Yeah, a guy who ran (and lost in the primary) for the Republican nomination Congress in my district told me a couple days ago that he could not in good conscience support overturning I-872, because it is the will of the people, and that would be judicial activism.
I say, bullocks.
Judges are there to strike down unconstitutional laws. That's part of their job. I am as against judicial activism as anyone, but this is not activism, it's the job description.
Right, you have to look at blanket primary results to get a better indication of what would happen. These results are not relevant. Apart from the fact that many Democrats would have voted for McKenna in a blanket primary, I voted for Vaska, but I would have voted for McKenna if we had a top-two system, as many (most?) of the Republicans who voted for Vaska would have.
Why does the poster assume there is no paper trail? From reading too many stories on Slashdot?
The post does not assume that. It assumes that SOME of the machines have no paper trail.
I am a Washington State voter, and my whole county (Snohomish) uses the same type of voting machine. Other counties are different. But here you can watch the little ticker-tape coming out of the back of each machine. I don't know how the votes are encoded, but there is definitely a paper audit trail.
Funny, I live in Snohomish County too, and several months ago I actually had a conversation with Bob Terwilliger, the auditor of our fair county, who told me that while the Sequoia voting machines we have are capable of paper trails (as they are required by law in other states the machines are used in), they do not have them now, in our county, for this year's elections.
I predict most elections will have two Republicans, except in Seattle.
I talked to my state Senator, who voted for the top two system in the legislature. She said that only a very small handful of races would end up single-party, based on looking back at actual results of the blanket primary over the years. So I predict this would not happen in most elections.:-)
Interesting idea, that. Of course, the fact that Louisiana has been using this system for decades (well, longer than I've lived there) seems to contradict your theory.
Even if this court ruling applied, it was in 2000, and the Louisiana primary has not (yet) been challenged in federal court. That said, the Louisiana system is very different, and so it wouldn't apply.
The WA primary had been challenged in federal court, and it lost, just last year. It will lose again.
How does it help the Republicans? Grays Harbor would have found the problem before certification was finalized; it was inevitable. It hurts the Republicans if anything, because it gave them a false sense of being ahead by 500 more than they should have been.
And you must have missed the story yesterday where a Democrat was elected because of a glitch in Indiana.
No, this will not be how the next primary will be. That is what I-872 says, which passed, but I-872 is clearly unconstituional, according to Scalia writing for the majority in California Democratic Party v. Jones (2000):
In no area is the political association's right to exclude more important than in the process of selecting its nominee...[who is] the party's ambassador charged with winning the general electorate over to [the party's] views. The First Amendment reserves a special place, and accords a special protection, for that process... because the moment of choosing the party's nominee is the crucial juncture at which the appeal to common principles may be translated into concerted action, and hence to political power. California's blanket primary violates these principles. Proposition 198 forces petitioners to adulterate their candidate-selection process -- a political party's basic function -- by opening it up to persons wholly unaffiliated with the party, who may have different views from the party. Such forced association has the likely outcome -- indeed, it is Proposition 198's intended outcome -- of changing the parties' message. Because there is no heavier burden on a political party's associational freedom, Proposition 198 is unconstitutional unless it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest.
This is the reason the blanket primary was overturned in the first place, and it is the reason it will be overturned now. The only reason there was not more of a fight against it during the election is because the parties knew it would pass, and the only way to defeat it would be going back to court.
I-872 is even worse than the previous blanket primary system, because not only is it unconstitutional in its blanket primary, it -- as you note -- destroys third parties and even in some cases will take away ANY party choice in the general election, denying the right of the people to petition to get a candidate on the general election ballot.
Also, you're wrong if you are implying both governor candidates would be listed on the general election ballot. That would never happen. That would rarely, if ever, happen for any statewide or national office. (Not sure if you meant this or not.) It would, however, happen for local candidates, but this would be the case in Eastern Washington too, but for the Republicans.
