Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 307: Tulsa Staggered

(+) Yeah! (+)

turbopuns3 posted...

Kentucky is an easy target for all the racism cries which gets really fucking old.

As somebody who used to live in Kentucky, there is very much a reason for that.

---

changmas posted...

https://twitter.com/brooklynmutt/status/1275582279289581571?s=21

This is funny because Nancy Green got screwed over by that and Quaker Oats refused to help fund a monument for her grave based on "Aunt Jemima and Nancy Green are not the same person. Aunt Jemima is a fictitious character."

---

turbopuns3 posted...

Sure. I accept that if even just 1 individual tries their very hardest to do everything in their power to vote and is denied the ability to do so by the system (read that carefully~), then yes voter suppression has occurred.

The entire point that you are incapable of understanding, apparently, is that individuals shouldn't be forced to try their very hardest to exercise their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS. The fact that people even have to "try their very hardest to do everything in their power to vote" IS a form of voter suppression. Because they've made it harder for certain groups of people to vote (those who vote in person, those without access to transportation, etc.). Making it harder to vote IS a form of voter suppression. The fact that you only consider it voter suppression when it is made literally impossible for individuals to vote is the problem here; your very definition of voter suppression is wrong.

---

changmas posted...

The entire point that you are incapable of understanding, apparently, is that individuals shouldn't be forced to try their very hardest to exercise their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS.

I understand this perfectly and do not deny that nonzero voter suppression happened despite the best good faith efforts of the state.

HashtagSEP posted...

As somebody who used to live in Kentucky, there is very much a reason for that.

And that does nothing to change my point about the ignorant backlash from the nation being exaggerated.

turbopuns3 posted...

I understand this perfectly and do not deny that nonzero voter suppression happened despite the best good faith efforts of the state.

"Best good faith efforts" is an interesting way to characterize shutting down 90% of your state's polling places.

---

I've gotta speak up for puns here. We're in the middle of a pandemic and polling stations tend to be manned by the most at-risk people in our society. It seems like small, enclosed polling stations were closed to redirect people to a larger, more open polling place. Plus the government did everything possible to expand their vote-by-mail efforts. It has bad optics, but it's like when New York cancelled their primary. It's the government trying to address a health concern more than anything else. Yeah, there's voter suppression all over the place in this country, but treating these circumstances like those in Georgia, for example, really muddies the waters overall.

---

Yesterday was a very, very good day to be a progressive. Lots of excellent victories.

---

Inviso posted...

I've gotta speak up for puns here. We're in the middle of a pandemic and polling stations tend to be manned by the most at-risk people in our society. It seems like small, enclosed polling stations were closed to redirect people to a larger, more open polling place. Plus the government did everything possible to expand their vote-by-mail efforts. It has bad optics, but it's like when New York cancelled their primary. It's the government trying to address a health concern more than anything else. Yeah, there's voter suppression all over the place in this country, but treating these circumstances like those in Georgia, for example, really muddies the waters overall.

Thank you. I admit I caused a lot of grief yesterday by being tilted already when I came in the thread. And took out my frustration in a way that was not productive or pleasant so I do feel remorse over that. At a point I was being perceived as trolling but that was just basic me being unable to control my emotions on the issue and getting myself dragged back into it.

Interesting point though about how if anyone's process for voting is made even a little more involved then it's voter suppression. Let's talk about that for a minute.

Does anyone here deny that it would be an acceptable good faith effort to change my polling location during covid to not be inside a building that is literally designed to care for people who are by definition in the high-risk population for the pandemic? Like if they moved it down the road to a church instead of the nursing home. Would you say that would make pretty good logical sense given covid?

Well if you think that then you accept that any good faith effort by the state to adjust the voting process would by definition create nonzero voter suppression. It would literally be impossible to do it without some degree of voter suppression because by the definition if you make a single person's voting location be farther away from them than it was before, you have made it more difficult for them to vote and thus, voter suppression.

Maybe if you accept that voter suppression was inevitable due to covid, it will help you realize that the system we put in place was entirely in good faith. Maybe not. But I think that is an interesting point.

