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Does Voting Matter This poll is closed. |
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| Yes |
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91 | 28.44% |
| No |
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133 | 41.56% |
| Jeb |
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59 | 18.44% |
| Bernie |
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37 | 11.56% |
| Total: | 320 votes | ||
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Kavros posted:And that's ... literally what the rhetorical device applies to. Anyone who insists voting is inconsequential would have to stand by that it would therefore not matter if only certain people vote. Verus posted:It's a complete bullshit 'leftists are the real racists' argument that doesn't engage with anything actually posted in this thread. Come the gently caress on.
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Sep 4, 2021 19:22
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After your own re-read of the thread you're the one coming back and confirming for us that people are arguing that voting is inconsequential. If people are arguing that, then the argument engages something actually in the thread, by your own admission. Is voting inconsequential or not?
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Sep 4, 2021 19:30
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fool of sound posted:I doubt that anyone is making the argument that representative government is categorically bad, though if anyone is feel free to correct me. Really almost everyone appears to be taking one of two positions: "voting in completely ineffective at eliciting meaningful change in the USA due to systemic factors, and therefore strategic voting is pointless" or "voting alone is insufficient for eliciting change but it does have some array of positive effects, therefore strategic voting is useful". It would be helpful if people would respond to those positions. I think there's room between those two viewpoints. Sometimes voting is completely ineffective at eliciting meaningful change (eg: for president or U.S. senator in a party-jiggered primary, or locally as possibly the case in the NY race the socialist won), and sometimes voting has positive effects (eg: for municipal elections that garner few voters, or in a House primary race). eta: imo, of course.
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Sep 4, 2021 20:00
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Cow Bell posted:It would be great if posters would debate with one another, instead if inventing people to be upset about. That would pretty much shut down several threads here and in c-spam. I'll own that I'm more mad at the people that are regularly posting how voting does nothing than the people that have stuck around in this thread. There's a lot of posters who do it, they just don't ever wish to expand into it more than that. So I'm part of the problem and I'll shut up.
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Sep 4, 2021 21:25
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Jaxyon posted:
No he doesn't: racial segregation is bad no matter whether the object of it 'matters' (has material effects) or not. Either you haven't thought this through, or you are a segregationist using a flimsy fig leaf to justify segregation on the basis that since where one sits in the bus doesn't "matter" then it's ok to segregate black people and make them sit in the back. It's obviously the former because this is the dumbest argument I've ever seen outside of the political cartoons thread but christ just think through what you're saying, this was all argued out in Brown v Board of Education VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Sep 5, 2021 |
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Sep 5, 2021 00:18
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Staluigi posted:1. often times where you sat on a bus actually mattered, with better kept and more open seats in the front and the back benches were very bumpy, but that doesn't matter to the argument anyway because Are you serious Are you arguing that the problem with segregation is the seats in the front were more comfortable, so segregation would be fine as long as accommodations were separate but equal. I know you're trying to get in a sick dunk and you're not actually an apartheid-loving racist, so maybe think this through for like 5 minutes and realize what you're saying.
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Sep 5, 2021 00:23
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But whatever the logic doesn't work anyway, because you guys are trying to use a bullshit argument to draw some repulsive conclusion from a set of facts, and then arguing that since your bullshit conclusion is repulsive this must disprove the underlying facts. If I proved that my local school was so terrible at education that kids don't learn anything and it's pointless to even attend, you could say "ah well if the school is worthless then we can just kick out all the black kids since it doesn't matter if they attend or not", and then when people said "no that's not the solution" you could claim their opposition to your desires of racial segregation proves the school must be good after all, but of course it proves no such thing.
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Sep 5, 2021 00:27
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VitalSigns posted:If I proved that my local school was so terrible at education that kids don't learn anything and it's pointless to even attend, you could say "ah well if the school is worthless then we can just kick out all the black kids since it doesn't matter if they attend or not", and then when people said "no that's not the solution" you could claim their opposition to your desires of racial segregation proves the school must be good after all, but of course it proves no such thing. Luckily this analogy is an absurd hypothetical and we would never be expected to vote for a candidate who, say, opposed the practice of desegregation bussing.
