Fair points. I'd read up after Biden was making a few bad claims about it and trusted those sources. Will check some stuff out this weekend. Care to critique the larger point about your claim that the right is the new liberals or we just gonna skip past that?
People on the right are standing up for free speech, due process (including for men on campus), and equal justice under law. Talking about people like Dave Rubin, Gad Saad, Jordan Peterson. DeVos under Trump promulgated regulations to protect free speech and due process on campus, and Biden has pledged to reverse those.
With a few honorable exceptions, the people on the left have now turned against these things. When I was a young man, it was people like Ed Meese and the Moral Majority who wanted to curtail free speech and due process. So yes, on the matters most important to me--civil liberties-- the right is now clearly better. The sides have switched.
It's trivial to make the facile arguments you are right now. I could bring up hundreds of reactionaries and pretend they're stand-ins for everyone on the right. I could pretend Taibbi or Greenwald or Aaron Mate or dozens of others are avatars for "the real left." It's just a bad argument so I won't make it.
Am I glad *you* seem to listen to right wingers who haven't given up on liberal values? Sure. Good. That's likely part of the reason you're here. But to pretend those people you brought up are driving rightwing discourse is deeply wrong. They arent indicative of most right wing thinking or voting in America. If they were, our government would look very differently. You know that. I know that. But you're trying to win internet points with pedantry. It's weak.
Instead of responding to my comment--for example, about the DeVos policies Biden has pledged to reverse--you're questioning my good faith. You might want to look in the mirror. That is not the spirit of this site
Look: I'm sorry. The right isn't somehow liberal now because a handful of authors you read are anti-censorship.
I don't really have the enthusiasm to keep making this point over and over while you ignore it and accuse me of bad faith for responding in ways that deflate some of your arguments. It's tiring. Have a good afternoon, S.
I have read your comments with what I believe is an honest degree of skepticism, in particular regarding your replies to "sasinsea". Your closing to this particular screed, "--you're questioning my good faith. You might want to look in the mirror. That is not the spirit of this site.", causes me consternation on a couple of fronts.
Most importantly is the appearance of ironic humor, in that a probable narcissistic lawyer is recommending to someone else that "You might want to look in the mirror." Secondly, please explain either how or where or by whom on Matt Taiibi's Substack site you were granted either the right or privilege of determining who is not participating in "the spirit of this site; especially when such an insulting assumption is founded upon your own imagined and false claim that your "good faith" has been questioned.
Regarding this particular reply of yours, what is your informed reasoning behind the repetitive supportive references to "the DeVos policies" as Secretary of Education; other some silliness about comparing them to what "Biden" may or may not do in the next four years. Just for fun, what is your newfound Conservative lawyerly opinion of Betsy DeVos' brother Eric Prince's policy contributions?
Having spent more than half a year under the protection of mercenaries (Triple Canopy rather than Blackwater, but same difference), i'm a fan of what Erik Prince does (or did) for a living.
That probably wasn't what you are looking for, though :-)
I do have nice things to say about the mercs though. Rank and file were foreign - Ugandan in this case. Big smiles and AKs. Leaders were all American and they went under names like "Rooster" and "Squirrel". Nondescript guys wearing khaki and carrying M4s. That said, super professional. They had booze. We didn't.
"Having spent more than half a year under the protection of mercenaries (Triple Canopy rather than Blackwater, but same difference), i'm a fan of what Erik Prince does (or did) for a living.
That probably wasn't what you are looking for, though :-)"
Actually cowboy, that's almost exactly what I was expecting, just not from you in particular. It's always amazing (and often disappointing) to discover what crawls out from under a proverbial rock on one of these sites, especially when it's trying to disguise itself as something that it could never effectively be. The pecking order you alluded to sounds a tad condescending for someone who professes to have honorable served.
Please correct me if I fuck this "chain of command" up:
Eric Prince - Dear Leader
You Contractors
Squirrel carrying
Rooster M4's
Ugandan Big smiles &
Mercs AK's
I'll just call the "booze" reference a BS insertion.
This all seems to resemble a collection of gun-slinging killers for hire that don't have to abide by those sacred "Rules of Engagement" that the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were so determined to circumvent. I've often wondered why even more of these miscreants don't have life-size tats of Nixon, or one of these henchmen on their backs.
Could it be that this screed is not what you anticipated?
Pretty much the confirmation bias expected, and the contempt for those who fight that I have come to expect from those who hate those who defend them. Until you're actually in danger. I'm having a bit of schadenfreude about that right about now, it amuses me.
You're wrong about just about everything but you'll have to find someone else to correct you, i'm happier not wasting my time.
Left and Right are immaterial descriptors. The issue is the "2" parties.
