[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

Prederick wrote:
@jbouie wrote:

i would like someone to explain to me the mechanism by which *ignoring* the anti-democratic movement in the republican party would reduce division, since the implication of this analysis is that identifying the division is what might make it deeper

Said analysis.

I read it - I even read it twice - and I dont' see anything in that article that talks about how ignoring anti-democratic movements would reduce division.
In fact I see nothing in the article at all which lays out *any* method of reducing division. Can you point to any specific part?

Rat Boy wrote:
Prederick wrote:

There will be endless crying and triggered victimhood from the "no snowflakes" brigade over Biden's speech. At least through Monday.

You've been watching CNN?

Never again.

Well their web site doesn't seem to be going on to much - 24 hour news cycle and all you can't keep the same story up for too long.

Currently they are running

Dozens of empty folders marked 'classified' found in Mar-a-Lago search

Which kind of feels like a bigger deal. Where are the documents that were in those folders?

farley3k wrote:

Well their web site doesn't seem to be going on to much - 24 hour news cycle and all you can't keep the same story up for too long.

Currently they are running

Dozens of empty folders marked 'classified' found in Mar-a-Lago search

Which kind of feels like a bigger deal. Where are the documents that were in those folders?

Hope the FBI has toilet plungers

farley3k wrote:

Where are the documents that were in those folders?

Riyadh. Moscow. Pyongyang.

farley3k wrote:

Where are the documents that were in those folders?

I vana know where he's buried them.

Seth wrote:

Enough begich voters said “yeah we want Begich, but Jesus Christ, we don’t want Palin. Anyone but Palin. Even a democrat over Palin.” And that’s what happened. You’re describing why ranked choice voting is superior to first past the post.

Umm, you don't know that. You only know that those people voted for one person. If they wanted Palin last, why didn't they rank Peltola second and Palin last? Did they understand the instructions? We don't know. We'll never know. And that's not a good look for an election.

I’m a little surprised you’d come out against ranked choice voting, as it naturally boosts minority parties like yours.

It doesn't - not in the real world. The problem is the assumption of honesty on the part of the voters in their rankings. Unfortunately, ranked choice voting provides strong incentives to strategically vote, primarily to prop up or encourage a split vote among your opponents.

I would never, ever, ever vote for a libertarian, for example, but I would put one as a second choice vs Trump.

If you are in a ranked choice district, you may want to reconsider that. Consider the following scenario:

There are three candidates: Democrat, Republican, and Libertarian. The candidates are honestly ranked like this in the first round:

D: 41%
L: 30%
R: 29%

As a D voter, you want to vote D first-choice. However, you know that the R voters secondary choice is L, while the L voters secondary choice is D. If you vote Democrat, the first round results are D41-L30-R29, the R candidate is eliminated, and in the second round L takes it 59 to 41. However, if 2% of D voters vote R first-choice, the first-round results are D39-L30-R31, the L's are eliminated, and the D's take it 69 to 31.

And if that boggles your mind, it gets a lot more complicated with more candidates. One of the fundamental flaws of ranked choice voting is that when a candidate is eliminated matters to the outcome.

gewy wrote:

Without more info, it feels to me like your position against RCV here is contrarian for the sake of contrarianism.

No, it's actually personal. I was a resident of Louisiana for the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election where Roemer was eliminated in the first round despite being the most popular candidate, leaving the electorate to choose between Edwards and Duke - two of the most disgusting candidates to ever disgrace the electoral stage. That system wasn't ranked choice but it functioned identically in the first round. That debacle and its aftermath is actually what got me interested in electoral systems.

Aetius wrote:

If you are in a ranked choice district, you may want to reconsider that. Consider the following scenario:

There are three candidates: Democrat, Republican, and Libertarian. The candidates are honestly ranked like this in the first round:

D: 41%
L: 30%
R: 29%

As a D voter, you want to vote D first-choice. However, you know that the R voters secondary choice is L, while the L voters secondary choice is D. If you vote Democrat, the first round results are D41-L30-R29, the R candidate is eliminated, and in the second round L takes it 59 to 41. However, if 2% of D voters vote R first-choice, the first-round results are D39-L30-R31, the L's are eliminated, and the D's take it 69 to 31.

