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Researching your vote First, a history lesson.  This is bumper sticker from the Louisiana 1991 election. The Democratic candidate was three time governor (and notoriously corrupt) Edwin Edwards. Louisiana is itself famously corrupt, home of the legendary Kingfish himself, Huey Long. Former U.S. Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-Chackbay, liked to say that, "Half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment." So when they talk about crooks, they know what they doing. Over the course of his career, Governor Edwin Edwards was accused of receiving illegal campaign contributions, was investigated for sale of government posts, extramartial affairs, South Korean bribes, went to trial for mail fraud, obstruction of justice, and bribery (Americans this time), and routinely went to Vegas with suitcases of cash. Later on, in ‘97, he was actually found guilty of racketeering, extortion, money laundering, mail fraud and wire fraud; So yeah. Definitely, one hundred percent, a crook. But we’re talking about 1991. Why would it be important to vote for a crook in 1992 in the LA gubernatorial race?  For the yougns among you, that’s loving David Duke, Grand Wizard of the KKK. Edwards won the race, 61 to 38. Because you vote for the crook, because it’s important. It’s now 2018. We have Democratic centrists of various stripes, mediocre and problematic. They don’t have spines, they don’t have vision. They are not the leaders we want, that we need, and we are going to replace them in the next primary. But this is the General Election. This is 2018, when we choose between the two parties, and who is on the other side?  Goddamn Nazis. So you register to vote, and you find your nearest voting place, and you vote for the goddamn Democrat, because it’s loving nazis. Vote for the crook, not the Nazi, and we can knife each other in the next primary the way God intended. Because it’s important. But Loel! you say. I don’t know anything about all that! Well, I’m here to help. We’re past the registration date in most states, so I hope you did that at least. For purposes of discussion, we’re going to assume the zipcode of 01775, one of the places I grew up in. We are going to Ballotpedia in the sample ballot tool and putting in the zipcode. It gives me a little warning saying I’m not being fully accurate since I’m not doing the street address, but that’s fine. When you do it, do the actual address. It loads for a bit, and then lists all the Ballot Measures. Below them are the candidates. Since we’re past the primary, we know we’re doing all Democrats, Because It’s Important. We’ll knife them in the next primary, don’t worry about that. For Massachusetts, they are referencing three ballot measures. Measure 2 is to form a committee about a constitutional amendment. Amendments are stupid hard to pass. The last one, regarding congresscritter salary, was 26 years ago. The one before that, putting the voting age at 18, was 47 years ago. Not a big concern. Measure 1 is about nurse staffing. I don’t know a goddamn thing about nurse staffing, but I remember reading Elise the Great’s blog posts, and she was always talking about staffing. So I’m leaning towards the staffing limits to keep nurses like Elise sane. Just in case though, I can look it up. Googling MA prop1, it tells me that it might improve nurses day-to-day, but it might also close some of the smaller hospitals because they can’t staff at the new levels. I can research further if I am interested. Measure 3 is about gender identity. This one is important to me, most of my circle are in the queer community, so I want to protect that. But I remember that sometimes legal bullshit can be sneaky in the ballot initiatives. Just in case, I look a bit closer because it’s important to me personally. I google MA prop3, and it’s your basic bathroom bill. So I know to vote yes. Pretty simple. Let’s do it again, for a FB friend’s of mine. Zipcode 76013. I go to Ballotpedia again, enter the new zipcode. While it gives me the candidates (vote Dem because It’s Important), it didn’t give me any state ballot initiatives. That’s weird, is Texas not doing any this year? I google a couple different websites, don’t see any. So I check for county (Tarrant) and city (Arlington). This finds a bunch. (I found those from the city website, you might need to go digging for local initiatives). The Tarrant one is a proposal for funding for a new hospital, while the city ones are funding for street improvements, park expansion, police and fire improvements, city administration, and term limits. I’m not sure how I feel about these. I might like an issue, but if it’s funded by a regressive sales tax, I might have second thoughts. I dig a bit deeper. Okay, they are funded by ‘general obligation bonds’. What the hell are those? I check wiki, it says they are most often funded by property tax. And I’m a filthy poor, so gently caress’em, I’m fine with that. I decide which measures I want to raise bonds for, and