I used to be very skeptical that changes to voting locations were motivated by animosity or an attempt to reduce the ability for minority voters to exercise their rights.
Since the Hofeller dump, it's very clear that there's an extremely intentional, well researched effort to directly impact minority voters.
In 2016 Arizona did much the same thing[1] and the outrage quickly died down. Voting should be easy and accessible, we honestly should just have a holiday for it, but long lines mean that people who can't afford to take as much time off of work can't afford the price to vote and that's just ridiculous.
This is an area where I think it is easy to not think it is a problem if you happen to live/vote in a place with reasonably operated polling operations.
I've been voting for over 30 years and have never waited more than 30 minutes to vote and it is usually less than 5 minutes yet in a nearby city they seem to have all sorts of logistical problems during every election including long lines, running out of ballots, etc.
I think I recall some folks from Australia describing in HN, their system as having an independent agency/office that is responsible for voting operations. Perhaps something like this would remove the disparities we have between polling locations in the US.
It is not an issue of "do this to fix it." It's an open secret that it is very intentional. You just have to look at the demographics with any sense of integrity. The issue is that there are people who fundamentally believe certain groups should not have the right to vote.
They can't actually say "I don't want X to vote because we all know they commit rampant voter fraud" because it isn't politically correct (or true, but the U.S. doesn't care about truth); however, they really believe they are literally fighting a holy/principled war to protect the U.S.
The U.S. is being carved apart because there are fundamental beliefs that are beyond being tested for veracity and must be enacted or the "others" will destroy this country.
I don't deny that this happens but at least around here I think Hanlon's Razor is more apt: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
In particular the problem areas around me are entirely controlled and populated by Democrats so it doesn't make sense to say that there is some cabal trying to prevent "certain groups" from voting since it is their own constituency that is being affected.
Again, to my original point. The experiences are very different from place to place and so you should be careful about extrapolating from individual experiences.
I know part of Bernie Sanders' platform is making Election Day a national holiday. Not sure whether this is part of the other Democratic candidates' plans.
What we do in Norway is open the polling stations almost a month in advance so people can plan when to vote depending on their schedule.
You can also vote by mail before or go to the local "rådhus" or town hall and vote there in case you are going on a long trip/vacation.
The election day itself if a normal work day, but on this day no campaigning is allowed to prevent pressure outside of the polling stations by the political parties.
It is never that simple. Voting by mail only works for people with reliable mailing addresses, mooting the homeless vote. At best, the US needs a combined system that will allow everyone the chance.
Address verification is likely only to verify that you're at the correct precinct that you were registered for. You don't have to have a permanent address to vote.
That could be. But, they demand my DL before reciting my name and full address. So...? I have no idea.
All these GOP schemes to prevent voting fraud or reduce costs all seem tailor made to reduce turnout of groups that are presumed to be largely non-GOP.
There is a segment of both parties that feel that people who disagree with them shouldn't have a voice - unfortunately it seems this segment managed to get a lot of control in the GOP while on the left side they mostly get relegated to the loony bin.
Both parties are super guilty of gerrymandering, but "voter fraud" isn't a proportionally important issue and it's been abused by some strategists to implement wide spread voter discrimination.
Sure, and motor-voter (which automatically registers people to vote when they get driver's licenses)[1] doesn't help people who don't drive. But both do enable a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise vote to do so. I would like to see the homeless be able to vote, but we're talking about 500K people in a country of 330M, so we shouldn't overstate the impact that would have.
A vote by mail loses the guarantee of secrecy (someone could check your mail and ensure 'consequences' for your vote, or even for voting in general), safety (someone could have coerced your vote, and because it was by mail they could verify 'your' vote was what they decided it to be), intelligent decision making (a mailed vote is mailed in advance, something could have changed by election day. This actually happens quite often, especially in primaries) and election integrity (someone in the mail could have messed with your vote).
Mailed votes are just a bad idea. The simpler and better solution is to have the US federal elections run by a federal non-political commission + a federal voting holiday. Disabled people could use mobile election vans and/or a proxy-vote system like in the UK but limited to them (very imperfect; but safer than a mailed vote, since the proxy's vote is still secret).
This state's rights issue was, thankfully, already lost when laws were passed to combat widespread racial discrimination[1] in voting. Those laws have been repealed but the federal government has a good historical justification for enforcing more laws around voter accessibility.
1. Among other requirements, the ADA likely requires that polling places and some proportion of booths be wheelchair accessible and mandates the accessibility of braille ballots.
Isn't it at least a little scary to you to nationalize the voting process? Would you want a Voting Administration with presidential appointees deciding how to register voters, collect votes, and count them?
I guess other countries do things that way with lots of observers, etc. to try to avoid the worst problems. But I'm not excited about my state/county giving up its role (which it seems to do just fine) under the theory that the federal government will do better in some other state and county that doesn't currently do a good job.
If you want to elect folks to federal offices directly, then you need a federal vote. The current system requires an awful lot of trust to be invested into states that have consistently shown themselves unable to justify being trusted.
That's correct. "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."
