Re: Random Thoughts

[Anna Raven]

You have to be registered with the government, in the locale you are going to vote. Then when you turn up to vote, they check the list to make sure you are registered in that area. They just don't want you voting in multiple places, or in a place where you don't live. And I assume it's also a way to keep illegal immigrants from voting, or felons, or anyone else who is legally not allowed to vote.

You don't have to be registered with any particular parties to vote in general elections. Primaries though are a slightly different animal. In the case of primaries, it differs from state to state, but in some states you have to be a "member" of the party to vote in their primary. Don't ask me what it takes to become a party member because I've never lived in a state that required that. These are called "closed primaries".

In other states you don't have to be a member, but you just have to choose one primary or the other to vote in for that given election year. And then finally there are some states that have completely "open primaries" where you can vote in any and all parties' primaries with no restrictions.

I do believe you still have to be registered with the government to vote in primaries though, regardless of if they are open or closed.

[Cable]

Don't ask me what it takes to become a party member because I've never lived in a state that required that. These are called "closed primaries".

When you register to vote you just select which party you are joining or you select None.

Closed primaries need to be done away with. Unfortunately most states use a variation of it.

[das_boot]

@SK— I had the choice of… two Labour candidates, one Conservative (who doesn’t even live in my area but in a posher one up the road), and five independents. This last fortnight they’ve all been at my door to canvass and the conversation went along the lines of…

CONSERVATIVE: had no explanation for why he was running, what he hoped to achieve, or what his priorities would be.

LABOUR: agreed with me that anti-social behaviour was an issue and that the police are less than woeful

One lot of independents (current sitting): they could list off a load of local interest bumf but didn’t realllllly have any policies other than “let’s make people proud to live here”

Another independent (currently sitting): agreed that the anti-social behaviour needs to be addressed but that he’s basically kneecapped by the other group of independents…

[Spectral Knight]

Anna, Cable - I think I know why I didn't recall what it meant. I... don't know what primaries are either.

Das - I've never really been canvassed properly. Normally I get one or two on the door but normally they shove a bit of paper at me but look dumbstruck if I ask about their policies. It's the exact same look on my face if I'm asked to explain quantum mechanics. I'm sure they mean we'll and have good intentions but their briefings have universally been awful

[Milkshake08]

NGL, I kind of despise canvassers. I understand the point, and I do think grassroots backing is the best - but man do canvassers annoy me. Like you said, SK, you ask them any questions on their candidate and it's like you just asked them to solve a quadratic equation in seconds. Why are you canvassing for someone if you aren't familiar with their basic policies? Makes no sense to me.

We have a local city council/mayoral election going on right now. All the candidates are godawful, and the amount of paper they waste on giant pieces of mailed literature legitimately stresses me out. The council member who represents my district is frankly appalling and we're trying to get rid of her. Her canvassers ring our doorbell nearly every day and we get loads of texts from her people as well. The last one I accidentally answered for talked non stop to try to be friendly; I had groceries in my hand from just coming back from the store and finally had to just close the door on him.

[das_boot]

Oh, see, I like canvassers. If I put them on the spot with a question, then how on EARTH are they supposed to represent people?

When I lived in the midlands during one of our several many general elections, I had a Conservative representative knock at my door and I shooed them away because no thanks. Nary an hour later I’d received a message on Grindr where he offered me… um…. Well I’ll leave that to your imagination… in exchange for voting Conservative. No. Just no.

I don’t mind political candidates knocking at my door— it gives me a chance to say, in person, “what about X Y and Z that you’ve done nothing about” to the current sitting member, or “what would you do about this, this and this” to folk who are election hopefuls. I have a pretty good BS detector too so if I suspect a lie, regardless of which party they represent, I’ll tell them categorically that they’re lying, or not answering my question.

What I DO find disrespectful are religious canvassers. I think religion/faith is a deeply personal thing and I honestly don’t know anyone just sitting around their house, patiently awaiting someone to tell them which religion is least probable to end in their eternal damnation.

[Jindianajonz]

So i recently got back from a Peru trip, and if anybody has any desire to see Machu Picchu in their lifetimes, there may not be a better time than now to go. Things are completely safe after the protests in December, but tourism is WAY down right now. Folks were getting same day train tickets to Machu Picchu, which is unheard of. My friends and I did the 4 day Inca Trail, and for good chunks of it we had the entire trail to ourselves. It really was a wonderful experience, and Lima has some of the best food I've ever had.

[Anna Raven]

Anna, Cable - I think I know why I didn't recall what it meant. I... don't know what primaries are either.

