YouTubers Will Enter Politics, And If They Do, They're Probably Going To Win (buzzfeednews.com) 298
A group of twentysomethings leveraged their huge YouTube audiences and actually won seats in Brazil's federal and state elections. What happens next is anyone's guess. Ryan Broderick, writing for BuzzFeed News: Kim Kataguiri is known in Brazil for a lot of things. He's been called a fascist. He's been called a fake news kingpin. Is he a YouTuber? He definitely uses YouTube. He's definitely a troll. A troll with a consistent message, though, he points out. Maybe he's Brazil's equivalent of Milo Yiannopoulos. His organization, Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL) -- the Free Brazil Movement -- is like the Brazilian Breitbart. Or maybe it's like the American tea party. Maybe it's both. Is it a news network? Kataguiri says it isn't. But it's not a political party, either. He says MBL is just a bunch of young people who love free market economics and memes. One thing is very clear: His YouTube channel, the memes, the fake news, and MBL's army of supporters have helped Kataguiri, 22, become the youngest person ever elected to Congress in Brazil. He's also trying to become Brazil's equivalent of speaker of the House.
[...] Kataguiri's political awakening is a textbook example of the way algorithms beget more algorithms. During his last year of high school, his teacher started a debate about welfare programs in Brazil. So Kataguiri started googling. He discovered Ron Paul and the Brazilian libertarian YouTuber Daniel Fraga. "Then I did a video to my teacher and my friends at school to talk about what I had found out," Kataguiri says. "There was one problem: I posted this video on YouTube. So it was public and it went viral." He says people kept asking for more videos, but he didn't know anything. So he went back to googling, and then made more videos about what he learned.
[...] Kataguiri's political awakening is a textbook example of the way algorithms beget more algorithms. During his last year of high school, his teacher started a debate about welfare programs in Brazil. So Kataguiri started googling. He discovered Ron Paul and the Brazilian libertarian YouTuber Daniel Fraga. "Then I did a video to my teacher and my friends at school to talk about what I had found out," Kataguiri says. "There was one problem: I posted this video on YouTube. So it was public and it went viral." He says people kept asking for more videos, but he didn't know anything. So he went back to googling, and then made more videos about what he learned.
news at 11 on Youtube. (Score:3)
Republicans BANNED By YouTube (Score:3, Insightful)
So, when any politician or person running for office is banned by youtube, the company can be charged with Election Tampering ?
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Thats not how that works.
More anime nerds get banned by Youtube (Score:2)
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Ego-stroking Talking heads will always be egoi-stroking talking heads...
Speaking of talking heads, this is right out of that old 80's show, Max Headroom, where the TV station with the most viewers at voting time got their candidate into office.
Trolls get old fast. (Score:2)
The trolls get old fast, but there are others on YouTube from the UK that now has entered politics. I have no idea if their combined subscriber base of over 1mil, will be enough to change elections.
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The trolls get old fast, but there are others on YouTube from the UK that now has entered politics. I have no idea if their combined subscriber base of over 1mil, will be enough to change elections.
With Sargon stepping back from the Culture Wars, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Is he really tired of YouTube fame, or is he positioning himself for a political career with UKIP? I think 1 million subscribers isn't enough to make a real impact, but it is great training for politics. Heck, just the idea that "maybe we should debate ideas on their merits" has become radical means it's time for something to change.
IMO the more "radical centrists" and "free speech extremists" get involved wi
Re:Trolls get old fast. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that for every sane Youtuber with a halfway decent following, you have an army of idiots that BLOW YOUR MIND, can count to 10 and show you a million things to do to your hair (with a link to buy the crap in the description, either as a promo-link to Amazon and the like or they run their own crap already and bypass the middleman when it comes to swindling teenies out of money).
Not to mention the criminally insane, from apricot-core eaters to flat earthers to the politically-religious, ranging all the way from the kill-the-fags right wing nutjob to the kill-the-cis-males left wing nutjobs.
My only hope is that they are SO many and fracturing their user base SO widely (because they themselves can't get along) that they splinter it up into so many insignificant groups that they in total don't matter.
