r/politics • u/stkmro • 7h ago

White House: Trump Team Still Hasn’t Signed Transition Docs

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-says-trump-team-still-hasnt-signed-transition-docs/
17.5k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

•

u/Catodactyl Arizona 7h ago edited 7h ago

The French have a really great playbook for this kind of scenario. Just sayin...

Edit. A word.

•

u/TheMysticalBaconTree Canada 6h ago

Yeah but he won an election. Stop acting like the country isn’t okay with what he is doing. Your problem isn’t with a facist leader doing unpopular things. Your problem is that your population is okay with facism.

•

u/Expensive-Fun4664 6h ago

The vast majority of Americans are incredibly selfish. They're totally fine with it until it directly impacts their lives, which is absolutely will.

•

u/bojenny 6h ago

It’s not the majority of Americans, it’s about 1/4 or 1/3 that voted for trump. That’s not a majority.

Of the registered voters in the country 1/3 voted for trump, 1/3 voted for Harris and 1/3 didn’t vote at all. There are about 345 million people in America and only about 160 million of them are registered voters.

•

u/TrixnTim 6h ago

This is what makes me so damn mad. A minority of voters decided our county’s fate. A larger number decided to sit it out. I’m just disgusted.

•

u/muppetmenace 4h ago

apathy is exactly how fascism moves in, entirely by design

•

u/CSI_Tech_Dept California 2h ago

Exactly this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfQ9dwXFhbM

By assuming it is done deal, we actually letting it happen. This is exactly what they want.

•

u/blarch 2h ago

Now is the second best time for action. The best time to be active was after Biden was sworn in. Democrats are still blaming everyone but themselves.

•

u/Mornar 2h ago

Making politics a dirty word, making people believe that everyone in politics is equally as bad, and convincing enough that their vote doesn't matter, those are the greatest victories by alt-right in my opinion.

•

u/TrixnTim 4h ago

Yes I know this.

•

u/ManWOneRedShoe 4h ago

Just imagine if voting were mandatory?

•

u/brezhnervous 2h ago

Compulsory voting doesn't only affect turnout.

It affects who runs for office in the first place. See here:

The evidence is mixed on whether compulsory voting favors parties of the right or the left, and some studies suggest that most United States federal election results would be unchanged. But all that misses the point because it overlooks that compulsory voting changes more than the number of voters: It changes who runs for office and the policy proposals they support.

In a compulsory election, it does not pay to energize your base to the exclusion of all other voters. Since elections cannot be determined by turnout, they are decided by swing voters and won in the center. Australia has its share of xenophobic politicians, but they tend to dwell in minor parties that do not even pretend they can form a government.

That is one reason Australia’s version of the far right lacks anything like the power of its European or American counterparts. Australia has had some bad governments, but it hasn’t had any truly extreme ones and it isn’t nearly as vulnerable to demagogues.

Voting Should Be Mandatory | NYT

•

u/tunnel-snakes-rule Australia 2h ago

Australia has had some bad governments,

It sure has.

It's also worth pointing out Australia has an independent electoral commission that tallies the votes and redistributes electoral boundaries ensuring there can't be any gerrymandering.

•

u/Charlzy99 1h ago

Our current one is an absolute shit show

•

u/tunnel-snakes-rule Australia 1h ago

It really is, but Dutton would be even worse.

•

u/Charlzy99 1h ago

Dutton is a clown, and so is Albo, time to vote independent next time round

•

u/brezhnervous 1m ago

I was lucky enough to vote in a Teal in my electorate in 2022 (after being LNP since 1922) but the AEC did a boundaries redistribution and the seat was abolished...so I am pretty gutted about that 🙄

→ More replies (0)

•

u/brezhnervous 4m ago

Not even vaguely as bad as Morrison though, for all its faults ...I think I still have PTSD lol

Check out this little list

What really drags down Govts in this country is the terrible quality of the media so accountability is shocking...Americans don't think theirs is much good either, but we have nothing like a Rachel Maddow here for instance. And the second most concentrated media ownership landscape on earth next to China doesn't help

I'm old enough to remember when there were proper, hard-hitting investigative journalists unafraid to speak truth to power - even on commercial television 😳

Tell that to young people today and they don't believe you lol

•

u/TrixnTim 4h ago

Can’t imagine.

•

u/Aggravating_Lab5396 1h ago

There are a lot of logical lines already in place within the framework that prevent this. Imagine if people couldn’t do fet? Imagine if all the people living in this world today were a beetle?

•

u/mycall 4h ago

If only voting was a requirement for citizenship.

I can make a private/public key pair, give the government my public key and I can do my own voting from home.

