{"id":70,"date":"2004-10-21T16:17:42","date_gmt":"2004-10-21T20:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=70"},"modified":"2005-08-04T22:25:19","modified_gmt":"2005-08-05T02:25:19","slug":"off-the-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=70","title":{"rendered":"Off the trail"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today George Will<\/a> seems to argue against the \u201creckless\u201d charges about the \u201ccertainty\u201d (his term) that there will be problems recording the perhaps 110 million votes in the coming election. <\/p>\n

The charges are couched in the language of liberalism: much talk about voters’ rights, no talk about voters’ responsibilities and dark warnings of victimization — “disenfranchisement” and “intimidation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We recently discussed Will\u2019s straw man version of the sloppy class term \u201cliberalism,\u201d so we direct the interested reader to that discussion<\/a>.
\nThe interesting variant on this argument here is that Will purports to show the recklessness of the charges of \u201cdisenfranchisement\u201d and \u201cintimidation\u201d by distracting the reader with an argument against the incompetent use of punch-card ballots. This voter incompetence results in two well-known errors: overvotes and undervotes. To buttress this claim Will points out the various sorts of things voters can do to avoid undervoting or overvoting\u2013read the instructions, double check the ballot for dimpled, hanging or pregnant chads. Despite the snide tone of Will\u2019s analysis, there does not seem to be anything wrong with the suggestion that voters be circumspect in the exercise of their constitutional right. Nor do we think that anyone (even liberals) would seriously suggest that the voter has some minimal responsibility for ensuring that she casts her vote properly. <\/p>\n

So Will has perhaps earned the conclusion that irresponsible or sloppy voting does not constitute \u201cdisenfranchisement\u201d or \u201cintimidation.\u201d Such charges, as Will correctly points out, require much more by way of evidence. Unfortunately, aside from his brief and problematic discussion of possible disenfranchisement in Ohio, Will never seriously considers what the actual evidence for such heavy language might be. Perhaps he might have considered the secretive and seriously flawed felon list in Florida\u2013remember Florida?\u2013that kept enough voters from the polls to swing the election to George W. Bush. Despite having failed to consider the serious and well established charges, however, Will claims no one has demonstrated that \u201cintimidation\u201d and \u201cdisenfranchisement\u201d have taken place or will take place and that \u201cliberals\u201d who make such charges do not understand that rights come with responsibilities. <\/p>\n

The critically minded reader will not be fooled, however, by the powerful scent of Will\u2019s red herring, for she will know the real issue is not incompetent voting, but the systematic or just plain incompetent efforts of some state officials to keep some voters from the polls. And she will notice also that Will, despite his whining about whining liberals\u2019 whining, has done nothing to show that this is not the case. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today George Will seems to argue against the \u201creckless\u201d charges about the \u201ccertainty\u201d (his term) that there will be problems recording the perhaps 110 million votes in the coming election. The charges are couched in the language of liberalism: much talk about voters’ rights, no talk about voters’ responsibilities and dark warnings of victimization — … Continue reading Off the trail<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-will","category-red-herring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}