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On April 25 2026 01:18 Introvert wrote: Once again, as I asked Falling the other day, it would be great for anyone to provide an example of a currently enacted voter ID law they think is too restrictive. Apparently we can talk about anything except actual examples.
I'm not sure why you think we are not talking about actual examples as though we are dodging. There might be too restrictive laws at the state level and there might not be. But you are arguing about something no one else was talking about.
When Republicans say "We want X" That means they currently do not have it, right?
If it is something that Republicans want that they do not have, we should be looking at proposed laws that Republicans say would get the X that they want, right?
So then when criticism is levelled at the proposed laws (or executive orders) being pushed by Republicans as being too restrictive, how is the counter to look at some state law that is already on the book? It's a complete non-sequitur.
And when I looked at the proposed law, it is most certainly most restrictive than, for instance, the three tiered system that Canada has.
I was equally confused by Introvert's wording in that post. If Introvert had written it as "Setting aside the debate on hypothetically adding a photo ID requirement for a minute, are there any currently enacted voter ID laws/regulations that anyone thinks is too restrictive? If so, why?" then I think some people might engage. But Introvert's wording was weirdly accusatory, especially when a conservative was the one who brought up photo ID in the first place, and the rest of us were just responding. These quotes in particular were aggressive and confusing to me: "Apparently we can talk about anything except actual examples"; "What is happening here is either ignorance or willful conflating"; and "You could argue about OTHER voter integrity laws". I don't think I read anything over the past few pages that came off like we were all going to refuse to talk about current voter ID laws.
Introvert, since you brought it up, are there any current election rules / voter integrity laws that you would like to discuss? Anything you think could be improved upon?
My general suggestion would be to do what Florida does. Very secure, and very fast counting. They really turned it around after 2000. My main things are voter ID, not automatic mailing of ballots, and less then one month of early vote. Some states I think are doing 6+ weeks now? It's insane.
Ah, interesting! Three follow-up questions:
1. What's the downside of automatically mailing ballots out to voters?
2. Why would it be better to have fewer weeks available for early voting?
3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?
Mailing ballots to people and places that did not ask for them is an...invitation I'd rather not make.
Okay, that's fair. Would you be okay with an opt-in program, where a voter could choose to receive a mailed ballot if they preferred it? That way it's not automatically extra mail for every voter, since some voters might not want it, but it's available as an option for those who do?
Too long an early voting period means sometimes things happen before election day that voters might like to know. But once they've dealt with their ballot early they are less likely to bother changing it. Elections happen on particular days. It's not the 1820s anymore, you don't need that much time.
Shouldn't that be a choice each individual voter could make though? The government isn't forcing voters to vote a month early, right? If a person was truly undecided with a month left before the election, couldn't that person just decide to wait a little longer, if they wanted? The vast majority of all voters obviously know who they're going to vote for way in advance, so it sounds like a beneficial option for anyone who wants to send in their vote and have one fewer errand to remember and run in November. You're right that most people "don't need that much time", but if a person wants to vote on the day of the election, or a week early, or a month early, I don't really see a downside to being flexible there.
I haven't looked into any literature specially but from what I've read it seems like most people who study such things think it's a pretty good system. It is generous within the rules. Famously early voting within Florida is very popular. But you still have to go through a security process. They even report turnout exactly through the day each day (from what I recall) which gives people a very good sense of what is happening. They know how many ballots are to be counted before they even start (early voting ends a few days before election day in most places). Maybe California changed this but I believe they do not know, and it makes sense because they also allow ballots to be received after election day, which if you have a easy, long early vote period is not needed.
While I appreciate the response here, I don't think it addressed my question, which was "3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?" I asked that because one of your three "main things" was voter ID, and I still don't see any beneficial impact of it. I'm not aware of any evidence either - I'm pretty sure all 50 states have secure elections, regardless of their rules and requirements - and while I agree that it's great that Florida reports up-to-date turnout throughout the day, that's not the same thing as preventing voter fraud. Also, voter ID isn't even a key component in the ability to report up-to-date turnout. Florida would still run smoothly and transparently without voter ID... maybe even more efficiently, since removing a voter ID requirement would allow for faster lines (less time per voter is needed when you don't need to check ID). And since we know that there's no widespread voter fraud that needs to be prevented with any extra regulations, it sounds like voter ID is pretty redundant and not crucial for anything in particular.
If you want to vote by mail you should have to request it.
it's not about being undecided, it's about changing circumstances, or events, or statements that might cause one to want to change their vote.
All the things I listed are security measures. Given that, *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud (although it seems like local stories pop up pretty often, I think recently in NJ actually) you are asking for an effect you don't think you are even going to find lol. But as I said the other day, doing easy things that make it more secure make it harder to claim fraud in the future as well. And you prevent things you don't even know about.
Florida is a good example because none of those reasons you gave apply. Voting is incredibly easy, everyone knows how it works, and turnout in the state is super high. There is no trouble with long lines. I like the locked door example someone gave earlier. Everything hinges on there being no fraud, but also we're going to try and remove all the barriers to fraud. Seems pretty silly.
I'm fine with needing to request vote-by-mail. I don't think we're in disagreement there.
I don't think we'll see exactly eye-to-eye on allowing for very early voting, but I think that's fine: You're prioritizing a hypothetical need to change one's vote, and I don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. I'm prioritizing a hypothetical maximal schedule flexibility, and you don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. Whether early voting is 2 weeks or 4 weeks or 6 weeks isn't the biggest deal to me; it might become a bigger deal to me if I learn about any states where voters are insisting they need more time to vote early because of some specific reason.
" *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud " I think we're the furthest apart on the subject of voter ID. I'd be interested in hearing Florida's safeguard against a massive amount of locusts disrupting Election Day, or how Florida would protect against assassins stealing all their mail-in ballots. Because, *so far as we know*, there isn't an enormous amount of those things happening, but better safe than sorry, right? Why not have three locks on the door instead of one? That's how I feel you're treating this non-existent threat of widespread voter fraud, and given that this push for voter ID came from Trump and other Republican leaders fabricating bad-faith claims about election integrity, I feel more passionate about pushing back on this. They're purposely trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters, as previously discussed.
As I've said before, if every voter automatically receives a free, immediate "voter ID" upon registering to vote and before every election (like a paper receipt or an email confirmation or a QR code or whatever can be easily, instantly, universally given out), I'm actually fine with people bringing it on Election Day, but Republicans suspiciously aren't advocating for the most convenient voter ID options possible. And it's painfully obvious that even if national voter ID laws were implemented, Republicans would still complain about election security the next time they lost, and then there would be another made-up excuse. They'll never be satisfied until all their cheating guarantees wins every time, and we know this because voter ID laws aren't the only examples of Republicans trying to rig the system.
I know you don't want our conversation to descend into just talking about voter ID, since that topic has been beaten to death over the past few days, so I'll respect both of our time and just say I'm happy we found some common ground (mail-in voting is fine as long as you request it) and that one of our two disagreements can lead to a reasonable compromise (we should allow a period of early voting that's long enough to be flexible for most voters, and short enough that most voters won't be voting before they're actually set on a candidate).
Ok, if you'd like we can end on agreement but i must make teo small points.
Republican states accept various forms of ID and I don’t see anything unreasonable about it. You csn just Google what Florida, Texas, Georgia, etc will accept. It is very convenient.
I think you are vastly undervaluing having procedures in place that help the electorate feel it is secure. Trump is all the focus but remember after 2016 for example polling said many dems thought Russia changed vote totals. And the cyber security of our elections infrastructure is important too. The system's legitimacy rests on both real *and* perceived fairness.
Perceived fairness would be greatly increased if people weren't baselessly claiming voter fraud were rampant. You can't scaremonger the crap out of people and then say that to increase perceived fairness it's important to increase security standards. Some grade A gaslighting going on here!
On April 25 2026 06:40 Falling wrote: [quote] I'm not sure why you think we are not talking about actual examples as though we are dodging. There might be too restrictive laws at the state level and there might not be. But you are arguing about something no one else was talking about.
When Republicans say "We want X" That means they currently do not have it, right?
If it is something that Republicans want that they do not have, we should be looking at proposed laws that Republicans say would get the X that they want, right?
So then when criticism is levelled at the proposed laws (or executive orders) being pushed by Republicans as being too restrictive, how is the counter to look at some state law that is already on the book? It's a complete non-sequitur.
And when I looked at the proposed law, it is most certainly most restrictive than, for instance, the three tiered system that Canada has.
I was equally confused by Introvert's wording in that post. If Introvert had written it as "Setting aside the debate on hypothetically adding a photo ID requirement for a minute, are there any currently enacted voter ID laws/regulations that anyone thinks is too restrictive? If so, why?" then I think some people might engage. But Introvert's wording was weirdly accusatory, especially when a conservative was the one who brought up photo ID in the first place, and the rest of us were just responding. These quotes in particular were aggressive and confusing to me: "Apparently we can talk about anything except actual examples"; "What is happening here is either ignorance or willful conflating"; and "You could argue about OTHER voter integrity laws". I don't think I read anything over the past few pages that came off like we were all going to refuse to talk about current voter ID laws.
Introvert, since you brought it up, are there any current election rules / voter integrity laws that you would like to discuss? Anything you think could be improved upon?
My general suggestion would be to do what Florida does. Very secure, and very fast counting. They really turned it around after 2000. My main things are voter ID, not automatic mailing of ballots, and less then one month of early vote. Some states I think are doing 6+ weeks now? It's insane.
Ah, interesting! Three follow-up questions:
1. What's the downside of automatically mailing ballots out to voters?
2. Why would it be better to have fewer weeks available for early voting?
3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?
Mailing ballots to people and places that did not ask for them is an...invitation I'd rather not make.
Okay, that's fair. Would you be okay with an opt-in program, where a voter could choose to receive a mailed ballot if they preferred it? That way it's not automatically extra mail for every voter, since some voters might not want it, but it's available as an option for those who do?
Too long an early voting period means sometimes things happen before election day that voters might like to know. But once they've dealt with their ballot early they are less likely to bother changing it. Elections happen on particular days. It's not the 1820s anymore, you don't need that much time.
Shouldn't that be a choice each individual voter could make though? The government isn't forcing voters to vote a month early, right? If a person was truly undecided with a month left before the election, couldn't that person just decide to wait a little longer, if they wanted? The vast majority of all voters obviously know who they're going to vote for way in advance, so it sounds like a beneficial option for anyone who wants to send in their vote and have one fewer errand to remember and run in November. You're right that most people "don't need that much time", but if a person wants to vote on the day of the election, or a week early, or a month early, I don't really see a downside to being flexible there.
I haven't looked into any literature specially but from what I've read it seems like most people who study such things think it's a pretty good system. It is generous within the rules. Famously early voting within Florida is very popular. But you still have to go through a security process. They even report turnout exactly through the day each day (from what I recall) which gives people a very good sense of what is happening. They know how many ballots are to be counted before they even start (early voting ends a few days before election day in most places). Maybe California changed this but I believe they do not know, and it makes sense because they also allow ballots to be received after election day, which if you have a easy, long early vote period is not needed.
