[2018 State and Local Elections in the US] Dems Pickup MI, WI, IL, KS, NV, NM, ME

tbloxham

ArbitraryDescriptor wrote: »

ElJeffe wrote: »

Polaritie wrote: »

enlightenedbum wrote: »

Democratic supermajority in the California Senate.

Is it enough to fix their ballot initiative problems?

Naw. Our ballot initiative system is fucked on a constitutional level. I believe fixing it would require a constitutional amendment, which would have to be placed as a ballot initiative and get two thirds of the vote. (I may be wrong on this.)

Our state has too much of a populist hard-on to ditch the ballot initiative system.

Can you finally unfuck your revenue situation, though?

(Or has that not been a problem for a while?)

Pretty much ever since Democrats took complete control of ever level of government in California things have been going very well indeed at a state level, other than with all our weird legacy propositions screwing things up.

Commander Zoom

Funny, that...

Look on the bright side, maybe you can eventually get in some Republicans to fuck things up again. Always works on the national level! :rotate:

Doodmann

tbloxham wrote: »

ArbitraryDescriptor wrote: »

ElJeffe wrote: »

Polaritie wrote: »

enlightenedbum wrote: »

Democratic supermajority in the California Senate.

Is it enough to fix their ballot initiative problems?

Naw. Our ballot initiative system is fucked on a constitutional level. I believe fixing it would require a constitutional amendment, which would have to be placed as a ballot initiative and get two thirds of the vote. (I may be wrong on this.)

Our state has too much of a populist hard-on to ditch the ballot initiative system.

Can you finally unfuck your revenue situation, though?

(Or has that not been a problem for a while?)

Pretty much ever since Democrats took complete control of ever level of government in California things have been going very well indeed at a state level, other than with all our weird legacy propositions screwing things up.

and all the farmers being continually mad. But I think that's because we're not just giving them all the water all the time? They seem to be doing fine, even with the complaining.

kaid

Alistair Hutton wrote: »

enlightenedbum wrote: »

Popular vote for the state legislature in Wisconsin: 54-46 Democrats
Seats: 63-36 GOP

That's not even vaguely a democracy.

How many uncontested seats on both sides?

If the Dems put up a candidate in every district and the GOP did not then that skews the numbers.

This is also why evers win was so huge. Having at least some high offices held by dems should at least mitigate the gerrymandering somewhat for the 2020 census district redrawing. Hopefully for the presidential year we can make some big pushes in the state legislature to bring more parity as well. The ironic thing about them thinking about removing powers from the governor is that the GOP has held that spot for most of my life between tommy tompson and walker with a few people in between so in the long run it probably will backfire on them more often than not.

Jragghen

https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge-orders-review-of-all-provisional-ballots-in-georgia-governor-race

Federal judge rules for all provisional votes to be counted before certification,hotline created where status can be checked, and updated reports on why so many provisional ballots were needed.

Knight_

Jragghen wrote: »

https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge-orders-review-of-all-provisional-ballots-in-georgia-governor-race

Federal judge rules for all provisional votes to be counted before certification,hotline created where status can be checked, and updated reports on why so many provisional ballots were needed.

boy i wonder.

it is a mystery.

unsolvable by humans and gods alike.

Jragghen

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/416427-federal-judge-finds-georgia-county-violated-civil-rights-act-by-rejecting

And another judge rules a county violated the civil rights act.

Xaquin

Jragghen wrote: »

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/416427-federal-judge-finds-georgia-county-violated-civil-rights-act-by-rejecting

And another judge rules a county violated the civil rights act.

what does writing an incorrect birth year on a ballot have to do with the civil rights act?

ArbitraryDescriptor

Xaquin wrote: »

Jragghen wrote: »

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/416427-federal-judge-finds-georgia-county-violated-civil-rights-act-by-rejecting

And another judge rules a county violated the civil rights act.

what does writing an incorrect birth year on a ballot have to do with the civil rights act?

§10101. Voting rights
(a) Race, color, or previous condition not to affect right to vote; uniform standards for voting qualifications; errors or omissions from papers; literacy tests; agreements between Attorney General and State or local authorities; definitions
(1) All citizens of the United States who are otherwise qualified by law to vote at any election by the people in any State, Territory, district, county, city, parish, township, school district, municipality, or other territorial subdivision, shall be entitled and allowed to vote at all such elections, without distinction of race, color, or previous condition of servitude; any constitution, law, custom, usage, or regulation of any State or Territory, or by or under its authority, to the contrary notwithstanding.