1. We are concerned with the will of the people, not the candidates themselves.
2. There is no such thing as "margin of uncountable votes." In the end, even if there is a difference of 1 vote, that person wins. Margins of error only apply to polls, not actual elections. It's true that there is error involved, but the laws do not -- thankfully -- attempt to take that into account in the final tally.
The race wouldn't be so close if they simply allowed IRV or Rank Choice Voting. I voted for Ruth Bennett, and would have chose Chris second.
That's speculation; you can't know that most Bennett voters would have voted Gregoire second. That said, I think you're probably right, and I'm glad the system is the way it is, not only because I campaigned for Rossi, but because I think IRV and Rank Choice are stupid. Cast your vote and live with it.
I keep a PowerBook G3/400 in the stereo closet with all my other components, and it is connected (along with the PS2) to a switch, which is connected to an AirPort Extreme base station. That connects to the server upstairs with all the MP3s on it, via iTunes.
The PowerBook's s-video goes direct to the TV, and it does audio out through a Roland-ED UA-30 with optical out, so I can go digital out. I use Apple Lossless Encoding, so I get no signal loss, and I can even listen to DTS audio CDs (ripped to ALE in iTunes) this way.
I control it with my Harmony remote, like everything else, as I have a USB IR unit plugged into it (all the IR in the closet goes through an IR receiver in the wall to a set of retransmitters in the closet).
I also have a Perl script that takes the album cover and saves it to a directory where the screen saver picks it up.
When I get a new PowerBook to replace my main G4/867, I'll stick that one in the closet instead, and then I can use it play all my movies too (current G3 too slow). I can do DVI out to the TV from that one, so it will be all digital, instead of s-video; I am not sure how well the movies will stream though. I could either try to string Ethernet through the wall, or just get another HD and keep the movies in the stereo closet instead of server closet...
Somebody should have said something about that to Bush and Cheney, when they were parading around the south in the 2000 primary insinuating that McCain's adopted daughter, who happens to be black, was his actual daughter, playing on southern whites' fear of miscegenation (race mixing).
Bush and Cheney and their campaign, in fact, did not do this. It's a lie the Democrats tell to scare the voters.
Are you more right if you get more pissed off?
I am always right when it comes to my children, no matter what my mood. Period.
Believe what you wish, but this is how parents think, and there are millions of parents out there who saw that and thought, man, if Kerry used my child to score political points against me, I'd be pissed too. And that informed their opinion of him.
No, I do not. You don't understand what meaning is. There is no one "real meaning" of "democracy." There are many meanings, that change depending on the context, who is using the word, and who is receiving the word. When talking about what form of government we have, the word "democracy" has two meanings: the very broad meaning where people have some form of vote, and the technical meaning where everyone has an actual say in the decisions being made.
So in the broad sense, yes, we have a democracy. But when talking about it technically -- e.g., when someone says we have a federal republic -- that modifies the context, and using the "real meaning" of the word in that context, no, we do not have a democracy.
That definition is impossible for any government to meet, even with modern technology. By that interpretation, there is no such thing as a democracy.
Funny, I have been a party to such governments, actually serving as an official in them. When you get tired of just making stuff up, let me know.:-)
You might mean there is no such thing as a technical democracy at a national level, and that is quite likely true, because as Madison points out, it is an unworkable idea. But there are many technical democracies out there.
For example, in most towns in Massachusetts, every legislative decision at the municipal level is made by a popular vote of the citizens. Budget line items, bylaw changes, capital expenditures, taxes, new job positions, everything. As chairman of my town's Finance Committee, responsible for overseeing the town budget and other expenses, and with a $100K budget of my own, I was fairly intimately involved, so I know what I am talking about here.
Your article is filled with myths of its own, and doesn't even address most of Hamilton's justifications for the electoral college in Federalist 68, which does not even *mention* the representation of the electoral college, except to acknowledge it. Certainly not to defend or explain it. It carried over from the representation in Congress, and it was beside the point.
In other words, any argument you have about representation of the electoral college is more appropriately directed at the Senate, because the electoral college is merely based on that, because was there.
