Or pre election in many cases. Stuff can be done that blatantly makes it more difficult for some people to vote, but it’s legal.
I think that means we need a rules change, because for a fair election, I think the difficulty to vote should be about equal for everyone.
One of those “stuff” you can do to make it more difficult to vote is to wait until Election Day to vote.
Not much anyone can do to help the procrastinator. It will always be more difficult for them to vote.
You can have two procrastinators that live relatively near each other, but the two areas in general vote differently. One procrastinator can walk in and vote in a matter of minutes, and the other waits a long time.
I don’t think the solution to this problem should be to say don’t vote on election day if you live in this area.
I cannot speak for all of the USA, but in Florida I can early vote in most any location that has early voting. How about the voter get off their dead butt and do a run-by the locations to survey their general line lengths? But I suppose if you don’t have a car that in itself makes it more difficult to vote.
All this garbage makes me sick. It is just like the no loads that complain about not making progress in the gym. Personal initiative is in the garbage can. Without initiative most everything in life is more difficult than someone with personal initiative.
I suppose that I am just heartless. Excuses bore me.
I concede. You win.
I voted on election day in martin county at 2pm, was in and out in 15 minutes
Larry David had the right idea.
This is how Jorgensen wins, btw, but funny video.
Yes, early voting is bullshit. I read 1 million votes were cast in the PA Senate race before the debate.
I think it’s less guarded than you think. Otherwise, people wouldn’t be able to quantify it in grad school theses and actual professional research.
I think the problem is that the media (on both sides) isn’t doing the hard work that it takes to go through all the research that actually does exist on this subject, to try to understand it better. Everyone is just spouting talking points without actually backing them up. That’s a major problem with a good chunk of contemporary journalism. And on top of that, our government officials are also not talking about the data. And to some extent I get it, politicians don’t always get into the weeds when talking to the masses, because it’s boring and, generally, a turn off to voters. The vast majority of the American public doesn’t actually want to hear an hour long lecture on the data regarding election fraud. They just want to believe whatever they already believe forever and ever.
We’ve talked about this before, and I would agree that, IF the government would actually provide such ID’s through tax payer money, perhaps a federal ID of some kind (rather than all the individual state ID’s), I’d absolutely support this. If you require an ID that cannot be acquired without money, ANY amount of money, it’s tantamount to a poll tax, plain and simple. And I absolutely do NOT want to see that become the norm, it’s too easy to abuse it.
Why does this matter? If you’re willing to vote before the debate, that pretty much inherently means the debate wasn’t going to sway you. I don’t think there’s a single voter in PA who is aware and interested enough in politics that they would vote so early, but also be so oblivious to the candidates, or at least the party lines, that a debate would make them say something like ‘oh, this Dr Oz guy is SO much different than I thought he was!’ lol.
RealID? (font makes it look weird, but the Real ID thing I keep getting spammed about needing to fly in 2023 or whatever?)
On a semantics note: Drivers licenses cost like $50 total… you can’t rent a book or open a bank account with some form of govt issued ID. You think that this forms too much a barrier to vote? I’d argue that people who don’t have any form of govt issued ID are likely uninformed on politics and what they are voting for. I guess some people call this ‘disenfranchising’ but I’d always prefer an informed populace.
I think we agree mostly on this, just in the fringes have some disagreements - which is okay with me.
Normally I’d agree with you on much of this, but did you see the PA Senate debate? It’s not that people may have suddenly been swayed for oz, but away from Fetterman. Someone may have realized the man they intended to vote for is a potato and can’t think or articulate his thoughts after suffering a stroke.
You think anyone that voted for him would have cared? Even a single person?
I don’t think so… but I’m not entirely sure, haha.
I could be ABSOLUTELY wrong about what the realID thing is, but my understanding was that it’s more or less a set of guidelines/rules for states to use to create their ID’s, so that all states have essentially the same standards. I haven’t seen anything saying they are free in situations when you can’t afford them.
