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The Battle Over Voting Rights (also Gerrymandering)

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    CelestialBadgerCelestialBadger Registered User regular
    Leaked: New GOP voting rules:

    No saggy pants and sneakers at the polling station. A dress code shows respect!
    Costco cards and golf club membership cards may be used as ID, but not library cards or SNAP cards.
    Persons speaking a language other than English at the polling station will be reported to ICE.
    Polling site security will be provided by the local police. To save resources, they will have a list of people with unpaid traffic fines to arrest.
    All persons seeking to vote will need to swear on a Bible that they are eligible. No, other holy books will not be provided. This is a Christian country!

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    DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    Forar wrote: »
    No carpooling? Uh, doesn't that just become a flagrant poll tax of 'either you can walk to your polling station or hope you have a car and can afford gas/parking', depending on the city layout? (yes I'm flagrantly overlooking mass transit, as that seems to vary wildly in the US, and be basically non-existent in some areas).

    I know the GOP love them some creative poll taxes, but at least at a headline level, that seems like a stretch. (yeah yeah, they're emboldened and want Democracy/Democrats to burn, etc, etc, I'm aware of the usual hot takes)

    I'm also aware that it doesn't have to work permanently, just long enough to screw with the election or at least to put fear/uncertainty into people leading up to it, which is why the judicial system should come down on this bullshit like a ton of bricks (usual caveats about red states, Trump judiciary stacking, etc, etc).

    It is becoming exhausting to post about this without also putting down a laundry list why your system of government is fuuuucked.

    I couldn't find details on google about that bit. I really don't know how you enforce it that doesn't get the politician driven there by his aide to have a photo shoot about him voting. I mean, the answer is the politician is probably white and has cameras on him so won't be hassled but like, theoretically...

    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
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    ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    Yeah, the wording of the legislation is straightforward, in the "we're obviously applying this selectively" sense of straightforward:
    A person shall not hire a motor vehicle or other conveyance or cause the same to be done, for conveying voters, other than voters physically unable to walk, to an election.

    A sufficiently power-trippy asshole would be able to argue that taxis or public transit fall under that.

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    ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    Forar wrote: »
    No carpooling? Uh, doesn't that just become a flagrant poll tax of 'either you can walk to your polling station or hope you have a car and can afford gas/parking', depending on the city layout? (yes I'm flagrantly overlooking mass transit, as that seems to vary wildly in the US, and be basically non-existent in some areas).

    I know the GOP love them some creative poll taxes, but at least at a headline level, that seems like a stretch. (yeah yeah, they're emboldened and want Democracy/Democrats to burn, etc, etc, I'm aware of the usual hot takes)

    I'm also aware that it doesn't have to work permanently, just long enough to screw with the election or at least to put fear/uncertainty into people leading up to it, which is why the judicial system should come down on this bullshit like a ton of bricks (usual caveats about red states, Trump judiciary stacking, etc, etc).

    It is becoming exhausting to post about this without also putting down a laundry list why your system of government is fuuuucked.

    I couldn't find details on google about that bit. I really don't know how you enforce it that doesn't get the politician driven there by his aide to have a photo shoot about him voting. I mean, the answer is the politician is probably white and has cameras on him so won't be hassled but like, theoretically...

    Not carpooling, per se
    A person shall not hire a motor vehicle or other conveyance or cause the same to be done, for conveying voters, other than voters physically unable to walk, to an election.

    § 168.931(1)(f) 'just' makes it a misdemeanor to contract transport for anyone other than yourself and people unable to walk.

    Just going to assume that the Michigan GOP has dutifully ensured that all polling locations are within comfortable walking distance for all voters.

    That's a fair assumption, right?

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    CelestialBadgerCelestialBadger Registered User regular
    I’m pretty sure the law is to fight the custom of black churches, who often hire minibuses to get parishioners to the polls. This really freaks out racist Republicans.

    You can find a lot of accounts online that go something like “The polling station was quiet and I was in a short line to vote, when suddenly out of nowhere a school bus rolled up and about 100 black people descended on us, all noisy and eager to vote. No doubt they had been driving from poll station to poll station all day. Who knows how many times they each voted?”

