It bothers me when they're quick to make empty efforts like this yet when it comes to doing anything that actually matters an overwhelming majority of them (on both sides) will vote against it.
I agree that it's frustrating that other efforts aren't being made, and this is easier, but I disagree it's an empty effort. Holidays, statues, rituals -- they're how we define ourselves as a society. They're important. Imagine how people would react if we tried to get rid of MLK day, or President's day, or the extreme negative reaction to proposals to cede Mt. Rushmore? They're symbols of the American national identity, for better or worse.
I dislike this holiday from a purely linguistic point of view. Having a national holiday be named after the portmanteau of June and nineteenth seems like juvenile naming.
"Juneteenth" has been used for the celebration for over a century, and the name by which various sub-federal governments have recognized it, and I think a law recognizing a particular holiday probably should not rename the holiday while it does so.
That said, "Emancipation Day" has also been historically used.
It's what the holiday has been called for 150+ years, and a bunch of (likely) white politicians deciding to rename something the black community created seems antithetical to the idea of the holiday.
Reflect on why you dislike this holiday and the difference between its name and "Christmas". Language is fluid and will survive. It's fine. This is a bad take.
> when it comes to doing anything that actually matters an overwhelming majority of them (on both sides) will vote against it
Do you have any evidence that both sides are equally guilty? This is the sort of thing that "everyone knows is true", but they "know" it because it allows them to express resignation and cynicism and get general agreement without offending anyone. It's like talking about the weather. But unlike talking about the weather it has the pernicious effect of dampening democratic action and rewarding the guilty. If a referee refuses to apply the rules of the game, throwing up his hands instead and saying "they all just foul each other all the time", how long do you think the game will have any rules? In a democracy the voters are the ultimate referees.
In this particular case, in the US, one side very much wants to fix the flaws in their democracy. Why? Well, in part because it's the right thing to do and in part because they are the ones disadvantaged by the flaws in the current system. If given the chance to vote the Democrats will pass a bill of sweeping electoral reforms with the net effect of equalizing voting power and thus giving themselves a better chance of winning elections. But Republicans will filibuster this legislation, so it won't happen. If by some miracle the filibuster is abandoned, not one will vote for it. On this issue the two sides are diametrically opposed, not equally guilty, whatever you think of the merits of their positions.
That's a feature, not a bug. No one cares about Juneteenth just like no one cares about Kwanza, so there's no disagreement, so it sails through. When people care, there's disagreement and deadlock.
Change to things that actually matter is supposed to be slow and difficult in Government. Otherwise there would be constant change as either side managed to seize power, and our legal system would be completely unpredictable.
> Change to things that actually matter is supposed to be slow and difficult in Government
This is mostly only true of presidential systems, and a particular affliction of ours. Parliamentary systems are not like this, nor is there constant instability from too much change.
The American system was not intended to be as dysfunctional as it is. Its present state is a consequence of primary elections, which were a terrible idea created by people much dumber than the Founders.
I would support ratifying article in the first. The only amendment of the original 12 that hasn't been ratified.
One representative for every 50k citizens. Clearly the building isnt big enough to hold all those representatives. Force them to work remote and live near their people.
No it wasn't. Thomas Jefferson said he hoped the United States wouldn't be without a revolution like Shay's Rebellion every 20 years, but in the context of the letter in which he made that quote, he certainly didn't consider such an event to be legitimate. He was speaking to the spirit of revolution in the American people, not the intended design of the government.
If the American system were actually intended to operate as you describe, that intent would have been put into the Constitution.
Maybe they couldn't get it ratified or just wanted to stay in politics for more than 20 years.
All lame sarcasm aside, that's a great clarification. Thanks
Election reform seems like a meaningful issue to tackle: what could be more fundamental to our Democracy? Democrats seem poised to make their best effort, but it's extremely difficult to do with 50+1 votes in the Senate. I wouldn't characterize D's as not doing anything on this specific issue.
Their "best effort" would be to change the filibuster and get it done. You're talking about the current voting reform bill(s)?
Manchin is taking the heat for holding this up, but the problem is broader than that: There are a handful of Dems (at least) whose sponsors also don't want this bill to pass, so I'm not holding my breath for any reform happening in this area.
And where are Biden and Schumer? They are pretty quiet on this whole situation.
> Their "best effort" would be to change the filibuster and get it done.
This seems like an iffy proposal. Changing most judicial nominations to simple majority has had a significant impact on the judiciary. Eliminating the filibuster for potentially short-lived gains while handing opposition a nearly blank check for future legislative victories seems like a long-term problem. It seems likely to exacerbate political tensions rather than relieve them.
One can argue that the deliberate nature of the Senate is inimical to justice and therefore has to change, but when the pendulum swings in the other direction it may prove to move too rapidly to injustice.
I say we try it. Let us not worry about what may happen in the future. We have pressing needs now--for example, reducing the influence of money in American politics.
The Senate should be made more democratic now. If the Senate flips in the future due to the will of the people, we will blow up that bridge when we get to it.
> We have pressing needs now--for example, reducing the influence of money in American politics.
Is this a higher priority than reducing political tension/violence?
Or is it worth increasing the likelihood of political tension/violence by eliminating the filibuster?
> The Senate should be made more democratic now. If the Senate flips in the future due to the will of the people, we will blow up that bridge when we get to it.
This seems short-sighted. What does it even mean? How would it solve any problems if the opposition could undo the work in a matter of a few years?
Biden and Schumer can't unilaterally decide Manchin's vote for him. This is a democracy, after all. Conversations are likely happening behind closed doors. So we shouldn't critique Democratic leadership just yet.
And, if they piss off Manchin or try to punish him for not getting in line, all he has to do is change parties. Then Mitch McConnell is Majority Leader again, and no one gets anything.
No. Make early voting widely available and mail ballots available to anyone who requests one. Stop thinking of elections as a single day. That’ll be much healthier for democracy.
In Australia we always have elections on Saturday. Works well for most people. Of course, there is a minority of people it doesn't work well for, such as people who have to work on Saturdays, and observant Jews.
And for those people we have early voting and postal voting too.
