Vote Please - Tumblr Posts
If you live in Ohio, today is a good day to check your voter registration, and to consider booting JD Vance into the sun.
Jesus fucking christ please fucking vote please vote against these nazis PLEASE
I can never tell which of my posts are going to explode (it is never ones I put work in) but I pray to God this one does
The past few weeks I have seen an explosion in doomerism and defeatism about Trump. Some people seem to have just decided to call the election for him for reasons that don't even make much sense
(He was almost shot and that always helps! Look at Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt! Reagan was already president and incredibly popular, and the shooting happened 2 months into his first term; Roosevelt was shot when he was campaigning in 1912....in an election he lost)
Trump has never been popular, he has never won the popular vote, and he has never had popular support. For the past 3 years, especially post Roe V. Wade, Democrats have increasingly overperformed especially in special elections. There were so many polls predicting 2022 would be a Red Wave, that turned out to be false due to faulty and biased polling. I'm not saying a Dem loss is impossible, but it is a lot less of a sure thing than the doomsayers are making it out to be
How does Trump win? Apathy. Despair. Low Turn Out. While many of the "Trump is guaranteed to win" posters I'm sure are real people who are justifiably scared, I think we underestimate just how many are people at home and abroad, who want a lower turnout, who want Trump to win.
I used to hear a joke growing up that "If voting did anything, they would make it illegal" Well considering how hard Republicans are trying to discourage voting and making it hard to do, it must do something.
Don't despair. Don't panic. Don't retreat. ACT
So what can you do?
Are you registered to vote? đł
You can register to vote here! âď¸
Do you know what/ who will be on your ballot? đ
Do you know your state voting requirements? đĽ
Do you know your polling location? đ
Can you vote early? đ
Can you vote by mail? đŹ
Do you need disability services for voting? âżď¸
Do you need to know your voterâs rights? đ§đ˝ââď¸
Do you need a ride to register/ vote?
Spread this far and wide. Tell your friends and your family. Make clear to them what is at stake if Trump wins.
Additionally, here are two volunteer organizations that I help out with
Vote Forward - write letters to encourage turnout
Working Family's Party - an organization working to help progressives win in primaries and general elections. I particularly like working in their text bank program. Want to help in a phone bank but don't like talking on the phone? this is perfect as you send texts to encourage support and voting
Spread this far and wide. Tell your friends and your family. Make clear to them what is at stake if Trump wins. Feel free to add other resources and organizations that
Not voting at all is a vote for Trump. Voting third party is a vote for Trump. Voting for trump is a vote for a fascist state, a vote against marginalized people, a vote against the rights of POC, queer people, and women. If you want to see broader change in the US system, it isn't going to happen if Trump gets reelected. Go out and fucking vote in November, and don't damn your fellow Americans and future generations to the nigh-on irreversible ramifications of another Trump term. Vote for the Democratic nominee. I don't give a fuck if you don't like them even by half; you'll like America under a second Trump term even less.
Vote blue. I'm begging you
No fault divorce allows women to escape abusive husbands. Making this unlawful tells you EVERYTHING you need to know about Republicans.
Christian fascists have no place in government.
Human rights are trans rights. You don't take away a human right using a personal phobia.
Vote Blue. đđđ
Among the other things that seem to pop out of nowhere, I hear that Harris is apparently "very pro-cop" as a reason why we shouldn't vote for her. I would like some clarification about that and also maybe reasons why we should be voting for her, just for the naysayers.
The Kamala cop thing comes from her jobs as San Francisco District Attorney and California Attorney General, and the fact that Kamala and Cop have a kind of ring to them.
the fact that Harris had worked on enforcing the law was used against her in the height of "Defund the Police" but ultimately was pretty unfair, just quickly I found an article from a public defender about Harris progressive record to be short as both DA and AG she fought to scale back incarceration, she refused to seek the death penalty, she wouldn't prosecute marijuana possession cases (back in 2004), as DA along with then Mayor of San Fran Gavin Newsom she took part in the city's short lived gay marriage moment in 2004
here she is in 2004 marrying a nice Lesbian couple, over 10 years before gay marriage would be legal nation wide and 8 years before President Obama announced her supported it.
