GSA says 337K Taylor Swift referrals have come to vote.gov

usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml to politics @lemmy.world – 599 points –
thehill.com

This is just from taylor swift's specific link and does not include any other traffic to vote.gov

73

They have woken the Swifties.

May god have mercy apon their ragged souls.

Now let’s recruit the K-Pop stans and only then will our victory be truly complete. We must unite these 2 forces for good.

May god have mercy on their souls

I assume that's a gif because I remember that line and it's a perfectly hilarious response, but I just see a pic.

Gifs don't seem to work for me. Is that a problem with Jerboa?

It was only a matter of time until Donald incurred the wrath of TayTay

But but JD Vance said no one would be influenced by her!

Technically he said a “billionaire celebrity,” so he might have been referring to his boss.

Taylor Swift Net worth: 1.3 billion USD

And hers isn't made up based off of Russian money laundering.

A reminder that all Trump businesses have failed and he's literally bankrupted a casino five separate times (and a hotel once). One of his spawn has also stated that the family has been "debanked" or fired as clients (due to financial, legal, regulatory, or reputational risk). Ironic that debanking usually comes under scrutiny for how it has disproportionately targeted Muslims and minorities.

Correct. We know that. It’s a dig on the hypocrisy of what Vance said. Vance said a celebrity billionaire wouldn’t have influence, and his running mate is exactly that.

How many are from the esteemed nation of PAWANEVMIAZGANC?

I'd guess a few. Swift's background in country means she's got a big fanbase in GA and NC. Even bigger than the other states, I mean.

That's an encouraging sign.

Even a 1% boost in turn out from young people could mean a lot in many races across the country, in swing state country I mentioned or not. Most people aren't Swifties, but chances are young people would have at least a friend of a friend who is one who may motivate the people around them to get involved this election.

According to Taylor Swift's post, Trump and his propagandists posting fake pictures of Swift implying she was endorsing him is one reason she went ahead and came out with this statement endorsing Harris now, to refute the fake stuff they are circulating. So their stupid plan massively backfired.

Maybe Swift would have come out to endorse Harris at some point anyway, but doing it now gives people more time to get registered before the deadline.

Yeah they pretty much forced her to engage. All because this F.. former president thought he could materialize an endorsement by posting a deepfaked image saying she endorsed him.

Interesting to see extreme narcissism combined with the ability to generate any picture imaginable. It's like he made the ai picture, and then believed it was true because his ego would not allow otherwise. He's literally trying to create his own reality.

Fascinating.

Don’t forget the part where he played the victim as well. His ego also wouldn’t allow him to take blame for spreading blatant lies. So when he got called out, all of a sudden he knew nothing about this picture. Someone “just sent” it to him and he thought it was real. Obviously a guy who wants to be the fucking president shouldn’t need to demonstrate that he’s capable of critical thinking or fact checking… ~/s~

I know there is work to be done every single day through the election. But just for this moment I'm going to just breathe it all in and enjoy. I think we all earned that.

I'm just impressed that this wasn't clickbait and that they took the time to filter for her link only. No way to refute it.

Now, if they will actually go vote, is the key.

Why is there a referral link to vote.gov? And why do you guys need to register in order to vote? In EU you can just go to the voting ballot by being a citizen

In the US there is no "national ID" everything is linked to like other countries. We used to be strongly privacy minded as a country (weird I know). So that as left some rather weird legacy problems. Hence having the register to vote.

Also we have a much different power dynamic between states and the federal government. Our states have a LOT more power than local/regional ones in most counties.

I'm reality, it's mostly absolute chaos. People unwittingly break so many laws everytime they cross a state border. Between helmet laws, small motor, open container, vastly different fire arm regulations, differing vehicular restrictions, legality or illegality of common substances.

That's not even to mention all the interstate stuff managed by the fed. Like traveling accross state lines with a pill organizer is illegal.

I will at least point out, that unless it’s a safety or moving violation you can’t get something like a window tint ticket in Virginia if your car is registered in North Carolina because the window tint laws are different.

