New Study Proves Republican Rule Is Bad For Democracy

A new study by a professor at the University of Washington has found that states controlled by Republicans have actually less "democracy" than states controlled by Democrats. This means that citizens of Republican-controlled states are not being represented properly thanks to decades of voter suppression and gerrymandering at the hands of those in power. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses the new study and how it coalesces with other studies about the dangers of Republican control.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A phenomenal new study out of the university of Washington by political scientists, Jake Grumbach has finally been able to quantifiably prove that Republican controlled States are less democratic than most of their democratic controlled counterparts. Now Grumbach went through 20 years of data piled through it. I mean, just absolutely barreling through every possible measure to determine what political scientists have been trying to determine for a long time. And that is how do you measure a free democracy? So Grumbach finally did the work and he did it on several different measures. One freedom of the press. How free is the press in your state? How much control does the government have over it? How many attacks does your state government level against the press? And of course the obvious things like gerrymandering and voter suppression and to nobody is surprise. It turns out that Republican States love to attack the press.

They love to gerrymander their districts. And more than that, they love to suppress the votes and all of these things combined with many more, by the way, in this study, I'm just kind of highlighting the big three here. But all of this combined shows that citizens in red States are actually less democratic, have less of a democracy, have less of a participatory state than their blue state counterparts. Now what's interesting to me about this study. Is it kind of coalesces with other studies that have come out, uh, from the years, not necessarily measuring the level of democracy in a particular state, but the level of happiness, the level of dependence on the federal government for aid. And of course the overall actual physical health of constituents and in every one of these studies, the same results have emerged. Things are worse in red States folks.

It's, it's not rocket science here, right? We understand exactly what is happening. It's not difficult. Republican controlled States have fewer regulations on corporations typically have far more pollution than their blue state counterparts. That pollution results in poor qualities of health for their constituents. They reject federal aid. Like they reject the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare that reduces public health. They allow corporations to run rampant with little regulations in terms of worker safety worker protections, and of course worker benefits. So therefore your overall poorer. So you rely more on federal assistance. And of course coupled all that with this new, your voter suppression, your gerrymandering, your attacks on the press result in a less democratic society. This is what is happening in the United States. And as Grumbach points out, this has been happening for decades, people in red States. And by the way, that includes myself down here in the red state of Florida solidly controlled by Republicans for 20 years. Yeah. We all get the short end of the stick and it sucks, but thanks to us being less, less democratic than other States, uh, Republicans have pretty much cemented their rule much like they're trying to do in Georgia, much like they're doing in Texas. And it just becomes a cycle that self perpetuates and keeps us all the citizens living in misery.