Cross-posted from "if the entire population just acted in a way they’ve never acted before..." by @Wheaties@hexbear.net in !chapotraphouse@hexbear.net
furryprovocateur:
literally why is gerrymandering legal. why is america the stupid idiot country.
ndiamichelle:
This could be counterproductive if people actually vote. Everywhere. We can blame the system and politicians all we want but if people don’t get off their ass to vote correctly or just vote in general that would probably solve a good chunk of our problems.
furryprovocateur:
enthralled at the interpretation of the world you have. the best way to vote out a system that exists to suppress votes and bottleneck specific populations from being heard is to vote harder. tell me more.
toloveviceforitself:
There’s a certain kind of democrat whose whole politics is basically “if the entire population just acted in a way they’ve never acted before on a level that borders on the miraculous, we could win without changing anything else about how democrats govern or campaign!” and they think that’s not only a useful insight, but a good justification for rejecting literally any alteration of their ideology, their strategy, or even suggestions that (on the occasions they have power) they alter the rigged system that requires such miracles in the first place.
i mean yes, but also the usa has insanely low voter participation.
Sure, but places like Australia with mandatory voting shows that forcing increased participation doesn't solve or really improve things. You would need to create conditions where a leftist/progressive politics could actually push forward a real policy after getting elected. But even that is hardly possible except under extreme catastrophe or duress in a capitalist system. The causality is that the major parties being undemocratic and out of step with the nation creates low voter turnout rather than the other way around.
Sooo... blaming the population for not participating in a fundamentally anti-democratic system didn't magically turn the fundamentally anti-democratic system into something democratic?
Colour me surprised.
yeah mandatory voting is not the solution. the argument that change must come from below has some merit, but in a climate of voter suppression it's not a useful one.
Yeah, the point is that there needs to be some material or structural change that would buy people into a movement and motivate them to focus their efforts into some political project. Not that chiding individuals online, hoping people spontaneously thought and acted different or just getting more people to vote would magically fix things.
Arguably, if the US voter turnout would just perpetually remain high, the Democrats would be incentivized to be even worse. Then their strategy of always moving right and throwing minorities and rights under the bus to win over "moderate Republicans" since they couldn't alienate poor or non-white voters because "what are they going to do, vote Republican!?!?! HAHAHAHAAHA! We're the lesser evil!" might work.
The people most likely to be impacted by gerrymandering and voter suppression typically vote more left leaning (kind of why they are impacted in the first place), so I'm not sure why you would suggest that this would move things to the right.
If anything, it would shift things a bit left. Not as far as it needs to go, but certainly not ratcheting to the right. Thats kind of an odd take.
It's so weird, because voting is patriotic and US Americans are super hyped on patriotism, but then they somehow don't vote. I don't get it.
Voting is generally accepted as "good" but zero practical allowances are actually afforded for it. You still have to get to work on time, kids are still going to school, all the normal things that overworked wage slaves deal with every day but now there's one extra thing that involves waiting in line for an hour they don't have. The OP is right, the deck is stacked against people actually participating and it's not all their fault.
oh, i see. in my region almost all voting traditionally happens on sundays. ppl just swing by the voting booths between church and bbq or whatever they do on sundays.
Voting is on Tuesdays in the US. Your employer is not required to give you paid time off to go and vote. Some places have mail on voting or early voting at the election board, but that depends on your state. It's very telling that even the most "Vote!" liberals are not advocating for making election day a federal holiday with guaranteed paid time off for voting.
In the US, many people are forced to work on Sundays to provide services to all the people who get the weekend off.
so are in my region, but the voting booths are open about 10h and are in range of like 10m by foot from everyones home. so ppl should be able to reach them before or after work.
I've talked to a lot of different people about this. People in different states, ages, professions, etc. Pretty much the main thing that keeps people from voting is that no one feels represented by either party. And for some people, they haven't felt represented their whole lives.
Also the whole voting is patriotic thing is kind of bullshit at this point. No one that I know personally thinks of voting as a super important thing that everyone should be proud of. That's just a media thing.
You see a small, loud subset of USAmericans on the web so I understand how you could think that we're all "super hyped on patriotism" but the fact is that most of us just wake up, do normal human things then go to bed. This over-generalization of huge populations of people is making me tired.
I also see USAmericans on TV/news etc., but that probably doesn't help, because the hyped ppl are often near the center of attention, eg. at sports events or rallies.