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People share the person they wish would actually run for president

Some popular names got people excited, but descriptions of the ideal president were most telling.

Photos by Canva, NASA, Kris Harris King and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Jonny Kim, Dolly Parton and Jon Stewart were all suggested as POTUS candidates.

As we ramp up to the November 2024 U.S. presidential election, many Americans are feeling less-than-enthused about it. In our de facto two-party system, we will realistically have a Republican and Democrat candidate to choose from, and this year both of the top candidates are struggling to inspire a great deal of confidence or support.

While Joe Biden and Donald Trump will most likely be duking it out come November, people are imagining who they'd really like to see on the ballot. A Reddit thread asked, "Who do you WISH would run for President of America?" and the answers span from ideal descriptions to hilarious hypotheticals to actual people who have the knowledge, skills, experience and character to be a good presidential candidate.

Here's how people responded:

A good, smart middle-aged person

By far, the most popular answers for who they wish would run for president revolved around being a good, responsible, humble person who is somewhere in the middle-age range.

"I am in my 60’s. I would like a 40-60 year old who is honest, intelligent, moral, and has a sense of balance. Not a perfect person who never made a mistake, but someone who made mistakes and learned from them. Someone who has overcome hardship. This will allow them to have empathy for others. Someone that will make sure the tax burden is shared evenly, based on one’s income. Someone who can work with other countries and promote partnerships and be strong against corruption, violence, and war. Someone who understands they won’t ever fix all of societies problems, but strives to make our society better. Should I go on. Young people out there who want to make the world a better place, we need you to step up." – No-Grapefruit-83

"Some random 40-56 year old guy, who no one knows, has worked quietly in government for years, understands how it works and how to navigate it, with a smart wit and who just wants to help people.

And he has no desire to be POTUS because he'd rather do some nerdy hobby with his wife. But if elected he would feel he had to do the duty." – kirbyfox312

"This is so pie in the sky, but someone who loves this country but also understands we are a small part of a big world. Someone who is intelligent. Someone who is like in their 50's? (maybe) Someone who is not an asshat, but also not weak. Someone who reads. Someone who is willing to listen to all sides.

Is this too much'? Probably." – Catalyst886

Some fun suggestions

More than a few responses were pure comedy.

"With absolutely nothing to do with his politics, but senator Sheldon Whitehouse. I just want news anchors to have to say “president Whitehouse” with a straight face for 4-8 years as though it didn’t sound like something out of a cartoon." – nothomelandersacct

"The mayor of Idyllwild, CA, is a golden retriever named Max. I think it’s time for him to make the step up to the national stage." – piray003

"The guy who owns Arizona Ice Tea." – MumpsMoose

Although, that one may not be a joke, considering:

"I just saw an interview with him where the reporter asked him why not raise the prices, and his response was fantastic. Basically said they're doing well and have all their bases covered so why make it harder for struggling people to enjoy their products when there's no need? That alone gives me mad respect for him." – MindOverMedia

Personal recommendations

Some people offered up people they know personally who would make a great president.

"My stepdad. He has done truly impressive things for the university where he is president. He grew up dirt poor in eastern Kentucky. Worked his ass off to put himself and several siblings through college. He came from nothing to get a PhD. He is fair and kind and wise. He is extremely generous. As an example of one of the many reasons I find him qualified: He once sued the state of kentucky on the grounds of unconstitutional funding of public education (as a board of education member representing the poorest school in the state - with only a bachelor’s in accounting) and WON! He is an incredible human being and he is one of the only people I would trust to run this country." – Ok-Parfait-

"My 7th grade social studies teacher, he's tite." – luxury_yacht

"My mom. She’s awesome." – Miss_Medussa

A few fictional possibilities

If we're going to play an imaginary game, we might as well bring in some imaginary players, right?

"Aragorn, son of Arathorn." – Lord_Battlepants

"Pedro... I think he would get votes." – Pinorckle

"Josiah Bartlet." – VoteForLubo

"Leslie Knope. I feel like we would all be better off it she was in charge." – Odd_Mix_8675

"If I could Thanos snap my fingers and make Jean Luc Picard an American politician in the present day, I would have done it by now." – RiflemanLax

Real people who will likely never run

Lots of names were thrown out, but a few of the most popular ones were:

Jon Stewart

"He has expressed specific disinterest in being president.