And if that boggles your mind, it gets a lot more complicated with more candidates. One of the fundamental flaws of ranked choice voting is that when a candidate is eliminated matters to the outcome.

Why would it boggle my mind that it was working exactly how it was supposed to? If more people are saying they ultimately prefer an L to a D, we should get an L instead of D, even if it's not what I personally want. Although the idea that an L would get more first round votes than an R is hilarious.

Aetius wrote:

No, it's actually personal. I was a resident of Louisiana for the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election where Roemer was eliminated in the first round despite being the most popular candidate, leaving the electorate to choose between Edwards and Duke - two of the most disgusting candidates to ever disgrace the electoral stage. That system wasn't ranked choice but it functioned identically in the first round. That debacle and its aftermath is actually what got me interested in electoral systems.

How is that possibly true?
If a candidate is eliminated in the first round - they polled the least votes. How can they possibly claim to be the most popular candidate based on that detail?

But you are right about the order of eliminations being important, although I would question how big a flaw it might be. Here's a great example of that from our recent federal election: https://www.abc.net.au/news/election...
Labor and Greens are both progressive compared to the Liberals (actually conservative) and a very high majority of their preferences will be to each other (~90%), so whichever got themselves into 2nd place would then get the preference flow when 3rd place was eliminated to push to the win.
It was a very close result but the Greens squeaked into 2nd place at the final elimination and with the vey high preference flow go on to win the seat.
The progressive parties scored ~60% of the primary vote compared to 40% conservative. A split in those votes still resulted in a win for a progressive candidate.

Aetius wrote:
Seth wrote:

Enough begich voters said “yeah we want Begich, but Jesus Christ, we don’t want Palin. Anyone but Palin. Even a democrat over Palin.” And that’s what happened. You’re describing why ranked choice voting is superior to first past the post.

Umm, you don't know that. You only know that those people voted for one person. If they wanted Palin last, why didn't they rank Peltola second and Palin last? Did they understand the instructions? We don't know. We'll never know. And that's not a good look for an election.

This is at best begging the question, and at worst solipsism. Why would you say it isn’t a good look for an election? It seems like a great look for an election. People voted and had their votes counted, with reasonable efforts made to explain how the procedure works. Three elementary school kids trying to decide what to have for lunch could figure it out.

I’m a little surprised you’d come out against ranked choice voting, as it naturally boosts minority parties like yours.

It doesn't - not in the real world. The problem is the assumption of honesty on the part of the voters in their rankings. Unfortunately, ranked choice voting provides strong incentives to strategically vote, primarily to prop up or encourage a split vote among your opponents.

I mean is “we can never know what’s truly in the hearts of men” the argument you’re using here? Strategic voting as you call it is, as I previously stated, a feature. it allows a voter not only to assert their first choice, but also to block their last choice. This is also often referred to as “compromise.”

I would never, ever, ever vote for a libertarian, for example, but I would put one as a second choice vs Trump.

If you are in a ranked choice district, you may want to reconsider that. Consider the following scenario:

There are three candidates: Democrat, Republican, and Libertarian. The candidates are honestly ranked like this in the first round:

D: 41%
L: 30%
R: 29%

As a D voter, you want to vote D first-choice. However, you know that the R voters secondary choice is L, while the L voters secondary choice is D. If you vote Democrat, the first round results are D41-L30-R29, the R candidate is eliminated, and in the second round L takes it 59 to 41. However, if 2% of D voters vote R first-choice, the first-round results are D39-L30-R31, the L's are eliminated, and the D's take it 69 to 31.

And if that boggles your mind,

It doesn’t. This is a hypothetical that relies on some seriously conspiratorial thinking to do the heavy lifting. For example, you can use the exact same narrative to tell a story of how ~3800 democrats stealth voted in Peter Meijer’s House primary, costing him his candidacy in favor of a far more extreme candidate who is expected to lose in the general election. The media claims it was the DNC ad buys, but your narrative also fits!

