Rachel Maddow warned viewers on Monday that President Donald Trump plans to interfere with midterm election results, following the Supreme Court’s recent 7-2 ruling against his executive order instructing the US Postal Service (USPS) to block states from distributing and collecting mail-in ballots.
Trump’s order, which he signed last March, would’ve directed the USPS to refuse to deliver mail-in ballots to anyone whose information hadn’t been properly submitted to a new state citizenship list maintained by the federal government.
“Trump is counting on confusion, uncertainty, and a lack of confidence in the mail-in voting system to suppress voter turnout,” she said.
TAKE your ballots to a box. DO NOT MAIL if possible.
That’s just not how elections work bruh. Its litterally logistically impossible to do that in sooooooooo many areas.
In Honolulu county, a county if a million people (practically) there are like _maybe_12 places to drop off your ballot. We do our election 💯 by mail and those drop off locations are just a back up. And it requires you sitting inkne for hours.
If you want to vote in person. Puh. Bruddah. Only get two place where can. Kapolei Hale and Honolulu Hale. And you gonna be in line for hours.
It is how it works. Take your mail-in ballot straight to your Election department. They will gladly accept it.
There simply isn’t the capacity. As a state we use mail in voting. States don’t all vote in the same manner.
For a period of ten (10) business days prior to and including each Election Day, voters may cast a ballot at a Voter Service Center. During this period, individuals not already registered to vote may register to vote and vote. In the City & County of Honolulu, Voter Service Centers are established at Honolulu Hale and Kapolei Hale. Traditional Election Day polling places will not be available.
There is no line for all 10 days. The line happens on Election Day. Do yourself a favor and vote prior to Election Day.
You’re free to live in a world of hypotheticals purely of your own creation, but don’t be surprised when reality comes to slap you I. The face because your so obscenely obnoxiously self obsessed in your considerations.
In reality, real people, not hypothetical people, are not going to make a huge effort to vote if it’s made to be too difficult. What actually happens is that even modest barriers being present, people just don’t bother.
Its quite hilarious how idiots take examples of what happens with real voters and real voter behavior, and then project it to mean being how the person individually behaves. Its a degree of stupidity you can only find on spaces like this.
Bro thats straight from the Honalulu County elections website.
Im very familiar with their process of accepting ballots. Your mail-in ballots should be received around Oct 16th. Fill it out and submit it to the Voter Service Centers or a Ballot Drop Box by Nov 3rd.
In reality, people wait until Nov 3rd to vote, but they dont have to wait until the 3rd. Go vote on:
- Oct 16 (Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 17 (Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 18 (Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 19 (Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 20 (Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 21 (Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 22 (Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 23 (Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 24 (Voter Service Center + Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 25 (Voter Service Center + Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 26 (Voter Service Center + Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 27 (Voter Service Center + Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 28 (Voter Service Center + Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 29 (Voter Service Center + Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 30 (Voter Service Center + Ballot Drop Box)
- Oct 31 (Voter Service Center + Ballot Drop Box)
- Nov 1 (Voter Service Center + Ballot Drop Box)
- Nov 2 (Voter Service Center + Ballot Drop Box)
- Nov 3 (lines begin here because people wait)
Plenty of days to beat the rush.
Just whatever you do, dont give it to USPS.
You truly have not one fucking iota of a clue about what the fuck you are talking about.
If people don’t mail in their ballots here, they simply won’t vote. We’re not built to do in person voting or even significant ballot drop off. You truly need to stfu about shit you don’t understand and stop spreading misinformation.
I mean, if you’re in certain states, yeah. CA provides verification for mail in so the advice is more to do it early, get verification, and if you don’t get it, follow up. You can still be very lazy in CA and your vote will be fine- just make sure you do vote.
But swing states (which includes Texas this time around lol) and blue districts in red states should be extra careful. I’d still vote as early as possible, in person or by mail if confirmation exists, just in case interference happens on election day (e.g. ICE intimidation).
