Better messaging is needed on terms like gerrymandering, vote stealing, fair and free elections, and other political science and legal terms. Plain English would help.
Have you noticed that both public officials and journalists tend to get into a rut using one or two technical words to substitute for common English? They wrongly make the assumption that audiences will understand how it will affect them, It is particularly a problem when abstract political science concepts are at issue. Often foul is called if a rule or law is broken, but that requires a brief legal case to be made instead of a sound bite. Frequently the point gets lost in the weeds of technical legal Iand hair-splitting definitions. Just claiming something is undemocratic is also too vague. For better advocacy,. there are some terms that can be retooled by walking in the shoes of the audience and helping them understand how it affects them. The operative alternative word to "against the law" is being " fair", because most people like to think they are fair or want to be treated fairly as others are treated. What the bad guys are doing may be fair to themselves, but not to anyone else. It might need a short phrase to explain it, or even simply ditching the jargon word and replacing it with a plain English phrase. "Fair and free elections" could be "counting your vote the same way as all others are counted". Basically," the the bad guys do not want so many votes opposing their opponents to be counted or even cast." " Fair is not their goal; winning if losing is". Elections are " stolen" when all votes are not counted. Elections can be called " unfair if who controls the counting is one party or one candidate ". . The term "voter suppression", assumes you get the point, and the bad guys are those who do not want you to vote. . If you are a victim of it, you get it, but if you are not, why should you care?. It might be called "making it harder (more inconvenient, more expensive) for certain people to vote for the candidate they want" "Gerrymander" is another jargon word, as well. Voters may think it is a bad thing, but how it affects them is not very clear.. . For "gerrymander", an explanatory phrase would be"drawing district boundaries to reduce the numbers of certain targeted peoples' representatives in government".
The subpoints of example to illustrate the unfairness of elections can follow the plain English phrase with examples, and relate them to "fairness". For example, removing ballot drop boxes for mail in votes and in person polling places from areas you suspect will vote for your opponent is not fair. Locking up paper ballots or counting machines so only candidate loyalists and supporters can do the counting is not fair. Those may be good examples of voter suppression, but they are above all not fair. Giving rural areas with lower population or one racial group than urban ones with another racial group more representative districts in the legislature is gerrymandering and unfair. Those practices may break the law or may not, but they are unfair.
There is an old preacher rhetorical trick that works well, too. First you tell them what you are saying, then you make your point with examples , and then close with a word of what you said. Here is how it could uld done in a short comment in plain English:: "It isn't fair for just my opponent's loyalists to count the votes. True story: A clerk in Colorado locked away the paper ballots and the vote tabulators in a room so only those loyal to her candidates could count them. Not only did that break the law and the rules, that is not a fair election that makes sure are votes are counted and no elections are stolen." . Another sound bite:",An equal ability for all to vote is fair. True story in another state: Polling places and mail in ballots drop boxes were removed from precincts expected to vote for an opponent, but not in precincts expected to vote for another candidate. That is called voter suppression, but it isn't fair. Drawing district lines to favor one party and to give them more representatives in the legislature than another party is not fair. True story in Colorado: An opponent running against the governor wants to change district boundaries to the legislature so that all urban counties with most votes are put in one district and rural ones with few voters are divided up into more districts. That may or may not violate a law, but it is not fair.
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