Why not have more severe consequences for voter suppression?
Because that would lead to fair elections. And if elections were fair republicans would never win any. So they block any attempt to fix elections.
Because that would lead to fair elections. And if elections were fair republicans would never win any.
Why would Democrats not simply extend and expand the Voting Rights Act when they have a Congressional majority? Dems had this in 2021 when Biden took office - both branches, plus the White House. They had it back in 2009 as well, when the House had two dozen votes to spare and the Senate enjoyed a 60 vote supermajority.
Why not send down more financial and legal aid, as Howard Dean championed back in 2008 when he was head of the DNC and delivered one of the largest landslide majorities in the party's history? Why not use federal money and manpower to amp up Mississippi state election offices?
Don't Democrats want to win in Mississippi?
I imagine it's because the Republican party is "absolutely evil turds" and the Democratic party is "everyone else". Unfortunately, "everyone else" includes some farts and sharts, too.
That, and the judiciary is usually GOP appointed where it matters.
Why would Democrats not simply extend and expand the Voting Rights Act when they have a Congressional majority?
Because such majority is not guaranteed forever and whenever they come close to something like that, the Republicans threaten to implode the country.
Because such majority is not guaranteed forever
It would be if everyone entitled to could easily vote. The GOP is running on policies far too unpopular to win without voter suppression and on never changing those policies no matter what.
The problem for the Dem leadership is that, just like the GOP can only win by disenfranchising people, right wing Democrats can only dominate a party that has drifted left without them if voters are scared of the greater evil that is a Republican with any chance of winning.
THAT'S the real reason. Voting being representative hurts the power base of the center right to right wing Neoliberals in charge of the Dems almost as much as it does the fascist Republicans.
It would be if everyone entitled to could easily vote
Well, that is like saying "in a perfect world....". Today Americans do not live in a democracy where everyone entitled to could easily vote. And there are MANY reasons for that, not just one type of obstruction.
Well, that is like saying “in a perfect world…”
No. It's like saying "cumulative return on investment". If you pass laws that enable more people to vote, and those voters vote for you, then you win more elections and can pass more new laws that allow more people to vote.
Why would Democrats not simply extend and expand the Voting Rights Act when they have a Congressional majority? Dems had this in 2021 when Biden took office - both branches, plus the White House.
Because Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema refused, so Democrats didn't have a senate majority. Both have now quit the party and sit as independents.
Because Voter Suppression usually comes in the form of laws and judgements, and legislators can't be arrested for passing unjust laws, and judges can't be arrested for passing unjust rulings, partly because...well who the fuck could even prosecute such a case without risking biased prosecution?
The supreme court is ordinarily supposed to be the check for when the law itself is unjust, but that ship has sailed and it ain't coming back until, IMO, we institute a sortitionate bench, IE the judges for any given case before the supreme court are selected at random from the pool of all federal judges who don't have a conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of one, on the case.
Really like the thought of the Supreme Court being pulled from a random pool of Federal judges for each case. Fuck this appointed for life shit!
How do you run out of ballots? Why don't they ship enough for every single legal voter?
Step 1: Be opposed to free and fair elections.
Step 2: Determine which districts vote for you less often.
Step 3: Ensure that fewer ballots are delivered to those locations.
It is intentional, not accidental. They probably used low turnout from prior elections (due to voter suppression) as justification for not providing enough ballots for every registered voter.
They should, at a minimum, have a ballot for every single voter registered to that precinct.
That's what voter registration is for.
The problem with the US system seems to be that it's partisan all the way down. It's too easy for the parties standing for election to influence how the election itself is run and counted. This is, I guess, an effect of the USA's highly decentralized approach to elections: if the Republicans run a county, they get to decide how elections work in that county. A more centralized system wouldn't leave the same scope for tweaking each local election to get the desired result in that locality.
Intentional voter suppression.
Benefit-of-a-doubt answer that they aren’t acting maliciously: that would cost way more than necessary for the typical American voter turnout.
This is election fraud. Republicans know they can't win on policy or reputation, so the only way they can win is by removing voters.
This is election fraud.
When will the DOJ begin prosecuting?
Literally never because they always have some bullshit way to legitimize their actions. It is fraud in the colloquial usage of the word, but not legally if they have specific arguments like "we were just referring to previous (lowest they could find) turnout numbers to save the taxpayers money!"
This is such a weird thing to think about being Australian, where you can go to almost any local school to vote.
But you can still have you vote outside of the area you live in from basically any other polling place in the country (if it is a federal election). And the same can be said for state and local, go to the closest open polling to you, let them know you're out of district and they point you to the correct line, done.