While I appreciate the response here, I don't think it addressed my question, which was "3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?" I asked that because one of your three "main things" was voter ID, and I still don't see any beneficial impact of it. I'm not aware of any evidence either - I'm pretty sure all 50 states have secure elections, regardless of their rules and requirements - and while I agree that it's great that Florida reports up-to-date turnout throughout the day, that's not the same thing as preventing voter fraud. Also, voter ID isn't even a key component in the ability to report up-to-date turnout. Florida would still run smoothly and transparently without voter ID... maybe even more efficiently, since removing a voter ID requirement would allow for faster lines (less time per voter is needed when you don't need to check ID). And since we know that there's no widespread voter fraud that needs to be prevented with any extra regulations, it sounds like voter ID is pretty redundant and not crucial for anything in particular.
If you want to vote by mail you should have to request it.
it's not about being undecided, it's about changing circumstances, or events, or statements that might cause one to want to change their vote.
All the things I listed are security measures. Given that, *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud (although it seems like local stories pop up pretty often, I think recently in NJ actually) you are asking for an effect you don't think you are even going to find lol. But as I said the other day, doing easy things that make it more secure make it harder to claim fraud in the future as well. And you prevent things you don't even know about.
Florida is a good example because none of those reasons you gave apply. Voting is incredibly easy, everyone knows how it works, and turnout in the state is super high. There is no trouble with long lines. I like the locked door example someone gave earlier. Everything hinges on there being no fraud, but also we're going to try and remove all the barriers to fraud. Seems pretty silly.
I'm fine with needing to request vote-by-mail. I don't think we're in disagreement there.
I don't think we'll see exactly eye-to-eye on allowing for very early voting, but I think that's fine: You're prioritizing a hypothetical need to change one's vote, and I don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. I'm prioritizing a hypothetical maximal schedule flexibility, and you don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. Whether early voting is 2 weeks or 4 weeks or 6 weeks isn't the biggest deal to me; it might become a bigger deal to me if I learn about any states where voters are insisting they need more time to vote early because of some specific reason.
" *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud " I think we're the furthest apart on the subject of voter ID. I'd be interested in hearing Florida's safeguard against a massive amount of locusts disrupting Election Day, or how Florida would protect against assassins stealing all their mail-in ballots. Because, *so far as we know*, there isn't an enormous amount of those things happening, but better safe than sorry, right? Why not have three locks on the door instead of one? That's how I feel you're treating this non-existent threat of widespread voter fraud, and given that this push for voter ID came from Trump and other Republican leaders fabricating bad-faith claims about election integrity, I feel more passionate about pushing back on this. They're purposely trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters, as previously discussed.
As I've said before, if every voter automatically receives a free, immediate "voter ID" upon registering to vote and before every election (like a paper receipt or an email confirmation or a QR code or whatever can be easily, instantly, universally given out), I'm actually fine with people bringing it on Election Day, but Republicans suspiciously aren't advocating for the most convenient voter ID options possible. And it's painfully obvious that even if national voter ID laws were implemented, Republicans would still complain about election security the next time they lost, and then there would be another made-up excuse. They'll never be satisfied until all their cheating guarantees wins every time, and we know this because voter ID laws aren't the only examples of Republicans trying to rig the system.
I know you don't want our conversation to descend into just talking about voter ID, since that topic has been beaten to death over the past few days, so I'll respect both of our time and just say I'm happy we found some common ground (mail-in voting is fine as long as you request it) and that one of our two disagreements can lead to a reasonable compromise (we should allow a period of early voting that's long enough to be flexible for most voters, and short enough that most voters won't be voting before they're actually set on a candidate).
Ok, if you'd like we can end on agreement but i must make teo small points.
Republican states accept various forms of ID and I don’t see anything unreasonable about it. You csn just Google what Florida, Texas, Georgia, etc will accept. It is very convenient.
I think you are vastly undervaluing having procedures in place that help the electorate feel it is secure. Trump is all the focus but remember after 2016 for example polling said many dems thought Russia changed vote totals. And the cyber security of our elections infrastructure is important too. The system's legitimacy rests on both real *and* perceived fairness.
Perceived fairness would be greatly increased if people weren't baselessly claiming voter fraud were rampant. You can't scaremonger the crap out of people and then say that to increase perceived fairness it's important to increase security standards. Some grade A gaslighting going on here!
"Widespread" just means "yeah but at least it hasn't happened for a PRESIDENTIAL election yet." So comforting.
No, not widespread only means that it is probably not zero and if it exists it is not significant/ outcome determinative. And I am arguing 'not widepread' because I have no desire to argue that there is 'not one instance of fraud'.
1) because that's unreasonable standard for any system and definitely an unreasonable standard to require an overhaul of an entire system. 2) I have no interest in making an argument using absolute terms like 'always' and 'never' which can be overthrown by finding one counter-example from some county in the 80's. 3) It can't be that widespread when the best examples I've ever come across were Republicans/ MAGA trying to prove the system was fraudulent... and then got caught. And the only other examples that get trotted out in the wider public is the crazy conspiracies from Trump and MAGA with boxes being shipped in- but the evidence is doctored videos that clips out that the boxes were in the building all along.
Which is what I've said from the very beginning. If they want robust Voter ID laws, just borrow ours. It works great. But that's not what the party of Trump wants or pushes. They want and push to limit access to mail in ballots because they got bad feels when Trump looked like he was winning and then the mail in ballots favoured Biden (as expected.) And because MAGA felt bad, they felt there was fraud and then fell for a bunch of fraudulent 'evidence' proving their feelings.
On April 25 2026 07:07 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: [quote] I was equally confused by Introvert's wording in that post. If Introvert had written it as "Setting aside the debate on hypothetically adding a photo ID requirement for a minute, are there any currently enacted voter ID laws/regulations that anyone thinks is too restrictive? If so, why?" then I think some people might engage. But Introvert's wording was weirdly accusatory, especially when a conservative was the one who brought up photo ID in the first place, and the rest of us were just responding. These quotes in particular were aggressive and confusing to me: "Apparently we can talk about anything except actual examples"; "What is happening here is either ignorance or willful conflating"; and "You could argue about OTHER voter integrity laws". I don't think I read anything over the past few pages that came off like we were all going to refuse to talk about current voter ID laws.
Introvert, since you brought it up, are there any current election rules / voter integrity laws that you would like to discuss? Anything you think could be improved upon?
My general suggestion would be to do what Florida does. Very secure, and very fast counting. They really turned it around after 2000. My main things are voter ID, not automatic mailing of ballots, and less then one month of early vote. Some states I think are doing 6+ weeks now? It's insane.
Ah, interesting! Three follow-up questions:
1. What's the downside of automatically mailing ballots out to voters?
2. Why would it be better to have fewer weeks available for early voting?
3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?
Mailing ballots to people and places that did not ask for them is an...invitation I'd rather not make.
Okay, that's fair. Would you be okay with an opt-in program, where a voter could choose to receive a mailed ballot if they preferred it? That way it's not automatically extra mail for every voter, since some voters might not want it, but it's available as an option for those who do?
Too long an early voting period means sometimes things happen before election day that voters might like to know. But once they've dealt with their ballot early they are less likely to bother changing it. Elections happen on particular days. It's not the 1820s anymore, you don't need that much time.
Shouldn't that be a choice each individual voter could make though? The government isn't forcing voters to vote a month early, right? If a person was truly undecided with a month left before the election, couldn't that person just decide to wait a little longer, if they wanted? The vast majority of all voters obviously know who they're going to vote for way in advance, so it sounds like a beneficial option for anyone who wants to send in their vote and have one fewer errand to remember and run in November. You're right that most people "don't need that much time", but if a person wants to vote on the day of the election, or a week early, or a month early, I don't really see a downside to being flexible there.
I haven't looked into any literature specially but from what I've read it seems like most people who study such things think it's a pretty good system. It is generous within the rules. Famously early voting within Florida is very popular. But you still have to go through a security process. They even report turnout exactly through the day each day (from what I recall) which gives people a very good sense of what is happening. They know how many ballots are to be counted before they even start (early voting ends a few days before election day in most places). Maybe California changed this but I believe they do not know, and it makes sense because they also allow ballots to be received after election day, which if you have a easy, long early vote period is not needed.
While I appreciate the response here, I don't think it addressed my question, which was "3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?" I asked that because one of your three "main things" was voter ID, and I still don't see any beneficial impact of it. I'm not aware of any evidence either - I'm pretty sure all 50 states have secure elections, regardless of their rules and requirements - and while I agree that it's great that Florida reports up-to-date turnout throughout the day, that's not the same thing as preventing voter fraud. Also, voter ID isn't even a key component in the ability to report up-to-date turnout. Florida would still run smoothly and transparently without voter ID... maybe even more efficiently, since removing a voter ID requirement would allow for faster lines (less time per voter is needed when you don't need to check ID). And since we know that there's no widespread voter fraud that needs to be prevented with any extra regulations, it sounds like voter ID is pretty redundant and not crucial for anything in particular.
If you want to vote by mail you should have to request it.
it's not about being undecided, it's about changing circumstances, or events, or statements that might cause one to want to change their vote.
All the things I listed are security measures. Given that, *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud (although it seems like local stories pop up pretty often, I think recently in NJ actually) you are asking for an effect you don't think you are even going to find lol. But as I said the other day, doing easy things that make it more secure make it harder to claim fraud in the future as well. And you prevent things you don't even know about.
Florida is a good example because none of those reasons you gave apply. Voting is incredibly easy, everyone knows how it works, and turnout in the state is super high. There is no trouble with long lines. I like the locked door example someone gave earlier. Everything hinges on there being no fraud, but also we're going to try and remove all the barriers to fraud. Seems pretty silly.
I'm fine with needing to request vote-by-mail. I don't think we're in disagreement there.
I don't think we'll see exactly eye-to-eye on allowing for very early voting, but I think that's fine: You're prioritizing a hypothetical need to change one's vote, and I don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. I'm prioritizing a hypothetical maximal schedule flexibility, and you don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. Whether early voting is 2 weeks or 4 weeks or 6 weeks isn't the biggest deal to me; it might become a bigger deal to me if I learn about any states where voters are insisting they need more time to vote early because of some specific reason.
" *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud " I think we're the furthest apart on the subject of voter ID. I'd be interested in hearing Florida's safeguard against a massive amount of locusts disrupting Election Day, or how Florida would protect against assassins stealing all their mail-in ballots. Because, *so far as we know*, there isn't an enormous amount of those things happening, but better safe than sorry, right? Why not have three locks on the door instead of one? That's how I feel you're treating this non-existent threat of widespread voter fraud, and given that this push for voter ID came from Trump and other Republican leaders fabricating bad-faith claims about election integrity, I feel more passionate about pushing back on this. They're purposely trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters, as previously discussed.
As I've said before, if every voter automatically receives a free, immediate "voter ID" upon registering to vote and before every election (like a paper receipt or an email confirmation or a QR code or whatever can be easily, instantly, universally given out), I'm actually fine with people bringing it on Election Day, but Republicans suspiciously aren't advocating for the most convenient voter ID options possible. And it's painfully obvious that even if national voter ID laws were implemented, Republicans would still complain about election security the next time they lost, and then there would be another made-up excuse. They'll never be satisfied until all their cheating guarantees wins every time, and we know this because voter ID laws aren't the only examples of Republicans trying to rig the system.
