> Our voting system is tilted toward people with stable, conventional lives. And that, overwhelmingly, is who participates, producing a conservative bias in the status quo.

I uh

I mean I guess I'm mostly surprised because it's not necessarily as racist as the stuff Steve King usually says, but

If this wasn't all so terribly dangerous it'd be pretty sad

Oh right I forgot about this, so @Wipqozn technically we won't know anything until December

Happy Holidays

@TimStone yeah this would be a big deal for any other politician but this is a lukewarm take from steve king

…like why even lie?

The reporter pool also includes a few people from Fox but 🤷🏼‍♂️

damn

gotta start walking like a fremen on the open sands

lol 420

but seriously what a waste of taxpayer money

send the army's PR team to the border

> “Trump is not being honest with the American people about what these troops are going to be doing. When he talks about them, he creates this word picture for people that these troops are going to be hurling back invaders at the border, side by side with the border patrol,” retired Rear Adm. John Kirby, a former Defense Department spokesperson, said on CNN. “That’s just not the case. In fact, many of them will never even get close to the border.”

🤔

@TimStone what happened at fort wayne?

Not sure on the details, but someone also needing medical attention apparently

Which like, I dunno about omens but people passing out at consecutive rallies

lol, imagine believing that

@Unionhawk Twitter indicating he was shot earlier today, thought to still be alive?

@GodEmperorDune lol

@TimStone dukeupress.edu/the-right-to-maim

Okay I had forgotten that not only is Kemp the same guy who said Obama's DHS was hacking his state because someone visited their election website from a DHS computer but also he pointed a gun at a kid for fun

I mean same but I'm not a polling place

@TimStone III% has pledged to "defend the state" so

like

this is literally self-defense in #2

Indeed

@TimStone it's so weird and menacing

@TimStone yall better step it up then

tfw you're a sociopath I guess

lol

Ah yeah I'm sure only 115 accounts on your platform of over a billion are full of bullshit thanks folks

clears throat

🚨🚨🚨

BREAKING NEWS

@TimStone good boi

Soy boi

Seriously though I wonder who that last 6% is

I think we have to hold him to that

@TimStone so we would have rivers cuomo and river cuomo?

lol, excellent

thread has some analysis

@TimStone wait what

WEll snap

Don't make that happen

@Unionhawk So, explain your "that's probably a crime" statement

Are you saying it's illegal for a non-US citizen to encourage US citizens to go and vote?

Some countries actually do have laws about non-citizens making political statements, but I think he was referring to making that statement in The Bridge

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure why I made that statement to begin with now that I think about it Just a random "please go vote" when most of the political discussion so far happened in here probably does more harm than good

I'm pretty almost all of the American Bridgers were already planning to vote anyways

yeah, I'm pretty sure of that myself

Hidden camera reveals how bank employees mislead and upsell on pricey credit card insurance: cbc.ca/news/business/…

@Nzall as in voting again would be a crime

lol

@Unionhawk oh right, you voted early?

Ye

Chat, what happened to us. There's a week old starred message that's still in the the list with only 2 stars!

@Unionhawk Are there any states where a DSA candidate is being a spoiler candidate?

or did you have the common sense in all locations to not let the DSA candidate run his own list in case they didn't win the democratic primary?

Oh wait this is this is fine

@Kevin that's pretty common for this room

@Kevin rekt

You mean you rekt yourself by being so slow in your response

@Nzall ...

@Unionhawk sorry, my question was probably phrased poorly

@TimStone alot

this is a community acting in self defense

lol dave reuben is apparently still doing the "im not conservative" act after literally telling people to vote republican

@TimStone I thought the black panthers resolved in the 80s

I mean it's breitbart so not like they're even anything close to reality

the FBI murdered Fred Hampton in 1969

but

Also TIL the black panthers were very progressive on woman's rights and gender equality

Most of it anyways. Sounds like an Oakland chapter wasn't at all

they also had a solid community outreach program among other things

They also provided group child care for members

ye

November Is Lebanese Heritage Month In Nova Scotia

I was trying to find a non-radio station news link, BUT WHATEVER

Pretty cool. I'm always glad when the gov't takes steps to help spread cultural awareness.

