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Don't re-elect SOPA supporters on Tuesday

• pooriaazimi 14y ago
  But what if they're excellent (in your opinion) in every other aspect? If you agree with them on 20 issues, and disagree on 2, it's better (and IMO, you're being much more responsible) to vote for a pro-SOPA than to vote for someone who's against SOPA but is a complete bozo. I think you should not decide for/against someone just because you agree/disagree strongly with one of their ideas. (Note: I'm not in the U.S. and like others disagree with SOPA)
• GotAnyMegadeth 14y ago
  perhaps this should be "Don't re-elect SOPA supporters on Tuesday, but make sure you vote for an alternative."
• sneak 14y ago
  Fuck that, don't re-elect PATRIOT Act supporters. SOPA pales in comparison to losing one's basic human rights. (Hint: Obama renewed Bush's PATRIOT Act when it was due to sunset.) The seemingly commonplace idea that popular american liberals are somehow less evil than the GOP is dangerous poison. PS: inb4 instant-runoff voting
  • thebooktocome 14y ago
    I think it's safe to say that there is no plausible electoral outcome that ends with the new President working to repeal the PATRIOT act.
    • sneak 14y ago
      Then those of us that consider living somewhere with basic human rights important have exactly two (2) options: - Take up arms in violent revolution to restore due process, - or, - - Flee the country and take one's productive energies and output to a place that has the rule of law. I abhor violence in all nonconsensual forms. This summer will be five years since I left job, family, friends, native language, and significant other behind in what was easily the most difficult and taxing decision I have ever made in my life. There are no other reasonable options now but to flee. To remain and to contribute in light of these facts is to support and enable this course of events. Don't be evil.
      • Artistry121 14y ago
        Where, may I ask, did you flee to?
        • dangrossman 14y ago
          Germany, according to his profile.
          • rayiner 14y ago
            Fleeing the US to Europe to escape restrictions on civil liberties... Head = asplode.
            • sneak 14y ago
              The US is a lot more free on paper, but has very little liberty in practice. Germany is, in theory, a lot less free - however I have never been anywhere else that allows many of the sorts of things that are commonplace here. I could go into many details but suffice it to say there is an interesting inverse symmetry to be found. One handy example: asking a bank for €5000 in cash doesn't even raise an eyebrow here.
              • CWuestefeld 14y ago
                * The US is a lot more free on paper, but has very little liberty in practice. Germany is, in theory, a lot less free - however I have never been anywhere else that allows many of the sorts of things that are commonplace here.* I have a similar understanding of China, based on several limited visits and conversations with extended family and friends there. They've got a lot of restriction in theory, but in practice, as long as you leave the oligarchy alone, they keep to themselves and ignore you.
                • loevborg 14y ago
                  That comparison is fanciful! Germany has the rule of law and its liberty (or lack thereof) is nothing like China's.
    • mtgx 14y ago
      At least vote 3rd party for people who would like to do that. If enough people do that, they might at least want to consider some of those policies for the next elections. Real change has to start somewhere.
      • sneak 14y ago
        October 2011 marked the tenth anniversary of the USA PATRIOT Act going into law. If change from within worked, it would have accomplished measurable effect within the first decade. Voting in the USA, on the federal level, is now demonstrably meaningless. How many decades will you live there, having liberty only at the mercy and willingness of your government and its large corporations, entertaining this poisonous delusion? The ratchet only works in one direction.
        • fusiongyro 14y ago
          Uprooting a life is complex, expensive, difficult, and unpleasant. Nobody's going to do it until it's more attractive than staying. Look at where people immigrate here from, and you'll have a good benchmark for the difference in quality of life that will have to exist in order for it to start looking attractive to emigrate--and remember that even then, the vast majority of people stay because it was easier or they find it tolerable.
          • sneak 14y ago
            You are explaining the consequences of such a choice to someone who has done it. It's not a matter of quality of life. That is the danger - the quality of life for the median citizen in the USA is nearly unmatched.
            • fusiongyro 14y ago
              Except it is a quality of life issue. Not many people are willing to endure a worsening quality of life simply to achieve philosophical purity. I'm glad that it worked for you, but do understand that simply by being an immigrant you are demonstrably different. That it worked for you is absolutely not a prescription for everyone.
