2018 US Elections

Suedesi said:
On the other hand, the fact you don't need a picture ID to vote strikes me as mad. You need a picture ID to buy cigarettes, buy alcohol, go to the doctor, collect benefits, use Medicare/Medicaid (part A/ Part B) - so I don't buy the bullshit excuse that people don't have picture ID's (otherwise I don't know how these people function/survive).
Click to expand...

Wow! You do realise that is the exact antithesis of "The land of the free" and by forcing everyone to have photo I.D. You are going even further down the paths of Orwell's 1984?

Nobody should be forced to have photo I.d. to aqcuire basic necessities or to go about their daily business. Feck me, what next? Retinal scanners and DNA testing each time you want to go to a concert or sports event?

Demanding photo I.D. is a dangerous path. It shouldn't be taken lightly, especially when there are clearly so many corrupt areas of the voting process that need fixing first.
 
InfiniteBoredom said:
Save your money.

images
Click to expand...

Eboue said:
OfG9F.jpg
Click to expand...

:lol: Damn I forgot the White text.
 
langster said:
Wow! You do realise that is the exact antithesis of "The land of the free" and by forcing everyone to have photo I.D. You are going even further down the paths of Orwell's 1984?

Nobody should be forced to have photo I.d. to aqcuire basic necessities or to go about their daily business. Feck me, what next? Retinal scanners and DNA testing each time you want to go to a concert or sports event?

Demanding photo I.D. is a dangerous path. It shouldn't be taken lightly, especially when there are clearly so many corrupt areas of the voting process that need fixing first.
Click to expand...

In theory you have a point, but in practice over 90% of Americans of driving age are equipped with a license, and as I pointed out you need a license to collect benefits, go to the doctor, buy alcohol, cigarettes, enter a bar, so we're past the point of Orwellian dystopia unfortunately.
 
Suedesi said:
In theory you have a point, but in practice over 90% of Americans of driving age are equipped with a license, and as I pointed out you need a license to collect benefits, go to the doctor, buy alcohol, cigarettes, enter a bar, so we're past the point of Orwellian dystopia unfortunately.
Click to expand...
All of the above aren’t rights. It’s very simple.
 
Suedesi said:
After reading up a bit about it, I think the system is very archaic. First you have to register to vote, which I tried to do, and the system didn't recognize me despite the fact that I've lived in NYC for about 15 years. It asked me to call a number and fax some paperwork, and given that voting in NYC doesn't really matter, I didn't bother - but still I can see how other people can be affected, and in swing states it could have real consequences.

On the other hand, the fact you don't need a picture ID to vote strikes me as mad. You need a picture ID to buy cigarettes, buy alcohol, go to the doctor, collect benefits, use Medicare/Medicaid (part A/ Part B) - so I don't buy the bullshit excuse that people don't have picture ID's (otherwise I don't know how these people function/survive).

I think every citizen should be automatically registered to vote, and should be able to approach any polling station in their state, have them scan the back of your ID (like they do tickets for games / concerts) and go about your business. This way you can't vote twice or impersonate somebody else. Voting for citizens is a right, not a privilege, and both parties should work on a solution.
Click to expand...

Even though the Justice Department acted first in December in blocking a South Carolina voter-ID law, election law experts seem to agree that the Texas case is going to be the tip of the spear. Here's how the Justice Department responded when it reviewed Texas' new voter-ID law. Federal lawyers wrote:

[W]e conclude that the total number of registered voters who lack a driver's license or personal identification card issued by DPS could range from 603,892 to 795,955. The disparity between the percentages of Hispanics and non-Hispanics who lack these forms of identification ranges from 46.5 to 120.0 percent. That is, according to the state's own data, a Hispanic registered voter is at least 46.5 percent, and potentially 120.0 percent, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack this identification. Even using the data most favorable to the state, Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver's license or a personal identification card issued by DPS, and that disparity is statistically significant.

