Not All Votes Are Equal, Says Arizona Politician, Who Supports 'Quality' (Hwhite) Over 'Quantity'

If there is one thing America loves, it’s to swing its freedom-sized dick around so every country to see just how “free” America really is. The songs, the car commercials, the massive, phallic buildings: Everything is a testament to the core value of freedom.

But the low-hanging testicles of the freedom peen is, without a doubt, voting rights; Americans love to brag about a democracy. So it was quite a surprise when, on Thursday, a Representative from the Arizona state legislature, John Kavanagh, told CNN, “everybody shouldn’t be voting.” According to Kavanagh, the “quality” of votes is more important than the “quantity.”

“Not everybody wants to vote,” he said “and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues,” as if that line of logic made his statement make some kind of sense.

Kavanagh is part of the larger GOP machine whose strategy for success is making it harder for people to vote. In Arizona, this includes measures that would remove people from Arizona’s early voting list and change the rules of mail-in voting. The state Senate already approved a measure requiring an “affidavits with their date of birth and driver’s license, state ID or tribal ID card number,” to mail in a vote. Kavanagh and other proponents of the bills argue that putting more roadblocks in place will prevent voter fraud as well as ensure the “quality” of votes.

While voting is touted as a privilege, it’s also a hassle for most working people—especially the people color, Native people, and disabled people whom these bills are clearly targeting. It also seems rife with opportunity to invite the kind of fraud that proponents like Kavanagh claim they’re trying to prevent: Imagine the scale of identity theft if a load of mail containing ballots and copies of people’s ID cards went missing.

That fear is enough to make many people skip voting in a crucial mid-term election, for the sake of maintaining some shred of privacy. But perhaps, those people don’t have the kind of quality votes Kavanagh is looking for.