Since when do State's rights trump fair federal elections anyway?
The electoral college was a fix to the then-not-now problem of actually counting votes from a country with more landmass than half of Europe.
Says who? Hamilton never mentioned that in Federalist 68, the actual justification for the electoral college. The primary problems to solve were how to keep the people invovled in the decision, but without having them make the decision directly, and how to keep the President independent of other organizations and the whims of the populace, as well as making the decision making itself immune from the influence of chaos.
Local federal affairs are best taken care of by members of the House, statewide federal affairs best championed by Senators, and national federal affairs should be the providence of the President.
OK, write a Constitutional amendment to that effect, and we can consider it.
So did James Madison when he said in Federalist 48:
In a democracy, where a multitude of people exercise in person the legislative functions, and are continually exposed, by their incapacity for regular deliberation and concerted measures, to the ambitious intrigues of their executive magistrates, tyranny may well be apprehended, on some favorable emergency, to start up in the same quarter. But in a representative republic, where the executive magistracy is carefully limited; both in the extent and the duration of its power; and where the legislative power is exercised by an assembly, which is inspired, by a supposed influence over the people, with an intrepid confidence in its own strength; which is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a multitude, yet not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions, by means which reason prescribes; it is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions.
Clearly, the Democrats have been the only ones using the draft as an issue to this point. We know that RTV is run by a (at least former) Democratic operative. We kow that RTV takes the Democratic position on most issues. And you think they are being nonpartisan about the draft... that just lacks credibility.
You responded by using your circular argument.
You're using a circular argument in (falsely) claiming I was using a circular argument.
The group appears to have very few policies other than encouraging young people to vote.
Appearances to the uneducated are different from appearances to the educated. I listed several of their stated positions on several issues.
There are no visible "anti-Bush" activities I can see on the website and I must have missed where you mentioned them
Encouraging people to vote according to RTV's positions, which are the Democratic positions.
This is a really bizarre blanket statement with little basis in reality.
In other words, you know little about Boston natives. *shrug*
on the other you have the absolutely worst president in recent memory
If you define recent memory as the last few years, he is both the best and the worst. If you define it longer than that, no, he is not nearly the worst, since Clinton is in there.
Anyway, did you fail to see the topic of the story (don't answer, as the seriousness with which you took the post makes clear that you in fact did fail to notice the topic was "It's Funny. Laugh.").
That's right, because Kerry's against the draft whereas Bush is... hold on?
I know they are both against it. But Kerry actually says a draft is likely under Bush.
Great. So it's now a self defining argument.
No. You asked a question, I answered it.
The primary reasons I gave for why RTV is a Democratic party operation is its politics, its anti-Bush activities, and the history of the person who runs it. Because it is a Democratic party operation, I therefore still define her as a Democratic operative. You're misreading my argument: it does not do what you say.
I looked recently, and found them to be in favor of federal handouts for education, for free health care, anti-war, pro-choice, anti-ANWR. Just go down the list, they support every Democratic position on every major issue.
Given the site is aimed at encouraging the participation of the young in elections, it strikes me that the draft is a pretty good way of getting their attention.
Yes, a good dishonest way, that the Democrats are using to make people vote for Kerry.
Is he still a Democratic party operative?
She is, yes. That's what Rock the Vote is.
It's non-partisan because they're not aiming at any particular party
That's a facade. Please.
there's no particular party associated with the draft?
Funny how the Democrats, including Kerry, keep bringing up the draft as a great possibility under Bush, and yet the Republicans say there is no chance of it. And you think this is not partisan? Please.
The CEO notwithstanding, Rock the Vote leans left on every single issue (just look at their issues pages), and their executive director is a former Democratic party operative. They've ALWAYS been a pro-Democrat group.
And as to the draft, how do you figure that is nonpartisan? They are trying to make people think the draft is a possibility, which is entirely false, and the ad is clearly aimed at hurting Bush.
