People are so desperate to consider themselves victims that one man’s letter to the editor, criticizing mature women for wearing yoga pants, motivated hundreds of women to participate in a rally for their right to wear yoga pants. Check out this video. Hard to believe, but this is proof that today’s victim insanity extends far beyond the pale of “social justice warriors.”
On another note, I voted today. It was a mail-in ballot, and I was OUTRAGED that the return envelope required postage. Don’t they know that minorities might not be able to afford postage stamps? This is blatant racism. Due to the legacy of slavery and oppression, African Americans are being denied their right to vote!! It’s 2016, and it’s like we haven’t even progressed in the last 150 years. People of color should have their ballots delivered to them on a silver platter, already filled out (lest they get confused and accidentally vote for Trump). Get their signatures, or thumb-prints, and it’s a done deal! (satire off).
If the postage requirement on mail-in ballots keeps a lot of people from voting for Hillary that’s nice and all, but the issue itself is a legitimate grievance.
Many people simply don’t keep postage stamps at home. Many people also probably don’t know where’s the nearest place that sells them. And then once they figure that out, they go there and realize you can’t just buy one stamp, so now they’re being asked to shell out $10 on a whole book of stamps, essentially just so they can vote using a method the government promised would be available to them for free. In that situation the insignificance of your vote starts to feel more tangible and not voting becomes very attractive.
And then you also have people who just happen to run out of stamps, and maybe keep forgetting to buy them because stamps isn’t something any normal person remembers to put on their grocery list. That’s happened to me a bunch of times, and you’d normally* like the way I vote.
The disparate impact angle is real too, even if it’s obnoxious and overused. If requiring postage on absentee ballots means certain types of people are less likely to vote, that creates a situation that can (and will) be politically exploited, which basically means you’ve added corruption to the system. Don’t think that corruption won’t ever be used in a way you don’t like. And you’ve also added another easy low-hanging target for people to point to and say the system’s racist or whatever.
*In years where I vote. This isn’t one of those years, for reasons that have nothing to do with postage stamps.
You have to put a stamp on a piece of mail you want to send in the snail mail, in the current year?
As far as the Rhode Island yoga rally, some people are just too prosperous and have too much time on their hands.
Outrageous isn’t it? IT’S THE CURRENT YEAR. Everything should be FREE!!!
Here in Lane County, we have a big box at City Hall, every city hall, for deposit of ballots. Generally, it’s the same one used for real estate tax payments.
I watched a video the other day showing some guy going around NYC asking Black people if they knew where the DMV was. Many showed their driver’s licenses.