A Clusterfark in Wisconsin
Evers issued an executive order Monday afternoon — 18 hours before polls were set to open — to bar in-person voting as a massive shortage of poll workers prompted some election officials to reduce polling locations, including in Milwaukee which will have just five instead of 180.
But the state’s highest court reinstated the election within hours, capping off nearly six hours of confusion as election officials told clerks to continue preparing for an election because they did not know whether the polls would open Tuesday.
A little over an hour later, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a second blow to the Democratic governor by tightening limits on which absentee ballots can be counted. Under that 5-4 order, voters will have to mail back their absentee ballots by Tuesday, go to the polls that day or give up their opportunity to vote.
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On the ballot is the presidential primary, a referendum on a crime victims’ rights and races for state Supreme Court and local offices across the state, including Milwaukee mayor and Milwaukee County executive.
Evers acknowledged as he issued the order that it could be thrown out but said he wanted to try everything he could to block in-person voting.
“It could end up in the Supreme Court yet today, but the bottom line is the people of Wisconsin, they don’t care about the fighting between Democrats and Republicans — they’re scared,” Evers said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before issuing the order. “I’m standing up for them. I’m standing up for those people who are afraid and that’s why I’m doing this.”Evers made his move four days after he said he had no legal authority to change the election. Republicans used the governor’s own words against him as they took their case to the state Supreme Court.
The Legislature’s Republican leaders called Evers’ order an unconstitutional action.
“We continue to believe that citizens should be able to exercise their right to vote at the polls on election day, should they choose to do so,” Fitzgerald and Vos said.
Everyone has disgraced themselves here. The governor for resisting calls to delay the election weeks ago. The legislature for failing to act. And the Courts for failing to do anything other than make the mess worse. Some folks are going to get very sick because of this.Report
The fundamental choices were: try to conduct the election as planned with the defined procedures, or make up something different on the fly. Even without the partisan considerations everyone’s jumping on, I find it unsurprising that the legislature declined to make an “on the fly” attempt. Equally unsurprising that the courts found the executive branch lacked authority to try it. State legislatures have been far less likely to delegate as much authority to the executive as Congress does routinely.
Note that “we’ll just have everyone vote absentee” on this kind of notice is very much an on the fly thing. States with vote-by-mail (CO, HI, OR, UT, and WA this year) all spent a year or two working the bugs out. States that are almost vote-by-mail using their absentee system (AZ and CA that I know of) have spent years building up the capacity to cope with it.Report
I find it unsurprising that the legislature declined to make an “on the fly” attempt
Me too since the Democratic governor and legislature in Illinois didn’t seek to change the election during a state of emergency.
One point that was raised by those wanting the courts to step in for a different result in Wisconsin was that a number of states apparently have expressly authorized their Governor to make changes to the election in a state of emergency. I think this was intended to normalize the grant of relief requested, but it probably worked in the opposite way because Wisconsin law had not. But it would be mildly interesting to see if those other states have a lot of conditions and provisos. As you say, most legislatures are not going to trust some future governor now to abuse this power.Report
My takeaway from this is based more on the Democrats whining about the two SCs (Supremes Court ??) decisions than the decisions themselves. As a party they’re just not prepared for no-holds barred political fights with GOP, despite the GOP telling everyone in the country that, for them, there are no holds barred.
My other takeaway is that for all of Roberts preening about the court not appearing partisan, drawing a line in the sand on this issue in the current circumstances (ie., a massive public health mobilization) sure gives the impression of partisanship.Report
I got taken to task for this very statement on another post yesterday. The Dems are bring knives to a gunfight.Report
The problem with the GOP at this point is that they have simply gone off the rails. The smartest ones know that it is only a matter of time before their crushes on Reagan do not hold sway and that the country’s demographics are getting younger and browner and more liberal. So they are doing everything in power to hold onto minority rule. Democrats won 54 percent of the vote in Wisconsin but the GOP has a supermajority in the state legislature because of ultra-gerrymandering. This can only be done through anti-democratic means and bad faith maps that look at land instead of people. I expect George will produce a word salad of dada to defend this sometime today.
The State Supreme Court judge up for reelection had the decency to recuse himself from any decision in this so some things are still bridges too far but this is very easily apartheid minority rule and doing all possible to hold unto power.Report
The problem with the GOP at this point is that they have simply gone off the rails.
I’d like to agree, but that’s a problem for us not-GOPers and not a problem for them, right?Report
Yep.Report
Wisconsin’s “ultra-gerrymandering” was approved by Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. I’m sure you’ll denounce them forthwith as ultra-conservatives.
As for the voting, take a look at the state legislature contests. You actually have to win each seat, not get more total statewide votes overall. You see, Republicans won seat after seat with totals that look like 53-47, 55-45, 60-40. Democrats won 30 of their 35 seats with the outcomes that were 99-9, 100-0, 98-0, because they were unopposed by a Republican candidate, whereas only four Republicans winners were unopposed.
Who do Democrats think any election is necessarily unfair and illegitimate if Democrats don’t win?Report
The Supreme Court has always deferred to the states when it comes to drawing legislative boundaries.Report
The Supremes, rightfully, view it as a tarbaby. I-know-it-when-I-see-it with no other rules than who I think should win.Report
A win for democracy.
Now, if we can just end the shistering of mail-in ballots.Report
What shistering? It looks like WI will have more absentee ballots mailed in this election then the last one . . .Report
And those ballots should be presumed fraudulent as there is no way to ascertain if the person it is provided for actually voted with it.
Any ballot not filled out in a certified election location is ripe for fraud and shistering. And shisters* will attempt to have anything that supports their cause counted while doing everything to discount the other team, and using dubius legallity to do it. An absentee ballot SHOULD be filled out in the presence of an election clerk. Sadly that is not the case.
*both teams, red and blueReport
Okay then. Where are these certified election locations?Report
I don’t know about today and where the polling locations are, as I don’t live in WI. In general, I would say those and registrar of elections office. Other, certified areas like a DMV could serve as one also, as long as there is a representitive of that office on hand.Report
in the last election, the only arrests, prosecutions and convictions for ballot or registrations were of Republicans. So no, both side do not infact do this. Oregon votes entirely by mail – has for several years – and there is zero evidence that any untoward, much less illegal or fraudulent activity has occurred.
Frankly if you want to really run down you assertions, there is no way to conduct e-commerce or pay bills by mail, since there’s no really way to ascertain that the person paying the bill is the person dunned by the bill.
Except of course that’s not how it works in the relay 21st century world.Report
I don’t care if it was R’s or D’s. And nowhere in my post do I mention either party as a culprit. Indeed, I say both teams. Though if you are mentioning one team doing it, it furthers my case against it. Well played!
And I live in OR, I know how it works here. And no, I don’t like it.
The funny thing about ecommerce is that it has zero bering on this converstaion. How I accept money, or for that matter how anyone does, is not voting. Why you brought that up, along with what century it is, we will never know. Must be something to do with reading comprehention.
And whaReport
Its to point out that in a day and age when you can accept money from Japan on a device in your pocket and consider the transfer legal and verified you can vote in a way that doesn’t require people to que up in line at fixed locations.Report
And none of that has anything to do with election security and integrity. You can still get scammed online by Russians and Nigerians, you can still bounce checks.Report
So you seriously contend that your state – which is vote by mail – is so riddled with voting irregularities that it should go back to forcing people to stand in line to vote? That your identity is so unknown to your voting officials that they need to cease and desist sending you ballots and force you to stand in line to show an ID to receive your ballot?
Your contention is that government should RESTRICT and HIGHLY Regulate your Constitutional RIGHT to vote by forcing you to do so in only one fashion that is over a century old instead of taking advantage of modern technology to enhance your ability to vote easily – and thus increase turnout?
Oh man, if I weren’t so pissed about all the problems with that I’d laugh. There is no reported evidence of any serious, massive widespread vote fraud in Oregon or any other mail in state.
The one conviction arising from the 2018 election for absentee vote fraud was for a Republican in North Carolina. 1 conviction.
And for that – again – YOU WANT GOVERNMENT TO RESTRICT THE RIGHT TO VOTE?Report
No, I am asserting that my state has an unknowable amount of irregularites. And that to me makes it unworthy. Just this month I have had two packages lost in the mail, and if I had a pro-Trump sign could not a disapproving postman destroy or hide my ballot? I wouldn’t know and would have zero ability to find out. Or could a home health worker take my ill fathers absentee ballot, fill it out fraudulently and forge his signature?
“ And the only voting fraud schemes with the potential to actually swing elections involved mail-in ballots, not impersonation at the polls.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/09/voter-fraud-exists-through-absentee-ballots-but-republicans-wont-stop-it.html
Even Slate, no Republican hash-house, refutes your claim.
Having polling places, that worked for centuries, does not in anyway restrict the right to vote. And, with the freedom of movement affirmed by our consitution there are no legal limits on any lawful persons ability to get to a polling location. So, voting is not restricted in any way that I am concerned about there. In much the same way that a person in a coma cannot vote, but is not legally restricted.
But, missing ballots, or ballots that are illegally placed dilute the constitionally protected right to vote. Why do you want to do that?
And as a side note, we currently have massive amounts of restriction to another constitutionally affirned right, that of the second amendment. Showing ID, punitive laws, restrictions on sales and age limits, etc. IE hightly restricted and regulated, to use your words. So, would you put your money were your mouth in a push to remove all of those restrictions upon a consitutionally guaranteed right?Report
As a gun owner who has yet to have his background checked when acquiring a fire arm because of massive loophole in those regulations – no I won’t. And the right to keep and bear arms – which when written were understood in a military context as applying to able bodied men only – is predicated on the need for a well regulated militia.
Because there’s no evidence of that outcome in multiple decades of voting by mail in various forms. None. And considering that the ballot harvesting fraund committed in North carolina was knowbale, detected and prosecuted successfully your assertion that there is an unknowable level of fraud in oregon is wishful thinking.Report
And aside from the fact that no one outside of partisan Dems takes that position re militia, you are totes cool with regulating and restricting one consitutionally affirmed right while not another. We are all the militia, ie The People, remember that? Applies to voting rights and the press also. Mutatus mutandis. So you fail to make a cogent argument on that point.
But you started this thread with complaints that R’s do commit fraud, and in your last post conclude with this: “And considering that the ballot harvesting fraund committed in North carolina was knowbale, detected and prosecuted successfully your assertion that there is an unknowable level of fraud in oregon is wishful thinking.” So, you affirm the thing that you say doen’t happen in the very same sentance.
Way to make my point.Report
During a pandemic in which multiple local law enforcement agencies have announced that they are overwhelmed and should only be called under the direst of circumstances is probably not the best time to do the whole “gun control” thing.
Off the top of my head, I imagine that there are a lot more undecideds who have said “maybe I should have bought a gun…” over the last two months than have said “golly, I’m glad that other people have been prevented from buying guns, even if that means that I can’t buy one”.
I mean, good god. At least when I argue for rescheduling marijuana during the quarantine, it makes sense how people might want to get stoned and watch Netflix in the comfort of their own living areas that they’re not supposed to leave. Have you heard about this Tiger King series? Pretty crazy!
Almost as crazy as arguing about gun control during a goddamn pandemic in which local law enforcement is saying “yeah, we’re not going to go to your house”.Report
You really being intentionally thick headed aren’t you? I asserted that 1) voter fraud is so uncommon as to be not a reason not to do something positive to expand rights; 2) that your own experience in oregon proves that you don’t have a leg to stand on in that regard; that 3) your proposed solution advocates for the very sorts of restrictions you claim to NOT want in all the other rights you see as protected and 4) that only one side of the aisle is found to consistently commit said non-impactful fraud anyway.
At the heart of it however you really don’t care about whether the voting rights of other are protected however so long as yours aren’t infringed. You also believe that somehow making voting more widespread and lowering participation barriers infringes on your rights.
Which is cool and all, except thats a big reason Wisconsin and the nation are where they are. And I’m not ok with where they are.Report
I realize this debate will go nowhere given that I’ve already made those same points previously and been dismissed by the same people without the slightest appeal to any fact or logic to back them up, but thank you for likewise calling out this BS double-standard and blatant circular logic that “there is no vote fraud, therefore we don’t need to look for vote fraud; when we don’t look then we don’t see any vote fraud, therefore there is no vote fraud”. For lack of evidence to be evidence of lack there would have to actually be some effort to gather evidence in the first place. On this topic Dems are very much “See no evil, Hear no evil, speak no evil”.Report
ok try this – the only evidence of vote fraud is fraud committed by one side of the aisle; its not been shown to have influenced or changed any election; when it has been found it has been fully prosecuted and it would not have been stopped by any of the measures proposed by that same side of the aisle to address the incredibly minuscule amount of fraud that occurs.
Is that a more accurate representation?Report
Quite a few people have a vested interest in finding, and a powerful incentive to find, voter fraud. They’ve looked. They found bupkis. The solutions proposed — like er photo ID — would do next to nothing to prevent voter fraud on a large enough scale to affect elections. Especially if you consider what you would have to do to swing an election.Report
Nope, never happens. Never ever…
Ohio Secretary of State:
“As a result of our review, my office has identified 277 individuals who registered to vote in Ohio
and 77 individuals who cast a ballot in an Ohio election and who appear to be legally present, noncitizens. ”
https://files.constantcontact.com/b01249ec501/104a9e84-a21c-48bb-b794-c0d934d54049.pdf
“The arrest of Edinburg Mayor Richard Molina on an engaging in organized election fraud charge is likely the first time an elected official in Texas has been charged with that crime.” https://www.themonitor.com/2019/04/25/breaking-edinburg-mayor-wife-surrender-authorities-illegal-voting-charges/Report
Right because in order to have any effect whatsoever on an election, you need to have corruption very high up the chain.
Even the smallest local races have margins of hundreds of votes, and Congressional races, thousands, and national races, millions.
So the idea of a person showing up with the wrong identity as a Problem To Be Fixed is laughably absurd; It would take a vast army of impostors. And you would have to know in advance the precise precincts and polling places where to deploy this army. And somehow prevent the real voter from showing up.
Voter fraud is like any other conspiracy theory- the logistics of how it could be done always fall apart after just a brief glance.Report
58,000 non-U.S. citizens may have voted in at least one election here, election official says
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article225094315.html
Yeah, 58 thousand people couldn’t swing an election, no siree.
““I’ve worked for over 30 years helping people in Roma vote,” said Vela, who was arrested twice in October on charges of vote harvesting, or illegally assisting voters with their mail-in ballots, the same charges she faced in 2010. ”And sometimes people try to stop you. I am doing a favor for the governor. I am getting people to vote. I am helping older citizens people who cannot leave their homes and vote.””
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/02/19/true_confessions_of_texas_vote_harvesters.html
We definatly shouldn’t worry about this, it never happens! And even if it did, well, they are only Republicans!Report
In 2018, 8,000,000 people voted in Texas state elections;
Even if we take this report completely at face value, 58,000 votes wouldn’t have changed the state level races- The gap between the winning and losing gubernatorial candidates was about 1,000,000 votes, almost twenty times the total “fraudulent” votes.
And even then, these are not cases of intentional efforts to sway the election in one direction or another; These were people who registered to vote who may, or may not, have been naturalized citizens at the time.
Holding this up as a case of “voter fraud” is yet again, laughable.Report
So, we have gone from “It never happens” to “that all?”
Again, un-frickin-real.Report
And we keep saying the same thing, that the number of intentionally fraudulent votes is less than the number of improperly marked, damaged, ,illegible or otherwise discounted ballots.Report
So, this faucet is leaking, but we shouldn’t fix it because that faucet over there is also leaking?
Again, un-frickin-realReport
Didn’t JFK get into office in 1960 because of Chicago vote stuffing?Report
Long rumored, never demonstrated.
The rumor wasn’t imposter voters, but of Mayor Daley arranging for a few truckloads of votes to be lost or found.
Because once again, it would have taken truckloads of ballot boxes, and dozens or hundreds of conspirators.Report
JFK won by less than 10k votes. That’s like a couple of boxes.Report
OK fair point, but the accusation still demands a preposterous theory.
How would the JFK forces know in advance that the election would come down to Illinois, and once they did, how would they know which precincts to swing?
Like, a small shift in any other state or even a shift in a few Illinois towns would have made Mayor Daley’s efforts pointless.
And yet this effort would have taken dozens of people to plan and carry out, all organized on a moment’s notice.
And even then, it demonstrates that in-person imposter voting is not where the possibilities are, but with someone high up in the chain of command, someone who can orchestrate the disappearance of ballot boxes and the silencing of dozens of witnesses and falsifying of records.
If you were tasked with throwing the 2020 Presidential election, how would you do it? Where would you even start? Which state, which precincts? How large of a staff would you need?