Which makes him the ideal candidate." – DigNitty


Dolly Parton

"I especially love Dolly Parton's stance on early childhood literacy. She has worked to improve it." – leannmanderson


Jonny Kim

"Jonny Kim:

- Harvard doctor
- NASA astronaut
- Navy SEAL (Bronze Star and Silver Star: rescued wounded Iraqi soldiers in the face of enemy fire)
- Navy flight surgeon and naval aviator
- Grew up poor in south Los Angeles
- Dad ran a liquor store
- Mom was a substitute teacher
- He went to public school. He went to University of San Diego as an undergrad (summa cum laude in mathematics)
- He was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of his father
- The police killed his father in their attic
- Married with 3 kids
- is 40 years old

He understands poverty, being a victim, intimately familiar with police engagement in domestic situations, being a POC, going through the public school system, understands numbers, military, healthcare, and bleeding edge science. and invested in the future of our country with 3 young children."


Hank Green

"Hank Green, absolutely. We need a scientifically literate president." – WildLudicolo

And yes, some politicians, too

Many people did name some people in politics that they'd like to see run, with the most popular names being Secretary of Transportation Mayor Pete [Buttigieg], Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, Congresswoman Katie Porter, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, California governor Gavin Newsom and Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth.

Each of those established politicians received multiple shout outs with people praising the qualities they felt they had that they felt would make them a solid candidate among the current crop of lawmakers.

Will any of these folks actually run for president in the future? It's entirely possible. As we've learned, when it comes to modern American politics, literally anything is possible.

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Democracy

Rumors vs. reality: 6 facts about voting by mail for folks worried about election integrity

Worried about mail-in voting? Don't be.

Photo by Tiffany Tertipes on Unsplash, @Mynorthwest/Twitter

Myths and facts about voting by mail.

As we head toward midterm elections in early November, there's a lot of misinformation floating around about how voting is conducted and how votes are processed. Sadly, we're reaping what widespread misinformation has sown in the form of continued election result denial, legislation that makes it harder to vote and even vigilante voter intimidation at ballot drop boxes.

Convincing someone their preferred candidate didn't win because the other side cheated is an easy political win, especially in a hyperpartisan atmosphere. But the reality is that the vast majority of Americans want elections to be as fair and accurate as possible, so sorting out truth from fiction and understanding how our election processes actually work—as opposed to how partisan sources tell us they work—is important.

Voting by mail comes up a lot in discussions of election integrity, so let's take a look at how mail-in ballots work and clear up some misunderstandings that might cause people concern.

Frequently, people will share things they've heard from a friend or a cable news host or a social media post without verifying whether those things are true. Every state handles mail-in ballots a little differently in terms of how people receive ballots and when they get counted, but the safeguards to prevent fraud and ensure eligible votes are counted are fairly standard.

Rumor: Mail-in voting is too new to be safe and secure.

Reality: Americans have been voting by mail since the 19th century. Those early mail-in votes came from soldiers in the Civil War and since then, members of the military who are deployed outside of their home states have long been voting by mail.

Widespread mail-in voting for civilians is newer, but not new. Oregon has been conducting all mail-in elections since 2000, so has had more than two decades to perfect its system. Washington state has done the same since 2012 and Colorado since 2014. In the past three years, Utah, Hawaii, Vermont and California have gone to all-mail-in voting. (Incidentally, Vermont and Washington took the No. 1 and No. 2 spots for electoral integrity in the 2018 midterm rankings in Harvard's Electoral Integrity Project, and all of the other states named here ranked in the top 20.)

Rumor: Mail-in voting gives Democrats an unfair advantage.

Reality: Studies have shown that there appears to be no statistically significant advantage for either party when mail-in voting is implemented. So there's that.

But as an anecdotal example as well, Washington state (where I live) elected a Republican secretary of state—the person in charge of elections at the state level—multiple times with our mail-in voting system until she resigned last year to work on election security at the federal level. And that's in a Democratic-leaning state overall. And the district I live in has elected a Republican representative to the House for years with all mail-in voting. Mail-in ballots are equally available to everyone and make voting very simple, so it doesn't make sense that it would give either party an advantage.

Rumor: Mail-in voting makes it easier to commit voter fraud.

Reality: The Brookings Institution shared data from the conservative Heritage Foundation that analyzed voter fraud over many years in different states. Here are the number of voter fraud cases Heritage found for states that had mail-in voting during most of the time period they analyzed and the total number of ballots cast during that time.

Colorado: 14 cases over 13 years out of 15,955,704 votes cast.

Oregon: 15 cases over 19 years out of 15,476,519 votes cast

Washington: 12 cases over 6 years out of 10,605,749 votes cast

This is what people mean when they say voter fraud isn't a concern. It's not that it never ever happens. It's just that it doesn't even come close to being anywhere near significant enough to approach making a dent in election results.

