Trump signs order seeking to overhaul US elections, including requiring proof of citizenship
Trump signs order seeking to overhaul US elections, including requiring proof of citizenship
Trump is doing this to distract media attention from the biggest fuck-up of his administration so far, and there's been a lot.
the biggest fuck-up of his administration so far
The biggest fuck-up of his administration this week.
His administration is a scandal factory.
They will fuck up and make a mess, and their solution is to make a bigger mess to distract from the one they just made.
What about the bigger mess? Well I guess they'll just have to make an even bigger mess to cover that one up.
Rinse and repeat.
My first thought too. The timing is just too perfect.
My second thought? This means that Trump's team probably has executive orders just waiting in the wings, since they know how this all works. The only thing needed to supplant even awful news cycles are even worse news cycles.
My third thought? This means every time Team Trump royally messes up something, our only reward will be Team Trump doing something even worse, because it's the only move they have, ever.
Until we're all dead by their or our own hands, presumably.
Flood the zone with shit.
Well, destroying democracy is pretty distracting, so kudos, I guess.
That we know. That likely wasn't the only signal chat group these idiots were using , and they probably still are.
of course not. if it were, there would be at least one person going "why are we using signal for this?" or at least "is this ok that we're doing this over signal?"
they're the most incompetent bunch of losers you could possibly bring together. I don't think you could manage this is you put an ad on Craigslist for incompetent losers, or have a fucking dimwit convention.
The title of the chat implies to me that it's just one of many "small groups"
Yes perhaps we should first require military communications required everyone involved be identified and verified, hmm?
Oh. Ok. I'll sit down then. Not like he'd actually do anything this time.
Right?
It seems like the biggest military intelligence fuck up in recent memory. Not just his administration.
Other way around. He's taking advantage of the distraction to make an order that - without hyperbole - could literally end democracy in the US.
“Papers, please!”
Welcome to the United States of Arstotzka
Cause no trouble.
Words you can hear. "Παπερσ"
And when that horn blows and you have to take out your rifle and blast'em.
Call your local & state officals about this. The federal government does not run elections. It's the state and local officals that do even for federal office. They are the ones who chose to follow or not follow a blatantly illegal order
Trump is threatening to pull unrelated federal funding if they don't, but he's been pulling funding for many states anyways for zero reason. Make sure your local & state officals know you'll have their back if they don't bow down
The US system is so weird, federal elections are handled at a lower level of power and differently depending on which state you live in, it makes no sense. You guys need an independent body handling federal elections so everyone's vote is handled the same way no matter where they live... And paper ballots, fucking hell you guys need to go back to paper ballots.
Call your local & state officals about this.
That's cute.
Arm yourselves.
I think if we get through this, we'll look back at this in horror.. for about 60 years, and then we'll have a crop of neo-trumpists because no one ever seems to learn anything.
Shall we sow stars on our clothes as well?
Only if you want them to sprout.
Pink triangles for the queer folk
If this isn't your line for outright riots America then I struggle to think of what is.
Tik tok ban
Problem is, when the riots do eventually start, there will be no going back. One way or another this will be a completely different country in probably less than a year.
good. let's get this shit over with.
When we riot, they will crack down. At BEST it will be a civil war. This isn't Europe. The US government can, will, and previously has mass-killed protesters. In the US, we can only riot when we are no longer afraid to die. And that's a big ask of anyone at any time.
The voter stealer wants fix elections to prevent further vote thefts. Irony.
I feel the hypocrisy is over their heads. But it is on brand with same party. Read about Abbott
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
The Constitution leaves the matter of election of electors to the states.
Here's my general summary of why this is an issue: the US has been denying people the right to vote since day 1. You had to own land to vote in 1788. Half the country seceded and started a civil war that killed more of our citizens than any war since, over the right to own people. The 15th amendment was passed in 1870 to make it so you can't deny Black people the right to vote, but places made it happen anyway. They made it so you had to pass a "literacy test" with intentionally ambiguous instructions, or pay a poll tax, or one of your grandparents had to have the ability to vote (afaik, the origin of the phrase "grandfathered in").
