The Republican Party likes its myths. Tell a nice anecdotal story (which doesn’t even have to be true), pretend that it expresses a universal truth, and watch it take root in the base so that there is no pressure to fix what is really broken.
Myth #1 — Gun control rules in Democratic cities have not prevented those cities from having high homicide rates. This one is less myth than simple distortion. First, most larger cities have Democratic mayors. So it’s hard to find Republican-controlled cities for comparison. Second, it’s universally true (not just an American fact) that increased population (and increased population density) means more crime. When you look at crime rates and violent crime rates, the cities with gun control actually fare relatively well. Third, in the U,S, legal system, it is very easy to evade city restrictions. You just need to travel to the suburbs to get your gun. And the open borders mean that there is no check at the city line to prevent the importation of guns into the city. Lastly, the penalties for violating a city ordinance are relatively minor. In short, local gun control ordinances appear to have some effect, but such ordinances are no substitute for federal legislation.
Of course, passing anything through Congress is hard. One proposal that I have seen that might bear some fruit is the concept of breaking down the current proposals into separate bills. When you have a complex bill, it is easy for the Members from the Party of GnOP to say they are voting no based on one provision. If you make them vote on each proposal separately, they will have to take a stand on each proposal rather than relying on the most controversial provision to justify killing the bill. While the Democrats probably have the votes in the House to pass the full program, they don’t have the votes in the Senate. Making forty-one Republicans have to vote against each of twenty or thirty proposals that have the support of 70% of the American voters might just move the needle in some swing states and districts.
Myth #2 — You can get immediate health care in the U.S. unlike months-long waits in the U.K. and Canada. I really don’t know which fantasyland these folks are living in. I am now at the age that after my annual physical (which I have to schedule several weeks in advance), I am typically referred to some specialist to follow-up on any worrying test results. I have never been able to book an appointment with a specialist for anything less than ten weeks in the future. So while folks in Canada or the U.K. may need to wait to see a specialist, so do Americans. And unlike folks in Canada and the U.K., we have to worry about what might be covered and how much it will cost.
Myth #3 — Voting fraud is serious. Each election, there are a handful of cases in which somebody attempted to vote twice or vote in the wrong location or vote when they were not eligible to vote. Almost universally, there is a non-malicious explanation for these acts. Rarely, there is an effort to vote for somebody else. Simply put, the number of races with enough fraud for the fraud to impact the outcome is very, very tiny — maybe one a decade.
What is more common is what we have seen in Michigan with the petition drive for the Republican gubernatorial candidates. We have seen something similar with some voter registration drives. Both are products of barriers that have been enacted to make it harder for people to file to run for office or register to vote. In both circumstances, one solution to the problem has been to pay companies to conduct the petition drive or voter registration drive. And too many of these companies pay by the signature/registration obtained rather than by the hour. And if you have been out for several hours trying to get signatures for John Trump Clone or legalized sports gambling and only gotten a handful of signatures, it is very tempting to get together with your co-workers and up your pay by pretending to have gotten signatures from Paula Brown, Michael Green, Rudy Schmidt, and Stanley Kowalski. Of course, those signatures or voter registration are likely to be rejected by the election authority, but the worker has gotten paid.
There are solutions to this problem — including banning pay for signature/registration — but the fraud is by the workers and the companies doing these drives, not by the voters or the candidates. There is no need to make it harder to voter or get on the ballot. I would also not that signature requirements in the U.S. in those states which require signatures are much much more stringent than those in other countries. In other countries, it is literally possible to get the local party committee and their families together in order to meet the signature requirements with no need to hit the streets to get additional signatures.
We used to have a voter fraud problem in this country. And a lot of the perception of voter fraud is based on people talking about the 1950s and 1960s. But the use of bipartisan election judges and observers has made significant fraud non-existent. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t at risk of regressing, but the risk is how hard it is to find election workers. And the solution is not making it harder to vote. It is finding ways — better pay, allowing split shifts — that will make it easier to have enough election judges.