Re:Trolls get old fast. (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to think this. Recently, the way the Democratic party is running, I feel we are now in an era of Minority rule. Take any hot topic item, whether its abortion, gay marriage, forcing a baker to make a gay wedding cake, etc. Lets take the gay wedding cake one.. Now look at the demographics of the democratic party. While the LBGTQ(insert-more-letters-here) group is solidly democrats, so are the black southern baptist and blue dog democrats. Latinos are typically very devout catholics. These groups have a very different set of ideals when it comes to certain social issues. Now if this was a national vote where it was not party driven, you would probably see only 15% come out and say "Yes, a baker should be FORCED to make any cake he or she disagrees with, regardless of religious belief". But because this 'coalition' exists to force all its members to tow the party line, this 20% suddenly jumps to 47% of the population, and members are being represented against their beliefs. As if there was some shortage of gay bakers to make a cake. This is why we are now a country of minority rule. We keep making exception after exception for every minority group instead of demanding people be treated exactly the same. Same means Same, not "All Animals are created equal; some are more equal than others".
The same thing happens in the Republican party, but its not quite as fractured as the Democratic party. There is a large number of people that vote republican that identify as libertarian, so they don't agree on social issues nearly as much as they do on fiscal and economic ones.
Depends on how you ask the question (Score:5, Insightful)
ask "Should the Baker be allowed to refuse service" and you'll get a lot of 'No's'
The end result is the same. LGBTQs are denied access to a public resource (in this case a publicly available bake shop).
Me? I just replace the word "LGBTQ" with "White Male Christian" and if I would say "that shouldn't be allowed" then there's my answer. Once you can use religion to discriminate you can do damn near anything. It'll start with baking cakes and end with riots and apartheid. [google.com]
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bullshit. A store owner has the right to refuse service regardless. These fucktards justify throwing out cabinet members from restaurants but its OK to force a baker to bake a fucking cake? The people who filed that suit went to TWENTY bakers BEFORE they found a baker that said NO. There is no shortage of bakers baking damn cake. You cant have it both fucking ways. Fine.... Im going to go around demanding NAMBLA cakes... see where that shit goes.
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Even better, lets all get WAR ON WOMEN cakes
WAR ON WOMEN
Putting bitches in their place since 1787
lets see how many bakers refuse to make that!!! Then file suit and appeal to the Supreme Court and site case law (it will never make it that far, the ruling covers ANY refusal)
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I've yet seen a good argument why "Race, sexual orientation, religion" are protected, but other intrinsic properties, such as height and weight are not. And how is pedophilia not a sexual orientation?
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you should read Radio Warfare: OSS and CIA subversive Propoganda. If you think Karl Rove perfected this, this book will blow your mind. This shit has been tooling up since WWII.
Did you miss the Trump rally (Score:3)
You've let neo-nazis and white supremacists into your party. Heck, you even helped them legitimize by calling them the "Alt-Right". What did you think was gonna happen when you did that?
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umm what you said is pretty bad, but what ANTIFA is doing is equally bad. Lets both agree that there are fucking fanatics on both sides. Though I am starting to suspect there are more on the left right now; throwing people out of restaurants, trying to get into fist fights with senators that dont vote their way, trying to break into Fox 5 in DC. At least with the right, you know where the crackpots are going to be, they show up at marches and everyone laughs at them.
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thats my point... making laws to give people extra perks as a make-up only, in the long term, makes equality impossible. Not everything is discrimination. Sometimes rules just suck. Sometimes, shit lets be real, often, I deal with a real hassle of rules that make things suck. I have to jump through hoops just to get something I need. Making a rule that gives minority X head-of-the-line treatment does not create equality. If a 'white privileged male' experiences hassle or problems getting something done, the
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One thing... most of these youtubers will join existing parties. And in many elections, have you seen how *close* most regions are?
It's a little different in Britain, I think. UKIP is a very small party, small enough that it doesn't get seats (some oddity of the UK system where you need to get ~5% of the vote to get any seats). However, it might well be that a million supporters, plus continued advocacy in more traditional ways, can push UKIP above that threshold. That could be at least the start of something.
