Anyone who is legally eligible to cast a ballot in an election should be allowed to do so in whatever way is most convenient for them. If that's in-person on election day, great; by mail, great; in-person in the weeks leading up to an election, great.

That is the only acceptable way for a democratic republic to function. Voting should be easy and it should be encouraged. There should be:

- Automatic voter registration.
- No excuses needed to vote absentee.

This is not controversial.
It's telling how people defend more restrictive voting methods. Look at this ridiculous quote from Pete Hegseth about how everyone being able to easily cast a ballot somehow stripping people of the "recourse" of the ballot box.
https://t.co/4AcTPT2HfD
They know there's not widespread fraud. It's not about "fraud." It never was.

They just want to put as many obstacles in the way as humanly possible, to make it more difficult for people to vote.
"We could've voted in person. I can go to Walmart. I can go to a store, I can go to a restaurant, I can go to sports games in some places. You tell me we couldn't have voted? I just don't buy it."

No one stopped you from voting in person, Pete!
If you're a minimum wage worker who doesn't get paid time off, who lives in an area where the number of polling places is limited and always has hours of lines... you're going to be less likely to vote *on* election day.
Only Republicans could look at record turnout and treat it like a problem that needs to be solved.
Efforts to limit early voting, to make it harder to cast votes by mail, to make it easier to reject ballots on technicalities like whether or not it was sent inside a special envelope... those are efforts to disenfranchise people.
Because all of those things are designed to affect the ability of people who work hourly jobs with little flexibility and an inability to take hours off in the middle of the day and live in densely-populated areas to cast votes. It's no coincidence that those are people who
tend to vote for Democrats. It's an attack on people of color. It's an attack on democracy. It's unacceptable.

And it's time the press started treating it as such.
Look at how often mainstream media outlets adopt the conservative framing on these election restrictions: "election security measures," "anti-voter fraud initiatives," etc.

Shameful. It's not a matter of "this side says it's about security, this other side says suppression"
"Both sides" coverage is how we got to this place. A fascist mob tried to overturn the election results. Mainstream media played a role in it.
How often are the people trying to add various "election integrity" measures asked what the ratio of instances of fraud their bills will prevent to the number of disenfranchised voters is? Never?
A lot of the DC media acting shocked and appalled with what happened yesterday are the same outlets that have led us to this point.

And had they, personally, not felt threatened, could they have even mustered up what outrage they did have?
Yesterday needs to be a major wake-up call. This is what endless "in this Trump town, they never stopped saying 'Merry Christmas'" profiles and "Meet the dapper Nazi" pieces have created.
Do better. And that means more than just a single day of acting outraged. That means reevaluating what the role of the press is in a functioning society, and rethinking journalism. It can't be entertainment anymore. It just can't.
The people who make decisions at CNN, NYT, WaPo, CBS, ABC, the AP, NPR, Reuters, USA Today, NBC, etc., won't see this thread. Or if they do, it won't sink in.

I can hope, though.
(I use "in this Trump town, they never stopped saying merry christmas" as an example because, I kid you not, it's something the Washington Post actually published... as if the rest of the country had stopped recognizing Christmas https://t.co/DaO6vPXR5A )

More from Parker Molloy

This is trash, @AP. Utter garbage. Shame on the “journalists” who wrote this (really? You needed 2 people to report out this garbage?) Also, you don’t even make clear that this lady is wrong. You treat it as a legitimate position. What the fuck is wrong with you?


Look at this. This treats both views as legitimate. Fucking garbage.


Have you learned nothing?! This is such bullshit. Why the fuck do I even bother trying to push back on bad journalism? No one in positions of power ever listen.

I used to think that bad journalism was mostly the result of honest mistakes, but the past few years have really hammered home for me how much it is intentional trash. Shame on @AP for that bullshit. Shame on @ABC for letting Rand Paul rant about his election conspiracy theories.

Seriously, @AP @ClaireGalofaro @JulietLinderman? You didn’t even bother to note that this lady’s delusions are false.
2017 https://t.co/kiqQoWR57e


https://t.co/W18nqFlLru


The GOP got rid of the SCOTUS filibuster so they could jam through three fringy right-wing Alito clones, including one right before the election, but sure thing, bud.

“Uh, actually, they got rid of the SCOTUS filibuster because Harry Reid did it first for something totally different! I am very smart!”

No. Knock it off.

Here’s the thing about the “But Harry Reid...” excuse:

1. McConnell was holding up Obama nominees, some *for literal years* without a vote.

2. Had he *not* done that, Trump would have inherited *even more* vacant seats.
This is what happens when the Trump cultists refuse to acknowledge anything outside their extremely insular bubble: they can’t grasp that the majority of the country thinks he sucks and voted him out.


Not once in 4 years of Gallup’s 3-day tracking of Trump’s approval rating was it ever higher than 49%.

He was the least popular incumbent since Carter to run for re-election. It’s not shocking that he got his ass kicked in the election. https://t.co/7BSCQR2vI2


But if you do nothing other than consume conservative media, you’d be under the false impression that he’s popular, that his ideas are popular, and that the people who oppose him are a small group of haters.

In Gallup’s last update before the election, Trump had a -6 net approval rating. The last time it was a net positive was in May when it was +1.


And here’s how you get numbers like that: you do absolutely nothing to try to win over people who aren’t already part of your base. Look at those numbers among independents.

More from Legal

Absolutely fascinating thread as @jsralton & others track down the identity of key players in the Capitol Hill breach.

Including highly decorated ex-members of the military.

The double wrist ties, tasers, discarded weapons all show an intention to go much further than they got


Seems so ordinary, becoming Lieutenant Commander Brock in the US Airforce ...yet the conversion from the ordinary into the extremist will make a fascinating study for psychologists @RichardBentall


His claim that he picked up the wrist ties “someone” had dropped so he could hand them into police is laughable.

And when you think about it rather cowardly. Can’t even take responsibility for what he has done.

Who else were involved in the planning? Which mates of his?

The attention to detail in making the links is impressive.

There’s going to be a lot more doors knocked in in the next few weeks.

How high and how deep into the Trump establishment does it go.?


H/T @k8tshires for this summary from CNN

If the people involved in this insurrection succeeded where would the establishment face of the movement be?

I suspect not making the denouncements they are now that it
Without jumping to conclusions, this is a strange coincident. Is someone trying to kill two birds with one stone?


If you don't get caught up in the noise of the media, you'll notice a few more things. The far-right Oath Keepers has been patrolling major cities with heavy weapons for weeks. They were present in numbers at the Capitol, but without weapons.


https://t.co/t7M1svIIMe


You find photos of the arrested vandals but strangely enough not of the one 70-year-old who allegedly had a truck full of weapons. And at least I couldn't find an image of that truck. But the old man was apparently very talkative to the police.


The most questionable aspect, however, is the FBI's search for a person who was apparently caught on a surveillance camera the previous night.
At that time, it was possible to predict a mass gathering, but not the riot.

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