Texas closes hundreds of polling sites, making it harder for minorities to vote
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Since the Hofeller dump, it's very clear that there's an extremely intentional, well researched effort to directly impact minority voters.
Yesterday was the 55th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. 55 years is not that long.
1. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016...
You can also vote by mail before or go to the local "rådhus" or town hall and vote there in case you are going on a long trip/vacation.
The election day itself if a normal work day, but on this day no campaigning is allowed to prevent pressure outside of the polling stations by the political parties.
I've been voting for over 30 years and have never waited more than 30 minutes to vote and it is usually less than 5 minutes yet in a nearby city they seem to have all sorts of logistical problems during every election including long lines, running out of ballots, etc.
I think I recall some folks from Australia describing in HN, their system as having an independent agency/office that is responsible for voting operations. Perhaps something like this would remove the disparities we have between polling locations in the US.
They can't actually say "I don't want X to vote because we all know they commit rampant voter fraud" because it isn't politically correct (or true, but the U.S. doesn't care about truth); however, they really believe they are literally fighting a holy/principled war to protect the U.S.
The U.S. is being carved apart because there are fundamental beliefs that are beyond being tested for veracity and must be enacted or the "others" will destroy this country.
In particular the problem areas around me are entirely controlled and populated by Democrats so it doesn't make sense to say that there is some cabal trying to prevent "certain groups" from voting since it is their own constituency that is being affected.
Again, to my original point. The experiences are very different from place to place and so you should be careful about extrapolating from individual experiences.
National Holiday still doesn't help retail/restaurant workers.
"Efficient" polling places that "only" take 30 minutes still require travel and specific timing.
Mail-in voting fixes both.
That made sense when we had a weak federal government and were mostly a conglomeration of states that agreed to work together.
But now the federal government controls a lot of our lives. The way Texas runs their elections has a significant impact on my life here in California.
I should have a say in how Texas runs their elections (and they should have a say in how California runs theirs).
Technically all elections are state/local elections. We don't directly vote for anything at the federal level. Each state has full control over who which presidential candidate it sends its electoral college votes to. That's why states like Virginia can decide to send all of theirs to the winner of the national popular vote.
1. Among other requirements, the ADA likely requires that polling places and some proportion of booths be wheelchair accessible and mandates the accessibility of braille ballots.
We need to stop acting like this hypocrisy and bigotry is a reasonable PoV, and stop bargaining with them. Conservatives and the GOP have a proven track record of bad faith, and any claims they make should be presumed false or misleading until proven otherwise.
Both sides regularly use "States' Rights" if and when convenient. When your side has a majority in Congress, go for a national bill; when your side has a majority in a state, go for a state bill. So it's easy to point to hypocrisy, but I tired long ago of "hypocrisy" as an argument. It's not convincing anyone, it's just a way to score points.
But States' Rights are a legitimate principle, too. The EU member states have rights (including the right to leave, apparently). I think retaining some autonomy is a good hedge against the risk of bad things happening at a higher level of government.
I guess other countries do things that way with lots of observers, etc. to try to avoid the worst problems. But I'm not excited about my state/county giving up its role (which it seems to do just fine) under the theory that the federal government will do better in some other state and county that doesn't currently do a good job.
All these GOP schemes to prevent voting fraud or reduce costs all seem tailor made to reduce turnout of groups that are presumed to be largely non-GOP.
There is a segment of both parties that feel that people who disagree with them shouldn't have a voice - unfortunately it seems this segment managed to get a lot of control in the GOP while on the left side they mostly get relegated to the loony bin.
Both parties are super guilty of gerrymandering, but "voter fraud" isn't a proportionally important issue and it's been abused by some strategists to implement wide spread voter discrimination.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Voter_Registration_Ac... 2: https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless...
Mailed votes are just a bad idea. The simpler and better solution is to have the US federal elections run by a federal non-political commission + a federal voting holiday. Disabled people could use mobile election vans and/or a proxy-vote system like in the UK but limited to them (very imperfect; but safer than a mailed vote, since the proxy's vote is still secret).
Most countries in Europe have no problems at all organizing fair in-person elections.
These articles are both long and I have other things to do in life, but I think the notes are reasonable.
To summarize, the big three issues with the Guardian article:
1. Insistence on framing the change as a racist attack. (Recurrent through first dozen paragraphs or so)
2. You can read the entire article and not have any clue as to the law's supporters viewpoint. (rolling polling).
3. Burying key information about cost and volunteer availability 18 paragraphs down.
Your notes show that both articles are concerned with the human impact of the poll closures.
For example, in the Texas Tribune article, I think the first (and last) paragraphs that you categorized as "neutral fluff" are meant to highlight the impact on "rural and young voters" that are mentioned in the article title. The article doesn't mention "minorities" or "black and Latino" voters.
In contrast, the Guardian article focuses on the impact on "minorities" and more specifically, the "black and Latino population." It doesn't mention rural or young voters.
Looking a bit deeper, I realized both articles are part of larger series which indicates to me that instead of "news reporting", these articles are motivated by a certain type of advocacy. The Guardian article is part of "The Fight to Vote" series and the Texas Tribune article is part of the "Texas Voting Rights" series.
Since both articles focus on the human impact of certain demographics, I think how one perceives the articles as slanted most likely depends on personal perspective.
For example, given the issue of voting rights and the well documented efforts to disenfranchise minority voters [0], I'd interpret an article that mentions the poll closures along party lines ("unanimous Republican support") but does not mention the potential impact on minority voters as slanted.
My takeaway is that both articles are "slanted", just in different ways and most likely in ways that conform to the expectations of their respective readerships.
[0]:
Some Republicans Acknowledge Leveraging Voter ID Laws for Political Gain
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/us/some-republicans-ackno...
The two articles describe two completely different problems. The parent article discuss the issue of voting sites being used to target specific voters. Rather then trying to maximum voting participation, the article describe the problem of targeted desirable voting populations at the exclusion of others. By removing temporary polling places and enforcing a rule that all polling places must remain open for all 12 days of early voting, it forces polling stations to focus only in areas with high populations.
The submitter article writes how texas is closing down most polling stations, making it more difficult for people to vote and arguably benefiting Republicans. It is saying that more voting locations close to Latinx neighborhoods got closed than in non-Latinx neighborhoods, and that Latinx people had to travel farther to vote than non-Hispanic whites. It also writes that places where black and Latinx population is growing by the largest numbers have experienced the vast majority of the state’s poll site closures.
Two different completely different problems, two completely different articles, discussing the same event. Thanks to HN I at least see a bit more from multiple sides, but it demonstrate quite well the issue with news article like this.
There's a lot of support for voters in older whiter neighbourhoods, and deliberately as few as possible in every. other location. They also make it as hard as possible to vote even if you can get to a polling facility there's no time off at all for voting (forget paid time off), and voting lines are frequently hours long. The various forms of "voter id" are also intentionally made difficult to get for as many people as possible.
Again, republican's hate anything that makes it easy for people to vote, because. they know that in free and fair elections they are increasingly likely to lose.
Vote by mail is better then what we have now, but I’ve found usability issues there to.
Voting is really important, if voting works we can theoretically solve a lot of other problems. But if we can't vote then the only solution we have is marching in the streets which will often lead to violence and destruction.