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It's a shame that neither party is interested in fixing this issue. These problems have been known for many years, but regardless of who's in power in the Congr

It's a shame that neither party is interested in fixing this issue. These problems have been known for many years, but regardless of who's in power in the Congress, nothing gets done about it.

hannasanarion 8y ago
This is a lie. The Democrats have tried at least six times in the last fifteen years to get money out of elections and make elections more secure, such as by requiring paper backups. Every time they were blocked by Bush, or the Republican Filibuster, or Trump. Election security is not a "both sides" issue. Democrats want more of it, Republicans want less of it, and this is bourne out very clearly in their voting record. https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/6brytw/justice_department_appoints_special_prosecutor/dhpcbdc/ https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/6brytw/justice_departm...
- rectang 8y ago
  This isn't uniformly true: consider that New York's governor Cuomo blocked played a part in blocking reforms there for several years. It's not historically true, either, when you consider buying votes in the Daley machine of Chicago. It's possible to talk about the politics of this on HN, but if we apply one level of generalization ("people in power for whom free and fair elections do not serve their interest"), we can have a less inflamed discussion. My rejoinder to the grandparent is, "some states are better than others". This is well known, and the correlation with party is well known as well.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    Cuomo is not a good example of an mainline Democrat. He sides with Republicans in the state senate as often as Democrats. The only NY politician with a worse approval rating is Mayor DeBlasio. Election reform is a major piece of the Democratic party platform, and has been for a very long time. Whenever it comes up in Congress, the vote is party-line: all Democrats in favor of more secure and less money-influenced elections, all Republicans opposed.
    - jerf 8y ago
      No, it's all Democrats in favor of things that they know will net them more Democrat votes, and Republicans against them, and vice versa, of course. Why are the Democrats upset about the census not counting "migrants" and going to court to block attempts to make the census only count citizens? Well, you could try to derive an answer from first principles... or you could just count votes, and come to the correct answer much more quickly. Don't be so silly as to believe their spin about "getting money out of the election"; such reforms are not hypothetical things that may happen in the future, reforms have been passed are in effect, and, lo, money is still in politics.
      - tzs 8y ago
        > Why are the Democrats upset about the census not counting "migrants" and going to court to block attempts to make the census only count citizens? You are a bit off on that. The census is supposed to count everyone resident in the US, regardless of citizenship status or legality of their presence here. It's been that way since the Census Act of 1790. (And it does not count US citizens who are not resident in the US, except for Federal employees and their dependents). The issue with adding a question about citizenship is that it might discourage some people from responding to the census, reducing the accuracy of the count. The Census Bureau estimates that about 6.5 million people will not respond if the question is included. There are legitimate reasons for the government to want to know how many citizens are resident in the country, and how they are distributed, but they already have that data from the American Community Survey which does include a citizenship question (in fact, I believe, the same question they are trying to add to the census). The experts at the Census Bureau unanimously recommended not including the