Good news a from NC. Republicans passed a law that required a postcard be sent to the address of any person who took advantage of same-day registration, if the card was undeliverable by the post office the vote would be thrown out.
(The voter would not even be notified this happened.)
Like many voter suppression laws, it almost sounds sensible: if you don't think about it much.
On closer inspection, it is designed to target poor, minority and/or young voters. 1/
I get tired of stupid complaints about how blacks (the only poor) are too incompetent to obtain proper ID. They are too incompetent to register to vote - unless they are planning to vote for Obama (i’m a vote fo the brotha).
Somehow inly they can attempt to vote on voting day and can’t have a legitimate address
How condescending! I think anyone with such arguments is a racist
@Arthur_500 No the voter suppression laws are racist and your reasoning is shallow and not something anyone I’ve ever known has said with a straight face.
@Arthur_500 Voter suppression steals our votes and voices. It’s taking power that you do not deserve and have not earned. If you can only win by cheating you have no business being in the running. You lack the basic integrity required to participate.
@Arthur_500
Listen I can see you think this is a clever argument “no it’s the people trying to stop racism who are the real racists!” and maybe you might make yourself or (some right-leaning yet still vaguely guilty-feeling) white people feel better about taking over legislators via this kind of voter suppression— but this imaginary idea that describing how voter ID laws harm black people more is “the real racism??” please leave that outside. We don’t need it in here.
@tuban_muzuru@Arthur_500 Yes. I’m just tired of this particular variant of “the soft bigotry of low expectations” argument coming from some of the people who care least of all about bigotry. Is so annoying. Not that this person will really listen or care about my response. But maybe my response will cheer up someone who is also sick of this argument. you know?
Normally laws are made to address an issue. Republicans keep passing laws that make voting harder, but what is their pretense for doing this? (Their purpose is too obvious & self-serving, to be the "reason" they give when making these laws)
Was there even a single instance of a bad vote that triggered this?
A fair proportion of "undeliverable mail" is due to post office error. A large proportion of same-day voters are younger. 2/
@futurebird It's called "voter caging" and one of the effects is that it generates its own "evidence" that they can then cite in the form of the returned postcards.
I had an argument about this years ago with a Republican who was convinced that the Democrats were systematically registering huge numbers of fake voters all over the country. He cited what he claimed was an entire nonexistent apartment building of fake voters in Missouri. I suspect there was some kind of clerical error that happened during one of these voter-caging exercises.
@mattmcirvin a whole apartment building of fake voters! Oh no! (of course it’s an apartment and not a single family house— in an ‘urban area’ where we, all of us are fake)
But seriously if there was any chance this were real I want to know more! When was the trial? Who went to jail?
Somehow getting to the bottom of it isn’t important— just throwing the very real votes of Americans like you and me in the trash!
@futurebird@mattmcirvin In the UK it's simple: the number of members of the present government convicted of sexual offences is greater than the number of cases of voting fraud over the same period.
@futurebird@mattmcirvin occasionally I was assigned to voting precincts in NYC apartment buildings where all thousand voters had the same address, so looking them up in the voter rolls was fun.
@futurebird@mattmcirvin It's so tiresome because if you want to change their minds you have to do inordinate amounts of work straddling the fine line between getting them to the realization and not making them feel like dumbasses and digging in.
@futurebird Countries with functional democracies offer as many ways to vote as are feasible. This is straight-up voter suppression.
For instance, in Canada, your vote always counts, and you are allowed to vote if you have one piece of government photo ID with your address or two pieces of ID with your name and address. If you don't even have that, a friend or family member who knows you and your address can vouch for you. https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=vot&dir=bkg&document=ec90525&lang=e
It's infuriating how casually a punishment (and it is a punishment) like having your vote not counted is imposed by this and similar attempts at suppression.
I would like to see more protection for voters, a way to check that your vote counted, that your time was not wasted, that you weren't shaved away in an attempt to skew the distribution to the purposes of a legislator.
You can request your voting recored in most states, but this should be easier and more centralized. IMO.
@futurebird My local postal worker has decided to cut my house out of his route for whatever reasons he might have. I get mail occasionally, guessing it's when someone else is working the route.
(I don't complain because (a) I don't rely on the Postal Service for anything, and (b) i passionately hate junk mail.)
Just saying that "undeliverable" mail is not the objective standard that this kind of legislation assumes.
@futurebird The deeper systemic flaw is that the US allows politicians to run their own elections.
In most other representational democracies, there are independent, non-patisan agencies to regulate and oversee #elections, like Elections Canada or the UK Electoral Commission.
In the U.S., whoever won the last election in a state gets to oversee the next one (at all levels), and that turns out more or less as one would expect when one of the players also acts as referee. 😕
wait what? There isn't an independent elections agency that runs elections here??? Is that true???
this is like when i found out the US also doesnt have a non-partisan electoral commission whose job is to oversee and come up with the district lines, leaving that task to elected officials and politically appointed judges.
@david_megginson@futurebird It’s worth noting “non-partisan” can mean “partisan, but we don’t tell you about it”. Doesn’t always, but can, and it can be really hard to identify and address.
Several of my local races are “non-partisan” in that the ballots aren’t allowed to list political party for those positions, but the candidates are nakedly partisan. We aren’t allowed to look up candidates on our phones while voting. As a result, it’s easy to accidentally vote for a frothing wingnut.
@futurebird In Colorado, I get a text message when my ballot is mailed, when the county picks it up from the box, and when it's counted. An email too. And on the same page I sign up for all these, I can view my voting history (not who I voted for, but that I voted and when/where, and if it's a primary which party's ballot I completed). More states need to do this.
Also in Colorado, you have to put postage on your ballot if you mail it, and it's a nonstandard amount. Which, WTF.
@futurebird They dry-ran a bunch of this in Washington State a couple of decades ago. There were a bunch of investigations. There were almost no cases of voting illegally, and every one of them, including from those investigations on the dry (Republican) side of the state, were by Republicans.
@futurebird The RW pretense across all domains and throughout all levels is always "If you do things exactly right and according to script you will be rewarded." "If you work hard enough, try hard enough, you will be accepted."
(Corollary: if someone is not rewarded or accepted it is de facto proof THEY are in the wrong.)
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