When I was in elementary school, my best friend decided he wanted to run for student council president. Not that he had any experience in being IN student council, but he thought it might be fun to be president of something. I, being his best friend, was enlisted to be his campaign manager.
We spent hours strategizing on how to best win the election. We focused on promises. Lots and lots of promises. We promised better quality of school lunches. We promised more recess time. We promised free ice cream on Fridays. We even promised no homework on days that ended in Y. In other words, we patterned our campaign after the real political campaigns of the day.
We handed out lollipops, which was only possible because my dad owned a candy store. We even handed out unopened baseball card packs to select “organizers”, who promised they could influence certain groups of voters. Again, just like real political campaigns.
But when the votes were counted, we lost. And, to be honest, it wasn’t even close. We didn’t ask for a recount - there was no reason to. I realized that all our voters were only in it for the lollipops.
But, if we had run today instead of 40 years ago, things might have been different. Because I would have taken a page from the Republican party and, instead of trying to get AS MANY votes as possible, I would have sought out ways to suppress the vote. Keep the voters AWAY and we would win!! What a brilliant strategy.
Hey you, third grader. You just moved here 2 months ago. You can’t vote. You, kid with the accent. How do I know you’re eligible?? Out you go. You, tall kid in the 6th grade - are you REALLY a student here?? No vote for you. Had we followed this new strategy, we might have actually won. And we wouldn’t have had to promise free Yoo-Hoo to every student on Mondays.
As juvenile as this strategy sounds, it’s actually the Republican approach to winning elections these days. It’s why HR-1 is so vehemently opposed by the GOP. In other words, don’t try to “persuade” voters to vote for you by promising things that they may actually want (or by offering up real ideas to improve their lives - not by promising more pizza on the lunch menu!). No. Instead, keep voters for the opposition OUT of the election process. Make things more difficult. Basically, suppress the vote!
That is the entirety of the GOP strategy. It’s not about bringing “integrity” to the election process. It’s about bringing smaller numbers of Democrats out to vote. It’s not about improving the messaging or the positioning of the party but rather fighting the fact that the Democrats are making more and more inroads with the middle class. Make no mistake - the GOP is not about improving the election process. It’s about “fixing” the process to their benefit.
Perhaps I should have borrowed some of their tactics. After all, had we forced the third grade to take a spelling test before voting, that may have swung the election our way. Who knows how things may have changed for us? Yoo-hoo anyone?
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