They’re not passing laws to say ‘nobody can vote except members of the town council’, or whatever. They’re claiming that they’re not restricting anyone’s voting rights (except for felons) despite the things they’re doing which make it much easier for some people to vote than others.
Specifying that every individual has the right to vote wouldn’t stop gerrymandering – every individual in the gerrymandered district can still vote, after all; the district’s been designed to cancel the effect of some people’s votes, not to prevent them from voting. Specifying that every individual has the right to vote doesn’t prevent moving the polling station out of the neighborhood – any individual could get to the new location, after all, there’s no law saying that they can’t in theory no matter how difficult it was made in practice. And so on,
Yes, there are other problems like gerrymandering, inadequate polling opportunities, and suppressing mail-in voting. But I feel the most fundamental issue is the actual right to vote. All of the other problems are ways for the Republicans to try to work around the fact that people vote against them. If they can simply stop people from voting, they won’t have to worry about other tricks.
Look at voter purges, where massive groups of people are simply thrown off the registration list. Literally hundreds of thousands of people lost their vote with a stroke of a pen. Sure, there are appeal processes but forces people to win back their vote.
I feel the system should go the other way; the legal presumption should be that every person has the right to vote. You would not have to prove that you should be allowed to vote. The burden of proof would be on the people who want to disenfranchise anyone; they would have to prove that somebody should be disenfranchised
The person would retain their right to vote until the case is finished. Which would prevent the tactic we’re seeing now of waiting until a few weeks before the election and then surprising people. Sure a lot of those people may win back their vote but the government can delay procedures until the election is over.
The government wouldn’t be able to submit a list of half a million names and disenfranchise everyone on it. They would have to make a case against each of those half a million individuals.
Once we’ve established that everyone has the legal right to vote, we can work on removing obstacles that make voting difficult or ineffective.
Automatic registration, mail-in voting allowed everywhere, ranked choice voting encouraged (how? I don’t know), all voting methods have paper backup, mandatory voting, abolish the electoral college, adequate number and geographical distribution of in-person polling places, priority handling of ballots by the postal service.
I’m sorry FlikTheBlue, that’s not enough to overcome a filibuster under current rules. You need three-fifths. Therefore no such act will pass the Senate without bipartisan support.
Well, many of my suggestions would be blatantly unConstitutional. But…
Require voter ID, rigorous verification of each voter’s identity.
All criminals should be allowed to vote - even while in prison.
Steep, steep penalties for any form of vote fraud.
Require everyone to pass a basic civics and knowledge test in order to vote.
A “none of the above” option should be allowed in most elections, and if it is the plurality, the election is invalidated and must be run again.
Not only should Election Day be a weekend day or a federal holiday outright, but there should be so much early voting permitted that it amounts to Election Week or Election Month instead.
Polls are closed once time is up, game over (i.e., 7 PM on Election Day;) none of this “standing in line but it’s closing time but still allowed to vote” stuff. You had one whole month of early voting to cast your ballot; you shouldn’t have let it come to “I couldn’t get to the polls until 6:59 PM.”
No release of early information is allowed before all polls are closed (i.e., no repeat of Gore 2000 in Florida.)
All mail-in ballots must be postmarked before Election Day.
Casting more than one mail-in ballot will be considered fraud, and punished.
Voter intimidation and electioneering is allowed, as long as it is ethically done (i.e., wearing a Trump T-shirt or Biden-slogan hat in the polls is OK)
The can get rid of the filibuster. A slightly dangerous proposition, as it removes power from the minority party, but necessary, if the minority party has demonstrated its unwillingness to govern effectively.
All the “on the basis of” stuff should be replaced with “for any reason”, possibly with exceptions baked into the amendment, i.e. conviction of voter fraud.
You may disenfranchise on the basis of political party, under the current amendments.
You are going into the first term of a new presidency with a two person majority in the Senate, and you say switching the threshold for legislation from three fifths to one half is only slightly dangerous?
Are you aware of the historical trend for the opposition party to make gains during the midterms?
Going into the term with only a two person majority in the senate and a filibuster is fruitless.
The reason that Republicans made gains in 2010 is because they could point to the things that were not being done by the Obama administration and the democrats, and rightly so, there were promises not delivered upon.
That they were the entire reason that nothing could get done was somehow not a factor in this, people didn’t turn out to support the democrats.
Just as there is nothing but tradition to stop the Democrats from nuking the filibuster, there is nothing to stop the Republicans if they take power either.
If Democrats are allowed to pass the legislation that is required to fix the mess that the Republicans have put us in to, then the people may notice this and reward them with continued governance. If they allow the minority party to prevent any legislation from being passed, then people will not turn out to support them in 2022.
