Moiraine

If you believe Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports), barring some small force of nature, Nevada is already in the blue column due to early voting. It might have been one of Jon Ralston's reports but I read that nearly 70% of the votes cast in Nevada are through early voting. That figure absolutely shocked me. I had no idea. Yes. And registered Democrats have a 6% lead over Republicans so far. But I haven't seen the number for independents.

They need to just eliminate the electoral college altogether and go by the popular vote. It is ridiculous that the candidate with the most votes could lose the election due to where their votes are concentrated or due to a faithless elector. I think going this route would put the Republicans at a disadvantage. Their voters are less concentrated so reaching them (in person) would be more difficult.

He looks really creepy there with that grin. He could be in a horror movie.

What makes you think the voters (in the actual election) are able to take off 4 hours out of their day any easier than you were for the primaries/caucuses you missed? The people most affected by this are poor and many have to ride the bus (longer distances now than before) to get to their polling locations. They're also more likely to work at a job where they can't just take some PTO. It's likely a lot are also single parent households, so voting after school's out might not be an option either. Especially not if they're going to be gone from 4pm to 8pm. All that said, I'm not opposed to having all the primaries on the same day but it's not a matter of the law at all. (And placing laws on parties that way probably isn't something we want to do). I don't. I think both situations are horrible and completely unnecessary. Gotcha. I misunderstood your wording

Okay, but you can see it in either of the articles I was replying to, and see evidence of it in the map that was posted. Also, I didn't say passed. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/25/supreme-court-strikes-down-key-part-voting-rights-act.html What they struck down made it so changes can be made with permission and if any of those changes turn out to be illegal, it will already be too late to fix them because the vote has already happened. This disenfranchises voters because all of the changes they're making have a huge, lopsided effect on one group of people, and there's no evidence that any of the changes were for any other purpose. There's a quote in a post from yesterday where the North Carolina (governor I think?) politician actually came right out and said that the voting window was reduced because too many Blacks were voting on those days. If you want you can argue that part of the law being struck down wasn't partisan but that'd be pretty amusing. I'd like to see that quote. Republicans scream voter fraud. Dems scream voter disenfranchisement. It's in this topic I think, in the past 2 pages... why am I doing all the work here? Also, it's already been posted that Arizona's most populated county reduced the number of polling places from 200 to 60. That should make EVERYONE here mad. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/ The legal document in question: Thanks Dude. I agree - there is no valid reason for reducing the # of polling places. If anything, they should be adding more polling place to reduce time in line and making sure access is available to all. If one party can do it now, just wait when the other party has the controls. The bolded is why EVERYONE should be mad at this. I don't think the Democrats wouldn't do the same thing if they were as desparate.

What makes you think the voters (in the actual election) are able to take off 4 hours out of their day any easier than you were for the primaries/caucuses you missed? The people most affected by this are poor and many have to ride the bus (longer distances now than before) to get to their polling locations. They're also more likely to work at a job where they can't just take some PTO. It's likely a lot are also single parent households, so voting after school's out might not be an option either. Especially not if they're going to be gone from 4pm to 8pm. All that said, I'm not opposed to having all the primaries on the same day but it's not a matter of the law at all. (And placing laws on parties that way probably isn't something we want to do).

The primary system disenfranchises more people than any of these rules ever even dreamed of but it is never discussed. Being the most conservative on this estimate as possible, everyone who had a primary after Cruz dropped out in the Republican primary was disenfranchised by the schedule. That includes Nebraska, West Virginia, Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota. Those states make up roughly 65,300,000 people. Now, let's say 40% of those are Republican. That means 26,120,000 people had absolutely NO WAY of having a say in who our Republican nominee is. Now.....there were many more who were in this same predicament simply because it was pretty much decided long before May 3rd when Cruz dropped out that the village idiot is the nominee. That is done explicitly to allow candidates to campaign in as few of states as possible to get the nomination. They can't care what someone in Nebraska, New Mexico or Oregon really has to say and nor do they even care if they vote. So......then, we can talk about Caucuses. In my opinion, these disenfranchise more voters in those states than any rule that you have mentioned. Look at the numbers that turn out for a caucus compared to a primary. Iowa is a state of 3,000,000 people. They were bragging about getting 180,000 people to come out for the Republican caucus and 260,000 for the Democrats. That's a whopping 14.6% of the population. Now, let's look at New Hampshire primaries. With 1,300,000 population, they had 535,103 votes for both parties. That's 41.1% of the vote. I lived in Iowa for 15 years and not once was I able to take an entire evening and devote that to going and debating with other voters on who we should all vote for. It wasn't that i didn't want to. When they came up, I simply could not do that. This year, if Iowa had the same type of turnout for a primary as New Hampshire, they would have had 1,230,000 voters in their primaries compared to 440,000 that showed up for their caucuses (and they were so proud). That's 790,000 voters that were disenfranchised just in the one state of Iowa. There were 10 states that held Republican caucuses this year instead of primaries. You think well over 34,020,000 people being disenfranchised isn't important? I am 49 years old and have voted in every Presidential election since I was 18. Not once have I had the ability to have any say in who any party's nominee is. To the bold: having no idea what you were referring to doesn't mean I think 34mil being disenfranchised is unimportant. So that's a weird question to ask me. To the rest, I don't agree that all of it is what you're saying it is. For the first part I think you're saying because some states have their primaries late, when the winner is already decided, they're disenfranchised. Maybe that's the case, but it's not even close to being as important as the vote for the actual election, and it's decided within parties so it's not really similar to the rest of the discussion. The Democratic party doesn't decide how the Republicans do their primary/caucus voting, and the Republican party doesn't decide how the Democrats do their primary/caucus voting. Each party within each state makes that decision, I believe. This is however related to what I said in my post about the two party system.