The one source of election vulnerability that has been identified, is hacking of electronic voting machines and ballots. Most have been shown to be amazingly easy to hack, and there isn’t a lot of effort put into securing them.Report
There is a wikipedia section devoted to the controversies and irregularities from the 1960 election.
Like, there were election workers who were convicted of voter fraud and the names of dead people showed up on the voter rolls.
Texas also had irregularities… stuff like 6000 ballots showing up to be counted from towns with only 5000 people.
This stuff is documented.
Not that it matters.Report
OK point taken.
But of course, this just goes to show that in order to actually work, you need not just some impostors to show up without ID, you need someone very high up in the chain to move votes by the thousands or tens of thousands. And you need a political machine, that is, a very large organization of people to carry it out.
But maybe we can just all agree that in-person voting is highly susceptible to fraud, and we should switch to vote by mail.Report
I’m not seeing how “vote by mail” will necessarily resolve any of the problems that were mentioned in the Wikipedia page.
Not that they necessarily *NEED* to be, of course… I mean, 1960’s documented voter fraud wasn’t fixed by requiring voting in person.
But I’d like to see arguments for how to address the voter fraud that we know exists in the people very high up the chain that have political machines at their disposal.Report
You’re making this too hard. They don’t need to know any of that.
The Daily Machine’s job was Illinois. So they have one strongly controlled precinct hold back, wait to see how many votes they need to swing the state, then they deliver that.
They don’t need “a moment’s notice”, they had people whose jobs were to deliver the votes so they did so. They also don’t need “dozens”, just a handful, and presumably this wasn’t the first or last time they’d done something like this, just the time it was done on a Presidential level when it mattered.Report
No, they didn’t. You have misunderstood every piece of what that article says.
First of all, those 58,000 people definitively did vote, not ‘may have voted’. I know this appears to be proving your point, but it really just shows you weren’t really paying attention.
Second, those people _may_ be non-citizens, that is unclear, and it was done by apparently matching names who are known to be names of non-citzens, which is…a really good way to just locate Hispanic people. Do you have any sort of follow-up to determine what percentage of them _were_ non-citizens?
Third…it was wasn’t one election! It was over twenty years of elections.Report
Uhmmm that was the lead for the article. Did you read it?
I was pointing out that, yes election fraud exists. You are affirming that. Good job.Report
That article doesn’t prove that at all. The article proves that 58,000 people who voted over the last decade have names shared with non-citizens.
There is not the slightest bit of evidence in that article that any of them were actually non-citizens.Report
“Texas Secretary of State David Whitley said a year-long evaluation found about 95,000 people described as “non-U.S. citizens” who are registered to vote in Texas. About 58,000 of them voted in Texas elections between 1996 and 2018, Whitley said.”
So, you were right. It wasn’t 58,ooo it was 95,ooo. The fist number are just who had voted not who had just registered.
It is almost like you didn’t read the article…Report
58,000 non-U.S. citizens may have voted in at least one election here, election official says
I’ll agree: 58,000 illegal voters is a problem that should be corrected. The next question is, why are we not seeing thousands of trials and convictions in Texas, or even stories about thousands of people being stricken from the rolls?
Anecdotal… A few years back, the Colorado Sec of State produced a list of 4,000 names and addresses that he asserted were people illegally registered to vote in Colorado. The list went to the county clerks, who investigated them all. The list was whittled down as naturalized citizens, people who weren’t on the rolls, and people with duplicate or misspelled names or incorrect addresses were cleared. When the clerks were done, there were four people who were illegally registered. All of them had been registered by a single overzealous worker at a drivers license office who signed them up without asking their status. None of them had voted. Their names were removed from the registration system, drivers license workers were given remedial training, and the local DA declined to prosecute.Report
Is it a triable offence? A deportable offence? A non- reported offence? (How many DUIs are reported or investigated?) I don’t know how texas handles it in this situation. I did provide a link on an elected officale caught doing this, and a vote bundler. Who was caught twice.Report
IIRC, voting illegally in Texas is a second-degree felony, the same category that includes arson, manslaughter, sexual assault, and human trafficking. Minimum sentence for a second-degree felony is two years. Also from memory, in the rare cases where a DA decides to pursue it, sentences are typically in the five-to-seven year range.Report
What about when it is an offence that didn’t happen ?
https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-secretary-of-state-retracts-figures-on-illegal-voters-2019-2
David Whitley, the Texas secretary of state, apologized for a misleading claim that tens of thousands of non-citizens were registered to vote.
Last month the secretary of state’s office said it was investigating the legal status of 95,000 registered voters who had provided work visas or green cards as documents when they obtained a driver’s license or ID, which may suggest they were not citizens.
Of these, according to the Texas Tribune, the secretary of state’s office said about 58,000 individuals cast a ballot in one or more elections since 1996. Officials said the names identified are “WEAK” matches that counties may choose to investigate or not.
Those figures have proven to be invalid, as outlets including the Texas Tribune found that tens of thousands of those counted were US citizens.
It is not as if the retraction by the TX Secretary of State of those numbers wasn’t as publicized as the initial numbers were. But perhaps you just didn’t read the retraction because it wasn’t that interesting to youReport
I didn’t read a retraction because I didn’t see it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. That doesn’t change the fact, as shown in other links I provided that there are issues, they need to be investegated, and those investegations have brought criminal charges.
Had I found this beforehand I would not have mentioned it, but that I was simply doing a Google seach for vote fraud and this came up. And as no one else in this thread new to look for a retraction, I would say that this is not common knowledge. One had to already be familiar with it. And as you live in Texas (if I remember correctly) you would obviously remember it.
I can’t read the article, as it thinks I am using an ad blocker, so we will stipulate that those are mostly legal and it was a misunderstanding. But, that does in no way change my contention, that there is indeed illegal voting going on, shown by my other links, which provide arrest information. This counters the arguements provided here in the forum, namely that this never happens, followed by but its only Republicans, followed by Yeah but other stuff is also broken.Report
TL?DR
“Only Republicans commit voter fraud!”
Then let’s end voter fraud.
“There is no voter fraud!”
Seriously, un-freaken-realReport
Every single anti-restrictive-voting person in this discussion needs to immediately stop using the term ‘voter fraud’. Because that is how pro-restrictive people confuse everyone, they conflate all the possibilities.
Here are your terms:
Voter impersonation – When someone pretends to be someone else and casts a vote in their name
Voter registration fraud – When a person falsely pretends to be someone else, or falsely claims they are eligable to vote but are not, due to being non-citizens or voting somewhere else or felons with revoked or under-aged.
Voter registration stupidity-It’s like fraud, when a person is ineligibly to vote, but doesn’t seem to know that.
Ballot manipulation – When ballots are altered or stolen or created out of thin air. This is nothing to do with the voters.
Note nowhere on the list is ‘Non-citizens voting’. That is not really any sort of crime…or, at least, that isn’t where we need to stop them. The problem is that the non-citizens registered at all. Either via voter registration fraud, or voter registration stupidity. Once the government tells them they can vote, it’s _really stupid_ to try to make them prove they can vote. Of course, we said they could!
The fact that Republicans seem to care _most_ about this situation, about checking people _we already said could vote_, instead of resolving their right to vote _earlier_ when they register, is because they want people to keep jumping through hoops. There is no reason that someone who finds it hard to prove who they are and that they are an American citizen should have to do that MORE THAN ONCE, much less do it to the satisfaction of random poll workers.Report
Letting people vote just because someone in government said they could vote won’t cut it, because unless we stop them, many people in government would register the entire population of China to vote in our elections.Report
If we wanted to see which side was being unreasonable, we could see what other countries that don’t have our hang ups do.
My general impression is our vote is pretty fair. However the impression of fairness is important so demagogs can’t use it and so the next time we have a near-tie that issue isn’t on the table.Report
Other countries don’t have our hang-ups about national ID or a voting system operated at the national level. Other countries have basically everyone with a photo ID, and they’ve had one for a very long time, because the government actually requires them and gives them out for free from basically birth or 16 or wherever.
This country makes it a confusing mess, and deliberately has setup a completely surreal system when the government believes someone for, for example, tax purposes and social security, letting people pay in all their life and then get it back out in checks…but then makes people jump through loops to vote…but that social security number was issued to a _citizen_, and they know that, and if I’m not me _why are you sending me my checks_?
If we were to nationalize the ID system and spend actual money making sure everyone had an ID, and that everyone who didn’t have the documentation had some sort of hearing decided, by preponderance of evidence where they can produce people and things, that prove who they are to a judge, instead of a very short list of ‘required documentation’, and after a year or so everyone had ID…I’d have no problem with voter ID rules. In fact, I _want us_ to do this.
I do not like states setting up moronic requirements, especially since states often set up those rules in _blatantly biased_ ways, like not allowing college IDs (Which actually are ID) but allowing gun licenses (Which are not.).Report
You’re setting a really high bar for what you’d accept before making the ballot more secure, especially in the context that what we call states other places would call countries.
How many college students are out of state or even out of country? Half? I don’t remember my college ID indicating that I wasn’t a resident of that state.
Big picture there are certainly politically motivated efforts to make it harder for people of very limited means to vote. There are also efforts by the politically motivated to make it easier for them to vote at the expense of security.
None of that detracts from my suggestion that we look and see what other countries do who don’t have this conflict, nor that we have a serious interest in making the vote look secure. That last may be virtue signalling but it still probably needs to happen if it’s cheap. Reasonable people can wonder if the Presidential election of 1960 was stolen, we’ve had multiple seriously close elections since then, not doing some virtue signalling on this subject is just begging for serious problems.
My impression is other countries do more for security than we do, at least to the point of matching airport security, but that’s an extremely off hand impression and not data.Report
I don’t think ‘everyone actually has an ID’, or at least ‘the burden of proof is on the government for _not_ giving them an ID’ is a high bar.
Again, it is utterly nonsensical that believes people are who they are say they are _in general_, to the point of writing checks to them, but refuses to issue them an ID in that name.
People who want ID and don’t have the documentation should be able to _force_ the government (for free) to schedule a hearing where they can produce witnesses as to their ID. (And if the government has any concerns, it can bring them up.) And then a ruling is issued, they get ID, and it’s forever over.
People right now without birth certificates or name changes they can’t prove are basically _forever_ having to prove who they are WRT voting, over and over and over again, and it’s insane.
We don’t determine who can vote where by looking at what sort of ID it is. The people who can vote in a place are the people who are _registered_ there. People with out-of-state driver licenses can still vote.
Again, they do have more security, because they all have IDs, because the government requires IDs.
The fact people aren’t _required_ to have IDs in this country is, honestly, how the government away with sorta randomly refusing to give them out. There’s sections of the population that simply can’t get an ID, because they don’t have the documentation that the government demands, which would be a _huge_ problem if government ID was actually required, but it’s not.Report
How many people is this affecting? Some of these “people have no ids” lawsuits have fallen apart when the lawyers haven’t been able to produce anyone negatively affected by “have id” laws.
Right after the virus closed stuff down I got my ID renewed and there were a host of different documents/ways to prove who I am, including court proof of name change.
Further I need to show my ID in order to deposit a check at a bank. That’s how I found out I didn’t have a valid ID.
The word “government” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Does the EU as a whole have one ID that the EU handles or is Germany allowed to have it’s own to police it’s own voters, just like you apparently don’t want the state of Michigan to do?Report
“I do not like states setting up moronic requirements, especially since states often set up those rules in _blatantly biased_ ways, like not allowing college IDs (Which actually are ID) but allowing gun licenses (Which are not.).”
School ID’s identify if someone is a student of the school, not whether or not they are a US citizen, so no it isn’t blatently biased. And by gun licence, one can only assume that you mean a CCW, it is generally only available to US citizens, which would be a de facto showing of the ability to vote.
So, no biases outside of legal parameters. Fascinating set of assuptions though.Report
Can non-US citizens get a CCW, and therefore vote?
Asking for an amigo.Report
In Michigan you have to be a resident, so I assume green card holders could.
Now we also make people vote at “their” polling place so your name has to be on the local resident list and you have to register ahead of time.Report
I was teasing (sort of) but it seems odd given all the hysteria over noncitizens voting and protecting the security of the vote, that Republicans would choose CCW as a form of ID.
I mean, theoretically, George Soros could get a mass drive of noncitizen immigrants to apply for CCW , present that as ID, and throw the election to the Democrats, muahahaha.
Sure, its silly, but no less silly than the justification for voter ID in the first place.Report
The rest of the first world would appear to disgree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_Identification_laws#ExamplesReport
Sure, nothing wrong with making sure only citizens can vote.
But why they give CCW permits to aliens, and then allow CCW to be a type of verification to vote?
And if we want ID to vote, why not insist on truly universal ID?
See, there is a bizarre set of double standards going on which makes people like me believe this is all bad faith;
Insist on IDs, but refuse to make them universal;
Use CCW permits as ID even though they are given to aliens; Yet refuse to allow student IDs because…they are given to aliens;
Fixate on voter impersonation, while ignoring electronic ballot hacking;
Insist on in-person voting, but close down polling places;
And so on.Report
I don’t actually know if any state that allows non-citizens to get CCW permits (For some reason, a list of those is really hard to fine), lets you use them as voting ID.
However, a lot of people have missed something about student ID: There’s actually three things under discussion here: Proof of citizenship, proof of residency, and photo identification. Normal student IDs shouldn’t be used as proof of citizenship. They _should_ be able to be used as photo ID _and_, in many cases, proof of residency, because student IDs often indicate what students live on campus.
To register to vote in my state, which incidentally had photo ID passed before it was cool, and had the court strike down some of that, (We do actually allow college IDs, I’m not sure if that’s due to the courts.) if you do not have a license, what you actually have to do to vote is this:
You provide these four things to the DMV:
* A photo identity document or approved non-photo identity document that includes full legal name and date of birth
* Documentation showing the voter’s date of birth
* Evidence that the applicant is a registered voter
* Documentation showing the applicant’s name and residential address
Some of you may have noticed three of those things are very poorly defined, and the remaining thing (registering to vote _first_) is not how you would expect it to work. I literally didn’t know until writing this post!
To figure out what documentation is needed, you can’t ask the Secretary of State…you actually have to ask the DMV about this. And it’s…a copy of a birth certificate, a copy of your social security card, and _two_ documentation showing where you live…huh, it doesn’t say _two_ on the SoS’s web site, I’m sure that’s an oversight…
What documentation, you ask? Well, the examples on the web site are ‘e.g. utility bill, phone bill’ (and I know from my _current_ attempts to change my stupid address that bank statements work, but of course the people without IDs are usually unbanked.)..and let’s ignore the fact that renters often don’t have utility bills, and people don’t actually get mail that often…
…the simple fact is, this is incredibly hard to piece together, and will almost certainly require multiple trips to the DMV…_I_ have to had to make multiple trips to the DMV to get my ‘Real ID’ licenses, and I’m a pretty smart guy and tried to look all this up in advance. And I have a _car_ and a _driver’s license_.
And…you ask…what happens if you can’t get follow these rules? What happens if you don’t have a birth certificate? What happens if you lost your social security card? (Fun fact: You can only get a replacement card if you already have a photo ID.)
Well, the process there is…uh…huh. Not listed anywhere. I suspect it involves a lot of trips to the DMV.Report
Colleges routinely give IDs to non-residents. I have two girls in college living on campus but continue to be residents of this house. I went to college out of state and never established residency.
As for “proof of ID”, that depends on the level of importance. Fake IDs for use in bars are a cultural thing, insisting on something better seems fine.
My State has very similar rules, and I decided after having gotten my ID renewed a month ago that it’s a poorly written website. I digged up most of those records, only found a copy of my birth certificate, but it didn’t matter because she never asked for anything. I gave her my passport and that was the end of it.
If you read the website you’d think these items were all “AND” things, not “OR” things.Report
Because state residency is pretty clearly a state level responsibility. We don’t have federal elections, even at the Presidential level we’re voting for our state’s decision.
This is just a partisen talking point. We dropped a lot of money on fixing that, then a year later (before we knew the results of the first effort) Nancy introduced a 2nd bill doing the same thing with some poisonous riders. When it was slapped down she was able to say the GOP is against ballot hacking.
Both sides are trying to make the other look bad, in Wisconsin the Dems had more skin in the game. Their Primary matters, the GOP’s doesn’t (no one is seriously opposing Trump). So do they not care about infecting their voters or do they come up with an impossible solution?Report
Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of an absentee ballot?Report
Depends on the reason for the ballot.Report
I think we have to take the requester at his word. Here’s the wording on Cook County’s ballot request form:
The country clerk ensures the requester is registered and that is it.Report
Yes, as the law currently stands that would be the proper way to go forward. I, personally, would tighten the absentee ballot rules. A doctors note speaking to immobilty or military service. Not just for being on vacation or not wanting to go to a polling station.Report
Why military service but not vacation? Both are voluntary activities. Shouldn’t we applaud those who want to exercise their franchise?Report
The military (though voluntarilly joined) gives little to no choice in duty assingments. And as they do this in service of the US, I consider it fair to have on base/ship voting with that as a block being sent back to the states for processing. Same with duty posting for State and similar.
