Ariella Elm

I wrote a whole essay on Zionism a few months ago, you should read it

The Daily Elm | Substack The optimism you need to fight from a place of hope rather than catatonic fear. Because, our voices are our superpower, when we use them! Click to read The Daily Elm, by Ariella Elm, a Substack public...

The absolute best way to do so is to become paid subscriber to my Substack (through the web, 🍎 newly takes a 30% cut) www.thedailyelm.com, but you can also buy me a ☕️ buymeacoffee.com/ariella.elm, or buy my merch www.bonfire.com/my-vote-is-m...
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I’m not kidding when I say the only way I can keep doing this work is if people like you support me.
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Comment below with what states you think are being written off and elections and situations you think deserve more attention in them!

I hope you learned something from today’s long yap. If you like this, please follow me for more anti-doomerism content!
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No state is a lost cause when it comes to aid, support, or politics. The faster we learn that, the faster we take back this country, one state at a time. Think of it this way…

Did you know Wyoming’s nickname is “The Equality State”? [Drawing of Wyoming with the name in calligraphy inside the state] If we were there once, we can get there again.

We just have to believe that every state is worth fighting for, every person is worth fighting for and equity matters at all levels and in all places. Your vote and your voice is your superpower, but only when you use them!

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Some of it is in the form of laws, like making it so college IDs can’t count to vote and removing all voting stations for colleges, or making early voting during work hours, or, in the case of Alabama, for instance, not having it at all.

And after the Texas primary, it’s become clear, maybe some, if not all of these states aren’t actually red. We got 100k MORE votes than the Republicans. Both primaries were incredibly contentious, but we had more voters.

And without their voter suppression tactics? Who KNOWS how many more voters we would have had. So I propose new language. Gray states.

We don’t know if they’re Red or Blue or Purple, there’s too much voter suppression, so judging it just isn’t applicable. We have no idea what color they are, and we’ll never find out if we write them off.

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When we talk about Red states, there is this perception that they are already a lost cause. People spend less money, pay less attention to the candidates and don’t respect the pain and suffering of the people in those states.

So I think we should change the narrative. These aren’t Red states, there’s no such thing. There’s no state without at least one Democratic stronghold.

But Ohio! Is by far one of THE most gerrymandered states in the country But Utah! Have you seen Salt Lake City? But Tennessee! Wait till I tell you about Memphis and Nashville.

Get the point? All of these states and so many more have something in common, they’re mostly gerrymandered to hell at state and federal level, and there’s so much voter suppression.

Introducing “Gray States” the concept that you can’t know how a state would actually vote if the voter suppression keeps so many people from voting. No state is worth writing off and every single state deserves to find out what their color truly is
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This just in, people want elected officials to waste their time explaining how two different organizations are in fact, two different organizations… I fucking can’t

No, because they think most people are smart enough to know the two different organizations are in fact, two different organizations

J Street is amazing. Been supporting them for a very long time.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but I know a lot of people do.

@jstreetdotorg.bsky.social is not AIPAC. If you see a candidate endorsed and funded by J Street, AIPAC hates them. Those two organizations could not be more opposite.

If you hate both of them, then you’re just an antisemite

Kristi Noem being fired, if that is in fact what happens, will not get to the root of the problem, and it’s putting all the blame on a woman.

That said it shows that Trump still cares about being embarrassed and humiliated. We do have power, even if it doesn’t feel like it all the time.

Thats higher than most primaries

The Daily Elm | Substack The optimism you need to fight from a place of hope rather than catatonic fear. Because, our voices are our superpower, when we use them! Click to read The Daily Elm, by Ariella Elm, a Substack public...

The absolute best way to do so is to become paid subscriber to my Substack (through the web, 🍎 newly takes a 30% cut) www.thedailyelm.com, but you can also buy me a ☕️ buymeacoffee.com/ariella.elm, or buy my merch www.bonfire.com/my-vote-is-m...
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I hope you learned something from today’s long yap. If you like this, please follow me for more anti-doomerism content!

I’m not kidding when I say the only way I can keep doing this work is if people like you support me.
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Dallas GOP says it will hand-count Election Day primary ballots That decision means Dallas County voters will have to cast ballots at their assigned precincts instead of countywide vote centers

sources.
 www.votebeat.org/texas/2025/1...
www.votebeat.org/texas/2025/1...
www.facebook.com/DallasGOP/po...
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But we can’t think like that, because that is letting them win. We have to show up every single time. We have incredible lawyers who are working on the legal aspect of this. It is our job to keep showing up. Because they focus these attacks on election day, if there is any way for you to vote early, do it. As long as we have early in person voting, that is the BEST way to do so.

But also spread the word about voter suppression. Don’t stop talking about it. The Republicans want to stop Black voters from having their voice heard. That was the goal of this whole situation. Do not leave them out of this conversation or ignore what happened in Dallas.

There should not be a single conversation about voting, right now, that doesn’t include the realities of voter suppression and voter disenfranchisement. That is the main story right now. But the other story, we have the votes. Despite the fuckery, we have the votes, and that’s HUGE.

Even with everything that happened, your vote is STILL your superpower, but ONLY when you use it!

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Just based on the amount of people who voted in the Dem primary ALONE, not to mention those who couldn’t vote because of this mess, that’s well over 2 million people the Dem party was tasked with explaining the new system to. Surprise surprise, that wasn’t possible. So that’s part one of this fuckery.