go from there. The other issue that I haven’t checked yet is the term limits. I look up ‘Arlington Prop E 2018’ and it turns out there’s a whole slapfight. On ballotpedia, they didn’t list Prop F - apparently it’s been an ongoing thing, Prop F was a citizen signature ballot for term limits (that would throw out current people), Prop E was the municipal rebuttal. But honestly, I don’t have a preference yet one way or the other. I google ‘term limits pro cons’, and make a decision from there. Now that I’ve done a few minutes research, I know how I want to go. I’m registered, I know the voting … where am I going. Yeah, should check that. I google ‘nearest voting place near me’, and it gives me a very helpful Vote.org reference. Type in my address, awesome, it’s right down the street. It also lets me check when I can do early voting. So, that’s where we are. We know the ballot initiatives, know where and when to vote. And remember. Vote for the crook, not the fascist. It’s Important. Loel fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 05:34
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OK yeah that's basically "hey I know you're disaffected with the political system but keep voting for the democrats, we've been doing that for nigh on 30 years at this point and, well, it's gotten us more fascism, but please keep doing it." Not an enormously compelling argument for the disaffected yoofs, I feel. And as earlier in the thread, definitely not a position that merits that title. I think if you're trying to capitalise on the present political energy you really need to come up with something better, and you're going to have to address the idea that perhaps repeatedly voting for thieving, self serving, boojy criminals might have some connection to why the opposition are fascists? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 16:55
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OwlFancier posted:OK yeah that's basically "hey I know you're disaffected with the political system but keep voting for the democrats, we've been doing that for nigh on 30 years at this point and, well, it's gotten us more fascism, but please keep doing it." "Vote for the crook" is only one presentation of the issues and the post wasn't only describing that. The time to bring in new progressives over establishment Democrats was in the primaries. This was surprisingly successful. Joe Manchin is the person who keeps getting brought up in threads, but there were people who seemingly didn't have a chance and did not have the DCCC with them who are now in close races. Many of these people will become the new face of the party. In addition, the down ticket races are full of new people running for office because they're working for the greater good and others who are very much not for the greater good. If you don't like the candidates in your state, find the ones you do and donate/phone bank. If you do have a progressive/non-establishment candidate that you don't hate, for the love of God go volunteer because we desperately need you right now. Then go vote because without a majority the candidates you like won't be able to push for their policies. In addition to the candidates, the ballot measures listed in the post you quoted are incredibly important. There are measures like allowing more Floridians to vote, Medicaid expansion, and levies to fund schools. I don't know if repealing the death penalty is up in any states this time, but it has happened. Those single issue measures should be enough to get people out to the polls, but the top of the ticket gets emphasized over everything else. EDIT: Also judges are super important and have a huge impact on what policy ultimately is. Dogwood Fleet fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 17:39
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The issue with "vote for them anyway even if they're shits" is that it's an excuse that will get wheeled out year after year. "This has been going on since 1991" is not a very good endorsement of the system. "The other guys are worse so support us unconditionally" has been the rallying cry of miserable centrism for decades across the world, why would anyone be using it in 2018? It doesn't matter how much bombast you put in front of it, "adopt voting tactics that have been in continuous use for longer than you've been alive" is not a motivating force and should not be if this is supposed to be some renaissance of political thought. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 17:46
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I guess it was only a matter of time before D&D threads told us to fall in line and vote for neoliberals.
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Oct 11, 2018 17:51
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Slutitution posted:I guess it was only a matter of time before D&D threads told us to fall in line and vote for neoliberals. I mean this is essentially what the trump thread has been saying for thousands of pages. Voted 1 moved on.
