Joe Soss, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, found in the 1990s that participating in means-tested programs—benefits that you must prove that you are poor enough to qualify for—significantly reduces the chance you will vote.13 Applying for those programs can be a lot like applying for record expungement: hard to start, confusing, often insulting, and impossible to succeed at for many people. “Because clients interpret their experiences with welfare bureaucracies as evidence of how government works more generally, beliefs about the welfare agency and client
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