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by 12xo 2068 days ago
If you think the retraction of voting rights is due to the actions of men some 300 years ago, I dont really have much to say... You might as well go back a few thousand years. However, if you're interested in the actual cause and effects of real, tangible actions and real legislation by living souls. People whose goals were to repress votes to change outcomes, I suggest you study the last 30 years of American media and how the Right morphed the rules to their benefit.
1 comments

"Retraction" is a weird word to use. The issue isn't that we're going backwards — voter turnout has generally increased over this country's lifetime [1] — but it's that we're enfranchising people at a relatively slow and demographically disproportionate rate. If you pick 30 years ago as your starting point, you'll miss the start of the war on drugs, white flight and redlining, Jim Crow — all "real, tangible actions and real legislation by living souls, people whose goals were to repress votes to change outcomes".

Right wing media constructing an alternate reality is worrying, of course. But it's myopic to intentionally ignore the mantle of disenfranchisement and oppression that recent politicians have picked up. Their ideas didn't come from nowhere, you know.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_St...

Forest v Trees 2020...