Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure how you equate 100 known peoples' votes to potentially 330m peoples' votes.
He was being farcical to make a point.
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US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies
121–130 of 311 posts
Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies
#122Oh, I thought the headline meant remote voting for, you know, voters, not Senators, and was very surprised to see an R next to one of the sponsor's names. The bill's just to let the Senate vote remotely. I'd imagine most of the interesting nuance is about "presence" and quorum-making. This is not about expanding remote/by-mail voting in elections, which Republicans have generally been strongly against, including and…
I used to be wowed by this kind of hypocrisy, but lately I've concluded that these things are happening so frequently because the voters have proved to them sufficiently that they will take no heed provided it "hurts the other team." Everything on the news looks ironic now because the political class has realized there's almost no limit to what they can get away with.
There was a comment on:
> Absolutely. America is internally fractured enough now to make any resistance movement useless. Most people are content to attack each other while the political/managerial class makes further extractions and the world moves beyond American hegemony.
> It's sad, really. This country pulled in generally the same direction for a long time. We don't have that strength anymore.
Which was deleted but raised some interesting points about the unification and cohesion of resistance movements and revolutions by my reading and I wanted to delve into movement fracturing even if that comment has been removed.
I don't think change movements are ever unified with the possible exception of those against hard force backed governments. Unless someone is literally beheading people to stay in power the revolution (or just political shift) will happen long before there is a unified and majority based embraced of the new order. Revolutions and resistance seemed eternally relegated to the fringe and exposed to excessive fracturing. This may possibly be due to the zealotry of those on the fringes or the academic origins of most political movements, but I'm quite uncertain as to the definite cause.
That said most political movements happen in stages where political ideals are embraced over time, in 2016 a 15$ minimum wage was decried as crazy and extremist and universal healthcare was viewed as an albatross, in this election round even Klobuchar had a plan that leaned toward universal healthcare.
Lastly, if by resistance movement you meant some sort of armed uprising - that's never going to happen in the US without it being a full blown coup which doesn't seem to fit the framing of "resistance movement" very much. The military far outclasses private individuals - even while the US might be the most armed populace, the US military is even more excessive.
Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies
#123The Senate is a deliberative body, and its primary work requires debate . Already too much gets done behind closed doors and outside the public eye. Dispensing with even the pretense of open debate is somewhat concerning.
Can someone point to any concrete results of debate on the Senate floor from anytime in the last 20 years or so? I am genuinely asking, because it seems to me that the value of debate on the floor is like you said only pretense at this point. Mandating that pretense and in turn making the Senate slower to react in an emergency seems like an actively harmful requirement.
"It doesn't work, make it worse" is what I hear here. These are the kind of arguments that move states further towards fascism.
Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
On a tangential note, these lawmakers failed to see the real consequence of a 55 mph speed limit: the invisible economic loss of longer commute times probably far outweighed any of the minor 0.5 to 1% savings in gas. Those hours spent on the road are hours that people could be spending with their family, at work, or doing whatever else they like. According to the Census Bureau, 128 million today commute daily in the…
Don't you have construction sites or slower cars? I'm regularly driving 150 kilometers on the fabled Autobahn, with no speed limit for the most part (and some 120 km/h speed limit sections), and the difference between "I feel great, let's drive 180" and "Let's take it slow and drive 100 or 110" is surprisingly small, because that top speed is only attainable for short stretches of time.
Obviously traffic varies by city, road and time of day but on the nominally 55-mph section of I95 around Boston traffic flows between 65 and 90ish if it's not precipitating with the exception being peak commuting hours when the choke points cause enough of a disruption to make most of the system flow well below that speed. Even if you knock 10mph off those speeds because older cars aren't quite as quiet and smooth at any given speed it still results in traffic speeds well above 55.
All the 55mph limit on that particular road does in my mind is give law enforcement a pretext to make fishing stops.
I can't recall a time I ever saw traffic go ~55 on a limited access road without the presence of inclement weather or severe traffic congestion. When you consider the kind of traffic conditions that are the norm in rural ares I don't think a national 55mph speed limit makes sense at all.
Edit: I'm curious to know how a comment that is simply stating my observations and opinions can be considered so wrong.
Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The left doesn't support that, why? Because it's a transparent attempt to reduce the ability of some groups of people to vote. The right pushes for voter ID while simultaneously doing everything possible to reduce the availability of ID. Put the Federal Election Commission in charge of voter ID, make the cards free and make it the mission of the FEC to track down and ensure every qualified citizen has one. Then I s…
Do you think with 10+ million undocumented immigrants - a not insignificant portion of the population, but not citizenry - that people should not be concerned about ensuring only valid citizens can vote?
You're absolutely right. There's a vast potential for very real problems.
When those problems manifest, we should deal with them. To try to address problems that don't actually exist is absurd overregulation and government overreach. It certainly is wasteful to expend resources on solving problems that don't need solving because they don't exist, isn't it?
Is there evidence of voter fraud by undocumented migrants that suggests we have a problem and should act?
Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies
#126Interesting that I cannot access this link over TOR unless the exit router is based in the US.
Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly enough, a significant majority of Republican Voters (~65%) actually do support mail in ballots. The opposition largely stems from the RNC and senior party leadership. In any case I am glad that the US senate is taking public health seriously, and I hope that they will take similar precautions in protecting their constituents by passing the Klobuchar-Wyden bill to allow mail in voting: https://www.wyden.…
The right supports mail-in ballots with voter-id, and voter-id in general. The left doesn't support that, why?
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Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies
#128I'm against this resolution, because it opens up the possibility of senate voter fraud. What's to stop dead senators from voting? Or senators from voting twice? This may even make it possible for former felons in the senate to vote!
I'm personally concerned that someone might vote in the US senate and then proceed to mosey on up to Canada and cast a vote in the House of Commons - how can we prevent politicians from voting multiple times in separate districts or governing bodies?
(Edit, just for clarity, /s on the above statement)
Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn’t need to be a power-grab (“We’re taking over the election to make sure it’s done right”). In all likelihood it would be some sort of funding incentive (“If you resolve to do vote-by-mail, we’ll give you the money to hire people and buy equipment to do it, and even throw in some money for infrastructure as a cherry on top”).
The problem with this approach is that it leaves a patchwork solution and still leaves the most disenfranchised out of the running, because ideology trumps free money. See: ACA Medicare expansion.
That still fractures the ideologues and allows you to defeat them in detail. I would consider it a win if Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Iowa all adopted voter enfranchisement as a policy.
Re: US Senators Introduce Resolution to Allow Remote Voting During Emergencies
#130Off topic since this is about senators, but to nip a possible related thread in the bud, an important reason why remote voting for citizens is a bad idea is that it can enable massive scale vote manipulation through schemes to buy or otherwise influence votes. In the privacy of one's home, outside a controlled voting booth, the problem is exacerbated, counterintuitively. A voter at home or in another uncontrolled set…
This is a complete strawman.
Has this ever been an actual problem with actual remote voting?
Could someone do this at scale _without detection_? No.