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Sep 5, 2021 00:41
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VitalSigns posted:Are you arguing that the problem with segregation is the seats in the front were more comfortable, so segregation would be fine as long as accommodations were separate but equal. no, and for what it's worth you have not once successfully identified nor portrayed any point i might have in this thread. so anytime you're saying "so what you must be saying here is X" i can caution everyone to ignore X the point is that your analogy was inapplicable for two reasons. besides that it does matter where you're allowed to sit on the bus even if the bus is going to the same location, the raven is very much so not like the writing desk and it does not make a valuable comparator
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Sep 5, 2021 00:44
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Staluigi posted:no, and for what it's worth you have not once successfully identified nor portrayed any point i might have in this thread. so anytime you're saying "so what you must be saying here is X" i can caution everyone to ignore X Dude, what the actual gently caress are you talking about? Segregation and racial oppression are ipso loving facto a bad thing. It doesn't matter if it's about voting rights, or about seats on a bus, or anything else you can imagine. And your attempt to invent a race-based gotcha against leftists here is doubly absurd when the goddamned democratic president goes around campaigning for republicans, cracking racist jokes about Indians, opposing desegregation in schools, and helped turn America into the country with the most incarcerated individuals in the world. Instead of trying to own us with your high school debate bullshit and then arguing in endless circles about it, why not actually engage with what people are saying? Verus fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Sep 5, 2021 |
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Sep 5, 2021 00:52
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Staluigi posted:the point is that your analogy was inapplicable for two reasons. besides that it does matter where you're allowed to sit on the bus even if the bus is going to the same location, the raven is very much so not like the writing desk and it does not make a valuable comparator yes good job that is my point and therefore it also matters whether black people are allowed to vote even if both candidates are literally the same person like literally, if both parties nominated Donald Trump (D/R) on a unity ticket, it wouldn't matter which party line you voted for yet racial disenfranchisement would still be bad
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Sep 5, 2021 00:53
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Staluigi posted:no, and for what it's worth you have not once successfully identified nor portrayed any point i might have in this thread. so anytime you're saying "so what you must be saying here is X" i can caution everyone to ignore X Holy poo poo please lay out your argument again clearly and consisely, in a single post.
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Sep 5, 2021 01:05
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Anyway Another example that if you follow the rules and vote in primaries they just change the rules https://twitter.com/Gritty20202/status/1434229748071284737 E: less flip tweet https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1433859849977139201 VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Sep 5, 2021 |
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Sep 5, 2021 01:21
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fool of sound posted:Holy poo poo please lay out your argument again clearly and consisely, in a single post. if black people losing the right to vote matters to outcomes for black people, and it does, then voting matters for black people. if voting matters for black people, voting matters. it matters a lot. substantially. it has a substantial and profound influence on our lives. everything we did to fight for that right is good. these efforts for enfranchisement create tremendous differences. if voting didn't matter, then there would be a tragic pointlessness in efforts to fight the continual disenfranchisement and voter constraint attempts against us. voting matters tremendously. in asking whether my life would be substantially different outside of not having to bother to vote, i get to ask if people recognize that there would be huge, huge, measurable differences in electoral and material outcomes in this country. most blue state governments would get thrown to GOP superpower status overnight and the effects would be horrendous. we're not talking irrelevant or minor differences, which is the counterpoint to the second step down from arguing that voting is literally meaningless, where people try to settle on "ok, voting has some impact, but it's not meaningful impact and/or it's not allowed to be meaningfully productive impact" i don't have to belabor the point much longer, and would prefer not to. people are either shutting up about or walking back arguments that voting just literally doesn't matter, and now working more carefully with how they qualify what they mean lest they actually argue that voting is literally meaningless or inconsequential, because that standpoint was always stupid and tiresomely everpresent. until we reach the next person who's going to hoist that banner, which i hope doesn't happen, that's where i can leave it at
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Sep 5, 2021 01:33
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Staluigi posted:if black people losing the right to vote matters to outcomes for black people, and it does, then voting matters for black people. This doesn't follow at all. Even if the elections were completely rigged Saddam Hussein style and all polling places reported 100% for Saddam Hussein no matter what, that wouldn't morally justify laws discriminating against black people. "Well you don't really need this anyway it's a waste of your time" is not a justification for segregation even if they don't really need it and it really is a waste of their time.
