Here’s my general summary of why this is an issue: the US has been denying people the right to vote since day 1. You had to own land to vote in 1788. Half the country seceded and started a civil war that killed more of our citizens than any war since, over the right to own people. The 15th amendment was passed in 1870 to make it so you can’t deny Black people the right to vote, but places made it happen anyway. They made it so you had to pass a “literacy test” with intentionally ambiguous instructions, or pay a poll tax, or one of your grandparents had to have the ability to vote (afaik, the origin of the phrase “grandfathered in”).
These were all legal until the 1960s. Lots of people here have parents who were alive before legislation was passed to end Jim Crow. Without that, the racists that be turned to the War on Drugs, because lots of places take away your right to vote if you’ve been convicted of a felony. They started passing voter ID laws and closing down DMVs in areas with lots of black people and reducing their hours. A politician in Wisconsin bragged after the 2016 election that these laws here threw the state to Trump. They’ve also started banning giving food and water to people in line to vote and throwing out mail-in votes that show up after election day.
This isn’t about election security and it never has been; voter fraud has never changed an election in the country’s history. The real election fraud is in suppressing people’s votes and fucking with voting machines (2004) and having allies in positions of power to throw the election your way (2000). There’s more than that too, but it’s a tangent.
I mean I would argue the whole system of having to show up in person to a place to vote on a non-holiday day and wait in a long line is in of itself a way to stop poorer people from voting. I’ve lived in a state with only mail in voting for my whole life and as result we have some of the highest voter turn out. It makes sense the Republicans want to do everything they can to to alter that as the harder they make it for poorer people to vote the better their odds of winning are.
100% agreed
Less of an overhaul, more of a keelhaul
I truly do not understand how this bothers people. In other countries you have to prove who you are to vote. It’s ludicrous to me that there hasn’t been a requirement to prove who you are this whole time.
guns
Held by whom? Pointed at whom?
the people the fascists
In western states, quite a few of the people are the fascists. Quite a few more are sympathetic to fascists. And those who work forces are regularly the ones who burn crosses.
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
― Malcolm X
Needless to say, we live in a nation full of uncareful people.
i’m pretty sure any society that truly wanted to fix itself would require a pretty large purge.
DOGE is a purge, of sorts. I don’t think its fixing things.
we have to stop making goose and gander comparisons. they’re sociopaths. we’re the good guys. it’s ok when the good guys do it.
they’re sociopaths. we’re the good guys
They’re sociopaths, certainly. But they’re sociopaths who the liberal faction seem content (perhaps even eager) to roll over for.
I don’t see many good guys. Only the bad and the ugly.
Elections are STATE things, right? Is he nationalizing elections?
Trump is doing this to distract media attention from the biggest fuck-up of his administration so far, and there’s been a lot.
Well, destroying democracy is pretty distracting, so kudos, I guess.
Other way around. He’s taking advantage of the distraction to make an order that - without hyperbole - could literally end democracy in the US.
That we know. That likely wasn’t the only signal chat group these idiots were using , and they probably still are.
of course not. if it were, there would be at least one person going “why are we using signal for this?” or at least “is this ok that we’re doing this over signal?”
they’re the most incompetent bunch of losers you could possibly bring together. I don’t think you could manage this is you put an ad on Craigslist for incompetent losers, or have a fucking dimwit convention.
The title of the chat implies to me that it’s just one of many “small groups”
the biggest fuck-up of his administration so far
The biggest fuck-up of his administration this week.
His administration is a scandal factory.
They will fuck up and make a mess, and their solution is to make a bigger mess to distract from the one they just made.
What about the bigger mess? Well I guess they’ll just have to make an even bigger mess to cover that one up.
Rinse and repeat.Yeah but Kamala brought Liz Cheney on stage, so…
Perhaps using Richard Cheney’s daughter to rebut the guy running for Unitary Executive was a mistake.
No, no, no. It was definitely just voters being stupid. I guess democracy was a mistake and we should have simply consolidated power under a more liberal dictatorship sooner.
Yeah, because I must think it was a good idea simply because I’m not stupid enough to use it as a reason to not vote for her. Another straw man from another “leftist” completely unwilling to accept reality.
Another straw man
Harris lost. She performed worse than the two other democrats who ran against Trump. That’s not a strawman, its a simple fact.