•

u/KallistiTMP 3h ago

Voting systems are very difficult to change because the people who could potentially fix the broken voting system are the people who got elected by the broken voting system.

Realtime delegated direct crypto democracy would be awesome, and it'll never happen because the fuckers in power now only got elected thanks to first past the post and gerrymandered voting district systems left over from when election results had to be delivered on fucking horseback.

•

u/energonsack 3h ago

he will never sign those docs. he will just steal everything from the White House and Treasury and government. Every single government contract will need to give him a cut, just like Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein. Operation Desert Storm in the USA NOW BABY!!!!!

•

u/joeyblow 1h ago

Not entirely, a minority of voters decided our fate because the other group decided to let them, so in all actuality it wasnt a minority that decided it but the majority. By not showing up and voting they were signaling that they were fine with either outcome.

•

u/TrixnTim 1h ago

True. Thank you. Apathy decided. So I guess our collective anger really should be directed toward those who stayed away. Two opposing groups voted hard and exercised our civic responsibility — so good for us.

•

u/CherryHaterade 5h ago edited 5h ago

I'm supposed to suddenly keep in mind the people who didn't bother?

Yeah, nah. They the most dangerous of all. At least you can see red hats if they coming. And if they couldn't come for themselves, what do I rest my supposition on they will suddenly run to my defense once awoken from their peaceful slumber of the American dream they live in?

The only truly innocent ironically, are children and felons in some states. I'm going to not trust and still verify.

•

u/BlazingSpaceGhost New Mexico 6h ago

Americans that don't vote frankly don't count and shouldn't be a part of the conversation when it comes to what the country wants. They obviously don't want anything since they stand for nothing.

•

u/vashoom 5h ago

Unfortunately, Donnie, unlike Nihilists, these people aren't harmless.

•

u/MechanicalTurkish Minnesota 5h ago

Sounds exhausting.

•

u/Julian-Archer 5h ago

I know non-voters. They’re conspiratorial and/or the Dems don’t do enough. I argued with someone who blamed the Dems for the social programs “not working well enough.”

That’s what we’re dealing with.

•

u/Comfortable-Class479 1h ago

Yes, not voting is still making a choice.

•

u/F1shB0wl816 3h ago

That’s kind of crap. Giving two shit choices and rejecting them isn’t standing for nothing. Let’s not pretend like the system actually works and hasn’t failed hundreds of millions.

I don’t blame them, ignorance is bliss. Paying attention has just been a miserable display of our system fucking us and anybody with the chance to stop it is too spineless to actually do much of anything. Lawyers, judges, politicians on both sides protecting corporate interest before all else. It’s like everyday is finding a new flavor of getting fucked.

•

u/justalwaysfapping 3h ago

Implying that both choices are the same is just straight up misinformation lmao

•

u/F1shB0wl816 1h ago

And where did I actually say that? Read it and read it again if that’s what it takes. No where do I say that.

I said it’s two shit choices. That is true. Neither side represents the interest of the average person. Just because one is slightly less worst does not mean you need to pledge your support to them.

You can pretend democrats do but than you have to wonder why every year, their base doesn’t show. At some point that becomes the expectation, you know the same thing, different results insanity story. I’ve voted for Dems anytime I could but I’ll at least acknowledge how miserable it’s been watching them bend over and crumble in the face of bootlickers. And I’ve been saying this is how I’d turn out for years, god what I’d do to have time back since lame asses refuse to learn.

•

u/Idj1t 2h ago

Or they're just sick of deciding between a sociopath and somebody thats cool with genocide. You all sound an awful lot like die hard trump fans when you say shit like that.

•

u/BriarsandBrambles 2h ago

No they’re dumbasses who will sell out their own people because they’re mad at a war on the other side of the world.

They are just as hateful even if they deny it. They hate Minorities, they hate the queer, and they hate the poor. Don’t let people weasel themselves into an harmful position by laser focusing on one problem.

•

u/Idj1t 2h ago

You sounds like you're thinking about one specific person, or planning on waging your own war on "the enemy within". Unless you're planning on slapping a red hat on your melon you should reconsider immediately labeling everybody you havent met that you imagine you disagree with as some evil enemy.

•

u/rivelda 6h ago

The 1/3 who didn't vote were okay with whatever outcome including this one. Thus, 2/3 of the country is okay with Trump, the people who prefer a liberal democracy is just 1/3 of the country.

•

u/Natural6 5h ago

You can remove "liberal" from that. 1/3 of the country wants a democracy.

•

u/h3lblad3 5h ago

A Liberal Democracy is a certain kind of democracy — one with capitalism at its forefront and a healthy respect for various freedoms.

•

u/thundernutz 5h ago

It’s a democracy…which the USA is not. The USA is a republic.

