Home / General / Malevolence and incompetence are often hard to disentangle

Malevolence and incompetence are often hard to disentangle

On October 26, 2020

At 4:40 pm

In General

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The only reason the voting situation in New York isn’t a a national scandal is that it isn’t currently a swing state in presidential elections. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez points out, it still should be:

This is some cold truth from @AOC. If NYC were in a swing state, its election administration would be a national outrage. pic.twitter.com/Hu7nNIR4G4— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 26, 2020

Voter suppression isn’t always abt intent. Whether borne out of conspiracy or incompetence, it almost always yields disparate impact on the working class, communities of color, the under-resourced, etc.

And shouldn’t an “incompetent” BOE be recognized as a huge, urgent problem? https://t.co/1fxv1nrELe— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 26, 2020

But there’s always a rationalization at hand:

We have long lines for voting for the same reason we have long lines for major concerts: it's a rare event for which demand occurs all at once.

This is why lines are worst in dense areas and poor areas–the only way to alleviate the queues is through massive overcapacity … https://t.co/rJYoiXyhyM— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) October 15, 2020

Or in the alternative you could just mail everybody their ballot at the address listed on their voter registration, and give them three weeks to either mail it back or drop it in a secure government ballot box.

Voter suppression is a mixture of conscious and unconscious bad motives, along with the usual combinations of nostalgia, inertia, laziness, and sheer indifference that keep lots of ridiculous practices and institutions in business.