politics and all the bits

[tielan]

Dear American citizens; have you checked that you're registered to vote? A good time to check registration deadlines in your state and whether your registration has endured.

(Also, I've heard tell of people who were on the voting roll a month ago and now aren't. So even if you think you are, CHECK AGAIN.)

They really do make voting difficult in the US. Tuesdays to vote. Voter registration. Checking.

Next time I vote, I think I'm going to livestream it to show just how easy it is in Australia. Saturdays from 8am to 6pm! Local polling places everywhere! Walk up and give your name! No ID required!

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I replied to someone on twitter this morning. They were claiming that saying there was racism in Australia was unreasonable because everyone was 'getting along'.

Frankly, 'getting along' is an incredibly low bar for interaction. A slave and their master 'get along'. An abused wife and her asshole husband 'get along'. And non-white people and white people 'get along' so long as the non-white people don't do anything that make the white people feel uncomfy. But bring rights and respect and representation into it, and HELL TO THE NOPE.

The response was longer than that (I was annoyed; he claimed there were so many Chinese in Sydney it was impossible for Australia to be racist), but that was the tail end of it.

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Last day at this workplace today. It will probably be pretty quiet. (Famous last words.)

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Lost hockey again yesterday. They got three short corners and an easy roll-in, and unfortunately two of those short corner goals were off one of our defenders' sticks. (She was really down about that.) We picked up in the last 15 minutes, but it was too late by then. I did score a goal - our only goal - off a short corner. Deflected a hard hit at an angle past the goalie and into the backboard.

Coach is not happy. We're not exactly happy either. But I'm wondering if the...lackadaisical play of some of our team is attributable to a lack of encouragement on the coach's part. Also, a couple of players spend rather too much time questioning the umpire and not enough time playing the game. (It doesn't help that the coach does that, too. Often loud enough for the umpire to hear.)

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I'm going to have to switch to solo track for my marvel_bang. I'm 11K in and have only just reached the first turning point. There are at least two more to come...

Comments

[the_rck]

My understanding is that Tuesday voting goes back to the days when many voters lived hours from where they could vote. Traveling on the Sabbath wasn’t something good Christians would do. Tuesday meant people could travel Monday and then stay for Wednesday market.

A lot of our voting protocols, including the Electoral College, are relics of times when traveling and communication took a very long time. Used to be a November election with people taking office in March. We only went to January in the 30s after FDR.

[tielan]

Ahh. And Saturday would have been bad for Jewish Americans. (I think I heard that the more strict Australian Jews do mail ballots before the day so they can keep the Sabbath. Although given that church halls are used as voting booths, it's possible that the synagogues can also set up spaces for voting on their property? *is curious now*)

Still, the holdover now just acts as a barrier for people who can't take time off work to get to the polls, and can't afford however many hours waiting to get in to vote...

[the_rck]

Well, Saturday voting would mean the farmers had to come to town twice in one week. Needing to allow allow a day on either side for travel or walk miles in the dark*. Tuesday or Thursday would be the days adjacent to market days and so require staying an extra night in town but not two different trips. I doubt that consideration for the Jewish sabbath came into it.

I’m pretty sure that November elections happen because most harvest work should be done. Some parts of the original states get snow in November, so it’s the start of when traveling was really miserable.

*Bearing in mind that it gets dark earlier in the northern US in November.

[beatrice_otter]

Except that the types of jobs that are MOST likely to have trouble getting time off are the type that you wouldn't be working 9-5 anyway. Retail, for example, where you're probably working 30 hours a week on average, random days and evenings depending on all sorts of factors. If you're working that sort of job, Tuesdays may actually be BETTER than Saturdays, because you're more likely to be working on a Saturday.

[conuly]

I replied to someone on twitter this morning. They were claiming that saying there was racism in Australia was unreasonable because everyone was 'getting along'.

People opposed to the civil rights movement in the US used that same line. Everybody got along *great* when (white) people literally picnicked at lynchings, right? Right?

[tielan]

Hah, we see it today with the opposition to taking a knee, black lives matter, and the attitude towards protests, or antifa.

They're disrupting the peace! (Disrupting white peace of mind, anyway - the need to believe that EVERYTHING IS OKAY "but, wait, what about--" EVERYTHING IS OKAY, OKAY?) They should find another way to protest! (Not a way that makes racist white people feel uncomfortable or inconvenienced.)

Have you seen that tumblr post, where a bear was leaning on a car window, possibly lifting a hat from the driver's head, and the caption was something like "in the 1950s, everything was so much more civil - even the bears were polite!" And below it, someone had added a pic of the dual water fountains for "whites" and "coloreds". So much more civil!

[beatrice_otter]

"there were so many Chinese in Sydney it was impossible for Australia to be racist"

So, this guy doesn't think that Apartheid South Africa was racist? Holy cow.

[monanotlisa]

Yes, voting in the US is purposefully difficult. I've been meaning to trace where all the roadblocks came from -- not the ones that try to keep people of color, especially Blacks, from voting, but the general ones such as the weekday (!) time.

My suspicion is that the United States' extreme Christians are to blame for the fact there is no voting on Sunday, and that the lack of a comprehensive registry of people and their locations is the origin of the voter registration. But there is certainly more to discover, because otherwise, why not abandon the bullshit?

[thothmes]

I just voted in the primary, which will keep me on the voter checklist. Two days later I went in for brain surgery and emerged new, improved, and just fine with less pressure on my poor little forebrain from a cyst I've apparently had all my life without knowing. It was full of the brain's normal fluid bath, and connecting it to the rest of the system will keep me from having seizures. All good.

Fortunately my state, Vermont, would like to encourage voting rather than suppress it, likely because most of our towns are all small enough that we look each other in the eye, know each other's foibles, and speak our minds at Town Meeting in March, and It's just a matter of time before each of us will need to help another or need help ourselves.