At the very worst, Republicans take congress in 2022, but the Democrats have the presidential veto to stop any damaging legislation. It’s the same gridlock you’d have either way, except that at least the democrats had 2 years to pass bills unimpeded.
2024 might as well be a week before the heat death of the universe at this point.
Most states currently do let you vote around a month before the election.
The problem with this is that in order to early vote, you have to go to your county seat. Even given a month, I don’t really want to go downtown and have to find a parking spot. I did that in 2008, as everyone was saying that you should go early vote. Even though it was a random day 2 weeks before the election, it was a pain in the ass and a 3 hour line. You are extending the time, but severely narrowing the location.
In order for early voting to be truly useful, it needs to be available everywhere. You should be able to vote at all post offices at the very least, probably the BMV, even the library. I’d support having year round voter outreach and education centers that also served as polling locations during election season.
You should be able to vote wherever you want to, at least within the state, and definitely within the county, not limited to a particular polling location.
If there is a long line at your polling location, you should be allowed to travel to one that is less crowded. If your workplace is closer to a location than your home location, then you should be allowed to go to the closer one on your lunch break.
There’d need to be quite a bit of reform before I could think about getting behind this.
If someone is not able to travel to their county seat and wait in line for a few hours through the course of a month, and then is not able to get off work until 6PM voting day, you would feel that they should be denied the right to vote if there is a line?
Would you enforce this for someone that showed up at 10am on voting day to find that they were having technical problems and had to wait several hours before anyone was able to vote, and even then, at limited capacity, leaving them waiting to vote for 9 hours?
This has the problem of not actually electing anyone to office. Does the incumbent keep power, or does it just go vacant?
Sure, and either require states to provide an ID, or to recognize a federal ID, that is provided free of charge, along with proactive assistance in acquiring it to all citizens.
What exactly do you mean by rigorous? Are we getting bio-metric data? Are we allowing poll workers to deny someone based on their judgement that someone didn’t pass muster?
Isn’t it already?
Voter intimidation done ethically? Is that a thing?
Anyway, no. I’m not even sure why you would want such a thing.
Absentee to their prior address, local, or their choice?
I disagree. Both sides are reluctant to make such a move because they know that one day they will be in the minority. I believe the outcome of your analysis to be logical, but only if we constrain ourselves to four years.
Once we look at the next Presidential election, the calculus changes significantly. You appear to admit that gridlock tends to work against the dominant party. Let’s assume the Republicans can take back the Senate in 2022. If you get two years to run wild, then two years of gridlock, the gridlock will be on voters’ minds come 2024. How much reform do you think can be accomplished in two years? That is a rhetorical question; the more radical your reforms, the more risk you incur of biting off more than you can chew. The last thing you want is for your reforms to pay off when the opposition is in power, only to see them leverage the fruits of your labors to undo those very same policies.
I’m not sure what your point is then. My point is that they need to drop the filibuster in order to get anything accomplished.
Either side can do it at any time, but only if they are in the majority. Pretty much all the other parts of the filibuster have been removed already.
See, here’s where we get lost. Gridlock hurts the dominant party, but by not having a filibuster, they are not gridlocked. Therefore, they are more likely to hold in 2022 than if they don’t.
Assuming that the republican take control in 2022, then without the filibuster, coming in to 2024, the last 2 years of gridlock will be on their minds. With the filibuster, then coming into 2024, the last 4 years of gridlock will be on their minds.
How much reform can be done in two years? Quite a bit, probably. It doesn’t really take that long to pass legislation. Much of it is already written and passed by the House, sitting in McConnell’s circular file. Biden could be presented with an entire book of legislation to be signed as soon as his hand is done with the Bible.
How much reform do you think will be accomplished in two years with a filibuster?
That’s exactly what happened since 2016. Having a filibuster didn’t seem to prevent what you say is the last thing that we would want.
To you and k9bfriender, I will reiterate my point in bringing this up. The original hypothetical as written assumes a senate majority of 51-49. Under such circumstances, the Senate rules currently in place (specifically the filibuster) will not allow the Democrats to push through legislation without securing 15 Republican votes.
k9bfriender is correct to conclude that, given the hypothetical, no such Voting Rights Act shall pass without taking the so-called nuclear option with regards to general legislation.
Needing 60% to pass legislation effectively means that no meaningful legislation is ever passed and neither party is ever held accountable for governing. I think current Republicans like it that way.
The filibuster should be unconstitutional because it decrees that the majority of votes do not win. Waiting until another party is in power doesn’t make it any better.
Yes, if the parties in turn keep superseding each other’s legislation because of ending the filibuster, the American voter will get a chance to evaluate the effectiveness of the opposing legislation. As long as we keep it all hypothetical bullshit instead, no progress can be made in changing people’s minds. Inertia is one of our government’s biggest failures. Contrary to conservative dogma, the government is there to do proactive good for the people.