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I see your point. Placing the candidates well could make a real difference, assuming you could find any overlap between "hotly contested" and "lots of YouTube viewers". Even with a small party, you'd just need an overlap between lots of disaffected voters and YouTube viewers, which doesn't sound so far-fetched.
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The trolls get old fast, but there are others on YouTube from the UK that now has entered politics. I have no idea if their combined subscriber base of over 1mil, will be enough to change elections.
If you have 1 million followers only 1000 will vote for someone just because you told them to. How is this different to newspapers editors endorsing a candidate? How many elections has that changed? As bad as society is people won't just vote for someone because "someone on You Tube" told them too.
You will have people on one medium endorsing one candidate, a rival on another medium endorsing another candidate, it all cancels out.
Before you say "but people are sheep and do whatever they're told by you tub
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It's a bit different when it's not just "endorsement" but "reasoned argument and debate". Appeals to tribalism, which is most of modern politics, is great for getting out the vote but as you say it's a marginal effect.
Actually persuading independent voters with reasoned argument is what these YouTubers potentially bring. Does that actually work, though? Hard to say, as when's the last time we saw a political "debate" that was anything but candidates reciting prepared statements?
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in a way, because those ads were about who NOT to vote for ;-) anymore these elections are about the perception that your voting for the least worst candidate of the two. Nobody is actually all that excited about anyone that makes it between the final 2. Lets admit it, most candidates you thought were OK got washed out early in their primaries.
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Playing the popularity game, throwing shite from the sidelines, sure fun. Being in the game and having shite thrown at you and your ignorance on public display, well, watch a youtube career go up in flames. Ego and greed, a sure set up for being busted for corruption, how about a betting pool on how many months it takes.
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While I have no doubt that you know "what a troll is" to the point of a science, you make a good point. "Troll" used to mean "an insincere opinion proffered to provoke an emotional response", and that's still the /. mod guidance, but these days it seems to mean "someone I disagree with".
Alex Jones may be a bit of a troll - I doubt he believes half the shit he talks about - but he's really not focused on aggravating people who disagree with him (after all, normal people simple don't listen to him, so he has
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Re: Trolls get old fast. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd say Milo and maybe Ann Coulter are trolls, but the label doesn't extend to people who are merely kooky or extremists.
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now its been redefined to be anyone they dont like or agree with. Identity Politics.
FTFS (Score:2, Funny)
The difference between communism and democracy (Score:2, Insightful)
Communism is the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Democracy becomes more and more the dictatorship of the proles.
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Ummm... WTF are you talking about. Or rather, since you clearly don't know that prole is short for proletariat, learn more before you speak.
Communism is an economic system (Score:2)
You're reciting a right wing talking point meant to give Democracy a bad name. Somebody wants to turn you into a fascist so they can take your stuff. Now you just have to figure out who.
No, they really won't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isolated cases where You Tube may or may not have influenced elections does not mean that You Tubers in general have all that much power. I really doubt many people will vote XYZ just because someone on You Tube told them to.
Re:No, they really won't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isolated cases where You Tube may or may not have influenced elections does not mean that You Tubers in general have all that much power. I really doubt many people will vote XYZ just because someone on You Tube told them to.
And why should we care if someone on YouTube "influences" an election anyway?
We're supposed to "influence" each other politically by communicating ... that's literally how its supposed to work.
Sure beats influencing each other via violence, firing people for their political opinions, and other popular methods of the day.
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dont give millennials that much credit. Just listen to the stupid shit that Cortez person keeps uttering without exhibiting even the least bit of comprehension of basic math and accounting. Everything is about taxing the rich to pay for everything instead of trying to make things cost less so they dont bankrupt the country. Take her healthcare approach. Everyone wants to give other countries as examples of universal healthcare. You know what those countries DONT have? Doctors making 7 figure salaries and b
Student Debt (Score:2)
OTOH they might just turn against the old folks. Demand an end to Social Security, Medicare, shutting down the VA & military pension programs, etc, etc. Hard to say.
