#ballot results

[arthur-two-sheds-jackson]

My mind as a non-British person watching the possible future UK Prime Minister side-by-side with a guy dressed as Sesame Street's Elmo on you Brit folks' Election Day:

[princesssarcastia]

okay listen. airing a u.s. political pet peeve here.

setting aside the issue of to-vote-for-biden-or-to-not-vote-for-biden in 2024 and the arguments for and against,

please don't lie to people and tell them voting for a third party presidential candidate is a good idea. please....please don't do that. it won't work. it won't help you. if you want to vote for a third party candidate as a "fuck you" to the republicans or the democrats or both, okay. go for it. but don't tell people that will help, don't expect it will help, it will do exactly nothing.

vote third party in your village, town, school district, city, county, state elections! vote for third-party candidates in your u.s. house races! in those kinds of races a third-party or nonpartisan candidate can have a decent chance of winning, depending. but it 100% won't work for president, and outside some very specific circumstances, probably also won't work in the u.s. senate.

the "third-party" presidential candidates running with most actual established political parties (green party, libertarian party) are not your friends any more than trump or biden are.

[strhwaberries]

the sheer stupidity of voting far right 💀

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Up the FBU.

[boundlesschaos]

“Oh…” Lucius has never seen the one who sits across from him before, either through his own negligence or her own preference, which makes their first interaction a rather strange one, it appeared. “Hello, I am Lucius. It appears we’ve been paired for this event!”

His choice had already been made, so he feels no sense of wariness that one might find searching for the correct answer. It will only take a moment to write it down, of course. He smiles, clasping his hands together. “I’m… not quite sure what the purpose of secrecy is for something like this, so I will tell you outright: no matter what you choose, I will ally with you.”

This stranger was going to ally with her?

A game like this was nothing like what she knew from her typical bouts on the battlefield. It seemed straightforward and easy enough - yet how easy the game presents itself gives Niamh pause. Was it correct to believe in what the stranger says?

Was he the sort to hide his intentions behind a smile?

She supposes there is only one way to understand his intentions. "...if that is what you claim, then I will act accordingly in return."

Whether she intends to actually ally or not...given her stern expression, its difficult to determine her feelings on the matter. At the least, she doesn't appear hostile, and Niamh is making no actions to force his hand.

She's just...not making any attempts to make this any less awkward. And it certainly doesn't help that she doesn't provide her name in turn. Was she that guarded, or did she just forget?

[g4zmaintechtv]

Catholic

[six-of-ravens]

congrats to the democrats I guess, though I'm unclear why it took you like 5 days to count your votes

[genderslug]

happy election day i wanna throw up haha hashtag just trans texan things

[hippo-pot]

With all the disclaimers (his politics aren’t perfect, he’s a politician and public figure and doesn’t need my parasocial sympathy, and Yes, i’m putting non-election-related work in and i don’t think elections are the end-all be-all)

Beto always works his fucking ass off and you can hear it in how hoarse he’s been and when he has talked about how he just wants to sleep in his own bed again once the campaign is over. The polling has been bad and it would have been a miracle if he’d won this race for governor against fucking Greg Abbott (the man who asked for child abuse investigations into the parents of trans children receiving gender affirming care) but I’m grateful he worked so hard anyway and I’m sad for our state, and for the state of things, generally

[holdtightposts]

Every election. Every single fucking time. I’m not surprised and yet I’m always shocked.

[tocourtdisaster]

Good job, Oregon!

[mediapen]

btw my hottest take is they should bring richard nixon back to life and de-age him to like 1975 richard nixon and make him watch all this happen but the catch is he is in a small box-like room and live-streamed to all of the world so we can see effective prisoner richard nixon livereact to an endless stream of things that were a) worse than those which cost him the presidency b) emboldened by his pardon c) made possible by the Nothing of substance that resulted from watergate. he also has to wear a microphone and is encouraged by a simple reward system to repeat iconic lines (and lies ❤️) and once a day someone comes into the room to call him names and feed him one of his weird favourite meals. and then he has to do a mukbang in the style of a mid-2010s youtuber (implying that richard nixon has been subjected to mid-2010s youtube). we have to sacrifice rfk jr to bring him back but that’s okay because he is serving no real purpose* and richard nixon simply cannot be allowed the joy of seeing a kennedy lose

[laurelwreathring]

show me the local election result predictions show me the predictions show me them show me show me show show me show me

[secretmellowblog]

People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

[centaurworks]

OC Ballot Winners - 2023

The OC Ballot for 2023 has officially wrapped up! Thank you to everyone for participating! This will affect what I draw and focus on throughout the year. I can't thank everyone enough for voting tho, it's always amazing to see what people think of my characters.

[anastasiaoftheironwood]

According to this article, California is likely to have its lowest primary turnout in the state’s history — 29%—"in part because more than 4 in 10 voters are not enthusiastic about voting for president or Congress, according to a Public Policy Institute of California survey." Further: "So far, Republican voters have turned in 32% of the ballots, according to Political Data, Mitchell’s analytics firm that monitors turnout across the state. . . .While there are roughly equal numbers of voters older than 65 and younger than 35 in California, so far 57% of the ballots turned in have been from seniors and only 2% from younger voters." (emphasis added) It's not just California.

You don't have to be "enthusiastic" about the candidate you vote for, but you must vote against the candidate you oppose.

Not voting is not a statement of dissatisfaction with the system; it says you are wiling to accept whatever other people decide, even if it's bad for you.

VOTE. Do not let the other side win because you couldn't be bothered to fill out a ballot.