In many states it is near impossible to vote unless you are unemployed or retired due to long lines, terrible hours, and voting locations. It makes me happy to live in a mail-in ballot state where I get my ballot weeks before election day, I have plenty of time to research everyone on the ballot (including judges) and make the best choice available. That's Colorado for you, but we are not alone in that.
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
303 points (98.1% liked)
politics
19170 readers
5938 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
And that's a big reason why Republicans are criticizing mail in ballots. If it became that easy to vote, then many more people would vote and they would have a harder time winning elections.
So Republicans will still claim mail in ballots are full of fraud despite there being no evidence of any voter fraud on a significant scale. (Definitely nothing that would sway a federal or state level election. Likely not even enough to sway a local election.)
PA mail-in ballot represent!
If the elections were on a weekend, like Saturday or Sunday then I turn out would be greater. But the puritans evangelists say that Sunday is for their imaginary little man living in the skies 🙄
Ooo we should make it a national holiday! Have public transportation for everyone to get there and fully support mail in voting across the country.
When would the bus drivers vote, then? Just do away with voting day and have a voting week instead.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Considering the state of the US, it’s really amazing more people don’t vote.
Isn't the problem that there's only two options? Here in Norway we have 10 different parties that are all quite popular. To me having only two options seems only marginally better than 1.
Yes, but the problem is deeper than that because one party is demonstrably worse than the other. Dems are still too conservative, Republicans are literally tearing the country apart.
I always use this analogy when people say "but the Democrats aren't giving me everything I want:
You're on 8th Street and want to get to 1st Street. In front of you are two cabs. The Democrat cab will only take you to 3rd Street. Close, but not really your destination. The Republican cab will take you to 16th Street before locking you in the cab and setting it on fire with you inside.
By the way, not choosing in this analogy isn't an option. If you don't choose (don't vote), then a cab is chosen for you.
So is the Democratic cab perfect? Of course not. However, it's a lot easier to recover from being dropped off at 3rd Street than it is being set on fire all the way over on 16th Street.
Yes. They have FPTP elections everywhere from top to bottom. Even state houses and senates are divided in blue and red because of this, WTF. They could really do with an electoral system update.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Really is frustrating with the amount of apathy going around, it only hurts ourselves
It might not be apathy; it could be the fact that for presidential elections, a vast amount of votes simply don't matter, and that fact bleeds into other elections, where their votes would matter.
What I mean when I say that the votes don't matter is that if a person is right-leaning in a solid blue state or vice versa, they can be reasonably sure that their vote is meaningless, because we let land masses vote for president, instead of people. Of course, this doesn't apply for local elections, but I think it's pretty plausible that this depresses turnout in them, anyway.
There should be a lot more engagement for an updated representative system. Nudge nudge from Europe. I recommend representative voting.
I recommend representative voting.
Do you mind elaborating on this? Do you mean Proportional Representation?
Yes, that's the accurate name! I'm not sure I would call FPTP representative given how alternative votes are lost. Like if I'm a socdem in a red district my vote is void, since the FPTP only have one seat. In a proportional system there are bigger districts with more seats so that lesser groups can get their votes distributed onto a seat.
Like instead of NY State being 102 Dem & 48 GOP, it would be 70 Dem, 10 Socdem, 10 Greens, 20 GOP, 10 Trump, 10 Libertarian etc.
load more comments
(1 replies)
“Voters who were more favorable to Republican candidates turned out at higher rates compared with those who typically support Democrats,” the report’s authors write. “Shifting preferences among individual voters – though likely consequential in some races – was a much smaller factor in the 2022 midterms compared with turnout.”
load more comments
(23 replies)
Lauren Boebert, the hated representative from Colorado won reelection by just a few hundred votes. This in a state that has mail-in ballots.
A few hundred more people had to vote and we never would have heard from that nutcase again, and yet people couldn't be motivated enough to do it. They wouldn't even have had to drive anywhere to do it. Literally a few seconds of their time and she would have been gone. Nope. People were just too goddamn lazy to do it. And yet those same people would be the first to complain about her winning.
The vast majority of our problems in the US are homegrown and are a result of apathy and laziness. We live in a participatory democracy and that system only works when people actually participate in the process.
I don't think it had to do with laziness in most cases. It's simply become a "damned if I do, damned if I don't" situation. Voter apathy is huge.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I really don't understand how the extreme emotions involved with politics in our society can result in apparent apathy. Their are conservatives who are willing to kill people over their political differences, but they still don't vote. Progressives get angry about hate-filled legislation and our steady loss of civil rights but won't spend a few hours to vote the people doing it out of office.
Most races are now decided by tiny percentages. Either party has the potential to suddenly take over the government by an overwhelming majority. Convincing less than a tenth of the people who don't vote to show up would do it!
Is saving the country from chaos really not worth a few hours?
Remember that Republicans have also deliberately done their best to make it much more difficult to vote for a lot of people, as well as opposed any measures which would make it easier to vote.
Standing in line for 11 hours on a workday without access to water would deter most, and that works as designed.
Which means if everyone who didn't vote instead voted for SpongeBob, he would have handily taken the election
load more comments
(1 replies)
Couldn't vote in the last primary because I was registered as an independent. Not making that mistake again
My ballot never came in the midterms...
You may have to request it each time, and requests may be rejected without notice. So you might have to appeal.
load more comments
(3 replies)
view more: next ›