All things ACORN

[Big Swami]

They do have quality control over the registrations they submit. A large number of fraudulant ones are flagged during the process. To say that they have 'NO' quality control is absolutely wrong.

Not true. In some states, ACORN is required to submit ALL of their voter registrations to the state government without reviewing them first. But let's not let this stop us from accusing ACORN for being a gay manbaby of Josef Stalin and Anton LaVey, only worse.

[xanadu]

I said ACORN flagged likely fraudulent registrations. I did not say they were discarded. I agree that it would be inappropriate to discard any registration because it could lead either party to discard registrations for no reason.

[Tahoe]

Hey hey hey now, Mxy. Let's not a few inconvenient facts get in the way of an awesome narrative. Just because there is NO POSSIBLE WAY for these bullshit ACORN registrations to affect the outcome of an election, let's keep faith that if you are an activist group working on behalf of poor brown people, you are a devil worshiper and a fornicator and hate America.

Let me state this another way: let's stay focused on the fact that ACORN is full of people who want to make the US a carbon copy of Iran with the only difference being that it would be communist and allow child molestation. Let's not worry too much about the fact that these ACORN registrations WERE TELEGRAPHED TO STATE GOVERNMENTS WELL IN ADVANCE AND WOULD NOT RESULT IN A SINGLE INVALID VOTE. That doesn't really fit with my preconceived worldview, and therefore I don't want to hear about it.

Wow

[Uncle Mxy]

As I've said before, we do a number of broken structural things that lead to the creation of groups like ACORN. Our decentralized election management process makes this crap inevitable. It's decentralized enough where we end up having to do decentralized efforts to promote voter registration.

For voter registration in particular -- one database, one (series of) voter registration form(s), a consistent window when registrations are accepted, etc. -- and you whack ACORN at the nuts. If anything, promoting voter registration is something our government should do and guide more of.

Hell, why not do what Australia does and pass a law that requires people to vote (not just register) and penalizes people if they don't?

[WTFchris]

Hell, why not do what Australia does and pass a law that requires people to vote (not just register) and penalizes people if they don't?

Well, because there are a lot of people that shouldn't be voting at all that already do (like the idiots in that Howard Stern clip).

I'd love to have a basic election IQ test before you can vote. Not super hard, but you at least have to know who is running for president, their running mate and which party they belong to. It will never happen though.

I wonder what those people do when they get in there and see that Palin isn't Obama's VP pick? Do you think they even notice?

[xanadu]

Well, because there are a lot of people that shouldn't be voting at all that already do (like the idiots in that Howard Stern clip).

I'd love to have a basic election IQ test before you can vote. Not super hard, but you at least have to know who is running for president, their running mate and which party they belong to. It will never happen though.

I wonder what those people do when they get in there and see that Palin isn't Obama's VP pick? Do you think they even notice?

Even I am not that elitist. At the least, people can tell when the party in power has generally been a success or a failure.

[WTFchris]

Well, I'm not asking them to know all the candidate's stances. You'd think they could at least tell you who is running though.

As I said, it won't happen because its unconstitutional, but why do people take something so important so lightly (and not know a damn thing about who they are voting for)?

[WTFchris]

Even I am not that elitist. At the least, people can tell when the party in power has generally been a success or a failure.

I disagree with that last statement. They may know from a presidential standpoint, but I bet there is a very large percentage that doesn't even know who is in power in congress, whether they have a veto proof majority or not, etc. None of that. Even if the Dems had a veto proof majority the last 8 years, they'd still think that the republicans had been in total control because of Bush.

[Big Swami]

Election time is the only time in the world when being undecided 2 weeks before the due date is considered a virtue. Just think about behaving that way when you're shopping for Christmas presents.

People who know their buttholes from a brick wall will generally be eager to vote and have their choices picked out far in advance of an election. As the elections draw near, the only people left to convince are the people who have absolutely no idea what is happening. These are people who are always looking for Moses to lead them to the promised land. Problem is, if someone can lead you in, someone else can just as easily lead you out.

A certain portion of any nation will always be irresponsible and stupid as it pertains to their political outlook. The confluence of marketing technologies, psychology, and mass media have begun to turn this portion into a valued commodity.

I do NOT believe that an IQ test should be needed in order to vote. But a short quiz on politics and current events wouldn't hurt. Along with a few new rules:

1) If you write in a fictional character for an elected office, your vote is invalidated and you lose the right to vote in the next general election.

2) If you somehow manage to fuck up your ballot, you lose the right to vote in this and the next general election.

3) Every ballot should have an essay portion in which you explain why you voted the way you did. These essays will be judged by English professors, and if you fail, you suck.

[geerussell]

Well, I'm not asking them to know all the candidate's stances. You'd think they could at least tell you who is running though.

As I said, it won't happen because its unconstitutional, but why do people take something so important so lightly (and not know a damn thing about who they are voting for)?

In some ways this is self-correcting. On the one end, such people are extremely unlikely to register and show up to vote.

On the other end, if you are part of a demographic that tends to vote, candidates will hunt you down and "inform" you whether you like it or not. Political operators have made quite the science of figuring out who's likely to actually show up at the polls.

So if "dumbasses who don't even know who's running" suddenly start showing up to vote, I guarantee you they will be the next election's focus-group targeted demographic. The soccer moms of 2012. Of course, once that happened they'd need a new name because they'd probably know who was running. Even if they thought the guy was a muslim terrorist traitor commie.