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u/WatchItAllBurn1 13d ago
There is also a chance that in bush' second election that there were some genuine problems
54% of votes discarded in Florida were African americans
in the same election, Ohio made it harder and less accessible for African Americans and poor communities to vote too.
While these were ultimately rejected by the republican congress at the time. It does not change the fact that Bush only won the popular vote by 0.7%.
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u/Glorthiar 13d ago edited 13d ago
This is why we should stop letting states decide how their votes are counted and sent in, because they cheat for their own teams. The feds should go to every god damn state and count the votes without those states being allow to fuck with it, states themselves are commiting election fraud openly without consequence.
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u/BlueBloodLive 13d ago
Little bit off topic but as an outsider this whole continual redrawing of districts seems so dodgy. Making it so there are more white Republicans than black Democrats and using little sneaky tricks to get as many red districts as possible.
It seems they need to basically keep moving the goalposts just for them to have any chance at winning, yet they cry to the heavens about elections being rigged. Shameless shower of arseholes.
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u/h0tfr1es 13d ago
Redistricting by itself isn’t bad, gerrymandering is. In California, we don’t do gerrymandering, there’s a committee of four Democrats, four Republicans, and two independents that all have to work together to redistrict the maps.
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u/VonThirstenberg 13d ago
And that's precisely how those maps should be drawn everywhere, through bipartisan compromise and agreement.
Sensible policy if you ask me.
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u/argv_minus_one 13d ago
I disagree. Those maps should be drawn by an open-source algorithm using publicly-available data, not by human politicians.
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u/RemedyofRevenge 13d ago
I agree with the intention, but then who gets to write that code/create the algorithm? And of those written/created, who gets to decide which one is the "fairest?" What are the emergency valves when the algorithm does something unintentional? What if the code written is sabotaged, and can we depend on our usual tech illiterate electorate to know when something is wrong, and how to solve it?
Not to say its a bad idea in itself, but the buck has to stop somewhere in having someone make a decision, a human decision on how these districts are drawn. A human using a digital code to draw it is still a product of human decision making.
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u/I_am_the_Jukebox 13d ago
Eh...having an "algorithm" figure it out isn't a panacea. After all, someone writes the algorithm. All that does is shift the responsibility to a black box that only a few people know how it actually works, and give the illusion of impartiality when algorithms often operate on the biases we give them.
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u/mrmastermimi 13d ago
the idea that computers and algorithms are immune to bias is dangerous. algorithms are just as fallible to human bias as we are. algorithms are, after all, created by people and trained on data created by people..
however, unlike us, algorithms don't have the ability to address nuanced context unless specifically programmed to do so.
there are certain districts that are gerrymandered in order to preserve specific minority voices in Congress, specifically to keep predominantly black communities to be grouped in their own district instead of spreading them between other districts.(this process, while allowed under the Voters Right Act, has been abused before in order to further dilute black communities' representation. most southern states with large black populations tend to abuse it)
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u/BlueBloodLive 13d ago
That's the word I was looking for, gerrymandering, couldn't remember it!
I'm not too familiar with it but from what I've seen Republicans will use it at every opportunity to better their chances.
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u/Glorthiar 13d ago
Seems dodgy? It's openly and blatantly treasonous. Redrawing districts with the express purpose of removing political power from the people is betraying democracy, and the people who do it should have to pay for their crimes.
Treason is a monumental crime, because it is destroying the very foundation of our democracy and ruining the lives of hundreds of millions. A crime for which their can be no justice, only a vicious and ugly punishment to dissuade future traitors.
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u/BlueBloodLive 13d ago
Is it ever challenged or pushed back against? Democrats should be all over that, no? Or at the very least making voters aware of it.
Again I'm not top up on the workings of it all but I'm surprised it's not a huge issue that gets a lot of attention.
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u/Glorthiar 13d ago
I have been hearing people fighting over gerrymandering my entire life, it's one of the go to examples wer were taught I highschool of how system of government are corrupted.
And I went to highschool in fucking TEXAS
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u/Ok-Champ-5854 13d ago
Yes many states will send it to a court which can say no and make them do it over again. It's one of the reasons Republicans have been packing courts for years.
