In the “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain” department, Portland TV station KGW has found a fair number of folks arrested at anti-Trump protests in their fair city didn’t vote in this year’s election:
KGW compiled a list of the 112 people arrested by the Portland Police Bureau during recent protests. Those names and ages, provided by police, were then compared to state voter logs by Multnomah County Elections officials.
Records show 39 of the protesters arrested were registered in the state but didn’t return a ballot for the November 8 election. Thirty-five of the demonstrators taken into custody weren’t registered to vote in Oregon [Kyle Iboshi, “Most of Arrested Portland Protestors Are from Oregon,” KGW-TV Portland, 2016.11.15].
A law-abiding Portland protester points out that arrestees may not be a representative sample of anti-Trump protesters. I’ll agree that hooligans who join any crowd just to smash windows and cause other trouble lack the civic spirit that should correlate with regular voting. Nonetheless, people who didn’t vote shouldn’t smash windows or shout “Not my President!” And if non-voters do show up for the protests, organizers should make sure to get those people registered and then call them multiple times in 2018 to remind them to vote.
The 1.4 million people who constitute Hillary Clinton’s current margin over Donald Trump in the legally irrelevant popular vote could consider marching on Washington, D.C., on January 20. Those 1.4 million still have no legal or moral claim to stand in the way of the peaceful, Constitutional transition of power, but they might provide our incoming President a powerful reminder that only 28% of voting-eligible Americans cast ballots for him.
About 132 million Americans cast Presidential ballots. That’s about 41% of the population of the United States. For every two Americans who can complain, there are three who can’t.
How does KGW know those voter’s ballots weren’t shuffled off to Buffalo via voter suppression hi-jinks?
Only 28% of voting eligible Americans voted for Trump and he received more than 1.5 million less votes than Clinton. Republicans netted less seats in the Senate and the House. This was not a mandate for the Republicans to run over America with their “Make Wealthy Americans Great Again” philosophy. If they overreach, they will lose in the long run with Millennials becoming the dominant voting block and with the US becoming more diverse. The one way to get non-voters to vote in the next election is to torque everyone off.
Mr. Larson, you note something quite interesting with Trump loosing to Clinton in the popular vote by 1,500,000 and counting. There is no mandate so we need to inform the populace of how this has shaken out. There should not be a roll over for Medicare vouchers to start.
I guess protesting is more fun than voting.
I remember when on the campaign trail President Obama reminded us, “Don’t ‘boo,’ vote.”
Jon Stewart remarked that although Trump’s election was also a repudiation of the Republicans, the Republicans are going to profit from the election of Trump. Again, it’s all about the label. He is now a Republican in the same way and on the same team as McConnell and Ryan. Let’s see how the “outsider” president does at “draining the swamp.”
Darin, “The one way to get non-voters to vote in the next election is to torque everyone off.” Why should we think that the next election will be different? Didn’t candidate Trump do enough to “torque” potential voters? Yet so many still chose to sit on the side lines and let his election happen.
I think this election showed that the “lesser of two evils” rationale for voting now gets pushed out for sitting out unless “inspired” by a candidate. Obama inspired voters and the system/(liberal)voters got spoiled.
O- take your pick-
http://juanitajean.com/friday-toons-204/
Swamp Thing is my choice.
Trump just settled the Trump University lawsuits.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-settles-trump-university-lawsuits-for-25-million-215707514.html
Tough guy is blinks with Iran deal. Thune sent a letter to everyone bitching and moaning about the Black guy and his deal with Iran that was written by Cotton. Turns out, that all the ones against the deal are now telling Trump that they are urging caution. They know full well that Iran would bloody us the the point of an unbelievable hurt. So cooler heads prevail even our resident dummy will get the memo. A war with Iran would be bad for business interests. Simple stuff. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/donald-trump-iran-nuclear-deal-231419
Drumpf swore he would never settle and chastised lead defendant for dropping out. I never settle which is why I seldom get sued – Exclusive: Trump’s 3,500 lawsuits unprecedented for a presidential ..
What an effing,lying little, nasty piece of work.
O-there was only one evil in this election and it got the prize because it was evil and needed plenty help to get there.
O says “Why should we think that the next election will be different? Didn’t candidate Trump do enough to “torque” potential voters? Yet so many still chose to sit on the side lines and let his election happen.”
