The author argues that Florida is struggling in many ways recently. Ron DeSantis’ handling of the COVID pandemic led to many preventable deaths in Florida, contradicting early articles praising his response. Now DeSantis is known more for his anti-gay and anti-science stances rather than effective governance. His campaign for president seems doomed to fail due to his lack of charisma and poor performance as governor. The author expresses sympathy for Florida residents dealing with the fallout of climate change, disasters, and poor leadership.
35% of the population turned out to vote. Of that 35, 59% voted for desantis, or 21% of the total population. A minority of people decided for the rest of us. I voted, and got out to encourage others to vote. Attended protests, events and generally tried to be active. Florida is a big state and most of us, despite the low turnout, didn’t and don’t want this man running our government. I hate what he’s doing to the state I was born and raised in, I’m being forced out of my home by inflation and growing hostility to my values. Say what you want about our government, but there are a lot of us who didn’t ask for this and tried out hardest to avoid it.
So
65%60.35% [edited to account for the provided evidence of voter suppression] of Floridians weren’t sufficiently motivated to try to change the government after living through a first DeSantis term.Yes, yes, I know, “voter suppression”, “disenfranchised”, etc. I’m sorry if I have a hard time believing that 65% of FL really super-duper wanted to vote but were prevented from doing so by systemic corruption; that would put Florida in the same ballpark as Somalia in terms of governmental autocracy.
At some point, we just have to cut our losses and scram. That’s why I left Arkansas, and am now squished into a tiny, overpriced, neglected little apartment with a roommate in a blue state, slowly working on replacing all my stuff.
you live in the United States, where an unelected panel of partisans make binding law on completely baseless grounds all the time and where universal voter enfranchisement happened so recently there are living people who could not vote because of their skin tone. i don’t know why you out of hand dismiss this as a possibility.
Because there’s no evidence.
“65% of all the eligible voters in Florida were prevented from voting due to direct governmental interference and extreme voter suppression” is a fantastic claim. One might even call it an extraordinary claim. One for which I would expect to see some fairly extraordinary evidence. I can’t just wake up in the morning and decide to believe something because it fits with my preconceived biases, especially not something directly involving almost 14 million people.
Are you actually expecting me to believe that 14 million people tried to show up at the polls and were turned away, without any evidence whatsoever? That’s a Q-level conspiracy.
beyond felony disenfranchisement, Florida has legally prosecuted voters for crimes they did not commit, which the state cannot prove they committed, and which the state would have “facilitated” them doing by giving them false information and is currently targeting voter registration groups for facilitating nonexistent voter fraud
from felony disenfranchisement alone, Florida legally disenfranchises 15% of its total black population and approximately one million (possibly more, we don’t have exact numbers and that’s by design) otherwise eligible voters statewide—an estimated 10% of the otherwise-eligible citizen population. turnout in 2022 was 7,796,916 voters.
1 million voters is just under
half of onefive percent of registered voters. That’s a far cry from 65%.Edited to correct my stupid math.
Edit 2: Edited my original post in this thread to reflect the provided data.
the state of Florida: extrajudicially prosecutes voters; arbitrarily fines voter groups; disenfranchises at least a million people in contravention of an overwhelmingly-supported referendum to legally enfranchise them
you: this isn’t autocracy because that’s only 5% of the total population of Florida (even though the affected demographics are disproportionately pro-Democratic and that’s the point of the disenfranchisement), there isn’t systemic corruption (even though the state of Florida is explicitly attempting to override the will of the people), Floridians did this to themselves (even though they’ve done everything in their power to not be run by inhuman ghoul Ron DeSantis)
is this seriously what we’re arguing? because if you’re going to do this i’d rather you be honest with yourself and just say you don’t care what happens to the millions of people in Florida who fought against and continue to fight against this despite people like you writing them off as basically subhuman.