Harris put a particular stress on prosecuting sex criminals, rapists and human traffickers, and well
"She Prosecuted Sex Predators, He is One"
thats the answer, every time.
normally i wouldnât make a post like this, but i hope at least some people will see it:
from this NYT article
from this WSJ article
just so everyone has the information.
Since folks are exhausted from hearing about Project 2025 and Agenda 47, here are some reasons to feel hopeful about Harris
(It would be wonderful if folks could reblog this, a lot of people are feeling very discouraged right now and could use the morale boost!)
"I live in a red state my vote doesn't ma-"
If your vote didn't matter they wouldn't try so hard to make it harder to vote in red states. Voting in red states can turn them into swing states like Georgia, Ohio, and Arizona. And voting in blue states can keep them from becoming swing states.
California used to be Red. Texas was Blue long ago. Florida was once a swing state. Obama took Indiana but it's gone redder since. Ten years ago Arizona and Georgia going blue was unthinkable.
Things change and we can make them change.
And that's before getting into more local elections. Turning cities blue, the state legislature.
Red states have flipped blue in recent years at those levels too.
Because people vote, and if we vote in high enough numbers we can turn a tight election into a walk in the park. If we vote in high enough numbers, we can turn a loss into a win. So many good things have happened in states where someone won by like 100 votes. (arizona is one)
When people are urging you to vote, when we're saying democracy is on the line, that sometimes gets accused of "catastrophizing" or that people are trying to manipulate you into voting--as if hoping people will vote and defend their right to vote is a bad thing--but here is Trump yet again making it clear he plans to end democracy. He's saying it even more clearly and loudly.
âChristians, get out and vote, just this time...you wonât have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you wonât have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians...I love you Christians. Iâm not a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you donât have to vote again, weâll have it fixed so good youâre not going to have to voteâ
The orange face toner autocratic garbage candidate literally has intentions to end democracy and it matters to prevent him from winning this election, it is literally a situation where if he wins this election, democracy will be endangered.
It does matter if you vote.
It is absolutely unhinged and alarming that the GOP candidate is talking about how people won't need to vote any more and that it's a wonderful thing.
Y'all I did NOT know this about Harris, and I think itâs really critical that we all listen and understand as we approach this election. Video at the end.
This creatorâs video describes how progressive Harris was as a prosecutor â actively going against the grain to the point she was accused of being soft on crime. Accused of being a social worker, not a prosecutor. She calls it being smart on crime. Sheâs pushing for systemic changes to give real pathways to reintegrate incarcerated folks back into society and prevent their past from continuing to haunt them moving forward.
âKamalaâs a copâ is a catchy dismissive response usually used to shut down conversation rather than add nuance. But this kind of reform is ESSENTIAL to work towards a present and future that treats incarcerated people with value.
I fell for it in 2020 and have thought âKamalaâs a copâ without further inspection since - and Iâm sobered by the realization that (you guessed it!) Iâm not immune to propaganda.
A better system only follows liberal democracy, because library democracy allows for exploration of better systems. If authoritarianism takes hold, it will not allow for the exploration of better systems. We will have to fight tooth and nail just to try to get back to liberal democracy, and I suspect we could not achieve it in our lifetimes.
Harris isnât perfect. But sheâs a hell of a lot better than many leftists have led me to believe. Donât let perfection be the enemy of good. Donât let perfection be the enemy of harm reduction.
We can either help elect Trump and usher in authoritarian fascism, or we can help defeat him and pull things back in the direction we want to go. Not liking the choices doesnât absolve you from participating and doing the most good you can with the options available.
Iâll link the original video in the replies. The original video has captions if you need them.
As much as we talk about the importance of actually fucking voting in the presidential election, I cannot stress enough that voting down-ballot is just as important, and probably more so. Getting a Democrat in the White House won't affect shit if the offices beneath them are staffed with Project 2025 cheerleaders.
So. Courtesy of my favourite political barometer Beau, here's three sites you can use to figure out which politicians are going to more accurately represent you -- or which politicians you need to start a letter-writing campaign to make them get off a particular horse.
Ballotpedia: https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page
VoteSmart: https://justfacts.votesmart.org/
OpenSecrets: https://www.opensecrets.org/research-tools
I strongly recommend watching Beau's video I linked there, because he breaks down what the different sites are good for and how they're best used.