Honestly, the only instance of suppression I think should be corrected in the case of Kentucky is...why the fuck are you closing your polling stations at 6 PM? There are people with 9 to 5 jobs, so that's cutting things EXTREMELY close. Polling places in Connecticut are open until 8 PM, which is far more reasonable to give plenty of time to people who have work and can't necessarily take it off, even though they're legally allowed to.

---

turbopuns3 posted...

Like if they moved it down the road to a church instead of the nursing home. Would you say that would make pretty good logical sense given covid?

I don't think voting should be done in a church.

---

turbopuns3 posted...

Does anyone here deny that it would be an acceptable good faith effort to change my polling location during covid to not be inside a building that is literally designed to care for people who are by definition in the high-risk population for the pandemic? Like if they moved it down the road to a church instead of the nursing home. Would you say that would make pretty good logical sense given covid?

Well if you think that then you accept that any good faith effort by the state to adjust the voting process would by definition create nonzero voter suppression. It would literally be impossible to do it without some degree of voter suppression because by the definition if you make a single person's voting location be farther away from them than it was before, you have made it more difficult for them to vote and thus, voter suppression.

there's a massive difference between moving your voting location down the road and closing 90% of voting locations. this is a complete and total false equivalence.

---

Inviso posted...

Honestly, the only instance of suppression I think should be corrected in the case of Kentucky is...why the fuck are you closing your polling stations at 6 PM? There are people with 9 to 5 jobs, so that's cutting things EXTREMELY close. Polling places in Connecticut are open until 8 PM, which is far more reasonable to give plenty of time to people who have work and can't necessarily take it off, even though they're legally allowed to.

^
This is horrendously early, yep.

Again though, if anything I think Kentucky did a better job at curbing voter suppression this year than they have in other years. No excuse absentee voting is a huge step forward and something I hope they maintain going forward. Shrinking the polling places is obviously less than ideal, but I at least understand the logic of it in the midst of a pandemic. It is something I hope they rectify in November unless they have a similarly aggressive vote by mail campaign. I'll be interested to see the final numbers when they finish counting the voting.

---

changmas posted...

there's a massive difference between moving your voting location down the road and closing 90% of voting locations.

Quite massive yes, but the point is to shed light on a different way of thinking.

How many other nursing home situations are there? How many voting precincts wouldn't have an obvious second choice? What logisitcal issues does that present in terms of communication on who needs to go to which new location? Are all the precinct lines the same? Let's arbitrarily say there are 25 that need to be adjusted for covid. You are going to multiply confusion exponentially as you add more changes to voting locations. Being able to tell the entire county "go to the huge building in the middle" is infinitely simpler. Again, not perfect but the point is I don't know if some critics have an actual better plan. If they do they haven't suggested it.

I'm not sure why this has been so heated, but here's how I vote: I realize it's voting day and I get in my car and I drive to my local polling station

If I had to drive really far to the only station in my city, especially in a congested area like downtown, I'd be pretty annoyed

If it was hour long waits when you get there, and as the only voting station it had an early closing time (especially a super early time like 6pm....maybe that's normal in KY but that'd be super unreasonable where I live) I'd be so fucking pissed.

I think pun probably believes that it'd be my fault for not being more prepared or whatever but I would completely view that as a failing of the organizers of the voting process.

---

Dancedreamer posted...

I don't think voting should be done in a church.

Oh, sure. There isn't actually a church down the road I was just making a hypothetical example.

I have a question for you Cly. Wherever it is you vote normally, what if that building burned down, hypothetically. So now you get a new place to vote. Sounds reasonable. How would you expect to be notified of the change?

CoolCly posted...

I'm not sure why this has been so heated, but here's how I vote: I realize it's voting day and I get in my car and I drive to my local polling station

Now imagine you have to use public transportation in order to get there. Or rely on someone else driving you to the polling station. Or imagine that you have to work that day. And your choice is between voting and your job.

