Suspending the Election
- Thread starter Trunkage
- Start date
You're right, invention isn't adoption. Optiscan was invented in the '30s. The first patent for an analog DRE machine was filed in 1898, the first patents for electromechanical in the '60s, and the first patents for digital DRE's in the '80s. I was talking about when they were adopted; what exactly do you think "were in use" means?
Post #416: "It's not like this is old, super well ingrained technology that everyone used. They're supposed to be the new technology..."
Post #418, after being told it is old tech: "In what world do you live that years beginning with a 2 are old? By what logic do you think it takes...to use technology you know is older?"
And now, post #420, after being told about the age of the technology and discrepancies in reliability, cost effectiveness, and security that actually do make the "older" technology superior: "When the earliest form of the technology was created has no bearing on where they're in use currently."
And you need to stop working so hard to justify voter disenfranchisement and suppression well beyond the boundaries of reason or justification. As I said earlier, were this sixty years ago, you'd be right here saying the same shit about poll taxes and literacy laws, making states' rights arguments and yammering about equality of opportunity.
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But there should be co-ordination. Irrespective of elections being run at a local level by local government, it is entirely within the power of a state to ensure that all the local governments in its jurisdiction run elections with uniform conditions that facilitate the ability of its citizens to vote without undue inconvenience, and entirely proper that the state should do so in order to uphold the principle of voter equality. If it fails to do so, it is dereliction of the state's duty.
If that inadequacy coincides with advantaging those politicians who administer the state, it's almost certainly not just negligence, but deliberate corruption.
I don't disagree that coordination would be good. I disagree with the part where you call it deliberate corruption. And I extra double disagree with Eacaraxe who is suggesting that it's deliberate corruption by even the politicians being disadvantaged.
I'm sure you know the adage "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". I'm not a fan of rules like that, but people here so often do the opposite. So many arguments here end up in the realm of refusing to attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by malice. Or even suggesting that stupidity itself is corruption. And in this case, I wouldn't even call it stupidity. Trying to set up polling places that encourage the most voting seems to be complicated enough that success shouldn't just be automatically expected. Some things can be failed at with neither incompetence nor malice, but here I am arguing with someone insistent that it's all planned failure.
I'm fine with the "stupidity not malice" concept, but where people already have a demonstrable track record of malice (e.g. gerrymandering), I don't think they deserve the same benefit of the doubt. Where the same problems continue through electoral cycles over the course of years, and where problems are concentrated in certain demographics, it becomes even harder to view that merely as incompetence. I'd also consider, if you like, "malicious stupidity". By which I mean that a situation has developed which is harmful and unfair to many people, but is beneficial or irrelevant to the ruling clique. So the ruling clique are intentionally neglectful and simply don't fix it.
I'm hardly an expert on geo-politics, but, well, you yourself mention that Russia has two things in its favour. One of those things is fossil fuels. That really counts for a lot these days. From what I understand, Europe's pretty reliant on Russian LNG, even if other sources exist (e.g. Norway's operations). Even if we've got to get off the stuff, fossil fuels still make the world go round.
a) Gerrymandering is a super overblown complaint. There are certainly instances of using it to defend a specific incumbent, but the common notion that entire states are rigged is myth.
b) The problems aren't concentrated in certain demographics, they're concentrated in urban geographies where certain demographics self-segregate. Correlation isn't causation.
c) The advantage of non-coordinated systems is that the people most responsible for getting people good polling places are local to their county. Nobody should be expected to want to take representation away from their own county outside of wild conspiracy theories.
Doesn't really matter: it does exist at all, and it cheats American citizens out of fair and equal representation. Plus that it's part of a whole host of shady practices, like dodgy voter purges, demands for ID to combat fraud that no studies show even exists, and so on.
It really shouldn't be this hard. The only reason it is, is because it suits the people who organise elections to make it that way.
That is still no answer for why these problems persist: they can be sorted out. Lots of places, in the USA or worldwide, successfully run elections smoothly in similar areas. Why can't they?
