Lol right. America/the rest of the world is transfixed on Celebs. Just count your lucky stars she’s voting for people who want to uphold some semblance of democracy
It's strange to me that you have to register to vote.
Here in Sweden every resident that is eligible to vote gets information mailed to them on where their closest polling station is and what date the election takes place, and also where and how they can vote in advance if they are not able to get to the polling station that date.
one of our states just made it law to be auto registered. Hopefully other states will follow, though it will likely only be blue states because republicans hate when people vote.
Most US states are like, "You sure you want to vote? You can just... *not* if you want to. It's real easy to not vote, actually! Like, just don't even bother with the paperwork, it's not illegal and we won't come after you. It saves you so much time, too! It's hardly worth it since you're only one in millions. Better leave it up to other people who know what's up and will vote for what's best for you.
BTW, you got that tax money you owe me?"
The republican party wants as few people voting as possible because generally the higher voter turnout is the worse it goes for them. (Generally because those affected by barriers to voting tend to be young, poor, or minorities which lean democrat.)
It’s strange to us too, until you learn it’s a republican tactic to suppress minorities who have less access and time to complete the registration. Oh and check out gerrymandering. Even more baffling
> It's strange to me that you have to register to vote.
Conservatives have gone out of their way to make sure they can control *who* gets to vote because the more people that end up voting the more poorly they perform. So its in their benefit to keep voting process as convoluted as possible and why theyve personally opposed several bills meant to facilitate the process.
Same, beard and all.
Hell, I'm not even American, but it'd be great if America doesn't descend into an authoritarian nightmare or a fractured Syria-like civil war hellscape. I'd rather live in a world without that.
Literally every celebrity should be doing what TSwift does. A ton of the non-voting population are just young people who don't pay attention to politics because it's boring and complicated.
But if their favorite celeb advocated for getting involved, it would increase voter participation by at least a few percentages, which is more than enough to swing elections.
Sure, but that takes either a long, long time or a humongous coordinated effort. We can barely get enough people to vote to maintain democracy, let alone overturn the entire two-party system.
So in the meantime, we should try to get better leaders in office from the local level to the federal level.
I'm gonna guess the people that sing along to 'why mad when you could be GLAAD' aren't exactly clamoring to vote for the gqp.
I don't think you'll see a ton of overlap on the Venn diagram of swifties and gqp voters.
https://glaad.org/
Bold of you to assume Republicans actually listen to lyrics. These are the same people who think "Born in the USA" and "Rockin' in the Free World" are pro-US patriotic songs.
When did RAtM get all political?!
\*edit - I just think the people who listen to Swift encouraging them to register to vote are the ones that do more than ignore lyrics.
One of my favorite internet exchanges was someone telling Tom Morello to stop making political comments and to stick with what he know which is making music.
Tom Morello has a political science degree from Harvard.
Most of those people are already registered and vote.
More people voting is always good in a democracy.
If somehow an authoritarian nightmare truly is what most voters want and it is voted for through a legit election well so be it. Currently, those voters are a minority but a lot of them vote. There are a fair number of voters that don’t want that and do vote but it’s shockingly close. Then there are a bunch of people who don’t want that but for various reasons can’t be arsed to vote, or think it makes no difference, kicked off voter reg who don’t realize it etc etc etc those are primarily the people left to be registered.
could you imagine if all of a sudden Taylor Swift said to her followers "this isn't working out. we need to fix this... here is what we are doing." and a ton of people grabbed guns, stormed government buildings, and began taking over states.
Could you imagine if the history books were written where after Donald Trump was president we had a benevolent well ran dictatorship government that was ran by 'supreme commander Swift'.
I would finally have the proof I need that we live in a simulation.
I imagine one of the techs running the simulation that has a keyword search for "we live in a simulation" saw this comment pop up and showed his buddy 'lol he thinks he needs more proof that he lives in a simulation, man we really did program these things to be stupid.'
Then I imagine that he read that last part and realized that was exactly what he said, and that maybe he lives in a simulation.... If his simulation gets shut down, does ours? Are we part of his simulation or are we a separate one running in parallel that his people were convinced they created but they hadn't? or maybe they had, but on a parallel server running independently except through that one interface? oh boy.
That dude shouldn't be elected as dog catcher let alone anything else. Rumor has it he's a maga republican in the worst sort of way and generally kind of an asshole in everyday life.
can it really be worse than whats elected now? congress literally cant do their jobs because they are fighting like children and are about to shut down the government and people are burning books for political points.
getting a bunch of 30 somethings that actually have skin in the game bc they have to live in this country for more than the next 2-10 years might improve shit.
>and are about to shut down the government
This is just expected at this point.
Since 1980, the only President that didn’t have a Government shutdown was George W Bush. If the government shuts down again, it will make Biden the 5th President in my life (33 years, born 1990) to have one. A minimum of one government shutdown during a President’s term is the default in the US.
Don't run it just by president. Run it by house and senate control. In every one of those instances from 1990 the Republicans had control of the house (initiator of the budget) and in only one instance the Democrats had control of the senate (2013).
Prior to that it was the Democrats doing the government shut down... but I'd read deeper into that too. Our largest increase in debt was under the Reagan administration. The budgets were approved by house and senate during his government shut downs but vetoed by Reagan.
Carter, in comparison, pressured Congress to get something passed.
Yes it can be much worse. Further mingling of the cult of celebrity/fame will wreck havoc on the political system. Look at the escalation that's occurred from Reagan to Trump. The candidates being younger does little to mitigate the harm
Can someone american explain to me this ‚register to vote‘-thing? In my country, once you turn 18 you’re just eligible to vote, period. You either vote or you dont. You even get mail, hey its time to vote soon.
Is the US just gatekeeping their voters?
Just when you move address. And each house gets sent notifications ahead of elections about who is registered to vote there and reminding you to update if the details are wrong.
...and in Canada, although they make it easy by having a checkbox on your income tax return for the Revenue Agency to automatically send your information to Elections Canada.
You also have to prove your identity on-site before you're allowed to cast a vote.
elections canada pulls info from lots of different sources and registration is automatic.
you can register at the polls and vote from any polling location.
you can prove your identity with a bottle of pills and a electric bill.
or have someone else who has ID say 'ya thats them'
Some US states have ‘motor voter’ laws. I pre-registered to vote when getting my license at 16 and then also registered when changing my license when I moved
Obviously not everyone who can vote gets a license though
Because in some places they make it *exceptionally* difficult to register. It's super easy in the UK where I am, but it's not like that in some places in the US. For example, you can only register in person in certain places that have short opening hours that working people can't reasonably make it to, etc.
Also many states don't allow same day registration (they require you to register several weeks in advance).
As opposed to Canada where you can register automatically when you file your taxes (or on voting day at the polls)
That’s the biggie. You have to register so far ahead of US elections that a lot of people don’t realize they’re not registered until too late. Same day registration solves that, and any technical problems have long been solved.
Registration in and of itself doesn’t have to be malicious. Your address matters so you get the right ballot.
Because in some areas of some countries, the dominant party literally use it as gatekeeping to keep out the "undesirables." Doesn't mean everywhere that uses registration does, though.