Vacation? No, you chose to go when there is an election. Choose better.
I don applaud those exercising theri franchise. I just think it is better done at the polling station. Faude (which I have touched on in this thread) candidates dropping out, last minute information coming out, all those issues point me towards keeping it, as much as possible, whithin a very specific period.
Call me old fashioned.Report
in Mississippi being out of town for work is also a reason to request an absentee ballot. I commuted to DC every other week of 2.5 years, and had I not had that option I wouldn’t have been able to work in multiple state and local elections.Report
I could see absentee balloting limited to a period starting within a reasonable time around the actual election day. Restricting who can use it disenfranchises those who choose so.
You’re old fashioned. 😉Report
I predicted George would go nuts but he used fewer paragraphs than I thought so I was only half-correct.Report
Don’t be an ass Saul.Report
George went nuts by referencing a SCOTUS decision about Wisconsin gerrymanders?
Lord help the Dems…Report
What was the scotus decision? What did it actually say? Did it say gerrymanders are just fine and dandy? George didn’t say what the scotus said or what the case was about. Was the decision on standing or a technical matter?Report
That prob came off a bit more aggressive then i meant it. G only said here was a scotus decision, but we all know scotus cases are often on principals of law or arcane matters not directly deciding an issue. Saying scotus said doens’t prove anything w/o more details about the actual case. He was also evading the issue of how you get a majority voting for one party but getting a much smaller percentage of seats without a gerrymander or wild chance.Report
If SCOTUS said gerrymandering is OK, would that prove to you the court is partisan, or would you think it was a principled decision?
I mean, there’s no doubt in my mind that gerrymandering is real, and that on balance at this moment in time it helps the GOP. But just because it favors conservatives doesn’t mean it’s unconstitutional.Report
Gerrymandering is real. It’s almost like the constitution doesn’t have one completely clear and obvious meaning we can all agree on. The court is as partisan as Roberts can stomach since he wants the court to be seen as non-partisan.Report
There isn’t any likely scenario where gerrymandering favours Democrats, because AFAIK when Democracts are in a position whereby the could gerrymander things to guarantee their ongoing power, they *don’t actually do it*. Because the principle that every voter is equally deserving of being heard and represented is a partisan issue, and it’s the Democrats who hold the “pro” position.
Democracy is for Democrats, in other words.Report
With all due respect I submit to you this map:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland%27s_congressional_districtsReport
I’ve always loved this one from Illinois. It wraps the suburb I grew up in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional_district#/media/File:Illinois_US_Congressional_District_4_(since_2013).tifsReport
Hey, that’s me!Report
You’re in district 4? Well what a small world. I grew up in Oak Park, the community the map drawers cleverly excluded.Report
Yes, indeed. Not nearly enough Hispanics in OP to fill that mouth of a district. I used to tell people my rep was Luis Gutierrez (D undocumented)Report
It is not as if mine is better
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_18th_congressional_district
It includes everything from the port of Houston area and refineries to tree shaded expensive inner ring suburbs to the Intercontinental airport.
The only commonality in the district is that is substantially more minority than the Houston area, and that the few white majority neighborhoods are very liberal (Montrose, The Heights, Oak Forest)Report
They rejected hearing the case by unanimously agreeing that the plaintiffs lacked standing.Report
The current case regarding today’s primary was a 5-4 decision on partisan lines that came out yesterday in record haste. George’s argument is essentially one of subterfuge, it has no bearing on what happened yesterday or today.
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/6/21211378/supreme-court-coronavirus-voting-rights-disenfranchise-rnc-dnc
I obviously have a very low opinion of Turner but OT wants to continue to be a polite debating society with tea time dulcet tones so I won’t tell you how low it is.Report
So not really about gerrymandering. It was rejected on a technical legal argument. That may be correct and fair but the point is that is doesn’t validate gerrymandering or some such. G was using a distraction tactic to evade the subtle hint that Wisc seems a wee bit gerrymandered.Report
Well, let’s look at the origins of the whole Wisconsin gerrymandering claim.
Yes, Democrats won far more votes than Republicans, but Republicans hold about Two thirds of the seats. How did they pull this off? By knowing how an election works, something that’s apparently completely lost on Democrats.
So, take a look at the 2018 Wisconsin House race wiki
There are 99 seats in the Assembly, and every three seats corresponds to a single seat in the Wisconsin State Senate (and every three seats exactly overlaps one Senate seat to make everything dead simple for voters).
The complaint is that the Republicans got 1,103,505 votes and the Democrats got 1,306,878 votes, and thus the Democrats should have a huge majority of the seats.
This is false.
First off, we see that only 61 of the seats were challenged by a race between a Republican and a Democrat. 38 of the seats were held unopposed.
Of the opposed seats, Republicans won 55 of the 61 races and Democrats won 6. That’s right. The challenged seats went 55 to 6 to Republicans, and the total votes in the challenged races were 936,402 (R) to 680,986 (D).
That leaves the unopposed seats. 7 are held by Republicans and 31 are held by Democrats.
The vote total for the 7 seats held by Republicans was 149,064 (R) to 0 (D), because no Democrats ran in those 7 districts.
The vote total for the 31 seats held by Democrats was 637,840 (D) to 0 (R),
because no Republicans ran in those 31 districts.
The votes the Democrats didn’t get in unopposed Republican districts, and the votes the Republicans didn’t get in unopposed Democratic districts – don’t mean anything. They don’t grant seats in other districts. They are the result of simple tactical spending decisions by the parties, where they look at the numbers and decide they’re not going to win a seat, so they don’t even run a candidate and thus party members in those districts don’t have their votes counted “for the team”.
That’s okay. It’s not a referendum on the parties, it’s a House race for a seat.
But for people who still don’t know how our Democracy works, despite a couple hundred years of repeated elections, this all seems absurd.
It’s not. Nobody has to blow money on a race they’re not going to win. That affects state-wide vote totals in a spreadsheet, but it has no influence on who wins an overall majority of seats.
To win an election, run a candidate who gets more votes than the opponent. It’s just that simple.Report
Oh let me guess. Wisconsin has a large liberal city (Milwaukee) and a large number of tiny conservative towns?Report
Madison, too.Report
Yet the districts are largely proportional to population, as are the Senate seats, in accordance with long established Supreme Court rulings.
A more partisan way to look at it is that of the 99 seats, Democrats won 6 in fair elections against Republicans. Then, feeling sorry for the Democrats, Republicans gave them 31 free seats while asking nothing in return.
But Democrats screamed “gerrymandering!” because Republicans didn’t give them all the seats.
By magnanimously not running candidates in those 31 districts, Republicans let the Democrats get 488,766 uncontested votes that weren’t offset by a reciprocal move by Democrats. If the voting is 50-50, that means 488,766 Republican voters were effectively disenfranchised. Hey, it’s easy to get more statewide votes when you don’t let the opposition vote. But that’s how Democrats roll.
Notice how deep down the rabbit hole you end up as soon as you stop viewing each seat as its own little contest. You enter the realm of pure power politics, vote rigging, and ignoring how people in a particular place actually voted for one person over another.Report
When even holding a safe election becomes a fight it makes it hard to feel positive about where we are going as a country. That leaves aside even talking about fair elections without gerrymandering. Even an obvious and proven safe solution which would increase voting turnout like vote by mail becomes another fight. Of course at that point, as admitted by a few R’s, that would destroy their chances of winning elections so we know why that is a problem.Report
It’s kind of like my comment on the other thread where we need to confront the fact that the GOP as a party, and the conservative movement, and the voting base that supports it, has grasped how unpopular their ideas are, and have abandoned the idea of operating as a loyal opposition or within the bounds of democracy, and decided to impose their vision on America by whatever means.
Its that paradox where they are using the norms of democracy against itself.Report
Look at what happens here when people try to confront this fact, it either gets attacked outright and also by allies who place way too much importance on proper etiquette and dulcet tones.Report
It’s kind of like my comment on the other thread where we need to confront the fact that the Dems as a party, and the “progressive” movement, and the voting base that supports it, has utterly failed to grasp how unpopular their ideas are, and have abandoned the idea of operating as a loyal opposition or within the bounds of the Constitution, and decided to impose their vision on America by whatever means.
“Its that paradox where they are using the norms of democracy against itself.”
The Democrat Party that has spent the last 4 years shredding every norm of democracy in a frenzied attempt to undercut, restrict, and remove our lawfully elected President doesn’t have a leg to stand on regarding the topic of Democratic norms. You lost, fair and square, and have tried pretty much everything short of an assassination or armed coup to overthrow that result. Your last President was theoretically a Constitutional Scholar, yet his administration set the record for lowest win rate before the Supreme Court (~50%).
I also appreciate the irony of appeals to “democracy” and complaints of “imposing their vision by whatever means”, given that the Obama administration set the all time record, indeed 7 of the top 10 records, for the size of the Federal Register at 97,110 pages, with an even greater percentage of “Guidance” letters outside the Register used to likewise force significant shifts in policy (such as the guidance letter that changed Title IX interpretations for schools to lower the bar of evidence and eliminate due process protections for the accused). This is in fact the longer term trend, with the most controversial Supreme Court rulings Dems now defend under “stare decisis” (abortion and gay marriage) dating to periods when neither policy had either a popular or Congressional majority in support. In contrast, the Trump administration has set the all time record for repealing regulations and his court picks have pushed back on deference to the administrative state, both of which return power to the People (the “demos” of “democracy”) and to Congress, the People’s elected Representatives. The only paradox here is that your party calls itself “Democratic” and yet it does everything it can to take power and freedom AWAY from the People.Report
This is a great comment because I think it really encapsulates the kind of thinking that has brought libertarian-ism to the nadir it currently is suffering and has fueled the rocketing of genuine socialism to its current (happily still limited) heights of popularity.Report
But libertarians are quite convinced they are right and often will babble forth in paragraphs about it. Even the most thoughtful of libertarians seems adamant that you can get rid of the safety net even if he or she realizes it is probably not a good idea politically.
“Conservaitsm/libertarianism can’t fail, it can only be failed” is seemingly an impossible mantra to beat.Report
Mmm that’s painting with an overbroad brush. I think a lot of good and smart libertarians can make some excellent arguments about policy. This comment in particular, frankly, is a rather poor example of libertarian thought but it is a really good sample of Republitarian thought and, as such, holds genuine value. Especially considering that republitarianism is, unlike its pure libertarian older brother, a potent electoral and political force in the country today.Report
What’s the point. We all know how Republican corrupt and pollute themselves into thinking that they are right. We can invoke all the facts and statistics in the world to show that they are wrong and that Democratic ideas are popular. They will just find a way to discount because they aren’t popular with their in-group or that we are a republic and not a democracy if they can’t bring themselves to be that delusional. We have a big section of the population that is enthralled to a fever swamp nightmare that we can’t snap them out of.Report
Our system is designed to stop the “two wolves and a sheep vote to see what’s for dinner” problem. This is a feature, not a bug.Report
“We have a big section of the population that is enthralled to a fever swamp nightmare that we can’t snap them out of.”
But don’t forget: there’s no such thing as false consciousness. Right?Report
I don’t think it is false consciousness. I think their genuine policy preferences are horrible.Report
These are interesting quantitative metrics but it’s not clear to me that they lead to the qualitative conclusions you indicate.
For instance, the volume of the CFR. It may be true that the CFR was more complex under Obama than it is now under Trump or it had been previously under Bush. But that doesn’t tell us whether it was better or worse, why it expanded, or what the expansion (or the subsequent contraction) did.
If the argument is that more regulation is bad because it produces a bad consequence, I don’t think there’s evidence to support that based on economic growth beginning under Obama and continuing through Trump up until the time of the public health crisis. If the argument is that more regulation is somehow inherently bad, the comment treats this proposition as self-evident when that is not the case. Nor is it self-evidently the case that the mere existence of a more complex body of regulation in any way meaningfully restricts individual freedom when interacting with the regulated subject matter; particularly if it is true that the reaction of now-deregulated industry to a change in the legal environment reduces the choices of individuals when they are considered as consumers of or otherwise stakeholders in the legal arena.
Similarly with SCOTUS opinions. Whether a given opinion is good or bad is very much in the eye of the beholder, it seems, largely based on individual policy preference. Those who claim to approach SCOTUS analysis from a principled position will at least pay lip service to the notion that a given opinion’s popularity is orthogonal to its legal soundness.
Similarly, it’s certainly not fair to point to Obama’s service as a teacher of Constitutional Law and link it to his Administration’s win rate before SCOTUS; these facts are not logically related to one another. Nor is it clear why a win rate of ~50% is in any way a bad thing. A very high win rate could easily suggest an overly deferential SCOTUS rather than an unambitious President; a very low win rate could easily suggest an overly activist SCOTUS as easily as it could suggest a President overreaching his station; in neither event would the Administration be the actor who is acting amiss. Again, more work needs to be done before issuing either praise or condemnation based upon the metric cited.
As to the notion of which party has a better claim to a democratic mandate to govern according to its preferred constellation of policies and tactics, the last Presidential election saw a plurality of votes going to Hillary Clinton and the flukes of the apportionment of those votes put the Electoral College in Trump’s favor. While I’ll not dispute the lawfulness of Trump’s election, I have disputed, and continue to dispute, that such a result indicates any sort of popular approval. The ongoing campaign of Republican officeholders at both the federal and state level to restrict access to and use of the franchise, on full display today in Wisconsin, and within the context of the GOP’s ongoing use of the boogeyman of voter fraud, at minimum suggests that GOP partisans ought to avoid claiming that “the people” are behind them as opposed to their Democratic counterparts, when it is Republicans who are the ones trying to reduce the number of people whose votes are cast.
Finally, if you’re going to accuse Democrats of shredding the norms of democracy, it would be helpful to understand your position if you could articulate what those norms are. Impeachment appears to be among these. As noted above, Donald Trump was elected with less than a plurality of votes, so popular resistance to his Presidency does not seem contra-normative. Impeachment is also meant to address post-election misbehavior, and to swiftly remove a lawless President from office before he harms the country; even a very popular President ought be, and is, subject to such a check against his misuse of power. For example, Richard Nixon was re-elected in 1972 with the largest electoral college victory since George Washington and the largest popular margin of victory perhaps ever. Yet there is little doubt that his impeachment was (or rather would have been) justified. You cannot appeal to electoral popularity alone when criticizing impeachment efforts as somehow violative of democratic norms.
Impeachment is every bit as lawful and constitutional a proceeding as the electoral college, though both are potentially contra-democratic in operation. Congressional oversight of and investigation of the executive branch’s activities is well-precedented throughout history (I recall what felt like about four thousand hours of Benghazi proceedings, for instance) and well-contemplated within the Constitutional order, reading back to the plain text of the Constitution (which explicitly places legislative and fiscal power in Congress) and in the writings of the Framers advocating it (e.g., Federalist #70, in which Hamilton argues that the President can and should be held to account by a deliberative and, importantly, autonomous Congress). Simply put, there’s nothing at all wrong with Congress asking the President hard questions about what he’s doing, all the time and about everything he does, and holding him to account when he does things that Congress disapproves of him doing. That, by definition, cannot be a violation of any norm of our democracy; it’s a feature, not a bug.Report
Also Obergefell v. Hodges was decided in 2015 and pre-Obergefell v. Hodges polling put popular support for SSM at 55-65% nationally.
Likewise with Roe vs Wade the “Abortion should be illegal under any circumstances” position on abortion was definitely well under 50% in 1973. So there’s also some playing mighty fast and loose with facts going on as well to go with all the rhetorical slight of hand and base stealing.Report
If people want to see some actual polling on abortion, here it is:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
Some interesting facts: While people will say all sorts of weird things about ‘mostly legal’ and ‘sometimes illegal’ (Probably because those are incredibly vague terms), the most useful poll might be: Do you want Roe v. Wade overturned? (Search in page for ‘overturned’.)
Because, after all, if they don’t want Roe v. Wade overturned, they don’t _actually_ want to restriction abortion in any major way, right? Everyone know that now, right?
So, if someone wants that overturned, they want to be _able_ to pass more restrictive laws. (Or other possibilities, maybe they just don’t think it’s a matter for the courts, or that decision was a good one, but it should still be legal. But let’s err on the side of ‘they do want those sort of laws’.) Whereas if they do want it to stay in place, they don’t anyone to pass those laws.
The most people who have ever wanted it overturned were: 36%. Seems to average around 33%, let’s say.
The least people who say it _shouldn’t_ be overturned…52%. That seems to jump around a bit, but let’s say an average of 56%.
