Trump has said that the United States shouldn’t have midterm elections this year because midterm voters often vote against the president’s party. Democratic congressional leaders have said they expect Trump to disrupt and dispute the midterms.
“It’s some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms,” Trump told Reuters in a recent interview. He then boasted that his presidency had accomplished so much that “when you think about it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told the Associated Press that Democrats are concerned that Trump will try to prevent open and fair midterm elections.
I hate defending non-voters, but a large number of people are unable to vote or aren’t well informed enough to know what’s going on. In the former camp, there are lots of people who can’t get to the polls because voting day isn’t a holiday or because there aren’t enough polling locations in their area, or because they are sick, etc. etc. Most of the time politicians actively work to make it harder to vote.
Of course you can feel however you’d like about the latter camp, but being uninformed is also being encouraged. People are often undereducated. Some people just don’t consume news. I’d be willing to bet there are some people who didn’t know an election was going on and some who couldn’t name the president.
Fuck off. That’s not a fucking excuse at this point. A third of the population allowed this to happen. The end.
This is the exact sort of response I expected.
My point here is that there is a lot of class struggle that actively works to prevent individuals from voting. Putting the blame just on those people misses the mark and will not fix things.
Take one example. Some people get to make a choice. Take time off of work, stand in line for literal hours, and try to vote or feed their family today. Is the solution to blame the individual or to address how fucked up the system is that prevents them from voting?
Yes, there are idiots who could have voted, but didn’t. They deserve derision. But, if we don’t identify that voter suppression is real, if we place the responsibility on people entirely, we play directly into the hands of those who don’t want people voting.