Philly cheesesteaks, of course.
You are correct, they aren't the same, because discriminatory voting access and offering outside incentives to vote are both A) illegal and B) capable of impacting the outcome of the election.
US 2024 Presidential Election
- Thread starter gorfias
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"Discriminatory voting access"-- so, within those areas, they only allowed Democratic voters to attain early access, did they? Because if it was accessible to voters regardless of their protected characteristics within those areas, then it's just expanded access. You might call it cynically motivated or unequal. But definitionally, it is not discriminatory, it is not illegal, and it is widely practiced by both parties. It's certainly far more ethically sound than the demographically-targeted voter suppression methods the GOP employ, and which you've previously defended to the hilt.
Offering an incentive to vote is indeed illegal. When that's a sandwich, it's also a complete non-issue, and available for voters regardless of affiliation. It's a joke you'd even bring it up in the same context as faithless electors, refused certification, and violent insurrection.
The efforts to overturn the election from the Republican Party were several orders of magnitude more severe than anything else in recent history. And they implicated far more of the party than the closest equivalences you can dreg up-- 6 congressmen vs. the unanimous RNC leadership and the President. You know this. The equivocation is performative.
Do you feel no embarrassment saying this? If the rich, predominantly Republican suburbs had bonus voting options set up with catering, and the blue cities had fewer options, people would be rightly upset. We don't have to imagine, we get those complaints every time an election has a long line in a black area, with people trying to rationalize how it's a Republican conspiracy that a bunch of working class people all showed up after work at the same time. Here we have a case of actual intentional disparate voting access, and you think it's a joke.
All of which Democrats and/or left-wing activists did in 2017 during Trump's certification and inauguration, at least by the standards the we are calling 2021 an insurrection.
This was not a distinction that I expected needed to be made.
I feel no embarrassment for pointing out that if something is available for all eligible voters in an area, and makes no distinction based on protected characteristics or voting choice, then it is not illegal discrimination, no. That is completely uncontroversial.
"Bonus voting options" is an odd way of describing wider opening hours, but hey ho. Those long lines tend to be a result of movement in the opposite direction: Republicans work to lower turnout in target demographics. Efforts to enable and increase turnout tend to be seen as more beneficial to the democratic process than efforts to suppress it, who would have thought?!
Are you referring to a handful of congressmen making demands, or are you talking about the sitting President and National Committee working to have it overturned?
You and I both know there was nothing even approaching the nature or scale of Jan 6th in 2017.
Philadelphia invents its own early voting system:
The article there from 2020 in support of it claims the 2019 law allowed for satellite early voting locations, but it absolutely did not. The relevant change is that it let anyone do mail-in without an excuse, and let people pick up and drop off mail-in votes at the county elections office. The part about satellite offices they just made up. The advertisement of early voting ran contrary to the voting laws that were passed with bi-partisan support literally the year before. The only counties that had that option available were 6 of the bluest counties in the state: 4 around Philadelphia, 1 for Pittsburgh, and then Center County which would be dark red if Penn State students weren't half the resident population of the county.
In Philadelphia specifically, they were giving out food to people to vote early, which does feel like a minor point, but also absolutely violates federal law.
The practice lead to a lawsuit, went to the PA Supreme Court, who voted on party lines (PA Supreme Court judges are elected by party) to allow it with about a month til the election, too late for anywhere else to take advantage. Their legal argument for allowing it was a combination of two things:
1) That the law said to return mail-in votes to the "county board of elections", and that phrase is vague enough to interpret as anywhere the people on the board specify, which it very well might be, except the law says they must deliver it to "said county board of elections", referring back to the previous sentence, which said the envelope needed to have written on it the address of the county board of elections, which is referring to the official office, not the people on the board. They hid verbiage from the law to create ambiguity for themselves.
2) That they felt satellite offices and drop box were in keeping with the legislative intent of the 2019 laws because they made voting more available. But that argument is really dumb, if the legislature passed election reform the previous year and said nothing about these things in it, it's hard to argue their intent was to allow for them. It's not like they didn't know voting drop-boxes were a thing elsewhere when they wrote the laws.
So all that happened, and the Republican campaigns said "ok, you've got your early voting places, but now we're going to go watch them to make sure you aren't cheating." Poll watchers are a real thing, election law guarantees the right of campaigns to send observers to polling places to ensure everything is done fairly and honestly. They kicked Republicans off the premises. The City of Philadelphia claimed the election laws didn't need to be followed because they "weren't polling places".
