The legal basis is that the president is not actually an office that American citizens vote for. Legally they are providing an advisory vote to their state’s legislature to inform them about which kinds of electors the state should sent to the federal electoral college. The electors (twice-removed from the citizens) are who elects the president.
Everything else is just layperson shorthand. As states have morphed their processes towards “all our electors shall vote for this state’s popular vote winner”, the difference between popular expectations and reality shrinks. Net of the glaring flaw that this transmutes a 50.1% victory for party A in state X into a unanimous 100% of state X’s political power being deployed in favor of party A.
Like most of the other arrangements in our ancient barely-beta-test version of democracy, it has not stood well the test of time. Yet it’s unchangeable.
Doing a bit of research, I find there’s a federal law requiring all states to have an option to register when getting a drivers license and also applying for public assistance. The Wikipedia article suggests a few states may not have that implemented, although it doesn’t say which ones. Oregon differs from most in that the registration is automatic, rather than just an option.
However, note that it’s not required to apply for either a DL or public assistance to register to vote in any state. Some states may require some proof of citizenship when registering and a drivers license can serve to do that, but there should be other ways that don’t require a drivers license.
As I said above, according to the GSA, the 400,000 number is just the number of additional viewers who visited the Vote. org site after Swift’s social media post. It does not represent those who clicked through to the state registration sites.
It’s all conjecture, obviously, but it’s likely that a relatively small portion of those clicks were actual interested, unregistered, eligible voters versus fans idly clicking on a link sent by their idol (or bots). And while I agree that the process for registration is mostly painless (although not universally so – some states, including mine, still don’t have an option for registering online), each step beyond that initial click is going to see drop-off.
I think Swift’s endorsement is a good thing, and will result in some number of people who would not have otherwise voted turn out for Harris. But I think the breathless reporting around how many clicks or likes her post has garnered gives a misleading impression of the actual impact she’ll have.
Some states even accepted NRA membership cards (which do not have a photo) as “valid photo ID”, but not student ID cards (which almost always do have a photo), on the grounds that they don’t have a phot.
If Swift is serious about this, then she’ll also send out state-specific messages, about a week before each state’s registration deadline, with information about how to do it and what you’ll need. That, probably would be done mostly by her employees, but with her imprimatur.
And ultimately, suppose she does get half a million folks to vote who wouldn’t have otherwise, or even 100,000 or 50,000. That’s still a lot of votes for one person to swing. How many votes can you or I swing? My own, of course, and I might be able to get one or two more by encouraging my students to vote (though most of them won’t be 18 in time). I’d say that Swift’s impact is pretty impressive even in the most pessimistic estimates.
Eh, I’d assume that most clicks were by people who, in the moment at least, felt sincerely interested in getting registered. It’s not as though Swift just posted some vague “Click here to see something!” link or a link for merch that you might want to check out even if you don’t buy it. There’s no reason to click a link to a voter reg/info site unless you’re actually interested in registering to vote. There’s no “fun” aspect to it, it’s self-selecting for people who want to go through the process. Likewise, there’s no incentive for already registered voters to click unless maybe they wanted to see if they could make sure their registration was current. If my favorite person in the world posts a link to a voter registration site, I’m still not clicking it because I am already registered and looking at a government site isn’t much of a reward in of itself.
Sure, each step might see some drop-off of people who don’t have the info, get stymied at a step or who say “I’ll finish this later” and don’t but I’d think precious few people are clicking links to a government site because they think it’ll be good times no matter what celebrity posted it.
To register in my state, or (in my case) to change my address, I still had to fill out a form in the mail. Fortunately, since I don’t live in a blue area in a red or purple state, they sent me mail telling me that they detected my move and that I needed to change my address, and included the form.
Though I did still have to go buy a stamp and envelope.
Exactly my thinking. It’s a deliberate choice which indicates some interest in voting. True, we can’t know how many will go to the *excruciating effort of clicking additional links, but I think it’s a good sign. Young folk have been known to go to far more lengths to emulate their idols.
[cynical old man]
Yeah, given the attention span of the Tik-Tok generation, I would think that a huge percentage of those clicks were just starry-eyed fans excited by receiving a personal message from Tay-Tay herself. So they clicked on anything clickable, hoping that something shiny would pop up on their screen.
[/cynical old man]
Actually, it would be possible to discern some hard facts, but it would take a dedicated journalist willing to put in some real work.
A computer counted those 405,999 visitors to the vote. gov site, and presumably there are also counters on the other voter registration sites in each state. So just count up how many additional clicks were made on each state’s site during the same time period that the 405,999 clicks were recorded. That would be a fascinating statistic to read. and would provide real insight about an under-reported demographic group which usually ignores voting, and probably never answers telephone polls.
What personal message? She posted it to her Instagram. I’d think people who follow Swift’s Instagram account are pretty familiar with her… posting to her Instagram account.
On Wednesday Trump accused Swift of “being very liberal”. On Sunday he posted he “HATES TAYLOR SWIFT” as Vance doubled down on tabby tapas.
Is this smart politics? No. It makes Vance look as crazy as (the latest) Kennedy. Trump dislikes dogs, using this as an insult. He must be the only president in a hundred years who didn’t own a dog.^. Checkers was the most endearing thing about Nixon. I can understand being traumatized by an unpleasant experience when young, but in my view most people who dislike animals (and almost all people who mistreat them) are very unpleasant people.
Although Swift may or may not have been planning her endorsement, there is a question of degree. Her statement was pretty balanced and likely won’t affect her sales at all. Her political role may be more modest than some think, but getting out extra thousands in some swing state districts could have real impact. Trump’s blatherings won’t win over many new voters, but Swift making stronger and repeated statements might well make a substantial difference. But it also shows Trump has no taste and is out of touch, which of course you did not already know.
Likely Swift made her own statement and had it vetted by her advisors. But if she did not, who cares? What does that change? Politicians use speechwriters but no one attributes their words to them.
^ Snopes indeed confirms Trump is the only president in 100 years not to own a dog, on further checking.
A lot of registering to vote is linked to information provided for a drivers license and/or state or federal ID card. To get a drivers license one must provide citizenship information (birth certificate), change of name information (marriage license or legal information form) and any other information proving that you are who you say you are. That pretty much rules out any person more or less gliding into a precinct and voting without providing this other information to the state government offices.
I don’t want to belabour the point. But Trump showed enormous amounts of both class and maturity today. Little known fact: the J in DJT actually stands for Jesús.
I’m not sure if Taylor convinced her parents and her grandparents to not vote for trump when she was explaining why she wouldn’t be voting for him, but maybe trump posting that he hates their beloved daughter/granddaughter will cost trump a few votes.
Can you imagine how that post by him must make them feel? They must be very concerned about her safety.
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