I know you don't want our conversation to descend into just talking about voter ID, since that topic has been beaten to death over the past few days, so I'll respect both of our time and just say I'm happy we found some common ground (mail-in voting is fine as long as you request it) and that one of our two disagreements can lead to a reasonable compromise (we should allow a period of early voting that's long enough to be flexible for most voters, and short enough that most voters won't be voting before they're actually set on a candidate).
Ok, if you'd like we can end on agreement but i must make teo small points.
Republican states accept various forms of ID and I don’t see anything unreasonable about it. You csn just Google what Florida, Texas, Georgia, etc will accept. It is very convenient.
I think you are vastly undervaluing having procedures in place that help the electorate feel it is secure. Trump is all the focus but remember after 2016 for example polling said many dems thought Russia changed vote totals. And the cyber security of our elections infrastructure is important too. The system's legitimacy rests on both real *and* perceived fairness.
Perceived fairness would be greatly increased if people weren't baselessly claiming voter fraud were rampant. You can't scaremonger the crap out of people and then say that to increase perceived fairness it's important to increase security standards. Some grade A gaslighting going on here!
My general suggestion would be to do what Florida does. Very secure, and very fast counting. They really turned it around after 2000. My main things are voter ID, not automatic mailing of ballots, and less then one month of early vote. Some states I think are doing 6+ weeks now? It's insane.
Ah, interesting! Three follow-up questions:
1. What's the downside of automatically mailing ballots out to voters?
2. Why would it be better to have fewer weeks available for early voting?
3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?
Mailing ballots to people and places that did not ask for them is an...invitation I'd rather not make.
Okay, that's fair. Would you be okay with an opt-in program, where a voter could choose to receive a mailed ballot if they preferred it? That way it's not automatically extra mail for every voter, since some voters might not want it, but it's available as an option for those who do?
Too long an early voting period means sometimes things happen before election day that voters might like to know. But once they've dealt with their ballot early they are less likely to bother changing it. Elections happen on particular days. It's not the 1820s anymore, you don't need that much time.
Shouldn't that be a choice each individual voter could make though? The government isn't forcing voters to vote a month early, right? If a person was truly undecided with a month left before the election, couldn't that person just decide to wait a little longer, if they wanted? The vast majority of all voters obviously know who they're going to vote for way in advance, so it sounds like a beneficial option for anyone who wants to send in their vote and have one fewer errand to remember and run in November. You're right that most people "don't need that much time", but if a person wants to vote on the day of the election, or a week early, or a month early, I don't really see a downside to being flexible there.
I haven't looked into any literature specially but from what I've read it seems like most people who study such things think it's a pretty good system. It is generous within the rules. Famously early voting within Florida is very popular. But you still have to go through a security process. They even report turnout exactly through the day each day (from what I recall) which gives people a very good sense of what is happening. They know how many ballots are to be counted before they even start (early voting ends a few days before election day in most places). Maybe California changed this but I believe they do not know, and it makes sense because they also allow ballots to be received after election day, which if you have a easy, long early vote period is not needed.
While I appreciate the response here, I don't think it addressed my question, which was "3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?" I asked that because one of your three "main things" was voter ID, and I still don't see any beneficial impact of it. I'm not aware of any evidence either - I'm pretty sure all 50 states have secure elections, regardless of their rules and requirements - and while I agree that it's great that Florida reports up-to-date turnout throughout the day, that's not the same thing as preventing voter fraud. Also, voter ID isn't even a key component in the ability to report up-to-date turnout. Florida would still run smoothly and transparently without voter ID... maybe even more efficiently, since removing a voter ID requirement would allow for faster lines (less time per voter is needed when you don't need to check ID). And since we know that there's no widespread voter fraud that needs to be prevented with any extra regulations, it sounds like voter ID is pretty redundant and not crucial for anything in particular.
If you want to vote by mail you should have to request it.
it's not about being undecided, it's about changing circumstances, or events, or statements that might cause one to want to change their vote.
All the things I listed are security measures. Given that, *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud (although it seems like local stories pop up pretty often, I think recently in NJ actually) you are asking for an effect you don't think you are even going to find lol. But as I said the other day, doing easy things that make it more secure make it harder to claim fraud in the future as well. And you prevent things you don't even know about.
Florida is a good example because none of those reasons you gave apply. Voting is incredibly easy, everyone knows how it works, and turnout in the state is super high. There is no trouble with long lines. I like the locked door example someone gave earlier. Everything hinges on there being no fraud, but also we're going to try and remove all the barriers to fraud. Seems pretty silly.
I'm fine with needing to request vote-by-mail. I don't think we're in disagreement there.
I don't think we'll see exactly eye-to-eye on allowing for very early voting, but I think that's fine: You're prioritizing a hypothetical need to change one's vote, and I don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. I'm prioritizing a hypothetical maximal schedule flexibility, and you don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. Whether early voting is 2 weeks or 4 weeks or 6 weeks isn't the biggest deal to me; it might become a bigger deal to me if I learn about any states where voters are insisting they need more time to vote early because of some specific reason.
" *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud " I think we're the furthest apart on the subject of voter ID. I'd be interested in hearing Florida's safeguard against a massive amount of locusts disrupting Election Day, or how Florida would protect against assassins stealing all their mail-in ballots. Because, *so far as we know*, there isn't an enormous amount of those things happening, but better safe than sorry, right? Why not have three locks on the door instead of one? That's how I feel you're treating this non-existent threat of widespread voter fraud, and given that this push for voter ID came from Trump and other Republican leaders fabricating bad-faith claims about election integrity, I feel more passionate about pushing back on this. They're purposely trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters, as previously discussed.
As I've said before, if every voter automatically receives a free, immediate "voter ID" upon registering to vote and before every election (like a paper receipt or an email confirmation or a QR code or whatever can be easily, instantly, universally given out), I'm actually fine with people bringing it on Election Day, but Republicans suspiciously aren't advocating for the most convenient voter ID options possible. And it's painfully obvious that even if national voter ID laws were implemented, Republicans would still complain about election security the next time they lost, and then there would be another made-up excuse. They'll never be satisfied until all their cheating guarantees wins every time, and we know this because voter ID laws aren't the only examples of Republicans trying to rig the system.
I know you don't want our conversation to descend into just talking about voter ID, since that topic has been beaten to death over the past few days, so I'll respect both of our time and just say I'm happy we found some common ground (mail-in voting is fine as long as you request it) and that one of our two disagreements can lead to a reasonable compromise (we should allow a period of early voting that's long enough to be flexible for most voters, and short enough that most voters won't be voting before they're actually set on a candidate).
Ok, if you'd like we can end on agreement but i must make teo small points.
Republican states accept various forms of ID and I don’t see anything unreasonable about it. You csn just Google what Florida, Texas, Georgia, etc will accept. It is very convenient.
I think you are vastly undervaluing having procedures in place that help the electorate feel it is secure. Trump is all the focus but remember after 2016 for example polling said many dems thought Russia changed vote totals. And the cyber security of our elections infrastructure is important too. The system's legitimacy rests on both real *and* perceived fairness.
Perceived fairness would be greatly increased if people weren't baselessly claiming voter fraud were rampant. You can't scaremonger the crap out of people and then say that to increase perceived fairness it's important to increase security standards. Some grade A gaslighting going on here!
Arguments about voter ID existed before Trump
Not remotely to the same degree, come on.
It cycles in and out of discussions like all things do. Maybe this particular instance was brought about by Trump but Republicans have been asking for and passing voter ID in states for decades and Democrats have been objecting to it for just as long. I'm sorry, but saying this wouldn't be a contentious topic in American politics without Trump is judt ignorance of American politics.
It'd be like saying immigration or amnesty wouldn't be a divisive topic without Trump. It's just wrong.
On April 25 2026 08:21 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: [quote] Ah, interesting! Three follow-up questions:
1. What's the downside of automatically mailing ballots out to voters?
2. Why would it be better to have fewer weeks available for early voting?
3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?
Mailing ballots to people and places that did not ask for them is an...invitation I'd rather not make.
Okay, that's fair. Would you be okay with an opt-in program, where a voter could choose to receive a mailed ballot if they preferred it? That way it's not automatically extra mail for every voter, since some voters might not want it, but it's available as an option for those who do?
Too long an early voting period means sometimes things happen before election day that voters might like to know. But once they've dealt with their ballot early they are less likely to bother changing it. Elections happen on particular days. It's not the 1820s anymore, you don't need that much time.
Shouldn't that be a choice each individual voter could make though? The government isn't forcing voters to vote a month early, right? If a person was truly undecided with a month left before the election, couldn't that person just decide to wait a little longer, if they wanted? The vast majority of all voters obviously know who they're going to vote for way in advance, so it sounds like a beneficial option for anyone who wants to send in their vote and have one fewer errand to remember and run in November. You're right that most people "don't need that much time", but if a person wants to vote on the day of the election, or a week early, or a month early, I don't really see a downside to being flexible there.
I haven't looked into any literature specially but from what I've read it seems like most people who study such things think it's a pretty good system. It is generous within the rules. Famously early voting within Florida is very popular. But you still have to go through a security process. They even report turnout exactly through the day each day (from what I recall) which gives people a very good sense of what is happening. They know how many ballots are to be counted before they even start (early voting ends a few days before election day in most places). Maybe California changed this but I believe they do not know, and it makes sense because they also allow ballots to be received after election day, which if you have a easy, long early vote period is not needed.
While I appreciate the response here, I don't think it addressed my question, which was "3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?" I asked that because one of your three "main things" was voter ID, and I still don't see any beneficial impact of it. I'm not aware of any evidence either - I'm pretty sure all 50 states have secure elections, regardless of their rules and requirements - and while I agree that it's great that Florida reports up-to-date turnout throughout the day, that's not the same thing as preventing voter fraud. Also, voter ID isn't even a key component in the ability to report up-to-date turnout. Florida would still run smoothly and transparently without voter ID... maybe even more efficiently, since removing a voter ID requirement would allow for faster lines (less time per voter is needed when you don't need to check ID). And since we know that there's no widespread voter fraud that needs to be prevented with any extra regulations, it sounds like voter ID is pretty redundant and not crucial for anything in particular.
If you want to vote by mail you should have to request it.
it's not about being undecided, it's about changing circumstances, or events, or statements that might cause one to want to change their vote.
All the things I listed are security measures. Given that, *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud (although it seems like local stories pop up pretty often, I think recently in NJ actually) you are asking for an effect you don't think you are even going to find lol. But as I said the other day, doing easy things that make it more secure make it harder to claim fraud in the future as well. And you prevent things you don't even know about.
Florida is a good example because none of those reasons you gave apply. Voting is incredibly easy, everyone knows how it works, and turnout in the state is super high. There is no trouble with long lines. I like the locked door example someone gave earlier. Everything hinges on there being no fraud, but also we're going to try and remove all the barriers to fraud. Seems pretty silly.