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u/WatchItAllBurn1 13d ago edited 13d ago
But why would the republican party ever agree to that? They literally cannot win elections without doing shady shit to the extreme.
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u/SuperMegaTrev64 13d ago
I mean, Rs could actually try:
- Not being so extreme.
- Persuading voters instead of the BS they shove down Fox News viewers’ throats.
- Functional, real governing when in power.
- Look to the future of the country and not just cater to old, rich, white people.
But 🤷🏻♂️
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u/DapperStatistician59 13d ago
The voting rights act would have helped stop this. But Kristen Sinema and Joe Manchin went to Republicans to kill the bill. They even high fived about it at the rich people meeting they have over in Switzerland or whatever. It was brought up. They were given great applause for blocking that bill. Traitors.
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u/Glorthiar 13d ago edited 13d ago
You think they would high five if they saw the hordes of people they fucking betrayed agrilly marching up their doorstep demanding retribution?
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u/Mixedpopreferences 13d ago edited 13d ago
"Look at all those agrilly horses!"
pause
"Fuck yeah!"
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u/Glorthiar 13d ago
That was indeed, a very funny typo. I do wonder how many horses it would end up being
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u/DapperStatistician59 13d ago
I wonder....I sure do. I think they will be singing a different tune. I'm not sure what it's gonna take for people to hold their Senators accountable. They won't even vote out Known scoundrels.
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u/h0tfr1es 13d ago
I mean, what’s the worst that could happen to them? They lose their seat? They still have the same benefits (because it’s for life) and they get to be highly-paid lobbyists/consultants instead.
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u/stycky-keys 13d ago
Unfortunately the supreme court basically decided against thatrecently
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u/Glorthiar 13d ago
If they keep Making ruling like this people are going to take away their right to rule on anything, were crawling up to a new age, a d these openly corrupt cocky bastards are not going to be pleased watching their halls of lies and reason turned to ash
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u/PaltryCharacter 13d ago
Also in 2004 Bush artificially raised the terror alert level just before the election.
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u/sbubgw 13d ago
And it was a re-election during wartimes. Tough when it’s that stacked
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u/PaltryCharacter 13d ago
Yep. Which is even more infuriating because the entire war was based on a lie.
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u/TheMadPyro 13d ago
But in fairness, what a strategy.
Start a war for no good reason, convince people it was a good idea, and then get re-elected because you’re in the middle of said war.
Obviously it was bullshit but it’s not like they half-assed their way through those 8 years.
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u/Diarygirl 13d ago
Those terror alerts became a joke. "Oh, we're on orange alert? What's the Bush Administration trying to distract us from this time?"
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u/theYetiDidIt 13d ago
Bush won the second election because we were at peak American fervor after 9/11 and everyone wanted terrorists dead in a crater. simple as that.
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u/RSCasual 13d ago
Looks like it wasn't just that either, red states make an effort to suppress voter turn out in poor and black areas (like always), meaning that even when the country is in that state they still need to cheat for him to win by less than 1%
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u/Lady_von_Stinkbeaver 13d ago
The bullshit Swift Boaters, who didn't even bother to make a token appearance protesting Kerry's nomination for Secretary of State.
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u/SolomonCRand 13d ago
Silent majority = minority of the population that has loudly complained about every thing that they find more than mildly frustrating for the last two decades
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u/KecemotRybecx 13d ago
For real. They bitch constantly.
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u/RedditAdminsLoveRUS 13d ago
"eVeRyBoDy gEtS a tRoPhY tHeSe dAyS!!!"
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u/Americrazy 13d ago
‘Imma buy a shit ton of ‘bUd LiGhT’ and set it ON FIRE to show the woke corporate elite!!’
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u/kitsunewarlock 13d ago
The only thing "silent" about them is the empty tracts of land and tumbleweeds that get to choose our supreme court justices.
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u/VolatileUtopian 13d ago
I remember around Obama's first term looking up the different political parties in the US and I noticed that the Democrats had way more registered members than the Republicans and that's when I learned about gerrymandering.