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    ZomroZomro Registered User regular
    They're either going to selectively enforce this against the poor and minorities and not white conservatives, or they won't bother to enforce it all and are expecting the fear of being punished will deter the people it's targeting. My money is on the former, but the latter could work with a strong ad campaign to scare the populace.

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    Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    Wait when did the Michigan GOP pass these laws

    Michigan is run by a bunch of dem women

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    ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    Wait when did the Michigan GOP pass these laws

    Michigan is run by a bunch of dem women

    2018 lame duck session

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    TaramoorTaramoor Storyteller Registered User regular
    edited February 2020
    Wait when did the Michigan GOP pass these laws

    Michigan is run by a bunch of dem women

    Lame duck session

    The point was that these are being challenged in court, and the national GOP has signed on to fight in favor of a few state laws that literally do nothing but make it harder for people to vote.


    Taramoor on
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    enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    Wait when did the Michigan GOP pass these laws

    Michigan is run by a bunch of dem women

    The legislature remains Republican, despite the GOP losing statewide by like 8 points.

    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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    Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    Yeah but I was thinking Whitmer could veto or Benson could do things to help voters despite it

    I forgot about the lame duck fuckery

    Also if the law has been around since 2002 that kind of validates my assumption that it’s functionally useless with no clear way to enforce

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    monikermoniker Registered User regular
    Thankfully you guys finally joined the no-excuse absentee ballot brigade after 2018, so it should have even less potential impact than it otherwise might.


    And, again, get on this shit, Eastern States. The number of strongly Democratic jurisdictions that make voting a pain in the ass is inexcusable. I mean, Republican ones too, but I expect better from New York than South Carolina.

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    AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    moniker wrote: »
    Thankfully you guys finally joined the no-excuse absentee ballot brigade after 2018, so it should have even less potential impact than it otherwise might.


    And, again, get on this shit, Eastern States. The number of strongly Democratic jurisdictions that make voting a pain in the ass is inexcusable. I mean, Republican ones too, but I expect better from New York than South Carolina.

    For decades, New York was run by a triumvirate of the governor, Assembly Speaker, and Senate Majority Leader that carved up the state government into fiefdoms that gave the Democrats the Assembly and the Republicans the Senate, and the strict rules was to enforce that system. It's only recently that the system was blown up (in large part by finally throwing some of these geese into prison), and we've seen the now Democratic state government pushing through reforms.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
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    monikermoniker Registered User regular
    moniker wrote: »
    Thankfully you guys finally joined the no-excuse absentee ballot brigade after 2018, so it should have even less potential impact than it otherwise might.


    And, again, get on this shit, Eastern States. The number of strongly Democratic jurisdictions that make voting a pain in the ass is inexcusable. I mean, Republican ones too, but I expect better from New York than South Carolina.

    For decades, New York was run by a triumvirate of the governor, Assembly Speaker, and Senate Majority Leader that carved up the state government into fiefdoms that gave the Democrats the Assembly and the Republicans the Senate, and the strict rules was to enforce that system. It's only recently that the system was blown up (in large part by finally throwing some of these geese into prison), and we've seen the now Democratic state government pushing through reforms.

    I'm aware. Doesn't change my expectations. I'm from Illinois. You think getting Good Government is easy here? And it's not like New York is alone.

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    MeeqeMeeqe Lord of the pants most fancy Someplace amazingRegistered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    No. Confidence intervals are only valid if the data can be reasonably said to be representative (and a random sample from a representative group is). They do not get bigger or smaler in the presence of bias; they get useless.

    Have read a great many of your posts over the years, I know you know way more about this than I do, thank you for helping me clarify my understanding!

    I take it you are of opinion that states races have not yet been nationalized enough to draw any sort of statistical inference then? That was the assumption I was running under, that the more nationalized elections become the more useful data in a state becomes, because it becomes more representative of the nation as a whole.

    I not married to the idea however, and if you have any supplemental links/places I could use to increase my understanding I would be all over it.

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    Phoenix-DPhoenix-D Registered User regular
    Meeqe wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    No. Confidence intervals are only valid if the data can be reasonably said to be representative (and a random sample from a representative group is). They do not get bigger or smaler in the presence of bias; they get useless.

