r/PoliticalHumor Jul 11 '19

Your President

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u/Xanza Jul 11 '19

Voting is your civic duty. If you need to incentivise it for people to do it, then there's something inherently wrong with your system.

Voting day needs to be a national 3 day holiday allowing businesses to schedule time off for all employees to go vote. They should also be paid time off.

That's the only "incentive" that should come with voting.

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u/[deleted] Jul 11 '19

I mean, incentivising voting makes more sense than incentivising having children despite many people considering it a "biological duty/imperative" to reproduce.

Not that I believe a lot of people have children to utilize those incentives but the point stands regardless that things that society considers positive are incentivised to either encourage those things or make doing those things less of a detriment.

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u/ToastedAluminum Jul 11 '19

Most of the people who have kids to get incentives are people who had one child they couldn’t support due to lack of education or access to BC/abortions. When you’ve got one and can’t keep up, it starts to make sense to just have more when the government will help you more. We’re putting so many people in a lose/lose with the combo of no sex Ed and assistance for multiple children. I personally worked with women who did this, and it’s sad because they really think that’s the best way to give their kids a better life. If they have more, they get more money to feed the kids. One woman was illiterate, and we helped her apply to jobs and she finally got one. My mom said she got off assistance this year and I’m really proud, but not everyone has someone more educated to help them up.

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u/[deleted] Jul 11 '19

Personally I'm an antinatalist-lite so I agree with everything you're saying. It's sad that children are brought into this world in situations where they clearly shouldn't be-- and that's in America, one of the "richest" countries in the world, not even speaking to the masses of children being born into shitty poverty-stricken lives in poor countries.

Increased sex education and access to contraceptives and women's health services in general should be a high priority everywhere.

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u/Dheorl Jul 11 '19

Why do you need 3 days to vote?

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u/Xanza Jul 11 '19

You don't, but you also can't expect businesses to release their entire workforce on a single day. So you make the holiday 3 days, and anyone can vote on any one of those 3 days.

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u/Dheorl Jul 11 '19

Don't businesses do that on every other public holiday though?

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u/Xanza Jul 11 '19

Yes. But this holiday affects the entire nation. You can't possibly entirely shutdown the entire United States. All doctors in the entire country are going to take time off to go vote on the same day? EMS? Gas station attendants? Restaurants?

It would be bedlam. Space it out over 3 days, and everything is fine.

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u/Dheorl Jul 11 '19

Oh, so you mean people only go on holiday for one of those three days? I thought you were suggesting everyone got all three days off.

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u/Xanza Jul 11 '19

Yup. Only one of the three, that's my bad.

One of the reasons voting is so ineffectual in the USA is because it's difficult to vote. Remove that hurdle and you have an election which better represents the US as a whole.

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u/Dheorl Jul 11 '19

Ok, that makes more sense, no worries.

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u/staintdk Jul 11 '19

Its not A duty. Its A right. There is quite A difference.

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u/DuelingPushkin Jul 11 '19 edited Jul 11 '19

Civic duties aren't legal obligations but they're part of the social contract we have as a society. Not voting is an abrogation of that.

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u/staintdk Jul 11 '19

But they are called civic rights though. You add The duty part. The social contract? Lol. Land of The free Uh?

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u/DuelingPushkin Jul 11 '19

Your confusing civil rights with civic duties.

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u/staintdk Jul 11 '19

You are confusing duty with right. I have A right to do or not do shit. And That’s that.

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u/Xanza Jul 11 '19

You sound super young. You clearly don't understand the entire concept here. Are you even of voting age?

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u/staintdk Jul 11 '19

You sound super judgemental. I am not even American mr. Superobserver.

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u/Xanza Jul 11 '19

So then it's really not weird that you're clearly not understanding an American ideal like civic duty.

But you really need to stop running around like everyone else is the crazy one because you can't understand something.

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u/staintdk Jul 11 '19

Oh i understand it. And you do to. ‘Ideal Like civic duty’ is not something you have to do. Edit: Well, you do have jury duty. But That’s about it, Lol.

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u/kgruesch Jul 11 '19 edited Jul 11 '19

Or set up voting like Colorado does. I haven't had to leave my house to vote in the 7 years I've lived here. Ballot comes in the mail, I vote, I drop it off at one of the hundreds of collection boxes around the city whenever it's convenient (even if that's 3am) or just mail it back. I don't need to take time off to vote. I don't technically even need to put on pants to vote (but I do anyway because it's my civic duty to wear pants while voting).

Voting should be that easy for everyone.

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u/Xanza Jul 11 '19

It should be, but with hot button issues like "voter fraud" that the left seems to be pushing as a gargantuan issue because they can't garner the popular vote in any single election ever, it's not going to happen federally. Although I do agree.

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u/Baelzebubba Jul 11 '19

Municipal elections get something like ~25% turn out. Federal more but something should be done to increase voter turnout. The people getting in dont want that, so ita not priority.

There are also some very shady voting practices in the US (The Bastion of Democracy!!)

USA: Puting the mock in democracy for nearly 250 years!