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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
GOP is still as strong as its ever been at the state level, and that allows them to gerrymander enough to secure the House to some extent.
And while I'd love to see the GOP fade until they return to the center-right, having one party capable of winning elections is not healthy for a liberal democracy.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Most likely, what'll happen is either the GOP will eventually manage to come up with a platform that isn't horrifying to both minorities and women, or it'll fall apart and some new party- partially formed from the remnants of GOP and/or Democrats who don't like HRC- will take it's place.
Or the GOP maintains it's current form because something really weird happens to the demographics.
edited 22nd Oct '16 5:26:03 PM by Gilphon
When Hillary Clinton stepped down as Secretary of State - I think the announcement was made during the 2012 election, or immediately after it - most of the articles I read about it speculated that it was specifically so she wouldn't have to openly agree with everything Obama did in the next 4 years. That'd leave her some room to define her own policies if she was to run in 2016.
I'm still curious. Did you just have to show up, or did you first have to register somewhere? How did you do that?
When you went to the place, did it have to be that specific place, or where there many places you could pick from?
You say went to a machine. How does voting with a machine work? Was it a touch screen thing or something else? How many things did you vote on? How long did it take?
As you can see I know next to nothing about the actual practices of a US election.
Just for comparison, in case someone's curious - and feel free to ignore the rest of this post if you aren't - in a Finnish election, if you vote on the election day, you have to go to a specific location that's mentioned in a letter you get from the government prior to the election. When you're there you show the official your ID - usually a driver's licence or a passport, but there are a couple of other types, and if you don't have one you can get a temporary ID for free from any police station - and you're given your ballot paper. It's a bit of cardboard that's folded in the middle.
You go to the booth. The candidates and their numbers are listed by party on the inner wall of the booth. (These lists are also widely available everywhere before the election and on the day.) You check your candidate's number - but realistically, you'll already know it because you've prepared at least that much - and write it down on your ballot paper. Then you fold it again.
You take your ballot paper to the officials. One of them stamps it (without opening it, obviously - your vote is secret) and puts it in the sealed ballot box.
If you vote early, you can go to any of the polling stations in your region on any of the early voting days (there'll be about 8 or 9 of them over a 2-week period or so). You show the officials your ID, and they give you your ballot paper. Then it's the same, except that after your ballot has been stamped they give it back to you with an envelope. You put the ballot in the envelope and seal it yourself. Then the officials take it. (I'm actually not entirely sure why early voting has this envelope thing instead of a ballot box. I suppose the ballots are delivered somewhere else to be counted, rather than being counted at the polling station at the end of the day.)
Early voting in our system takes you about 2 minutes from the moment you arrive at the polling station - which will typically be at a school or library or mall or post office or such - to the moment you leave. On election day it can take a minute or two longer if you have to queue.
How does voting in the US differ from this?
There are a couple of things I already know, but would like to know more about. I know you have voter registration that isn't automatically done for you even if you're eligible. I know you vote with some sort of machine, but that's basically all I know about that. I also know you've got more than just the one election happening at a time - so there's the "down ticket" stuff. I think there can also be specific legislation on the ballot, decided by popular vote? How does that work?
edited 22nd Oct '16 5:49:51 PM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.I doubt we'll be seeing a landslide but if the democrats grab the senate majority and can find some willing republicans in the house they can still move alot of stuff through. Unless the republicans go back to stonewalling, which hasn't worked out so well for them.
I can see a split happening; the trump types moving to the libertarians and the moderates sticking with the GOP. Unification or the complete collapse of one of them would probably happen after the mid-terms if they get trashed.
@handle: Are we going to be doing Hamilton on every page until election day? because I am 1000% behind that.
EDIT:
the stamp is interesting. In canada we just initial the outside flap and I'm like 40% sure they've got a serial.
edited 22nd Oct '16 5:51:40 PM by thatguythere47
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?It's been pointed out to me before (in this thread) that the GOP can't really course-correct at this point because their base won't allow it.
I'm not really sure exactly what path they'll take post-Trump, but it's definitely true that being the party of aggrieved whites, in the long run, is essentially them readying their own coffin.
I just showed up to the place but I was already registered. I did that a few years ago, and don't remember it being particularly difficult, probably just the same thing of showing an I.D., my name ,and address.
It didn't have to be that specific place but it was the most convenient for me.
I don't know if it's how all machines work but they gave me card to insert into it, I got to choice how big the text was, and then a list of elections and other things being voted on came on one at a time. There were only five things to vote on, so it only took like a second.
There was hardly anyone in at the time so it was very much an in and out situation.
edited 22nd Oct '16 5:59:00 PM by LSBK
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Thanks for the reply.
