4 ms·

This would just be a fine on poor people. In many US states there are active efforts to disenfranchise and suppress voting such as moving voting places, not pro

by erentz 7y ago

This would just be a fine on poor people. In many US states there are active efforts to disenfranchise and suppress voting such as moving voting places, not providing enough booths so there are big queues and delays, automatically removing people from rolls, etc. The US first needs to establish an independent electoral commission to set district boundaries and run the elections fairly like in other countries.

dane-pgp 7y ago
A great idea, but I think the problem is convincing politicians to appoint independent commissioners that may remove their electoral advantage. Perhaps a necessary step is to come up with a rule that can objectively determine how gerrymandered a given set of boundaries are, and then convince enough people in both parties to agree to the same limit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Efficiency_gap_calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Efficiency_gap_...
- thu2111 7y ago
  The UK has such a commission. It hasn't worked out well. The commissioners turned out to be very publicly stating strong political opinions (which were mostly homogenous). If you want to run elections that's the sort of behaviour it should go without saying you don't engage in. Their decisions are regularly criticised for being extremely biased and they've been slapped down by judges in some high profile cases, where the judges basically said the commission didn't understand electoral law and/or appeared to be deliberately engaging in political harassment. The UK commission doesn't set electoral boundaries though, Parliament does that. They just run other aspects of elections.
  - dane-pgp 7y ago
    > Their decisions are regularly criticised for being extremely biased Regularly criticised by whom? I'm guessing the side that is found to be breaking electoral rules. > they've been slapped down by judges in some high profile cases, where the judges basically said the commission didn't understand electoral law and/or appeared to be deliberately engaging in political harassment. Maybe the law was vague, or maybe, get this, the judges were biased and the commissioners were actually correct. Unfortunately we're now living in a world where politicians and institutions and court cases are evaluated not based on any objective truth, but on whether "my side" beats "the other side". Perhaps it's always been like that, as the history of gerrymandering shows, but it does seem that the polarisation and tribalism is more extreme or more blatant now.
    - thu2111 7y ago
      You seem to be doing exactly that, no? You're assuming without having researched the details that the Commission must be correct and everyone else must be wrong. At least that's how your reply reads. Politicians have criticised it. Journalists have criticised it. The Metropolitan Police have criticised it. High court judges have criticised it. Exonerated members of the public have criticised it. The archives here detail various setbacks and screwups the EC has had, along with evidence for the prior sentences: https://order-order.com/tag/electoral-commission/ https://order-order.com/tag/electoral-commission/ The EC is the kind of thing you find in a banana republic. It's indefensible. You can't claim to be a neutral arbiter of fairness in elections when investigations you refer to the police are repeatedly thrown out because they were so shoddily done, when multiple judges say you don't understand electoral law, when it's been found you issued incorrect advice to campaigners, when politicans from both major parties are calling for you to be disbanded and - most critically - when the people running it repeatedly proclaim their hatred for political causes and parties in public. The idea these people are unbiased is absurd. The director of regulation at the EC posted this to Facebook: "[Louise Edwards] cannot believe she lives under a Tory PM again! What is wrong with people? Do they not remember the last time? Words fail me, grrr." and "Just can't understand what people were thinking. Do they not remember the Tories before?" and "[Louise Edwards] doesn't want to live under a Tory government" How can anyone believe British elections are run fairly when the people trusted to run them literally post on the internet that they don't want one side to win? Unsurprisingly, people don't. The entire thing is a textbook example of how completely corrupted government bureaucracies can get the moment they're not directly run by people who might lose their job at the next election. The EC should have been shut down years ago.

by erentz 7y ago

dane-pgp 7y ago

A great idea, but I think the problem is convincing politicians to appoint independent commissioners that may remove their electoral advantage. Perhaps a necessary step is to come up with a rule that can objectively determine how gerrymandered a given set of boundaries are, and then convince enough people in both parties to agree to the same limit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Efficiency_gap_calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#Efficiency_gap_...

thu2111 7y ago
The UK has such a commission. It hasn't worked out well. The commissioners turned out to be very publicly stating strong political opinions (which were mostly homogenous). If you want to run elections that's the sort of behaviour it should go without saying you don't engage in. Their decisions are regularly criticised for being extremely biased and they've been slapped down by judges in some high profile cases, where the judges basically said the commission didn't understand electoral law and/or appeared to be deliberately engaging in political harassment. The UK commission doesn't set electoral boundaries though, Parliament does that. They just run other aspects of elections.
- dane-pgp 7y ago
  > Their decisions are regularly criticised for being extremely biased Regularly criticised by whom? I'm guessing the side that is found to be breaking electoral rules. > they've been slapped down by judges in some high profile cases, where the judges basically said the commission didn't understand electoral law and/or appeared to be deliberately engaging in political harassment. Maybe the law was vague, or maybe, get this, the judges were biased and the commissioners were actually correct. Unfortunately we're now living in a world where politicians and institutions and court cases are evaluated not based on any objective truth, but on whether "my side" beats "the other side". Perhaps it's always been like that, as the history of gerrymandering shows, but it does seem that the polarisation and tribalism is more extreme or more blatant now.
  - thu2111 7y ago
    You seem to be doing exactly that, no? You're assuming without having researched the details that the Commission must be correct and everyone else must be wrong. At least that's how your reply reads. Politicians have criticised it. Journalists have criticised it. The Metropolitan Police have criticised it. High court judges have criticised it. Exonerated members of the public have criticised it. The archives here detail various setbacks and screwups the EC has had, along with evidence for the prior sentences: https://order-order.com/tag/electoral-commission/ https://order-order.com/tag/electoral-commission/ The EC is the kind of thing you find in a banana republic. It's indefensible. You can't claim to be a neutral arbiter of fairness in elections when investigations you refer to the police are repeatedly thrown out because they were so shoddily done, when multiple judges say you don't understand electoral law, when it's been found you issued incorrect advice to campaigners, when politicans from both major parties are calling for you to be disbanded and - most critically - when the people running it repeatedly proclaim their hatred for political causes and parties in public. The idea these people are unbiased is absurd. The director of regulation at the EC posted this to Facebook: "[Louise Edwards] cannot believe she lives under a Tory PM again! What is wrong with people? Do they not remember the last time? Words fail me, grrr." and "Just can't understand what people were thinking. Do they not remember the Tories before?" and "[Louise Edwards] doesn't want to live under a Tory government" How can anyone believe British elections are run fairly when the people trusted to run them literally post on the internet that they don't want one side to win? Unsurprisingly, people don't. The entire thing is a textbook example of how completely corrupted government bureaucracies can get the moment they're not directly run by people who might lose their job at the next election. The EC should have been shut down years ago.