Talk:Voter suppression

message: Needs more spin.  How about we talk about the Haliburton Hurricane Machine, which was obviously used to wreck Democratic voting New Orleans?
----  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.246.219.35 (talk) 16:56, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: If the neutrality issue in this article has been resolved the tag should be removed. Thank you! William (Bill) Bean 20:31, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias 

message: I added a well sourced example of voter suppression by campaign organizations, namely, the tire slashing of GOP vans during the 2004 election. This is one of the very few examples where people were actually convicted in a court of law for these kinds of activities, and certainly should be in the article.Crockspot 16:07, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Crockpot, thank you for clarifying how the vans were involved in voter suppression.  Also, thanks for correcting the references in the article. Kgrr 01:19, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  My pleasure. - Crockspot 01:22, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Balance 

message: In 2004, 5.3 million Americans were denied the right to vote because of previous felony convictions. Thirteen states permanently disenfranchise convicted felons; eighteen states restore voting rights after completion of prison, parole, and probation; four states re-enfranchise felons after they have been released from prison and have completed parole; thirteen allow felons who have been released from prison to vote, and two states do not disenfranchise felons at all.[3] However, for states that do offer a path for restoration of voting rights, the process can often be very difficult.
The United States is the only democracy in the world that bans its felons from voting.
The last sentence is contradicted by the cited statistics, since not all felons are barred from voting. APh8ohph (talk) 21:56, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Inaccuracy

message: This only has examples from the USA. What about some examples from other nations? Contralya 06:38, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there would be no harm in renaming the article United States voter suppression or something similar. -- Yellowdesk 18:06, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  USA 

message: It's not at all clear if caging is illegal or unethical, particularly given that its purpose is to weed out fraudulent voter registrations.  This is especially relevant because a group well-known for complaining about caging is being investigated for widespread fraudulent voter registrations.  Please address this before altering the NPOV notice on this section.  Frotz (talk) 03:59, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The whole article looks POV to me.  It starts with "Voter suppression is a form of electoral fraud" but then discusses issues such as excluding past felons from the franchise, which seems to be legal if not particularly democratic to an non-American.  Presumably what it means is "Voter suppression is any attempt by my opponents to reduce the ability of my supporters to vote for me".  It could be said that anybody who reduces the ability of others to vote is carrying out voter suppression, whether that is for obvious compliance with democratic systems even if it introduces bureaucratic hurdles (e.g. ensuring people are adult citizens and only vote once), or where there is legitimate argument which might have differential effects (e.g. the exclusion of criminals of one sort or another, or requiring a minimum residency in an area), or where the attempt is more clearly illegitimate (e.g. physically threatening anybody who tries to vote in opponents' locations of support).--Rumping (talk) 14:37, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Caging and dubious accusations 

message: I did a significant rewrite and copy-edit on the page tonight in hopes of making the POV more neutral.  Since the topics are disputed, I thought the clearest way would be to remove party affiliations where possible (i.e., where it wouldn't look like "hiding" something), and to phrase discussion of tactics as "proponents" and "opponents."  One group believes one thing, the other group believes the opposite.
I also rewrote the introduction to make the concerns on this page clearer, that "suppression" may or may not be "illegal" but broadly refers to the idea of trying to keep people from voting rather than convincing them to vote the way you would prefer.
In the various sections (and I admit, I gave the last section almost no attention), I added text when I thought it was necessary to explain why a described action could be seen as "suppression." For example, I didn't think it was immediately obvious why requiring a photo ID could be argued as targeting minority or elderly voters, so I added text to state that such people may not have photo IDs because they don't need them.  I tried to clarify what the phone jamming's intent was, why inequal funding could lead to inequal wait times, and noted that partisan conflicts of appearance may be just the appearance thereof.
The Texas section is kind of contentious, and might be better removed unless someone has evidence to support the contentions of widespread voter fraud. There's a citation for the study saying there were no individual instances and that a million voters don't have photo IDs, but no citations saying there is any voter fraud to be combatted.  Without such citations, it's going to appear to have a point of view, but I didn't have any citations to add.
If someone has the data to add a section about the illegality of suppression techniques, including citing both techniques that were found illegal as well as those that were alleged to be illegal but upheld in the courts, I think it would go a long way towards setting the tone of a discussion of the strategy and tactic rather than pointing fingers at who is and isn't trying to engage in it.
I have a point of view on this, but I really hope it didn't come through.  (If I didn't have my own point of view, I would know nothing about this and wouldn't feel comfortable trying to help.)  I don't think I removed anything significant or reversed any meaning; I only tried to clarify and take individual organizations out where possible. I even changed one section to refer to "other political parties" instead of "the other party" because, in some elections in some places, there are more than two parties.
I'm not married to any of this but, of course, I hope that my first large-scale article contribution attempt won't be indiscriminately reverted.  There have been more allegations of voter suppression against Republicans in the US in the past several years than against Democrats, so as long as examples remain a significant part of the article, the quantity of examples alleging Republican wrongdoing may, by itself, present the appearance of a point of view.  On the other hand, trying to find an equal number of Democratic examples, or removing Republican examples to match the number of existing Democratic examples, could be viewed as trying too hard to present an "even" perspective when the data supports more current examples from one party.
A statistic from somewhere showing how many allegations of voter suppression were made in a time period, including how many were made against each political party, could establish that there simply are (or are not) more allegations against Republicans lately, and therefore avoid the appearance of POV.
This is my very first long-form talk page contribution, too, and I apologize if adding a new section wasn't right.  I'm new at this but thought I could help the article.  Mdeatherage (talk) 09:52, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  July 2009 rewrite to remove POV 

