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Cards Against Humanity Launches a Super Pac to Match Elon Musk's Super Pac
- jqpabc123 2y agoThere is really any mystery as to why half the voters don't vote? Unless you live in one of the half dozen "swing states", your vote is just a symbolic gesture with little chance of impacting the overall outcome.
- JellyBeanThief 2y agoAll that means is that we don't have a one-person one-vote system. Some people's votes matter more than others. What we have is a case of civil inequality. If we build a system where everyone's votes count the same (radical and extreme idea, I know), then each person will have the same fundamental incentive to vote.
- Zigurd 2y agoDirect election of the US president would be an improvement. Expanding the House of Representatives as originally formulated, or similarly, would help. Making the Senate reflect the population better by dividing populous states, and/or a statehood option for Puerto Rico and DC would help. Striking down gerrymanders would help. More contested down-ballot races would help. No excuse for the parties to not have strong organization and candidate recruitment at that level. No changes to laws needed for this.
- renewiltord 2y agoWell, it's a federation of states so you can't quite do that unless you abandon that conceit.
- kibwen 2y agoNo, devolving powers to the states is what makes it a federation. Having a state-representative legislative chamber makes it a federation. Electing a federal president via popular vote does not indicate defederation any more than the existence of the House of Representatives does.
- wakawaka28 2y agoElecting a president via popular vote would give populous states disproportionate influence over the country compared to other states. That is important because the president could do obnoxious things against the best interest of any particular state, especially ones with less influence. The stuff happening to your home state is way more relevant to your life than your political party or special interests.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoArbitrary lines on maps are arbitrary. North & South Dakota are far more similar than north and south California.
- wakawaka28 2y agoThe lines on maps are not arbitrary. People decided them by choice and in some cases by force. You might feel no particular attachment to your state, but if another state decided that your state should be exploited in some way, your primary source of support would be your neighbors within those so-called arbitrary lines.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoI used North and South Dakota for a reason. The only reason they were split was to hijack the Senate.
- wakawaka28 2y agoThat is misleading. There was no state of Dakota. The two became states at the same time. Even Wikipedia says this: >Regionalist tensions between the northern and the southern parts of the territory were present since the beginning. So, the split was not likely about senate seats. It was about people getting along within each state.
- Zigurd 2y ago
- zarathustreal 2y ago> we don’t have a one-person one-vote system. Correct, and that’s a good thing! Intelligence is not evenly distributed among individuals, and susceptibility to psyops and propaganda is a huge issue. The plain truth of the matter is that a majority of people simply aren’t qualified to weigh in on national issues. True democracy works when you’ve got a small group of like-minded individuals of roughly equal stature (13 original colonies) but not when you’ve got an entire empire (Roman republic)
- kej 2y agoThere is more on your ballot than the president, you know.
- jqpabc123 2y agoUnless you happen to live in a swing area, the results for most other races conform to well known and even pre-determined trends. There are very few such areas. Voters, candidates and the political parties know this.
- gsk22 2y agoThe presidency is not the only election on the ballot. And if you ask people who don't vote why not, very few of them are going to mention the electoral college. I would wager most people who don't vote couldn't even explain what the electoral college is.
- blacksmith_tb 2y agoProbably they couldn't explain it, but many of them will have taken to heart the idea that "my vote doesn't matter". Which is especially sad, since like you say there are potentially all kinds of local and regional races and ballot measures their vote could in fact have impacted.
- atmavatar 2y agoIn many districts, your vote for US House and Senate seats largely doesn't matter, either. For many people, those are the only elections they are thinking about when it comes to November. Senate seats are elected state-wide, so they largely go the same way as the presidential vote. If you're in a deep-red or deep-blue state (i.e., nearly all of them), your individual vote isn't going to make a difference. House seats are district-specific, but: a) the re-election rate of incumbents is over 90% b) districts are often drawn to lock-in control for a specific party State senate and house seats are often no better. However, much to the credit of the sibling response, there are all kinds of local and regional races as well as ballot initiatives that are important.
