Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Iduno]

Isn't that a criminal offense, breaching voter confidentiality?

Politicians write the laws, so anything that benefits them gets quickly legalized.

[Frumple]

Isn't that a criminal offense, breaching voter confidentiality?

Voter registration is public record in most of the US, so... probably not. Exactly who can (easily) access the information and what it can be used for varies from state to state, but in general it's easily accessible if you feel like accessing it, particularly if you're officially associated with a recognized political party. First breakdown I found online was this, off these critters' website.

If you think that accessibility is abusable and regularly used to do things like send spam mail and whatnot, well. Yes. Yes, it is.

[nenjin]

Funny story. We provide inventory software to people, that's my job. And one of our oldest customers also happens to be a County Election Commissioner. In my first year on the job, he sent in a spreadsheet of all their voter registration records and asked us, his inventory management software provider, to clean them up.

Just to give you an idea how "sacred" those records are.

[Eschar]

I've been getting these too. They must have gotten voting records, because I haven't used this email in the United States any other time.

Isn't that a criminal offense, breaching voter confidentiality?

I'm guessing you are thinking of voting records rather than voting registration records. Distributing voting records is a criminal offense IIRC, but registration records are public information (though the ease of finding them varies by state.)

[delphonso]

Sorry for the inflammatory language - I meant registration records. In Wisconsin you register with your party, though - which is interesting. These folks should know I at least registered Democrat, whether or not I voted for Biden, they can't be sure.

[Frumple]

I'unno how much that matters (on several different levels -- the county I'm in is like 50-60% registered dem, but went somethin' like 80% trump last year, ferex. Blue dogs are a thing.), I've been getting emails from rubio's office for years now that claim I contacted their office at some point (not that I recall!). Lot of the time (and especially with email, which has effectively zero distribution costs) folks like that will just fling their shit anywhere they can get it to reach, opposing political groups or not.

At most it means they think the demographic they think you're a part of has plenty of cross ticket voters, really. Which it might.

[Lord Shonus]

Party registration only really matters for primaries, and it isn't at all uncommon for people to register with the opposite party from what they usually vote for. Sometimes it is "I'll support a bad candidate so my guy wins", sometimes it is "I'll support the candidate I dislike the least here so I have somebody I can stomach if my guy loses".

[Starver]

The wheels within wheels people think they're spinning in such a Representative Democracy is a wonder to behold, when the wheels themselves are spinning them in return. I also boggle at the 'suggestion' of registering one's potential vote when regestering for the electoral role[1].

An alternate version over here is number of people in the UK who actually believe they (once?) voted for (/against) the current PM (or any other given party leader) when they live nowhere near the Uxbridge (or other respective) constituency where this would perhaps be possible. Barring the tendency to couple Presidential votes with unresearched straight 'down ticket' voting, I suppose at least you don't have that issue.


[1] Aye, I ken how a swathe of the US states need this information to allow access to voting at the Primaries level, in this gimcrack system built upon a time modern enough to actually have widening suffrage but just too early to solve the communication issues (even within a territory) that could allow a more compact direct-democracy model as desired by at least some of your founding fathers...

[The_Explorer]

So keeping up with my russia/china thing...not to ruin the current convo and all...

China continues building up their islands

https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/satellite-photos-reveal-worrying-antennas-in-south-china-sea/news-story/f48362e49d5e1ec82269ea2c27a12a70

and war with russia could start as soon as christmas eve/christmas day or holidays if prefer that (personally celebrate christmas since to me its more a family thing but that is like a convo of its own).

[Iduno]

The wheels within wheels people think they're spinning in such a Representative Democracy is a wonder to behold, when the wheels themselves are spinning them in return. I also boggle at the 'suggestion' of registering one's potential vote when regestering for the electoral role[1].

An alternate version over here is number of people in the UK who actually believe they (once?) voted for (/against) the current PM (or any other given party leader) when they live nowhere near the Uxbridge (or other respective) constituency where this would perhaps be possible. Barring the tendency to couple Presidential votes with unresearched straight 'down ticket' voting, I suppose at least you don't have that issue.


[1] Aye, I ken how a swathe of the US states need this information to allow access to voting at the Primaries level, in this gimcrack system built upon a time modern enough to actually have widening suffrage but just too early to solve the communication issues (even within a territory) that could allow a more compact direct-democracy model as desired by at least some of your founding fathers...

Yeah. We very much have a country separated into 2 groups, based on which of the two previous presidents they believe invented racism/other systematic problems, and which one solved all problems making the US a utopia. That seems like an exaggeration, but there are plenty of people willing to make those arguments.

