Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/02/24/republicans-try-to-stop-pandemic-of-voting-in-hilarious-but-all-too-real-parody-ad.html
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I’m sure you’ve heard this from a certain type of person before: America is not a democracy, it’s a republic!
There has often been this idea that voting isn’t important or it shouldn’t be left up to people who aren’t qualified (as Rush put it: low information voters). It’s pretty easy to demonstrate that so-called Conservatives are unhappy with a centuries long tradition of voting by laypeople. Oh the irony of it.
I wonder if people get it miswired in their brain that Republican means switching to a republic instead of democracy. Or if they’re simply power hungry and the ends justified the means for them.
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Blocked in Canada.
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Uh… this so-called fake ad could be used as-is in the advertising space for Fox News/Newsmax/OAN.
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But it’s also true that the Founders didn’t want just anyone [even any/all white males] to vote. They wanted the “right” sort of people to have access to the ballot. And they designed a system that makes it easy to suppress voting. It’s one of the many things they got wrong.
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This is why I end up watching Seth Meyer and Stephen Colbert on youtube because the daily show is always blocked in Canada
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Very tongue in cheek. But brilliant, and somehow suitable.
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There was some controversy on the specifics even back then. Ultimately if they agreed that only white wealthy land owners should vote, they would have stated it as such in the Constitution. The concept didn’t even land in early drafts.
It’s probably a pretty universal feeling. But we don’t act on it because we hold other principles higher. For example, I don’t want people who reject science and believe in flatearth or anti-vax conspiracy theories to vote. And I don’t want violent racists voting either. I could make a list of persona non grata.
Ultimately they left it to the states to decide. Any one or two states that didn’t restrict it in the appropriate ways could be overwhelmed by the other states in Congress.
So, the USC doesn’t address individuals voting at all until the 15th amendment. It only deals with Senators and Reps, the VP, and Electors.
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In Australia too… but for some reason the Daily Sow content on youtube is viewable on the Guardian site?!
Love Al Murray but often find some of his audience take his character at face value and don’t appreciate the irony of a conservative pub landlord being played by a very Left intellectual with encyclopedic recall. Just imagine performing this piece from memory, a small section of the show!!
Of course Al did run for parliament and shared the stage with Nigel Farage when he lost the 2015 election - chefs kiss!
A couple of Al’s election clips in and out of character and very prescient to the topic at hand:
This is a long one from Oxford:
Also a comedic explanation of the players in corporate greed by Al (the pub landlord) with regard to the abstract nature of the money market played out in his show using and describing the 'butterfly effect" so succinctly!!
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The video was blocked for me, but I watched it by using a VPN and pretending to be an American, a fairly easy thing for Canadians (we’re everywhere!).
I am not sure if the vpn I use does youtube. It is pretty specific. I mostly use it for watching hulu. I am too lazy to try just for the daily show.
I honestly hope that the number of people who take him at face value are a tiny minority.
He is brilliant, though. Never known anyone who can cut through bullshit quite so precisely with his comedy.
The idea of the constitution as being built out of “checks” and “balances” is mostly due to Madison. And Madison was suspicious of universal suffrage.
Viewing the subject in its merits alone, the freeholders of the Country would be the safest depositories of Republican liberty. In future times a great majority of the people will not only be without landed, but any other sort of, property. These will either combine under the influence of their common situation; in which case, the rights of property & the public liberty, will not be secure in their hands: or which [FN22] is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence & ambition, in which case there will be equal danger on another side. The example of England had been misconceived [by Col Mason]. A very small proportion of the Representatives are there chosen by freeholders. The greatest part are chosen by the Cities & boroughs, in many of which the qualification of suffrage is as low as it in any of the U. S. and it was in the boroughs & Cities rather than the Counties, that bribery most prevailed, & the influence of the Crown on elections was most dangerously exerted. [FN23]
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_807.asp
This essay, among other things, gives a chronology of when states dropped or reinstated property requirements. Most of the constituent states of the US had some sort of property requirement at the time of ratification. (Interestingly, those that had dropped requirements early on, or were admitted without such requirements in place formed a good part of the constituency of Andrew Jackson, who promoted slavery and genocide)
The Evolution of Suffrage Institutions in the New World: A Preliminary Look
That condition was altered as a consequence of the Civil War.
The VPN itself does all websites. Just some websites block VPN exitpoints they know about. And I’ve never been blocked by YT for using a VPN.
Btw the Opera browser now has a free VPN built in.
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