#importance of informed voting

[theroguebanshee]

Embrace “None of the Above”

  None of the Above: Why Breaking Free from the Two-Party Trap Matters Thinking Outside the Ballot Box Every election cycle, the same story unfolds. Two candidates, two parties, two choices. The pressure mounts to pick one, even if neither represents your views. But what if the best option is none of the above? This isn’t just about politics. It’s about mindset. Whether it’s elections, gun…

[fly-chicken]

This feels like a good time to remind people of the 1981 Regan assassination attempt and the fallout was republicans turning out in droves to re-elect him as well as popularity in polls surging positively

Especially since trump is not original and all his ideas seem to be torn from Regans playbook or other global autocratic dictators

EDIT OMG AND BOLSONARO STABBED DURING HIS ELECTION CAMPAIGN IN 2018, GUESS WHAT HAPPENED W HIS TURNOUT AND RESULTS TOO?!?!

[actuallytodojewski]

hey so uh everyone who decided to not vote/vote third party because "Kamala is Totally just as bad as trump", congrats! you have just sent millions to an early grave. I hope you're fucking happy

[fakecrfan]

Keep seeing US posts about how it's good to vote, which is good, but are there any posts circulating about how to get informed on various policies and candidates up for election?

[deedi-hh]

Y'all I'm scared

I'm not an adult, I am a minor. I can't vote, and my word practically means nothing. Please, if you're a young adult, don't vote for Trump. For starters, Trump will strip people of their careers, leaving many, many people without jobs, or he would change people's jobs to a 'better job' in his eyes (at least that's what i got from the article). Secondly, he's going to make the people that investigate the president work *for him*, and that federal employees have to pass a new civil service test he made (prove their loyalty? I dont know, i didnt see the test). He's going to make a travel ban on Muslim-majority countries to "keep out the terrorists", which not only is racism but if someone has family members in one of those countries, and those family members want to move to them, that'd be *impossible*. He's practically going to brain-wash immigrants to be all-good Americans, to not hate him, to basically call him the best. He's going to end birthright citizenship, so people born of illegal immigrants can not get a citizenship from federal agencies. He's going to end transgender rights, so no more surgeries, transferal hormones or hormone blockers. He's going to make project 2025 continue in it's tracks if he wins, and if that happens, civil servants will be sacked, giving Trump even more power, dismantling the Department of Education. I'm genuinely on the verge of tears right now. I wont lie to you, I'm really young. And that dismantling of the DE means that Trump is going to change the curriculum however he likes, which in turn means kids won't learn about important stuff, they're going to have to pay for their food, (which a lot of families, like mine, can't really afford). He's going to make abortion illegal in every state, and the women/people with female anatomy that have been S/A'd or R-worded won't be able to get rid of the outcome of that traumatizing, terrible situation. It's not good too, since nearly 70 PERCENT of those cases are against CHILDREN 17 AND UNDER. A CHILD BEING FORCED TO GIVE BIRTH COULD KILL THE CHILD. It's so horrible, it's vile. I am sure a whole group of you is nonplussed, and I am too, but I can tell that voting for trump obviously isn't going to end well. He's going to send MILITARY workers out on *PEACEFUL* Protests, which weren't endangering anybody. He said he LIKED WATERBOARDING (I'm assuming he's going to do that to secret agents, stuff like that) and thought that it *wasnt tough enough*, so he likes torture. He's going to make birth control so hard to get a hold of, which sometimes is used to help women with terrible periods that leave them bedridden, and he's wanting to end Planned Parenthood, which speaks for itself, since its not good at all.

That's not even all of it. (Read: https://apnews.com/article/trump-policies-agenda-election-2024-second-term-d656d8f08629a8da14a65c4075545e0f) Please, if this man wins he's going to make America terrible. A living hell for all of us, and he needs to lose. I'm scared; I can't do anything, basically, but I can say this. Don't vote for him, I beg you. He's not going to make America great, he's going to make it a borderline dictatorship. If you think these aren't enough reasons, that's because I didn't cover them all. You can watch videos on youtube, tiktok, anywhere, I think, and there are going to be so many reasons. From an American to another (if you are one or just live in the country), do not vote for trump. I live in a red state, and I am ashamed. I hope some of you will vote for the right person, AKA anybody but Trump.

[good-beans]

I just really love this mindset on voting and I need a refresher on it now and again. As much as I love the freedom to vote however we choose, sometimes I find myself frustrated with guilty voters who have blatantly wrong information on the characters, misunderstandings that could be solved by listening to the voice dramas or watching the mv more than twice -- I find myself wondering why they're allowed to get a say in the characters' fates if they're not going to put the work in like the rest of us.

