4 ms·

What is the reality on the ground though? For instance: "Texas ranks number 10 overall when it comes to engagement among African American voters, including be

by mrkstu 5y ago

What is the reality on the ground though? For instance: "Texas ranks number 10 overall when it comes to engagement among African American voters, including being first overall in proportional representation of blacks in state legislature and national party conventions." https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/african-americans-in-texas-are-among-the-most-political-engaged-in-the-us-report-finds https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/african-americans-in-texas-...

adventured 5y ago
> What is the reality on the ground though? The reality on the ground is that all Western European nations have stricter voting laws / requirements than the US does and almost nobody on HN will dare to talk about that fact because it's inconvenient to the propaganda game. It's the sick joke of eg Major League Baseball moving the All-Star game from Georgia to protest new voting laws, shifting it to Colorado which already had similar voting laws to those that Georgia wanted to implement. It's all bullshit propaganda. The same is true of immigration restrictions. You're not supposed to talk about how strict most other affluent nations are when it comes to who they let into their countries to become citizens. Can you imagine the global uproar if the US began a cultural genocide program against Muslims like Denmark is aggressively doing? Forcibly taking children away from their parents to be re-educated via nationalist propaganda and forced value systems. How about something less sinister - a national ban on full face veils like France, with punishment by forced re-education. The US would be called draconian, Islamophobic and racist for such treatment. Meanwhile over there's Macron one step away from calling for a cultural crusade. When the US does it, it's bad. When everybody else does it, it's logical and good and progressive.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > all Western European nations have stricter voting laws / requirements than the US does The UK* has never required voting ID for elections, and it is possible to walk into a local polling station and be given a ballot paper after just stating your name and address. Sadly that may no longer be the case for future elections, because the UK Conservative party has decided to introduce a voter ID requirement, modelled on the success that the Republicans have had with it at decreasing turnout especially among the poor and minorities. The fact that other Western European nations have voter ID laws is likely because they generally have mandatory national ID cards already, and it makes to use those to record who voted (how many times). If Republicans were first pushing for mandatory state ID, then later requiring those IDs at polling time would not be seen as so suspicious. > The same is true of immigration restrictions. I'm sure it's possible to find examples of policies in some European countries which are worse than the equivalent US policy, but to provide some factual comparison for how welcoming the US is of (poor) immigrants, let me point out that Sweden hosts 8.52 refugees per 1,000 people while the US hosts 0.92, ranking 13th and 68th respectively on the global league table for this.[0] But you're right, the US would receive criticism for adopting more bigoted policies, just as France was condemned for its bigoted face veil policy.[1] If you live in the US, it shouldn't be surprising that you hear (and are more sensitivity to) criticism of the US more than criticism of countries like France. * Technically voter ID was trialled in some English constituencies recently, and it has long been standard in Northern Ireland, so perhaps "Scotland" is a better example of a "Western European nation" here. On the other hand, not every US state requires voter ID, so I hope it's still fair for me to say "the US does" require it. [0] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Migration/Refugee-population-by-country-or-territory-of-asylum/Per-capita https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Migra... [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-niqab-ban-burqa-human-rights-united-nations-islam-veil-a8599131.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-niqab...
  - mbg721 5y ago