These were all legal until the 1960s. Lots of people here have parents who were alive before legislation was passed to end Jim Crow. Without that, the racists that be turned to the War on Drugs, because lots of places take away your right to vote if you've been convicted of a felony. They started passing voter ID laws and closing down DMVs in areas with lots of black people and reducing their hours. A politician in Wisconsin bragged after the 2016 election that these laws here threw the state to Trump. They've also started banning giving food and water to people in line to vote and throwing out mail-in votes that show up after election day.
This isn't about election security and it never has been; voter fraud has never changed an election in the country's history. The real election fraud is in suppressing people's votes and fucking with voting machines (2004) and having allies in positions of power to throw the election your way (2000). There's more than that too, but it's a tangent.
I mean I would argue the whole system of having to show up in person to a place to vote on a non-holiday day and wait in a long line is in of itself a way to stop poorer people from voting. I've lived in a state with only mail in voting for my whole life and as result we have some of the highest voter turn out. It makes sense the Republicans want to do everything they can to to alter that as the harder they make it for poorer people to vote the better their odds of winning are.
100% agreed
Less of an overhaul, more of a keelhaul
Hear we go guys. Hold the line!
Huh? We are presented with a choice between doing something and the end of democracy. Way I see it, its the system's fault for putting bad choices in front of me, and the choices are, uh.. equivalent, according to my internet sources. Maybe I'll sit it out again.
/s for the gifted triggered ones
Gonna be proof of Republican Party soon
What are elections for if not selecting your favorite republican ^/s^
If you want to go full dystopian...
Party assigned at birth (PAAB) based on family, ethnicity, economic background, and other social factors present when the child is born. PAAB designation must be present on ID, birth certificate, and citizenship at all times. Any attempt to hide or misrepresent PAAB will be considered felony fraud pending investigations into any extremist relations contributing to the offense. PAAB may only be changed by government application via relocation and re-education facilities. Following the abolition of the US voting system, government representatives will be automatically chosen based on majority PAAB demographic.
/s
then comes proof of ethnicity or something
Land ownership
wouldn't put it past them to do that. a big hurdle that keeps getting taller.
Here we go. I guess congress Rs will bend, while the Ds just hold signs again. Thanks america, I hope this is what you wanted. Now bend over and spread those tight cheeks.
Elections are STATE things, right? Is he nationalizing elections?
So? The idea itself is not inherently bad. If I want to vote in Germany I go to the local polling station, show my ID (proof if citizenship) and hand over my voting documents (so I can only vote once, also the volunteers will mark me on a list) and I vote. And no, I don't have to register to vote.
Your problem is that your common way of identifying is your damn drivers license and not an ID card like in nearly every other country.
Not defending this big, orange, walking, talking and shaking with his little hands, asshole. Just saying, not all of your problems are caused by him. Many of them are inherent to your political system.
Sure, without any context or respect to history this will be just fine. Lol
Not to long ago we killed millions and wanted world domination. We changed our laws so this does not happen again Because law can be changed
A social security card is practically a national id card but without your picture. I'm a little surprised we've gone so long without one.
A social security number/card is not exclusive to citizens. Green card/permanent residents, for example, usually get them - particularly, if planning to/already working.
Any kind of national/citizen id would need a whole new process and require it be provided to 100% of existing citizens. Time-consuming and certainly a cost associated with the process.
It's one of those "in theory" easy things, but a lot more difficult in practice, I imagine.
I am so FUCKING TIRED of naive sheltered Europeans with functioning democracies not taking 5 minutes to read American history to see why this is quite nearly the worst possible thing our government could do. Not worst as in "oooh it's a mistake" but worst as in intentional evil.
I read quiet a lot about us history. But our viewpoints are different on it.
Also, your political system enables this asshole. He uses your own legislative and political system against you.
You have to make sure to fix this ASAP. I know own it is hard, I know in your the winner takes it all system, and how changes to the constitutions are done that this is hard. Very hard. But what are your options? Give up?
Assume Trump dies on a overdose of lead next week, the next asshole can use the same system to try again.
Doesn't most of the world already work like this? I have to identify myself to vote in my country, it's the obvious way to prevent people from voting more than one time.
The key is what id would be acceptable.
