Voting for white people, at large, is walking to your polling place, waiting in line for a few minutes, voting, and then going about your day. Voting for black people begins six months earlier with multiple trips to the DMV 50 miles away to get a voter ID, missing work and getting reprimanded for it, and then on election day having to travel many miles to get to the point place and waiting on line for hours to have the ID scrutinized, and argue about being allowed to vote versus being sent over to make a provisional ballot, before getting to actually vote. So, define burden, please.
Edit: deleted comment said Voting wasn't a burden for black people.
Voting was made de facto harder for poor people, but proportion-wise (which is all that matters in the end in voting) it was specifically targeted against black and Hispanic voters.
"Is there any way to get a breakdown of the 2008 voter turnout, by race (white and black) and type of vote (early and Election Day)?"
..."Republican House speaker asked for 'a breakdown, by race, of those registered voters in your database that do not have a driver's license number.'"
So if you were to somehow remove all impoverished people from voting, you only lose 10% white vote but 26% of black vote and 23% Hispanic vote.
People in Alabama generally are poorer than most. Alabama ranks 47th in median household income. Nonwhites disproportionately so. Of course there are many people of color in the middle, and a few in the upper class in Alabama. But we don't need to worry about their ability to get to the polls, do we?
I don't know, it just seems racist to assume all black people in Alabama are poor. Or to assume they don't have cars or cannot access public transportation.
The median income for black households in Alabama is $29,210. That's just above the federal poverty line. For whites it is $49,464. Source and
Source 2.
And I didn't say all if them. Just the ones we need to be concerned for. Obviously if you can afford it, this isn't you.
Are you trying to say that 13% of blacks not having a car somehow makes it impossible for them to vote? You don't think they have friends or family who could take them to vote?
Not to mention a lot of the churches are where they vote, they make it to church just fine. I'm sure they have no problem getting there to vote.
You're acting as if black people are fucking helpless and I guarantee you they are not. They made it out to vote in this election, so they aren't the helpless destitute people you're making them out to be.
But it can take time, resources and possibly even money to make it to the polling station, or to make it to a place where you can get the proper ID so you can register or get to a place with internet to sign up if you don't have internet, and a lot of these places are poor and/or rural, and every possible impedence is put forth to stop these people.
I see missing work, getting the documentation and transportation are covered. If you're a mother there is also childcare. If you're disabled there are more impediments. If you're a felon and are entitled to vote again there is the cost of establishing that, and the criminal Justice system is deliberately used for racial oppression.
Also, when you're very poor everything is hard. Very hard.
Have you made any useful comment here or do you just hop into comment threads you’re not a part of because you can’t make intelligent comments of your own?
He’s not saying voting is. But, rather, that they had to carry the election on their shoulders to get someone into office who wasn’t a pedophile.
White voters, specifically white men, voted overwhelmingly for Moore. If the black voters hadn’t gone out of their way to push back against their rights being infringed on, then Moore would have walked away with a victory.
Everyone should vote, always. I am just as happy as everyone else that Moore lost but I don’t see why it could ever be considered a burden to vote. People shouldn’t only vote bc Moore is a pedo, they should vote every time, regardless.
Yes, but for some people, mostly minorities, there are tough boundaries for them to overcome. See the voter registration reports that voters, specifically, black voter’s rolls were deemed, “inactive,” even bough they had voted in the same precinct at the last election. Because of this they had to go to a different polling place to cast a provisional ballot and then had to drive back to actually vote. That’s the burden. And it has a way of disenfranchising voters.
I think it's more that this highlights the fact that in a large part the onus is upon them to ensure we didn't end up with a racist pedophile in the senate. One could argue that it's up to everyone, not just black voters, but the actual turnout and demographic ratios make it clear that it was up to them.
It's not just up to them though. If it were, and only black people voted for Jones and all white people voted for moore, moore would be in office. And the point is still that even if the onus is on them, which is clearly isn't, they're not trying to escape the temple of doom alive to cast their vote. They simply go to the voting booth and cast it. What I'm saying is importance of the vote doesn't directly correlate to burden of the vote. But again it's a moot point because they didn't carry jones alone even though they were integral in him winning.
but the actual turnout and demographic ratios make it clear that it was up to them.
See, that statement shows your bias in the matter. Why don't you say "black people voted for jones and made up 70% of the vote. If white people hadn't shown up to make up the other 30% Jones would have lost. White people got him elected!" You're arranging the situation to make black voters the savior's here when it's actually not like that for any demographic unless you come from some sort of bias. Its like you expect black people not to have to vote or not to be expected to but white people are.
Jones won because statistically speaking, a lot more black voters turned out to vote for him than did any other racial demographic. That's all that's being said here.
Then I don't think you understand my point. That comment comes from the position that's its not assumed the black voters would come out and vote for him while it's assumed that whites would or should. Otherwise you'd be saying he won because of white voters (because obviously his black base will be there to vote for him but it was so close that whites had to show up in higher numbers to turn the election). The way statistics are presented can have extreme bias.
Nah, it's not that I don't understand your point. It's simply what I said previously. Statistically speaking the number of black votes far outweighed other demographics. That's all anyone's saying. It's not to discredit any one demographic. It's just a factual statement based on statistics.
For example, if you bake a pie, and 4 people eat it, and it's broken out as follows:
Person 1 ate 73% of the pie
Person 2 ate 9% of the pie
Person 3 ate 9% of the pie
Person 4 ate 9% of the pie.
By and large, that pie was consumed for the most part because of person 1. Granted that if persons 2, 3 and 4 hadn't eaten their share of the pie it wouldn't be all gone, but person 1 was the biggest contributor.
Statistically speaking the number of black votes far outweighed other demographics. That's all anyone's saying. It's not to discredit any one demographic.
I agree and I don't take it as a discreditation.
Using your pie analogy, no one group is responsible for the pie being eaten. Just like no one group is responsible for electing jones or "saving america from roy moore" as the title explicitly states. Whites and blacks are equally responsible for electing Jones in that without either group's votes, Jones loses. Even if their portion of the votes isn't equal, their votes turned out to be just as important as each others. If person 4 didn't eat 9% of the pie the pie wouldn't have been eaten and Person 1 wouldn't be given credit for getting the pie eaten. Person one did have a large role to play in eating the pie, I'm not disputing that. The Black vote was a large reason for Jones winning, I don't dispute that. Im glad they came out in the numbers they did to vote for him - it was necessary. It was also as necessary for the white voters that came out to vote for him to do so because without them, Jones would have lost. It could be therefore argued just as logically that without those white voters tipped the scale for Jones and got him elected. That's why I wouldn't decisively say either group got Jones elected or saved America from Moore. It was collective.
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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '17 edited Dec 15 '17
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