In many states it is near impossible to vote unless you are unemployed or retired due to long lines, terrible hours, and voting locations. It makes me happy to live in a mail-in ballot state where I get my ballot weeks before election day, I have plenty of time to research everyone on the ballot (including judges) and make the best choice available. That’s Colorado for you, but we are not alone in that.
And that’s a big reason why Republicans are criticizing mail in ballots. If it became that easy to vote, then many more people would vote and they would have a harder time winning elections.
So Republicans will still claim mail in ballots are full of fraud despite there being no evidence of any voter fraud on a significant scale. (Definitely nothing that would sway a federal or state level election. Likely not even enough to sway a local election.)
PA mail-in ballot represent!
If the elections were on a weekend, like Saturday or Sunday then I turn out would be greater. But the puritans evangelists say that Sunday is for their imaginary little man living in the skies 🙄
Ooo we should make it a national holiday! Have public transportation for everyone to get there and fully support mail in voting across the country.
When would the bus drivers vote, then? Just do away with voting day and have a voting week instead.
I work in a restaurant and don’t get any national holidays off and work weekends when do I vote?
When do you vote now?
Lucky for me my state has mail in and a month of early voting
Considering the state of the US, it’s really amazing more people don’t vote.
Isn’t the problem that there’s only two options? Here in Norway we have 10 different parties that are all quite popular. To me having only two options seems only marginally better than 1.
Yes. They have FPTP elections everywhere from top to bottom. Even state houses and senates are divided in blue and red because of this, WTF. They could really do with an electoral system update.
Yes, but the problem is deeper than that because one party is demonstrably worse than the other. Dems are still too conservative, Republicans are literally tearing the country apart.
I always use this analogy when people say "but the Democrats aren’t giving me everything I want:
You’re on 8th Street and want to get to 1st Street. In front of you are two cabs. The Democrat cab will only take you to 3rd Street. Close, but not really your destination. The Republican cab will take you to 16th Street before locking you in the cab and setting it on fire with you inside.
By the way, not choosing in this analogy isn’t an option. If you don’t choose (don’t vote), then a cab is chosen for you.
So is the Democratic cab perfect? Of course not. However, it’s a lot easier to recover from being dropped off at 3rd Street than it is being set on fire all the way over on 16th Street.
Well the problem is we don’t have ranked choice voting in most all places. So if you’re not voting for red or blue you are kinda wasting your vote.
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It might not be apathy; it could be the fact that for presidential elections, a vast amount of votes simply don’t matter, and that fact bleeds into other elections, where their votes would matter.
What I mean when I say that the votes don’t matter is that if a person is right-leaning in a solid blue state or vice versa, they can be reasonably sure that their vote is meaningless, because we let land masses vote for president, instead of people. Of course, this doesn’t apply for local elections, but I think it’s pretty plausible that this depresses turnout in them, anyway.
There should be a lot more engagement for an updated representative system. Nudge nudge from Europe. I recommend representative voting.
I recommend representative voting.
Do you mind elaborating on this? Do you mean Proportional Representation?
Yes, that’s the accurate name! I’m not sure I would call FPTP representative given how alternative votes are lost. Like if I’m a socdem in a red district my vote is void, since the FPTP only have one seat. In a proportional system there are bigger districts with more seats so that lesser groups can get their votes distributed onto a seat.
Like instead of NY State being 102 Dem & 48 GOP, it would be 70 Dem, 10 Socdem, 10 Greens, 20 GOP, 10 Trump, 10 Libertarian etc.
That’s what happens when you have a presidential election system like the electoral college instead of a popular vote.
Liberal voter in Arkansas? Your vote doesn’t matter. Conservative voter in California? Your vote doesn’t matter.
It’s just the sad reality of a winner-take-all system that places more importance on the geographical size of a state rather than individual voters.
“Voters who were more favorable to Republican candidates turned out at higher rates compared with those who typically support Democrats,” the report’s authors write. “Shifting preferences among individual voters – though likely consequential in some races – was a much smaller factor in the 2022 midterms compared with turnout.”
I’m not American but the last 2 elections that they had I definitely wouldn’t of bothered voting . Trump vs Hilary and Trump vs Biden . In both cases I really didn’t care who won . I don’t think any of them actually care about the average American so why bother .