Just two more questions:
First, about the machine. Was it a touch screen thing or something else? (I've heard you used to have some sort of punch card things. Are they still used?)
Second:
So you were registered. Where do you go to register? Do you go to some sort of official, or is it a political party that does it? You just fill out a bit of paperwork and show your ID, right? If so, presumably the organisation that takes your registration would forward it to the election officials, if they aren't the officials themselves.
Can you register on election day, or does it have to be in advance? It'd be quite sad if someone finally decided to go vote on election day, only to find out they couldn't register in time. Can that happen?
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.Best Of: I very much imagine the experience will vary depending on where you are, since November 8th is less one national election and more 51 different sets of elections with varying voting procedures. Example: Oregon, Washington (state), and Colorado don't have polling stations at all - voting is entirely by mail.
I'm in NJ - my voting machine is push-a-button-on-each-option-you-want-to-vote-for-and-results-are-recorded-electronically-when-you-hit-the-"Submit"-button (the choices are printed on a paper and overlaid on the machine interface). As for legislation, in my case there is a referendum on the ballot asking whether to approve an amendment to allow casinos in North Jersey (currently casinos are only allowed in Atlantic City by a separate state constitutional amendment back in the 70's) - majority vote needed to pass (AFAIK it's expected to fail pretty hard).
I registered a long time ago - only had to update my address when I went to the DMV to renew my driver's license. As for registering, most state's deadlines have passed by now - I've heard several states allow provisional ballots to be cast if there's a question about whether you're at the right polling station, but you'd have to ask specifically.
The damned queen and the relentless knight.@Best Of: You have to register in advance in most states. For example. in the state of Nebraska, this year, October 21 is the deadline for registration for online and mail voting and October 28 is the deadline if you'll be voting in person. These date are not fixed to a calendar date, but rather on a certain amount of time before the election. In Nebraska's case, it's either postmarked by the third Friday before the election or done in-person by the second Friday before the election.
In some states, you can actually register on voting day. For example, just scrolling through the tool Google provides for voting registration dates, in Montana, you can register as late as Nov 8 (election day) if you're voting in person.
For more info, try this: http://www.rockthevote.com/get-informed/elections/voter-registration-deadlines.html
In my case, I'm already registered and plan on voting by mail.
edited 22nd Oct '16 6:23:48 PM by Balmung
@Best Of A lot of those are complicated questions because elections are regulated by state and county governments, not the federal government (and there would be immense pushback if the federal government tried to take it over). The method of voting varries by state: there are some computer touchscreens, there are some paper ballots, there used to be punchcard ballots (the ones that caused the problems in Florida in 2000), there used to be mechanical voting machines (New York was the last state to phase them out, I believe but they were what I knew growing up). The most popular at the moment are paper ballots designed to be fed into optical readers, the same tech that you may know from the answer sheets of tests in school.
Voter registration can happen in a lot of ways; many applications for government documents like drivers licenses include a checkbox you can mark to register while doing so and there's also mail forms and increasingly, online forms. Most states, you do not need ID to register but you may have to provide it at the polling place, especially if it's your first time voting there. Limiting the types of ID allowed is argued to disadvantage poor and minority voters and is a big contentious issue
; the Supreme Court has overturned some, though not all of these laws. Some states but not all do have same-day registration; the deadlines for most stated passed in the last two weeks.
Polls are maned by paid staff, both members of the local Board of Elections and regular people who signed up in advance to work that day. Each polling location is overseen by a member of both of the major parties. I believe the poll workers get about a day of classroom training which has to be repeated each year.
edited 22nd Oct '16 6:32:59 PM by Elle
That's interesting. I actually do know about the voter ID law controversy. To be honest I'm a little bit on the side of mandatory ID; it's important to make sure that everyone only votes once. That said, I know about the problems with this and would only support these voter ID laws if they were bundled with ways to guarantee that people could get an ID easily and at no (or at most a marginal) expense.
For comparison, again, I've worked as an election official once. I was at a fairly popular polling station on election day in our Parliamentary election last year. Every party is asked to recruit a given number of election officials. I'm not sure if there are any that aren't affiliated with any party. The vote count is repeated a couple of times, and no candidate gets their votes counted by just one or two officials; so in practice we're all there to make sure the count is right and that there's no foul play by any of the other parties. (To be honest I can't imagine that suspicion of fraud would be a real issue in Finnish elections, but I would also insist that these redundancies be in place just to make sure that there can be no complaints after the fact.)
I got a small but decent remuneration for the day's work - it was probably only barely minimum wage, but I don't think anyone's there for money, anyway. (It's still good that it's not just volunteers, though - I mean, it is actual work so it's fair that you're paid at least something.)