(2) No person acting under color of law shall-

(A) in determining whether any individual is qualified under State law or laws to vote in any election, apply any standard, practice, or procedure different from the standards, practices, or procedures applied under such law or laws to other individuals within the same county, parish, or similar political subdivision who have been found by State officials to be qualified to vote;

(B) deny the right of any individual to vote in any election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting, if such error or omission is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under State law to vote in such election; or

Huh. Good law!

Xaquin

that is a good law!

they should have put that in their article (or maybe they did and I missed it)

Polaritie

Hmm, by that wording I would think signature matches would be illegal.

As an error on ... other act requisite to voting ... not material to determining that [they can vote].

Note that it has no allowance for demonstrating identity.

ArbitraryDescriptor

Polaritie wrote: »

Hmm, by that wording I would think signature matches would be illegal.

As an error on ... other act requisite to voting ... not material to determining that [they can vote].

Note that it has no allowance for demonstrating identity.

If not illegal, certainly cause for it to be counted as a provisional ballot so they can verify that you filled it out.

Madican

Polaritie wrote: »

Hmm, by that wording I would think signature matches would be illegal.

As an error on ... other act requisite to voting ... not material to determining that [they can vote].

Note that it has no allowance for demonstrating identity.

Yep!

Want to bring that up to this Supreme Court and see how it does?

enlightenedbum

https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1062522615666016256

1) Go fuck yourself, Rubio. That chain gets worse.
2) Literally nothing is funnier than the manly men who represent real America trying to talk about sports.

Preacher

Imagine that elections should count all votes and just because its not election night doesn't mean you stop counting? Imagine.

WACriminal

Preacher wrote: »

Imagine that elections should count all votes and just because its not election night doesn't mean you stop counting? Imagine.

Clearly, we should do it this way:

1. Machine-sort the ballots into two piles, based on apparent party preference.
2. Start counting votes by hand.
3. At midnight, stop counting. Only votes that you have hand-counted are used to determine results.

Local poll workers decide which pile to start with, obviously.

Polaritie

Madican wrote: »

Polaritie wrote: »

Hmm, by that wording I would think signature matches would be illegal.

As an error on ... other act requisite to voting ... not material to determining that [they can vote].

Note that it has no allowance for demonstrating identity.

Yep!

Want to bring that up to this Supreme Court and see how it does?

No.

shryke

enlightenedbum wrote: »

https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1062522615666016256

1) Go fuck yourself, Rubio. That chain gets worse.
2) Literally nothing is funnier than the manly men who represent real America trying to talk about sports.

Imagine if NFL team was trailing 24-22 but in final seconds the leading team declares they won and then the other team hits a 3 pt kick to win. And then the first team complains because they already declared that they won so the points scored after that don't count.

Mayabird

One of the georgia state senators was arrested, zip-tied, and removed from the state Capitol building along with fourteen others for being part of a demonstration calling for all the votes to be counted.

"I'm being arrested because I refused to leave the floor of a body I serve in. I'm a state senator. I was not yelling. I was not chanting. I stood peacefully next to my constituents because they wanted their voices to be heard, and now I'm being arrested," Williams said.

Her arrest is probably illegal, but it's not like the Powers That Be in georgia care much about the law.

(Spoiled for very large for some reason)

Polaritie

Mayabird wrote: »

One of the georgia state senators was arrested, zip-tied, and removed from the state Capitol building along with fourteen others for being part of a demonstration calling for all the votes to be counted.

"I'm being arrested because I refused to leave the floor of a body I serve in. I'm a state senator. I was not yelling. I was not chanting. I stood peacefully next to my constituents because they wanted their voices to be heard, and now I'm being arrested," Williams said.

Her arrest is probably illegal, but it's not like the Powers That Be in georgia care much about the law.

(Spoiled for very large for some reason)

Edit: I was going to point out the technical limitations of that, but then I read the article. The government will try to hang it on "breach of the peace", of course. But that's bullshit.

Viskod

I am so beyond tired of this bullshit.

Ohio Democrats outpolled Republicans in Statehouse races, but will remain in the deep minority

The Democrats actually collected more total votes in the 116 Ohio House and Senate elections across the state, cleveland.com found in tabulating the unofficial returns.

It's a takeaway from Election 2018 that isn't the usual headline grabber. More importantly, in terms of controlling Ohio's government, the GOP won 72 of the 116 Statehouse races.

But the Republicans scored their wins for 62 percent of the seats while collecting just under 50 percent of the total vote.