But given how screwed they are (they make 20% less than baby boomers with more education) they're gonna be more political, Youtube or no
well (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:well (Score:4, Informative)
He's suggesting that we'd be less horrified if he were a liberal rather than something resembling a fascist, which I can't argue with. Far-right ideologies have proven to be harmful every time they've been tried, so we should be horrified by them.
stand up and salute (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our new Pewtie Pie overlords.
Good for them. (Score:2)
Of course I'm just waiting for every politician to host their own youtube channel because some social media ninja told them that is the way to win elections. Maybe if were lucky they will put all their efforts into youtube and stay out of tv and news so I don't have to skip through the political ads anymore.
Then of course the fake politically Russian youtube channels will be blamed for their candidate loosing that election too.
My head hurts, I'm going to go lay down for a while.
Useful Idiots... (Score:2)
Not in the US (Score:2)
The problem with attempting to equate 3rd world behaviors(ie, what happens in Brazil) to the US is that people under 30 don’t vote in the US and for the most part, are so busy watching themselves on Instagram, they don't th
Buzzfeed? Seriously? (Score:2)
Wrong question asked (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Wrong question asked (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like identity politics, you REALLY won't like the modern right with their constant appeals to the straight white male persecution complex/privilege loss anxiety.
And I think this is less likely the end of leftism than it is the violent, desperate death throes of the right as a mainstream political force. Leftism hasn't become any less common or made any sudden moves in the last few years. It's the right that has taken off its gloves and mask, taking the complacent left by surprise, even as it has become less common. Leftism appears to be losing right now because it's still marching in formation against an enemy that's suddenly started using ISIS-level guerilla tactics.
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I think it is wishful thinking on your part to think that mainstream could somehow be in a death throes - after all masculinity, heterosexuality, and to a degree w
Leftism doesn't eat it's own (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking as a White guy, White Privilege is real. Us White Guys are painfully aware of it. We've had decades of preferential treatment in loans, school admissions, jo
Re:Leftism doesn't eat it's own (Score:4, Insightful)
Another problem is who exactly counts as white. Are Irish white? Are recent Eastern European immigrants white? Are pale-skinned Latinos white? Are pale skinned Turks and Arabs are white? Are Jewish people are white? Are Chinese white? Do they all have the same white privilege?
At least I agree with you that Democratic party today has f-all to do with progressiveness or classical liberalism. I don't know who to blame this on, I think it is much more complex than "Clinton did it". However, I know that all that effort currently being spent on identity politics is a wasted effort while real issues, like catastrophic wealth inequality or collapse of unions, go undressed.
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Speaking as a White guy, White Privilege is real. Us White Guys are painfully aware of it. We've had decades of preferential treatment in loans, school admissions, job interviews and the like. I'm not going to argue this point, it's a historic fact. Go google a bit and educate yourself.
And by and large, we all decided those things weren't right and everyone should be treated equally. But SJWs decided equality wasn't good enough, and preferential treatment should be kept but the groups who receive it swapped. It's perfectly rational that this gets a lot of pushback, as the underlying principle, that discrimination is ok as long as it's against the right people, is fundamentally flawed and has no place in a just society. Compounding this is the complete and utter refusal to accept any expla
Right wing ideology != "fake news" != "troll" (Score:3, Insightful)
Off course it comes from Buzzfeed, the left's Breitbart but just because someone has a platform you do not agree with or understand, does not make it bad, fake, non-existent.
Going through YouTube and similar platforms is just the modern equivalent of sending out flyers in your mailbox and placards in your yard.
Not sure what this guy's message is per se, but the left's lunatic identity politics is turning off young men and working people across the world. You can't just re-categorize an entire population of people with mental disorders as "freedom fighters" and hope that it works.
Remind me again... (Score:2)
... why YouTube, Facebook, et. al. aren't treated like the public square that they are?
To late, Twitter users did it first (Score:2)
A Waldo Moment (Score:2)
YouTuber President... (Score:3, Informative)
Is it just me (Score:2)
Does anyone else read "YouTuber" and think of potatoes?