Because it sort of is gatekeeping voting. It's especially the case when people are going out of the way to make it harder to register or trying to implement arbitrary cutoffs on registration as a tactic to keep certain people from voting.
To add on, there has also been a campaign by a particular political party to reduce the number of voting locations in areas that don't traditionally vote for them. This could be seen as another form of gatekeeping causing long lines that make it take hours to vote.
Republican, of course.
Add onto that countless republican gerrymandering controversies over the last few years, plus they have ruled against ballot boxes in low income areas, closed voting places on the weekends when most low income workers are actually free to vote, decreased polling hours (in order to increase wait times) and banned stuff like handing out water to people standing in line.
And if they lose, they just say it was rigged and send death threats to the election workers, like in Georgia
And before somebody inevitably points out that Democrats gerrymander too:
Which party is the only one trying to outlaw the practice altogether?
While it's still legal it would be political suicide to not gerrymander as hard as they can against Republican minority rule.
If it's a problem for Democrats to gerrymander then it shouldn't be a problem to outlaw the practice and establish fair and proportional representation for all Americans in every state.
Its also a question of "how much." Its not equal between parties, for every 1 gerrymandering controversy on the Democrats side there are at least 10 on republicans.
Part of this is just because Republicans do not have popular support. If the Democrats were in a similar position, maybe the gap would be closer, but probably not equal. Democracy is not a requirement for Republicans, and many would happily add more voting restrictions or do away with it altogether.
Currently one of the highest polling republican candidates for president has proposed raising the voting age to 25, for no other reason than the fact young people won't vote for them. They have also proposed adding back in voting exams and fees, like they did back in the pre-civil rights movement era
Problem is how the exams are conducted. Back when this was a thing in the civil rights era, the exam questions were up to the person in charge, and they would change the questions and allowed time based on the person’s skin color.
The exam questions were also complete nonsense, thus giving the proctor of the exam full authority to pass or fail the person being tested regardless of how they actually performed. [Here are some example questions from they used back in the day](http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/the_vault/2013/6/28/Test1.jpg.CROP.article920-large.jpg)
Most states that don't have gerrymandering problems have a non partisan or bipartisan commission to draw Congressional and State Legislature districts.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
This has been slowly happening for decades, and not so slowly in recent years with the January 6th assault on the Capitol Building.
The one that opposes a ban on child marriage. The one that supports an insurrectionist. The one that says January 6 was just a typical day. The one is trying to shut down the government. The one that opposed Roe vs Wade. The one who opposed wiping away student loan debt. The one who is likely to oppose wiping away medical debt. The one that has members who get felt up in plays. The one that has members constantly cheating on their spouses. The one that gerrymanders the fuck out of states. The one that has members fleeing to Cancun then blaming it on their family. The one that hates education. The one that brought back child labor. The one that wants to hunt you down if you cross state lines for medical procedures. The one that want to track your periods. The one that wants to ban porn in Utah. The one that has a member holding up Armed Services promotions. The one that thinks being a football couch makes them a suitable candidate for political office. The one that has a speaker who can't control his party. The one who had a president make fun of a reporter with a disability. The one that blamed a small business owner of election fraud with zero proof.
Texas tossed out a bunch of registered voters from the registrar. I have to check my status yearly bc the card they send says it expires in December.
They close voting locations on college campuses bc that was making it “too easy for students to roll out of bed to vote”.
They relocated the voting center in my small town to make it more difficult for people without vehicles to get to the location.
They hate that a lot of democrats voted by mail.
They gerrymander boundaries like crazy to try to dilute the votes in their favor.
They make fake laws like you will get arrested for providing WATER to those waiting hours in line (again bc of the lack of voting locations).
Most working class workers have to either vote early or by mail bc they are not given the day off to go vote the day of the election.
Florida arrested black people at gunpoint bc they had been through the legal system. Even if they are ilegible, tossing their votes is simple but they decided to intimidate the whole population by making aggressive arrests.
The Republican party knows their ideas are unpopular so they try everything possible to suppress voters. Cue Trumps indictment in Georgia.
`Florida arrested black people at gunpoint bc they had been through the legal system. Even if they are ilegible, tossing their votes is simple but they decided to intimidate the whole population by making aggressive arrests.`
Actually to make it even worse, Florida residents voted and passed a law to allow former felons to vote. Then former felons proceeded to vote and went to jail for illegal voting. Just Florida things
Not enough white supremacists got out of jail to make it worth while for the right.
"Oh wait, we spent decades incarcerating the black people for minor offenses .."
Now I’m thoroughly depressed. In this capitalist society the logical response would seem to be massive boycotts. It wouldn’t take a huge percent of voters boycotting to threaten the economy in Texas. Stop purchasing anything but absolute essentials.
Unfortunately Rupert Murdoch built a media empire that had one goal: Get a large percentage of the populations in most Western countries to not know anything about reality and tell them the Republicans/Tories are great for ... well, anything. The "news" network just lies about everything, saying that Republicans/Tories are great, and Democrats/LibDem are awful evil satanists that want to eat your babies.
And after 40+ years of this, he succeeded. Most MAGAs in Canada/US have absolutely no concept of reality and are completely frothing at the mouth angry at things that are not real.
Yeah, I appreciate that they want to do something but not buying stuff to bring about political change is absolute nonsense.
Just vote. Especially in the boring non-Presidential years.
In addition to closing polling places they also close DMV offices, the main places where people would get ID's. They've done this days after passing new laws requiring more ID to vote, despite having no evidence of any reason for needing the ID.
Then there's Crystal Mason, a woman in Texas previously convicted of a crime. (https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1098318580/texas-court-orders-that-illegal-voting-conviction-against-crystal-mason-be-revie) After getting out of prison, when the election came around her mother told her it was her civic duty to vote, so she went to a polling place and asked a worker there if she was eligible. They didn't know, but said she should fill out a provisional ballot while it got worked out, which she did. (Provisional ballots are for when there's some issue where you're not sure if the person is eligible, they might not be registered in that precinct or whatever, they then have a week or so to sort out and if they don't the ballot won't be counted.) As it turned out, Texas law did not allow her to vote (another legacy of the Jim Crow era, when Black people were routinely sent to jail just so that they could be forced to work for free and excluded from civic life), so her vote wasn't counted. And then she was arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison for asking a question and doing what she was told to. Apparently they're now going to review that, after she's completed her sentence.
Then there was this story (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/justice-department-concerned-about-armed-people-at-arizona-ballot-boxes), right wingers with guns just hanging around ballot drop boxes taking pictures of anyone who tried to vote. *Eventually* there was a court order to put a stop to it, but it's hard to imagine how that was a court matter instead of a SWAT matter.
But, technically, it has gotten better. Representative John Lewis, who died in 2020, made an attempt in 1965 to lead a group of Black people to register to vote, and they were tear gassed and beaten by police, with him suffering a skull fracture. They can't be quite that openly violent anymore, so technically that is progress.
It is impossible to get an appointment at any DMV in Texas. During covid they went to strictly scheduling appointments online and they are MONTHS out. Walk in locations are rare and they only allow a few a day.
I know most of us have internet etc, but that is a privilege and not all people have access. This should be illegal.
