The Non-Voter

By artappraiser on Sat, 09/05/2020 - 4:27pm |

I think some reporter on here said recently that the biggest divide is between those who follow politics closely and those who don't. In America, those who don't are the majority, and not very well represented in institutions. https://t.co/dHwq8baDCF
— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) September 5, 2020

URL:

https://americancompass.org/the-commons/the-non-voter/

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excellent excerpt

Most of my book on poverty and addiction is about non-voters. That isn’t surprising since the poorest Americans are the least likely to vote. Yet I met plenty of working class and solidly middle class people who don’t vote.

One reason people don’t vote is because it is unnecessarily hard to do, and that should be changed. But it is far more than that. For many Americans, as they see it, not voting is the right choice, and they still wouldn’t vote if it was easier to do.

The attitude is best summed up by T, a forty-year old black man in Lumberton, North Carolina who explained why he didn’t vote in 2016,

“I am just so upset with the whole thing. Fed up. I voted for Obama. Seems like when he left office nothing changed for me. Nothing changed for this neighborhood. So I say, ‘We had a black president and I still working for eight dollars per hour and nothing has changed. Nothing. Ain’t nothing changed. Every single president. Obama. Bush. Clinton. Same thing.”

Or J, 62, in Battle Creek, Michigan,

“Most of the men I know didn’t vote. Nobody had the spirit this time. Trump or Hillary? Doesn’t make much difference. Things out here gonna stay the same. We had high hopes for Obama. But nothing changed. Blacks here didn’t end up being helped by him. I mean, he might have tried, but his hands were tied by both parties. Lots of us are just so frustrated. Nobody had the spirit.”

No change and still no hope, so why bother.

T and J at least took the time to respond. Most others, when asked about politics, simply roll their eyes, or laugh, or shake their head, or spit out something like, ‘Fuck them crooks.’

This isn’t a left or right thing, or a black or white thing, or an urban versus rural thing. It isn’t just an Obama thing, like in the two examples. I heard the same frustration and same disappointment directed at Bush and Romney from deep red regions, like trailer parks in West Virginia and truck stops in Kansas, just like I heard it directed at Obama and Clinton in deep blue regions like a housing project in downtown Cleveland and the wards of El Paso.

by artappraiser on Sat, 09/05/2020 - 4:30pm

Beto currently pushing the same meme:

Texas isn’t a red state. It’s a non-voting state. We’re calling literally every Democratic voter in the state to change that. Join us on this phone bank Tuesday & help us turn Texas into a voting state, one that elects Democrats up and down the ballot: https://t.co/N4fESgtCUu
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) September 4, 2020

by artappraiser on Sat, 09/05/2020 - 4:37pm

The quality I have most often encountered when talking with the "none of the above" contingent is an odd confidence in a system that requires nothing from them. The Arnade article focuses on the nothing gained side of the equation. I think the deeper side of the problem is a weird kind of sense of entitlement where the minimum experienced by many is a thing that cannot be further reduced.

It can.

by moat on Sat, 09/05/2020 - 4:57pm

As far as the "nothing gained" or transactional attitude about it, I was just thinking about how many non voters might actually be the case of it being a negative to vote. As far as "living off the grid" for some reason or another--i.e., non filing of taxes, not paying alimony or child support, trying to run from bill collectors, judgments against you for one thing or another, immigration legalities, unpaid parking tickets or other fines, or even just not capable of more time for traditional responsibilities of being "on the grid".

Once you vote, "they" are all after you, they know you are there, you are on the rolls. They might have thought you dead because your mail is returned to sender. But now you are there.

You will get a jury summons pronto within months, as if you have time for that....

For some reason renewing a Driver's License or I.D. does not have the same effect as voting in this regard.

by artappraiser on Sat, 09/05/2020 - 5:21pm

p.s. I KNOW this is one reason many do not avail themselves of Obamacare: it requires coming up with prior year income tax filings and they don't have one. Even if they don't owe anything, the fines for non-filing are stiff and ignoring those can have very nasty consequences. And they don't want any communication with the IRS about them. So they can't get a subsidy, so the prices quoted them on Obamacare are high.

Working for cash and living off the grid means not voting and not having health insurance, either.

Edit to add: is one strong argument for V.A.T. type taxes rather than income taxes. Low income and low info. people who have myriad problems can't handle "the paperwork" as it were, of having so much individual responsibility.

by artappraiser on Sat, 09/05/2020 - 5:28pm

Fatigue with bureaucracy must play a part. I think the fear of Big Brother is more about our relationship to the Bank than the State. The State just seems like an extension of the Bank in a lot of situations.

The "whatever" expectation of nonvoters is a perception of the world more than a withdrawal from it.

by moat on Sat, 09/05/2020 - 7:50pm

A deeper problem than partisan analysts see:

There also wasn't majority support for Hillary Clinton in 2016. In 2014, voter turnout was the lowest in seventy years, that's why Democrats lost control of the Senate. This goes a lot deeper than these partisan analyses offer. https://t.co/XgA7kb4aQB
— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) September 19, 2020

by artappraiser on Sun, 09/20/2020 - 3:04am

and there is significant anti-Federal sentiment to add into the problematic mix:

There has never been a better time to post this poll pic.twitter.com/UsYsW9QlVr
— Populism Updates (@PopulismUpdates) September 19, 2020

by artappraiser on Sun, 09/20/2020 - 3:06am

As Ali McGraw nearly said:
Being Libertarian means never having to say you are sorry.

by moat on Sun, 09/20/2020 - 1:55pm

Here's the irony for me myself and I.

I used to think: how loony, how can people think that a federal system of taxation and funding and insuring fairness need be so onerous and wasteful in this day and age when you can have friends on Facebook across the globe and buy stuff on Ebay from China and have it arrive in a couple days and everybody allover the world is shopping on Amazon and likes it?

And then came the virus. And we are back to local local local...you can forget the U.S., nobody from Spain can go to Italy right now...and those from Wuhan are going to have to live with a scarlet letter for quite some time...

by artappraiser on Sun, 09/20/2020 - 2:14pm

The Non-Voter

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