But when it comes to scheduling off-cycle elections1 like those taking place today, the Democratic Party is the champion of voter suppression...
Scheduling elections at odd times appears to be a deliberate strategy aimed at keeping turnout low, which gives more influence to groups like teachers unions that have a direct stake in the election’s outcome...
For readers who are sympathetic to the perspective of the off-cycle election proponents (typically Democrats), it is worth noting that these are very much the same arguments that Republicans might make in favor of voting restrictions that make voting a little bit harder for the average American. Just like voter ID or voter-registration requirements, off-cycle elections impose a cost on political participation. The cost is evidently high, since very few people participate in local elections when they are held in odd-numbered years. Maybe the cost leads to a more enlightened electorate. Or maybe it is Democratic-sponsored voter suppression.
Earlier this year, Hillary Clinton made a speech about voting rights in which she said, “Republicans are systematically and deliberately trying to stop millions of American citizens from voting. What part of democracy are they afraid of?” For Democrats like Clinton who are apparently aghast at Republican efforts at voter suppression, today is a good day to take a look in the mirror.
Wednesday, November 04, 2015
How Democrats Suppress The Vote
Given the source, lefties can't complain about it :)
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School board elections are notoriously like this. In my current small city of residence, school board elections stand alone, with no other measures on the ballot, are at an odd time-frame, do not use the regular polling places but combines several precincts into one larger one (which votes a a place different from all of the usual ones) AND all district employees may vote at their place of work. Yeah, that's fair; teachers can vote at their school but parents dropping off their kids (no school buses except for spec ed) cannot vote there. The elections also tend to be poorly advertised, except for employees, who are bombarded by propaganda and reminders (my neighbor is a teacher).
I also remember an extremely close election for a MD senator, a couple of decades ago, which was won by the Democratic candidate by only a few hundred votes. It was discovered that Baltimore (city and county) had purged voter rolls only is precincts that usually voted Republican. Heavily Democratic precincts were left alone, despite post-election evidence of significant numbers of dead voters and the same voters listed at several addresses (voting at each one). The state Democratic machine ignored it all.
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