• Braxton assumed office by default in 2020 when he filed for office and no one else, including the incumbent, did the same.

      The defendants, listed as former mayor Haywood “Woody” Stokes III and his town council, held a secret, special election, preventing Braxton from appointing his town council. During their special election, the previous town council re-elected themselves, and ultimately reappointed the previous town mayor.

      [Rechecks the year] …WTF??

    • It sucks to slog through voter suppression efforts every day online and then find an entire town being suppressed. THIS… THIS…THIS… POST is the cumulative result of the efforts of ANYONE who tells SOMEONE else to withhold their vote for a political stance. You ARE a vote suppressionist! 👈👈👈

            • Where have you been for the past 3 months lol.

              why would i vote?

              The power of your vote isn’t affected by someone…commenting on it…so you’d still vote for whatever reason you had before you were told that. Being told that your vote would be wasted on, presumably, a third-party candidate is just practical commentary. If you find yourself dissuaded by that, you’re not being suppressed, you’re just…childishly impressionable. Please forgive the insult.

          • Art thou talking about us, or is that a “generic you” like a “royal we”?

            (because if thou are talking about me in particular, we hold no wish to keep up with thine baseless misplaced accusations)

              •  Phroon   ( @Phroon@beehaw.org ) 
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                6 months ago

                You replied to jarfil with the words “this post”, it isn’t clear if “this post” refers to jarfil’s comment or to the article itself. Also, the use of “You” leads the reader to imply that the “You” is jarfil, rather than “You” meaning ‘anyone who tells someone to withhold their vote for a political stance’.

                •  jarfil   ( @jarfil@beehaw.org ) 
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                  6 months ago

                  jarful

                  Please, no… 🤦

                  (rant)

                  I’ve kept this nick since back in the 1990s, when I had to spell it over the phone while creating an account, because client support said “Oh, like Garfield?” and I found it funny… since I also liked cats, the comic strip, hated Mondays, and loved lasagna… a couple decades later Google decided that “Did you mean: jar file”, and since becoming a brony, the full jar thing has become a very unfortunate coincidence. But I refuse to change it, I was there first!..

              •  jarfil   ( @jarfil@beehaw.org ) 
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                6 months ago

                No, I was being funny… but now I’ll be crystal clear:

                • IF you were referring to a generic group, THEN say so and we’re fine, but you could have made it more clear.
                • IF you were accusing me of being a vote suppressionist, THEN explain precisely what lead you to that idea, and we can see where the misunderstanding came from.
                • ELSE, I will assume you’re not discussing in good faith (trolling as you say) and hit the block button.

                No hard feelings. 🕊

          •  Zworf   ( @Zworf@beehaw.org ) 
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            6 months ago

            Withholding votes no, but IMO the American voting system (at least at a national level) seems pretty broken to me. FPTP, the weird bias to rural areas etc.

            Really it should be changed so that it doesn’t always result in this eternal standoff between the two major parties.

            Ireland, Australia and New Zealand dumped FPTP and were better for it. It’s just that the US has this kind of romantic idealism about the original founders, as if they were always right and their ideas still hold as much merit in this day and age of voter influencing through digital means, so I don’t really see it happening there. But it should, in my opinion.

            Right now it seems like every major election is choosing between bad and worse there and voting for an outsider is just a lost vote.

            In that sense I can understand the reluctance of voters to actually show up. Especially in states that aren’t swing states.

      •  jarfil   ( @jarfil@beehaw.org ) 
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        6 months ago

        If they are an incorporated plece, and they get the whole shebang of taxes, funding, elections, etc., then they need someone to run it, or a “government”.

        Guess it sometimes could be hard to tell, with all the varying rules, but people who live there… are there places in the “deep US”, where people live in anarchy?

        (sometimes it might also be the case where an incorporated town, through depopulation, ends up with nobody willing to act as mayor, but that’s different)

          • I might be wrong, but it seems to me like unincorporated places would depend on county level, or some larger place, good boys telling you what to do. I’m guessing it also comes with a budget, taken out of the residents taxes, for stuff like services, police… elected official’s pay… and similar.

            At a population of 133, it sounds more like a HOA, but dunno.