    Have read a great many of your posts over the years, I know you know way more about this than I do, thank you for helping me clarify my understanding!

    I take it you are of opinion that states races have not yet been nationalized enough to draw any sort of statistical inference then? That was the assumption I was running under, that the more nationalized elections become the more useful data in a state becomes, because it becomes more representative of the nation as a whole.

    I not married to the idea however, and if you have any supplemental links/places I could use to increase my understanding I would be all over it.

    Even if the race is nationalized the pool of voters being sampled is not.

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    ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    Taramoor wrote: »
    The point was that these are being challenged in court, and the national GOP has signed on to fight in favor of a few state laws that literally do nothing but make it harder for people to vote.

    To be fair, that and "lower taxes on anything vaguely wealthy" are about the only two things the Republicans or their analogues in most other western countries have been consistent about for the last ten or fifteen years.

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    MeeqeMeeqe Lord of the pants most fancy Someplace amazingRegistered User regular
    Phoenix-D wrote: »
    Meeqe wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    No. Confidence intervals are only valid if the data can be reasonably said to be representative (and a random sample from a representative group is). They do not get bigger or smaler in the presence of bias; they get useless.

    Have read a great many of your posts over the years, I know you know way more about this than I do, thank you for helping me clarify my understanding!

    I take it you are of opinion that states races have not yet been nationalized enough to draw any sort of statistical inference then? That was the assumption I was running under, that the more nationalized elections become the more useful data in a state becomes, because it becomes more representative of the nation as a whole.

    I not married to the idea however, and if you have any supplemental links/places I could use to increase my understanding I would be all over it.

    Even if the race is nationalized the pool of voters being sampled is not.

    Thank you! That makes sense, when I got pushback on my prior post from people from who I think know their business, I knew I had to be missing something along the way.

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    ArcTangentArcTangent Registered User regular
    A Wisconsin Appeals Court has struck down a lower court ruling ordering more than 200,000 voters to be removed from the rolls because they may have moved.

    The ruling, handed down by Wisconsin’s District IV Court of Appeals, also invalidates a lower-court decision that found the Wisconsin Elections Commission and some of its members in contempt for failing to purge the rolls.
    https://madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/appeals-court-strikes-down-voter-purge-ruling-allowing-voters-to/article_2a9d74bc-47ea-59bb-bf57-e52b771319c1.html

    Eat a dick, Wisconsin GOP.

    ztrEPtD.gif
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    MadicanMadican No face Registered User regular
    ArcTangent wrote: »
    A Wisconsin Appeals Court has struck down a lower court ruling ordering more than 200,000 voters to be removed from the rolls because they may have moved.

    The ruling, handed down by Wisconsin’s District IV Court of Appeals, also invalidates a lower-court decision that found the Wisconsin Elections Commission and some of its members in contempt for failing to purge the rolls.
    https://madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/appeals-court-strikes-down-voter-purge-ruling-allowing-voters-to/article_2a9d74bc-47ea-59bb-bf57-e52b771319c1.html

    Eat a dick, Wisconsin GOP.

    And the judge who was on a power trip with the bullshit contempts can eat ten thousand dicks

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    HefflingHeffling No Pic EverRegistered User regular
    Leaked: New GOP voting rules:

    No saggy pants and sneakers at the polling station. A dress code shows respect!
    Costco cards and golf club membership cards may be used as ID, but not library cards or SNAP cards.
    Persons speaking a language other than English at the polling station will be reported to ICE.
    Polling site security will be provided by the local police. To save resources, they will have a list of people with unpaid traffic fines to arrest.
    All persons seeking to vote will need to swear on a Bible that they are eligible. No, other holy books will not be provided. This is a Christian country!

    Is this a joke or a real leak?

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    ChaosHatChaosHat Hop, hop, hop, HA! Trick of the lightRegistered User regular
    Would the no carpooling prevent say, a couple from driving to the polls together?

