So it's my imagination that people are PAID to disrupt us and convince us NOT to vote?

[Igel]

5. There are, to be sure.

They're called "advertising consultants" and "political consultants." They produce disruptive, voter-turnout-lowering paid advertising on tv and radio. The goal is often to not get voters to vote for your guy. High voter turnout is only a positive thing in a democracy, it seems, when it helps your party--voters for the other side are always cretins who should be discouraged, if not disenfranchised. In many cases, the person paid is the politician himself.

Politics masquerading as journalism--the so called new journalism from 40 years ago--doesn't help. A lot of people are outraged and more determined to vote when told that horrendously high barriers are being put up to their voting, even though the barriers affect a very, very small percentage of possible voters. Far more, I'd guess, are discouraged from voting when told about how impossibly high the barriers are to getting proper ID--even if they already have that ID sitting in their wallets or purses. Or how there aren't enough voting machines at peak voting times, even though they'd probably go during off times.

I must say, last elections I looked at the candidates, their chances of winning, where I'd have to vote, and decided the hassle of finding my voter registration cards and the time I'd spend waiting for bumbling election clerks and incompetent voters just wasn't worth it. (Full disclosure: I knew it was sitting on my desk, in one of two stacks of papers and files that I had to eventually sort through anyway, and I had spent hours in mindless web surfing while sitting within 2 feet of it in the week prior to the election.)