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Democrats worry their most loyal voters won’t turn out for Biden in 2024
(www.washingtonpost.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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politics
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In a lot of areas voting isn't easy. It's something you have to work to do. Why stand in the freezing November air worried you're gonna be late for work and lose your job if you're not excited? Why do it in the morning? Because maybe you're me in your 20s and don't have a car and you can actually make it to when the polls open in the morning but not the evening with how the schedules run.
Why go up to the election office and force them to take your mail in ballet after it was rejected twice because your signature "didn't match" if you're not excited?
Why finagle a time in your day when you can stand in the cold for an hour without your baby if you're not excited?
Why stand until you want to literally because the line was way longer than you thought it was and you didn't bring a chair this time if you're not excited?
All this happened to me over the course of me voting in my adult life. This doesn't count how voting locations constantly move on me for reasons unknown. It's not that the voting location moved. For some reason I was just assigned a different location. The times where I've been given the run around about where I should vote. The times where I tried to vote, but whoops all the machines are broken and I decided that I didn't want to wait for a repair which could take hours.
Voting is hard. It can be a breezy affair, but I've never experienced that in presidential elections or midterms, only really in special state elections or pure local elections. The system is definitely rigged against you and you have to ask yourself if it's worth fighting. Is denying my kid's time with me worth this? Is enduring this strain on my body worth this? Is the mental energy when I'm tired from work worth this? I get what you'd say no even if I always say yes
Pretty sure that every state (with maybe a handful of exceptions?) provides for required unpaid time off work to vote. There's also lots of places that have early voting, for weeks ahead of an election, with early and late hours. Mail-in voting has expanded dramatically since Covid.
But I get it. There are also lots of places in the country where voting is hard, and there's a very clear reason why. The more people who vote, the more likely that a Democrat will win and a Republican will lose. It is always Republicans who want to make voting harder, and it is always Democrats who want to make voting easier.
You want it to be easy to vote, so you don't have to be as excited about voting? Go vote for the people who want to make it easy to vote, and stop voting for people who want to make it hard to vote. If nothing else, get excited about making it easier to vote.
For a lot of people "unpaid time off" isn't a favor. You're asking them to pay to vote.
Plus the rules frequently only come into play if their work shift makes it literally impossible to make it to the polls. If they could wake up from their third shift job to get in line as polls open before making it to their other job at 7:45 sharp, then no time off for you. If you need to get your kids to school during that time slot? Too bad, that's time you could technically be voting, so it's not your employer's responsibility.
Sorry, but voting is a civic duty.
Not a pastime.
Not a hobby.
Not a privilege.
A duty.
Republicans win when you don't vote, and they get you to not vote by making it difficult, if not dangerous.
Just remember, not voting will only ever make things worse.
I cannot vote for you.
When someone has three kids and lives paycheck-to-paycheck, asking them to sacrifice pay to vote is not justified. You're saying, "vote or feed your kids, pick one."
I'm not saying that you should let your kids starve. I'm saying that this situation has been engineered on purpose, and that it perpetuates itself by design.
If I could, I would stand in line for you. I can afford it.
But I can't. Legally, I can't.