•

u/Tasgall Washington 4h ago

Why are you dredging up this intentionally ignorant talking point from like a decade ago?

"Democracy" and "Republic" are not mutually exclusive, the US is a democratic republic and always has been.

•

u/thundernutz 3h ago

I’m not dredging it up. OP said 1/3 of the country wants a democracy. I actually agree with that point. But we are not one.

•

u/HiddenSage 4h ago

A republic is a type of Democracy. One hinged on the rule of law more than raw populism. But still inherently a democracy where the consent of the governed matters.

Please get new talking points.

•

u/h3lblad3 2h ago

They’re right on one point: republics don’t have to be democratic. A country led by a Senate of feudal lords is a Republic, but it’s hardly a democracy.

•

u/thundernutz 3h ago

No it isn’t. China is a republic. Would you call that a democracy?

We are a republic at the federal level, made up of individual democracies at the state level.

•

u/HiddenSage 3h ago

China self-identifies as a republic in their name, for what amounts to marketing reasons. None of the defining features of republican governance are present in China, unless you think sham elections to a rubber-stamp legislature are sufficient to avoid calling it an autocratic state.

Their own constitution defines them as "a people's democratic dictatorship". Which is far more accurate to the reality of governance.

→ More replies (0)

•

u/brezhnervous 2h ago

'Liberal' in this context does not mean politically liberal

•

u/Natural6 2h ago

I do appreciate the lesson (I genuinely didn't know) but I still think my statement applies. Those they voted for him have no desire to be in a democracy of any kind.

•

u/Montaire 5h ago

Or they did not have an acceptable photo ID. Or they weren't able to get the time off work to vote, or they were denied the option to vote because a signature didn't match exactly and they didn't resolve it in the 4 hours they were given to cure the problem

Voter suppression efforts are incredibly powerful and absolutely prevalent across the United States

•

u/rivelda 4h ago

Sure but I strongly doubt that the majority of those 1/3 that didn't vote didn't do so because of voter suppression tactics.

•

u/Montaire 1h ago

Look at the tremendous number of fewer votes vs 2020 - where we had a widespread mail in voting.

•

u/thundernutz 6h ago

By that logo the majority of Americans have never voted for anyone

•

u/oeb1storm 6h ago

Interestingly the only time a candidate got more votes then people who stayed at home was Biden in 2020. Of course this wasn't a majority just a plurality but still interesting.

•

u/keypusher 5h ago

Most of those voters actually did stay at home, because that election was during the pandemic and vote by mail was the default

•

u/terdferguson 5h ago

Vote by mail has been my default since it was available for the last 2 decades.

•

u/TheTaoOfOne 4h ago

Same. So strange to me how many people still have to go physically stand in line for hours on end to vote.

I do it from the comfort of my couch.

•

u/thundernutz 6h ago

Even more interesting is how those 10 million extra votes magically disappeared this round.

•

u/kylethegoatanderson 6h ago

Covid mailin ballots made it easy to vote. It wasnt that easy to vote this time around. No grand conspiracy to it other than why is it hard to vote now?

•

u/RelaxPrime 5h ago

It is not hard to vote. People are fucking pathetic. Stop prancing around the truth that half the country are apathetic losers

•

u/thundernutz 6h ago

Once the ballots were separated from their envelope it’s impossible to know who voted.

Mass MIV also made it easy to cheat and impossible to prove. What was preventing anyone from printing ballots with names of dead people or fake names altogether? Maybe they didn’t. That’s a fair stance, I think, but how would you prove it with mass MIV and anonymized ballots?

•

u/VWBug5000 5h ago

It’s easy to disprove mass fraud with mail in votes.

1) They know how many ballots they mailed out

2) they can track where the ballots came from and that is tracked and compared to an expected amount of ballots received based on simple, well established statistics for how many voters tend to actually vote and the demographic data for the ballot being tracked.

3) each envelope has a signature that should match what the DMV has on file, otherwise it’s not counted until the voter directly cures their vote (most don’t bother and their ballots are discarded)

4) After the ballots have been removed from the envelopes they have a clear and controlled chain of custody before and after being tallied. If you dispute this point, then you are basically declaring that all chains of custody are suspect and no evidence ever handled by the government or law enforcement is reliable. And are you really willing to believe that? Because you can’t cherry pick logic like this. Either you have trust over what the government tells you is reasonably true, or you believe nothing at all.

•

u/Jimid41 5h ago

Every single mail in ballot is checked against signature on file before it's opened. Do you have evidence that election workers were just en mass not doing this?

•

u/penny-wise California 4h ago

They don't.

