Voter Suppression & the Danger of Saying Everything is Nuanced

Last week, I wrote an article on how “voter disorientation” might be a better phrase than “voter suppression.”

I mainly wrote this in response to the critics who called NY voters entitled and whiny for labeling what happened in NY “voter suppression.”

I saw this and responded to everyone with a post that was essentially saying “the critics are wrong, but so is the other side.”

In this article, I will get into how the critics were even more wrong than I gave them credit for, and I hope to also address that intellectual impulse to write nuanced “both sides are wrong” takes on current events, even when that’s not actually the case.

Amanda Marcotte, Jamil Smith, and other prominent anti-Sanders pundits all addressed the controversial party registration deadlines in NY and said “sucks for you, and how dare you compare yourself to suppressed voters.”

What they said was unnervingly dismissive of the wide variety of voter disenfranchisement that went down on Primary Day, and lends credence to the theory that when most people say “voter suppression,” they are referring to laws that hurt their candidate, not problematic voting regulations in general.

But what they said was also hard to deny: failing to meet a registration deadline is not nearly as bad as changing polling places, removing people from rolls, and other more direct forms of voter disenfranchisement.

What this anti-Sanders cabal actually accomplished, conversation-wise, was something complicated and nuanced: by repeating their points about registration deadlines, they made it seem as if the people talking about voting issues were all complaining about deadlines. Many of us got so busy engaging with those arguments, we forgot that actual voter disenfranchisement did occur.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the anti-Sanders pundits will flat-out apologize for dismissing the massive voter purge, because it’s quite an egregious error on their part. But what interests me more is why I so easily fell for their narrative (that New Yorkers saying “voter suppression” are actually just complaining about a closed primary system).

Part of why I went for it was simply that the anti-Sanders pundits directed the conversation toward issue of closed primaries.

But there was also a more interesting reason why I, and many others, engaged with the anti-Sanders pundits’ points: it made things more interesting.

A world where thousands of voters were disenfranchised, and a bunch of pundits are dismissing it is a pretty simple, boring, and depressing world.

But a world where the biggest question is “Closed Primaries: Good or bad?” is a more comforting world, and a world where yes, voting laws are problematic, but one candidate’s supporters made things worse by crying “voter suppresssion,” and Actually Everyone’s Slightly Wrong… that world is a more interesting world.

And so I wrote about that world. To me, writing last week, the anti-Sanders pundits were mostly wrong, but also all sides were wrong. And in this interesting, confusing, nuanced world, I had an answer: let’s come up with a new word. Let’s call it “voter disorientation.”

While I’m glad I wrote the article, I’m still a bit scared by the impulse I had to write it — the impulse to always say “this thing is more nuanced and complicated than you think.”

When Clinton & Sanders debate fracking, I always have an impulse to take Clinton’s side. Clinton’s worldview is appealing: Environmentalism isn’t simple, it’s *nuanced* and yes, we have to have clean energy, but also, in a certain way, fracking is clean, and yes, we can transition.

Clinton’s argument sounds great. It’s comforting in that tells you “the status quo is OK.” It’s also intellectually challenging in that it tells you “it’s complicated.” When something ticks off both of those boxes, it’s easy to assume it’s true.

And even if it weren’t so comforting to hear that the status quo was OK, Clinton’s argument would still be an appealing one, precisely because it tells us things are more nuanced & complicated than they appear.

Except that the reality of Planet Earth isn’t that nuanced. The reality is that fracking is killing the planet, but a few wealthy & influential people are pretty into fracking. So, if you’re in the same circle as those wealthy & influential people, you’re going to have more reasons to support fracking than to oppose it. Social reality isn’t actually that nuanced. It’s dull.

Many people think Clinton is an evil person, but I don’t think she’s that different from the average thoughtful, educated American. She’d rather believe that the world is nuanced and ambiguous, because the alternative is to see how mind-numbingly bland it can be.

I don’t think that, deep down, Clinton wants to make the planet hotter and more prone to earthquakes. But a lot of very interesting people in Clinton’s social circle made fracking for natural gas sound interesting and nuanced. And an intelligent person like Clinton prefers an interesting and nuanced world. It also doesn’t help that, if you’re Clinton, and you’re Secretary of State, the people who want you to promote fracking worldwide are going to give your foundation millions of dollars.

I’d prefer an interesting and nuanced world where both sides are right and both sides are wrong. But nuance didn’t keep fracking out of New York state — thousands of persistent organizers did that.

And likewise, a nuanced term like “voter disorientation” won’t help stop voter disenfranchisement in New York. But, as a person who likes nuanced complications, I do wish it could.