I’m in CA. If you have the luxury, the polling districts local to me have ballot dropoff locations a couple weeks leading up to the election. My neighbor has been a poll worker since we moved here and she says it’s fairly standard statewide. If I recall reading in prior elections, there should be one in your town/city hall. I’d rather deliver it myself than trust usps
Up in Washington where we also have 100% mail in voting and there are ballot drop boxes all over the place. I usually walk up the street to the public library to drop off my ballot.
I have a convenient box here in my office, will that do?
(just being silly, but I agree. If you get a mail-in ballot, drop it in an official return box if you are absolutely able. That’s my plan. And if your ballot never arrives, you should be able to go vote in person, probably signing something that says you are only voting in person)
I’ll be voting in person, as I always do.
I urge everyone who possibly can to do the same. Yes, it’s inconvenient, yes, there will be long lines. But, your employer must, by law give you time off to vote. Just stand in line and look at your phone, or even take a folding chair.
Vote in person early if it’s an option. Our early in person voting starts today.
I go early every year and I’ve had to wait in line once, and even then the wait was only about 10 minutes for my area which is not considered rural.
What’s the plan to stop him?
Nothing, same plan since 2015.
Civil war should it come to it.
That’s not going to happen.
What will happen, assuming he’s successful, is the Democrats will quietly fall in line after a few weeks of posturing. There will be lawsuits, and the courts will ultimately decide in Trump’s favor.
Unrest comes when people have their way of life existentially threatened through hunger or homelessness. Or when their position within the caste is in question.
Unrest will come from the Right if they lose. When the undecideds and liberals lose an election, they say “damn, better luck next time” and move on. They aren’t willing to do anything that might jeopardize their comfortable way of life.
The people pushed to the margins will be further castigated, and find themselves in an even more dangerous position.
Unrest will come from the margins. People with nothing, and everything, to lose. The police will be granted further impunity to kill, and POC/LGBTQ+ will die. They’ll protest, and they’ll be killed by cops and right wing nutjobs alike. And no help will come. “Allies” will start to go quiet if the violence gets particularly bad and those communities will learn who their true friends are.
Arm yourselves. Violence is coming regardless of who wins in November.
Unrest will come when the truckers go on strike in October
Long before that, unseating the SEC def during a conflict they started says his power base is leaving him.
I’ll be honest and say fantasies of a second civil war are trite. Right wingers will make one up about big government overreach (aka international capitalists removing the protectionist frameworks keeping crybabies like US ranchers and carmakers afloat) where the conclusion is getting back to what the founding fathers desired. Cosmopolitan types will make one about “””polarization””” and oh have you no decency??? where in the end everyone becomes a perfect, compliant neoliberal subject.
Whatever the case, it’s pure american exceptionalist drivel. Both are adamantly for the document that says slaves are worth 3/5 of a person. There is no serious willingness or dare I say ability to contend with what actual war looks like. These fantasies always stand counterpoint to the reality where as it turns out we aren’t having a setpiece war. Ever. It’s all cultural animosity. Economically, in the real world, everything is in lockstep. So a film about a scary future we can look at then turn off, it reassures us of the greatness of the US, in weal or woe, a place outside of history, above history.
A time machine. Otherwise we have lost, there’s no getting around it.
“It is possible to commit to every mistake and still lose.”
-Star Trek, or something.
Amidst everything going on, if people legitimately vote for republicans, the USA gets what it deserves.
Trump is a symptom. America is the disease.
Trump is a symptom, the heritage foundation is the disease.
Whatever happen it won’t change anything.
They are corrupt as hell, US is a living hell for the bottom class.
Glad I was born in a decadent EU country.
I seem to remember the genocide accelerating under a Dem.
I seem to remember a Dem bailing out big banks during the financial crisis instead of the working class.
There is no comparison. The difference is orders of magnitude.
Yes every administration and the USA itself has problems. But this administration is all problems, they are robbing and kidnapping and suppressing and killing.
More Democrats try to do the right thing and are capable of learning and changing. MAGA just doubles down on the cruelty.
No, the democrats rob and kidnap and suppress and kill, they just do it in other countries. Now that the pain has come home, you’re all passionate about human rights lol.
We’re talking about genocide here and you’re begging for the party that accelerated it.