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u/Professional-Box4153 13d ago
They also outright lie. When I registered to vote at 18, I was asked my political party. I selected "independent" because at the time I thought it meant non-affiliated. I later got a mailer in the mail thanking me for joining the Independent Republican Party (whatever the hell that means). I left it alone because I really didn't care that much at that age. When I actually went to vote, I was told by an official that I was not allowed to vote across party lines. I could ONLY vote for the Republican candidate since I was registered as Republican. I chose not to vote instead.
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u/quetzalcoatlsghost 13d ago
You can only vote in the republican PRIMARY.
It's not true that you can't vote democrat in an actual election if you register Republican. All the candidates are on the same ballot, no one could stop you.
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u/Professional-Box4153 13d ago
I was young and honestly didn't even know that there were other races.
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u/quetzalcoatlsghost 13d ago
Oh yea sorry, didn't mean any offense. Just wanted to clarify for people that might not know WHY you said republicans are liars. Some people who responded to you didn't seem to know that.
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u/AntiparticleCollider 13d ago
Is that universal? That's wild to me. If I registered to vote and they asked which party I'm with, my response would be none of your facking business
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u/Joshatron121 13d ago
They were likely trying to vote in a primary in this anecdote. You can't vote in a primary for a party you aren't registered with and the ballot is for that party only. For a normal election they don't know who you vote for since it's all the same ballot.
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u/SockPuppet-47 13d ago
Republicans...
Can't win a fair election without all the handicap advantages they're given. Without gerrymandering and the Electoral College we wouldn't be concerned at all about their shitty policies.
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u/FitVisit4829 13d ago
One of the main reasons they're so against mail-in's and ranked choice voting.
They know for a fact they have to cheat to win in most cases, and can't actually win a fair vote to save their asses.
It's why they project so much without a shred of proof, because they know they're the ones doing it.
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u/floatingby493 13d ago edited 13d ago
The irony is that their policies regarding voting are likely costing them votes. They want everyone to have to vote in person but many older people aren’t able to drive and wait in line to vote. They are making it harder for their base to vote.
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u/Slyvester121 13d ago
They tend to only outlaw things like drive-in voting in city centers, which lean heavily democratic. The regulations often don't extend to rural areas.
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u/qb1120 13d ago
Now they're even trying to raise the voting age to 25 LMAO
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u/yummyforehead 13d ago
Them preaching about the constitution: :)
Them when the constitution is more than just guns: >:(
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u/Terramagi 13d ago
Love that the voting age is going to be easier to increase than the fucking minimum wage.
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u/xiofar 13d ago
The entire federal government is a gerrymandered mess in favor of conservatives.
The house is over-represented by conservatives. The senate is an inherently undemocratic by design. The electoral college is a outdated joke.
We need to expand the house and give it true proportional representation.
We need to expand the Supreme Court and get rid of the travesty that are lifetime appointments.
We need to get rid of the senate where a single person can destroy any law being passed.
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u/midnightgirlj 13d ago
more like "the electoral college is the only way we win" majority
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u/DemandZestyclose7145 13d ago
I would argue the way we do the Senate is even more egregious. Every state has 2 Senators which makes zero sense. So of course the tiny red states like Wyoming and Montana get as much political power as California. Honestly if it wasn't for this and the electoral college then the Republicans would never hold power again. Which is why it will never change.
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u/SpacemanSpleef 13d ago
Although funny enough Montana has a democrat senator. Jon Tester!
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u/TheTVDB 13d ago
The House remaining at 435 members for over a century is a bigger problem. The US was built on the concept that the interests of both individuals AND states should be represented at the Federal level. Obviously done by loosely tying House members to the population, Senate members to states, and the Presidency to a combination of both. Except the power of the population in smaller states is heavily skewed because the number of House members has remained fixed at 435 and because electoral votes are varied based on number of Representatives and not Senators. This results in the issue you're describing more than Senate representation.
If you adjust the number of House members upwards, then electoral votes will more closely align with popular vote.
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u/scoopzthepoopz 13d ago
It's to keep their interests in the game. Except that's not the reality at all. They can hijack the entire nation's progress by holding out, and the gop has formed a voting bloc including your Dakotas and Montanas.
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u/SaltChildhood7 13d ago
And 2004 was only because we were in the middle of a war
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u/_userclone 13d ago
An illegitimate war started by the “winner” of the 2000 election, even.