I never quite understand why voting is such a controversial topic in the US. In many countries (I'm sure Australia is not alone in this) it is a boring thing that just works. You might not always like the outcome, but the process itself rarely becomes the topic of discussion.
I think one thing that helps in Australia is that federal elections are completely controlled and run by the federal government. For federal elections, we don't have each state doing its own thing. Local government has no role to play in elections either. (Even local government elections are actually run by the state governments.)
Addendum: I must point out when I say "controlled and run by the federal government", they are run by an independent and non-partisan federal agency, politicians don't have direct control over them. Likewise, each state has an independent and non-partisan agency to run state and local elections
It’s controversial because the party in power sets the voting rules and they tend to try and do so to their advantage. Be it gerrymandering [1]districts or setting voting rules they think will favor their party. These rules are state level functions so we have 50 different sets.
It creates a system where on political party is pretty much guaranteed to win certain districts and they’re aren’t a ton of competitive races. Part of the problem is an electorate that would “vote for a bag of rocks” if it belonged to the right party.
A segment which comprises, by simple math, a full 15% of retail, customer service, and hospitality workers, who in turn make up a very large portion of the working poor, one of the least-well-represented interest groups in the US.
Which is why that early and postal voting is so important.
> A segment which comprises, by simple math, a full 15% of retail, customer service, and hospitality workers, who in turn make up a very large portion of the working poor, one of the least-well-represented interest groups in the US.
Questions around the math aside, in Australia for federal elections the polling booths are open from 08:00 through to 18:00 - and the process to hop in and vote is typically fast, at least compared to what we see on the news for USA elections.
In either case, it means the number of people who can't get to a polling booth during those 10 hours on the Saturday is relatively tiny. And, as you and parent noted, early / postal voting is a convenient, non-contentious, trusted option.
>"... the process to hop in and vote is typically fast, at least compared to what we see on the news for USA elections.."
The process is typically fast in the US as well, but the edge cases are what get into the news. The USA also has a population 13x larger, so we should expect any given issue to occur about 13x as often in the USA as in AUS.
It's largely because increased voting overwhelmingly (and almost exclusively) benefits one side in the US. While it's obviously good to have increased participation in democracy, the side that's going to more or less cease to exist if we ever get even 80% citizen participation obviously has an incentive to make voting harder.
"More people voting always hurts <x party>, and helps their opponents" has always seemed to me like an admission that <x party> is innately anti-democratic, and I don't know how people ever spin it otherwise.
But democracy's approval rating has been dropping for a while, so that's probably not the death blow it would have been. Democracy doesn't seem to be sacred anymore.
The number of people saying it's essential (rating a 10/10 on importance) to live in a democracy seems to have peaked for people born in the 50s in Europe and has been dropping for birth cohorts since the 30s. [Figure 1 in the source]
Additionally, about 15-20% of people in the US (depending on age) seem to think democracy is a bad way to run a country [Figure 2 in previous source]
Even this pew article, which is relatively rosy on democracy, finds that ~40% of the US would be fine with leaving policy making to experts. The question specifically mentions excluding elected officials. [4th chart in next source]. We could probably debate on the merits of technocracy, but it's a very different thing than democracy.
"Requiring ID to vote always hurts <y party>" has always seemed to me like an admission that <y party> is innately anti-democratic, and I don't know how people ever spin it otherwise.
"Dead people voting is a problem" That's not voting. That's absolute fraud. There's no nuance or gray area. There's no "some dead people should be allowed to vote but others shouldn't" use case.
Compare to "requiring ID will eliminate fraud": No. It eliminates some types of fraud, some of the time. It doesn't fix someone hacking a system and changing votes. It doesn't prevent someone creating fake IDs to vote. It also disenfranchises people who are unable or unwilling to get government ID in time to present it at the polls.
The dead aren't people (at least, not any longer), so no.
For, your eight dead relatives happen to be the average number of votes by the dead in a whole election[1], since votes by the dead have never actually been recorded in significant numbers, and certainly not in recent accusations [2][3][4]. Hell of a coincidence that it's all your dead relatives.
The ironic thing is that the people on Hacker News understand security.
They know that a lack of voter ID, mass mail-in balloting, ballot harvesting, lack of chain of custody of ballots, lack of ability to observe the counting of ballots, etc. are all terrible security practices. They practically guarantee fraud in elections.
If you told the average HN reader to secure his banking information like we secure the vote, she would think you're out of your mind. But somehow, a complete lack of ballot security is just dandy. It's almost like some people feel that any means necessary to win is okay.
Who is proposing we eliminate the chain of custody for ballots? Who's actually called for that. Who has said "no observation of ballot counting" as opposed to "everyone who feels like it can come in and wander freely to investigate". Ballot harvesting has at least 3 different definitions, some of which are fine (put your ballots somewhere other than a polling place, and officials collect them) others are dubious (give some person you trust your ballot, have them deliver it to the polls). And if these things are "guaranteeing" election fraud, show me where it happened on such scale as to matter (and not some dude who did something he shouldn't but got caught and therefor disproves your point about how bad the security is).
I used to think this was true, but I think the last election has proved this theory wrong. The Democrats won, but there was record turnout for both candidates, and it was a lot closer than many were expecting. Republicans are in the process of making it so it doesn’t matter who wins.
I feel this doesn’t account for districts that were Gerry wandered and what would have happened had there been fair drawing of districts I. These communities. This is Where number allocation is more important that how many numbers there are.
Barring historical arguments about the Dakotas, modern Gerrymandering doesn't meaningfully apply to the presidential election, which was also closer than many forecasters predicted.
I'm not defending the anti-democratic party, I'm simply explaining why increasing voting access is so controversial in the US: because a party with outsized power does not want to lose their power. Fully for democracy over here.
I'm not sure how you rationalise that with the fact that Australia consistently votes in a right-wing government. UK (which doesn't have compulsory voting) also reelected a right-wing government.
The "wings" are not very comparable between countries. They are influenced by their environment. I can confidently say that an alternate universe where those countries had US-style elections would have very different parties, though not necessarily more US-like.