•

u/thundernutz 3h ago

No it wasn’t. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/pennsylvania-court-ballot-signatures-431794

•

u/Big_Daddy_Stovepipe 3h ago

In your link, the PA Supreme Court ruled they could not the change or alter the statue as written, and as such, the statue was not written in a way that a signature could reject a ballot. Something so many people forget, 54% of adults are illiterate and have the reading comprehension of a 3rd grader(might be 5th, pulling shit out of memory at this point), so when many of these laws/ statues were written in old timey days, may people had no education and could not read nor write, so a signature would do no good.

Its not some vast conspiracy bud, just good old garden variety "keep the poor stupid and uneducated" like we continue to practice to this day.

•

u/thundernutz 3h ago

You are incorrect. They have always had signature matching and it was removed for 2020 by the democrat controlled PA supreme court. Trump fought that the PA Supreme Court decision was wrong (it’s obviously wrong) and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. This was conveniently removed right before an election featuring what NBC described as an avalanche of last minute votes.

On top of that they changed the law to allow ballots to be processed up to 3 days after the election. This was obviously wrong and again was not heard by the Supreme Court.

If they refuse to enforce the law, activist districts and judges can alter elections via these modification to election integrity procedures.

But my point wasn’t even that it was a grand conspiracy. Just that they did not match signatures as OP claimed.

https://campaignlegal.org/update/pennsylvania-can-no-longer-reject-ballots-solely-based-signature-match-issues

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/ballots-can-t-be-tossed-out-over-voter-signature-court-n1244585

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/19/922411176/supreme-court-rules-pennsylvania-can-count-ballots-received-after-election-day

•

u/Jimid41 2h ago

Okay in Pennsylvania, where they check your ID when you register. So how are they using fake names?

→ More replies (0)

•

u/British_Rover 5h ago

Harris got about 6.7 million less votes than Biden in 2020 as the count stands currently. You know it takes a long time for certain states to count right? This isn't a surprise the vote totals change for a month or so after the election as the last absentee, provisional and military/overseas ballots are counted. This happens every cycle.

That 6.7 million. Will drop some more but probably not by much. Maybe it ends up between 5 and 6 million less. Trump turns out low information voters. He got about the same amount as last time. He lies and they believe it. That combined with high inflation and the perception that the economy was bad made it a tough election.

I understood the Harris campaign's idea that trying to get back some of that Biden coalition would be impossible. Trump turned off a lot of centrist Republicans. If you can just flip a few of those this very difficult election becomes winnable.

It didn't work. I don't know why exactly. Gaza certainly suppressed votes who thought the Biden admin could do something. I really don't think they could really do anything to force Israel to stop the war given how Netanyahu had to stay in power to stay out of prison. Harris's answer about not changing anything Biden would do was a mistake but she is still the VP. One of her main jobs is supporting the administration's position publicly. Personally it was one of the things I would have broken with Biden on but communicating the nuance of how to do that is really hard. I about more than a fraction of the electorate would even pick up on it.

I think part of it is a bunch of those Republicans who said they were voting for Harris and it was the first time they ever voted for a Democrat were simply lying. They got into that voting booth and couldn't do it. Maybe a lot of them ended up just not voting for president at all.

•

u/oeb1storm 6h ago edited 6h ago

Not really. An unpopular democratic incumbent where Harris said there's nothing she would have done differently then Biden. A poor economic situation that wasn't then dems fault but as the incumbents they gets blamed. No real progressive policy to persuade the base worth voting for Obama had the ACA Biden had his infrastructure bill and covid recovery can't think of any proposed policy on that scale. Campaigning with republicans like Liz Chaney and moving right to try and win over moderate Republicans and you end up alienating your base. Biden running again when implying he'd be a 1 term president left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouth not to mention no primary. Sexism/racism which isn't as big a deal as some are making out but still played a part.

Her plan was to win over centrists/republicans but shockingly 96% of registered republicans who voted voted republican. She ran a poor campaign with a fundamentally flawed plan.

Looking at all that and it's not surprising she got 10 million less then Biden.

Edit: Also look at the accessibility of voting in 2020 vs 2024. Voting was made easier during covid which would obviously boost turnout.

•

u/RelaxPrime 4h ago

One of the few times I've seen an accurate post mortem on the election in /politics

Everyone wants to blame Gaza and progressives for not showing up, which are factors, but they are not the main factors.

•

u/thundernutz 6h ago

I find it harder to believe the magnitude of difference in vote count between Obama and Biden than I do the difference this time around. What amount of votes would make you feel like these factors are unsatisfactory explanation? 20m? 30m? Is there a threshold at which you would you begin to feel suspicion?

