Thinking about the thin state of democracy. Here’s what Paul Weyrich* told a meeting of the religious right in Dallas in 1980 about the power of suppressing voter turnouts:
Many of our Christians have what I call the Goo Goo Syndrome: Good Government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been, from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections goes up as the voting populace goes down.
*Weyrich founded the Heritage Foundation and ALEC, where Republican legislators learn to write laws to benefit their corporate benefactors like the private prison industry.