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

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

#331

Post by angelzen »

ceejayoz wrote: post #313
angelzen wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability of the partisan brain to consistently be outraged by the perceived foul play of the other side, while never bothering to check how one's own side is measuring up, is a fascinating phenomenon. This is really easy to sanity check. For example CA, the best known blue state in the nation. 2020 elections, 79% of the Congressional delegation is D, while only (edit) 66% of the popular vote went for (edit) Ds. Bu…

I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing. That said, 50-77 versus 63-79 seems like a different order of magnitude worth of gerrymandering.

Order of magnitude means 10x. This is 27 vs 16, not even a binary order of magnitude :)

I agree that gerrymandering is a major issue. I wholeheartedly disagree that it can be solved if framed through partisan lenses.

Our brains crave to know who is on our side and equate that with the good guys. As long as we don't make an explicit effort to snap out of this very seductive mode of thinking, the future is tribal. Memorably, "why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

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

#332

Post by angelzen »

alistairSH wrote: post #315
ceejayoz wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing. That said, 50-77 versus 63-79 seems like a different order of magnitude worth of gerrymandering.

The 63-79 isn't apples to apples - it's comparing Congressional representation to Presidential votes. We should be comparing number of seats assigned to each party and % of vote cast for each party.

I could not find the Congressional vote totals on the Wikipedia page. If you have a source with the Congressional vote totals, please share.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

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

#333

Post by notreallyserio »

isoskeles wrote: post #233
_jal wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always nice to see people willing to write off other peoples' disenfranchisement as a rounding error or 'worth it' (whatever 'it' is.) That is exactly the attitude the authoritarians are counting on. This is how you lose your own representation.

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,…

It’s also really easy for someone to steal your documents. It’s not unheard of for an abusive partner to steal documents in order to trap their victim.

I know your pattern now, you’ll call this another edge case sob story and set it aside because it isn’t convenient for your argument.

As for your paper document argument… what is your proposed alternative? You must have one, else you wouldn’t have floated it.

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

#334

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #206
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious as how this relates to the topic at hand.

How the trustworthiness of academics being affected by academic institutions pressuring them, relates to examples of universities forbidding and threatening their academics not to speak freely about inconvenient topics? I'm not really sure how to explain it better. Is there something particular aspect of what I wrote that was confusing or poorly worded?

Because the issue is that the state is forbidding academics from speaking at trials, and you are roping in right-wing disdain for academia under the guise of "bias".

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

#335

Post by rayiner »

bsanr wrote: post #314
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:/…

This is where truth and "truthiness" diverge, I suppose. "Two decades of claims about election fraud" shares character with "two decades of high rates of Stop-and-Frisk detainments of black New Yorkers." The rest of the world looks at the reasonable behavior of liberal election workers and would be reformers - no the "Moderate" Democrats, who as recently as last week were working to gerrymander one of their own party…

The rest of the world gets an extremely biased view of what’s happening in America. They may view “liberal election workers and would be reformers” as the good guys based on that, but the best way to tell what they think is reasonable is from the rules they impose on themselves. French people might not like Georgia Republicans, but France banned mail in voting in the 1970s, while Georgia has extensive mail in voting. Germans might not like Georgia Republicans either, but residency registration there—which is required for voting—requires shlepping down to a citizens office in person with a bunch of paperwork. Meanwhile you can register to vote in Georgia completely online.

You can see this for many other issues as well. International media portrays American Republicans as crazy religious fundamentalists. But Mississippi’s 15-week abortion law is less restrictive than the laws in France or Germany. (In the latter country, abortion is technically still illegal under the basic law, though not punished.)

I agree referencing international norms is a good way to sanity-check what’s within bounds. But obviously the way to do that is to look at the actual rules in place in other liberal democracies, not how people in those countries perceive Americans. On that front, the American left is outside the liberal democratic mainstream on many issues: voting, abortion, religious education, etc.

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

#336

Post by [deleted] »

angelzen wrote: post #332
alistairSH wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 63-79 isn't apples to apples - it's comparing Congressional representation to Presidential votes. We should be comparing number of seats assigned to each party and % of vote cast for each party.

