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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026

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I think that is a bit uncharitable. Do Republicans mean no one should vote, ever?

Voter ID is one of the many, many issues where the parties usually take incremental positions. Democrats are the party of fewer restrictions and verifications. They have been since the Southern Strategy realignment. Their current planks are such radical statements as “expand the VRA”. I think most Democrat voters would endorse bringing all states up to the basic ID requirement. Maybe even a national ID, if it was free.

But that’s not what Trump is offering. He’s throwing shit at the wall in hopes that it benefits his team.

I think that is a bit uncharitable. Do Republicans mean no one should vote, ever?

It's not a perfect parallel of absurdism. You can't remove voters from rolls. You can't require ID. You can't oppose ballot harvesting. You can't be skeptical of hundreds of homeless people voting from an NGO office. Et cetera and so forth.

I'm originally from a state with a notoriously corrupt election history, so maybe I'm a little more primed than average to take concern here.

I am comfortable being a bit uncharitable when believing my lying eyes. Likewise, I'll acknowledge that the DHS twitter account is proof enough that for at least some in the administration, the cruelty is the point. Less than maximal charity does not require throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Their current planks are such radical statements as “expand the VRA”

Do we really think elections would be improved by making the Catch-22 navigating between the CRA and VRA even worse?

Maybe we should just disenfranchise white people altogether. Taps head Can't gerrymander the minority when there's no majority! For some reason I doubt the Dems would be satisfied then, either. I wonder how all these laws blow up in 2060 or if history just keeps the charade going.

most Democrat voters

Not a relevant category. What voters want and what politicians do is poorly correlated, and prior to the Iran brouhaha I would've said it was especially poorly correlated on the left.

But you can! Every state does voter roll maintenance. 36 states require ID. The most lax states tend to check signature and address against their rolls. They also allow challenges from poll watchers and other registered voters. It’s not the Wild West.

Ballot harvesting is more complicated, and I didn’t want to tally up every state’s laws. Did you know that only Texas and California ban paying people for ballots? Suffice to say that such liberal states as New Jersey are absolutely willing to combat ballot harvesting.

And if you can’t be skeptical…what are you doing? I think mass homeless voting absolutely raises eyebrows, even among state politicians. And they’re the ones who control these laws. The SAVE act is an attempt to centralize election control in a less responsive, less stable body, one that’s very honest about its partisan aims. I think that’s more likely to bite us in the ass by 2060.