As a minor point "self-segregate" is obviously bogus. People on $20k a year don't have wide choices in accommodation because they're priced out of so much. They may like to stick with each other to some degree, but it's also that they live where they can, and segregation exists in large part because people who do have money then move out.
I expect oversight of how counties arrange their elections such that they get a jolly good slap round the chops if they aren't doing it well, and nothing stops the state from providing assistance and resources if for some reason the county can't cope.
Part of the problem is the principle of "voter equality" itself has been twisted from what you and I would consider...well, sane...to support the argument. Look at tstorm823's previous arguments.
They're looking at the number of voting machines per district as self-reported by polled individuals, without considering voters per machine or the capacity of these machines to handle voter load. They then made a roundabout argument trying to say these machines are newer, and by (unintentional) implication HAVA funding is being directed heavily and unequally to majority-minority areas, without noting these machines are inferior and cannot handle high-volume districts, leading to a situation in which more money is spent for minorities and poors to have a harder time voting.
Meanwhile, they're saying voter congestion and high volumes are the cause of racial disparities in wait time. Well, no shit. But when it comes to asking why those disparities exist, they're failing to acknowledge precinct consolidation and closure, neatly handwaved away by a counterargument that rural voters drive to polling stations. Rather, we're provided a portrait of hordes of black and brown voters descending upon polling stations that are somehow high-quality yet simultaneously incapable of handling voter volume, having apparently teleported there direct from their homes and workplaces, in a historical vacuum brought to the polls in unprecedented numbers by Obama.
Alas, none of these matter. Wait times are irrelevant. They can vote regardless of these minor little quirks, and that's "equality". I mean, after all, black and brown voters have larger standing-only waiting rooms and the toilets are labeled, it can't be that bad, right?
I mean, let's compare the situation now to sixty years ago; white voters had to take literacy tests and poll taxes too, that's equality. Grandfather clauses and moral character tests were equal too in terms of getting exemption from literacy tests and poll taxes, I mean nothing in particular stopped black voters from being able to prove whether their parents or grandparents had voted in an election in former slave states before the abolition of slavery, and nothing particular stopped black voters from getting a certification of good moral character from white county registrars and clerks, right?
I mean, here's the bottom line in terms of sane resolutions to the issues with long voter lines and institutional barriers to the minority vote. Re-institute guidelines for maximum precinct size in terms of voters per precinct, not in absolute numbers but percentages. Say, the largest precinct in a state cannot be 300% the size of the smallest or somesuch -- the extremely low-density districts (as in less than one person per square mile) damn well out to be early and mail-in balloting already. Then you put the optiscan machines in high-density precincts with BMD's for disabled accessibility, and put DRE in the low-density precincts.
It's a more resource-efficient, cost-effective, and more accessible voting system regime, country-wide, than what we have now, and takes into account rural/urban divide.
You consider redlining and white flight to be self-segregation, on minorities' part. Got it.
Oh, it's a conspiracy all right. It's also a conspiracy with a 160-year-old pedigree with overwhelming evidence in its support. So much so, Congress had to pass multiple laws to keep the conspiracy from bearing fruits, most notably one in 1965. And after that law was partially struck down by the Supreme Court, this conspiracy you allege doesn't exist, didn't spring into action to consolidate voting precincts in majority-minority and poor areas across the country that you seem to think just naturally have problems, when those closures previously would have been considered illegal and blocked by the judiciary, in what I'm sure you'll argue is the greatest coincidence in American history.
How the gutting of the Voting Rights Act led to hundreds of closed polls
Watch VICE News Tonight on HBO weekdays at 7:30.
news.vice.com
Report: Supreme Court ruling caused mass polling place closures across Southern USA
Voting rights advocates argue that the 2013 court decision made it easier for elections officials to disenfranchise black and minority voters.
www.usatoday.com
Voting precincts closed across Georgia since election oversight lifted
Election officials have closed 214 precincts in Georgia over the last six years, many of them in rural, poor and minority communities. The changes came in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that removed federal oversight of voting changes in Georgia and several other states.
www.ajc.com
South Carolina Closing Poll Stations Without Notice
The biggest county in the state, Greenville, will close 52 precincts.