And false fraud allegations can have tragic real-world results. Everyone needs to make sure they triple-fact-check fraud claims before passing them along.

Rumor: I know of people who received more than one ballot in the mail, which means they'll be able to vote twice.

Reality: Nope, they can't vote twice even if they have two ballots. It doesn't really matter how many ballots a person receives since only one can be submitted and processed for each voter. Election officials try to avoid voters receiving more than one ballot since it causes confusion, but if it happens, it's not an indication that anything fishy is going on. Once one ballot is processed, another ballot for the same voter can't be. Multiple safeguards are in place to ensure that only one ballot is processed for each registered voter and to ensure that the person's signature on the ballot envelope is legitimate.

Rumor: Mail-in voting opens up the possibility of voter coercion.

Reality: This could be true. At a polling place, each individual votes privately so no one else can see who they vote for. People can still feel coerced into voting a certain way, but there's no way for anyone else to really know how they voted. When ballots are mailed to homes, it is possible for one person in the home to force another person to vote a certain way, but: 1) If there are really enough controlling and abusive households that coercion could sway an election, we have bigger problems on our hands than mail-in voting, and 2) Voter intimidation and coercion is a crime, whether it's someone sitting next to a drop box with a gun or someone sitting next to their spouse with a threat.

Rumor: Mail-in voting offers more opportunities for mistakes in the election process.

Reality: There's no evidence for a claim like this. Every voting system can run into problems. Polling places have power outages and voting machines break. Tens of thousands of voters in Virginia were recently given the wrong information about which polling place they are supposed to go to to vote in person. Mail-in voting systems aren't any more prone to things going wrong than any other voting system.

The full reality is that mail-in voting is a convenient, secure way to run an election, which has been proven by bipartisan and nonpartisan sources over and over again. Claims to the contrary are simply political games designed to sow fear and distrust, which is unfortunately an easy way to sway voters.

However you decide to vote, just vote. Democracy only works as intended if we all participate.

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Bill Maher made an ominous prediction about Trump supporters and the 2024 election

Real Time with Bill Maher/YouTube

Bill Maher described the "slow-moving coup" happening in the U.S.

We are living in weird times in far more ways than one. Not only are we coping with a global pandemic that some people still refuse to acknowledge, but we are also dealing with an ex-president who still refuses to admit that he lost the last election, whose fan base keeps spiraling deeper and deeper into kooky conspiracy theories and whose adopted party inexplicably failed to cut bait and run from Q-ville when it had the chance.

So now we're watching democracy flail and sputter because millions of Americans simply reject objective reality. It's genuinely, mind-bogglingly weird.

Such is the backdrop of Bill Maher's recent run-down of what he sees happening in the next election. Under normal circumstances, it would be far too early for such punditry from comedic political commentators, but the U.S. sailed right past normal years ago. So now, not even a year past the last election—and with no one even announcing an intention to run—we're already pondering what will happen in 2024. (Seriously, why does everything have to be so dumb?)

Maher laid out the plan that appears to be unfolding before our eyes in a segment titled "A Slow-Moving Coup," starting with the Eastman memo that basically was a blueprint for Trump overturning the results of the election he lost.


New Rule: The Slow-Moving Coup | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)www.youtube.com



"Here are the easiest three predictions in the world," said Maher. "Trump will run in 2024. He will get the Republican nomination. And whatever happens on election night, the next day he will announce that he won.

"I've been saying ever since he lost, he's like a shark that's not gone, just gone out to sea," continued Maher. "But actually, he's been quietly eating people this whole time. And by eating people, I mean he's been methodically purging the Republican Party of anyone who voted for his impeachment or doesn't agree that he's the rightful leader of the Seven Kingdoms."

Maher explained how the small number of Republicans who outwardly opposed Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election will be gone by 2024, and how state legislatures and election officials are being replaced with loyalists who will hand him the presidency whether he actually wins it or not. He predicted that Republicans would win the House in 2022.

"And yet, 2024 comes and Democrats treat it as a normal election year," he said. "They are living in a dream world where their choice of candidate matters, their policies matter, the number of votes they get matters, none of it does. I won't even predict who the Democratic nominee will be, because it doesn't matter."

Maher explained that even if the Democratic nominee wins the election, "Trump won't accept it." But this time, his conspiracy theories about election fraud "will be fully embraced by stooges he is installing right now."

The only thing that kept the U.S. from a full-blown constitutional crisis was that some Republican elected officials put their foot down and insisted on reality. What happens without people who are willing to go against pressure from their party and do the right thing?

"The ding dongs who sacked the Capitol last year? That was like when Al Qaeda tried to take down the World Trade Center the first time with a van. It was a joke. But the next time they came back with planes," Maher said.

