But once I had actually voted for the first time, I didn’t want anything more than this vote to count. Not to win, just for someone to acknowledge that bulletin. I felt so angry and helpless and I wanted to scream until my lungs would start to bleed.
I feel the same way after voting in Texas. Different method for caging and disenfranchising voters, but the outcomes are functionally the same.
I don’t think presuming my vote will be traunched and kettled and rendered meaningless through statistical manipulation feels any better simply because I know it will be counted. Its still a rigged game. The outcomes are overwhelmingly predetermined.
What I want more than anything is for my city of Houston to go its own way. To be independent of the corrupt cesspool of bigotry and fear that dominates the capital building. I don’t want to simply be counted in the minority. I want my independence.
Your vote is not just counted, but even meaningful. Shenaningans in Texas try to affect the outcome by playing with things to control the odds and making it more difficult for “the wrong people” to vote. It’s really an entirely different scale.
Texas Conservatives are manipulating the vote with “legal” actions and can only affect percentages. A likely result is very different than a predetermined result. A “legal” manipulation is subject to at least some checks and balances and can be changed, which is very different from something that can just be dictated by those in power
Texas Conservatives are manipulating the vote with “legal” actions and can only affect percentages.
It goes beyond that.
PoC districts often get voting machines that don’t work. Urban districts will have large pools of ballots that go uncounted because of deliberate delays in the vote count (similar to what Republicans managed in 2000 with the Brooks Brothers Riot). Judges remove candidates from the ballot for arbitrary reasons (Tom DeLay would routinely run uncontested because his opponents’ petitions to fill would get “lost” or “misfiled’” by the country clerk).
This is only legal in so far as local allied politicians allow it to be.
I feel the same way after voting in Texas. Different method for caging and disenfranchising voters, but the outcomes are functionally the same.
I don’t think presuming my vote will be traunched and kettled and rendered meaningless through statistical manipulation feels any better simply because I know it will be counted. Its still a rigged game. The outcomes are overwhelmingly predetermined.
What I want more than anything is for my city of Houston to go its own way. To be independent of the corrupt cesspool of bigotry and fear that dominates the capital building. I don’t want to simply be counted in the minority. I want my independence.
Your vote is not just counted, but even meaningful. Shenaningans in Texas try to affect the outcome by playing with things to control the odds and making it more difficult for “the wrong people” to vote. It’s really an entirely different scale.
Texas Conservatives are manipulating the vote with “legal” actions and can only affect percentages. A likely result is very different than a predetermined result. A “legal” manipulation is subject to at least some checks and balances and can be changed, which is very different from something that can just be dictated by those in power
It goes beyond that.
PoC districts often get voting machines that don’t work. Urban districts will have large pools of ballots that go uncounted because of deliberate delays in the vote count (similar to what Republicans managed in 2000 with the Brooks Brothers Riot). Judges remove candidates from the ballot for arbitrary reasons (Tom DeLay would routinely run uncontested because his opponents’ petitions to fill would get “lost” or “misfiled’” by the country clerk).
This is only legal in so far as local allied politicians allow it to be.