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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 re

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
        None of that matters with regard to what I said. Probably none of it matters with regard to what is really going on, either. Our job as plebians is to get really distracted arguing about the details of the various fig leaves and whose fig leaves are better, but that's all they really are. I don't see any reason to care about them any more than our political class (really) does.
        tptacek 8y ago
        This is a non sequitur response to an informed and interesting comment, which 'tzs clearly took pains to compose and which addresses in detail the claim you made above. You'd have been better off not commenting at all than writing this.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    Democrats consistently oppose all forms of voter ID, which is pretty much standard practice in most other developed countries. The usual explanation is that it amounts to racial profiling in practice, which is true enough with the implementations that GOP proposes - but then why not propose an implementation that doesn't have those problems (again, like most other developed countries already have)? Don't forget that Maryland remains one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the nation, either - and that gerrymander was carried out by the Dems, and is currently being defended in court by the state admin. I'm also not convinced by their stance on counting non-citizens for the purpose of representation. I am not a citizen, and I cannot vote - but the effect of the present system is that a vote is effectively allocated to me, but then handed over to whichever side is first past the post in any election in my district, amplifying their voting power without my consent. Supposedly this is because they still "represent" me - but it's about as meaningful as the representation that the American colonies ostensibly had in the British parliament prior to the revolution. If voting power irregularities that stem from the electoral college are bad - and they are - this is no better. So why are Dems supporting it? The cynical answer is that it gives disproportionate voting power to areas with large immigrant non-citizen populations, which are mostly urban and lean strongly Dem. I'm not sure what a non-cynical answer is; I can't come up with one. On the whole, I believe that it is correct to say that Dems are much more often in favor of less money influence on voting and broader franchise. But given situational examples to the contrary, it seems less like a principled stance, and more like the party interests being in alignment with those goals more often than they are for GOP. Which makes sense for a party that relies on a broader, larger coalition of diverse voters, rather than a monolithic key support group.
    - specialist 8y ago
      No Democrat any where opposes properly identifying voters. One's identity and eligibility to vote is verified upon registration. One's identity is confirmed when being issued a ballot. The current system works so well, until recently [1], that there have been very few cases of voter or registration fraud. If you are you unhappy with forms of identification accepted to be issued a ballot, then you should advocate that all voters are issued a government issued identification for free. Which is pretty much standard practice in most other developed countries. Requiring government issued ID to vote that is not free is called a poll tax. And that's unconstitutional. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47323556 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47323556
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.

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
      None of that matters with regard to what I said. Probably none of it matters with regard to what is really going on, either. Our job as plebians is to get really distracted arguing about the details of the various fig leaves and whose fig leaves are better, but that's all they really are. I don't see any reason to care about them any more than our political class (really) does.
      - tptacek 8y ago
        This is a non sequitur response to an informed and interesting comment, which 'tzs clearly took pains to compose and which addresses in detail the claim you made above. You'd have been better off not commenting at all than writing this.
- int_19h 8y ago
  Democrats consistently oppose all forms of voter ID, which is pretty much standard practice in most other developed countries. The usual explanation is that it amounts to racial profiling in practice, which is true enough with the implementations that GOP proposes - but then why not propose an implementation that doesn't have those problems (again, like most other developed countries already have)? Don't forget that Maryland remains one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the nation, either - and that gerrymander was carried out by the Dems, and is currently being defended in court by the state admin. I'm also not convinced by their stance on counting non-citizens for the purpose of representation. I am not a citizen, and I cannot vote - but the effect of the present system is that a vote is effectively allocated to me, but then handed over to whichever side is first past the post in any election in my district, amplifying their voting power without my consent. Supposedly this is because they still "represent" me - but it's about as meaningful as the representation that the American colonies ostensibly had in the British parliament prior to the revolution. If voting power irregularities that stem from the electoral college are bad - and they are - this is no better. So why are Dems supporting it? The cynical answer is that it gives disproportionate voting power to areas with large immigrant non-citizen populations, which are mostly urban and lean strongly Dem. I'm not sure what a non-cynical answer is; I can't come up with one. On the whole, I believe that it is correct to say that Dems are much more often in favor of less money influence on voting and broader franchise. But given situational examples to the contrary, it seems less like a principled stance, and more like the party interests being in alignment with those goals more often than they are for GOP. Which makes sense for a party that relies on a broader, larger coalition of diverse voters, rather than a monolithic key support group.
  - specialist 8y ago
    No Democrat any where opposes properly identifying voters. One's identity and eligibility to vote is verified upon registration. One's identity is confirmed when being issued a ballot. The current system works so well, until recently [1], that there have been very few cases of voter or registration fraud. If you are you unhappy with forms of identification accepted to be issued a ballot, then you should advocate that all voters are issued a government issued identification for free. Which is pretty much standard practice in most other developed countries. Requiring government issued ID to vote that is not free is called a poll tax. And that's unconstitutional. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47323556 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47323556

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.