I'm fine with needing to request vote-by-mail. I don't think we're in disagreement there.
I don't think we'll see exactly eye-to-eye on allowing for very early voting, but I think that's fine: You're prioritizing a hypothetical need to change one's vote, and I don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. I'm prioritizing a hypothetical maximal schedule flexibility, and you don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. Whether early voting is 2 weeks or 4 weeks or 6 weeks isn't the biggest deal to me; it might become a bigger deal to me if I learn about any states where voters are insisting they need more time to vote early because of some specific reason.
" *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud " I think we're the furthest apart on the subject of voter ID. I'd be interested in hearing Florida's safeguard against a massive amount of locusts disrupting Election Day, or how Florida would protect against assassins stealing all their mail-in ballots. Because, *so far as we know*, there isn't an enormous amount of those things happening, but better safe than sorry, right? Why not have three locks on the door instead of one? That's how I feel you're treating this non-existent threat of widespread voter fraud, and given that this push for voter ID came from Trump and other Republican leaders fabricating bad-faith claims about election integrity, I feel more passionate about pushing back on this. They're purposely trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters, as previously discussed.
As I've said before, if every voter automatically receives a free, immediate "voter ID" upon registering to vote and before every election (like a paper receipt or an email confirmation or a QR code or whatever can be easily, instantly, universally given out), I'm actually fine with people bringing it on Election Day, but Republicans suspiciously aren't advocating for the most convenient voter ID options possible. And it's painfully obvious that even if national voter ID laws were implemented, Republicans would still complain about election security the next time they lost, and then there would be another made-up excuse. They'll never be satisfied until all their cheating guarantees wins every time, and we know this because voter ID laws aren't the only examples of Republicans trying to rig the system.
I know you don't want our conversation to descend into just talking about voter ID, since that topic has been beaten to death over the past few days, so I'll respect both of our time and just say I'm happy we found some common ground (mail-in voting is fine as long as you request it) and that one of our two disagreements can lead to a reasonable compromise (we should allow a period of early voting that's long enough to be flexible for most voters, and short enough that most voters won't be voting before they're actually set on a candidate).
Ok, if you'd like we can end on agreement but i must make teo small points.
Republican states accept various forms of ID and I don’t see anything unreasonable about it. You csn just Google what Florida, Texas, Georgia, etc will accept. It is very convenient.
I think you are vastly undervaluing having procedures in place that help the electorate feel it is secure. Trump is all the focus but remember after 2016 for example polling said many dems thought Russia changed vote totals. And the cyber security of our elections infrastructure is important too. The system's legitimacy rests on both real *and* perceived fairness.
Perceived fairness would be greatly increased if people weren't baselessly claiming voter fraud were rampant. You can't scaremonger the crap out of people and then say that to increase perceived fairness it's important to increase security standards. Some grade A gaslighting going on here!
Arguments about voter ID existed before Trump
Not remotely to the same degree, come on.
It cycles in and out of discussions like all things do. Maybe this particular instance was brought about by Trump but Republicans have been asking for and passing voter ID in states for decades and Democrats have been objecting to it for just as long. I'm sorry, but saying this wouldn't be a contentious topic in American politics without Trump is judt ignorance of American politics.
It'd be like saying immigration or amnesty wouldn't be a divisive topic without Trump. It's just wrong.
In the context of Trump it seems like it takes on a different light, though, given he's tried to rig and game the system more obviously and stupidly than most. He's also taken openly racist "They're eating the cats" rhetoric, so it seems hard to raise voter ID as a serious issue in the face of that context.
Even within that, general consensus here seems like voter ID would be fine if it could be done fairly, but if dems couldn't trust it to be done fairly before why the fuck would they trust it to be done fairly now.
On April 26 2026 01:00 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: Weirdly, I'm with GH on this. Stop feeding the stupid. There's no progress being made in this cesspool. You win no points. You've gained nothing. Stop. I want to participate in the thread, but what you've all been doing...fucking yuck.
"Feeding the stupid" is what makes them feel superior/enjoyment/what they gain. They aren't going to stop. I'm not even trying to get them to. I'm mostly just pointing out their demonstrable incapacity/refusal to do pretty much anything else. Since I'm objectively right, and they're marginally embarrassed by that, they just lash out at me and rationalize their behavior instead of taking the obviously valid criticism and simply discussing US politics topics they value among themselves instead of this petulant shitposting (or worse yet, treating the Sartres like serious interlocutors) LightSpectra and others are always rationalizing. This is part of why they are desperate to rehabilitate/normalize/engage Intro, despite knowing doing so ever so slightly helps Intro in shifting the Overton Window rightward
On April 25 2026 22:23 LightSpectra wrote: New page in this thread about the same discussion, Republicans here have still offered zero evidence.
On April 25 2026 23:33 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: We now have baal calling people retarded and autistic, and oBlade calling people trolls. Wow.
The turn of phrase "Duh!" comes to mind. You all know better, just can't help yourselves though.
If you just link back to your own post a few dozen more times, we will have achieved socialism.
Well played.
How so?
Here's where the "advancing socialism" (so to speak) discussion was left before the mock and gawk spam you guys prefer.
On April 14 2026 06:05 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:50 EnDeR_ wrote:
On April 14 2026 00:57 GreenHorizons wrote: I'll come back to this later if you'd like (or if you and Ender would prefer to take it to my Blog I suppose that'd be fine). You guys are just on the verge of having something resembling a real discussion about the future of the opposition to Trump/Republicans and I'd like to see that develop.
Do you not re-read your posts before hitting the button? How did you not clock how condescending this last paragraph is?
In all honesty, the biggest problem in communicating with you, besides the shitty attitude, is the sheer quantity of references to different concepts that you never bother to explain in your posts.
Which concepts are you struggling with? (note: "struggling" isn't pejorative, it's complimentary)
That's not condescension, that was observation. For a moment the discussion between each of you seemed to look like it was going to turn to disagreements about how best to get from where we are here, today, to a future where AOC (or another preferred candidate) is a front runner, and/or the policies (ideally non-reformist reforms) we all mutually like are at the forefront of the platform for the Democrat nominee.
That rapidly devolved back into some variations of "vote blue no matter who or else!" (except Swalwell, which I suppose might be worth discussing) before the first candidate has even declared for the primary.
EDIT: Also I realize now I forgot Kwark has been quite clear he thinks Democrats should nominate the oldest whitest guy they can, not an AOC or Harris or whatever.
EDIT2:
On April 14 2026 06:17 KwarK wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:41 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:21 KwarK wrote:
On April 14 2026 03:53 GreenHorizons wrote: Seems like everyone that's opined (except maybe RenSC2) would prefer AOC over the other candidates, but not so much that they'd actually want to start making an effort to convince the people (and that's a lot more people than Newsom or Harris will need to convince) they'll need to agree with us and work to help make AOC the nominee and eventually president.
GH: Dems only offer token resistance to Republicans while basically losing on purpose to help Republicans with their agenda
Also GH: Why aren’t people working harder to make a woman of colour outsider the Democratic nominee
Are you trying to point out that I'm right or that the posters here aren't "Dems" so much as "independents" and/or "socialists" that believe Democrats are the only viable political body/strategy to even potentially move their interests forward?
Neither. You seem not to have noticed that the American population are deeply racist and sexist. That’s something that needs to be incorporated into your strategy. If you plan on doing a revolution before the next election then fine, voter prejudice is not an issue. But if you don’t then
we need to find us an old white male reality tv star or we’ll have another 4 years of Trump.
Yeah, I remembered.
and
On April 22 2026 03:49 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 22 2026 03:23 WombaT wrote:
On April 22 2026 02:18 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 22 2026 01:10 WombaT wrote:
On April 21 2026 20:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 21 2026 18:44 WombaT wrote:
On April 21 2026 08:56 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 21 2026 08:50 Acrofales wrote: [quote] With "recent" you mean since the founding of your country,+ Show Spoiler +
right? Because there have been a bunch of changes to your constitution, but not much at all has changed about how Congress or the president are chosen.
The fact that the parties aren't stable and are, instead, descriptive of the main voting blocks in the country is, if anything, an argument against your thesis: burning down the apparatus and starting again will most likely lead to something within the currently achievable political spectrum, and not something wildly new, and the USA has probably not been further away from a communist revolution than it is right now, maybe ever.
Finally I understand you are piggybacking on the point about the political parties working for the elite and always having done so, in a "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" kinda way. That's partially true but there is clearly a meaningful difference in ideologies between the parties. Maybe your ideology isn't reflected and everything east of social democracies is "basically fascism" in your book, but that's about as meaningful as a colourblind person claiming green is the same as red, because they can't see the difference anyway. Would I rather have less corporatism and lobbying? Hell yes. Does that mean all corporations are the same? Obviously not, and the choice between the parties isn't meaningless because they are both beholden to large donors. Lists like these make it quite clear what the lesser evil is: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donors
Are elections going to solve it all? Almost certainly not. But that doesn't make them meaningless.
No, I'm talking about the distinct shift in how people understood politics in the US that came after the civil rights movement. I previously described it this way:
Doesn't matter what you want politically really, what you need to get it is leverage. Small d democratic majorities and elections are one aspect of how you get that leverage, but historically, they typically come at the end after the work on the ground has made the status quo less tolerable than giving in to at least some of the demands.
Since the Civil Rights Movement, the pitch was "Hey women and Black people! We're (mostly) letting you vote now! Isn't that great! This is how you are to make any changes politically now! No more of that silly mass disruption stuff until demands are met! You can have big fun protests, just make sure to keep them symbolic"
We got mass incarceration (with legal slavery), women lost bodily autonomy, the surveillance state is out of control, Nixon's EPA is being dismantled, and the list goes on.
The idea that lining up behind Democrats after they finally parted ways with their most virulent racists in the 60's as part of a democratic political block to accomplish the things the poor people's campaign was aiming at before the US government conspired to subvert the campaign and assassinate MLK jr. for it looking too promising has categorically failed.
Any and all progress that can be said to have been gained since then must be recognized as happening despite the Democrat party, not because of it.
That said, I agree with your belief that elections won't solve it all and aren't meaningless.
The thing is, being enfranchised into the voting process and things like legalistic rights is a huge driver of quite a few of those kind of movements in the first place.
You’re almost framing it as some carrot dangled to placate these movements, rather than it being a key demand that’s being met. + Show Spoiler +
And they tend to dissipate when momentum stalls as the kinda main goals that glue the broad coalition together, and we get into various stretch goals that are more niche.
Or to put it another way, a big driver of mass disruptive/revolutionary movements often isn’t to overturn a system, merely to be enfranchised within it. Plenty are more structurally transformative too of course but I think broadly in either instance you’ve got a handful of quite clear grievances that are sufficiently shared for some kind of critical mass of people to garner enough momentum to move the needle.
Not to downplay the importance of such movements, my position is rather the opposite. I just don’t see the appetite from Americans for radical transformation, nor am I sure what the ‘civil rights issue of our time’ is that could rally sufficient people to that banner.
Sort of?
Those aren't mutually exclusive. I'm pretty familiar with the history, so you know you're not bringing new information to my attention.
