It seemed pretty quiet to me on that particular front, but you never know.
15 thoughts on “Domestic Politics Open Thread”
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"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
It seemed pretty quiet to me on that particular front, but you never know.
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(From Mercury News (requires registration), via Body and Soul.)
This ought to be one of the biggest domestic stories ever, given the time frame. Four years ago, as has been acknowledged by all those involved, nearly 20 000 voters were illegally thrown off the electoral rolls in Florida, due to false claims that they were felons. Rather than reinstating those illegally prevented from voting, the State of Florida has thrown another 47,000 voters off the electoral rolls, and claims that there’s no deadline requiring them to restore those entitled to vote to the register.
Regardless of your opinion of Katherine Harris’s motivations in eliminating so many voters, no one with a committment to democracy would disagree that people who are entitled to vote, as the vast majority of the 20 000 eliminated prior to the election of 2000 were, ought to be able to vote. It appears that the election officials in Florida, however, have no committment to democracy.
I went to a concert for Kerry in Manhattan last night at Pianos. The musicians were quite energetic, but the audience was small and spiritless. The only people who danced were yours truly and some skinny listless little teeny bopper. It distresses me how many young women in Manhattan I could break in half with my bare hands. Women got liberated; then too many decided to be size 2, sacrificing all their life force. When I graduated from college in 1967, I didn’t know there were sizes lower than 6. Our discussions about diet centered around where could you get the best hot fudge sundaes.
Unremarkably I am stronger and have more stamina than the sugar-is-the-ultimate-evil girls. Give me a break. Haven’t they tasted breastmilk? Infants are supposed to find that life is sweet.
I have a lovely red shirt from the gap men’s department that says, “A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss.”
When is the Kerry campaign going to begin?
Jane,
There’s a sense that Kerry likes to begin his campaigns later rather than sooner (he did seem to do so during the primary). I’ve heard after Labor Day he’ll start up the engines. Not sure he has that much to gain by starting too soon anyway.
Medium Lobster on Kerry:
…Kerry is coldly exploiting America’s rich history of Zen populism, planning to ride all the way to the White House on a wave of faltering invisibility. There is still hope, however – Kerry has begun embarking on an 11-day foreign policy tour, a mistake which could cripple his campaign by fatally reminding the voting public that he exists.
It distresses me how many young women in Manhattan I could break in half with my bare hands. Women got liberated; then too many decided to be size 2, sacrificing all their life force. When I graduated from college in 1967, I didn’t know there were sizes lower than 6.
I fear too many women figure out far too late that self-inflicted starvation and tryouts for the part of Skeletor in the 22nd annual Masters of the Universe cosplay competition are not attractive qualities in an adult human being.
Plenty of words have been written on why this is, and plenty more will be before it gets solved. But given the rise of what some in America are pleased to call “obesity” (and which I am pleased to call a decline in the unhealthy obsession with artificial waistlines), I conjecture that people just might be /starting/ to get it.
As for the Kerry campaign, I believe he’s been pursuing the wisest possible strategy this last month, given the circumstances–Team Bush has been doing a spectacular job of imploding on its own, and given Kerry’s undeniable lack of charisma, Bush’s plummeting numbers, and the media’s inclination to play Kingmaker, I think it’s a smarter move to let Bush beat himself whenever possible.
That said, I’m starting to feel a shift in the political energy–and it may well be time to go active. We’ll see.
Speaking of elections, even in states where Republicans are not simply kicking voters off the electoral rolls, there’s always Diebold Variations.
Regardless of your opinion of Katherine Harris’s motivations in eliminating so many voters, no one with a committment to democracy…
I guess that calibrates you for us.
Katherine Harris’ job description didn’t include “committment to democracy”. You may disagree that it ought to, but it ain’t there. Her job was actually to ensure the election laws were followed. The execution of those laws was completely up to the supervisors of elections, who miraculously avoided all responsibility for obeying the law. The laws were flawed (still are, to a lesser extent) and the executions of the law were similarly flawed.