Australia has 83%+ (with 67% being of British ancestry) and UK has 86% white population while US has 60% non-hispanic white population (with no such single major ancestry inside it like the British ancestry of the AU and UK white populations). Thus there are huge sources of racist/xenophobic voting power drivers that the right-wings in AU and UK can tap into while doing so in US causes blowback of similar scale and which grows with voting participation increase.
Also Australian here. Unironically the whole family looks forward to voting day for the snags. I've seen kids ask why voting day so far away. Is that sort of environment all the US is missing that makes this controversial?
In some states in the USA recently there's been legislation passed that makes it illegal to provide even water to people waiting to vote.
For us Australians, I suspect that invites a huge range of questions, including how long are people normally waiting that they need water, and why would a nominally capitalist society legislate against selling libations and comestibles under these very specific conditions.
Yeah because it's like bribing a vote. If it was non partisan water no one would care but instead it's "Oh you're hot and thirsty standing in line? Here, have a cold one courtesy of Biden (or Trump)!"
Nothing is stopping voters from drinking their own water and eating their own snacks in line.
I applaud laws that limit "gift giving" at the polls. The polls should not be a place where your vote is swayed by a gift.
In Australia, schools are often used as polling stations. Schools generally have parent volunteer groups who try to raise money for the school, and those parent volunteer groups use election day as an opportunity to sell food (traditionally, sausages) to the voters in order to raise funds. The sale of food is an entirely non-partisan thing.
If a partisan group started giving voters free food or beverages at a polling place, that would be illegal.
The poverty of expectations implicit in that concern is profoundly depressing.
That sufficient number of people (to warrant passing such legislation) would be swayed on the topic of who to vote for, to disregard their experience and opinions built up over the past several years, in return for a $2 bottle of water to quench a mild thirst, seems inconceivable. I wonder if there's perhaps other reasons at play there.
I guess it may be interesting to look at whether there's any common features at all of all the state legislatures that have passed such laws this year.
> The poverty of expectations implicit in that concern is profoundly depressing.
I shouldn't have used Biden/Trump in my example, because where freebies really sway votes is not the POTUS, but in the dozens of other positions and issues on the ballot.
In Maryland this last election the ballot was like 4 pages long and took me many hours of prep work to determine who I wanted to vote for board of education, representatives in congress, etc. If you haven't done the prep work and only came to vote for the president, your vote in the other areas is up for grabs. That's why people at the polls try to stuff your hands with brochures and freebies that have names on them - anything to make their preferred candidate's name pop into your mind while you are filling out the ballot.
> In Maryland this last election the ballot was like 4 pages long and took me many hours of prep work to determine who I wanted to vote for board of education ...
The what?! That sounds absolutely awful.
We have partisan people outside the front gates at schools etc for our polling booths, with a 'how to vote' but they tend to be very well behaved, and aren't allowed on the property, so it's a small and mild gauntlet.
At federal election time we have only two pieces of paper to fill out. A small green piece for (upper house) senate with 5-10 candidates, and a (ridiculously) large white sheet with ~130 names on it sorted in to about 40 columns for the (lower) house of representatives. Party / independent status is listed under each name on the former, and at the top of the columns on the latter.
The voting rules have relaxed slightly - several years ago for the lower house you could opt for one or more column headings with a numeric preference OR every person under the column headings. Even that typically took you less than ten minutes, and for most people the time consuming bit was to work out which fringe parties to put at the very end of your preferences.
IIRC now you can fill in as many preferences as you like below the column headings - until you get bored, basically. Either way this is a mechanism to let you select where your spill over preferences go to, rather than allowing your first preference to 'sell off' your votes, if it looks like they aren't going to obtain a seat. Ie. force your cascading preferences, rather than pass that decision onto your first preference.
Interestingly in the last federal election here a good 25% of the population did not vote for either of the two major parties (both of which are somewhere to the right of center, gung-ho on being all-in on fossil fuel, etc). That group of people is trending upwards the last several elections, so there's some small optimism that we may escape the end-game of a viciously partisan two-party system here.
In any case we have no other votes to cast at these events. (I recall a federal referendum about 20 years ago that was tied in to an election, but that would have been a 'yes or no' option on a separate, very small, piece of paper - with a LOT of public discussion preceding it, as it was the ol' chestnut of whether Australia should remove itself from the British Commonwealth and become a republic.)
Every aspect of the voting experience in the USA really does seem to be designed to be as hostile to the citizenry as possible.
I interpreted @umvi's comment to mean they took "many hours" of research [during the days/weeks before election day] to decide which candidate to vote for in the down-ballot races. They said this to support their proposition that it might be easier to sway voter's down-ballot votes with poll gifts because it takes a lot of personal time to research the policies of low-profile candidates (i.e., candidates who aren't Trump/Biden). Voters who haven't spend that time might plausibly sell those votes for a free water bottle.
Sounds like you may have interpreted @umvi's comment to mean they took "many hours" to fill out the ballot [on election day]. So, you gave a rundown of your ballot's mechanics as an example of how a ballot can be designed in a way that doesn't take "many hours" to complete.
Oh, no, I actually took it to mean that time-consuming research was required before turning up to the polling station -- but acknowledging that 4 pages of ballots could be onerous, especially as one of the votes is clearly way more momentous than the others.
I guess the argument is that because it's a weekday, you want to aggregate many into the one event.
In addition to some obscure offices, 3 of the 4 pages were taken up with various bond issues, like this:
An Act enabling the County to borrow money and issue bonds in an amount not exceeding $38,134,000 to finance the design, construction, reconstruction, extension, acquisition, improvement, enlargement, alteration, renovation, relocation, rehabilitation or repair of Public Safety Facilities (including Fire Department Facilities), as defined therein.
I think very few people actually bother to research such questions. They just either reflexively tick Yes or No.
Researching a better answer requires a lot of questions. Does the county actually need to repair its Public Safety Facilities? What new construction do they plan? Have they been spending their money well in the past?
Answering all that would take a fair bit of time. And there were a dozen items like that.
Saturday is a potential issue for people who observe Sabbath and any attempt to move elections to Saturday would be seen as a potentially discriminatory act in the US.
> It provides impetus to the government to make it as frictionless as possible.