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u/SaltChildhood7 13d ago
Yes - in hindsight. But at that time 2003, we were bent on destroying and revenge
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u/_userclone 13d ago
Many of us wanted more (read: any) proof that Saddam had WMDs before launching a full-scale invasion.
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u/SaltChildhood7 13d ago
That is when Powell trotted out the little vial of all purpose flour at the UN. Such a farce.
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u/qwertycantread 13d ago
This statistic really highlights why the current Supreme Court has no validity.
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u/Mattress_Of_Needles 13d ago
This is one of the worst side effects of their fuckery. Don't learn how to play the game, learn how to game the system.
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u/PoopMobile9000 13d ago
A majority that only exists because SCOTUS stole the election in 2000 and handed it to Bush.
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u/Padaca 13d ago
They're as valid as the institution that empowers them...
Do with that info what you will.
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u/killing31 13d ago
The argument I always see for the electoral college is that without it, the candidates would only concentrate on California and New York. But currently, they only concentrate on a few swing states with fewer people. How is that logical?
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u/ShakespearIsKing 13d ago
Why campaign in states where more people live instead of swing states where less people live?
Logic!
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u/Relyst 13d ago
California has more Republicans than Texas, Texas has more Democrats than New York, New York has more Republicans than the 11 least populated Republican states combined. Never mind that the reasoning Hamilton gave for creating the electoral college was that the average person was too stupid to make an informed choice. Supporting the electoral college is the equivalent of thinking you're a fucking moron.
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u/awfulmcnofilter 13d ago
With the internet all of that state specific campaigning is ridiculous anyway.
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u/Upper-Job5130 13d ago
Had a Democrat been president in 2001, then 2004 would be on the blue side, not the red. The only reason he won the popular vote was an increase in national pride as a result of the response to the 9/11 attacks (IMHO)
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u/Frisky_Potato42nite 13d ago edited 13d ago
We need to abolish the Electoral College and have ranked-choice voting. The person with the most votes by the public wins - simple and classically democratic.
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u/Roofies666 13d ago
GW really had that folksy charm, didn't he? People wanted to get a beer with him and thought he was an alright dude so that made up for all the war crimes and awful shit he signed off on while president.
Cool, cool, cool, so very cool.
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u/OnTheFenceGuy 13d ago
It was more about the “Patriotism” the country was still feeling, and the fact that the Iraq War seemed to be going well.
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u/gundumb08 13d ago
This. He was a "wartime President" and that carried his votes. And in 2004 we still had no idea there were no WMDs in Iraq (there was still a decent sized pushback as people thought it distracted from the actual War in Afghanistan).
It was simply a "don't rock the boat" scenario; plus that Swiftboat BS and some Voting Law shenanigans didn't help.
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u/ThePaddysPubSheriff 13d ago
If I was a warmonger with no morals I'd absolutely have a beer with the guy
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u/Mapsachusetts 13d ago
Unfortunately for all the immoral warmongers, he hasn’t drank since 1986. But you can always go hunting with Cheney instead!
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u/ThePaddysPubSheriff 13d ago
I tell you what, you can always bet on something interesting happening when you chill with R's
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u/picklesdoggo 13d ago
The ordering of the years is awful
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u/bunglejerry 13d ago
Reverse sequential order, top to bottom.
But it winds up looking totally random. It's an eyesore.
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u/I_am_Daesomst 13d ago
It's better now that I read your comment - if it were truly just random someone should have been fired, re-hired and fired again for the effect.
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u/OGRube 13d ago
Fuck the electoral college. One citizen one vote. What’s the problem?
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u/oneeyejedi 13d ago
The problem is the rich would lose. Remember America is less a democracy and more a plutocracy
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u/jpa7252 13d ago edited 13d ago
Imagine how much better off we would be as a country without the electoral college, gerrymandering, voter suppression and election undermining, without Bush and Trump, and all the other seats Republicans have cheated their way into?
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u/The_Crimson-Knight 13d ago
Isn't 2004 because of Dubya and the war in the Iraq?
I'm a former Republican, brainwashed into loving Bush and hating Obama. The Dijon mustard "scandal" broke the hold on me.
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u/districtcourt 13d ago
I'm a former Republican
Same
The Dijon mustard "scandal" broke the hold on me.