Hmm. Sorta seems like…a majority of people don’t want laws restricting abortion, and the amount that do are…not actually that many people.
And again…we don’t actually know those people are in favor of restricting abortion in any particular manner, just that they might want the possibility to exist…which isn’t as weird as people might think. It is entirely possible to hold positions such as ‘abortion should be legal, but sex-selective ones shouldn’t be’, or ‘abortion should be legal, but not due to disabilities’, something that Roe v. Wade would currently not allow laws about. So even that ~33% might not want to outlaw abortion.
But that ~56% majority _wants it to stay legal_.Report
But do they want it bad enough to vote on it?Report
Not enough to vote single issue on it, you are entirely correct, and that’s why Republicans keep bringing it up as an issue. I’m just pointing out…banning abortion does not have majority support. It _maybe_ has one-third support, probably not quite that much. (There’s probably some percentage of people who want it regulatable to bring down from ‘viability’ to 24 or 20 weeks, which is not really a ban in any real sense, especially if they want to pair it with better access.)
I have no problem with political parties picking topics that few Americans care about in general, but a few have passionate positions about. And I don’t really care, in the abstract sense, if those sort of ‘urgent to a few people’ positions win out, although I don’t agree with _these_ specific positions. But it’s not a problem in the democratic sense if they win, they have a right to win there.(1) People have priorities, and if the X people outnumber the anti-X people, but don’t actually care, sometime anti-X will win. We don’t make laws via public polling.
Where I have problem is the insistence, by Republicans, that they’re speaking for the majority. That’s what Urusigh was doing, using it (And gay marriage! Which voters don’t even care about anymore!) to argue that Democrats force positions on the population that run counter to what a large majority of American want.
The right always, always think that. And sometimes, they pick do pick issues where the split is roughly half the population (Which still make their claim of large majority support wrong!), but…they also have positions that are minority positions, where something like 90% of Democrats and 40% of Republicans oppose it.
And it’s not even a ‘lie’ when they say that, they don’t realize they’re wrong. What’s happening is that they have excluded a vast amount of people from ‘legitimate consideration of their politician opinion’. There are the people who count, the ‘real Americans’, and then there’s everyone else. And everyone else don’t count as much.
That sorta pisses me off. If they want to say ‘Republican voters don’t like that’, sure. They shouldn’t claim ‘Republican voters’ are the exact same thing as ‘Americans’, though.
1) Well, they don’t actually, because of the Surpreme Court, but I mean in the abstract sense.Report
“If the argument is that more regulation is bad because it produces a bad consequence, I don’t think there’s evidence to support that based on economic growth beginning under Obama and continuing through Trump up until the time of the public health crisis.”
That’s a weaksauce argument. Obama led the slowest recovery in US history (indeed, were it not for the fracking boom, which occurred more in spite of his policies than anything else, it’s debatable whether the recession would have ended under his tenure at all). In any economic context regarding Obama’s terms where the term “unprecedented” is accurate, the metric is usually negative (i.e. annual small business formation falling below small business closures). Trump, OTOH, achieved record high stock markets, record low unemployment (particularly for women, minorities, felons, and the handicapped), record high small business confidence, and income growth that was proportionately higher for the bottom half of wage earners than the top half. In short, Trump and the Republicans delivered better on supposedly Democrat priorities than the Dems themselves did, even while fighting the headwinds of trade corrections. We went from “stagnation is the new normal” under Obama to “We’ve run out of superlatives to describe how good the jobs report is” under Trump. You comparison is like putting a slow walker next to a running sprinter and then saying, “well, they both moved forward” as if the speed difference was irrelevant.
“Whether a given opinion is good or bad is very much in the eye of the beholder, it seems, largely based on individual policy preference.”
No, it isn’t. Whether a given opinion is good or bad is largely (should be exclusively, but humans are what they are) based on the rigor of the analysis underlying it . Policy preference is entirely removed from the judicial domain. Justice is blind; a “good” legal ruling should be the inevitable result of the facts of the case and existing law; any given set of judges should arrive at the same conclusion when given the same case, anything less takes us one step further from Rule of Law and closer to rule by unelected tyrants. Good Law is no more a matter of policy preference than good science.
“Similarly, it’s certainly not fair to point to Obama’s service as a teacher of Constitutional Law and link it to his Administration’s win rate before SCOTUS; these facts are not logically related to one another. Nor is it clear why a win rate of ~50% is in any way a bad thing. ”
It’s entirely fair and inescapably related: A Constitutional Law professor, by definition, should know what he can and cannot legally do and veto legislation that he knows to be unconstitutional. Heck, DACA makes a perfect example: Obama himself admitted that he lacked the authority to do it, then did it anyway. In no less than 44 cases, the ruling against him was UNANIMOUS. You really can’t fob that off on “well, maybe the court was overly activist…” when even the partisans on his own side ruled against him.
“While I’ll not dispute the lawfulness of Trump’s election, I have disputed, and continue to dispute, that such a result indicates any sort of popular approval.”
Shrug. It’s a Republic, the United STATES, of course the relevant level of abstraction is the states.
“the boogeyman of voter fraud,”
You live in a very strange world if you think voter ID “reduces” the integrity and legitimacy of our elections. Fraudulently cast votes dilute valid votes, which makes it a direct attack on voting rights. I always find this Dem double standard absurd: the 1st and the 2nd Amendment are both Constitutional Rights, but Dems think the right to bear arms can be restricted to the point of costing hundreds of dollars, months of waiting, and direct permission at the discretion of
unaccountable bureaucrats, but voting shouldn’t take anything more than mailing in a piece of paper without any validation at all.
“Finally, if you’re going to accuse Democrats of shredding the norms of democracy, it would be helpful to understand your position if you could articulate what those norms are.”
Sure, lets start with some easy ones in no particular order. NOT doing the following: Bringing charges of Impeachment on a purely partisan basis and without actual high crimes to justify it; disgracing the dignity of the Congress with petulant “sit ins” disrupting the normal operation of the legislature; using unsubstantiated (and known false) partisan oppo research to fraudulently obtain FISA warrants (while deliberately manipulating data and unlawfully excluding exculpatory information) in the submission in order to use National Security Agencies to try to dig up dirt on a political opponent, then deliberately leak controlled information and publically lie about investigation findings; using entrapment against political campaign members and then bringing process charges even in the absence of any underlying crime; refusing the President of the United States routine courtesies such as the proper introduction; publicly expressing the desire to “beat up” or outright assassinate the President; the practice of career bureaucrats in executive agencies deliberately slow-walking the President’s lawful orders, concealing information from him, or (if true) outright stealing papers off his desk to prevent him from acting on them; publicly rejecting the legitimacy of the electoral results; attempting separate diplomatic efforts to foreign countries to undercut the President’s own foreign policy; publicly urging electors to be faithless; attempting utterly without basis to use such unprecedented measures as the Logan Act, the Emoluments Clause, and even the 25th Amendment; the unprecedented number of nationwide injunctions against Trump policies from Democrat-appointed judges that have had to be overturned by higher courts (often with the literally unprecedented argument that “yes, a president DOES have the authority do x, but because it’s Trump…”. There’s plenty more, but I’ll stop there for space.
“Impeachment is also meant to address post-election misbehavior, and to swiftly remove a lawless President from office before he harms the country; even a very popular President ought be, and is, subject to such a check against his misuse of power. ”
Agreed.
“You cannot appeal to electoral popularity alone when criticizing impeachment efforts as somehow violative of democratic norms.”
I haven’t. My appeal is actually well summarized by no less than Nancy Pelosi herself: ““Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country,”. So while popularity certainly can’t save a President from actually unlawful conduct, it’s pretty clear that the charges were weak and vague, there was nothing “compelling” or remotely “overwhelming” about the evidence, and “bipartisan” is the LAST word anyone observing the process would use to describe it.
“Simply put, there’s nothing at all wrong with Congress asking the President hard questions about what he’s doing, all the time and about everything he does, and holding him to account when he does things that Congress disapproves of him doing. That, by definition, cannot be a violation of any norm of our democracy; it’s a feature, not a bug.”
This is incorrect. Congressional oversight, like any other oversight, is still bounded by the underlying purpose and rules. Oversight to ensure that the President is acting within his lawful authority, using the least intrusive means necessary, with a reasonable indication that additional investigation is called for, is presumably a legitimate use of Congressional power; “Oversight” used for transparently partisan advantage using the most intrusive means available without a reasonable inciting event is not merely a use of Congressional power, it is an obvious abuse of it. The standard of oversight is NOT merely “Congress disproves”. They can pass a Resolution of Condemnation or even change the relevant laws themselves in that case, but oversight is supposed to be strictly nonpartisan and impartially concerned with whether a person did their job properly within its limits. (Regarding Bengazi, that was an absolute Clusterfark and SOMEONE should have payed for it, but even I’ll agree that the proceedings were handled badly and continued far past any reasonable hope of new evidence. I don’t approve of this shite from either side.) Simply put, the questions Congress asks need to be justified by a reasonable expectation that something has actually been done wrong, not merely the desire to waste time or generate soundbites against a political opponent.Report
Pssst: Republican officials are generally in favor of voting by mail.
I mean, even the one we’re all talking about, that happened yesterday, had vote-by-mail passed by the _Republican_ legislature. As far as I can tell. Or if it didn’t…Wisconsin had draconian photo ID passed by Scott Walker passed by 2011…and the Republicans have been in charge since then. And they allow voting by mail for any reason you want, despite obviously having passed laws _about_ voting.
I think you sorta lost the ‘voter fraud’ talking point plot there. Maybe go re-calibrate, check your talking-point supplier again?Report
Everybody saw Em Carpenter’s retweet about the hilarious exchange today where Donald Trump stated that he votes by mail, right?Report
Heh, no, but that’s interesting. Of course Trump sees no problem with it. He cannot comprehend shame.
I hadn’t realized he ‘moved’ to Florida.
We need to crack down on residency. I mean, I don’t think residency laws should be always ‘Where you live the most’, but I think a rule should be if you spend, say, 3/4th of your nights somewhere, that has to count as be your legal residency…but you spend less than that, you can quibble and pick that second one. Or maybe a rule that ‘You stayed there for an amount of time that is within three month of the place you stayed the most’.
I.e., if you lived four and a half months somewhere, and seven and a half months somewhere else, you could (barely) pick the shorter one. Or you lived one-three months in 6 different places, you could pick any of them. But you live an entire quarter year more at a place, you couldn’t pick a different place.
Which still wouldn’t work for Trump, or any president, though. Who would have their legal residency as DC…which also they couldn’t vote in their own re-election. Ha. Sucks to be them…or any DC resident.
Incidentally: The ability to specify residencies at will is yet another unnoticed way that the wealthy don’t follow the same rules as other people. Because they get to vote wherever they want.Report
He moved to Fla. because that’s where every other shyster in this country lives. That, and there’s no income tax. I can’t believe it took him this long, though it may be that the balance sheet of the Trump Organization is such that paying income tax is not a worry.Report
I realize that this may come as a shock to you, but I’m not on a mailing list with hand out talking points; I genuinely read a variety of news sources and make up my own mind on politics and policy. Unless you’re military or have a doctor’s certification that you literally can’t travel to your polling place, you should vote in person, with ID from a trustworthy government office (none of this student ID carp). That’s my position and I’m sticking to it.Report
*laughs* Oh, I’m sorry, do you want to re-litigate gay marriage? It should be _really_ damn interesting.
In fact, let’s just make sure everyone knows. Hey, everyone! The Republicans are currently against gay marriage! Everyone shout that loud and clear. There’s not a reason Republican shut up about that recently or anything.
It couldn’t be the fact that in 2017, there were exactly two states in the entire US where a plurality of people didn’t support gay marriage. Two states where more people wanted it illegal than legal, and only one with an actual majority who want that. It’s only gotten worse for that position.
Likewise…the actual fact is, 61% of people say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Which is…still worse than the support for gay marriage, I guess, which is around 67% nationwide.
In fact, Republicans are REALLY GOOD at arguing that positions the Democratic party holds are not accepted by Americans, and being outright factually wrong about that based on every single piece of polling evidence. If you put poll the positions of the political party (Not some sort of hypothetical ‘left’ or ‘right’, but the actual party platform position, or legislation supported by the party’s elected officials and moved forward by the party), and ask people about them…not telling them it’s part of a party platform, but just individually as a position, almost all the Democratic positions are more popular than the Republican positions.
And not ‘barely’ more popular. Again, almost unrestricted abortion is supposed by 61% of people, and that’s one of the most decisive issues!
And there are some issues so lopsided it’s not even funny…like, there’s literally no support for the recent Republican push to allow financial advisers to no longer act with a fiduciary duty towards their clients. Not technically a piece of legislation, but a thing Republicans pushed. That, literally, that polls below the ‘abducted by aliens’ threshold. Fundamentally no one in this country wants it. But Republicans pushed it, and got a court to strike down the regulation, and won’t pass a law. And the inverse is true with a few types of gun control. Like, 86% of the population wants expanded background checks that Republicans refuse to do. The Republican Party generally take positions that are anywhere from ‘slightly opposed by the mainstream’, to ‘astonishingly far out of the mainstream’.
Democrats don’t do this. Oh, they sometime do wander into ‘slightly opposed by the mainstream’, I admit. Trans right, for example, that’s about five points towards in the ‘negative’ column. But that’s about as negative as you can get. Objections to ‘Democrat positions’, by voters, are almost always based entirely on lies about what Democratic positions are. (Which…I have to suggest deliberate constant promotion of misinformation is undemocratic, but what do I know.)
Not only do Republican officials don’t even see to know this fact, Democratic officials don’t seem to know it either!
Of course, the reason for this disconnect between reality and what Republican ‘know’ is true about what people want, because in politicians heads, most Republicans but a startling amount of Democrats also, have an idea ‘Americans’ does not that include quite a lot of people. So they’re basically arguing that what ‘Americans’ want is defined by what ‘Republicans-type’ people want.Report
“*laughs* Oh, I’m sorry, do you want to re-litigate gay marriage? It should be _really_ damn interesting.”
Sure, my position is that “marriage license” shouldn’t be a government thing at all and there shouldn’t be any specific legal benefits tied to it. A “license” implies that the government clerk actually has the power to say “No” and I don’t think that’s justified. Let’s face it, marriage isn’t a good proxy for parenthood anymore, hasn’t been for a while, it’s barely even a proxy for “single household” anymore, single income isn’t the norm, and other legal means (i.e. a will and power of attorney ) pretty much cover every other default legal application of “marriage”. Let the churches argue about homosexual marriage as a theological point all they want, if there’s no government effect tied to the word than it doesn’t matter either way. I haven’t found a “Right” to marriage anywhere in the law and Government doesn’t have a compelling interest once the implicit purpose of parenthood has been both de facto and de jure severed from the concept, so it shouldn’t be involved at all.Report
Ah, the nonsensical libertarian position. It’s weird how literally no one actually supports actually changing the laws in the manner, in fact no one’s ever proposed anything like that, not even actual libertarians, and such a position appears to exist _solely_ so that libertarians don’t have to come out as pro-gay marriage, which would cost them their Republicans voters, (aka, what most ‘Libertarians’ really are.), or come out as anti-gay marriage, which would cause people to point out the giant hypocrisy of them deciding to base a law in religion.
But that’s not actually a position on gay marriage, it’s a position on _marriage_, period. You don’t get to make decisions by magically wishing the universe was such that you didn’t have to make a decision. That’s not a serious political position. It’s like having a position on gun control of ‘I wish no company manufactured guns at any industrial level, then we wouldn’t need any laws’. You might wish that, but it’s not a position on gun control.
And if we were discussing gay marriage, I would make you answer, pro- or anti-gay marriage, yes or no on the specific laws that people are promoting, or the court decision…except, we weren’t actually _talking_ about your positions. You were talking about how Democrats had created ‘controversial Supreme Court rulings’ because Democrats didn’t have the support for their policies. Despite the fact they did have support, and also human rights aren’t subject to majority acceptance. That’s what I’m addressing, not what laws you want.
The problem with your statement is: Gay marriage isn’t really opposed by a political party any more. It did end up in the 2018 Republican platform, sorta, but they carefully only condemned the ruling and said Congress should to be able to set marriage policy, without taking a position on what Congress should say. Unlike, say, abortion, or gun control, or anything else, where they have very specific statements on what they want the laws to be. In fact, with abortion, they’re proposing a constitutional amendment to allow them to regulate that…and weirdly not proposing the same thing with gay marriage, despite the fact it would be just as needed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if being against gay marriage was sorta in the 2020 platform, also. No one reads the platform. But national Republicans are never, at any point, going to do anything about it, and if anything, the elected Republicans are happy about being taken out of their hands…now they can complain about it, but not be expected to do anything. State Republicans…probably aren’t either doing anything either…we may get a few small lurches for another decade, but it’s over.