A primary is simply an election held before the actual election, in which voters choose who will be the party's candidate. Most of the time an incumbent politician will just be allowed by the party to run again. But if the incumbent is retiring, or has hit a term limit, then they will need to select a new candidate. Likewise, if say a Republican is in office and his term is up, the Democrats need to select a candidate to run against them.

So whenever you need a candidate, for most federal elections, and some state positions, like governor, the parties hold a primary. All the various candidates are voted on, in either the open or closed systems, or some version in between, and then for the general election, each party has only the one candidate who won the primary.

Note that this means you will almost never have, say, two Democrats running in the same election, like you would have in Europe.The only way that would happen, is if one of them decided not to be part of the Democratic primary and just ran without his party's backing. At that point, he would be labeled an Independent, even if he had been a Democrat all his life. The reason for this is that since there is no ranked-choice voting in the US, and a simple majority rules, having two people from the same party run in an election is political suicide. They would obviously just split the vote and allow the other party to get an easy win.

[Blackcyclops]

Well that’s not true…at least on state and local levels. Several cities and states have rank-choice voting or something similar. The Chicago mayoral election (the third biggest city in the country) was between all Democrats basically.

Per Wikipedia:

Ranked-choice voting is used for state primary, congressional, and presidential elections in Alaska and Maine and for local elections in more than 20 US cities including Cambridge, Massachusetts; San Francisco, California; Oakland, California; Berkeley, California; San Leandro, California; Takoma Park, Maryland; St. Paul, Minnesota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Portland, Maine; Las Cruces, New Mexico; and St. Louis Park, Minnesota.[1] New York City is the largest voting population in the US using RCV.[2]

[Spectral Knight]

Ahh, party candidates are just decided by that party and it's paid up members over here. Whilst sometimes there will be votes to decide who the party rep is or who their leader will be in changeovers, there's also central party influence with candidate lists on some local government bodies but we don't really have primaries or anything like that all. The number of people who are members of parties are very small compared to the overall electorate.

Sounds a total faff to me. I don't think I could ever bring myself to join a political party though anyway

[Anna Raven]

Well that’s not true…at least on state and local levels. Several cities and states have rank-choice voting or something similar. The Chicago mayoral election (the third biggest city in the country) was between all Democrats basically.

Per Wikipedia:

Ranked-choice voting is used for state primary, congressional, and presidential elections in Alaska and Maine and for local elections in more than 20 US cities including Cambridge, Massachusetts; San Francisco, California; Oakland, California; Berkeley, California; San Leandro, California; Takoma Park, Maryland; St. Paul, Minnesota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Portland, Maine; Las Cruces, New Mexico; and St. Louis Park, Minnesota.[1] New York City is the largest voting population in the US using RCV.[2]

I was mostly talking about federal elections and/or big state elections. I've also never lived anywhere that had ranked choice. I think its also a very new-ish idea.

I don't think many Americans consider themselves "members" of parties either. It's just something you are kind of forced into, and usually you ideologically identify with one of the two major parties over the other one, but I know a lot of people who sit in the middle and vote back and forth.

[Cable]

I don't think many Americans consider themselves "members" of parties either. It's just something you are kind of forced into, and usually you ideologically identify with one of the two major parties over the other one, but I know a lot of people who sit in the middle and vote back and forth.

And to be clear even in closed primary states you can update your voter registration to switch parties at any time for any reason. I was a registered Republican in 2016 because I wanted to vote against Trump in the primary. I was a registered Democrat in 2020 because I wanted to vote for Biden in the primary. In 2024 I will be a registered Republican again so I can vote against Trump in the primary.

[Blackcyclops]

Counting party membership in the US is dependent upon how you’re counting. If you’re going purely off some official roll then yeah it’s rather small. But if you count in the non-profits, think tanks, and other part-time people (on the local and state level we pay our politicians actually pretty poorly, if at all, which is imo super problematic and actually encourages corruption) then you get a pretty sizable portion of people.

But overall, Anna is right, the official counts are pretty small. And looking at voting records, over basically the last 4 Presidential cycles people really don’t change very much. It’s a small number (and shrinking) of people who constitute the actual changeable. Of course there’s an even bigger group of people, the non-voters (I think around 100 million), who prolly represent the majority of Americans lol

[Magnus]

California doesn't exactly have ranked-choice at the state level, but we do have an "nonpartisan blanket primary" (or "jungle primary") where everyone competes in the primary election, regardless of party, and then the top two vote-getters move on to the "general" election. Sometimes this still results in a Democrat vs Republican (like our 2022 gubernatorial election), but often it results in a Democrat vs Democrat because the California GOP is near dead on the state level. For example, our 2016 Senate election was two Ds (Harris vs Sanchez) as was our 2018 Senate election (Feinstein vs de Leon).

