As a non-American, I don’t know exactly how your polling works, but why am I seeing “plan your voting day” or “set a voting strategy” like they’ve done on the Cards Against Humanity voting campaign?

Where I live, it’s just show up on voting day and cast your ballot, or ask for a mail in ballot, or go to a special voting station if you need (or want) to vote early. Is it the same in the US, and this is just getting people to gather those last pieces of information early and put a reminder in the calendar? Or is there more to it than that?

Thanks!

    • snooggumsEnglish
      23•2 months ago

      Because the same party doing it is good at repeatedly testing the barriers to discrimination and dismantling laws against it.

      Texas and some other states were not allowed to change voting practices without approval for years due to this kind of thing under the Voting Rights Act. Then SCOTUS overturrned that law…

      https://apnews.com/article/voting-rights-act-supreme-court-black-voters-6f840911e360c44fd2e4947cc743baa2

      Within hours of a U.S. Supreme Court decision dismantling a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, Texas lawmakers announced plans to implement a strict voter ID law that had been blocked by a federal court. Lawmakers in Alabama said they would press forward with a similar law that had been on hold.

      The ruling continues to reverberate across the country a decade later, as Republican-led states pass voting restrictions that, in several cases, would have been subject to federal review had the conservative-leaning court left the provision intact. At the same time, the justices have continued to take other cases challenging elements of the landmark 1965 law that was born from the sometimes violent struggle for the right of Black Americans to cast ballots.

      • hendrikEnglish
        7•2 months ago

        Thanks for the explanations. I think the Unites States should embrace being founded on the principles of democracy, and once being amongst the leading countries with that… And return to being a democracy. Every time I read about some more details, I’m more convinced that one of your major parties doesn’t like democracy, or the original idea behind the USA.

        • snooggumsEnglish
          10•2 months ago

          The US was founded on wealthy white male landowners who mostly owned slaves being able to vote, just like their Greek and Roman inspirations.

          Expending that concept to the general population took a couple nearly two centuries, and we still haven’t embraced it. We have sucked at being a democracy the whole time.

          Also, the parties traded the racists in the 60s and 70s. Republicans were the equal rights party prior to the Southern Strategy while the Dems were the racists up to that point, but Republicans have been on the wrong side of history since then.

          • hendrikEnglish
            3•2 months ago

            I think democracy as a concept is alright, though. It has some flaws baked in… But I don’t think there is a casual relationship to humans being humans and needing centuries to realize women are people, too. And so are people with a different skin color, poor people… Deciding if slavery is a good or a bad thing also has a very prominent place in US history. And we here in Europe also didn’t do much better.

            I’m proud that we left lots of that behind and we’re doing much better now. We’re certainly not done yet, there is still quite some way to go… I think it’s just a shame that we can’t do any better. Or that it’ll take decades to get anything productive done, because of the way politics is set up to work. And meanwhile we also have to fight populists, corruption and all the usual annoyances of giving power to people.

      • @[email protected]English
        5•2 months ago

        I’d expect some equality be ensured on federal level for at least federal level stuff. Just… wow. I knew US was fucked up, but I somehow always learn there is yet another level to it

    • @[email protected]
      10•2 months ago

      I love seeing people realize the USA is only a Democray for a very specific group of people weather it’s concerning the Judges or the Election process. On top of that thanks to the electoral college if you dont live in a swing state you don’t really get a say. The election will boil down to a few hundred thousand people in a couple states just because of where they live.

      • Prison Mike
        2•2 months ago

        The swing state thing really makes my blood boil mainly because moving from my shithole red state with the same population as the city I live in now (Los Angeles) my vote means nothing. In fact, I always chuckle when I get political mail here because it’s like “why waste your time?”