Always a risk of projecting; I was simply explaining why I thought it most likely that you were getting that particular response.HooDat wrote: ↑Wed Aug 03, 2022 1:07 pmyou are projecting my meaning.MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 03, 2022 12:16 pm I think the reaction to your post was the equivalency that it implied.
I am not talking about the separate topic of voter access and attempts at voter suppression (btw the most pernicious of which is both parties love affair with gerrymandering).
I am talking about the Dems response to the accusations of fraud by Trump and his supporters. Rather than address the accusations (in what could have been a very simple and productive way) they turned accusations of voting irregularity into counter-accusations of this being right-wing nutjobs who don't need to be listened to because they are always attempting voter suppression...
And to be clear, I am not arguing that they weren't right-wing nutjobs. I am arguing that the better response would have been: "let me show all the ways our elections are secure, and lets discuss any reasonable suggestions for making them more so". No matter how good we think we are doing, there is always room for improvement.
To afan's regular comment on absentee ballots - I agree with his (perhaps facetious) position that we should get rig of them. Instead, we certainly have the technological capability to facilitate online voting booths for our military. That solution would eliminate the delays in counting ballots, reduce/eliminate lost ballots, and be far more efficient in general.
It certainly seemed to be that you were suggesting equivalency in the "screaming and wailing"...I don't think they were remotely equivalent, both in their intensity and in their justifications.
I don't think the Dems were primarily reacting to the voter fraud thing with accusation of the GOP as "racist neanderthals" (though that accusation, for at least some, actually has merit, given that it certainly wasn't coincidence that Trump and his allies kept pointing solely to counties where black and brown people live in higher proportion more than areas where they are low...). But that definitely wasn't the primary response, not by the Republican election and state higher officials who were offended by their fellow Republican accusations that there was fraud on their watch, nor the Dem ones. Even on the most left wing, see-race first shows, the primary reaction was that Trump and his group were simply making up shite because they lost. All about power, not specifically about race. Of course, those shows did get around to pointing out where the Trump folks kept claiming there was fraud wasn't coincidental...that's their frame and their audience is a tuned to that perspective, which, unfortunately, all too often has merit...
Conversely, we really did have some people trying to steal an election through a total lie.
Yes, a fan is being facetious.
Absentee ballots work marvelously well and have done so for years. They require procedures and processes to ensure validity is high, but those procedures and processes are well known and straightforwardly implemented.
We should make it as easy to vote as possible.
We do need to be vigilant with those procedures and processes.