Douglas Brunt Quotes
The main influence on voters should be a series of robust debates among the candidates. It's a free country, so this is a tough problem to solve, but I'd love to see an election season with zero political ads, and all voters had to decide based on watching four national debates over the two months leading to election day.
Brunt, Douglas. "I am Douglas Brunt, author of the novels The Means and Ghosts of Manhattan. AMA." Reddit, Reddit Inc., 10 June 2014.
He and most of the Republicans at that time did not want to make it easier for people to register to vote as the affluent and others likely to vote Republican had a very high registration rate, while it was the poor and others who were likely to vote Democratic who did not have a high proportion of voter registration. Therefore, they reasoned, the Democrats would benefit much more than they would from easier voter registration. The Republicans, despite the concern of a few who believed citizens should be encouraged to vote regardless of who benefitted, were able to kill the Motor Voter bill.
Historically, there has been a tendency to make it difficult for the poor to vote and having election day during working hours on a weekday was a very effective day of doing that. In modern times voting hours have been extended to 9 PM in some states so that working people could more easily vote. However, in modern times calls for weekend voting or Internet voting has been difficult to produce bipartisan support as increasing turnout tends to favor one party—the Democrats—over the other.
Douglas Brunt is an American novelist and former president and CEO of the cybersecurity firm Authentium.
