This article is a few months old now, but I think itās an incredibly important area of research and something that explains a lot of why America is like it is and how red states stay red.
Excerpt,
A study I co-authored with fellow researcher Kevin Morris, published in December in the American Political Science Review, finds that traffic stops by police stops in Hillsborough County reduced voter turnout in 2014, 2016, and 2018 federal elections.
Our study compared the voter turnout of Hillsborough motorists who were stopped by police shortly before and after each election. Drawing on information about each personās turnout in past cycles, we found that these stops reduced the likelihood that a stopped individual turned out to vote by 1.8 percentage points on average. The effect held when accounting for characteristics like race, gender, party affiliation, past turnout, and prior traffic stops to improve our comparisons. The discouraging effect of stops was slightly higher in 2014 and 2018.
These results make clear that the collateral consequences of policingāincluding worsening outcomes for economic security, educational attainment, and healthāalso extend to political participation. If the communities who are most frequently subjected to policing are also discouraged from voting as a result, it could create a vicious feedback loop of political withdrawal.
Why would traffic stops make people less likely to show up to the polls? Past research has already established that the most disruptive forms of criminal legal contact, like arrest and incarceration, discourage people from voting. Our study shows that low-level police contact matters in the same way. If a traffic stop makes a motorist fear that the government will harm them, it can prompt a withdrawal from civic life that political scientists call āstrategic retreat.ā Motorists might worry that a routine traffic stop could escalate into police violence, a more common outcome for Black people in particular. Beyond justified fears of violent victimization, voters might also bristle at the perception of being targeted to raise revenue through excessive ticketing. Accordingly, if incarceration āteachesā would-be voters that their government is an alienating and harmful force in their lives, traffic stops could catalyze a similar form of ālearning.ā
Full study is available here, and hereās an archived thread from a dumb website where one of the research study authors answered questions.
Yeah, I used to believe exactly this, but Iāve seen too many privileged and comfortable people do and argue for completely sadistic shit to hold on to that anymore. Or maybe it is true, but it just doesnāt matter to me as much as it used to when the end result is innocents getting hurt.
For what itās worth, I like the world youāre describing a lot more than the one I feel like Iām currently living in.
They are the same world. I still slip into that world. In 2016-2019, I hated Trump with a passion. Then I realized he is just a sad, abused and neglected kid. The sycophants around him are influenced by capitalistic greed. Capitalism is the cause of most problems in our society. It seems to easy to say that, but itās true. Marxism and socialism arenāt the answer. But they are the first step to finding the answer.