Bottom line is: you’re right. Ranked choice voting does not solve the problem of dishonest schemers. But neither do any other alternatives (you can scam approval voting too, and far more easily), and it does solve a lot of other isssues! Furthermore, specific to the Alaskan election: ranked choice voting satisfied the most amount of people possible given the choices they made. That’s a goddamn win in my book.

Seth wrote:
Consider the following scenario:

There are three candidates: Democrat, Republican, and Libertarian. The candidates are honestly ranked like this in the first round:

D: 41%
L: 30%
R: 29%

As a D voter, you want to vote D first-choice. However, you know that the R voters secondary choice is L, while the L voters secondary choice is D. If you vote Democrat, the first round results are D41-L30-R29, the R candidate is eliminated, and in the second round L takes it 59 to 41. However, if 2% of D voters vote R first-choice, the first-round results are D39-L30-R31, the L's are eliminated, and the D's take it 69 to 31.

And if that boggles your mind,

It doesn’t. This is a hypothetical that relies on some seriously conspiratorial thinking to do the heavy lifting. For example, you can use the exact same narrative to tell a story of how ~3800 democrats stealth voted in Peter Meijer’s House primary, costing him his candidacy in favor of a far more extreme candidate who is expected to lose in the general election.

In first-past-the-post:

R: 48.85% (2,912,790)
D: 48.84% (2,912,253)
G: 1.63% (97,488)

As a G voter, you want to vote G first choice. However, many G voters have a strong preference between D and R. If the G voters all vote for G, they have a better chance of getting the person they *least* want. If G's voters decide to switch their votes from G to either D or R, then they have a better chance of getting their second choice instead of getting their third, and it shouldn't make that much of a difference because they all know that there's no way they're getting their first.

These numbers are the final results from Florida in 2000.

Strategic voting is hardly limited to ranked choice.

Stengah wrote:

Why would it boggle my mind that it was working exactly how it was supposed to? If more people are saying they ultimately prefer an L to a D, we should get an L instead of D, even if it's not what I personally want.

Except that's not what is happening. What is happening is that some D voters are voting for R in order to secure a win for D. Do you think that makes intuitive sense to your average voter? Or do you think that's likely to anger R voters and make them feel cheated?

Bruce wrote:

How is that possibly true?
If a candidate is eliminated in the first round - they polled the least votes. How can they possibly claim to be the most popular candidate based on that detail?

There were 12 candidates in the first round. Roemer had defeated Edwards before, and polling had Roemer winning easily in a 1-v-1 versus Edwards or Duke. However, his support was sapped just enough by other candidates (primarily Holloway) to put him in third place and get him eliminated.

Bruce wrote:

But you are right about the order of eliminations being important, although I would question how big a flaw it might be.

Don't look at how it works, look at how it breaks. How would you feel if LNP voters had voted for Labor in order to deny the Greens the seat, which could easily have happened in that election? How would you feel if the LNP had won the election despite almost 60% progressive first-round support, as in the Alaskan election? You would feel robbed and betrayed, and rightly so.

Seth wrote:

Bottom line is: you’re right. Ranked choice voting does not solve the problem of dishonest schemers.

Keldar wrote:

Strategic voting is hardly limited to ranked choice.

You are correct, but ranked choice actively encourages electoral shenanigans that lead to unexpected and unintuitive outcomes. It might be technically better, but is MUCH worse when it comes to perception. That's a HUGE problem in a charged political environment like we currently have.

Aetius wrote:
Stengah wrote:

Why would it boggle my mind that it was working exactly how it was supposed to? If more people are saying they ultimately prefer an L to a D, we should get an L instead of D, even if it's not what I personally want.

Except that's not what is happening. What is happening is that some D voters are voting for R in order to secure a win for D. Do you think that makes intuitive sense to your average voter? Or do you think that's likely to anger R voters and make them feel cheated?

R voters feel cheated whenever they lose, no matter how fairly. Especially when they are the ones trying to cheat and still end up losing. And it honestly doesn't matter. You are allowed to vote strategically. With FPTP, you often had to vote for an unfavored candidate just to prevent an even worse one from winning. Was that also "dishonest" voting because people were casting their vote specifically so R wouldn't win?