There's no actual evidence these machines favor Republicans. I used the same machines (Sequoia voting systems) in Washington, and me and a few other people would have Democrat selected when we clicked Republican. Happened the other way, too. If you use the provided stylus instead of your finger it is less likely to make an error (the problem being that if you flat-finger it, you could select two squares at once, and then it guesses wrong).
It is part bad design, part user error, and as someone who's worked some with the machines (we had a demo machine when we were registering people to vote, so they could play with the new systems), I can I saw no evidence it favored either side in its errors.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, a guy who ran (and lost in the primary) for the Republican nomination Congress in my district told me a couple days ago that he could not in good conscience support overturning I-872, because it is the will of the people, and that would be judicial activism.
I say, bullocks.
Judges are there to strike down unconstitutional laws. That's part of their job. I am as against judicial activism as anyone, but this is not activism, it's the job description.
Right, you have to look at blanket primary results to get a better indication of what would happen. These results are not relevant. Apart from the fact that many Democrats would have voted for McKenna in a blanket primary, I voted for Vaska, but I would have voted for McKenna if we had a top-two system, as many (most?) of the Republicans who voted for Vaska would have.
Why does the poster assume there is no paper trail? From reading too many stories on Slashdot?
The post does not assume that. It assumes that SOME of the machines have no paper trail.
I am a Washington State voter, and my whole county (Snohomish) uses the same type of voting machine. Other counties are different. But here you can watch the little ticker-tape coming out of the back of each machine. I don't know how the votes are encoded, but there is definitely a paper audit trail.
Funny, I live in Snohomish County too, and several months ago I actually had a conversation with Bob Terwilliger, the auditor of our fair county, who told me that while the Sequoia voting machines we have are capable of paper trails (as they are required by law in other states the machines are used in), they do not have them now, in our county, for this year's elections.
I predict most elections will have two Republicans, except in Seattle.
:-)
I talked to my state Senator, who voted for the top two system in the legislature. She said that only a very small handful of races would end up single-party, based on looking back at actual results of the blanket primary over the years. So I predict this would not happen in most elections.
Interesting idea, that. Of course, the fact that Louisiana has been using this system for decades (well, longer than I've lived there) seems to contradict your theory.
Even if this court ruling applied, it was in 2000, and the Louisiana primary has not (yet) been challenged in federal court. That said, the Louisiana system is very different, and so it wouldn't apply.
The WA primary had been challenged in federal court, and it lost, just last year. It will lose again.
Heh, so the person who wrote that story is illiterate, since it said the glitch gave the votes to the Democrat.
How does it help the Republicans? Grays Harbor would have found the problem before certification was finalized; it was inevitable. It hurts the Republicans if anything, because it gave them a false sense of being ahead by 500 more than they should have been.
And you must have missed the story yesterday where a Democrat was elected because of a glitch in Indiana.
This is the reason the blanket primary was overturned in the first place, and it is the reason it will be overturned now. The only reason there was not more of a fight against it during the election is because the parties knew it would pass, and the only way to defeat it would be going back to court.
I-872 is even worse than the previous blanket primary system, because not only is it unconstitutional in its blanket primary, it -- as you note -- destroys third parties and even in some cases will take away ANY party choice in the general election, denying the right of the people to petition to get a candidate on the general election ballot.
Also, you're wrong if you are implying both governor candidates would be listed on the general election ballot. That would never happen. That would rarely, if ever, happen for any statewide or national office. (Not sure if you meant this or not.) It would, however, happen for local candidates, but this would be the case in Eastern Washington too, but for the Republicans.
You're a liar, and so is your friend.
No.
1. We are concerned with the will of the people, not the candidates themselves.
2. There is no such thing as "margin of uncountable votes." In the end, even if there is a difference of 1 vote, that person wins. Margins of error only apply to polls, not actual elections. It's true that there is error involved, but the laws do not -- thankfully -- attempt to take that into account in the final tally.
3. There is no incumbent in this race.
The race wouldn't be so close if they simply allowed IRV or Rank Choice Voting. I voted for Ruth Bennett, and would have chose Chris second.
