Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/01/dear-young-people-dont-vo.html
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deja vu all over again, and again.
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When you are retired you kind of have that luxury
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The only OLD PEOPLE I know who support this administration and the Republicans in Congress are experiencing dementia and are unlikely to vote unless someone accompanies them into the booth and holds their hand while telling them who to vote for. I’ve sponsored legislation that will END the franchise for people at age 50.
What does the blue shirt guy say at :26? Sounds like “shmereiallot”?
We’re all getting older.
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“sure, you don’t like it”
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The only retired people I know are in their 80s. The rest can’t afford to stop working.
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President F.N. Furter does have a ring to it, doesn’t it?
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@Eboreg - If you think voting is a luxury, and you don’t vote, you are supporting Trump and the GOP.
Voting has never been a luxury. It is your right and it is your duty. That’s why so many people have fought and died to get the right to vote.
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Great, agist AND racist attacks on Boing Boing. Again.
Did young people invent progressive politics? No. Have today’s young people been consistently voting for progressives over the last 50 years? No.
Many of us old folks are not only supporters of progressive candidates, we’ve been voting all our lives. How did all those progressive people get elected long before you were born? We fuc king voted for them, that’s how. How have the GOP assh oles gotten into power anyway? Because too many young people don’t fuc king bother to vote.
Attacking old people because lots of young people are too fuc king narcissistic or stupid to vote is ignorant and vile. Put your own houses in order before you start attacking progressive voters who actually vote every election.
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You seem to be weirdly arguing that old people generally don’t vote, and when they do, they vote republican only because the young people they are with tell them to. That’s completely contrary to the facts that I’ve seen.
I see lots of “old” people voting. It’s an activity that is easy, and gets them out of the house, and lets them feel like a part of society, when they are thoroughly omitted from society on so many other levels. They take great pride in participating in the vote.
Statistics support that (at this time) old people are more likely to be Republicans than young people. The proportion of people calling themselves Republican goes steadily upward with age. Young people (under 50) tend to be Democrats, old people (over 70) tend to be Republicans. The crossover is the Boomer generation, roughly ages 50-70, where it is about 50-50.
This wasn’t always the case. Until about 2010, the Democrats had the majority in all age groups. (See Pew research) .
This is exactly what happens. Yes, someone takes all the people out of the nursing home, to the polls, and they point them in the direction of a voting machine and let them go wild, voting a straight republican ticket with complete abandon because otherwise those godless heathen librals will force them to get abortions and government health care!!111!1!1!!!
(Yep, these are the same people who are afraid of government involvement in their Medicare and Social Security…)
50 is way too young to block the franchise. I don’t think it should be based on age, at all. But I do really, really feel that if you are no longer mentally able to give consent for medical treatment, you really shouldn’t be allowed to vote anymore…
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It’s kind of obvious that having to work all day makes it harder to get to a polling place than if you don’t have to work all day. Everyone should still vote.
The best way to get more people to vote would be to move election days to the weekend (or better yet, make election day a federal holiday).
There is no longer any reason that election day needs to be on a Tuesday. Election day was put on Tuesdays in the 1800’s, so that it would conveniently fall between church day and market day, allowing more people to get to the polls.
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@muser - where have you been? In most states you can vote before election day, and early voting polls are open on weekends. You can also vote by mail if you need to. There’s no excuse but narcissism and laziness to miss voting.
As a last resort, if you can’t vote by mail or in early voting in your state - Federal law gives every employee the right to leave work to vote if their work schedule would otherwise prevent them from voting. Employers can’t prevent it or retaliate against the employee.
Blaming old people because you don’t vote is ridiculous.
Some states have been moving in the opposite direction on early voting, especially red states. And people who work several jobs, far from their home, relying on the bus system have a much harder time getting to their polling places, even if their state has early voting. These are serious impediments to voting, and calling people who have these impediments is really missing the struggles of your fellow Americans.
Also, mail in ballots are often counted as provisional and are often rejected:
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@ Avery_Thorn - not all old people are in nursing homes, not all old people vote Republican. Your nightmare scenario of old folks voting GOP in their madness and destroying civilization is just a fantasy.
If everyone who was eligible to vote voted, the voters in nursing homes would be trivial and irrelevant. Raging against old folks instead of convincing ignorant young folks to learn about the issues and vote is profoundly hypocritical. With early voting, mail voting and all the other changes, there’s never a valid excuse to not vote unless someone is physically preventing you from voting.
Yes, if your polling places are closed and your voter registration is canceled by a GOP state government, you can’t vote - but that’s not the same as being able to vote and not voting.
Agreed, emphatically.
There is an active intentional effort going on to make it harder for disenfranchised people to vote.
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