The "Democrats" have decided that their only concern is equity (at least until it actually takes things out of their individual party leaders' pockets). This has allowed them to descend into madness defending illiberal concepts - including censorship, not calling "transgenderism" mental illness, and means-testing government benefits by melanin count.
The "Republicans" have decided that they believe in the "common man" and "common sense" to the point where they pretend that they still don't want to funnel as much money to the people with the largest bank accounts (mostly themselves).
The truth, as always, lies in between.
McConnell's bullshitting all fall about the relief checks is the reason for the 1 vote majority in the Senate. Pelosi's bullshit about the January 6 insurrection is the reason why she will be out of power on Jan 1, 2023 (unless she can get Manchin and Synema to ditch the filibuster to allow her buy-the-vote bill to pass).
It's worthy of note that PBS featured Lisa DesJardin interviewing Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling last week, and Sterling was able to make some absolutely spot-on, cogent points about why Georgia's new proposals on voting regulations did not equate to an anti-democratic effort at (racist!) voter suppression, the way that partisan Democrats have alleged, falling all over each other with hyperbole:
Sterling: "in this law, we move to a thing that actually is a better election administration item, which is using a voter I.D. number, their driver's license number, or their last four of their Social and their date of birth to identify the person, as opposed to a subjective signature match, which kind of undermined many people's faith in how that signature matching was done. By having a binary, objective measure, it makes it easier and will likely lower rejection rates for those ballots...those very same people [allied with the Democrats] sued us to get rid of signature verification just last year, and they lost..."
Lisa DesJ: "...You know what is making headlines, of course, is this ban on handing out food and water at the polls. I understand you made the argument that, in the last election, there may have been some activists who used giving out water as an excuse to talk to voters.
First, do we know that that happened? And, second, if so, why not just enforce the campaign ban? Why eliminate giving out food and water?"
Gabriel S.: "Well, the main thing is, it's been used as a work-around to get around that law.
And the irony of this, as we looked it up, this is actually the law in the president's home state of Delaware right now. So, this is not some new thing that's been brought out. This is pretty standard across the country to avoid those kind of loopholes where people can go and campaign and try to influence voters in the line.
And that's been the law in this state for decades. This was a work-around. People sort of abused it. It's hard to enforce for elections officials and sheriffs. Like I said, it's the law in the president's home state of Delaware. So I'm surprised that shock isn't being held for his own state legislature, who passed the same thing."
(Yes, that's the same Gabriel Sterling who told the Election Steal Fanatics last November that yes, Joe Biden really did win the state of Georgia in a valid election with no evidence of fraud, and would the Trumpist goon squad please stop threatening his staff with their paranoid meltdowns.)
Now I'll present the two Partisan Templates for the way DesJardin's interview with Sterling gets recollected. You know, the takeaway. The information that gets lodged in long-term memory.
Partisan Democrats: they love PBS, of course. But when PBS presents content as disruptive of the Democratic Party Narrative as that, it literally goes in one ear and out the other, like the interview never happened.
Partisan Republicans: PBS never ran an interview like that, because ugh, PBS...they lean liberal, and therefore everything they feature MUST be serving the agenda of Cancel Culture orthodoxy. So they couldn't have.
We all caricature each other a bit. I have noticed that some (absolutely not all) elements of the media have become a bit more evenhanded since Trump's departure. They all seemed to judge it a moral imperative to get rid of Trump by any means necessary, and now some have gone back to more objective reporting. I hope this continues.
Buy that simply accentuates the problem. If they are only useful as a source of truth during times they approve of, then they are suspect at all times; are they accurately reporting facts now, or then? When does the switch flip? And so on.
Integrity is something that is very hard to gain, but very quick to lose. And these "journalists" have lost it.
The real issue isnтАЩt the food and water. ItтАЩs the under-resourcing of voting sites that is systematic. Once the lines to vote reach 8 hours, we can argue all we want about who gets to hand out food.
I can make a law that on its face looks neutral, but applying the same numerical limits on widely disparate counties has the effect of NOT being neutral. LetтАЩs face it, Georgia and much of the South has a long history of structuring voting to disadvantage people they donтАЩt want to vote. The people waiting 8 hours to vote are disproportionately non-white.
If "the real issue isn't the food and water", then why am I constantly hearing about that supposed problem in so many news reports? It's recurrently brought up as a big deal on the NPR news shows I listen to. For that matter, why is that aspect taking up so much of the energy in the discourse, when the real problem is the under-resourcing of voting sites?
At minimum, the fact that the critics of the Georgia law have highlighted that provision as if it were THE telling indication of voter suppression is an indication of their callowness and indiscipline.
"Georgia and much of the South has a long history of structuring voting to disadvantage people they donтАЩt want to vote."
I agree completely. I have no reticence about "facing" that fact. But we are not going to emerge from the past into a new day if the people with their hands on the wheel keep wagging their finger in the rear-view mirror. In fact, if someone pays too much attention to that activity, they are liable to crash the ambulance.
