Okay I wanna piggy back off of the previous reply to show y’all something real quick. I live in New York state, in The City(yes, that one). One of those ‘my vote will never matter because the state always goes blue!’ states.
Here’s the map of the results for New York state in the 2016 presidential election:
Now I know you’re thinking - holy shit balls that’s a lot of red!
And you’re fucking goddamn right it is! Trump had 36% of the vote in New York in 2016. For reference, although that’s about the percentage that usually goes to the republican candidate, here are the maps for 2008 and 2012 respectively:
Before I get into the main part of this post, wanna know WHY all those areas that were blue in 2008 and 2012 were suddenly red in 2016? In 2008 and 2012, Independents got less than 2% of the total votes. In 2016? Almost 6%. Not a big difference in the grand scheme, but this is a really great example of how even a small number can make a huge difference.
Now, see that teeny, tiny, area of dark blue down at the bottom? That’s New York City. New York City is literally the only reason New York State always goes blue. This ONE FUCKING CITY is the reason people are so sure that New York - which holds 29 electoral votes - will never, ever, go to a republican. And under normal circumstances, while that doesn’t make me comfortable, it does hold a certain amount of weight. It’s also why in the 2016 election I voted in my home county of Schoharie - one of those nice bright red areas up north.
Except here’s the thing about 2020. New York City is fucking empty.
24,000 people died of coronavirus in New York City alone this summer.
An additional estimated 500,000 - no you are not reading that number wrong - have either moved out or been evicted. I work as a dog walker, and a full 60% of my client base has left the city and told me they are not planning to come back. They’ve left for places like Connecticut(7 electoral votes), or Massachusetts(11), or Vermont(3) or Florida or Texas or - you get my point. Now that they have been unemployed for six+ months, and the eviction freeze has been lifted, a shit ton of people are being forced to leave, and people with kids are also abandoning the city for somewhere less populated.
And even further? No one I know has received their requested mail-in ballots yet. No one. Not a single person. The virus is still active(and yeah, we’re down to <1% infection rate, but schools are about to open back up so :) ) Voting takes place in schools. it is likely many people will not be able to risk voting in person - especially if we see an uptick in cases as kids return. Which means if their mail in ballots don’t arrive in time, they may not be able to vote at all.
Hilary had around 4.5 million votes from New York - 2 million of those came from NYC and the surrounding boroughs. She won the popular vote in this state by 1.8 million votes.
Now, yes, a small number of the people who have left NYC are also Trump Voters. Something like 15% of NYC’s vote went to Trump. But a much higher percentage are democratic - and committedly democratic - votes. Healthcare workers suffered disproportionately from CV deaths. Startups, Small business owners, College and recent college grads, Theatre workers? They’re all gone.
New York State can, honestly, no longer be counted on to go blue no matter who abstains from voting or who votes third party because of the toll the virus has taken on the city. We really do need every single person who is able to vote, to do so. Not because it’s fun, or it makes you happy. Not because you believe 100% in the american democratic system. Because the people you - yes - you, the abstainers - have counted on to uphold your few, dwindling democratic freedoms, can no longer be counted on to do so alone.
Gerrymandering sucks. The electoral college needs to be abolished. But it is specifically because those things are still in place that you need to vote if you are able. We absolutely should be fighting the system. But we cannot abandon it to let it fall to ruin and leave the people affected by that fallout to die because of it while we gather our strength. And yes. People will die. If this summer has taught us anything, let it be that elections fucking matter and in the coming years, our leadership absolutely has the ability to determine how many of us survive.
TL;DR: If you have the ability to vote please fucking use it. This is not a normal election year, and the safeguards that have been in place are no longer to be relied upon.
therealklt:
Yes, that’s how it happened. It’s because we don’t go by the popular vote, we go by a little thing you might’ve heard called the electoral college.
Trump won Michigan by .3 percent, Wisconsin by 1 percent. Pennsylvania by 1.2 percent. Florida by 1.2 percent. North Carolina by 3.8 percent. And Arizona by 3.9 percent. That’s a total of a paltry 491,719 votes. Just four hundred and ninety two thousand votes. And those are only the states that were razor thin in margin.
Yet over 100 million eligible voters didn’t vote at all, and 5 million voters voted third party. That’s 105 MILLION people who could have made the difference. 492k goes into 105 million 23 times. 492k goes into 5 million, the number of those who voted third party, 10 times. Ten god damn times. That’s how many fucking people that is.
If just some of those states had gone to Clinton, she would have won. But they didn’t, and it’s because millions of people decided voting at all was too much trouble, or they decided that wasting their vote in a protest of ideology was more important than actual human lives.
somethingaboutsomethingelse:
theanartist:
theanartist:
Did liberals collectively forget that Hilary won the popular vote the moment that fact stopped being rhetorically useful to them
“Look where sitting on your hands got us last election” what in the god damn fuck are you talking about
“If you don’t vote for Blue Team than that’s a vote for the Red Team” oh, is that how it happened the last time?
It’s really just that simple.
We haven’t forgotten how 2016 went down - when we say vote it’s because we remember how much of a difference a very small number of people could have made, and we know that this year, that difference is even more important.
Imagine if all the people who thought that they could get a world with Hillary as president instead of Trump without having to bruise their egos by personally voting for her had actually bothered to cast their vote to help *make sure* that she got more votes than Trump.
If Biden doesn’t win the White House and the left doesn’t retake the Senate, we will lose the last chance we have to tackle the gerrymandering issue. (Not to mention all of the OTHER issues.) If we don’t at least have a shot at fixing the places gerrymandering by republicans is a problem, we’re looking at elections in the future being even harder for leftist candidates to win. We’re looking at a situation where, if the democrats DID decide to run a candidate that somehow appealed to both the far left AND enough moderates for them to have a shot at getting enough votes to win against a conservative opponent, it’s unlikely that they’d actually win because the corruption by then will have gotten too entrenched.
It’s pretty fucking entrenched NOW, but at least there are chances for it getting fixed in places if the GOP doesn’t retain power. That’s not a promise it will get fixed everywhere, but it’s a CHANCE it will get fixed in a lot of places, as opposed to having ZERO CHANCE that it will under republican rule.
Don’t you want a chance at fixing things so that future elections are more fair?
Don’t you want to help democracy survive long enough for you to see the day we actually get to vote for candidates we have no reservations of supporting?
….Don’t you want to help start rebuilding our foundations so that by the time AOC runs for president we’ll be in a position to properly support her?
Yeah?
Then suck it up and vote for Biden in 2020. Because that’s what you need to do NOW if you want any kind of shot of getting the future you want.
If the purity-leftists had been willing to set aside their egos for the sake of the country in 2016, there would literally be more Americans alive today. And we could have been taking the steps in 2020 that now have to wait until 2024 because we’re stuck trying to triage what the country has suffered under Trump for the last four years.
Don’t let your ego be the reason we’re stuck with Trump for another four.