Capitalism (Score:2, Funny)
We have a solution to all those problems: Voluntary trade; 2 individuals agreeing how to allocate their resources (i.e., how to interact).
Under capitalism, you vote every time you make a decision, and the weight of your vote is a privilege determined by how much control of societal resources you've managed to gain through interaction that is solely voluntary.
People need a signal for when they are making good choices, and they need a signal for when they are making bad choices. Capitalism gives us this, and
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in the United States voter suppression makes this moot. For one thing young people don't like to register because it increases the odds you get jury duty. Polling places are kept away from college campus, student Ids are not valid voter Id (while gun permits are). The list goes on and on.
Young folks aren't just lazy and stupid. There's a concerted effort by the powers that be to keep them from voting.
I'm a bit curious as to why the system of voter registration is accepted? From what I understand Nort Dakota has no registration requirement so there shouldn't be anything inherent in the system that can't be changed at the state level, or am I missing something?
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the "wrong" sort shouldn't be allowed to vote. They won't say it out loud though. They hide behind euphemisms. Most commonly they say that voting should take some work because if you're not willing to put the effort in you shouldn't be voting. This starts a discussion about how hard it should be to vote and distracts from the basic issue, which is voter suppression. It's a very effective straw man argument.
What it comes down to is conservatives want to keep progressives out of the political system. America's entire system is built to do that. It's why we have a Senate and Electoral college. We don't like to talk about it because we preach Democracy heavily. For some folks they can't even wrap their heads around how little actual Democracy exists in America. [bbc.com]
Do you remember what your grade school civics classes taught you?
The United States is not and has never been a "Direct Democracy". It's a representative republic designed to weigh the interests of populous areas and less populous areas equally with one another.
The senate and electoral college achieve that means and it's by design from the onset. Heck, it wasn't until 1913 that we switched the selection of senators to the popular vote. Previously state governments voted on who their senators would be.
This sy
So you oppose Democracy (Score:2)
I'd like to say you don't know what you're saying, but I get the idea that you know exactly what you mean. Like I said elsewhere, I'm not a strong enough person to get guys like you to understand the ramifications of your mistake. All I can hope for is that other people will read your post and be so appalled by it they'll react against it and margi
Yeah. (Score:2)
the "wrong" sort shouldn't be allowed to vote. They won't say it out loud though.
Yes, the wrong people shouldn't be allowed to vote. I've never had a problem saying it out loud, even though you usually try to put words in my mouth by trying to tell me what I mean by "wrong". Wrong means "people who should not be allowed to vote". People who are not US citizens should not be allowed to vote. People who don't live in the voting district should not be allowed to vote there. People who are not registered to vote should not be allowed to vote.
Most commonly they say that voting should take some work because if you're not willing to put the effort in you shouldn't be voting.
Yes, if you can't be bothered to pay attention t
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Voting is mandatory in Brazil.
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That's an argument against mandatory voting. Brazilian politics makes America look good.
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Everytime power turns over in China, they also have a wave of 'anti-corruption' trials. That isn't generally a good thing.
Hint: 'Corruption' doesn't mean what you think it means.
That would explain why the American CIA (Score:2)
This is the one thing I'm scared of: will the ruling class let us have Democracy. So far with Gerrymandering and Voter Suppression the answer has been 'no'. But but guys like you haven't been trying very hard. Maybe if you did....
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Where are you from that colleges have no polling? (Score:3)
Polling places are kept away from college campus
Name one college where that is true. Usually there are polling places ON campus, because they have a lot of buildings with rooms that can be devoted to polling quite easily.
Young folks aren't just lazy and stupid. There's a concerted effort by the powers that be to keep them from voting.
Hint: When something seems wrong, always vote on lazy/stupid as being the reason.
Except that I take exception with them being stupid. Voting well takes some work to research
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Name one college where that is true. Usually there are polling places ON campus, because they have a lot of buildings with rooms that can be devoted to polling quite easily.
