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If you are politically engaged, then you will vote. If you are not engaged with politics….. then frankly, I would rather you didn’t vote
That's a very good point against compulsory voting. Have we got anyone from here down under who can say if/how it works for them?
On 5e other hand, compulsory voting, or at least registration, would stop disenfranchisement of voters; everyone would automatically have a vote to cast and that would be enshrined in law.
Alternatively rather than make legislation to change the behaviours of voters, change the political system so that voters feel that they have a stake. Many western democratic systems (such as the US and UK) were designed a couple of hundred years ago to reflect the views and opinions of a select few, not the masses, and they're probably over due a reform or two
To be clear, Rudy Giuliani was never America’s mayor. That nickname was a bit of media gloss that was spread so thickly and indiscriminately that Giuliani had no trouble dining out on it for years. Many Americans lapped it up, too.
President Trump has been like a steady stream of acid on that veneer. And now Giuliani is a raw, smoldering mess.
As a culture, we like to believe that with age comes wisdom. The truth of it may be that age only makes people more obviously what they’ve always been. Freed of the urgent need to prove and define themselves for a future that’s yet to unfold, people can simply be. Giuliani, at 76, has revealed himself to be a man who believes that he can summon truth from falsehoods, bend the law to his will and conjure whatever reality suits him simply by speaking his hopes and dreams aloud.
No, Giuliani was never America’s mayor — a fact that if recognized makes it much easier to contend with the ease with which he has become one of Trump’s boys.
Giuliani attached himself to Trump as a vehicle for power. All the law-and-order, brute-force business was not foreign to him. The man who believed himself to be America’s mayor also seemed to believe that wherever he went, he would be surrounded by the scent of patriotism and he would duly perfume whatever he touched.
He believed in the power of his own myth. But he didn’t create it.
"Good ole Rudy won’t give up in Pennsylvania – they’re trying again…"
And at $20 000 a day in wages, he'll keep on trying 🙂
https://twitter.com/RichardHRBenyon/status/1329082454200631297?s=19
Needs sound, listen to the end because the captions don't cover it all.
That has got to be a spoof, surely!?!??! please tell me they're not real people 🙁
That covers the state of many Republicans in the US. They don't care about rational process they just want to win - it doesn't matter what's right or wrong or nonsensical. To them, it's a game with no rules.
Note not all Republicans are like this.
That has got to be a spoof, surely!?
I kinda think so, but I'm not completely sure. Even if it is, it's just literally saying what Trump's crew are not saying out loud.
I think they are probably taking the piss.
But it is a testament to Trumpets that I'm not sure.
the rudy judy thing has to be a dead cat, something else is going on.
Regarding @thols2 post about amending their complaint again:
https://twitter.com/RMFifthCircuit/status/1329192600629338114
Giuliani is less likely to be there because he is a lawyer, because Trump's team likely knows there's no legal basis. But he's not fighting on law. Giuliani's presence guarantee's press, live tweeting and the widespread repeating of Trump's narrative. He's there to tell the story to Trump's base as part of the disinformation campaign that the election was stolen. He'll lose, but the base will consider that that's unfair because Trump has told them the "truth". Once you think of it as PR or theatre in support of campaign then it makes more sense.
Look at Michigan. This is all about disrupting the votes being certified, opening loopholes for the electoral college. They don't want to win cases, just stop certification.
You basically want to know what is happening with Donald Trump’s lawsuits over his election defeat, and whether he has any glimmer of a chance of over-turning it, don’t you? Reuters have put together this summary:
ARIZONA
THE CASE: The Arizona Republican Party is trying to block the certification of the election results in the state’s most populous county, Maricopa, until the court rules on the party’s lawsuit asking for a new hand count of a sampling of ballots. An audit already completed by the county found no discrepancies, officials said.
WHAT HAPPENED: The judge has not issued a decision. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Wednesday.GEORGIA
THE CASE: A high-profile conservative attorney, L. Lin Wood Jr., has sued in an attempt to block the certification of election results in Georgia. Wood alleges Georgia illegally changed the process for handling absentee ballots. Georgia’s deputy secretary of state has called Wood’s case a “silly, baseless claim.”
WHAT HAPPENED: A judge has scheduled a hearing for Thursday to consider a request for a temporary restraining order to halt certification.MICHIGAN
THE CASE: Trump’s campaign is trying to block the certification of election results in the state, alleging that election officials “allowed fraud and incompetence to corrupt the conduct of the 2020 general election.” Trump’s legal team alleges that their observers were prevented from being able to properly watch the vote counting, that ineligible ballots were counted and that Republican challenges to ballots were ignored.
