The General Election

[BigRedBuster]

One situation is criminal. One is a matter of scheduling.

 

Seriously. Stop.

If we seriously want to fix the problems in the system that have brought us to this point and how many people have been taken out of the process.....then....no....I won't stop talking about it.

[BigRedBuster]

By equating a party's scheduling choice with intentional voter disenfranchisement, you most certainly are playing down its importance. It's a ridiculous comparison.

That's your opinion...and I have mine.

[knapplc]

 

By equating a party's scheduling choice with intentional voter disenfranchisement, you most certainly are playing down its importance. It's a ridiculous comparison.

That's your opinion...and I have mine.

 

Your argument is that armed robbery and Mrs. Templeton's social calendar are the same thing.

 

All opinions are not created equal.

[BigRedBuster]

Your argument is that making someone stand in line for 4 hours is worse than scheduling an event they have absolutely no ability to be involved in are the same thing.

 

Not all examples are created equal.

[Red Five]

HARBAUGH!!!!

 

[Moiraine]

Your argument is that making someone stand in line for 4 hours is worse than scheduling an event they have absolutely no ability to be involved in are the same thing.

 

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).

[TGHusker]

 

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.

 

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.

 

That is why I think there should be 4-6 max primary dates - states vote in groups (not necessarily by region as that may favor one candidate.) 2 weeks between each primary to reduce the election cycle. Candidates wt under 5% get dropped from the next primary.

[TGHusker]

 

 

 

 

Show me a law the "Republicans" passed to disenfranchise 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.

 

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/

 

Most strikingly, the judges point to a "smoking gun" in North Carolina's justification for the law, proving discriminatory intent. The state argued in court that "counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black" and "disproportionately Democratic," and said it did away with Sunday voting as a result.

 

 

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.

[BigRedBuster]

 

Your argument is that making someone stand in line for 4 hours is worse than scheduling an event they have absolutely no ability to be involved in are the same thing.

 

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.

[Moiraine]

 

 

 

 

 

Show me a law the "Republicans" passed to disenfranchise 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.

 

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/

 

Most strikingly, the judges point to a "smoking gun" in North Carolina's justification for the law, proving discriminatory intent. The state argued in court that "counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black" and "disproportionately Democratic," and said it did away with Sunday voting as a result.

 

 

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.

[Moiraine]

 

 

Your argument is that making someone stand in line for 4 hours is worse than scheduling an event they have absolutely no ability to be involved in are the same thing.

 

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

[Moiraine]

HARBAUGH!!!!

 

 

 

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

[Red Five]

[Red Five]

State odds. The larger the negative, the bigger the favorite.

 

Clinton favored in NV, FL, and (narrowly) NC.

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

Well here we are. Almost 24 hours till the results start rolling in.

 

As the quote goes.

 

"What a time to be alive."