Pretending that this is an unpopular opinion of the court (It really wasn’t at the time, and certainly isn’t anymore.) is just making stuff up.Report
You clearly don’t remember the Defense of Marriage Act, which DID have widespread popular support. Hell, even Obama didn’t support Gay Marriage when he took office, though he did abandon his duty to defend the DMA in court. Sorry, but your polls were manipulated by advocates to pressure the courts, nothing more. Now it’s damage done, the horse is already out of the barn and there’s no getting it back in. None of which makes it a “good” ruling, Justice Anthony’s mystic musings on the matter don’t bear any resemblance to an actual legal analysis and your partisan activist judges just voted for their preferred policy because they don’t respect Constitutional limits in the first place. It’s bad law on it’s own merits and should be thrown out, but if that’s not going to happen than we’re left with a legal redefinition of marriage that severed it from any “compelling interest” the government previously had in the matter (which was based on the assumptions of a traditional family raising children).
“But national Republicans are never, at any point, going to do anything about it, and if anything, the elected Republicans are happy about being taken out of their hands…now they can complain about it, but not be expected to do anything.”
Well, yeah, we call those RINO’s for a reason, have you seen how low approval ratings are for Congressional Republicans? Evangelicals have been dealing with that frustration for a LOOONG time. We get pandered to around election time, we get maybe a few virtue signalling votes when they know Dems will block anything from actually passing (i.e. Obamacare repeal), then when they actually have the numbers to force an issue….we get tax cuts and whatever the Koch Brothers are pushing policy-wise. The Republican party establishment, AFAICT, regards culture war issues as an unfortunate inconvenience they indulge only as far as necessary to get the votes they need for their economic agenda. The Republican base OTOH, elected Trump and gives him record high support because, among other things, he needs us badly enough that he actually has to deliver on some of that and all the voters he would lose by doing so already hate his guts anyway. Hence negative partisanship: Republicans in office mostly benignly neglect their base, whereas Democrats in office openly attack us, so we’re stuck with the Reps.
That said, no, I don’t expect that government will actually pass my preferred policy soon, if ever, because I don’t expect people in government to ever willingly admit that something isn’t their business to regulate. Being a small government advocate is invariably fighting a losing battle, but that doesn’t make it any less right or important.Report
If the Democratic Party and their ideas are so unpopular, how come they keep getting the most votes. Like literally. If Wisconsin had proportional voting for their state legislature, the Democratic Party would hold over half the seats. If they were really unpopular, the governor would not be a Democratic politician. The only reason the Republicans hold the majority of seats in many places is because they are actively cheating and engaging in dirty tricks with help from Republican judges on partisan lines. There is no other reason for this.Report
Self association. We have liberal cities which are very liberal, very concentrated, and have a lot of people.
That’s where your “majority” comes from.
However we also have a very dispersed population which isn’t those things.
“proportional voting for their state legislature” would mean urban people tell rural people how to live their lives.Report
That’s where your “majority” comes from.
Why the scare quotes? The word is being correctly used with its normal, conventionally agreed upon, dictionary meaning.
It’s been interesting to watch the “we’re the majority by land mass” arguments in conservatism gain purchase, and how the concept is massaged into consistency with concepts like representative democracy.Report
You’re suggesting that the correct and desired outcome of these elections should be that people who do NOT live where the elections are happening be allowed to determine the outcome. That “representatives” who only represent the liberals in the cities should be the only ones who have power.
It would be possible to draw boundaries to make this happen, have large geographic areas radiate outwards from the middle of the city, like spokes in a bicycle tire.
The purpose would be that when we have issues which have urban/rural divides the rural voters will be prevented from having a voice. Viewpoints other than your own, even if they have large minorities and consist of a pretty unified population, will not be heard.
You are using the dictionary correctly, you are also suggesting something which in practice would be deeply anti-democratic, divisive, and heinous.Report
From your earlier comment:
“proportional voting for their state legislature” would mean urban people tell rural people how to live their lives.
The same argument goes the other way wrt gerrymandering Dark. In Wisconsin, rural people are telling urban people how to live their lives. The point I was making is that you only begrudgingly concede that Democratic voters are an actual majority of the voters (right now anyway) by implying there’s something nefarious about one party receiving 50%+1 support from the electorate.Report
Do you have a gerrymandering argument after we subtract the whole “lots of urban voters who think everyone is urban?”
On what issue?
Which is why the Dems have the governorship.
However the Representatives are supposed to be representing their voters interests, and for the most part the people who live together have the same interests.Report
On what issue?
Gah!
Dark, you were making a point about representation in the legislature, not a point about which policies are represented in the legislature.Report
Still already noted that you want minorities to have more voting power then majorities. You are not the first conservative to just come out and say that. But what i noted was the “tell them how to live” thing. Ummm no. Live how you want. It is conservatives who seem to think gov controls them. But it doesn’t gov does do things, some things people like and don’t like. It doesn’t tell you how to live. That is the hyperbole and fear mongering of of our time. Everybody. Every. Body. Lives in a place with some laws/regs they like and some they don’t. That is called a democracy.Report
Our system overpowers minorities to prevent the whole “two wolves and a sheep vote for lunch” problem.
That means lots doesn’t get done. This is a feature, not a bug.
That was Stillwater.Report
That was Stillwater.
Double Gah!!!
Dark, the following is a quote from a comment you wrote above:
“proportional voting for their state legislature” would mean urban people tell rural people how to live their lives.
The “tell them how to live thing” is not from me. It’s from you.Report
That was theoretical, I’d thought he meant actual.
OK, big picture the legislature, is supposed to be running things for the state as a whole. So if there’s an issue’s solution which is wildly popular in [Big City] and unpopular outside of that city, then the Legislature isn’t supposed to be enacting it.
This makes sense when you think about it, the different places live in very different worlds when it comes to public access to transportation, access to the police, other social services, and interactions with their neighbors. This is why we have such a sharp divide when it comes to things like gun control and so on.
Your proposed solution to this is, in effect, for the urban voters to dominate and the rural voters to not be heard at all. Why should I a politician with a budget campaign for votes outside of big city when the bulk of my voters are there?
That instantly becomes “let’s raise state taxes for public transportation even though rural voters won’t be able to use it” and so on.Report
Your proposed solution to this is, in effect, for the urban voters to dominate and the rural voters to not be heard at all.
lol Good lord Dark….
I haven’t proposed any solutions at all. I’ve commented that you reject the concept of a scare-quote majority because it means that urban people telling rural people how to live, yet gerrymandering (in Wisconsin) constitutes rural folk telling urban folk how to live even though those voters, as a block, don’t constitute a non-scare-quote majority.
Look, you can justify gerrymandering as an antidote to the political power of urban centers but don’t pretend that it’s “democratic”, in any sense of the term. Gerrymandering is (by definition!) a construct by which one political party gains an outsized share of political power in the legislature. That’s it’s only purpose.Report
You are assuming what you should be proving.
The entire urban/rural situation would create the issues we’ve seen; Where the Dems have very high percentage majorities in some urban districts and are minorities in non-urban districts (i.e. everywhere else). Pro-urban policies are unpopular in non-urban locations.
We don’t need “gerrymandering” to create that, so you can’t simply point to the results we’d expect from the urban/rural divide and claim gerrymandering.Report
You are assuming what you should be proving.
See, that’s the hell of it Dark. I haven’t assumed anything in this thread other than that you mean what you write.Report
So you are agreeing minorities should hold disproportionate power. But not all “minorities” of course. Just some minorities. Got it.Report
You’re suggesting that the correct and desired outcome of these elections should be that people who do NOT live where the elections are happening be allowed to determine the outcome. That “representatives” who only represent the liberals in the cities should be the only ones who have power.
As opposed to folks in less populous rural areas telling city folk how to live? Which is what has happened in Wisconsin and led them to this place?Report
I asked for examples of that and got “they’re GOP” and crickets chirping.
Most of the examples I can think of go the other way. The urbans want gun control since every wall is another neighbor, the rurals don’t because the nearest cop is an hour away. The urbans want state level taxes for public transport that the rurals won’t use because it won’t be set up for them. The urbans want min wage levels that are based on a cost of living which is different away from the city, i.e. it would cost rural jobs.
Am I missing something?
Note that a refusal to enact a serious min wage is not “telling someone how to live”, it’s simply telling the urbans their policies don’t have broad support.Report
Rurals don’t use public transport??? So they never go to the city or don’t commute to a city? Huh wuh. Ridiculous.
There is certainly a rural/city divide in this country. But you are way overstating the actual real life divide. The areas all interact and are interdependent. Rural people need cities and city people need rural areas. The issues are more complex they you paint.
You say urbans dont’ have broad support for their policies. But you also want rurals to have the power to put in their policies which by your own argument ( rurals have disproportionate power) have even less support then those of the urban areas.Report
Well if rurals are secretly urbans, then there is no problem, no divide, no different interests, and team blue doesn’t have any adjustments to make away from the big cities to win elections.
Agreed.
What I am doing is supporting the current system of measuring how broad support a policy has.
Disproportionate power is a problem, but the solutions on the table would quickly lead to the elimination of non-urban voices which seems much worse.
And thus far none of the people claiming the rurals are forcing the urbans to live as they want have offered up a specific policy example.
Even the current cluster isn’t policy. The governor has admitted he doesn’t have the legal authority to do what he tried. Absent the Blues and the Reds both trying to make each other look bad there is no disagreement here.Report
Umm wha huh? Rurals are secretly urban. Comprehension of reading much?
What policies are rurals forcing on urbans? Well disproportionate power for minorities for one. Gerrymandering. Gun control measures. Any issue you can paint as urbans forcing rurals can be read as rurals forcing urbans.Report
One side shifting it’s policy costs on the other, or worse, virtue signalling at the cost of the other, doesn’t create mirror images.
Collecting taxes from the entire state so subways can be built in urban areas (rural need not apply) is a good example. One group gets all the benefits, the other gets part of the bill. This is one side voting for benefits that will be paid for by the other. That’s not “rural doesn’t want public transportation and urban does”, that’s “rural doesn’t want to pay for urban’s public transportation.”
Urban virtue signalling with the burden falling on the rurals is also not flippable. Gun control falls into this category unless the measures would work, i.e. are something other than virtue signalling.
Ditto min wage laws if the urban area has a higher standard of living (which is pretty common) and higher general wage rates. At the extreme the “min” wage can be set less than the cost of labor in the urban area but higher than the rural so it’s designed to shift jobs from one area to another.Report
And thus far none of the people claiming the rurals are forcing the urbans to live as they want have offered up a specific policy example.
The reason no one has offered an example of this is because it’s irrelevant to a principled defense of the Wisconsin gerrymander. It reduces the justification for the gerrymander to your preference for the policies it disproprtionately represents.Report
{{OK, the reason *I* haven’t offered one is because…}}Report
The following is a map of the current Wisconsin congressional districts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin%27s_congressional_districts#/media/File:Wisconsin_Congressional_Districts,_113th_Congress.tif
This is a blue/red map of Trump’s 2016 election and the following 2018 election. It includes cities.
https://www.wpr.org/blue-wave-builds-wisconsins-supreme-court-election
Compared to gerrymander examples of yesteryear, this looks pretty mild. Lots of blocks and straight lines. Google “gerrymander” to see what a serious gerrymander looks like.
I can easily believe there’s gerrymandering in there (this was done by politicians), but I also believe the natural distribution of the populations make this easy.Report
And thus far none of the people claiming the rurals are forcing the urbans to live as they want have offered up a specific policy example
Here’s one: Charlotte NC issued a regulation about access to bathrooms, which was approved by Charlotte’s legislative body, elected by Charlotte’s voters only.
The NC assembly invalidated that regulation and issued a state wide contrary one
You might say that in our constitutional organization cities and counties are creations of the states, and subordinated to them, and that would be true.
But you cannot argue then that all voters in NC, urban and rural, are not equal, and that rural voters should commend a larger portion of the NC representatives.
If a majority of voters want public transportation, or bathroom access for transgender, they should be able to vote for that. Either at the city/county level, and teh state should not pre-empt them, or at the state level, and rural voters and urban voters should not have the same voting power.
If I was a rural voter, I’d give up trying to control the cities. After all, there’s more people thereReport
It’s unclear if trans rights is an urban/rural divide thing (as opposed to a GOP/Dem thing) but if so then this is a great example.
I don’t. I do argue that the whole urban/rural thing is natural form of sorting and our alternatives for fixing this are pretty limited with the alternatives worse.
Agreed.Report
“If the Democratic Party and their ideas are so unpopular, how come they keep getting the most votes.”
The two parties have roughly the same favorable ratings and multiple commenters here insist that Republicans are “unpopular”, so logically Democrats are unpopular too. Independents are also split quite evenly, so you don’t have an edge with “swing” voters either. Both parties are unpopular. You don’t “keep getting the most votes” either, your Party just makes a point to run up the numbers in “safe” jurisdictions and Reps don’t bother because it doesn’t change the outcome (This is a widely recognized mistake Hillary made in 2016).
“The only reason the Republicans hold the majority of seats in many places is because they are actively cheating and engaging in dirty tricks with help from Republican judges on partisan lines. There is no other reason for this.”
Cheating? Perish the thought! IF you’re alleging election tampering such as vote fraud, by all means, lets go hunting for vote fraud. 😀 See, I’m rather convinced of the opposite: Dems run up the numbers in places without Republican oversight through deliberate malfeasance including ballot harvesting and voter fraud. It’s not like its a secret that large chunks of your party thinks Illegal Aliens “should” be allowed to vote, that many of said aliens don’t actually know they aren’t allowed to vote, that they have in fact been found on voter rolls, that your preferred rules for voting doesn’t make any effort to check, and that your cooperation with investigations has been pretty much nonexistent. It’s so bad that Dems sue states for following their own laws regarding voter roll maintenance.
Gerrymandering is historically a bipartisan vice (it’s noteworthy that cases from both a Republican State and a Democrat State reached the Supreme Court together), and multiple analysis shows that it’s pretty much a wash nationally (partisan geographic sorting has made “competitive” jurisdictions more rare over time even with other factors held steady), not to mention that the courts have largely agreed that there is no “fair” workable standard for them to draw them themselves and it is properly a legislative power. So your “no other reason” ought to be pretty simple: geography matters and enough people outside your bubble don’t agree with you. It’s not like it’s only right-wingers who factually point out that the Dem coalition tends to concentrate themselves geographically. Your “Salad bowl” approach to Multiculturalism creates ethnic enclaves and heavy emphasis on the urban over the rural naturally results in a pattern of geographic urban “packing” and rural “cracking”. In effect, your voters tend to gerrymander themselves.
“If Wisconsin had proportional voting…”
Cherry picking. Let’s look at a larger State then, shall we? In California, the Democratic controlled legislature has a history of creating district lines that meander around California, throwing Republicans incumbents together, and carving out new districts that favor Democratic candidates. In one famous instance of excessive creativity, they designed a district for a Democratic incumbent that had 385 sides. In the past, the electoral power grab has been so effective that Democrats have been able to win a majority of the U.S. House seats from that state, even though they sometimes have earned less than a majority of the votes. Bluntly, your gerrymanders usually affect more people than ours do.Report
GOP delenda est.Report
I’ve been critical of the Illinois Governor’s partisan communication style, but think he deserves a lot of credit and more recognition for making the hard decision not to attempt to change the election during this state of emergency:
“I will not use this moment, this moment, to supersede my constitutional authority,” Pritzker said. “There are people out there who want to say, ‘Its a crisis, bend the rules and overstep your authority.’ Let me tell you this: It is exactly in times like these when the constitutional boundaries of our democracy should be respected above all else. And if people want to criticize me for that, well go ahead, I’ll wear it like a badge of honor.”
Illinois officials point fingers over primary voting issuesReport
Good news! Biden supports the whole “voting in person” thing in Wisconsin!
Report
Biden is wrong.
What’s YOUR perspective? I’m sure you have one.Report
That Biden is an exceptionally imperfect person for this moment and with every day that passes, I can more easily imagine Trump getting re-elected.Report
Cute. What’s your perspective on what’s happening in Wisconsin?Report
That they should have talked Biden into accepting Bernie being is running mate and talked Bernie into agreeing to be Biden’s running mate so they could cancel the rest of the primaries, including today’s in Wisconsin.
I think that there are a number of people who will likely be exposed to the Corona as a result of these elections and some of those exposed will get it and some of those who get it will die.
And opportunities for Biden/The Democrats to show Strong and Decisive Leadership have shown up and wandered past.Report
There were still local/state elections.Report
Get rid of the primary and shift those local/state elections to November.Report
Umm who should have done that. The Dem gov was trying to postpone it. It was R’s who insisted on voting today and killing people.Report
I guess that makes sense for why Biden supported this thing too.Report
More accurately, it was the R’s who insisted on voting today in person at greatly diminished numbers of polling stations as opposed to allowing a meaningful opportunity for voters to cast votes by mail.