What exactly in the quoted post are you trying to dispute?
Your previous narrative almost presents these approaches as parallel if not directly oppositional.
I may be misunderstanding you on certain points, fair enough that may be on me.
I assume we agree that public sentiment and electoral politics don’t enjoy a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship, the leverage is required but what is the pivot?
I think your characterisation of historic political movements is either incorrect, or alternatively I’m just reading you wrong. Which makes adoption into modern contexts strategically flawed, assuming I’m not reading you wrong.
It’s very frequently ‘I want to be in the club too’, and not ‘let’s destroy the club’, a movement pushes the Overton Window sufficiently that political, legal or cultural norms become broadly acceptable to the movement and it somewhat dissipates.
I think a minority in this thread would disagree with you on the importance of movements shifting the political ground, but a lot of your rhetoric seems to suggest just bypassing codified political structures because they’re broken. Or bypassing other things that characterise successful movements more generally.
If I’m misinterpreting I mean that’s somewhat on me but I don’t think I’m the only one somewhat confused as to what your vision of action encompasses
Let's start there.
I meant: "[being enfranchised into the voting process and things like legalistic rights being] some carrot dangled to placate these movements, rather than it being a key demand that’s being met." aren't mutually exclusive.
Are we understanding each other that far?
They’re not mutually exclusive, they are just different framings.
If person A’s goal is simply to be enfranchised in the electoralism machine, and that’s granted, it’s not some carrot or pseudo-bribe being dangled, it’s simply their ambitions being met. + Show Spoiler +
If person B’s goal is huge systemic change and their pressure gets the same concessions, it doesn’t meet their goals.
Certainly in the Northern Irish example, our Civil Right’s movement was mostly person As, with person Bs helping to push that along.
Your rhetoric seems to shit on boring old electoralism, and your evidence frequently invokes past movements whose actual goal was merely to be a meaningful part of that process.
If my read is off well, my bad
Okay.
Let's put/take "person A" from a real historical moment of "significant progress" in the US of your choice?
Either of them could pick that back up or anyone else could really. But you've all got important shitposting about the latest far-right nonsense to do and I understand you find that much more satisfying.
You could forget about Socialism for the moment if you will, I'm also talking about discussing plain lib/Dem/ilk ideas among yourselves.
Or, alternatively people couldn’t be arsed engaging with you based off your long posting history and aren’t especially interested in indulging you and what you think should be being discussed
Sure, that could be plausible. Except, setting aside the whole engaging with people calling others "retarded" and "autistic" thing, I'm again talking about the lib/Dem/ilk thread participants inability to/disinterest in discussing US politics among yourselves, while ignoring me/whoever else if you insist/must/choose.
We're approaching the fiftieth "just pointing out their demonstrable incapacity/refusal to do pretty much anything else" but maybe one more time and it'll finally change something. Don't give up now!
"Widespread" just means "yeah but at least it hasn't happened for a PRESIDENTIAL election yet." So comforting.
No, not widespread only means that it is probably not zero and if it exists it is not significant/ outcome determinative. And I am arguing 'not widepread' because I have no desire to argue that there is 'not one instance of fraud'.
1) because that's unreasonable standard for any system and definitely an unreasonable standard to require an overhaul of an entire system. 2) I have no interest in making an argument using absolute terms like 'always' and 'never' which can be overthrown by finding one counter-example from some county in the 80's. 3) It can't be that widespread when the best examples I've ever come across were Republicans/ MAGA trying to prove the system was fraudulent... and then got caught. And the only other examples that get trotted out in the wider public is the crazy conspiracies from Trump and MAGA with boxes being shipped in- but the evidence is doctored videos that clips out that the boxes were in the building all along.
Certainly you need to come across better examples of fraud if that's all you've been exposed to. Going "some county in the 80s" suggests you didn't see the last two pages, or information is coming out but not going in, or you just missed it. There are really clear examples just waiting for you direct from the age of Trump. If my last mention of them was too esoteric let me name the same four more clearly.
2020 city council election in NJ - huge rejection rate of mail-in ballots which highlights why to vote in person instead of by mail to begin with so you don't lose sincerely cast legal votes to signature rejection and tampering and so on:
2023 sheriff election in Louisiana - Guy loses by one vote, probably would have won original election had proven illegal votes never been cast or counted - loses redo election with higher turnout:
Let's start from your own criteria: They didn't order redo elections for these because they WEREN'T "outcome determinative." The biggest obstacle in getting even that far is the burden of proof is on the candidate to prove a challenge. Just because one person filled out grandma's ballot and got caught isn't enough to throw out an election, sure. But then you better hope the grandma's ballot detectors are working overtime, because for those of us who aren't candidates in an election we just have to stick our faith in the competence of the secretary of state and so on, and there's an awful lot of grandmas.
That leaves "significant." Of course without defining that ahead of time, these examples are just waiting for you to adjust the borders of "significant" until they are cleanly walled off from it, that part is predictable. So on to the interesting part, has learning about these cases caused you to otherwise update any view or idea or thought you have about the topic whatsoever?
On April 26 2026 01:00 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: Weirdly, I'm with GH on this. Stop feeding the stupid. There's no progress being made in this cesspool. You win no points. You've gained nothing. Stop. I want to participate in the thread, but what you've all been doing...fucking yuck.
"Feeding the stupid" is what makes them feel superior/enjoyment/what they gain. They aren't going to stop. I'm not even trying to get them to. I'm mostly just pointing out their demonstrable incapacity/refusal to do pretty much anything else. Since I'm objectively right, and they're marginally embarrassed by that, they just lash out at me and rationalize their behavior instead of taking the obviously valid criticism and simply discussing US politics topics they value among themselves instead of this petulant shitposting (or worse yet, treating the Sartres like serious interlocutors) LightSpectra and others are always rationalizing. This is part of why they are desperate to rehabilitate/normalize/engage Intro, despite knowing doing so ever so slightly helps Intro in shifting the Overton Window rightward
On April 25 2026 22:23 LightSpectra wrote: New page in this thread about the same discussion, Republicans here have still offered zero evidence.
On April 25 2026 23:33 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: We now have baal calling people retarded and autistic, and oBlade calling people trolls. Wow.
The turn of phrase "Duh!" comes to mind. You all know better, just can't help yourselves though.
If you just link back to your own post a few dozen more times, we will have achieved socialism.
Well played.
How so?
Here's where the "advancing socialism" (so to speak) discussion was left before the mock and gawk spam you guys prefer.
On April 14 2026 06:05 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:50 EnDeR_ wrote:
On April 14 2026 00:57 GreenHorizons wrote: I'll come back to this later if you'd like (or if you and Ender would prefer to take it to my Blog I suppose that'd be fine). You guys are just on the verge of having something resembling a real discussion about the future of the opposition to Trump/Republicans and I'd like to see that develop.
Do you not re-read your posts before hitting the button? How did you not clock how condescending this last paragraph is?
In all honesty, the biggest problem in communicating with you, besides the shitty attitude, is the sheer quantity of references to different concepts that you never bother to explain in your posts.
Which concepts are you struggling with? (note: "struggling" isn't pejorative, it's complimentary)
That's not condescension, that was observation. For a moment the discussion between each of you seemed to look like it was going to turn to disagreements about how best to get from where we are here, today, to a future where AOC (or another preferred candidate) is a front runner, and/or the policies (ideally non-reformist reforms) we all mutually like are at the forefront of the platform for the Democrat nominee.
That rapidly devolved back into some variations of "vote blue no matter who or else!" (except Swalwell, which I suppose might be worth discussing) before the first candidate has even declared for the primary.
EDIT: Also I realize now I forgot Kwark has been quite clear he thinks Democrats should nominate the oldest whitest guy they can, not an AOC or Harris or whatever.
EDIT2:
On April 14 2026 06:17 KwarK wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:41 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:21 KwarK wrote:
On April 14 2026 03:53 GreenHorizons wrote: Seems like everyone that's opined (except maybe RenSC2) would prefer AOC over the other candidates, but not so much that they'd actually want to start making an effort to convince the people (and that's a lot more people than Newsom or Harris will need to convince) they'll need to agree with us and work to help make AOC the nominee and eventually president.
GH: Dems only offer token resistance to Republicans while basically losing on purpose to help Republicans with their agenda
Also GH: Why aren’t people working harder to make a woman of colour outsider the Democratic nominee
Are you trying to point out that I'm right or that the posters here aren't "Dems" so much as "independents" and/or "socialists" that believe Democrats are the only viable political body/strategy to even potentially move their interests forward?
Neither. You seem not to have noticed that the American population are deeply racist and sexist. That’s something that needs to be incorporated into your strategy. If you plan on doing a revolution before the next election then fine, voter prejudice is not an issue. But if you don’t then
we need to find us an old white male reality tv star or we’ll have another 4 years of Trump.
Yeah, I remembered.
and
On April 22 2026 03:49 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 22 2026 03:23 WombaT wrote:
On April 22 2026 02:18 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 22 2026 01:10 WombaT wrote:
On April 21 2026 20:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 21 2026 18:44 WombaT wrote:
On April 21 2026 08:56 GreenHorizons wrote: [quote] No, I'm talking about the distinct shift in how people understood politics in the US that came after the civil rights movement. I previously described it this way:
[quote]
That said, I agree with your belief that elections won't solve it all and aren't meaningless.
The thing is, being enfranchised into the voting process and things like legalistic rights is a huge driver of quite a few of those kind of movements in the first place.
You’re almost framing it as some carrot dangled to placate these movements, rather than it being a key demand that’s being met. + Show Spoiler +
And they tend to dissipate when momentum stalls as the kinda main goals that glue the broad coalition together, and we get into various stretch goals that are more niche.
Or to put it another way, a big driver of mass disruptive/revolutionary movements often isn’t to overturn a system, merely to be enfranchised within it. Plenty are more structurally transformative too of course but I think broadly in either instance you’ve got a handful of quite clear grievances that are sufficiently shared for some kind of critical mass of people to garner enough momentum to move the needle.
Not to downplay the importance of such movements, my position is rather the opposite. I just don’t see the appetite from Americans for radical transformation, nor am I sure what the ‘civil rights issue of our time’ is that could rally sufficient people to that banner.
Sort of?
Those aren't mutually exclusive. I'm pretty familiar with the history, so you know you're not bringing new information to my attention.
What exactly in the quoted post are you trying to dispute?
Your previous narrative almost presents these approaches as parallel if not directly oppositional.
I may be misunderstanding you on certain points, fair enough that may be on me.
I assume we agree that public sentiment and electoral politics don’t enjoy a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship, the leverage is required but what is the pivot?
I think your characterisation of historic political movements is either incorrect, or alternatively I’m just reading you wrong. Which makes adoption into modern contexts strategically flawed, assuming I’m not reading you wrong.
It’s very frequently ‘I want to be in the club too’, and not ‘let’s destroy the club’, a movement pushes the Overton Window sufficiently that political, legal or cultural norms become broadly acceptable to the movement and it somewhat dissipates.
I think a minority in this thread would disagree with you on the importance of movements shifting the political ground, but a lot of your rhetoric seems to suggest just bypassing codified political structures because they’re broken. Or bypassing other things that characterise successful movements more generally.