2016 led to a massive removal of civil rights. 2020 was a vote for or against democracy itself. There was an enormous reason to vote.
2024, is going to be the same thing as 2020 as trump still has a chance, desantis out here just getting demolished by trump while RFK Jr is just trying to disenfranchise the democratic party as none of his views fit democrats nor do they fit moderate republicans.
I still think the GOP requires a third party to drive votes away from Democrats to win.
True, that’s what screwed the liberal republicans in the 1914 election, ted roosevelt opened a new party after losing to taft, and split the liberal vote causing woodrow wilson to win.
That’s what happens when democrats do the bare minimum when they get power while republicans can - for some reason - do so much more with the same power when they get in. People feeling that voting is pointless can see the trend. Baby steps forward when democrats get in and massive strides backward when republicans get in. The only way to actually move forward would be to get democrats in power in perpetuity which is impossible in our system. It’s designed that way. These people see two parties serving the rich first and foremost and can tell the natural consequence of that. That democrats throw a bone here or there changes little in the big picture.
By the way, between two parties gatekeeping the entire process and having representatives that don’t actually represent the masses, we never had democracy.
I don’t think you’re entirely wrong about none of them truly giving a shit about average Americans, but I would love it if you would reconsider the utility of voting at all. I’m a woman in Ohio with a trans kid, and the outcome of the last few state elections has directly affected us. Just like they weren’t playing around when they said they were coming for our rights, please know that they’re not kidding when they talk about banning pornography and birth control.
It’s one thing to not be actively helping as much as they promised (which is absolutely a thing that democrats do, I’m totally with you on that!), but it’s another thing entirely to be actively working to turn the United States into some kind of christofascist oligarchy. Please, please vote.
I’m also a woman from Ohio and a little worried about how few people I’ve talked to recently are aware of/ understand the magnitude of the upcoming special election.
For anyone who’s interested: https://www.commoncause.org/ohio/democracy-wire/background-on-issue-1/
Issue 1 would essentially take away majority representation in the state and only allow for special-interest and more polarized issues to come through.
Missouri resident here. We only got medical and recreational marijuana legalized through ballot initiatives because we have a backward state leglistaure like you! Minority rule sucks.
Sorry you are going through that but I’m Canadian .
Caring for average Americans is one thing, but assembling a government that is honest, inclusive and benefits the vast majority of citizens is most important; and there are HUGE differences between the candidates you mentioned! It’s this line of thinking that is causing so much apathy in our world today, and ultimately this will be humanity’s downfall.
Ribbit
We got Trump because he wasn’t a beltway insider. Trump was able to sway independent voters simply because he wasn’t a career politician. Liberals, Greens, and progressives got tired of voting for moderate democrats who are ultimately conservative so they didn’t show up to vote.
We all know democrats take their voters for granted. It’s almost like ppl will stop voting for you if they feel ignored. Which is exactly what happened. Maybe a few years of Trump might be the kick in the pants our representatives needed
You are the reason Trump won. If you can’t see the difference between Trump and Biden, then you weren’t paying attention
No, the reason trump won was because democrats ran a shit campaign. The party needs to stop blaming everyone but themselves when their garbage candidate fails to motivate voters. If you haven’t noticed, things were already not great before trump entered office and when people hear “but things will get even worse!!” they don’t care because they feel it’s already bad enough as is that it doesn’t matter. They want significant tangible improvement, not “at least we’re not the other guy”.
Hard to do any “significant tangible improvement” when half the government refuses to govern and (usually) has enough control to block any meaningful policy changes you do make
That’s the thing, republicans will pull all the stops to get what they want when they have power and block democrats when they don’t. Republicans actually fight. Democrats just let things happen, always claiming that their hands are tied (republican hands are never tied, apparently) and on top of that, democrat leaders will claim “we need a strong republican party” and espouse bipartisanship (you know, with the nazi republican party). I, and I’m sure many others, would love a party that actually fights for them.
Im Canadian sooo…
Which tells me you either weren’t paying attention or truly didn’t understand what a nightmare Trump and his ilk are.
Interesting. That’s certainly not the view of most non-Americans I know. To what extent do you actively follow politics?
I’m kinda checked out at this point . I’m too busy just trying to keep my rent paid and my lights on . Everyone I know just votes for Justin Trudeau because they think of they vote for someone else conservatives might win . Then turn around and complain that Trudeau is our prime minister.
