I want to talk to you today about memes
I want to talk about the power of means
and how memes can transform us but in
particular I want to talk about how
memes are transforming our democracy how
they’re transforming the right to vote
by creating a partisan feedback loop
that’s damaging how we talk to each
other and I want to talk about how to
get out of that loop but let’s be honest
for a minute when I said I want to talk
about memes you weren’t thinking about
the right to vote were you probably not
you were thinking about those pictures
you see in your social media feed you
know it’s something cute and adorable or
it’s provocative and it has words on it
and the combination of the words and the
picture makes you think of something
take this for example
yeah it’s funny it’s cute this adorable
cat who’s disappointed because Santa
isn’t going to take her up as one of the
reindeer you might want to spread this
mean you might even switch cat for dog
and as it spreads the more and more
people who love this will say oh yeah
right this is fantastic and if enough
people under the right circumstances do
it it goes viral right and so that is a
powerful thing it and it’s powerful not
because it’s true not because they’re
Santa but because it appeals to our
emotions it changes our thinking it’s
short circuits are thinking now my
argument to do you today is very simple
the idea of rampant in-person voter
impersonation fraud is a meme the idea
itself is a meme it does the exact same
things it transforms our thinking it
inspires us to spread it and we have a
debate about that and not about what the
right to vote should be case in point
the President of the United States
before and after the election argued
that there was a rampant voter fraud in
fact after the election he tweeted this
and many more tweets saying that over
three million people voted illegally
thus shifting the results of the
election it has made a powerful
statement in our society in fact it’s
the justification for the convening of
an election commission to question from
the ground up how we vote in America
today now this isn’t the first time
we’ve had this meme of voter fraud
impact our elections think back to the
election of 2000 but don’t think about
Florida though
think about Missouri then Senator John
Ashcroft lost his bid for re-election to
the US Senate to the ex governor of that
state Mel Carnahan there is one problem
though
Mel Carnahan had died the month before
so in losing to a dead man
the GOP reacted by saying there was
voter impersonation voter fraud in
southwestern Missouri Missouri voters
were impersonating dead people in voting
multiple times and this set off an
investigation once John Ashcroft became
Attorney General he investigated voter
fraud and state legislators saw the
concern about voter fraud and passed
voter identification laws and they
shorted the time that you could spend
voting they shorted the deadline where
you had to register the vote and the
like all this based on the belief that
there was rampant voter impersonation
voter fraud but study after study
academic study journal and lism study
even the studies of Ashcroft’s own
Justice Department found virtually no
voter impersonation voter fraud so what
are we to make of this mean well like I
said before part of the challenge of
this meme is that it creates a partisan
feedback loop Republicans might
literally believe that there is voter
impersonation voter fraud or they might
say this represents our views about how
our election system is insecure and they
say these are common-sense provisions
designed to help our elections be secure
but Democrats often see it as this is a
power grab there is no voter fraud why
are you trying to oppress minorities and
the poor and then the Republicans resent
the implicit charge of racism and the
Democrats resent being called naive and
we go back and forth and back and forth
about this debate and then the meme
changes and it re-energizes its brab on
our democracy and we see different
versions of it we see illegal immigrants
accused of fake voting we see wrongfully
registered voters voting illegally
again the meme of voter fraud we see
felons accused of wrongfully voting
again the meme of voter fraud we see as
we said before dead people accuse the
voting but one of the things that comes
from my own research in this area is the
realization that the justification for
all of these things seems to boil down
to fears of voting and scant anecdotes
of voting not hard proof and the other
thing the thing that really disturbs me
about this is that this discussion is
happening in an era of the Browning of
America demographers have told us that
by 2040 if not before America is going
to be a majority of people of color and
given these two things and one other
thought that these accusations often
target again minorities and the poor it
makes me think that this isn’t just
about politics this isn’t just about who
gets elected it’s a battle about the
identity of American citizenship who
gets to be an American who gets to be
seen as someone less than a full
American citizen this is the debate that
we are having when we talk about voter
fraud now it is a classic debate this
debate has gone on for as long as
America has a
think about the Constitution think about
the beginnings of this republic the fact
of the matter is that the National
Constitution did not define the right to
vote it did not define who got to be a
national citizen that was left to the
states and in this eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries the early 19th
century that right to vote that idea a
full citizenship was getting given to
white men who owned property women