There's more. As Brentin Mock wrote earlier this week at Colorlines, the practical reality of life in Texas makes it difficult, if not impossible, for people who want to comply with the new ID law to do so. Mock wrote:

Texas has no driver's license offices in almost a third of the state's counties. Meanwhile, close to 15 percent of Hispanic Texans living in counties without driver's license offices don't have ID. A little less than a quarter of driver's license offices have extended hours, which would make it tough for many working voters to find a place and time to acquire the IDs. Despite this, the Texas legislature struck an amendment that would have reimbursed low-income voters for travel expenses when going to apply for a voter ID, and killed another that would have required offices to remain open until 7:00 p.m. or later on just one weekday, and four or more hours at least two weekends.
Click to expand...

On Election Day, my wife did not go to the polls, but I did. I had my valid Georgia driver's license. I had my Vanderbilt University student ID. I even had my voter registration card, a couple of utility bills, my lease, and a copy of my birth certificate. I have doubts about the prevalence of in-person voting fraud and therefore the necessity of voter ID laws—but there are three reasonable components to test for: identity, citizenship, and residency, which I felt I was able to supply with everything I had with me.


However, that did not meet the legal standard to vote in Tennessee. So I had to cast a provisional ballot, which was ultimately not counted.
Click to expand...


Oliver, now 22, headed to the polls for the very first time in 2014. The Maryland resident said he was excited to cast his ballot and perform his civic duty, but the excitement was short-lived.

Oliver, who identifies as trans masculine, said he was met with resistance when he presented his identification — which is required of some first-time voters in Maryland — to a poll worker in the “pretty liberal” suburb of Washington, D.C.


“This isn’t your ID,” the poll worker said, according to Oliver. “It has an ‘F’ on it.”

While Oliver, who requested his surname not be published because he's not out as transgender to everyone, said most people perceived him as male at the time, he had only legally changed his name, not the gender marker on his identification, which he said is “a really expensive process.”
Click to expand...

Politicians’ discretion to fiddle with electoral rules greatly intensified in 2013, when the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act requirement that jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination gain federal approval when adopting electoral policies.

According to the Brennan Center, jurisdictions previously under federal preclearance have since purged far more names off of their lists than other jurisdictions. A separate study by the Leadership Conference Education Fund documents the alarming rate at which these same jurisdictions have been shutting down polling places since 2013; for instance, 212 voting locations closed in Arizona alone in the run-up to the 2016 elections.

The broad discretion and mean use of it has been at the forefront of the news recently because of Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the Republican nominee for governor in next month’s election. He had already been at the forefront of both the excessive purge of voter rolls, and the closure of voting locations in predominantly poor and minority areas and, last week, the Associated Press exposed that Kemp’s office has put 53,000 voter registration forms on hold because they ran afoul the state’s “exact match” test. The test means that a slight divergence between the applicant’s name on the registration form and on existing government files — say, a missing hyphen or an added accent — is enough to put an application in limbo. Around 70 percent of the frozen applications are from African Americans in the state.
Click to expand...
 
Suedesi said:
In theory you have a point, but in practice over 90% of Americans of driving age are equipped with a license, and as I pointed out you need a license to collect benefits, go to the doctor, buy alcohol, cigarettes, enter a bar, so we're past the point of Orwellian dystopia unfortunately.
Click to expand...

why should a poor person who takes a bus to work be forced to pay for an ID?
Anyone who is registered goes to the polling station and just signs next to his or her name to get a ballot.

That's how it is here in Minnesota.
 
Suedesi said:
In theory you have a point, but in practice over 90% of Americans of driving age are equipped with a license, and as I pointed out you need a license to collect benefits, go to the doctor, buy alcohol, cigarettes, enter a bar, so we're past the point of Orwellian dystopia unfortunately.
Click to expand...

That was my point. I find it amazing that the USA and so many of its citizens on all sides of the political spectrum (but mainly Republicans) constantly bang on about being the "land of the free" and the true home of Freedom and Democracy, while continuously slagging off other places (especially in Scandanavia and the EU or UK) and mocking them for being inferior, when the opposite is actually plainly true to anyone who has travelled or bothered to research or read up on it.