Want to blame someone? The legislature would be a good place to start. Harris takes some blame, as does her predecessor (who selected awarded the contract to that company…can’t recall the name…to screen for felons), as do the supervisors of election. The real breakdown was in the way responsibility is not assigned to anyone to interpret the state law in a way that works. One step in the right direction would be to have a heirarchy of responsibility, with the elections supervisors being directly accountable to someone (SecState? I really don’t know if this is the appropriate choice), and uniformity of polling practice (or at least central control thereof) statewide.
And perhaps the requirement of central oversight and independent review ought to be imposed at the national level. If you’re really looking for meaningful change, that is.
And some sort of external, independent audit of practices and procedures (up to and including election day) ought to be looked into. If you think Katherine Harris was bad, her replacement ought to give you real panic.
While I agree with Jes’s implied outrage it’s pretty clear that some reasonable standards need to be applied to voter rolls and it’s not happening now. Here in Chicago in the primaries this spring election judges were required to issue a ballot to anyone requesting one regardless of ability or willingness to provide identification or appearance on the voter registration list.
“And perhaps the requirement of central oversight and independent review ought to be imposed at the national level.”
Ease down there, Mao Tse Slarti.
Our best defense against electoral misdeeds is decentralization. Make sure that if you’re going to rig something, at least 20 people have to be in on it. That’s the biggest danger of Dieboldification. The numbers go into the machine up to the precinct center and onto the state with but 1 or 2 eyes seeing them.
Wasn’t calling for national oversight, sidereal. Was suggesting that perhaps there ought to be a national requirement for local oversight. I can see how the “central oversight” may have steered you astray, though. Hey, I’m just as unclear (nuclear?) as the next guy. More so, sometimes.
Further clarification:
What I meant by “central oversight” was just that, at the state level. Currently what we have (in Florida, at least) is a bunch of supervisors of election who are accountable to no one (except those who voted them into the office to begin with. Oh, and Jeb, but all he can do is dismiss them.) and who can come up with their own ballot layout. Central oversight at the state level would mean, among other things, that the supervisors of election are no longer a large number of loose cannons.
One of those has been dismissed in the last year (IIRC) for egregious abuse of public funds, and assorted other incompetencies. So some sort of oversight would be a GOOD thing, IMO. And if we have independent audit, even better things might come of it. Who knows, we might find something useful for the Union of Concerned Scientists to concern itself with.
“Was suggesting that perhaps there ought to be a national requirement for local oversight.”
Ah, that’s all good then. You recommending a central committee got me all twitchy.
Ah, that’s all good then. You recommending a central committee got me all twitchy.
Even putting some sort of oversight requirements on states might raise constitutional issues. What you thought I’d said (not without good cause, I admit) would get tossed out on its ear by SCOTUS (IMO, of course; I’m not a lawyer) unless the answer was given in the form of a constitutional amendment.
call me crazy, but deliberately purging voter rolls of “felons” based on veeeery loose SQL queries strikes me as fundamentally undemocratic. as does having rich white counties allow people to check their ballot and do it again if they screw up, but poor black counties not have the same privelege … Jim Crow is alive and kicking in Florida, but he’s a wiley bastard.
You’ve got it exactly backward, asdf. Most of the irregularities occurred in districts whose supervisor of election ran as a Democrat. So, the standards in Republican-run districts allowed for a higher level of democracy than did those in Democrat-run districts.
Of course, it doesn’t run completely along party lines. And of course, it doesn’t mean what it might, on first glance, appear to mean. What it really means is where things failed is where there was the most pressure to succeed, and where the precincts were most pressed to do their jobs: in the highly populated southern cities, which tend to vote Democrat. Most likely it means that the supervisors in question didn’t have sufficient resources to meet demand, and neglected to plan for this contingency. Reason for change, yes. Conspiracy to deprive black voters of their votes: no evidence at all for that. And if there was a conspiracy, it was of Democratic making. Because they had control where the action was.