Virginia man outside polling location carrying a handgun_ — Image via Twitter.
A woman in Virginia claims she was stopped by a man wearing a Trump T-shirt and wearing a handgun on his hip, who blocked her path to a voting site on Friday and asked her if she was voting for Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
A local GOP official defended the man, stating, “It’s a free country.”
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Erika Cotti said she was on the was to county’s registrar’s office in Loudon County in order to vote when she was accosted by the man
“I had my 9-year-old son with me. I felt intimidated,” Cotti said. “And I had to explain to my 9-year-old why a man with a 357 magnum is standing outside the polling station.”
[…]
Loudoun County registrar Judy Brown confirmed that the man was outside the office, but was beyond the 40-foot no-canvassing zone so there was nothing she could do about it, with law enforcement saying the man had a right to carry the gun in an open-carry state.
“They said that there’s nothing they could do, that he was well within his rights to be carrying his weapon,” Brown explained.
Informed about that man, a local Republican Party official, stated that the man is a former law enforcement official, and that they asked him to pull his Trump T-shirt over the gun on his hip.
“’We don’t want to startle anyone,’” Republican Committee Chairman Will Estrada told the Huffington Post. “He felt really bad, he pulled his T-shirt over it, and I think everything was fine after that.”
Oh, the wrong. He felt really bad? He didn’t seem to feel bad when he was busy intimidating voters, attempting to force a repub ticket on them, and asking who they were going to vote for. Now we know the magic of making guns everywhere okay – just pull your shirt over them. No one would ever be able to tell you had a gun then, oh no. And of course, no one would feel the least bit intimidated anymore, what with that magical piece of gun neutralizing fabric taking care of everything. FFS.
The problem with this free country business? It’s only a free country for the same people it always has been, colonial white people. Out at Standing Rock, it’s quite clear that it’s not a free country for us Indians. Across the nation, it’s quite clear that it’s not a free country for any persons of colour, and it’s certainly not a free country for those who do not profess Christianity.
Via Raw Story.
The depravity of RWAs is incredible.
If you tell people about the US election without mentioning the word USA*, people will simply tell you that these are not free elections.
-Got to register to vote? WTF in the first place? Germans are automatically registered to vote when they turn 18. You get your voting cards automatically before every election you’re entitled to vote in.
-Voting booths being far away? Never more than 1km or so.
-Need a special reason to cast an absentee ballot? Fuck, you’re technically equired to have a “good reason”, but noone cares. Folks are ahppy you want to vote.
-Having to stand in a fucking line? Never for more than 60 seconds. And that’s with consistently higher voter turnouts than in the USA.
-Somebody openly brandishing a gun and questioning people in fron of the voting booth???????? No wrods.
*Because we all know the USA is beyond reproach
I think by “it’s a free country” they mean “we took all we wanted without paying for it.”
Giliell @ 2
The same goes here, except no reason is needed for early voting (by post, early voting places are in shopping centres etc.) and some rural people do have to travel longer distances, many will vote when they go shopping. Openly carrying a gun near a voting place would cause a major police operation.
Marcus Ranum @ 3
They paid, with empty promises lead and fire.
@Giliell #2 Sorry I didn’t wrote your full name.
In Hungary we’re eligible to vote at 18, there’s no card just a registry, ID is required and better not plan going on a vacation at short notice as casting your vote elsewhere has to be filed 3 weeks in advance.
There was a referendum a month ago. Those who’re citizens but live in a different country could vote by mail, those work in a different country had to go to the embassy to register. It’s far away? Nobody cares. So a Romanian dual citizen could vote, but someone working 2-300 kms away from an embassy couldn’t yay democracy.
Unless you wish to file a referendum question. When this referendum was filed, there was a debate over stores should be open on Sunday or not. Quite “accidentally” a wife of small village’s mayor wished to file an question in support of stores being closed. Equally “on accident” a bunch of burly men suffering from long term hair loss and a possible penchant for listening to German war songs accompanied her, being there hours before the other filing could happen. These men have physically blocked the attempt of asking people if they wish to shop (since not everyone works Monday through Friday) and the voting commission quite illegally sent away the patrolling officers who were called to the scene. Stores are open on Sunday, but the point is that questions not favored by the government can’t be asked and not surprisingly the voting commission refused to file charges against the obstructionists like this guy in the article here.
