U.S. Politics: Register to vote, the election is nigh

[lokisnow]

First time creating a topic in tapatalk hope this works...

Nah, Kennedy is Gollum. He's got the Sméagol/Gollum thing into a fine art.

Scalia/Thomas are Saruman/Wormtongue.

Scalia is WUTTEAT. It is known.

In recent years, Democrats have. Sotomayer and Kagan are 60 and 54 years old respectively.

I think ginsberg despite being the eldest and a cancer survivor is probably the healthiest judge on the bench and in the best shape of the nine.

That said if all the conservative justices retire strategically and liberal justices do not do so, as Breyer and ginsberg have not, then the court is inevitably going to get more and more conservative. For 14 years of Democrat presidents they've only flipped one Reagan bush judge.

[Suttree]

NY Times

More than half of the general election advertising aired by outside groups in the battle for control of Congress has come from organizations that disclose little or nothing about their donors, a flood of secret money that is now at the center of a debate over the line between free speech and corruption....

The dominance of secretly funded advertising defies one of the underlying assumptions of the Supreme Courts Citizens United decision, which paved the way for outside groups to raise and spend more money, so long as they did not coordinate with candidates and parties. In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy envisioned campaigns in which unlimited independent spending by unions and corporations would be paired with robust real-time disclosure.

Shareholders can determine whether their corporations political speech advances the corporations interest in making profits, Mr. Kennedy wrote, and citizens can see whether elected officials are in the pocket of so-called moneyed interests.

The reality is far different. In race after race, voters are confronted by advertising from an array of groups with generic names and unclear agendas. The groups finances are disclosed only on a federal tax return, typically filed more than a year after Election Day, on a form on which the names of donors are allowed to be redacted. Critics call it dark money.

No but really, it's all about "free speech".

[The Undead Martyr]

You know, at the very least I'd imagine a bill to mandate full disclosure of campaign donors would pose no ideological issue with SCOTUS, even if the notion of campaign finance reform is (in their bizarro world) an infringement upon free speech.

Who am I kidding? Scalia would still strike it down.

Then again you could argue that they are being true to the Constitution's oligarchic roots. Life, liberty, property, and keeping the wealthy white man in power over the mob.

[Summah]

Aceluby,

No people below a certain threshold do not have to file if they don't owe. Every year the government sends me a letter about this so I can look up the cut off and determine I don't need to file.

It would certainly still be disenfranchising, first in order to register to vote the way most people would under your system, as well as get a free a id, poor people who do not pay taxes would have to file a tax return anyway, that's ridiculous, the tax forms themselves are ridiculous and difficult to understand and forcing people who don't pay to file is ridiculous. Many people would find this to be too much and figuring their bite doesn't count anyway, not bother. Also if this system were set up there likely wouldn't be as many voter registration drives, so registering would become more difficult, you're also asking the poorest people in this country to either pay for an ID when everyone else gets one for free or file a complex and ridiculous form that is otherwise unnecessary for them and likely making it more difficult to register and consider that this group is disproportionately disabled, elderly, lacking access to transportation, child care and for many poor enough that even the cost of public transportation to go and register would be a burden.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TGU,

I'm much more supportive of full disclosure laws regarding campaign funding than I am of limits on campaign funding.

[The Fallen]

Why can't all nominees running for office be funded by us, the taxpayers. Everyone gets X amount of money for their campaign. The networks give them all X amount of hours for ads. Basically, everyone in the same tier (a presidential race would get more obviously, as it's a national race) gets the same shit and may the best man/woman win.

Is spending tens of millions of dollars in order to drown out the opposition really democracy?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Fallen,

Because the two major parties would be in charge of who qualified for funding. Thereby reinforcing their existing control over who gets access to ballots with control over who gets money to run for office.

[The Fallen]

Fallen,

Because the two major parties would be in charge of who qualified for funding.

Well, every candidate that meets the criteria for getting on the ballot, as we see in local races, would get the funding. And in local races, at least here in NY, you have a slew of parties that run candidates. Voters in primaries would decide who the nominee is. And they would be deciding, theoretically, between a group of similarly funded candidates. It's possible that someone from a smaller party could pull out a win.

Fallen,

Because the two major parties would be in charge of who qualified for funding. Thereby reinforcing their existing control over who gets access to ballots with control over who gets money to run for office.

I just want to make sure I'm following. When you say access to ballots, are you referring to which politicians who will be placed on the ballot?

Public funding would cut out all the third party money. And funding from the National Committees. I think the major parties would have less control in such a scenario.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Fallen,

Who would control drafting the laws that would set up this system? You really think they wouldn't stack the deck in their favor?

