Wizard Rock the Vote: help the Harry Potter Alliance get out the vote

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/20/wizard-rock-the-vote-help-the.html

1 Like

Voldemort or Umbridge?

“Vote!” is the coward’s way to say “Vote democrat”

1 Like

That would make no sense at all, except for Republican efforts to suppress the vote.

Also, I wonder how a Trump supporter would react to Dumbledore knocking on his door?

6 Likes

Right. Because Republicans never need to get voters out.

40 - 60% of the American public tends not to vote. If that percentage of the country really were overwhelmingly for the Democratic party, our political system would likely look very different.

Oh, and, welcome to BoingBoing.

6 Likes

I just put my wand in four wheel drive.

1 Like

So it’s bad when Russian oligarchs meddle in our country’s elections, but when British wizards do it, it’s suddenly okay.

13 Likes

I’m not saying that the country is overwhelmingly for the democratic party, but that the people who are affected by GOTV schemes are disproportionately democratic. Look at this one, harry potter, skews young, female, (don’t know about race), presumably higher proportion of graduates, that’s the demographic of the democrats.

Can I please get a citation for that?

While I’m sure HP fandom has a large female population, I’ve never gotten the impression that the fandom has more women than men.

6 Likes

Assuming it wasn’t with a shotgun blast? Depends on whether he was wearing a white pointy hood or not is my guess.

2 Likes

I’ll just point you back at the article I already linked to, where it calls Trump out for doing a surprisingly poor job of GOTV operations compared to previous Republican campaigns.

There’s nothing unique to the Democratic party about GOTV.

2 Likes

First reaction: "Why a GOTV effort aimed at kids? They can’t vote*"
Second Reaction: "Wait, Kids who were ten when Sorcerors Stone came out are now 29"
Third Reaction: *Cries a little, Googles “Social Security Solvency,” cries a lot*

*while, yes, of course acknowledging that there was always a significant adult contingent to HP fandom…

8 Likes

… You do know that J K Rowling is a woman, right?


If you want to get all of the references from the series, please read the series.

3 Likes

OK, I get that… but the inclusion of the descriptor “female” in “female characters who, despite serious flaws, are still basically on the side of the good guys,” threw me a bit. I inferred that you thought she was able to right male characters fitting that description, but not female ones, which would be kind of an odd thing to say about an author who is a woman.

Most of the Potter movies pass the Bechdel test, but not all:

http://groupthink.kinja.com/harry-potter-and-the-bechdel-test-1459903982

But that only makes sense, since “Rowling had overall approval on the scripts, which were viewed and discussed by the director and the producers.”

It just seemed odd that you would be coming into here and discussing Umbridge, despite the fact that you should have no idea who that is beyond nominative determinism (she doesn’t show up until Book 5).

I think, in this scenario, she’s being used as a reference to the line “The world is not divided into good people and Death Eaters” (or, in this case, good people and “the basket of deplorables”).

2 Likes

Point taken posts deleted

1 Like

What if it was “Left Behind” fandom urging people to “Vote!” without being explicitly partisan about it? After all, the orange blowhard’s ground game is well known to be weak, so he needs all the help he can get bringing evangelical bigots to the polls.

Yes, Harry Potter fandom is predominantly young and anti-authoritarian and pro-diversity, which means if they do vote they’ll tend to go for a Democrat rather than a Republican. That doesn’t mean that the Harry Potter Alliance is cowardly for promoting a general non-partisan GOTV effort – far from it, since (in contrast to “Left Behind” fans) a significant portion of Harry Potter fans will in fact vote for the candidate at odds with the values expressed in the books.

2 Likes

Huh. I would not have guessed that.

Still, if that’s accurate, is shouldn’t have much of an influence either way: the skew towards Democrat among HP readers appears to be very, very slight.

2 Likes

I would say vote Luna Lovegood, but some people here complain whenever anyone does that.

4 Likes

2 Likes