But... that's life. That's what people do to real people. That's what I do to real people. And not just big news events like Yamanaka mentions, but even little situations as well. I make judgements about things I see while scrolling online, and can't be bothered to deep dive into every available piece of information on the situation. I join in the outrage in a conversation because my friends said so, and I'm not going to call up everyone involved to verify both sides.

I am just ceaselessly amazed by what a cool experiment this is, and how thought-out all of the elements are (even when I get caught up thinking they're flawed lol)

[pilloclock]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by by Yafa Ajweh IBCLC, MSN (@thelactivist)

Labour are just as complicit as the Tory’s. Apart from Zara sultana I’ve completely lost faith in them since October. They’ve been firing and suspending people for speaking up against Israel and now this. The woman who calls Angela’s feminism out is absolutely correct.

Please tell me people are voting green. 8 months ago I would have said I’m voting Labour but I can’t. As a pro Palestinian person I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I voted for Labour.

Please share this video far and wide

[hey-howdy-hello]

Making my own post, because I don't like that my addition is buried under a readmore on the other one.

I've seen this post a few times, and I think its core point (don't try to guilt people into doing things) is good and important, but the devil's in the details; a good post can do harm due to its framing. So I want to share an also important correction/addition: No, you cannot shame someone out of being a "bad person" (not a real thing anyway). Shaming people for perceived misbehavior can lead to depression and addictive tendencies toward those behaviors. Shame also drives people right into the arms of radicalization, since they feel ostracized and emotionally wounded, and with particularly malignant behaviors and political ideologies, they're likely to find a group of people who tell them they don't have to feel that way if they just get worse about it.

TL;DR: Guilt and shame are not the same thing. Shame is almost universally counterproductive for positive change. Most importantly, inflicting guilt or shame on someone is never going to be productive; your focus as an outside party trying to convince someone to change (in the rare circumstances where that's a good idea) should be on accountability, empathy and communication, not causing that person to experience specific emotions.

.............

Guilt, which is not interchangeable with shame, has some positive value for getting people to hold themselves accountable (accountability being the actual goal), but it's not something you should be inflicting on people.

If a child does something harmful, then you holding them accountable may cause guilt and the guilt may be productive, but it should not be your goal; the sadness of a child should never be your goal, actually, though it can sometimes be an unfortunate side effect or intermediary step in discipline.

If an adult does something harmful, I understand wanting them to feel guilty about it, but their feelings actually don't matter, morally speaking--what matters is, again, taking accountability, which they can do a lot better without you telling them how to feel.

To illustrate my point: there's an extensive body of research suggesting that shame is an incredibly common linking factor between mental health issues and addiction (Batchelder et al., 2022; Bilevicius et al., 2018; Bilevicius et al., 2019; Matthews, 2019). Going against the grain a bit, Snoek et al. (2021) do argue that shame and guilt can both positively contribute to addiction recovery, but through a clear lens of understanding that unless they're very carefully managed (by clinical professionals, the individuals themselves, and trusted loved ones they voluntarily bring into the process, not by community members with a special interest in pop psychology), then they will make everything worse through a sense of self-punishing.

For a more evocative example: sex criminals are, contrary to popular belief, a very rehabilitatable population with relatively low rates of recidivism. It can work to use guilt--treatment methods centered on avoiding temptation and shutting down the "bad thoughts" have a long history, and they're not completely ineffective. But you know what works better? The good lives model, a model that emphasizes living a good life with all personal needs met, rather than striving to avoid temptation and defining your life around shame and guilt (de Vries Robbé et al., 2015; Prenzler et al., 2023; Sapp & Vaughn, 1991; Ward et al., 2007). In fact, the biggest criticism of the good lives model is that it may not go far enough in enabling offenders to live full and complete lives, since it's often paternalistic and controlling in execution (Glaser, 2010).

You know what doesn't help sex criminals avoid committing sex crimes? Shame. Shame has been well-established to increase impulsivity (Forkus et al., 2023; Sanchez et al., 2019), and impulsivity is one of the biggest risk factors for committed sexual violence in the first place, while self-control and an ability to self-forgive are strong protective factors against it (de Vries Robbé et al., 2015; Efrati et al., 2019).

So again: you cannot "shame someone out of being a bad person", and you certainly can't shame a child out of misbehaving and expect them to grow up healthy, and you really need to resist the urge to try.