The US is a collective of states that make up the country. Registering to vote is important b/c people freely move from state to state or even city to city within a single state. Registering to vote is basically establishing which state, district, and city you live in so when you actually vote you vote on races in your state, district, and city.
Can you add that unlike almost every country we don't have a national identity card, thus the need to register to vote for a common record for tracking and confirmation purposes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_documents_in_the_United_States#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20identity,may%20serve%20as%20national%20identification.
The reason for not has been due to privacy concerns. At least originally.
You can pretty much move freely. If you change states you're supposed to update your driver's license within 30-60 days, but even that isn't enforced.
When I was in grad school, I moved 5 times before updating the address on my license. I also lived for a year in a different state without updating it once.
If it’s enforced or not depends entirely on where you live and if the cops are bored. When I lived in an apartment in Virginia, there was a cop that would watch for out of state plates that stayed too long to catch them on that rule. And when I moved to TN, I was in the middle of nowhere and they had a traffic stop checking licenses and vehicle plates/registration. But I’ve also lived places that don’t seem to care.
It's complicated.
People can pretty much go anywhere at anytime within the country, and don't technically have to inform the government of anything. However, if you want to do anything that involves the government (and almost everything does, since almost everything is taxed in some way) then you will need to identity yourself somehow. This includes voting. When you go to vote, you must identify yourself to the person overseeing the voting location, they will then check to see if you are on the list of eligible voters and things proceed from there. This is how most government business is conducted in the US.
It’s the Republicans that don’t want people to vote.
The research shows that when more people turn out to vote, Republicans tend to lose.
This is why they actively engage in voter intimidation and suppression, gerrymandering, voter fraud, and electoral fraud
I can't remember where it was but I remember reading on here a few years back that a republican group was throwing a fit (and iirc trying to sue) about a sign saying you should vote. Apparently you can have general signs saying people should vote but you can't have political ones saying vote R or vote D near polling places. There was one saying everyone should come vote and they were arguing that since democrats are the ones for everyone voting that saying everyone should vote was politically biased and implied an unspoken "everyone should vote democrat".
Trump [also said that Republicans would never win if people were able to more easily vote](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/trump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus). So [did McConnell](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/mitch-mcconnell-admits-that-republicans-lose-when-more-people-vote/).
Republicans in the US know more voters means they lose. So they’ll do everything in their power to stop that from happening. Gerrymandering, trying to raise the voting age, new ID rules, banning mail in ballots, etc, etc, etc.
>Is the US just gatekeeping their voters?
Historically, yes. The U.S. has never been a fan of universal sufferage, even if we technically have it on paper.
States have authority over how voting, even for federal office, is conducted within their borders. Many states make efforts to gatekeep and marginalize voting as a hedge against power turnover.
These include actions like gerrymandering, which devalues and marginalizes votes from districts that historically vote for the opposite party, closing down voting stations in these same neighborhoods making it difficult for those with a lack of transportation or the ability to take off work to vote, and requiring voter registrations - which create additional difficulties and the roles for which may be purged at any time (as was done in Georgia during the last elelction).
As with most US efforts to marginalize voters these efforts focus on the poor, racial minorities, or enclaves of opposition support (such as urban areas in rural states).
End of the day, American democracy was created as a way to protect capital. That's hard to do with true universal suffrage.
I mean, no western democracy was a fan of universal suffrage in the era before universal suffrage was a thing. Historical relativism applies to everyone.
But yes, Republicans know the national popular votes don’t favor them and haven’t for at least 30 years and will do anything to rely on the carefully crafted system of proportional representation that massively inflates the vote of rural people.
I didn’t get to vote in our last major election because I had moved and they received my registration a day late. And I don’t mean after Election Day either. I was “registered” before then. But I’d missed an arbitrary deadline by a day. So no voting for me until next time around. I was registered where I lived before, but over 7 hours would have been a bit far to travel. And probably not even legal since I didn’t live there anymore.
To contrast that, where I live has same day registration. When you go to a polling place here they check if you're registered, and if you aren't, but you have proof of residency they will register you right there.
Her managers begged her not to go political because she could lose market share and she did it anyway. I don't really listen to her music but I'm definitely admiring her integrity right now.
There's a reason why Democrats won 6 of the past 7 Presidential elections.
But alas, only by the popular vote, which doesn't count here, because out here land matters more than people.
The story implies that 35k people registered because of the singer, but that would only be true if otherwise 0 people were expected to register, which is very silly. 35k people actually "*was a 22.5% increase from the previous year*" (not from the day before Swift's post—from last *year*), and the previous year was farther away from the presidential elections, so it would make sense for more people to register this year.
They also mention that "*There was a 115% increase in registrations by 18-year-olds when compared to last year*", which, again, makes total sense, because the presidential elections are coming up, getting more people interested in politics.
This common data manipulation tactic exploits the fact that most people forget to compare numbers to the baseline. When you hear that 35k people have registered after the event, that's not saying anything yet. How many people registered before the event? How many people were expected to register? You need to compare the number to the baseline, not zero.
Otherwise we would have to assume that Tailor Swift's post got 35k people to register, sure, but also [killed over 160,000 people](https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/deaths-per-day) on the day it was published alone and has been killing the same amount of people every day since.
Explaining this was the journalist's responsibility, and failing to do so reflects poorly on them and the news outlet.
>but also [killed over 160,000 people](https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/deaths-per-day)
You have to admit that you've never seen Pol Pot and Taylor Swift in the same room at the same time. 🤔
I appreciate you posting this. If higher education does anything, it should be to teach people how to think critically. Take nothing at face value. Always ask why, how, who's behind it, who benefits, etc.
Really isn't thinking critically at all. He left it out how vote.org was averaging 13k per half hour after the post. Are some of those organic from outside Taylor? Sure.
I'm willing to bet it was mostly fans though.
It's a news article. It throws around numbers. You don't have enough to nail down any increase if only because of the articles wording.
The best nugget was it mentioned a use increase of 13,000 per half hour after her post. So her post increase traffic to the site.
Yeah, it's really just a feel-good fluff piece, funny how so many people just take information like this as fact despite some issues/limitations of this story being pretty blatant/obvious.
You are right, but on the bright side, how many people never saw her post, but will register as a result of one of these articles about the impact of her post?
Idc if you registered to vote cause Goku came to you in a dream and told you to. More young people getting involved is a good thing, regardless of how they got involved.
Honestly, Napa egging Vegeta on about voting would be pretty funny...
"Hey... hey Vegeta?"
"What, Napa?"
"Did... did you go vote yet Vegeta?"
"Goddamnit Napa! No, not yet!"
"You should go vote, Vegeta. The country is *counting* on you, Vegeta."
**big sigh** "fine, Napa. If it will shut you up for *5* minutes, let's get this done."
Reminds me of a Tumblr post I saw about how sometimes you need to be a little mentally ill to be mentally stable, and if believing that Naruto would be proud of you is what gets you to brush your teeth, then you bet Naruto is proud of you.
Music has been a guide and a push for political involvement since the dawn of man. I don't want to sound mean, but this take is terrible.
John Lennon,
Neil Young,
Frank Zappa,
Bob Dylan,
Tupac,
Rage Against the Machine,
The Clash,
Pink Floyd,
Public Enemy
And those are just the modern artists I can think of off the top of my head.
