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Politicians are sooooo clever. They play silly games with voters. They are not only unhappy with the current political process which pretty much guarantees their independence from the voters; they want more. They want the power to decide for the voters at and during the voting process. This is to because they want people to vote because it legitimizes their tyranny; the only pesky problem is that people tend to vote their mind, not what politicians want! Convincing people to vote one way or another is such a hard work! There has to be a better way… and of course there is.

In the good old days this would have been called for what it is: fraud.

In the current "politically correct", "soft–policy", "spin–doctor oriented", "I–expanded–my–previous–point–of–view" world, it is called something different: law.

This is nothing new, actually, in terms of voting there is nothing new under the sun. Politicians have been doing this since voting was invented.

There are only three ways in which voting can be manipulated:

  1. Increase the amount of voters voting for a candidate
  2. Cheat the system
  3. Decrease the amount of voters voting for a candidate

Let's take a quick look at all of them.

INCREASING VOTERS

These are time–tested strategies to get elected. It includes favorites such as:

  • Getting dead people to vote (identity theft)
  • Getting live people to vote twice (preferably trice – by gaming voting processes inefficiencies and loopholes)
  • Paying people to vote (money for votes)
  • Facilitating people to vote (money for favors)
  • Ordering people to vote (forcing people to vote through threats or by authority –legal or illegal–)
  • Persecuting people who votes against (such as in the glorious USSR)

And many others. One person one vote is such a limited philosophy!

All these methods are being used today to a larger or lesser degree.

CHEAT THE SYSTEM

We are used to think about outright cheating as a Banana Republic domain. First World countries would not possibly lower themselves to outright fraud… or would they? On the surface most modern countries have voting systems that seem fraud–proof. But is it so? Well… no.

Take an election, any election in any developed country in the world and you will find anomalies. It is just a matter of digging deep enough. We are not talking about a few votes here and there; we are talking about mysterious shifts in voting patterns which are totally out of synchronism with previous 10 polls. We are talking about the almost inevitable tidal wave of fraud claims from opposing (i.e. losing) parties. We are talking about the endless stream of exposes and claims of suspicious activities.

In the end it does not matter how this cheating is accomplished, the logistics of it is a matter of entertainment, of scientific curiosity. It's like being mystified by a magic trick where one knows it is impossible yet the true challenge is to figure out how did the magician do it.

What is important is that it does happen throughout the entire world.

DECREASING VOTERS

This method has been tried before, but not with much success. The main goal is to prevent an opponent from getting elected by selectively preventing voters from voting this person. You see dear reader, when it comes to human nature it is much more difficult to prevent a person from doing something that it is to motivating this very same person to do something.

And so, to decrease the amount of voters, it is necessary to get either drastic or remained exposed.

Drastic approaches usually involve the use of force or physical threats, but this is very crude and typically ends up backfiring. Pissed–off people have the tendency to seek revenge. A person threatened into not voting will have a very strong incentive to denounce this act. The problem with this is not that a politician may end up looking "bad", but that the voting process, the very process designed to legitimize a politician is thrown into doubt. This is something no politician can afford.

The second method to prevent people from voting is to deceive them into not voting. This deception may be accomplished through many means (e.g. wrong voting station addresses, times, stealing of voting mail, etc.) but it implies leaving traces. Again, pissed–off people tend to seek revenge, tend to make noise. This is not acceptable to a politician.

In summary, up to now very few of these methods have been used not because they were not effective but because they usually produce blow–back.

Until now.

Tired of those old and illegal voter decreasing methods?

Looking for a clean and legal way to remove those pesky opposition voters?

Low on cash and high on ambition?

Not to worry!

Introducing the new state–of–the–art anti–voter weapon: Voter Suppression!

Now in a smaller package, more effective, more efficient, more ruthless.

Voter Suppression

Voter suppression is the ultimate weapon of voter destruction. In the past some degree of voter manipulation was possible by continuously re–drawing political boundaries to leave outside people who tended to vote for your opponent and capturing voting areas where people tended to vote for you. But this process was messy because while you were improving your election chances, you were decreasing the ones of your fellow party member in other geographic locations. It was what's called a Zero Sum Game in Game Theory. This means that for one politician to get elected another one must lose the election.

Not anymore! Through the overwhelming use of computers it is now possible to determine with statistical certainty which geographic locations have tendencies in favor or against a given political philosophy. For example, do you have a "poor" neighborhood? They will vote for "socialist" philosophies (statistically speaking).

In the past it was quite difficult to get these people not to vote for a Conservative candidate. Hence, candidates had to "soften" their sales pitch… which created a problem with die–hard Conservatives. It was a delicate balancing act, lose a few votes here and gain many more there.

But now with further improvements in computer and software power, it is possible to identify people likely to vote for or against a given political position. This is done through profiling.

Up to now this information was useless because there was very little a politician could do about it. However, with the introduction of Voter Suppression laws, it is now possible.

Armed with a list of "undesirables", party members can now park on voting stations and challenge the "right" of those people to vote.

– Is that document ID scratched? No vote for you!

– Are you sure you registered correctly? No vote for you!

– Humm, I see you changed addresses in the last 9 months. No vote for you!

– That is not the preferred ID. No vote for you!

– You have an outstanding parking ticket! No vote for you!

And so on. Politicians are getting creative and are embedding their preferred means of disqualifying voters according to the social profiles of their "undesirables". They can now allow only "people like us" to vote while discarding "people like them".

Isn't technology wonderful?

IMPACT

Most people should and would rightfully be deeply perturbed and upset by these new developments. Then again, we are not most people. We welcome all these silly games that politicians play because they accelerate the inevitable debacle.

In the end they are a self–defeating methodology. The more people they upset, the more people they cheat, the more disillusioned people there is; and this is good.

Only thoroughly disillusioned people tend to change government styles.

Only thoroughly disillusioned people tend to ignore governments… and When Countries Dissolve Absolute Austro–Libertarianism can begin.

CONCLUSION

Plainly we expressed before why you should not vote (To Vote Or Not To Vote Is The Question) but in the same article we also expressed that you should be active in convincing other people not to vote. Voter suppression is yet another weapon that politicians have added to your arsenal. You should use it… or not. Your choice.

Note: please see the Glossary if you are unfamiliar with certain words.

 

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