SummerMadness

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The Student Vote Is Surging. So Are Efforts to Suppress It.
At Austin Community College, civics is an unwritten part of the curriculum — so much so that for years the school has tapped its own funds to set up temporary early-voting sites on nine of its 11 campuses.

No more, however. This spring, the Texas Legislature outlawed polling places that did not stay open for the entire 12-day early-voting period. When the state's elections take place in three weeks, those nine sites — which logged many of the nearly 14,000 ballots that full-time students cast last year — will be shuttered. So will six campus polling places at colleges in Fort Worth, two in Brownsville, on the Mexico border, and other polling places at schools statewide.
 
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iluvatar5150

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and they will vote the way their professors tell them to.

Is that any worse than voting how Sean Hannity tells them to?
 
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CRAZY_CAT_WOMAN

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and they will vote the way their professors tell them to.
Or they will vote the way their parents votes. Until they get enough experience in the world.
 
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Is that any worse than voting how Sean Hannity tells them to?

It's more of a case of projection. College students and young people in general don't like to be told what to do, but religious conservatives on the other hand? That's the whole point.
 
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JackRT

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We just had a federal election here in Canada. The campaign was 40 days long. I was greatly impressed that every effort was made to ensure that no one was left out of the voting. It completely astonishes me that in the USA there are governments that are actually trying to suppress the vote in a very targeted way. This is unbelievable in a democratic republic.
 
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Tigger45

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We just had a federal election here in Canada. The campaign was 40 days long. I was greatly impressed that every effort was made to ensure that no one was left out of the voting. It completely astonishes me that in the USA there are governments that are actually trying to suppress the vote in a very targeted way. This is unbelievable in a democratic republic.
There is surprisingly a political segment within the U.S. that for all intends and purposes has all the ear marks of a fledgling banana republic.
 
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We just had a federal election here in Canada. The campaign was 40 days long. I was greatly impressed that every effort was made to ensure that no one was left out of the voting. It completely astonishes me that in the USA there are governments that are actually trying to suppress the vote in a very targeted way. This is unbelievable in a democratic republic.
like what requiring an ID?
 
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JackRT

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There is surprisingly a political segment within the U.S. that for all intends and purposes has all the ear marks of a fledgling banana republic.

That would be hilarious if it were not so true.
 
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JackRT

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like what requiring an ID?

Yes, that too but every effort is made to make that easy. The vast majority of Canadians are registered through their income tax returns.
 
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Yes, that too but every effort is made to make that easy. The vast majority of Canadians are registered through their income tax returns.
I believe that need voter IDS and also to register they should require that that is not surpressing the vote that is called election security and not being lazy.
 
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Ana the Ist

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In Australia voting is compulsory. Non-voters can receive a small fine (around $50) if they can’t provide a reasonable excuse for not voting. ‘Reasonable excuse’ is interpreted fairly liberally.

All issues connected with elections (including setting electoral boundaries) are managed by independent Electoral Commissions based at the state and federal level. Electoral Commissions are also responsible for ensuring maximum levels of voter registration. Registration involves completing, and posting, a simple form available at all Post Offices.

These organisations also pride themselves on ensuring that voting facilities are easily accessible to all voters including those in remote communities. All voting and voting materials are standardised. We use paper ballots, completed by hand, by voters. Voters don’t need to provide any proof of ID when voting.

A couple of years ago Australians were asked to participate in a voluntary postal survey on same sex marriage. The voluntary ballot was returned by around 80% of eligible voters even though the results were not binding on the government.

When it comes to voting everyone participates. Voter suppression and gerrymandering are virtually unknown.

OB
 
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ThatRobGuy

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Voter suppression is a rather interesting topic...

Specifically, in regards to the fact that a "certain political faction" will do everything in their power to make sure that voting is as difficult as possible for demographic groups that typically don't vote for them.

The HBO show "The Newsroom" summarized the situation quite well

Republicans know that certain demographic groups aren't likely to vote for them so rather than adjust their policies to try to win votes, they simply try to suppress the votes of people who typically vote democrat.

Minorities typically vote democrat, as do people aged 18-25.

Much like they try to suppress minority votes, this isn't the first time the GOP has tried to suppress younger votes, some have even tried pushing for raising the voting age.
 
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SummerMadness

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Voter suppression is a rather interesting topic...