    So the first person in line to mumble "Johnson, Boris, 10 Downing St." gets his ballot? That can't be true in practice.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      I think the poll worker would be entitled to perform a citizens arrest at that point, unless "the first person in line to mumble" that was also wearing a very good disguise.
      - mbg721 5y ago
        So even without a physical ID document, the poll workers have at least the ability (if not the duty) to remedy a fraudulent vote attempt. The latest US "voting rights" push is to have as few voters as possible physically enter a polling place. Americans aren't grumbling about ID because they hate minorities; they're grumbling because their dead relatives voting in Chicago have been a running joke for 60 years.
  - boba-men 5y ago
    You pointing out edge cases isn't a very convincing argument against Europe as a whole. In general, Europe has more strict voting ID laws (fact). In general, Europe has more restricted immigration laws (fact). I mean in the US the debate isn't even about who to let in, rather if we should even have a border and allow people to come in as they please. In general, Europe is more racist. When Orlando Patterson, a renowned race-baiter in the US, surveyed the evidence he found that America was less racist than any other white-majority country by far. Americans are more open than Europeans to living next to a neighbor of a difference race. And we have sharply rising level of intermarriages.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      I think you are making some reasonable points here, even though I don't agree with all of them. You're right that I was cherry-picking the example of the UK (just as the comment I responded to was cherry-picking examples of French and Danish policies) but I think I was justified in doing so since the other comment said "all Western European nations". Perhaps the difference between "all" and "nearly all" is not worth quibbling over, but my cherry-picked example does show that it's perfectly possible for a country to have legitimate elections without voter ID, which I think is relevant here. Your comment would probably be more convincing if you provided some citations for your claims, though. The EU average for refugee population, on the link I gave last time, is 2.3 per 1,000 people and the European average is 2.01 per, which are both twice as much as the US. I suppose it's possible that Europe is more welcoming of refugees than other immigrants, but I think your second "fact" is not self-evidently true. The only policy you might have in mind is that EU states can, in some circumstances, expel citizens from other states, despite freedom of movement[0] and the Schengen system, which doesn't have an equivalent in the US as far as I know. Of all your claims, though, the one that I think most needs to be supported is the idea that not having a border is a mainstream position. I don't think you're saying that every inch of America's land and sea borders need to have an impenetrable physical barrier to even qualify as a border at all, so can you point to an example of an official mainstream party policy saying that there should be no limits on who can enter the country? I'm sure some people on Twitter have suggested that the US shouldn't have a border, but I don't think it has more political support as a policy than, for example, the "shoot to kill" policy suggested by Georgia state Rep. John Yates (R).[1] [0] https://ukandeu.ac.uk/myth-busting-free-movement/ https://ukandeu.ac.uk/myth-busting-free-movement/ [1] https://www.laprogressive.com/georgia-lawmaker-national-guard-shoot-kill-border-crossers/ https://www.laprogressive.com/georgia-lawmaker-national-guar...
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Just because they've been trying doesn't mean they've been successful yet. But just pile up more voting restrictions and let's see what happens...its not like Texas has very high voter engagement over all (which is on par with other poor southern states and...Hawaii).
- mrkstu 5y ago
  And yet black Texans are in the top 10...
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Of black voter engagement (via some metric). Overall they are in the bottom 10 of voter engagement. I guess it should be ok to be compared to Mississippi.
dragonwriter 5y ago
Yeah, that's the problem that the new voting restrictions aim to fix. Likely also the redistricting; both because the Voting Rights Act, by which the federal government prevented Texas (among other states) from wholesale disenfranchisement, is out of the way.