minorities the poor were deemed unable
to judge their affairs well enough so
that they did not deserve the full set
of citizenship I call this the ideology
of exclusion but at the same time all
the way from the Declaration of
Independence where we talk about all men
are created equal to today there is also
an ideology of inclusion the idea that
we are all capable of voting so we see
over history a long struggle to make our
elections to make citizenship more
inclusive and so we come to the point
today where our laws say the right to
vote should not be based on who you are
other than if you’re a citizen so how
does the meme of voter fraud relate to
all that the mimo voter fraud stirs up
the debate between inclusion and
exclusion not because of what the laws
say on their face but because we worry
about the effects of the laws we worry
that too many people will be wrongfully
dissuaded from being able to vote and it
stirs up this debate about who is a
threat and who is not a threat in them
to American democracy now the other
problem is that it distracts us from
real problems about American democracy
consider there is vote-buying there is
voter intimidation there are problems
with registration given and
equated registration rolls and looseness
in the registration process
there’s worries about Russian hacking
that we have to deal with as a democracy
the meme of voter fraud seems to
distract us from all of those real
problems and make voter impersonation
voter fraud a concern despite the fact
that there is no evidence there is
virtually no evidence of such fraud it
distracts us from another thing – it
distracts us from the fact that we all
want to live together in this democracy
but to live together in this democracy
we have to reason about our democracy
and so the meme of voter fraud the fear
of the illegal voter who no one can find
makes us worry about whether our
identity is a threat whether it be more
conservative folks worried that their
identity is being supplanted by another
or more liberal folks worried that the
conservative folks are coming after them
we all get trapped in our fears but then
we forget that what the likelihood of an
event happening because we fear it has
no relation whatsoever to the actual
likelihood of that event happening we
also forget that concerns about security
of our elections and some concerns about
making sure everyone is included in our
elections are actually both essential to
an effective American democracy and we
also forget that it’s the politicians
who have been running this system for a
long time ever since America has been
created in those state legislatures the
politicians defined the rules about who
gets the vote and they
these tactics like gerrymandering poll
taxes literacy tests to figure out who
is their electorate and it takes us away
from the way democracy is supposed to
run which is that the electorate we the
voters figure out who are politicians
who are elected officials should be the
meme of voter fraud puts us into this
partisan feedback loop where we’re
fighting each other and we go out to
vote in order to continue that fight
rather than solve the actual problems in
our democracy this distraction that
happens because of this meme is in peril
lling us all but there’s a way out there
is a way out of this feedback loop and
what I want to share with you are my
three fall thoughts on how to break out
of the effects of the meme of voter
fraud first of all and probably most
important we have to remember that means
work because they short-circuit our
reasoning we’d rather believe that Santa
exists then confront the truth that you
have to buy those presents yourself in
the same way the meme of voter fraud
puts our fears in front of us whether
they’re conservative or liberal fears
rather than allowing us to focus on the
real problems so that we can work
together to find real answers so we have
to do what short circuiting reasoning in
any logic loop is in other words we have
to ask why why are we afraid what is
that is bothering us why is this me
motivating me and then when it comes to
voter fraud in particular demand
verifiable facts to answer the question
about the mean if we can start with
facts we can all agree on that basis and
then we can work together second we have
to realize that the concerns about
security of the electorate and the
concerns about ensuring that all
citizens get included are actually part
of the same concern the
inclusion/exclusion debate feeds off of
that divide but it’s a false divide when
we realize that it’s a false divide and
we can work together to ensure that both
concerns are answered we can get to a
more inclusive election with genuine
election integrity and finally we have
to remember that the questions that get
raised by the meme of voter fraud are
actually questions about what it means
to live together in a democratic
republic what does it mean to live
together in this community what does it
mean to be a citizen of this United
States and a with a constitution that
forbids discrimination on the basis of
race on the basis of gender on the basis
of age when it comes to voting this is
the realm of first questions and when it
comes to inclusive elections the first
question that you have to answer is are
our regulations which create the right
to vote genuinely inclusive to all
citizens in such a way that we know the
election is safe and fair because all
citizens ought to be able to participate
in this
beautiful democracy so as I finished
today
I simply leave you with this thought I
ask you to not disappoint the cat and
work with me to break out of the
rhetoric of voter fraud thank you
[Applause]