I see posts going "Okay, I'll vote for Kamala, I GUESS IF I HAVE TO" and "omg if that's the best we can do I suppose I'll support it" and I'm like...
What do you people fucking WANT?
Let's run down how she's rated politically by some organizations that we vibe with, kay?
ACLU = 93% on civil liberties
AFL-CIO = 100% on trade unions
Human Rights Campaign = 100% on queer rights
League of Conservation Voters = 91% on environmentalism
NARAL = 100% on reproductive rights
NRA Fund = 7% on gun rights (we LIKE a low score on this one)
NEA = 100% on education
Planned Parenthoos = 100% on reproductive rights
In addition, GovTrack (which is a nonpartisan tracker) places her in the MOST politically left-leaning categories of Senators. So we've got a very liberal, woman of color who's spent her career trying to mitigate draconian tough-on-crime laws to benefit the accused and keep black people out of prison and decrease recidivism and that's somehow...just barely tolerable.
So I ask again...what is that you're dissatisfied with? Is it Palestine? as recently as March she was calling for a ceasefire and demanding aid to Gaza. Keep in mind she's pretty constrained as to what's possible to do in this situation.
Is it just that she was a prosecutor? That is an important job that needs to be done and we WANT people doing it who aren't rah-rah tough-on-crime Gestapo types, which she is not. We need prosecutors who are addressing the root causes of crime and looking for ways to help people escape the cycle, which she has done to the point that she was often called SOFT on crime.
So what is your objection here? Is it that her politics aren't 100% aligned with a bunch of Tumblr socialists? I got news for you...we Tumblr socialists DO NOT REPRESENT THE ELECTORATE. If such a candidate existed, they would not win.
Democrats struggle sometimes because our tent is large. Republicans just want you if you're a straight white man and preferably rich. There's room for a lot more types in the lefty side, but sadly that means a lot of room also for dissention among the ranks. This is how they get us. Let's not let them, huh? Just a suggestion.
Check out this article where Michelle Bishop explains how to navigate access barriers to voting and how the National Disability Rights Network can help.
people think they shouldn't vote as a protest or whatever because they've been raised on boycotts. which do sometimes work.
boycotts deprive the target of money.
not voting does not deprive the government of money.
it does, however, deprive you of power.
it's not like a boycott.
The discussions around whether or not to vote for Kamala keep being dominated by very loud voices shouting that anyone who advocates for her âjust doesnât care about Palestine!â and âis willing to overlook genocide!â and âhas no moral backbone at all!â And while some of these voices will be bots, trolls, psyops - we know that this happens; we know that trying to persuade progressives to split the vote or not vote at all is a strategy employed by hostile actors - of course many of them wonât be. But what this rhetoric does is continually force the âyou should vote for herâ crowd onto the back foot of having to go to great lengths writing entire essays justifying their choice, while the âdonât vote/vote third partyâ crowd is basically never asked to justify their choice. It frames voting for Kamala as a deeply morally compromised position that requires extensive justification while framing not voting or voting third party as the neutral and morally clean stance.
So hereâs another way of looking at it. How much are you willing to accept in order to feel like youâre not compromising your morals on one issue?
Are you willing to accept the 24% rise in maternal deaths - and 39% increase for Black women - that is expected under a federal abortion ban, according to the Centre for American Progress? Those percentages represent real people who are alive now who would die if the folks behind Project 2025 get their way with reproductive healthcare.
Are you willing to accept the massive acceleration of climate change that would result from the scrapping of all climate legislation? We donât have time to fuck around with the environment. A gutting of climate policy and a prioritisation of fossil fuel profits, which is explicitly promised by Trump, would set the entire world back years - years that we donât have.
Are you willing to accept the classification of transgender visibility as inherently âpornographicâ and thus the removal of trans people from public life? Are you willing to accept the total elimination of legal routes for gender-affirming care? The people behind the Trump campaign want to drive queer and trans people back underground, back into the closet, back into âcriminalityâ. This will kill people. And itâs maddening that caring about this gets called âprioritising white gays over brown people abroadâ as if itâs not BIPOC queer and trans Americans who will suffer the most from legislative queer- and transphobia, as they always do.