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Oct 11, 2018 18:03
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So what do I do then? Asking for a friend They're basically hearing that voting is stupid complicated to register/ballot/showup/vote and that on top of that it doesnt work. Will study some of those groups if any lf them operate here in SC, guntculture central. Sjs00 fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 18:27
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Sjs00 posted:So what do I do then? Asking for a friend You can register to vote in South Carolina online and have until October 17th. You do need a South Carolina ID and so I can’t walk you about the process after confirming your ID number, but apparently it takes about two minutes. You don’t need to go in on election day to vote either. You can get an absentee application online and you just send the completed application back through the mail, preferably ASAP but you need to have in by November 2nd. You can then return the ballot by mail. If it’s easier you can just go in on Election Day and ignore everything after I said after registering to vote. Going in, voting, and leaving takes 10 minutes to a half hour for my privileged suburban rear end, but that depends on where you are. Looking at the South Carolina map, it’s a frustrating place to vote. I’ll tell you this though: Donald Trump has upended a lot and weird poo poo is going down. If things are going to change, it’s now. However, if you do nothing, then nothing will change. In addition to this, there’s a constitutional amendment on the ballot. From what I can tell (please look this up yourself since I’m pretty far removed from the situation and this is at a glance) the governor wants the state superintendent of education under his thumb rather than have it be an elected position. People may vote for the governor, but they really could go either way on this and it’s an important issue. You also have local candidates and measures like bonds and levies for schools that I can’t really describe without knowing what district your friend is in. Positions like county clerk or board member of your local community college is where baby politicians get their wings and people don’t always pay attention to those. As for levies for schools, response can vary widely regardless of political party. In the end, voting is well worth the effort since you can definitely make an impact on the constitutional amendment and district/county measures and the stakes at the state/national level are high. Also, it’s your civic duty, so get out there! Fake edit: Also not mentioned in previous posts, The League of Women Voters and Vote411. Enter your address and the site will pull up all of your candidates and their positions. The positions come from the candidates in response to questions from the LVW, so there are a few people who may not answer. It's incredibly useful for school board or state representative look ups.
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Oct 12, 2018 03:32
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Alright, guys, we came in once and gave you the five minute warning, and we turned off the lights. You only signed up with the library for one time slot and the german club is already waiting, now am I going to have to give you three a write up or can you play your paper pretend games somewhere else?
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Oct 12, 2018 06:16
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Sjs00 posted:So what do I do then? Asking for a friend Seriously, join DSA. Ignore national and twitter and work in your local area, where you have the ability to make serious changes. In the last two years, my local chapter alone has:
Even if you feel like national elections are the only thing that matters, good national candidates need to cut their teeth on the local level, and in the meantime you're tricking them into improving things in your area in noticeable ways. Goon Danton fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Oct 12, 2018 |
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Oct 12, 2018 12:49
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| # ? May 5, 2024 01:36 |
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Sjs00 posted:So what do I do then? Asking for a friend I wish I had answers but I can tell you over here in GA, I can at least empathise and I'm trying to figure that out myself. Getting registered, staying registered, and actually voting are all a bitch and a half. DSA or any number of organizations isn't a bad idea if you live in an urban center. I'm not crazy about entryism into the Democratic party anymore, but they still at least do decent work locally depending on the chapter. If that's not an option and you still want to get more involved and organize locally, then yeah I wish I knew the answer. From my own digging around, you can get involved with the Poor People's Campaign by signing up for phonebanking. It's look more oriented around asking people "Hey we're doing an event/protest, can you come?" than around fundraising which is cool. https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/phonebank/ However that doesn't do much if your goal is to get organized locally. My gut says that what's going to matter more is finding something that aligns with your goals more than whatever their national label is if you're rural because your pickings are going to be real slim. Trick is, I don't know how you do that if you don't already have a social network or connections to leverage.
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Oct 12, 2018 15:40
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