Yeah I am opposed to the US aiding Israel, and there is a divide in the Democratic party over it. I agree both are bad, but in my view Republicans are 99% bad and Democrats are 52% bad.
And I’m 100% opposed to the killing the US is doing in Iran and striking “drug” boats in the Caribbean.
There is no difference to the millions of dead civilians your country has left in its wake since the end of WWII.
Only like 1/5th of the people who lived here voted for Trump in the last election, so I’m glad you agree that we don’t deserve this
“Lesbian political pundit Rachel Maddow”
What does her sexual orientation have to do with her political point whatsoever? She’s saying that as a journalist not as a lesbian, what the fuck.
At first I agreed with you, then saw that the source is LGBTQ nation, so if she wasn’t a lesbian, it possibly wouldn’t be reported on by them. Her orientation is what ties this piece of news into the LGBTQ realm.
So if she wasn’t gay they wouldn’t report the news?
I would guess not this story by this outlet. I’m not the editor so please don’t shoot the messenger.
Has anyone heard any information on the most reliable ways to vote? Any guidance at all from opposition other than to vote? If GOP is messing with the mechanisms of voting, shouldn’t they be helping people learn which mechanisms are most reliable?
The fascists want to suppress voter turnout, for one, just overall. For two, they want to suppress likely-Dem voters, hence the various attacks made on various things - but almost even more importantly, they want to destroy confidence in the voting system altogether.
The GOP does, wtf are the Dems doing? If if nothing, who out there is and how can we build that community?
Honestly? I think there’s a couple of facets to the answer:
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The bad news: The oligarchs have a stranglehold on politics. Not only are the Republicans a completely lost cause for democracy, establishment Democrats largely may care somewhat about human rights, but also are addicted to that oligarch money train. Which is where the “both sides” thing has a bit of merit. HOWEVER
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The better news: This is a good time to try and get involved. I think efforts in recent years have sort of been around a few individuals, but it seems like the DSA is emerging as a possible new powerhouse, and a place for progressives to gather around and use. One of the powers of Conservatives has been things like the Tea Party or MAGA. We need to rally around DSA and use it as sort of shorthand: If someone is associated with the DSA, then they are probably decently a progressive and hopefully we can support them.
But building community is hard. That’s the first thing the oligarchs attack to try and disrupt. And for some reason, it seems that while conservatives tend to band together, progressives tend to care about issues and when there’s disagreement, can’t figure out ways to work around that.
So I guess the hard part is, for example, taking a VERY wedge issue: Israel and Palestine. While I personally have lost my respect for Israel (notably: completely different topic than the topic of Jews/antisemitism) and believe the reality is Palestine has been genocided by Israel, it would be foolish for me to see a candidate who hasn’t come to that same conclusion but is otherwise progressive - and fail to vote for them or worse vote for the Republican candidate because of that one issue.
The oligarchs use wedge issues to unify consevatives, and they use wedge issues to divide progressives.
We have to realize that and overcome it to build community.
DSA?
You make some great points. I think with regard to leadership and support, we should become capable of breaking our support into issue specific support. Instead of supporting a person or not, be capable of supporting them on the issues we agree on, regardless of disagreements elsewhere. We don’t have to support them on everything, but can build support issue by issue. In a way it’s dismantling the hierarchy notion of leadership the DNC and GOP use and returning to dispersed democratic form. I don’t know how that actually fits with the systems of democracy we have, as a representative democracy, but it might mean staying involved in the day to day of our representatives and of the systems that grant them their power.
It also means choosing candidates to support this system, first and foremost. Our first agreement together is to vote for candidates who will champion only the issues we all agreed with them on, and won’t vote their beliefs if there is not consensus from us. Even returning for town halls to ask for our guidance. They would function as the person who casts the votes in the system, not the person who decides which votes to cast. Less representative and more direct democracy. We need our hands to be more in the wheel than before, because we can’t trust them.
DSA?
https://www.dsausa.org/ - not a political party, but seems like progressive Democrats are generally rallying around them, so it seems to be turning into a good org to rally around.