This is a lot like what happened in Ohio's 16 congressional districts, where Republicans won 75 percent of the seats with just 52 percent of the overall vote.

Couscous

Viskod wrote: »

I am so beyond tired of this bullshit.

Ohio Democrats outpolled Republicans in Statehouse races, but will remain in the deep minority

The Democrats actually collected more total votes in the 116 Ohio House and Senate elections across the state, cleveland.com found in tabulating the unofficial returns.

It's a takeaway from Election 2018 that isn't the usual headline grabber. More importantly, in terms of controlling Ohio's government, the GOP won 72 of the 116 Statehouse races.

But the Republicans scored their wins for 62 percent of the seats while collecting just under 50 percent of the total vote.

This is a lot like what happened in Ohio's 16 congressional districts, where Republicans won 75 percent of the seats with just 52 percent of the overall vote.

At what point is this pretty directly analogous to apartheid South Africa's gerrymandering to ensure one party control?

tbloxham

Viskod wrote: »

I am so beyond tired of this bullshit.

Ohio Democrats outpolled Republicans in Statehouse races, but will remain in the deep minority

The Democrats actually collected more total votes in the 116 Ohio House and Senate elections across the state, cleveland.com found in tabulating the unofficial returns.

It's a takeaway from Election 2018 that isn't the usual headline grabber. More importantly, in terms of controlling Ohio's government, the GOP won 72 of the 116 Statehouse races.

But the Republicans scored their wins for 62 percent of the seats while collecting just under 50 percent of the total vote.

This is a lot like what happened in Ohio's 16 congressional districts, where Republicans won 75 percent of the seats with just 52 percent of the overall vote.

I mean, at least that article gives some indication of reform (although why it's being implemented in 2021 I don't know) but it doesn't look like particularly great reform.

Here's my basic gerrymandering rule

1) If you do not win the majority of the total votes, then you cannot hold the majority of the seats
2) If you DO win the majority of the total votes, then you may hold no more than 10% more seats than you won votes.

If this doesn't happen, you cheated and the seats will be assigned based on proportional vote.

nexuscrawler

imagine if the NFL did let one team take the field for the last 10 minutes of the game

moniker

tbloxham wrote: »

Viskod wrote: »

I am so beyond tired of this bullshit.

Ohio Democrats outpolled Republicans in Statehouse races, but will remain in the deep minority

The Democrats actually collected more total votes in the 116 Ohio House and Senate elections across the state, cleveland.com found in tabulating the unofficial returns.

It's a takeaway from Election 2018 that isn't the usual headline grabber. More importantly, in terms of controlling Ohio's government, the GOP won 72 of the 116 Statehouse races.

But the Republicans scored their wins for 62 percent of the seats while collecting just under 50 percent of the total vote.

This is a lot like what happened in Ohio's 16 congressional districts, where Republicans won 75 percent of the seats with just 52 percent of the overall vote.

I mean, at least that article gives some indication of reform (although why it's being implemented in 2021 I don't know) but it doesn't look like particularly great reform.

Because redistricting happens after the decennial census.

When Texas did it a second time mid-decade it was some bullshit.

Ilpala

Couscous wrote: »

Viskod wrote: »

I am so beyond tired of this bullshit.

Ohio Democrats outpolled Republicans in Statehouse races, but will remain in the deep minority

The Democrats actually collected more total votes in the 116 Ohio House and Senate elections across the state, cleveland.com found in tabulating the unofficial returns.

It's a takeaway from Election 2018 that isn't the usual headline grabber. More importantly, in terms of controlling Ohio's government, the GOP won 72 of the 116 Statehouse races.

But the Republicans scored their wins for 62 percent of the seats while collecting just under 50 percent of the total vote.

This is a lot like what happened in Ohio's 16 congressional districts, where Republicans won 75 percent of the seats with just 52 percent of the overall vote.

At what point is this pretty directly analogous to apartheid South Africa's gerrymandering to ensure one party control?

A while ago.

PantsB

Couscous wrote: »

Viskod wrote: »

I am so beyond tired of this bullshit.

Ohio Democrats outpolled Republicans in Statehouse races, but will remain in the deep minority

The Democrats actually collected more total votes in the 116 Ohio House and Senate elections across the state, cleveland.com found in tabulating the unofficial returns.

It's a takeaway from Election 2018 that isn't the usual headline grabber. More importantly, in terms of controlling Ohio's government, the GOP won 72 of the 116 Statehouse races.

But the Republicans scored their wins for 62 percent of the seats while collecting just under 50 percent of the total vote.