Specifically, in regards to the fact that a "certain political faction" will do everything in their power to make sure that voting is as difficult as possible for demographic groups that typically don't vote for them.

The HBO show "The Newsroom" summarized the situation quite well
They do wonderful things like require voting IDs, then close the centers where they can be obtained more easily by people without cars. Then they'll throw in the additional issue of limiting business hours. Then claim the ID is free and attack people for having trouble obtaining it.

Or the favorite tactic is to sift through the exit polling data, then target the methods most used by African Americans. We see it all the time, and the water carriers foist explanations pretending as if we don't see these actions and how they were similar to the segregationists back in the mid-20th century. "The literacy is simply there so we can ensure people can read. We want them to make an informed decision!"
 
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tall73

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Many Texans’ votes are lost when they go to the wrong polling place. Counties see countywide vote centers as an answer.

Turns out Texas had a problem with people showing up at the wrong place to vote and never actually voting. They changed the law so anyone can vote at any of the voting sites....but in order to do this, some smaller voting locations were shut down.

Doesn't seem like voter suppression at all once you see their reasoning for it.


That article didn't address campus locations, however. Most of the larger counties agreed to keep sites at current levels for a time, and it was often in less populated areas that they were discussing reducing them right away, and even then with an eye to not disenfranchising people.

The original article posted did list a reason that Republicans cited for removing the shorter-term sites:

Dollar for dollar, mobile voting sites were “the most effective program we had,” Dana DeBeauvoir, the Travis County clerk and chief elections official, said.

State legislators took a dimmer view. Last spring, State Representative Greg Bonnen, a Republican from suburban Houston, filed legislation to require that all polling places remain open during the whole early-voting period, eliminating pop-up polls. He argued that local politicians were using the sites to attract supportive voters for pet projects like school bond issues.

The Texas Association of Election Administrators opposed the change, and Democratic legislators proposed to exclude college campuses, nursing homes and other sites from the requirement. But Republicans rejected the changes and passed the bill on largely party-line votes.

The issue was not that the pop-up polls were not sufficiently used. They seemed to be quite well used. The stated problem was people driving their pet local issue. However, since they offered to exclude colleges, nursing homes, etc. I don't think the rationale for the new measure made much sense. If it was really about local pet issues it sounds like that could be more or less resolved by exempting the pop-up locations in places where they were well used, and that were not as likely to be driving local politics.
 
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Trogdor the Burninator

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In Australia voting is compulsory.
.....
Voters don’t need to provide any proof of ID when voting.
......
When it comes to voting everyone participates. Voter suppression and gerrymandering are virtually unknown.
OB

There's a lot to be said for compulsory voting, the main one being (as OB outlines) that you entirely eliminate any issues around voter turnout, because everyone has to vote anyway.

It's also very difficult to rig elections, because everyone in each electorate is going to vote (minus a very small percentage), so any additional votes are going to show up as duplicates and immediately throw suspicion on the count - causing an investigation.

You also do away with issues around voter ID for similar reasons (though last election here they were checking anyway). The reason you need voter ID in the US (or indeed anywhere with non-compulsory voting) is that you have to guard against people impersonating others who (as has been shown above) you have a fairly good chance of knowing won't vote at all. therefore it's easier to swing the vote in a marginal seat
 
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Aryeh Jay

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We just had a federal election here in Canada. The campaign was 40 days long. I was greatly impressed that every effort was made to ensure that no one was left out of the voting. It completely astonishes me that in the USA there are governments that are actually trying to suppress the vote in a very targeted way. This is unbelievable in a democratic republic.

Must have been pretty smooth since your whole countries population is less than California.
 
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ThatRobGuy

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It's also very difficult to rig elections, because everyone in each electorate is going to vote (minus a very small percentage), so any additional votes are going to show up as duplicates and immediately throw suspicion on the count - causing an investigation.

It may be able to prevent rigging granular outcomes, but with the aspect of gerrymandering, rigging overall outcomes with regards to the legislative representation in our country wouldn't be addressed by compulsory voting.

When the incumbents are carving up district lines so you end up with outcomes like this:
upload_2019-10-27_18-50-42.png


It's very difficult to have fair representation, or even get people truly interested in the process.

PA is a state in which even though more than half of the population voted democrat (for congressional elections), republicans ended up with nearly 3 times the number of seats in congress.

The concepts of "packing" & "cracking" are two I'd recommend people take a glance at.
 
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