question (as did six former directors of the Bureau, both Republican and Democrat). The Commerce Secretary overruled them, claiming that the Justice Department said it wanted the question added to somehow better enforce the Voting Rights Act. (Emails between the Secretary and the DoJ that were introduced in one of the trials over this show that this is not true--the DoJ told him that the question was unnecessary). Here's a recent article that covers most of this [1]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/705210786/a-decade-of-implications-at-stake-supreme-court-hears-census-citizenship-questio https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/705210786/a-decade-of-implica...
- jerf 8y ago
  This is a Uniparty issue. There's several issues in the US that are always proposed by the minority party and blocked by the majority party. The reason is that neither party wants them, but both see an advantage in calling for them while in the minority.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    The 2016 Democratic platform included a resolution for constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United in the first 90 days, do you think they were hoping to lose? I provided a bunch of evidence over two decades of Democrats uniformly supporting election reform, and Republicans uniformly opposing. If what you say is true, it should be trivial to provide examples of the opposite, so why don't you?
    - jerf 8y ago
      "Citizens United in the first 90 days, do you think they were hoping to lose?" The Democrats believe Citizens United hurts them and benefits Republicans. It does not challenge my core thesis. "If what you say is true, it should be trivial to provide examples of the opposite, so why don't you?" Republicans have, for instance, supported Voter ID laws consistently, while Democrats have vigorously opposed them. You have two basic choices here. You can either agree this is an example of the Republicans attempting to improve voter security. Or, you can repeat the standard accusations that Voter ID laws are simply intended to hurt minorities and suppress their votes, in which case you're basically agreeing with my thesis that the party's interests in these matters are driven by their interests rather than their stated principles. (The idea that voter ID is some sort of unmitigated atrocity is a peculiarly American one not shared by the rest of the world, which is why I infer it's a political position and not a logical one.) If, of course, you attribute to the Democrats all their stated reasons and goals, but every time the Republicans open their mouths they're lying every possible way and have every possible bad motive, of course you'll end up with the result that the Democrats are just awesomesauce and the Republicans stink, but it's not an interesting result. The conclusion is entirely described by the measurement metric. At least if I apply an action-based interests-driven theory equally to both parties, I end up with a potentially-consistent result. And in the scientific sense, I can tell you, it's a very highly predictive theory. I sit up and take notice when a political party makes what lawyers would call an against-interest admission, because it does not happen often.
- 1024core 8y ago
  > The Democrats have tried at least six times in the last fifteen years to get money out of elections and make elections more secure, such as by requiring paper backups. Couple of points. 1) "getting money out of elections" and "secure elections" are two entirely different problems. By grouping them into one, the Democrats make sure that there's a lot of opposition to it. And 2), for 2 years (2008-2010?) Democrats had full control of the Congress and Whitehouse. Why didn't they try then? I can tell you why: because then it would have become law! And then no more rallying your troops with the whole "elections are being stolen! elections are being stolen!!" cries. I am mostly a Democrat, but I'm not willing to give them a free pass just because they're Democrats.