Technically all elections are state/local elections. We don't directly vote for anything at the federal level. Each state has full control over who which presidential candidate it sends its electoral college votes to. That's why states like Virginia can decide to send all of theirs to the winner of the national popular vote.
yes, conservatives also believe that slavery was a states rights issue, the civil war was "the war of northern aggression", women's health care is a federal issue, and lgbt people don't have any rights.
We need to stop acting like this hypocrisy and bigotry is a reasonable PoV, and stop bargaining with them. Conservatives and the GOP have a proven track record of bad faith, and any claims they make should be presumed false or misleading until proven otherwise.
"Conservatives" are not a single monolithic block of people, and labeling them as such doesn't help in any way.
Both sides regularly use "States' Rights" if and when convenient. When your side has a majority in Congress, go for a national bill; when your side has a majority in a state, go for a state bill. So it's easy to point to hypocrisy, but I tired long ago of "hypocrisy" as an argument. It's not convincing anyone, it's just a way to score points.
But States' Rights are a legitimate principle, too. The EU member states have rights (including the right to leave, apparently). I think retaining some autonomy is a good hedge against the risk of bad things happening at a higher level of government.
This might be better described as the "hard news" version. Guardian's article pulls in a lot of additional context -- about the racial impact assessments in states with a long history of voter disenfranchisement going away, analysis of where these polling places closed (it was in places with large minority populations), etc. None of that really slants the article, but it does involve more analysis.
After having read both, the only thing the ties the two article together is HN and the seemingly word Texas.
The two articles describe two completely different problems. The parent article discuss the issue of voting sites being used to target specific voters. Rather then trying to maximum voting participation, the article describe the problem of targeted desirable voting populations at the exclusion of others. By removing temporary polling places and enforcing a rule that all polling places must remain open for all 12 days of early voting, it forces polling stations to focus only in areas with high populations.
The submitter article writes how texas is closing down most polling stations, making it more difficult for people to vote and arguably benefiting Republicans. It is saying that more voting locations close to Latinx neighborhoods got closed than in non-Latinx neighborhoods, and that Latinx people had to travel farther to vote than non-Hispanic whites. It also writes that places where black and Latinx population is growing by the largest numbers have experienced the vast majority of the state’s poll site closures.
Two different completely different problems, two completely different articles, discussing the same event. Thanks to HN I at least see a bit more from multiple sides, but it demonstrate quite well the issue with news article like this.
Thank you for the thoughtful and detailed response. I agree, I think your notes are reasonable.
Your notes show that both articles are concerned with the human impact of the poll closures.
For example, in the Texas Tribune article, I think the first (and last) paragraphs that you categorized as "neutral fluff" are meant to highlight the impact on "rural and young voters" that are mentioned in the article title. The article doesn't mention "minorities" or "black and Latino" voters.
In contrast, the Guardian article focuses on the impact on "minorities" and more specifically, the "black and Latino population." It doesn't mention rural or young voters.
Looking a bit deeper, I realized both articles are part of larger series which indicates to me that instead of "news reporting", these articles are motivated by a certain type of advocacy. The Guardian article is part of "The Fight to Vote" series and the Texas Tribune article is part of the "Texas Voting Rights" series.
Since both articles focus on the human impact of certain demographics, I think how one perceives the articles as slanted most likely depends on personal perspective.
For example, given the issue of voting rights and the well documented efforts to disenfranchise minority voters [0], I'd interpret an article that mentions the poll closures along party lines ("unanimous Republican support") but does not mention the potential impact on minority voters as slanted.
My takeaway is that both articles are "slanted", just in different ways and most likely in ways that conform to the expectations of their respective readerships.
[0]:
Some Republicans Acknowledge Leveraging Voter ID Laws for Political Gain
So your biggest issue is that the Guardian brings in themes of voter disenfranchisement in an ex-Confederate, Jim Crow state with a history of voter suppression?
Many can, but republican states don't actually believe in the constitution, so deliberately make it as hard as possible for non-conservatives to vote.
There's a lot of support for voters in older whiter neighbourhoods, and deliberately as few as possible in every. other location. They also make it as hard as possible to vote even if you can get to a polling facility there's no time off at all for voting (forget paid time off), and voting lines are frequently hours long. The various forms of "voter id" are also intentionally made difficult to get for as many people as possible.
Again, republican's hate anything that makes it easy for people to vote, because. they know that in free and fair elections they are increasingly likely to lose.
I disagree, voting by mail is easy and convenient - I still like and support polling places as a primary solution but online voting systems raise far too many questions around accountability and verification. And, while some good theoretical systems exist, it's anyone's guess which approach ends up being picked by the same politicians who have repeatedly gone for budget voting machines or those who have blatant conflicts of interest and have used voting machine selection to line their own pockets.
Voting is really important, if voting works we can theoretically solve a lot of other problems. But if we can't vote then the only solution we have is marching in the streets which will often lead to violence and destruction.
Since the Hofeller dump, it's very clear that there's an extremely intentional, well researched effort to directly impact minority voters.