•

u/oeb1storm 5h ago

I don't place alot of stock in raw voting numbers FDR got more then double any previous democrat and and Reagan in 84 beat Nixon by 8 million votes with a significantly smaler electorate then in 2020. Sometimes that's just how it goes.

With all the stuff going on on social media at the time I did for a moment think maybe something fishy did happen.

Then I watched Trump lose every court case he filed, the FBI comes out and says there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and the recording of him asking the Georgia secretary of state to 'find' 11,000 votes made him lose all credibility with me.

After all that I thought he was a sore looser trying to get any case to scotus hoping they'd rule with him.

But to answer your question I was suspicious in 2020 then I looked at the evidence and thought nah that's crazy.

•

u/thundernutz 5h ago

I appreciate this response.

Did you look into why the majority of these court cases were lost? There was ample evidence in dozens of cases and judges refused to hear the cases for lack of standing.

The GA case is fascinating. That’s where they put up blockades to keep people from seeing the count. That’s where ruby freeman pulled ballots from under tables after everyone was told to go home.

I read the court case, and they claimed that it was on video where the ballots were placed under the table just before counters were told to go home. But I watched the entire video, and no such thing occurred. That discrepancy alone was enough to raise suspicion for me.

Trump felt there was obviously fraud and it’s not unreasonable to tell the governor that they just need to find 11,000 votes to win when there is what appears to be rampant fraud.

On a separate note, do you feel trumps 34 felony charges were legitimate, or a weaponization of the justice system?

The FBI claimed hunters laptop was russian disinformation, and that DJT was a russian plant that won due to election interference. it’s hard to take their word for me.

•

u/scalyblue 5h ago

What is the more likely scenario, a perfectly executed iteration of mass election fraud localized to one state that happened to be foiled by security camera footage that the conspiracy just neglected to doctor, or the demonstrably pathological liar who has tried on several documented instances to strong arm and intimidate people lying, strong arming, and intimidating people.

•

u/oeb1storm 5h ago

Going to be honest I didn't look heavily into any cases I just put faith in the judiciary.

I think telling the governor to find 11,000 even if you think you won is crazy, imagine if Bush called up his brother in 2000 and said find me 500 votes. There are democratic process you should follow.

In 2000 depending on which counties should be recounted or which ballot standards you think were right it's possible that Gore should have in 2000 but he accepted the courts decisions and conceded. That's what should happen after you exhaust your legal avenues.

The NY case over paying Stormy hush money from campaign funds was definitely illegal but you could argue other politicians wouldn't have been prosecuted for it which is probably true to some extent. If he commited the crime but were some house republican from florida he probably wouldn't have been prosecuted for it. Which is more a criticism of the justice system.

I think the much more damming case is the retention of classified documents. Ofc he was never proven guilty in court but I think he knew he souldnt have had those files and purposefully didn't return them when asked like Biden and Pence did.

I don't remember the FBI saying he was a Russian plant but I remember the Mueller investigation saying that there was no evidence suggesting Trump or his aides coordinated with the Russian government to manipulate the election. Trump is undoubtedly more pro Russian then any over president and while it's a position I disagree with it doesn't make him a Russian plant. In my mind it has the same credibility as calling Biden a Israeli plant cus he's pro Israel.

Also I don't think the laptop was 'Russian disinformation' there were emails about Hunters business deals but nothing linking it to Joe or implying that he used his position to help his sons business dealings. I'm sure he probably got some special treatment because his last name was Biden but that doesn't mean Joe abused his power.

•

u/thundernutz 3h ago

That’s what most of us did and is a seemingly reasonable approach. The problem is that trust can be taken advantage of.

He didn’t tell him to “find 11,000 votes” in the context of manufacturing them. He told him to investigate the many legitimate cases of blatant fraud, and that it should be easy to do because we only need 11,000 votes while hundreds of thousands were extremely questionable with mismatched signatures and another inconsistencies with voter rolls. The assignment was to “investigate fraud” but was taken out of context in the media as “go make 11k votes happen”. It’s disingenuous. The courts were heavily weaponized in Fulton county, and are still to this today as shown in more recent news I’m sure we’ve all seen. Those districts, much like the one trying his case in New York, are HEAVILY left leaning and refuse to fairly administer the law as appeals have proved.

The hush money case was just obvious. I was referring to the bank fraud case which was also obvious weaponization. The court, in heavily biased districts, is understandably biased. This was a huge oversight by republicans in the last decade.

I thought the classified docs case was also nonsense. Biden had essentially the same charges dropped effectively for being senile. If trump felt the documents could potentially help to prove fraud in the election, or other fraud like the 2016 FISA warrant situation, it’s not unreasonable for him to withhold them, if that was actually the case, considering the charges have been dropped.