Biden versus Sanders in the Democratic Presidential Primary has very little to do with it. Control of the decisive seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is what’s motivating the Republican desire to have the vote today with as few voters as possible.Report
“Biden versus Sanders in the Democratic Presidential Primary has very little to do with it.”
Sanders is still polling 30%.
Telling 30% of voters to fuck off is an interesting strategy.
Telling them that you’re so invested in their personal safety that you’ll take their candidate and make him the number-two man in the government is a good base-turnout move.
Unless, of course, you’re so sure that everyone hates That Bastard that you don’t think you need to whip up the base any further. That’ll definitely work, just like in 2004 and 2016.Report
Bingo. I read that Milwaukee had only 5 of the usual 180 voting sites open and operating.Report
Who is closing poling locations on an election day?Report
Not sure. One account I read was that too many of the normal volunteers are sick or otherwise can’t operate the polls, but the election commission itself is a hybrid between executive and legislature:
From the Wi.gov site:
Report
Interesting. That is going to go to the matt in the blame olympics.Report
I didn’t blame anyone. I said I don’t know. You asked a question and I gave you an answer. Thought I was being helpful, actually.Report
Oh, you were. I didn’t take it any other way. But, I can see how my comment could come across that way.
My only thought about it was that there is going to me a massive amount of blame going around from this in the next week or so. People will be rightly asking who ordered them closed, what was the contingency plan and so on.Report
Yeah, it’s a big ole mess. Evers might have tried to argue that the election shouldn’t be today because there weren’t enough election officials to realistically conduct it. Which, from what I read earlier, is actually the case. Instead, he focused on voters’ health (which, you know, ain’t a bad argument either).Report
Nobody “ordered” them closed – they had no volunteers to run them so they couldn’t open them. This is because Wisconsin – like most states reliant on in person voting – mans its polling places with retirees who have the time to do the training and staffing. And as we know, those over 60 – who form the vast majority of these poll workers – are subject to very bad outcomes from COVID.
SO TL:DR – you can’t run in person elections if you don’t have the people to do it, and county election officials knew weeks ago they couldn’t get people. The Republican controlled state legislature won two lawsuits in short order saying the Governor couldn’t reschedule on his own authority – and they shoe to ignore three requests from the governor to have a special session to reschedule.
So my FIL who has advanced COPD and didn’t get his absentee ballot (even though he lives in Green Bay and requested it two weeks ago) was denied the right to vote because going out in public would have exposed him to COVID which he won’t survive if he contracts it.
And he was not alone.Report
What were the contingency measures? That is the point of failure.Report
reschedule to another time, just as every other state with a primary in April has done. Its not that hard.Report
He didn’t have the legal authortity to do that. And, no not all recent primaries were handled like that, see Illinois:
“I will not use this moment, this moment, to supersede my constitutional authority,” Pritzker said. “There are people out there who want to say, ‘Its a crisis, bend the rules and overstep your authority.’ Let me tell you this: It is exactly in times like these when the constitutional boundaries of our democracy should be respected above all else. And if people want to criticize me for that, well go ahead, I’ll wear it like a badge of honor.”
But, I am sure you would be OK with Trump rescheduling the Nov. elections for a Covid emergancy…Report
By his own admission he can’t do that legally since elections are run by the states. And if he came out tomorrow and said we need to do everything we can – more early voting, greater absentee ballot access, full voting by mail – not only would states have time to do something, but I’d actually support it. But he won’t do that because 1) he has said (and likely believes) it means Republicans loose and 2) he’s not that bright.
You seem to dodging the part where Wisconsin’s governor asked the legislature three times to meet in special session and use their authority to reschedule the election – which they declined to do each and every time. They made a cynical choice hoping that the election would turn out their way, as opposed to a caring and compassionate choice that both preserved democracy AND protected life. A democrat asked which as governor he had the authority to do and republicans said no. They didn’t say – no, but lets amend the rules for absentee ballots to make it easier on our citizens. They didn’t so lets reschedule. They said we don’t even want to talk about the options.
But sure, Both parties do it.Report
IL’s primary was in March. And, yes, it was a stupid thing to go ahead with it.Report
Thats why I said recent. And as hishonor states, it would have been unconstitutional to change it.Report
Biden versus Sanders in the Democratic Presidential Primary has very little to do with it.
This would have been a great opportunity for Biden, then.
What did he say when asked about it?Report
Bernie as veep? Well it’s not the craziest thing you’ve suggested but it’s up there. Particularly if you’re a person who wants Trump to lose the next election.Report
I’m not sure that a Biden/Sanders ticket would necessarily lose.
I’d be interested in hearing arguments why it would.Report
I think the argument is that losing with a woman VP is more meaningful than winning with a man. Because proving that American voters are racist misogynist anti-progressives is, in its own way, a more satisfying victory than actually winning.
Like the man said; would you rather be right, or be President?Report
It certainly wouldn’t be my argument!
No, I’d say something like having two really old north easterners on the ticket is a really bad call. Especially considering how badly Bernie has done in this primary campaign in terms of pulling out voters. Any argument about Bernie allowing Biden to nail down the Democratic Party’s left flank would have to grapple with how poorly Bernie performed compared to his run against HRC in 2016. Since the center and right cohorts of voters are enormously larger voting populations than the highly left wing it’d be hard to say, with any confidence, that veep Bernie would bring in more voters from the left than he’d alienate in the center and right.
Bernie is also badly deficient in the traditional Veep roles. I don’t think he’d play well with Biden, nothing we’ve seen suggests he’d be a good attack dog, hell he hasn’t even demonstrated the ability to excite the party he’s notionally running for the nomination of.
I guess Duck has about half a point in that promising to nominate a woman then backtracking on it would be bad for Biden. Also there’re a number of pretty good woman candidates who offer better regional and skill set bona fides than Bernie.
And even if Biden did bring Bernie into the campaign the elections would continue anyhow for state and other offices so the very core of Jaybirds point is already kind of moot. I mean why not Bernie? I think the onus is on anyone saying otherwise to make the case for Why Bernie. Why not Bernie is pretty clear cut.Report
He should pick Klobuchar. She left the race unscathed and is a boring, competent midwesterner that will be hard to cast as a radical in the wings. If we’re going bland and uninspiring we should triple down, no hedging.Report
She’d be my #1 pick.Report
“having two really old north easterners on the ticket is a really bad call. ”
He’s gonna pick Hillary Clinton, dude, so get ready to explain to me how that one works.Report
Your willful idiocy isn’t entertaining anymore. We still tolerate this bullshit here?Report
2016: “If only the Democrats had nominated someone who was more popular and likeable, then Trump wouldn’t have been elected!”
2020: “Ahh, nevertheless!”Report
Chip, my argument for Biden winning the election has always hinged on three things:
Wisconsin.
Pennsylvania.
Michigan.
He seems to have done well with Michigan. I guess that’s one.
Wisconsin… well… he doesn’t need it, I guess.
It’s all on Pennsylvania, now.Report
The argument I keep hearing is that Trump could be defeated, if only HRC or the DNC were not so inept at campaigning. Or that the Democrats turned too far left; Or some variant which boils down to, “Donald Trump was a freakish anomaly and its the Democrat’s fault he got elected.”
But the fact that both elections would be, in any conceivable scenario, won or lost by razor thin margins;
And the fact that no matter which of the 20 or so Democrats he is put up against, Trump’s poll number hold rock steady;
And the fact that no matter the scandal, no matter what policy Trump does or doesn’t announce, no matter what events transpire, Trump’s approval among his Republican base never wavers more than a point or two;
Should point to a much more profound conclusion.
The fact that so many pundits want to ignore that conclusion in favor of barstool sports analysis is why I keep pointing it out.Report
It is certainly true that 10% more turnout in two or three states would have made Hillary Clinton the President.
What moves do you think that Biden and the DNC could make right now that would cause a large increase in turnout?Report
What’s the opposing argument? “Nobody could have beaten Trump! Clinton was the best, the absolute best candidate the Dems could have chosen and she made no mistakes that wouldn’t have been worse in the hands of any other candidate”?
I mean, nobody is arguing that Clinton was *PERFECT*. That’s absurd. It’s just that she was the absolute best that the Democrats had to offer and any imperfections she had and any miscalculations her aides made on her behalf were not as bad as the ones that any other candidate would have also stumbled into, because nobody’s perfect.
Right? That’s the other argument, right?
Or some variant which boils down to, “Donald Trump was a freakish anomaly and its the Democrat’s fault he got elected.”
What’s the other argument? “Trump was better than the best that the Democrats had to offer. Also, Clinton won the popular vote.”?Report
How about this argument:
“There is about 45% of the American electorate that will vote for Donald Trump no matter who is put against him; And another 5% who may or may not, depending on whether a candidate stops in their town, or an adverse headline comes out, or butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon.
In other words, Donald Trump accurately represents the political and cultural worldview of almost half of America.”Report
And nothing could have been done differently in 2016.
And nothing can be done differently than what will happen between now and November.
All this has happened before.
All this will happen again.
This time, it’s happening here.Report
“If it weren’t for those pesky Republicans voters voting for Republican candidates all the time Dems would have an easier time winning elections.”Report
The point here is to establish what the terrain is that we fight on.
Recognizing the truth is key to planning ahead.
Assume “something is done differrently” and a razor thin Biden victory in November, with Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader and Neil Gorsuch as median SCOTUS justice.
So then what happens?
Given the history of how the Republican minority behaved in 2010, how should we react this time?
Given that Republicans have an active hostility to democracy and will use whatever power they have at the state level, to obstruct and defy the Democratic administration, what course of political action should Democrats take?
Given that the Republicans newly appointed to the judiciary can be counted on to aid and assist the Republicans in thwarting democracy, what should be the Democrat’s course of action?
Those questions can’t even be addressed much less answered, until we come to grips with what we are up against.
ETA: The profound conclusion I referenced above is that we are not just fighting Trump; We are fighting the massive army he leads, an army that isn’t going to disband when he leaves office. It will still be there fighting tooth and nail.
This isn’t a case where you strike at the head and the snake dies.Report
I’m glad to hear you say those things, Chip, because a necessary part of forming a battle plan is looking at your own sides strengths, deficiencies, leadership, etc and so on. If the Dems want to compete in the culture you describe, they’re probably gonna have to do better than, say, Chuck Schumer as Senate Leader and Tom Perez as head of the DNC. It will take a whole new approach.Report
For example, here’s a good question to consider: how do the Dems win a general election with a candidate who is neither inspiring nor a visionary nor a policy wonk nor a …. ?Report
In blunt realpolitik terms, work like hell to get your guy nominated, then if he falls, close ranks and fight like hell to get his replacement elected.
Progressive Democrat> Centrist Democrat> Conservative Democrat>Any RepublicanReport
Disagree. You steal the popular concepts from Bernie but go fuzzy on the specifics, make fun of the Warren faction, and tell the middle of the country to stop falling for Trump’s bullshit because you’ve got their backs and he doesn’t.
This is the surest path but it won’t be taken.Report
You’re giving advice to the Biden campaign;
I’m giving advice to fellow rank and file Dems.Report
Ah I misunderstood.Report
But rank and file Dems aren’t gonna win the election Chip. You’re not working like hell to get *those* people to vote for Joe. You need to appeal to the other folks. InMD is telling Dems – all ya’ll – how to frame his candidacy as the answer to all they’re prayers. Or at least show up to the polls.Report
Which is pretty much what Biden is going to do, whether you believe it or not.Report
Something I said back in 2017:
Here’s a counter-argument that you can use right now: “But the Democrats had a blue wave in 2018!”
There you go.
Nothing to worry about.Report
The wonderful thing about this analysis is it contains no actual measurable ideas.
What are they doing wrong now?
What would a better strategy be?
If Biden is a bad candidate, who would be a superior one?
Like your example, where Biden spoke in favor of in-person voting;
If he wins, will this be an example of his shrewd centrist positioning? Or a stumble from which he overcame?
If he loses, will this be an example of his tone deafness? Or a promising move which should have been pursued?
We don’t know, we can’t know, because there are no goal posts here, nothing with which to measure or which can be supported by data and evidence.
Its all just moods and feelings and hedged equivocation.Report
“Did you make any mistakes in 2016?”
“No we did not. There isn’t anything we should have changed.”
“There are people at the time who said you were making mistakes.”
“They were all biased against us.”
“Are you making any mistakes now?”
“No we are not.”
“There are people who are saying that you’re making mistakes now.”
“They are all biased against us.”Report
Can you name some specific mistakes they are making now?Report
How’s about Biden not agreeing with the Republicans on stuff that might get voters killed?
I’m not saying that he has to take the opposite policy, mind (as if any given policy has only one opposite).
Just don’t agree with the Republicans.
Like, a million years ago, when John McCain suspended campaigning because there was this huge vote on TARP?
I thought “Oh, crap! He’s going to go back and vote the opposite way that Obama does!”
And, nope.
He voted the same way Obama did.
I consider that a mistake on McCain’s part, by the way. A mistake that *NOT* suspending would have avoided and, whoops, missing the vote wouldn’t have been. But agreeing with Obama on TARP was the worst mistake he could have made.
But maybe we just have to wait until May to see if Biden agreeing with the Republican Justices was a mistake on his part.Report
Ok, thats a good start.
I think Biden should and could be a lot more confrontational and communicate more outrage than he currently is.
But see, I can’t separate my biases of what Chip wants, from the detached analysis of what America wants.
Can you?
What hard evidence is there to suggest that if Biden opposed in person voting, or went on an angry rant, that he would be more likely to defeat Trump?
Isn’t it entirely possible that your and my suggestions could actually backfire and become evidence that people point to in 2021 of why Biden lost?Report
You want hard evidence that Biden shouldn’t just agree with Republicans?
I have none to offer.
Lots of luck for your coming election.Report
I’ll take that bait:
Hillary pandering to the southern black vote which pissed off rust belt whites and cost her the blue wall?
Hillary offering miners *zero* sympathy or compassion for putting them outa work?
Hillary BLM activists worried about racial profiling by cops to “write her up some suggestions”?
Hillary refusing to say she’d fire the public officials responsible for poisoning FLint’s water supply?
The common thread is that in each case Hillary pandered to a special interest group in the Dem coalition in order to not offend them and it cost her more votes than her pandering gained her.Report
OK.
So by this logic, nominating someone other than Hillary in 2020 would be a surefire winning strategy.
Whew!Report
Ooorrrr, don’t pander to special interests in the Dem base.Report
Nobody wants to consider this because nobody really know what to do about this. You can’t freeze the 45% out of all politics without becoming what you are deriding. Nor can you really send them to re-education camps because they don’t work and you still become what you are protesting against. That means your only real hope is to wait patiently till demographics shift in your favor and hope that enough of the country and the government apparatus is still in good working order when it does.
No democracy ever figured out what to do if one or more parties goes off the rails and rejects the premises of liberal democracy. Nor have they figured out what you do when a plurality of the nation wants policy that is malicious and actively evil implemented.Report
And that’s why so many are voting for Trump, to prevent those kinds of horrible outcomes. Democrats still have acknowledged him as President, and probably never will, because they don’t abide by elections.
They want to replace working class Americans with uneducated immigrants who aren’t even second class citizens, or just ship all the non-service jobs overseas. They want to shut down energy production and transportation, so we can return to a feudal lifestyle with rich liberals ruling things the peasants from their gated communities. They want everyone judged entirely by the color of their skin, like back in their party’s glory days. And they demand socialism, which has a century-long track record of abject failure, oppression, and misery.
And to preside over all these horrible things, they want a white geezer who is pretty far down the road of senile dementia. I would suggest they need to rethink so many things.Report
“No democracy ever figured out what to do if one or more parties goes off the rails and rejects the premises of liberal democracy. Nor have they figured out what you do when a plurality of the nation wants policy that is malicious and actively evil implemented.”
Sure they have. It’s called a civil war.Report
Democracy:
“ Then on April 2, U.S. District Judge William Conley waived the absentee witness requirement. Ms. Swenson put her ballot in the mail the next day.
But the Supreme Court on Monday night overturned Judge Conley’s ruling, reinstating the witness requirement. Ms. Swenson’s ballot, mailed three days earlier, will not count.”Report
Yes, lets go back to the rule by man, and jetison the rule of law.
