this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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[–] FinishingDutch 128 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Decisions are made by those who show up. It’s as simple as that. It really is the very least you SHOULD do as a functional adult.

I get how not everyone wants to be active on campaigns, can donate, etc. But voting itself should definitely be a given. Same goes for small elections; if you don’t vote, someone else will decide for you. And you might not like what they decide.

Show the fuck up and vote.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil 28 points 5 months ago

I prefer "Pokemon Go To The Polls", myself.

Either way, I'm not sure where OP's "40 Million Registered Democrats" are coming from. Obama set a high water mark for Dem turnout in 2008 with 69M votes and still managed to carry out a win four years later with 65.9M votes. Hillary pulled in 65.8M votes four years after that. She just racked them in the wrong states this time around and lost to a guy who hit his own GOP high watermark of 62.9M.

Then, in 2020, the country implemented a temporary state of national mail-in voting. Turnout surged enormously. Republicans brought in 74M votes! Enough to win in a landslide in virtually any other year. But still not enough to beat the Dem 81M vote haul. An absolutely historic turnout by either party, all thanks to a change in the mechanism used to submit ballots.

But even using these very temporary figures, I have no idea where you're finding a full 105.8M Democrats to vote for your candidate, relative to 2016. Set aside how much our antiquated and archaic machine-voting system suppresses turnout. Set aside the deliberate disenfranchisement by determined State Secretaries in democracy-hostile states and districts. Set aside voter disenfranchisement and intimidation, misinformation and scammy robocalls. Tell me which rock these 40M Democrats are hiding under.

And when you do, make sure there's not another 40M Republicans hiding right alongside them. Because we played this game in Texas for nearly a decade. And what we discovered was a large surplus of lackadaisical conservatives, who came out to swamp the state in 2022. So much for simply being a "non-voting" state.

Never even fucking mind all the "Obama to Trump" voters who showed up in 2016 absolutely revolted by the ghoul Democrats put up as Obama's replacement.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod 13 points 5 months ago (6 children)

I've shown up every year since 2000 and other people keep making the decisions anyway because the people I vote for lose so goddamn always.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (9 children)

My friends and a lot of my coworkers I were Bernie supporters in 2016 -- donated, attended events, etc. I made sure I was registered to vote and strongly encouraged my friends to as well. Talking to them after the primary was depressing as fuck ... most of them didn't vote, and had the lamest excuses you could imagine. It was eye opening.

Alright: whatever. Great work guys, now we get to vote for Hillary, since it was going to be either her or Trump as president. Shockingly almost none of the aforementioned friends/coworkers voted for her, and several that admitted they couldn't get off their asses to vote for him in the primary complained about how it was "stolen" from Bernie.

It was hard not slapping the shit out of them.

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[–] givesomefucks 72 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Good thing the party learn d their lesson and stopped running uncharismatic elderly moderates with terrible approval ratings...

Right?

[–] MilitantAtheist 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How the fuck did they go from Obama to Hillary to this?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They didn't, they TRIED to run Hillary in 2008. Obama was the party outsider who won by a tiny margin.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (22 children)

The only people who dont vote for the least bad option are the people who have the luxary not to.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (16 children)

We gotta get us some Approval Voting so people can vote for their true favorite without worrying if it'll accidentally give them a worse election result.

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[–] disguy_ovahea 64 points 5 months ago

That’s not even counting unaffiliated and registered independent citizens that abstained.

[–] hark 47 points 5 months ago (2 children)

"Hillary is the best choice, she's guaranteed to win!" - the democratic party in 2016.

[–] homesweethomeMrL 16 points 5 months ago (2 children)

She was never the best choice of the Democrats available, but you must admit we had no idea how goddamned stupid people were back then. She should have won. Turns out, yeah, russia was listening.

[–] GladiusB 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't know who down voted you? They have proven several times that Trump's inner circle was with Russian businesses that controlled advertising on Facebook. It's not that far of a stretch.

[–] SkyezOpen 9 points 5 months ago (16 children)

They probably worked harder than they had to. She really is an unlikable piece of shit.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Al Gore should have won too, but here we are.

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[–] BaldManGoomba 32 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Hillary Clinton is our best candidate let's convince the whole primary field to drop out because the democrat donors want Hillary and it's her turn. Said the democratic party.

Also my vote in Delaware didn't lose her the election. We have popular vote on a state by state basis. Can't blame 95% of the democrats or independents that didn't vote for her. They should be polling in the areas that will decide the election. I think the stat was 20,000 or so votes in the middle of the country decided it.

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[–] Stern 32 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How many of those were in the 5-6 states where their vote actually matters? Cuz I'm in a state thats been hard blue since like, Reagan.

We don't have a true popular vote. If we did we'd never have a Republican president again.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I live in Utah. The difference in numbers in Utah is crazy. If everyone registered as other than Republican voted for Biden and just registered Republicans voted for Trump, Trump would still win by around 10%. Registered Democrats are outnumbered 2:1 by unaffiliated and 4:1 by Republicans.

In fact, "Unaffiliated" is the second largest group of active voters in Utah.

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[–] voldage 16 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I'm proud I didn't vote Blue in 2016 and 2020. I'm not from the USA so it would be a voter fraud if I did.

That being said, dems are completely incompetent when it comes to elections, deliberately picking such terrible candidates like Hillary and Biden. I don't believe there are actual people that voted Blue because of seeded candidate and not despite it.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Bit of a tangential point: Every vote counts but not every vote counts the same. Voters in California get less of a say than voters in Maine.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

People forget downballot races end in single and double digit gaps way too often.

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[–] Furbag 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I will never take a single vote for granted considering how many elections in very recent history were literally decided by a single vote.

It's even important to vote in states and districts that are deep red/blue where the minority party is statistically unlikely to win, because if you don't show up the numbers will never reflect the true demographic of people who want a change. Not to mention the arguably more important down ballot races for local elections. Change on a macro scale might be difficult, but change on a local level is very possible.

The way I look at it is yeah your one vote doesn't count for much, but consider this; if you can convince 5 friends to join you in voting for the same candidate, that's 6 more votes that the opposition will also need to scrounge up just to win by the same margin as if you did not vote at all. That's not insignificant. Using your right to vote can swing the social dialogue more towards compromise in future elections if enough people turn out.

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[–] gmtom 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm sure at least one of them was like "Ah shit, fuck, that was today???? I thought it was Tuesday today, god fucking damnit"

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (5 children)

How many of the 40 million votes were in locked-in blue states?

Edit: this was an honest question, not some kind of gotcha

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