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Gary Johnson: I'd Consider Pardoning Snowden, Chelsea Manning (vocativ.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Vocativ: [Vocativ reports:] "The U.S.'s most popular third-party presidential candidate says he would 'consider' pardoning the highest profile convicts of computer-related crimes in the country, including Chelsea Manning, Ross Ulbricht, and Jeremy Hammond. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico, also reiterated his possible willingness to pardon Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency analyst who gave a cache of agency documents to journalists in 2013." "Having actually served as a governor and administered the power to grant pardons and clemency, Gary Johnson is very conscious and respectful of the need for processes for using that authority," Joe Hunter, Johnson's communications director, told Vocativ in a statement. "However, he has made it clear on numerous occasions that he would 'look seriously at' pardoning Edward Snowden, based on public information that Snowden's actions did not cause actual harm to any U.S. intelligence personnel. Likewise, he has said he would look favorably on pardoning Ross Ulbricht, consistent with his broader and long-standing commitment to pardon nonviolent drug offenders, whistleblowers, and others imprisoned under unjust and ill-advised laws," Hunter said. When Vocativ asked specifically about Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond, Barrett Brown, and Matthew Keys, Hunter responded: "The same goes for the other individuals you have mentioned -- and hundreds, if not thousands, like them. Gov. Johnson finds it to be an outrage that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world, and announced in 2012 that, as President, he would promptly commence the process of pardoning nonviolent offenders who have done no real harm to others." The Green Party candidate Jill Stein has also shared her thoughts on pardoning Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Not only would she pardon Snowden, but she said she would appoint him to her cabinet.
If only people realized that voting FOR someone you agree with is less of a waste than voting AGAINST someone you don't agree with.
Voting 3rd party isn't a wasted vote if you are more in line with that party that the main 2.
DC politicians are the traitors. They routinely pass law that violates the constitution, they've made it clear they're willing to sell our liberty to the highest bidders, and they are willing to prevaricate about it on camera. Fuck them.
Snowden is not convicted, He can't be pardoned yet.
"The U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted this language to include the power to grant pardons, conditional pardons, commutations of sentence, conditional commutations of sentence, remissions of fines and forfeitures, respites, and amnesties." [P.S. Ruckman, Jr. 1997. "Executive Clemency in the United States: Origins, Development, and Analysis (1900-1993)," 27 Presidential Studies Quarterly, 251-271]
Granting amnesty and calling it a "pardon" is legit. No conviction required.
If only people realized that voting FOR someone you agree with is less of a waste than voting AGAINST someone you don't agree with. Voting 3rd party isn't a wasted vote if you are more in line with that party that the main 2.
I would like to agree with you, but I suggest you look up the phenomenon called the Spoiler Effect.
CGP Grey has very well-done 6.5-minute video about it here, which is also worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
In summary: A 3rd party candidate is statistically more likely to be closer in ideology to one of the two major parties.
If you have primary parties A and B, and C is the 3rd party, C is probably more like B than A (for this example). If you and I vote for C because we hate A and like C better than B, our votes didn't count for B. So instead of a vote being a 49% A and 51% B vote, it may well turn out 49% A, 41% B, and 10% C. Thus the party we least liked, A, is the winner.
As long as we have first-past-the-post, winner-take-all elections, it is one's rational self-interest to vote strategically against the party they least want to win, rather than for the party they most want to win. It took me some fifteen years to come to that realization, and it is still depressing. The only way C wins is if C can either pull enough votes from A and B, or draws all of B's votes. It could and has happened, but it's extraordinarily rare. Usually A or B will adopt the the strongest primary platform of C to keep those votes for themselves.
Thus the party we least liked, A, is the winner.
So? I consider destruction of the two party system more important than voting for someone I dislike a little less.
>"As long as we have first-past-the-post, winner-take-all elections, it is one's rational self-interest to vote strategically against the party they least want to win, rather than for the party they most want to win"
This. +1
Our system makes it essentially IMPOSSIBLE for any non Republicrat to win in major elections. Until we change the voting system to something *SANE* that allows voters to RANK the candidates, we can't really change anything else. We end up voting AGAINST the major party we don't like instead of FOR the party we might want.
Imagine what would be possible if voters this year had the ability to RANK candidates from all the parties. People could rank some other party first with ZERO fear they are throwing their votes away. The outcome might be shocking.... especially if we knew we could do this a long time ago and drummed up more candidates.
http://fairvote.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Even in countries with effective third parties, where FPTP is in play, it almost always tends towards a two-party system, with a third parties playing spoiler, but almost never becoming a governing party. FPTP almost inevitably shuts out third parties from power. There can be unique situations where FPTP multiparty Parliamentary countries can enter a period of minorities, this is particularly true in Canada during the mid 2000s until 2011, where a strong regional party in Quebec managed to destabilize the national parties enough to force two hung Parliaments, and it happened in the UK in 2010, where a strong regional party in Scotland (the SNP) wrestled enough votes from Labour to deprive it of power, but a similar effect with UKIP deprived the Conservatives of an absolute majority. But all in all, these are fairly rare in FPTP legislative assemblies.
It should also be noted that in the UK, in particular, it has a huge lower house, 649 seats in the House of Commons as compared to 435 in the US House of Representatives, and the House of Lords with 798 seats as compared to the US Senate's 100. This far greater number of representatives must also be factored in to any modeling of how FPTP plays out, the UK has a lot more room for third parties to find their niche with smaller Parliamentary constituencies than US districts.
If you truly want to give third parties a shot at significant power, you need to move to some sort of proportional representation. Even normal instant-runoff systems are not truly proportional, and are vulnerable to certain strategies that can give unfair advantage (with the exception of multi-member district STV, which is roughly proportional). But I'm not sure how that would even play out in US presidential elections, where by and large, the game has been rigged to make third party runs for the White House all but impossible. You'd have to make some big changes to the way the electoral college works, or abandon it entirely, but that seems pretty damned unlikely to me, since the intent of the electoral college was to create a sort of hybrid popular vote/state vote system, and any support for amending it after the 2000 election seems to have long since failed, though perhaps a very close election (which this one might be), might bring back demands to reform or eliminate the electoral college (though what kind of voting would replace it isn't clear).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.