Did you really just tell me having an additional solution makes it harder? At this point you're making an argument for the sake of an argument. Great solution Major. Drop boxes apparently make voting difficult. Lets abolish drop boxes for everyone.
Long ago, I was a young person. I dimly remember why I didn't vote when I didn't. It's apathy. I've always been politically minded but when I was younger, I had a vague sense of what was going on beyond the biggest stories and didn't have a long memory of the significant players. Maybe I'd go vote for president, and then be surprised to see I need to pick a Senator too, and only knew one name. Now I have a deeper appreciation for history, I know more about how the process works, I know who the politicians are, I've seen how policy platforms translate into screwing me over in the end, I carry grudges, I recognize that doing what I can to defend myself at the ballot box includes a lot of upfront work of educating myself and researching. So, now I'm not a carefree winsome voter as I once was. But I remember the days where I did my own thing 364 days a year and then just showed -- maybe, if it was convenient -- on the first Tuesday of November to make guesses on a list of names. But sure, make it easier to vote too. I think voting is up this year because the last 4 years everyone has been forced to be engaged more in the political circus. They have definite opinions to be expressed. When politics gets boring again, engagement will fall no matter how easy it is for people to cast their uninformed ballots.
You can chalk it up to apathy, but if you view "apathy" vs "engagement" as a spectrum rather than as a binary, and if we assume young and older people are equally "apathetic", the evidence here would suggest that young people will be less likely to vote for more structural reasons. It could be argued that young people should be relatively more engaged, since in some sense the stakes are higher for them.
You misunderstood his point. He's not saying drop boxes make it more difficult to vote than not having drop boxes. He's saying the decision to restrict drop boxes to only 1 per country makes it more difficult to vote. What is purpose of such a restriction, if the goal of drop boxes is to make voting easier?
No, Covid made it much harder. Drop boxes made things a little easier as a counter to that. The GOP then reversed this and made drop boxes largely useless in large counties. Again, WHY? You seem to have trouble with the concept that these are things being done to partially counter Covid, which made voting more complicated to start with.
I also add habit into the mix. Habits is a real thing. When you remove barriers (cost of voting is another economic way to put it) and make it easier to vote, people will more likely try it out. Once they do it, they are likely to repeat it. You can stop that or discourage it with additional barriers or you can help them to form new habit of voting by removing barriers. Do I have to register again? Do I have to wait in 2 hours line again? I need to ask my boss again? These are some examples of unnecessary barriers in a modern pro-democracy country.
This sounds a bit out of touch, plenty of employers would deny someone to leave work and vote, fast food, convenience store, bank, any job that is needs to be staffed would deny you to leave work. I agree with these excuses are bullshit but people are not getting of work that easy.
Researching down ballot takes time. You could randomly vote or go straight ticket like many seniors have done but it's still an overwhelming feeling even w/ an abesentee ballot.
I'm not saying it would be that easy but, given the period of early voting, I'm sure something could be done to get a worker to vote with a few exceptions. Yea...I'm not in touch with every service worker's dilemma. I admit that. If they have a very busy schedule, then it would be easier to just not deal with it.
I didn't say it shouldn't be easier. But looking at the lists of reasons, there's no reason to make "easy" "difficult". In instances where states purge voter rolls, that's a different story.
Access to vote should just be a default for American. Now, I'm sure many young, middle age and older folks still won't vote, but that's because of their own choice to not participate, not because of some State imposed barriers. A modern pro-democracy country has no excuses for not defaulting to civil participation (voting), when robust democracy itself is dependent on civil participation. I think we have been too used to barriers that we actually justify it by blaming people for being lazy (or whatever else). It's wrong. I'll give a technological reasoning for default. Google paid Apple $12B to Apple to remain Safari's default search engine in 2019. How hard is it to change your default search engine? Ain't that hard, but it's worth 12B in a single year. And for you older folks that don't know how to change the default... well, you think 1st time voter knows how to register? They don't. It's one of many barriers, an unnecessary one.
I don't blame the young people if they don't care, especially now when they are locked up and can't do social events legally. for those who are involved , good for them, but for young adults and college students their social life and freedom is top priority. they don't have to pay real taxes, have a mortgage, worry about jibs, worry about health issues etc . it's normal that they don't prioritize it high.
Agree. Let's not make it more difficult with barriers. In fact, let's make it as easy as opening up social media and pressing a few buttons.
I understand why. We all understand why. Maybe I am a little more appreciative the Republicans have largely been unsuccessful at stopping mail in and drop boxes like they initially tried to. Our country has largely been successful with implementing voting measures in response to Covid. It could be MUCH MUCH worse, albeit the election is still not over.
It hurts nobody to make it easy. You can claim that it isn't important enough if they don't find a way to vote with difficulties. But why not remove the difficulties? Will it get all non-voters to vote? No. But it might get some which is a benefit.