    • jonnathanson 14y ago
      The only plausible outcome for this election would be if Obama won, and he decided in his second term -- with nothing to lose, politically -- that he would repeal the PATRIOT act. (Not because Obama is any better on this issue than Romney, but because by nature, a second-term president has less to fear in making politically risky calls). I would call this scenario highly unlikely, if only because he'd face strong pressure from his party not to repeal it, jeopardizing everyone else's political futures in doing so. This is one of those obnoxious political footballs that is entrenched precisely because everyone's too chickenshit to do anything about it. Republicans won't do it, because they have a rah-rah jingoistic voting base to appeal to. Democrats won't do it, because they don't want to look "soft on terrorism." And nobody wants to be the guy who repeals it right before another attack happens. So both parties are strongly disincentivized to repeal it. In the long run, I think we'd need a grassroots movement to pressure politicians to make it a core issue.
      • rhizome 14y ago
        It's equally plausible that with nothing to lose he would make PATRIOT worse.
        • freehunter 14y ago
          That's assuming he's actively malicious. Given his record, I would doubt that (note, not malicious does not equal the opposite of malicious). It is certainly a possibility, but I wouldn't say it's an equal possibility. In all likelihood, the chances we're discussing here on both sides are far less than one.
          • rhizome 14y ago
            His intent barely matters. If it gets worse, it is worse.
          • pessimizer 14y ago
            >That's assuming he's actively malicious. No, it's not. It's not assuming that he is against the PATRIOT Act. I've seen no reason to believe that he is, other than the projections of his constituency. President Obama has advanced and legalized most of the encroachments on civil liberties from the Bush years, and in no way that I am aware of has he made any argument to curtail them since he was Candidate Obama. Assigning malice to that is assuming that he believes that the PATRIOT Act is a bad thing, and that supporting it would be knowingly perpetuating a bad thing. In other words, assuming that he secretly thinks of PATRIOT as you think of PATRIOT.
    • Shivetya 14y ago
      I am all for changing who is in the White House every four years until they take the hint. I would be of the same mind for Congress but they keep changing the rules to make it near impossible to get them out. The only recent threat to them had even the press siding with politicians! Just like with schools, most people will claim that Congress is bad but have no reason NOT to support their guy because he is "the good one". Term Limits, I am more than willing to take the bad many associate with term limits over the situation as is
  • Goronmon 14y ago
    The seemingly commonplace idea that popular american liberals are somehow less evil than the GOP is dangerous poison. What does this statement have to do with the topic being discussed? Other than just being the usual political flamebait that people always feel compelled to sling around when discussing policitics, of course.
    • sneak 14y ago
      The post is suggesting that people vote based on issues vitally important to the freedoms of this interest group (HN). I am pointing out that one should live (and vote, and think, et c) based on issues vitally important to the freedoms of all humans, as these are much more life-and-death than internet censorship (and that one is huge, too). Political flamebait is usually of the pro-/anti-skub variety. I argue that it is just that - flamebait - as we can expect near-identical behavior on the issue of basic liberties from any candidate in the US with half a prayer of being elected. It is now time to leave. This is not a drill.
  • mindslight 14y ago
    I think democrat presidents are actually worse for the discourse, as the blue plebs turn into complacent government supporters, while the red plebs think that repeating the republican party line is a form of dissent.
  • anonymoushn 14y ago
    My plan is to not re-elect EESA supporters. I don't think this plan will work very well, though.
  • rayiner 14y ago
    What "basic human rights" does the PATRIOT Act impinge? It's been a decade, and I don't see the "there" there. The PATRIOT Act was supposed to be the end of the republic, but so far it seems to have had no impact in practice.
    • sneak 14y ago
      The lack of judicial oversight for the executive branch's data gathering powers granted by the Act evaporates any circumstances in which the First Amendment could reasonably and effectively be used for unpopular speech or unpopular assembly. The banking regulation amendments effectively prohibit large scale anonymous or unpopular publishing and communication/organization of effective resistance. A shining example presently is the harassment of the social networks of Wikileaks associates and supporters. Another is the collection and use of Twitter and GSM metadata of protesters in New York. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/fbi/fbi-informant-infiltrated-occupy-movement-758348 http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/fbi/fbi-informant-infilt... The next time something like COINTELPRO happens, it won't have a wikipedia page for it, and those attempting to draw attention to it will be jailed indefinitely without trial. Note that this is the same FBI that targeted Martin Luther King - but now with no sunlight. If you don't see the real, live implications of this sort of tyranny, you aren't paying attention. The government issues over 40,000 NSLs a year, now.
