• Baron Von J@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    How could he even have been on any ballots yet when he hadn’t even been officially nominated?

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      That’s sort of the point - this hesitancy was all bullshit.

      The fact that the convention is so late does mean we’ll have to really scramble after it, though (and the convention is so late because of Biden’s specific request).

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        To be blunt, American election seasons are completely asinine.

        As an American myself, having election seasons that essentially last somewhere between 7 months and 3 years is absolutely sanity destroying. It’s completely awful and I hate it passionately. It obviously also has a strong negative influence on our more responsible politicians actually, you know, trying to do their jobs in a meaningful sense. It’s all because it’s a super profitable exercise for a LOT of people. I’d be simply ecstatic if we had a system closer to France or the UK in that regard (and don’t get me started on the clusterfuck that is the electoral college).

        • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          In theory the FEC could address this by limiting the advertising season and going after candidates or news outlets that violate that limitation.

          In actuality, the media makes far too much money turning it into a horse race.

          • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            Yeah, but even if they tried to nowadays, the Tribunal of Six would declare it illegal because Thomas Jefferson himself didn’t have that specific idea back in the late 1700s, so it’s “clearly unconstitutional”. Or, they’d just refer to the recent case where they decided that specialist regulatory agencies aren’t supposed to regulate anything.

      • foggy@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        The UK had an entire vote in just 6 weeks.

        Our information apparatus (print, TV, social media, etc al) is … Far superior to theirs, in terms of efficiency (not in terms of human dignity, relax, I am aware).

        I feel like folks are forgetting just how addicted to information we all are, and how easy it is to get the whole fucking country talking about the same thing at the same time.

        Trust me, the advertising budget for Squid Games ain’t shit next to the DNC war chest.

    • Tinidril@midwest.social
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      4 months ago

      There are states that require candidates to register by a date that is often before the nominating conventions. Those states have always passed one-time exceptions when that occurs. If they choose not to in this case, using the last minute change as political cover, it could be a legal grey area, and who knows how it would play out with today’s judicial system.

      On the other hand, those are red states that a Democrat wouldn’t win anyways.

      • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        …a situation where the electoral college is actually an advantage against election manipulation.

    • someguy3@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Technically afaik the election institutions don’t care about parties, they care about the individual running. Remember the whole system was set up with the idea/hope that parties don’t exist.

      • Baron Von J@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Well that was then. Presently if you’re not the nominee from a party which received a minimum threshold of votes in the preceding election you have to get a bunch of signatures from the voters to be put on the ballot. So since the Democratic party has.met the threshold of votes in prior elections in all states their nominee will be on the ballots but they haven’t nominated anyone yet.

        • someguy3@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Sounds like the legal mechanism is that you need a certain threshold of support to be put on the ballot, but they carved out niche to just accept the nominee from the 2 parties with the understanding they would obviously meet the threshold of support.

          • Baron Von J@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Right. So they can’t have already started printing out ballots before the Democratic party has actually nominated their candidate.