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this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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Would be if it was a true measure but with the low voter participation and him getting less than 50% of what few people voted, he never got more than 21% of the total population to vote for him. That means that over three quarters of Americans have never voted for him and probably never will.
That he got that far with so little of the population voting for him (18% when he "won" in 2016) says a LOT about how undemocratic the system is, though..
Whatever way you do the figures, he was elected once and nearly elected a second time. He’s the most likely candidate for a third term and it’s neck and neck. People choosing not to vote is just as big a problem when one of the candidates is this terrible for the world.
He was APPOINTED once. Elected is when you get more votes than the other candidates.
You mean politicians from both parties alienating prospective voters by representing rich people and their corporations many times more than regular people, being staunchly pro-cop and laughing at the very notion of common sense policies that most of the population wants?
While Biden is by far the lesser evil, him and the other neoliberals are still very much an evil, complicit in the rise of fascists like Trump because they never do enough to resist them or represent and help the poor people who have been fooled by Trump pretending to care about them.
And that's not even mentioning all the voter suppression the Dems make pretty speeches against but hardly ever do anything to actually stop it.
An indirect election is a type of election. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election
Voter suppression is certainly a problem but voter apathy is a bigger problem.
An indirect election is one thing, but the EC isn't democratic. Not even close.
And voter "apathy" (more like resignation) is mostly a problem because, with very few center-left exceptions, the major parties only cater to the rich and others with right wing policy positions.
To have nobody who represents you faithfully in Congress or the white House is de facto disenfranchisement, not apathy or laziness.
In the most recent election, as it was an election, trump nearly won. That's apathy, not resignation.
None of the candidates in the republican side can get support over trump. Again, apathy. I'm no saying they are good candidates, but a bucket of vomit would be better than a narcissist who steers the country towards civil war and fascism, only caring about his own enrichment.
There are myriad possible reasons for people not voting, including but not limited to
Voter suppression makes it extremely difficult to impossible for many, especially in the states and districts that Trump won. Voter suppression that the Dems keep promising to do something about.
The disenfranchisement through lack of faithful representation I mentioned
Having no energy left after working grueling hours on election day
Going to college in a state that only allows permanent residents to vote and being unable to return to your hometown for election day
But you just automatically assume that it's the only one that's completely unquantifiable and absolves yourself and your favourite politicians from all responsibility.
That's very convenient, don't you think?
Not at all, but while all of those reasons can and should be addressed, the vast majority of people not voting are choosing not to for other reasons. It's not inability it's lack of will. The reason one side is trying to stifle the voice of the other by gerrymandering and making registration difficult is because votes matter. Yet many people choose not to vote as they think their vote doesn't make a difference. It's apathy more than barriers.
Too tired to vote is not a real reason. There is postal voting in many states. Despite postal voting in some states, and states without the type of problems you cite, voter turnout is still low. It's a big problem.
You're complaining about disenfranchised voters while downvoring comments you don't agree with. I assume the irony is lost on you.
I don't care about Internet points. The whole system on Lemmy is to make posts more visible. You're choosing to stifle conversation.
Oh yeah? How are you measuring the will of people to be so certain?
Again, where's your proof? All the other things are objectively measurable, but you assume that it's the intangible one because that's convenient to you.
It definitely is. YOU try working the equivalent of two full time jobs and take care of a family on top of that, still unable to make ends meet. See how much energy you have left for literally ANYTHING else.
But not all. Most of the ones with the most restrictions on it were amongst the states Trump won. Yet another case of measurable voter.
Because of the many measurable reasons I've mentioned and to a much smaller extent the theoretical one you want to blame it all on for convenience.
Yep. One that can be tackled by addressing the many tangible reasons rather than just yelling at people for unproven assumptions.
Yeah, I'm downvoting misinformation and assumptions based on nothing concrete. That's not disenfranchisement or censorship or whatever else you imagine it to be. Nothing ironic about that.
No, I'm choosing to express my opposition to misinformation using the tools available to me. If I was to downvote someone claiming Trump won in 2020, would you complain about that too? What about someone claiming that vaccines give you covid?
Not all utterances are of equal value. Your downplaying of proven problems in favor of your gut feeling based on party strategist propaganda is misinformation and thus of little value if not downright harmful.
