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naraburns  nihil supernum  5mo ago (text post)   27915 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

If you're a U.S. citizen with voting rights, your polling place can reportedly be located here.

If you're still researching issues, Ballotpedia is usually reasonably helpful.

Any other reasonably neutral election resources you'd like me to add to this notification, I'm happy to add.

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With Harris shaping up to receive 10-15 million fewer votes than Biden in 2020, has anyone here updated with regards to the chance of fraud in 2020? This graph is floating around Twitter: https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1854144250562429081

Is Harris truly so unpopular that 15 million Democrats just stayed home? Or was the overwhelming shift to mail-in ballots in 2020 the key to Biden's victory, giving barely motivated Dems an opportunity to fill in a ballot and mail it out rather than drag themselves to the polls? Republicans in several swing states managed to pass legislation tightening voting laws -- maybe that helped? Or is America simply not ready for a woman president (much less a "black" woman president)?

I consider this pretty strong evidence that the sloppiness of just spamming mail-in ballots to just about everyone successfully increased turnout in 2020. Whether you consider that rigging, illegal, totally fair, a desirable state of affairs that should be permanently implemented... whatever, it just seems like that's actually the explanation. If that's not it, we need to explain the big fluctuations in the Trump vote as well.

The voting process should select for higher agency / lower time preference voters. That’s a good thing; those are the people who should have a bigger influence on politics. It’s outside the Overton window to require an IQ test as a precondition of voting, but thankfully it’s still within the Overton window to have some very simple and reasonable measures like, requiring that someone physically travel to a polling place, or requiring that someone procure a mail-in ballot for themselves. Any slight barrier to entry is better than canvassers going door to door and telling people “just sign on the dotted line, please” in order to harvest votes.

I agree with this, but can't put my finger on the principle. It's just a vague sense that universal suffrage is a problem not a solution.

Oh sure. I agree completely. But if we’re stuck with universal suffrage, then the least we can do is require that people actually go to the damn polling place if they want their vote to be counted.

What alternative do you propose to universal suffrage?

I think people on this site have made a surprisingly (to me) good case for bringing back property ownership requirements to have the vote. That may not be the best solution (buying a house is not exactly easy depending on where you live), but I do think it's a good idea to require voters to have a vested interest in the long-term success of the country and proof that they are able to contribute positively. I used to think that universal suffrage was an obvious good thing, but I'm not so sure after seeing some discussions on it in the past.

That sounds very interesting. Would you happen to have links to such past discussions?

Unfortunately no, I wish I did.

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