[The Fallen]

Fallen,

Who would control drafting the laws that would set up this system? You really think they wouldn't stack the deck in their favor?

Good point. It would take an informed citizenry to pressure them into writing a fair law. Which is a pipe dream with our apathetic citizens.

Maybe the press could carry the ball until enough pressure has been built to force the citizens to demand it?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Fallen,

I don't know. The elder I wax the more cynical I get about politics. Most of the sincere and idealistic who stay in are either inefective or turned into what they fight against in an effort to be more effective. The big, and unavoidable problem, with representative democracy is that we give power to people who want power and we reward those who seek power for power's sake with more power.

Structurally, I wonder, sometimes, if we wouldn't be better served by randomly selecting people for duty as legislators rather than letting people build political fiefdoms. But that solution has tremendous problems as well.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

The idea that we shouldn't enact campaign finance reform because it would entrench the two major parties is a little odd to me. The two major parties could scarcely be more entrenched than they already are. I doubt that will change without major structural changes- the two party system is basically inevitable under the Constitution as currently written- but at least we wouldn't have two major parties that needed to raise vast sums of money to compete with one another, and following from that listen mostly to the voices who bankroll them.

The two highest ranking elected independents in the United States Government, Bernie Sanders and Angus King, have both been critical of the Citizens United, and advocated for campaign finance reform. In Kansas, independent Senate hopeful Greg Orman has also criticized Citizens United and called for reform.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

OAR,

I think we need serious structural reform. I've been advocating for a Constitutional convention for a decade now. My problem is what you propose will be used to reinforce existing power dynamics however strong those dynamics already are.

[Ormond]

Fallen,

I don't know. The elder I wax the more cynical I get about politics. Most of the sincere and idealistic who stay in are either inefective or turned into what they fight against in an effort to be more effective. The big, and unavoidable problem, with representative democracy is that we give power to people who want power and we reward those who seek power for power's sake with more power.

Structurally, I wonder, sometimes, if we wouldn't be better served by randomly selecting people for duty as legislators rather than letting people build political fiefdoms. But that solution has tremendous problems as well.

Uh, yes, Scot, for "random selection" to fix what you see as the "problem" of people with high power motivation running for office, it would have to work like the military draft used to, with anyone who fit the qualifications being eligible for selection whether or not they had volunteered to be part of the selection pool. And that would lead to having a lot of people in office who did NOT want to be there, resented the fact of having to serve, and who therefore would end up doing an even worse job of running the government than those with high power motivation do.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Ormond,

As I said random selection for office has huge problems too. But it does address the problem of giving power to the power hungry.

Churchill spoke well when he said, "democracy is the worst form of government ever invented, except for all the others."

[Maltaran]

Ormond,

As I said random selection for office has huge problems too. But it does address the problem of giving power to the power hungry.

Churchill spoke well when he said, "democracy is the worst form of government ever invented, except for all the others."

Wouldn't it give power to the bureaucracy though? People like Sir Humphrey who know "how things are done" and can guide the inexperienced legislators down the "right" path.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Malt,

Yes, it would.

[Commodore]

You know, at the very least I'd imagine a bill to mandate full disclosure of campaign donors would pose no ideological issue with SCOTUS, even if the notion of campaign finance reform is (in their bizarro world) an infringement upon free speech.

I imagine most disclosure laws are perfectly constitutional, but in general, why shouldn't I be able to donate anonymously?

This all stems from the left's belief that all political opposition is insincere and illegitimate. That it only exists because of super rich anonymous donors brainwashing the moron citizenry into voting against their interest.

So they want to control what information the populace is exposed to, by regulating the means to produce that information.

[The Fallen]

Fallen,

I don't know. The elder I wax the more cynical I get about politics. Most of the sincere and idealistic who stay in are either inefective or turned into what they fight against in an effort to be more effective. The big, and unavoidable problem, with representative democracy is that we give power to people who want power and we reward those who seek power for power's sake with more power.

Structurally, I wonder, sometimes, if we wouldn't be better served by randomly selecting people for duty as legislators rather than letting people build political fiefdoms. But that solution has tremendous problems as well.

Same here. That last paragraph is interesting. It would have the added effect of forcing people to pay attention. Let me just say though, that there's nothing worse than a career politician. Someone who's only interest is in keeping his/her job, putting the interests of their constituents second. We had a guy here in NY who was a Democrat. Couldn't rerun as a Democrat so he switched to Republican. Then ran, and won, for the state assembly as a Democrat. Only to recruit several other guys to hold the assembly hostage unless they got powerful positions in specific committees.

There are always exceptions, but man, limits wouldn't be a bad thing.

I agree with OnionAhai. The problem is money.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Commodore,

Money buys influence. We are entitled to know who has influence over our public officals.