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.
The Supreme Court has already placed strict limits on federal intervention in state elections. So it probably wouldn’t go anywhere although I would support an attempt at least.
The issue with (the most important parts of the) voting rights act was that it only applied to states with a history of racism. Expand it to cover all states and in theory the argument of the SC breaks down. Of course, they may well come up with a different line of reasoning, but a Democratic congress should at least try.
Did you even read the comment you replied to?
That would require Dems actually doing something for a change.
That would require Dems actually doing something
You mean trying to do something without the entire republican party stopping them at every single turn including threatening govt shutdowns over it?
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!
But then with how partisan judges are now, you would get completely random rulings. Better than what we have now I guess, but in theory you could have two landmark cases against, for example, Roe v Wade, and the SC might handle these challenges completely differently depending on composition.
Would it not leave the door open for more cases to be revisited with such randomness?
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.
Republicans also love to volunteer / run for local elections that oversee these logistics purely because they want to manipulate it in bad faith. It’s SOP for them.
Hell, they have even been caught multiple times putting up fake ballot areas, and “helping” non-native English speakers fill out their ballots, and being in full control of delivering those ballots.
Both sides are not the same.
A more centralized system is ironically easier to rig too. But we’re getting there with decentralization as well.
The thing about decentralization is that all it changes is who exactly gets to fuck with you by being corrupt.
How centralized or decentralized a system is doesn’t matter as much as how accountable people on either end of that spectrum are able to be held.
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
We call it a sausage sizzle (democracy sausage at voting time) and they’re delicious 🤤
You guys sure are doing it right out there!
I have lived in several counties in Illinois and North Carolina. They have been urban or semi-urban counties. I have never experienced any problems voting anywhere I’ve lived. In fact, it seems like they bend over backwards to offer every option for voting. I am much more concerned about gerrymandering and effective bribery of elected officials using campaign donations.
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.
Not the hardware store? How you do you get your sausage?
i believe during times of sausage-related crises the state emergency services step in and air lift sausages from hardware store warehouses to effected polling places
they do not, however, transport onions by this means as they would cause unnecessary slip risk to the crew
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!”
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. 😩
How many people will vote in a county is super predictable. There are only 2 reasons to run out of ballots
- Turnout is unusually high (Not likely).
- You printed less ballots than you needed (Really likely).
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.
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Enough ballots were printed but not all were delivered
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Ballots were printed but the wrong quantities were delivered to different polling stations
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Ballots were delivered and some “disappeared”
Not saying it’s any of those things, but that’s 3 more possibilities
- You intentionally lower the amount of ballots sent to precincts you want to suppress the vote of.
That is the most likely situation in my opinion
That is reason 2
-
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.
According to this article on the event:
- The commission which screwed up the ballots order was composed entirely of Democrats
- All members of the commission took responsibility for the failure (meaning they didn’t identify who actually made the mistake)
- One commissioner blamed the failure on inadequate training from the Secretary of State’s office (which conflicts with the taking of responsibility for it)
- When interviewed, the commission was unable to list any concrete steps they had taken to ensure it doesn’t happen again
- (There’s no mention of any discussion of extending the polling hours)
So it really, really sounds like a bunch of Democrats disenfranchised the black voters of Hind county, then failed to take responsibility for the screw-up, then failed to take it seriously enough to actually fix it.
Happy to review any evidence to the contrary; this is the first I’ve heard of this debacle but the OP doesn’t seem to be backed up by the facts here.
Anyone have evidence of the Republicans’ alleged actions here?
https://mississippitoday.org/2023/11/14/hinds-county-ballot-lawsuits-dropped-mississippi/
In the Democratic Party’s lawsuit, a chancery judge ordered all Hinds County polling places to remain open an extra hour, until 8 p.m. The state Republican Party filed an emergency appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court and asked the state’s highest court to overturn the order
Would it be a weird question to ask how many Black people were in that commission?
I mean, sometimes racism can take priority over party affiliations.
Just reviewed this AP article.
It agrees with everything I listed in the previous comment. Again, no mention of any proposal or debate around extending polling hours, nor of Republican opposition to this. It doesn’t refute OP’s claim; it simply doesn’t mention anything about it.
I just reviewed this article from WLBT (conceivably a local station?) that was published on election day, while this was happening.
It opens with this:
A member of the Hinds County Republican Executive Committee is considering filing a lawsuit to keep the polls open longer after a number of Hinds County precincts ran out of ballots.
“We’re trying to figure out how to do it,” said committee member Pete Perry. “We’re trying to make sure voters get to vote.”
In direct opposition to what OP claims, the Republicans were fighting to keep the polls open.
Again, still open to conflicting evidence, which support’s OP’s claim.
So far what I can tell is that Democrats dropped the ball, disenfranchised thousands of black voters, and then attempted to blame Republicans for it, after also claiming to take responsibility for the failure.
I’ve reviewed 3 articles on this: the three top results on the event from a google news search for
hinds county ballots. Those three articles do not back up what OP is claiming.There are many other articles. If someone else would like to step in and do some reading and add more sourced information about this, it would be greatly appreciated.
As of now OP’s claim about Republicans’ actions in this event is unsubstantiated.
Be skeptical, people
So a commission makes a mistake and this should lead to voter disenfranchisement? Why do you think that’s fine? Completely reasonable to request a small extension of 1 hour when the commission screws up (which inevitably means will happen sometimes independent of party affiliation).
Of course such committees take joint responsibility rather than pointing the finger at one person. These people are essentially volunteers and you will need people to volunteer in the future.
I agree with you about being skeptical here. It appears that this was likely just someone who screwed up. I doubt it was a conspiracy or intentional. In fact, both parties ended up suing to keep polls open:
As ballots ran short, groups filed two lawsuits to try to give people more time to vote Tuesday night. One was filed by the nonpartisan group Mississippi Votes, and the Mississippi Republican Party initially supported it. The other was filed by the Mississippi Democratic Party.
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 ©®™
Both parties are bad but the magnitude is totally different.
