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University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

npr.org

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Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#321

Post by Consultant32452 »

chuckee wrote: post #294
Consultant32452 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an endorsement, but a clarification. They're allowed to testify in court. They are just not allowed to get paid to do it, nor are they allowed to use their affiliation with the university as credentials when testifying because they are not speaking for the university.

I couldn't find this information in the NPR article - do you have a different source?

This is from the article:

>"It is important to note that the university did not deny the First Amendment rights or academic freedom of professors Dan Smith, Michael McDonald and Sharon Austin," the school said in an email to NPR. "Rather, the university denied requests of these full-time employees to undertake outside paid work that is adverse to the university's interests as a state of Florida institution."

The operative phrase there is "outside paid work."

I believe you interpreted NPR's article exactly the way NPR intended you to interpret it. That is to say, you were supposed to read it and walk away misinformed due to the framing.

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#322

Post by mthoms »

rayiner wrote: post #239
ModernMech wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a professor, I think the actions of The University of Florida are abhorrent. I would never want to work in an environment that kowtows to politics. There are enough political considerations within a University, but having to deal with state politics as well? Count me out. At the same time, he doesn’t have tenure? So they are actually fully within their rights to do this, and really no one should be surprised. But…

Are you kidding? Universities have been kowtowing to politics for decades now. The latest example: https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/mit-disinvites-a-climate-sci... . Conservatives finally just woke up about it.

Your example, valid as it is, applies to events happening on-campus, not off. It doesn’t seem comparable to this situation.

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#323

Post by [deleted] »

_jal wrote: post #316
isoskeles wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for scare quotes around something I never said. What will you accuse me of next? I don't think any of this is "worth it," I just don't agree with coming up with sob stories as a counterexample. It's not that hard to hold onto important government documents like your birth certificate, social security card, etc. The argument against disenfranchisement shouldn't look like such a clear edge case. If anything,…

Wait, are they scare quotes, or am I quoting you? The fact that you can't decide makes me think you know I wasn't quoting you, which was contextually obvious. I find the rest of your argument equally sincere and convincing.

[deleted]

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#324

Post by UnpossibleJim »

mcguire wrote: post #275
osense wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, so instead of being able to count on the justice system we're basicall back to mob justice?

We like to think of it as democracy in action.

So the Salem witch trials were "democracy in action"?

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#325

Post by baldeagle »

xenophonf wrote: post #241
dahfizz wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would this work in deeply red or blue states? If you redraw the districts in California to put all the red voters together, that district will be competitive, but you have gerrymandered all the other districts to be blue forever. I think districts should represent sections of the geographic population. Its fine for a district to be uncompetetive if the general population in that region have a strong lean one way…

In practice, it means establishing non-partisan redistricting commissions, taking that power away from the legislature or the political parties: https://www.nonprofitvote.org/nonpartisan-redistricting-citi...

This is a good response. I think California already does things like this, by having a non-partisan redistricting process. Texas, on the other hand, could barely more embrace parternship.

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#326

Post by vkou »

president wrote: post #211
ianai wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. With all the anti-democratic practices being rolled out across the states it’s pretty scary to imagine things even a year from now and a long time forward. Life threats against election officials and all the way up to Senators. Gerrymandering. Even the SCOTUS is biased. Seems civics in the US are about to be rigged for one party rule.

Serious question, does anyone have any insight into how we got into this mess? It seems like the past few years has seen a whirlwind of anti-democratic rule at almost every level of government - state, local, and federal.

Due to demographic shifts, much of the Republican party has discovered that it won't get what they want through democracy, so when pressed with the choice of weakening its power, and weakening democracy, it has taken the second one.

In parallel, due to the difficulty of getting legislature through a 50/50 deadlocked congress, the power of the executive has grown to fill the gaps, so you get people on both sides grousing about executive overreach. If congress would do its job, that problem wouldn't be present.

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#327

Post by angelzen »

mthoms wrote: post #312
angelzen wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point. Mail-in voting is a disgraceful corruption of the voting process. You'd think that the elementary task of getting rid of it would be a shoe-in bipartisan issue. Not so fast, this is USA, the beacon of hope for democracy in the world. Or have we moved on to identity based rights instead? I'm losing track of the excuses. Tribal brain kicking in 5... 4... 3...

Why is mail-in voting a “disgraceful corruption of the voting process?”. Lots of people can’t vote in person (eg military and others temporarily overseas). Note: I’m not American and have no stake in this. I’ve just never seen such a strong negative opinion about mail in voting in principle.

I live in WA state. All vote is mail-in. I can't vote in-person even if I want to. This is not democracy. Some further thoughts:

* I was raised in a country with a single party and 99% outcome elections. People, kids my age (at the time), sacrificed their lives for the right to vote. I don't take voting for granted, but I do take voting seriously.

* The mail-in argument is predicated on the postmodern "the exception is the rule". I reject that on principle. A small minority has special needs, we can find many ways to accommodate that without disrupting the vast majority. And if we can't, too bad for the small minority.

* The custody chain is fundamentally broken. The reason I marginally trust election results is because representatives of both parties keep a hawk eye on each other to prevent foul play. This can be done in at in-person polling locations for a day or two, but cannot logistically be done for weeks over the area of an entire state.

* As a corollary, him who delivers the mail has weeks to either make certain votes appear from thin air, or disappear / delay blocks of votes from areas likely to vote against his party. Oops, we just printed 10k ballots too many...

* The vote must be secret. Mail-in vote sits with your signature on it for weeks who knows where. In the era of cancel culture, possibly worse, the doxxing risk is non-negligible. Remember Brendan Eich?

* There is no confirmation that the vote was filled by the person receiving the ballot. Perhaps their spouse / elder guardian / etc. filled it in for them?

* Ballot harvesting, the process of pressuring people into voting by knocking on their door or downright bullying them into collecting the blank ballots. Done selectively in areas leaning towards your party it can easily turn an election. Note how both parties complain about this when they are at the receiving end of it.

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#328

Post by namelessoracle »

deepsun wrote: post #209
lotsofpulp wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am deducing it based on the fact that if one person is threatening someone by talking to them in person with no one else around, then he said she said accusations will not be sufficient to convict one of witness tampering in a criminal trial.

But how then verbal intimidation was proven in an age before audio-recording?

It generally wasn't without a direct witness that saw it.

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#329

Post by UnpossibleJim »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #198
ninjinxo wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there usually provisions to override requiring all party consent, if it becomes reasonably necessary as criminal (not civil) evidence or for your own legal/physical protection? Edit: I looked into it, nope, Florida is utterly insane - a child didn't get consent to record their rapist soliciting/threatening them, so the evidence was denied; On December 11, 2014, the Florida Supreme Court held in McDade v. State…

You should still record anyway. Use it in the court of public opinion.

https://youtu.be/lSM-9RBk3HQ

Or just make a deepfake of anyone you want saying anything you want and try them in the court of public opinion. Mob justice is a poor form of investigation.

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#330

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #289
rayiner wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It's tit-for-tat. Moderate Democrats won't push back against the "community organizers" when they push highly questionable practices such as ballot harvesting or allowing ballots to be counted that arrive days after election day. Moderate Democrats also never pushed back on two decades of claims about election fraud and stolen elections from the likes of people like Terry McAuliffe and Stacey Abrams: https:/…

The last major story about ballot harvesting was a conviction for a Republican operative doing it in North Carolina.

Great. We can get behind it being a bad thing, right?
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