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Sep 5, 2021 01:36
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VitalSigns posted:No he doesn't: racial segregation is bad no matter whether the object of it 'matters' (has material effects) or not. Forcing people to sit in the lovely part of the bus is not the same as modern voting restrictions. This is a real lovely analogy you're reaching for, just so you can call people segregationists for daring to claim that voting might sometimes be a useful tool for collective action. Modern voting restrictions don't impose any specific restrictions on individuals, in the way that Jim Crow laws did. Nobody's 100% disenfranchised based on factors like race, in the "you have to sit in the back of the bus because the front is whites only" sense. Instead, the restrictions are designed to create slight disproportionate effects, which make it somewhat harder for certain demographic groups to vote in the aggregate, without locking anyone out entirely. Tactics like gerrymandering, closing down polling sites in targeted areas, and enforcing onerous ID and paperwork requirements don't create an absolute block. They're designed to dilute group power and operate at a stochastic level. "Anybody who actually cares can still vote" is how modern voting discrimination justifies itself. That's how they get around the Constitution, laws, and precedents that say you can't discriminate against individuals based solely on protected characteristics (with the help, of course, of a Supreme Court that thinks voting rights restrictions are cool and good). If voting is basically a waste of time and only matters for its symbolic value as a thing people can do in society, then there's no reason to care about that dilution under post-Jim Crow voting restrictions. Anyone who really cares can still vote, so the symbolic value is equal. The ability to effect change by voting is zero, so if it's reduced and diluted a bit, who cares? Zero reduced by 20% or whatever other factor is still zero, and people who choose to not participate are making the smart decision to avoid wasting their time. On the other hand, if we accept that voting might in some cases be able to effect positive change, then diluting a community's voting effectiveness is actually a serious problem. Gerrymandering, closing polling places, onerous registration requirements, and all the other mechanisms used for voting rights restrictions in the past 50+ years are only a problem if you think that voting might be able to create meaningful change.
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Sep 5, 2021 01:49
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VitalSigns posted:This doesn't follow at all. yes, it does, because the impact of the black vote changes our lives. the votes of bipoc or other minorities are not symbolic and otherwise purposeless, it changes outcomes substantially. the evidence of how significantly it changes material outcomes substantially is evidenced by how obviously everything would change if they either didn't or couldn't vote, and how severely (very). and if that changes the outcome of the condition of the country that severely, we are way past arguing that voting is in any way symbolic, meaningless, pointless, a token gesture that is kept from being 'truly' meaningful. so people should stop doing that.
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Sep 5, 2021 01:53
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Space Gopher posted:If voting is basically a waste of time and only matters for its symbolic value as a thing people can do in society, then there's no reason to care about that dilution under post-Jim Crow voting restrictions. No this doesn't follow, racial discrimination would still be bad and wrong even if the vote were 100% rigged. Just like banning black kids from going to school would be bad and wrong even in a world where schools were so bad there was no point in going. Because racial discrimination is inherently bad and harmful even if the thing that's being segregated is unimportant or worthless You guys have completely lost the plot, you're trying to do this dumb "if you disagree with me you're the real racist" nonsense, and now you're the ones arguing for situations where we shouldn't care about Jim Crow.