There’s about one election per year in most places in the US, not just every four years for president.
Yes both sides are bad but republicans are still way worse…
It’s not like Biden is an amazing president but he’s doing a lot better than trump did and he’s fixing some of the stuff trump fucked up.
Lauren Boebert, the hated representative from Colorado won reelection by just a few hundred votes. This in a state that has mail-in ballots.
A few hundred more people had to vote and we never would have heard from that nutcase again, and yet people couldn’t be motivated enough to do it. They wouldn’t even have had to drive anywhere to do it. Literally a few seconds of their time and she would have been gone. Nope. People were just too goddamn lazy to do it. And yet those same people would be the first to complain about her winning.
The vast majority of our problems in the US are homegrown and are a result of apathy and laziness. We live in a participatory democracy and that system only works when people actually participate in the process.
I don’t think it had to do with laziness in most cases. It’s simply become a “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” situation. Voter apathy is huge.
99% of people have no idea who she is and have never heard her speak. People on lemmy (and reddit) do not appreciate how small their echo chamber is. These places do not represent mainstream USA. Most Americans do not give a shit about any of this. As long as they have their starbucks and ubereats and netflix in their NYC/LA/SF apartment. It’s fucking sad.
I do agree with this - I think it is a mix of apathy, laziness and ignorance. These people see a Democrat in the White House and then complain why the Dems don;t solve all their problems. We don’t live in a dictatorship. These people don’t understand that the President can’t just decree that something gets done. We need a buy-in from Congress to fund things and within Congress, we will always need to have some level of cooperation between the parties to get stuff done. That’s where twats like Boebert are so dangerous because she, along with most Republicans, will stop at nothing to halt any Democratic agenda from progressing. But average Joes don’t understand that and our useless mass media doesn’t really report on it.
I really don’t understand how the extreme emotions involved with politics in our society can result in apparent apathy. Their are conservatives who are willing to kill people over their political differences, but they still don’t vote. Progressives get angry about hate-filled legislation and our steady loss of civil rights but won’t spend a few hours to vote the people doing it out of office.
Most races are now decided by tiny percentages. Either party has the potential to suddenly take over the government by an overwhelming majority. Convincing less than a tenth of the people who don’t vote to show up would do it!
Is saving the country from chaos really not worth a few hours?
Remember that Republicans have also deliberately done their best to make it much more difficult to vote for a lot of people, as well as opposed any measures which would make it easier to vote.
Standing in line for 11 hours on a workday without access to water would deter most, and that works as designed.
Which means if everyone who didn’t vote instead voted for SpongeBob, he would have handily taken the election
In other words, third party candidates could win, ending the dictatorship of the winner that’s the automatic result in a democracy with only two options (or a stalemate where nothing gets done if two government bodies are controlled by opposing parties.)
Couldn’t vote in the last primary because I was registered as an independent. Not making that mistake again
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My ballot never came in the midterms…
You may have to request it each time, and requests may be rejected without notice. So you might have to appeal.
How would I know if it was rejected or if they just never got my request? And how would I know before the election if it was rejected?
I think it depends on your state, and how hard they want it to be for you to vote.
Okay thanks, I’ll try to find out more before the next election- because I have to vote from oversees so I assumed I had just mailed it wrong.
Voting is irrelevant now. It can’t stop what’s happening. Not to say you shouldn’t vote, if you’re informed. But the population is not civically educated, by design. And they’re not educating themselves, that’s the role of the government, which is captured. So the solution is… wait. Wait for the fascism, the war, the collapse. Bernie was proof that reform is impossible.
Hopeless take my dude. I know it feels like we’re on a train careening towards a cliff, but don’t forget that there are lawyers, judges, and even a small subset of politicians that are still fighting the good fight, and they need to know that we’re still behind them.
They may be in a minority, but I think as more and more people wake up, look around, and get involved politically on the local and state levels, we can still turn this ship around. We have access to more information right at our fingertips than we ever have in the past. It’s important for us to strike down fascist and extremist viewpoints, shout them down, and ensure that the younger generations see more level headed approaches.
Never stop fighting.
Agreed! I won’t if you won’t my dude!
I get out and vote no matter how inconvenient it is, for you guys. Because I believe and I want others to know that I believe too.
Ok doomer.
I wish I weren’t.