What could possibly go wrong?Report
When all is said and done, the SCOTUS let stand the part of the district judge’s order that said absentee ballots postmarked by Apr 7 and received by Apr 13 should be counted. And as it turns out, that’s exactly the relief that the plaintiffs in the case had requested. No one in the case asked that the witness requirement be waived or people be allowed to vote late — that was stuff the district judge threw in.Report
And you have a situation where someone did exactly what they needed to do at the time to vote and their vote will not count. Democracy.Report
They did not. The judge’s ruling was that clerks should count certain improper ballots. It did not change the rules for submitting a proper ballot. “I submitted a proper ballot” and “I submitted an improper ballot that a lower-court judge in an open case under appeal said should be counted” are two very different things.Report
The New York Times coverage is misleading at best. On the day she voted (Friday), a three-judge panel in Chicago stayed that portion of the injunction that eliminated the absentee witness requirement. The SCOTUS didn’t reinstate the witness requirement, it wasn’t in place Monday night.Report
The Court is sticking to the literal text of the Constitution:
(Article 4, section 4) The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.
Note the capital “R”.Report
Because state residency is pretty clearly a state level responsibility. We don’t have federal elections, even at the Presidential level we’re voting for our state’s decision.
This is just a partisen talking point. We dropped a lot of money on fixing that, then a year later (before we knew the results of the first effort) Nancy introduced a 2nd bill doing the same thing with some poisonous riders. When it was slapped down she was able to say the GOP is against ballot hacking.
Both sides are trying to make the other look bad, in Wisconsin the Dems had more skin in the game. Their Primary matters, the GOP’s doesn’t (no one is seriously opposing Trump). So do they not care about infecting their voters or do they come up with an impossible solution?Report
Chip, it won’t let me post this as a reply, it keeps telling me it’s a duplicate.Report
When it does that:
1. Copy your comment text (highlight it all and control-C) just in case.
2. Refresh the page.
In all likelihood your comment was posted and WordPress is, for reasons man was not meant to know, trying to post it a second time.Report
If a comment gets tagged for moderation, it won’t display on any of the pages, but an attempt to resubmit will produce the duplicate-comment message. OT doesn’t tell you that your comment is stuck.Report
The problem in Wisconsin was not whether to vote for Bernie or Biden, and everyone (at least everyone in this thread of highly informed people) knows
The real issue was the WI Supreme Court electionReport
Exactly. And the Conservative Chief Justice likely gamed this out with the Conservative Senate and House leadership there and decided retaining power was the most important outcome.
Which gets back to a long standing general critique I have of both Democratic politicians and the media – Republican politicians have been in a war to consolidate power and hold it since Reagan. Democrats have been in a debate over policy and philosophical differences. And america is now littered with the lopsided carnage of that disconnect.Report
When it comes to the whole “seeking power” problem BSDI;
We just look at our own team with Rose tinted glasses.Report
I didn’t say Democrats weren’t seeking to obtain and consolidate power – I said their record hasn’t rendered their quest nearly as successful, and i believe the evidence shows that’s because they brought slingshots to a bazooka fight.Report
Our most devious form of power grabbing, as outlined by comrade Alinsky, is to get more people to vote for us than the opposition.
Truly diabolical.Report
Within the recent past we’ve seen Team Blue make 5(?) allegations of rape against a Supreme Court nominee. 4 of which we now know are false and the 5th has no evidence in favor of it and what facts we do have weigh against it. Compare what is known about Ford (effectively a random person with a heart breaking story where we can’t narrow it down to the year or city without running into contradictions) compared to Biden’s accusators (they worked together, there’s no question they’ve were alone together).
We’ve had impeachment used against a sitting President for ethics that weren’t as bad as selling pardons. We’ve had the nuclear option used by Team Blue to seat judges (which is why Team Red has such an easy job of it now).
Short of assassination how does Team Blue get more ruthless? Court Packing? Arresting political rivals?
Speaking as an outsider, Team Blue has no problems with being ruthless. You do have the weakness to match your strength in the cities, i.e. you’re weak outside of them, which translates into a structural weakness in the House because your support is so concentrated.
You also have the “problem” that you’ve won huge recently, on multiple fronts (gay rights, Obamacare) and that’s left you with fewer hills to fight for. Fundamentally that’s a good problem to have.Report
Dark Matter sad
“And if we want ID to vote, why not insist on truly universal ID?
Because state residency is pretty clearly a state level responsibility. We don’t have federal elections, even at the Presidential level we’re voting for our state’s decision.”
Every country with universal ID also has local elections. When you move for one local to another, you go to an official agency (in the USA could be the DNV) and change your local voting registration. We already do that to switch driving licenses.
Most people here know that I have dual citizenship. I vote in the Spanish elections, too. When I registered with the local consulate, the registration form asks me what municipality I want to be registered in for voting purposes: I vote for everything from major to senator in a city 5,000 miles away. I get my absentee votes materials in the US mail, without asking for them. I can mail them back via US Mail, or drop them at the consulate (I do the latter).
It’s not difficult. It is already done by scores of countries using the same mechanics.
That we don’t do it is not because it’s difficult to figure out a way to do it. It is because politicians in charge DO NOT WANT to make voting easier.Report
If only we could remove politics from politics.Report
We can do many things – Most countries do them, and it is uncontroversial
We are cursed by this (false) belief that we are exceptional, and that there’s nothing to be learned about how most people do most things
National ID is one of those things – Most countries have them, and National ID actually protects your identity better than this clusterfish of assorted pieces of paper, from birth certificates to the flimsy SS card to utility bills that we have to carry aroundReport
The United States isn’t the equiv of Germany, we’re the equiv of the EU.
The reason various states don’t do ID well is because our need for it is less and our xenophobia on this issue is way less.
France cares a lot about being France and not Germany. France cares about Germans among them. Ohio cares little about being Ohio rather than Florida. Ohio cares not at all about people from Florida and how to identify them to preserve its heritage or something. Ohio and Florida can exchange population and it’s a piece of paper to do.
Our internal state boundaries are not well marked and foreigners are often shocked we don’t have walls or processing centers or whatever between them.
We are exceptional. And because we’re so good at the larger situation (which we mostly don’t notice or think about) when it comes to State/National ID, we’re exceptionally bad at it.Report
None of the above is a good reason not to have a national ID. You are both a citizen of a state and of The United States. The United States can, and should produce a The United States national ID
Spain, where there are regions that historically were separate countries has national ID. So does Belgium. So does Germany, who as a country is 100 years younger than USA.
No, we are not like the EU. I am a EU citizen. I can tell the difference. We are not even as federal as Spain, or Germany, or Belgium. The level of legal autonomy and cultural differentiation between Spain’s autonomies, German Lander, or Belgian Flanders and Wallonia is significantly bigger that between the states.Report
Although it was not intended to be, the Social Security card is a de facto national ID.
It is a required proof of identity for drivers licenses and most other forms of state IDs.
And although the Real ID is issued by states, its form and requirements are mandated by the federal government.
So within the next couple years as it is phased in, this duo of SS and Real ID will become a national ID.Report
Number, not card. My state’s Real ID application — also US passport application — requires an SSN and that the combination of name, address, and SSN match the SSA’s records. My state requires some minimal paper for the SSN, like a pay stub. The feds don’t require any more than that you write the SSN on the application.
Now for the bad part — we know that some SSNs have multiple names and address attached to them, and that some names/addresses are attached to multiple SSNs. The data have been corrupted by mistakes (eg, the SSA occasionally assigns the same SSN more than once) and fraud over the years. The system has never been administered in a fashion suitable for use as a national ID number.Report
Yes, exactly.
THe SSN was never intended to be a national ID, but increasingly it has become a de facto one.
Yet, we rely on just this system to secure our nation against terrorism, arguably the single most important task we have.
My argument isn’t to say that SSN is a perfect system, (nothing ever is) only that any protestations against a national ID for voting purposes is falsified by the fact that we already have one, we just don’t use it for that.
Especially for those who prefer a driver’s license as a prerequisite for voting, since driver’s licenses themselves have become nationalized in their form and requirements.Report
My SS card doesn’t have my picture on it, nor my size, sex, age, etc.
Calling it an ID card doesn’t pass a smell test.Report
And yet, in order to get a picture ID, what document is always requested?
What is your point here, that a national ID isn’t possible?
Now THAT is something that doesn’t pass the smell test.
The conservative argument is normally that a reliable form of ID is required for virtually everything we do like flying or credit or employment, so we should have one for voting.
That actually makes sense; But then it logically follows that if we want as many citizens to vote as possible, then making sure as many citizens have this ID is imperative.
Yet somehow, that part always gets left off.
Because Republicans don’t want as many people to vote as possible.Report
If you are suggesting you can get a Driver’s license with just a SS card, you’re mistaken.
Straw man.
Good to hear.
Let’s go back to “a reliable form of ID is required for virtually everything we do like flying or credit or employment”.
How many people don’t have IDs that let’s them drive, fly, have credit, or employment, and why don’t they have it? The only possible solution for “everyone else” is a massive federal restructuring of the existing machinery that will step on the toes of all 50 states? That’s the only acceptable and cheapest solution?
In my state, a non-driver’s ID is free for those age 65+ and $10 for those below that age (free also for the blind and probably also the not-driving-because-they’re-disabled). I suspect the Federal gov could make that $10 free and we’d eat the cost… or the Feds could just pay for it.
That sounds like a reasonable compromise and something that would be trivial to slip into the bill… especially since the Supremes have already said poll taxes are unconstitutional so if the bill doesn’t wave that fee it’s going to get thrown out.
That is what Team Blue wants to claim they oppose, but this hits the radar as a non-serious argument they keep alive to have a reason to justify their own existence. They need to fight for something.
As far as I can tell a National ID isn’t a bad idea, but it’s a different issue than requiring an ID for the vote, certainly at a state level.Report
The only thing I ask for is that if the state is going to require an ID to vote, then the state needs to provide the necessary assistance for the edge cases. If the feds are going to require an ID to fly, then the feds need to provide whatever assistance is necessary for the edge cases.
Edge cases are the ones you see from time to time where an (usually) elderly person lacks a birth certificate, or can only get a copy of the certificate by appearing in person halfway across the country, or has to assemble a portfolio of affidavits. I believe they’re getting less common with time, but they still exist.
An interesting bunch showed up after the Deepwater Horizon mess. Assorted paperwork was required to get federal assistance if your job had disappeared. It turned out there were a modest number of middle-aged people who were born in isolated areas along the coast, never got a SSN, been paid in cash their entire life and never filed tax forms.Report
Oh no, I don’t trust ‘assistance’. States have _deliberately_, for _decades_, used voting ID laws to disenfranchise. I’m not trusting their ‘assistance’.
This is why we need a Federal law. Logically, the thing to do is Federal ID, but we really stupidly don’t want to do that.
So what we need is a law saying that if a state refuses to accept someone’s documentation or lack thereof, if they get turned away, then that person can go to the Federal government and get a hearing. A civil hearing, where they can bring in witnesses, and whatever documentation they have. (The state that opposed them getting their ID can weigh in on the other side, if they want, but obviously they won’t 99% of the time because they don’t _have_ any evidence.) This also would include running their fingerprints to make sure they aren’t someone else, and storing a thumbprint, like a lot of states do.
In most cases, it will simply be a few people testifying ‘This person is the specific person that the US government already knows about, because they have a social security number and all sorts of stuff, and they’re just missing the random tokens the state requires. We’ve known them for decades, we knew their parents, they are actually that person.’ But in a few extremely rare cases, the government won’t know about that person, and it will have to decide if the person is really themselves or someone else, and also if they’re actually a citizen.
And by a preponderance of evidence (Aka, which side is more likely.), the Federal government will decide, and issue a piece of paper, a ‘Writ of Identity’ or something, that states must accept as identification when giving _their_ identification out. (It should even do that for non-citzens, and just put that fact on the writ. Like…even non-citizens have identities, and can often get ID card or driver licenses, but that’s up to the state still.)Report
I agree with all of this.Report
I would explain it, mostly some people don’t drive or fly, and you’re wrong about the other things, you don’t need photo ID for either of those. (You don’t even need a social security card. Just a number.) But I’m not going to argue logic is wrong, because we literally know you’re wrong, to start with.
Only 86% of people over 18 in the US have driver’s licenses. Like…in _actual reality_. Well, it’s closer to about ~10% of the driving age population wouldn’t have on. (There’s a sharp drop off after 85, but presumably a lot of those people have _expired_ driver’s licenses which still work as photo ID.)
https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2018/10/number-of-licensed-drivers-usa/
Now, it’s hypothetically possibly that that 10% have state-issued non-driving ID instead, except…only 79% of people between 20 and 25 have a driver’s license, and I promise they didn’t go out and get photo IDs, and then switch to driver’s licenses later. They simply haven’t bothered to ever get an ID at all. Presumably they haven’t ever needed one.
So, for somehing that you are asserting is impossible to live without, it’s weird how not having one is not an inconvience for 20% of young adults and 10% of all adults.
Incorrect. The poll tax is more than that $10.
First, getting a certified copy of a birth certificate is minimum $5, but can be $50. (On the plus side: Once you do have a copy of your birth certificate, getting a replacement social security card is free.)
Second, to get a photo ID, you have to provide _residency information_. Which requires a bill addressed to you at that address. People without ID often do not have bank accounts, so don’t get bank bills there, and often are in living situations where the utilies are not in their name..hell, that can just happen in _apartments_. As I said, _I’m_ having trouble getting a damn bill addressed to me at my new address, because no one sends those anymore! I finally got something from insurance company mailed here, I’d going to go use that…
So…what are they supposed to do, go open a bank account they can’t afford the minimum deposit on and will get eaten up in fees? That’s $50 right there. And interesting fact: Banks are now charging people for mailed paper statements, so even if poor people do have a bank account, they aren’t getting paper statements, they turned that off immediately!
And, of course, the homeless constantly find it hard to register to vote, something that keeps getting pointed to the government, and keeps getting ignored, despite the fact the courts have said you can’t deny someone the votes simply because they have no fixed address. (It sure is weird how we basically let rich people declare what _state_ they live in as long as they have a house there, but suddenly get all concerned when a homeless person wanders between precincts.)
This is not including all the work getting that together, or having a visit a DMV which is often incredibly hard without a car. (Hey, why are we doing that at the DMV instead of courthouses?)
So, basically, all these ‘voter ID’ things are poll taxes with a bunch of _secret_ fees that no one notices…not to the government exactly, but the point of poll taxes has never been to collect revenue, it’s always been to stop poor people from voting. And, of course, we can make them spend the only thing poor people have less of than money: Time.
—
And, of course, like I said…there’s the people who _can’t_ do this. And they have _literally no appeal process_. Seriously. Here, let me show you. Pretend you don’t have an ID, or a copy of your birth certificate and the state government won’t give you a copy of it, they said the don’t have a copy of it on file, you don’t know why. (I _do_ know why, it’s you listed the wrong name for your father on the form, because your parents lied to you, and then died before they could tell you. It’s also why you weren’t handed a copy of it by your parents. But you don’t know any of that. It also could be your name is spelled slightly different, or…anything.)
What do you do? Here’s the internet, you’re on it, look up the process to figure that one. How do you fix _that_ problem. As an added bonus, you’re currently in California, but were born in Kentucky, and can’t afford to travel across the county (Hell, you can’t drive or fly anyway) so you can’t do anything in person.Report
Let’s just quote the SOS website: “Electronic copies are acceptable.”
About 1% of the population is behind bars. Something like 1.5% of the population every year dies. I’m not sure what percent has extreme mental illness (or just illness). For perspective, my Grandma didn’t vote the last 10% or so of her life because she didn’t the mental acuity to do so.
So that 10% is roughly equal to the population that can’t legally/mentally/physically vote. Funny that.
Then we have the people with State IDs. The young adults I knew who didn’t drive had to have State IDs for obvious reasons.
Yes, proving residency is a problem if you don’t have residency. This seems like a different issue than the ID problem, although granted we’d have to take care it’s not made worse.
Local/State/Federal elections are all held at the same place and typically share the same ballot.
So… in your National ID system where everyone has an ID, where does someone who is living in their car (and changing their voting residency many times a day) vote for local elections?
A few paragraphs ago you were holding up the lack of snail mail as an unbeatable problem. Vast numbers of people change their names every year (women getting married) and still manage to do things that require names and IDs.
Before I try to come up with a solution, please source that your issue actually exists.Report
First…people can vote while behind bars. Second, being behind bars has almost no bearing on them having a license or not. Plenty of them are in there short enough to have a driver’s license the entire time, and it’s certain possible to renew a license while in there.
And, of course, a certain number get their license suspended for non-felony things like failure to pay costs, and they _legally_ are still allowed to vote…except of course, we just took away their ID and made them jump though more hooks, hoops that could be hard in prison. Oh, look, more voter suppression.
For the record, the _grand total_ of people who have right to vote suspended currently is less than 2% of the entire population, about 6 million.
And…a hell of a lot of them _have_ driver’s licenses. The felony-conviction population is no less likely to have licenses than the general population.
Which means…you probably just pointed out something along the lines of 0.2% of the population doesn’t have a driver’s license but couldn’t vote if they did.