We often mock the brainwashed Trump cult, but it goes much deeper than that. I honestly think many put this false sense of living in the freedom and democratic capital of the world simply down to being able to own a gun. I don't think many actually realise how oppressed or controlled they actually are. Shit, I feel awful because I think I am always slamming the USA when really there is so much to love and admire and learn from and even emulate. However I think the biggest problem (or one of them) is that feeling is not thought or reciprocated and many feel the USA is superior and perfect and everyone else has it wrong and there is nothing to learn and everyone should copy and want to emulate the USA, and they can't fathom anyone thinking otherwise.

That was a bit of a generalisation, but I honestly feel that's how many non US posters think or feel at times and it certainly is how it's perceived by many. Well it is definitely the consensus between many of our daily visitors.
 
langster said:
:lol: Fml! I can't believe you had to defend your fecking username on a MANCHESTER UNITED FORUM!

:lol: Damn, that may be the funniest thing I have ever read on here.
Click to expand...
I don’t know what you are talking about, it’s clearly a current event forum with a Manchester United section ;)
 
McConnell's changed his look.
 
Tom Perez on CNN saying the Dems have a good shot of winning the senate. Either he's bluffing or the internal polling is showing a swing towards the Dems in some of the senate races.
 
Fergies Gum said:
Tom Perez on CNN saying the Dems have a good shot of winning the senate. Either he's bluffing or he's seeing a late swing towards the Dems in the internal polling in some of the senate races.
Click to expand...
The NYT/Siena poll shows a late break of about 3pts in battlegrounds for Dems.

That being said, with many close races, and no obvious 51st pick up, it’s hard to see them holding everywhere.
 
I am really really hoping Beto to get the seat. I know it is Texas and all but it would be a very good momentum for a lot of progressive candidates and would make the Dems go left a little bit as a whole.

If he loses, most would believe in shit like how he was too far left bla bla and end up more with centrists and another term for Trump.
 
langster said:
Wow! You do realise that is the exact antithesis of "The land of the free" and by forcing everyone to have photo I.D. You are going even further down the paths of Orwell's 1984?

Nobody should be forced to have photo I.d. to aqcuire basic necessities or to go about their daily business. Feck me, what next? Retinal scanners and DNA testing each time you want to go to a concert or sports event?

Demanding photo I.D. is a dangerous path. It shouldn't be taken lightly, especially when there are clearly so many corrupt areas of the voting process that need fixing first.
Click to expand...
This is the route we would have gone down with Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” constant chokepoint immigration plan. A society that requires you to ‘show your papers’ at every turn. Of course that only would function if it applies to everyone, not just undocumented immigrants (obviously unenforceable) or is just applied in a blatantly racist way (cops/ICE/law enforcement stopping only black or Latino people).

Republicans would gladly scrap every civil liberty they could if it meant keeping power (except Rand Paul). They don’t give a feck about freedom unless it’s to do what they want to do.
 
The United said:
I am really really hoping Beto to get the seat. I know it is Texas and all but it would be a very good momentum for a lot of progressive candidates and would make the Dems go left a little bit as a whole.

If he loses, most would believe in shit like how he was too far left bla bla and end up more with centrists and another term for Trump.
Click to expand...

He is closing. But it is about turnout.

Fingers crossed.

Texas is likely to turn blue in the near future.Georgia too.
 
Fergies Gum said:
Tom Perez on CNN saying the Dems have a good shot of winning the senate. Either he's bluffing or the internal polling is showing a swing towards the Dems in some of the senate races.
Click to expand...
I think it is a PR. Not much point going on TV right before the election and says we have no chance. Would be very counter productive.


Unless it is Mourinho...:lol:
 
Last time in 2016, I was sat in Norwalk, CT in my living room in a daze randomly switching channels as results poured in and pinching myself that Donald fecking Trump, a reality TV nobody who wrestled with Steve Austin and got delivered a stunner on a wrestling ring become the President of US of A. My wife had long left me to stare at the TV. I remember hitting the bed at 3 AM watching Van Jones having a meltdown on CNN.

