I think the best thing for Democrats to do is if they require voter ID, but they make the ID's free. And get rid of mail ballots in most situations. I remember in 2016, I had a friend whose uncle would take everybody's ballots and fill them out "for them", and thus my friend said they were made to vote for Trump. It seems mail ballots may fall victim to power dynamics within a household.
As ever, I appreciate your response. On this issue, it isn’t really about advantage, as such household dynamics have perhaps worked in the Dems’ favor in other homes. It’s the fact such dynamics are allowed to affect an election. Coming to a public place with a booth where you cast a secret ballot pretty much shits these dynamics down.
Still, you are insightful as to strategy, and that might worth trying. I don’t know why Dems don’t go for free ID.
I think the household dynamics are a wash, TBH. To the extent that they're present today, they've probably only been *worse* in the past.
I'm far more concerned with overall turnout. Mail balloting is valuable because of that. IMO, we should have stacks of ballots at every gas station next to the newspapers. We already verify mail-in ballots against voter rolls, so having them widely available isn't an appreciable risk of fraud.
I also strongly believe that the two-party system itself undermines turnout. One of the strongest factors that discourages nonvoters is the spoiler effect. No one likes to get nothing for their vote. IMO, this is the single greatest opportunity for restoring our democratic feedback loop. Adopting positive-sum elections makes pretty much every other turnout reform or anything else easier to implement and succeed with -- IE, once you stop insulting people by calling zero-sum elections "democracy", they'll be responsive to the other things you might do. But until we manage that, everything else is just tinkering at the edges.
Maine did it. NYC did it. STL did it. Alaska has some wierd thing going on. And the national Democratic primary is done by basically a "proportional electoral college with superdelegates as a top-up" method. It's possible! It seems like there are two types of spaces where it's feasible:
1) Places where stable one-party dominance requires better methods for processing internal dissent. That's NYC and STL, as well as the national Dem primary. The strategy here should be to sell the parties on this as a stabilizing factor that will help prevent flukey primaries from tanking the party's dominance over the state.
2) Places with strong histories of statewide moderation where polarization has frustrated the "middle majority" by foisting extremists from either side onto them through flukey primaries. This is Maine and Alaska. The strategy here is... basically exactly what activists did in each state. You sell it to the public as "this isn't to help either party, it's to fix the system and get better moderation".
I think the best thing for Democrats to do is if they require voter ID, but they make the ID's free. And get rid of mail ballots in most situations. I remember in 2016, I had a friend whose uncle would take everybody's ballots and fill them out "for them", and thus my friend said they were made to vote for Trump. It seems mail ballots may fall victim to power dynamics within a household.
I think that mail balloting is still a net positive for Democrats.
Now, using it as a trading chip to get "free and widely available ID" may indeed be worth considering.
As ever, I appreciate your response. On this issue, it isn’t really about advantage, as such household dynamics have perhaps worked in the Dems’ favor in other homes. It’s the fact such dynamics are allowed to affect an election. Coming to a public place with a booth where you cast a secret ballot pretty much shits these dynamics down.
Still, you are insightful as to strategy, and that might worth trying. I don’t know why Dems don’t go for free ID.
I think the household dynamics are a wash, TBH. To the extent that they're present today, they've probably only been *worse* in the past.
I'm far more concerned with overall turnout. Mail balloting is valuable because of that. IMO, we should have stacks of ballots at every gas station next to the newspapers. We already verify mail-in ballots against voter rolls, so having them widely available isn't an appreciable risk of fraud.
I also strongly believe that the two-party system itself undermines turnout. One of the strongest factors that discourages nonvoters is the spoiler effect. No one likes to get nothing for their vote. IMO, this is the single greatest opportunity for restoring our democratic feedback loop. Adopting positive-sum elections makes pretty much every other turnout reform or anything else easier to implement and succeed with -- IE, once you stop insulting people by calling zero-sum elections "democracy", they'll be responsive to the other things you might do. But until we manage that, everything else is just tinkering at the edges.
I agree. But how do you adopt positive-sum elections? The 2 parties will not accept it, and they hold all the cards.
Maine did it. NYC did it. STL did it. Alaska has some wierd thing going on. And the national Democratic primary is done by basically a "proportional electoral college with superdelegates as a top-up" method. It's possible! It seems like there are two types of spaces where it's feasible:
1) Places where stable one-party dominance requires better methods for processing internal dissent. That's NYC and STL, as well as the national Dem primary. The strategy here should be to sell the parties on this as a stabilizing factor that will help prevent flukey primaries from tanking the party's dominance over the state.
2) Places with strong histories of statewide moderation where polarization has frustrated the "middle majority" by foisting extremists from either side onto them through flukey primaries. This is Maine and Alaska. The strategy here is... basically exactly what activists did in each state. You sell it to the public as "this isn't to help either party, it's to fix the system and get better moderation".