I want to talk about the power of means
and how memes can transform us but in
particular I want to talk about how
memes are transforming our democracy how
they’re transforming the right to vote
by creating a partisan feedback loop
that’s damaging how we talk to each
other and I want to talk about how to
get out of that loop but let’s be honest
for a minute when I said I want to talk
about memes you weren’t thinking about
the right to vote were you probably not
you were thinking about those pictures
you see in your social media feed you
know it’s something cute and adorable or
it’s provocative and it has words on it
and the combination of the words and the
picture makes you think of something
take this for example
yeah it’s funny it’s cute this adorable
cat who’s disappointed because Santa
isn’t going to take her up as one of the
reindeer you might want to spread this
mean you might even switch cat for dog
and as it spreads the more and more
people who love this will say oh yeah
right this is fantastic and if enough
people under the right circumstances do
it it goes viral right and so that is a
powerful thing it and it’s powerful not
because it’s true not because they’re
Santa but because it appeals to our
emotions it changes our thinking it’s
short circuits are thinking now my
argument to do you today is very simple
the idea of rampant in-person voter
impersonation fraud is a meme the idea
itself is a meme it does the exact same
things it transforms our thinking it
inspires us to spread it and we have a
debate about that and not about what the
right to vote should be case in point
the President of the United States
before and after the election argued
that there was a rampant voter fraud in
fact after the election he tweeted this
and many more tweets saying that over
three million people voted illegally
thus shifting the results of the
election it has made a powerful
statement in our society in fact it’s
the justification for the convening of
an election commission to question from
the ground up how we vote in America
today now this isn’t the first time
we’ve had this meme of voter fraud
impact our elections think back to the
election of 2000 but don’t think about
Florida though
think about Missouri then Senator John
Ashcroft lost his bid for re-election to
the US Senate to the ex governor of that
state Mel Carnahan there is one problem
though
Mel Carnahan had died the month before
so in losing to a dead man
the GOP reacted by saying there was
voter impersonation voter fraud in
southwestern Missouri Missouri voters
were impersonating dead people in voting
multiple times and this set off an
investigation once John Ashcroft became
Attorney General he investigated voter
fraud and state legislators saw the
concern about voter fraud and passed
voter identification laws and they
shorted the time that you could spend
voting they shorted the deadline where
you had to register the vote and the
like all this based on the belief that
there was rampant voter impersonation
voter fraud but study after study
academic study journal and lism study
even the studies of Ashcroft’s own
Justice Department found virtually no
voter impersonation voter fraud so what
are we to make of this mean well like I
said before part of the challenge of
this meme is that it creates a partisan
feedback loop Republicans might
literally believe that there is voter
impersonation voter fraud or they might
say this represents our views about how
our election system is insecure and they
say these are common-sense provisions
designed to help our elections be secure
but Democrats often see it as this is a
power grab there is no voter fraud why
are you trying to oppress minorities and
the poor and then the Republicans resent
the implicit charge of racism and the
Democrats resent being called naive and
we go back and forth and back and forth
about this debate and then the meme
changes and it re-energizes its brab on
our democracy and we see different
versions of it we see illegal immigrants
accused of fake voting we see wrongfully
registered voters voting illegally
again the meme of voter fraud we see
felons accused of wrongfully voting
again the meme of voter fraud we see as
we said before dead people accuse the
voting but one of the things that comes
from my own research in this area is the
realization that the justification for
all of these things seems to boil down
to fears of voting and scant anecdotes
of voting not hard proof and the other
thing the thing that really disturbs me
about this is that this discussion is
happening in an era of the Browning of
America demographers have told us that
by 2040 if not before America is going
to be a majority of people of color and
given these two things and one other
thought that these accusations often
target again minorities and the poor it
makes me think that this isn’t just
about politics this isn’t just about who
gets elected it’s a battle about the
identity of American citizenship who
gets to be an American who gets to be
seen as someone less than a full
American citizen this is the debate that
we are having when we talk about voter
fraud now it is a classic debate this
debate has gone on for as long as
America has a
think about the Constitution think about
the beginnings of this republic the fact
of the matter is that the National
Constitution did not define the right to
vote it did not define who got to be a
national citizen that was left to the
states and in this eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries the early 19th
century that right to vote that idea a
full citizenship was getting given to
white men who owned property women
minorities the poor were deemed unable