This is a lot like what happened in Ohio's 16 congressional districts, where Republicans won 75 percent of the seats with just 52 percent of the overall vote.

At what point is this pretty directly analogous to apartheid South Africa's gerrymandering to ensure one party control?

Its almost certainly not whats happening here. Its far more likely to be sorting

But the Republicans scored their wins for 63 percent of the seats while collecting just over 50 percent of the total vote.

So we can look at https://vote.ohio.gov/ and look for gross gerrymandering. Its not at all clear.



Franklin County might be suspicious (Columbus) so check that out. Of the 11 State Rep races, 10 were won by Democrats, so by vote share to elected officials they were substantially over represented (which is how it works when an area pretty uniformly prefers a certain party).

What about 44, 45 46? All D. Anything that's not huge? Pretty much all Democratic because urban areas voted D. Its just those areas voted more overwhelmingly D (a number were unopposed) and/or didn't turnout as much than other seats.

Its less clear in the US House races, but even there there were only 2 races within 10% (OH-1 and OH-12) and only the 11th (Fudge-D) seems like a strong stacking case.

In my home state (Massachusetts) Dems control 80%+ of both Houses, but definitely didn't get 80% of the votes in contested races.

Phoenix-D

PantsB wrote: »

Couscous wrote: »

Viskod wrote: »

I am so beyond tired of this bullshit.

Ohio Democrats outpolled Republicans in Statehouse races, but will remain in the deep minority

The Democrats actually collected more total votes in the 116 Ohio House and Senate elections across the state, cleveland.com found in tabulating the unofficial returns.

It's a takeaway from Election 2018 that isn't the usual headline grabber. More importantly, in terms of controlling Ohio's government, the GOP won 72 of the 116 Statehouse races.

But the Republicans scored their wins for 62 percent of the seats while collecting just under 50 percent of the total vote.

This is a lot like what happened in Ohio's 16 congressional districts, where Republicans won 75 percent of the seats with just 52 percent of the overall vote.

At what point is this pretty directly analogous to apartheid South Africa's gerrymandering to ensure one party control?

Its almost certainly not whats happening here. Its far more likely to be sorting

But the Republicans scored their wins for 63 percent of the seats while collecting just over 50 percent of the total vote.

So we can look at https://vote.ohio.gov/ and look for gross gerrymandering. Its not at all clear.



Franklin County might be suspicious (Columbus) so check that out. Of the 11 State Rep races, 10 were won by Democrats, so by vote share to elected officials they were substantially over represented (which is how it works when an area pretty uniformly prefers a certain party).

What about 44, 45 46? All D. Anything that's not huge? Pretty much all Democratic because urban areas voted D. Its just those areas voted more overwhelmingly D (a number were unopposed) and/or didn't turnout as much than other seats.

Its less clear in the US House races, but even there there were only 2 races within 10% (OH-1 and OH-12) and only the 11th (Fudge-D) seems like a strong stacking case.

In my home state (Massachusetts) Dems control 80%+ of both Houses, but definitely didn't get 80% of the votes in contested races.

Turnout is a thing but Ohio is definitely gerrymandered.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/06/everyone-complains-gerrymandering-ohio-just-did-something/310438002/

The former House speaker applied pressure to not reform district lines.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/voting-rights/gerrymandering/why-ohios-congressional-map-unconstitutional

Using partisan indices to draw the districts, the operatives designed a map that would allow Democrats to win four districts, while ensuring Republican wins in the state’s other 12 districts.

As a result of the new map, Republican candidates earned 51 percent of the statewide vote in 2012, but secured 75 percent of the state’s congressional seats. In 2014, they earned 59 percent of the vote, and again held onto 75 percent of the seats. In 2016, the Ohio GOP took 57 percent of the vote, and — yet again — kept 75 percent of the Congressional seats.

Ohioans who had voted as Democrats in past elections were “packed” into four irregularly shaped, barely contiguous districts, reducing their political power throughout the state. This resulted in unusually large margins of victory for Democrats in all four districts.

It gives examples later.

Captain Inertia

PantsB wrote: »

Couscous wrote: »

Viskod wrote: »

I am so beyond tired of this bullshit.

Ohio Democrats outpolled Republicans in Statehouse races, but will remain in the deep minority

The Democrats actually collected more total votes in the 116 Ohio House and Senate elections across the state, cleveland.com found in tabulating the unofficial returns.

It's a takeaway from Election 2018 that isn't the usual headline grabber. More importantly, in terms of controlling Ohio's government, the GOP won 72 of the 116 Statehouse races.