Ahahahaha. Have you tried dealing with American bureaucracy? None of it is frictionless, it’s all horribly inefficient and fragmented, and one party is steadfastly committed to keeping it that way, and the other party only vaguely recognizes how big of a problem it is. Voting needs to be made easier, but making it compulsory would not automatically do that.
edit: besides which, voting already takes me only about 5 minutes. The problem is that that experience, which I have as a wealthy white person in a liberal suburb of a blue state, is not universal.
I was talking about Australian voting, given the post to which I replied talked about Australian voting. Specifically, I was pointing out that in Australia, compulsory voting is great.
I don’t really know about the US’s ghoulish pantomime that is government, but at least here, the understanding that one can be fined for not voting comes with the societal expectation that the roadblocks to doing so will be cleared as much as possible by them, across the board, to everyone. That way, people who fail to vote fail to do so by their own choice and thus the fine is not farcical. Australia’s government understands and honours that.
It’s possible it could be a good idea, I suppose I’m just cynical that it could be implemented in a way that doesn’t end up further alienating those who don’t vote — mostly poor people.
I’m also somewhat worried in this political climate that such a measure could start another civil war, for one thing, and that at minimum there would need to be federal military intervention to enforce it in southern states, as in the 1960s. The Supreme Court would also need to be packed, because the justices currently holding the majority would never support it (they gutted the Voting Rights Act with no pretense of legal argument eight years ago merely because it was an ideological goal).
> one party is steadfastly committed to keeping it that way, and the other party only vaguely recognizes how big of a problem it is.
Not quite: the other party is committed to keeping it that way, too, but is also content to let the first party be the fall-guy for its efforts.
The two parties both play for the same team. They're in a big club you might say, and we're not in it (apologies to Carlin for my poor rendition of his skit).
It’s pretty clear this isn’t the case. It was more true 20 years ago, but polarization has been increasing rapidly. How are they playing for the same team if they can’t agree on anything anymore?
This isn’t just rhetoric. They literally can’t get bills passed except through budget reconciliation, and Republicans will not confirm any Democratic judicial appointments while they hold the senate. Legislative gridlock has fully set in.
As an australian, the reason the process is boring is because voting is mandatory. Well, to within a practical degree; some people can't, some people don't etc
By making it mandatory:
1. everyone has to accept that voting has to be accessible.
2. it's pretty hard to contest the results of a vote when you know "everyone had their say".
In the US the variations around accessibility can significantly affect voter turnout.
> As an australian, the reason the process is boring is because voting is mandatory
Unlike Australia, New Zealand doesn't have compulsory voting. And yet, I am led to believe that the process of voting is just as boring in New Zealand as it is in Australia. And one could make the same point about a number of other countries – Canada, the UK, Ireland, much of Western Europe.
So the reason that these countries to have far less controversy over the voting process than the US does must be something other than the question of optional-vs-mandatory voting.
People tend to contest the result because they feel the result was wrong or miscounted. Not because not everyone voted. I don't see how that changes if everyone is forced to vote.
No. Ensuring every single citizen gets access to a Identification Card that guarantees access to health care, social service, and voting would be much healthier for democracy and for the card holders.
Everyone deserves access to public services. Everyone needs a government ID.
No, a healthy democracy only exists with complete transparency and access throughout the whole process. That means a public counting of paper ballots--no mail-ins, no electronic ballots, etc. Other large democracies manage to do it this way; America can, too.
I'm not certain how mail-in ballots are counted currently, but it is certainly possible to have the ballots be in a sleeve, and the ballot itself only be exposed to the machine reading it. Put the ballot 'inserters' under camera if needed. It seems like a simple problem to solve.
Another commenter mentioned that a real issue is that the counting of ballots isn't transparent, which is true. When I vote, all I know is that the ballot scanner increments its 'scanned ballot' count. I can't verify that it actually voted for who I voted for, and they're closed source, so I have to rely on someone else's word that they are.
A secret ballot and chain of custody both rely on the idea that the ballot is verifiably given to the voter, filled out in secret, and never leaves the control of the voter before being submitted in a way that removes the connection to that voter.
Literally all of this is invalidated by a mail in voting system. You cannot be sure the proper person got the ballot, you cannot be sure the person filled it out without it being seen by others or coerced, and you cannot be sure the ballot wasn’t intercepted somewhere along the line and modified. The entire system hinges upon a signature verification process which is automated and obviously needs to avoid false positives more than false negatives, given the risk of disfranchisement. We should expect the signature check to be a poor mechanism to block hijacked ballots, anyone with a bit of sense can see why we should expect it to allow most signatures through.
What we should expect under a mass mail in voting system is fairly obvious, given the means, motive, and opportunities it uniquely affords people in highly contested elections.
It has been interesting to watch smart people (not you) who were warning about these risks years ago be forced to stop agreeing with them because of the political implications that would likely come if we had verified examples of these weaknesses being exploited.
No you cannot have both. Once a ballot is sent out via the mail, there is no physical control over it. It is therefore impossible to ensure the ballot is secret, which makes it impossible to know whether the voter is being bribed/coerced.
It’s funny your comment is downvoted because what you state is self evidentially true.
In general, sacrificing this important principle was acceptable if the alternative was to disenfranchise the voter (eg, they are overseas.) Now it seems there are many who want to just throw it away in the name of making voting “more accessible” in general. This is a pretty bad stance imo unless you assume it is cost-free, which it isn’t.
Are you sure about that? This past election wasn't exactly very healthy.
Be careful with removing all the pageantry around elections. Symbolism is very important and singular day election days play into that. So does filling in a paper ballot, and going to a polling place with your fellow citizens.
Imagine you created an app, wherein you enter your preference (Dem or GOP) and the app goes and proceeds to vote for you automatically anytime there's an election. Would that improve democracy or alienate people from it?
We have a rigged two party system. Layer conservatives and liberals stacking the system on top of that and you have an unhealthy democracy pretty much guaranteed. Given the corrupt nature of the leaders of the US, and the corrupt nature of the voters as well if we're being fair, the US has a remarkably smooth functioning system. It's definitely breaking down and showing its cracks, but given the breadth and scale of the assault it's been under for about the past 40 or 50 years, you have to be impressed at how it has held up.