      • rayiner 14y ago
        Absolutely absurd. What the FBI did with Martin Luther King came to light years later. Meanwhile, we're seeing their moves with regards to organizations like WikiLeaks in real time. There is far more sunlight today than there was. National Security Letters are also wildly overblown. They are a formalization of things the FBI was already doing. With that formalization has come increased judicial oversight: the PATRIOT Act Reauthorization in 2006 gave recipients subject to the gag order recourse in court. You think if the FBI circa 1950 wanted information from you, you'd be able to go complain to a federal court? Absolutely absurd.
        • sneak 14y ago
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
• zhemao 14y ago
  The problem with this is, how can we be sure that their opponents won't also vote for such legislation if they get into office?
  • ajross 14y ago
    We don't, obviously. And in most cases positions on bills like this are a function of geography more than politics -- if a bill is desired by local lobbyists the local representatives are going to support it. This is the problem with single-issue voting in a two party system; it simply doesn't work the way you want it to except in very limited ways: SOPA died because its proponents wanted to avoid the controversy that was growing over it and dropped it, seeing litle upside. That is the way single-issue politics works in the US system. And the system worked, and the bill isn't law. Trying to prolong the fight at the ballot box does nothing more than make you enemies among the supporters of basically every other single-issue subject in american politics. A really important related point is that not all issues are like this. A vote at the ballot box isn't going to do anything about SOPA or follow-on bills, but it is likely to have effects on future tax and health care policy, court appointments (hint: which party's judicial appointments are most friendly to heavy-handed internet regulation?), and (in the executive branch) the choice to engage in wars of aggression. Don't fool yourself into being a single-issue voter. This isn't a parliamentary system.
  • slurgfest 14y ago
    It's a safe bet that if a candidate publicly opposes SOPA they are a lot less likely to vote for it. So look for that, if you are a single-issue voter on SOPA.
• hypersoar 14y ago
  In California, he hasn't taken into account redistricting. If you live in the the new 30th district, your choices are Brad Sherman and Howard Berman - both on this list. There are a lot of people involved in the entertainment industry around there (it's in the San Fernando Valley), so it might be impossible to elect someone not beholden to it. (I know this because I used to live in Brad Sherman's district. I never expected that area to have a competitive congressional race, and now it's the site of one of the most expensive, bewildering, and viciously competitive races in the country.)
  • wonderyak 14y ago
    I currently live in this district and the amout of political ads coming through my mail are INSANE. There is almost no right choice here.
• ssharp 14y ago
  I think it's irresponsible to say "don't vote for this incumbent because he/she supported SOPA" without offering any explanation on the alternative candidates' positions on SOPA. It seems probable that some portion of the opponents might also support SOPA-like legislature.
  • mtgx 14y ago
    Real facts and actions are better than a theory that another one might do it, too. You need to take that into consideration, too, but at the end of the day one actually voted for SOPA, and another hasn't (at least yet). To me the option is clear.
    • ssharp 14y ago
      I guess it's clear if your voting entirely on one issue, which is what the OP is about. For me, the alternative is a Republican candidate, who if he wins, has the potential to change the majority of the Senate, and has taken positions I do not agree with, including reproductive rights, marriage equality, energy and global warming. I don't agree with SOPA at all but I feel like it's something that would actually be debated. These other issues are so polarizing that it becomes majority rule and to me, that makes them more important. Regardless, it's good to be educated about your candidates.
    • slurgfest 14y ago
      Public statements/positions are actions and have a lot of predictive value. Do you seriously think that we should AVOID looking into the other candidate's relationship to the issue?
  • ericdykstra 14y ago
    American politics has always been about voting for the guy/party who hasn't fucked you over yet, even if they're just as likely to as the first guy. That's why we see the house majority, senate majority, and presidency change hands between the "two" parties so often.
    • 14y ago
• btipling 14y ago
  I think this article might have made more sense during the primaries. I'm not happy with Feinstein supporting SOPA, but I'm not going to vote for her conservative opponent who probably also would have supported SOPA.
• theevocater 14y ago
  If you are in CA, I'm not sure that voting against Feinstein will help you. Emken doesn't seem to have many real positions and her website is lacking in any real substance of her stance on issues. She has a lot of platitudes but it seems she basically just supports the straight Romney line with "repeal healthcare" "job creators" and other nonsense. More importantly voting on a single issue that never even passed is dumb. Congress people tend to be older folks who don't know much about tech anyway. Supporting the bill should not be this poison pill. In fact, if anything, supporting it and then pulling support once they learned of the opposition should be celebrated as a successful execution of American politics. Anyway: educate yourselves. http://vote-ca.org/politicianissue.aspx?state=ca&id=caemkenelizabeth&issue=busbusiness http://vote-ca.org/politicianissue.aspx?state=ca&id=caem... http://www.emken2012.com/inner.asp?z=5E5A585B http://www.emken2012.com/inner.asp?z=5E5A585B http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/ http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/
  • jredwards 14y ago
    For what it's worth, I wrote a letter to Feinstein protesting her support of SOPA/PIPA, and the form letter her office sent back to me made it quite clear that neither she nor anyone in her office actually understood the issue or the consequences. I don't know that I'll be voting for her opponent, and I don't think she has any chance of losing, but the fact that she could be such a strong proponent (she co-sponsored Protect-IP) of a law that she so clearly did not understand has put me off the idea of ever voting for her again.