- gsk22 2y agoSetting aside gerrymandering (which is a huge issue), the reelection rate doesn't tell the whole story. By what margin are House candidates typically winning? I'm sure there are plenty of landslides, but also lots of districts that were decided by a few percent -- and those who don't vote could be a deciding factor in those races if they chose to vote. Or if we analyze this from an opportunity cost perspective, IMO voting is always the right choice. Maybe there's an 80% chance your vote "doesn't matter", but the cost is only 15 minutes of your time every 2 years. Isn't the 20% worth the risk? (OK, I am lucky enough to live in a state where voting lines are short. I understand it takes more than 15 mins for some people.)
- alecco 2y agoIt's interesting how Occupy Wall Street was ridiculed by the press. I think they were onto something even though I don't agree with almost everything else they also believed in.
- throwaway14356 2y agoThe problem is brainwashing. The formula is this: YOU learn all by yourself what all electable candidates say they want to do. YOU figure out all by yourself which ones LIE. One lie is enough, if they do it they keep doing it. And then YOU chose which election program you want to vote for. Ideally you chose what is best for the country but this is rather challenging for people. We can forgive them for being stuck thinking only of themselves. Why would it be perfectly obvious if one is ordering food but not for elections??? Food might taste bad and you might get food poisoning. A bad choice doesn't mean years of suffering. Does one not look at the menu card? Or do you ask your mum what to order? Do you roam around the restaurant looking what other people are eating? Do you order what CNN is screaming at you? If people scream at you from all directions that you should order the snails in garlic butter, does that mean you will never have to look at the menu the rest of your life? You can just eat snails every day, everyone else is eating snails every day???? Why are you not eating snails?? It is the nr 1 most sold food! Don't you want snails to be the nr 1 food? Then the restaurant switches to the cheapest worse possible snails because people will order it anyway because other people will order it. Is this a display of good taste? I hate apple but I buy iphone because they are good enough for what I need. I might get an android phone some day. They are good enough too. I did actually look. With elections no one is looking. People have no idea. Non of them! There is not one journalist who knows anything. For each million voters one or two have watched a single video from a candidate other than the top 2. A video by a 5 year old on tiktok gets more attention online than the entire list of election programs. I could see logic in getting advice from an expert on something or from your mum but if they know absolutely nothing about the topic?!?! The voter is therefore brainwashed into irrelevance, she won't influence elections in any way.
- addandsubtract 2y ago>There is not one journalist who knows anything. This seems like a brazenly false statement. Also genuinely worrying, as you're discrediting all journalists based on... your feelings? Something that has been pushed for over the last 8 years by one party under the guise of labels such as "fake news" and "mainstream media". Maybe you meant to say "everything", but parroting anti-news propaganda is only making everyone less informed and only benefits the side that isn't campaigning in good faith.
- rmbyrro 2y ago[flagged]
- jongjong 2y ago[flagged]
- orwin 2y agoOr you know, you can google it and find it's a play on word with "crimes against humanity" because a lot of the combination result on really dark or politically incorrect humor.
- unsnap_biceps 2y agoI think you're reading way too much into a satirical card game dude...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- marssaxman 2y agoYou are reading way too much into the tongue-in-cheek name of a satirical card game.
- mikestew 2y agoYou might want to go look it up before making a bunch of assumptions based only on the name. Sure, you might feel a bit silly after, but hopefully you can have a good laugh over it.
- piva00 2y agoGosh, you have gone pretty far down into the kool-aid. Cards Against Humanity is a card game, it was a Kickstarter in 2011. The name is a joke with "crimes against humanity", it's a politically incorrect game where you complete sentences from a card with the sentences/words you have in the cards on your hand. You've created a whole 5 paragraphs strawman out of the name of a game... Please, reconsider the stuff you read, you're deeply chronically online. And I don't mean this to put you down, it's just that the vicious way you went into a tirade against a creation of your own mind is concerning.
- orwin 2y agoI don't really care about US elections in general, but your rules are broken. Here are interesting bits: How do you know who didn’t vote? We formed a Super PAC and bought the personal voting records of every American citizen from a data broker we found on the internet. It’s pretty fucked up. How do you know who’s “blue leaning”? We got your partisan lean from the same data broker who sold us your voting history. You wouldn’t believe how easy it was for us to get this stuff. So fucked up! This rules. Can I give you more than $7.99? If you agree with us that this is a pretty good idea, you can donate as much as you want during checkout for your 2024 Election Pack. Literally no limit, because we’re a Super PAC. This is the kind of crazy shit that happens when the Supreme Court rules that “money is speech” and corporations can spend unlimited amounts of cash influencing elections. If you want to make a very large donation, please email us and we'll work it out.