Then you have the issue of identification. Student IDs in many places don't count. Some people don't have a drivers license. And getting an ID sometimes is more difficult than necessary.

The idea that people have to vote on a specific day in a specific place seems kind of silly these days.

---

Inviso posted...

Honestly, the only instance of suppression I think should be corrected in the case of Kentucky is...why the fuck are you closing your polling stations at 6 PM? There are people with 9 to 5 jobs, so that's cutting things EXTREMELY close. Polling places in Connecticut are open until 8 PM, which is far more reasonable to give plenty of time to people who have work and can't necessarily take it off, even though they're legally allowed to.

100% yes it is stupid I don't know why 6pm is the rule.

Though the ugly truth that 90% of people in here are gonna deny and chide me for pointing out is...you can vote before work. In fact the news showed people in and out in 15 seconds in the early hours. "No lines" throughout the day, and then a huge traffic jam at 5. I know there was a hotline for people to call if they weren't able to vote in person. Would be curious to see poll results from those people.

The real ugly truth is this whole debate should not be happening because we need to do a lot more to make voting easier.

and voting should be required by law.

---

Granted, maybe not everyone is in a logisitcal situation to allow that, but realisticallyyou know a lot of people were perfectly capable of being there earlier and weren't. And, I'm not saying they shouldn't keep them open later but at least acknowledge that there are people who voting matters to them so much that they make a difference on that day to sacrifice some sleep to get there and make sure it gets done.

DoomTheGyarados posted...

The real ugly truth is this whole debate should not be happening because we need to do a lot more to make voting easier.

True.

DoomTheGyarados posted...

and voting should be required by law.

That's a bad idea. If people don't want to vote, they shouldn't be required to. Compulsory voting leads to people voting for whoever promises to get rid of compulsory voting.

---

turbopuns3 posted...

I have a question for you Cly. Wherever it is you vote normally, what if that building burned down, hypothetically. So now you get a new place to vote. Sounds reasonable. How would you expect to be notified of the change?

Easy - I look it up online or ask my neighbors where we are supposed to vote on the day of.

I've never known where the place I should vote at is before the day comes. I usually don't even know it's voting day until people around me talk about it! Then I realize it's time to vote for my local ward representative or provincial MLA or national MP or whatever and find out where to go and go vote.

I'm not attached to any particular place to vote - it just needs to be something that's reasonably accessible for me to get to during a normal work day.

And it *should* be that easy. Requiring extensive preparation to vote or requiring a bunch of hoops to jump through is anti voter.

I'm not against opening up avenues to absentee vote or anything - I think maybe thats what DancedDreamers point is trying to be? They should definitely make those options available to people - but you can't just completely take away or restrict the usual way of voting for people who aren't interested in doing that. You might see it as " a new way of thinking" but punishing people who aren't interested in that way of thinking is not good.

---

Yesterday on Facebook my cousin posted a picture that said something to the effect of "Stop dropping so many 'truth bombs'. You can have the right message and send it with the wrong heart." And I think this needs to be my theme. I should have considered it more yesterday. Lol

Dancedreamer posted...

That's a bad idea. If people don't want to vote, they shouldn't be required to. Compulsory voting leads to people voting for whoever promises to get rid of compulsory voting.

This is not true, to be honest. It's time to step up and realize voting is required to actually have freedoms.

---

CoolCly posted...

You might see it as " a new way of thinking" but punishing people who aren't interested in that way of thinking is not good.

Did you think I'm saying we should forever have 1 voting place in Louisville? It's not like I'm starting a revolution here. I just, again, was trying a different angle to help people realize that until they offer a plan that simultaneously protects people from covid and also minimizes confusion and also and also and also, that maybe they should give the issue more thought before they just start blastin'. That's it really.

I don't agree voting should be required.

I've felt before that I wasn't informed enough to vote for somebody in a race, and in that case I feel like there's no reason to vote because it wouldn't be based on anything rational, and it's damaging to influence the votes from people who actually are informed on that particular race.

I've also felt before that I strongly do not support any candidate - so I won't vote for any of them.


