Piece in Guardian - US Republicans want to repeal Amendment 19 giving women the vote.

[Treaclewell]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/04/women-right-to-vote-disenfranchisement

Land of the free?
Gobsmacked.
Though I think they might have a problem with getting enough turkeys voting for Thanksgiving.

I am imagining a jousting tournament where anyone can enter and the last person standing is the monarch.

Far better would be a sword extraction contest overseen by a grizzled druid.

😆

I live in the USA, you have time be extremely gullible to think this would ever be mainstreamed. It will have as much success as trying to convince people that men can be women. Studies and polls show that over 70% of the US voting base want the same policies (such as universal healthcare) and the parties never offer it to them. As a result 50% of US eligible voters NEVER vote. Bernie Sanders was extremely popular and the majority of my extended American family wanted to the opportunity to vote for him. Of course the Democrat establishment vetoed that. As a result the Bernie voters (at least in my family) split for Hilary and Trump. The Democrats are no longer seen as a working-class party. Anyway, extreme Right-wingers do not represent most conservative US citizens, let alone the US public more generally. The Guardian in the UK and the US is always desperate for stories that tell the hysterical narrative they are pushing. Noone in the US is reading the Guardian. Most people have never heard of it. It has about as much relevance as Teen Vogue. Americans struggle to find anyone to vote for, just like in the UK. The state of political leadership in the West is appalling.

The Guardian has gone the way The Independent did after some Russian oligarch bought it and gave it to his kid as a birthday present. All clicks are good clicks, though.

Yes, um, that's pretty much every civilization in existence. Women didn't originally have the right to vote in the UK either. That's why we're all fighting so hard against males continously trying to force us into remaining 2nd class citizens - whether those men are far-right or TIMs. Same misogyny different flavor. What is your point again??

Abortion rights has always been a useful tool for the Dems for fundraising and rallying the troops to vote but have they ever prioritised it to try and codify it?

Its like we get constantly scolded about focusing on gender issues when there are so many other issues that we should be more concerned about....put the women to work for the party but push their rights to the back of the queue.

The photo with him smiling and putting his arm around him suggests he meant that though. And realistically, what else could it mean? I think you have a nerve accusing someone else of disingenuousness quite frankly

You are now scaremongering. The difference between Roe vs Wade and the 19th is that Roe was a Supreme Court ruling, not a Constitutional Amendment.

Roe attempted to claim a nationwide constitutional right to abortion based on a convoluted interpretation of the due process clause of the 14th. Such an interpretation was fragile and, as we saw in Dobbs, easily overturned. By contrast, the 19th spells out very clearly that women get to vote, end of. The bar to repealing an amendment is very high.

Whether the Supreme Court will overturn voter registration laws that disproportionately affect women on the basis of incompatibility with the 19th remains to be seen.

In the mean time, I advise women who marry to keep the names they were born with.

As an aside, Dobbs didn't criminalise abortion. Some states chose to criminalise abortion after Dobbs. Other states held referenda and enshrined abortion as a right in state constitutions. Two of those states elected Trump on the same ballot paper because their referenda and the Presidental election were held concurrently. Many, if not most, Republican voters support legal abortion access.

Yup. I've been saying this ever since Dobbs.

Wtf is a Shire wife?

may I ask a question?

when you say “lifelong registered democrat”. What exactly is that?

I’ve done some googling and it appears that for some elections you have to declare who you’ll be voting for? And people can search and see who you’re registered to vote for?

it kind of goes against the grain for me, here who you vote for is your own business, and ballots are anonymous. Unless you choose to tell people yourself of course. But we don’t hold registers of the politics people declare themselves to.

obviously google only gets me so far, so I’d like it from the horses mouth, so to speak.

I have never fully understood this 'registered Republican' or 'registered Democrat' business in the US, or seen a satisfactory explanation as to why it is necessary or desirable.

It's to do with something called "primaries" which are where all the registered Dems pick the Dem presidential candidate and all the registered GOP voters pick the GOP presidential candidate. They don't actually have to vote for the party they are registered for when voting in the actual presidential elections.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAmericans/comments/1ciobn2/what_does_registered_democratrepublican_mean/ has explanations.

I think this tactic backfiring actually contributed to Trump's second election.

Obama flat fucking lied to women about protecting abortion rights when he campaigned on it for his second term, and then, instead of acting when he had the most favourable political circumstances since Roe, he kicked it into the long grass never to be seen again so that the next Dem candidate could repeat the trick.

Except that voters can see when they are being lied to and they don't like it. And Dobbs stopped that tactic stone-dead because Trump stacked the court during his first term, which is a risk that Obama could and should have foreseen.

By contrast, we all remember laughing at Trump trying to build The Wall in his first term, not seeing that what he was doing was showing the electorate that he tries to keep his promises, no matter how cruel or stupid they are.

When voters went to the polls in 2024, they voted for the promise-keeper.

By the time we get to 2024, it's too late to use abortion as a whip to command women's votes, because Dobbs has superseded Roe and the electorate is viewing abortion as a matter to be settled at state level. Women no longer have to hold their noses and vote Dem because that horse has already bolted and the stable door is swinging on its hinges.

Men in women's sports and spaces is now on voters' radar. Trump says he'll end this. Harris won't even acknowledge that voters are concerned about it, looking out-of-touch and unwilling to face truths. Biden has dropped out leaving Harris running as what many will perceive as not even the Dems' true choice of candidate because she wasn't selected by a primary. Harris is also the candidate of the party that lies to you that women can have penises and breaks promises to women. She's not seen as honest. Trump is. People will vote for an honest sinner over a hypocrite because at least they know what they are getting.

That "Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you." campaign was pure genius in that context. It tapped into that perception of Harris as untrustworthy and out-of-touch and invited voters who know that there are only two sexes to, in the privacy of the polling booth, express the truth that they dare not speak aloud as a vote for the candidate who speaks that truth openly.

And true to his word, the Orange One signed executive orders protecting women's spaces and sports in his first few days of office.

The Dems are really going to have to work at being seen as authentic to come back from this. I think Sanders was the last authentic primary candidate they've had. And I hope that they do come back from this, otherwise 2029 will be JD Vance's first term.

Ah, thanks, that makes more sense. So this is probably a small proportion of American voters who are that bothered, presumably, like party membership in the UK?

I don't know. He has certainly been pictured with Tate doing a big thumbs up. Make of that what you will.

Yes, apart from in Texas, where you pick up just one primary ballot paper from a choice of several types, one type for each party. Example: there's a primary ballot paper for each of Rep, Dem, and Green, and you pick up just the Dem one.

I assume, a parochial and backwards sort of woman. Someone came on here and called us Shire Wives of Nigel Farage, some years back.

I'm sure that it doesn't include me. I come from Dorset. Not so sure about women from the next county over though. It's called Hampshire.

I mean - men didn't have the right to vote for a long time either and they weren't given it all at once.

Sometimes people seem to forget that in many countries, although women had the vote later, the differernce between when men and women got the vote is not as much as people seem to think.

It's very much like party membership, as a registered voter you get to vote on the person who will run as their presidential candidate.

I think it's close to half of Americans that register.

That photo seems to have been a pretty standard photo op at a partisan event. Like you would take if you met Kier Starmer or something. They don't seem to really know each other personally.

But NF says he is not a fan of Tate, so that probably means he's not a fan.

My point is that when your rights are an afterthought, it would be a bit uncritical to believe they are as secure as you think.

That also goes for the 14th amendment. Which may yet be removed by SCOTUS reinterpreting it.

What legal reasoning could be applied to judicially negate the 14th? I assume you refer to birthright citizenship.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. looks bombproof.