So, if you dare to work abroad or wish to ask the people on a referendum and dare to belong to an opposition party, tough luck for you, so you don’t need to look at the US for these instances.
secondtofirstworld
No offense meant, but I don’t think most Europeans have Orban’s Hungary in mind when they think of a working democracy.
I shouldn’t brag too loudly, though, German CSU (Christian Social Union. They’re constantly at odds with Pope Francy standing on the right side of him and always in favour of cutting benefits) just voted for a new program called “the order”.
@Giliell: None taken, it’s for the better, although he’s again making the news with meeting May probably to work up a draft of a CETA-like free trade in exchange for special protection of the V4 countries’ workers, undermining solidarity at play, nothing to see here. He’s a calculating weather vane though, he was the one orchestrating the entry of the country into the EU in the first place.
As for Germany, I’m more concerned about the AFD and their rise outside the former East Germany.
Perhaps falsely by no intention but I do compare the societal evolution of Tea Party voters to that of Eastern Europeans. American exceptionalism isn’t my problem, rather falsely equating economic superiority with a social one. Being richer does not make one more enlightened or allows one to retcon history, like making English the single official language (when it has none) or claiming the country is built on Christianity when it doesn’t and can’t have an official religion. This former cop is the symptom, not the disease, but we both know that. It’s the GOP’s fault for embracing the fringe, because as much Republicans wanted to undermine Obama, Tea Party voters abandon their own candidates (Bachmann, Cruz, Rubio) in favor of Trump. As the saying goes, it’s my way or the highway pending they can raise the gas tax and it doesn’t crumble with the bridges by 2020. The only upside of that is that when they shoot a new disaster movie, the roads crumbling under John Cusack won’t be CGI.
He performed ‘feeling bad’ when spoken to by a sympathetic white man from his own party. That’s not who he wanted to frighten, after all.
I too never had to register to vote, because since I turned 18, I receive voting cards for each vote I am eligible for.
USA is just weird.
secondtofirstworld
I’m worried about the AfD, but I’m more worried about mainstream conservatives just taking over their positions because these guys are in the government.
@Giliell
I’ve been to Bavaria, it really is a free state jumping out of a picture book (as the GIs described it during WWII), as for its convictions, I can’t say I’m surprised, they don’t seem to get diversity despite Munich being enriched by Italian Germans. My two cents are, that the CSU is just toying with these ideals to put pressure on the CDU and serves no other purpose than domestic politics, they should no better than to ally themselves with the likes of Zschepe and serial arsonists, it puts a bad name to an already sullied reputation.
I think it was Sam Bee who pointed out that lot of what Trump supporters do come from Europe, the newest gem finding its way to the mainstream is Lügenpresse. I mean no offense to Americans, but whichever idiot came up with it to use it should know it comes directly from the Nazi Party, more specifically from the brain behind Der Stürmer, a man so despised not even the other 21 defendants of the Nuremberg 22 wanted to share a meal with him.
Reminds me of this cynical old childhood rhyme I’ve herad /read somewhere many decades ago :
And free to get bullied, intimidated, attacked in different ways and exploited and, yeah, this reality here’s so wrong, unfair and badly needs fixing.
Appalling, horrific and scary this voter intimidation shit sure is. In case folks haven’t seen this somewhere already :
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/11/03/guns-down-project-fight-back-against-firearm-related-voter-intimidation-election-day/214271
Might be of help hopefully?
@secondtofirstworld #11:
To many Trump supporters, that is a feature, not a bug. There are still many Americans who still think Hitler had the right idea, though you’d never see them admit to being Nazi sympathizers. As for it being from someone so despised, they just assume he was despised because of the SJWs of the day, and because the other 21 didn’t have the strength of their own convictions. A good number of Trump supporters are more vile than you would believe.
secondtofirstworld
Well, for one it shifts the overtone window. We’re talking about hard fought-for gains and the increased rate of roll-back.