Are you willing to accept the domestic deployment of the military to crack down on protests and enforce racist immigration policy? Iâm sure itâs going to be very easy to convince huge numbers of normal people to turn up to protests and get involved in political organising when doing so may well involve facing down an army deployed by a hardcore authoritarian operating under the precedent that nothing he does as president can ever be illegal.
Are you willing to accept a president who openly talks about wanting to be a dictator, plans on massively expanding presidential powers, dehumanises his political enemies and wants the DOJ to âgo after themâ, and assures his supporters they wonât have to vote again? If you canât see the danger of this staring you right in the face, I donât know what to tell you. Allowing a wannabe dictator to take control of the most powerful country on earth would be absolutely disastrous for the entire world.
Are you willing to accept an enormous uptick in fascism and far-right authoritarianism worldwide? The far right in America has huge influence over an entire international network of âanti-globalistsâ, hardcore anti-immigrant xenophobes, transphobic extremists, and straight-up fascists. Success in America aids and emboldens these people everywhere.
Are you willing to accept an enormous number of preventable deaths if America faces a crisis in the next four years: a public health emergency, a natural disaster, an ecological catastrophe? We all saw how Trump handled Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. We all saw how Trump handled Covid-19. He fanned the flames of disaster with a constant flow of medical misinformation and an unspeakably dangerous undermining of public health experts. Itâs estimated that 40% of US pandemic deaths could have been avoided if the death rates had corresponded to those in other high-income countries. That amounts to nearly half a million people. One study from January 2021 estimated between around 4,200 and 12,200 preventable deaths attributable purely to Trumpâs statements about masks. Weâre highly unlikely to face another global pandemic in the next few years but who knows what crises are coming down the pipeline?
Are you willing to accept the attempted deportation of millions - millions - of undocumented people? This is ârounding people up and throwing them into camps where no one ever hears from them againâ territory. Thatâs a blueprint for genocide right there and itâs a core tenet of both Trumpâs personal policy and Project 2025. And of course they wouldnât be going after white people. They most likely wouldnât even restrict their tyranny to people who are actually undocumented. Anyone racially othered as an âimmigrantâ would be at risk from this.
Are you willing to accept not just the continuation of the current situation in Palestine, but the absolute annihilation of Gaza and the obliteration of any hope for imminent peace? There is no way that Trump and the people behind him would not be catastrophically worse for Gaza than Kamala or even Biden. Only recently he was telling donors behind closed doors that he wanted to âset the [Palestinian] movement back 25 or 30 yearsâ and that âany student that protests, I throw them out of the countryâ. This is not a man who can be pushed in a direction more conducive to peace and justice. This is a man who listens to his wealthy donors, his Christian nationalist Republican allies, and himself.
Are you willing to accept a much heightened risk of nuclear war? Obviously this is hardly a Trump policy promise. But I canât think of a single president since the Cold War who is more likely to deploy nuclear weapons, given how casually he talks about wanting to use them and how erratic and unstable he can be in his dealings with foreign leaders. To quote Foreign Policy only this year, âTrump told a crowd in January that one of the reasons he needed immunity was so that he couldnât be indicted for using nuclear weapons on a city.â Thatâs reassuring. Iâm not even in the US and I remember four years of constant background low-level terror that Trump would take offence at something some foreign leader said or think that he needs to personally intervene in some military situation to âsort it outâ and decide to launch the entire world into nuclear war. No one sane on earth wants the most powerful person on the planet to be as trigger-happy and careless with human life as he is, especially if heâs running the White House like a dictator with no one ever telling him no. But depending on what Americans do in November, he may well be inflicted again on all of us, and I guess weâll all just have to hope that he doesnât do the worst thing imaginable.
âBut I donât want those things! Stop accusing me of supporting things I donât support!â Yes, of course you donât want those things. None of us does. No oneâs saying that you actively support them. No oneâs accusing you of wanting Black women to die from ectopic pregnancies or of wanting to throw Hispanic people in immigrant detention centres or of wanting trans people to be outlawed (unlike, I must point out, the extremely emotive and personal accusations that get thrown around about âwanting Palestinian children to dieâ if you encourage people to vote for Kamala).