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Sep 5, 2021 02:33
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Staluigi posted:i don't have to belabor the point much longer, and would prefer not to. people are either shutting up about or walking back arguments that voting just literally doesn't matter, and now working more carefully with how they qualify what they mean lest they actually argue that voting is literally meaningless or inconsequential, because that standpoint was always stupid and tiresomely everpresent. until we reach the next person who's going to hoist that banner, which i hope doesn't happen, that's where i can leave it at Good lord, you can climb down off your cross any time you want. This is one of the most pretentious posts I've ever read. I just want to reiterate that this entire absurd hypothetical regarding whether we should once again disenfranchise minorities was prompted by this post: quote:This, like every other voting matters argument I've seen ITT, rests on the following assumptions: We've come very far away from the things people were actually describing and discussing.
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Sep 5, 2021 02:50
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VitalSigns posted:No this doesn't follow, racial discrimination would still be bad and wrong even if the vote were 100% rigged. Just like banning black kids from going to school would be bad and wrong even in a world where schools were so bad there was no point in going. Because racial discrimination is inherently bad and harmful even if the thing that's being segregated is unimportant or worthless I am not trying to say "if you disagree with me you're the real racist" at all. I can't speak definitively for any other posters, but I don't think they're trying to do that, either. I think you are making a lovely analogy to try to say that about others, with statements like "now you're the ones arguing for situations where we shouldn't care about Jim Crow." You'll note that I explained how Jim Crow does not match the restrictions under discussion, in the parts of my post you cut out of your quote. Those restrictions are bad and wrong, but they are not Jim Crow. If you're only talking about Jim Crow now for some reason, then I think we can both agree that Jim Crow was a very bad thing and move on to focusing on the parts of Staluigi's argument that discussed "the fight against rollbacks of suffrage" in the present tense. Modern voting restrictions, which I'll assume you claim to oppose, are not explicitly racially discriminatory in the way that Jim Crow was. They're designed to apply to everyone "equally", but to actually have a racially disparate impact. If voting really is meaningless, then that disparate impact doesn't matter. You can't simultaneously claim that voting can't change anything, and that voting restrictions that are designed to statistically dilute rather than totally block Black votes are bad. It's as meaningless as accusing someone of watering down a glass of water.
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Sep 5, 2021 03:01
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Space Gopher posted:
Yes it does, racial discrimination is still racial discrimination even if it's done under facially neutral pretenses. And racial discrimination is still bad and wrong even if it's done for an objective that doesn't actually matter. Let's just think this through: if the Republicans woke up in September 2024 and saw the light and nominated Joe Biden on their ticket too, and then went down the ballot co-nominating every Democrat, then it wouldn't matter which party line we all voted on the ballot. Would that make Republican voting restrictions and their racially disparate impacts okay? You're so committed to this ludicrous line of argument that saying voting doesn't make a difference is the same as endorsing racial discrimination that you've galaxy-brained yourself into making segregationist arguments that discrimination is fine as long as it's over something that doesn't matter.
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Sep 5, 2021 03:20
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e: dumb post, came back from my break too soon
Fister Roboto fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Sep 5, 2021 |
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Sep 5, 2021 03:35
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VitalSigns posted:Anyway This poo poo right here pretty well covers most of my problems with voting. The rules only apply to the people they're trying to keep out, otherwise, there's always an exception to be made for the "right" sort of people. My other issue is that so much of the voting process has devolved to where you're almost never voting FOR anyone so much as you're voting AGAINST the other guy. poo poo, look at the election last year. The Dems could have run a box of stale crackers (and did, lol) and they'd be howling and screaming about how you have to vote Blue no matter who because Trump and *insert any conservative here* was such a unique once in a lifetime unprecedented evil that even harboring the Wrongthink notion of trying to support a candidate you actually liked was akin to treason because nothing was more important than stopping the other guy at all costs.