Part two is what happened night of. Predictably, many Dems went to the wrong location, some 3-4 TIMES. AND so many people were confused that the website telling them where their precinct was literally crashed. So the Dallas County Dems went to a district court and got them extended from 7 till 9. A whole two hour increase.

That’s when AG and Senate Candidate Ken Paxton got involved and went directly to the Texas Supreme Court, who reversed the lower court decision, but only after those votes had started to be cast. So there’s really no way to know which voters were already in line by 7pm and which voters came after. But, the confusion is the point.

The goal of voter suppression isn’t to throw out votes as much as it is to get people to think voting is a waste of time and not even bother in the future. These votes might very well be counted, but the whole mess undermined trust in the system, and some people are just not gonna vote in November as a result.

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Dallas County Chairman Kardal Coleman told Vote Beat “Not just for Democratic voters, but this is going to adversely affect every voter who may show up in the wrong location. It’s already causing chaos and confusion.” Basically, Dallas Dems could vote anywhere in the county, but this time there was only one location they could vote at, and it wasn’t even guaranteed to be nearby.

Fast forward to December 30 and Republicans abandon their plan to hand count ballots. Something tells me they weren’t ever planning on doing it in the first place, but anything to make things harder for Democrats and Black voters to make them think they actually were. Now, don’t blame Dallas Dems. They did the best they could.

The Democrats and Republicans can run their primaries however they want, separately. Except for county-wide voting vs precinct voting. That’s joint. And Republicans said it was happening, so it didn’t really matter what the Democrats wanted. [at the bottom is a graphic of a paper that says vote has a pencil and checked boxes for where someone filled out their ballot]

As a result, the parties literally had separate voting locations in every single precinct. And they had to find, staff and fully fund every single one of them themselves. Not to mention making sure all these people who have been voting around the county, for a while now, knew that this primary was going to be different.

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EVEN THOUGH so many Dems, especially Black voters, were kept from voting at all or had to go to upwards of FOUR polling places before actually being able to cast their ballot. I like to call Texas a gray state. We can’t know how blue or red it is because there’s so much gerrymandering and so much voter suppression, but with these numbers?

Texas GOTV efforts should be so fucking proud. Hopefully we can replicate whatever they did across the country. Okay, remember all those reasons why We’re NOT Doomed in your head and your heart, cause the next part isn’t fun. What happened in Texas was really fucking scary.

Let’s start with an important fact: the exact way the Republicans suppressed the vote cannot happen in the general. It was a primary specific tactic and it cannot be repeated in a general election. That doesn’t mean they won’t find other ways, but THAT way is not a concern AND this wasn’t last minute either, so it can’t come out of nowhere in other states

But let’s go back to the beginning. As of December 9, Republicans wanted to hand count ballots. So everyone had to hand count ballots. And Republicans wanted to switch from county wide polling places to precinct based, so everyone switched to precinct based. The local Dem party already knew this was gonna be a problem.

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I’m flipping the script today. I wanna start with the reasons We’re NOT Doomed. North Carolina Roy Cooper is the Democratic Nominee for the North Carolina Senate seat. We knew that, that’s not news.

What IS news is that, with >95% in, 824,798 voters voted in the Democratic primary, while only 625,667 voted in the Republican primary. No matter how few or how many people voted for Roy Cooper, he was winning the Democratic nomination, and yet people came out anyway.

We CAN flip this Senate seat! That doesn’t mean we aren’t going to fight or it won’t be work, but it’s doable. Arkansas We FLIPPED Arkansas State House District 70. Alex Holladay is Rep elect. He ran in 2024, getting 49%, and this time he got 57.4% that is an 18.4% overperformance!

Texas There was SO MUCH fuckery in Texas (more on that in a moment), but even with that, 2,158,010 people voted in the Republican primary, and 2,309,617 voted in the Democratic primary. WE HAD 200K MORE VOTERS THAN REPUBLICANS

Amongst all the Texas fuckery, there were some bright shining moments. We need to be able to hold both to truly understand where we are and what we need to do. Enjoy this breakdown.
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What happened in Texas was awful and I’m a little gleeful about the fact that it backfired on Ken Paxton, who now has a runoff while we don’t
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Can we celebrate that for the next two months Republicans in Texas are gonna be focusing on a runoff election and we get to go directly into the general.

That is such a huge leg up in a state that we are going to have a real uphill battle.
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Did you track your ballot to make sure it counted

What’s happening in Texas is a reminder that it is never a good idea to wait to vote till election day

I don’t know what planet he lives on because same day and voter by mail are not in across the entire state like 2% is in that is absolutely no reason to call a race

Is anyone who is already calling Texas aware that the majority of votes in are early in person and day of votes and by mail are pretty much not in anywhere?

Which is really fucking weird by the way

IT IS LITERALLY TOO EARLY TO CALL

The story out of Texas cannot be us eating each other. It has to be that Republicans took away our ability to have a voice. The hate needs to be directed at the Republicans not either candidate.

I would just like to say to the people who don’t like Henry Cuellar, and Vicente Gonzalez

Where are you? Cause you didn’t vote and they’re winning the primary again.

The Daily Elm | Substack The optimism you need to fight from a place of hope rather than catatonic fear. Because, our voices are our superpower, when we use them! Click to read The Daily Elm, by Ariella Elm, a Substack public...

The absolute best way to do so is to become paid subscriber to my Substack (through the web, 🍎 newly takes a 30% cut) www.thedailyelm.com, but you can also buy me a ☕️ buymeacoffee.com/ariella.elm, or buy my merch www.bonfire.com/my-vote-is-m...
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