"The people waiting 8 hours to vote are disproportionately non-white."
That's my impression, too. But since I haven't heard enough FOCUS on that problem to be aware of the specifics- and because so much of the oxygen in the room has been burned up by these peripheral objections, these "gotchas"- I can't really speak to the details enough to know how much of a case there is to be booked there in the year 2021CE, or whether that's just more partisan wolf-crying, with extra Racism sauce on the side.
My expressed skepticism on that is not an attempt at a hand-wave. I sincerely want to hear those details. Occasionally I've heard a snippet or two of hard data on that particular aspect, but it's been all too readily buried underneath all of the snickering by people like the New Jacks at the NY Times (on the hour every weekday that NPR has provided them, entitled "The Daily") of the very possibility that campaign workers might use offers of food and water to pitch candidates at the last minute to voters waiting in line, when a) it's generally agreed that touting candidates at polling places is unethical and illegal, and b) anyone over the age of 22 with experience in reality-based society knows that offers of food and water provide a foolproof opportunity to engage in that tactic. You're talking to an old cabdriver here. Don't even try to snow me.
I'm in absolute agreement that long lines at polling places are inexcusable. For that matter, I think opening polls at 7am or 8am and closing polls at 8pm and 9pm is inexplicable, in the modern world- it disrespects the swing shift and night shift workers out there. But do you want to know who wants those polling places shut down by 9pm more than anyone else? The TV networks. And the viewing audience, that's been conditioned into getting their first hits of info-crack from reportage of the results by 930pm. My personal attitude about that is, take all the time that you need. I can wait a couple of days to find out the results of an election where the winners are not going to assume the duties of office for months...I'm not Pavlov's Dog. I mean, if you're going to show the numbers, I'll watch, maybe. But if people are being discouraged from voting because they don't get off shift until 1030pm, I don't get that. But understand, that's everywhere.
Also, it's really disingenuous to pin an argument about absentee voting on an observation like this:
"Georgia has cut by more than half the period during which voters may request an absentee ballot, from nearly six months before an election to less than three.
This will almost certainly reduce the number of people who seek absentee ballots and the number of people who vote. In the last presidential election, 1.3 million Georgians тАФ about 26 percent of the stateтАЩs electorate тАФ voted with absentee ballots. Of those who returned absentee ballots in 2020, 65 percent voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. and 34 percent chose Donald J. Trump."
The Covid Year Absentee Ballot has no business being put forth as if it were the New Normal for elections. I fail to see why it's of dire importance to the cause of justice that prospective voters have 180 days prior to an election to request an absentee ballot. 180 days before November 7 is May 11. In any primary season that amounts to a contest instead of an ordainment, the candidates haven't even been chosen at that point. The 78 day opening in the new Georgia regs equates to the last week in August. In most years, the conventions have just wrapped up. The dog days of August are still widely known as "the silly season" in electoral politics. The candidates haven't even had their first debates. What conceivable payoff is there to tacitly encouraging people to vote as soon as the ballots can be printed up with the names of the candidates on them?
I voted in advance in 2008, 2012, and 2016 in Virginia. That voting isn't allowed in Va. until 45 days before Election Day in November. I never had the idea that I was being put under the gun by that situation. To compare that with the days of Jim Crow- it's disrespectful.
I also think it's disrespectful for the Democratic Party to patronize "nonwhite voters" as if they practically needed to be spoon-fed to get them to turn out in a high percentage at the polls. Black people and Latin~s and whoever else are most assured of showing up at the polls when they're fired up, same as everybody. Same-day registration, that's a travesty. It's Boss Tweed Tammany Hall bullshit. That's a sad-ass legacy of the Democratic Party that needs to be kicked to the curb the same way the actual legacies of Jim Crow need to be. Instead, it's being touted as a Civil Rights measure.
Ironically, there's never been a better opportunity for the Democratic Party to put together a strong ground game. There are actual voter regulations out there that are worked to discourage a heavy voter turnout in minority populations, and they deserve to be countered (although, as I've said, not with the scattershot presumptions of racist motivation for every voting reg put into place by a Republican majority in a state legislature.) But beyond that, the best thing the Democrats could do would be to get their constituents riled up enough to not let some petty obstacles put in place by dead-enders discourage them. Because the worst of these regs don't even come close to shotgun voter suppression. They're more like paper tiger voter discouragement- which is a sign of weakness in the right-wing opposition, not strength. Instead, the Democrats keep regressing into their insecurities. The best thing that they could do would be to deal with the difficulties by dunking on their opponents fair and square. (I'm convinced that is what actually did the trick in the January Senatorial elections in Georgia.) Instead, the Democratss- the new winners! and every demographic trend says they have the wind at their back!- keep falling back into this aggrieved paranoia, this passive aggressive whining and wheedling, the taint of the old buy-votes-with-packs-of-cigarettes era (and before that, Boss Tweed's free open house at the taverns in his wards...)
