4 ms·

No, in person voter fraud is well studied and considered so uncommon that it is a red herring. If it were truly considered a problem then mail in ballots would

• dfee 9y ago
  My last mail in ballot was rejected because the state of Texas thought the signature on the ballot and the signature on the envelope didn’t match. So much for my scribble sig.
• mcantelon 9y ago
  >since more people voted for Hillary than Trump, is "universal" loathing actually a problem for presidential candidates? Evidently so seeing as getting the most votes in total isn't what was required to win.
  • kurthr 9y ago
    Well, exactly, my point is that you could be loathed by more people and still win!
• crdoconnor 9y ago
  >has identity politics has been shown to be such a loser for republicans? Pretty much, which is why they didn't really do it. Trump stole from Bernie's playbook - if you take his last few ads as a representative sample - they pushed the class warfare angle pretty hard - starring Lloyd Blankfein, ironically enough. That played really effectively off Hillary's "business as usual ; government is hard ; I work hard" angle, and was probably responsible for her losing Michigan - not exactly a state that has done well out of the status quo or the trade deals she championed. >2) since more people voted for Hillary than Trump, is "universal" loathing actually a problem for presidential candidates? Yes, because the numbers that stayed home in disgust outnumbered both candidates. Voter turnout is what killed Hillary's chances, not "white supremacists" or "fake news" or whatever, and that voter turnout was because she was such a thoroughly loathed individual - which was actually largely her doing.
  • venantius 9y ago
    Re: 2 - that's an inaccurate way of representing it. Hillary had an 0.1% difference in voter turnaround relative to Obama in 2012. What actually won the election for Trump was (a) the distribution of votes across the landscape and how that translates to Electoral College votes and (b) demographically speaking, white people (at every income level).
    • fastball 9y ago
      What exactly is your point about white people? Are you claiming this is about racism? If this was a race issue, the black man would've lost (instead he won both times) and the white woman would've won. Or am I missing something?
      • peg_leg 9y ago
        Demographic analysis != racism
        • fastball 9y ago
          Stating demographics != analysis Pointing out that "white people won Trump the election" does not really mean anything to me. Which is why I asked for clarification from OP. I feel like I'm supposed to understand some veiled inference, but I'd rather OP explicitly say what they mean.
      • crdoconnor 9y ago
        That's always what the Dems are claiming these days. Though, if you dig deeper, economic distress (which correlates to race) is was the real mover. Or, to put it as Bill Clinton once did just before he won an election, "it's the economy, stupid".
      • croon 9y ago
        > Are you claiming this is about racism? If this was a race issue, the black man would've lost (instead he won both times) and the white woman would've won. Or am I missing something? I don't claim either side of that question, but I just have to say that your statement is patently false. Hypothetically all racists could vote one way, and still lose an election (or turn the tides), depending on the size of that group.
• belorn 9y ago
  Saying that someone won the popular vote but not the election is identical to saying that someone won in the more densely populated area but lost in the more sparsely populated areas. It don't prove gerrymandering, which is the intent to arrange voting districts to manipulate elections. The intent is the key here and not the result. Having seats allocated by area rather than population is an very old tactic to unify a large number of small provinces into a single nation. Rural voters votes need to still feel like its worth to vote, even if they are outnumbered by 10 to 1 to the voice and needs of the more populated areas. Similar how people view voting of third-party to be a wasted vote, so is it believed that people in low population areas would feel if election was purely based on the popular vote. This is not the definition of gerrymandering, but rather policy that is designed to prevent splintering of nations and civil war. Did Roy Jones or his party rearrange the district to orchestrate a election win? If so then that is gerrymandering. If not then the idea of having voting districts rather than popular vote is really just the trade that happened a long time ago between low and high populated areas being applied to all levels.
  • deleted 9y ago
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  • mstachowiak 9y ago
    For reference, the previous commenter was talking about AL's 7 congressional districts. US congressional districts are defined based on population (they're suppose to be equally sized intra-state).
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
• dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Roy Jones won 6/7 districts and lost the popular vote. Pretty much the definition of gerrymandering No, it's a common consequence of the fact that partisan leanings aren't uniformly distributed that will be able to occur in almost any situation where districts aren't artificially drawn to compensate form that fact, which even most proposals to use blind algorithms for districting wouldn't do. Now, in the case of Alabama, it's absolutely the case that the Congressional districts are the result of a partisan gerrymander, but simply the fact that a party can lose a statewide vote while winning in the vast majority of districts doesn't prove that; the way democratic voters are often hyperconcentrated in urban centers makes that quite plausible, especially for a Republican statewide loss, without gerrymandering. Which is why we need to eliminate FPTP for House elections, not just limit the ability to.deliberately distort districts.