Anti-Voting Efforts

Powerful interests try to stop you from voting, proving that they're afraid of it.

There's a fake quote by Mark Twain that gets spread on the internet: "If voting made a difference, they wouldn't let us do it." (Twain actually said the opposite.)

The strangest thing about this fake quote is that some elected officials and political parties try really hard to stop people from voting, through tactics ranging from exclusionary voter ID laws to voter purges to closing polling locations.

Targeted voter discouragement is a key part of Russian election interference:

Some strategies and tactics for election interference were the same as before. Russia’s trolls pretended to be American people, including political groups and candidates. They tried to sow division by targeting both the left and right with posts to foment outrage, fear, and hostility. Much of their activity seemed designed to discourage certain people from voting. And they focused on swing states.

This isn't new. The post-reconstruction era in the US South is famous for its extensive efforts to prevent African Americans from voting. You can take this real Louisiana voting test to see how determined white politicians were to block black people from the polls.

Even with all this effort, political groups and moneyed interests are unable to completely stop voter power. If political parties controlled politics, Donald Trump would not have won the 2016 Republican primary. If money controlled politics, then Ted Cruz would have won that year.

Below, in 40 seconds, you can see a prominent political leader from the 1980s proudly admitting that he doesn't want people to vote and explaining why:

And a more recent example: