First off, i live in Europe, so i honestly don’t know too much about politics in other parts of the world, other than what i sometimes see in the news. I hope my innocent question doesn’t trigger any nastiness.
My question is; in discussions i see only talk about democrats vs republicans, for instance discussions only about Biden and/or Trump. But my understanding is that there are other political parties one can vote for. However, i never see any mention of them. So, is it that most people are not interested in those? Or maybe they don’t get enough media time? Or are they seen as too extreme? Are the US basically a two-party system? And does it change over time? There are a lot of worries in the world - i don’t need to name all of them - but this seems to trigger more extreme views. Does this mean that those other parties attract more voters nowadays?
Wow, only about 50% vote, that is very low. I did read - quite a while back - that they have all kinds of ridiculous requirements to be able to vote, apparently to prevent black people from voting, if my understanding is correct. As for the Trump voters, your description is just about what i expected. I think this is the case in our european country as well; protest voters who vote for rightwing extremist parties.
Thank you so much for your elaborate reply and the links, which i will read, very much appreciated.
Have a great weekend
There’s actually not a lot of hurdles for voting, and there’s only a few things that would hinder you from voting, like being a felon, or a dishonorable discharged from the military, because that’s essentially being a felon and probably due to something felony level, certain states have other rules about identification but outside of the monetary cost it’s not really so prohibitive, but that’s also why the left here are fighting for free identification, which makes sense if we’re forcing people to have it then it should be free, and placing a cost on it makes it hard for poor people to afford it. That’s probably part of what you mean by the voting requirements being prohibitive to black Americans, since due to some older systemically racist policies, and some racist business tactics from decades ago, black folks tend to be impoverished, but there are also historical and cultural issues at play there as well. For the most part if you’re an American citizen that hasn’t gone to prison or hasn’t been kicked out of the military you can vote, you just have to make sure you register to vote, however things still vary from state to state. Homeless people, like the poverty issue in general, tend to be the most disenfranchised when it comes to voting, because without an address they will give them a hard time about things like identification and voter registration.
Another issue that goes on with that stuff is voter registration purges, people are sometimes removed from the voter rolls for innocent or nefarious reasons, voter rolls need to get cleaned up from time to time as people pass away or move away, but sometimes it’s a cheating effort to prevent people from voting, usually Republicans purging democrats from the rolls.
I think most of the non-voting populace are just people that aren’t interested in participating in the process, there’s plenty of those types, some of them are even the loudest when it comes to their disdain about politics, yet don’t vote to help fix things, and then there’s the folks that don’t vote because they live “off the grid” on homesteads in the middle of nowhere, or in cult compounds, or are part of the militia and sovereign citizen movements, these people tend to he oppressed to the system in general so they generally have no interest in participating in it.
Another thing is how right wing led states limit polling locations, vote by mail drop offs, and voting times, in Georgia they even limited voters from being able to have water with them to wait in line, the right wing always tries lame fuckery like this to get any advantage they can.
The vast majority though are the apathetic voters, uninterested in participating for one reason or another, so they don’t bother to, the second most are probably the felons/military shitbirds, as we have many of each.
If i had my way everybody would be registered to vote at voting age, it’s 18 now but should probably wind up being 16, the right wingers are trying to raise voting age to 21+ because they hate how the youth turnout favors the left, and I would also ensure that everyone is sent ballots at home and with enough drop off points for every single ballot.
Thanks for the conversation, hope you have a good weekend as well.