#on the ballot

[the-cimmerians]

right now it’s almost halfway through 2023, and 2024 is an election year in the US. I have started to see a growing proliferation of posts suggesting that there is no difference between the republican and democratic parties--the exact same kind of posts I saw an awful lot of before the last major election here. I am unfollowing folks who post or reblog these sort of posts, as I consider these posts to be fascist propaganda framed as leftist discourse, designed to suppress anti-fascist votes and voters. 

[maeamian]

Hey Americans, double check that you don't have an election tomorrow, Nov 7th 2023, I know the off years are harder to keep track of, but it'd be a shame if Moms for Liberty gets their people on your school district's school boards because of it. If you don't have an election, great!, but just give it a double check for me if you're not sure ok?

[madtomedgar]

5 states including kentucky (!!) voted to protect abortion access. 3 states did away with slavery (prison labor) as punishment for a crime. 3 states made massive commitments to affordable housing. illinois made collective bargaining a protected right. 2 more states legalized weed. connecticut is moving towards early voting. alabama removed racist language from the state constitution and is investing in statewide public broadband internet. california massively expanded funding for arts and music programs in public schools. colorado raised on the wealthiest in order to provide universal free school lunch to students. georgia may no longer pay cops who are suspended on a felony indictment. massachusetts massively expanded funding for public education and infrastructure, massively expanded dental insurance, and will allow residents to get a drivers license or state id regardless of immigration status. montana will now require a search warrant for access to electronic data. nebraska will increase its minimum wage to $15. new mexico will massively improve and expand senior facilities, public libraries, higher ed, special public schools, and tribal schools, residential utilities (water, internet, electricity). new york is putting 4.2 billion towards climate change mitigation. rhode island is increasing funding for public education and environmental protection. south dakota expanded medicaid.

[sundaynightfilms]

Six in Paris, 1965

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

it is. so weird to me that I'm having to say this again after a real-life cartoon supervillian already once ran for president on a platform of hatred & fascism and won, but.

it's November, please fucking vote

[notbecauseofvictories]

guess who signed up to be an election judge??

[reasonsforhope]

For all the concern in recent years that U.S. democracy is on the brink, in danger or under threat, a report out Tuesday offers a glimmer of good news for American voters worried that casting a ballot will be difficult in 2024.

Put simply, the new data shows that voting in America has gotten easier over the past two decades. More voters have the ability to cast a ballot before Election Day, with the majority of U.S. states now offering some form of early in-person voting and mail voting to all voters.

"Although we often talk in a partisan context about voter fraud and voter suppression and whether voters have access to the ballot, the reality is, over the past 25 years, we've greatly increased the convenience of voting for almost all Americans," said David Becker, the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), which authored the new report...

The data shows that, despite real efforts by some Republican-led legislatures to restrict access at the margins, the trend in the U.S. since 2000 has been toward making it easier to vote: Nearly 97% of voting-age American citizens now live in states that offer the option to vote before Election Day.

"The lies about early voting, the lies about voting machines and efforts in some state legislatures to roll back some of the election integrity and convenience measures that have evolved over the last several decades, those efforts almost all failed," Becker said. "In almost every single state, voters can choose to vote when they want to."

Forty-six states and Washington, D.C., offer some form of early in-person voting, the report tallied, and 37 of those jurisdictions also offer mail voting to all voters without requiring an excuse...

In 2000

In 2024

Infographic via NPR. If you go to the article, you can watch an animation of this map that shows voting availability in every election since 2000.

There are some political trends that show up in the data. Of the 14 states that don't offer mail voting to all voters, for instance, 12 have Republican-led legislatures.

-via NPR, March 19, 2024. Article continues below.

But maybe the more striking trends are geographic. Every single state in the western U.S. has offered some form of early and mail voting to all voters since 2004, according to the data. And those states span the political spectrum, from conservative Idaho to liberal California.

"It's really hard to talk about partisanship around this issue because historically there just hasn't been much," Mann said. "We've seen voting by mail and early in-person voting supported by Republican legislatures, Democratic legislatures, Republican governors, Democratic governors. We see voters in both parties use both methods." ...

In 2020, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts all made changes to make voting more easily accessible, which have since partially or fully become permanent. Delaware is currently embroiled in a legal fight over whether it can implement early and mail voting changes this election cycle as well.

The South, with its history of slavery and Jim Crow laws, has long lagged behind when it comes to voting access. The CEIR data shows that, although some states have slowly started expanding options for voters, generally it is still the most difficult region for voters to cast a ballot.

As options nationwide have become more widely available, voters have also responded by taking advantage.

In the 2000 election, 86% of voters voted at a polling place on Election Day, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

In 2020, during the pandemic, that number dropped to less than 31% of voters. It went back up in 2022, to roughly half of the electorate, but was still in line with the two-decade trend toward more ballots being cast early.

