Wednesday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was the thread that I've already discussed about being offended by the suggestion that someone else is raising your kids. That thread is a classic stay-at-home-mom versus work-out-of-the-house-mom thread, and I probably should put it out of everyone's misery. After that was a thread titled, "Gov. Youngkin issues statement after DOJ files lawsuit over noncitizen voting in Va." and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, which is the case with all the threads I will discuss today. The background of this thread is that on August 7, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order requiring non-U.S. citizens to be removed from Virginia's voting rolls. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to stop the action because it violates the National Voter Registration Act, which requires a 90-day quiet period during which maintenance of voter rolls must be paused. The justification for the pause is that mistakes are often made during the mass removal operations. Youngkin's executive order fell on the 90th day before this year's election. Youngkin claims that his order is aimed at removing non-citizens, who are not allowed to vote in any case, from the voting rolls. The U.S. Justice Department's position is that the effort violates the NVRA and can wrongly hinder eligible voters' right to vote. In at least one case, the Justice Department has been shown to be correct. For instance, Nadra Wilson of Lynchburg, VA, who was born in Brooklyn, NY, and moved to Virginia 9 years ago, had her registration cancelled. A federal court ruled in favor of the Justice Department and ordered Youngkin's voter removal effort to stop. However, the case was appealed, eventually reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, which stayed the lower court decision and allowed Youngkin's program to continue. What complicates cases like this is that it is never clear if the actors involved are acting in good faith. Republicans, claiming to be acting in the interest of election integrity, have raised continual barriers to voting. They have also repeatedly alleged that Democrats encourage non-citizens to vote. The idea that Democrats are encouraging mass immigration and then allowing those migrants to vote is central to the racist "great replacement theory" that once was confined to QAnon types and mass shooters, but has rapidly become part of mainstream Republican thought. Youngkin, who postures as a serious Republican in contrast to extremist MAGAs, attempted to provide plenty of leeway to those who are being removed to demonstrate that they are citizens and should remain eligible to vote. However, in the real world, many of those provisions fail. For instance, in the case of Wilson, the letter sent to inform her that her registration would be cancelled was sent to a previous address. Once it made its way to her, the deadline to respond had passed. Wilson can still take advantage of same-day registration in order to vote and can prove her citizenship with a passport, but not everyone has a passport, and, in some cases, birth certificates are not easily located. As a result, there is still some chance that eligible voters will be wrongly stripped of their registrations. Most troubling about this is the action of the U.S. Supreme Court. The conservative majority has made a number of voting-related decisions. There has been no legal consistency among the rulings. Rather, the common element has been that the decisions generally favor Republicans. Such decisions often are handed down even, as was the case in this instance, the Court is clearly ignoring federal law.

Yesterday's next most active thread, which was also posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, is on a very similar topic. Titled, "Foreign student voted in Michigan", the thread discusses a case of voting fraud in Michigan. A University of Michigan student, who is a Chinese national but apparently a U.S. Green Card holder, went to an early voting site, attested to being a U.S. citizen, and proved residency. The student was then able to vote but later returned to the voting center and asked if the ballot could be retrieved. Once votes have been tabulated, they cannot be returned because there is no way to identify the ballot in question. The student apparently admitted to voting illegally and has been charged with two felonies: one for perjury due to falsely signing an affidavit attesting to being a U.S. citizen and one for unauthorized voting. The student could face as much as 19 years in jail. To Republicans in this thread, this case demonstrates that voting laws are too lax and that additional procedures are needed to ensure that only legal voters are allowed to vote. The Democrats in the thread argue that this is a single case and that there is no evidence of widespread voting fraud. The number of voting fraud cases that have been identified and prosecuted is extremely small and, ironically, almost all involve Republicans. For instance, Danielle Christine Miller has been charged with voter fraud in Minnesota because she cast a ballot in her mother's name for former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. Miller's mother died in August. Similarly, Larry Lee Savage Jr., a former Republican Congressional candidate, was arrested in Indiana and charged with stealing ballots during a test of voting machines. Savage was shown on video stealing two ballots during the test and putting them in his pocket. Police later found them in his car. After taking the ballots, Savage encouraged another Republican observing the test to question the accuracy of the machines because the ballot count was off. This may have been an attempt to undermine faith in voting machines. However, while Republicans are up in arms about the student in Michigan, they have nothing to say about the two cases involving Republicans. Republicans clearly have an interest in creating doubt about voting, particularly in swing states. Following the 2020 election, Trump made numerous allegations of voter fraud, none of which held up in court. It appears he is setting the ground for further allegations after this election. In one case, however, Republican efforts to sow doubt were undermined by none other than Lara Trump, Trump's daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee. When allegations were raised concerning suspected duplicate ballots being mailed in Michigan, the RNC investigated and determined that this was a computer glitch and that the duplicates would not be counted. The University of Michigan student actually involves two Republican fears regarding voting. Not only are they concerned about foreign citizens voting, but they strongly dislike students being allowed to vote. Many students are from out of state, but are allowed to register to vote after living in the state for 30 days. Republicans strongly support prohibiting this practice.