    • theevocater 14y ago
      It is likely that she/her office felt that they did understand the issue. Most people are not tech people and her only inputs were probably executives/lobbyists looking to strengthen copyright. I'm all for lobbying to make sure more congresspeople know what the issues are but writing off candidates because of one issue is really silly.
      • jredwards 14y ago
        When a legislator sponsors legislation she doesn't understand, there's a failure somewhere. Regardless of where that failure comes from, I feel comfortable saying that legislator has made a fairly grievous error. I didn't mean to imply that I'm entirely a single-issue voter, merely that I'm upset enough by that error to avoid that politician. Perhaps I'd consider differently if I thought the outcome of this election were in doubt or that my single vote was significant enough to matter. As it is, I tend to regard voting as an exercise in personal satisfaction more than an act which carries weight.
• tptacek 14y ago
  So, for instance, if you live in Minnesota, this page thinks you should vote for Kurt Bills instead of returning Amy Klobuchar to the Senate, because voting against someone who supported SOPA makes it sensible to vote for someone who supports a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and who believes we should consider unborn fetuses "persons" and thus ban not only abortion but also stem cell research. Asinine. The objections on this thread blow my mind. "But but but what if their opponent also supports SOPA?" How about first you make sure your "alternative" candidate doesn't think we should nuke Mecca? Jiminy Christmas, if you don't already know why you support your Senate and Congressional candidates and can't be bothered to go look up their positions on real issues, please stay the hell away from the voting booth.
  • city41 14y ago
    The truly asinine thing is our political system constantly pits media and copyright issues against social issues like abortion and same sex marriage. The fact remains most Democrats are very much in the RIAA and MPAA camp. The whole system is asinine.
    • tptacek 14y ago
      Amy Klobuchar doesn't support a teenage rape victim's right not to be forced by law into bearing a the resulting fetus to term because it's a strategy to keep you from pirating Creed CDs.
      • freehunter 14y ago
        Your honor, that wasn't a Creed CD, that was just an hour of output made by piping /dev/random to /dev/audio!
        • thebigshane 14y ago
          For those that actually want to try this... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6465624/how-to-pipe-dev-urandom-to-linux-sound-output http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6465624/how-to-pipe-dev-u...
• jacoblyles 14y ago
  A little bit late on this one. If the internet freedom coalition wants to be effective they need to take a clue on grass roots organizing from the Tea Party and target the primaries. There you need far fewer votes to be effective. And you can recruit someone who you know is good on the issue.
  • jacoblyles 14y ago
    On that note - if anyone is interested in supporting an Internet Freedom PAC that targets the primaries of both parties, please contact me.
• Nursie 14y ago
  This just highlights the main problem with representative democracy as I see it. I don't care who represents me. I'm not interested in their personality or values, I couldn't give a fig if they're black/white, male/female, gay/straight, republican/democrat/whatever. I care about issues and how they get addressed in legislation. So what do I do when I'm presented with someone who is pro-SOPA on one side (but also pro a bunch of stuff I like) and someone who is anti-SOPA but pro a bunch of other things I consider abhorrent? Politics of party and politics or the personality-cult need to end.
  • anigbrowl 14y ago
    Use money. If a politician is pissing you off on some issue, write and say 'I've donated to your opponent'. Unlike voting, donations are recorded and public information, so if you donate $50 to Party B, (even though you support party A at heart), then the Party A candidate has to raise an extra $50 at the next election. You can always donate to Party A closer to the election if you want to even things out, but donating between cycles is a very powerful way of sending a message. Alternatively, support a primary challenger. Money talks. Is this institutionalized corruption? Sort of, but I'm not sure it's something you can ever legislate away. If you don't want to spend money, you can also change your party registration. Also, write letters on actual paper. They have to be opened and filed, and have considerably more impact than phone calls, faxes, or emails. Or write an op-ed explaining why a politician's vote on some topic is wrong.