If I’m misinterpreting I mean that’s somewhat on me but I don’t think I’m the only one somewhat confused as to what your vision of action encompasses
Let's start there.
I meant: "[being enfranchised into the voting process and things like legalistic rights being] some carrot dangled to placate these movements, rather than it being a key demand that’s being met." aren't mutually exclusive.
Are we understanding each other that far?
They’re not mutually exclusive, they are just different framings.
If person A’s goal is simply to be enfranchised in the electoralism machine, and that’s granted, it’s not some carrot or pseudo-bribe being dangled, it’s simply their ambitions being met. + Show Spoiler +
If person B’s goal is huge systemic change and their pressure gets the same concessions, it doesn’t meet their goals.
Certainly in the Northern Irish example, our Civil Right’s movement was mostly person As, with person Bs helping to push that along.
Your rhetoric seems to shit on boring old electoralism, and your evidence frequently invokes past movements whose actual goal was merely to be a meaningful part of that process.
If my read is off well, my bad
Okay.
Let's put/take "person A" from a real historical moment of "significant progress" in the US of your choice?
Either of them could pick that back up or anyone else could really. But you've all got important shitposting about the latest far-right nonsense to do and I understand you find that much more satisfying.
You could forget about Socialism for the moment if you will, I'm also talking about discussing plain lib/Dem/ilk ideas among yourselves.
Or, alternatively people couldn’t be arsed engaging with you based off your long posting history and aren’t especially interested in indulging you and what you think should be being discussed
Sure, that could be plausible. Except, setting aside the whole engaging with people calling others "retarded" and "autistic" thing, I'm again talking about the lib/Dem/ilk thread participants inability to/disinterest in discussing US politics among yourselves, while ignoring me/whoever else if you insist/must/choose.
Really? because the few times we've had without you or the latest right wing nut case have seen calm discussions among ourselves about whatever interesting topic happened to be brought up.
As for 'feeding the stupid' I will always point out how wrong they are simply because to do otherwise is to invite page upon page of misinformation without counter, anyone peeking in sees this misinformation without the followup pointing out how its just plain wrong and wonders if its actually true. Thats how your grandma got to believing in jewish space lasers causing cancer.
The lies don't stop if you stop engaging them, they just spread.
On April 26 2026 04:40 oBlade wrote:<Snip for length>
I find it funny that I click your 2nd link out of mild interest and encounter this quote.
“It was a local election in Paterson. Some guys tried to screw with the system,” Murphy said on MSNBC Thursday. “I view it as a really positive data point. They got caught.”
This isn't minority report, we can't prevent all crimes before they happen. But the system detected that some people tried to commit fraud. That sounds like a pretty secure system to me.
When a guy walks into a bank with a gun to try and rob the place only to be taken out by a security guard you don't advocate for closing all the banks, there were measures in place to protect the bank and they worked.
Would you mind sharing with us what you consider to be an authoritative source that conclusively demonstrates that elections in the US are insecure or among the most insecure across developed nations? I did a quick search and couldn't find any.
I'm still knees deep in trying to find a peer reviewed published scientific study that proves I'm not a horse.
On April 25 2026 20:39 Geiko wrote: [quote]
That's exactly my point, Switzerland and the USA have the exact same score and everything is fine here, no election fraud. What does that tell you ?
It tells me that countries of 8 million and 350 million are different.
The US has had multiple invalidated and redone elections in the last 10 years.
You can be proud of being the "same" as that or read my post or your own article or at the very least look at this conveniently prepared picture which enumerates the dimensions they analyzed and absorb the fact that the score for "election integrity" in the report you found doesn't mean what you think it means to begin with, it's not an election security certificate, it's just a vague democracy index which is not helped by the fact there's no appendix of methods of how they scored anything:
Most of these factors are not to do with securing the vote.
There are two ways of thinking: One, that because we found some elections that were so bad they had to be redone, that means the system is working.
It is like seeing a bridge that cracked and going "Wahoo! It signaled us that it's broken instead of just collapsing immediately! Great success"
And then there's the other way of thinking. The crack is already the failure. The next issue is the cracks you don't see. This is harder if you don't check for cracks and further harder if you designed a bridge which inherently erases evidence of its own cracks at certain steps.
Oh yes the magical population excuse. Which oddly is couched in national population and not by state, but we’re also told x is unfeasible because the US is a confederation of multiple states who like to do things their own way.
Excuse for what?
For why the US can’t do x, y or z by virtue of its population, or can’t be compared to another locale by virtue of the same.
Most systems tend to be scalable
What does Switzerland do better than US elections that you think the US needs to follow/copy?
Not having massively fraudulent elections obviously
Switzerland did invalidate a referendum in the town of Moutier from 2017.
A country of 8 million and one of 350 million are different
Troll.
If you "scaled" Switzerland to the US like you wanted, you should end up with over 40 invalidated elections over the last 10 years by that.
The US had around four that I found.
North Carolina's 9th Congressional District in 2018 was the biggest redo. There was also a city council election in NJ in 2020, Democrat mayoral primary in Bridgeport in 2023, and LA sheriff in 2023.
Either Switzerland is 10x worse than the US and not necessarily worth imitating on this matter (which would make your earlier reflexive "typical excuse" post where you thought this was healthcare and you could just go "Do it like Europe" a mistake - France has almost no mail-in voting, when did MAGA get to them), or US actual fraud is going around 10x undetected.
Alternatively, you know, Switzerland is famous for holding a lot of elections, so some type of 'per capita' comparison is nonsense - you should rather do a 'per election' comparison. That said these four examples basically show that 'the US is fine'.
Also, you can't have it both ways - either the US is fine (doing better than switzerland, a country with no issues), no need for reforms, there's no real issue with electional integrity so you can keep doing what you've been doing or it's worse than switzerland (and can do stuff more like switzerland - so be fine with mail in ballots becoming more common).
Why are we widening the scope to sheriffs and mayors? I really don't think the federal government should have much (beyond ensuring some basics like no racial segregation, etc) to say about elections at that level do you? And Louisiana and North Carolina are pretty solidly Republican aren't they, so what has Democrat opposition to do with anything?
Regardless, aren't these all examples of the system working? In a close enough election (which gerrymandering for federal elections makes increasingly unlikely to have a close result, which is what we are talking about) but more likely when voting for sheriffs and mayors, a couple instances of fraud would be outcome determinative. I'm fine with the recount and eliminating the extras- seems like in one case two people voted by mail in and then voted in person... and were caught. And in another case, the Republicans were tampering with ballots... and were caught. And the results were close enough that they hit the threshold for a revote. Sure. What is the problem?
Unless you intend to ban mail in ballots entirely, it seems like any change to the system would amount to the same thing: they vote twice.. and get caught. And then depending on how close the results were, does the oversight body order a recount only or a recount and a revote?
On April 26 2026 01:00 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: Weirdly, I'm with GH on this. Stop feeding the stupid. There's no progress being made in this cesspool. You win no points. You've gained nothing. Stop. I want to participate in the thread, but what you've all been doing...fucking yuck.
"Feeding the stupid" is what makes them feel superior/enjoyment/what they gain. They aren't going to stop. I'm not even trying to get them to. I'm mostly just pointing out their demonstrable incapacity/refusal to do pretty much anything else. Since I'm objectively right, and they're marginally embarrassed by that, they just lash out at me and rationalize their behavior instead of taking the obviously valid criticism and simply discussing US politics topics they value among themselves instead of this petulant shitposting (or worse yet, treating the Sartres like serious interlocutors) LightSpectra and others are always rationalizing. This is part of why they are desperate to rehabilitate/normalize/engage Intro, despite knowing doing so ever so slightly helps Intro in shifting the Overton Window rightward
On April 25 2026 22:23 LightSpectra wrote: New page in this thread about the same discussion, Republicans here have still offered zero evidence.
On April 25 2026 23:33 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: We now have baal calling people retarded and autistic, and oBlade calling people trolls. Wow.
The turn of phrase "Duh!" comes to mind. You all know better, just can't help yourselves though.
If you just link back to your own post a few dozen more times, we will have achieved socialism.
Well played.
How so?
Here's where the "advancing socialism" (so to speak) discussion was left before the mock and gawk spam you guys prefer.
On April 14 2026 06:05 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:50 EnDeR_ wrote:
On April 14 2026 00:57 GreenHorizons wrote: I'll come back to this later if you'd like (or if you and Ender would prefer to take it to my Blog I suppose that'd be fine). You guys are just on the verge of having something resembling a real discussion about the future of the opposition to Trump/Republicans and I'd like to see that develop.
Do you not re-read your posts before hitting the button? How did you not clock how condescending this last paragraph is?
In all honesty, the biggest problem in communicating with you, besides the shitty attitude, is the sheer quantity of references to different concepts that you never bother to explain in your posts.
Which concepts are you struggling with? (note: "struggling" isn't pejorative, it's complimentary)
That's not condescension, that was observation. For a moment the discussion between each of you seemed to look like it was going to turn to disagreements about how best to get from where we are here, today, to a future where AOC (or another preferred candidate) is a front runner, and/or the policies (ideally non-reformist reforms) we all mutually like are at the forefront of the platform for the Democrat nominee.
That rapidly devolved back into some variations of "vote blue no matter who or else!" (except Swalwell, which I suppose might be worth discussing) before the first candidate has even declared for the primary.
EDIT: Also I realize now I forgot Kwark has been quite clear he thinks Democrats should nominate the oldest whitest guy they can, not an AOC or Harris or whatever.
EDIT2:
On April 14 2026 06:17 KwarK wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:41 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:21 KwarK wrote:
On April 14 2026 03:53 GreenHorizons wrote: Seems like everyone that's opined (except maybe RenSC2) would prefer AOC over the other candidates, but not so much that they'd actually want to start making an effort to convince the people (and that's a lot more people than Newsom or Harris will need to convince) they'll need to agree with us and work to help make AOC the nominee and eventually president.
GH: Dems only offer token resistance to Republicans while basically losing on purpose to help Republicans with their agenda
Also GH: Why aren’t people working harder to make a woman of colour outsider the Democratic nominee
Are you trying to point out that I'm right or that the posters here aren't "Dems" so much as "independents" and/or "socialists" that believe Democrats are the only viable political body/strategy to even potentially move their interests forward?
Neither. You seem not to have noticed that the American population are deeply racist and sexist. That’s something that needs to be incorporated into your strategy. If you plan on doing a revolution before the next election then fine, voter prejudice is not an issue. But if you don’t then
we need to find us an old white male reality tv star or we’ll have another 4 years of Trump.
Yeah, I remembered.
and
On April 22 2026 03:49 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 22 2026 03:23 WombaT wrote:
On April 22 2026 02:18 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 22 2026 01:10 WombaT wrote:
On April 21 2026 20:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 21 2026 18:44 WombaT wrote:
On April 21 2026 08:56 GreenHorizons wrote: [quote] No, I'm talking about the distinct shift in how people understood politics in the US that came after the civil rights movement. I previously described it this way:
[quote]
That said, I agree with your belief that elections won't solve it all and aren't meaningless.