Also, your scenario is very flawed as you can't know in advance how the actual vote will turn out with that degree of precision. Polls can get close, but the margin of error make that kind of gamble extremely risky. Plus, voting blocks are not that uniform. A percent of people will just not rank secondary choices, and not everyone with the same first choice will have the same second choice, there will always be some split. Regardless of the possible problems or perceptions, it's still far better than the known problems and perceptions we know FPTP to have.

Aetius wrote:

It might be technically better, but is MUCH worse when it comes to perception. That's a HUGE problem in a charged political environment like we currently have.

I’m comfortable that this is your perception about ranked choice voting, and I’m glad we agree it’s better. I think the Alaskan election is an excellent example of the system working properly, and the criticism you’ve leveled at ranked choice voting - that it creates a negative perception - also applies to the electoral college and the entire Senate. The difference is that, as you said, ranked choice is better. I’m assuming that in the next week, the NY Post or some other rag will find a dozen or so Alaskan republicans who will either lie and claim they didn’t understand that not marking Palin as their second choice would exhaust their ballot, or they will genuinely have not understood the civic assignment. There might even be a poll showing dissatisfaction among Republicans, as that’s just an easy prediction to make even when they win. Neither of these would change the success nor effectiveness of the Alaskan election.

I’m happy to discuss abandoning the electoral college as well as the senate as they also are HUGE problems in the charged political environment we currently have.

Rat Boy wrote:
Prederick wrote:

There will be endless crying and triggered victimhood from the "no snowflakes" brigade over Biden's speech. At least through Monday.

You've been watching CNN?

Also, and predictably, calls for violence. The American MAGAs are intent on proving Biden correct that they are indeed fascists.

By Friday afternoon, posts on forums popular among white supremacists and far-right extremists called for the assassination of Biden, and named Jewish administration officials including Attorney General Merrick Garland, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as potential targets. Declarations of civil war were also appearing, according to documents detailing some of the threats.
Stengah wrote:

R voters feel cheated whenever they lose, no matter how fairly.

Accurate

When your argument is "it's people screwing with the election system, but I don't have any proof that that was what actually happened", well... Maybe that's sand you've built your house on, not slab... Honestly, if the Dem had lost, I would not have had the balls to put forth this explanation, because the data for it do not exist, and also because there are ways to mess with other types of vote-counting.

The difference is that actual conspiracies leave evidence behind that can be found and dealt with. In this case, it would be massive and wide-spread media instruction and exhortations to do just this. It would be discussions at political rallies leading up to the vote, emails and phone calls and Zoom meetings among candidates and staffers, canvassers and community organizers, and so forth. These kind of vote manipulations just do not happen spontaneously, without coordination. The only reason we know the Brooks Brothers riot that halted the Florida 2000 count was such a conspiracy is that the principals were all political operatives, and freely spoke of it afterwards, and also obviously coordinate their actions towards a goal, in a way that could not be covered up.

Is there anything like this visible in Alaska? Anything?

This whole business of "ranked choice bad" and the specious arguments used to handwave it into existence feels a whole lot like someone trying to be clever by simply being contrarian.

It's not. It's just false.

The only way I see ranked choice voting stealing an election for a more dramatically lesser candidate is if they incorporate first, second and third choice. The person who got the least first place votes should never win the election and they could squeak a win with enough second and third place votes. So as long as it is run as first and second favorite votes are tallied no matter how many candidates, it seems fair. Though I would strongly prefer no more than three candidates as well.

Aetius wrote:
gewy wrote:

Without more info, it feels to me like your position against RCV here is contrarian for the sake of contrarianism.

No, it's actually personal. I was a resident of Louisiana for the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election where Roemer was eliminated in the first round despite being the most popular candidate, leaving the electorate to choose between Edwards and Duke - two of the most disgusting candidates to ever disgrace the electoral stage. That system wasn't ranked choice but it functioned identically in the first round. That debacle and its aftermath is actually what got me interested in electoral systems.