Pa. judge tosses Trump complaint over polling place restrictions
The president's lawsuit connected to his now-famous "Bad things happen in Philadelphia" quote has been rejected.
whyy.org
Like, imagine a red state making up a variation of in-person voting with slightly different rules and then claiming election laws aren't relevant there because it's technically not a polling place. The outrage would be enormous and justified.
All of this chaos was justified in large part by the pandemic, they said they wanted voting to be easier because of the pandemic, which makes the other two stories here laughable.
I'm having difficulty finding a source for the State pretty much ignoring the senior citizens. I found an article that alludes to the State telling counties to relocate polling places away from assisted living facilities due to the pandemic, but I haven't found the part where elder rights advocates petitioned for voting assistance for seniors (you know, like Philadelphia did), and the response they got was basically "they can figure out how to mail a ballot". Their methodology for ensuring people had voting access during a pandemic was to invite people in cities to extra in-person voting places while handing out free food, and then telling senior citizens that weren't supposed to be leaving their facilities that they can figure it out themselves.
And then the last one is the Green Party ticket being kicked off the ballot. Nominees to go on the ballot have to be submitted with a certain number of signatures on the petition, along with a bunch of paperwork, and a sworn affidavit from the named candidate that those papers and petitions are accurate. The Green Party initially submitted placeholder candidates, because they had not yet had their convention to decide on their national candidates but knew they intended to be on the ballot. This is an established, normal practice. They later substituted out to the actual candidates in August, as expected. The Green Party's presidential candidate was removed from the ballot on the basis that the original placeholder candidate's signed and notarized affidavit was faxed in rather than physically sent. The lower courts actually decided in their favor and would have allowed them on the ballot, but Democrats (specifically one Democratic candidate for state office and a member of the state Democratic Party) sued up to the state Supreme Court to remove their presidential candidate on the basis that the person they were replacing on the ballot filed electronically during a global pandemic.
And those same Democrats on the state Supreme Court who would later say that satellite offices might not be explicitly allowed by the law, but matched the legislative intent, in this case wrote this sentence:
"It is well-settled that the “so-called technicalities of the Election Code” must be strictly enforced, “particularly where . . . they are designed to reduce fraud.” "
The shamelessness of that year really is overwhelming.
Areas have demographics. Imagine someone making voting easier in only places where more white people live and then telling you it's not discrimination because the black people in only the white-majority areas were also helped. You would see through the bullcrap instantly.
Legislatively, on January 6th, 2017, there was nothing more done by Republican politicians than a handful of objections, which stopped when the riot started. Just a handful of congressmen placing the same sorts of futile objections.
The riot was different in nature to January 6th, 2017, but not different in nature to the day of Trump's inauguration in 2017, when over 200 people were arrested for rioting in DC. And not like crime of opportunity rioters, but a politically organized group who planned to disrupt the inauguration with chaos and destruction of property.
Areas also have varying needs. In one county, the pre-existing spread of polling spots may be sufficient for demand; in others it may not be. Local and state officials are usually the ones trusted to make arrangements to accommodate. PA had one of the most restrictive mail-in systems beforehand and was plainly insufficient; plenty of Republican states had more accommodating ones. And Trump saw no issue with requesting extended in-person opening hours in PA elsewhere, which were delivered as he asked and not disputed by the Dems.
You also say we'd cry foul if expanded access were granted to white majority counties, yet Center County is overwhelmingly white, and you just shift the criticism onto students. It seems that higher turnout favours Democrats, so its in your party's interest to maintain barriers.
"Legislatively". Because at that point Trump was pressuring his colleagues to ignore their legislative role, and to install him through other means. Then later, the RNC unilaterally endorsed the rioters that took up his call.
This is an accurate description of those who responded to Trump's call to fight like hell with him.
It doesn't, actually. That's one of those silly internet myths, if you plot turnout against which party wins year to year, it's actually complete noise with no obvious trend.
Democrats in the south spent decades actually suppressing voters, and now they try to sell the lie of the party flip and claim Republicans are the ones suppressing voters now, and it just isn't true.
So you agree, 2021 had recent precedent from the left side of the aisle.
I think I've tried to follow this link 5 times today. All times I get an ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT-error. Do you have another link?