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Sep 5, 2021 03:39
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Staluigi posted:yes, it does, because the impact of the black vote changes our lives. the votes of bipoc or other minorities are not symbolic and otherwise purposeless, it changes outcomes substantially. the evidence of how significantly it changes material outcomes substantially is evidenced by how obviously everything would change if they either didn't or couldn't vote, and how severely (very). and if that changes the outcome of the condition of the country that severely, we are way past arguing that voting is in any way symbolic, meaningless, pointless, a token gesture that is kept from being 'truly' meaningful. so people should stop doing that. It's debatable whether legislation would be different in states where black people are allowed to vote or not. You'd have to prove that states have significant legislation changes as of present post-suppression than pre-suppression, and that would require showing an objective standard of legislation that is good for black people looks like. I feel like a lot of your argument is based off of what the power of the vote has done for black people in the past versus what it can do now for black people in the present. It's undeniable that the Civil Rights Act dramatically changed circumstances for black people, but when you have Democrats later on passing harmful legislation like the Crime Bill and the like that decimate black communities, then it becomes messier. The counterargument to that is usually, "Well, the black community supported that at the time!" which I honestly question (black community leaders =/= black community), but even accepting that is true, the community has rejected those policies now and, well, the majority Democratic government isn't really rolling back those laws. I guess the question is, what sweeping bills do you see the Democrats pursuing that would make them a good alternative for black people? And yes, I qualify with "sweeping" because marginal "incremental" programs tend to be first on the chopping block once Republicans inevitably take charge; the bills with staying power are ones with significant impact. E: Thinking it over, there have been a couple states that have been giving back voting rights to prisoners, so that would be a dent in what I'm saying, but I'd like to see plans for a federal program to do that to really justify why a national vote matters. State legislation I can definitely be talked into mattering, federal elections is where I get leery. Probably Magic fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Sep 5, 2021 |
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Sep 5, 2021 03:43
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the_steve posted:This poo poo right here pretty well covers most of my problems with voting. The rules only apply to the people they're trying to keep out, otherwise, there's always an exception to be made for the "right" sort of people. Also compare it to what happens when third parties follow the law to get on the ballot. Democrats sue them over ridiculous technicalities to get them kicked off because "oh your petitioners didn't sign in cursive, we're a nation of laws ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀᴡ ɪs ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀᴡ", but when a Democrat wants to run an explicitly illegal sore loser campaign after the people voted and he lost fair and square the law can get hosed
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Sep 5, 2021 03:51
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VitalSigns posted:Yes it does, racial discrimination is still racial discrimination even if it's done under facially neutral pretenses. And racial discrimination is still bad and wrong even if it's done for an objective that doesn't actually matter. Absolutely not. It would mean locking Black, low-income urban, and other disadvantaged communities out of whatever third-party or write-in options popped up (which would probably happen a whole lot in that hypothetical), as well as nonpartisan local races, ballot initiatives, and so forth. Voting is much more than just "pick one, Team D or Team R," and we're talking about the ability of voting to have an impact at all. If we reduce it even further, to a ballot with literally no choices at all and just a single preapproved bubble to fill in for every "decision", then who would possibly give a drat about voting? Anyone who is motivated by the act of casting a ballot itself, to the point that they'd fill out that one, is going to have all their paperwork filled out perfectly for every election anyway. The fact that there would be fewer places to cast your no-choice ballot in historically Black neighborhoods would be kind of lovely in the abstract, but it wouldn't really matter any more in light of the fact that voting is completely, obviously meaningless. e: responded to Fister Roboto's post which they chose to edit out Space Gopher fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Sep 5, 2021 |
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Sep 5, 2021 04:29
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Space Gopher posted:Absolutely not. It would mean locking Black, low-income urban, and other disadvantaged communities out of whatever third-party or write-in options popped up (which would probably happen a whole lot in that hypothetical), as well as nonpartisan local races, ballot initiatives, and so forth. Voting is much more than just "pick one, Team D or Team R," and we're talking about the ability of voting to have an impact at all. Space Gopher posted:If we reduce it even further, to a ballot with literally no choices at all and just a single preapproved bubble to fill in for every "decision", then who would possibly give a drat about voting? Anyone who is motivated by the act of casting a ballot itself, to the point that they'd fill out that one, is going to have all their paperwork filled out perfectly for every election anyway. The fact that there would be fewer places to cast your no-choice ballot in historically Black neighborhoods would be kind of lovely in the abstract, but it wouldn't really matter any more in light of the fact that voting is completely, obviously meaningless. Just stop with this whole dumbass line of argument. You can't prove something "matters" by starting with the premise that racial discrimination isn't immoral for things that "don't matter" (which is bullshit in the first place) and then working backwards to claim that anyone who doesn't support racial discrimination over X is admitting X matters. How do I explain the error you're making: "Homeopathic medicine must work, because if it didn't then laws making black people stand in line for eight hours to buy it wouldn't be a problem, so if you think such laws are bad you admit homeopathy works" VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Sep 5, 2021 |
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Sep 5, 2021 04:50
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I do think the converse of the argument is interesting though: If voting matters Democrats should be passing laws protecting black people's right to vote, they aren't passing those laws therefore...?