Well the last election I was in college for was 2004, and it was certainly true there. UMiami had plenty of room on campus, and heck we hosted a Presidential Debate there that year (a massive circus like you wouldn't believe), but come election day, there was no polling place on campus. We had to go to a public library that was about a 10-15min drive from campus, was not accessible by public transportation, the university offered no shuttle service, and the wait was around 2 hours.
No proof, no reality (Score:4, Insightful)
As for removing polls from campus, google.
Not one of the search results says anteing like polling places are *moved* off campus, and ignores that most colleges across the U.S. HOST polling places for the reasons I specified. Hell, one of the links talks about free buses from one campus to a polling place... making it easier for students to vote, not harder.
I said this elsewhere in this thread but, well, nothing I say is going to convince you.
You are going to have to try reality based arguments instead of describing things you imagine are true but are not.
The best we can hope for is that you're in the minority and that as more folks become aware of Voter Suppression it will be ended.
Don't worry, all of the folks pushed away by imaginary voter suppression are made up for by imaginary dead and illegal votes.
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so by making them eligible to have jury duty this is considered a 'concerted effort by the powers that be to keep them from voting"??? So someone working a regular job at age 30, should be eligible for jury duty, but not a 20yr old in college? Because why? Because he is special? This is type of 'Some people are more equal than others' bullshit that's gotten politics so riled up to begin with. Same means Same, equal. Not special treatment for every subset of society you can dream up.
IAW federal law, a gun pe
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That's not true, at least not in any state I've ever lived in. Getting a driver's license on the other hand...
Again, what backwards ass state do you live in?
Well, one is a government id, and the other isn't (assuming it's a private school.)
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Oh please. They ARE allowed to vote. They filled out the registration form wrong and need to correct it within a certain period of time. That is all.
Given how easily you're fooled by HuffPo-like propaganda, you should probably just stay home instead of voting.
Re:Georgia is purging them from the rolls (Score:5, Insightful)
Georgia is purging them from the rolls left and right while moving polling away from campuses. This isn't propaganda, it's fact
No, it's propaganda. The people who filled out the registration form incorrectly have 26 MONTHS to fix it, and they can vote in this upcoming election. Your "facts" are disingenuous at best and are therefore propaganda. Also, I never said anything about moving polls. I didn't comment on that so why are you bringing it up?
That means you don't get to plead ignorance.
I'm not.
having decided that some people shouldn't be allowed to vote because they disagree with you.
When the hell did I say any of this? You sure are good at putting words into people's mouths.
What I hate about folks like you is you.
Folks like me? You mean, folks who can read between the lines and critically think? Folks who aren't sheep?
you won't just come out and say "I don't like Democracy"
Because I DO like democracy.
You hide behind talking points to fool people.
What talking points are those? I simply called you out on your totally incorrect statement about the 53,000 people not being allowed to vote.
Democracy is good, but only when _everyone_ votes.
False. Democracy is good when INFORMED people vote. Not sheep who just look look for the little "R" or "D" behind the name. Sorry I triggered you by pointing out your B.S. statement. Get out of your echo chamber a little more often and maybe you'll toughen up a bit. And please, for the sake of all of us, get informed before voting.
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No CNN pretending to be middle of the road
!!! Thank you for the laugh, it was a deep one. What kind of drugs do you do?
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If you do not pay taxes, like the ~44%-plus of Americans who pay no Federal income taxes, you have no right to vote on how those taxes are spent.
As far as the 'rich' not paying their 'fair share', the top10% of Americans in income pay two-thirds of Federal income taxes while the bottom 50% pays ~3%..
The USA is rapidly becoming a full-on Authoritarian Oligarchic Kleptocracy with merely the trappings of a mock-democracy, a democracy no more valid than those 'Democratic Republic of [insert_name]' dictatorships
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As far as the 'rich' not paying their 'fair share', the top10% of Americans in income pay two-thirds of Federal income taxes while the bottom 50% pays ~3%..