to judge their affairs well enough so
that they did not deserve the full set
of citizenship I call this the ideology
of exclusion but at the same time all
the way from the Declaration of
Independence where we talk about all men
are created equal to today there is also
an ideology of inclusion the idea that
we are all capable of voting so we see
over history a long struggle to make our
elections to make citizenship more
inclusive and so we come to the point
today where our laws say the right to
vote should not be based on who you are
other than if you’re a citizen so how
does the meme of voter fraud relate to
all that the mimo voter fraud stirs up
the debate between inclusion and
exclusion not because of what the laws
say on their face but because we worry
about the effects of the laws we worry
that too many people will be wrongfully
dissuaded from being able to vote and it
stirs up this debate about who is a
threat and who is not a threat in them
to American democracy now the other
problem is that it distracts us from
real problems about American democracy
consider there is vote-buying there is
voter intimidation there are problems
with registration given and
equated registration rolls and looseness
in the registration process
there’s worries about Russian hacking
that we have to deal with as a democracy
the meme of voter fraud seems to
distract us from all of those real
problems and make voter impersonation
voter fraud a concern despite the fact
that there is no evidence there is
virtually no evidence of such fraud it
distracts us from another thing – it
distracts us from the fact that we all
want to live together in this democracy
but to live together in this democracy
we have to reason about our democracy
and so the meme of voter fraud the fear
of the illegal voter who no one can find
makes us worry about whether our
identity is a threat whether it be more
conservative folks worried that their
identity is being supplanted by another
or more liberal folks worried that the
conservative folks are coming after them
we all get trapped in our fears but then
we forget that what the likelihood of an
event happening because we fear it has
no relation whatsoever to the actual
likelihood of that event happening we
also forget that concerns about security
of our elections and some concerns about
making sure everyone is included in our
elections are actually both essential to
an effective American democracy and we
also forget that it’s the politicians
who have been running this system for a
long time ever since America has been
created in those state legislatures the
politicians defined the rules about who
gets the vote and they
these tactics like gerrymandering poll
taxes literacy tests to figure out who
is their electorate and it takes us away
from the way democracy is supposed to
run which is that the electorate we the
voters figure out who are politicians
who are elected officials should be the
meme of voter fraud puts us into this
partisan feedback loop where we’re
fighting each other and we go out to
vote in order to continue that fight
rather than solve the actual problems in
our democracy this distraction that
happens because of this meme is in peril
lling us all but there’s a way out there
is a way out of this feedback loop and
what I want to share with you are my
three fall thoughts on how to break out
of the effects of the meme of voter
fraud first of all and probably most
important we have to remember that means
work because they short-circuit our
reasoning we’d rather believe that Santa
exists then confront the truth that you
have to buy those presents yourself in
the same way the meme of voter fraud
puts our fears in front of us whether
they’re conservative or liberal fears
rather than allowing us to focus on the
real problems so that we can work
together to find real answers so we have
to do what short circuiting reasoning in
any logic loop is in other words we have
to ask why why are we afraid what is
that is bothering us why is this me
motivating me and then when it comes to
voter fraud in particular demand
verifiable facts to answer the question
about the mean if we can start with
facts we can all agree on that basis and
then we can work together second we have
to realize that the concerns about
security of the electorate and the
concerns about ensuring that all
citizens get included are actually part
of the same concern the
inclusion/exclusion debate feeds off of
that divide but it’s a false divide when
we realize that it’s a false divide and
we can work together to ensure that both
concerns are answered we can get to a
more inclusive election with genuine
election integrity and finally we have
to remember that the questions that get
raised by the meme of voter fraud are
actually questions about what it means
to live together in a democratic
republic what does it mean to live
together in this community what does it
mean to be a citizen of this United
States and a with a constitution that
forbids discrimination on the basis of
race on the basis of gender on the basis
of age when it comes to voting this is
the realm of first questions and when it
comes to inclusive elections the first
question that you have to answer is are
our regulations which create the right
to vote genuinely inclusive to all
citizens in such a way that we know the
election is safe and fair because all
citizens ought to be able to participate
in this
beautiful democracy so as I finished
today
I simply leave you with this thought I
ask you to not disappoint the cat and
work with me to break out of the
rhetoric of voter fraud thank you
[Applause]
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