If all of the people who didn’t vote because “It would never make a difference” actually voted, we could have had a constitutional amendment by now removing the electoral college.
Seriously
I love how the takeaway from this is “yeah fuck politics amirite” and not “dude it is THERE FOR THE TAKING for anyone who is inspiring enough to actually get people voting for them”*
(*and who feels like overcoming the significant hurdles of the media and the DNC cooperating to do their best to tank their campaign which they will definitely do if you are inspiring enough for people to want to vote for you)
THERE FOR THE TAKING I tell you
Nah. There’s always going to be those, “They’ll never win”, “they’re not a practical choice”, “Voting third party is a waste” types.
Democrats and Republicans can only agree on one thing. They don’t want more competition. I think that’s why voter apathy is so bad
I have a former roommate that her reason for not voting is that she doesn’t think it effects her. She thinks she can live an apolitical life because she just doesn’t want to deal with it. Meanwhile she can’t afford anything because our state makes it really hard to get food stamps
voting third party will just split the vote for the side you want though (and thats a big problem when the opponent is literal evil or whatever, and the margins are so tight), we need to switch to a better voting system like ranked choice voting to allow more than 2 options.
For anyone like myself that was interested in 2020:
Found it here (Although the data source is shown on the chart)
I think trump woke a lot of people up. clearly there’s still ground to cover but it looks like clear progress in voter turnout
Everyone was also at home/working from home/on flex schedules due to covid in 2020. People had time to vote, they had time to research things and take part in political discourse. Everyone always forgets that little historical tidbit.
2024 may hit record low voter turnout as the nazi’s ratchet up anti voter laws, removing polling places, and companies keep putting the economic screws on their workers with stagnant pay and forced return-to-office so citizens don’t have time to think about the political process.
Can Biden just say fuck it and declare a national holiday? Would that help at all? What about making voting mandatory like we have in Australia? You get a small fine if you don’t vote which is usually enough incentive.
Another shout out to all the states that have at-home voting through the mail. You get a pamphlet with their stances and websites and you have a long time to get it in. It’s an amazing thing.
This is an example for the primaries in August: https://voter.votewa.gov/genericvoterguide.aspx?e=888&c=99#/
In most of the countries of the World elections are on Sunday and Saturday for this exact reason, US could change to weekend voting days as well:
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/46ukem/so_camerons_eu_referendum_is_on_a_thursday_which/
People had time to vote, they had time to research things and take part in political discourse
Which is precisely why it should be mandatory, otherwise politicians can just go about making life difficult for people to suppress votes. There is no place for political disengagement in a democracy
2020 was the highest US voter turnout in over 100 years (percentage wise), and it was still atrocious. Also worth noting, trump got the second most votes of any presidential nominee in US history, thankfully beat by Biden, but it’s not like all of the new voters were purely against trump.
…okay, you’ve convinced me. As someone from a beige state that’s been presidentially blue for over 30 years (meaning my vote means dick-all due to EC shenanigans), I will continue to show up and vote to make sure it stays that way.
Maybe one day I’ll even get an inspiring candidate to vote for.
I’m assuming you’re showing up for more than presidential elections, though, right? Where your vote counts even more?
If you think presidential participation is low, you should see state and local numbers. Or don’t, if you’re prone to depression.
Yes. Unfortunately I live in a nepo congressional district where the mob boss’s — I’m sorry, party power broker’s — little brother has a seat for life and runs unopposed every primary. And said “power broker” is VERY deeply embedded in the state dem machine (and much of the business dealings in and out of the public view), to the point where court action was needed to stop the ballot placement fuckery.
It’s also next to impossible to dig up information on county commissioners, township committee, and school board candidates. “John Doe was born in neighboring Othertown but has lived and worked in Hometown for decades. He has three children in the local school system with his wife Jane. ‘I care very deeply about policy and I think things should be good, not bad.’ John likes to go for long walks in the local park when he’s not hang gliding at his mountain vacation house.”
Unfortunately techniques like this work, as (at least) one of the Moms Against Liberty types got voted onto the school board last term. The term before that, they were all mask-off for the standard conservative Covid crap and lost… but not by much. They scrubbed their online presence to be as generic as possible… and the only POC on the board lost her seat.
And yes, I am prone to depression.
No, they were saying they didn’t bother since their party was winning anyway. Easy to misread though.
I did vote in 2000. “Wait… so the son of the VP during Regan’s Reign of Dementia is really a for real candidate?” Didn’t matter, state went blue, Florida did not because some guy named Chad Brooks hung his brother in front of SCOTUS.
I did vote in 2004. “Well this guy is completely forgettable but at least junior is going to follow in daddy’s footsteps and be a one pump chump.” Didn’t matter, state went blue, I begin to question reality.