    • Nursie 14y ago
      I agree with you from the pragmatic viewpoint, what can we do now, but you're proposing a workaround to a system that (IMHO) addresses the wrong problem and is fundamentally broken. Maybe it addresses an old problem from before the information age, maybe at that point your best hope was to send someone off to represent you, someone whom you felt was in tune with your community and would do what they did with a deep understanding of who you were. Perhaps this was necessary because you couldn't hope to keep up with the news or the unfolding of events in a timely fashion. Now this is no use to anyone, every candidate is a mess of good and bad, I want my voice to be heard on the things I believe in, not just on voting in some asshole who happens to be slightly better than some other asshole. Because the first asshole takes your vote as a mandate to pursue their full 'platform', regardless of the fact that most people voted for them simply because they had one less repellent, abhorrent policy on their manifesto. Swiss style democracy should be spread around the world.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• zzzeek 14y ago
  The bigger picture around SOPA is the attitude that large corporations are to be blindly trusted and given ever more power over individuals. No trend pushes this agenda more than privatization. SOPA has its roots in the privatization agenda (see http://torrentfreak.com/the-privatization-of-copyright-lawmaking-111112/ http://torrentfreak.com/the-privatization-of-copyright-lawma...), which I would argue is more of a "big picture" issue where there's a clear ideological difference between Democrats and Republicans. Voting against Democrats, who are at least very skeptical if not opposed to privatization in many cases, in favor of Republicans who are usually 100% pro-privatization in almost all cases, who would also have the same or worse position on SOPA, is at best very ignorant.
• gyardley 14y ago
  Are there any districts on this list that are remotely competitive? I'm sympathetic, but I really don't understand why people bother attacking entrenched politicians in non-competitive districts when they should be identifying more competitive races and directing resources there. A case in point: TX-21, the district I live in, which is on this list. Rep. Lamar Smith will be re-elected. There is simply no chance of any other result. That didn't stop anti-SOPA campaigners, primarily from Reddit, from sinking tens of thousands of dollars into a challenger in the Republican primary - a challenger who didn't manage to get 15% of the vote. They might as well have lit the money on fire.
• antidoh 14y ago
  For those who react to not voting for A, because B is worse in some way, there is an alternative: vote 3rd party. Any party, it doesn't matter. You're voting for a message, not a result.
  • eli 14y ago
    I don't think you should vote for "any party." Some third party candidates may believe things you abhor. I really feel pretty strongly that you should vote for the best candidate (third party or not).
  • masterzora 14y ago
    If you want to send a proper message, vote Libertarian. Not because you agree with them (I personally abhor the party) but because it is the largest third party in the US. Your vote won't have an impact on the outcome of this election but it's your best chance for actually having impact since a sufficient number of votes for a third party can affect visibility and funding.
    • antidoh 14y ago
      It really doesn't matter which 3rd party you vote for, so vote for whichever one you abhor less or like more. The main thing is that you're entering a vote that isn't being counted in the Dem or Rep column. If you don't vote then it doesn't count against the Dems or Reps at all. Vote whichever 3rd party is easiest on your conscience, and you'll be voting against both parties that can't responsibly work together at the moment.
      • masterzora 14y ago
        Scattered votes will have very little impact. The most impact we can have as voters in locked states is in concentrating on one party to boost for now. Party status and funding is based in part on percentage of the popular vote, so concentration is necessary for that visibility. While I wish it were more viable to vote in a manner I abhor less, I recognise it would be a better bet to shine light on the viability of third parties by bolstering one first.
• givan 14y ago
  I think that there is a big problem with having so few candidates, even for the president there are only two candidates. This is a very big problem if one supports acta and the other one supports baning abortions or something like it, choose the smaller evil? this is stupid, the system must be changed.
  • alexPetrov 14y ago
    Except there wasn't two candidates. At the end there's two candidates, and there's good reason for it. Put in more and you have problems with splitting the vote. If you want more options, vote during primaries. For long-term change, vote and push third-parties. Nationally, this punishes the two main parties for not representing you properly (and thus losing their vote to someone who does), and locally they actually have a chance to be elected.
• verysquishy 14y ago
  How about this Indiegogo to educate Congress: http://www.indiegogo.com/tech-literacy http://www.indiegogo.com/tech-literacy
• stretchwithme 14y ago
  I for many important things and against others, but one cannot vote on just a few issues the way our system works. We wouldn't to sacrifice some things for other things if we could be represented by a person of our choosing. And, no, I don't mean choosing between two choices someone else picked. When you're influence gets watered down and distorted, that means other people are getting more than their fair share of the power. And no you know how banking works.