[raw_anon_1111]

People keep saying this. But the fact is it doesn’t matter.

Between gerrymandering, the electoral college, two senators per state, and lobbying, votes don’t matter unless you are in a purple state or a purple district. Most people aren’t.

And then we have the Supreme Court giving the President unlimited power.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Between gerrymandering, the electoral college, two senators per state, and lobbying, votes don’t matter unless you are in a purple state or a purple district

I’ve knocked on doors for judicial elections in Manhattan where a single tenants’ association’s turnout out swung every election on the ballot. (In another case, the judge who went to Koreatown with us after a meet and greet swung our eight top to turn out, which was more than the margin for an off-cycle mid-week judicial primary.)

There are always elections on the ballot that matter. And civic engagement isn’t limited to voting.

[ryandrake]

Local politics and civic engagement might help getting a speed bump installed in front of the town grocery store, but it doesn’t stop unaccountable, non-identifying masked ICE thugs from swooping into your neighborhood and black-bagging your friends and neighbors. National politics overrides state and local.

[raw_anon_1111]

Or women bleeding to death because doctors are afraid to perform life saving abortion because they might get arrested.

The (Republican) governor of GA has been spending years and millions of dollars to get the Hyundai plant in GA that would bring 8500 direct jobs and no telling how many indirect jobs to GA. That was delayed an almost ruined by ICE.

It was such a bad fuckup that Trump tried to beg the Koreans to stay after being arrested by ICE. They refused.

The GA voters overwhelmingly voted for Kemp over a MAGA endorsed candidate during the primaries and even a Republican governor can’t block the federal government’s jack booted thugs

[sumeno]

There's more than national politics

[estearum]

and yet the center of political power oscillates – with real consequences – every two and four years... coincidentally around the time we have elections!

[raw_anon_1111]

And those same purple states have decided where it oscillates - like I said.

Whether you are a Republican or Democrat in California it doesn’t matter who you as individual votes for for President. If you are in Los Angeles county, it also doesn’t matter who you vote for in the general election as your representative.

The primaries matter though. California sends the same number of Senators to DC as West Virginia and half as many as North and South Dakota combined even though they don’t have nearly the population.

How long and what strike of luck will it be based on timing that you think this country will see a liberal Supreme Court? Especially since justices nominated by Democrats refuse to leave when a Democratic President is in office? But then again, we are in this mess we are in today because the Democrats were too cowardly to pressure Biden not to run sooner.

[davidw]

If it didn't matter they wouldn't get so upset about you doing it.

Never listen to anyone telling you that your voice doesn't matter.

Like... here's a story about me getting a kind of boring corporate law (related to limited liability companies) changed in Italy. Tons of people rolled their eyes at me and said it'd never happen, but I kept poking away at it, and it did happen:

https://blog.therealitaly.com/2015/04/16/fixing-italy-a-litt...

Also, local politics matter a bunch in the US. There is a ton of good you can do in your community with just a handful of people.

[raw_anon_1111]

If anything, I get upset at how naive the left is, how they think that “this isn’t who we are”, and how out of touch they are. They try to play fair - the right plays to win.

Right now, the governor of California is trying to meet Texas gerrymandering with its own. But liberals are clutching their pearls with “two wrongs don’t make a right” and arguing about things like this in their committees

The rules specify that when we have a gender-nonbinary candidate or officer, the nonbinary individual is counted as neither male nor female, and the remaining six officers must be gender balanced.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/dnc-mee...