How about 2010? 2008 and 2012 aren’t hard to explain, and black turnout was higher than white turnout nationwide. Will 2014 feature higher black turnout than in 2010 or 2006? I doubt it very much.
I’ve said that Democrats are trying to increase minority turnout. They aren’t actually succeeding, at least not with efforts to make voting easier. Putting a minority at the top of the ballot is what got people out to vote, not just minorities, but young people too. Although young people got disillusioned pretty quickly and reverted to form in 2012. Believe it not, this was not because of voter suppression efforts against young people.
The problem with that is that you get less accountability, not more. The US system enhances the power of dedicated voting blocs, which makes it easier to hold politicians’ feet to the fire.
The goal of the US system has never been “democracy”. Democracy is just a means to an end. THe end is individual liberty. In order to ensure our liberties are protected, politicians have to be held accountable. If most voters aren’t paying attention, that becomes impossible. The votes of the ignorant swamp the votes of the informed. The founders went too far in restricting the franchise. We all support universal suffrage for citizen adults now. But expanding turnout for its own sake in order to entice the uninformed to christmas tree their ballot or just vote for names they are familiar with is not good for democracy and certainly not good for protecting our freedoms.
For the vast majority of people, voting is quite easy. If it’s not for some people, that has to be addressed, but early voting and same day registration aren’t really part of that solution. Those are solutions to a different problem, which is unmotivated Democratic voters that keep on costing Democrats elections. Thus making it a matter of great urgency to one party.
Are these the same unmotivated voters, many of whom waited for eight hours to vote in 2004 Ohio, while Republicans were voting quickly at precincts with far more machines?
My God, is your attention span so bad you can’t even remember a very recent post in another thread?
Yes they are. They succeeded in '08 and '12, as studies have shown. Now we need to translate that success into midterms.
That probably had something to do with it, but minority turnout was higher in states like North Carolina with lots of early voting than in states without it. Again, you fail on the facts.
Although the ignorant did not swamp the votes of the informed, they do vote in large enough numbers to make the GOPer cheating mad skillz work, with a little help from the SCOTUS 5.
Please, please take this debate over to one of the many voter threads in the Pit and GD. It really doesn’t belong here and it’s ruining this thread.
Also, this thread isn’t for debating Republican stupidity, it’s for posting about it. If anyone has a particular stupid Republican idea that should be debated, please, please take it to another thread.
Gah. I hate to see this thread ruined after cruising along so well for so long. Thanks, Obama.
What do you do after seven congressional committees have concluded that there was no “Benghazi Conspiracy”? Why, you hold an eighth committee, which chairman Trey Gowdy(R-S.C.) insists won’t be the least bit political. Uh huh. Listen to the non-partisan words of committee member Rep. Westmoreland(R-GA)
And it gets better!
Using congressional committees and public funds to openly campaign against the President and the Democratic Party. How sweet.
Actually, I was referring to the absolute disconnect between “I think our enemy stands on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave", and “it’s hard” for congressional Democrats “to be bipartisan.”
Drawing attention away from our pet monkey (who capers through so many other threads), here’s news from another Republican idiot. Santorum–whose name says it all!
Banning a religion is a thoroughly un-American concept. Besides, he’s wrong about the past–the recent past, as well as that stuff that happened at the end of the 18th century.
When I went to school in Bible Belt Texas there was no daily prayer. (Graduated high school in 1966–you do the math.) Occasionally, some local Brother Whathisface would do an “invocation” for a special assembly (or that truly sacred event, a football game). He’d do that weird Protestant Our Father; everybody would have fainted at a Hail Mary. (I always remembered to cross myself.) There were no Bibles in the classroom. If there had been, the community would have insisted on the KJV; but the mostly secular setting protected the minorities. (Santorum claims to be RC–as I was.)
Not long ago, the Texas Freedom Network, always on the alert, said that elective Bible courses might be offered in public schools. Various curricula were reviewed & some were found lacking because they taught a certain narrow brand of Christianity rather than literature, history, etc. New developments:
(Yes, in Texas the folks trying to screw up Public Education are overwhelmingly Republican.)
It really does convince me that conservatives in this country struggle with what “consent” means. That would explain why they are so befuddled by rape.
The problem with Election Day is that it’s a WORK day. This was fine in the days when you worked near (or even where) you lived, but in this day and age it isn’t.
I live more than an hour’s travel from where I work when it isn’t rush hour. On Election Day, I either have to get to work late or leave work early if I want to vote. If I were an hourly worker, I’d have to hope that I weren’t scheduled during voting hours.
I live in a state that doesn’t have early voting and doesn’t allow absentee voting except for very limited reasons, such as “not in the country” or “in the hospital ICU”. Otherwise, you have to be at the polls, on the day, to vote.
Voting isn’t a walk in the park for me, and registering required a trip to the DMV (and time off of work), but for me that’s a minor inconvenience. My salary is high enough that I don’t have to choose between working enough to feed myself that week or voting. Not everyone has that luxury.
I hate distract this thread, but why do we do elections this way? Why on Tuesday? Why only ONE day?
Why couldn’t we have Election Weekend? You go to church on Sunday? Vote Saturday! Synagogue on Saturday? Vote on Sunday! open 24/7! I would gladly donate my entire weekend to host a polling place.
AND…we can announce results on Wednesday and ONLY on Wednesday! Enough of the ‘with 22% of polls checking in, Incumbent Dickstain has a 5 point lead on Challenger Nitwit’. Everybody can chill the fuck out, vote at their leisure (I know some folks work on weekends, so the ‘time off for voting’ rule would still apply) and the pundits can keep their pie holes shut till mid-week!
I know. It’s a brilliant idea and will never happen.