Tag: politics

Vote by snail mail?

In the United States, our General Election is on November 3, 2020, and as you can imagine, there’s been lots of talk about whether or not it’s safe to go to the polls during the Coronavirus pandemic. The fewer times you have to be around lots of people, the better, right? So, voting by mail is a huge topic of conversation these days.

What is it?

Well, voting by mail is basically the same as absentee voting, which has been around since the Civil War.

” What we in the U.S. now call absentee voting first arose during the Civil War, when both Union and Confederate soldiers were given the opportunity to cast ballots from their battlefield units and have them be counted back home.” (MIT Election Data + Science Lab)

Traditionally, absentee voting was limited to people who were too sick to vote on election day, or who were overseas during the election. Beginning in the 1980s, many states began to allow absentee voting for any reason at all.

This year, due to the pandemic, many states are making it easier to vote by mail. Check your state’s election office to make sure you know what the rules are and so you don’t miss any important deadlines!

How does it work?

Basically, you get an application from your state or county Board of Elections office, fill it out, and a few weeks later (depending on how close to the election it is) they mail you a ballot. You complete your ballot and mail/return it to the Board of Elections no later than 5 p.m. on election day.

In North Carolina, you must have one witness to observe you filling out the ballot (but not observing WHO you vote for). Other states may have different rules about this.

For information about absentee voting in NC, check out the state BOE website.

Is voting by mail reliable?

The short answer is yes. There are very few cases of voter fraud associated with mail-in ballots, and safeguards are in place to help prevent fraud. This article by Bipartisan Policy Center gives a great overview and talks to local and state election officials.

“…  jurisdictions with all-mail elections must constantly update voters’ addresses to ensure that the right voters receive the right ballots. As a result, when a person moves, they are unlikely to get the wrong ballot by mail, whereas an in-person voter with an outdated address could be going to the wrong polling place for years.”

What should you do?

It’s up to you how you will vote in 2020. I’m going to go ahead and fill out the absentee ballot application that a nonprofit sent to me in the mail. That way, it’s done, and no Coronavirus, car breaking down, or other unexpected disaster will stop me from getting to the polls!

Key West Storm GIF

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Are you marching?

Hundreds of marches are going on next Saturday. Check the website mentioned below if you are interested in finding one near you…

is March For Our Lives! Join the movement for change in Washington or your local community (or internationally). I will be joining in from Brussels. Follow the link to find out what your community has planned. https://marchforourlives.com/

via MARCH 24th! — ellisnelson

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Highway of Tears

I’m listening to another CBC podcast: “Missing and Murdered: Who Killed Alberta Williams?” Reporter Connie Walker investigates the 1989 unsolved murder of a young indigenous woman. Alberta Williams was found along Highway 16 in British Columbia, now known as the Highway of Tears because of the number of women (mainly indigenous) who have been murdered or went missing along the highway.

As she interviews people who knew Alberta, Connie Walker peels back the layers of a terrible past that may be unknown to many non-Canadians.

From the 1880s until as late as 1996 (!!!), the Canadian government operated “residential schools,” or boarding schools for indigenous people. Children as young as 6 were forcibly removed from their homes and taken from their families to spend years in cruel institutions where they faced sexual abuse, forced starvation, and even death. Their hair was cut, and they were not allowed to speak their ancestral languages.

The legacy of residential schools continues today, passed down by grandparents and parents who were treated less than human. Alcoholism, PTSD, poverty, domestic violence, and feelings of worthlessness are remnants of the residential school system.

I just finished listening to Episode 3, where Connie Walkers begins to connect the past with the present — why are indigenous women  3 to 4 times more likely to be murdered than non-Indigenous Canadian women? Unlike all the other podcasts I’ve listened to, Walkers draws from her own childhood experiences and links the culture to the crime.

Walker’s approach underlines how no crime stands by itself. We are all products of our upbringing, history, and society. And it reminds me how every country has its shameful past — the U.S. being no different — that affects its citizens for generations.

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Born a Crime…

This is a re-post of a re-post! Looks very interesting!

Originally posted on What’s Nonfiction?: Book review: Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah Where most children are proof of their parents’ love, I was the proof of their criminality. Apartheid is one of those subjects that I know embarrassingly little about beyond the basics. If you’re in the same position, I highly recommend comedian…

via South African Roots and Apartheid’s Influence, with a Sense of Humor — Memoir Notes

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Show your love

If you follow U.S. elections, you know that Democrat Doug Jones won the Senate seat in Alabama yesterday, largely due to the turnout of Black voters. CNN reported that 98% of Black women and more than 90% of Black men voted for Jones.

Kamala Harris (right) at a rally for the Affordable Care Act, June 2017.

So, why did college-educated white women (and men!) mostly vote for Republican candidate Roy Moore? Moore has been accused of sexual encounters with teenage girls and has romanticized the times before slavery was abolished.

If you are a women, know a woman, or have any female members of your family, it does not make sense to support Moore. If you are in favor of Black people having equal rights, it does not make sense to support Moore. What is the explanation for his popularity among the majority of white Alabama voters?

  1. Many educated white women and men still believe it is okay for men to sexually assault girls and women.
  2. Many educated white women and men still believe it is okay to discriminate against Black people.

As a friend on Twitter said last night, while the election results were being reported,  “Privilege is a powerful drug.”

If you are reading this and you are a white person, thinking, “But I’m not like that!” then take concrete steps to disprove the statistics. Support organizations, businesses, and political candidates who stand for values that support all people, regardless of race or gender.

Sign that reads, "Green jobs not jails."
Photo courtesy of Brooke Anderson at https://www.flickr.com/photos/brooke_anderson/773438823

Here’s a list to get you started:

 

 

 

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What history?

education-1959551_960_720What a difference a few sentences can make. I just finished listening to one of Malcolm Gladwell’s podcasts for his series “Revisionist History.” In this episode, “Miss Buchanan’s Period of Adjustment,” Gladwell explores the fallout from the 1954 Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education.

The Supreme Court found that “separate but equal” was unhealthy for Black children, that being segregated was fundamentally “bad” for their psyche and self-esteem. But that was not what the NAACP had been fighting for.

From the mouths of two Black parents who took part in the court case, Leola and Oliver Brown, they had no complaints with their daughter’s school (Monroe School, shown below). They loved the teachers, thought the education was “fantastic.” They just wanted all Black parents to have a choice of where to send their children to school.

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From Gladwell’s podcast:

So what does the US Supreme Court do in 1954 in the Brown decision? It buys into the southern way of thinking about race. Leola Brown and the other plaintiffs say, “We have a structural problem. We don’t have the power to send Linda to the school down the street.” The court says, “No, no, no, it’s a psychological problem. Little Linda has been damaged in her heart.” That may seem like a small distinction, believe me it’s not. We’re still dealing with the consequences.

Those few sentences by the Supreme Court made a huge difference to children across the segregated South. What do you think happens when Black schools and Black teachers are ruled to be inferior? What happens to teachers and students deemed “deficient”? The fallout is huge. Listen to Gladwell’s podcast, or you can find a transcript of it here.

The New York Times published an excellent, related article earlier this year: “Where Did All the Black Teachers Go?”

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