On the rest: I think that’s… generally how it should work. The earlier in the process things are, the pickier you can be to find the person that shares as many beliefs as you have. As they win or lose support, when you get to the primary, you have to vote for the available options, so you pick the one that best represents you. And in the general, again, you have to pick the best possible candidate.
That’s the voting side.
The other support comes before voting: When you find a good candidate, talk them up to your peers IRL or on social media / sites like Lemmy. Do what you can to get the people that represent you better at every stage of the process.
What the fascists want is for us to say, “Oh, my person didn’t make it to the next step, and this other person supports something I hate” and to bow out of the process, when the entire idea is to vote for the person that best represents you.
That’s how we get to “blue no matter who” in the general election because one assumes that the Democrat option is always going to be - at a minimum - less shitty than the Republican option. But people who push back on that… do they not understand that fascists are worse? Or do they not understand that they should have been pushing for Their Preferred Candidate long before that point?
Its a bit different, we pick a candidate that has stuff we like and stuff we don’t. I’m saying only field candidates that pursue things we can all agree on and doesn’t make calls on the rest. They come to us with those calls and we have a conversation amongst ourselves. We tell them what to do, and they do that. We need change the relationship we have with reps and revoke some of their autonomy to make decisions. Less representative and more democracy may be the solution to inability to align.
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We don’t need the warnings. Everyone assumes trump’ll do something untoward. What we need is a plan of action. All neighbourhoods should designate a pocket telephone picture taker to record anything and everything to gather any evidence needed.
Damn I’m tired I read that as Ms Rachel at first and I was already a fan
I am a fan of her “bullying bad people” thing she has been doing.
That isn’t his ultimate plan. He doesn’t have an ultimate plan. He has an ultimate direction ,(whatever he wants at the moment) and zero empathy.
One thing I, as a Swede, am having a hard time understanding is the heavy reliance on mail-in voting. We just had our elections last Sunday and you couldn’t even vote by mail, with the only exception being if you live abroad. Otherwise you are going to your designated voting location on the day with your voting card and ID, or to any of the early voting locations. Even with these rules we had a turnout of nearly 85%.
Lol, bruh
Sweden: 450,295 km2 USA: … 9,833,520 km2
We are 20x the size and very spread out. Mail in voting is a very efficient way to get it done. When it’s done right.
Sweden has a population of 10 million. 10 of our states have populations well over that. Hell, California has 40 million people. Even with neighborhood voting stations it’s a big procedure. The process itself isn’t bad, about an hour or three, but the whole procedure of taking off work and getting there with thousands of others makes it a logistical circus.
Sweden is a beautiful country filled with intelligent and worldy people who have a functional government and solid social net.
54% of our population have a below 6th grade reading level. A quarter of our population is functionally illiterate.
Getting the majority of people to vote is like herding cats. Plus there are only two parties so many people feel disenfranchised. We used to have strong national values about doing our civic duty, but that has largely fallen out of favor. We are not an united people.
We are essentially the ultra-capitalist version of Russia and as advanced as much of our tech is, our civic services are 15 years behind the times.
If we could vote online, and were required to, many many things would be different.
Election day is on a Tuesday. You don’t necessarily get the day off work. I think they are open until 7, but I wouldn’t know because I work 12 hour shifts 9 - 9 when I work. There is early voting but mail in just makes it so much easier. I can sit down and research all the candidates for each thing I am voting for.
And the mail in voting in Florida was great (strange to say something political in Florida was great, but it was). You opt in for mail in, then every election you can vote for, they have to send you a ballot. Sometimes you don’t even know there is an election going on and you get the ballot and you can research and find out why, and make an informed vote.
It’s just a system that makes sense and encourages more participation and allows for better engagement with your choices. So of course they are trying to dismantle it. It’s still good in Florida, but now you get opted back out after every major election and you have to go and get yourself opted back in. Small hurdle but I’m sure people have forgotten.
Part of the popularity in mail-in voting in recent years has been because a lot of fashy dudes like to hang out at polling places and threaten folks they don’t think should be voting (e.g. women and racial minorities, etc).
