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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   34788 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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Yes, I already acknowledged this as an argument for restricting the franchise but my point here is that you should also justify the increased bureaucracy costs. Do you think it's worthwhile?

One thing I didn't touch upon is that it seems like a good policy to let ex-felons vote at least as a way to encourage them to be part of civil society again. Disenfranchising them seems like it would encourage them to just check out completely.

Yes, I already acknowledged this as an argument for restricting the franchise but my point here is that you should also justify the increased bureaucracy costs. Do you think it's worthwhile?

What increased bureaucratic costs? We already know who is married, who has kids, who own property, who pays more taxes than they accept in government aid.

Wouldn’t you need to balance that out with cheaper elections (since there are less votes)? Also perhaps GOTV apparatuses would be smaller if the vote was held by a smaller percentage of the population. If people behind gotv could do something productive, that would be a net win.

Running elections seems to come with high fixed costs and low marginal costs, so it doesn't seem likely that additional votes would materially increase costs. Throwing additional votes into the tabulation machinery seems way cheaper than having real life bureaucrats carefully scrutinizing individual registrations as I outlined in my examples.

The cost of running elections is negligible... how many $10 million miles of highway would we need to give up? Not many.

Campaigning though isn’t low marginal costs.

It is if the marginal campaign dollar is going on paid media (which, in America, it probably is)

I'm not sure exactly why you think it would be so expensive to restrict the franchise. Why can't you just give voter IDs out like driver's licenses to those who tick the correct boxes. The less people allowed to vote, the cheaper that is.

encourage them to be part of civil society again

Felons are not anywhere near as civic-minded as you think they are.

I'm not sure exactly why you think it would be so expensive to restrict the franchise.

I wrote my reasons in detail, did you miss that above?

Sometimes there are difficult cases. How many of them are there and how expensive are they? "Voting can be hard to figure out for some felons, if they're banned" is probably true, but how many felons aren't bothering to try and register in the first place? If felons are allowed to vote, how much is spent on getting them registered and tabulating their votes?

The more people you can cut with general rules (e.g. only landowning married men can vote), the less expensive dealing with edge cases becomes.

but how many felons aren't bothering to try and register in the first place?

If Florida is any indication, about 10% of the adult population has a felony record and unable to vote and few (~100k?) have bothered to register to vote. This tends to be true in most states that have post-release disenfranchisement, unless restoration is automatic, few people bother trying. Running elections seems to come with high fixed costs and low marginal costs, so it doesn't seem likely that additional votes would materially increase costs.

The more people you can cut with general rules (e.g. only landowning married men can vote), the less expensive dealing with edge cases becomes.

I would agree there's likely a "reverse Laffer curve" where increasingly high disenfranchisement gets progressively cheaper, but I don't see your argument for where we are currently on the curve. If cost was your only concern then you could justify getting rid of voting entirely.

Cost is a minor concern overall, but I was arguing that more people voting in general is more expensive, not the other way around.

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