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    XaquinXaquin Right behind you!Registered User regular
    Heffling wrote: »
    Leaked: New GOP voting rules:

    No saggy pants and sneakers at the polling station. A dress code shows respect!
    Costco cards and golf club membership cards may be used as ID, but not library cards or SNAP cards.
    Persons speaking a language other than English at the polling station will be reported to ICE.
    Polling site security will be provided by the local police. To save resources, they will have a list of people with unpaid traffic fines to arrest.
    All persons seeking to vote will need to swear on a Bible that they are eligible. No, other holy books will not be provided. This is a Christian country!

    Is this a joke or a real leak?

    it's a joke, but it's a joke they would absolutely implement if they could

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    CelestialBadgerCelestialBadger Registered User regular
    Heffling wrote: »
    Leaked: New GOP voting rules:

    No saggy pants and sneakers at the polling station. A dress code shows respect!
    Costco cards and golf club membership cards may be used as ID, but not library cards or SNAP cards.
    Persons speaking a language other than English at the polling station will be reported to ICE.
    Polling site security will be provided by the local police. To save resources, they will have a list of people with unpaid traffic fines to arrest.
    All persons seeking to vote will need to swear on a Bible that they are eligible. No, other holy books will not be provided. This is a Christian country!

    Is this a joke or a real leak?

    Joke

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    CelestialBadgerCelestialBadger Registered User regular
    ChaosHat wrote: »
    Would the no carpooling prevent say, a couple from driving to the polls together?

    Enforcement depends on the hue of the offender.

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    TubeTube Registered User admin
    Reminder than this isn’t an open mic night

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    ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    edited March 2020
    ChaosHat wrote: »
    Would the no carpooling prevent say, a couple from driving to the polls together?

    It's ostensibly aimed at hiring busses to get voters to polls, which is already tenuous legal ground.

    If they actually enforced it against calling a cab to get you and a co-resident to the polls it would get struck down much faster.

    Edit: Also, the people now in charge of enforcement are not the people interested in suppressing votes, so if you're asking out of personal concern, I think you needn't worry.

    ArbitraryDescriptor on
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    GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Meeqe wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    No. Confidence intervals are only valid if the data can be reasonably said to be representative (and a random sample from a representative group is). They do not get bigger or smaler in the presence of bias; they get useless.

    Have read a great many of your posts over the years, I know you know way more about this than I do, thank you for helping me clarify my understanding!

    I take it you are of opinion that states races have not yet been nationalized enough to draw any sort of statistical inference then? That was the assumption I was running under, that the more nationalized elections become the more useful data in a state becomes, because it becomes more representative of the nation as a whole.

    I not married to the idea however, and if you have any supplemental links/places I could use to increase my understanding I would be all over it.

    States are filled with people who have different priorities and different political sensibilities.

    Politics is not just a set of core beliefs but also a culture. These things can he considered random but not random in the way that helps us.

    Imagine you had a Sine Wave (centered on zero) and took a random value for the Sine Wave and assigned it to every state. Then you populated each state with a bunch of numbers that was randomly centered around that point you chose. If you sample a state you get an average at the point of the sine wave and not necessarily zero, which we have defined as the national average.

    Now in the example we know the underlying relationship. But for political sampling we dont. Or as someone else said “the race may be national but the people arent”

    wbBv3fj.png
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    MonwynMonwyn Apathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime. A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered User regular
    Forar wrote: »
    No carpooling? Uh, doesn't that just become a flagrant poll tax of 'either you can walk to your polling station or hope you have a car and can afford gas/parking', depending on the city layout? (yes I'm flagrantly overlooking mass transit, as that seems to vary wildly in the US, and be basically non-existent in some areas).

    I know the GOP love them some creative poll taxes, but at least at a headline level, that seems like a stretch. (yeah yeah, they're emboldened and want Democracy/Democrats to burn, etc, etc, I'm aware of the usual hot takes)

    I'm also aware that it doesn't have to work permanently, just long enough to screw with the election or at least to put fear/uncertainty into people leading up to it, which is why the judicial system should come down on this bullshit like a ton of bricks (usual caveats about red states, Trump judiciary stacking, etc, etc).

    It is becoming exhausting to post about this without also putting down a laundry list why your system of government is fuuuucked.