Perhaps you think it is a strawman to suggest she might have been responsible for her exceptionally poor performance?
Thus solving the problem once and for all!
So, what do you think, the biggest mess will be end of the Line? I for myself am betting on declaring war onto another Country. Or nuclear missiles. Whatever, we are fucked 🤷♂️
According to project 2025, the end of the line is martial law then full authoritarian dictatorship.
At this point I’m not sure that there is an end of the line.
This has been the case since he took office in 2017, we’re 8 years in now and every week he outdoes himself.
He kept creating scandal after scandal for 4 years when he wasn’t in office, and still got reelected.
This isn’t stopping until he’s room temperature. Hopefully the fact that he refuses to exercise, has an excess of presenting dementia symptoms, Eats McDonald’s for every meal, and has a stimulant addiction, catches up to him sooner rather than later.He’s powered by feces, hate and bitterness, he’s going to live to be 120 just to spite everyone with a conscience on this planet.
My first thought too. The timing is just too perfect.
My second thought? This means that Trump’s team probably has executive orders just waiting in the wings, since they know how this all works. The only thing needed to supplant even awful news cycles are even worse news cycles.
My third thought? This means every time Team Trump royally messes up something, our only reward will be Team Trump doing something even worse, because it’s the only move they have, ever.
Until we’re all dead by their or our own hands, presumably.
Flood the zone with shit.
Yes perhaps we should first require military communications required everyone involved be identified and verified, hmm?
Oh. Ok. I’ll sit down then. Not like he’d actually do anything this time.
Right?
It seems like the biggest military intelligence fuck up in recent memory. Not just his administration.
Doesn’t most of the world already work like this? I have to identify myself to vote in my country, it’s the obvious way to prevent people from voting more than one time.
There are other methods. In NZ every enrolled voter’s name gets printed into a physical book, and then crossed off by poll workers when they arrive to vote. An “easy vote” card is also mailed out to everyone, which is basically in index card to make it easier to look you up in the book.
As part of the vote counting process, all these books are checked against each other, to identify if a person has cast a vote at multiple polling places. With any duplicates investigated by the electoral commission.
Effectively the only way to manipulate the vote count would be to spend election week driving around the country, voting once per polling station under the name of a person you knew was enrolled to vote, but would not be voting themselves.
There were ~150 cases of attempted/apparent vote fraud in the last election, out of ~2M votes cast. That seems like a fairly low number to me, and I would not support any attempts to restrict voting to prevent it.
I live in a country where every citizen automatically receives a government id at the age of 12. We have to bring that id when we go to vote, but even if I were to lose the card at the worst possible time, there are contingency measures to allow me to still cast my vote. The idea is to get as many people as possible to vote, the id card greatly facilitates this process, but it’s not used as a tool to keep people from voting.
In the usa (and the uk, and maybe other countries as well), citizens are not automatically granted an id card. Instead they have to acquire + maintain some accepted means of identifying themselves if they want to vote. And there some Americans saw a great opportunity: what if they made it so that certain minority groups would have a statistically harder time acquiring and maintaining identification that was deemed acceptable? And what if the state government could arbitrarily purge voter lists based on data mined information? The voter id requirements are used not only for facilitating the voting process, but also for suppressing undesired votes.
If you want some examples of usa voter suppression: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States
The key is what id would be acceptable.
They’ll raise the bar until only ids most people (they don’t like) don’t have and they have already destroyed the public service so getting one will ve very very hard and/or expensive
Interestingly, it may backfire on them. For example they cite Real Id or passport.
So passport only people who travel internationally bother to get. The rural MAGAs are less likely to get this.
For Real Id, it’s more likely since that can be done with your license, however most people I know who do not fly have not bothered, because it’s a hassle, they have to find DMV acceptable materials for a feature they don’t even need (if you aren’t flying, you still won’t need real id for much of anything).
I can 100% guarantee that implementation will be left up to the states, and there will be a discretionary level of federal oversight. Rural Louisiana officials will be given leeway to allow votes for people who seem genuine. Meanwhile every single signature will be audited in New Orleans, and a computer glitch will accidentally purge a lot of people. Every town of 350 people will have 4 registration offices, and every large college town will have one office open 10am to 1pm with a 2 hour break for lunch. Registered Republicans will get mail, emails and calls reminding them to register to vote. Democratic party members will get one flyer that gets lost in the mail.