Yay?
So what you’re saying there is that if we compare the amount of issued driver’s licenses to the population, which is how we got our percentages…we’re wrong and have _over-estimated_ the percentage of people with licenses? Because the ‘people with valid driver licenses’ statistic probably include some currently dead people, whereas the current population estimates don’t?
It’s weird flex arguing my position. You’re right, that could add of a few percentage of people without licenses.
I would just ignore it, but you’re were making such a big deal about prison…I’m certain there probably are _way_ more dead people with driver’s licenses than felons-without-voting-rights without a driver’s license.
She still has the _right_ to vote, unless she’s been declared mentally incompetent, and she lives in a state where it’s possible to lose the right to vote for that reason. (Only 30 states allow that.)
If anything, again, that’s a argument for _my point_. Making her jump through hoops she doesn’t understand is voter suppression. We don’t get to have poll tests either.
But, here’s the percentage of people who have driver’s licenses, from my link:
All ages – 84.6%
16 to 19 – 51.7%
20 to 24 – 79.1%
25 to 49 – 89.5%
50 to 69 – 92.3%
70 to – 84 84.7%
85 and older – 60.8%
So I actually was already discounting the elderly. Not because they’re incompetent, but because they probably stopped driving and thus have an _expired_ license, which they can still use to vote.
No, it’s nowhere near that. Also, there’s no such thing as people who ‘can’t’ mentally or physically vote. There are people who, in various states, have been declared legally incompetent and barred from it, and there are people who cannot process the world enough or are in comas or something, and thus _don’t_ vote, but they certainly are _allowed_ to vote. And should have the right to do so.
See, and here’s the thing, every time I discuss this, I end up arguing with people who think making it hard to vote, and thus having various people _unable_ to do so…like, oh, people in prison who still have a right to do so, or old people, or whoever…is fine.
No, it’s NOT.Report
Only in Maine and Vermont. In 16 states they can’t vote while behind bars. In 32 states not only do they lose them in prison but they lose them for some period of time (maybe forever) afterwards.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx
For short timers, yes. For everyone else I question whether the renewal fee would be cost effective, and the state would certainly not let them out to go to the SOS office, and to the best of my knowledge most don’t have internet access.
True, but that’s more like 3% of the voting age population. And I’m surprised you can quote this but still claim that people behind bars can vote.
You say this like it’s a good thing. All she’d need is someone to fill out the documents for her, “help” her decide who to vote for, and maybe help her sign the documents. Of course she couldn’t do things like brush her hair (much less talk), so the conversation would have to be pretty one sided.
Time and nature stole her mind. That’s the reality. An ugly reality means ugly choices.
I prefer some extremely minimal hoop that she can’t pass over letting someone “help” (i.e. “steal”) her vote. I don’t trust the gov to decide who should be voting and who shouldn’t so whatever restriction needs to be extremely minimal, but trying to claim there’s value to society in having her vote is farcical.
What we have now passes the smell test as an extremely minimal bar. All you really have to do is be interested in voting.Report
In _every_ state people can vote behind bars, because are there for a _misdemeanor to start with. Duh. In fact, ‘behind bars’ would include people _who have not been convicted of a crime_.
You just blithely decided to make blanket statements about people ‘behind bars’, like that somehow should stop them from voting. If you are trying to restrict it to _felonies_, your number is too high.
I say she has a right to vote like it is a _right_.Report
Again: The Secretary of State is not in charge of who gets IDs. That is under the DMV. The SoS’s website, in fact, is often _wrong_, as I pointed out for my state. My SoS just says you need ‘documentation’ of your address, but in reality you need two different things out of a list of very specific things that give your address, which is a bit more specific than ‘documentation’, which you might assume could be a note from your landlord.
Luckily, one of those things is ‘a delivered piece of mail addressed to you at that address’, so that’s fairly easy to get, if you know you need it in advance. But you still need something else.
Of course, _you_ just showed up with an electronic copy of something, which they don’t accept at all, so you just had a wasted trip. Ha.
(Puzzling these rules out, they seem to imply that, to _change_ my address, because I already have an ID, I only need one thing from the checklist, which implies it could be literally any piece of mail addressed to me. I…feel that won’t work, I bet there’s an exception. It would be nice if it was that easy. I guess I can mail myself something and show up and try it. I mean, once you have a license, the DMV is actually pretty reasonable…it’s getting the damn photo ID in the first place that is hard. Oh, incidentally: Mailing myself something…yet another poll tax.)
Presumably the same way that rich people who spend their summers in one place, and winter vacation in another, and live in yet a third, declare _their_ residency? By just saying which of those locations they live?
The problem isn’t the homeless living in multiple locations, or whether they can truly be said to ‘reside’ somewhere in some philosophical sense. People keep bringing that up, but, as I said, no one seems to have a problem with rich people doing way more residency-shopping. The problem is entirely the lack of documentation of _any_ residence, which the homeless do not have, and the multi-location rich do.
Because they have a marriage license with that name change on it.
The problem that people don’t have certified copy of their birth certificate? Do I really need to prove such a thing does exists? I mean…my youngest brother didn’t have one, he had to go get one recently for some reason. I mean, he had one at some point, or he couldn’t have gotten a driver’s license to start with, but it got lost somewhere. His was easy, he still had a non-certified copy, so just used the information on that. (This is, incidentally, why people should photocopy their birth certificate, or at least take a picture.)
And the requirements for getting a certified copy are right there on the website…that’s why I picked a specific state (literally just the first one I came across, all the states are basically the same there.) I’ll quote the requirement for you:
Full name at birth of the person for whom the certificate is requested
The month, day and year of birth
The county of birth
The mother’s maiden name
The father’s name
There are several things on there that people might not know. I gave the example of ‘father’s name’, but it’s possible not to know your mother’s maiden name, or what county you were born in, and some people have been using different names their entire lives. And…I remind people, parents can die and no longer be able to supply information.
If you don’t have all that correct, they won’t give you a copy. I happen to know there are ways to still get a copy, because I know someone who went through this hassle (not my brother) although they luckily already had a license, but…I’m not telling you, you have to figure it out. Come on, you need your Kentucky birth certificate and they have rejected your request with a blunt assertion that there is no such birth certificate on file. So, to start with, you’re out $10, they don’t give that back. And what do you do next?Report
I went to the SOS a month ago for a license.
I showed up with paper records that I didn’t need because they took the first thing I gave them and that was that. The website made it look a lot harder than it turned out to be.
We don’t let anyone just pull an address out of thin air. Someone with multiple homes pays multiple sets of taxes and gets to pick a place from all the places they could prove they reside.
Meaning even under your perfect Federal ID system, you don’t have a solution. This issue isn’t fixable by any ID system because it’s not an ID problem.
No, I am not researching your arguments for you. I am also not treating your hypothetical corner case as a wide spread reality unless you source it.Report
You do understand that different states operate different ways, right?
In recounting my adventures to change my address, and my previous efforts getting a license, I clearly was talking about the state _I_ live in, and the conflicting information they had on _their_ websites.
And the Georgia ‘Department of Driver Services’ is in no manner whatsoever under the Georgia Secretary of State. The Secretary of State is an elected position, whereas the DDS is run by *checks the internet* a appointed Commissioner, although apparently there’s a Board also…I’m not sure of the exact operations structure, but is totally unrelated to the SoS office. (Although, ironically, the SoS website has big links to their ‘Licensing’ section…but that’s business and professional licensing, not driver.)
Let me guess: Your state doesn’t have a history of voter suppression, so actually makes all this logical and clear?
Because _my_ state is Georgia.
Much like the right to vote doesn’t depend on mental competency (unless the state has specifically passed a law saying so _and_ the person has been declared incompetent)..it also doesn’t depend on people being property-owners or even people who sleep in a fancy ‘building’.
My solution is they can vote where they say they live! Just like rich people!
We are _incredibly_ lax about making sure that people continue to reside in places, or really that they ever ‘resided’ there at all and didn’t just know somewhere there to collect mail to them, and used it as a billing address. We don’t even have _procedures_ in place for catching people who lie. I’m unaware of any law enforcement charging someone with being registered to vote where they don’t live, _ever_.
I mean…I could keep voting where I used to live, despite moving quite some time ago, so long ago that I’m technically in violation of the ‘supposed to change address within 60 days’ rule for driver’s licenses. (Which they also don’t check.) I could driving up there, keep voting there. As long as I never went long enough to trip to ‘mail the voter to see if they still exist’ check, and I have gotten one of those, I can keep voting in the wrong place forever.
And interestingly enough…it appears I can change where I’m registered to vote _without_ changing my driver’s license, on the SoS website. I can just…log in or something. I assume they will mail me something to check, but, again, people can collect mail for other people. Apparently I could very easily register to vote halfway across the state if I knew someone who lived there.
And yet…somehow…we refuse to let the homeless vote because of the lack of address. Ironically, many of them already have resorted to getting mail at someone else’s house, meaning they _could_ register to vote by claiming they live there…if they didn’t mind lying. Although some shelters do let people get mail there, so…they could used as an address to register to vote, and many of them do.
Of course, there’s still the problem of getting an ID if they don’t have one, because…they’re not going to get a lot of mail there. Hopefully the government will send them something.
I am also not treating your hypothetical corner case as a wide spread reality unless you source it.
I didn’t say it was ‘wide spread reality’. I asked what the solution was to an _entire reasonable_ hypothetical. There are plenty of _other_ hypothetical situations…a more common one is abusive house, where they actually can’t get in touch with their parents.
But since you think it’s an absurd ‘edge case’ and refuse to check (Despite me literally knowing someone who went through this.), I will instead explain what people have to do, and what it can cost.
People without IDs can’t get a copy of their birth certificate via normal means….which often are presented as the _only_ means. My state’s website straight up says you, or someone related to you, _have to_ have a photo ID to get a copy: https://dph.georgia.gov/ways-request-vital-record/birth-records
So according to the official website…if all your relatives are dead before you get a photo ID, and you don’t happen to have a copy of your birth certificate, you’re shit out of luck.
Having read that as the only option, people without photo IDs might still try to do the ‘Order online’ request, but not have ID to present there…hopefully they won’t go ahead and try to present some other ID, because they can’t do it that way (Even if it is documentation they would accept.), and they’d be out $33. Also hopefully they didn’t take that other option presented and do the mail-in request, because same thing there.
I will admit both those places make it very clear you have to have photo ID, so someone putting in a request without a photo ID is unlikely. But…people are honestly so baffled by this I would bet a few of them have _tried_, because clearly you can’t _need_ a photo ID to get a copy of your birth certificate. (Fun thing to try: Google ‘I don’t have a photo Id and need a birth certificate’, and read the utter _amazement_ people have at this apparent dumbshit Catch-22.)
So, if you don’t have photo ID, you have to ignore the literal words on the website, and go in person, because they will actually accept other documentation…exactly what documentation, I don’t know, it’s literally not on the website, which, again, lies, and say you need a photo ID.
At that point, once you have proven who you are…now you have to get the information on your birth certificate exactly right. Oh, and they won’t do a search there in real time, computers not having been invented yet, and…each search is still $33. And because you don’t have photo ID you can attach to these requests…you have go in person _every time_, instead of making them online or via the mail.
Let’s make the orphans play the guessing game of what their mother’s last name was when they were born! Or what their father’s name was! Wee! A trip across the county and $33 a spin!
Hell, let’s hope they’re right about what state they were born in.Report
That was my point.
True. So… maybe the states should be treated differently? The states that want to have IDs and not use them as an opportunity for voter suppression should be allowed to do so? Every state shouldn’t be treated like Georgia?
And while we’re on that subject, a one size fits all solution from the federal government probably wouldn’t be written to keep Georgia in line, so the reality might not be the utopian solution you’re envisioning.
“Just like rich people” means we insist on documentation. You don’t actually want them to be treated like the rich (or the middle class) and pretending you do doesn’t help your argument.
We don’t insist on documentation because we want to screw over the homeless, we insist on it because we think this is an important issue and people lie about important things. And if enough people think that, then maybe it is.
It’s lumped in there with other forms of ballot fraud. https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
These sorts of issues come up at low levels. Small town officials or other interested parties. Parents trying to sneak their kids into other school districts, or they want to run for office and have to register to vote in “their” district even though it’s fraud.
Yes, they could commit fraud on something people are paranoid about and have put in draconian punishments to stop.
An excellent idea.
What stands out about this sort of situation is how lack of ID creates so many other problems, often homelessness, and states which inflict this issue on themselves should fix it.
However that seems like a different issue than ballot security. It’s like we’re talking about Universal Health Care and you keep bringing up that cigarettes cause cancer. It’s not that you’re wrong, but the issues you’re bringing up are serious problems in their own right. Cigarettes causing cancer isn’t a reason to have, or not have, UHC.
I agree there should be ways to handle corner cases, but imho that kind of attention would be a good thing for people who currently lack ID. Similarly treating fees for state IDs as a poll tax so they’re free would be a good thing for the people you’re talking about.Report
Germany is smaller than Montana.
There is a strong argument that the US should have a national id, but that’s now with modern technology. For the bulk of this nation’s history we’ve been too big and too spread out for a national id to be useful. Fax machines became popular in the 1980’s, before that if Hawaii wanted to send a photo back to Washington DC to be checked, we’re talking about snail mail over the ocean.
In 1941 FDR heard about Pearl Harbor at 1:30 PM, the attack was at 8AM, adjusting for time zones that’s about 12 hours… which is presumably millitary state of the art at the time for important messages.
In that context it makes a lot of sense to deligate that (and other) duty/duties to the states.Report
@ Dark Matter
What on earth are you talking about? What kind or arguments are you trying to make?
Germany is smaller than Montana
It seems that we need to point this out a lot, but acres don’t vote, people do. We are not trying to give a National ID card to every acre of land, but to every person. Germany’s population is 83 million, Montana’s is 1.06 million. There’s 78 Germans for every person in Montana. That’s 78 ID cards in Germany for every one needed in Montana
I travel to MN quite a lot for work. People in Montana are not Yanomamis or Pashtos, living in impenetrably forests or mountaintops away from western civilization. People in Montana have cell phones, internet, cars (probably more than Germans do). It will be trivially easy to provide every Montana resident with National ID. Germany gives out 78 times more ID cards, and they are doing fine.
Fax machines became popular in the 1980’s, before that if Hawaii wanted to send a photo back to Washington DC to be checked, we’re talking about snail mail over the ocean.
What the hell? Before the fax machine there was something called wirephotos or radiiophotos, going around since the 1930s. It’s how deadwood newspapers around the world got photos to put on their first pages. That’s how you got to see pictures of bonzos lighting themselves on fire in Vietnam, or Apollo missions shooting to the moon from Florida.
In 1941 FDR heard about Pearl Harbor at 1:30 PM, the attack was at 8AM, adjusting for time zones that’s about 12 hours… which is presumably millitary state of the art at the time for important messages
The Titanic, in 1912, had radio (then called “wireless”). That’s how so many people were rescued from it, because they radioed for help, and several vessels in the area came to succor. I’m fairly sure that military state of the art in 1941 also included radio.
Plus Honolulu in 5 hours behind DC in the winter (HI does not do DST still today). 8 am HI time is 1 pm Washington DC. The news of the attack reached FDR within 30 minutes.
So no, nothing in your argument would imply that the country is so big, and so lacking in communication and 100 years old technical infrastructure that was developed that National ID would be a fool’s errand.Report
“Our internal state boundaries are not well marked and foreigners are often shocked we don’t have walls or processing centers or whatever between them.”
Wait wut??? Huh? Other countries have internal states to. It’s not some weird american thing.Report
Sometimes there seems to be a scale thing going on. The Great Plains in the US are on a par with having Mongolia tucked into the middle of the country (in both size and population density). How can there not be any meaningful borders in there somewhere?Report
How many nation-states are within other nation-states?
Gavin Newsom Declares California a ‘Nation-State’
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-09/california-declares-independence-from-trump-s-coronavirus-plansReport
Well, when it comes to testing, he’s failing as both a state and a nation state. California ranks #50 for tests per capita, but they are ahead of Puerto Rico. Among nations, they’re just ahead of Djibouti and Turkey, but behind Belarus and Azerbaijan. They be doing better if they had some biotech companies or universities.Report
This little Lady Gaga/Joe Biden spot has a hilarious ending that I didn’t see coming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWh8IihEdiYReport
Of note – the Republican gamble failed in as much as the liberal challenger unseated the conservative incumbent:
https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/dane-county-judge-jill-karofsky-wins-state-supreme-court-race/article_a60dd913-bd22-589d-855b-ca2788b81d9a.html
And it proves the President got one thing right in hi term – when you increase voting by mail (as Wisconsin did with a record 1.2 million absentee ballots), Republicans don’t win.Report