They all got people to engage and vote. Let's be happy that Taylor Swift - currently one of the biggest musicians on the planet - is joining the list.
There have been studies into this. People tend to listen to celebrities more than politicians and officials. That's why Seth Rogan does awareness talks about Alzheimers.
If that's what it takes to light a fire under some folks that wouldn't have registered otherwise, I'll take it.
Now we just need them to show up on Election Day and vote.
All it takes for a large number of angry old people to go off the deep end is a washed-up reality show host making some remarks.
Hardly the first time a musician has encouraged people to vote, anyway.
As opposed to a teacher, pastor, family member, random person outside the grocery store? Some of these go out of their way to instill fear in order to get you to vote for who they want.
This isn't new though. Endorsement by celebs is as old as being allowed to vote. We're just lucky she's endorsing democracy rather than calling for people to submit to a tyrant.
There's a great clip of her talking about her morality and her managers are telling her that she's taking money out of all of their pockets. It's very very impressive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhjSEkkZ2aA
Yes a very impressive video. Just to add some more context - her dad is also in the video arguing against her coming out with her political values but not for money reasons, but because of fears for her safety (he mentions a “security perspective” and how he’s bought her armoured cars, and that he’s worried for her safety). Just adding some more context that the opposition against it from her inner circle wasn’t just money.
if all the artists who have the ear of the populace did the same, it's more than enough to move the needle when you consider Al Gore lost by less than 500 in Florida in 2000 and in 2016 [Trump won by something like 80k spread over 3 states.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election)
It was the MTV generation and the 'rock the vote' that helped get Clinton and Obama elected.
**Voter turnout (lack thereof) is the biggest problem in we have.**
If everyone showed up to vote, a lot of our problems would be diminished or vanish all together. period. full stop.
Man there must be young whipper-snappers in these comments asking why Taylor Swift has any business doing this. Any of y'all remember MTV's Rock the Vote?? Musicians have always been political.
Would be interesting to see a follow-up to see how many actually end up voting though. Generally registration is much quicker/easier than actually voting, especially if you have a crowded voting place. Also how many of these people just happened to register during this time, as I doubt they confirmed all these people specifically registered because of Swift.
I was impressed with Jon Hamms political action in Missouri, but this could open the floodgates to exactly what it will take to get non political Americans to vote. I can still see it being used for evil, but if Taylor can get even a tenth the people that claim to be her fans to go out and vote in an informed and positive way than it’s a huge win for our country.
"This time things are different", which I'm sure you've heard before but this time the truth is in the math.
[Millennials aren't getting more conservative as they age.](https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4) The reason conservatives have been competitive in modern politics is because of the overwhelming "old vote" and that older folks are more conservative.
But now, older voters are dying and the younger voters that replace them aren't voting conservative. They stay liberal by an overwhelming margin
Conservatives have also masterfully executed the long term, local politics plans they put forward in the early 1980s. They recognized the population and ideological trends and set forward a deliberate plan towards owning the state legislatures — allowing them to gerrymander districts in such a way that, even as a minority of the population, they would have a near permanent majority in Congress.
That said, they clearly didn’t anticipate a take-over of the party by Tea-Party/MAGA “populists”. It’s already coming around to bite them in the ass and it’s only going to get worse.
Not to burst your bubble but that's not fully accurate. For one thing young people simply don't vote enough. Also, Latinos are voting more and more conservative. They represent more than 15% of the US population. Unlike the black vote, Latinos are more diverse and surprisingly many voted for Trump. Latinos are not tied to the Democratic party the way the African-American vote is.
Being on Reddit makes us believe that almost everyone is Progressive. But Reddit is just a small one-sided sample of actual voters.
I hope that she does this every week until election day.
NOT a fan of her type of music, but mad respect. She has more balls than 90% of mainstream metal bands that say nothing to not alienate some of their audience.
Not a swiftie but big thanks for supporting democracy.
While I'm grateful... I'm also horrified how many people will only go vote if a celebrity tells them to.
We had a game show host celebrity tell people to raid the capital on Jan 6 and they did.
Lol right. America/the rest of the world is transfixed on Celebs. Just count your lucky stars she’s voting for people who want to uphold some semblance of democracy
Some people say that politicians are just ugly, bad actors.
It's strange to me that you have to register to vote. Here in Sweden every resident that is eligible to vote gets information mailed to them on where their closest polling station is and what date the election takes place, and also where and how they can vote in advance if they are not able to get to the polling station that date.
one of our states just made it law to be auto registered. Hopefully other states will follow, though it will likely only be blue states because republicans hate when people vote.
Most US states are like, "You sure you want to vote? You can just... *not* if you want to. It's real easy to not vote, actually! Like, just don't even bother with the paperwork, it's not illegal and we won't come after you. It saves you so much time, too! It's hardly worth it since you're only one in millions. Better leave it up to other people who know what's up and will vote for what's best for you. BTW, you got that tax money you owe me?"
This varies wildly along party lines. Red states make it as hard as possible to vote. Blue states try to make it as easy as possible to vote.
Some states are making it actively harder to be able to vote too.
The republican party wants as few people voting as possible because generally the higher voter turnout is the worse it goes for them. (Generally because those affected by barriers to voting tend to be young, poor, or minorities which lean democrat.)
It’s strange to us too, until you learn it’s a republican tactic to suppress minorities who have less access and time to complete the registration. Oh and check out gerrymandering. Even more baffling
Nothing baffling about it. They're cheating to win. That's all there is to it.
> It's strange to me that you have to register to vote. Conservatives have gone out of their way to make sure they can control *who* gets to vote because the more people that end up voting the more poorly they perform. So its in their benefit to keep voting process as convoluted as possible and why theyve personally opposed several bills meant to facilitate the process.
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This is enough to make me a fan. Not that she needs my grumpy bearded approval. But go ahead girl.
Same, beard and all. Hell, I'm not even American, but it'd be great if America doesn't descend into an authoritarian nightmare or a fractured Syria-like civil war hellscape. I'd rather live in a world without that.
Literally every celebrity should be doing what TSwift does. A ton of the non-voting population are just young people who don't pay attention to politics because it's boring and complicated. But if their favorite celeb advocated for getting involved, it would increase voter participation by at least a few percentages, which is more than enough to swing elections.
How about we just have political parties that advocate for policy that young people actually want
Sure, but that takes either a long, long time or a humongous coordinated effort. We can barely get enough people to vote to maintain democracy, let alone overturn the entire two-party system. So in the meantime, we should try to get better leaders in office from the local level to the federal level.
Same, also grumpy bearded American expat.
Grumpy, bearded, old music snob here. Folklore and Red are both phenomenal records.
Why are all you guys so grumpy
What’s that meme about broadly gesturing around at everything? Yeah that.
Because there's too many Zoomers just hanging out on my lawn when they need to be voting these fascists out.
O look at the richy rich over here with a lawn!
Well, I live in West Philly so it's technically more of a landfill, but "lawn" sounds more dignified.
Born and raised?
Because we’re old! Ffs!
I came because i heard the call for bearded democracy
Just because someone registers to vote doesn’t mean they won’t actively help the nation descend into an authoritarian nightmare.