I did vote in 2008. “I have no idea who this guy is but he talks a good game and he pisses off the bigots.” Didn’t matter, state went blue, record numbers came out to vote, and my mom suddenly cared about politics because she’s a racist piece of shit.
I did vote in 2012. “Let’s keep this rolling please and thank you.” Didn’t matter, state went blue, Bain Capital went on to kill both KayBee Toys and Toys R Us as revenge.
I did not vote in 2016. “These choices are bullshit, what the hell.” Didn’t matter, state went blue, large areas of empty space went red, and the oval office went orange despite almost three million more people voting for Buttery Males over Fraud Inc.
I did vote in 2020. “This election smells of mothballs and Icy Hot but at least I don’t have to stand in line.” Didn’t matter, state went blue, record numbers came out to vote, fascists went mask-off.
I will vote in 2024 (and already voted in the primary, which… didn’t matter). “I truly believe we are living in some sort of simulation, how can this possibly be real life?”
Pass the coconuts.
Since I moved from a red state to Colorado it’s been mind blowing how painless and accessible it is to vote in this state.
Before every election all registered voters automatically get a mail-in ballot, as well as a detailed book explaining every issue & candidate on the ballot with sample arguments for & against. You can then either mail the ballot or drop it off in very convenient drop boxes that are usually less than 10 min from your place. In some ways it’s difficult to not have at least some idea of the political landscape for most voters.
Since I moved from a red state to Colorado it’s been mind blowing how painless and accessible it is to vote in this state.
I think that is something we need to stress here: A lot of people in America don’t vote not because they are apathetic but because, well, they often don’t have access because they have to work and can’t get time off, and it doesn’t help that certain states cut and limit the amount of voting places to prevent people from voting.
I remember seeing the images from Georgia in 2020 where there were queues around the block, hell, some fucking states have laws preventing people from offering water for people waiting in line, knowing that people will be waiting in line for a long time. And the fact the places where those polling stations tend to be set up in ways to stop certain demographics from voting is another thing. There’s laws there to prevent students from voting in some states, there’s laws making it hard to vote by mail, you fucking name it.
Meanwhile in the UK, I just had to fill in a PDF form and send it to my local valuation office and I could get a postal vote. No restrictions on who can do this, you can just apply.
Yep! It’s real bad, I had to wait in a line around a building on a Tuesday morning the first election I voted in. One of the big things too is that there are fewer polling centers in the city, and usually more in the suburbs (proportional to the amount of people there).
So while you have a quarter of the eligible voting population in a city go to a single voting center, in the suburbs you have a much smaller group with a less crowded (& usually more convenient) polling area.
Thats insane, here in Germany voting is always on sunday and (at least in my state, we may have some small time variations in others) I can go vote from 8-18:00, or I could do a postal vote, although I never bothered to do that because its just easier to vote in person, the lines were never really long or even existant at all.
Right now I just have to walk 200m to the next primary school and vote there, its very easy and relaxed.
So fun fact: In the UK, elections and votes are always on a Thursday because it was the furthest day from Saturday (when people went to the pub) and Sunday (when people went to church, this rule was instituted when people were more religious).
Now my local polling place was my local school (which changed with Covid because they didn’t want to interrupt education even more) so when I was a kid when there was an election we always got election day off. :)
Colorado has so many props on the ballot as well since I believe anything affecting taxes has to be voted on that way. I really like the direct democracy.
One odd holdover from TABOR (giant tax structure from the 90s that is still around in one way or another) is that any issue affecting taxes MUST BE PRINTED IN ALL CAPS FOR THE ENTIRE TEXT. It’s so funny to see
it really says all it needs to that dems are trying to get MORE people to vote, and GOP are trying to PREVENT as many people as possible from voting
Lets all remember that time one of the largest pop stars in the world gave a message to her fans on stage to remember to vote, and was instantly targeted by the GOP for being anti-american, and they started a beef with her that would drive thousands of people against the right.
How does anyone not see it and get what’s happening? I feel like you would have to have eaten ALL the crazy pills for this to make sense.
How does anyone not see it and get what’s happening? I feel like you would have to have eaten ALL the crazy pills for this to make sense.
I keep repeating this, and people don’t like to hear it, but 75% of American Adults identify as religious, 68% as Christian.
The majority of Americans are willing to discard logic, reason, and evidence in favor of believing in an imaginary man in the sky. These aren’t usually simple spiritual belief systems either, these are complex religious, historical, and social belief systems the rely entirely on “faith” to believe - or to believe it because you were told to, not because there are any real-world reasons to give these beliefs validity. The beliefs that the majority of Americans believe in range from “demonstrably false” to “having no evidence”, and yet people believe in these things with their whole hearts.