To the Democratic Party braintrust: be better than that. If you can be. If you're capable of it.
One very big problem with having voting places open for your proposed "swing shift" is getting people to man these locations and party acolytes to monitor them. It is already difficult in many locations to get "granny" to volunteer to run or monitor polling places in many parts of the country. When the people themselves refuse to participate in manning the polls it is difficult to understand how we extend voting hours overnight without severely compromising election integrity.
Like everything else, it's a tradeoff not solely a positive way to solve a minor problem.
With the increase in vote by mail spreading around the country this may soon be a solution in search of a problem.
I take your point. Spreading out in-person voting over more than one day would also help with that aspect. I think should be more sites open for advance in-person voting, too.
I also think it would be a good idea for all concerned to acknowledge that there are valid concerns about losing the chain of provenance of ballots, as well as unfairly restricting access to them. The fact that problems haven't been shown to exist is no safeguard against some of them arising in the future if the protections are slipshod.
I brought up the 2020 Covid Election as an exception, because that's what it was- there wasn't any advance notice for any possible ballot-rigging conspiracy- even at a local level- to figure out how such a massive mail-in situation could be abused to rig an election to their preference, and then make the preparations necessary to carry out that plan. But that doesn't prove that it's safe.
[edit]
Coincidentally, I was just got in from listening to a C-Span (re)broadcast of the House Administration Committee Hearings, and I'm a bit less skeptical of massive mail-in voting than I was formerly. I was impressed by what I heard from both of the witnesses (one of whom represented Georgia and the other Oregon, I think.) The House members I heard sounded reasonable, too (not exactly the rule for the Congressional hearings I've heard and seen over the years, unfortunately.) But I think there are challenges associated with scaling it up as a routine process in states with large populations, and I think it's important to have safeguards in place to protect both provenance/chain of custody and the privacy concerns required for a secret ballot.
Oregon has a long record of highly successful mail-in balloting. It isn't even hard. However, I have a couple of caveats. One is that Oregon requires ballots to be in on election day; we're extensively warned to drop them in the special boxes if it's too close to election day. Consequently, there's a parade of sheepish procrasinators to the boxes on Election Day - one of them me.
The other is that Oregon is a "clean" state; the voters have zero tolerance for scandal. There has been all of one case of cheating, by an election official. I can imagine other ways, but I won't repeat them. So if your state is crooked, this will be a considerably heavier lift - but so is all voting.
I was briefly a GA resident. Their idea of public services is not that of someone living in the Northeast. I'd believe that most polling places are inefficiently run. And mind you, my experience is New Jersey, where everything is inefficient.
Dragging Georgians into the future is not a simple thing. They are justifiably resistant to external pressure.
┬лIn the last presidential election, 1.3 million Georgians тАФ about 26 percent of the stateтАЩs electorate тАФ voted with absentee ballots. Of those who returned absentee ballots in 2020, 65 percent voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. and 34 percent chose Donald J. Trump."┬╗
Also look at the House votes held together with presidential elections in Georgia in November:
2020: R: 2.49m, D: 2.39m
2016: R: 2.27m, D: 1.50m
2012: R: 2.10m, D: 1.45m
2008: R: 1.88m, D: 1.86m
Pretty "amazing" what happened between 2016 and 2020 (59% surge in the Democratic vote). Then consider reading between the lines this article on the senate elections in Georgia in November:
The Democratic party spent a collossal amount of time and effort on the senatorial race in Georgia, and only managed to add 100k votes on top of the "amazing" number in November.
IтАЩll tell you how this law will be used. Voting access will increase in places where there is currently no problem, namely small rural counties. The numerical limits that have been baked into this bill are targeted to reduce access in the larger counties, that - oh my - happen to have a large Democrat registration.
The voting lines that are experienced in the larger counties are the result of past efforts to limit who much access voters have to voting sites. The problem will get worse when less mail-in voting is allowed. When the lines get longer, the legislature will claim that the county elections officials are incompetent and will replace them with Republican hacks, per provisions in this law. That will create even less access for voters in those counties.
No bill like this will ever say it is discriminatory. That would be struck down by courts. The bill has been structured to treated large counties unfairly, knowing that they vote for Democrats. Allowing a state takeover of their election boards will permanently entrench a Republican power structure on Georgia, regardless of how the residents would like to vote.
Someone is feeding you BS, and you're swallowing it. https://morning.thedispatch.com/p/the-morning-dispatch-understanding
Fair points. I'd read up after Biden was making a few bad claims about it and trusted those sources. Will check some stuff out this weekend. Care to critique the larger point about your claim that the right is the new liberals or we just gonna skip past that?