If you think these rules will be applied fairly to all, you’re a sucker.
Yeah I don’t get it either. Every election I voted in I’ve had to have id. It’s been like this for a long time and it hasn’t shifted so that we need proof of ethnicity or some other bs people here are suggesting will happen next.
Are people really not aware of the issues with voter ID laws? Do we really need to go over this basic shit again?
What are these issues? Every other country in the world ids voters.
I’m not Trump fan by any means but it’s hard to argue against voter ID. Americans in general seem to live in 3rd world when it comes to IDs with your social security number shit etc.
We had a whole civil rights movement about it. Jim Crow. MLK Jr. The laws are specifically intended to apply selective enforcement. That is their entire purpose. Why do you think these laws are always proposed by Republicans?
I’m sorry but not implementing ID cards is literally the dumbest way to address this 🙄
And y’all say Americans are dumb. Clearly stupidity is universal.
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@drmoose @prole The UK only just brought it in a few years ago, against the advice of the Elec Commission as we don’t really have any fraud and we don’t have universal ID cards so it’s complicated to know what you’d need to bring. Mostly it’s passports or driving licences which relies on people having the cash to drive or travel, and their name matching the voter roll. If someone is turned away for not having ID they might not come back.
Maybe its time to join the 21st century and issue citizen ids?
No wonder identity theft and scams are so rampant in the US.
We have citizen IDs. If you really don’t understand the issue. Open a history book. I’ll even give you a starting point. Read about Jim Crow laws.
Nah that’s not a justification. Just fix your country instead of running away from your problems. Seriously americans are spineless as fuck.
@drmoose it was discussed in the 00s (in the UK!) but was massively polarising and got dropped. People didn’t like the idea of having to carry something that proved who they are.
That’s just crazy to me. How can society function when people are afraid to identify themselves to officials they should be trusting and relying on.
In person voter fraud is so statistically inconsequential that it might as well not exist. The idea that this is meant to prevent voter fraud is preposterous. It’s just pretense.
All this does is create more hurdles for people who already have difficulty voting from decades of disenfranchisement. It’s the goal of these laws, and Republican politicians have literally admitted it.
How do you get an ID if you don’t have an address? They can’t win with policy, and high voter turnout always means the results skew left, so they focus on stopping people of certain demographics from voting altogether.
It’s not about voting fraud but your entire culture being so crippled by fear that you avoid basic societal structures that are accepted as a net positive literally everywhere else. Maybe it’s time to stand up for yourself?
Yeah you’re right, I should have realized and done something about that sooner. Thank God you were here to tell me.
It really depends on what the purpose of voter ID is.
If it’s to ensure that everyone that is entitled to vote votes once and only once, you’ll see some key properties. It’ll be free and easy to get. Applying for it is as simple as applying to vote (which itself will be easy to do), and it’ll be virtually automatic that you get it. In many cases, it’ll arrive unannounced as the Government already knows everything it needs to get you this card, and you won’t have to do anything but show up at the polls election day with the card they gave you.
If it’s to ensure that only ‘desirable’ voters can vote, it’ll have other key properties. Getting it will be as easy as the above if you’re the preferred class. But if you’re the undesirable class of voter, getting it will have more hassles than its worth. It’ll cost money. It’ll have onerous requirements. It’ll take you lots of time, and require transportation. It’ll be designed to discourage you from voting. Because that’s the goal. Onerous enough that you give up and let your betters rule you like God intended.
Can you guess what the United States’ goal with voter ID is? Here’s a hint. We have a long history of treating certain groups of people like crap, and despite 1865’s end of the Civil War, there are STILL people who would rather see Black people in chains and treated like animals.
Every election I voted in I’ve had to have id.
I’m currently trying to get my newborn son a passport, as the offices that handle this - SSA, Post Office, etc - are rapidly being dismantled by DOGE. I have no idea how we’ll be able to maintain or renew our documentation in coming years, given that there’s simply not going to be anyone to stamp the forms and mail me renewed papers at this rate.
it hasn’t shifted so that we need proof of ethnicity or some other bs
It specifically has for transgender people. We’ve seen both state and national rules changes that no longer recognize change of gender identity on forms. So a person who shows up to vote with a form that shows “Man” when presenting as a Woman is prime target for disenfranchisement.
