So this is kind of true and kind of not. Part of the reason the Republican Party is so insane and intransigent and incompetent is because they ate too greedily from the forbidden tree of hacking...
So this is kind of true and kind of not. Part of the reason the Republican Party is so insane and intransigent and incompetent is because they ate too greedily from the forbidden tree of hacking elections.
They gerrymandered districts all to hell, so they created an environment where the median vote is hyperconservative. This selects for crazy pants Republicans and against more moderate or reasonable ones. They hitched their power to all the least democratic elements of our governing system, like packing the courts and holding a senate majority where 20% of the country elects 60% of the senate. All of this undermines their legitimacy and makes it hard for them to actually govern properly. They’ve got all the wrong things pressuring them.
So Trump is kind of wrong. If we made it easier to vote, undid gerrymandering, and did all the other pro-democracy reforms we could then eventually Republicans would start winning. The difference is, the white supremacist, plutocratic wing of the Republican Party would not longer have a stranglehold on the party’s platform. But, of course, that’s what they’re afraid of. . .
The party itself, though, would be fine. It would respond to the pressures to be more responsive to constituents and eventually come out of it stronger with a more whiggish bent.
It's really not. The Rhode Island Democratic Party is basically held hostage by people who would have been Republicans in any other state and it's pretty heinously corrupt. All the single-party...
One party rule is nice when it's your side
It's really not. The Rhode Island Democratic Party is basically held hostage by people who would have been Republicans in any other state and it's pretty heinously corrupt. All the single-party states have a lot of corruption under the hood, D and R. Single-party control should be considered an indicator of some underlying dysfunction with the system.
Corruption's a sort of subjective term. Kind of like obscenity, you know it when you see it and where you draw the lines highly reliant on cultural norms around it.
Corruption's a sort of subjective term. Kind of like obscenity, you know it when you see it and where you draw the lines highly reliant on cultural norms around it.
Problem is, Republican voters don't want to change either. 7/10 republicans want to deport illegal immigrants and 4/5 see immigration as a threat. If the GOP establishment decided to endorse one...
One issue the Republican party has had as the nation has grown less white is that it doesn't want to change to appeal to non-whites.
Problem is, Republican voters don't want to change either. 7/10 republicans want to deport illegal immigrants and 4/5 see immigration as a threat. If the GOP establishment decided to endorse one of these policies there would be a 'DNC conspiracy' reaction among their base, especially with Trump at the helm. They could try with black people but it's not very clear if they would forgive the GOP after at least 5 decades of fighting the southern strategy they created. Also young people still overwhelmingly back the Democrats so this would probably only be a temporary fix and in 25 years time would lead them right back where they started.
Please don't think it's just one U.S. state that's uniquely prone to this kind of anti-democratic intervention. The rot goes all the way to the top. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that absentee...
Please don't think it's just one U.S. state that's uniquely prone to this kind of anti-democratic intervention. The rot goes all the way to the top. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that absentee ballots received late, in the middle of a nationwide epidemic, should be invalidated. Many voters didn't receive the mail-in ballots they requested.
I'd expect these shenanigans in a managed "democracy" like Russia, or the antebellum U.S. South pre-Voting Rights Act. We need a national Fair Vote initiative, with impartial districting and secure, reliable mail or in-person voting.
I'm glad this is getting attention, but the Republicans in Wisconsin have been doing this sort of thing for a decade now. I know there's been attention on past events but it just doesn't seem like...
I'm glad this is getting attention, but the Republicans in Wisconsin have been doing this sort of thing for a decade now. I know there's been attention on past events but it just doesn't seem like enough.
This article is explicitly drilling into the past decade, since the 2011 gerrymandering.
This article is explicitly drilling into the past decade, since the 2011 gerrymandering.
That assault on democracy began in 2011, when Republicans drew new lines for political districts in Wisconsin. It was part of a national Republican effort, called Project Redmap, to capture state legislatures and, with those victories, to gain control over redrawing the lines of each district.
The irony when Republican representatives can vote remotely but actuals voters can't.
It was a meeting only in name. Republicans, who control 63 of 99 seats in the state assembly, sent just one member. He brought the session to order and then immediately ended it without taking up the governor’s request. It took just 17 seconds. In the Republican-controlled state senate, the same thing happened, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It took even less time.
The irony when Republican representatives can vote remotely but actuals voters can't.
If anyone is interested in a book-length look at voter suppression in the United States, I just finished Carol Anderson's One Person, No Vote and would enthusiastically recommend it.