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Sep 5, 2021 04:58
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It's sort of frustrating that we're on the second day of the voting matters crew arguing with a straw man and insisting there are a whole bunch of people making those arguments without actually showing where.
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Sep 5, 2021 05:37
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Space Gopher posted:Modern voting restrictions don't impose any specific restrictions on individuals, in the way that Jim Crow laws did. Gonna call this specific part out really hard. Yes, yes they do. Old Jim crow laws did lots of stuff like like poll taxes and literacy tests that didn't ~technically~ block somebody from voting ~in theory~ but in practice absolutely did so. Also modern suppression efforts like limiting the number of poling places actually does block people from voting in a real way. If you only have enough polling locations for 100 people but 125 people want to vote then 25 aren't going to be able to have their voices heard no matter how hard they try. You are also going to lose some people who quit before voting because they don't really feel like waiting in line for 4 hours. It's quite literally the exact same kind of poo poo that happened back in the day being done for the exact same reasons. It's just moderately less severe than it was 60 years ago because conservatives haven't finished unraveling the civil rights act.
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Sep 5, 2021 05:42
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I think Herstory Begins Now was onto something.
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Sep 5, 2021 05:44
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Mellow Seas posted:I think Herstory Begins Now was onto something. If it had been closed we wouldn't have had people arguing that segregation and discrimination is okay so long as it's over something that doesn't matter though. Like it feels like a real mask off moment that there are people in this thread genuinely making the case that it's fine to deny minorities rights so long as those rights are minor or meaningless rather than discrimination being wrong in and of itself.
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Sep 5, 2021 05:56
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This entire argument strikes me as a gotcha that only gets dumber as you continue to defend it. Racially discriminatory laws are an inherent negative regardless of exactly how restrictive they are. It doesn't matter if the law is something as trivial as 'black people may not eat durian between the hours of 10 pm and 2 am', it's still codifying a racial caste system into law. Unless you have a pretty compelling argument that this situation is somehow different, consider dropping it now. e: to be clear, responding to staluigi fool of sound fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Sep 5, 2021 |
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Sep 5, 2021 06:16
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fool of sound posted:This entire argument strikes me as a gotcha that only gets dumber as you continue to defend it. Racially discriminatory laws are an inherent negative regardless of exactly how restrictive they are. It doesn't matter if the law is something as trivial as 'black people may not eat durian between the hours of 10 pm and 2 am', it's still codifying a racial caste system into law. Unless you have a pretty compelling argument that this situation is somehow different, consider dropping it now. There's a near-perfect analogue that doesn't involve durian here: racially restrictive housing covenants, from the developments back in the 1960s or whatever that said "no Black people/Jews/etc may live here." Everyone acknowledges that they're a bad thing, but they're also a royal pain to get rid of, because they were deliberately constructed to stick with the property through almost any event. Those covenants are an ugly legacy of discrimination, but today, they are unenforceable and have no legal effect. For the most part, people deal with them by shaking their head and moving on to more important things. When it comes to investing limited time, effort, and resources into civil rights issues, eliminating those deed restrictions is much lower on the priority list than just about anything else, because they have no practical effect even though they're disgusting. If it were possible to just instantly eliminate them, that'd be great, but as long as it would take even a tiny bit of effort, then that effort is better put towards more important things. Claiming that they're a top priority, over issues like criminal justice reform or educational fairness, would be ridiculous. If we accept that voting is a waste of time, then voting restrictions are about like those deed restrictions. They're bad, sure, but they're not bad in a way that will actually change anything, and it's more useful to focus on other things. Anyone who thinks that voting is worthless claiming that they care deeply about voting restrictions doesn't make any sense. Space Gopher fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Sep 5, 2021 |