I believe I did that. I was trying to click back to the forum homepage and missed, hitting the one star right below my intended link. I really didn't think anyone would notice. Reported

Okay, but you can see it in either of the articles I was replying to, and see evidence of it in the map that was posted. Also, I didn't say passed. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/25/supreme-court-strikes-down-key-part-voting-rights-act.html What they struck down made it so changes can be made with permission and if any of those changes turn out to be illegal, it will already be too late to fix them because the vote has already happened. This disenfranchises voters because all of the changes they're making have a huge, lopsided effect on one group of people, and there's no evidence that any of the changes were for any other purpose. There's a quote in a post from yesterday where the North Carolina (governor I think?) politician actually came right out and said that the voting window was reduced because too many Blacks were voting on those days. If you want you can argue that part of the law being struck down wasn't partisan but that'd be pretty amusing. I'd like to see that quote. Republicans scream voter fraud. Dems scream voter disenfranchisement. It's in this topic I think, in the past 2 pages... why am I doing all the work here? Also, it's already been posted that Arizona's most populated county reduced the number of polling places from 200 to 60. That should make EVERYONE here mad. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/

Okay, but you can see it in either of the articles I was replying to, and see evidence of it in the map that was posted. Also, I didn't say passed. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/25/supreme-court-strikes-down-key-part-voting-rights-act.html What they struck down made it so changes can be made with permission and if any of those changes turn out to be illegal, it will already be too late to fix them because the vote has already happened. This disenfranchises voters because all of the changes they're making have a huge, lopsided effect on one group of people, and there's no evidence that any of the changes were for any other purpose. There's a quote in a post from yesterday where the North Carolina (governor I think?) politician actually came right out and said that the voting window was reduced because too many Blacks were voting on those days. If you want you can argue that part of the law being struck down wasn't partisan but that'd be pretty amusing. If people are so upset about this disenfranchising voters....why aren't they even more upset at bigger and more obvious issues that do the exact same thing that got us in this pathetic mess to begin with? What you say about this may very well be true. But, I'm sick and tired of people crying about things like this when even bigger issues slap them right in the face and they don't even acknowledge it. It might be slapping me in the face but I don't know what you're talking about. I'm talking specifically about ways to try to stop select groups of people from voting. I'll talk about what upsets me though: money in politics. Only the Republicans and Democrats get attention from the media because they're the ones with the money. Corporations can get policy passed that makes their CEOs more money because they can buy off politicians. I wouldn't call that disenfranchising voters, though, so I still don't know what you're talking about. There's gerrymandering, but I've already posted about that and I doubt it's what you're talking about.

Why is it excessive? It's proportional to the population. Also, when the Republican nominee wins the popular vote and loses the electoral college, you'll have a lot better reason to complain.

Okay, but you can see it in either of the articles I was replying to, and see evidence of it in the map that was posted. Also, I didn't say passed. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/25/supreme-court-strikes-down-key-part-voting-rights-act.html What they struck down made it so changes can be made without permission and if any of those changes turn out to be illegal, it will already be too late to fix them because the vote has already happened. This disenfranchises voters because all of the changes they're making have a huge, lopsided effect on one group of people, and there's no evidence that any of the changes were for any other purpose. There's a quote in a post from yesterday where the North Carolina (governor I think?) politician actually came right out and said that the voting window was reduced because too many Blacks were voting on those days. If you want you can argue that part of the law being struck down wasn't partisan but that'd be pretty amusing.

So instead of changing with the times the Republican party just changes the laws to disenfranchise voters. The Democrats need to somehow get more people voted into local elections, and then if they become in charge, try not to do sh#t like this. There is no defense for it.

The probability that the Democrats will take the Senate is down to 45.7%. New Hampshire and Missouri are the closest races that the Republicans are winning in. If all of the probabilities are correct, the Democrats will have 49 seats. The NH race has been pretty neck and neck since the beginning of August: http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/senate/new-hampshire/

So you want 100 people to give 1 start votes? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I want 20 people to give it 5 stars, damn it. Funny thing is it's now at 3 stars. But it was at 3 stars after I gave it a 5. That means it's only averaging a 3 after I begged for votes

Just noticed this topic has 1 star and since I created it and I'm very fragile I implore all of you to give it 100 stars!

This issue is why what North Carolina is doing (closing the voting window) is so wrong. It almost exclusively effects one party, because it has the biggest negative impact on big cities and minorities.

Clinton's chances of winning her closest "firewall" state, New Hampshire, are back up to 64% according to fivethirtyeight. It had been as low as 60% since the first Comey announcement. On the bad news (for Clinton) front, Philadelphia transit workers are on strike, which will make it harder for voters who would vote for Clinton in high numbers to get to the polls. Edit: Nevermind. It just ended.

Don't hold your breath Money is important but isn't everything. If it was everything, Oklahoma State would've won a national championship by now.

I've wondered what the score would've been had Armstrong not been injured, just based on how short our offensive possessions were. We still would have lost in a blowout but I'm thinking more like 42-21.

Thanks for posting this. I'm getting tired of people saying week after week that we should burn POB's shirt (i.e. waste a year of his eligibility) to get him practice for next year.

Yup

He means the super secret detrimental to the country leak that she announced in the debate about the operator having 4 seconds or whatever it was.

Well it's a good thing he wrote that letter then.

This is a reason for lots of these decisions, but in every other case they pretend it's not. This a-hole just came right out and said it. I think closing the voting window has the biggest negative effect on poor voters who live in big cities - in other words, minorities/democrats. In my hometown in Nebraska you can go vote and it takes about 20 minutes. There's no way that's the case in a city.