We’re also increasingly seeing Hispanic and Arab people targeted for arrest and imprisonment, purely on an individual not currently carrying ID (and - in many cases - despite this fact). It isn’t hard to imagine this persecution continuing into the next election cycle, with DHS agents grabbing people at polling stations.
Thank you for your insight. I hadn’t realized how obtaining an id could be an issue. We just use our driver’s licence (issued by the police) which most of us have already at hand. Wish you and the family all the best.
“Papers, please!”
Welcome to the United States of Arstotzka
Cause no trouble.
Words you can hear. “Παπερσ”
And when that horn blows and you have to take out your rifle and blast’em.
Call your local & state officals about this. The federal government does not run elections. It’s the state and local officals that do even for federal office. They are the ones who chose to follow or not follow a blatantly illegal order
Trump is threatening to pull unrelated federal funding if they don’t, but he’s been pulling funding for many states anyways for zero reason. Make sure your local & state officals know you’ll have their back if they don’t bow down
Call your local & state officals about this.
That’s cute.
Arm yourselves.
The US system is so weird, federal elections are handled at a lower level of power and differently depending on which state you live in, it makes no sense. You guys need an independent body handling federal elections so everyone’s vote is handled the same way no matter where they live… And paper ballots, fucking hell you guys need to go back to paper ballots.
I think the states handling election in theory makes sense. It’s a decentralized system that is harder to undermine. An independent body may bring consistency, but I don’t think that helps at all in combatting Trump’s tampering.
Also, many states are using paper ballots and always have been.
Decentralization isn’t always better, it’s not as efficient and, in this case, it makes it so people’s ability to choose their president varies by state and in red states there’s scheming to prevent the Democrats from gaining ground.
With an independent body and equal access to voting for all, Trump wouldn’t have been elected in the first place.
You say it’s harder to undermine but it’s getting undermined while we don’t have issues like we see in the USA right next door in Canada.
I think you are coupling a centralized voting system with one that gives equal access, and I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Being a centralized system makes it consistent, but not necessarily fair.
An independent body could be easier to undermine (single point of attack), and be just as likely, if not more likely, to reduce voting access across the country all at once. I think we’d have corruption either way. The inefficiency of the decentralized system could be slowing it down.
I think you are looking at the system with hindsight and assuming that because the current system is suffering problems, that a different system wouldn’t suffer those same problems. I don’t think you can justify that conclusion
The problem here isn’t efficiency though. Inefficiency I think is a reasonable trade off to make to prevent corruption at scale.
But there’s corruption and it’s inefficient… It takes days or weeks to get results in some states but not in others, some people simply don’t have access to a place to cast their vote to prevent them from voting for the “wrong” party…
I think if we get through this, we’ll look back at this in horror… for about 60 years, and then we’ll have a crop of neo-trumpists because no one ever seems to learn anything.
Shall we sow stars on our clothes as well?
Only if you want them to sprout.
Pink triangles for the queer folk
If this isn’t your line for outright riots America then I struggle to think of what is.
When we riot, they will crack down. At BEST it will be a civil war. This isn’t Europe. The US government can, will, and previously has mass-killed protesters. In the US, we can only riot when we are no longer afraid to die. And that’s a big ask of anyone at any time.
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Problem is, when the riots do eventually start, there will be no going back. One way or another this will be a completely different country in probably less than a year.
The bigger problem is when the riots start so does martial law. That is the final step according to project 2025.
good. let’s get this shit over with.
Tik tok ban
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
The Constitution leaves the matter of election of electors to the states.
The voter stealer wants fix elections to prevent further vote thefts. Irony.
I feel the hypocrisy is over their heads. But it is on brand with same party. Read about Abbott
Gonna be proof of Republican Party soon
What are elections for if not selecting your favorite republican ^/s^
If you want to go full dystopian…
Party assigned at birth (PAAB) based on family, ethnicity, economic background, and other social factors present when the child is born. PAAB designation must be present on ID, birth certificate, and citizenship at all times. Any attempt to hide or misrepresent PAAB will be considered felony fraud pending investigations into any extremist relations contributing to the offense. PAAB may only be changed by government application via relocation and re-education facilities. Following the abolition of the US voting system, government representatives will be automatically chosen based on majority PAAB demographic.
/s