It was pouring rain going into the voting place but it stopped as soon as I voted so you know the gods are appeased or whatever

did you put the sacrificial goat into the correct ballot?

I did

Internet traffic from Washington DC routed through China Telecom for 2.5 years due to them taking advantage of outdated routing protocols

@puzzlepiece87 How does nobody notice the huge pings associated with two trans-pacific journeys?

@MBraedley No idea. I suppose common sense monitoring costs money. If it was happening to me, I wouldn't notice either. The list of things I would blame for poor connection speed first would include deep breath:

We're talking an additional ping time of at least 100ms. Any gamer would notice that.

8. The ISP throttling me, those bastards.

Unless that was 2; maybe that's an ISP I haven't heard of.

@InvaderSkoodge Yuppp

@InvaderSkoodge That's my ISP yeah.

There's 1M and one things I would blame before Chinese spying lol.

ISPs are the worst.

I'm not saying I wouldn't notice the slow speeds, just that two transAtlantic trips are not where I would start my investigation.

traceroute wouldn't be the last thing on my list to try, though, and that would probably show it

@InvaderSkoodge Nice, you're better than me :)

Also, given the state of IT security in the US, someone probably did report it and the people receiving the report:

@MBraedley One of the reasons I can think of is that there are certain people who knew the entire time. And one of the quirks of internet routing and digital surveillance is that any traffic that is routed outside of the country at any point becomes a lot easier to be legally scooped up by certain intelligence agencies.

We've thrown people in prison for accessing publicly accessible directories, etc.

cough cough NSA cough CIA cough

@Yuuki Did you read the story?

I'm more speaking to US domestic digital surveillance laws than foreign surveillance.

The ways certain laws are written mean that any data that is transferred outside of US borders even if both endpoints are wholly within US borders are open to surveillance by domestic intelligence agencies.

@puzzlepiece87 Look if we just don't talk about how messed up BGP is then maybe it'll be fine

🤷

Um

that sounds legal as shit

Ah, well

"Yeah we're cancelling the exercise at the last minute that we sprung on everyone right before the last minute no I'm sure this won't cause any confusion or issue"

@Yuuki Sure, but routing all internet traffic from the nation's capital through one of our top two adversaries... You're making a good point but it's pretty disconnected from the original story MBraedley was commenting on, in my opinion.

I'm not saying anyone inside the US did it on purpose, but I wouldn't be surprised if a US agency knew about the routing problems and was so short-sighted that they ignored the fact that data was being sent to China in favor of "oh hey, we can legally snoop on this senator/representative that's critical of our operations now". Equally dumb things have happened, IIRC.

But yeah this is all completely dumb speculation.

@Yuuki That's true, equally dumb things have definitely happened. However, MBraedley was talking about all of the victims. The gamers, the Verizon folks, literally anyone who could have run a traceroute. Unless we're going in on the CIA hushing them all up xD But yeah, I like your semi-related point in general.

I suppose. I interpreted "nobody" as more of a general nobody as in literally anyone in the US.

Ah okay, fair enough.

So out of curiosity, how does everyone's ballots work?

In my district it's a large easel that has the laminated ballot put over top, then you press the squares next to your choice and they light up, then there's a big green Vote button at the bottom of the device that locks it in

Paper ballots in MO. Fill in the bubbles with a special marker, scan-tron style.

Stick through a reader machine and pick up your sticker

Heh, someone complaining about the ballot reader rejecting their ballot before it even got to the part where it looks at the choices was what prompted my question, incidentally

@TimStone Electronic voting machine. Scroll wheel that rotates through all the choices, you press a button to vote, and it changes it to Republican at the end.

lol

That does seem so unnecessary

How many races do you have to vote for?

harrisvotes.com/SampleBallot/VoterBallot/E/0439-171.pdf

Oh, you also have pagination buttons. Each page represents one race.

