University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by OrvalWintermute » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 2:37 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #153

educaysean wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we, the society, are outraged at the blatant abuse of power we are witnessing in this article. We are shocked by how our current system may have critical vulnerabilities that compromise it's ability to deliver the education it promised, and are ready to discuss which aspect of the status quo may need to be improved upon.

All that may be true; we'll have to see if society kicks up enough of a fuss. I hope it does in this case. I'm not sure how you get from "this university did a bad thing" to "we should get rid of public universities", though.

The issue is not getting rid of public universities.

The issue is huge partisanship which has distorted academia from their mission.

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

#442

Post by joveian » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 2:51 AM UTC

davorak wrote: post #423

Consultant32452 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the policy that requires them to ask permission to do something ever apply to volunteer work under any circumstances? Or is this something they only have to do when getting paid?

The image in the linked twitter suggests that Michael McDonald officially asked if he could testify pro bono and was denied by Gray Wimsett, Assistant Vice President of Conflicts of Interest. So Gray Wimsett at least claims it is against the policy to volunteer to do the work in this case.

That was the response to the initial (compensated) request, however it seems to clearly indicate that the compensation is not the issue.

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

#443

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 2:51 AM UTC

bgorman wrote: post #426

ceejayoz wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, it's goalpost moves all the way down. The names of voters from ballots received are checked against the voter registration records. Which are checked against the death records. That there's an intermediate step doesn't mean it's not happening.

There is an obvious flaw, which is that someone could die between the time voter registration for the election is finalized and when ballot is submitted. The fact that you ignore this suggests that you are not discussing this in good faith.

I'm not ignoring it; my earlier example shows they catch exactly that. Again: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/republican-official-ohi...

> Snodgrass was busted after a Delaware County election worker questioned the signature on his father’s ballot. A subsequent investigation revealed the ballot had been mailed to H. Edward Snodgrass on Oct. 6 — a day after the 78-year-old retired businessman died.

Voter registration isn't "finalized"; quite a few states have same-day registration or provisional balloting. There's verification steps that happen on and after election day.

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

#444

Post by isoskeles » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 3:18 AM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #431

isoskeles wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appreciative to see we've all moved on from, 'voter id is inherently racist,' to, 'what if my dog ate my voter id?' (Aside, today is having fun with quotes day.)

Abusive partners exerting control by restricting access to important documents is a very real problem for many women, and men for that matter. Also this is something abusive parents and human traffickers do. It should not be minimized and trivialized as “my dog ate my voter id”.

I’m trivializing the use of the victim of an event as justification to say we can’t have voter id. It’s a strange argument, coming off as if voter id laws and protecting people from spousal abuse must be at odds, so anyone who supports voter id must support spousal abuse as well.

Is the next argument that Hitler wanted voter id? At what point do we get to actually discuss the merits of validating a person is who they say they are so they get exactly one vote?

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

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Post by Master_Odin » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 3:27 AM UTC

angelzen wrote: post #327

mthoms wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you equally appalled that so much other government paperwork goes through the mail? If we can't trust voting by mail, then we certainly can't trust mailing passports, visas, IRS forms, car records, etc.

It's weird to me to single out voting as the one thing that can't be trusted to the postal service, especially when there's things like voting lock boxes that are kept under camera you could put your vote in.

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

#446

Post by s5300 » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 3:30 AM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #428

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with all of this is that it's complicated, people misstate things, and everybody is eager to prove that "their side" is right. So then you get excessive claims like "no state purges voter rolls" which is just easily falsifiable, and then it gets falsified and leads one side to believe that to be the end of it. Whereas what really happens is that a state goes to purge its voter rolls, they have a list of 1…

What you say is true, but at the same time there was a voter fraud commission started in 2017, formed with the explicit charter of investigating such claims. This commission was disbanded after they couldn’t make progress showing that “thousands and thousands” of people fraudulently voted in 2016, causing then President Trump to lose the national popular vote. He made very specific claims about people being bussed ar…

Trying to collect on your Soros bucks today are you citizen?

