There are many problems that we need to address but a very big one is how to get more voters engaged in the election. Yes, there were voters who switched from Democrat in 2012 to GOP in 2016 and we need to look at those voters and see how we can get them back. But lets not forget about the 100 million some voters who were eligible to vote but didn’t. We are pulling our hair out over what happened on Nov 8th and quibbling over 70K votes in 3 swing states, yet 100 million people didn’t even think it was important enough to vote.
Over 231 million Americans are eligible to vote. However, based on early results from the 2016 Presidential election, just over 130 million of them voted for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
The election is over and the Electoral College has made it official that we on the verge of the impending Trump presidency. There are outrages on so many levels that is hard to sustain interest and activism on something as complicated as voter suppression.
Voter suppression takes many forms and I won’t to go through all of them but the fact that 100 million eligible voters did not vote in 2016 is a clear indication that voter suppression works. The question is how do we fight back. Kudos to the movement in north Carolina for fighting the good fight. This is the model that the left should be championing and we should be dragging our political leaders along with us.
Since Republicans love them some tax cuts so much they should be all for giving a tax deduction to voters simply voting. I know; they will fight tooth and nail for tax cuts to their rich donors but the prospect of them supporting tax cuts for regular voters is pretty slim. Still it would be political fun to watch them twist themselves into pretzels explaining why they will not support such an idea. It should a checkbox on every tax return, right next to the presidential election fund. It doesn’t have to be much. $50 would be equivalent to a $6.5 billion tax cut. This is a small price to pay and besides, it should stimulate the economy according to GOP orthodoxy.
The GOP uses political battles to effectively sway public opinion, or often to confuse the public. A political fight like this, even though nearly impossible in the face of GOP obstruction, is what we need in the minority. Even if we lose the political battle, we start to change peoples attitudes about voting.
I know it is a heavy lift but we have to start somewhere.