this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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United States | News & Politics
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These are the consequences of taking Wisconsin and Michigan for granted, and talking crap about coal in Pennsylvania.
We DID go out and vote, but the candidates HAVE to run a 50 state strategy for it to make a difference.
Clinton lost Wisconsin by 22,748 votes.
Michigan by 10,704 votes.
Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes.
Those three states threw the election to Trump. Clinton wins would have made the electoral vote 273 to 258 Clinton.
Biden won all three.
It's worth noting, despite the terrible campaign, Clinton still won the popular vote.
That is a 50 state strategy. The electoral college is a problem, too.
We don't have national elections. Carrying California by 4,269,978 votes doesn't matter when you only need 50%+1 for a state.
The national vote count was 65,853,514 for Clinton and 62,984,828 for Trump, a difference of 2,868,686.
As noted, California had a 4.2 million overvote.
Which highlights the even bigger problem - around half the eligible electorate don’t think either is worth voting for, and there are no realistic other choices.
A lot of it is people can't get the time off to go vote or local rules have made in person voting take so long, it's virtually impossible to stand in an 8+ hour line to even get in the door to vote.
We need a national vote by mail plan like we implemented in Oregon 23 years ago. It works, participation is higher than any non-vote by mail state.
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/01/05/oregon-voter-turnout-highest-in-us-general-election-2022/
”61.5% of all the eligible citizens in Oregon cast a ballot in our election,” he said, “and we edged out Maine by .05%”
Meanwhile...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/03/10/turnout-in-2022-house-midterms-declined-from-2018-high-final-official-returns-show/
"Nationwide, nearly 107.7 million valid votes were cast in the 2022 House elections, representing about 45.1% of the estimated voting-eligible population, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of official returns from all 50 states. That was down from 48.1% turnout in 2018 – when midterm voting reached levels not seen in more than a century – but still higher than the 34.4% turnout rate for House elections in the 2014 midterms."
How did Oregon do in 2018 and 2014?
67.8% and 70.9% respectively.
Vote by mail works.
Or even better online voting, or phone app. It is no less secure than an old lady at a poll booth or voting by mail.
Vote by mail still has an auditable paper trail. Text/phone voting does not.
Yeah, dial in alone wouldn’t work well. Just phone app/website.
App or website is open to manipulation and is not auditable. Vote by mail has a paper trail.