211–220 of 308 posts
How is this post not off/topic per HN’s guidelines? > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Honestly very surprised this was unanimous. Maybe a lot of the people I would have thought would vote nay were conveniently absent for the vote?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's largely because increased voting overwhelmingly (and almost exclusively) benefits one side in the US. While it's obviously good to have increased participation in democracy, the side that's going to more or less cease to exist if we ever get even 80% citizen participation obviously has an incentive to make voting harder.
I'm not sure how you rationalise that with the fact that Australia consistently votes in a right-wing government. UK (which doesn't have compulsory voting) also reelected a right-wing government.
This is a good symbolic gesture, but making election day a federal holiday equivalent in standing with Christmas would have real and positive impact. But the latter never draws the votes in congress, so that should tell us how meaningless this vote truly was.
No. Make early voting widely available and mail ballots available to anyone who requests one. Stop thinking of elections as a single day. That’ll be much healthier for democracy.
Are you sure about that? This past election wasn't exactly very healthy.
Be careful with removing all the pageantry around elections. Symbolism is very important and singular day election days play into that. So does filling in a paper ballot, and going to a polling place with your fellow citizens.
Imagine you created an app, wherein you enter your preference (Dem or GOP) and the app goes and proceeds to vote for you automatically anytime there's an election. Would that improve democracy or alienate people from it?
On one hand, that's nice that there's another public holiday, but on the other hand this feels like such an empty gesture, almost like the political equivalent of putting a filter on your selfie.
Agree, but we’re also working with politicians that had discrepancies with a law protecting Asians from hate crimes[0] [0] https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/20/politics/republicans-voted-no...
White people deciding what they feel Black people need. Black people don't need Juneteenth holidays. They need respect from the nation's institutions and they need to present and articulate their case for reparations in an emphatic and uncompromising manner.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't follow how flipping the point from "more voting" to "less voting" while not flipping the "anti-democratic" clause tracks.
If 8 of my dead great-grandparents vote for Mayor Daley, but I vote against, his 8-1 victory isn't democracy.
This is a good symbolic gesture, but making election day a federal holiday equivalent in standing with Christmas would have real and positive impact. But the latter never draws the votes in congress, so that should tell us how meaningless this vote truly was.
I've never met someone that wanted to vote but couldn't for some reason. Does this actually happen to anyone in reality? This may be a case of preemptive optimization.
This is a good symbolic gesture, but making election day a federal holiday equivalent in standing with Christmas would have real and positive impact. But the latter never draws the votes in congress, so that should tell us how meaningless this vote truly was.
No. Make early voting widely available and mail ballots available to anyone who requests one. Stop thinking of elections as a single day. That’ll be much healthier for democracy.