    Also a violation of free association

    uH3IcEi.png
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    ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    The state of Texas, worried about the existence of voters who fail the paper bag test, is shutting down hundreds of polling locations across the state with an emphasis on counties with lots of minorities.

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    Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    Zibblsnrt wrote: »
    The state of Texas, worried about the existence of voters who fail the paper bag test, is shutting down hundreds of polling locations across the state with an emphasis on counties with lots of minorities.

    I'm sure that's perfectly legal and proper.
    In Texas.

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    Martini_PhilosopherMartini_Philosopher Registered User regular
    Zibblsnrt wrote: »
    The state of Texas, worried about the existence of voters who fail the paper bag test, is shutting down hundreds of polling locations across the state with an emphasis on counties with lots of minorities.

    I'm sure that's perfectly legal and proper.
    In Texas.

    Without pre-clearance, everything is legal, nothing is forbidden.

    All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
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    MorganVMorganV Registered User regular
    Zibblsnrt wrote: »
    The state of Texas, worried about the existence of voters who fail the paper bag test, is shutting down hundreds of polling locations across the state with an emphasis on counties with lots of minorities.

    I'm sure that's perfectly legal and proper.
    In Texas.

    Without pre-clearance, everything is legal, nothing is forbidden.

    Not everything is legal. You can always challenge it in court.

    Just as long as you're fine with not getting a final decision until mid November, at the earliest.

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    ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    Zibblsnrt wrote: »
    The state of Texas, worried about the existence of voters who fail the paper bag test, is shutting down hundreds of polling locations across the state with an emphasis on counties with lots of minorities.

    I'm sure that's perfectly legal and proper.
    In Texas.

    It actually isn't - they closed enough of them that it's even managing to violate Texan election regulations.

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    Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    Zibblsnrt wrote: »
    Zibblsnrt wrote: »
    The state of Texas, worried about the existence of voters who fail the paper bag test, is shutting down hundreds of polling locations across the state with an emphasis on counties with lots of minorities.

    I'm sure that's perfectly legal and proper.
    In Texas.

    It actually isn't - they closed enough of them that it's even managing to violate Texan election regulations.

    wow.

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    JuliusJulius Captain of Serenity on my shipRegistered User regular
    I think they're not concerned about whether or not it is illegal so much as they are about whether or not they can get away with it.


    The courts might rule it illegal but will they do so before this November? And if so would it mean all those locations being re-opened in time?

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    shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Julius wrote: »
    I think they're not concerned about whether or not it is illegal so much as they are about whether or not they can get away with it.


    The courts might rule it illegal but will they do so before this November? And if so would it mean all those locations being re-opened in time?

    ie - why pre-clearance existed in the first place

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    THAC0THAC0 Registered User regular
    Zibblsnrt wrote: »
    Yeah, the wording of the legislation is straightforward, in the "we're obviously applying this selectively" sense of straightforward:
    A person shall not hire a motor vehicle or other conveyance or cause the same to be done, for conveying voters, other than voters physically unable to walk, to an election.

    A sufficiently power-trippy asshole would be able to argue that taxis or public transit fall under that.

    The way this is worded makes it seem like it may be designed to combat things like ride share companies offering free rides to polling locations. That seems like something I see headlines on fairly often in the last few years. It must be hard for silicon Valley tech giants. They love PR but hate democracy

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    FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    THAC0 wrote: »
    Zibblsnrt wrote: »
    Yeah, the wording of the legislation is straightforward, in the "we're obviously applying this selectively" sense of straightforward:
    A person shall not hire a motor vehicle or other conveyance or cause the same to be done, for conveying voters, other than voters physically unable to walk, to an election.

    A sufficiently power-trippy asshole would be able to argue that taxis or public transit fall under that.

    The way this is worded makes it seem like it may be designed to combat things like ride share companies offering free rides to polling locations. That seems like something I see headlines on fairly often in the last few years. It must be hard for silicon Valley tech giants. They love PR but hate democracy

    No, it's designed to combat black churches hiring buses to polling places.

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    THAC0THAC0 Registered User regular
    Oh I have no doubt. I know nothing about the local situation, I'm about as far away on earth as you can be from there. The language just struck me as a sort of "no free rides, period" sort of deal

This discussion has been closed.