[Schmaven]

Yeah. We very much have a country separated into 2 groups, based on which of the two previous presidents they believe invented racism/other systematic problems, and which one solved all problems making the US a utopia. That seems like an exaggeration, but there are plenty of people willing to make those arguments.

Also, each group views the other group as idiots who don't follow science and whose policies are utterly destroying the country.  I just avoid talking about politics as much as possible now.  Too toxic.

[The_Explorer]

Yeah. We very much have a country separated into 2 groups, based on which of the two previous presidents they believe invented racism/other systematic problems, and which one solved all problems making the US a utopia. That seems like an exaggeration, but there are plenty of people willing to make those arguments.

Also, each group views the other group as idiots who don't follow science and whose policies are utterly destroying the country.  I just avoid talking about politics as much as possible now.  Too toxic.

Yeah this is same with me. There is not any room for more moderate democrats (or even moderate republicans because their party went to the extreme) these days, which I consider myself as a moderate democrat. Since the political spectrum sees us as no different than republicans in recent years, though republicans of today are vastly different than in the past too. (though to add, that isn't really a bigger problem on this forum for most part. There are obvious trolls that get banned, but its mostly civil here. But I still had enough of domestic politics for a lifetime after the past few years lol)

So I just focus on russia/china news since it still involves the US since we have troops and everything ready to defend against both nations. And seems to be a more bigger global issue, though its definitely less at "home" than most of the ameripol topic is about.

[Frumple]

I mean, most issues these days don't really have a moderate position, yeah? Least not the ones folks are staking positions on in american politics. Healthcare was and still does leave millions out in the cold and gives us horrible returns on investment relative to basically every other country of relevant note -- status quo or going backwards on that front isn't even a little middle of the road. Our foreign policy has historically been various shades of atrocity, and "just a little bombing civilians and whatnot, like, on the side!" isn't actually a "moderate" position. Greenlighting police brutality and corruption doesn't really have an in-between position. Our infrastructure has been crumbling for decades and only one side of the political spectrum is even bloody trying to fix that to any meaningful degree. LGBT rights don't exactly have a compromise position for most of its issues, you either treat folks like other citizens/actual human beings or you don't. The list just... keeps going. And going. And going.

People want to call themselves moderate but they don't want to think about what that actually bloody means in our political ecosystem, y'know? The steady radicalization of our right wing since... fuck, reconstruction or some shit, has left basically anything that's not pretty ensconced on one side of our politics decidedly not moderate by any reasonable use of the term. When a chunk of your political spectrum is cosplaying Nergal worshippers, there stops being much of a middle ground

[Micro102]

Some of these statements frame both "sides" as being equally wrong, and that is wrong. Not just factually, but morally.

One side has collected cults, seditionists, terrorists, Nazis, pedophiles, climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, and people who still celebrate the confederate flag. Their politicians commit more crimes, are more corrupt, are more obstructionist, more racist, have caused hundreds of thousands more deaths with their fearmongering over the coronavirus, have stacked the supreme court using made-up rules that they don't follow, and have attempted a coup. They have a news station created off the desire to protect Nixon from bad press, which made their viewers at one point even less informed than people who watch no news at all. Literal propaganda. Attempts to bring cheap healthcare to the US (like the rest of the first world has) has been met with cries of communism ffs. There isn't reality behind these words.

If you want to separate America into just left and right, then the right is objectively worse, to a deadly degree. Their supporters heap praise onto Trump while Biden is met with constant criticism for going back on campaign talk like student loans. I've never seen anyone even on the internet saying Biden will bring us a utopia, but I hear plenty of talk about Trump having all the answers both online and real life. Along with threats about how he is going to have all the democrats and FBI killed for daring to investigate his ties with Russia. You don't see democrats openly fantasizing about murdering all their political opponents, and thus pretending that these two "sides" are equal, grants validity to the much higher concentration of sociopaths, which effects voting, and encouraged things like coronavirus denial and the coup.

I would ask that people figure out what moderate position means. Because if you are just going to make it shift around to be in between the democratic and republican party based on wherever they move, then it never really means anything but an indifference to any position ever.

[anewaname]

...
When a chunk of your political spectrum is cosplaying Nergal worshippers, there stops being much of a middle ground

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After I considered if you meant Nurgle, and googled and saw they can be considered to be the same being, I stopped because of the stunning similarities between this guy and a current political figure... That posture...the artist nailed it.
.