Make it a holiday and move the election to the day after tax day:
"Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders." - Thomas Sowell
What a trite and overly simplistic idea. First is the idea that Government spending is bad. Second is the idea that Government spending is controlled directly by taxes. Third is the idea that a majority of people actually pay any income tax at the end of the year. Fourth is the idea that people understand their taxes. Fifth is the idea that it is income taxes are the only taxes.
>> "Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders." - Thomas Sowell
> What a trite and overly simplistic idea. First is the idea that Government spending is bad. Second is the idea that Government spending is controlled directly by taxes. Third is the idea that a majority of people actually pay any income tax at the end of the year. Fourth is the idea that people understand their taxes. Fifth is the idea that it is income taxes are the only taxes.
And sixth is the idea that it's even necessary. Pretty much my entire adult life has been major tax cut after major tax cut, one useful starved government program after another (the
Strategic National Stockpile anyone?), and a ballooning deficit.
> First is the idea that Government spending is bad.
It's not saying that all spending is bad. The point is to have some pushback so it's not so wastefully spent. Some efficiency would be welcome by all, I think.
You’ve not said anything obviously false, but I also don’t see you making any kind of a point. I think you’re attempting to imply one though and I’m curious what it is.
> "Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders."
This is the reason why we have to file tax papers. State & federal can calculate taxes for majority of the people but don't because a group "" want people to suffer and revolt against income tax.
All politicians wants to cut spending but just not for the area they represent.
I’ve always liked the idea of just reusing the Fourth of July. I think there would be a lot less animosity from the losing parties if everyone was celebrating America on the same day.
I love this idea, but patriotism in the United States is mostly an act. Asking people to back their 'love of country' with an actual deed (especially one that shortens their time at the barbecue) would spoil the illusion.
Absolutely. If we can have Columbus Day as a federal holiday, there's absolutely no reason why something as fundamental as voting shouldn't also be a federal holiday. But the act that practically defines the difference in power that citizens have between the US and Great Britain when we fought free of them is an act that is made inconvenient at best and close to impossible at worst for people with certain types of jobs, obligations, mobility issues etc.
On paper it seems okay: polls generally open early enough or close late enough that a person can vote before or after work. Except that is so often the requirement for people that polls in some places are backed up for hours during those times, making the choice between losing money if you're an hourly worker to take extra time to vote or have to skip all together if you have a family to care for and can't wait hours to vote.
Voting should be made as easy as possible. It will always take an extra detour from your daily routine but it should never require a trade off between losing money or caring for your family or any other disincentive.
I think you really need to put your idea in perspective.
Christmas is barely the last hold out for holidays where the people who need time off to vote (retail, food service, other low wage high hour jobs) get at-least a bit of time off and that is being eaten into each year.
Do you really think a federal holiday for voting would do anything but start a whole new round of election day door busters that make it even harder for these people to vote?
A voter holiday is a waste of political capital that doesn't help the people who would need it. Pushing for the voting booths to be open all month long and to allow no justification mail in ballots are the kind of valuable reform we can push for rather than a symbolic holiday that would be ultimately worthless.
They have a point though, every single US holiday is hell on low paid retail workers except for the few select stores that close on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Why would Voting day be any different?
"Election Sale, come in and vote for savings today only!"
"We're open late, stop by after you cast your ballot for saaaaavings!"
That's just it, though. The working class doesn't get Memorial Day off. Businesses don't close for Flag Day. The people who have the hardest time voting on election day are the same people whose employers would still be open for business that day.
Things like early or mail in voting are far more effective ways to enable those people to vote.
The working class does get Christmas off, though. With limited exceptions.
Which is my point.
And the idea of making election day a national holiday is a baby step, one capable of getting the ball rolling on real change, like extended voting windows and unrestricted mailed ballots.
> And the idea of making election day a national holiday is a baby step, one capable of getting the ball rolling on real change, like extended voting windows and unrestricted mailed ballots.
What will be enough? If you make Election Day a federal holiday as important as Christmas do you still need to have such a large voting window and unrestricted mail in ballots? Even now, as is, most people have a two week window to cast a ballot before Election Day. And plenty of options for mail in if they can’t vote in person.
> What will be enough? If you make Election Day a federal holiday as important as Christmas do you still need to have such a large voting window and unrestricted mail in ballots? Even now, as is, most people have a two week window to cast a ballot before Election Day. And plenty of options for mail in if they can’t vote in person.
No idea, honestly. But if we don't start taking any steps at all, we're stuck with a very ugly gremlin of a situation we're already keenly familiar with.
What's happening during Thanksgiving and Christmas? A lot of travel, which I suspect is about the only reason some stores like Costco are closed, not that they're necessarily just being nice to employees but because a lot of their employees are going to be out of town and people would definitely shop there on those days if they could.
I'm not following you. Your main point seemed to be that all holidays are major shopping days, citing Thanksgiving and Christmas. But Thanksgiving and Christmas are not actually major shopping days. And now you're pivoting to say its because employees are traveling? That doesn't make sense...
You correctly pointed out two exceptions to US holidays where businesses tend to make their money before or after, but I'm pointing out they're the exception (because of travel) and I see no reason why Voting Day as a holiday would be like Thanksgiving/Christmas i.e. high amounts of travel, most likely it would result in an increase in local commerce and potentially be a way that would hurt the very people it's meant to help.
People travel on Christmas because they have the day off, not the other way around, obviously. None of them are especially large sales days aside a bit from memorial day. It's a really weak assumption being made here. Also, and this may be a shocker, not everyone works a low level job in retail.
Getting upset by perceiving other people as thin skinned is like the sensitive equivalent of closeted, ashamed homosexuals behaving in aggressively homophobic ways.
In Australia, Queens Birthday public holiday is even celebrated on different dates in different states. Most states, first Monday in June. Queensland, first Monday in October. In Western Australia, it is not a fixed date and the state government chooses a new date each year, but usually they pick either the last Monday of September or the first Monday of October. (WA does have a public holiday on first Monday in June, but that's not Queens Birthday, that's Western Australia Day.)
I maintain that the Fourth of July should be made a floating holiday, on the first Thursday in July, to facilitate 4-day weekends.