That's speculation; you can't know that most Bennett voters would have voted Gregoire second. That said, I think you're probably right, and I'm glad the system is the way it is, not only because I campaigned for Rossi, but because I think IRV and Rank Choice are stupid. Cast your vote and live with it.
I keep a PowerBook G3/400 in the stereo closet with all my other components, and it is connected (along with the PS2) to a switch, which is connected to an AirPort Extreme base station. That connects to the server upstairs with all the MP3s on it, via iTunes.
...
The PowerBook's s-video goes direct to the TV, and it does audio out through a Roland-ED UA-30 with optical out, so I can go digital out. I use Apple Lossless Encoding, so I get no signal loss, and I can even listen to DTS audio CDs (ripped to ALE in iTunes) this way.
I control it with my Harmony remote, like everything else, as I have a USB IR unit plugged into it (all the IR in the closet goes through an IR receiver in the wall to a set of retransmitters in the closet).
I also have a Perl script that takes the album cover and saves it to a directory where the screen saver picks it up.
When I get a new PowerBook to replace my main G4/867, I'll stick that one in the closet instead, and then I can use it play all my movies too (current G3 too slow). I can do DVI out to the TV from that one, so it will be all digital, instead of s-video; I am not sure how well the movies will stream though. I could either try to string Ethernet through the wall, or just get another HD and keep the movies in the stereo closet instead of server closet
Somebody should have said something about that to Bush and Cheney, when they were parading around the south in the 2000 primary insinuating that McCain's adopted daughter, who happens to be black, was his actual daughter, playing on southern whites' fear of miscegenation (race mixing).
Bush and Cheney and their campaign, in fact, did not do this. It's a lie the Democrats tell to scare the voters.
Are you more right if you get more pissed off?
I am always right when it comes to my children, no matter what my mood. Period.
Believe what you wish, but this is how parents think, and there are millions of parents out there who saw that and thought, man, if Kerry used my child to score political points against me, I'd be pissed too. And that informed their opinion of him.
you choose to deny the real meaning.
:-)
No, I do not. You don't understand what meaning is. There is no one "real meaning" of "democracy." There are many meanings, that change depending on the context, who is using the word, and who is receiving the word. When talking about what form of government we have, the word "democracy" has two meanings: the very broad meaning where people have some form of vote, and the technical meaning where everyone has an actual say in the decisions being made.
So in the broad sense, yes, we have a democracy. But when talking about it technically -- e.g., when someone says we have a federal republic -- that modifies the context, and using the "real meaning" of the word in that context, no, we do not have a democracy.
That definition is impossible for any government to meet, even with modern technology. By that interpretation, there is no such thing as a democracy.
Funny, I have been a party to such governments, actually serving as an official in them. When you get tired of just making stuff up, let me know.
You might mean there is no such thing as a technical democracy at a national level, and that is quite likely true, because as Madison points out, it is an unworkable idea. But there are many technical democracies out there.
For example, in most towns in Massachusetts, every legislative decision at the municipal level is made by a popular vote of the citizens. Budget line items, bylaw changes, capital expenditures, taxes, new job positions, everything. As chairman of my town's Finance Committee, responsible for overseeing the town budget and other expenses, and with a $100K budget of my own, I was fairly intimately involved, so I know what I am talking about here.
Your article is filled with myths of its own, and doesn't even address most of Hamilton's justifications for the electoral college in Federalist 68, which does not even *mention* the representation of the electoral college, except to acknowledge it. Certainly not to defend or explain it. It carried over from the representation in Congress, and it was beside the point.
In other words, any argument you have about representation of the electoral college is more appropriately directed at the Senate, because the electoral college is merely based on that, because was there.
Since when do State's rights trump fair federal elections anyway?
Since when is the electoral college unfair?
The electoral college was a fix to the then-not-now problem of actually counting votes from a country with more landmass than half of Europe.
