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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: January 15th, 2024

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  • “Hexbear has had a track record of antisocial users who will do anything to get offended at anyone, for any reason.” --Hexbear front page

    OK, that explains a lot.

    I left out abolishing the Electoral College because that would require a Constitutional amendment, which is much more difficult to do than get a bill through Congress, or a state bill through state congress, which is all those other solutions would require. Amending the Constitution is also a possible solution for any political problem in the United States, I thought it went without saying.





  • Nice of you to acknowledge that I’m mostly being insulted and dunked on, but if that was going to stop me from commenting why would I even use Lemmy, or any social media?

    Voting in Cuba is pointless for national elections. It’s a one-party state so each candidate runs unopposed in their district. One-party states are bad. There is nothing the U.S. can learn from voting in Cuba, it is one of the least democratic countries in Latin America.

    Voter turnout has been 88% or better in Australia since 1925. Why didn’t you list them as an example? Voter turnout is good there because voters are fined a few hundred dollars for not voting. They have a mandatory voting law. That could increase voter turnout in the United States, but if it didn’t come with rules that employers must give their employees time to vote, and states must have fair standards for registering to vote, then it would just be fining poor people for being poor.

    Other things the United States could do to increase voter turnout: make Election Day on the weekend instead of a Tuesday, which was selected so farmers traveling by horse and buggy could get to the polls. We don’t have that many farmers anymore, much less ones that travel by horse and buggy. That’s really the only rule at the federal level on how states run elections, other rules to increase voter turnout would be implemented by individual states. Early voting, mail-in voting, the ability to register to vote when you’re interacting with a state office anyway, like when you get a driver’s license, or pay your taxes. Letting people vote after they’ve served their prison sentence. Letting people vote while serving their prison sentence. &c.






  • First-past-the-post voting incentivizes voting against the candidate you don’t want to win by voting for the candidate most likely to beat him. So scaremongering about the other candidate is a strategy often used to great effect. Trump used scaremongering against Hillary in 2016. Trump’s using scaremongering against Biden now. George H.W. Bush famously used scaremongering about crime to win.

    Also their platforms are not the same. Trump has Project 2025.


  • Not really.

    If you’re not in a swing state then you could throw your support behind your preferred third-party candidate, or write in the name of literally any person you can think of who would cut off aid to Israel.

    But not voting just says you’re OK with whomever the other voters pick for president. It says you don’t see a meaningful difference between Biden and Trump. And if you honestly don’t, OK, you’re allowed to think that. But in November, unless one of them dies, either Biden is going to win the election, or Trump is. The want to discourage people from voting against them. If you’re not voting you’re neutral so they don’t care as much.