How about bills restricting voting access to people of color, or the ability to say the word “gay”? Those don’t qualify as material consequences for violating conventions/ideology? You have a one sided view.
https://archive.ph/zUVTp is one of many, they work by making it more difficult to vote if you are working class, and usually urban in a state with a high percentage of minority residents. These laws, in practice, disenfranchise mostly minority voters.
It's not dead due to work by the Roberts Court to gut the voting rights act, which was the law that prevented this kind of shenanigans.
Isn't the part of the bill you linked to just saying "buses and other readily movable facilities shall only be used in emergencies"? What does that have to do with being working class or a minority?
The entire article, I didn't mean to link to a particular subheading.
And now the "plausible deniability games" begin in earnest. It is entirely possible to write a law that is ostensibly race neutral while making it apply discriminatorily. For a non-racial example, consider preferring tall candidates or military veterans as a proxy for men.
Similarly, things like requiring a drivers license or travel to an in-person voting location prevent working class people who don't own a vehicle and who work 9-5 from being able to vote without sacrificing wages (or perhaps at all!)
> It is entirely possible to write a law that is ostensibly race neutral while making it apply discriminatorily.
I agree it's possible, just not that this bill does so.
> requiring a drivers license or travel to an in-person voting location
But the bill you linked to doesn't require either of those things. There are explicit provisions for people without driver's licenses in it, and it didn't ban absentee voting.
> Right, which you need to be familiar with and be able to assert your rights about.
Being allowed to vote without an ID isn't good enough, because some people might not know it's allowed? And why would you need to "assert" your rights? If this bill were to pass, wouldn't pollworkers be aware of the new set of rules?
> 1. All else equal, will this law decrease turnout by predominantly black working class voters?
> 2. Did the bills drafters intend this?
> Three answers to both of those are "yes". Which brings up the third question: why isn't that discriminatory?
If the answer to both of those questions were actually yes, then I'd agree that the bill were discriminatory. But you've just asserted the answer is yes without providing evidence, and I don't agree with your assertion.
> If this bill were to pass, wouldn't pollworkers be aware of the new set of rules?
That depends on your race. The fun thing about arbitrary and unnecessary restrictions like this is that they can be enforced only against some people, something that the VRA explicitly prevented at the policy level until it was gutted.
The answer to the first is yes, policies like these result in voter suppression that has to be countered by additional gotv efforts for equivalent turnout (among predominantly black, working class, democrat voters).
The answer to the second is also yes. The Republican legislators aren't dumb. The theory that the election was "stolen" by the Dems, which led to this law is functionally that too many Democrats voted. And the point of this law is to prevent that, under the guise of blocking "illegitimate" (working class black democratic) voters.
How is anything I said "plausible deniability games"? You claimed that bills exist that would restrict voting access to people of color. I asked you exactly which bills these are, and you can't/won't tell me.
The reason they won't tell you is because you've already presented yourself as someone who would deny the racist goals of a bill merely because it doesn't explicitly mention race.
Differently put: everyone knows what these bills are except people who are in denial of institutionalized racism. You've used an argument structure that is reminiscent of that used by people who are in denial of institutionalized racism. Therefore, it is assumed that you are in denial of institutionalized racism, and thus, there's no point telling you about the bills because you're just going to be in denial about them anyway.
Meanwhile, anyone who is not in denial can just use any random search engine and find articles like this one:
After 4 years of trying to engage thoughtfully and being given the run around, I'm done putting myself out there for people who don't demonstrate an ounce of genuine interest in understanding the issue.
I consume a wide range of media every day and I've never seen a bill that "restricts voting access for people of color". It's an extraordinary claim so you would to need provide strong evidence, rather than being dismissive.
> I consume a wide range of media every day and I've never seen a bill that "restricts voting access for people of color".
Bills that restrict voting rights in America along racial lines are all over the news, even outside of America. That leaves only two possibilities. Either your range of media isn't as wide as you think, or you are in denial. You've already dismissed another commenter’s response, so I'm leaning towards the latter.
If said bills are so well-known and all over the news, why not just link to one? This is HackerNews, if someone says "____ exists and it's a problem" and someone else politely asks "which ____ are you referring to?", the appropriate thing to do is to just reference the thing in question - we don't need to get pedantic about the range of one's media consumption.
It's because the bills in question don't actually explicitly restrict people of color from voting, they just make voting a little less convenient (i.e. a bill that you have to show a photo id to vote, for example, and a person of color might be statistically less likely to have a photo id than a non-person of color)
The reason I (and I assume other commenters, but I don't presume to speak on their behalf) don't care to dig up sources for you is because it's a waste of time. There are only two possibilities: either you're in denial, in which case there's nothing I can present to you that you won't also be in denial about; or you're not, in which case you can just search for it yourself (e.g. “bills that restrict voter rights in America”). Things that are all over the news are also generally easy to find.
Forming conclusions about racism requires interpretation. Every time I trust one of you to be genuinely curious about the issue I’m disappointed, and here I am again, disappointed. Not particularly surprising though.
Ezra Klein and John Oliver aren't news, they're entertainment personalities like Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson. Though if they're a big part of your information diet as it is, I don't really see this being a fruitful conversation. /r/politics tends to accommodate to that kind of viewpoint a little more, I'd suggest moving the soapbox over there :)
John Oliver is more prone to histrionics, but Ezra Klein is genuinely insightful and thoughtful. He’s really a much better/more truthful journalist than joe Rogan or tucker.