Also, the primary voter rules can vary by state/party. CA tried to force an open primary rule that let anyone vote in a party's primary regardless of affiliation, but it got struck down as unconstitutional. So we now have a system that lets the party decide. The Republicans run a closed primary (so you have to register as as Republican if you want to vote for/against a certain party's candidate, like Cable did) whereas the Democrats let people registered with 'no party preference' vote in their primary too. Though I believe you can only vote in one party's primary each year.

[AntiBody]

On this day in 2015, both the 616 and 1610 universes collided, resulting in the destruction of the Marvel multiverse. Happy anniversary to everything dying!

[Spectral Knight]

A question for the parents of UM...

How many clothes / stuff do babies actually need?
I've spent all Bank Holiday weekend being an IKEA pro (the absolute limits of my DIY capabilities), putting up a full wardrobe, a toy trunk and a little bookcase and somehow our little un, who's still approximately a fortnight away from making her debut has had her wardrobe filled, her toy trunk filled, a pre-existing cupboard half filled and the bookcase which was my comic overflow storage has been taken over by "That's Not My..." and Supertato kids books. She's not even here yet...

Super excited, slightly terrified and also can't sleep at all with a fidgety heavily pregnant wife. Knackered already lol

[das_boot]

So, not a parent but an uncle three times over…

A LOT. Primark it because honestly there’s absolutely no point in buying a load of expensive and super nice stuff when you’re only ever one nappy explosion away from needing a full change of clothing for Spectral Squire. Unless you suspect she’s going to be absolutely tiny, expect that the 0-3 months clothes are going to be used for MAYBE 2 months and then never again. I don’t know what your social circle is like for children, but I know that my brother and his missus’ circle of friends have managed to be quite cunning in that most of them have had children at some point over the last six years so the baby/kids clothes tend to get passed around a LOT— I think my youngest niece who’s two and a half got the vast majority of the 12-18 months clothes back that her elder sister originally wore so it’s absolutely worth seeing if any of your friends are in that kind of round Robin situation and seeing if you can slide in there too. If you can’t stomach the queues in Primark (aka, the new eighth circle of HELL), H&M tend to be pretty good for baby clothes too and not dramatically more expensive— and if you sign up for a members card they do discounts on baby stuff fairly often too.

Also if you see kids clothes in a sale and you think they’re too big for the little one at the moment, ignore that, buy them because if you don’t you’ll be punished with an immediate growth spurt.

[Spectral Knight]

Oh, don't worry, between us we are Primark PROFESSIONALS. Honestly, I don't even care about their dubious offshore labour practises when their clothes are cheaper than bog roll.

The missus' baby shower drenched her in clothes thanks to some very generous cousins and friends*- what I meant (admittedly being a little pissed now, what with it being a bank holiday and a football team who have turned into a complete shower of shit in recent week) is just how much she has!!

(*also, our respective mums are at two totally different ends of the spectrum. This is the M-I-L's 5th (maybe sixth, the wife's youngest sister is also due in the next month!) grandchild, whilst it'll be my mum's 1st, and she has gone radio rental with the stuff she has bought)

The 0-3 month hanger/drawers is already making me sad, in that in a few months time she'd have already cleared them I've not even got her any Marvel outfits yet either and no point given her stacked inventory.

[Blackcyclops]

I believe my desire to have my daughter wear alot of nerdy tees is part of why she’s a 13 yr old who reads Moon Knoght, classic horror comics and wanted to reach Anne Rice as she traveled to Disney World on a school trip.

[das_boot]

I believe my desire to have my daughter wear alot of nerdy tees is part of why she’s a 13 yr old who reads Moon Knoght, classic horror comics and wanted to reach Anne Rice as she traveled to Disney World on a school trip.

… have you accidentally made your daughter a goth?! I approve. I approve of this parenting. I AGGRESSIVELY approve.

[BardicOne]

Kids grow out of clothes like it's an Olympic Event. "25-meter outgrow your wardrobe". My siblings with children live for consignment sales. Buy and sell clothes with the rest of town that were only worn a handful of times.

[Cable]

How often do the top 2 box office movies star the same person? Chris Pratt is making some crazy money right now.

[Spectral Knight]

After a couple of crazy days, this little beauty arrived at 7.02 this morning... Meet Amelia Rose:

FB_IMG_1683908433305.jpg (92.48 KiB) Viewed 857 times

Mrs Knight is rightly knackered as she needed to be induced, but Amelia wasn't overly impressed so she had to make her debut via C-sec, tiny little thing but beautiful...!

Spoiler: show

(Think Amelia counts as X-adjacent enough as well as a nod to Who too!)

[Blackcyclops]

CONGRATULATIONS BRUV!!!!!!

[Spectral Knight]

Thank you BC!!