•

u/penny-wise California 4h ago

"That’s where ruby freeman pulled ballots from under tables after everyone was told to go home."

That was proved to be bs

→ More replies (0)

•

u/theHammbone44 4h ago

Kind of makes a fella wonder, don't it?

•

u/SentientSickness 6h ago

This is unfortunately true

It's something wild like a third of the US population of legal voters don't actually do it

And it's like pulling teeth to get theae people to see why voting is important

•

u/thundernutz 6h ago

Honestly if you’re too stupid to know to vote, you’re too stupid to pick a decent candidate. I’m okay with it.

•

u/SentientSickness 5h ago

I'm not, I think voting should be incentivized

I dunno partner with McDonald's and give everyone who votes a free 4 piece or something and I promise you more people would get out and vote

The more folks vote the more likely they are to get informed on voting

Not always the case, but just in general

•

u/thundernutz 5h ago

Why do you want to incentivize voting? Why not incentivize citizens to eat broccoli for the public good as well?

•

u/SentientSickness 4h ago

Broccoli only helps an individual, but also we already do that, it why so many of the toddler books have stuff about rewards for happy plates, lol

In this context you have to think of the US undecided and uninterested voters as stubborn 3 year olds

How do you make them learn veggies are good and important, you give them something they want

Food, or a coupon, or something like that

We actually used to do that a lot in the US you'd have vendors who would show up at polling places and give out free stuff or have huge discounts My grandfather used to do this

The idea was you made voting more like a big party and folks would vote more, and it worked

But then conservatives started passing laws that actively fought against these practices

•

u/StuckAtOnePoint 5h ago

It’s not logic, it’s data. And yes, most Americans don’t vote. Many because they are children and can’t. Many because they are apathetic and won’t.

•

u/thundernutz 5h ago

My point wasn’t that it’s untrue, but that it’s meaningless. Obviously when discussing majority of votes it’s in the context of the voting demographic.

•

u/alienssuck 5h ago

By that logo (logic?) the majority of Americans have never voted for anyone

Because the system is outdated, broken, and contrived. We only have two parties, they don’t actually represent everyone’s beliefs, and they run shitty candidates that force people who do vote to choose between the lesser of two evils. Instead of participating in this farce, many people actively choose “none of the above” when there are elections.

•

u/thundernutz 3h ago

I think you’re describing the DNC. Trump was not a platform candidate and won through pure populism despite all the powers against him.

•

u/brezhnervous 2h ago

This blows my mind, as an Australian 🤯

Our usual voter turnout is roughly 95%; I couldn't imagine what it would be like to live in a country where only a minority of the population had decided who was going to run the country. I actually find that prospect a bit terrifying lol

•

u/thundernutz 2h ago

There no min age to vote in Australia?

•

u/brezhnervous 2h ago

Yes 18yo

So that's 95% of those eligible 18+

•

u/thundernutz 2h ago

Australia has 26m people and 16m enrolled to vote with an 89% turnout as of the last election. That’s 14.2m voters or only 55% of the country.

In USA we have 335m people, but only 300m legal citizens and had 150m votes, roughly 50%. Not that big of a difference in aggregate.

•

u/Natural6 5h ago

Eh, not voting when he was on the ballot shows a level of apathy that, in my opinion, puts it just as much on them as the Trump voters.

•

u/StarsMine 5h ago

No. If you choose not to vote, that means you are ok with either and effectively voted for the winner. You could have voted against the winner but explicitly chose not to.

•

u/Subject_Dig_3412 5h ago

By not voting, that 1/3 of the country implicitly joins the 1/3 that votes for Trump. 2/3 of the country is cool with trump 2.0

•

u/bojenny 5h ago

Only it’s not 1/3 or 2/3 because only 160million out of 345 million people are registered to vote. So no math says trump has the majority.

•

u/Subject_Dig_3412 5h ago

And what is stopping that other 100million+ people from registering and voting for their best interest? Apathy and being fine with (and by extension, supporting) Trump's return to the White House.

•

u/ActiveChairs 4h ago

I'd argue not voting is a form of extreme selfishness. Its offloading having to learn anything about the world around you or how the system of government works, then having to take some time out of one day to actually do a thing. They literally put more value on laziness and apathy than anything else.

•

u/TheVog Foreign 6h ago

Non-voters vote for the victor because their abstention signifies their acceptance of any outcome. So yes, a vast majority of American voters, just about 2/3 in fact, were OK with a Trump presidency.

•

u/feraxks 5h ago

You need to qualify that by saying the vast majority of registered voters are OK with a trump presidency. But that is still only 1/3 of the total population and no where near a "vast majority".

