The Senate is not decided! The Georgia runoff will determine who controls the Senate.
Do what you can.
I’m going to do some sort of donation matching stream this weekend. But you don’t have to give money. You can volunteer to phone bank. You can help get the word out. There are a lot of ways to be involved even if you don’t live in Georgia.
In that case, should all cabinet-level positions be elected instead of appointed?
I don’t know this person, but they have the right idea. A Scott type of idea.
Like how much would it cost to ‘hire someone to move’?
They have to pay rent for two months. Doesn’t matter where in the state you go. What’s the cheapest rent you can find in all of Georgia? A few hundred a month x 2-3 months. Don’t necessarily need to pay moving expenses. The person doesn’t have to actually permanently move. They just come with enough to get by for a few months. Like a long vacation. Get there in time to register, stay long enough to vote, then leave, and stay just long enough for it to become undoable.
How much would it take to get you to do it? Would you do it for $10k? $30k? $100k?
Hell, I can work remotely, so as long as they covered enough for like a Casper mattress I can throw on the floor and a folding table and chair, plus internet costs, I’d do it for under $10k.
Imagine spending that money on solving social issues, so fewer people struggle to live, and can spend mote effort getting out to vote.
As it stands they’re going to spend it on election campaigns. Spending it in a way that more closely guarantees a win will give democrats control of the senate and the ability to do social programs and such.
We can’t make any meaningful broad changes until we have electoral power in the federal government.
I feel like regardless of the justifications or moral imperatives, is it legal or nominally ethical for a party to just plant hundreds of thousands of people in a city temporarily for the strict purpose of voting in a specific special-case runoff vote? And how do you avoid other people from crashing that party and voting for the other person? You definitely can’t force them to vote a specific way or get proof of their vote. So it would require doing enough investigation to assume they are beyond reasonable doubt in your camp.
Seems if this was allowed it’s not a huge mental leap before you have parties just literally paying for your vote if you pinky swear to follow thru at the ballot box.
So yes is is worth trying in this specific case? I mean, if there’s a way to do it it would be effective. But is there a way to do it that isn’t blatantly illegal?
It’s not illegal at all to pay someone to move. As long as they register and vote legally, it’s legal. Obviously you can’t coerce them to vote. You solve that by only paying people to move who you already know and trust.
Who cares? Playing according to some sense of norms gets you nothing. No one cares, no one has any faith in these institutions left to lose. Every day Democrats bind their own hands by not doing things that are legal and effective is a day they’re not protecting people from Republicans as well as they could be.
Look if you want another Bleeding Kansas you’re gonna need another John Brown.
I’m not arguing that it shouldn’t be done now, if there’s any means by which it can be done this is the time to go do that shit if it made sense. I’m well aware of your argument that democrats should just do all the cheating required to usurp power which, I just asked if something was moral or ethical or legal not whether to do it anyway. I’m all for saying “this is not the right way to do this, violates all our principals, and is illegal as shit, but let’s full send it” when the ends justify.
I’m saying in a more abstract sense (and maybe this isn’t the ideal thread for that discussion, but, it came up) is this a thing that should at all be allowed/legal/etc or would it be best if nominally this type of move was heavily curtailed with reform at some future point? Cuz my lay perspective is that of course that shouldn’t be even possible or if it is, it should be considered election fraud.
Because removing all of the names of parties involved and just looking at it from a rulemaking perspective, it seems like a huge loophole in the concept of an election for local representation if Player A could just pay money to inject a ton of people into any given location for only a few months in order for their registrations to be processed, do the voting, and then just everyone pack up and go home after.
That said, thinking about it more, if the population is so evenly split that any party could pull this scheme off to tip the balance it probably means that A: that party is more invested in that area to some degree, B: roughly half of the population is still being represented whether or not the 0.3% that made the difference were plants.
So maybe it’s not a serious issue at all.
If the question is whether the system should allow this, then I lean very strongly towards no, for roughly the same reasons I oppose gerrymandering. The methodology is different and it takes a lot more effort, but both are ways of taking advantage of the fact that a fraction of voters is turned into a single legislator.
As for an actual solution, I don’t have a clue. Maybe if someone moves within X months they’re required to vote absentee based on their prior residence? That screws them over on local elections though. I don’t think there’s a good way to thread the needle between preventing fraud (or whatever you’d call this) and not disenfranchising voters.
That said, thinking about it more, if the population is so evenly split that any party could pull this scheme off to tip the balance it probably means that A: that party is more invested in that area to some degree, B: roughly half of the population is still being represented whether or not the 0.3% that made the difference were plants.
I think the fundamental issue is that even if one party wins massively, say 60/40, awarding a total victory isn’t even close to representative. If you solve that problem then moving people around is largely moot. I don’t think you can fix that without rewriting the Constitution from scratch though.
Which news sources are you following? Some have given Biden Arizona and others are holding off.
My Dad and his wife moved to Georgia so they’ll be very pleased if they’ve contributed to a Biden victory there.
Yes, this type of move should be curtailed. The way it should be curtailed is to change it so that people vote, not land. If where someone’s address is when they vote doesn’t matter, then you can no longer move bodies around to gain political power.
An undemocratic system is inherently vulnerable to undemocratic manipulation. The fix is to do things like eliminate the electoral college, and abolish/reform congress, mostly the senate, so that what state someone lives in has no bearing on how much their vote matters in terms of federal representation.
I’m not going to worry about “cheating” by people temporarily moving when the system is already a cheating system giving someone in Wyoming more voting power than someone in DC who don’t even have a senator.
Decision Desk just called PA.
Joe Biden has won the election.
Anything that happens after that is the impotent screeching of increasingly unlikely lawsuits to try and overturn the results.
The next step, of perhaps many steps, I think is to get everyone to loudly demand the current president concedes, in unison. Contact your representatives and tell them to demand it, and demand it yourself. Pretend its like a sporting event and we’re taunting a player on the visiting team together. Recycle those “count every vote” signs into “concede” signs.
Hashtag #TrumpConcede seems to be the consensus tag on social media.