Abso-fucking-lutely. The fact that we literally had to implement an amendment to the constitution SPECIFICALLY prohibiting this is reason enough for me to feel it’s too much of a burden. Voting should be free, period.
They might be. And I would DEFINITELY agree that it is important to be informed politically (hell, I’m participating in a political forum). But I am STRONGLY against the implementation of any mechanism that makes things harder for less-informed people to vote. And we have a Constitution that says as much. This is a basic right for all citizens of our country, period. It’s one of the few things I’m personally not willing to give an inch on, because it’s so fundamental to a democracy.
Senator-elect John Fetterman also detained an innocent, unarmed man by pointing a shotgun at him. My mayor would probably have some political consequences if he began detaining his constituents with a shotgun. Well, I’d like to imagine he would, but maybe he’d become a U.S. Senator instead.
This incident of unnecessary gun violence took place before the stroke. It’s a good thing the media didn’t decide to talk about it non-stop, because that could have been really bad optics.
I’ve mentioned it on the forums before but there was some problem with North Dakota requiring people to have street adresses on their ID’s to vote or something like that. It was a problem for many living on the state’s reservations because they don’t have street addresses. The USPS doesn’t deliver door to door. They have PO boxes, but those don’t count as addresses. It’s not like any person who really wants to vote can just decide to give themselves a street address on their own though, so that was where, considering it affected primarily the majority-white state’s Natives, something could be considered racist. Is it? I don’t know, but it made things harder for a higher percentage of one group than it did for the other.
If someone can’t manage to save up $50, I can almost guarentee you they couldn’t care less about voting… you can’t even get unemployment benefits without an ID in California, yet you can vote? Unless you’re speaking on principle, I do not understand your logic.
To what extreme? Can I deduct the cost to drive myself to and from the polling location? It was literally NOT free for me to vote. And yes, I am nit picking. You had to add “period.”
I don’t see a reason to believe that extremely impoverished people don’t want to have a say in who represents them in government. Regardless, as I’ve said before, voting is a right of all citizens, regardless of how much money they can save. Whether they’re interested in voting or not should remain their choice.
And if you don’t think extremely poor people want to vote, you should come check out the polling stations in south Dallas sometime. That might change your mind.
unemployment benefits are not a constitutionally guaranteed right of citizens. Voting is.
I would think the people in this country who are the most impoverished would very often have the MOST interest in voting. Someone like me is largely unaffected by most government policies. I pretty much do what I want, regardless of who’s in office. Changes in taxes just change whether I can afford, say, an 800k house or a million dollar house, ya know? Very few government policies actually affect my own quality of life. Welfare policies don’t really affect me, but they do affect poor people directly.
I think my logic is pretty clear. If you’re a citizen, you shouldn’t have to spend money to vote, period, because that is guaranteed by our constitution so specifically. I don’t see a reason for the government to fudge that. If voter fraud is so widespread as some claim, why are THOSE people not screaming for free voter ID’s across the country? THAT seems illogical to me. That someone could say it is absolutely essential for our democracy to function properly without this thing, but also the government shouldn’t provide it through tax payer money.
Aside from any money you had to spend on voter ID in your state, voting was free, but you chose to spend money on transportation. This is very essential to this question. It should always be POSSIBLE to vote without spending money. You could have walked, as annoying as that would have been.
That being said, if the government decided to reimburse citizens for travel costs related to voting, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. I don’t think it’s necessary by any means, in terms of free and fair elections, but I don’t hate it. I’d have to think over the logistics of such a policy, but the general concept is interesting.
I’ll get out ahead of the next question, which would be ‘what if someone is physically incapable of walking to a polling station?’ To me, that would be the thing that makes some sort of remote voting system essential and ready available to disabled folk. We have all the technology and resources available to make this happen, thus we should use it for people in such situations, without any additional financial burden on those people.