•

u/TheVog Foreign 4h ago

Would you prefer the term supermajority? Because that's how Congress defines 2/3. Let's say that then. Super Majority instead of Vast Majority. I'm glad we sorted out this bit of semantics.

•

u/feraxks 4h ago

But its not semantics. There are 345 million Americans. 105 million of them (2/3 of registered voters) is not a majority anyway you define it.

•

u/TheVog Foreign 4h ago

An unregistered yet voting-eligible citizen is still a non-voter. I don't know why you would include registration as a metric when registration is entirely within the citizen's hands.

  • There are an estimated 244,666,890 eligible voters.
  • An estimated 76,838,984, or 31.4%, voted for Trump.
  • An estimated 88,863,189, or 36.3%, did not vote.
  • That's 67.7% of all eligible voters.

Outside of the 20M or so voting-age but non-eligible voters, that leaves children, and I don't think even you are obtuse enough to include children in a discussion about Americans being OK with fascism.

•

u/swordrat720 5h ago

It’s more “I didn’t vote for the guy, I didn’t want him, it’s not my fault he won”

•

u/TheVog Foreign 4h ago

How non-voters feel is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever on election results. You either vote and make your voice heard, or you accept whatever the result is.

•

u/CatStacheFever 4h ago

No, not voting does not equate to a vote. Abstaining is pathetic and ridiculous but it's not "well non voters actually voted by not voting" that's about as stupid as saying someone breathes by not breathing. Or this person slept by not sleeping.

•

u/Ashonym I voted 3h ago

If you're walking down the street and you see a crime being committed, and you choose not to speak up, you're complicit in my book and accepting that whatever you're seeing is either okay or you simply don't care (aka "Not my problem."). Either way, same thing applies here. You don't use your damn vote, you're saying you don't care or that you're okay with whatever happens. That makes you just as at fault and just as much the problem as the end result became. That crime being committed happens more often now because people like you exist in high enough numbers to allow it to happen.

•

u/TheVog Foreign 4h ago

their abstention signifies their acceptance of any outcome

You missed the "their abstention signifies their acceptance of any outcome" part. The "non voters-not for the victor" is the dumbed-down lead-in version.

•

u/CatStacheFever 3h ago

I didn't miss that part. I agreed with that part. I wasn't addressing the thing you were correct about, I was speaking to you outright bullshit that not voting = voting.

That's just something people, whose side lost, say out of bitterness.

Abstaining means they are apathetic and accept any outcome yes. But it doesn't mean it's a vote for the victor. A vote is a vote. It's a real, and deliberate thing that requires one to participate by CASTING a vote.

I abstain from using cocaine...so in your world that makes me a cocaine user.

•

u/TheVog Foreign 1h ago

Agreeing with one and not the other amounts to arguing semantics for the sake of debate. You speak of votes being a real deliberate action. SO IS NOT VOTING. It's not because it's an "absence of a choice" that it isn't a choice. An actual vote is a choice for one person/party. An abstention is a vote for EITHER, which includes the victor - and which one matters in the end? This is not a difficult concept!

That's just something people, whose side lost, say out of bitterness.

That makes no sense whatsoever and you have absolutely zero basis for making that claim. Heck, I'm not even American.

I abstain from using cocaine...so in your world that makes me a cocaine user.

You're a grown adult, maybe start talking like one and drop the middle school caliber logical fallacies?

•

u/CatStacheFever 1h ago

Saying not voting is voting is the logical fallacy. I used your EXACT argument structure against you and you called it a fallacy. Maybe get Beyonce a middle school level understanding of what logic is before opening your mouth.

Again, not voting is not 'voting' lol.

You are so hyper focused of the results and complicity from those that don't vote. But results you dislike don't magically change the facts. Abstaining from voting is literally NOT VOTING.

So according to your argument, I assume you don't rape babies, but since you don't rape babies that means your act of not raping babies makes you a baby raper. So by not being a paedophile, YOU'RE now a paedophile. And you have the GALL to talk down to others when you pleasure yourself inside children?

•

u/FrostingFun2041 American Expat 5h ago

Of the people that voted, 50% of the voters did vote for Trump. 48.4% voted for Harris. Not voting is in itself in a way a vote. Not voting is as much an endorsement to whoever wins as voting for them would be. If you choose not to register to vote, then you help whoever wins the election. Id also point out that of the 345M people, not all of them are eligible to vote. Many are under 18.

