Virginia Makes It Easier to Vote

[Tenlo]

Well then it sounds like you need a lesson on why the U.S. has a Senate.

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L

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Yes the Counties in Blue are making laws for all the people in red. Thanks for clearing that up.

So hypothetically if there's a state with say 5 counties and 4 of them are rep with populations of 100 each and the 5th one is blue with a population of 10000 the 4 counties should get to decide shit cuz Reasons? Land can't vote

[cubby]

Hard to find articles from back then, but this one kind of summarizes it:

https://www.toledoblade.com/State/20...ee-voting.html

Here's some info about the bill itself, it was put forward in the 126th general assembly (both houses controlled by Republicans) and was sponsored by Mike Dewine (when he was a state representative), the current Republican governor of Ohio.

https://www.lsc.ohio.gov/documents/g...a/hb0003h2.htm

First of all, thank you for the links. It's rare to ask for a cite/link and get it - especially, as you pointed out, for something that far back.

I was reading through the notes from the articles, and I noticed that the GOP version that passed (and usurped the state wide amendment(?) that was coming up(issue 2), included a voter id requirement. Which is typical of the GOP and their voter suppression efforts. From the article:

Unlike Issue 2, the bill requires absentee voters to provide proof of identification when they request the ballot and when they submit it.

IIRC, the recent Virginia one does not.

[Flower Milk]

Virginia state legislature is proposing scrapping Lee-Jackson Day, a holiday celebrating 2 Confederate generals, and making election day a holiday instead to make it easier for people to vote.

Sounds great but what they should really do is do vote by mail. It makes it infinitely easier to run an election, it costs less money for the state to run an election, and produces way higher voter turnout. I've never lived in a state in my entire life that didn't have voting by mail, I've never been to a polling station once in my life, and I've never missed a single election since I turned 18. There's no reason not to vote when it takes so little time to just fill out a ballot that comes in a mail, sign it, and then mail it back, no postage required.

I don't understand how anyone can be against making it more convenient for people to vote.

[cubby]

Can't complain on making voting more accessible unless abuse becomes an issue.

Exactly. And as Trump's own Commission proved, voter fraud is not an issue.

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Virginia state legislature is proposing scrapping Lee-Jackson Day, a holiday celebrating 2 Confederate generals, and making election day a holiday instead to make it easier for people to vote.

Sounds great but what they should really do is do vote by mail. It makes it infinitely easier to run an election, it costs less money for the state to run an election, and produces way higher voter turnout. I've never lived in a state in my entire life that didn't have voting by mail, I've never been to a polling station once in my life, and I've never missed a single election since I turned 18. There's no reason not to vote when it takes so little time to just fill out a ballot that comes in a mail, sign it, and then mail it back, no postage required.

I don't understand how anyone can be against making it more convenient for people to vote.

Agreed. Voting by mail is a huge advantage. It's shocking that the GOP continues to turn it down. Just shocking!

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Virginia state legislature is proposing scrapping Lee-Jackson Day, a holiday celebrating 2 Confederate generals, and making election day a holiday instead to make it easier for people to vote.

Sounds great but what they should really do is do vote by mail. It makes it infinitely easier to run an election, it costs less money for the state to run an election, and produces way higher voter turnout. I've never lived in a state in my entire life that didn't have voting by mail, I've never been to a polling station once in my life, and I've never missed a single election since I turned 18. There's no reason not to vote when it takes so little time to just fill out a ballot that comes in a mail, sign it, and then mail it back, no postage required.

I don't understand how anyone can be against making it more convenient for people to vote.

Agreed. Voting by mail is a huge advantage. It's shocking that the GOP continues to turn it down. Just shocking!

Seriously though, the way Canada does their voting, hell their entire election process, is amazing and simple. Having a day off for voting is key, even with the mail in ballots. Those two combined would create the best environment for getting the most people to vote.

[Orbitus]

Im sure the people of downstate Virginia love the 3 counties of Democrats near D.C making all these changes lol. 70% of the state is still rural.

You say 70% of the state is rural. Is this just the land you are talking about? Or the people? Because 86% of the state wanted the background checks, 73% wanted the red flag laws, 54% wanted the assault style weapons banned.