I could not find the Congressional vote totals on the Wikipedia page. If you have a source with the Congressional vote totals, please share. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

[deleted]

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

#337

Post by qqqwerty »

angelzen wrote: post #311
ceejayoz wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gerrrymandering indeed has a long history, and it's a bit like nukes - if the other side is already using them, it's hard to hold off on your side. In 2018, North Carolina saw 50% of the vote go to Republicans, but they received 77% of the Congressional seats. A couple rounds of that is a recipe for a permanent minority for the other party.

The ability of the partisan brain to consistently be outraged by the perceived foul play of the other side, while never bothering to check how one's own side is measuring up, is a fascinating phenomenon. This is really easy to sanity check. For example CA, the best known blue state in the nation. 2020 elections, 79% of the Congressional delegation is D, while only (edit) 66% of the popular vote went for (edit) Ds. Bu…

First of all, your numbers are wrong[1]. And second, thanks to Trump, R's lost a lot of seats in CA by close margins. Before Trump, the CA delegation was more balanced. It should also be said that CA Democrats are a super majority. Once you get into super majority territory, it would essentially require a reverse gerrymander to protect minority seats.

CA uses a nonpartisan process to create their congressional maps. If and when the Republicans manage to claw their way out of super minority status, I fully expect that the congressional delegation will return to a more balanced state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_House_of_Re...

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

#338

Post by ceejayoz »

angelzen wrote: post #332
alistairSH wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 63-79 isn't apples to apples - it's comparing Congressional representation to Presidential votes. We should be comparing number of seats assigned to each party and % of vote cast for each party.

I could not find the Congressional vote totals on the Wikipedia page. If you have a source with the Congressional vote totals, please share. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

Congressional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_House_of_Re...

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

#339

Post by AnthonyMouse »

tptacek wrote: post #292
rayiner wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We got into this mess because the activist wing of the Democratic party doesn't know how to accept a win. For example, in 2019, Pennsylvania did a bi-partisan electoral reform allowing widespread mail-in voting: https://www.governor.pa.gov/newsroom/governor-wolf-signs-ele... What did Democratic activists do then? They sued to gut every compromise in that bi-partisan bill, including provisions that are common in mail-…

I don't think I understand how delivered-by could possibly be a better standard than postmarked-by. Once postmarked, delivery is out of the hands of the voter (and, in fact, there are some really fucked up incentives for the party that controls postal delivery). The postmarked-by standard didn't meaningfully delay the Pennsylvania count (the drastic shift from in-person to mail-in ballots sure did, but the ballots th…

> I don't think I understand how delivered-by could possibly be a better standard than postmarked-by.

The purpose of delivered-by is obviously to allow for the election results to be known on election day (or as soon thereafter as possible).

A sensible alternative would be to use postmarked-by, but make the postmarked-by date sufficiently in advance of "election day" to allow for the ballots to have been delivered by then. In practice this is the same result while addressing your concern for intentional postal system delays, since now intentional delays wouldn't change the result so there would be no incentive to do it. (And a large number of ballets mailed well in advance of election day but delivered after would then be highly suspicious, as it ought to be.)

> The postmarked-by standard didn't meaningfully delay the Pennsylvania count (the drastic shift from in-person to mail-in ballots sure did, but the ballots that decided the election on D+4 weren't late-to-arrive so much as they were late-to-count).

A delay that was overwhelmed by a different delay in a specific election doesn't mean it isn't a delay.

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

#340

Post by angelzen »

qqqwerty wrote: post #337
angelzen wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability of the partisan brain to consistently be outraged by the perceived foul play of the other side, while never bothering to check how one's own side is measuring up, is a fascinating phenomenon. This is really easy to sanity check. For example CA, the best known blue state in the nation. 2020 elections, 79% of the Congressional delegation is D, while only (edit) 66% of the popular vote went for (edit) Ds. Bu…

First of all, your numbers are wrong[1]. And second, thanks to Trump, R's lost a lot of seats in CA by close margins. Before Trump, the CA delegation was more balanced. It should also be said that CA Democrats are a super majority. Once you get into super majority territory, it would essentially require a reverse gerrymander to protect minority seats. CA uses a nonpartisan process to create their congressional maps.…

Thanks for the link. The congress vote went 66-34. The congressional delegation, 79-21. There is a noticeable gap there, any plan to fix it?
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