Next was a thread titled, "Texas woman died because of abortion ban" and, like the previous two threads, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. This thread is almost a duplicate of one that I previously discussed about Amber Thurman, who died in Georgia after being refused a dilation and curettage procedure. The original poster highlights the case of Josseli Barnica, a woman in Texas who miscarried but was refused an abortion because there was still a fetal heartbeat and doctors were afraid of violating Texas's strict abortion laws. She suffered an infection and died two days later. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, abortion rights proponents warned that the prohibitions on abortion being enacted in several states would cost women their lives. Now it is being demonstrated that exactly that is happening. Fundamentally, abortion cannot be separated from women's healthcare, and any restrictions on abortion end up having consequences, perhaps unintended, on women more broadly. Republicans were already bitten by this once when abortion restrictions ended up prohibiting IVF, something that has strong support even among Republicans. Unfortunately, they seem less concerned about women dying. The standard Republican line, repeated ad infinitum in these threads, is that women can avoid unwanted pregnancies by simply avoiding sex or using birth control. Neither of those arguments really stands up to scrutiny, but they completely ignore situations like Barnica's. She wanted to be pregnant and wanted to have the baby. However, things went wrong, and when they did, doctors were prohibited from providing life-saving care. Abortion proponents rarely show a willingness to consider that they are wrong or that the anti-abortion laws have gone too far. In this case, one defender of Texas's laws argued that this was a case of medical malpractice instead of a problem with the law. This explanation required willfully acknowledging that the doctors refused to perform an abortion due to legal restrictions. The next tactic was to blame the mother, who, a poster claimed, had not sought medical care early enough. Again, this requires willfully ignoring the fact that Barnica arrived at the hospital early enough for her life to have been saved but was refused care. Many of the abortion opponents claim that emergency abortions are allowed under Texas law. This ignores that Texas has aggressively limited what is legally considered an emergency and repeatedly overruled doctors' determinations that abortions have been medically necessary. Several posters brought up the case of Katie Cox, whose doctor recommended an abortion, which a judge approved. However, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ignored the doctor's recommendation and the judge's decision and sent letters to medical care providers threatening to prosecute them if they provided an abortion. Cox was ultimately forced to leave the state for care. However, poor residents such as Barnica don't have the resources for such travel or find out that they need an abortion too late in the process. Abortion opponents repeatedly argue in this thread that this was a medical issue and that doctors failed. However, in reality, women's medicine in Texas is now being practiced by lawyers with doctors on the sidelines.

The final thread that I will discuss today was, like all other threads today, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. This thread was titled, "Is your neighborhood mixed R and Ds?" and the original poster asks whether those who live in neighborhoods that include both Republicans and Democrats interact socially. The original poster would not be inclined to invite a neighbor who has a sign supporting former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump over for a visit because the original poster's family is mixed-race and the original poster suspects that Trump supporters are likely to be racist. Two things are immediately evident from this thread. The first is that, as has been shown in many earlier threads, liberal posters draw distinctions between "Republicans" and "MAGAs". They generally have no problem with the first but try to avoid the second. The second thing that is very apparent is that to many, political affiliation is not their identity. They may support one candidate or the other, but that doesn't interfere with their relationships and their acquaintances might not even know who they support. Many posters report that politically they are a minority in their neighborhood and, therefore, are quiet about whom they support. They try to avoid friction regarding their political alignments. Threads like this one tend to be very predictable and this one basically follows the usual script. MAGA posters seize on any suggestion that Democrats are ostracizing Trump supporters to complain about liberal intolerance and to paint themselves as victims. These chronic victims ignore the posts from MAGAs extolling pride that any signs supporting Vice President Harris are covered over by Trump signs in their neighborhoods and that liberals are clearly not tolerated. Quite a few posters report that they live in neighborhoods with a mixture of political leanings and everyone gets along fine. But the thread has quite a bit of trash talking. For example, one poster described Trump supporters as "unhinged lunatics," while a MAGA poster responded to say that the "biggest threat to our democracy is post-menopausal suburban white women". I don't think anyone mentioned it, but I've found one of the biggest causes of discord is actually neighborhood mailing lists, Nextdoor, or similar services. People who are perfectly nice in person can be completely different when writing online.