A candidate can't be an election official. I'm actually going to have to worry about this a little bit in our municipal elections next year. I would like to be an election worker again - it helps my party fill out the quota, it's meaningful work that I consider important, and I quite liked doing it.
Thing is, in the past I've been a candidate in the municipal elections for my party. I only got a tiny number of votes (I didn't have any campaign other than what we did together with the whole local branch of the party, and I always promoted the more serious candidates in all the events I attended). Still, they would like me to be a candidate again. (In our system the most important result is the number of votes a party gets - individual candidates' number of votes is less important, so even a candidate that only brings in a couple of votes will still be worth something.)
I'd prefer to be an election official, but I'm pretty sure they'll talk me into being a candidate again. They always get me to campaign with them and be a candidate in almost everything. (I'm pretty active, locally, in my party and in the past couple of years the local branch, the youth organisation, and the student party have all changed leadership so that every one of them is led by old friends of mine - not the same people, a different friend in each organisation.)
edited 22nd Oct '16 6:53:02 PM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.@Best Of
As others have pointed out it's a state-by-state thing. I live in New York, and for me it was very simple. I went to the website, entered my address so they could send me an official registration form in the mail a week later. I filled it out and mailed it back to the appropriate address indicated on the back of form, using my social security number since I don't drive. A week later I go back to the voting website to see if I'm officially registered and that my data is in the system for this year and voila. New York doesn't allow for early voting, only absentee ballots, but on election day I will provide some form of personal ID with address to get in and vote at the nearest location (there are many, many such polling stations, including the basement of a public school a few blocks from my apartment).
Now if pressed by hypothetical voter ID laws I could take a trip down to the registry to provide personal identification but it would be extra work that, had I not lived in a place with decent public transportation and also worked at a place with flexible hours, would be quite a burden, and which favors the well-to-do, native and elderly (who tend to vote Republican). I get that voter fraud is an actual thing that occurs, but we already have a two-step manner of ID in place so pushing for voter ID laws as stringent as Republicans want them to be are basically a dogwhistle campaign meant at disenfranchising legal votes from demographics they want out of the polls.
Likewise, not making Election Day a national holiday that guarantees time off so people can vote. Most workplaces are understanding enough to let people slide with pay anyway, and there may be other more legitimate reasons for why it isn't yet, but making it so that fewer people can vote is a side effect of that.
edited 22nd Oct '16 7:12:39 PM by AlleyOop
The National Review, for daring to be more old-school conservative than Trump-style conservative, is under a lot of attack from Trump supporters. And they write about it.
I saw images of my daughter’s face in gas chambers, with a smiling Trump in a Nazi uniform preparing to press a button and kill her. I saw her face photo-shopped into images of slaves. She was called a “niglet” and a “dindu.” The alt-right unleashed on my wife, Nancy, claiming that she had slept with black men while I was deployed to Iraq, and that I loved to watch while she had sex with “black bucks.” People sent her pornographic images of black men having sex with white women, with someone photoshopped to look like me, watching.
For inter-racial adoption, apparently this National Review writer isn't conservative enough! The quest for conservative purity has gone to increasingly absurd lengths.
It took days — and hundreds of IP blocks and Twitter reports — but things finally calmed down. The racist images slowed from a flood to a trickle, I relaxed a bit at night, and life returned, I thought, to normal. I was wrong. Our “normal” had changed. This wasn’t the beginning of the end of our troubles, but rather the end of the beginning.
Honestly, I am waiting for all these social media sites to start having better tools for blocking assholes, and start banning people. Things are getting out of control. Yes, people are screaming censorship because an alt-righter got banned from Twitter, but oh well. Let them scream censorship. What will they do, jump to a competitor? If all the scumbags use competing social media sites, and everyone else stays the hell away from them, then such sites will become pretty much places where only the scum hang out.
More victims are coming forward. In a painful, vulnerable post, commentator Mickey White writes about how the alt-right came after her and her family, triggering a mental-health crisis. In the face of the abuse, she sought help, but help was slow to come.
I reached out to people I thought I could trust and to this day I’m not sure if that was the right thing to do. At the time I was desperate though, as the trolling had increased from mere tweets, to D Ms from very random famous accounts. Then e-mails went out to people suggesting that I might harm myself, even though I’d indicated nothing of the sort. Anyone who responded to me would also be shamed or harassed. I was advised that I was about to be swatted. I contacted my local sheriff and eventually the FBI. As all of this was happening, the people behind these accounts made an ominous threat towards a family member. My sister. The single most important person to me in the world.
We contacted law enforcement, she got her handgun-carry permit, and life returned to the new normal of daily Twitter harassment, until the day this month when an angry voice actually broke into a phone conversation between my wife and her elderly father, screaming about Trump and spewing profanities. My wife was on her iPhone. Her father was on a landline. That launched a brief, anxious search inside my father-in-law’s home for a potential intruder and yet another call to law enforcement.
