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The whole fight behind voting really is political. It helps the left and it hurts the right. It’s like gerrymandering. Sure, people have the right to vote and s

The whole fight behind voting really is political. It helps the left and it hurts the right. It’s like gerrymandering. Sure, people have the right to vote and should be able to, but that’s an intellectually dishonest way of representing changes in voting.

Okkef 6y ago
Of course the fight behind voting is political! But that does not mean anything is allowed in politics. It's about time Trump was seriously challenged on his lies.
- pas 6y ago
  As long as the plurality of voters are buying shit someone is going to sell it. The GOP primary had every kinds of people and Trump won because he was the most blatant. So there's that.
kmonsen 6y ago
This is specifically true in the US at this moment, but it does not need to be so. The reason for this is that the GOP has less popular support (all polling on policy issues they are doing badly), but the voters they have are very dedicated and will go to much greater lengths to vote. Also votes are suppressed in specific areas which does not good in a democracy. People should be able to choose their leaders, it should not be leaders are able to choose their voters. What I mean to say is that having good voting access should not be a political issue in a democracy.
dmurray 6y ago
This is true about voting rights (enfranchising more voters is almost always good for the left), but gerrymandering in the US is a cross-party issue. There are plenty of examples of what the Supreme Court called "affirmative racial gerrymandering" that carve out districts to ensure more Democratic candidates get elected. Examples start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States#Affirmative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_S...
- sagichmal 6y ago
  > gerrymandering in the US is a cross-party issue. Not in the last ca. 20-30 years, it certainly isn't.
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  It’s a cross-party issue in the sense that Democrat Eric Holder, former US Attorney General, has been raising money for candidates who support citizen redistributing through the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. You don’t have to be a Democratic Party candidate to be a part. I know there are also Republicans who care about this issue, but I don’t know of a better plan to fix it than this one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Redistricting_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Redistrict... https://democraticredistricting.com/chairman/ https://democraticredistricting.com/chairman/
- millstone 6y ago
  This is the worst kind of both-side-ism. Compare the redistricting procedures of blue states like CA or NY, to red states like TX. If anything Democrats have been way too timid about gerrymandering and have lost votes because of it.
  - cafard 6y ago
    I would look at the history of Maryland's 8th Congressional District before I asserted that the Democrats have been timid.
LordFast 6y ago
How does it help the left and hurt the right? Serious question.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zaroth 6y ago
  I’ll get downvoting for attempting to answer but,... why would someone think this helps the left and hurts the right? Ballot harvesting is generally agreed (by both political parties) to have been a major factor in the last congressional elections in CA for example. Personally I think it is a very strange dynamic to have 200-300 political operatives canvassing specific addresses in a district to deliver provisional ballots, assist a very targeted set of people in helping to fill out those ballets, and then driving those filled out ballots to the polling station on Election Day. > Ada Briceño, chair of the Democratic Party of Orange County, said her staff and volunteers have collected mail-in ballots for GOP candidates and turned them in along with Democratic and independent ballots. > Briceño said her favorite story about ballot collection came in 2018, after she knocked on the door of a Latino man in his 70s. Her told her he’d never voted because he’d been intimidated by the ballot and process. Briceño said she spent time walking him through how it worked and discussing the candidates with him. By the end of their talk, she said the man was crying because he’d just finished voting for the first time in his life. [1] We don’t allow campaigning within a certain distance of a polling place. But the chair of the Democratic Party can knock on a man’s door with a provisional ballot, discuss the candidates, and help him vote? Republican campaigns take the position that their voters would never hand over a completed ballot or accept “help” in filling one out. > Fred Whitaker, chair of the Republican Party of Orange County, said they spent money on a ballot harvesting program in 2018 but saw almost no results. He said, “Republicans will basically tell you, ‘You’re not prying my ballot from my hand.’” The SF Chronicle wrote a piece on the last CA election where Democrats gained more seats then they’ve ever won before in CA; > California Democrats took advantage of seemingly minor changes in a 2016 law to score their stunningly successful midterm election results, providing a target for GOP unhappiness that is tinged with a bit of admiration. [2] > ...They felt the hit on Nov. 6 — and in the days after, as late-arriving Democratic votes were tabulated and one Republican candidate after another saw leads shrink and then evaporate. This week, a seventh GOP-held congressional seat flipped to the Democrats, leaving Republicans controlling a mere seven of California’s 53 House districts. In Orange County alone, where every House seat went Democratic, “the number of Election Day vote-by-mail dropoffs was unprecedented — over 250,000,” Fred Whitaker, chairman of the county Republican Party, said in a note to supporters. “This is a direct result of ballot harvesting allowed under California law for the first time. That directly caused the switch from being ahead on election night to losing two weeks later.” [1] https://www.ocregister.com/what-is-ballot-harvesting-and-how-is-it-affecting-southern-california-elections https://www.ocregister.com/what-is-ballot-harvesting-and-how... [2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-s-late-votes-broke-big-for-13432727.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-s-la...
twalla 6y ago
I'd argue that if increasing turnout to be more representative of the population as a whole hurts your party then there's something fundamentally flawed with what your party is offering to the populace.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  Something to think about: the electoral college is halfway more representative of people who can't vote (minors, non-citizens) because, in a sense, the elector represents them, and their neighbors who did vote probably have similar political views.
  - mattnewton 6y ago
    How nice of my neighbors to vote for others. Increased voter turnout removes the “probably” though by directly sampling. And then you don’t need anachronisms like the electoral college.
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      My point was about representing people who can't vote. Direct sampling ignores them entirely.
      - kmonsen 6y ago
        But we don’t want elections to be decided by people who are not allowed to vote. If we wanted those people to vote we would simply let them instead of some weird indirect system.
  - millstone 6y ago
    The electors are completely irrelevant. They 100% vote for whatever candidate they are bound to. The result is indistinguishable from a direct vote. The only relevant fact about the electoral college is the number of electors assigned to each state.
    - 6y ago
chrischen 6y ago
Well currently the GOP is overrepresented due in part to states' rights (states have more weight than people do, so less populous states have overrepresentation in the form of the Senate). Same goes for popular elections vs electoral college. This is skewed towards the GOP which is why Trump won despite losing the popular election. Call it what you want (balance of power, "minority rights", or whatever), but some people's votes were just counted as less of a vote. I mean you could apply your argument to defend dictators or monarchs. Democracy of course will of course be hurtful to Maduro (of Venezuela) but helpful to his opponents. That's an odd way to frame something that simply shouldn't necessarily have been in the first place. It's not as if God made the world evenly divided between Left and Right. It's a constantly shifting line between how Left and how Right and sometimes one side is simply more wrong than the other. I mean if we decided that somehow Left and Right should always be evenly power balanced we wouldn't have such Leftist policies such as universal suffrage or the abolition of slavery.
mattnewton 6y ago
Are we a democracy or is this some kind of team sport calvinball? The purpose of government is to serve the citizenry. If increased voting among the citizenry hurts your party there is something wrong with your party’s message or governing performance.
ykevinator 6y ago
so what? All policies hurt and help groups, more voting is good, less voting is bad
pas 6y ago
It is, but it seems that it's a strange made up polarization: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-is-no-evidence-that-voting-by-mail-gives-one-party-an-advantage/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-is-no-evidence-th...