The thing is, being enfranchised into the voting process and things like legalistic rights is a huge driver of quite a few of those kind of movements in the first place.
You’re almost framing it as some carrot dangled to placate these movements, rather than it being a key demand that’s being met. + Show Spoiler +
And they tend to dissipate when momentum stalls as the kinda main goals that glue the broad coalition together, and we get into various stretch goals that are more niche.
Or to put it another way, a big driver of mass disruptive/revolutionary movements often isn’t to overturn a system, merely to be enfranchised within it. Plenty are more structurally transformative too of course but I think broadly in either instance you’ve got a handful of quite clear grievances that are sufficiently shared for some kind of critical mass of people to garner enough momentum to move the needle.
Not to downplay the importance of such movements, my position is rather the opposite. I just don’t see the appetite from Americans for radical transformation, nor am I sure what the ‘civil rights issue of our time’ is that could rally sufficient people to that banner.
Sort of?
Those aren't mutually exclusive. I'm pretty familiar with the history, so you know you're not bringing new information to my attention.
What exactly in the quoted post are you trying to dispute?
Your previous narrative almost presents these approaches as parallel if not directly oppositional.
I may be misunderstanding you on certain points, fair enough that may be on me.
I assume we agree that public sentiment and electoral politics don’t enjoy a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship, the leverage is required but what is the pivot?
I think your characterisation of historic political movements is either incorrect, or alternatively I’m just reading you wrong. Which makes adoption into modern contexts strategically flawed, assuming I’m not reading you wrong.
It’s very frequently ‘I want to be in the club too’, and not ‘let’s destroy the club’, a movement pushes the Overton Window sufficiently that political, legal or cultural norms become broadly acceptable to the movement and it somewhat dissipates.
I think a minority in this thread would disagree with you on the importance of movements shifting the political ground, but a lot of your rhetoric seems to suggest just bypassing codified political structures because they’re broken. Or bypassing other things that characterise successful movements more generally.
If I’m misinterpreting I mean that’s somewhat on me but I don’t think I’m the only one somewhat confused as to what your vision of action encompasses
Let's start there.
I meant: "[being enfranchised into the voting process and things like legalistic rights being] some carrot dangled to placate these movements, rather than it being a key demand that’s being met." aren't mutually exclusive.
Are we understanding each other that far?
They’re not mutually exclusive, they are just different framings.
If person A’s goal is simply to be enfranchised in the electoralism machine, and that’s granted, it’s not some carrot or pseudo-bribe being dangled, it’s simply their ambitions being met. + Show Spoiler +
If person B’s goal is huge systemic change and their pressure gets the same concessions, it doesn’t meet their goals.
Certainly in the Northern Irish example, our Civil Right’s movement was mostly person As, with person Bs helping to push that along.
Your rhetoric seems to shit on boring old electoralism, and your evidence frequently invokes past movements whose actual goal was merely to be a meaningful part of that process.
If my read is off well, my bad
Okay.
Let's put/take "person A" from a real historical moment of "significant progress" in the US of your choice?
Either of them could pick that back up or anyone else could really. But you've all got important shitposting about the latest far-right nonsense to do and I understand you find that much more satisfying.
You could forget about Socialism for the moment if you will, I'm also talking about discussing plain lib/Dem/ilk ideas among yourselves.
Or, alternatively people couldn’t be arsed engaging with you based off your long posting history and aren’t especially interested in indulging you and what you think should be being discussed
Sure, that could be plausible. Except, setting aside the whole engaging with people calling others "retarded" and "autistic" thing, I'm again talking about the lib/Dem/ilk thread participants inability to/disinterest in discussing US politics among yourselves, while ignoring me/whoever else if you insist/must/choose.
The world doesn’t revolve around you and your sensibilities
There have been plenty of actually interesting topics and interjections in this thread in the recent past, hell I’ve actually learned a few things. Certainly more interesting than the 198th iteration of ‘Dems bad’ anyway
Quick q, are we applying the "other developed nations also have voter ID requirements so why not the USA" reasoning also to universal healthcare, gun control, massive renewables subsidies, public transportation, General Data Protection Regulation, not starting wars for imperialism, using the metric system, etc. as well? Or does the idea that other countries do something better than the USA start and end at election security?
On April 26 2026 05:52 LightSpectra wrote: Quick q, are we applying the "other developed nations also have voter ID requirements so why not the USA" reasoning also to universal healthcare, gun control, massive renewables subsidies, public transportation, General Data Protection Regulation, not starting wars for imperialism, using the metric system, etc. as well? Or does the idea that other countries do something better than the USA start and end at election security?
Fantastic question, especially since the United States actually has problems with guns and problems with healthcare, as opposed to the non-existent voter fraud "problem".
may God, Allah, Brahman, and the demiurge have mercy on our souls. Scott Bessent has "evolved" his views on tariffs. It starts at 60 seconds in this clip.
The interviewer lets Bessent off the hook by the way he is framing the question. I highly suspect Bessent would not have accepted the interview without this kind of friendly/favourable question framing.
Anyhow, i always hoped Bessent was going to talk Trump out of tariffs.
Notice idiots like Andrew Ross whathisface in this video. and then other uneducated clowns like Stephen A. Smith add either their middle initial OR their middle name into their names to make themselves seem important. For the record, they are following the trend I started with this account.
On April 26 2026 01:00 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: Weirdly, I'm with GH on this. Stop feeding the stupid. There's no progress being made in this cesspool. You win no points. You've gained nothing. Stop. I want to participate in the thread, but what you've all been doing...fucking yuck.
"Feeding the stupid" is what makes them feel superior/enjoyment/what they gain. They aren't going to stop. I'm not even trying to get them to. I'm mostly just pointing out their demonstrable incapacity/refusal to do pretty much anything else. Since I'm objectively right, and they're marginally embarrassed by that, they just lash out at me and rationalize their behavior instead of taking the obviously valid criticism and simply discussing US politics topics they value among themselves instead of this petulant shitposting (or worse yet, treating the Sartres like serious interlocutors) LightSpectra and others are always rationalizing. This is part of why they are desperate to rehabilitate/normalize/engage Intro, despite knowing doing so ever so slightly helps Intro in shifting the Overton Window rightward
On April 26 2026 01:46 WombaT wrote:
On April 26 2026 00:39 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 26 2026 00:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On April 26 2026 00:12 LightSpectra wrote:
On April 25 2026 23:51 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 25 2026 22:23 LightSpectra wrote: New page in this thread about the same discussion, Republicans here have still offered zero evidence.
On April 25 2026 23:33 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: We now have baal calling people retarded and autistic, and oBlade calling people trolls. Wow.
The turn of phrase "Duh!" comes to mind. You all know better, just can't help yourselves though.
If you just link back to your own post a few dozen more times, we will have achieved socialism.
Well played.
How so?
Here's where the "advancing socialism" (so to speak) discussion was left before the mock and gawk spam you guys prefer.
On April 14 2026 06:05 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:50 EnDeR_ wrote:
On April 14 2026 00:57 GreenHorizons wrote: I'll come back to this later if you'd like (or if you and Ender would prefer to take it to my Blog I suppose that'd be fine). You guys are just on the verge of having something resembling a real discussion about the future of the opposition to Trump/Republicans and I'd like to see that develop.
Do you not re-read your posts before hitting the button? How did you not clock how condescending this last paragraph is?
In all honesty, the biggest problem in communicating with you, besides the shitty attitude, is the sheer quantity of references to different concepts that you never bother to explain in your posts.
Which concepts are you struggling with? (note: "struggling" isn't pejorative, it's complimentary)
That's not condescension, that was observation. For a moment the discussion between each of you seemed to look like it was going to turn to disagreements about how best to get from where we are here, today, to a future where AOC (or another preferred candidate) is a front runner, and/or the policies (ideally non-reformist reforms) we all mutually like are at the forefront of the platform for the Democrat nominee.
That rapidly devolved back into some variations of "vote blue no matter who or else!" (except Swalwell, which I suppose might be worth discussing) before the first candidate has even declared for the primary.
EDIT: Also I realize now I forgot Kwark has been quite clear he thinks Democrats should nominate the oldest whitest guy they can, not an AOC or Harris or whatever.
EDIT2:
On April 14 2026 06:17 KwarK wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:41 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 14 2026 05:21 KwarK wrote:
On April 14 2026 03:53 GreenHorizons wrote: Seems like everyone that's opined (except maybe RenSC2) would prefer AOC over the other candidates, but not so much that they'd actually want to start making an effort to convince the people (and that's a lot more people than Newsom or Harris will need to convince) they'll need to agree with us and work to help make AOC the nominee and eventually president.
GH: Dems only offer token resistance to Republicans while basically losing on purpose to help Republicans with their agenda
Also GH: Why aren’t people working harder to make a woman of colour outsider the Democratic nominee
Are you trying to point out that I'm right or that the posters here aren't "Dems" so much as "independents" and/or "socialists" that believe Democrats are the only viable political body/strategy to even potentially move their interests forward?
Neither. You seem not to have noticed that the American population are deeply racist and sexist. That’s something that needs to be incorporated into your strategy. If you plan on doing a revolution before the next election then fine, voter prejudice is not an issue. But if you don’t then
we need to find us an old white male reality tv star or we’ll have another 4 years of Trump.
Yeah, I remembered.
and
On April 22 2026 03:49 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 22 2026 03:23 WombaT wrote:
On April 22 2026 02:18 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 22 2026 01:10 WombaT wrote:
On April 21 2026 20:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
On April 21 2026 18:44 WombaT wrote: [quote] The thing is, being enfranchised into the voting process and things like legalistic rights is a huge driver of quite a few of those kind of movements in the first place.
You’re almost framing it as some carrot dangled to placate these movements, rather than it being a key demand that’s being met. + Show Spoiler +
And they tend to dissipate when momentum stalls as the kinda main goals that glue the broad coalition together, and we get into various stretch goals that are more niche.
Or to put it another way, a big driver of mass disruptive/revolutionary movements often isn’t to overturn a system, merely to be enfranchised within it. Plenty are more structurally transformative too of course but I think broadly in either instance you’ve got a handful of quite clear grievances that are sufficiently shared for some kind of critical mass of people to garner enough momentum to move the needle.
Not to downplay the importance of such movements, my position is rather the opposite. I just don’t see the appetite from Americans for radical transformation, nor am I sure what the ‘civil rights issue of our time’ is that could rally sufficient people to that banner.
Sort of?
Those aren't mutually exclusive. I'm pretty familiar with the history, so you know you're not bringing new information to my attention.
What exactly in the quoted post are you trying to dispute?
Your previous narrative almost presents these approaches as parallel if not directly oppositional.
I may be misunderstanding you on certain points, fair enough that may be on me.
I assume we agree that public sentiment and electoral politics don’t enjoy a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship, the leverage is required but what is the pivot?
I think your characterisation of historic political movements is either incorrect, or alternatively I’m just reading you wrong. Which makes adoption into modern contexts strategically flawed, assuming I’m not reading you wrong.
It’s very frequently ‘I want to be in the club too’, and not ‘let’s destroy the club’, a movement pushes the Overton Window sufficiently that political, legal or cultural norms become broadly acceptable to the movement and it somewhat dissipates.
