The Funny Side of DisenfranchisementTPM Reader JW writes in with a little window into the mind of Washington GOP Chair Luke Esser, who decided to stop counting votes on Saturday night just because.
It’s a column from Esser’s college days, and a column that was clearly intended to be humorous at that. So it should be taken with a grain of salt. On the eve of the 1986 midterm elections, Esser wrote in the University of Washington’s paper that he was praying for rain, because that would drive Democratic-voting “shiftless deadbeats” away from the polls. He explained, “Years of interminable welfare checks and free government services have made these modern-day sloths even more lazy. They will vote on election day, if it isn’t much of a bother. But even the slightest inconvenience can keep them from the polling place.”
And since, he wrote, “[m]any of the most successful anti-deadbeat voter techniques (poll taxes, sound beatings, etc.) that conservatives have used in the past have been outlawed by busybody judges,” he was organizing a “Rain Dance” for conservatives that night. Ha ha ha.