The comments of the article include the odd spectacle of right-wingers denouncing racists and Trump supporters.
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I don't remember where I read it but I read it recently: it's actually really hard already for a person to vote multiple times and nearly impossible to do so without quickly getting caught and/or in enough volume to significantly alter the results.(The polling places keep records of who's registered to vote there and who shows up.) Actual election fraud on a scale large enough to swing an election would have to be carried out on an administrative level.
That said, we have seen how a failure of technology in a closely contested race can throw the system into chaos (Florida 2000 again). If a malicious actor wanted to tamper with a national election here they'd want to focus on disrupting in those close districts. Fortunately what we no longer have in the presidential election is a close race.
edited 22nd Oct '16 7:17:34 PM by Elle
I know. This has been a very prominent controversy that's been a feature of all US elections since at least the 2012 General/Presidential election. (Probably earlier, as well - but I'm cutting it there because I definitely remember it from 2012, while I only vaguely recall it from 2010 and 2008. (2004? Probably...)
I'm still a bit confused that everyone isn't registered by default by the election officials, but I suppose it's to do with restrictions to personal information (address and so on) that the officials would need to get from some government agency, and Americans in general aren't too keen on having the government share that information with other government-related entities. This hassle of registering is another threshold that people will have to overcome in order to vote, but I suppose the argument for it is that at least there's no time and money wasted on registering people who don't intend to vote, anyway.
Change of topic: one thing I've seen and heard in all sorts of places, related to this election, is the term "Muslim-American". I must say I'm rather annoyed at that term. I can get why "African-American" or "Italian-American" are good terms (although I'm a little bit annoyed that "African" is used, rather than a specific country or region of Africa - but I do understand the practical reasons for it).
"Muslim-American" is a bit different, though. First, "Muslim" is not an ethnicity. Religions and political affiliations and other ideological aspects of a person's identity behave similarly to ethnicities, but they're not entirely the same and I think the "X-American" structure would be best left to ethnic and cultural identities. (Again, I understand that religion is a kind of cultural identity, but calling yourself "Pakistani-American" or "Iranian-American" would convey more information and avoid the implication that your religious identity is something as unchanging as your ethnicity.)
It's not a simple issue, by any means, but it just kind of annoys me. I mean, would you speak of "Atheist-Americans" or even "Methodist-Americans"? "Jewish-American"? I think not. I would suggest that phrases like "American atheists" or "American Jews" would be much more common than the "X-American" structure. Only Muslims get called referred to with that structure, and I think that's unfair because it lumps all American Muslims together and, more importantly, because it others them, at least to some extent, by using a construction that isn't normally used for religious identities.
What do you think? ("You" refers to anyone in this thread - this isn't directed at anyone in particular.) Wouldn't it be better if media reverted to terms like "American Muslims", rather than using "Muslim-American"? (I'd be especially interested if we had a "Muslim-American" in the thread to reply to this, but I'm pretty sure we don't happen to have anyone matching that description among this thread's regulars. I suppose it reflects how small a minority Muslims still are in the US - but that's changing a bit, obviously.)
edited 22nd Oct '16 7:35:03 PM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.Interesting tweet from Ben Shapiro about anti-Semitism.
I don't disbelieve it at all, I've seen first hand how fucked up the alt-right can be, but I'm curious what metrics we're looking at here. Scale of 1 to 100? 1000? Per month or lifetime? How do they judge what's anti-Semitic for statistics' sake, what algorithms do they use?
Also for the love of god don't scroll down.
I've read quite a lot about voter fraud in the US, and the information that's mentioned the most in all serious studies about it is that it's not significant. It's so rare that it barely matters. Ideally you'd want to make sure it doesn't happen at all - and you're nearly there already - but the solutions offered so far have always - by design - caused more people to lose their ability to vote at all than they have limited illegal voting.
It would be nice if someone would design and pass a good law that would actually reduce voter fraud - even from its already tiny number of instances - but it would absolutely have to be designed so that it wouldn't cause an unreasonable amount of inconvenience to people who can't easily get a valid ID. You'd have to legislate to force employers to give people free time to get an ID and register to vote; and you'd have to guarantee that people could travel to the place where they get their ID; and you'd have to make sure that this whole process costs next to nothing. If you could do that, it would be great to pass a more restrictive voter ID law, just to increase the public's faith in elections.
If you're losing 1000 potential voters to catch 1 instance of fraud, it's just not worth it at all.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

So long as the GOP continue with their hardline immigration policy they've already lost a huge (and growing) voting demographic that'll make the odds against them ever stacked. And the evangelical demographics are fast fading in terms of influence.