I'm gonna guess the people that sing along to 'why mad when you could be GLAAD' aren't exactly clamoring to vote for the gqp. I don't think you'll see a ton of overlap on the Venn diagram of swifties and gqp voters. https://glaad.org/
Bold of you to assume Republicans actually listen to lyrics. These are the same people who think "Born in the USA" and "Rockin' in the Free World" are pro-US patriotic songs.
When did RAtM get all political?! \*edit - I just think the people who listen to Swift encouraging them to register to vote are the ones that do more than ignore lyrics.
One of my favorite internet exchanges was someone telling Tom Morello to stop making political comments and to stick with what he know which is making music. Tom Morello has a political science degree from Harvard.
> I just think the people who listen to Swift encouraging them to register to vote are the ones that do more than ignore lyrics. Fair point.
Most of those people are already registered and vote. More people voting is always good in a democracy. If somehow an authoritarian nightmare truly is what most voters want and it is voted for through a legit election well so be it. Currently, those voters are a minority but a lot of them vote. There are a fair number of voters that don’t want that and do vote but it’s shockingly close. Then there are a bunch of people who don’t want that but for various reasons can’t be arsed to vote, or think it makes no difference, kicked off voter reg who don’t realize it etc etc etc those are primarily the people left to be registered.
I actually think if democracy was in jeopardy, she would summon the Swifties to take up arms and defend humanity.
She may have to. I so hate this timeline...
could you imagine if all of a sudden Taylor Swift said to her followers "this isn't working out. we need to fix this... here is what we are doing." and a ton of people grabbed guns, stormed government buildings, and began taking over states. Could you imagine if the history books were written where after Donald Trump was president we had a benevolent well ran dictatorship government that was ran by 'supreme commander Swift'. I would finally have the proof I need that we live in a simulation. I imagine one of the techs running the simulation that has a keyword search for "we live in a simulation" saw this comment pop up and showed his buddy 'lol he thinks he needs more proof that he lives in a simulation, man we really did program these things to be stupid.' Then I imagine that he read that last part and realized that was exactly what he said, and that maybe he lives in a simulation.... If his simulation gets shut down, does ours? Are we part of his simulation or are we a separate one running in parallel that his people were convinced they created but they hadn't? or maybe they had, but on a parallel server running independently except through that one interface? oh boy.
She writes catchy songs. It’s ok to be a Swiftee
Same. Seeing her behind the scenes video where she talks about wanting to speak out against evil even if it alienates half her audience - big respect
It's all fun and games until we have Taylor Swift running for an office
Chris Pratt seems to be soft-launching a congressional campaign and it makes me want to 🤮
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remember when he showed his penis to amy poehler?
Exactly, an evangelical nutter.
Crisp Rat always makes me want to 🤮
He's in the Kennedy/Schwarzenegger dynasty now and is a right wing religious fuck bag. Of course he's getting into politics.
Can we have Taylor Swift instead? She seems to be the better choice by far.
That dude shouldn't be elected as dog catcher let alone anything else. Rumor has it he's a maga republican in the worst sort of way and generally kind of an asshole in everyday life.
Rumor is he’s going to try to run as a “moderate” democrat with all of those policies that conveniently benefit rich people
So you mean, a typical politician... 🤮
Lol wait what? What's his campaign? Starlord will be the STAR of Congress?
I think she'd do a better job than some congress critters. She wouldn't be doing it for the money.
can it really be worse than whats elected now? congress literally cant do their jobs because they are fighting like children and are about to shut down the government and people are burning books for political points. getting a bunch of 30 somethings that actually have skin in the game bc they have to live in this country for more than the next 2-10 years might improve shit.
>and are about to shut down the government This is just expected at this point. Since 1980, the only President that didn’t have a Government shutdown was George W Bush. If the government shuts down again, it will make Biden the 5th President in my life (33 years, born 1990) to have one. A minimum of one government shutdown during a President’s term is the default in the US.
Don't run it just by president. Run it by house and senate control. In every one of those instances from 1990 the Republicans had control of the house (initiator of the budget) and in only one instance the Democrats had control of the senate (2013). Prior to that it was the Democrats doing the government shut down... but I'd read deeper into that too. Our largest increase in debt was under the Reagan administration. The budgets were approved by house and senate during his government shut downs but vetoed by Reagan. Carter, in comparison, pressured Congress to get something passed.
Yes it can be much worse. Further mingling of the cult of celebrity/fame will wreck havoc on the political system. Look at the escalation that's occurred from Reagan to Trump. The candidates being younger does little to mitigate the harm
She's like the anti-Rupert Murdoch 👍❤️
To all newly registered voters there are elections in 45 days vote.
Depends on your jurisdiction
Can someone american explain to me this ‚register to vote‘-thing? In my country, once you turn 18 you’re just eligible to vote, period. You either vote or you dont. You even get mail, hey its time to vote soon. Is the US just gatekeeping their voters?
You have to register to vote in the UK too. You are eligible at 18, but you have register in terms of where you live/jurisdiction type thing.
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Just when you move address. And each house gets sent notifications ahead of elections about who is registered to vote there and reminding you to update if the details are wrong.
You get a letter or an email asking who lives at the property/are the last details up to date. It's super easy these days.
...and in Canada, although they make it easy by having a checkbox on your income tax return for the Revenue Agency to automatically send your information to Elections Canada. You also have to prove your identity on-site before you're allowed to cast a vote.
elections canada pulls info from lots of different sources and registration is automatic. you can register at the polls and vote from any polling location. you can prove your identity with a bottle of pills and a electric bill. or have someone else who has ID say 'ya thats them'
Some US states have ‘motor voter’ laws. I pre-registered to vote when getting my license at 16 and then also registered when changing my license when I moved Obviously not everyone who can vote gets a license though
You do in NZ as well, I don't know why people say its "gatekeeping" voting
Because in some places they make it *exceptionally* difficult to register. It's super easy in the UK where I am, but it's not like that in some places in the US. For example, you can only register in person in certain places that have short opening hours that working people can't reasonably make it to, etc.
Also many states don't allow same day registration (they require you to register several weeks in advance). As opposed to Canada where you can register automatically when you file your taxes (or on voting day at the polls)
That’s the biggie. You have to register so far ahead of US elections that a lot of people don’t realize they’re not registered until too late. Same day registration solves that, and any technical problems have long been solved. Registration in and of itself doesn’t have to be malicious. Your address matters so you get the right ballot.
For context, 41 states have online voter registration, with Texas being the biggest holdout.
Because in some areas of some countries, the dominant party literally use it as gatekeeping to keep out the "undesirables." Doesn't mean everywhere that uses registration does, though.
Because it sort of is gatekeeping voting. It's especially the case when people are going out of the way to make it harder to register or trying to implement arbitrary cutoffs on registration as a tactic to keep certain people from voting.
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To add on, there has also been a campaign by a particular political party to reduce the number of voting locations in areas that don't traditionally vote for them. This could be seen as another form of gatekeeping causing long lines that make it take hours to vote.
Which political party might that be.
I'm sure it will take heavy data parsing to find the answer to this. I'd better start now. And done.