OK, makes sense, and I no longer think you were just being contrarian. I think I was thrown off somewhat because you were responding to Seth's observation (which I think is accurate) that Republicans are just crying "voter fraud" because they lost. It looked to me like you were trying to counter that, not just voice your own concerns about ranked choice voting. I think it's pretty clear that though you may have some well-reasoned skepticism about RCV and electoral systems in general, the average angry Republican these days hasn't thought about it that much and simply asserts that "D victory = voter fraud." They just want whatever system ensures they maintain as much power as possible, since only Republicans represent the will of the people outside the hellholes of California and New York.

As for the 1991 Louisiana election, I'm from a neighboring state, so only have vague recollections of it, but not the details, so I did some reading. It seems like Roemer angered voters and Party officials on both sides of the aisle by making a last minute Party switch from D to R. This completely disrupted the Republican nomination process allowing former Grand Wizard David Duke an opportunity. Roemer probably assumed he would waltz in and take the nomination, but, among other things held against him, he was not liked by the anti-abortion constituency of the Republican Party for previously vetoing an (at that time) strict anti-abortion bill.

Seems to me like Roemer may have been the most popular choice (depending on your definition of the word "popular") but voters were overall lukewarm on him, and tactical blunders and assumptions sank his chances more than flawed election system.

There's also this detail I found interesting.

During Roemer’s tenure, pollution for the first time was treated as a critical problem facing Louisiana. The first annual national Toxics Release Inventory, which lists the quantity of toxic chemicals released by every major plant, had just been published, and many of the worst offenders were in Louisiana.

Urged on by Templet and Roemer, the Legislature passed a law requiring that toxic pollution statewide be cut in half over a decade, a goal Louisiana industry met and exceeded.

Not surprisingly, industry was cool on Templet and, by extension, Roemer. No one disliked the governor and his DEQ secretary more than Jack Kent, president of Marine Shale Processors, a company based in St. Mary Parish that used an incinerator to turn dangerous industrial waste into a product used in roadbeds and other projects.

Alarmed by a cluster of rare brain cancers among local kids, Templet’s DEQ fined Marine Shale millions of dollars and pushed to revoke its permit in a series of pitched battles.

Kent had his revenge in the 1991 gubernatorial primary. He spent $400,000 on a series of ads attacking Roemer, who wound up finishing third behind the white supremacist David Duke and Edwin Edwards, who had by then served three terms as governor and been indicted once.

This speaks strongly to the pernicious influence of corporate money in politics in my opinion.

So, we had a widely popular (in the "eh, he's OK I guess" kind of way), would-be Republican Governor sank in part by not passing the anti-abortion litmus test. And in part by corporate donors protecting their profits over environmental safety and health. Sounds all too familiar.

gewy wrote:

This speaks strongly to the pernicious influence of corporate money in politics in my opinion.

My takeaway is how cheap it was to buy a win 30 years ago. $400k might not be enough to win local dogcatcher nowadays.

Consider the following scenario:

There are three candidates: Democrat, Republican, and Libertarian. The candidates are honestly ranked like this in the first round:

D: 41%
L: 30%
R: 29%

As a D voter, you want to vote D first-choice. However, you know that the R voters secondary choice is L, while the L voters secondary choice is D. If you vote Democrat, the first round results are D41-L30-R29, the R candidate is eliminated, and in the second round L takes it 59 to 41. However, if 2% of D voters vote R first-choice, the first-round results are D39-L30-R31, the L's are eliminated, and the D's take it 69 to 31.

I think it’s important to note that this presupposes a huge number of things (and a number of huge things): that people are voting purely along party lines; that every party line voter has the same party line preference; that a huge number of people are coordinating – including the people who are going to lose the election – to ensure that there is precise information available to allow this kind of micro manipulation… Can one create a situation where ranked voting results in non-intuitive results? Sure, but the only value to that exercise is to create distrust of the methodology.

EDIT: In Palin’s case, the biggest assumption seems to be, “I’m a Republican, so anybody that wanted a different person who also happens to be a Republican must want me as second choice.”

fangblackbone wrote:

The only way I see ranked choice voting stealing an election for a more dramatically lesser candidate is if they incorporate first, second and third choice. The person who got the least first place votes should never win the election and they could squeak a win with enough second and third place votes. So as long as it is run as first and second favorite votes are tallied no matter how many candidates, it seems fair. Though I would strongly prefer no more than three candidates as well.