Hopefully better luck this time.
 
Charlie Foley said:
This is the route we would have gone down with Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” constant chokepoint immigration plan. A society that requires you to ‘show your papers’ at every turn. Of course that only would function if it applies to everyone, not just undocumented immigrants (obviously unenforceable) or is just applied in a blatantly racist way (cops/ICE/law enforcement stopping only black or Latino people).

Republicans would gladly scrap every civil liberty they could if it meant keeping power (except Rand Paul). They don’t give a feck about freedom unless it’s to do what they want to do.
Click to expand...

I was surprised to know that an ICE officer can cite and arrest a legal immigrant if he doesn't carry his legal documents including visa/GC/I797 forms at ANY time. Apparently it's not enforced but an ICE office will be within his rights to arrest you.
 
fishfingers15 said:
Last time in 2016, I was sat in Norwalk, CT in my living room in a daze randomly switching channels as results poured in and pinching myself that Donald fecking Trump, a reality TV nobody who wrestled with Steve Austin and got delivered a stunner on a wrestling ring become the President of US of A. My wife had long left me to stare at the TV. I remember hitting the bed at 3 AM watching Van Jones having a meltdown on CNN.

Hopefully better luck this time.
Click to expand...
I remember a friend from Singapore called me and said "OMG america, What have you done?!" I think only 20 states had the results at that point. so I was like don't worry, just wait.

And... yeah
 
Eboue said:
why should a democrat help someone who will just vote for them anyway? the democrats need to focus on helping the middle class, the poor can just deal with it. also i am a good person
Click to expand...
:lol:While I'm loving New Orleans, the downside of the US is how grave the homeless problem is. Never fails to shock me when I'm here.
 
Suedesi said:
In theory you have a point, but in practice over 90% of Americans of driving age are equipped with a license, and as I pointed out you need a license to collect benefits, go to the doctor, buy alcohol, cigarettes, enter a bar, so we're past the point of Orwellian dystopia unfortunately.
Click to expand...

I guess the percentage varies from state to state. For instance in 2016 Texas had a voting age population of 19.3 million while the number of these with a drivers licence was 15.9 million. That equates to around 82%. If you consider that licensing rates decline the younger and poorer you are you can see why a seemingly trivial thing like demanding a license has an immediate and disproportionate disenfranchising effect on specific portions of the population. Might be (pulling figures out of my ass a bit here) that up to a quarter or a third of the poorest Texans don't have a license.

The most recent estimate of how Texan ID law affects registered voters is from way back in 2014 when a judge appeared to accept that over 600k Texans failed to meet the state's ID requirements despite being registered to vote. My guess would be that the longer a licence is required then the more people will pick one up, but I'm not sure that's the case.
 
langster said:
That was my point. I find it amazing that the USA and so many of its citizens on all sides of the political spectrum (but mainly Republicans) constantly bang on about being the "land of the free" and the true home of Freedom and Democracy, while continuously slagging off other places (especially in Scandanavia and the EU or UK) and mocking them for being inferior, when the opposite is actually plainly true to anyone who has travelled or bothered to research or read up on it.

We often mock the brainwashed Trump cult, but it goes much deeper than that. I honestly think many put this false sense of living in the freedom and democratic capital of the world simply down to being able to own a gun. I don't think many actually realise how oppressed or controlled they actually are. Shit, I feel awful because I think I am always slamming the USA when really there is so much to love and admire and learn from and even emulate. However I think the biggest problem (or one of them) is that feeling is not thought or reciprocated and many feel the USA is superior and perfect and everyone else has it wrong and there is nothing to learn and everyone should copy and want to emulate the USA, and they can't fathom anyone thinking otherwise.

That was a bit of a generalisation, but I honestly feel that's how many non US posters think or feel at times and it certainly is how it's perceived by many. Well it is definitely the consensus between many of our daily visitors.
Click to expand...

Yeah Americans can be arrogant and infuriating, but there's no place I'd rather live than USA.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.