by mrkstu 5y ago

adventured 5y ago

> What is the reality on the ground though? The reality on the ground is that all Western European nations have stricter voting laws / requirements than the US does and almost nobody on HN will dare to talk about that fact because it's inconvenient to the propaganda game. It's the sick joke of eg Major League Baseball moving the All-Star game from Georgia to protest new voting laws, shifting it to Colorado which already had similar voting laws to those that Georgia wanted to implement. It's all bullshit propaganda. The same is true of immigration restrictions. You're not supposed to talk about how strict most other affluent nations are when it comes to who they let into their countries to become citizens. Can you imagine the global uproar if the US began a cultural genocide program against Muslims like Denmark is aggressively doing? Forcibly taking children away from their parents to be re-educated via nationalist propaganda and forced value systems. How about something less sinister - a national ban on full face veils like France, with punishment by forced re-education. The US would be called draconian, Islamophobic and racist for such treatment. Meanwhile over there's Macron one step away from calling for a cultural crusade. When the US does it, it's bad. When everybody else does it, it's logical and good and progressive.

dane-pgp 5y ago
> all Western European nations have stricter voting laws / requirements than the US does The UK* has never required voting ID for elections, and it is possible to walk into a local polling station and be given a ballot paper after just stating your name and address. Sadly that may no longer be the case for future elections, because the UK Conservative party has decided to introduce a voter ID requirement, modelled on the success that the Republicans have had with it at decreasing turnout especially among the poor and minorities. The fact that other Western European nations have voter ID laws is likely because they generally have mandatory national ID cards already, and it makes to use those to record who voted (how many times). If Republicans were first pushing for mandatory state ID, then later requiring those IDs at polling time would not be seen as so suspicious. > The same is true of immigration restrictions. I'm sure it's possible to find examples of policies in some European countries which are worse than the equivalent US policy, but to provide some factual comparison for how welcoming the US is of (poor) immigrants, let me point out that Sweden hosts 8.52 refugees per 1,000 people while the US hosts 0.92, ranking 13th and 68th respectively on the global league table for this.[0] But you're right, the US would receive criticism for adopting more bigoted policies, just as France was condemned for its bigoted face veil policy.[1] If you live in the US, it shouldn't be surprising that you hear (and are more sensitivity to) criticism of the US more than criticism of countries like France. * Technically voter ID was trialled in some English constituencies recently, and it has long been standard in Northern Ireland, so perhaps "Scotland" is a better example of a "Western European nation" here. On the other hand, not every US state requires voter ID, so I hope it's still fair for me to say "the US does" require it. [0] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Migration/Refugee-population-by-country-or-territory-of-asylum/Per-capita https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Migra... [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-niqab-ban-burqa-human-rights-united-nations-islam-veil-a8599131.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-niqab...
- mbg721 5y ago
  So the first person in line to mumble "Johnson, Boris, 10 Downing St." gets his ballot? That can't be true in practice.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    I think the poll worker would be entitled to perform a citizens arrest at that point, unless "the first person in line to mumble" that was also wearing a very good disguise.
    - mbg721 5y ago
      So even without a physical ID document, the poll workers have at least the ability (if not the duty) to remedy a fraudulent vote attempt. The latest US "voting rights" push is to have as few voters as possible physically enter a polling place. Americans aren't grumbling about ID because they hate minorities; they're grumbling because their dead relatives voting in Chicago have been a running joke for 60 years.
- boba-men 5y ago
  You pointing out edge cases isn't a very convincing argument against Europe as a whole. In general, Europe has more strict voting ID laws (fact). In general, Europe has more restricted immigration laws (fact). I mean in the US the debate isn't even about who to let in, rather if we should even have a border and allow people to come in as they please. In general, Europe is more racist. When Orlando Patterson, a renowned race-baiter in the US, surveyed the evidence he found that America was less racist than any other white-majority country by far. Americans are more open than Europeans to living next to a neighbor of a difference race. And we have sharply rising level of intermarriages.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    I think you are making some reasonable points here, even though I don't agree with all of them. You're right that I was cherry-picking the example of the UK (just as the comment I responded to was cherry-picking examples of French and Danish policies) but I think I was justified in doing so since the other comment said "all Western European nations". Perhaps the difference between "all" and "nearly all" is not worth quibbling over, but my cherry-picked example does show that it's perfectly possible for a country to have legitimate elections without voter ID, which I think is relevant here. Your comment would probably be more convincing if you provided some citations for your claims, though. The EU average for refugee population, on the link I gave last time, is 2.3 per 1,000 people and the European average is 2.01 per, which are both twice as much as the US. I suppose it's possible that Europe is more welcoming of refugees than other immigrants, but I think your second "fact" is not self-evidently true. The only policy you might have in mind is that EU states can, in some circumstances, expel citizens from other states, despite freedom of movement[0] and the Schengen system, which doesn't have an equivalent in the US as far as I know. Of all your claims, though, the one that I think most needs to be supported is the idea that not having a border is a mainstream position. I don't think you're saying that every inch of America's land and sea borders need to have an impenetrable physical barrier to even qualify as a border at all, so can you point to an example of an official mainstream party policy saying that there should be no limits on who can enter the country? I'm sure some people on Twitter have suggested that the US shouldn't have a border, but I don't think it has more political support as a policy than, for example, the "shoot to kill" policy suggested by Georgia state Rep. John Yates (R).[1] [0] https://ukandeu.ac.uk/myth-busting-free-movement/ https://ukandeu.ac.uk/myth-busting-free-movement/ [1] https://www.laprogressive.com/georgia-lawmaker-national-guard-shoot-kill-border-crossers/ https://www.laprogressive.com/georgia-lawmaker-national-guar...

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

Just because they've been trying doesn't mean they've been successful yet. But just pile up more voting restrictions and let's see what happens...its not like Texas has very high voter engagement over all (which is on par with other poor southern states and...Hawaii).

mrkstu 5y ago
And yet black Texans are in the top 10...
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Of black voter engagement (via some metric). Overall they are in the bottom 10 of voter engagement. I guess it should be ok to be compared to Mississippi.

dragonwriter 5y ago

Yeah, that's the problem that the new voting restrictions aim to fix. Likely also the redistricting; both because the Voting Rights Act, by which the federal government prevented Texas (among other states) from wholesale disenfranchisement, is out of the way.