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Cards Against Humanity Launches a Super Pac to Match Elon Musk's Super Pac

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51–60 of 94 posts

Re: Cards Against Humanity Launches a Super Pac to Match Elon Musk's Super Pac

#51
post #15

Can someone explain what law forces Musk to pay them $47 for everyone that fills out a form?

it'll be breach of contract. Musk is promising that he will pay every valid voter in the swing states $47 if they fill out his form and certify they will vote for in the interest of the first and second amendments, if a eligible voter fulfills their part of the bargain and says to send their check to CaH, it's their right to do so. Musk can't just decide he doesn't like what they're doing with (now) their money and n…

Huh. If this is true, I'm surprised this "program" hasn't yet caught on as a Tiktok "here's how to get $50 for free if you live in one of these states" trick.

Re: Cards Against Humanity Launches a Super Pac to Match Elon Musk's Super Pac

#52
post #25
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it flat illegal to pay people to vote? Otherwise Trump or Harris could just… directly bribe people to vote for them through a cutout.

He's not paying people to vote. He's paying people to register to vote.

I believe that too is illegal. Isn't he just paying them to "sign" a petition that they'd vote to support the 1st and 2nd amendments?

Re: Cards Against Humanity Launches a Super Pac to Match Elon Musk's Super Pac

#53
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The presidency is not the only election on the ballot. And if you ask people who don't vote why not, very few of them are going to mention the electoral college. I would wager most people who don't vote couldn't even explain what the electoral college is.

In many districts, your vote for US House and Senate seats largely doesn't matter, either. For many people, those are the only elections they are thinking about when it comes to November. Senate seats are elected state-wide, so they largely go the same way as the presidential vote. If you're in a deep-red or deep-blue state (i.e., nearly all of them), your individual vote isn't going to make a difference. House seats…

Setting aside gerrymandering (which is a huge issue), the reelection rate doesn't tell the whole story. By what margin are House candidates typically winning? I'm sure there are plenty of landslides, but also lots of districts that were decided by a few percent -- and those who don't vote could be a deciding factor in those races if they chose to vote.

Or if we analyze this from an opportunity cost perspective, IMO voting is always the right choice. Maybe there's an 80% chance your vote "doesn't matter", but the cost is only 15 minutes of your time every 2 years. Isn't the 20% worth the risk? (OK, I am lucky enough to live in a state where voting lines are short. I understand it takes more than 15 mins for some people.)

Re: Cards Against Humanity Launches a Super Pac to Match Elon Musk's Super Pac

#54
post #6

[flagged]

For the same reason CPAC would have a banner saying "We're all domestic terrorists". Dark satire. Whether you find it appropriate or funny is an exercise left for the reader.

Dark satire is perhaps more appropriate in a party game than at a supposedly-serious political conference.

Re: Cards Against Humanity Launches a Super Pac to Match Elon Musk's Super Pac

#55
post #52
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not paying people to vote. He's paying people to register to vote.

I believe that too is illegal. Isn't he just paying them to "sign" a petition that they'd vote to support the 1st and 2nd amendments?

He’s paying a person $47 for every registered swing state voter that that person refers to the SuperPAC and that follows through on signing a petition to support first and second amendment rights.

It appears to be lawyered loopholes around paying people to register to vote directly. Which is illegal as you mentioned.

Sure plenty of people will sign it for the money and then forget about it, but some sliver of people that sign will feel some sliver of obligation to vote for the candidate that the petition obviously wants them to vote for. A sliver here and there could be enough to turn this currently close election.

Re: Cards Against Humanity Launches a Super Pac to Match Elon Musk's Super Pac

#57
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electing a president via popular vote would give populous states disproportionate influence over the country compared to other states. That is important because the president could do obnoxious things against the best interest of any particular state, especially ones with less influence. The stuff happening to your home state is way more relevant to your life than your political party or special interests.

> Electing a president via popular vote would give populous states disproportionate influence over the country compared to other states. It would give every human, who has the right to representation, exactly proportionate influence. The weird fashy retired cops in Idaho will have to settle for having the same number of senators as Californians have.

That is not a good argument. People have a right to self-determination. The same logic of populism can be applied on a trans-national scale, even. There is no limit because under your logic, any person's vote is as good as any other's. The fact is we have states to provide a level of autonomy and independence to geographically separate groups of people, so they can live with more freedom. I don't care if the entire state of California is against how I live, because they are thousands of miles away and deserve less say in how I live than my neighbors. The federal system we have strikes a balance between the two.

A president of a federation such as the US must represent the individual states equally, because there can only be one president and that seat has disproportionate power. I really think people flip flop on the popular vote issue based on whether they think it helps their particular party or not, which is unbelievably short-sighted.

Re: Cards Against Humanity Launches a Super Pac to Match Elon Musk's Super Pac

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electing a president via popular vote would give populous states disproportionate influence over the country compared to other states. That is important because the president could do obnoxious things against the best interest of any particular state, especially ones with less influence. The stuff happening to your home state is way more relevant to your life than your political party or special interests.

Arbitrary lines on maps are arbitrary. North & South Dakota are far more similar than north and south California.

The lines on maps are not arbitrary. People decided them by choice and in some cases by force. You might feel no particular attachment to your state, but if another state decided that your state should be exploited in some way, your primary source of support would be your neighbors within those so-called arbitrary lines.

Re: Cards Against Humanity Launches a Super Pac to Match Elon Musk's Super Pac

#59
post #11

I don't really care about US elections in general, but your rules are broken. Here are interesting bits: How do you know who didn’t vote? We formed a Super PAC and bought the personal voting records of every American citizen from a data broker we found on the internet. It’s pretty fucked up. How do you know who’s “blue leaning”? We got your partisan lean from the same data broker who sold us your voting history. You…

> bought the personal voting records of every American citizen from a data broker we found on the internet The way they phrase this, it sounds like they physically bought a file containing these records, not e.g. access to some API that lets them send targeted messages. If that is the case and that file can be bought so easily, I'm surprised some version of it hasn't leaked on the internet yet. An email address, phon…

I didn't work with election data but I dealt with Data brokers and they worked both ways. They offered API as a service access or a single bulk download for special pricing. I was surprised how relatively cheap it was considering all the data they offered.

Re: Cards Against Humanity Launches a Super Pac to Match Elon Musk's Super Pac

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electing a president via popular vote would give populous states disproportionate influence over the country compared to other states. That is important because the president could do obnoxious things against the best interest of any particular state, especially ones with less influence. The stuff happening to your home state is way more relevant to your life than your political party or special interests.

Damn imagine if everyone's vote was equally weighted, what a disaster for democracy that would be. Mob rule!!

I sense some sarcasm. But you ought to know that the founders, along with Aristotle and other Greeks (basically, the inventors of democracy), were afraid of mobs and sought to temper the whims of the people.

States are given representation proportional to their populations, and also equal representation (in the Senate). The EC and House seats aren't just based on voter turnout, voter population, or even the actual number of citizens in the state (which is rather problematic). So this whole push for direct democracy in the presidential election is stupid. Yes, swing states are a thing, but only because the other states vote consistently in a particular way.

Another problem with using the popular vote to decide the presidential election is that it inventivizes fraud. If someone managed to corrupt a few populous states, they could generate extremely high numbers of fake votes to drown out every other state.

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