[Masark]

Seriously though, the way Canada does their voting, hell their entire election process, is amazing and simple. Having a day off for voting is key

We don't have days off to vote, but we do have mandatory time off for voting if your work schedule overlaps election day voting hours sufficiently (you have to have 3 consecutive hours off work during the time when the polls are open on election day. e.g. if you work 9-5 and poll hours are 7-7, your employer has to either let you come in late or leave early. Which they give you is their choice), with the exception of transportation workers.

Though we also do have extensive no-reason-needed advance voting (fri-sat-sun-mon the week before the election). And no-reason-needed special ballot voting at any EC office.

[Fugus]

We don't have days off to vote, but we do have mandatory time off for voting if your work schedule overlaps election day voting hours sufficiently (you have to have 3 consecutive hours off work during the time when the polls are open on election day. e.g. if you work 9-5 and poll hours are 7-7, your employer has to either let you come in late or leave early. Which they give you is their choice), with the exception of transportation workers.

Though we also do have extensive no-reason-needed advance voting (fri-sat-sun-mon the week before the election). And no-reason-needed special ballot voting at any EC office.

The problem with that, they can do crap like last election and force the lines to be backed up for hours and hours where you CAN'T stay off work long enough to vote.

[Masark]

The problem with that, they can do crap like last election and force the lines to be backed up for hours and hours where you CAN'T stay off work long enough to vote.

Yeah, that's another (intentional) absurdity with your system. Up here, the only way you could possibly get that kind of line up is if literally everyone in the polling division showed up to vote at the same time.

There's a hard cap of 500 electors per polling division, with actual numbers generally in the low-400s. And 20-30% vote in advance, so there's like a maximum 300-350 people to deal with on election day assuming 100% turnout (actual turnout was about 66%).

[Fugus]

Yeah, that's another (intentional) absurdity with your system. Up here, the only way you could possibly get that kind of line up is if literally everyone in the polling division showed up to vote at the same time.

There's a hard cap of 500 electors per polling division, with actual numbers generally in the low-400s. And 20-30% vote in advance, so there's like a maximum 300-350 people to deal with on election day assuming 100% turnout (actual turnout was about 66%).

I live in the special election district in North Carolina. I actually tried to vote early for that but they had closed down the early voting in our area so to do it I would have had to go clear across town to do it instead of 5 minutes down the road. So waited till election day.

But yeah, America has some fucked up shit and almost all of it can be tracked to by design faults from founders who didn't anticipate and actually warned against political parties and a single party who keeps screwing shit up for their advantage at every step.

[Twdft]

I live in the special election district in North Carolina. I actually tried to vote early for that but they had closed down the early voting in our area so to do it I would have had to go clear across town to do it instead of 5 minutes down the road. So waited till election day.

But yeah, America has some fucked up shit and almost all of it can be tracked to by design faults from founders who didn't anticipate and actually warned against political parties and a single party who keeps screwing shit up for their advantage at every step.

I always wonder how the US isn't able to get elections going smoothly when I see video about people standing in line for 3 hours. I am in and out in 3 minutes and we do everything with paper ballots. Every polling place cares about 1500 citizens and has about 8 people manning it. Open 8-18 o'clock on a sunday. After closing the 8 people count the votes (and if you want to you have the right to watch them do it) which doesn't take long. I did that a couple times, there is no multiple choice you just have to put every ballot on the right pile, check if the vote is valid. When all ballots are on a pile you count them twice, note the numbers, phone the numbers in, seal the ballots up and drive them to the election agency where they can be recounted if necessary.

[Fugus]

I always wonder how the US isn't able to get elections going smoothly when I see video about people standing in line for 3 hours. I am in and out in 3 minutes and we do everything with paper ballots. Every polling place cares about 1500 citizens and has about 8 people manning it. Open 8-18 o'clock on a sunday. After closing the 8 people count the votes (and if you want to you have the right to watch them do it) which doesn't take long. I did that a couple times, there is no multiple choice you just have to put every ballot on the right pile, check if the vote is valid. When all ballots are on a pile you count them twice, note the numbers, phone the numbers in, seal the ballots up and drive them to the election agency where they can be recounted if necessary.