So this year, for instance, the calendar would go July 4 (Independence Day, Thursday) - July 1 (Friday) - July 2 (Saturday) - July 3 (Sunday) - July 5 (Monday).
No. It is on a Thursday this year. Like all holidays if it is on a Saturday or Sunday it is observed on the Monday. But it doesn’t move if it is on Tuesday Wednesday or Thursday.
The official holiday is always on July 1, but when it's midweek, celebrations often don't get rolling until late in the day (eg [1]). I've always interpreted this as an acknowledgment that a lot of employers let people switch the day-off to a nearby Friday or Monday.
Western cultures moved the date of Jesus's birth to late December for political reasons. So there's precedent.
Besides, I don't think MLK's birthday is that significant anyway. Nobody celebrates his birth, do they? Sure, celebrate the date of one of the Selma marches, or of the I Have A Dream speech, or the date of his death.... But in my opinion, it's sufficient to set aside a day to remember him - it doesn't have to be the one day he was statistically most likely to have eaten cake with his family.
I'm not saying "move his birthday and change the history books". Frankly, I think it would be more respectful to move it somewhere else. Since everyone already calls it "MLK Day", there's no reason we can't use it to commemorate one of his achievements other than exiting a birth canal.
>Jesus's birth to late December for political reasons.
The Bible says Jesus was born 6 months after John the Baptist. John the Baptist was born within a two week period based of the schedule of John's father priestly duties. Since we do not know the exact year Jesus was born one option is that John was born in June. (His birthday is traditionally celebrated on June 24th.) Six months after that would be December. The idea we know for a fact that Jesus' birthday was not December 25th is just plain wrong.
I assume they meant that the existing federal holiday observing MLK‘s birthday should be moved to the existing Election Day, So that election day is off for most people, and we still observe MLK, and there can be no objection to an additional holiday.
Entire counties can get their voting stations reduced to a few places that are super inconvenient for the parts of the county that won’t vote the way the people in control of the voting locations would prefer. Mail vote is a patch for this exploit, not an optimization.
Or, just… spend more money on it. Here, polls are from 7am to 10pm, you don’t generally have to queue to vote for more than a few minutes, and unless you’re in an extremely rural area you can walk to your polling place.
Now, presumably American elections are cheaper per capita, but it’s not like the money isn’t available. Cut down on the f35 habit a bit and have some proper elections.
So, have the federal government give states money to hold proper elections. Sanction any state who doesn’t. This isn’t hard. Most of the developed world manages to hold elections more or less sensibly; the US can too, if it wants to. The trouble is, it doesn’t want to.
(I’m sure money isn’t the only problem, but clearly US elections are done on the cheap)
In South Africa voting is always on a Wednesday, and I've always been told the logic is:
Avoid Monday and Friday so that workers won't take a 3 day weekend.
Similarly, avoid Tuesday and Thursday so that workers don't take a vacation day for a 4 day weekend - even though fewer workers would do this, it would still be a massive hit on productivity, and workers would more likely to travel and thus be outside their electoral areas
What does making it a public holiday mean? I assume federal government offices will be shut on that day. What about state offices? Banks, other services? Private companies?
I assume they are making it a federal holiday not unlike Columbus Day or Veterans Day. If you work in the private sector the chance you have those days off is fairly low.
[Edit: I am not saying that Juneteeth won't get special treatment. See my nested commented in this thread.]
State governments may or may not recognize a given federal public holiday.
Very unlikely. Even large corporate employers don't give time off for most federal holidays. I have a cushy tech job and still have to work on MLK day, President's Day, Veteran's Day, Columbus Day.
My (large media) company has had it as well. We've made inclusion and progression a huge point of emphasis over the last decade though, so it's not really surprising.
Most people would prefer an extra vacation day that they can take any day they want, or accumulate and take in a block, over a mandated holiday on a particular day.
Well, check my prediction 1-2 years from now. Your company will give you a day off on both MLK and Juneteenth. On Juneteenth 2023 you'll have a day off (this and next year it falls on the weekend)
The only exception to this would be companies (and schools) that will use Juneteenth as an education day instead of giving the day off. (I hope companies don't do that. If I want to get educated I have books and the Internet)
My company decided to give Juneteenth off this year as a change to the calendar effective from January. Its treated exactly the same as every other federal holiday, if it falls on a Saturday we get Friday off and if it falls on a Sunday we get Monday.
Same. Last year it was a half day, but this year it's a full holiday like any other (observed on Friday, June 18), and I assume will continue going forward.
True, though Juneteenth may be different here. It could be considered the most basic signal of whether a company cares about Diversity & Inclusion. Of course this itself would be meaningless, but perhaps eventually the lack of this holiday may say something about that employer.
P.S.: The big tech company I work for has more federal holidays off, but Columbus Day and Veterans Day are not among them.
I'm actually kind of shocked, but there are plenty of companies that don't give MLK day off. So those companies are probably not going to do Juneteenth.
If I had a private company, I would put 0 emphasis on diversity and inclusion beyond "if you discriminate on the basis of sex or race, you are fired." I would, however, have Juneteenth off as a holiday.
So, please consider me a data point of 1 which does not fit your paradigm.
I've always wondered why many other countries shut down for Christmas entirely yet have relatively low or no compulsory religious language in public institutions, or purity tests in politics and government. It might be too easy to blame capitalism for a moral decline in the general public, were it not unpatriotic and therefore not aligned with the political party that most religious people tend to associate with.
That’s fine, I’m from the UK and didn't get that the Senate uses words to mean completely different things from the actual meaning in certain contexts. We do it too, I’m certain.
But how is it unanimous? It literally is whoever was there (which is not all senators) and they did not actively approve of the motion (just didn't disapprove).
I realise this is semantics but it seemed strange to me.
Each senator is given advance notice of all bills that are proposed to be be passed using the unanimous consent procedure. This being passed meant that each senator affirmatively decided not to stop it. Their presence or otherwise in the chamber is not really relevant.
Seeing as the initial sanity check before going to a vote is “do nays and ayes both shout at the same volume?”, bills are often unanimously approved because “nobody shouted nay” rather than forcing a lengthy vote for every single motion.
