What were the ad campaigns like around this proposition?
There were none. It had no opposition either.
I dunno, I voted for it, but California has HUGE conservative areas and the notion of working off your sentence isn't exactly new or seen as particularly cruel by most. Also the comparisons to slavery will fall on deaf ears because it's as much slavery as imprisoning people is kidnapping.
If you are OK with prisons, forced labor within them isn't going to seem significantly harsher.
In character for the US. Now it just has to play a Civil War movie and some patriotic montage to act like it isn't there.
The props are worded so insanely that without hours of prep, I would vote incorrectly.
My state banned ranked choice voting by an insane margin because it was worded like "only citizens should be allowed to vote, and each citizen only gets one vote each!" Literally two Google searches would clear it up if people had more critical thinking skills
That's what I'd call a rigged election.
This is also one of the downsides of citizen ballot initiatives. The proponent can usually word things however they want.
In Mass., I know they have a strict judicial review for the language. It requires a clear and fair statement, and it gets refined through a unique type of litigation.
A "resistance" against the will of the majority is generally called a terrorist organization.
Progressive Americans, face it: Most of the people around you want this.
George Carlin called it decades ago.
The politicians are a reflection of us.
Our PEOPLE suck.
A fat, greedy, proudly ignorant, proudly racist, spray tanned elitist bully drunk on schaudenfreude is the perfect American mascot.
He's like the United States took human form. A monument to all our sins.
If you still consider the rugged individualism we crow about a feature and not severe mental illness, you are infected with the disease. If you want winners and losers, go live in the forest and see if you live or die.
Societies need to work together, and we have been trained in the spirt of capitalist competition🤮 to compete against eachother, to tear eachother down, to root against one another hoping to get moooaaaar for ourselves. This is the very opposite of a society.
The first part is not true. The White rose and the french resistance in ww2 are both called "resistance". So the distinction between terrorists and resistance is in the eye of the historian.
I'm inclined to just let them have it at this point. I'm done fighting. Give me the coup de grace and let it be swift.
In California they have prisoners fight the wildfires. I find it sickening, but it's a popular program. I wonder if that's where this result comes from. The wildfires get worse and worse and they need bodies to sacrifice. Depressing.
My thoughts as well.
It's the wildfires. They don't want to pay more in taxes to hire more firefighters, at least that's what makes sense to me.
It's still an abominably shitty thing and, IMHO, a human rights violation too.
They don't want to pay more in taxes to hire more firefighters, at least that's what makes sense to me.
california is like richer than most countries in the world. dnc and its upper class base is more rotten that i had thought. no wonder 15 million democrats don’t want to vote for these cronies.
It's at least a volunteer program, they aren't directly forcing people to fight the fires. A lot of people, the prisoners included, consider it a way of repaying their debt to society. I'm pretty sure I don't agree with a great deal of the situation in which it exists, but I do think that if I was in prison, being able to to something, feel like I still matter, would be some comfort.
It hasn't been called yet but I certainly didn't have California votes to be a slave state on my 2024 bingo card.
Call for resistance? You can get enough Americans to get off their arse to vote every four years?
They should combine it with selling a new iPhone on election day. People have time to camp out for weeks in front of the store for that.
You can't get most Americans to stop playing Fortnight or watching Dancing with the stupid Stars to even pay attention to the country
Looks like people voted no to slavery, but the question asked do you not support slavery.
The answer should have been (yes) I do not support slavery.
Instead (no) I do not support slavery.
I can image a good chunk of people got confused with the wording, and I myself am still confused reading it.
This is the ballot text, it's not really confusing at all.
The link you supplied clears it all up. No way anyone could have misunderstood the vote, the ballot even outlines what yes and no mean in the context.
I think I now agree with what krashmo said in the thread below.
"Or maybe Americans are largely shitty people. Stop trying to excuse the behavior and accept it for what it is"
Are you sure? It seems pretty straightforward to me. “This amendment would bar slavery and involuntary servitude.” It’s the first sentence.
With the amount of people that voted for Trump I don’t have much confidence in the literacy of randos
Your wording is more confusing to me
This is the first result I checked for when I woke up this morning, and I nearly vomited when I saw the breakdown. Half the vote is still uncounted, but I don’t think the result will change. I’m ashamed of my neighbors.
To be fair, and that’s being very fair, it does end with “allowing involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime” and a case could be made for confusing wording.
This is the ballot text, it's not really confusing at all.
The Arguments section is unfortunately left out on actual ballots. I could see a lot of the less research-inclined citizens interpret that as simple community service and not straight up indentured servitude.
Unfortunately, most things can be attributed to stupidity rather than malice. Had they put the word slavery on the ballots I’d hope we’d see a better split
I think it'll be a few days before everything is counted, since California is pretty slow. That said, conservative turnout seems pretty high so I wouldn't be surprised if it fails.
Yeah, we generally are an example of the 5 day rule as I saw a text book call it. Basically nothing is certain until five days after an election. The reason for V days is because it covers a full work week roughly.
Oh go away, they did not vote for "slavery". They voted to allow making convicted felons work as part of their sentence. It's slavery in the same sense that working to buy food and pay rent is "slavery". Metaphorically yes, but calling it slavery devalues the experiences of all the people who were kidnapped from their homes, brought here in chains on ships, and sold in a market.
Hey, would you look at that, chattel slavery isn't the only type. That is amazing, no one could have guessed that until right now, after I looked it up. It is almost like it being called chattel slavery implies multiple forms of slavery. Wow, this is so new, and novel.
Just like uncle Tom, working in the house so he could make a living...as a slave. But hey, they fed and clothed him, so is it still slavery?
Something something 13th Amendment?
Yes, let's read the 13th Amendment together: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Notice that two things are listed - slavery and involuntary servitude. I define convict labor as involuntary servitude. The 13th Amendment doesn't back up either interpretation.
I wonder who is disproportionately sent to jail...?
Isn't work in prisons usually a privilege? Is this something that is actually used? What happens when someone just doesn't do what is asked of them?
People likely voted for not repealing the provision allowing involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime and not for keeping slavery.
Whoever thought combining those two things in one vote was a good idea is an idiot
...what other slavery currently exists (legally) that this would have addressed? This isn't combining two things. Barring slavery in any form includes punitive servitude. Calling them separate issues is like calling "we should fix this leak" a separate concern from "this pipe should not have any leaks".