People on the right are standing up for free speech, due process (including for men on campus), and equal justice under law. Talking about people like Dave Rubin, Gad Saad, Jordan Peterson. DeVos under Trump promulgated regulations to protect free speech and due process on campus, and Biden has pledged to reverse those.
With a few honorable exceptions, the people on the left have now turned against these things. When I was a young man, it was people like Ed Meese and the Moral Majority who wanted to curtail free speech and due process. So yes, on the matters most important to me--civil liberties-- the right is now clearly better. The sides have switched.
It's trivial to make the facile arguments you are right now. I could bring up hundreds of reactionaries and pretend they're stand-ins for everyone on the right. I could pretend Taibbi or Greenwald or Aaron Mate or dozens of others are avatars for "the real left." It's just a bad argument so I won't make it.
Am I glad *you* seem to listen to right wingers who haven't given up on liberal values? Sure. Good. That's likely part of the reason you're here. But to pretend those people you brought up are driving rightwing discourse is deeply wrong. They arent indicative of most right wing thinking or voting in America. If they were, our government would look very differently. You know that. I know that. But you're trying to win internet points with pedantry. It's weak.
Instead of responding to my comment--for example, about the DeVos policies Biden has pledged to reverse--you're questioning my good faith. You might want to look in the mirror. That is not the spirit of this site
Look: I'm sorry. The right isn't somehow liberal now because a handful of authors you read are anti-censorship.
I don't really have the enthusiasm to keep making this point over and over while you ignore it and accuse me of bad faith for responding in ways that deflate some of your arguments. It's tiring. Have a good afternoon, S.
Re: Skeptic
I have read your comments with what I believe is an honest degree of skepticism, in particular regarding your replies to "sasinsea". Your closing to this particular screed, "--you're questioning my good faith. You might want to look in the mirror. That is not the spirit of this site.", causes me consternation on a couple of fronts.
Most importantly is the appearance of ironic humor, in that a probable narcissistic lawyer is recommending to someone else that "You might want to look in the mirror." Secondly, please explain either how or where or by whom on Matt Taiibi's Substack site you were granted either the right or privilege of determining who is not participating in "the spirit of this site; especially when such an insulting assumption is founded upon your own imagined and false claim that your "good faith" has been questioned.
Regarding this particular reply of yours, what is your informed reasoning behind the repetitive supportive references to "the DeVos policies" as Secretary of Education; other some silliness about comparing them to what "Biden" may or may not do in the next four years. Just for fun, what is your newfound Conservative lawyerly opinion of Betsy DeVos' brother Eric Prince's policy contributions?
As Usual,
EA
Having spent more than half a year under the protection of mercenaries (Triple Canopy rather than Blackwater, but same difference), i'm a fan of what Erik Prince does (or did) for a living.
That probably wasn't what you are looking for, though :-)
I do have nice things to say about the mercs though. Rank and file were foreign - Ugandan in this case. Big smiles and AKs. Leaders were all American and they went under names like "Rooster" and "Squirrel". Nondescript guys wearing khaki and carrying M4s. That said, super professional. They had booze. We didn't.
Re: HBI @~11PM
~5 hours ago you opined
"Having spent more than half a year under the protection of mercenaries (Triple Canopy rather than Blackwater, but same difference), i'm a fan of what Erik Prince does (or did) for a living.
That probably wasn't what you are looking for, though :-)"
Actually cowboy, that's almost exactly what I was expecting, just not from you in particular. It's always amazing (and often disappointing) to discover what crawls out from under a proverbial rock on one of these sites, especially when it's trying to disguise itself as something that it could never effectively be. The pecking order you alluded to sounds a tad condescending for someone who professes to have honorable served.
Please correct me if I fuck this "chain of command" up:
Eric Prince - Dear Leader
You Contractors
Squirrel carrying
Rooster M4's
Ugandan Big smiles &
Mercs AK's
I'll just call the "booze" reference a BS insertion.
This all seems to resemble a collection of gun-slinging killers for hire that don't have to abide by those sacred "Rules of Engagement" that the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were so determined to circumvent. I've often wondered why even more of these miscreants don't have life-size tats of Nixon, or one of these henchmen on their backs.
Could it be that this screed is not what you anticipated?
As Usual,
EA
Pretty much the confirmation bias expected, and the contempt for those who fight that I have come to expect from those who hate those who defend them. Until you're actually in danger. I'm having a bit of schadenfreude about that right about now, it amuses me.
You're wrong about just about everything but you'll have to find someone else to correct you, i'm happier not wasting my time.
Left and Right are immaterial descriptors. The issue is the "2" parties.
The "Democrats" have decided that their only concern is equity (at least until it actually takes things out of their individual party leaders' pockets). This has allowed them to descend into madness defending illiberal concepts - including censorship, not calling "transgenderism" mental illness, and means-testing government benefits by melanin count.