Second, it grants legitimacy to those views. By now the term “concerned citizen” makes me puke. Those setting houses on fire are just concerned citizens with legitimate complaints, right?
Last, well, domestic politics are what I’m concerned about. I live here after all. I also don’T believe they’re doing it for shits and giggles. When somebody voices very sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, authoritarian opinions I believe them that tehy do so because they’re sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and authoritarian.
Voting in Canada was a lot simpler, too. This USAmerican ‘free election’ business is a laugh (the bitter kind). As for a free country, well…
@methuseus comment 13:
Julius Streicher of course wasn’t despised by the other defendants, many of whom were mass murderers, because they lacked convictions. According to Burton C. Andrus (hilarious wordplay, in my language Burton already sounds like prison) who was their overseer during the trial and wrote a book about his experiences, stated, that Streicher was a defendant in the same courthouse during the Weimar Republic for participating in child pornography and pedophilia. So adopting the brainchild of this person is like saying, Jerry Sandusky is a victim of a frame job. Make no mistake, Germans shouting the same know this as well, they just choose to ignore, that any vile creature could have worked for Adolf. Then again, according to some Lavrentiy Beriya also liked little girls to the extent not even Stalin let his daughter close to him.
As for civilian human vile: last week, police attempted to arrest a man known to authorities as militant alt-right, when the police went in to search on a legal warrant, he shot one of them with an illegally kept machine gun. One alt-right commenter under an article relating to the case had this to say: As you know, police officers automatically execute orders without thinking or asking which makes them akin to robots. Anyone who reads science fiction knows, that robots can get defective, and terminating defective robots is not a crime. So, if you ask, what vile I can imagine about Trump supporters, based on this person who is neither American nor a voting Trump supporter, yeah, I can imagine pretty much.
@Gilell: it seems we think alike and have very similar concerns. The difference is, you still have a stronger foundation of democracy, actual free press and a non-partisan government. If it were funny, I’d find it side splitting hilarious, that despite being in the same union, it’s like this is the ’60s, you’re in New York State and I’m in Illinois close to the border with Kentucky. Same union but still so different.
I get the frustrations of Trump supporters and how they’re fueled without condoning it, I lived similarly. One central theme is diversity is just a thinly disguised ploy to weaken the majority in order to forcefully assimilate them until they vanish. The fact it doesn’t happen and can’t happen because you live alongside and not with them bothers noone. The rejection to see other people as victims because you see your dwindling surroundings as evidence how much of a bigger victim you are. The reasoning moving factories away happened for financial reasons don’t speak to those lacking a GED. What they see is, my father and grandfather worked there, and greedy people make us suffer, they sell out the whole country. I actually have a greatest hits collection on reasons like this. From that point welcoming blame on unrelated people is easy as snipping a finger, like in I dream of Jeannie.
I think the main difference between these people and me, the launch of private television networks fell at the same time as socialist countries ran out of money jamming Western broadcasts. I’ve expanded my German and English skills with watching these shows, so I adapted to thinking methods other than my own. Many around me have only learned mandatory Russian, they only accept information in their own language. As for Trump supporters, many don’t speak anything else but English, and have never left the state, much less the country. So even if you speak and think in English, if you never leave the surroundings you grew up in, you still speak and think in two languages with other English speakers disagreeing with that opinion. The same thing happens to Germans and to the society I grew up in as well.
Sadly, this was predictable, no different than voter harassment of black people in the past. It will likely be one of many reported cases once the election is over.
Canada does not allow people to wear any partisan political paraphernalia at voting stations, not even by the voters. (And, obviously, there’s no “open carry” nonsense.) If the US is really a “free country” and a democracy, then it would prevent voter harassment and intimidation like this instance. Why would guns be allowed any closer to polling stations than to the white house?