So if you were told the board of a company Unanimously Approved something, would it be secretly understood by you to mean there might be only a handful of board members present and that they didn’t actively agree to the motion, they were just playing with their phones or something and ignored it?
All I was trying to say was I’m fine with it if this is understood to be how things are done in the US, but it’s not correct use of the terms unanimous or approved, certainly in the way they are used in day to day English.
There's a wide spectrum of signalling between the extremes of "Hitting the Like button Really Really Hard", and "Creating a new Federal Holiday".
I wouldn't argue that this signal is productive, per se. Very few people honor the intent of Federal holidays anyway. But the signal is powerful, and I've learned that powerful signals do make an impact on psychology.
The whole concept of America, quite honestly, is one of symbols and signals. We can never live up to our mythology, but we can make sure the things we aim for are as honorable as possible. That's meaningful.
Absolutely, yes. A disturbing number of fairly vocal people. Probably none in the Senate who are the voters in question here, but a non-zero number of them who are influenced by a minority of their constituents. I've met and spoken to these people in real life. Perhaps you have not had the privilege.
And it is worth noting that it took more than 150 years for something so obviously correct and worthy to be commemorated. We don't even celebrate the end of the Civil War. Some people still earnestly call it the War of Northern Aggression. These things all mean something.
On one hand, that's nice that there's another public holiday, but on the other hand this feels like such an empty gesture, almost like the political equivalent of putting a filter on your selfie.
Holidays may not all be holy days, but they certainly do occupy an important place in the cultural pantheon. Even the act of introducing the Holiday is significant -- Reagan was in office the last time this happened, I wasn't even alive back then!
Even more importantly, however... children will now grow up having the day off and learning about it in class. That's where the real, permanent progress happens!
Hate crimes are already a redundancy over the fact that the underlying crimes are already crimes. Hate crimes against Asians, doubly so. You already can't assault somebody. We don't need laws that say that you can't assault somebody on the basis of their race, and we definitely don't need laws saying that you can't assault somebody because they're Asian.
It's not all just redundancy since it imposes stiffer penalties on the strict subset of crimes deemed more important to punish or deter.
I don't really like that one kind of assault is punished more than another even if the physical harm is identical, although I can see why some people would.
How is this post not off/topic per HN’s guidelines?
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Symbolic gestures are still statements of shared values, which is pretty surprising to even have in the US. So while, yes, it’s not substantive legislation that helps black people, we can still be happy this happened.
> Penal labor in the United States is explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
They are "forced" to work at below minimum wage rates both for the government and individual firms in public-private partnerships.
I use "forced" in quotation marks, because although prisoners are no longer forced chain-gang style, these jobs can be a prisoner's only source of money, which is required to purchase communication with the outside world.
Is this work economically valuable/worthwhile to whoever is employing them? What are the profit margins that their employers make from their prison labor?
Near where I grew up there's a state prison called Angola, built in 1880 on the site of an old plantation called Angola. The slave quarters were repurposed as the original prisoner quarters. Mostly-black prisoners raise cotton and other crops for pennies on the hour, overseen by mostly-white officers called "freemen."
Why not? Slavery seems completely reasonable as a punishment. Many people choose it as an alternate to non-slave prison sentences. ("Community Service.")
It's the brutality and the length of sentence that may make it bad.
When you checked last time did you also check Reagan and the 80s? US prison system is and has been private for years and that makes the entire "pipeline" from streets all the way to prison private.
Just like the 13th still allows slavery for prisoners, the ECOA still allows discrimination if the person can't afford the home, incentivizing the system to make housing as expensive as possible: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OEHRENWBSHNO
> the ECOA still allows discrimination if the person can't afford the home, incentivizing the system to make housing as expensive as possible
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that you will sell your house to someone who can't afford it, possibly for a much reduced price?
What is your point then? What you are trying to say? Your words give the impression that you believe when a person cannot afford a house, that is discrimination.
I don't get what's so difficult to understand here. It used to be straight-up illegal for certain people to live certain places. The system shifted to covert discrimination once that overt discrimination was outlawed. Housing became an investment so the people with equity would never want to dismantle the system, and all the accessible jobs went away. Now the people who used to be overtly discriminated against have no ladder to climb.
Since each of the people who responded to you, responded similarly, then perhaps the obstacle was your original wording and not with the people who replied.
What you wrote in this post is entirely different from what you wrote in your prior post.
When it's coupled with an economy that disenfranchises certain groups over others, yes, exactly. Like how America offshored all the manufacturing jobs that used to provide for the middle class.
If anything the last few years showed me, it is that gestures do matter. Giving public recognition seems shallower cheap until you have a leader that refuses to observe even basic decencies.
Of course the work doesn't stop with public gestures, but what we publicly celebrate shows us what we collectively value.
I'm not convinced. Memorial Day and Labor Day are just three-day weekends to most people. There's not a lot of somber and thoughtful observance.
I hope that popular culture uses the opportunity to discuss Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. What a great moment (right in the middle of a lot of terrible moments).
Mhm. I find the list of minimum annual leave by country interesting. [0]
Seems like companies are not obliged to honor this holiday. Personally I think national holidays are probably having a positive impact, because it will give almost all folks an opportunity to rest, maybe do a small vacation, so they’ll come back and be more productive or have spent some savings to boost the economy.
This has become a cultural date so it makes sense to ratify June 19th as the holiday.
But since the article talks about historical accuracy, it should be noted that slavery had not ended on June 19th - slaves in some border states had to wait till December for their freedom.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about this. Its a nice gesture, but I am concerned it’ll lead to two Fourth of July’s and further divide the country.
"Republican legislation to limit teaching a historically accurate picture of U.S. history in public institutions has advanced in some half a dozen states."
[I was going to post this independently, but as I've found your comment down the page I'll post this in reply to your comment.]
NPR is usually a more balanced news source, but that last paragraph takes a definite one-sided stance in the phrase "a historically accurate picture" in reference to critical race theory. Critical race theory is not about historic accuracy (non-normative fact), it's a very normative activist perspective.
That being said, I'm strongly against any form of the law restricting what ideas can be taught, even wildly wrong and dangerous ones.