---

CoolCly posted...

Easy - I look it up online or ask my neighbors where we are supposed to vote on the day of.

I've never known where the place I should vote at is before the day comes. I usually don't even know it's voting day until people around me talk about it! Then I realize it's time to vote for my local ward representative or provincial MLA or national MP or whatever and find out where to go and go vote.

To keep with the analogy of covid<->fire

Imagine if you woke up and every non-residential building within 5 miles of you was on fire. So you had to drive 6 miles. Would you blame the election people...?

COVID isn't a good reason to consolidate all voting to one place - it's actually a very bad reason, because you are forcing a very large portion of the population to all congregate in the same place as a large group, or at best go into a location that someone with COVID probably just went through.

If that's why there's only one voting station in Louisville, they really fucked up.

---

More space means more room means easier social distancing tracks pretty well by my logic

But also the severe lack of election officials and if you are forced to greatly reduce polling locations there is value in making the message as simple as possible

Side note unrelated to the social distancing thing, I don't know if anyone was unaware but just in case, there were actually 18 voting locations inside the louisville expo center. Still in one building but it's a huge ass building.

Imagine if Louisville had 4 places instead of 1. It's a big place with 600,000 registered voters.

How many people do you think would've ended up at the wrong place and not had time to travel to the correct one? Is it unreasonable to entertain the idea roughly 100-200 people?

DoomTheGyarados posted...

The real ugly truth is this whole debate should not be happening because we need to do a lot more to make voting easier.

Strongly agree!

and voting should be required by law.

Strongly disagree!

---

Lol legally mandated voting?
---

turbopuns3 posted...

Imagine if Louisville had 4 places instead of 1. It's a big place with 600,000 registered voters.

How many people do you think would've ended up at the wrong place and not had time to travel to the correct one? Is it unreasonable to entertain the idea roughly 100-200 people?

Very few, if they took the two minutes to search the internet and find out where their polling place is ahead of time. I mean, how did people find out where their polling place was before COVID?

---

We should set it up like in Ancient Greece where a government guy would go around marking everyone he could with red paint on a stick to require you to go vote and get a second color or have it removed because if you just went home red youd be arrested or fined lmao

turbopuns3 posted...

To keep with the analogy of covid<->fire

Imagine if you woke up and every non-residential building within 5 miles of you was on fire. So you had to drive 6 miles. Would you blame the election people...?

the fact that you continue to think this ridiculous hypothetical has any relevance to 90% of polling locations being closed is baffling. it's just constant false equivalences coming from you.

---

I think you just can't think deeper than a number, changmas. That is what your position says to me here. I'm illustrating with examples since I failed by just yelling yesterday. Can you follow along with this line of thinking:

-a vast majority of election officials are high risk population
-we must have fewer locations as a result of this
-changing voting locations in an area with 600,000 people is a massive logistical nightmare of a problem to tackle
-the issue is extremely complex and every possible solution comes with its own problems
-the actual numbers attached to the issues that happened (the number of people who wanted to vote in person but failed to do so) are minuscule given the scale of the problem that was being addressed

Michael Flynn acquitted! The Court of Appeal overruled the trial judge and ordered him to dismiss the case.

---

Not_an_Owl posted...

Very few, if they took the two minutes to search the internet and find out where their polling place is ahead of time. I mean, how did people find out where their polling place was before COVID?

We already have an example of a voter in this topic who says they just ask their neighbor where to go sometimes. We got one of those from a sample of like 30 people. So out of 600,000 when some of them are poor and don't have internet to easily verify things, and lots of word of mouth is used to communicate, I'm betting more than "a few" people would turn up at the wrong place. I also suspect that you may have never actually been in charge of planning any event involving more than 8 people.

Oh and the bold part is the point I was trying to lead Cly to by the nose earlier but he just wandered off. He was saying how it's legitimately frustrating to just wake up one day and find out that his polling place is changed and it's in a different location. I was leading to the point that KY communicated the new locations well ahead of time. And the normal locations were deemed unsafe or otherwise just unable to be used due to lack of personnel as a result of a pandemic. The fact that a bunch of buildings being on fire sounds ridiculous does not change the fact that the normal polling locations were not usable and that this fact was communicated in advance.