O – The prospect of Trump was not enough for some people to realize the gravity of the situation. Some figured HRC would win without their votes. Some thought Trump and HRC were equivalent bad choices. Heck, look at the small percentage of Sanders supporters who refused to vote for HRC or even the subgroup that voted for Trump. Now the reality of Trump will be visited upon the mindset of the electorate every day for four years. Those idealists out there who thought there was no difference between Trump and HRC can wake up to the new realities of a Trump administration. I need not recite them. We will be living them.
Instead of beating up on Obama and HRC constantly for 8 years, the media will be examining Trump’s actions under a microscope and it will be in the news everyday. What is the best way to drum up interest, participation and money for the political process? Put an evil empire on the news every day.
What part of Russian intervention do you all fail to understand? This is coming directly from the National Security Adviser. We all can piddle around about torque of potential voters (I like that one) or we can admit that Russian hackers broke our political system.
Drumpf’s media of choice is Fake Noize and dead Breitbart where everything Drumpf sez is 100% gospel and true.
Can’t wait for Drumpf’s Twitter spin on how he personally defeated the savage horde in his latest lawsuit. Of course he will be sure to remind everyone he did not admit guilt so he is totally innocent.
Just wondering if Trump will settle the upcoming child rape charges?
millennials who failed to vote or didn’t vote for Hillary out of whatever…, will likely NEVER make such an irretrievable mistake again. hope we stumble through another 4 years of republican idiocy.
Dems who didn’t vote for Hillary are just plain idiots.
@leslie, I respectfully disagree, these folks are scared to death. It really does not matter of they are voters are non voters, they are Americans first and they are scared of being left to die on the street by themselves with no way to get medical help. The emergency rooms are not the safe havens they claim to be as some have closed their doors. It is not good out there on the mean streets and especially if you are sick with diabetes or some other insidious illness.
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21710265-local-health-outcomes-predict-trumpward-swings-illness-indicator
There is certainly a health crisis in this country that is growing each hour. 1,000,000 new enrolled in the ACA so far and countless others are being left out due to ignorant governors refusal to expand Medicaid. Look who voted for Trump, the sickest of the sick because they know that the way this healthcare is at present, they will soon be left out as that is the case for them, all will suffer as they do. Revenge is powerful and Trump, of all people, knows this firsthand.
Clinton’s popular vote lead is now up to 1,663,845 and growing. Will it hit 2 million?
Roger, the child rape case was “voluntarily” dismissed by the Plaintiff on Nov. 4. The Court records only show the dismissal itself, but give no information about the reasons. I have seen various social media postings claiming that the Plaintiff feared for her life so she dismissed, but I have no actual way of confirming whether that is true. In any event, that case has been dismissed for now.
Although it is hypocritical to protest the results of an election that one didn’t bother participating in, we should give some leeway to SOME (not all) of those that may be protesting due to a few reasons:
1. Some protesters attend college in the cities they are protesting in, but they are actually registered to vote in their home states.
2. Some protesters were most likely prevented from voting due to the ever-increasing barriers put up to prevent them from doing so. And before we claim these voter suppression tactics won’t harm legitimate voters, let’s keep in mind that at least two of Donald Trump’s own children were unable to vote for him due to missing arbitrary registration deadlines.
3. It is possible some protesters are either underage, or were not 18 at the time of the election. That doesn’t mean their voices don’t matter.
4. Some protesters may have opted to not vote because they felt their candidate was wrongfully prevented from appearing on the ballot. Some third party candidates were left off of ballots in some states, and some saw the DNC leaks as sufficient evidence that the Democrats prevented Sanders from winning the primaries.
Thus until we know all the details about a particular person and the reasons they didn’t have a ballot on file for the prior election, it is probably best to withhold judgment.
Where are the investigations into Russia (admitted they were involved with wikileaks hacking) and the FBI interference into a US election? I hear there are at least 5 more HRC investigations either planned or already underway.
Craig offers fair grounds for allowing complaint and protest from non-voters. Young people under 18, I welcome your exercise of your First Amendment rights; just be sure to go register to vote on your 18th birthday.
Note that the first 39 non-voters cited are registered Oregon voters. Their excuses are thin at best. I’m not inclined to accept Bernie non-voting as an excuse for not voting; even if they insisted on leaving that top line blank, those Bernie voters should still have thrown their voice behind the state and local progressives who need their support.
Oregon’s voter registration deadline this year was October 18. Dang: that’s a week earlier than South Dakota’s, and I think South Dakota’s is too early. Let’s go with same-day registration.