The "Republicans" have decided that they believe in the "common man" and "common sense" to the point where they pretend that they still don't want to funnel as much money to the people with the largest bank accounts (mostly themselves).
The truth, as always, lies in between.
McConnell's bullshitting all fall about the relief checks is the reason for the 1 vote majority in the Senate. Pelosi's bullshit about the January 6 insurrection is the reason why she will be out of power on Jan 1, 2023 (unless she can get Manchin and Synema to ditch the filibuster to allow her buy-the-vote bill to pass).
It's worthy of note that PBS featured Lisa DesJardin interviewing Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling last week, and Sterling was able to make some absolutely spot-on, cogent points about why Georgia's new proposals on voting regulations did not equate to an anti-democratic effort at (racist!) voter suppression, the way that partisan Democrats have alleged, falling all over each other with hyperbole:
Sterling: "in this law, we move to a thing that actually is a better election administration item, which is using a voter I.D. number, their driver's license number, or their last four of their Social and their date of birth to identify the person, as opposed to a subjective signature match, which kind of undermined many people's faith in how that signature matching was done. By having a binary, objective measure, it makes it easier and will likely lower rejection rates for those ballots...those very same people [allied with the Democrats] sued us to get rid of signature verification just last year, and they lost..."
Lisa DesJ: "...You know what is making headlines, of course, is this ban on handing out food and water at the polls. I understand you made the argument that, in the last election, there may have been some activists who used giving out water as an excuse to talk to voters.
First, do we know that that happened? And, second, if so, why not just enforce the campaign ban? Why eliminate giving out food and water?"
Gabriel S.: "Well, the main thing is, it's been used as a work-around to get around that law.
And the irony of this, as we looked it up, this is actually the law in the president's home state of Delaware right now. So, this is not some new thing that's been brought out. This is pretty standard across the country to avoid those kind of loopholes where people can go and campaign and try to influence voters in the line.
And that's been the law in this state for decades. This was a work-around. People sort of abused it. It's hard to enforce for elections officials and sheriffs. Like I said, it's the law in the president's home state of Delaware. So I'm surprised that shock isn't being held for his own state legislature, who passed the same thing."
(Yes, that's the same Gabriel Sterling who told the Election Steal Fanatics last November that yes, Joe Biden really did win the state of Georgia in a valid election with no evidence of fraud, and would the Trumpist goon squad please stop threatening his staff with their paranoid meltdowns.)
Now I'll present the two Partisan Templates for the way DesJardin's interview with Sterling gets recollected. You know, the takeaway. The information that gets lodged in long-term memory.
Partisan Democrats: they love PBS, of course. But when PBS presents content as disruptive of the Democratic Party Narrative as that, it literally goes in one ear and out the other, like the interview never happened.
Partisan Republicans: PBS never ran an interview like that, because ugh, PBS...they lean liberal, and therefore everything they feature MUST be serving the agenda of Cancel Culture orthodoxy. So they couldn't have.
We all caricature each other a bit. I have noticed that some (absolutely not all) elements of the media have become a bit more evenhanded since Trump's departure. They all seemed to judge it a moral imperative to get rid of Trump by any means necessary, and now some have gone back to more objective reporting. I hope this continues.
Buy that simply accentuates the problem. If they are only useful as a source of truth during times they approve of, then they are suspect at all times; are they accurately reporting facts now, or then? When does the switch flip? And so on.
Integrity is something that is very hard to gain, but very quick to lose. And these "journalists" have lost it.
Good points.
So, how long are the voting lines in Delaware?
The real issue isnтАЩt the food and water. ItтАЩs the under-resourcing of voting sites that is systematic. Once the lines to vote reach 8 hours, we can argue all we want about who gets to hand out food.
I can make a law that on its face looks neutral, but applying the same numerical limits on widely disparate counties has the effect of NOT being neutral. LetтАЩs face it, Georgia and much of the South has a long history of structuring voting to disadvantage people they donтАЩt want to vote. The people waiting 8 hours to vote are disproportionately non-white.
If "the real issue isn't the food and water", then why am I constantly hearing about that supposed problem in so many news reports? It's recurrently brought up as a big deal on the NPR news shows I listen to. For that matter, why is that aspect taking up so much of the energy in the discourse, when the real problem is the under-resourcing of voting sites?
At minimum, the fact that the critics of the Georgia law have highlighted that provision as if it were THE telling indication of voter suppression is an indication of their callowness and indiscipline.
"Georgia and much of the South has a long history of structuring voting to disadvantage people they donтАЩt want to vote."
I agree completely. I have no reticence about "facing" that fact. But we are not going to emerge from the past into a new day if the people with their hands on the wheel keep wagging their finger in the rear-view mirror. In fact, if someone pays too much attention to that activity, they are liable to crash the ambulance.