Another lawsuit filed this week on behalf of two poll challengers asks a court to halt the certification of election results until an independent audit is completed to “ensure the accuracy and integrity of the election.”
WHAT HAPPENED: There have been no decisions in either case. Judges have already swatted down several other Republican efforts to block certification in the Detroit area. Wayne County, which is home to Detroit, unanimously certified its election results on Tuesday, hours after Republicans first blocked formal approval of voters’ intentions – although they appear now to be rowing back on that.NEVADA
THE CASE: Trump’s campaign is asking a judge to nullify Nevada’s election results or set them aside and declare him the winner, arguing that illegal or improper votes were cast and the use of optical scanning to process signatures on mail-in ballots violated state law. The Trump lawsuit, filed Tuesday, rehashes arguments that judges in Nevada and elsewhere have already rejected. It claims that votes were cast on behalf of dead people, that election observers weren’t allowed to witness “key points” of processing and that people on American Indian territories were illegally given incentives to vote. In a separate court filing this week, a voting watchdog group led by a conservative former state lawmaker wants a judge to block statewide certification of the election.
WHAT HAPPENED: There have been no rulings in either case.PENNSYLVANIA
THE CASE: A Trump campaign case aims to stop the state from certifying the election, alleging Philadelphia and six counties wrongly allowed voters to correct problems with mail-in ballots that were otherwise going to be disqualified for a technicality, like lacking a secrecy envelope or a signature. The total number of affected ballots was not expected to come anywhere close to Biden’s margin of more than 80,000 votes.
WHAT HAPPENED: Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, signed onto the case this week after others abruptly withdrew, and the former New York City mayor argued in court on Tuesday for the first time since the 1990s. Giuliani made wild, unsupported allegations of a nationwide conspiracy by Democrats to steal the election. The judge did not immediately issue a ruling and canceled a hearing that was set for Thursday but set out a schedule for both sides to make new filings this week.WISCONSIN
THE CASE: Trump’s campaign on Wednesday filed for a recount in the counties that cover Milwaukee and Madison, both Democratic strongholds. It alleged — again without evidence — that absentee ballots were illegally altered or issued and that government officials violated state law.
WHAT HAPPENED: Biden leads Trump by 20,000 votes statewide. The recount requested by Trump will begin Friday and has to be complete by 1 December, the deadline for the vote to be certified at the state level. State and local elections officials reiterated that there was no evidence to back up the claims Trump was making.
I don't think that any of it matters in regard to the present election. Even if they disrupt certification in Michigan, they'd have to do it in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin etc to make a difference.
This is all about setting the narrative of a stolen election for the next four years of Congressional elections, and either Trump, or a Trumpist, running in 2024.
Trump is doing his bit by trying to sabotage both foreign policy and pandemic response in his remaining time to make as big a mess as possible for Biden to inherit.
The problem with mainstream Left wing politics generally, is that they believe in fairness, whereas the Right are Win at All Costs, with Trump and Johnson the typifiers of this.
Biden wants to move on, whereas he actually needs to throw the full weight of his powers into destroying them.
Its FPTP that's the problem.
It effectively disenfranchises millions. What's the point of voting Republican in California or Dem in the flyover states when your vote never counts?
Our system is a bit more fine grained (650 seats vs 50 states) but still had the same fundamental issues. Not much point voting Labour in Somerset or Tory in North Lanarkshire.
Its FPTP that’s the problem.
It effectively disenfranchises millions. What’s the point of voting Republican in California or Dem in the flyover states when your vote never counts?
1. Congressional and Senate seats. The biggest problem there is gerrymandering, not FPTP. (The Republican Party pretty much destroyed themselves in California, it wasn't a FPTP thing, just gross stupidity.)
2. The popular vote for President does carry some weight. Presidents who don't win the popular vote need to think carefully about what they have a mandate for. This is a big part of Trump's problem - he was always quite unpopular, but never made any effort at all to attract new supporters.
the washington post has some "inside" info on the plan
President Trump has abandoned his plan to win reelection by disqualifying enough ballots to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s wins in key battleground states, pivoting instead to a goal that appears equally unattainable: delaying a final count long enough to cast doubt on Biden’s decisive victory.