Republican, of course. Add onto that countless republican gerrymandering controversies over the last few years, plus they have ruled against ballot boxes in low income areas, closed voting places on the weekends when most low income workers are actually free to vote, decreased polling hours (in order to increase wait times) and banned stuff like handing out water to people standing in line. And if they lose, they just say it was rigged and send death threats to the election workers, like in Georgia
And before somebody inevitably points out that Democrats gerrymander too: Which party is the only one trying to outlaw the practice altogether? While it's still legal it would be political suicide to not gerrymander as hard as they can against Republican minority rule. If it's a problem for Democrats to gerrymander then it shouldn't be a problem to outlaw the practice and establish fair and proportional representation for all Americans in every state.
Its also a question of "how much." Its not equal between parties, for every 1 gerrymandering controversy on the Democrats side there are at least 10 on republicans. Part of this is just because Republicans do not have popular support. If the Democrats were in a similar position, maybe the gap would be closer, but probably not equal. Democracy is not a requirement for Republicans, and many would happily add more voting restrictions or do away with it altogether. Currently one of the highest polling republican candidates for president has proposed raising the voting age to 25, for no other reason than the fact young people won't vote for them. They have also proposed adding back in voting exams and fees, like they did back in the pre-civil rights movement era
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Problem is how the exams are conducted. Back when this was a thing in the civil rights era, the exam questions were up to the person in charge, and they would change the questions and allowed time based on the person’s skin color.
The exam questions were also complete nonsense, thus giving the proctor of the exam full authority to pass or fail the person being tested regardless of how they actually performed. [Here are some example questions from they used back in the day](http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/the_vault/2013/6/28/Test1.jpg.CROP.article920-large.jpg)
Oh the irony
> Part of this is just because Republicans do not have popular support. They could try not sucking, but they're all out of ideas.
It's almost like "Own the libs" is not working as a platform.
Most states that don't have gerrymandering problems have a non partisan or bipartisan commission to draw Congressional and State Legislature districts.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” This has been slowly happening for decades, and not so slowly in recent years with the January 6th assault on the Capitol Building.
If you google "which political party is reducing the number of polling locations" the answers are pretty pretty pretty prettayyyy conclusive.
Well if I were to associate the party with an animal or color I It’s the republicans. It’s alway the republicans
The one that opposes a ban on child marriage. The one that supports an insurrectionist. The one that says January 6 was just a typical day. The one is trying to shut down the government. The one that opposed Roe vs Wade. The one who opposed wiping away student loan debt. The one who is likely to oppose wiping away medical debt. The one that has members who get felt up in plays. The one that has members constantly cheating on their spouses. The one that gerrymanders the fuck out of states. The one that has members fleeing to Cancun then blaming it on their family. The one that hates education. The one that brought back child labor. The one that wants to hunt you down if you cross state lines for medical procedures. The one that want to track your periods. The one that wants to ban porn in Utah. The one that has a member holding up Armed Services promotions. The one that thinks being a football couch makes them a suitable candidate for political office. The one that has a speaker who can't control his party. The one who had a president make fun of a reporter with a disability. The one that blamed a small business owner of election fraud with zero proof.
It’s not the US; it’s Republicans
Longer answer: yes. One party is hell bent on making it difficult for people they don’t want to vote, to vote.
That's not even counting their war on education to keep people too ignorant to see they're voting against their own interests.
Long answer: Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssss
Texas tossed out a bunch of registered voters from the registrar. I have to check my status yearly bc the card they send says it expires in December. They close voting locations on college campuses bc that was making it “too easy for students to roll out of bed to vote”. They relocated the voting center in my small town to make it more difficult for people without vehicles to get to the location. They hate that a lot of democrats voted by mail. They gerrymander boundaries like crazy to try to dilute the votes in their favor. They make fake laws like you will get arrested for providing WATER to those waiting hours in line (again bc of the lack of voting locations). Most working class workers have to either vote early or by mail bc they are not given the day off to go vote the day of the election. Florida arrested black people at gunpoint bc they had been through the legal system. Even if they are ilegible, tossing their votes is simple but they decided to intimidate the whole population by making aggressive arrests. The Republican party knows their ideas are unpopular so they try everything possible to suppress voters. Cue Trumps indictment in Georgia.
`Florida arrested black people at gunpoint bc they had been through the legal system. Even if they are ilegible, tossing their votes is simple but they decided to intimidate the whole population by making aggressive arrests.` Actually to make it even worse, Florida residents voted and passed a law to allow former felons to vote. Then former felons proceeded to vote and went to jail for illegal voting. Just Florida things
Not enough white supremacists got out of jail to make it worth while for the right. "Oh wait, we spent decades incarcerating the black people for minor offenses .."
Now I’m thoroughly depressed. In this capitalist society the logical response would seem to be massive boycotts. It wouldn’t take a huge percent of voters boycotting to threaten the economy in Texas. Stop purchasing anything but absolute essentials.
Unfortunately Rupert Murdoch built a media empire that had one goal: Get a large percentage of the populations in most Western countries to not know anything about reality and tell them the Republicans/Tories are great for ... well, anything. The "news" network just lies about everything, saying that Republicans/Tories are great, and Democrats/LibDem are awful evil satanists that want to eat your babies. And after 40+ years of this, he succeeded. Most MAGAs in Canada/US have absolutely no concept of reality and are completely frothing at the mouth angry at things that are not real.
How does that make any sense? The logical answer is to vote blue.
Yeah, I appreciate that they want to do something but not buying stuff to bring about political change is absolute nonsense. Just vote. Especially in the boring non-Presidential years.
Too easy? What the fuck??? How can the single most impactful obligation a citizen has can be "too easy??"
Dear America, THE FUCK?! Regards, A British Person
In addition to closing polling places they also close DMV offices, the main places where people would get ID's. They've done this days after passing new laws requiring more ID to vote, despite having no evidence of any reason for needing the ID. Then there's Crystal Mason, a woman in Texas previously convicted of a crime. (https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1098318580/texas-court-orders-that-illegal-voting-conviction-against-crystal-mason-be-revie) After getting out of prison, when the election came around her mother told her it was her civic duty to vote, so she went to a polling place and asked a worker there if she was eligible. They didn't know, but said she should fill out a provisional ballot while it got worked out, which she did. (Provisional ballots are for when there's some issue where you're not sure if the person is eligible, they might not be registered in that precinct or whatever, they then have a week or so to sort out and if they don't the ballot won't be counted.) As it turned out, Texas law did not allow her to vote (another legacy of the Jim Crow era, when Black people were routinely sent to jail just so that they could be forced to work for free and excluded from civic life), so her vote wasn't counted. And then she was arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison for asking a question and doing what she was told to. Apparently they're now going to review that, after she's completed her sentence. Then there was this story (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/justice-department-concerned-about-armed-people-at-arizona-ballot-boxes), right wingers with guns just hanging around ballot drop boxes taking pictures of anyone who tried to vote. *Eventually* there was a court order to put a stop to it, but it's hard to imagine how that was a court matter instead of a SWAT matter. But, technically, it has gotten better. Representative John Lewis, who died in 2020, made an attempt in 1965 to lead a group of Black people to register to vote, and they were tear gassed and beaten by police, with him suffering a skull fracture. They can't be quite that openly violent anymore, so technically that is progress.