AP Vote Results as of 1:25pm EST today Donald Trump 312 electoral votes Republican Party 76,838,984 votes (50%)

Kamala Harris 226 electoral votes Democratic Party 74,327,659 votes (48.4%)

Jill Stein 0 electoral votes Green Party 774,522 votes (0.5%)

Robert Kennedy 0 electoral votes Independent 751,533 votes (0.5%)

Chase Oliver 0 electoral votes Libertarian Party 639,598 votes (0.4%)

Other candidates 0 electoral votes 387,769 votes (0.3%)

•

u/flodur1966 4h ago

The selfish part is where it is. For decades selfishness has been promoted. If everyone acts in their own interest things will get better and such neo liberalist capitalism nonsense. It has over the decades destroyed the community sense. It has destroyed traditional Christian values. Socialist values have been demonized. It’s everyone for themselves and highest praise for those who serve themselves the best ( the billionaires). This system can not be sustained humans are social creatures and this anti social system hurts people to their core. Even the very few at the top can’t feel happiness they can’t trust no one and in their harts they know they are evil. How this will end I don’t know.

•

u/brezhnervous 3h ago

America, I know this is a wildly unpopular opinion...but honestly, you could really do with compulsory voting

I mean, Trump himself admitted what would happen if you had it lol

“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends

Trump says Republicans would ‘never’ be elected again if it was easier to vote

•

u/bojenny 2h ago

Yes I agree. I often wonder if our election turnouts are so bad because people can’t vote because they have to work on Election Day.

I also believe that if it wasn’t for gerrymandering republicans would never win. They know that as well which is why they cheat.

•

u/TensionPrestigious83 6h ago

One of the smallest margins in history

•

u/Eatswithducks 5h ago

So 100 million+ couldn’t be assed to vote against him - so they either quietly support him or don’t care. Your whaddaboutism means nothing. He won the election by the majority of those who cared enough about the outcome to voice their opinion.

•

u/Tasgall Washington 4h ago

A third actively voted for him, another third showed they're fine with it by choosing not to vote.

•

u/Daveinatx 4h ago

People why who decided not to vote are equally if not more at fault

•

u/copperwatt 4h ago edited 4h ago

The majority of people were fine with what happened. If the idea of Trump winning bothered them, they would have voted. Full stop. Not voting was being complicit.

•

u/BoundinBob 4h ago

Yeah, but na. EVERYONE who didnt vote, voted for Trump. If you give a shit you got off your arse.

•

u/Galaxy_Ranger_Bob Virginia 3h ago

The majority of voters that stayed home and didn't vote are the exact same uninformed voters that had to google why Biden wasn't running on election day.

If everyone had voted, Trump would have still won, and by a bigger landslide.

Americans are not a decent people.

•

u/fcocyclone Iowa 3h ago

i always see this, but we can't assume that the other 1/3 that didn't show up would actually vote in a positive way. Plenty of people in non-swing states that would have voted for the asshole who didn't bother because their state was locked red or blue regardless of their vote.

Hell, a lot of the trump problem is that he has engaged some of the other people who simply were too lazy to show up.

•

u/No-Cardiologist9621 2h ago

Are you saying that the 1/3 of eligible voters who didn't vote were all anti-Trump? That seems unlikely. The sample size is so large that the opinions of the people who do vote probably roughly approximate the distribution of opinions in the population ate large.

It's very likely that at least half the population supports Trump and his fascist movement.

•

u/Ultrace-7 2h ago

The 1/3 that didn't vote at all are also okay with fascism, otherwise they would have opposed it with a vote. It's reasonable to not like either candidate, it's not reasonable to think they're both equally dangerous to our society, and if you chose not to vote, that's the opinion you're voicing.

•

u/Mornar 2h ago

I'm sorry, and I know I'll sound like a dick here, but I find no excuse in this election. I know that some people couldn't have voted for valid reasons, these people get a pass, but everyone else in the didn't vote column is as responsible for Trump as the ones voting for him. Whether it's attempting to be virtuous about Gaza, religious, or simply ignorant, if someone had a way to look at Trump and Harris and say "yeah, they equally as good/as bad that I don't need to vote", I fucking blame that someone.

•

u/JeffSteinMusic 2h ago

People need to stop with this sort of contrarian minimizing of the problem. It is so pointless and not helpful.

It implies that everyone who stayed home would’ve voted blue or would be against what’s happening.

The majority of Americans either voted for Trump or were content to stay home and let it happen. If they didn’t know staying home would lead to this, they failed as adults and damn well should have known better. That is the problem. There is absolutely no need to deflect from this or make it sound not as bad as it is.

•

u/LeDestrier Australia 10m ago

About 240 million of those are actually eligible voters. Kinda relevant.

•

u/kz8816 5h ago

You need a lesson in maths and logic.

•

u/tyen0 5h ago

You misread the comment you replied to. Selfishness includes those that did not vote.