Ahh, wow

Oh wow, one of the county judge candidates has a really unfortunate name: Christine Riddle Butts.

That must've been a terrible childhood.

I think we vote for school stuff at a different time, we don't vote for judges, and we have no ballot measures (I'm not sure if we just don't happen to have them or it's just not a thing in DE)

There's a candidate here whose last name is Simpler but unfortunately he's Republican because "Let's make things Simpler" is such an easy campaign slogan

@TimStone electronic with touch screen, including printed paper audit

I think you can demand a paper ballot though

Remember to vote, y’all

@TwitterSafety,,,thank's

Ah, yet, I see they are still employed, hm 🤔

@TimStone as in we addressed a large bonus to hannity for keeping trump fans engaged with our content

@GodEmperorDune Exactly. They hardly even pretend any more

@TimStone They sure are having a lot of polling issues today

@Wipqozn a lot of it is as much incompetence as much as malice. (though using ancient machines that are tricky to use and/or not properly staffing up or funding elections is sticking a toe into malicious territory imo)

@TimStone we used to have a sheet with numbered bubbles and you filled in the numbered bubble corresponding to what you wanted to vote for. Now we have these large printed ballots with the question/candidate/whatever thing printed right there and the bubble right under it so it's less difficult to mess up

@GodEmperorDune The worst part is that in this case I'm not even sure because this is Georgia and also the county (I think?) where Kemp's folks magically lost early voting ballots

our ballot is 5 pages long (3 pieces of paper because yay for saving things)

@GodEmperorDune Just curious how much incompetence and apathy you need to add up to malice?

@BradC doing it differently in republican leaning precincts vs dem leaning precincts would be straight malice imo

the entire state being shitty at elections as a type of bureaucratic friction that discourages young or less privileged people from voting.... more borderline

still a thing that needs to be changed but more likely following old systemic issues so i'm not going to call it actively malicious

@GodEmperorDune 5 pages wtf. Canadian ones are about the size of a flash card.

How is it 5 pages?

I don't understand

2 pages in MO

@Wipqozn we have a lot of things to vote for this cycle

and they are printed in larger, easier to read font

Front page: national, state, local candidates, including county boards, and a lot of local court judges

the only huge ballots we have are local elections in some states. But we also don't vote for all kinds of other positions

i'm trying to find an example online but i can only find the old, shitty system

Back page: state and county ballot initiatives

@GodEmperorDune okay that all makes sense.

My last ballot had 2 pages (one was longer than a typical A4 page). One for the main election, with 2 votes. And then another page with proposed changes to the constitution, which is an extremely rare thing

@TimStone @BradC I'm in MO too, same thing except we also have an option to vote electronically. I take paper every time.

this was the old ballot style (bubble on a separate sheet)

I think I had, like ~25 "people"/races to vote on? Plus like 8 ballot initiatives, some of which had really long paragraphs

that one is 10 pages but they are tiny pages

aha, it seems the discrepancy is vote by mail vs vote in person

that official ballot is the in person one

the by mail one is here

lavote.net/docs/rrcc/media/New-VBM_Factsheet.pdf

and for @Wipqozn's y tho questions, the FAQ for why they changed it

lavote.net/docs/rrcc/media/New-VBM-FAQs.pdf

and if voter instructional video is more your jam

Just fantasize with me for a minute here: Wednesday, after Democrats have a solid showing in the midterms, Mueller issues felony indictments for Jared, Don Jr, and Ivanka.

that would be awesome

Bloomberg: Now, It's the Midterms. But Mueller Time Is Coming.

Washington Post: Buckle up. The Mueller investigation may once again take center stage.

Vanity Fair: “I'm Very Worried About Don Jr.”: Forget the Midterms—West Wing Insiders Brace for the Mueller Storm

Old news but it made npr

@BradC That would be so beautiful

@TimStone how can texas fuck this up so much?