"The people waiting 8 hours to vote are disproportionately non-white."
That's my impression, too. But since I haven't heard enough FOCUS on that problem to be aware of the specifics- and because so much of the oxygen in the room has been burned up by these peripheral objections, these "gotchas"- I can't really speak to the details enough to know how much of a case there is to be booked there in the year 2021CE, or whether that's just more partisan wolf-crying, with extra Racism sauce on the side.
My expressed skepticism on that is not an attempt at a hand-wave. I sincerely want to hear those details. Occasionally I've heard a snippet or two of hard data on that particular aspect, but it's been all too readily buried underneath all of the snickering by people like the New Jacks at the NY Times (on the hour every weekday that NPR has provided them, entitled "The Daily") of the very possibility that campaign workers might use offers of food and water to pitch candidates at the last minute to voters waiting in line, when a) it's generally agreed that touting candidates at polling places is unethical and illegal, and b) anyone over the age of 22 with experience in reality-based society knows that offers of food and water provide a foolproof opportunity to engage in that tactic. You're talking to an old cabdriver here. Don't even try to snow me.
I'm in absolute agreement that long lines at polling places are inexcusable. For that matter, I think opening polls at 7am or 8am and closing polls at 8pm and 9pm is inexplicable, in the modern world- it disrespects the swing shift and night shift workers out there. But do you want to know who wants those polling places shut down by 9pm more than anyone else? The TV networks. And the viewing audience, that's been conditioned into getting their first hits of info-crack from reportage of the results by 930pm. My personal attitude about that is, take all the time that you need. I can wait a couple of days to find out the results of an election where the winners are not going to assume the duties of office for months...I'm not Pavlov's Dog. I mean, if you're going to show the numbers, I'll watch, maybe. But if people are being discouraged from voting because they don't get off shift until 1030pm, I don't get that. But understand, that's everywhere.
I'll get deeper with this: I've read through all of the "voter suppression" provisions identified by the NY Times in the new law, and I'm not really seeing it. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/us/politics/georgia-voting-law-annotated.html
Also, it's really disingenuous to pin an argument about absentee voting on an observation like this:
"Georgia has cut by more than half the period during which voters may request an absentee ballot, from nearly six months before an election to less than three.
This will almost certainly reduce the number of people who seek absentee ballots and the number of people who vote. In the last presidential election, 1.3 million Georgians тАФ about 26 percent of the stateтАЩs electorate тАФ voted with absentee ballots. Of those who returned absentee ballots in 2020, 65 percent voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. and 34 percent chose Donald J. Trump."
The Covid Year Absentee Ballot has no business being put forth as if it were the New Normal for elections. I fail to see why it's of dire importance to the cause of justice that prospective voters have 180 days prior to an election to request an absentee ballot. 180 days before November 7 is May 11. In any primary season that amounts to a contest instead of an ordainment, the candidates haven't even been chosen at that point. The 78 day opening in the new Georgia regs equates to the last week in August. In most years, the conventions have just wrapped up. The dog days of August are still widely known as "the silly season" in electoral politics. The candidates haven't even had their first debates. What conceivable payoff is there to tacitly encouraging people to vote as soon as the ballots can be printed up with the names of the candidates on them?
I voted in advance in 2008, 2012, and 2016 in Virginia. That voting isn't allowed in Va. until 45 days before Election Day in November. I never had the idea that I was being put under the gun by that situation. To compare that with the days of Jim Crow- it's disrespectful.
I also think it's disrespectful for the Democratic Party to patronize "nonwhite voters" as if they practically needed to be spoon-fed to get them to turn out in a high percentage at the polls. Black people and Latin~s and whoever else are most assured of showing up at the polls when they're fired up, same as everybody. Same-day registration, that's a travesty. It's Boss Tweed Tammany Hall bullshit. That's a sad-ass legacy of the Democratic Party that needs to be kicked to the curb the same way the actual legacies of Jim Crow need to be. Instead, it's being touted as a Civil Rights measure.
Ironically, there's never been a better opportunity for the Democratic Party to put together a strong ground game. There are actual voter regulations out there that are worked to discourage a heavy voter turnout in minority populations, and they deserve to be countered (although, as I've said, not with the scattershot presumptions of racist motivation for every voting reg put into place by a Republican majority in a state legislature.) But beyond that, the best thing the Democrats could do would be to get their constituents riled up enough to not let some petty obstacles put in place by dead-enders discourage them. Because the worst of these regs don't even come close to shotgun voter suppression. They're more like paper tiger voter discouragement- which is a sign of weakness in the right-wing opposition, not strength. Instead, the Democrats keep regressing into their insecurities. The best thing that they could do would be to deal with the difficulties by dunking on their opponents fair and square. (I'm convinced that is what actually did the trick in the January Senatorial elections in Georgia.) Instead, the Democratss- the new winners! and every demographic trend says they have the wind at their back!- keep falling back into this aggrieved paranoia, this passive aggressive whining and wheedling, the taint of the old buy-votes-with-packs-of-cigarettes era (and before that, Boss Tweed's free open house at the taverns in his wards...)
