The Grand Illusion
While public opinion polls currently are less than infallible, at least when they’re attempting to forecast election results, their margin of error is usually within a few percentage points. This means that polls are often not terribly useful in predicting national election results, but they can be very useful in quantifying public sentiment… and sometimes that quantification is frightening… if one considers the implications.
For example, public opinion polls show that roughly half of Americans are unconcerned about election laws that effectively restrict voting access or otherwise give a partisan advantage to one party, including continuing gerrymandering. This group of roughly half of American is much more concerned about infrastructure, immediate pay improvement, and climate change. From what I can determine, more people appear to support Trump’s lie about having the election “stolen” from him than the number who are concerned about election restrictions.
I can certainly agree that for someone unemployed or underemployed, getting a job or getting a better job is of far greater concern than future electoral restrictions, but ignoring current and future election law restrictions is only going to make it harder to improve problems such as inadequate education, wages suppressed by a low federal minimum wage, a crumbling public infrastructure, and the growing challenge of climate change, because the people who back restricting the right to vote, both directly and indirectly, are predominantly the same people who oppose dealing with the problems of low-income, unemployed, or underemployed people. Those who push election voting restrictions are also among those who benefit the most from keeping wages low and who oppose increasing the minimum wage.
Yet far too many Americans fail to understand that restricting voting access, over time, is just as much an economic issue as a legal issue; it’s just not as obvious to most people.
When asked to complete a survey in the UK, often I am told to rank my concerns.
Therefore I also likely would put electoral reform well down the list but that does not mean I do not care.
The pollsters state that offering people the opportunity to mark choices as being of equal priority does not give them anything to work with.
The whole argument is fake! One can verify people’s identity and STILL make it acceptably easy to vote, if one is willing to put some resources into aiding the identification-challenged to obtain identification.
But widespread mail-in voting with all validity checks removed because they might limit dead or fake people from voting, ballot harvesting, etc, is just crazy, because it’s utterly unverifiable.
“ But widespread mail-in voting with all validity checks removed because they might limit dead or fake people from voting, ballot harvesting, etc, is just crazy, because it’s utterly unverifiable.”
Literally no one is advocating for this and this did not happen in the 2020 election. The only people who are saying this is happening are Republican activists who are lying to you, because they want you to become angry and give them money, give them votes, or click on their content (‘remember to like and subscribe!’).
Various states or counties by administrative fiat set aside statutory checks such as for signatures, proper envelopes, etc. There were a number of irregularities where observers from both parties were not present. These things happened, and that’s not an exhaustive list by any means. Did they make a difference in the outcome? Maybe not, but they CERTAINLY provided fodder to call into question the integrity of the process. Nothing worthwhile should be made so easy as to be debased. If you’re not willing to lose some income or stand in line on a bad leg (done that rather than a mail-in vote, call me stubborn), you don’t deserve a vote. BTW, just a weekend extra voting is plenty to give people a chance to get there if they can get anywhere, and the lines were short and safety/distancing was NOT a problem in November 2020; unless you were particularly vulnerable, there was no excuse for staying home – at least not in my district.
As for activists, the left already has most of the market on lying; they are a constant threat to liberty, which is NOT being free from want, but being free to benefit or suffer from the consequences of one’s own actions. Trying to let no need go unmet means letting nobody go un-enslaved (more than a bare minimum of collectivism IS slavery of a sort), except of course those running the show, which, as Orwell pointed out, are more equal than others.
I’m sorry, but no. You cannot go around saying that you are just asking questions if you won’t listen to any of the answers that are provided to you. Trump filed more than 90 lawsuits and lost every one of them. All of the cockamamie theories that you listed above have been looked into and found wanting.
Good luck with that Arizona recount. Sure, it’s been going on for months and they could’ve recounted those ballots 150 times now, but if you just donate a little bit more money, they’ll be able to find that fraud! Remember to like and subscribe!
PARTICIPATION BIAS A type of selection bias producing a threat to generalization of experimental results resulting from a systematic difference between individuals willing to participate compared to individuals choosing not to participate in a study.
Perhaps this is the significant factor in surveys; and other things, in which we choose to participate.
As for – “From what I can determine, more people appear to support Trump’s lie about having the election “stolen” from him than the number who are concerned about election restrictions.” – and – “Yet far too many Americans fail to understand that restricting voting access, over time, is just as much an economic issue as a legal issue; it’s just not as obvious to most people.” – we have to recall our apparently increasing problems with observation, analysis and synthesis.