@TimStone What the fuck

@TimStone I honestly don't understand. Aren't they legally required to have a ballot for everyone registered?

lol

I mean I do understand, but it's fucked this can happen

Voter disenfranchisement in action

I suspect these folks probably came out yo vote for the first time too, and will now never vote again

clears throat AMERRRRRRRRRRICA

@TimStone Accurate

Thanks for making me feel much better about our own system though

Counterpoint though if we go down we're probably taking Canada with us

God I hope he loses. If only one unexpected race goes for Dems, let it be that one

I mean screw Ted Cruz too but

"Ah, voters, actually, f you"

> Despite the fallout from the video, Guzman told the publication she did not step down from her post due to the incident but because she felt Davis’s office failed to provide backup when she alerted authorities about the incident.

I dunno what you need LSD for I already feel pretty detached from reality

overall this sounds like a legal as shit election

complete with a border patrol exercise in some texas neighborhood iirc

@Unionhawk nah they cancelled it

LEGAL AS SHIT

we need fuckin president marudo to come and monitor our elections like president carter did for him

So weird a lot of these more egregious failures are happening in the state where the guy running the election is running in the election

(and found it to be democratic)

How hard is it to move to Canada? I imagine I need some reason other than "this place is fucked please help me get away".

former justice roberts thank you for your service (by voting to gut the VRA)

wouldn't you test stuff the day before or something like that if you use voting machines?

@MadScientist Not if you want them to fail.

@InvaderSkoodge I mean isn't that what applying for asylum is?

americans cannot apply for asylum in canada

Since I'm already married to someone who is not a Canadian citizen, I imagine I don't qualify for that one.

Why is it so hard to just move to a part of the world that sounds better? :(

Everyone and everything is bad

#optimism

@Ash Just punch the border

@Ash You should just have to take a niceness test tbh

The idea that the migrant caravan is some kind of Democrat conspiracy is hilarious to me given that immigration is probably one of Trump's (and the Republicans') strongest issues and that the Democrats were doing perfectly fine in voter sentiment before the caravan became news.

It would have been SOO MUCH EASIER if either the Mongols of the Romans didn't have their empire collapse

Then again, I guess the Democrats sabotaging themselves is perhaps a running theme so maybe there's some truth to it.

@Yuuki They're not saying the Democrats did it to get more votes, they're saying it's to undermine the nation with all of that crime those women and children are going to be doing

Like it wouldn't be easier to undermine the nation by controlling the legislature?

@Yuuki No, the implication is that they can't win the elections so they're going to undermine it through underhanded ways

so their message is 1) the democrats aren't winning the way they're saying they are; 2) they're looking for alternative ways to fight against us; 3) they've known this for over a month and their only chance is to send an invasion army

or summarized

The democrats are 1) weaker; 2) desperate and 3) underhanded

I suppose "weaker" would also explain why the invasion army consists of only 7,000 people.

Or at least that's the number I've heard bandied about.

Wait, there's a controversy over the ability to kill KKK members in Red Dead Redemption 2?

Is this the Wolfenstein thing all over again?

It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to scare the racist elements of their base enough to get them out to the polls

@Yuuki yes

@Yuuki yes

"Video games were a mistake." - Hayao Miyazaki Shigeru Miyamoto

@Yuuki i thought the controversy was that people were harassing suffragette NPCs in RDR 2

@GodEmperorDune haha like gamers would find offense at that

> Red Dead Redemption 2 allows you to kill KKK members without penalty. Some on /r/gaming wonder if Rockstar's gone too far with the murdering

thread

@Yuuki oh controversy on /r/gaming

yeah this was a thing in my TL

This is because I am the sheriff in the cowboy skyrim game

your welcome

mostly "brogamers feel free to keep showing how manly you are by harassing female NPCs"

@Yuuki I learned about it via the same thread

It's just ugh

@Yuuki work filter blocked for adult material, yikes

@UN please investigate these illegitimate "elections"

@Nzall yeah i've heard of moist ballots in NC too

Voter suppression is one of those things where I'm like "what are you supposed to do"? Outside of revolution, of course.