Like I can already hear the stories.

"Well, they said on the news the 4 locations were A, B, C, D and I know I live closest to A so that's where I went."

*pulls out a map*

*actually lived closer to B*

turbopuns3 posted...

I think you just can't think deeper than a number, changmas. That is what your position says to me here. I'm illustrating with examples since I failed by just yelling yesterday. Can you follow along with this line of thinking:

-a vast majority of election officials are high risk population
-we must have fewer locations as a result of this
-changing voting locations in an area with 600,000 people is a massive logistical nightmare of a problem to tackle
-the issue is extremely complex and every possible solution comes with its own problems
-the actual numbers attached to the issues that happened (the number of people who wanted to vote in person but failed to do so) are minuscule given the scale of the problem that was being addressed

I'm not saying this is an easy problem to solve, but you are constantly misrepresenting the issue with asinine examples about moving individual voting locations down the street.

You can have fewer voter locations without having 1 for the entirety of Louisville. You can even do so and still adhere to social distancing guidelines! Of course changes will have to be made to accommodate for a global pandemic, but you act like this is some sort of all or nothing thing. Like cutting 90% of voting locations was the only possible solution and that the only failings of such a system should be placed upon individual voters and their own responsibilities.

You are correct in the sense that any change to voting locations will create some nonzero amount of voter suppression. But it's patently absurd to continue to make up trivial examples like "the building burned down and the voting location got moved 1 mile away" and act like that's anything similar to making people drive upwards of 20 miles into downtown Louisville to a single voting location. Especially when they're closing the polls at 6pm.

There's a middle ground here that you simply aren't acknowledging. I'm not asking for Kentucky to keep every single precinct open in the middle of a pandemic, but they could and should have done a lot better than they did.


---

changmas posted...

You can have fewer voter locations without having 1 for the entirety of Louisville. You can even do so and still adhere to social distancing guidelines! Of course changes will have to be made to accommodate for a global pandemic, but you act like this is some sort of all or nothing thing. Like cutting 90% of voting locations was the only possible solution and that the only failings of such a system should be placed upon individual voters and their own responsibilities.

Actually this is quite off base so perhaps it's partially a failing on my part.

I never insisted this was the only way in fact I said this system we used had problems in like my 3rd or 4th post of this entire ordeal. So check yourself on that. I'm actually just making the opposite point which is that all the critics are acting like this solution was completely asinine and the literal worst possible idea ever and anyone who entertained it is a complete fucking idiot who is no brighter than the scum on my shoe. When in reality it was like > 98% successful or some shit.

CoolCly posted...

I don't agree voting should be required.

I've felt before that I wasn't informed enough to vote for somebody in a race, and in that case I feel like there's no reason to vote because it wouldn't be based on anything rational, and it's damaging to influence the votes from people who actually are informed on that particular race.

I've also felt before that I strongly do not support any candidate - so I won't vote for any of them.

My understanding of mandatory voting isn't that you MUST vote for a candidate, it's that you are required to report a decisive ballot (in this case, a choice to not vote for any candidate) to the government.

---

turbopuns3 posted...

Actually this is quite off base so perhaps it's partially a failing on my part.

I never insisted this was the only way in fact I said this system we used had problems in like my 3rd or 4th post of this entire ordeal. So check yourself on that. I'm actually just making the opposite point which is that all the critics are acting like this solution was completely asinine and the literal worst possible idea ever and anyone who entertained it is a complete fucking idiot who is no brighter than the scum on my shoe. When in reality it was like > 98% successful or some shit.

and since then you've repeatedly insisted that the problems of this system are due to incompetent, uninformed, or lazy voters.

---

I did insist that the law of 6pm which is older than dirt was upheld in the same way that it's always been upheld and such behavior should not surprise anyone, yeah

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1275832019243630592?s=21

---