Also, in rare cases, if the vehicle comes from the factory with super dark tint, you can’t get a ticket period because it is federally allowed. See the GM Pontiac fiero rear limo tint from the 80’s.

And this is just one aspect of a vehicle across state lines. So yea, it’s chaos and the police will give you a ticket anyways, especially if you’re a visitor.

The way the electoral roll is managed varies from place to place.

Avoiding automatic voter registration tends to favour the more traditionally conservative demographic; it's racist and classist, but the people who turn up to vote on local electoral issues are too, by and large. It requires engagement to change.

How do they know you are a citizen?

How do they know in what political division your vote should be counted?

For local referenda, how do they know what issues you are eligible to vote on?

Whatever means are in use to get you the right ballot is what you use for "registration".

For germany:

How do they know you are a citizen?

Everybody has an identity card. And you will be sent an election letter which you then show there. It has your Voter-ID and district number on it.

How do they know in what political division your vote should be counted?

Well the voting happens inside the respective districts. Plus you have the number on your letter.

For local referenda, how do they know what issues you are eligible to vote on?

No such thing in germany.

In the US there is no "national ID" everything is linked to like other countries. We used to be strongly privacy minded as a country (weird I know). So that as left is some rather weird legacy problems. Hence having the register to vote.

Its kinda weird for germany too. After having a total surveillance state twice in our history you'd think we had something against it. And we are in general very privacy minded. But the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

No such thing in germany.

Bullshit. You didn't understand my question. I'll rephrase and elaborate.

Not every issue is a national issue. You vote on issues in your locality that someone living across the country is not eligible to vote on. They vote on issues in their locality that you are not eligible to vote on.

For example, In my state, schools are funded at the district level through property taxes. I vote on the tax rate in my school district; someone across the state votes on the tax rate in their district. (Generally, districts and cities are at the same level, but sometimes two or more cities will combine into a single school district, so they are technically separate.).

Zoning issues are at the city level. I can vote on zoning issues in my city; I can't vote on zoning issues in another city.

We had a state-level abortion issue on my last ballot: individuals residing in other states were not eligible to vote on my state's issue.

My point is that you have similar need for registration, it's just done automatically alongside the process of getting your ID.

Generally, we register to vote in the same process as getting or renewing our ID cards. That first ID card might be a driver's license issued at 16, a learner's permit at 15, a moped license at 14. Passports and state IDs can be issued at even younger ages, but we are not eligible to vote until 18. Our first ID generally doesn't include voter registration, simply because we aren't yet eligible. People who turn 18 since the last general election will need to register separately.

Some people have dual residency. "Snowbirds" are retirees who spend their summers in a northern state, and the winters in Florida. They are only eligible to vote in one state or the other, but technically qualify to vote in either. We vote in November; these snowbirds will be in Florida at the time, and will need absentee ballots to vote in their northern elections. Absentee ballots are only issued to registered voters.

You are the one that does not seem to understand. There is no such thing as voting on issues at all in germany. We elect the political party we believe will tackle the problem in the way that aligns with our desired outcome. But the ordinary citizen has no say in the matter directly.

There is no voting on tax rate, zoning, abortion or whatever. Nowhere in germany. Neither localy nor nationwide. The only thing that could possibly be comparable would be a referendum where, for example, you have to collect 1 million votes and then you can submit this to the state as a request. But there is no guarantee they will even accept it.

Really. Interesting.

I find it hard to believe you have zero direct democracy, even at local levels, but I have little reason to doubt you.

I don't trust the politician-class enough to support such a system.

I would not say that i fully trust our politicans, but there are significant checks and restrictions in place.

I mean, we had an all-encompassing totalitarian state that had absolute control over the country (or at least parts of it) 2 times in our history. We kinda learned the one or another thing from that.

And about the direct democracy thing. There have been and continue to be efforts to introduce more options. And I was an advocate myself for the longest time of my life.