To the Democratic Party braintrust: be better than that. If you can be. If you're capable of it.
One very big problem with having voting places open for your proposed "swing shift" is getting people to man these locations and party acolytes to monitor them. It is already difficult in many locations to get "granny" to volunteer to run or monitor polling places in many parts of the country. When the people themselves refuse to participate in manning the polls it is difficult to understand how we extend voting hours overnight without severely compromising election integrity.
Like everything else, it's a tradeoff not solely a positive way to solve a minor problem.
With the increase in vote by mail spreading around the country this may soon be a solution in search of a problem.
I take your point. Spreading out in-person voting over more than one day would also help with that aspect. I think should be more sites open for advance in-person voting, too.
I also think it would be a good idea for all concerned to acknowledge that there are valid concerns about losing the chain of provenance of ballots, as well as unfairly restricting access to them. The fact that problems haven't been shown to exist is no safeguard against some of them arising in the future if the protections are slipshod.
I brought up the 2020 Covid Election as an exception, because that's what it was- there wasn't any advance notice for any possible ballot-rigging conspiracy- even at a local level- to figure out how such a massive mail-in situation could be abused to rig an election to their preference, and then make the preparations necessary to carry out that plan. But that doesn't prove that it's safe.
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Coincidentally, I was just got in from listening to a C-Span (re)broadcast of the House Administration Committee Hearings, and I'm a bit less skeptical of massive mail-in voting than I was formerly. I was impressed by what I heard from both of the witnesses (one of whom represented Georgia and the other Oregon, I think.) The House members I heard sounded reasonable, too (not exactly the rule for the Congressional hearings I've heard and seen over the years, unfortunately.) But I think there are challenges associated with scaling it up as a routine process in states with large populations, and I think it's important to have safeguards in place to protect both provenance/chain of custody and the privacy concerns required for a secret ballot.
Oregon has a long record of highly successful mail-in balloting. It isn't even hard. However, I have a couple of caveats. One is that Oregon requires ballots to be in on election day; we're extensively warned to drop them in the special boxes if it's too close to election day. Consequently, there's a parade of sheepish procrasinators to the boxes on Election Day - one of them me.
The other is that Oregon is a "clean" state; the voters have zero tolerance for scandal. There has been all of one case of cheating, by an election official. I can imagine other ways, but I won't repeat them. So if your state is crooked, this will be a considerably heavier lift - but so is all voting.
I was briefly a GA resident. Their idea of public services is not that of someone living in the Northeast. I'd believe that most polling places are inefficiently run. And mind you, my experience is New Jersey, where everything is inefficient.
Dragging Georgians into the future is not a simple thing. They are justifiably resistant to external pressure.
┬лIn the last presidential election, 1.3 million Georgians тАФ about 26 percent of the stateтАЩs electorate тАФ voted with absentee ballots. Of those who returned absentee ballots in 2020, 65 percent voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. and 34 percent chose Donald J. Trump."┬╗
Also look at the House votes held together with presidential elections in Georgia in November:
2020: R: 2.49m, D: 2.39m
2016: R: 2.27m, D: 1.50m
2012: R: 2.10m, D: 1.45m
2008: R: 1.88m, D: 1.86m
Pretty "amazing" what happened between 2016 and 2020 (59% surge in the Democratic vote). Then consider reading between the lines this article on the senate elections in Georgia in November:
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/935730100/how-biden-won-ramping-up-the-base-and-expanding-margins-in-the-suburbs
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-28/how-the-democrats-won-georgia-s-senate-runoffs
The Democratic party spent a collossal amount of time and effort on the senatorial race in Georgia, and only managed to add 100k votes on top of the "amazing" number in November.
IтАЩll tell you how this law will be used. Voting access will increase in places where there is currently no problem, namely small rural counties. The numerical limits that have been baked into this bill are targeted to reduce access in the larger counties, that - oh my - happen to have a large Democrat registration.
The voting lines that are experienced in the larger counties are the result of past efforts to limit who much access voters have to voting sites. The problem will get worse when less mail-in voting is allowed. When the lines get longer, the legislature will claim that the county elections officials are incompetent and will replace them with Republican hacks, per provisions in this law. That will create even less access for voters in those counties.
No bill like this will ever say it is discriminatory. That would be struck down by courts. The bill has been structured to treated large counties unfairly, knowing that they vote for Democrats. Allowing a state takeover of their election boards will permanently entrench a Republican power structure on Georgia, regardless of how the residents would like to vote.