They'll raise the bar until only ids most people (they don't like) don't have and they have already destroyed the public service so getting one will ve very very hard and/or expensive
Interestingly, it may backfire on them. For example they cite Real Id or passport.
So passport only people who travel internationally bother to get. The rural MAGAs are less likely to get this.
For Real Id, it's more likely since that can be done with your license, however most people I know who do not fly have not bothered, because it's a hassle, they have to find DMV acceptable materials for a feature they don't even need (if you aren't flying, you still won't need real id for much of anything).
I live in a country where every citizen automatically receives a government id at the age of 12. We have to bring that id when we go to vote, but even if I were to lose the card at the worst possible time, there are contingency measures to allow me to still cast my vote. The idea is to get as many people as possible to vote, the id card greatly facilitates this process, but it's not used as a tool to keep people from voting.
In the usa (and the uk, and maybe other countries as well), citizens are not automatically granted an id card. Instead they have to acquire + maintain some accepted means of identifying themselves if they want to vote. And there some Americans saw a great opportunity: what if they made it so that certain minority groups would have a statistically harder time acquiring and maintaining identification that was deemed acceptable? And what if the state government could arbitrarily purge voter lists based on data mined information? The voter id requirements are used not only for facilitating the voting process, but also for suppressing undesired votes.
If you want some examples of usa voter suppression: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States
There are other methods. In NZ every enrolled voter's name gets printed into a physical book, and then crossed off by poll workers when they arrive to vote. An "easy vote" card is also mailed out to everyone, which is basically in index card to make it easier to look you up in the book.
As part of the vote counting process, all these books are checked against each other, to identify if a person has cast a vote at multiple polling places. With any duplicates investigated by the electoral commission.
Effectively the only way to manipulate the vote count would be to spend election week driving around the country, voting once per polling station under the name of a person you knew was enrolled to vote, but would not be voting themselves.
There were ~150 cases of attempted/apparent vote fraud in the last election, out of ~2M votes cast. That seems like a fairly low number to me, and I would not support any attempts to restrict voting to prevent it.
Yeah I don’t get it either. Every election I voted in I’ve had to have id. It’s been like this for a long time and it hasn’t shifted so that we need proof of ethnicity or some other bs people here are suggesting will happen next.
Every election I voted in I’ve had to have id.
I'm currently trying to get my newborn son a passport, as the offices that handle this - SSA, Post Office, etc - are rapidly being dismantled by DOGE. I have no idea how we'll be able to maintain or renew our documentation in coming years, given that there's simply not going to be anyone to stamp the forms and mail me renewed papers at this rate.
it hasn’t shifted so that we need proof of ethnicity or some other bs
It specifically has for transgender people. We've seen both state and national rules changes that no longer recognize change of gender identity on forms. So a person who shows up to vote with a form that shows "Man" when presenting as a Woman is prime target for disenfranchisement.
We're also increasingly seeing Hispanic and Arab people targeted for arrest and imprisonment, purely on an individual not currently carrying ID (and - in many cases - despite this fact). It isn't hard to imagine this persecution continuing into the next election cycle, with DHS agents grabbing people at polling stations.
This isn't for control of the presidency but Congress. Unless Congress goes along and rejects the electorates sent by the states, the electoral college works the same. It sets us up for another constitutional crisis where the president gets to say certain Congress people are illegitimate.
This will get shot down faster than there can even be controversy. Founding fathers would be rolling in their graves, and there‘s no way the Supreme Court can squeeze that kind of interpretation out of the Constitution.
That being said, it may give some state legislators cover to go with it.
Oh you sweet, sweet summer child.....
This has been a GOP wet dream for years. States and GOP legislators are going to cram this through by any means necessary. The Supreme Court has used medieval text from completely other countries in order to justify rulings and have openly said precedent doesn't mean shit to them. These people will cram this through and smile while doing it.
I wish that were true
Founding fathers would be pissed that [slur removed] are voting. The constitution was written to oppress these people.
When you make oppression your whole identity
I truly do not understand how this bothers people. In other countries you have to prove who you are to vote. It's ludicrous to me that there hasn't been a requirement to prove who you are this whole time.
But what about that president from Kenya?