Rudy Giuliani has told Trump and associates that his ambition is to pressure GOP lawmakers and officials across the political map to stall the vote certification in an effort to have Republican lawmakers pick electors and disrupt the electoral college when it convenes next month — and Trump is encouraging of that plan, according to two senior Republicans who have conferred with Giuliani and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter candidly.
But that outcome appears impossible. It is against the law in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin law gives no role to the legislature in choosing presidential electors, and there is little public will in other states to pursue such a path.
Once you think of it as PR or theatre in support of campaign then it makes more sense.
They don’t want to win cases, just stop certification.
Completely agree with both these points.
They are trying to sell a narrative and still holding out hope that they can effectively filibuster the election process, preventing states from declaring in the hope of invoking the 12th amendment:
...The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote;..
It is a bizarre thing because even if this succeeded, and I'm pretty sure it won't, it would make a laughing stock of American democracy and surely push centrists strongly towards the Democrats.
I don't get the argument that FPTP makes votes for the losing candidate "a waste". If you hadn't voted for the opposition then the winner would have an even larger mandate, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy that encourages complacency to put forward that any vote not for the eventual winner is pointless - Trumpy Man uses this rhetoric too - he is a "winner" and people should vote for winners.
NO VOTE IS EVER WASTED - many people have given their lives over the years across the world to protect the right to vote.
There are many other reasons there are better systems than FPTP.
If you hadn’t voted for the opposition then the winner would have an even larger mandate
I think one issue is that in FPTP voting the mandate is often purely theoretical and it is left to the conscience of the winner to respect that there was a large minority that did not vote for them.
Trump is a good example of that: lost the popular vote by quite a margin in his first term but always considered himself "the winner" and showed no signs of acknowledging that tenuous mandate.
Would it be possible over here for a party to not get the most votes but still win an election? Thinking about it I think it would be, politics does seem to be a bit broken currently.
Would it be possible over here for a party to not get the most votes but still win an election? Thinking about it I think it would be, politics does seem to be a bit broken currently.
I think this happens a lot in UK politics. It's ineviatble with a FPTP system IMHO.
I don’t get the argument that FPTP makes votes for the losing candidate “a waste”. If you hadn’t voted for the opposition then the winner would have an even larger mandate, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy
This explains it well, the first 20 mins is enough but the whole episode is very interesting, especially in todays environment.
Over 90% of voters agree that campaign financing and lobbying is corrupting politics and feel it is an important issue, but no party runs on it.
thols2 thanks for all your links btw, some good stuff.
They're maybe not his lawyers?
good grief !! they are mental!
they are going to get counter lawsuits at this rate for libel.
Oh, I hope so!! Im surprised Judge Brann in PA didn't send him down for contempt.
Hugo Chavez did it from the grave !
Im watching the live stream of the press conference and guliani has dropped the "jew" conspiracy bombshell, its all the fault of George Soros.
Meanwhile everyone is paying attention to guliani's sweat and hair dye running down the side of his face.
I like the bit where he said the movie My Cousin Vinny, explained how it was rigged
That was nuts - BIGGLY !
What the fluck is going on with the world where this is allowed to go on ?
Maybe that old idiom will come to pass in all of this - give them enough rope and...
Are they preparing an insanity plea for when the post presidential lawsuits land?
they're still prepared to believe/push the us army german server seizure story!!
Why does he keep quoting Jimmy Carter's views on mail-in ballots?
'Jimmy Carter is pushing back on efforts by Attorney General William Barr and the White House to use the former Democratic president's work studying voting by mail to discredit the practice.
"I approve the use of absentee ballots and have been using them for more than five years," Carter said in a statement Thursday.'
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/04/politics/carter-vote-by-mail-safety-barr-white-house/index.html
Forget the cartoon Trumpist stereotypes for a moment. It’s worse than you think:
Trump was so popular and got so many votes he broke the Hugo Chavez algorithm in the voting machines! (sorry, just catching up with the Rudy press conference)
My problem is that a lot of the people in these interviews are trusting that the people submitting the legal interventions are being genuine and have real evidence. We all probably know people who work at very high levels but they are usually motivated by good reasons even if we disagree with them. We appear to have a situation where either a bunch of low level self interested ****s have been given way to loud a voice
Or the world no longer makes sense
Empirical evidence suggests it's the first
That Ellis woman. I would love to be all liberal and believe she is genuine but that is another level of tolerance
It’s just crossed my mind that the Trumps aren’t going to Florida for Thanksgiving as normal, as he thinks he might get locked out of the White House!