Vote suppression is the only “election fraud.” — a lesson in “values framing” for Democrats

Filed under: Medium
Tagged: Politics, Democrats, Liberal, Progressive, Values

This article was originally published on Medium. This copy is provided for accessibility and archival purposes. The canonical version remains on Medium.

Vote suppression is the only “election fraud.” — a lesson in “values framing” for Democrats

Mar 18, 2021

“They hate fair elections. This is about Republicans subverting democracy for those who vote against them. Vote suppression is the only ‘election fraud happening here.’ We know better.”

If I say, “[Don’t Think of an Elephant](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13455.

Don_t_Think_of_an_Elephant_Know_Your_Values_and_Frame_the_Debate),” what did you just picture in your mind? It works the same for any moral political statement — and all politics is moral. My statement frames our side in “fair elections” and their side in “subverting the vote” through “vote suppression”. Even uttering their poll tested phrase, “election fraud” is risky, and probably unnecessary, but I left it in for illustration. It MUST come after the rest, if it has to be used.

I found a typical post from a Democrat answering Republican a talking point by using that same talking point to “frame” their statement, falling right in to the same damned trap Democrats have been falling for for decades.

Here’s the original, “This isn’t about election fraud, it’s about republicans obstructing the vote from those who may vote against them. We need to call it what it is, an attack on our democracy and fair elections.”

The trick I used to rewrite this is simple. All I really did here is reverse it and add a few more values statements. The conclusion is first, so that MY values (and yours) “frame” the topic, instead of letting THEIR poll tested trigger phrase frame the topic. I did the same with the overall structure of this post.

Come on Democrats, our values are better than theirs. This might seem like a little thing, but the knowledge of how this works is the only advantage Republicans have. They’ve been killing us — often literally — by simply using a technique we refuse to learn.

What is the hangup?