Or, like I guess keep setting yourselves on fire every time something terrible happens.

It’s all going to be terrible. It’s all a five alarm fire. You don’t fight a fire by waving your garden hose around wildly, you team up and focus.

How is this the lesson we haven’t learned?

The House of Representatives is up for election NEXT YEAR. That means we need to be recruiting candidates now.

See my previous thread about why downplaying the security or importance of voting is repeating propaganda in service of the current administration.

How can you get out the vote?

Let’s talk about actions to shore up states and work on state elections. Virginia and New Jersey have gubernatorial elections also this year. We can flip the Virginia governors seat and hold New Jersey. We can elect bigger D majorities in state houses.

But, at the very least, stop doing the work of voter suppression for bad actors by being conspiracy theorist Eeyores.

It’s propaganda, and you’re better than that.

Don’t know the protections in your state? Visit your department of elections website or call your local voter registrar.

Rigging voting machines is hard hard.

Convincing people their vote doesn’t count is much easier.

Don’t do the work for them. Seriously.

Don’t say you’ll vote begrudgingly. Vote like you mean it. Explain the actual process of voting and the protections in your state.

There is not one national voting machine vendor.

Voting machines aren’t on the internet. To hack a voting machines, one would have to get into every machine. In states with redundant paper ballots, those would also somehow have to be tampered with to match the results.

Everything to do with localities. Where voting precincts, management, tallying, all of the nitty gritty Election Day business happens.

Which is why I am on a rag tag one-woman mission to remind people, every time I see comments like this and “it’s not like the vote won’t be tampered with” that the process of elections has almost fuck all to do with the federal government and everything to do with the states or…

How many diners did you visit for this story?

I would be disappointed with you, but this kind of wishy washy double talk is pretty on brand for the NYT historically. I mean, you could TRY to be better, but we both know you won’t.

Great point. I’m revising my answer. They think it means the mafia.

I’m like 90% sure they think it means “loan sharks.”

Or, I guess more succinctly, this.