Says who? Hamilton never mentioned that in Federalist 68, the actual justification for the electoral college. The primary problems to solve were how to keep the people invovled in the decision, but without having them make the decision directly, and how to keep the President independent of other organizations and the whims of the populace, as well as making the decision making itself immune from the influence of chaos.
Local federal affairs are best taken care of by members of the House, statewide federal affairs best championed by Senators, and national federal affairs should be the providence of the President.
OK, write a Constitutional amendment to that effect, and we can consider it.
And laugh at it.
Huh.
Funny, because I do.
So did James Madison when he said in Federalist 48:
Do not taunt HappyFunFederalist!
I am a Boston native, and I've even met you at Boston Perl Mongers meeting shortly before you moved to the west coast.
:-)
I know. But that doesn't mean you understand, because you obviously don't.
And?
... that just lacks credibility.
Clearly, the Democrats have been the only ones using the draft as an issue to this point. We know that RTV is run by a (at least former) Democratic operative. We kow that RTV takes the Democratic position on most issues. And you think they are being nonpartisan about the draft
You responded by using your circular argument.
You're using a circular argument in (falsely) claiming I was using a circular argument.
The group appears to have very few policies other than encouraging young people to vote.
Appearances to the uneducated are different from appearances to the educated. I listed several of their stated positions on several issues.
There are no visible "anti-Bush" activities I can see on the website and I must have missed where you mentioned them
Encouraging people to vote according to RTV's positions, which are the Democratic positions.
This is a really bizarre blanket statement with little basis in reality.
In other words, you know little about Boston natives. *shrug*
on the other you have the absolutely worst president in recent memory
If you define recent memory as the last few years, he is both the best and the worst. If you define it longer than that, no, he is not nearly the worst, since Clinton is in there.
Anyway, did you fail to see the topic of the story (don't answer, as the seriousness with which you took the post makes clear that you in fact did fail to notice the topic was "It's Funny. Laugh.").
That's right, because Kerry's against the draft whereas Bush is... hold on?
I know they are both against it. But Kerry actually says a draft is likely under Bush.
Great. So it's now a self defining argument.
No. You asked a question, I answered it.
The primary reasons I gave for why RTV is a Democratic party operation is its politics, its anti-Bush activities, and the history of the person who runs it. Because it is a Democratic party operation, I therefore still define her as a Democratic operative. You're misreading my argument: it does not do what you say.
Try as I might, I can't find one
I looked recently, and found them to be in favor of federal handouts for education, for free health care, anti-war, pro-choice, anti-ANWR. Just go down the list, they support every Democratic position on every major issue.
Given the site is aimed at encouraging the participation of the young in elections, it strikes me that the draft is a pretty good way of getting their attention.
Yes, a good dishonest way, that the Democrats are using to make people vote for Kerry.
Is he still a Democratic party operative?
She is, yes. That's what Rock the Vote is.
It's non-partisan because they're not aiming at any particular party
That's a facade. Please.
there's no particular party associated with the draft?
Funny how the Democrats, including Kerry, keep bringing up the draft as a great possibility under Bush, and yet the Republicans say there is no chance of it. And you think this is not partisan? Please.
The CEO notwithstanding, Rock the Vote leans left on every single issue (just look at their issues pages), and their executive director is a former Democratic party operative. They've ALWAYS been a pro-Democrat group.
And as to the draft, how do you figure that is nonpartisan? They are trying to make people think the draft is a possibility, which is entirely false, and the ad is clearly aimed at hurting Bush.
Rock the Vote is nonpartisan like Fox News is. Please.
There's no actual evidence these machines favor Republicans. I used the same machines (Sequoia voting systems) in Washington, and me and a few other people would have Democrat selected when we clicked Republican. Happened the other way, too. If you use the provided stylus instead of your finger it is less likely to make an error (the problem being that if you flat-finger it, you could select two squares at once, and then it guesses wrong).
It is part bad design, part user error, and as someone who's worked some with the machines (we had a demo machine when we were registering people to vote, so they could play with the new systems), I can I saw no evidence it favored either side in its errors.