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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   34791 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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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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