With the most devout (read: immovably stubborn) Christians concentrated on the right, it is no surprise at all that the far-right is completely divorced from reality. Republicans treat their political views like they are a matter of faith already. They believe, despite the lack of any evidence of it, that Jesus Christ personally supports their party and their candidates.
Now, inevitably someone will chime in here to say “but Todd, I believe in the almighty skydaddy, are you saying that I am stupid?”. Yes, I certainly am. My point here is that the further disconnected from reality we get, the worse our decisions get, and if you believe that there is a supernatural entity watching you from the sky deciding whether or not to torture you with fire, you are disconncted from reality and I trust you less than I would someone that doesn’t believe obviously fake shit.
I don’t see it changing anytime soon. If I may go off on a tangent.
If any of us have gained anything of material use from the “AI revolution” it wouldn’t be plagiarized drawings of Taylor Swift as an anthropomorphic fox with six breasts, it would be the dawning realization that we’re not so special.
If so many of us can be tricked with a predictive text app into believing something is aware and alive, a technology in its infancy, what are the next several decades going to look like?
I don’t believe in the AI hype, the “singularity” subreddit is packed with the most delusional people in the world. And they sound exactly like Christians, Trump supporters or scientologists or any other cult.
It’s inherent to our experience here, that our brains trick us into thinking that thinking is special, that our conscious experience is somehow separated from the universe.
The harsh reality is it’s not separate from the world. Most of our decisions are made up to an hour in advance, most of our life is rehearsed by parts of your brain that don’t talk, that don’t narrate. You are made of thousands of layers of “entities” that sort and assemble information and then make you think you’re able to control the world around you with something called “choice.”
So now, understanding these hard truths about the human condition… when will it get better? When will we start to set aside superstition and fear and mythology to make us feel better about that gnawing fear we all have, the one lingering in the backs of all our minds that we can’t quite touch, the fear that we really aren’t in control, we really aren’t that special. We made cities, but can ants. We travel in space but so can fungus. We go to war with each other but so do chimps.
We are not letting go of religion or mysticism. Not in our current form. Maybe if we’re really, really lucky some of the most delusional techbros are right, and we will have a system in our lifetimes for “upgrading” our brains and expanding our ability to comprehend and understand each other. I am not holding my breath though. These are the same people who tried to convince us that NFT’s were the future.
Right?!
Like…even if you had no idea what either party stood for, or what positions they took on the various specific issues that concern the population in the present, all you really need to know is how a democracy works in theory, how presidential elections work in the US in practice (and by extension, how these two things differ, thanks to the Electoral College)…and where each party stands on voting rights, voting access, districting (and gerrymandering)…and as a dark horse…public education.
One side wants as many people as possible to get out and vote (and while they obviously hope they’ll vote Democrat, most of their messaging, to their credit, is focused not on ‘go vote for us’, but instead ‘the most important thing is that you get out there and vote’), wants to make sure that everybody who wants to vote is able to do so, has no roadblocks, hoops to jump through, bureaucratic red tape, etc., wants every voter across the country to have a voice equal to every other voter, and wants everyone to have a good (and improving) baseline of education, as a foundation upon which to make an informed decision about their voting.
The other side wants to suppress the vote, wants to disallow voting by default unless the individual takes steps to prove themselves, wants to introduce obstacles to voting access, wants to maintain and perpetuate a system where some voters have disproportionately more impact than others on the overall results (a system which, by the way, has much of its origins in the political maneuverings of slaveholders)…and most telling (and disturbing) of all, in the long term, actively, directly, and overtly makes efforts to reduce and degrade the quality of public education, literally seeking to reduce access to quality education for anyone not fortunate enough to be born into a family with the means to provide for a private education.
Seen to its logical conclusion, one side is literally seeking to revert decades if not centuries of progress on education and return to a situation where an education (and the opportunity it provides) is a privilege reserved for the children of affluence, where wealth, opportunity, class mobility, and professional occupations are reserved and exclusive to the wealthy, and in effect secured to them and their future generations indefinitely. And the best part (for them) is that once this happens, the future generations of uneducated lower and middle classes won’t have the education to understand what’s being done to them, or how it might be different.
i couldn’t have said it better.
but don’t forget to include that one side chose to employ fake electors
one side staged an insurrection at the capitol to try to overturn the entire election process
even ignoring all the fraud, adultering, rape, pornstar hush money, criminal negligence, theft of classified documents, and everything else their wannabe dictator cult leader did, the 2 things above really tell you all you need to know about republicans
And the side that actually, verifiably tried to use fake electors to subvert the will of the people (even against the stacked deck of the electoral system that benefits their side)…is also the side that loves to spread constant (and constantly disproven) lies about their opponents’ voter fraud.
Like…even if I agreed with their platform on the issues, the GOP would still not get my vote based on the way they try to get that vote…in order to gain power…to realize their goal…of getting to a point where my vote loses its power.