No, you're following a narrative, not data. If people were having problems voting to the extent you are claiming, then we'd have similar voting levels to historical levels in the states with similar rules. We don't. It's dropped.
We'd also have a large decrease in voters in the states that are restrictive or gerrymandered. We don't. It's a measurable reduction and skews to certain populations.
You're claiming facts, while providing no data. Then saying mine is from my gut while the data backs it up.
Heck, you can even stop comparing us states and start looking at the difference between countries. You can even look at the difference in elections that have a president on the ticket and the ones that don't. Which of your reasons so you think causes that discrepancy?
So you're saying that the fact that, in a country with ever-increasing and evermore effective voter suppression, voter participation dropping is proof positive that it has nothing to do with it? What kind of backwards ass logic is that?
Absolute populations are increasing while voter participation as a percentage is decreasing.
Yeah, disenfranchised populations. Still doesn't prove your apathy hypothesis
You want data? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/28/state-voting-rights-election-laws-police-suppression
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/voter-suppression-barriers-college-students/
What data? Not only have you provided exactly as much data as I did before this comment, but you've also invented causal relationships for which there's no proof at all.
You mean other countries that work fewer hours, have a higher minimum wage, have plenty of polling places in every district and just generally makes it much easier to vote than in the US? Gee, must be because voters are less apathetic there!
People are conditioned by the media to believe that presidential elections are the most important ones, so employers and educational institutions are more likely to give employees and students leeway to vote than for "midterm" elections.
The difference between claiming data and not is that I'm agreeing that your points have merit. You're ignoring mine.
I have provided examples. You haven't disproved them, you've disregarded the .
Neither of yoir links show my opinion as false. They reinforce your assertion, which I agree with but they don't quantify it.
No I mean every country worldwide. Those with more or less holiday pay. Those with more or less voting restrictions.
Lol, so people vote more when they think it's important. The corraly is that they vote less when they think it is less important. Also called apathy. Which state do you think has the least gerrymandering and voter suppression?
First I've heard of you agreeing. And no, I'm not ignoring your baseless claims, I'm calling them out for being baseless. It's a significant difference.
You have provided arguments, not examples.
I also haven't disproven that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit.
You can't prove a negative. I refer you back to the teapot.
They're imperical proof that the things I claim actually happen. That they don't quantify it doesn't imply that your unproven claims must be true.
All well-functioning democracies have better facilitation of voting than the US and higher voter participation. That they have both of those things in common is no coincidence.
That's an interpretation ignoring a ton of known data in favor of your unproven hypothesis. Ever hear of confirmation bias?
I have no idea and that's fine since it's irrelevant.
Ah, so it's a comprehension problem. Well, no point wasting my time then.
The point of asking for the least gerrymandered state was to show the differences in a state of your choosing, without me cherrypicking data.
The fact that they don't quantify it is my point. Youre making assertions of fact without the data to back it up. I'm pointing to flaws in your data and offering examples that show your assertions are incorrect.
I think it's more damning to see how many eligible voters saw his disastrous administration, and still didn't vote.
Imagine seeing Trump on the golf course for a literal year out of his term and thinking, "Yeah, I don't care if that guy wins or loses again."
Imagine seeing 4 years of the kind of damage Trump can do, running on returning to the exact same status quo that made a demagogue like him all but inevitable, and then shaming everyone who doesn't think that's a great idea as indifferent 🤦
I don't have to imagine it, because that's exactly what I'm doing.
If anyone thinks America before Trump was just as bad as America during Trump, they literally don't deserve the right to vote, because they lack critical thinking skills and empathy for their fellow people.
Oh, and PS: your "enlightened centrism" is neither.
I think you're thoroughly misunderstanding what I'm saying. You're definitely misunderstanding where I'm coming from.
What I'm saying is that it's not enough to return to how things were just before Trump, because things were so damn bad for so many people that they (extremely unwisely and in most cases with malicious intent) made TRUMP president.
To go "you know what? We need to do exactly the same things that we had been doing for 30 years when the disaster happened" is absolute lunacy that invites the disaster back.
In case you still can't tell, I'm not a centrist. I'm a progressive who knows that it's no longer 1992 like the DNC thinks but also that it's beginning to smell a lot like 1920s Italy when fascists first came to power while liberals didn't use what power they had to stop them either.