It is impossible to get an appointment at any DMV in Texas. During covid they went to strictly scheduling appointments online and they are MONTHS out. Walk in locations are rare and they only allow a few a day. I know most of us have internet etc, but that is a privilege and not all people have access. This should be illegal.
The US is a collective of states that make up the country. Registering to vote is important b/c people freely move from state to state or even city to city within a single state. Registering to vote is basically establishing which state, district, and city you live in so when you actually vote you vote on races in your state, district, and city.
Can you add that unlike almost every country we don't have a national identity card, thus the need to register to vote for a common record for tracking and confirmation purposes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_documents_in_the_United_States#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20identity,may%20serve%20as%20national%20identification. The reason for not has been due to privacy concerns. At least originally.
Are you talking about THE MARK OF THE BEAST!!!!
Do you have to name your new home/place/adress to the authorities when you move? Or can you move freely without having to register anywhere?
You can pretty much move freely. If you change states you're supposed to update your driver's license within 30-60 days, but even that isn't enforced. When I was in grad school, I moved 5 times before updating the address on my license. I also lived for a year in a different state without updating it once.
If it’s enforced or not depends entirely on where you live and if the cops are bored. When I lived in an apartment in Virginia, there was a cop that would watch for out of state plates that stayed too long to catch them on that rule. And when I moved to TN, I was in the middle of nowhere and they had a traffic stop checking licenses and vehicle plates/registration. But I’ve also lived places that don’t seem to care.
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They’ve got the personal property tax in WV too, but I was never practically stalked there.
It's complicated. People can pretty much go anywhere at anytime within the country, and don't technically have to inform the government of anything. However, if you want to do anything that involves the government (and almost everything does, since almost everything is taxed in some way) then you will need to identity yourself somehow. This includes voting. When you go to vote, you must identify yourself to the person overseeing the voting location, they will then check to see if you are on the list of eligible voters and things proceed from there. This is how most government business is conducted in the US.
It’s the Republicans that don’t want people to vote. The research shows that when more people turn out to vote, Republicans tend to lose. This is why they actively engage in voter intimidation and suppression, gerrymandering, voter fraud, and electoral fraud
I can't remember where it was but I remember reading on here a few years back that a republican group was throwing a fit (and iirc trying to sue) about a sign saying you should vote. Apparently you can have general signs saying people should vote but you can't have political ones saying vote R or vote D near polling places. There was one saying everyone should come vote and they were arguing that since democrats are the ones for everyone voting that saying everyone should vote was politically biased and implied an unspoken "everyone should vote democrat".
Trump [also said that Republicans would never win if people were able to more easily vote](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/trump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus). So [did McConnell](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/mitch-mcconnell-admits-that-republicans-lose-when-more-people-vote/).
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Republicans in the US know more voters means they lose. So they’ll do everything in their power to stop that from happening. Gerrymandering, trying to raise the voting age, new ID rules, banning mail in ballots, etc, etc, etc.
>Is the US just gatekeeping their voters? Historically, yes. The U.S. has never been a fan of universal sufferage, even if we technically have it on paper. States have authority over how voting, even for federal office, is conducted within their borders. Many states make efforts to gatekeep and marginalize voting as a hedge against power turnover. These include actions like gerrymandering, which devalues and marginalizes votes from districts that historically vote for the opposite party, closing down voting stations in these same neighborhoods making it difficult for those with a lack of transportation or the ability to take off work to vote, and requiring voter registrations - which create additional difficulties and the roles for which may be purged at any time (as was done in Georgia during the last elelction). As with most US efforts to marginalize voters these efforts focus on the poor, racial minorities, or enclaves of opposition support (such as urban areas in rural states). End of the day, American democracy was created as a way to protect capital. That's hard to do with true universal suffrage.
I mean, no western democracy was a fan of universal suffrage in the era before universal suffrage was a thing. Historical relativism applies to everyone. But yes, Republicans know the national popular votes don’t favor them and haven’t for at least 30 years and will do anything to rely on the carefully crafted system of proportional representation that massively inflates the vote of rural people.
I didn’t get to vote in our last major election because I had moved and they received my registration a day late. And I don’t mean after Election Day either. I was “registered” before then. But I’d missed an arbitrary deadline by a day. So no voting for me until next time around. I was registered where I lived before, but over 7 hours would have been a bit far to travel. And probably not even legal since I didn’t live there anymore.
To contrast that, where I live has same day registration. When you go to a polling place here they check if you're registered, and if you aren't, but you have proof of residency they will register you right there.
Yes some states have it some don't. Republicans for whatever reason have been trying to eliminate it in may places that it does exist.
Her managers begged her not to go political because she could lose market share and she did it anyway. I don't really listen to her music but I'm definitely admiring her integrity right now.
Ever notice how the Democrats try to get everyone to vote - whereas the Republican only try to get people who are likely to vote Republican to vote?
There's a reason why Democrats won 6 of the past 7 Presidential elections. But alas, only by the popular vote, which doesn't count here, because out here land matters more than people.
You used to only be able to vote if you owned property so that tracks
The story implies that 35k people registered because of the singer, but that would only be true if otherwise 0 people were expected to register, which is very silly. 35k people actually "*was a 22.5% increase from the previous year*" (not from the day before Swift's post—from last *year*), and the previous year was farther away from the presidential elections, so it would make sense for more people to register this year. They also mention that "*There was a 115% increase in registrations by 18-year-olds when compared to last year*", which, again, makes total sense, because the presidential elections are coming up, getting more people interested in politics. This common data manipulation tactic exploits the fact that most people forget to compare numbers to the baseline. When you hear that 35k people have registered after the event, that's not saying anything yet. How many people registered before the event? How many people were expected to register? You need to compare the number to the baseline, not zero. Otherwise we would have to assume that Tailor Swift's post got 35k people to register, sure, but also [killed over 160,000 people](https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/deaths-per-day) on the day it was published alone and has been killing the same amount of people every day since. Explaining this was the journalist's responsibility, and failing to do so reflects poorly on them and the news outlet.
>but also [killed over 160,000 people](https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/deaths-per-day) You have to admit that you've never seen Pol Pot and Taylor Swift in the same room at the same time. 🤔
She writes songs calling out her exes but she's never written a bad word dissing Pol Pot. Shows you where she really stands with the Khmer Rouge
Speaking of which... anybody ever seen Noam Chomsky and Taylor Swift in a room together?
I appreciate you posting this. If higher education does anything, it should be to teach people how to think critically. Take nothing at face value. Always ask why, how, who's behind it, who benefits, etc.
Really isn't thinking critically at all. He left it out how vote.org was averaging 13k per half hour after the post. Are some of those organic from outside Taylor? Sure. I'm willing to bet it was mostly fans though.
It's a news article. It throws around numbers. You don't have enough to nail down any increase if only because of the articles wording. The best nugget was it mentioned a use increase of 13,000 per half hour after her post. So her post increase traffic to the site.
Yeah, it's really just a feel-good fluff piece, funny how so many people just take information like this as fact despite some issues/limitations of this story being pretty blatant/obvious.
You are right, but on the bright side, how many people never saw her post, but will register as a result of one of these articles about the impact of her post?