"I hope I scared the shit out of you!" Maher said, in conclusion.

Yeah. A majority of Americans are already there, Bill.

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Voting machine companies force Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN to debunk their own conspiracy lies on air

Jan Wolfe/Twitter, Mike Sington, Twitter, John Whitehouse/Twitter

The information age sometimes feels more like the misinformation or disinformation age, with seemingly no end to the deluge of "alternative facts" constantly bombarding people on social media. That problem is only made worse when media outlets themselves—ones that are supposed to share actual news—participate in flooding the zone with unfounded conspiracy theories and outright lies.

For the past month, Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News (OAN) have been amplifying the voices of people claiming that the 2020 presidential election was rampant with fraud and pushing the false idea that Trump actually won the election. As part of those claims, these networks have peddled conspiracy theories about voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion being tied to various people from Hugo Chavez to George Soros, tabulating U.S. votes overseas, and outright changing votes via the companies' software.

How can they keep pushing this stuff if it isn't true? Well, the Fairness Doctrine that required broadcasters to cover controversial issues in an honest, fair, and balanced way hasn't been in effect since 1987—and cable networks were never bound to it anyway—so there's not really any official check on accuracy or truth.

That leaves two main avenues for keeping networks accountable for the information they share—public response and legal action. Public response is fairly useless, as people tend to eat up whatever confirms their views and beliefs and reject what goes against them, regardless of what the facts are. But legal action? That still holds some weight.

Facts and truth actually matter in a court of law. That's why none of the lawsuits alleging widespread fraud in the election have actually gone anywhere, as judge after judge and court after court have dismissed the dozens of cases Trump's team and allies have filed, both on their standing and on their merits.

Now, Smartmatic and Dominion are utilizing legal channels to hold these networks accountable for the election falsehoods they're peddling that involve them. The New York Times reports that both companies have legal counsel preparing libel action, with Smartmatic having already sent a 20-page demand letter to the networks to forcefully correct the misinformation about them.

Watching those legal threats force these networks into telling the truth is eye-opening—and frankly, quite satisfying.

First, Fox News has aired this video debunking claims pushed by their own network on at least three of their shows so far. Hosts Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, and Maria Bartiromo have aired the segment during their shows, and other hosts that have pushed the same claims may follow.

It's quite clear that Smartmatic specified exactly which claims needed to be corrected. According to the Times, the company is requiring the networks to keep documentation for an upcoming defamation suit.

Newsmax gave similar details in this video "clarifying" their coverage of Smartmatic and Dominion's role—or lack thereof—in the 2020 election. In this clip, John Bachmann tries to distance the network from the claims of the guests it has had on its shows and makes it very clear that Newsmax has evidence that anything those guests claimed is true.

The content of this clip is also posted on the Newsmax website under "Facts about Dominion, Smartmatic You Should Know":

"Newsmax has found no evidence that either Dominion or Smartmatic owns the other, or has any business association with each other.

We have no evidence that Dominion uses Smartmatic software or vice versa, and no evidence has been offered that Dominion or Smartmatic used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election.

Smartmatic has stated its software was only used in the 2020 election in Los Angeles, and was not used in any battleground state contested by the Trump campaign and Newsmax has no evidence to the contrary.

Dominion has stated its company has no ownership relationship with the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's family, Sen. Dianne Feinstein's family, the Clinton family, Hugo Chavez, or the government of Venezuela.

Neither Dominion nor Smartmatic has any relationship with George Soros.

Smartmatic is a U.S. company and not owned by the Venezuelan government, Hugo Chavez or any foreign official or entity.

Smartmatic states it has no operations in Venezuela. While the company did election projects in Venezuela from 2004 to 2017, it states it never was founded by Hugo Chavez, nor did it have a corrupt relationship with him or the Venezuelan government."

The impact of the legal actions from Smartmatic is spilling over into interviews on these networks as well, as they try to save their tails from further action from allowing their guests to push their wild conspiracy theories. For instance, watch Sebastian Gorka interrupt MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell as he starts to make unsubstantiated claims about Dominion voting machines and move him in another direction entirely.

Watching these networks debunk election fraud claims they themselves have been pushing is really something. So far, OAN—the favored media child of President Trump—appears to be doubling down on their fraud conspiracy claims. We'll see how that risk/benefit ratio works out for them.

If threatening or bringing lawsuits is the only way for media outlets to be held accountable for the falsehoods they air, so be it. Enough was enough a long time ago. Thank goodness someone is finally standing up to the absurdity in a way that actually counts.


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