brought refreshments to voters in line - and some saw that as giving gifts to sway voters. (Black Voters Matter delivered pizza..)
Not allowing water seems petty. The new GA voting bill supposedly tries to change things so that there are not long voting lines - which is apparently an issue in GA in metro areas.
Oh, didn't even register there was a question there! haha
Why no water? Hmm. Conservation is the reason. There are people in Africa with no clean water to drink. We should be conserving water, and you gotta start somewhere.
Georgia, where at least two counties had problems with electronic pollbooks, is latest state to see extremely long lines on first day of in person voting
For a lot of people, it's difficult to find the time to vote. Not everyone can turn around and vote some other day. I know I voted early in VA and waited hours just because of the you never know factor, didn't want something to go wrong on election day and not vote. Hopefully, GA expanding weekend voting will compensate for the blatantly horrible parts of the law.
Only thing banned are cheesedick politicians going around the lines in their t-shirt, hat, and 10 pieces of flare handing you a branded water bottle with their name and mug on it while saying "remember big bob took care of you when you get in there!"
In this scenario you have people waiting hours in line to vote, so it must be pretty important to them to have their voice heard, but then someone rolls up with a free bottle of water and they're like, "Guess I'm switching parties!"
The problem is the line, not the water bottle. You could kill two birds with one stone and just shorten the line.
There are people who check party line boxes without knowing 3/4 of the candidates they're voting for, or people who vote for someone simply because they have a catchy name.
If "rethinking democracy" means passing a basic candidate knowledge quiz to vote than let's talk, but I suspect that would go over like a fart in church.
I'm not saying the bar for democracy is high, I'm just saying it's not so low that someone will be swayed by being given a bottle of water. And this is especially true in a scenario where someone might want a bottle of water because they're determined to wait in line for hours just to vote.
I don't live in Georgia, I don't plan to live in Georgia, so who gives a crap about bottles of water? I'm just saying it's pretty obvious what they're doing and the only defense seems to be, "I don't care if they make it illegal because I wasn't going to do that anyway." Strange position for conservatives. And one reason you wouldn't do that anyway is because you likely don't live in a district that has voting lines you have to stand in for hours.
I don't get why we're acting like this is making it harder
Mar 26, 2021, 2:58 PM
to vote....it's feigned outrage. Surely they did something in the bill more egregious than water.
Here in TN, you aren't allowed to campaign within a few hundred feet of the building, so when you pull into the school parking lot there are signs, people waving like they care, balloons and tents, but you get to the parking space and make it from there throughout the voting process unaccosted. No one can do anything to attempt to sway your vote once you're on the grounds. I don't see how this is different.
Now if you're telling me that hypothetically a line could be a half mile long and someone can't hand you whatever water they want to prior to you getting within that radius, then yeah, that's an overreach.
You think I'm pretending to have angst about this for some reason. I don't feel particularly fired up about this issue. It's pretty obvious what's going on and it's unsurprising. Plus I'm really just burning up the last few minutes of a Friday afternoon at work.
This water bottle stuff by itself isn't some big hindrance to voting, but it's part of a larger tapestry of efforts by Republicans to restrict the ability of likely Democratic voters to vote. If their efforts are successful there's going to be a flashpoint down the road where a small minority has control over a government that's totally out of step with the majority and it won't end well.
From what I've observed Republican politicians don't see the long term ramifications of their actions, just the short term benefits. They gerrymandered voting districts so they'd be safe for Republicans and it worked, except now instead of worrying about Democrats to their left they're worried about hyperconservatives to their right. They didn't see that coming somehow and they certainly haven't learned a lesson because they're still doing it.
The Republican platform is becoming increasingly unpopular and there's no indication that's gonna change. Their only options are to change their platform, which they refuse to do, or prevent people from voting, so they're going to prevent people from voting. And all that does is buy them some time.
It's gonna work out ok for me either way. I'll just have some delayed gratification.
The whole "lie" the GOP is running with to push and pass this and other similar legislation is one as Sidney Powell admits, "no reasonable person would believe." So, I'd really like an explanation by other conservatives that either support this bill or believe in the "lie" how you have compartmentalized being "unreasonable" in order to publically push this antidemocratic agenda?
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