Paul Weyrich - "I don't want everybody to vote" (Goo Goo)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as a primary-source quote in discussions of voter suppression.
What it is
A 1980 clip of conservative strategist Paul Weyrich telling a religious audience he does not want everybody to vote. He says elections are not won by a majority and that leverage rises as turnout falls.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2017 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Cites noobermin · 2017-02 · on “Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media”
Conservatives have admitted in the past[0] that they win by suppressing the vote. That happens while Liberals usually win by getting out the vote. Saying "both sides do it" is just plain unfair and borderline propaganda. [0] [this video]
Cites fencepost · 2017-10 · on “Indiana Purging Voters Using Software That’s 99% Inaccurate”
How about if by "significant" I mean "has enough impact on elections to merit countermeasures that have been statistically shown to disproportionately reduce election participation [oh noes!] by brown people and people with lower incomes (regardless of race)?" How about if by "significant" I mean "has enough impact on elections to merit countermeasures that cost at least tens of thousands of dollars per fraudulent vote, but probably hundreds of thousands of dollars per fraudulent vote?" Is there truly no more cost-effective way to spend that money on ensuring election integrity? Perhaps with little things like voter-verifiable paper trails that actually allow auditing of results? Why, it's a
Cites zackmorris · 2022-09 · on “Taxing Mechanical Engineers and Subsidizing Drama Majors”
We weren't supposed to have a standing army either, much less one like we have today with an inflation-adjusted budget as high as during WWII, but here we are. Madison would be appalled, Washington would be ok with something but not that. Conveniently, the far-right in the US omits the military from balanced budget debates, since any reduction in military spending would disrupt the status quo. I feel that we haven't had civic discourse around this stuff since Newt Gingrich started his Contract with America. Or maybe before that with Paul Weyrich's New Right religious conservative movement with Reagan: [this video] The fallout of that ideology today is gerrymandering and various other forms of dis