this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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Now if only they would actually turn out to vote in larger numbers....
Exactly, more than half of registered voters are over 50. So polling 50+ year olds would definitely be better data.
With all the new anti-voting laws, what percentage of young people can actually register to vote? Do they have valid ID? Can they get it? My grandmother died years ago, but she managed to make it 97 years without ever owning a photo ID. She didn't drive, but she had a voter card and the bank knew her by sight as well as signature. In today's world, I'm pretty sure she'd be disqualified from voting.
They are, but they are holding the numbers ransom to see whose camp pays more to either have them released or suppress them.
i wish i understood why people have such a large blind spot when it comes to gerrymandering and voter suppression.
both combined with extremely unpopular politicans and policies (ie gaza genocide) are the reason why people aren't voting; but somehow, people are still confused as to why voters aren't voting.
Neither are a problem in the European countries that I'm aware of yet young voter turnout is catastrophic there as well. Some parties definitely have a hard anti-Israel line. I'd be happy to see a counterexample but I think only bitter disappointment lays ahead.
Young people are increasingly disengaged from the "traditional" democratic process, globally. Less voter turnout, but also way less participation in traditional politics (which 25 year olds have a party membership card anymore?)
Interestingly though, Gen Z isn't necessarily politically inactive; they are still being activists, engaging in political discourse, and are donating a larger average percentage of their income than Gen X/Y IIRC.
That's not to excuse the extremely shortsighted decision not to vote, but the problem is a lot larger than some practical barriers. I truly think there are strong and multifaceted cultural elements to the youths increasingly not responding to the traditional representative democratic systems in the way that generations who grew up on TV did. Gerrymandering is bad, but don't expect a hypothetical fix to bring zoomers to the voting centers.
i think that voter suppression and gerrymandering are less of a problem for younger voters and that the problem is more likely shitty candidates and shitty policies driving down enthusiasm/desire to vote.
While gerrymandering and voter suppression aren't nothing, the system is just completely incapable of responding to signals it never receives. If you don't vote, the system is not incentivized or designed to promote people who have your political interests in mind. There's a lot of critical reforms that need to happen, none of them as urgent as ranked choice voting, but as little as your vote means for a federal election:
It means A LOT MORE for local elections, and these people have a shocking amount of power for how much people care about local races.
It's still at least some signal to the system that can be interpreted or responded to. It can't hurt. Throw your vote away on RFK or the Libertarian Party if you want. Hell, I voted for Jorgensen last election. But I'm telling you that not voting when you could is almost always going to lead to the worst possible outcome for people who share your political interests.
since you're not seeing the circular reasoning here; i'll try to make it more apparent: how do you vote when your vote is blocked?
It's not blocked as much as it's made more and more difficult, because they can't hard block it (yet). So, the best advice, if you actually want advice and not just to bitch on the internet (it's fine if that's all you want, btw), is to organize. Organization is the single most powerful tool in political efforts, full stop. Examine the problem that affects voters in a given area and organize with the explicit goal of helping voters overcome those barriers. I'm not just talking about getting people to the polls, I'm talking demanding local policy changes, getting after state legislators, yelling at anyone who will (and many who won't) listen, organize and run local campaigns for city council or county supervisor. Those races can actually be competitive in deep red/blue areas, especially if locals know a particular person on their team is a shithead. Those positions also hold a shocking amount of power, and open up political communication channels that would otherwise be inaccessible. Idk if you're a communist, and I don't care, the American communists of the 1800s didn't just sit back and wait for the US to collapse, they got out there and faced likely being murdered to try and organize slaves to break up an unjust system. Get outside and stomp some grass if you want to see something different, bitching on the internet won't change anything.
we agree on this; our signals got crossed somewhere.
Real problems are often used as convenient excuses to justify laziness. At the end of the day it's your job as a citizen to do whatever it takes to vote. If you want it to be easier then jump through the hoops that currently exist to vote for the only party offering a way to remove some of them. If you don't vote at all then your opinion is irrelevant. That's the reality of the world we live in.
real world problems are the first words in your response; but it seems that you ignore them.
if the choice comes down to voting or pissing off your employer to take off to go vote; it's a real world problem and you're going to stay at work.
if the choice comes down to commuting home and make dinner for your kids or spending hours in line in a place like houston to go vote; it's a real world problem and you're going to go home to make that dinner.
i suspected that laziness was the knee jerk reaction that people had when it came to voter suppression and you're coming from lemmy.world so that tracks and explains why republicans win elections despite there being so much fewer of them than democrats when democrats also don't give a fuck.
It took you a lot of words to say "but sometimes it can be hard to vote". We all know that, but it's still your job as a citizen to overcome those obstacles. If you don't figure out a way to do so then it's only going to get worse. You can call that mean or apathetic or whatever other descriptor you like but it isn't going to change the situation. Voting could though.
I'm not sure what that weird instance gatekeeping rant was about. Seems like the whinging of the terminally online to me but maybe I'm missing something.
the entirety of my response is summed up by practicing empathy for other people and it's clear you lack that empathy from your response.
i recommend that you give empathy a try to help dislodge your callousness so that things can improve for humanity.
This isn't the god damn care bears. Empathy is not going to fix this problem. Voting is the only thing that will. If pointing that out makes me an asshole then I'll happily accept that label. It's better than whatever fatalistic psychotherapeutic nonsense you're trying to peddle. Actions solve problems, not good vibes. Pull your head out of your ass.
empathy is just the start; it'll help you realize why things are fucked and you can take meaningful action from there.
i used to be like you and it wasn't until the anti-gay, anti-immigrant and anti-student laws fucked my life hard that i developed that sense of empathy that i'm imploring you to develop before things get worse for all of us.
Empathy is not the important bit, the action is. That's what I'm talking about but you're just virtue signaling.
To illustrate the point I'll concede to your argument. Empathizing with people who have trouble voting is step one of fixing the problem. Great, now what's step two? Tell me it's not finding a way to get people to vote to change the system that's disenfranchising them, which is exactly what I've been saying. You're getting stuck on how people feel about things when that's a secondary issue at best.
I mean, your view is fucked, but they come from .ml so I wouldn't put much into their gatekeeping
OK, but what's the alternative? All I see is people making excuses for doing nothing and I don't see how that helps anything. People need to vote in spite of the difficulties, not feel better about not voting because it's not as easy as it should be.
It is literally made difficult on purpose and you are excusing it
If that's what you think I'm saying then you're not listening at all
You are just telling people to get over it. It isn't productive, yet you are requesting a productive response
You don't know how to read without injecting your own bullshit into the material