prospect.org
NAACP sues over Lake County precinct consolidation law
The Gary NAACP wants a federal judge to block a new law that will consolidate Lake County's voting precincts.
www.indystar.com
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Lawsuit: Indiana law forcing precinct consolidation violates voters' rights
A federal lawsuit claims a new Indiana law forcing small precinct consolidation in Lake County is a violation of voters' rights.
www.chicagotribune.com
That doesn't strike me as a very meaningful distinction in this case. If we know that certain areas have higher concentrations of some demographics than others, and those areas suffer ongoing issues, then the impact is going to be disproportionate on those demographics. It's functionally discriminatory.
I consider the choice to congregate at major cities to be a choice. It's not cheaper to live in cities. Simple example, the town I grew up in has a lot of short term renters in it whose money situations dictated they move 10 miles out of the city, who intend to move back into the city once they get their finances together. I'm not faulting anyone for living in a city, but it's got upsides and downsides. If a polling place in the city has a 15 minute wait, and a polling place in the country has a 15 minute round trip drive to vote, you pick your poison. The people in charge can't feasibly level all differences, regardless of who lives where.
I live in a rural enough town that I have to go to the post office to pick up my mail. Based on where people live, I'd hazard a guess that inconvenience belongs primarily to white people in America. Is the postal service discriminating against white people? No. Different places offer different challenges, and reasonable people understand sometimes they can't feasibly be equalized.
Okay, well if we're now talking the realm of personal experience and anecdote, I live in lily-white-ass suburbs. It actually takes me longer to drive to my polling place than it does to walk. The longest I've ever had to wait to vote was five minutes, and that was because I voted during rush hour. My polling station serviced less than a thousand people, and every election I've voted there they've had a dozen BMD's and single optiscan machine.
That's a thirty-minute commute from my former workplace, there and back. In 2016 and 2018 I left work to vote, voted, and came back because my employer wouldn't allow us to take our state-mandated two hours at start or end of shift. In 2016 I was back on the clock in an hour, in 2018 I came home and fucked around for an hour and went back to work.
If I had to use public transportation instead, that would have been an hour bus ride to get to the nearest stop, about a ten-minute walk to the polling station, time to vote (let's call it five minutes), ten-minute walk back to the bus stop, and an hour back to work. So, two hours and thirty minutes round trip, which meant I wouldn't be able to vote without dipping into personal time.
Because guess what, people who live in suburban and urban areas don't teleport to their polling stations. Especially if they're going there from their workplaces, or have to go to their workplaces after voting.
And no, that's no choice for minorities to live in cities. That's the impact of redlining, an eighty-year practice that still continues today despite attempts to curtail it.
Maybe cities aren't cheaper, but people need to work and the jobs are overwhelmingly in the cities.
Ever since countries had their industrial revolution, towns and cities have been the primary drivers of job creation. That's why the population has become increasingly urban. This is why immigrants have overwhelmingly poured into cities rather than rural areas: because they wanted to go where jobs were.
The last 30-40 years have actually seen this go further, such that large cities are the primary drivers of job creation - hence why all over the developed world, there are decaying, post-industrial towns that lack the critical mass to support the sort of characteristics that underpin the modern globalised economy.
No, we must all return to de-industrialized communities and fire up the gentrification industries. We need more retirement homes built out of the shells of dead communities, bigger retirement homes, with a Costco and a Walmart for every senior citizen! This is how we will rebuild America!
As far as I can see, in my country at least, rural environments consist of two parts. The traditional towns and villages with the pretty, quaint houses are nearly all second homes for the urban rich and tourist rental properties plus the odd upmarket cafe and deli, and if the area still needs some locals as workers for stuff like agriculture and hotel staff, they're all crammed into an ugly, modern housing estate built safely out of the way where it won't spoil the view.
This is the future. This is community. This is the real capitalist dream.
You're out of date, my friend. The computer age is here, and business centers located around highway warehouse districts are all the rage. Who wants a 1 floor suite in a city center when you can have a 10 acre campus for half the cost just outside the suburbs and draw from the same suburban talent pool?