It's a bit strange to throw this sentence in at the end--it's vague to the point of being useless and seems to throw the 50 Republican senators who didn't oppose in a generic "bad guys" light.
I haven’t read the article yet, so i’m going to bet now that there is no direct link in the article to the text of any bill they’re characterizing this way.
If i’m wrong, i’ll donate $10 to NPR.
ETA: unsurprisingly, my money was safe. But at least they linked to the Juneteenth bill. That’s rare enough. I think it should be considered a bare minimum in modern reporting to link to the original sources.
They're hoping you click on the link in that paragraph, which is full-on Marxist propaganda.
Also, it's not 6 states banning CRT, it's 20 states now.
(CRT is calling white children oppressors, and black children victims. Neither is accurate or helpful. CRT is derived from Marxist Critical Theory. Since the US doesn't have a class struggle, racism has been inserted to make it a racism struggle.)
Marxism has nothing to do with Critical Race Theory, which is an explicitly non-marxist idea. Marx theory is that all of history is a history of class warfare, so any racism is a result of class warfare. Marx was unconcerned with race.
It's true that Marx is about class and CRT is about race, but don't you think there's an abstract similarity there, which is the group-based oppressed/oppressor claim? I don't think it's totally disingenuous to think of CRT as a modern re-incarnation of this type of thinking due to this abstract nearness.
Perhaps a more accurate way to frame this is that both CRT and Marxism are separate instances of a collectivist way of thinking that tries to categorize people into groups based on their perceived power, where what informs that categorization is low dimensional (e.g merely class or merely race+gender). In that sense they're similar ideologies.
There is a nugget of truth to the propaganda, which is one reason it persists. Critical Race Theory (which seeks to understand the relationship between racism and law) is a branch of Critical Legal Studies (which seeks to understand the relationship between more generalized oppression and law), which is a branch of Critical Theory (which seeks to understand how societies reinforce power structures). Critical Theory arose from the Frankfurt School, and drew significantly from the thinking of Marx and Freud. So, yes, CRT is fractionally inspired by Marx, a notorious racist and anti-Semite. But the Red Scare is alive and kicking in American discourse, so this tenuous link makes for effective gish gallop.
> Marxism has nothing to do with Critical Race Theory
This is just incorrect. Critical Theory is a product of the Frankfurt School. They were explicitly applying Marxist thought to twentieth century politics, and wanted to understand why Marxism wasn't successful in the west.
This is a basic matter of record, not some wing-nut attempt to slander. Critical Theory is reworked Marxism to try to apply it to the modern West.
That's its full text. You can read it, it's short.
Some highlights are that the bill mandates (that's mandates - not prevents) that Texan schoolchildren are educated about:
* "the history of Native Americans;"
* "the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong;"
* "the history and importance of the civil right movement"
* "the history and importance of the women's suffrage movement"
* The Indian Removal Act
* the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850;
* Brown v. Board of Education;
* The Underground Railroad
The bill also mandates that Texan schoolchildren learn about such historical figures as MLK, Frederick Douglass, Sally Hemings and Cesar Chavez, to name but a few.
So tell me: who wants to prevent a "historically accurate picture of the United States" from being taught in schools - those who support a bill that requires children to be taught about the history of slavery, Indian genocide, the civil rights movement and white supremacy, or those who oppose such a bill?
And I've only talked about what what the bill requires. What does it prevent? What does HB3979 ban from Texan classroom? Again, I encourage you to read the whole thing yourself, but I know that most people don't click through to the source, so I'll quote again.
Some of the things that HB3979 bans from being taught to Texan schoolchildren include that:
* "an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;"
* "an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of the individual's race;"
* "an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual's race or sex;"
Similar wording appears in most of the anti-CRT bills working their way through state legislatures.
You need to understand this: critical race theorists want to teach the above. They oppose these bills (and lie about their contents) because they want to discriminate on the basis of race, make people feel discomfort, guilt and anguish based on their race, hold entire races collectively responsible for the actions of individual members of that race, and engage in racial stereotyping and scapegoating. The sooner you realise this, the sooner you'll be able to make sense of our current moment.
I really encourage everyone who disagrees with this comment to reflect on it. The reporter just threw out, as though it was obvious, a partisan stance on an issue of great controversy completely unrelated to the topic of the article. A key component of media literacy is recognizing biases in your sources, so you have to be consciously aware of these kinds of things, or you'll be systematically misled.
For example, one question you should be asking is, why does the article contain a quote only from one side of the aisle? I think a lot of people are likely to conclude that only one side thought it was important, and that's not so - there was strong bipartisan support for this bill.
It doesn't help that CRT proponents do not provide a complete, rigid definition of CRT, and might provide a very nice sounding initial explanation like it "explores the history of systemic racism in the US and how it still has tangible effects today." If that's one's understanding of CRT, then it feels very reasonable to be against the people trying to suppress teaching it. Who wouldn't want to dive into the history of racist policies and how it still creates problems today? But in order to explore these problems, CRT relies on assumptions, groups our modern-day conceptions of races as homogeneous groups of people with their own class struggles, and in general is not a historically honest or objective way of looking at the world.
Here’s a definition used in Florida’s ban[1] on CRT:
> the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons.
CRT by this definition is an objective historical fact. The effect of white supremacy on the legal system can be seen from the end of reconstruction, to Jim Crow laws, to government officials allying with the Klan, to the modern-day carceral state. All of these topics were covered in my public school education.
If you want to argue that some works of CRT are flawed, that’s one thing, but substituting the objective historical facts of critical race theory with nationalist propaganda, as these CRT bans explicitly aim to do, is irresponsible and a disservice to the public education system. As NPR correctly points out, it “limit[s] teaching a historically accurate picture of U.S. history”.
White people deciding what they feel Black people need.
Black people don't need Juneteenth holidays.
They need respect from the nation's institutions and they need to present and articulate their case for reparations in an emphatic and uncompromising manner.
The point is that starting a discussion with “black people ______” and “white people _____” sounds like you’re speaking about all (or even most) black / white people.
If you say “As a black person, I feel uncomfortable with a majority white Senate granting a holiday when I don’t feel respected by government institutions or feel like the need for reparations is being respected” it gives space for people who disagree with you to still hear your opinions.