This is their holy war, it will be as bloody, brutal and vicious as it needs to be to satisfy their perception of what the second coming of jesus Christ desires. While every tiny detail can be betted on through the polymarket. Sounds rather unchristian but who am I to say?
not even getting into the secular motivations of western capitalist neocolonailism tightening their death grip on top spot, using blatant market manipulation too when it starts to hurt
Among the issues solved by President Trump? Fertility.
bsky.app
Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com)
Trump: "We are doing more to help women struggling with infertility than any administration in history. I got a call from Katie Britt. She explained the problem. I wasn't that familiar with it, I must tell you, but after about two minutes I understood it very well. We solved it."
bsky.app
It's a link to PA Act 77 of 2019. Just the actual election laws for reference.
Asmengold being a Nazi dick sucker again.
Other Nazi dick suckers
John Stewart with the call outs!
Other Nazi dick suckers
John Stewart with the call outs!
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That would be a terrible way to judge it, and would only work if turnout was the sole determining factor.
Yes, you can gripe about your interpretation of past events all you like. But right here and now, we have an instance of easier voting being introduced to areas in which the existing infrastructure was plainly insuffcient, and far behind most other states-- including Republican ones. And you're opining it shouldn't have been allowed. Even though your own President requested and was granted it elsewhere in the state. Its plainly cynical.
Lol no. Its very much a stretch to describe anything else.
No, I am not. I have no complaints about having extra offices set up for absentee voting, that seems like a fine thing to do.
My complaint is how they did it. The law didn't allow for that, but laws can be changed. They could have put it to a vote in Harrisburg, I guarantee it would have passed. They didn't do that. Instead, they just did whatever they wanted, and banked on the partisan majority of the court to let them get away with it. Why didn't every other county do whatever they wanted, why did everyone else follow the rules as written? Because if you screw around like that, you risk the validity of every vote you accepted that way. Election officials breaking the law risks the people's votes. No sensible person is going to do that without the absolute assurance that the practice won't be rejected.
The end result is that only Democrat majority spaces got that opportunity in 2020. The problem isn't that the rules were looser, the problem is that only some places had looser rules than others within the same election. That is an advantage to those places and the people they support. In 2024, the looser rules were explicitly available for everyone, more people voted in Pennsylvania (both in the absolute and as a percentage of registered voters), and the result flipped.
How on earth do you intend to validate the claim then? I agree that election results have a lot more factors than just turnout involved, it might not even be possible to correct for them all, but if we say that comparing turnout to results is insufficient to support the claim, what is left to base that claim on? What evidence would make you think that increased turnout benefits Democrats if not Democrats having greater success in elections with higher turnout?
In short: They did it at kind of short notice, and Republicans weren't interested in expanding voting access so hadn't tried. This isn't illegal discrimination.
Dig down. Look at demographics or specific locales with lower turnout than average, see if/how it changed, and how the change specifically was distributed. Account for fluctuations in how existing voters changed their vote. Account for the impact on voters lost between elections even when the overall trend increased. And be granular, measuring the impact of turnout by distribution and geography-- party A increases its voteshare by 50 in a county they already strongly control, and party B increases its voteshare by 20 in a knife edge? B has benefitted more from turnout.
Data analysts already do this kind of thing.
Let's expand on what the PA Democratic Party actually did. The Party itself filed a law suit leading up to the election against the State Secretary running the elections and the election board of every county in the state, including those run by Democrats. The Secretary was appointed by Democrats, working in a Democratic administration. They were on both sides of the suit. And there is no claim that they started setting up election sites believing it was already legal based on the 2019 laws, they were suing the state for injunctive relief because the 2019 laws didn't allow for what they wanted to do.
They started the suit that allowed for satellite election offices in July. The Secretary, a member of the political party that was suing, appealed to the State Supreme Court for a ruling a month later in August. Philadelphia was already advertising satellite offices before that appeal to the Supreme Court was made. They moved forward with a policy that they filed suit over because it wasn't legal well before even officially asking the Court to make a determination. And it went to September until the Democrats that had the majority on the court decided to give the go-ahead.
No, the Republicans were not interested in suing themselves and rejecting themselves to appeal to themselves to months later decide to let themselves do whatever they wanted.
Then perhaps consult them about this. You will not have difficulty finding a number of studies and books that refute idea that turnout benefits the Democrats.