Ruminations: Voter Frustration/Apathy to Self-Suppression to Blaming Negative Campaigning
For the last few days, I've tried to get a better understanding of dynamics between the electorate, candidates, and politicians. The first inspiration for this exploration came from the latest FiveThirtyEight Politics episode, "Democratic Socialists are Here to Stay". The hosts discussed what different metrics and polls could help predict polls the best. The podcast had generally discussed the Congressional Generic Polls up to this to see the sentiment of the nation. A link will be good! https://t.co/m8lIBwYr70 https://t.co/N8WAZhjDjO [Providing good indepth analysis into voter apathy then concludes with approach I can agree with: make voting into a festive party-like experience.] Why more than 80 million Americans won’t vote on Election Day [2016] - Vox https://t.co/VdYUDCrXkb #voterapathy #voterfrustration [Well someone triggered me when it comes to voters not participating.] Why Young, Minority, and Low-Income Citizens Don’t Vote [2014] - Center for American Progress https://t.co/kHa6CSa6A7 #voterapathy #voterfrustration [Is the problem w/ US politics a crisis of disorganization or a crisis of leadership? I appreciate the word 'politiphobe' from this article.] How American Politics Went Insane - The Atlantic https://t.co/QtafSWHzxE #politicalapathy #politicalfrustration [This article doesn't try to hide one major argument: Republicans don't want people to vote b/c it will likely hurt their chances of winning.] It's Unnecessarily Hard To Vote In America. . .But It Doesn't Have to Be - Digg https://t.co/GuQLXekIit #voterapathy #voterfrustration [How much will voter suppression affect the Millennial vote?] Young People Are the Future—Too Bad Voter Suppression Might Keep Them from the Polls - Medium https://t.co/DWcQSWPI27 #voterapathy #voterfrustration #votersuppression Starting to think self-selection bias is a form of voter suppression ("both parties are the same", "my vote doesn't count or do anything", "none of the candidates are good", "none of the candidates are inspiring", etc.). Thoughts? #voterapathy #voterfrustration #votersuppression And I don't mean super-positive in a way that ignores injustices in the country & world, but a super-positive campaign that gives us hope but no main strategy to have the opposing base self-supress their voting. The effect of negative campaign ads on voters - WSIL ABC https://t.co/WnNKtraMns #voterapathy #voterfrustration #turnoutsuppression #votersuppression
In the discussion, though, the hosts opined that the Likely Voter Polls would provide more accurate metrics. Makes sense. As I understand it, the Congressional Generic Polls doesn't necessarily screen out non-voters or those with a low chance of voting, for whatever reason, so allowing this data into the polls can skew the results by giving irrelevant noise credence. Likely Voter polls, however, should screen out those non-voters and unlikely voters, thus generating more accurate predictions of an upcoming election.
The Internet doesn't have that many Likely Voter polls published or shared on it. The closest I could find was this Vox article: "Poll: only 28 percent of young voters say they will certainly vote in the 2018 midterms". Being a big social media user, I shared the article with some comment about needing to increase that likely voterhood of young voters to 100%. It felt great until someone made a comment about not having an inspiring candidates that would motivate young people to vote, so why even bother?
I first responded to that comment by going off about Trump being an existential crisis that could lead to the destruction of the United States and the world (the fires all around the world this year are really freaking me out, then add in the belligerence of Pompeo and Trump with regards to Iran this week, and so many other things). Candidates that make a modicum of sense and can bring order back to Washington and society by putting a stop to Trump is worth it, even if they're bland in other ways. Stopping this trashfire is more important now than pushing for social and economic progress. We can move onto those good things once we return to steady pluralistic peace that we don't feel gaslighted all the time.
That whole response felt hypocritical to arguments that I've made in the past -- except that the more voters that vote, the more we hold our elected officals accountable. I want our candidates, politicians, and leaders to motivate and inspire us to vote and get out in the world to actively mold it. I do a hyperfocused search with terms a variety of terms about Americans not voting and the reasons for it.
Since this search came in reaction to an expression of voter apathy, disillusionment, disaffection, and frustration rather than active suppression by the powers that be, I screened out straight up voter suppression. I believe voter suppression contributes a lot to results I disagree with and goes against the spirit of America. Nonetheless, other than the $5 per month donation I send to Let America Vote and other token efforts here and there, I can't do much about voter suppression (you should also contribute to Let America Vote and also help fight voter suppression, too).
Plus, voter suppression in the form of laws, rules, and so forth isn't very complicated. Corrupt Powers that Be put "legal" roadblocks in the way of people that obviously don't support them. Simple, but difficult, solution: get those Corrupt Powers out of office, replace them with Agents of Democracy that hate voter suppression as much as me and want as many voices to participate in Democracy to have the power to do so. Simple to imagine the path to the destination, but difficult because it involves so many human factors, which I only have a limited power over. The most power I can possibly have pretty much comes down to influence people around me and who I have in Internet reach to get out the vote and value candidates that will fight voter suppression.
The biggest issue in motivating and influencing that way: voter self-suppression, a complicated and still difficult scenario. Here's a sample of articles that I found:
All of that Internet searching combined with a bunch of surfing I did this weekend about the ideological alignment of the Alt Right and Russia (epitomized by this quote: "Classic Soviet propaganda always treated Democrats and Republicans as essentially indistinguishable and interchangeable components of the bourgeois power structure, both equally worthy of denunciation", which basically made me think of Green/3rd Party and a few disaffected voters I know who either voted 3rd party or didn't vote in 2016) motivated me to end this latest social media blitz with the following:
A connection provided me a good challenge, stating that even though those factors aren't good, it didn't strike them as "voter suppression" since it lacked intentionality from The Powers That Be. The challenge to my claim sent me on another tear to narrow down terms and try to make an argument of intentionality on the side of politicians to encourage voter self-suppression (term I discovered in ths tear through the Internet).
My thought processes haven't gone much further than the following Tweets:
I'll finish these ruminations here. My mind contains more fuel for rumination, especially in regards campaigning and leading more positively. I also have some thoughts about presenting political information/arguments in ways that cut down on information overload. This ruminative essay fails at that level of succinctness, but I'm OK with that. At this time, I'm fine with throwing shit at the wall, seeing what sticks, and also seeing if anyone else has any useful responses. So. . .anyone else have anything to add?
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