message: In North Carolina, USA, at least, recent additional state legislation requires that students at colleges and universities vote from their home precincts.  Not exactly convenient to leave during the week -- especially if home is very far away.  ....Isn't an absentee ballot an option?  Nope.  Now in North Carolina, you must vote from your home district at least once before you can do an absentee ballot. This in fact disenfranchises most students who are now participating in their first presidential election, due to their age.
As a partisan observation, student turnout for the 2008 election was a significant determinant for a state that traditionally leans Republican; the law was sponsored by a Republican in the NC State House of Representatives. Many students tend to vote Democrat, but of course, the laws apply equally to all voters.  
This may be a minor (or too specialized) an example with minimal documentation and historical impact.  Hence, rather than editing, I'm leaving it in the Talk page for others' consideration.  Gprobins (talk) 09:42, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additional State Legislation (USA) 

message: Maybe consider adding a section devoted to data on the number of alleged voter suppression or intimidation acts. I feel this would add an element of authentication to the article. I think it would be relatively painless to find this data and the evidence would be very useful in informing readers on whether suppression is real or just perceived. --Acowan360 (talk) 01:40, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  A section focused on empirical evidence of voter suppression? 

message: I added a bit of background from the Wikipedia article on the American Center for Voting Rights, linked to it, and marked its claim for violating NPOV. Any claims that it made concerning voter suppression are suspect. Independent confirmation would be needed. Please review, and if necessary we can delete this paragraph.
Here are some references on voter suppression, and the opposing argument on supposed Voter Fraud. I don't have time to mine all of the instances of voter suppression that they report. I leave it to others to determine whether these accounts are authoritative and NPOV, particularly whether they give original encyclopedia-quality sources on the events they report. The books themselves, and the video, are clearly secondary sources.
* Electoral Dysfunction: A Survival Manual for American Voters, by Victoria Bassetti, Heather Smith and Mo Rocca (Sep 18, 2012)
* Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, by Greg Palast (Sep 18, 2012)
* The Politics of Voter Suppression: Defending and Expanding Americans' Right to Vote, (A Century Foundation Book) by Tova Andrea Wang and Janice Nittoli (Aug 21, 2012)</li>
* The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown, by Richard L. Hasen (Aug 14, 2012)
* The Myth of Voter Fraud, by Lorraine Carol Minnite (Jun 10, 2010)
* Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008, by Mark Crispin Miller (Apr 1, 2008)
* Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression, by Spencer Overton (Jun 5, 2006)
Here is a DVD of a TV special on the subject.
* Moyers & Company: Suppressing the Vote, Starring Bill Moyers, Keesha Gaskins, Michael Waldman, et al. (Sep 19, 2012) DVD
The Daily Beast has a story on it.
* "As Election Nears, Voter Suppression Efforts Kick Into Gear"
by John Avlon Oct 31, 2012 2:02 PM EDT 
Books pushing the myth of voter fraud are one of the tools of choice among the voter suppression crowd.
* Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, by John H. Fund (Jul 21, 2008)
* The Dead Always Vote Democrat: But Our Troops Don't Get to Vote, by Ben Brink (Sep 3, 2012)
* Who's Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk, by John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky (Aug 14, 2012)
Cherlin (talk) 23:51, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Since no one has stepped up to defend it, I've simply deleted the paragraph in question as trivial, as it makes controversial claims and doesn't cite any secondary sources. If this appears wrong to anyone else, though, as always, feel free to revert me and glad to talk further. -- Khazar2 (talk) 03:50, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  American Center for Voting Rights not a neutral source 

message: "Contemporary voter suppression techniques include voter ID laws." 
I think that has to be rewritten. Many countries, including Canada, require identification in order to be able and eligible to vote and very few think of it as "voter suppression."   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.246.232.41 (talk) 02:39, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Iffy 

message: Given that there is an article titled "Voter suppression in the United States" that this article even refers to, this page maybe should be expanded to more countries and have a less U.S. focused topic. There is some missing information about Poland and more examples of voter suppression in other countries. --Deej26 (talk) 18:49, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too U.S. Focused? 

message: Given that there is a section regarding the effects of COVID-19 for the 2020 U.S. elections at the bottom of the article, should there also be a section that addresses the important effects of the BLM movement on the 2020 U.S. presidential election as well as the effects of the "Save The Post-Office" movement around this US? Both BLM and "Save The Post-Office" movements are crucial to voter suppression as both movements contribute to the mail-in voting aspect of the elections and the importance of voting in the 2020 election regardless of in-person or mail-in voting method.--Lindseyjli3 (talk) 05:15, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Effects of BLM and "Save The Post Office Movement?" 

message: At present (2020) no photo ID is required to vote in UK elections so the unsourced paragraph suggesting it is a problem was removed. Acorrector (talk) 00:21, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  UK - photo ID not required 

message: There's very little in this article about systemic elements of voter suppression. If, for instance, the voting system is changed from PR-STV to FPTP (First Past the Post), would this be considered as an example of "voter suppression" against minority groups as they know their vote will not count as much as are less likely to vote? This (disenfranchisment of the native/nationlist/Catholic minority) happened in Northern Ireland from the 1920s until the 1970s, and was one of the main causes of the Civil Rights Movement emerging there in the late 1960s. 89.101.231.2 (talk) 10:47, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can the voting *system* be a form of "voter suppression"? 

message: Why are the examples all US-aligned western nations? It seems like openly authoritarian regimes such as Russia should be included. The article mentions Taiwan, but not China?? Not very familiar with talk page of wikipedia so sorry if this breaks the rules.129.252.30.32 (talk) 22:44, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples used 

message: Many of the facts and data used are from elections 10+ years ago, yet the elections in the previous few years specifically have sparked debate about voter suppression and fraud. This article could be improved with updated information and discussion on voter suppression in the past few years such as in the 2020 election. Keelyford (talk) 22:24, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should article include most recent elections?