They can't. The person who gets the least votes in the first round is eliminated, and anyone who out them as their first choice has their votes changed to their second choice. Everyone else still uses their first choice votes. In RCV, votes only change to your next choice if your first choice is eliminated.

Having more than three candidates isn't a problem either. We had 4 candidates in 2018 when we used it in Maine. In the first round the R got 46.33%, the D got 45.58%, and the two I(ndependant)s got 5.71% and 2.37%. The 2.37% I candidate was eliminated and their ballots went to their second choice. There still wasn't anyone with more than 50% so the 5.71% I was also eliminated and their ballots switched to their second choice (if they were already on their second choice from the other I candidate being eliminated, they went to their third choice). Once that was done, between the redistributed votes and exhausted ballots, the D candidate won 50.6% to 49.4%. The Rs were super pissed and cried that they were cheated, since they'd have won if we were still using FPTP, but that was why we implemented RCV in the first place, we had a very bad experience with an R winning when they only had 37.8% of the actual vote.

Another benefit of RCV is that it encourages more cooperation between similar candidates, because not only are you trying to convince people to put you as their first choice, you also are trying to get as many of your competitions voters to put you as their second choice. So similar candidates are poorly served by attacking each other and alienating each other's voters. That's a lesson the Rs in Alaska apparently didn't learn. The 5.71% I candidate worked that into almost all their campaign stuff, "Vote for me, but put (D) second."

Aetius wrote:

How would you feel if LNP voters had voted for Labor in order to deny the Greens the seat, which could easily have happened in that election?

Might as well ask how he'd feel if the tooth fairy called him a dickhead, while you're conjuring up fantasies.

This complaint about RCV still boils down to two things.

1 - My candidate didn't win; and
2 - Some people voting might not understand perfectly how it works.

Both of those REGULARLY happen in a 2 party system where it is majority wins.

I wouldn't expect anything else from the "whoever has the gold makes the rules" ideology.

Mixolyde wrote:

I wouldn't expect anything else from the "whoever has the gold makes the rules" ideology.

Yeah. It feels a whole lot like “we spent all this money f*cking with the old way” sort of whining

Paleocon wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

I wouldn't expect anything else from the "whoever has the gold makes the rules" ideology.

Yeah. It feels a whole lot like “we spent all this money f*cking with the old way” sort of whining

No, it feels like "the simplest rules are clearly the best rules."

Aetius wrote:

There were 12 candidates in the first round. Roemer had defeated Edwards before, and polling had Roemer winning easily in a 1-v-1 versus Edwards or Duke. However, his support was sapped just enough by other candidates (primarily Holloway) to put him in third place and get him eliminated.

Bruce wrote:

But you are right about the order of eliminations being important, although I would question how big a flaw it might be.

Don't look at how it works, look at how it breaks. How would you feel if LNP voters had voted for Labor in order to deny the Greens the seat, which could easily have happened in that election? How would you feel if the LNP had won the election despite almost 60% progressive first-round support, as in the Alaskan election? You would feel robbed and betrayed, and rightly so.

So Roemer wasn't the most popular candidate overall as evidenced by finishing 3rd.

And LNP voters absolutely did vote for Labor ahead of Greens. Every single how-to-vote card published by the Libs had Labor ahead of the Greens in every single electorate. But they put LNP first because in RCV voting 1st preference for your preferred candidate is always the best way and then how you number your preferences determines where your vote eventually will land and the vast majority of our electorate understand that.

How can it be possible to feel robbed and betrayed by COUNTING THE VOTES? That's all that happened.
Conservatives win on progressive preferences and vice versa every time. It's how the system works.

Bruce wrote:

How can it be possible to feel robbed and betrayed by COUNTING THE VOTES? That's all that happened.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/mSDQ5j3.png)
The R in the example from my state upthread has a strong physical resemblance to Kirk Van Houten, which led to a lot of Simpson-related memes being used, so I'll reuse this one to answer that question.