But if youâre advocating against voting for Kamala, you are clearly willing to accept them as possible consequences of your actions. That is the deal youâre making. If a terrible thing happening is the clear and easily foreseeable outcome of your action (or in the case of not voting, inaction), in a way that could have been prevented by taking a different and just as easy action, you are partly responsible for that consequence. (And no, itâs not âa fear campaignâ to warn people about things heâs said, things he wants to do, and plans drawn up by his close allies. This is not âoooh the Democrats are trying to bully you into voting for them by making him out to be really bad so youâll feel scared and vote for Kamala!â He is really bad, in obvious and documented and irrefutable ways.)
And if you believe that âboth parties are the same on Gazaâ (which, you know, they really arenât, but letâs just pretend that they are) then presumably you accept that the horrors being committed there will continue, in the immediate term anyway, regardless of who wins the presidency. Because there really isnât some third option that will appear and do everything we want. Itâs going to be one of those two. And we can talk all day about wanting a better system or how unfair it is that every presidential election only ever has two viable candidates and how small the Overton window is and all that but hell, we are less than eighty days out from the election; none of that is going to get fixed between now and November. Electoral reform is a long-term (but important!) goal, not something that can be effected in the span of a couple of months by telling people online to vote third party. There is no âinstant ceasefire and peace negotiationâ button that weâre callously overlooking by encouraging people to vote for Kamala. (My god, if there was, we would all be pressing it.)
If weâre suggesting people vote for her, itâs not that we âare willing to overlook genocideâ or âdonât care about sacrificing brown people abroadâ or whatever. Nothing is being âoverlookedâ here. Itâs that weâre simply not willing to accept everything else in this post and more on top of continued atrocities in Gaza. Weâre not willing to take Trump and his godawful far-right authoritarian agenda as an acceptable consequence of feeling like we have the moral high ground on Palestine. I cannot stress enough that if Kamala doesnât win, we - we all, in the whole world - get Trump. Are you willing to accept that?
And one more point to address: Iâve seen too many people act frighteningly flippant and naĂŻve about terrible things Trump or his campaign want to do, with the idea that people will simply be able to prevent all these bad things by âorganisingâ and âprotestingâ and âcollective actionâ. âIâm not willing to accept these things; thatâs why Iâll fight them tooth and nail every day of their administrationâ - OK but if youâre not even willing to cast a vote then I have doubts about your ability to form âthe Resistanceâ, which by the way would have to involve cooperation with people of lots of progressive political stripes in order to have the manpower to be effective, and if youâre so committed to political purity that you view temporarily lending your support to Kamala at the ballot box as an untenable betrayal of everything you stand for then forgive me for also doubting your ability to productively cooperate with allies on the ground with whom you donât 100% agree. Plus, if the Trump campaign gets its way, American progressives would be kept so busy trying to put out about twenty different fires at once that youâd be able to accomplish very little. Maybe you get them to soften their stance on trans healthcare but oh shit, the climate policies are still in place. But more importantly, how many people do you think will protest for abortion rights if doing so means staring down a gun? Or organise to protect their neighbours from deportation if doing so means being thrown in prison yourself? And OK, maybe youâre sure that you will, but history has shown us time and time again that most people wonât. Most people arenât willing to face that kind of personal risk. And a tiny number of lefties willing to risk incarceration or death to protect undocumented people or trans people or whatever other groups are targeted is sadly not enough to prevent the horrors from happening. That is small fry compared to the full might of a determined state. Of course if the worst happens and Trump wins then you should do what you can to mitigate the harm; Iâm not saying you shouldnât. But really the time to act is now. You have an opportunity right here to mitigate the harm and itâs called ânot letting him get electedâ. Act now to prevent that kind of horrific authoritarian situation from developing in the first place; donât sit this one out under the naĂŻve belief that âweâll be able to stop it if it happensâ. You wonât.
12% of Texas voters have had their voter registration suspended.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/right-wing-activists-are-challenging-tens-of-thousands-of-voter-registrations/ar-AA1otndq
Lots of states are purging voters from the rolls in huge numbers.
It take only a few minutes to check your voter registration. Check it now. If something is wrong, check your voter registration deadlines and make a plan to register to vote.