...in reality, Becker says, more voting options actually make elections more secure and less susceptible to malicious activity or even human error.

"If there were a problem, if there were a cyber event, if there were a malfunction, if there were bad weather, if there were traffic, if there were was a power outage, you could think of all kinds of circumstances. ... The more you spread voting out over a series of days and over multiple modes, the less likely it's going to impact voters," he said...

-via NPR, March 19, 2024

[presaugust]

Dr. Ratthi: #1 Man

[zivazivc]

Man she really dumped him for being sad? I see where creek got his personality-

queen also didn't sign up for raising baby brothers-in-law instead of their own kids that they've been planning on having

[codacheetah]

Which one will you vote for?

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

👏

[super-smash-bracket]

QUARTERFINALS

(NOTE: Read the Palutena's Guidance for Professor Layton HERE and for eShop Bag HERE)

[cleoselene]

[laisai]

So this OTW Election drama is getting out of hand...

I see a lot of panic and fearmongering, and I think some facts need to be stated to help put things into perspective.

The OTW, which operates AO3, has yearly elections for the Board of Directors. This is position which is occupied by SEVEN PEOPLE total. You can see the members of the current board here: https://www.transformativeworks.org/board-directors/

The entire Board of Directors works together to oversee the OTW as a whole. They cannot and also do not oversee the details of day-to-day operations, such as your tags being wrangled, or keeping track of donations, or responding to support tickets, or keeping the servers working, etc. (https://elections.transformativeworks.org/what-the-board-does/)

Therefore, ONE person being elected to the Board will not be able to completely shift the direction and goals of the OTW as a whole. You would need a 4 person majority at the very least, and the maximum number of seats up for election in any year is usually 3.

The requirements for running for the Board are fairly simple: 9 months in the previous year as a volunteer (everyone in the OTW, including Board members, are volunteers), not being in the Elections committee, being a legal adult, and being a paying member (basically the same as being a voter in the election). More info: https://elections.transformativeworks.org/becoming-candidate/

There is no nomination process or any sort of internal popularity contest at play here. Any views being expressed by a candidate therefore doesn't mean anything about the OTW's culture internally as a whole.

There is a period of time before the election where all eligible voters get emails at the same email address they will send the ballots to, with instructions to a mock-up page of the ballot so that people can work out technical issues if needed. People who need accommodations for any reason are also able to request them during this period weeks before the election. So asking for a "tech testing" period before the election happens is... pointless. It's already there!

Asking for more "screening" of candidates is reasonable on the surface, but the truth is, it could be ripe for abuse by people in charge of the process. Sure, perhaps the people who put these rules into place won't use the process badly, but who's to say nobody will ever be tempted to do so? It could lead to a Board and Elections Committee that works together to keep new ideas and changes in the OTW from ever coming to fruition. Just imagine the Board of Directors we hate in movies: old white men in suits who never want anything to change, and only let in people who are just like them. Also -- the reason we have elections AT ALL is so everyone gets a voice in how the OTW will run.

This isn't like the US Election (or British, or wherever you are) where your vote is one drop in an ocean of millions. The OTW and AO3 are actually not that big in the wider world, and that means each vote counts more. Also, the ranked voting system means peoples' votes can count towards their second- or third-favourite candidate, or so on. It's not all or nothing here!

I know a lot of people are worried seeing what seems like anti views coming from "within" the OTW itself, but it is still one person out of hundreds. People are always going to have varying opinions; the GOOD thing is that people are voting against opinions that they don't agree with. That means the voting process is working.

There is a conversation to be had, perhaps, about changing some policies and requirements for candidates and members future elections. But right now? Breathe.

There is no risk of the AO3 censoring and banning fic overnight, even if you personally cannot vote this year. After all, the candidates weren't revealed until after everyone donated, and we know antis would never give AO3 their money.

(And for the conspiracists out there: ballot-stuffing is not 100% impossible, but EXTREMELY UNLIKELY. You would need to have paid 10$ donations for HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of fake people (which is $$$$) months in advance and also set up hundreds/thousands of email accounts for all these fake people, or for real people with nefarious aims. The reason we know the moon landing wasn't faked is because that many people could not have realistically kept a secret for that long. We would have heard whispers about it. The same applies here. This entire debacle came out of left field over the course of a few days!

And all that work, for ONE member who can't unilaterally change anything? Please.)

[godisarepublican]

They’re illegal aliens. Say it right: Illegal aliens!

[gnar-slabdash]

Actually: Game Time! Every character gets one fuckword in the whole original series. Where do you put it? ex. i just put in a vote for nate to say “i fucked up” instead of “screwed up” during his performance in the Long Goodbye Job