References:

Batchelder, W. A., Glynn, T. R., Moskowitz, J. T., Neilands, T. B., Dilworth, S., Rodriguez, S. L. & Carrico, A. W. (2022). The shame spiral of addiction: Negative self-conscious emotion and substance use. PLOS One. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265480

Bilevicius, E., Single, A., Bristow, L. A., Foot, M., Ellery, M., Keough, M. T. & Johnson, E. A. (2018). Shame mediates the relationship between depression and addictive behaviours. Addictive Behaviors, 82, 94-100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2018.02.023

Bilevicius, E., Neufeld, D. C., Single, A., Foot, M., Ellery, M., Keough, M. T. & Johnson, E. A. (2019). Vulnerable narcissism and addiction: The mediating role of shame. Addictive Behaviors, 92, 115-121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2018.12.035

de Vries Robbé, M., Mann, R. E., Maruna, S., & Thornton, D. (2015). An exploration of protective factors supporting desistance from sexual offending. Sexual Abuse, 27(1), 16-33. https://doi.org/10.1177/1079063214547582

Efrati, Y., Shukron, O., & Epstein, R. (2019). Compulsive sexual behavior and sexual offending: Differences in cognitive schemas, sensation seeking, and impulsivity. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 8(3), 432-441. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.8.2019.36

Forkus, S. R., Contractor, A. A., Raudales, A. M. & Weiss, N. H. (2023). The influence of trauma-related shame on the associations between posttraumatic symptoms and impulsivity facets. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 15(4), 576–583. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0001288

Glaser, B. (2011). Paternalism and the good lives model of sex offender rehabilitation. Sexual Abuse, 23(3), 329-345. https://doi.org/10.1177/1079063210382044

Matthews, S. (2019). Self-stigma and addiction. In: Avery, J., Avery, J. (eds). The Stigma of Addiction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02580-9_2

Prenzler, T., McKillop, N., Rayment-McHugh, S., & Christensen, L. (2023). Best practice in sexual offender rehabilitation and reintegration programs. Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice, 9(3/4), 201-221. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCRPP-07-2023-0036

Sanchez, H., Clark, D. A. & Fields, S. A. (2019). The relationship between impulsivity and shame and guilt proneness on the prediction of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Heliyon, 5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e02746

Sapp, A. D. & Vaughn, M. S. (1991). Sex offender rehabilitation programs in state prisons. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 17(1-2), 55-75. https://doi.org/10.1300/J076v17n01_05

Snoek, A., McGeer, V., Brandenburg, D. & Kennett, J. (2021). Managing shame and guilt in addiction: A pathway to recovery. Addictive Behaviors, 120, 106954. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2021.106954

Ward, T., Mann, R. E., & Gannon, T. A. (2007). The good lives model of offender rehabilitation: Clinical implications. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 12(1), 87-107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2006.03.004

[the-cimmerians]

Yesterday was particularly rough for candidates endorsed by “Moms for Liberty,” the White Christian Nationalist “parental rights” (for rightwing parents) group that wants to cleanse school libraries and curricula of books by/about LGBTQ+ people and people of color who aren’t Ben Carson or Thomas Sowell. Now that Americans are seeing what these loons want to do to public education, more and more communities are saying the hell with that.

[oll13v3r]

this actually helped me understand what was going on with project 2025 all the way and the major issues that it has. I had trouble trying to read it because absorbing information through reading is hard for me so yay there's a song about it :]

To all the eligible voters in the us

Vote.

People are counting on you.

(Including me, a trans minor who hasn't yet gotten the chance to start hrt and wont be able to access top surgery for four years)

[sewersoul]

in light of recent news of arson at ballot return boxes, here’s a reminder that you can track the status of your ballot. link above has resources for each state. i was able to track mine and saw that it has been received and accepted.

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

Hahaha haha yeah I just checked. I can't vote.

[jakeperalta]

hello people in england this is a reminder that there are local elections coming up soon on 4th may!!

I know councils don't feel very interesting or important compared to central government but they really do make so many decisions that impact our daily lives (also this election acts as a bit of a popularity test ahead of the next general election, with the tories currently predicted to lose a load of seats!)

put in your postcode here to check whether there's an election in your area

if you're not already registered to vote at your current address, you can register here until 17th april

you will need to take ID to be able to vote!! this is the first election requiring voter ID (more info here)

[lith-myathar]

.

[yeenobabino]

Haven’t registered to vote?

You can find your registration website at This link:

The nonprofit I work for wants at least five people to fill out the form, so please give it a look if you haven’t registered yet.

I work for Action for the Climate Emergency btw.