Voter suppression
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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If people actually voted, they might vote for people the oligarchy doesn't like. Bet you didn't think about that, huh? Checkmate libruls!
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100% this
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Because they don't want the workers voting.
If you "can't go to the ballot because you need to work" you are a plebeian, and so they have a way of excluding you while technically not excluding you.
A lot of modern oligarchy is powered by these technicalities. Technically everyone has a "right to" participate in the system, but the whole apparatus is rigged in such a way that in material reality only the same nobility caste that has called the shots since the bronze fucking age gets to call the shots.
By law employers are required to allow their workers an opportunity to vote. The problem is other stuff like taking their kids to school and having to go to work right after and by the time you make it to the poll through rush hour traffic, the line is out the door and they shut it down and don’t let you vote even though you waited for an hour.
My roommate asked for time off to vote; her employer literally laughed at her. Now, there is legal recourse there, and she would have likely won and even gotten awarded a money judgment.
But she needed that job without interruption. This was in Canada, by the way.
This is why you don’t ask.
Also, you don’t really need a whole day. I’m also Canadian. Employers are required to allow you time to do it, not an entire day.
I would phrase the question like this: “I need to take time to go vote. Would you prefer I take the morning or afternoon off?”
If they so no to both, you say “you know it’s illegal not to allow me time off to vote, right?”
I’ve changed careers since the last election, but as a driver I’d just say “I’m going to swing by the polling place in my way to or back from wherever” and it was never a problem.
It really depends on how much you need that job to like
Not be homeless
And how hard it was to get the job in the first place.
You can make your legal rights count if you have options.
If you don't, you let your boss walk all over you and thank them for it.
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So the bare minimum that even my little Eastern European hellhole could do was that a polling place closing means that those in line can still vote.
A poll worker gets in line exactly at closing time, and those in front get to vote however long that takes. It's not hard to organize.
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The law also doesn’t require employers to pay for that time, so many can’t afford to take the time off even if their employer is chill about it.
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The thing is
"The law says it has to happen" doesn't mean it happens.
And the weaker labour protections are in your country, the more bosses can walk all over their employees.
In the US, with their so-called "at-will" employment system, you can be fired at any time for any reason, and if you need the job to like, live, you won't even bring up your legal rights.
Mind you even on countries where polling happens exclusively on Sunday (like mine!) there are other subtle ways The Poors ^tm^ are kept from enfranchisement. "Voting happens on a work day" is just one of the ways it happens in one of our world's oligarchies.
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"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
Because easy and accessible voting is extremely bad for one party.
Cuz America is a backwards ass country
A shit hole country
A third world country in a Prada belt.
In most civilized countries, voting takes place on weekends and your employer is legally obligated to let you leave work to go vote
Employees have to let you leave to vote.
They can also fire you the next day for a coincidentally unrelated reason, and unless you have 50k in lawyers retainers handy there’s not shit you can do about it
If only there existed, like, a club for workers where everyone pays a membership fee to cover each other's legal costs and protect each other's rights. We could call it a "togetherness" or something like that
If only…
That's not true.
In most states, employers don't need any reason at all to fire you.
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Wait, you guys are getting President's Day off work??
Yeah, making election day a national holiday doesn't help those of us who don't get most holidays off.
Right. Congress would need to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to mandate that employers give national holidays off to employees for this to apply to everyone.
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This was my thought as well. Too many years of retail has left me with an instinctual hatred for holidays. Like how Labor Day is a holiday for the rich to "celebrate" the working poor who have to work that day.
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Sure, here you go: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7329
One of many such bills.
Take a look at the sponsors. I'll give you 1 guess at which party would vote it down, because it would hurt them in elections.
It's the same reason Puerto Rico will never be a state.
Because only people who are able to afford a day off are supposed to vote. That's also why republicans agitate against postal voting and why early vote ballot drop-offs are burning.
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"We"? Who are "we"? Star fleet?
People have to remember that this is the Internet, this thing is global.
We should just have elections on presidents day.
Even if you made it a federal holiday, the wage slaves would still have to work.
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Meanwhile all the schools in my area are polling places so kids don't have school.
Forcing many parents to take the day off anyway, but unpaid (or using PTO time, if they have it).
Working as intended. Make voting as difficult and distasteful as possible so we can welcome fascism with big warm hugs. Finally, no more of that voting nonsense.
We don't get the day off to vote in MN but you are legally allowed to take time off to go vote (with pay). So when I was in the office, I always voted in the middle of the day right after my lunch hour.
Our boss just took us out to lunch and gave us four hours off the rest of the day to go out and vote, which is probably the most encouragement to vote I think I've ever gotten from any boss before. I'm sure I was entitled to it this whole time, but it's never been encouraged like this before with this boss at any of my other workplaces, if anything, previous bosses probably would've talked shit if I said that's what I wanted to do with my time.
Dudes working at most hourly lower end type jobs still wouldn't get election day off, unless you mandated like octuple pay for anyone working that day (They should)
In France elections are held on a Sunday so most people don't work, the others are allowed time off to vote of course
Well in the US, no one was originally intended to vote but the male landed gentry, who clearly could afford to travel for several days to their polling place, get plastered on local liquor, and just shout who they were voting for at whomever was supposed to jot that down. Them that person would go off and vote for whoever they wanted, in case the peasants had gotten any silly ideas and voted for the wrong guy.
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Why is it election day anyway, why not election month. California and Oregon have vote by mail; every state should
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You are getting President's Day off?
The poor and desperate will vote less under the current conditions. It is all baked into the US cake. Wait until you realize that the US never passed the Equal Rights Amendment. Still waiting on those bastard laggard states to ratify it for nearly 50 years.
Because Republicans don’t want you to vote if you have the kind of job that you can’t just take whatever time you want off.
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Because corporations own you and this means they can pressure how you vote in key states.
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