So this is what a competent country looks like. Must be nice.
Yep, and it's compulsory voting, on a sensible day of the week and even pre-poll so you can just go in early if you want to. And sometimes there are sausages.
And sometimes there are sausages.
Okay you trying to hurt me? Because it seems like you're trying to hurt me.
we call it democracy sausage and they tend to be at most polling places and run by local charities or community groups… it’s brilliant tbh - national pride in our democracy manifested in additional support to charity
At a school. Imagine! We vote in the churches across the street from the schools.
Schools, town halls, community centres, some libraries, some council buildings, certain community spaces like scout halls, basketball stadiums, rotary clubs etc.
Old churches that are now public halls are also opened as voting stations, and some actual churches while not open for voting due to conflicts of interest, do establish rapid housing programs so people can get legal addresses for electrotal enrolments in time for voting, and others will be open as census sites for homeless folk to record themselves on census night. I grew up in bum fuck nowhere and on election day if the weather was tolerance AEC would set up an open polling station on the local football oval just to move through the register faster than what the tiny local school could handle.
Since covid lock downs, eastern states especially have enhanced their postal and early voting processes.
For about 2 weeks before elections (local, state, federal) for the most part you can just walk into any of the above buildings, in litteraly any suburb town or city that's participating in the election, and cast your vote.
If you do your research on best venues and times, you can knock out your vote in 10 minutes flat. No queue.
Some people are eligible for postal votes too, you can request the ballot be mailed to you, or pick one up from the post office and cast your vote without leaving your home block.
But we're far from competent. While I love our preferential voting system, it's not well understood by the public, our LGA's are still subject to gerrymandering, and there are large swaths of our community that are legally prohibited from voting for various reasons that I personally feel is an unethical antidemocratic policy. There are also huge groups of indigenous peoples who do not have accessible electoral education, trustworthy polling processes, and are disenfranchised from the electrotal process, with little government support or funding for culturally appropriate programs for engagement. Despite our preferential voting, we have essentially devolved to a two party system with neither major party really being any better, do we want the party of bigots, or the party of other bigots?
In Germany it's overwhelmingly schools. There are several in every district everywhere, they are public buildings, they are easily accessible, they have enough room for events like this... It's a no brainer.
Is this in Texas where the guy responsible was just indicted? He was supposed to look at all the places ballots were to go and instead just sent basically a divided equal amount to each location. He did this partly because he was doing this while at work at another job that was undisclosed to the local government while he "worked from home" for them. His new job was with some oil company paying considerably more, but he never resigned and just half assed his gov work to keep the extra $.
Edit - Source
Edit 2 - I'm apparently illiterate and missed the word Mississippi somehow. 😩
The number of ballots is an issue, but the response to running out is far more important. There is "oh shit, well let's get more there, give some time to make sure votes are counted." Vs. "Stop the polls, this is all going to plan!"
How many people will vote in a county is super predictable. There are only 2 reasons to run out of ballots
That's it, that's the end of the reasons. You can literally print the same number of ballots for the last similar election and you'd have a good chance of having enough at least for most of the voting with some good early indicators that you need more at the beginning of the election. To run out 2 hours into an election shows you didn't even print as many ballots as you did for the last major election.
The math for how many ballots to print is "last similar election * (county growth percentage * last election turnout percentage) * 1.05". That's it. That will cover enough ballots for pretty much any election except for an extreme one where turnout is WAY higher than what could be predicted.
That math actually results in not having enough ballots in areas with more voter suppression if they actually turn out for the next election. The correct number of ballots is 105% of the number of registered voters so everyone can vote in any given election, with some spares for mistakes.
Inb4 assholes come out of the woodwork to both sides this.
Trump said if minorities vote, Republicans will never win another election, so they're making sure minorities can't vote.
This was from November....what happened with this??
The people weren't allowed to vote. Simple as.
Fuck so they won
They don't want democracy unless it gives them conservatism. They'll fight to subordinate the entire country, including openly defying democracy and the peaceful transfer of power.
...again. They'll do those things again.
They aren't a political party, they're the white taliban. An illegitimate organization.
Get the fuck out of my face telling me both parties are the same
glances at Merrick Garland's DOJ and Kristen Clarke, the Assistant AG at the Civil Rights Division
You... uh... you gonna do anything about this?
Butterfly meme - Is this Freedom ©®™
it's a war and all is fair. if you expect your opponent to play nice, you're naive. we know they're going to cheat to win. what are WE going to do about it?
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