Vote Veto

I've been enjoying this latest, and last, season of Veep.  It might be the best ever.  Selina Meyer is once again running for President, and this time she might win.  Jonah Ryan is also running, and who knows where that will end up.  I'm hoping he'll be a kingmaker at a brokered convention.

The show is impossibly cynical about politics, but (is that the right conjunction?) very funny.  This week's episode featured serious voter suppression.  And recently, Billions had serious voter suppression guaranteeing Chuck Rhoades political victory.

I'm all for cynicism about politicians, but these shows treat suppression as if it's common and easy to pull off.  I don't think either case is true.  I'm not referring to casual voter suppression, where you simply do what you can to encourage your voters and nothing to help voters you don't think are on your side, using whatever rules are available to legally discount troublesome voters. (Note that getting your base out in higher numbers has the same effect as voter suppression, in that you're trying to make sure the vote doesn't represent the feelings of the public at large.)

But full scale, election-changing voter suppression?  Maybe in small races where everyone knows the landscape, and there are clear powerbrokers.  But pulling it off in states, much less in the nation overall, is not only hard to get away with, it's hard to even try.  We've seen systematic, widespread voter suppression in the past, and nowadays even the slightest activity sets off alarms.

The real lesson is while it's fun to see powerful people do outrageous, immoral things on TV shows, when they do it in real life, we like it and believe it's moral if it supports our side. (I know this paragraph doesn't seem to follow from the previous paragraphs, but I don't have time to rewrite.)