I think a minority in this thread would disagree with you on the importance of movements shifting the political ground, but a lot of your rhetoric seems to suggest just bypassing codified political structures because they’re broken. Or bypassing other things that characterise successful movements more generally.
If I’m misinterpreting I mean that’s somewhat on me but I don’t think I’m the only one somewhat confused as to what your vision of action encompasses
Let's start there.
I meant: "[being enfranchised into the voting process and things like legalistic rights being] some carrot dangled to placate these movements, rather than it being a key demand that’s being met." aren't mutually exclusive.
Are we understanding each other that far?
They’re not mutually exclusive, they are just different framings.
If person A’s goal is simply to be enfranchised in the electoralism machine, and that’s granted, it’s not some carrot or pseudo-bribe being dangled, it’s simply their ambitions being met. + Show Spoiler +
If person B’s goal is huge systemic change and their pressure gets the same concessions, it doesn’t meet their goals.
Certainly in the Northern Irish example, our Civil Right’s movement was mostly person As, with person Bs helping to push that along.
Your rhetoric seems to shit on boring old electoralism, and your evidence frequently invokes past movements whose actual goal was merely to be a meaningful part of that process.
If my read is off well, my bad
Okay.
Let's put/take "person A" from a real historical moment of "significant progress" in the US of your choice?
Either of them could pick that back up or anyone else could really. But you've all got important shitposting about the latest far-right nonsense to do and I understand you find that much more satisfying.
You could forget about Socialism for the moment if you will, I'm also talking about discussing plain lib/Dem/ilk ideas among yourselves.
Or, alternatively people couldn’t be arsed engaging with you based off your long posting history and aren’t especially interested in indulging you and what you think should be being discussed
Sure, that could be plausible. Except, setting aside the whole engaging with people calling others "retarded" and "autistic" thing, I'm again talking about the lib/Dem/ilk thread participants inability to/disinterest in discussing US politics among yourselves, while ignoring me/whoever else if you insist/must/choose.
Really? because the few times we've had without you or the latest right wing nut case have seen calm discussions among ourselves about whatever interesting topic happened to be brought up.
As for 'feeding the stupid' I will always point out how wrong they are simply because to do otherwise is to invite page upon page of misinformation without counter, anyone peeking in sees this misinformation without the followup pointing out how its just plain wrong and wonders if its actually true. Thats how your grandma got to believing in jewish space lasers causing cancer.
The lies don't stop if you stop engaging them, they just spread.
I agree calling out the misinformation and deliberate bullshit helpful. The first couple of pages. But I think then, with all that's going on, we should ignore them. If someone has already called out the stupid, then we don't need to pile on, unless you're offering new information that the previous person left out.
I guess my disappointment, so to speak, is that this is all we can do. Everything we could possibly talk about is just "How incompetent can this administration be?!?!" And every day it's like they have to one up themselves.
US sends envoy to Pakistan for talks, Iran guffaws and sends no one. Envoy stays home. Dept of Labor head is out for abuse. 4-5 House reps resigned in what...3 months? Marijuana easements from the DOJ happened as well. Guess that last one isn't too bad.
Mailing ballots to people and places that did not ask for them is an...invitation I'd rather not make.
Okay, that's fair. Would you be okay with an opt-in program, where a voter could choose to receive a mailed ballot if they preferred it? That way it's not automatically extra mail for every voter, since some voters might not want it, but it's available as an option for those who do?
Too long an early voting period means sometimes things happen before election day that voters might like to know. But once they've dealt with their ballot early they are less likely to bother changing it. Elections happen on particular days. It's not the 1820s anymore, you don't need that much time.
Shouldn't that be a choice each individual voter could make though? The government isn't forcing voters to vote a month early, right? If a person was truly undecided with a month left before the election, couldn't that person just decide to wait a little longer, if they wanted? The vast majority of all voters obviously know who they're going to vote for way in advance, so it sounds like a beneficial option for anyone who wants to send in their vote and have one fewer errand to remember and run in November. You're right that most people "don't need that much time", but if a person wants to vote on the day of the election, or a week early, or a month early, I don't really see a downside to being flexible there.
I haven't looked into any literature specially but from what I've read it seems like most people who study such things think it's a pretty good system. It is generous within the rules. Famously early voting within Florida is very popular. But you still have to go through a security process. They even report turnout exactly through the day each day (from what I recall) which gives people a very good sense of what is happening. They know how many ballots are to be counted before they even start (early voting ends a few days before election day in most places). Maybe California changed this but I believe they do not know, and it makes sense because they also allow ballots to be received after election day, which if you have a easy, long early vote period is not needed.
While I appreciate the response here, I don't think it addressed my question, which was "3. Is there any evidence that Florida is more secure than states that don't require a voter ID?" I asked that because one of your three "main things" was voter ID, and I still don't see any beneficial impact of it. I'm not aware of any evidence either - I'm pretty sure all 50 states have secure elections, regardless of their rules and requirements - and while I agree that it's great that Florida reports up-to-date turnout throughout the day, that's not the same thing as preventing voter fraud. Also, voter ID isn't even a key component in the ability to report up-to-date turnout. Florida would still run smoothly and transparently without voter ID... maybe even more efficiently, since removing a voter ID requirement would allow for faster lines (less time per voter is needed when you don't need to check ID). And since we know that there's no widespread voter fraud that needs to be prevented with any extra regulations, it sounds like voter ID is pretty redundant and not crucial for anything in particular.
If you want to vote by mail you should have to request it.
it's not about being undecided, it's about changing circumstances, or events, or statements that might cause one to want to change their vote.
All the things I listed are security measures. Given that, *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud (although it seems like local stories pop up pretty often, I think recently in NJ actually) you are asking for an effect you don't think you are even going to find lol. But as I said the other day, doing easy things that make it more secure make it harder to claim fraud in the future as well. And you prevent things you don't even know about.
Florida is a good example because none of those reasons you gave apply. Voting is incredibly easy, everyone knows how it works, and turnout in the state is super high. There is no trouble with long lines. I like the locked door example someone gave earlier. Everything hinges on there being no fraud, but also we're going to try and remove all the barriers to fraud. Seems pretty silly.
I'm fine with needing to request vote-by-mail. I don't think we're in disagreement there.
I don't think we'll see exactly eye-to-eye on allowing for very early voting, but I think that's fine: You're prioritizing a hypothetical need to change one's vote, and I don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. I'm prioritizing a hypothetical maximal schedule flexibility, and you don't think that's the number one priority because it's rarely necessary. Whether early voting is 2 weeks or 4 weeks or 6 weeks isn't the biggest deal to me; it might become a bigger deal to me if I learn about any states where voters are insisting they need more time to vote early because of some specific reason.
" *so far as we know* there isn't an enormous amount of fraud " I think we're the furthest apart on the subject of voter ID. I'd be interested in hearing Florida's safeguard against a massive amount of locusts disrupting Election Day, or how Florida would protect against assassins stealing all their mail-in ballots. Because, *so far as we know*, there isn't an enormous amount of those things happening, but better safe than sorry, right? Why not have three locks on the door instead of one? That's how I feel you're treating this non-existent threat of widespread voter fraud, and given that this push for voter ID came from Trump and other Republican leaders fabricating bad-faith claims about election integrity, I feel more passionate about pushing back on this. They're purposely trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters, as previously discussed.
As I've said before, if every voter automatically receives a free, immediate "voter ID" upon registering to vote and before every election (like a paper receipt or an email confirmation or a QR code or whatever can be easily, instantly, universally given out), I'm actually fine with people bringing it on Election Day, but Republicans suspiciously aren't advocating for the most convenient voter ID options possible. And it's painfully obvious that even if national voter ID laws were implemented, Republicans would still complain about election security the next time they lost, and then there would be another made-up excuse. They'll never be satisfied until all their cheating guarantees wins every time, and we know this because voter ID laws aren't the only examples of Republicans trying to rig the system.
I know you don't want our conversation to descend into just talking about voter ID, since that topic has been beaten to death over the past few days, so I'll respect both of our time and just say I'm happy we found some common ground (mail-in voting is fine as long as you request it) and that one of our two disagreements can lead to a reasonable compromise (we should allow a period of early voting that's long enough to be flexible for most voters, and short enough that most voters won't be voting before they're actually set on a candidate).
Ok, if you'd like we can end on agreement but i must make teo small points.
Republican states accept various forms of ID and I don’t see anything unreasonable about it. You csn just Google what Florida, Texas, Georgia, etc will accept. It is very convenient.
I think you are vastly undervaluing having procedures in place that help the electorate feel it is secure. Trump is all the focus but remember after 2016 for example polling said many dems thought Russia changed vote totals. And the cyber security of our elections infrastructure is important too. The system's legitimacy rests on both real *and* perceived fairness.
Perceived fairness would be greatly increased if people weren't baselessly claiming voter fraud were rampant. You can't scaremonger the crap out of people and then say that to increase perceived fairness it's important to increase security standards. Some grade A gaslighting going on here!
Arguments about voter ID existed before Trump
Not remotely to the same degree, come on.
It cycles in and out of discussions like all things do. Maybe this particular instance was brought about by Trump but Republicans have been asking for and passing voter ID in states for decades and Democrats have been objecting to it for just as long. I'm sorry, but saying this wouldn't be a contentious topic in American politics without Trump is judt ignorance of American politics.
It'd be like saying immigration or amnesty wouldn't be a divisive topic without Trump. It's just wrong.
In the context of Trump it seems like it takes on a different light, though, given he's tried to rig and game the system more obviously and stupidly than most. He's also taken openly racist "They're eating the cats" rhetoric, so it seems hard to raise voter ID as a serious issue in the face of that context.
Even within that, general consensus here seems like voter ID would be fine if it could be done fairly, but if dems couldn't trust it to be done fairly before why the fuck would they trust it to be done fairly now.
I don't really see a connection to the cats and dogs things, sounds like a stretch. And if you trust public opinion on this neither do most voters. Resistance to voter ID appears to be highly concentrated among Dem politicians and far left activist groups.
To the contrary, as I have been saying voter ID is in fact already being done fairly.
On April 26 2026 03:58 Fleetfeet wrote: obviously and stupidly than most. He's also taken openly racist "They're eating the cats" rhetoric, so it seems hard to raise voter ID as a serious issue in the face of that context.
if they are starving and have a hard time making US money because they are undocumented then eating cats is defensible.
Immigrants in Canada we're being criticized for illegally pulling salmon out of the Port Credit river during spawning season. When i was a teenager from 2001 to 2007 we did it every fall. meh.
There is a defense for immigrants pulling salmon out of the Port Credit river today that did not exist in 2003 when I did it. The highest quality salmon is now $10/can and Loblaws keeps on scamming its customers. If any one wants a thorough rundown of all the decades long anti consumer fraud by Loblaws I'll post it in the Canadian politics thread. BTW, May 12 is National Steal From Loblaw's Day.
Any how, if some Canadian immigrants are planning on illegally pulling salmon out of the Port Credit river this fall.... I'll show them the best spots to do it.
It's weird how minor crimes are being catastrophized these days.
EPT
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