And not just the “right to vote”. When my office-mate was getting her PhD in NC, she had to stand in line for 3 hours to vote, because it was a college town, and college towns are more likely to vote democratic, therefore make sure there aren’t enough polling sites. Same goes for any town likely to vote Dem where most people can’t afford to take an entire day off work to be able to vote.
Just make it hard enough to vote (see my post just above this one).
If there’s one thing this election has shown it’s that you can’t tell how someone will vote by looking at them.
So unfortunate that there wasn’t a piece of paper that would have stopped the fascists dead in their ambitious tracks in Germany in the 1930s.
'Zactly.
Ultimately what determines who can vote is the guy with the gun standing in the door of the polling place.
We (most of us) have had the privilege in this country (most of the time in most places) of thinking our laws are a) reasonable and b) followed by both government and citizen alike.
That happy situation is very rare over the course of human history, both in space and in time.
My own estimation is the Fascists won’t try to curtail voting. Like all the other skillful authoritarians around the world, they’ll keep voting. Instead they just eliminate any effective opposition parties and ensure there are several of them, not just one.
Please point out where I claimed that they did.
States control voting–particularly since John Roberts, in his wisdom, gutted the Voting Rights Act. Much less federal oversight! To change the system back to one the GOP prefers—something circa 1930 Alabama—GOP operatives, some of whom work for the Heritage Foundation, will be working with state legislatures to ensure a more favorable voting environment. Favorable for themselves, of course.
We’re straying from Vance, though I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘ensuring the 2026 and 2028 elections are “free and fair,” haha’ isn’t made part of his VP portfolio.
Agree. These guys and their ilk have been slavering over their new “mandate” to change the rules on who gets to vote and who does not.
What will be fascinating is what they try to do in the blue states. Federal legislation–an “ANTI-Voting Rights Act” of sorts, though obviously not with that name–could be part of the equation.
Yeah, this, too.
Declaring organizations to be Terrorist may become a much-used tool.
If they’re smart they won’t do anything. The Big Sort ensures that the firmly red states will outnumber the blue states for the foreseeable future, and it’s useful to have an ostensibly functional minority visibly (but pointlessly) participating in the sham elections, just as the Globetrotters pretend the Generals are a real opponent.
And, for anything affected by voting districts smaller than whole states, gerrymander the hell out of them. SCOTUS won’t stop you.
Arizona tried to bypass voters altogether and just declare Trump the winner of the state’s electotal votes. It didn’t work that time but I would not be surprised to see some states try a version of this in 2028.
Link:
Good point. Though are you saying (in the part I bolded) that the sum of the total populations of the red states is greater than that of the blue states? Or just that there are more red than blue states (inarguable).
If so: that may change if enough red states deport or imprison enough of their Spanish-speaking residents…
(I don’t expect you to have this information handy. I’m just wondering, in general.)
By the way, do we know yet what mischief Vance will be getting into what areas of responsibility Trump will be assigning him?
The latter, this. Which translates to electoral votes (ergo the White House) and control of the Senate.
Yeah. We never should have allowed Dakota to be broken up. (More seriously: this ‘land = votes’ was always a corrupt distortion of democracy, as I know you know.)
Remember there is NO federal legal requirement to allow the public to vote for President. That is something that became fashionable in the mid-late 1800s. Prior to that time the state legislatures each picked their slate of EC electors who in turn voted for their own pick for prez.
Most (all?) states have laws now that require a public vote for prez. And further require that the electors vote the same way as the public did. Some states have the former, but not the latter.
Any state legislature that wanted to could stop public voting for president or make the public’s vote explicitly only advisory on their EC electors.
What do you think about this post? JD Vance posted this. I’m befuddled.
Saying this may not win friends and influence people here, but I love Norman Rockwell (read this).
The vandalized painting, in the post immediately above, is “Freedom from Want” from the Four Freedoms (1943) series.
If this was a novel, I believe the painting would still be under copyright for another fifteen years or so. And Rockwell, even though most of his paintings may seem conservative, was a liberal who would have objected to Trump and Vance using his painting to make a mockery of his values. Might what Vance did to this painting be illegal?
That painting (like many Rockwell paintings) has been frequently used as the basis of parodies and tributes.
Parody is included under fair use rules, so no.
Those are derivative works:
If painted before 1929, they are out of copyright, and unauthorized parodies are legal. But I suppose that his estate would have difficulty deciding which Rockwell would have disliked. Plus, raising your hand to become a public adversary of JD Vance may not be perfectly safe.
Vance, as a Yale Law School graduate, must, unlike almost all other parodists, know this was legally dubious. I am so surprised he does not care 
P.S. As for fair use, wouldn’t that more apply to taking a brief excerpt, not most of the painting?
True. But it becomes less safe the more people think that way.