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

#447

Post by rayiner » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 3:32 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #412

rayiner wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

First, can we agree on a set of premises --- for instance, that "ballot harvesting" is not an idiosyncrasy of the Democratic party? It's an article of faith among conservatives that the Democratic Party is the party of voter fraud, but that's empirically untrue. When we agree on what the facts are, it should be straightforward for us to work out what good changes would be.

What does that have to do with ballot harvesting?

I don’t think democrats are “the party of voter fraud.” I do think they overvalue activist rhetoric about voter access while undervaluing the importance of overt displays of trustworthiness in building trust in elections. The whole point of elections is so people who don’t trust each other can agree on the result, and ballot harvesting pretty much screams untrustworthiness.

Voting isn’t rocket science. Plenty of advanced democracies do it well. My point of reference is basically: is this practice common in the EU, or Japan/Taiwan/Australia/Canada? As far as I can tell, ballot harvesting isn’t.

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

#448

Post by rayiner » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 3:46 AM UTC

bsanr wrote: post #420

rayiner wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Cherry-picking restrictive (and, might I say, somewhat off-topic?) policies doesn't change that some form of postal voting is associated with national freedom and wealth, which is both an image I imagine that we'd like to project and a reality level-headed lovers of democracy support. Japan has it. Australia has it. The UK. Canada. Germany. It's a good thing. Many foreigners recognize this, just as they recognize the…

> Japan has it. Australia has it. The UK. Canada. Germany. It's a good thing.

Sure, but Texas, Georgia, and Florida have no excuse-needed absentee voting. Democratic rhetoric about “Jim Crow on steroids” is precisely about these restrictions such as number of days of early voting—which are still generally more liberal in these states than in advanced western countries.

> Many foreigners recognize this, just as they recognize the truth that "liberal election workers and would-be reformers" ARE the good guys, because they are not bombarded with cynical, horse race-style coverage of the minutiae of our collective political life.

But that’s exactly what’s happening. Foreigners aren’t looking at the actual laws in Florida or Georgia and comparing them to their own laws, they’re hearing Biden call those laws “Jim Crow on steroids.”

> When they learn of our goings-on, they usually receive facts, like:

Except, apparently, the “facts” regarding the actual content of these laws.

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

#449

Post by cormacrelf » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 3:50 AM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #281

deepsun wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Was it? It is pretty well known that one of the main obstacles for populations such as poorer people, women, minorities, or anyone else in a position position where someone has power over them that they can be coerced into questionable activities and they have no recourse because there is no proof.

This is correct if your only goal was to secure a conviction, but you are forgetting that when witness tampering is occurring, there is already a judge who is very willing to hear evidence about it. The integrity of their court is at stake. They absolutely do not require an audio recording to make any number of potent orders to protect you. The indirectness of the threat and its unsuitability to curing by judicial power is more of a problem than the lack of audio recording.

Your best bet if you care about delivering the evidence is probably to leverage the power of the judge, ventilate it and get the people threatening you to retreat. If you do that, you transform a threat behind closed doors (not to do something) into a retaliation for something real that you did (telling the court about tampering) that you can tell your tenure committee about later. In sum, open justice is designed to expose these things, it is far and away the best forum for it, so better to use it while you can.

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

#450

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 3:58 AM UTC

Master_Odin wrote: post #445

angelzen wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you equally appalled that so much other government paperwork goes through the mail? If we can't trust voting by mail, then we certainly can't trust mailing passports, visas, IRS forms, car records, etc. It's weird to me to single out voting as the one thing that can't be trusted to the postal service, especially when there's things like voting lock boxes that are kept under camera you could put your vote in.

This sure sounds like a deflection. The GP raised several points about how mail-in-voting (especially 100% mail-in voting) could reasonably lead to increased rates of voter fraud, and it's not all because it transited the mail.

And that renders your second paragraph moot. GP talked about the sender being either under coercion or not who the ballot said. If that happens, then keeping a camera on the voting lock box once the ballot arrives isn't going to fix the problem.