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A Police Stop Is Enough to Make Someone Less Likely to Vote - Research shows how the communities that are most heavily policed are pushed away from politics and from having a say in changing policy. (boltsmag.org)

submitted 1 year ago by gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

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This article is a few months old now, but I think it's 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 person’s 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 policing—including worsening outcomes for economic security, educational attainment, and health—also 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 “strategic retreat.” 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 ‘teaches’ would-be voters that their government is an alienating and harmful force in their lives, traffic stops could catalyze a similar form of ‘learning.'

Full study is available here, and here's an archived thread from a dumb website where one of the research study authors answered questions.

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[+] KoofNoof@lemmy.world -52 points 1 year ago

Liberals are always thinking there’s other factors for why people vote Republican rather than people just thinking differently lol

[-] TheBenCommandments@infosec.pub 10 points 1 year ago

Thinking differently is for liberals. Conservatives think the same.

[-] irmoz@reddthat.com -1 points 1 year ago

Look man....

Liberals are better than conservatives, but they're still brainwashed fools serving the elites

[-] RecursiveParadox@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Yes but one party is actively trying to kill the other's members and when they run out of them, they'll go for the plebs that supported them. Whataboutism like your statement is what got America (and the UK for that matter) to the dire point both countries are in.

[-] irmoz@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This isn't whataboutism. Whataboutism doesn't acknowledge that one is better. Whataboutism says "B may be evil, but A is just as evil".

Guess what I did? I acknowledged one was better.

I'm just saying not to be satisfied with a liberal status quo - liberalism will become conservatism when left unchallenged, just like it is already doing. I'm saying we should constantly push for more. Vote as far left as you can, of course, but don't let yourself think that the "left choice" is actually left.

What you're doing is the mirror image of whataboutism. Pointing out that A is marginally better than B, and thus concluding that the now-suddenly-binary choice has a clear good and evil.

Also, I didn't mention any parties.

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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023

475 points (98.0% liked)

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