Okkef 6y ago

Of course the fight behind voting is political! But that does not mean anything is allowed in politics. It's about time Trump was seriously challenged on his lies.

pas 6y ago
As long as the plurality of voters are buying shit someone is going to sell it. The GOP primary had every kinds of people and Trump won because he was the most blatant. So there's that.

kmonsen 6y ago

This is specifically true in the US at this moment, but it does not need to be so. The reason for this is that the GOP has less popular support (all polling on policy issues they are doing badly), but the voters they have are very dedicated and will go to much greater lengths to vote. Also votes are suppressed in specific areas which does not good in a democracy. People should be able to choose their leaders, it should not be leaders are able to choose their voters. What I mean to say is that having good voting access should not be a political issue in a democracy.

dmurray 6y ago

This is true about voting rights (enfranchising more voters is almost always good for the left), but gerrymandering in the US is a cross-party issue. There are plenty of examples of what the Supreme Court called "affirmative racial gerrymandering" that carve out districts to ensure more Democratic candidates get elected. Examples start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States#Affirmative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_S...

sagichmal 6y ago
> gerrymandering in the US is a cross-party issue. Not in the last ca. 20-30 years, it certainly isn't.
aspenmayer 6y ago
It’s a cross-party issue in the sense that Democrat Eric Holder, former US Attorney General, has been raising money for candidates who support citizen redistributing through the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. You don’t have to be a Democratic Party candidate to be a part. I know there are also Republicans who care about this issue, but I don’t know of a better plan to fix it than this one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Redistricting_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Redistrict... https://democraticredistricting.com/chairman/ https://democraticredistricting.com/chairman/
millstone 6y ago
This is the worst kind of both-side-ism. Compare the redistricting procedures of blue states like CA or NY, to red states like TX. If anything Democrats have been way too timid about gerrymandering and have lost votes because of it.
- cafard 6y ago
  I would look at the history of Maryland's 8th Congressional District before I asserted that the Democrats have been timid.