But the Republicans scored their wins for 62 percent of the seats while collecting just under 50 percent of the total vote.

This is a lot like what happened in Ohio's 16 congressional districts, where Republicans won 75 percent of the seats with just 52 percent of the overall vote.

At what point is this pretty directly analogous to apartheid South Africa's gerrymandering to ensure one party control?

Its almost certainly not whats happening here. Its far more likely to be sorting

But the Republicans scored their wins for 63 percent of the seats while collecting just over 50 percent of the total vote.

So we can look at https://vote.ohio.gov/ and look for gross gerrymandering. Its not at all clear.



Franklin County might be suspicious (Columbus) so check that out. Of the 11 State Rep races, 10 were won by Democrats, so by vote share to elected officials they were substantially over represented (which is how it works when an area pretty uniformly prefers a certain party).

What about 44, 45 46? All D. Anything that's not huge? Pretty much all Democratic because urban areas voted D. Its just those areas voted more overwhelmingly D (a number were unopposed) and/or didn't turnout as much than other seats.

Its less clear in the US House races, but even there there were only 2 races within 10% (OH-1 and OH-12) and only the 11th (Fudge-D) seems like a strong stacking case.

In my home state (Massachusetts) Dems control 80%+ of both Houses, but definitely didn't get 80% of the votes in contested races.

90 seconds of review shows me at least half a dozen districts that are actually some of the hottest bullshit

Don’t be fooled by the number of “whole county” districts...there are plenty of “make weird shapes to lessen the influence of urban or college town vote” districts too...

Final edit (I hope): Pants wouldn’t have known this as a Mass resident. Ohio Rs did a good job of rigging this in their favor with a map that “visualizes” well...

Tox

Yeah that's certainly no NC bullshit, but it's still pretty bullshit

Rhah

Jeez. F Florida, seriously.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/15/politics/broward-county-recount-didnt-count/index.html

ElJeffe

The nation has been gerrymandered to hell and back. It's not exactly a secret. But in 2021, especially with some of the laws that were just passed governing redistricting, things will get a little better. Baby steps, but we're making progress.

ElJeffe

Rhah wrote: »

Jeez. F Florida, seriously.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/15/politics/broward-county-recount-didnt-count/index.html

While still pretty bullshit, does it matter much with Florida having to do a statewide manual recount?

ArbitraryDescriptor

Rhah wrote: »

Jeez. F Florida, seriously.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/15/politics/broward-county-recount-didnt-count/index.html

They still count, they just can't be used to trigger a manual recount if one was not already indicated by the initial results.

What happens if Florida elections offices fail to meet Thursday’s looming deadline for a machine recount of ballots in the state’s tightly contested races?

Keep counting, says Florida’s secretary of state.

A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Ken Detzner said Tuesday that by law counties should continue counting past the deadline so that final tallies can be included in official results.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article221710345.html

Missing the deadline only potentially affects Gillum, but defer being frustrated until we see if the margin in the certified count winds up being under 0.25%. The final count will include the unreported machine recount tallies, and unless it's in that range, no further tabulation would have happened anyway.

Tox

NBC is reporting that Stacey Abrams is acknowledging that Kemp will be certified as gov-elect, but is not conceding because she says the state failed its voters

Unknown

This content has been removed.

dispatch.o

.

shryke wrote: »

enlightenedbum wrote: »

https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1062522615666016256

1) Go fuck yourself, Rubio. That chain gets worse.
2) Literally nothing is funnier than the manly men who represent real America trying to talk about sports.

Imagine if NFL team was trailing 24-22 but in final seconds the leading team declares they won and then the other team hits a 3 pt kick to win. And then the first team complains because they already declared that they won so the points scored after that don't count.

Imagine if the NFL team was trailing 24-22 but in the final seconds... black people aren't allowed to score points.

TNTrooper

Don't think it was mentioned yet but team blue flipped AZ's sec of state. The winner ran on a platform of making voting easier and more accessible.

Mayabird

Pretty sure I mentioned in one of these threads about the nineteen black women elected to Harris County (the one with Houston) Texas judgeships. Turns out the judicial flip was even more extensive: every single Republican judge up for reelection in the county was unseated, a total of 59. One of the new judges is a Democratic Socialist too. That'll be massively shifting the courts in Houston for a while.

Beto lost but I think his was a moral victory.

Man in the Mists

Yeah, his coattails turned out to be extremely powerful. And of course those who are crowing about his loss won't see that.