But after seeing how some of the population behaved during Covid and how they are currently behaving in the East (where an ultra-right wing party has taken power) I'm not sure it's a wise idea to give more direct power to an uninformed, easily manipulated mob.

But thats a topic for another time.

Y'all's conversation has been really enlightening.

"Enlightening conversation" is a bit of a euphemism in my community. I'm a balloon pilot. The way we "enlighten" our aircraft is by filling them with hot air...

Tldr: at least half of the government doesn't want you to be able to vote because they think you'll vote for the other party. Welcome to America isn't it great.

I'm the state of Illinois you can more or less do this. You just need proof of residency to register day of at the polls. It was very fascinating to see when my wife's registration was removed.

Ok smarty pants let’s see you come up with a better system to give votes to empty land instead of niminorities!

Referral source is a built in feature in browsers that analytics tools can utilize. It does not require any special links.

It just means that a website (almost) always knows the previous page you came from.

[Promotes basic action of American democracy]

"They are cheating!!! That's not fair!!!!"

"If you listen to her, you're stupid and shouldn't vote" is my favorite emotionally abusive narrative.

Fuck these creeps. To anyone that felt inspired by Swift, you deserve to feel empowered.

They should stick to sports, erhm, music, and stay out of politics!

/s if not obvious

That's significant.
Trump lost in 2020 by 11,780 votes.
That's what he needed to take Georgia and their EC votes.
Taylor just got 30x that number of people to register in a single day.

It seems like a bad idea to track where traffic is coming from when a person is signing up to vote. We know the sort of opponent in this endeavor, why give them the ability to start determining who might have papers or information get accidentally lost in the application process?

Vote.gov is aware of the traffic. It redirects you to your state website to actually register. Those websites would only see traffic from vote.gov, not anything from a tracking URL.

Vote.gov uses custom links to see what is effective in getting people to register to vote so they can continue doing that, as that's their mandate.

As a note, this is 10x as many people signing up same day then in 2022 when she directed people to vote.org

The article itself says:

The same day Taylor Swift posted a message encouraging her followers to register to vote, over 35,000 people reportedly made a “Run (Taylor’s Version)” to do so on Vote.org

Edit: I had clicked the wrong link. OP’s headline is thankfully correct!

That was 2022, when she used the vote.org link, which is a charity that registers people to vote. Yesterday, she used vote.gov, which is a government service that redirects people to their local state registration services.

OPs headline is the same as the article from this year, and is accurate as it lists referrals, which is what vote.gov does.

Think that's because this time it's a “vote to defend me” kind of situation?

Nope. At no point did she ask her fans to "vote to defend me."

She expressed her political opinions, and extolled them to express their own several times, then dropped a link about registering to vote.

She basically said "I believe this and will be voting for Harris. You should think about what you believe, and then vote for that. Here is how you register to vote."

Pretty chill and reasonable, honestly.

Oh sorry I meant this:

I imagined your average Swiftie saying:

How dare he [and after that AI nude scandal too?!]. I’mma defend our girl.

She definitely didn’t ask anyone, but if your favorite person says someone wronged you and says what they’re going to do, that’s a very attractive bandwagon.

Her post was flawless.

I think her fans are probally not happy about that, but it was pretty small part of the overall post. I read that as more her responding to the misinformation about her than a direct "they wronged me, get them!" She certainly isn't happy about AI fakes though, and not just from the Trump campaign. Musk also allowed Twitter to host a viral wave of fake porn of her a bit ago before it got a lot of outrage in the media, so this may also be a clap back about how irresponsible the GOP side of aisle is being with AI.

I'd expect her fans to have a stronger inclination to overall agree with supporting reproductive rights and the various other points she championed over a sense of retribution, but it may play a part.

The election is being run by non-fascists. If we want to keep it that way, we need to vote.

If they wanted to accidently lose registration they could just do it by party affiliation in key states

No need to do it by referring url

They will learn no lessons from this because they're stuck in their weirdo right-wing media/online bubble. They'll keep saying weird and disgusting things like Musk when he threatened to impregnate Taylor Swift, and it will be devastating for them