Donald Trump’s campaign strategist for his 2016 election win says: “I believe we will have a national emergency declared by late August,” ahead of the Congressional midterm elections due on November 3. “You will have enough evidence by mid-August to show that we have a massive problem” of election fraud, he tells me in an interview. Trump’s televised address to the nation on Thursday last week was the beginning of the process, he says.
The president declassified documents, which he claimed show “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure” revealed by the 2020 election.
These had been hidden, even from him, by a “deep state” conspiracy of US intelligence services, he posited.
Trump demanded that the Congress pass a bill called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act. The bill stipulates that all voters produce a passport or birth certificate to be eligible to vote. Democrats denounce it as an effort at mass disenfranchisement. The Brennan Centre for Justice at New York University estimates that it could block 21 million Americans from the ballot box.
Under the US Constitution, it’s the states, not the federal government, that run elections. The SAVE Act would force state governments to hand voter roll information to Washington.
Trump sent his Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin, out the following morning to issue a threat to state officials: they could face prison time unless they followed the administration’s orders to remove non-citizens from rolls.
That’s just rude. There’s a difference of tactics here. They’re not supporting fascism and I think it’s pretty shitty to blame that on people who have their heart in the right place but don’t want to participate in the atrocious US electoral system of FPTP, by far most votes don’t make a difference anyway
That’s remarkably disingenuous when some elections are literally won and lost by less than a few votes.
Every vote matters. Just because you vote for someone or a party that doesn’t win doesn’t mean your vote is wasted. More people who might want to vote for that party don’t because “Well, they only got 5% of the vote, so why bother” might see the next election that same party get 9% of the vote. Then 14%. Suddenly there’s more people voting for that party that will draw in more people to vote.
Every vote might not make a huge difference today, but it might be a part of a huge difference in 10 years.
So shut the fuck up and vote.
I meant that there are swing states where votes really count, and safe states (for either party) where a protest vote is easier to justify.
It’s not necessarily the vote itself that does all the heavy lifting. Politicians pay a lot of attention to the stats of which groups are consistently voting and which issues are important for them, much more so than for what is important to the population at large because their bottom line is appealing to the people who show up to vote. Even if those votes are associated with their opponent if it’s a big enough block then throwing a bone to attract their vote becomes appealing.
For example, old people are one of the most highly consistent blocks of voters and (in our aging society) a growing one, too. Everyone wants to appeal to them as the math gets a lot harder if old people totally reject you! So with politicians competing for their support, social security & medicare make up over 50% of all the increase in government spending (not including more interest in the loans to pay for that which is also very substantial), even though the government already spends six times more on the average 65+ person than on the children and young adults <26, despite the latter group being substantially more likely to be in poverty. It’s not an economically sound decision, investing in the youth would provide better returns for society by setting them on a better trajectory for all the working life they have yet to live. But most of the ages in that younger block are not allowed to vote and the older near 26 are very inconsistent at voting, so their concerns really do not matter to politicians except insofar as the children are a concern of their parents who are much more likely to be voting.
Even if a movement is very popular with the general public, if that movement isn’t in the habit of voting politicians aren’t likely to stick out their neck for it if there are other more reliable voters they can appeal to. Because that would be seen as a wasted effort that won’t help them to win. But if a generally unpopular movement or view is popular with voters then politicians will tend to stand by it no matter what the general public has to say.
So besides directly and immediately allowing the greater fascist to win by abstaining from the easiest, most basic and important civil right known to civil society, what else are they doing to
enablecombat fascism?“Check this box to have a voice”
“No.”
“K. Next?”
“I RESPECT Y’ALL’S RIGHT TO ELIMINATE YOUR OWN RIGHTS BAR HA HA YA HA” - Fascists
Honey they don’t have their heart in the right place if they stand by waiting while evil gets to work ❤️