- miki123211 2y ago> bought the personal voting records of every American citizen from a data broker we found on the internet The way they phrase this, it sounds like they physically bought a file containing these records, not e.g. access to some API that lets them send targeted messages. If that is the case and that file can be bought so easily, I'm surprised some version of it hasn't leaked on the internet yet. An email address, phone number, address and political leaning for every voting American? That would be the breach to end all breaches, probably both figuratively and literally.
- cssanchez 2y agoI didn't work with election data but I dealt with Data brokers and they worked both ways. They offered API as a service access or a single bulk download for special pricing. I was surprised how relatively cheap it was considering all the data they offered.
- jedberg 2y agoIt seems some people are surprised that they were able to buy data on who voted and how they lean. I wasn't surprised because I worked on a campaign before. It's ridiculous how much information you can get about voters for not a lot of money. You can get their phone number and email address that they provided with their voter registration, and the do not call list does not even apply (nor the do not spam list). You can call and email with reckless abandon. It's kinda crazy how basically every law meant to protect people from spam has a special carve out for political campaigns.
- quickthrowman 2y agoSome political campaigns are relentless. I was able to get a local city council candidate’s campaign to stop calling me but I had to threaten to run against their candidate in the next election. Haven’t heard from them since, YMMV.
- nonameiguess 2y agoSure, and like other targeted ad buyers being sold bullshit, you simply take it for granted that the data you get is accurate. Meanwhile, looking through my SMS history, I have 8 texts from this week addressed to either my grandmother, who is 86 and recovering from a stroke, or her last boyfriend, who is dead, telling me about GOP candidates in Nevada. I have never lived in Nevada. She no longer lives in Nevada. He no longer lives at all. I haven't voted since 2004. If you're just going to go by my "mood affiliation" or cultural leanings or whatever, voter or not, I'm sure as shit not a Republican. Thankfully, Nikki Haley finally stopped bugging me when she dropped out.
- tmpz22 2y ago> It's kinda crazy how basically every law meant to protect people from spam has a special carve out for political campaigns. Electioneering is a golden goose of money. There are billions in Ad spend every election cycle and everybody is in on it - Facebook, Google, Twilio, Sendgrid, the telecoms, phone banks and call centers, nonprofits, for profits. Nobody wants the money to stop because is pure margin what they charge the campaigns for.
- madmod 2y agoCan someone explain what law forces Musk to pay them $47 for everyone that fills out a form?
- jedberg 2y agoMusk is running a similar program for people in swing states, paying them $47 to refer potential Trump voters. If he doesn't pay, or pays selectively, he's violating various campaign finance laws.
- api 2y agoIsn’t it flat illegal to pay people to vote? Otherwise Trump or Harris could just… directly bribe people to vote for them through a cutout.
- orwin 2y agoIt's not if its a superPAC, apparently.
- yul__bel 2y agoThat seems to be the work around.
- drcross 2y agoHe's not paying people to vote. He's paying people to register to vote.
- ryandvm 2y agoI believe that too is illegal. Isn't he just paying them to "sign" a petition that they'd vote to support the 1st and 2nd amendments?
- gdhkgdhkvff 2y agoHe’s paying a person $47 for every registered swing state voter that that person refers to the SuperPAC and that follows through on signing a petition to support first and second amendment rights. It appears to be lawyered loopholes around paying people to register to vote directly. Which is illegal as you mentioned. Sure plenty of people will sign it for the money and then forget about it, but some sliver of people that sign will feel some sliver of obligation to vote for the candidate that the petition obviously wants them to vote for. A sliver here and there could be enough to turn this currently close election.
- dullcrisp 2y agoCouldn’t they pay out after the election to anyone who leans left and voted or anyone who leans right and didn’t vote? Just an idea I guess.
- rsynnott 2y agoThey’re not technically paying for votes. That’s illegal. They’re exploiting the same loophole as Musk to, for practical purposes, pay for votes.
- jongjong 2y ago[flagged]
- mrala 2y agoThink you might be projecting just a little?
- yul__bel 2y agoNot a lot of people just how much voter data is available out there and how easy it is to check if someone voted and their party affiliation. On a side note, if folks are interested in US politics humor/election party card games, I'd also check out democrazy.com