It's a shame that neither party is interested in fixing this issue. These problems have been known for many years, but regardless of who's in power in the Congress, nothing gets done about it.

hannasanarion 8y ago

This is a lie. The Democrats have tried at least six times in the last fifteen years to get money out of elections and make elections more secure, such as by requiring paper backups. Every time they were blocked by Bush, or the Republican Filibuster, or Trump. Election security is not a "both sides" issue. Democrats want more of it, Republicans want less of it, and this is bourne out very clearly in their voting record. https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/6brytw/justice_department_appoints_special_prosecutor/dhpcbdc/ https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/6brytw/justice_departm...

rectang 8y ago
This isn't uniformly true: consider that New York's governor Cuomo blocked played a part in blocking reforms there for several years. It's not historically true, either, when you consider buying votes in the Daley machine of Chicago. It's possible to talk about the politics of this on HN, but if we apply one level of generalization ("people in power for whom free and fair elections do not serve their interest"), we can have a less inflamed discussion. My rejoinder to the grandparent is, "some states are better than others". This is well known, and the correlation with party is well known as well.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  Cuomo is not a good example of an mainline Democrat. He sides with Republicans in the state senate as often as Democrats. The only NY politician with a worse approval rating is Mayor DeBlasio. Election reform is a major piece of the Democratic party platform, and has been for a very long time. Whenever it comes up in Congress, the vote is party-line: all Democrats in favor of more secure and less money-influenced elections, all Republicans opposed.
  - jerf 8y ago
    No, it's all Democrats in favor of things that they know will net them more Democrat votes, and Republicans against them, and vice versa, of course. Why are the Democrats upset about the census not counting "migrants" and going to court to block attempts to make the census only count citizens? Well, you could try to derive an answer from first principles... or you could just count votes, and come to the correct answer much more quickly. Don't be so silly as to believe their spin about "getting money out of the election"; such reforms are not hypothetical things that may happen in the future, reforms have been passed are in effect, and, lo, money is still in politics.
    - tzs 8y ago
      > Why are the Democrats upset about the census not counting "migrants" and going to court to block attempts to make the census only count citizens? You are a bit off on that. The census is supposed to count everyone resident in the US, regardless of citizenship status or legality of their presence here. It's been that way since the Census Act of 1790. (And it does not count US citizens who are not resident in the US, except for Federal employees and their dependents). The issue with adding a question about citizenship is that it might discourage some people from responding to the census, reducing the accuracy of the count. The Census Bureau estimates that about 6.5 million people will not respond if the question is included. There are legitimate reasons for the government to want to know how many citizens are resident in the country, and how they are distributed, but they already have that data from the American Community Survey which does include a citizenship question (in fact, I believe, the same question they are trying to add to the census). The experts at the Census Bureau unanimously recommended not including the question (as did six former directors of the Bureau, both Republican and Democrat). The Commerce Secretary overruled them, claiming that the Justice Department said it wanted the question added to somehow better enforce the Voting Rights Act. (Emails between the Secretary and the DoJ that were introduced in one of the trials over this show that this is not true--the DoJ told him that the question was unnecessary). Here's a recent article that covers most of this [1]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/705210786/a-decade-of-implications-at-stake-supreme-court-hears-census-citizenship-questio https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/705210786/a-decade-of-implica...
jerf 8y ago
This is a Uniparty issue. There's several issues in the US that are always proposed by the minority party and blocked by the majority party. The reason is that neither party wants them, but both see an advantage in calling for them while in the minority.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  The 2016 Democratic platform included a resolution for constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United in the first 90 days, do you think they were hoping to lose? I provided a bunch of evidence over two decades of Democrats uniformly supporting election reform, and Republicans uniformly opposing. If what you say is true, it should be trivial to provide examples of the opposite, so why don't you?
  - jerf 8y ago
    "Citizens United in the first 90 days, do you think they were hoping to lose?" The Democrats believe Citizens United hurts them and benefits Republicans. It does not challenge my core thesis. "If what you say is true, it should be trivial to provide examples of the opposite, so why don't you?" Republicans have, for instance, supported Voter ID laws consistently, while Democrats have vigorously opposed them. You have two basic choices here. You can either agree this is an example of the Republicans attempting to improve voter security. Or, you can repeat the standard accusations that Voter ID laws are simply intended to hurt minorities and suppress their votes, in which case you're basically agreeing with my thesis that the party's interests in these matters are driven by their interests rather than their stated principles. (The idea that voter ID is some sort of unmitigated atrocity is a peculiarly American one not shared by the rest of the world, which is why I infer it's a political position and not a logical one.) If, of course, you attribute to the Democrats all their stated reasons and goals, but every time the Republicans open their mouths they're lying every possible way and have every possible bad motive, of course you'll end up with the result that the Democrats are just awesomesauce and the Republicans stink, but it's not an interesting result. The conclusion is entirely described by the measurement metric. At least if I apply an action-based interests-driven theory equally to both parties, I end up with a potentially-consistent result. And in the scientific sense, I can tell you, it's a very highly predictive theory. I sit up and take notice when a political party makes what lawyers would call an against-interest admission, because it does not happen often.
1024core 8y ago
> The Democrats have tried at least six times in the last fifteen years to get money out of elections and make elections more secure, such as by requiring paper backups. Couple of points. 1) "getting money out of elections" and "secure elections" are two entirely different problems. By grouping them into one, the Democrats make sure that there's a lot of opposition to it. And 2), for 2 years (2008-2010?) Democrats had full control of the Congress and Whitehouse. Why didn't they try then? I can tell you why: because then it would have become law! And then no more rallying your troops with the whole "elections are being stolen! elections are being stolen!!" cries. I am mostly a Democrat, but I'm not willing to give them a free pass just because they're Democrats.