I responded to the guy, and should not have, here is what I said:
That’s twice now you have asked me what conservative news I read, and I must say that I don’t see the relevance of that information to this discussion. What if I read more conservative news than you; does that make my argument more valid and therefore correct? If you read more liberal news than me, does that now make your argument the right one? Besides, you just provided a list, not proof, that you read liberal publications. For all we know, you just googled a list and reprinted it. And I’m calling you out on this trick, as I have seen you do it other times to other people, to somehow prove that you are more well read. Come on, mate! Get some new material! Why don’t we just measure our hands to see whose is bigger? But to answer your question, my father helped found The National Review, and I spent summers with William F Buckley Jr. on the Cape sailing and discussing the need for a cohesive conservative political philosophy that is big tent, and also encourages individualism through free markets and personal responsibility.
All joking aside, the tactic you are trying to use here is to keep the discussion as micro as possible (Any fraud in a systems renders that system invalid and must be discontinued as it no longer can be trusted), but when it comes to voting in the United States, it has to be a macro, context-based discussion. Such as, 749 cases of voter fraud is not a good thing, but if you compare 749 cases of voter fraud to the 500+ million votes cast in the United States since 1948, which is the date range the Heritage database used, then you are looking at way less than one percent, right? (I’m not the math guy, I’ll leave that to you.) It would seem to me that would be akin to saying that if one murder was committed in a city of 10 million, that you have to scrap all the homicide departments in the police force, because murder could be rampant. Now, I would view that as, wow, that police department is doing an amazing job!
Also, in human history, when a political party is in power and it starts to try and limit access to people’s ability to vote, does that result in more or less enfranchisement?
And that’s what leads me to believe that you are lacking an understanding of the history of the United States when it comes to voting rights. Here is a nice primer for you:
Sadly, the language and argument of the possibility of voter fraud with mail-in ballots, which currently is being pushed hard by many conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, are not new, and goes well back 150 years. I ask you to educate yourself on the Jim Crow south, the Red Summer of 1919, Operation Eagle Eye (and how it has continued to this day,) and the language used in the opposition to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Did you even take a moment and wonder why so many of these Republican voter laws came about after repeal of part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013? What part of the country are they focused? Who does these laws affect? Why did it only become a national issues after 2013?
Dude, I know that I am not going to convince you of my position through a Facebook post, and you still wouldn’t believe me if I was right in front of you. But, I’m not asking you to believe in what I know, but I am asking you to question everything you think you know. Is that not the way we become more intelligent?
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