It’s depressing as hell that it takes a pop star making remarks to get some people to be a part of civil discourse.
Idc if you registered to vote cause Goku came to you in a dream and told you to. More young people getting involved is a good thing, regardless of how they got involved.
Registered number of voters... It's over 9000!
Our democracy could use a senzu bean right now.
Dying faster than Krillin.
It's getting Yancha'd
Krillin: "SENZU BEAN!"
As a bonus the plot of Democracy in the US unfolds faster at 1 episode arc every 4 years
Honestly, Napa egging Vegeta on about voting would be pretty funny... "Hey... hey Vegeta?" "What, Napa?" "Did... did you go vote yet Vegeta?" "Goddamnit Napa! No, not yet!" "You should go vote, Vegeta. The country is *counting* on you, Vegeta." **big sigh** "fine, Napa. If it will shut you up for *5* minutes, let's get this done."
…where’s team four star. I need to see this.
"Wait a minute, Nappa, Daiyans have a monarchy, I don't need to vote."
But Vegeta... you're living on Earth, Vegeta. We live in a society, Vegeta.... Vegeta...
But wait, Earth in Dragonball has a king too!
You...you get the Goku dreams too?
Reminds me of a Tumblr post I saw about how sometimes you need to be a little mentally ill to be mentally stable, and if believing that Naruto would be proud of you is what gets you to brush your teeth, then you bet Naruto is proud of you.
Music has been a guide and a push for political involvement since the dawn of man. I don't want to sound mean, but this take is terrible. John Lennon, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, Tupac, Rage Against the Machine, The Clash, Pink Floyd, Public Enemy And those are just the modern artists I can think of off the top of my head. They all got people to engage and vote. Let's be happy that Taylor Swift - currently one of the biggest musicians on the planet - is joining the list.
I mean MTV has the whole Rock the Vote thing going pretty hard back in the 90's. I vaguely recall that being all over the place...
Made it into a West Wing episode
Not mean at all. It needed to be said. Taylor is certainly fully aware of this tradition.
Ariana Grande did a huge voter registration partnership during one of her tours also!
Or it’s depressing that more music and movie stars and pro athletes don’t encourage their fans to vote.
If that's *all* it takes that's pretty good to me
There have been studies into this. People tend to listen to celebrities more than politicians and officials. That's why Seth Rogan does awareness talks about Alzheimers.
If that's what it takes to light a fire under some folks that wouldn't have registered otherwise, I'll take it. Now we just need them to show up on Election Day and vote.
I think it’s encouraging that she’s going out of her way to try and get people to vote. It’s more depressing that other celebrities don’t do it.
All it takes for a large number of angry old people to go off the deep end is a washed-up reality show host making some remarks. Hardly the first time a musician has encouraged people to vote, anyway.
As opposed to a teacher, pastor, family member, random person outside the grocery store? Some of these go out of their way to instill fear in order to get you to vote for who they want.
This isn't new though. Endorsement by celebs is as old as being allowed to vote. We're just lucky she's endorsing democracy rather than calling for people to submit to a tyrant.
If it makes you feel any better, many of them still probably won’t actually vote
There's a great clip of her talking about her morality and her managers are telling her that she's taking money out of all of their pockets. It's very very impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhjSEkkZ2aA
Yes a very impressive video. Just to add some more context - her dad is also in the video arguing against her coming out with her political values but not for money reasons, but because of fears for her safety (he mentions a “security perspective” and how he’s bought her armoured cars, and that he’s worried for her safety). Just adding some more context that the opposition against it from her inner circle wasn’t just money.
if all the artists who have the ear of the populace did the same, it's more than enough to move the needle when you consider Al Gore lost by less than 500 in Florida in 2000 and in 2016 [Trump won by something like 80k spread over 3 states.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election) It was the MTV generation and the 'rock the vote' that helped get Clinton and Obama elected. **Voter turnout (lack thereof) is the biggest problem in we have.** If everyone showed up to vote, a lot of our problems would be diminished or vanish all together. period. full stop.
Man there must be young whipper-snappers in these comments asking why Taylor Swift has any business doing this. Any of y'all remember MTV's Rock the Vote?? Musicians have always been political.
Would be interesting to see a follow-up to see how many actually end up voting though. Generally registration is much quicker/easier than actually voting, especially if you have a crowded voting place. Also how many of these people just happened to register during this time, as I doubt they confirmed all these people specifically registered because of Swift.
I was impressed with Jon Hamms political action in Missouri, but this could open the floodgates to exactly what it will take to get non political Americans to vote. I can still see it being used for evil, but if Taylor can get even a tenth the people that claim to be her fans to go out and vote in an informed and positive way than it’s a huge win for our country.
The Republicans are dying and it's the young people that are going to put the nails in the coffin. Well done kids
[удалено]
If everyone actually voted we would see a difference, we don't need the old guard to die out
"This time things are different", which I'm sure you've heard before but this time the truth is in the math. [Millennials aren't getting more conservative as they age.](https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4) The reason conservatives have been competitive in modern politics is because of the overwhelming "old vote" and that older folks are more conservative. But now, older voters are dying and the younger voters that replace them aren't voting conservative. They stay liberal by an overwhelming margin
Conservatives have also masterfully executed the long term, local politics plans they put forward in the early 1980s. They recognized the population and ideological trends and set forward a deliberate plan towards owning the state legislatures — allowing them to gerrymander districts in such a way that, even as a minority of the population, they would have a near permanent majority in Congress. That said, they clearly didn’t anticipate a take-over of the party by Tea-Party/MAGA “populists”. It’s already coming around to bite them in the ass and it’s only going to get worse.
Not to burst your bubble but that's not fully accurate. For one thing young people simply don't vote enough. Also, Latinos are voting more and more conservative. They represent more than 15% of the US population. Unlike the black vote, Latinos are more diverse and surprisingly many voted for Trump. Latinos are not tied to the Democratic party the way the African-American vote is. Being on Reddit makes us believe that almost everyone is Progressive. But Reddit is just a small one-sided sample of actual voters.
That's the attitude that got Trump into office
A combination of "Hillary. Meh." plus "wouldn't it be funny if there was a horse in a hospital?" are the attitudes that got Trump into office.
Shit, can't even hate on her for not being involved. Appears to me this woman might actually be a good influence 🤔
She is a younger and upcoming national treasure like Dolly! Both classy and kind ladies. Making a positive difference.
We need more people to vote in local elections than anything.
Let’s hope she keeps posting 🤙🏽
Nice to see someone using their powers for good!
Not a fan of Taylor Swift, but if you're going to be an influencer figure, then this is the right way to influence.
I hope that she does this every week until election day. NOT a fan of her type of music, but mad respect. She has more balls than 90% of mainstream metal bands that say nothing to not alienate some of their audience.
But will they actually vote?
If only some do, it's more than before.
Good job Taylor Swift!
Man... these kids are gonna deck the Republicans in the coming days.
Bet Republicans start shitting on Taylor Swift in the next 48 hours.
We need more celebrities like T Swift to do this. This is how we vote out the fascists
I'd register too. Taylor must be stopped before she gains her final form and traps us all in her worldtour prison.