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Sep 5, 2021 06:21
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Probably Magic posted:I guess the question is, what sweeping bills do you see the Democrats pursuing that would make them a good alternative for black people? And yes, I qualify with "sweeping" because marginal "incremental" programs tend to be first on the chopping block once Republicans inevitably take charge; the bills with staying power are ones with significant impact. I mean, 91 percent of black people voted for the Democrat last year. I'm not sure how you continue this particular argument without either admitting that Democrats have done something to make them a good alternative for black people, or denying that black people have the agency to choose who to vote for. You could say that it's not because of "sweeping bills", but then that raises the question of why you're talking about sweeping bills if that isn't why people vote. James Garfield fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Sep 5, 2021 |
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Sep 5, 2021 06:50
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VitalSigns posted:Also compare it to what happens when third parties follow the law to get on the ballot. Does the fact that this decision was based off a SCOTUS ruling in favor of a third party (Anderson v. Celebrezze) make you feel any differently on how this played out? Kalit fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Sep 5, 2021 |
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Sep 5, 2021 09:52
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Sedisp posted:It's sort of frustrating that we're on the second day of the voting matters crew arguing with a straw man and insisting there are a whole bunch of people making those arguments without actually showing where. The tactic obviously worked. It's been like four pages arguing about this ridiculous derail instead of addressing what people were actually posting about. Instead of discussing the inadequacies of our current situation, some posters want to relitigate history for a quick dunk.
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Sep 5, 2021 13:11
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^^^ Ugh, sorry. This argument is terrible. Staluigi is making the argument that if racial discrimination laws around voting are bad and should be opposed, then black people voting must matter, and so voting matters. VitalSigns disagrees, by pointing out that racial discrimination laws are bad and should be opposed, even if the discrimination is over something that doesn't matter. You are now saying that there exist racist rules that have no practical impact, and since America is really racist, people are choosing to spend their time opposing other more important racist laws. Somehow you conclude that this means Staluigi is right, and you can't oppose discrimination on principle, you can only oppose discrimination if you think the target is being disadvantaged in some meaningful way. In addition this whole argument is pointless, because no one is saying voting doesn't matter at all ever, but Staluigi insists on arguing against a position no one holds.
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Sep 5, 2021 13:14
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Kalit posted:Does the fact that this decision was based off a SCOTUS ruling in favor of a third party (Anderson v. Celebrezze) make you feel any differently on how this played out? No, judges make bullshit rulings all the time and use good rulings as a fig leaf. If you think this information should make me feel differently though, feel free to explain how this ruling by a Trump-appointed judge whose developer brother is a donor to the Brown campaign is good https://mobile.twitter.com/WBFO/status/1433841545371963392
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Sep 5, 2021 13:27
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Space Gopher posted:If we accept that voting is a waste of time, then voting restrictions are about like those deed restrictions. They're bad, sure, but they're not bad in a way that will actually change anything, and it's more useful to focus on other things. Anyone who thinks that voting is worthless claiming that they care deeply about voting restrictions doesn't make any sense. If you force black people to stand in line for 8 hours to vote being hassled by Bubbas and Karens, that affects them! Even if you just dumped everyone's votes in a hole after and picked the winner, that doesn't mean it's ok to treat black people differently while they're standing in line.
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Sep 5, 2021 13:48
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