I just cant believe they were trying to make people remember their county of birth, at the polling place, without the benefit of a cell phone. I know I would totally fail that question.
Congrats to our own @jilly who worked her butt off to help achieve this result. A small part of this victory belongs to you. Own it; you are awesome, @jilly
Mine’s easy to remember because it doesn’t exist anymore . They consolidated some regions; there are a finite number of us with the old name on our birth certificates.
I could guess at mine, but without the internet available or my birth certificate on hand there’s no way I’d be certain on it. (After looking it up on the 'net, well… mine would be incredibly easy to remember, but I’ve never had to, and it’s just overall a really bullsh*t thing to throw at someone who’s just trying to exercise their constitutional rights).
English-speaking politics around the world didn’t vote in Alabama, and didn’t elect Trump. The phenomenon of white American women voting overwhelmingly against their interests – Roy Moore is against women having voting rights, for pity’s sakes – is worth examining on its own.
Really? Rural areas are largely unincorporated, so the county matters more than the town. I have lived nearly half my life in unincorporated areas in the Midwest. It’s not like Massachusetts where each town has like three different villages in it, and if you don’t know which village you’re in you must be from Out Of Town, but nobody knows what county they’re in.
The last few places I’ve lived have had multiple cities per county, and all that’s important for navigation or mail addressing is the destination city/town (or its general area). The only time the county matters is when I’m specifically needing to deal with the local government.
While I definitely remember the city I was born in, I’ve never before had the slightest reason to even think about the county that was involved (as it turns out, I now know the city and county name are related, but I sure wouldn’t have wanted to be quizzed on that in a stressful situation).
I’m not sure if it’s been verified that this was being asked, but if people were getting quizzed on birth county just to vote, that would be a pretty heavy weighting against anyone originally born out of state or whose family had moved around within the state.
(I also have to wonder what answer would be acceptable for a citizen born out of the country…)
Sure, but that means the county you live in is important for voting, not the county you were born in. The only time I can think of that being actually important is as a plot detail for explaining what Mary and Joseph were doing in Bethlehem when Jesus was born.
In most democracies, it’s not where you were born, but where you live now and whether or not you have citizenship. Nobody cares where someone old enough to vote was born.
It’s definitely an urban/rural thing then. I’ve lived many places where I didn’t have a town name, and didn’t even have a street name (my address was something like 1234 N 50 E and that was good enough for the post office). There are probably a lot of people in rural Alabama who know what county they were born in but have no idea what city (if any) they were born in.
Of course, that really doesn’t help people who aren’t originally from rural Alabama, or who came from outside the state or even outside the country.