I honestly have a lot of respect for you, then partisan Republican, to be able to see through this cheap trick, and allow it to push the needle enough to break you away from the GOP. That takes an uncommonly found maturity level
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u/StargasmSargasm 13d ago
Somehow Republicans convinced people that John Kerry was a coward and Bush was a hero when John Kerry actually served in Nam and Bush was a draft dodger. Also the whole "Jesus told me to go to war" thing. The signs were all there. We just missed them.
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u/g0lfball_whacker_guy 13d ago
If the shoe was on the other foot republicans would’ve abolished the electoral college 20+ years ago. But they benefit from this broken system so it’s working perfectly for them. This is why voter apathy remains high. Democrats in red states feel like their voice is never heard and vice versa. Also the fact that college electors can change their vote leaves voters with no faith. The giant orange cum stain tried sending fake electors to change the outcome of 2020. Whole system is fucked.
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u/dudinax 13d ago
Then in 2020, the Republican tried to overthrow the electoral college with a coup.
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u/davechri 13d ago
Without the electoral college and gerrymandering republicans would be irrelevant.
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u/dathomar 13d ago
I like to include George H W Bush, because it makes sense that he's the first post-Reagan President. That makes it 2 elections for the Republicans and 7 for the Democrats. Also, that means that, out of three Republican Presidents, two of them have lost their incumbency to a Democrat. Meanwhile, no Democrat has lost their incumbency.
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u/PracticableSolution 13d ago
Wrap your head around the fact that a Republican president has not been installed by popular vote since 1988. That’s 35 years ago.
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u/Kara_lin_69 13d ago
Notice how blue won 2016 but we got a red "winner"
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u/_userclone 13d ago
Also in 2000, the one where the state Supreme Court of the state run by the Republican candidate’s brother decided the election was over.
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u/BatmansBigBro2017 13d ago
It’s a leftover practice from the post civil war period. It needs to end. Along with a lot of archaic things we do.
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u/Lots_o_Llamas 13d ago
We need to eliminate the electoral college, actively combat gerrymandering, institute ranked choice voting, and overturn Citizens United.
But fuck man. We can't even get people to agree on universal background checks for buying an AR-15.
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u/Glorthiar 13d ago
Make everything these people don't cheat and steal elections what it is, a crime against democracy and every single constituent affects.
It's not just fraud, it's treason.
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u/AcademicAd4816 13d ago
If not for 9/11 2004 wouldn’t have looked like that either
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u/LordMuffin1 13d ago
Such a nice democracy. You do not win becauae you get most votes. You win because you get right votes. No wonder the republicans dont want democratic rights, they are not interested in democracy or values such as free speech or voting rights.
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u/John97212 13d ago
There is no such thing as "the silent majority." What conservatives name that is actually "the fuckin' loud minority."
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u/That1Guy80903 13d ago
If we abolished the Electoral College and Gerrymandering was made illegal (like it should be) Repuglicons would never hold political power again, and they know damn well that's true. They've even said it on live tv multiple times.
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u/bakochba 13d ago
And 2004 is tainted because GW Bush didn't win the popular vote in 2000 so he shouldn't have even been in there.
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u/R3dCypher 13d ago
Five things to fix the US:
All elections by popular count. (no electoral college, no more gerrymandering )
Supreme Court Justices are elected for 4 year terms.
All elected officials have term limits. Max 10 years as an example.
No more special interests or lobbying.
Elected officials can no longer actively participate in trading stocks. You choose to represent the people not your wallet.
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u/medium0rare 13d ago
Yeah. The issue is 100% an over represented minority. It’s gotten to a point where dems in red states just don’t vote. My vote literally doesn’t count.
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u/FewerToysHigherWages 13d ago
And Bush only won in 2004 because of 9/11. Everyone at the time was scared shitless about terrorism and thought Rudy Giuliani was a national hero.
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u/Valuable-Composer262 13d ago
Idk the electoral college just seems like a sham to me. Just go with the popular vote. This way everyone's vote is equal. A North Dakota vote would be equal to a California vote which is not the case right now
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u/Zealousideal_Fuel_23 13d ago
2004 election was held during the 4 months that the Iraq War appeared to be going well.