A revelation that the youngest voters heavily favor Democrats is not a revelation. But, making it effortless post-COVID for these low-propensity voters to vote has made a difference.
Spot on about couch potatoes voting. Those voters really don't care enough to get off their duff to go to the polls. They may tend to be young and many feel entitled to success. They rarely really are paying attention to policy but to sound bites. Too many aspire to TL:DR and can't read "chapter books". Many believe in alternate forms of government that have repeatedly failed. Apparently the power structure prefers that, just as long as they can stay in power. Not sure we can save ourselves.
Now we can puzzle about this: Would requiring prospective voters to bear the small cost of actually showing up at the polls raise the quality, in some sense, of the pool of voters who would actually show up?
By "quality" one might mean, "better informed"? "More motivated"? But, would more motivated voters actually make for more discriminating voters, or would such voters really just include a large share of fanatics?
My own sense is that imposing a small cost would induce important self-selection, but then one could imagine how the the authorities could abuse the idea of imposing costs. Think poll taxes and such.
Separately, there are questions about early voting and mail-in/absentee voting. Liberalizing these things imposes costs on the system, and, then, of course, there is the question of how such processes make that system more susceptible to manipulation.
If it were up to me to dictate, maybe I'd allow one Saturday of in-person, early voting and some provision for absentee voting... on auditable ballots. And that's it.
We know that primaries do include those fanatics. But that's where I really believe mail in voting would be a positive by making it easier so might get more participation. I also think the nominees should bear the costs of that mailing, even if that favors those with deeper pockets. It might encourage the political parties to be a bit more important by making them responsible for the logistics and preliminary vetting of candidates.
I don't mind a week of early voting but this month long stuff seems more expensive than it needs to be. Mail voting ought to require a request followed by ballot delivery. I don't think universal sending of ballots is wise at all in spite of the states asserting it works well and ballot harvesting should never be allowed. In the past I've requested and received a ballot for my Ex who lives in a nursing home. I didn't do that this year, I think her mind is too far gone. I could have cheated but didn't, not sure others are that honorable.
Cleaning up the voter rolls might be a fair thing to get done. In ,looking at https://voteref.com/ for your state, or whatever states allowed access, I see that there can exist phantom voters or registered voters who rarely vote. I see the potential for misuse of those names. In some cases I might question how those names got on the list.
But the request-receipt of ballots is critical. If you can't be motivated to at least make the request?
The cost I'd like to impose would mimic poll taxes in a way by requiring a test every five years. The test would cover basic civics but I suspect that could never happen. i am appalled at how ill informed some people are. I'm convinced our educational system takes for granted that our constitution and freedoms mean little. We ignore civic responsibility, perhaps because we have so few willing to take responsibility for anything.
I think Lake has beat out the competition. But we shall see. If so, she has promised to revise the system. There are so serious issues with the balloting nearly everywhere.
I simply can't accept that a person like Fetterman could get elected. One might think his track record would be disqualifying. OTOH, was OZ really that bad? Then again Mastriano seemed hardly visible nationally, can't know about PA.
Spot on about couch potatoes voting. Those voters really don't care enough to get off their duff to go to the polls. They may tend to be young and many feel entitled to success. They rarely really are paying attention to policy but to sound bites. Too many aspire to TL:DR and can't read "chapter books". Many believe in alternate forms of government that have repeatedly failed. Apparently the power structure prefers that, just as long as they can stay in power. Not sure we can save ourselves.
Fetterman and a dead guy tell the tale.
That is an efficient way of putting it!
Now we can puzzle about this: Would requiring prospective voters to bear the small cost of actually showing up at the polls raise the quality, in some sense, of the pool of voters who would actually show up?
By "quality" one might mean, "better informed"? "More motivated"? But, would more motivated voters actually make for more discriminating voters, or would such voters really just include a large share of fanatics?
My own sense is that imposing a small cost would induce important self-selection, but then one could imagine how the the authorities could abuse the idea of imposing costs. Think poll taxes and such.
Separately, there are questions about early voting and mail-in/absentee voting. Liberalizing these things imposes costs on the system, and, then, of course, there is the question of how such processes make that system more susceptible to manipulation.
If it were up to me to dictate, maybe I'd allow one Saturday of in-person, early voting and some provision for absentee voting... on auditable ballots. And that's it.
We know that primaries do include those fanatics. But that's where I really believe mail in voting would be a positive by making it easier so might get more participation. I also think the nominees should bear the costs of that mailing, even if that favors those with deeper pockets. It might encourage the political parties to be a bit more important by making them responsible for the logistics and preliminary vetting of candidates.
I don't mind a week of early voting but this month long stuff seems more expensive than it needs to be. Mail voting ought to require a request followed by ballot delivery. I don't think universal sending of ballots is wise at all in spite of the states asserting it works well and ballot harvesting should never be allowed. In the past I've requested and received a ballot for my Ex who lives in a nursing home. I didn't do that this year, I think her mind is too far gone. I could have cheated but didn't, not sure others are that honorable.
Cleaning up the voter rolls might be a fair thing to get done. In ,looking at https://voteref.com/ for your state, or whatever states allowed access, I see that there can exist phantom voters or registered voters who rarely vote. I see the potential for misuse of those names. In some cases I might question how those names got on the list.
But the request-receipt of ballots is critical. If you can't be motivated to at least make the request?
The cost I'd like to impose would mimic poll taxes in a way by requiring a test every five years. The test would cover basic civics but I suspect that could never happen. i am appalled at how ill informed some people are. I'm convinced our educational system takes for granted that our constitution and freedoms mean little. We ignore civic responsibility, perhaps because we have so few willing to take responsibility for anything.
A lot to think about.
It will be interesting to see if Arizona cleans up its voting processes if enough people serious about cleaning it up get into office.
I think Lake has beat out the competition. But we shall see. If so, she has promised to revise the system. There are so serious issues with the balloting nearly everywhere.
I simply can't accept that a person like Fetterman could get elected. One might think his track record would be disqualifying. OTOH, was OZ really that bad? Then again Mastriano seemed hardly visible nationally, can't know about PA.