If anyone is interested in a book-length look at voter suppression in the United States, I just finished Carol Anderson's One Person, No Vote and would enthusiastically recommend it.
The Democratic party could try to bring national attention to these issues and encourage people to vote downballot perhaps, since these elections tend to have even lower turnout than national or...
The Democratic party could try to bring national attention to these issues and encourage people to vote downballot perhaps, since these elections tend to have even lower turnout than national or presidential elections ("Don't like Biden? You can still do good by voting against Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression in your state government or legislature's election by voting Democratic") Problem is, the Republicans would do the same but more effectively since they're trusted by their voters. Also a lot of incumbents would need to be pretty selfless and abandon their safe seats, the chances of some reactionary getting elected in the south and the media piling over it or all those states that don't have enough population to participate in a multi-winner system, not to mention the off(?)-chance this ends up breaking the 2 party system in the house and suddenly people realize just how bad the current system is.
So this is kind of true and kind of not. Part of the reason the Republican Party is so insane and intransigent and incompetent is because they ate too greedily from the forbidden tree of hacking elections.
They gerrymandered districts all to hell, so they created an environment where the median vote is hyperconservative. This selects for crazy pants Republicans and against more moderate or reasonable ones. They hitched their power to all the least democratic elements of our governing system, like packing the courts and holding a senate majority where 20% of the country elects 60% of the senate. All of this undermines their legitimacy and makes it hard for them to actually govern properly. They’ve got all the wrong things pressuring them.
So Trump is kind of wrong. If we made it easier to vote, undid gerrymandering, and did all the other pro-democracy reforms we could then eventually Republicans would start winning. The difference is, the white supremacist, plutocratic wing of the Republican Party would not longer have a stranglehold on the party’s platform. But, of course, that’s what they’re afraid of. . .
The party itself, though, would be fine. It would respond to the pressures to be more responsive to constituents and eventually come out of it stronger with a more whiggish bent.
It's really not. The Rhode Island Democratic Party is basically held hostage by people who would have been Republicans in any other state and it's pretty heinously corrupt. All the single-party states have a lot of corruption under the hood, D and R. Single-party control should be considered an indicator of some underlying dysfunction with the system.
How do you define "a lot" of corruption? How did you measure?
Corruption's a sort of subjective term. Kind of like obscenity, you know it when you see it and where you draw the lines highly reliant on cultural norms around it.
Problem is, Republican voters don't want to change either. 7/10 republicans want to deport illegal immigrants and 4/5 see immigration as a threat. If the GOP establishment decided to endorse one of these policies there would be a 'DNC conspiracy' reaction among their base, especially with Trump at the helm. They could try with black people but it's not very clear if they would forgive the GOP after at least 5 decades of fighting the southern strategy they created. Also young people still overwhelmingly back the Democrats so this would probably only be a temporary fix and in 25 years time would lead them right back where they started.
Please don't think it's just one U.S. state that's uniquely prone to this kind of anti-democratic intervention. The rot goes all the way to the top. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that absentee ballots received late, in the middle of a nationwide epidemic, should be invalidated. Many voters didn't receive the mail-in ballots they requested.
I'd expect these shenanigans in a managed "democracy" like Russia, or the antebellum U.S. South pre-Voting Rights Act. We need a national Fair Vote initiative, with impartial districting and secure, reliable mail or in-person voting.
I'm glad this is getting attention, but the Republicans in Wisconsin have been doing this sort of thing for a decade now. I know there's been attention on past events but it just doesn't seem like enough.
This article is explicitly drilling into the past decade, since the 2011 gerrymandering.
Well, shows how much I read it then.
The irony when Republican representatives can vote remotely but actuals voters can't.
If anyone is interested in a book-length look at voter suppression in the United States, I just finished Carol Anderson's One Person, No Vote and would enthusiastically recommend it.
The Democratic party could try to bring national attention to these issues and encourage people to vote downballot perhaps, since these elections tend to have even lower turnout than national or presidential elections ("Don't like Biden? You can still do good by voting against Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression in your state government or legislature's election by voting Democratic") Problem is, the Republicans would do the same but more effectively since they're trusted by their voters. Also a lot of incumbents would need to be pretty selfless and abandon their safe seats, the chances of some reactionary getting elected in the south and the media piling over it or all those states that don't have enough population to participate in a multi-winner system, not to mention the off(?)-chance this ends up breaking the 2 party system in the house and suddenly people realize just how bad the current system is.