Watched the panel my Twitter friend moderated.
I had three main takeaways from the talk, two of which are the same thing.
- There was a strong contention that information shared with the media prior to the polls closing negatively affected voter turnout, and;
- The contention that information problems in other parts of government negatively affected voter turnout.
To reference my fellow CNU alumnus, https://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/medium/000/001/865/wikipedian_protester.png
I can see how that it might be commonly-thought that this is true, but where is the evidence to substantiate it?
Find me five people who are dissuaded from voting because the water utility’s shit got caught up in ransomware hell. I’ll be waiting.
The idea about media surpression, of course, is a flashback to Florida in 2000, where the media outlets were reporting, before the polls closed in East Alabama, that Gore had won the state.
Except, of course, that doesn’t really fit the narrative, considering how Republican the voters there are. So if the media had said Gore had won, Bush would have won by less?
(I kid about East Alabama. My wife was downloaded in the panhandle, I along the Space Coast. Neither of us would ever willing claim any Florida heritage.)
The third one I took issue with was the never-ending “go vote” mantra.
Listen, for some people It doesn’t matter in the least based on where they live.
I write this from Washington, DC; when’s anything other than a Democrat ever going to win here?
Never.
I will admit that my views on this have been greatly influenced by another DC resident, Katherine Mangu-Ward. Essentially, she said that if government is legitimate because it has the consent of the governed, if you refuse to provide consent by not voting, it isn’t okay for that government to exercise power over you.
So, yeah, I was gesticulating wildly in the back.
Hillary lost. It wasn’t because of the Russians. It wasn’t because of suppression efforts. She lost because she was a horrible candidate.
Nothing can be done that will change that fact, and any attempts made to remedy a problem that doesn’t really exist, will only serve to make elections worse.