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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 1 points 1 year ago

In what ways were they right wing? I guess you don’t need to answer that, I can do my own research. Just seems like taking away guns and using propaganda to put everyone against a particular group seems like what the left is wanting to do in America today.

Modern day leftists are very “if you’re not with us, you’re against us”, and “anyone who is against us is anti-human and a stain on society”.

All it takes is more time for the division to escalate and I could see Republican views being considered terrorism and grounds for going into a prison camp

[-] PostmodernPythia@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Since sending you off to Google “own the libs fascism” won’t do very much: The fourteen major elements of fascism identified by Umberto Eco in Ur-Fascism are here: https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html Not sure how anyone could possibly misunderstand it being right wing. Was it the adherence to strict binary gender roles or the contempt for weakness that made you think it was leftist? /s

If you have a commonly accepted comprehensive definition of fascism you prefer, present it and we can discuss. Otherwise, here’s your answer.

this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023

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