I hate this argument because of the wealth distribution in the US. Granted this is just one of the first easy to read sources I found but you'll notice that the top 10% hold 75% of the wealth while the bottom 50% hold 1.1% (according to this chart). Given that, one could argue that the bottom 50% pay too much and the top 10% pay too little.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203961/wealth-distribution-for-the-us/
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If you do not pay taxes, like the ~44%-plus of Americans who pay no Federal income taxes, you have no right to vote on how those taxes are spent.
Even people who don't pay federal income tax pay taxes.
You do realize the Red states don't pay taxes (Score:3)
You're right about the Authoritarian Oligarchic Kleptocracy, but the solution isn't less voters, it's _more_ voters. Progressive, pro-worker policies poll in the 70s. Those include single payer healthcare, legalized drugs, college for all (good even if you're not in college, since it keeps the young'uns out of the job market for a bit so they compete less with us aging
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I can't tell you how many folks I know don't vote because their vote's suppressed.
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try reading the constitution buddy.
I did. It originally required voters to be land owners. You know, people who have actual skin in the game rather than being useless eaters that will happily vote to "redistribute" (read; "steal under threat of government force) the product of the labor of others to themselves for their own selfish agendas.
I was speaking about moral right.
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic." -- Benjamin Franklin
Strat
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High Five
Yes you do and yes it does (Score:2)
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What's wrong with jury duty?
Most crap jobs won't pay you (Score:2)
Basically we've got millions of people who are one car payment away from homelessness (no car == no job == no place to live). The threat Jury
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Maybe if Republicans weren't doing things like placing all the ID places in wealthier areas, poorly reachable by public transport from less wealthy areas, open only during weekday business hours, requiring a not-trivial-to-the-poor fee, disallowing comparble non-state IDs less likely to be possessed by whites, their voter ID whinging wouldn't get shot down as transparently racist. If you're willing to reform those problems across the country, *then* we can talk about voter ID. [...]
I'm in NJ, the liberal northeast, and even for me to get an ID, it's 90 minutes of walking/PATH to get there round trip, at a cost of $5.50 (add $3.20 for the bus if I don't want to walk 2 miles), and they're only open limited weekday hours. Not all people can take off work for minimum half a day to go do that; what if I had a kid to pick up and no one else to do it? It's a multi hour wait. Then the ID itself is $26, so now I'm out $31.50. You seriously going to tell me with a straight face none of this has a disparate impact on poor, predominantly black voters?
Since large scale voting fraud has never happened, it's pretty damn clear that voter ID laws are being pushed in a way that, when paired with the policies being implemented to obtain those IDs, is in fact about voter suppression. Cheats like that and extreme partisan gerrym
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Well, why the fuck is voting during the week days?
In such a system, the companies would be required to give the time off any company who discouraged voting would have the management arrested for treason.
That's the problem... you guys do not take voting seriously. You do not deserve the vote.
Re:Why is voting optional? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The premise is silly. IIRC our polls open at 6am and close at 6pm. There are never lines early, rarely lines late.
People that work 12 hour days can vote early, by mail.
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Ges what else less than half the people do? (Score:3)
> I have heard that less that 50% of the population vote, since the "middle of the road" people feel there simply is no point to vote.
Also, less than 50% of them know who the vice president is.
They are more interested in biking, playing soccer, video games, or whatever their interest is, and have very little interest in civics. Not enough to even know who the VP or the Speaker of the House are. Given they have roughly zero relevant information or understanding to draw from, when asked which candidates t
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Same as you my friend, I watch youtube once in a blue moon to check how to repair my washing machine or my car. I don't understand people who spend hours watching youtubers.
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youtube is a great tool for the illiterate or functionally illiterate. People talking into a camera do so because 1. They probably couldn't write a coherent article/essay about what they're trying to say and B. their audience either couldn't or wouldn't read something like that.
You could (and many did) say that about TV.
For some of the audience, it's true enough. For others, not.
I always thought the criticism was rather overblown, and somewhat class-ist (or wannabe class-ist). Nobody gives you grief if you go see a lot of live action plays and musicals, for example. But watch them on TV, and suddenly you are rotting your brain, you are illiterate, etc.
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Uncle Bumblefuck is unlikely to write the great Canadian novel. But he's literate.