Kinda hard to vote the suppressing party out of office when they're suppressing the vote.

@Yuuki direct action

organize, fight, get the CIA to overth--

hm wait

hassle them everywhere

protest official offices, heckle them out in public

voting is just one tool in a larger toolbox

@Yuuki Ideally you should be able to sue or press charges against government officials or the state itself

Wasn't the GOP actually charged and found guilty of that acouple years ago...?

so there's precedent

I mean obviously it doesn't happen enough if it does, since well frankly most of the GOP should be in jail for it by this point

we need a new federal voting rights act that makes it a fucking

federal crime to run the election and also run in it

god dammit

why is this allowed

@Wipqozn i personally am losing faith in the courts, seeing as how they are being packed

@Unionhawk because the system is set up to lock in the status quo and protect the powerful as well as incumbents?

thanks in part to senate minority leader deals

@Unionhawk mainly due to cocaine mitch blocking obama's judicial appointments for years

this is also true, but this congress has approved more than bush too

@Unionhawk Does kind of seem like that should be the bare minimum as far as not-allowed shit goes

@Unionhawk yeah because there were a lot of vacancies at the beginning

because obama couldn't name replacements

@TimStone yeah we need laws to prevent this stuff that founders assumed "voters wouldn't ignore this egregious thing"

everyone remain calm, yes the american democracy is wholly illegitimate, but you hsould voice your opinion at the ballot box

like god intended

@GodEmperorDune Like Kobach used his position to usurp the (replacement) sitting GOP governor seems like this whole scheme doesn't actually benefit anyone except the assholes pulling it

@GodEmperorDune Due to the humidity no less, love when seasonally inappropriate weather influences the election

@TimStone climate change yo

Just amazing

@TimStone lol

canada i expected better, eh

"We're so not litigious that we're suing you for claiming we are"

> Maybe we could setup blockchain voting like crypto mining. Set a predetermined number of votes, divisible to 8 decimal places. Then everyone could place their vote by mining it. If your computer isn't powerful enough, then you could mine a fraction of a vote. Or if you don't have a computer...never mind, you're poor, you don't matter anyway.

@puzzlepiece87 dafuq is this?

Blockchain-based voting would destroy public trust in elections.

> If you talk to experts on election security they'll tell you that we're nowhere close to being ready for online voting. "Mobile voting is a horrific idea," said election security expert Joe Hall when I asked him about a West Virginia experiment with blockchain-based mobile voting back in August. But on Tuesday, The New York Times published an opinion piece claiming the opposite.

@GodEmperorDune Basically, the NYT continues to be absolutely hamstrung by its shitty op-eds and Nazi sympathy pieces.

@puzzlepiece87 it bothers me so much that NYT has some excellent reporters on staff but keeps fucking up in other areas, like op-eds

@GodEmperorDune Likewise.

we were all rooting for you.gif

@GodEmperorDune yeah that's why I said ideally because, well, yeah

🤔

> Republican House members Chris Collins of New York (80 percent) and Duncan Hunter of California (82 percent) and Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey (94 percent) are all favored to win re-election, even though all three have been indicted in corruption probes.

Yeah, Democrats definitely should have strongly pressured Menendez not to run for re-election

the overturning of his conviction by the supreme court was a joke

they protect their own

or bob knows where actual bodies are buried

probably

"Well, if you can't find a signed, notarized contract where he is explicitly trading official government preference for specifically named gifts, then its not actually corruption, per se

What a joke

fwiu the NJ machine is pretty impenetrable

as is the case virtually everywhere

> Emmanuel Macron calls for creation of a ‘true European army’ to defend against Russia and the US

:/

@TimStone The administration is pioneering a new proximity-based governmental structure. First it was Mar-a-Lago and now we're getting to AirBNB at Zinke's house.

@Yuuki ummm wat

@GodEmperorDune source

> “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America,” Mr Macron told France’s Europe 1 radio in an interview.