You want to see just how bad it is, watch the "Last Week Tonight" with John Oliver about Voter ID and watch the extents they go to try and keep people from voting. The stuff in 2018 is part the course where they try to strategically cut stations to keep those voters out. Just look into Georgia.

Or in North Carolina, we were forced to vote in 2018 on literally illegal districts as the Supreme Court had ruled them gerrymandered to an illegal extent but the Republicans dicked around so long that they claimed they didn't have enough time to create new ones and the courts let them keep it.

Also, during this election, out of the 13 districts, 1 district had a Republican run unopposed and out of the 12 contested districts, the Republicans lost by over 164,000 votes and as the losers they got 9 of the districts while the Democrats who won only got 3 due to how they were drawn.

[Zan15]

Well then it sounds like you need a lesson on why the U.S. has a Senate.

[
Yes the Counties in Blue are making laws for all the people in red. Thanks for clearing that up.

/facepalm...…

I mean...ummm….holy hell son....


So if one person owns 51% of the land in a given state or district....then their vote > everyone else in the state/district.

Good to know I am sure there are some billionaires planning now to take over a few states.

[Zaydin]

It's a democracy. I would rather make it easier for everyone to vote, even if that means more people who I disagree with will vote, than to win because my side did a better job suppressing the other than they did us.

The reason the GOP keeps fighting to make it harder to vote because it's a statically proven fact that Republicans do worse in high turnout elections. So, they decided that if certain demographics won't vote the 'right' way, they will make it as hard as they can for them to vote at all.

That's not even getting into the self-made demographic death spiral they trapped themselves in years ago when they embraced the Southern Strategy.

[PC2]

Poor people are voting republican now.

The data I've seen says the poorest quartile tends to strongly vote Democrat. As earnings go up that trend changes and eventually hits the crossover point where most vote Republican.

[Spectral]

Was it hard to vote before?

[Wyrt]

Was it hard to vote before?

It can be for poor people who can't take time off work and have to rely on public transportation to get around. Especially when Republicans limit the number of polling places serving poor communities.

[Dontrike]

2016 was the first year that, if you had at least a college degree, you voted democrat. If you had anything less, you voted republican. In the 20th century, to be sure, it was the other way around. That's gone. Poor people are voting republican now.

So making it easier to vote actually will help the republicans.

Its not going to be too much longer before democrats start talking about voter ID as a good thing and republicans demanding that everyone vote.

Who the hell cares what side it helps as long as it helps everyone vote, the way it should be. Voting should not be made hard to do and doing so only proves you are afraid of what way a person(s) vote. The fact you think this is mind boggling.

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Was it hard to vote before?

Harder than it should be and harder still when Republicans keep cutting out polling places. The very fact you might have to take time off of work and not get paid to do it is dumb enough as is.

[Themius]

You say 70% of the state is rural. Is this just the land you are talking about? Or the people? Because 86% of the state wanted the background checks, 73% wanted the red flag laws, 54% wanted the assault style weapons banned.

Republicans put more stock in land than humans.

[Draco-Onis]

The data I've seen says the poorest quartile tends to strongly vote Democrat. As earnings go up that trend changes and eventually hits the crossover point where most vote Republican.

Income is not as big of a determinant as education, race and gender, if you look at the data overall the vote gap between rich people who vote democrats vs republican is in the single digit. I think you forget that lot of the richest parts of the country are really blue, the top 25 richest districts in the US vote democrat by a huge margin.

[PC2]

Income is not as big of a determinant as education, race and gender, if you look at the data overall the vote gap between rich people who vote democrats vs republican is in the single digit. I think you forget that lot of the richest parts of the country are really blue, the top 25 richest districts in the US vote democrat by a huge margin.

Yes except the original point was about 'people' and not 'states' which means you have to analyse that at the level of people. The reason for this is because the well-off people in blue states are still more likely to vote Republican after the income cross-over point, and the poorest people who are concentrated in blue cities in red States are mostly Democrats. So if you want the most accurate understanding of this topic then you want to understand things at a lower level of granularity, not by generalizing people based on their state.