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US Congress is a cozy club of multimillionaire boomer lawmakers hoarding power | Arwa Mahdawi
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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politics
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US Congress is a cozy club of multimillionaire Boomers and Greatest Generation lawmakers WHO ARE UP FOR REELECTION EVERY 2 TO 4 YEARS IN A COUNTRY WITH 50% VOTER TURNOUT.
Fixed the title to reflect the reality that Americans don't want to hear. We don't like to be told that it is our role as citizens to keep these people in power, or vote them out of power. But that involves effort, and we instead love to turn to excuses like "oh, if only we had turn limits" or "but, but, but, gerrymandering". We essentially have term limits - they are called elections, and in even some of the most gerrymandered districts, we could vote politicians out of powerif we got off our fat asses and voted. But we don't, and we use whatever excuse we can come up with to defend that laziness.
Instead of "people are too lazy", can we acknowledge how unnecessarily difficult it is to vote?
You dismiss gerrymandering, but we can't exactly vote in a district we're not a part of, or rely on convincing the biggest supporters to flip their politics.
Meanwhile, mostly targeting minorities, voting is made overly complex with people waiting for hours after work to be told they need a document or didn't register correctly.
No wonder only retirees in affluent areas vote, they're the only ones not jumping through hoops to do it. We need voting to be handled federally, with universal registration and mail in voting. Election day should be a holiday, and the polls should be open for a week.
THEN we can complain about people being too lazy.
I love the method Arizona uses. Of course we elected a corrupt piece of shit, but there's no way we would have gone blue without mail in voting. It's not like we get election day off, which should be in the Constitution
We can do more than one thing. We should constantly be reassessing voting to make it easier and safer as new technologies and processes develop (seriously, why are we not doing mail-in everywhere?). It will be hard to implement effective changes without significant political capital. So in addition, we don't have a choice but to be shouting from the rooftops that it's partially our fault it got this bad, and it's our responsibility to fix it.
I talk a lot of politics (I'm very popular at parties /s), and easily the most common response is along the lines of "I don't vote, what's the point?" or just pure ignorance of anything beyond some headlines and a casual disregard for civic duty. We have majorly slipped, and people by and large have entirely taken society and it's framework for granted. I genuinely think people need a kick in the ass from fellow citizens to focus up and not pretend apathy isn't part of the problem. There's no chance we fix anything without motivating a huge block of the population that just doesn't prioritize these things for a multitude of reasons.
Obviously, this also means those of us that don't have a difficult time voting should be volunteering where possible and donating to like-minded causes when that's not an option. We should be having frank political discussions and not straying away from calling out absurdities. It's not fun, there's no glory therein, it just needs to be done. Nations don't endure on belief alone.
No, I'm not going to acknowledge that because for the vast, vast majority of people it isn't true.
It's never taken me more than 15 mins to vote in even the biggest election cycles and that's gonna be true for the vast majority of people. Sick of hearing some BS about It ToOk ToO lOnG usually from people who have never 3ven tried to vote and instead are just regurgitating some BS they heard online. Are there SOME districts which are far worse than others? Sure, I'll condeed that, but it's not the norm. Not by a long shot.
I've been in hour long lines on the regular in white districts. The black districts on the other side of town people wait all day.
Additionally you assume no time to get to and from the polls. Which of course takes longer if you don't have a car. So now do you see how easy it is for voting to be an all day thing for some people? And probably a day off work you can't afford if you can't afford a car.
People in my State use gerrymandering and obstacles like this to discourage voter turnout. They restrict polling locations on purpose to make it hard on purpose. To make lines long. To basically poll tax black people with a missed day of work.
And you want to pretend your experience is everyone's experience and shame people for not voting when you don't live their lives?
We need to make it as easy as possible to vote and encourage people to get involved. Not shame them. The situation is fucked up enough without shaming each other.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/04/upshot/voting-wait-times.html
"For most voters on Election Day, things went well. Most people in our data took 20 minutes or less to vote..."
But even in districts that took much longer, the data they collected shows 110 to 180 minutes as being on the extreme end of the spectrum. No one should need to wait that long, but again, that is in no way, shape or form, the norm. And in no way, shape or form is 180 minutes considered "all day".
EDIT: I guess posting proof to my point, gets one downvoted on Lemmy. So I guess Lemmy ain't that different from Reddit afterall.
That same year, in my city (I won't say which because I value my anonymoty), voter turnout was down almost 10%.
And you're not factoring in distance and transportation to and from the polls. Which is something that affects poor people more (by design).
This is exactly the reality today. I'm old (50's). I voted in every election since I could vote. I made a point to educate myself and vote on candidates and issues that helped the working people (me and many more).
I'd ask the younger people I work with if they were going to vote and they told me it doesn't matter if they voted. And then they don't vote, and complain about laws and changes to social safety nets.
I am waiting for the young people to go vote these people out of power.
Every time I vote I see a sea of white haired people at the polls.
Online, while I can't see how old people who post are,I think it is safe to say most trend considerably younger. To this younger generation they think some wicked burn on Twitter or a meme posted on on Reddit or a snarky comment on Lemmy is the equivalent to voting. They think that's how politicals change works.
This is a near-useless critique. It's on the level of "If people stopped doing bad things and did good things, society would be perfect." Sure, individual responsibility is all well and good, but why do the young people in the United States have such a reliably low turnout? It's not just Gen Z, the other generations had similarly low turnout when they were in the same age range. Could this point to a systemic issue that causes young people to be less likely to vote? Ah no, it's just laziness. Also, to be clear, elections are not term limits. China, Russia, and North Korea all hold elections, and yet I would bet money none of those leaders are going to be leaving office anytime soon.