Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/19/street-artists-install-anti-tr.html
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If only it were so easy… (the crosswalk button or the voting)
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Shiny! More Art!
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Okay, but honest question here: does it matter? With the electoral college being so badly broken? NPR pointed out yesterday that Trump won with fewer votes than Mitt Romney lost with. The majority of the country did vote against Trump this time, but it had no effect. As long as a handful of counties in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida like Trump, nothing else seems to matter?
Disclaimer: I cannot vote in US elections. Obviously if I could, I would because not voting certainly doesn’t help. However I feel like these “voting will fix it” campaigns are sometimes kinda tone deaf for where we are right now.
Edit to add: this a good faith question and I am looking to have my viewpoint changed on this. Please be kind but help me understand why voting matters unless you live in a swing county of a swing state.
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I’ve felt the same way before, I live in a town where I usually know my picks won’t win the state. The last national election made me realize that there’s more to voting than maybe getting the win. I know, because like-minded neighbors bothered to vote, that 49% of my neighbors feel the same way I do. I think there’s value in letting others know they aren’t alone. Even if we don’t win this time. Maybe it helps slow the slide into despondency, or turn the tide…
So that’s something.
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If only the alternative wasn’t Biden.
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He needs to be beaten by a larger margin. 2016 was a shameful display of 40% of America committing self-harm.
We can keep voting every election and slowly move things to a more functional state. Or we can have a violent revolution with no guarantee that the next regime is an improvement. I’m not thrilled by the first option, but it is still the best we have.
I think crushing the alt-media empires will help. Fighting the massive misinformation campaigns and repairing the hearts and minds of the American people is the way out. Until then, we’ll still have some big fraction of people voting to put us on the road to fascism.
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Always expect the Democrats to dissapoint you- because they will.
I say this as someone who was registered independent all my life till 2016- registered as Dem.
I support most of what they align with but they always, without fail, when it really matters, they crumple better than the sides of a Yugo. They always ride a wave of people wanting and screaming for real change, but instead of giving it to them- they pick what they think is a safe choice for staus quo. Obama was the one exception.
I wish they would pull their cowardly heads out of their asses and actually get with the fucking people supporting them, desperate for them to actually fucking follow through. This is why we end up with mealy mouthed spineless people like Biden.
I’m still voting for him- because I’d vote for a pile of dogsh*t before Trump or now any Republican for the rest of my life, now that I see how atrocious they care to embrace. I just wish theyd get people willing to fight back like Bernie or AOC on the stage. That’s the main reason I like them- they actually stand up vocally against bullshit while Biden yawns.
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Unfortunately - the buttons do nothing. Most of them don’t have any effect on the walk signals, even.
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I am in the same situation in Australia. A Labor party candidate will almost certainly win the seat I vote in. But I vote:
1: greens
2: (my second choice of the day)
…because the greens will make it eventually, and thats the message I want to send.
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Oh no! Next thing you know is the GOP is going to pose as the Dems in a get out the vote campaign that says “due to an expected surge in turnout, please go to the nearest crosswalk and cast your vote for Biden there”
The shortest answer I have: the Electoral College doesn’t dictate every election.
Plenty of municipal, county, and state issues require participation. Withholding a vote out of a sense of protest or futility means self-silencing over the other items on the ballot, which recently have included such issues as parcel taxes for education, funding libraries and mass transit, local law enforcement, housing development, water infrastructure, road repairs, council seats, judges, etc… All of these have an immediate effect on me and my neighbors. Not voting, in my mind, sends one of two messages: I’m happy with the status quo, or I’m too lazy to change things.
Not voting because “it doesn’t matter” is a myth: it matters, in a hundred different facets of your everyday life as a citizen. Pretending that the office of the President is the only election that matters is to ignore the mundane and very necessary functioning of government at every level.
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I hope those buttons are of a robust design, or else traffic/street division repair people are gonna be busy.
Obama wasn’t exactly a progressive. He wasn’t exactly not a progressive, but he quietly snuck up to progressive policy like gay marriage and universal healthcare, and was full of compromises and half measures. It’s hard to label the man “Centrist” or “Progressive” based on his record.
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Yeah, I know. Im happy he was elected for various reasons, but he did some things I consider unconscionable- like leaving Guantanamo Bay open.
He was the first time I really felt proud to be an American though. I miss having a leader to whom reality and facts, and science all mattered.
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Such is the wisdom of ranked choice voting. Much more sensible than what the US does.
Speaking from one of the swing states, yes it matters if people outside of here vote at high rates. The first reason is all of the other elections on the ballot. A good congress, municipal and state government will reduce the harm of even a second Trump presidency. But even the presidential votes in not traditionally swing states matter a lot. Wisconsin and Michigan shifting from pretty safe Dem to Rep changed the electoral math tremendously. Even the distant chance of Texas or Georgia flipping this year means that the GOP will have to put some resources into keeping them red. They probably will manage that, but every dollar spent there is a dollar not spent on swing voters in Stark County, Ohio. Having too much confidence in traditionally safe states can sink a campaign.
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For sure. I’ve lived in both Swing and “Safe” states over the years, and voted in all of them. One of the “safe” ones flipped colors at some point, so safety is relative.
Participate. Vote. Change happens from the bottom. (Not meant at you directly, of course.)
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In my neighborhood you get a very strident white-guy-voice “WAIT!” when you push the button. Not sure how that translates to the message.
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We got it in Maine. Hilariously, a lot of republicans and libertarians vocally refuse to use the option, because…I don’t even really know. It reminds me of that guy hate-listening to “let it snow” last winter after his local radio station said they wouldn’t play it anymore.