LordFast 6y ago

How does it help the left and hurt the right? Serious question.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zaroth 6y ago
I’ll get downvoting for attempting to answer but,... why would someone think this helps the left and hurts the right? Ballot harvesting is generally agreed (by both political parties) to have been a major factor in the last congressional elections in CA for example. Personally I think it is a very strange dynamic to have 200-300 political operatives canvassing specific addresses in a district to deliver provisional ballots, assist a very targeted set of people in helping to fill out those ballets, and then driving those filled out ballots to the polling station on Election Day. > Ada Briceño, chair of the Democratic Party of Orange County, said her staff and volunteers have collected mail-in ballots for GOP candidates and turned them in along with Democratic and independent ballots. > Briceño said her favorite story about ballot collection came in 2018, after she knocked on the door of a Latino man in his 70s. Her told her he’d never voted because he’d been intimidated by the ballot and process. Briceño said she spent time walking him through how it worked and discussing the candidates with him. By the end of their talk, she said the man was crying because he’d just finished voting for the first time in his life. [1] We don’t allow campaigning within a certain distance of a polling place. But the chair of the Democratic Party can knock on a man’s door with a provisional ballot, discuss the candidates, and help him vote? Republican campaigns take the position that their voters would never hand over a completed ballot or accept “help” in filling one out. > Fred Whitaker, chair of the Republican Party of Orange County, said they spent money on a ballot harvesting program in 2018 but saw almost no results. He said, “Republicans will basically tell you, ‘You’re not prying my ballot from my hand.’” The SF Chronicle wrote a piece on the last CA election where Democrats gained more seats then they’ve ever won before in CA; > California Democrats took advantage of seemingly minor changes in a 2016 law to score their stunningly successful midterm election results, providing a target for GOP unhappiness that is tinged with a bit of admiration. [2] > ...They felt the hit on Nov. 6 — and in the days after, as late-arriving Democratic votes were tabulated and one Republican candidate after another saw leads shrink and then evaporate. This week, a seventh GOP-held congressional seat flipped to the Democrats, leaving Republicans controlling a mere seven of California’s 53 House districts. In Orange County alone, where every House seat went Democratic, “the number of Election Day vote-by-mail dropoffs was unprecedented — over 250,000,” Fred Whitaker, chairman of the county Republican Party, said in a note to supporters. “This is a direct result of ballot harvesting allowed under California law for the first time. That directly caused the switch from being ahead on election night to losing two weeks later.” [1] https://www.ocregister.com/what-is-ballot-harvesting-and-how-is-it-affecting-southern-california-elections https://www.ocregister.com/what-is-ballot-harvesting-and-how... [2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-s-late-votes-broke-big-for-13432727.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-s-la...

twalla 6y ago

I'd argue that if increasing turnout to be more representative of the population as a whole hurts your party then there's something fundamentally flawed with what your party is offering to the populace.

dehrmann 6y ago
Something to think about: the electoral college is halfway more representative of people who can't vote (minors, non-citizens) because, in a sense, the elector represents them, and their neighbors who did vote probably have similar political views.
- mattnewton 6y ago
  How nice of my neighbors to vote for others. Increased voter turnout removes the “probably” though by directly sampling. And then you don’t need anachronisms like the electoral college.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    My point was about representing people who can't vote. Direct sampling ignores them entirely.
    - kmonsen 6y ago
      But we don’t want elections to be decided by people who are not allowed to vote. If we wanted those people to vote we would simply let them instead of some weird indirect system.
- millstone 6y ago
  The electors are completely irrelevant. They 100% vote for whatever candidate they are bound to. The result is indistinguishable from a direct vote. The only relevant fact about the electoral college is the number of electors assigned to each state.
  - 6y ago

chrischen 6y ago

Well currently the GOP is overrepresented due in part to states' rights (states have more weight than people do, so less populous states have overrepresentation in the form of the Senate). Same goes for popular elections vs electoral college. This is skewed towards the GOP which is why Trump won despite losing the popular election. Call it what you want (balance of power, "minority rights", or whatever), but some people's votes were just counted as less of a vote. I mean you could apply your argument to defend dictators or monarchs. Democracy of course will of course be hurtful to Maduro (of Venezuela) but helpful to his opponents. That's an odd way to frame something that simply shouldn't necessarily have been in the first place. It's not as if God made the world evenly divided between Left and Right. It's a constantly shifting line between how Left and how Right and sometimes one side is simply more wrong than the other. I mean if we decided that somehow Left and Right should always be evenly power balanced we wouldn't have such Leftist policies such as universal suffrage or the abolition of slavery.

mattnewton 6y ago

Are we a democracy or is this some kind of team sport calvinball? The purpose of government is to serve the citizenry. If increased voting among the citizenry hurts your party there is something wrong with your party’s message or governing performance.

ykevinator 6y ago

so what? All policies hurt and help groups, more voting is good, less voting is bad

pas 6y ago

It is, but it seems that it's a strange made up polarization: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-is-no-evidence-that-voting-by-mail-gives-one-party-an-advantage/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-is-no-evidence-th...