this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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the state of Florida: extrajudicially prosecutes voters; arbitrarily fines voter groups; disenfranchises at least a million people in contravention of an overwhelmingly-supported referendum to legally enfranchise them
you: this isn't autocracy because that's only 5% of the total population of Florida (even though the affected demographics are disproportionately pro-Democratic and that's the point of the disenfranchisement), there isn't systemic corruption (even though the state of Florida is explicitly attempting to override the will of the people), Floridians did this to themselves (even though they've done everything in their power to not be run by inhuman ghoul Ron DeSantis)
is this seriously what we're arguing? because if you're going to do this i'd rather you be honest with yourself and just say you don't care what happens to the millions of people in Florida who fought against and continue to fight against this despite people like you writing them off as basically subhuman.
No.
I'm arguing that voter suppression cannot possibly account for the 65% of registered voters in Florida who did not vote one way or the other for DeSantis's second term.
I'm arguing that a substantial portion of voters in Florida were, if not DeSantis fans, fine enough with DeSantis to not bother going out to vote against him.
I feel like you're arguing that all of the non-voters would have voted against DeSantis, but did not because they are systematically oppressed. That 14 million citizens were actively denied the right to vote and the Florida gubernatorial election was stolen by voter suppression. If that's not what you're claiming, then we don't have anything to argue about; if that is what you're claiming, I'm going to need more substantial evidence that Florida's democracy is in the same state as Myanmar's and Zimbabwe's than what has been so far provided. If anywhere close to 14 million people in one state are being actively prevented from voting for DeSantis's opponent, that would probably be the biggest scandal, with the biggest cover-up, in American history by a wide margin. It makes the Business Plot look like the schemes of a grade-school playground clique.
1 million people being disenfranchised is awful. It does not prove that the 65% of registered voters who did not vote were directly oppressed by the government and denied their rights, and such a claim would be entirely hyperbolic, and would only serve to obscure the fact that a large majority of Floridians are fine with DeSantis and the GOP. I get that it's more empowering to believe that we can fight a few public entities engaging in voter suppression to free Florida from their minority rule, as opposed to believing that we'd be fighting to change the opinions of over 10 million individuals who literally don't care about us and who wouldn't bat an eye if we were all hunted down by DeSantis's private brownshirts.
I'm not trying to fight those people, or change them. I fled before Fox News told them it was time to "cut the tall trees", and I advise everyone else to do the same.