Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
... The student ID thing is one of a list of examples of how a group with an agenda can present their case for something that sounds reasonable, like "voter ID laws for secure elections" yet structure it in a manner that they absolutely do intend to take advantage of unfairly (hunters can vote, students no?) ...
At the heart of the voting-rights (or ID) debate, the “election fraud” debate, the electoral college/states' rights debate and so on, is the tension between what it means to be a republic or a democracy. In brief, in a democracy, everyone votes as individuals. Those votes get tallied, arriving at a winner, who goes on to represent the public. In a republic, individual’s choices get aggregated into groups. The groups then vote, and it’s the groups’ choices that win.
The distinction is important. Consider 100 people. Suppose that 10 people are one group, another 10 another group, and the remaining 80 are a third group. In a democracy, we have 100 voters. In a republic, we have 3. If the first two groups vote for Jones, and the third group overwhelmingly for Smith, then Jones wins, even if Smith garnered the vast majority of the individuals’ votes.
It’s true, if coincidental with the respective parties’ names, that today the Republicans want essentially a republic, while the Democrats want a democracy.
OK but you're still doing it. You brought up the Student ID thing again, yet you admit you have no idea what state supposedly banned or bans student ID's as a form of ID for voting, and what year that may have been. You only admit it's not Georgia. FWIW a hunting license is issued by the state, so of course it's a valid ID. The state won't let you run around in the woods with a gun if they don't know who you are. An ID card issued by a private hunting club would not be a form of ID for voting, just as a private college ID is not valid for voting. I certainly hope that all state/county/public college student ID's are valid forms of ID for voting in all states.
The truth is, there are plenty of forms of ID that are accepted. I wish I had a nickel for every time I've listed the forms of ID that anyone can use to vote. Bank statement with your name & address on it, a pay stub, a utility bill, a county ID, a state-issued non-driver's license (my son had to get one when he was 16 to board a plane), boating license, fishing license, and yes, even a state-issued hunting license.
I did not bring it up again so much as you never put it down. I was trying to explain that it was an example oft cited in rhetoric of the shaping of voting laws in such a way that those who align with certain special interests agendas are given a means to prove identity to vote (gun or hunting licenses, which are more commonly issued to people who prioritize 2A concerns, in a very general sense.)
In some states it is very restrictive, in some less so. But I already apologized for being unclear in a way that led to confusion, and admitted that I wasn't even sure but vaguely thought it was Texas, and that anyways that particular DETAIL (this is the nit-picking, you are digging around prolonging an argumentative exchange over something that was rhetorical and not meant to be a main pillar of any argument for me) was one of several little bits in a list of things, we could strike it from my post and my point would remain unchanged. I also said in an earlier post that I struggle to imagine anyhow, not having a basic State ID of some sort. It would be difficult for anyone over 18 and many who are younger than that, to even function without one!
And actually, I'm willing to take your point about the difference between something issued by the state versus something issued by a private organization. But I don't much care for these standards being set by state legislatures where they can be as tight or loose or particularly oriented as a partisan body may please - and that goes BOTH ways. I don't think that the solid blue states should be let to set election rules that could give them an advantage, either. I think that we need a big, bipartisan body to come up with a standard framework of rules that apply across the board that won't give either side an advantage or involve special treatment or discrimination against any state.
It would cover the timing, the process for balloting by mail and absentee, how long the polls stay open, how many locations there must be per X number of voters in an area, what proof of identity is required for registration and voting. Of course if it went as far as I wish it would, I wish we had a system of elections more like the Australians do. /shrug
But I have to say, that harming people's faith in the integrity of elections is not a smart move on the part of the Right, necessarily. I have spoken with someone I know who is fully in ideological support of the right, hates the left, and yet he says, "I don't vote anyways. Why bother? It's all rigged, we all know it."
At the heart of the voting-rights (or ID) debate, the “election fraud” debate, the electoral college/states' rights debate and so on, is the tension between what it means to be a republic or a democracy. In brief, in a democracy, everyone votes as individuals. Those votes get tallied, arriving at a winner, who goes on to represent the public. In a republic, individual’s choices get aggregated into groups. The groups then vote, and it’s the groups’ choices that win.
The distinction is important. Consider 100 people. Suppose that 10 people are one group, another 10 another group, and the remaining 80 are a third group. In a democracy, we have 100 voters. In a republic, we have 3. If the first two groups vote for Jones, and the third group overwhelmingly for Smith, then Jones wins, even if Smith garnered the vast majority of the individuals’ votes.
It’s true, if coincidental with the respective parties’ names, that today the Republicans want essentially a republic, while the Democrats want a democracy.
The historian I follow says that when we hear the "We don't live in a Democracy, we live in a Constitutional Republic" argument, it's a lot like saying, "I don't have a dog, I have a Golden Retriever" in that I guess the latter is one kind of the former...
But I can at least sort of agree with you, though I do think that even a minority if it is significant enough needs to be represented and heard. In many ways I really do want more democracy, not less.
As I just said though, I like the way that the Aussies do it. Ranked choice and "compulsory" voting - though that's a bit misleading...if you don't vote, you get a small fine, which I think that they can waive if people have a good enough excuse like they were in the hospital or something. It's not so much "compulsory" or "mandatory" as it is "very much more strongly encouraged." I wish that more Americans were into civic participation, and that it did not take the feeling of existential threat to motivate a lot of us. I think that putting those big ideological issues (like weed, abortion) on ballot measures does drive more participation.
And I also think that ranked choice voting would give third (fourth, fifth, whatever) parties and independents more of a chance, which I think would be a very good thing for the country.
...And I also think that ranked choice voting would give third (fourth, fifth, whatever) parties and independents more of a chance, which I think would be a very good thing for the country.
It's interesting how many modern democracies (or if we like, republics) are locked into a 2-party system. The UK in principle has 3 parties - Tories, Labour and Liberals - but the Liberals haven't been a serious party for 100 years. Not sure about Canada or Australia... but it seems that most countries have a "labor" party or a "social democrat" party, and some kind of conservative party.
The exceptions, who do have multiple viable parties, such as France or Italy, tend to be less stable. I mean their policies see-saw, depending on who wins. In the US we can be reasonably sure that staggering changes in policy won't be implemented. This thread is asking what would happen if the GOP takes total control. It's highly unlikely that for example Social Security would be abolished, or that the US would suddenly become an ally of Iran.
But you're quite right, that the American political system has evolved to institutionalize there being exactly two parties. If the GOP splits into MAGA and "establishment" factions, it's likely that the latter will join with the Democrats, while the blue-collar/agrarian/labor wing(s) of the Democratic party would join the MAGA-GOP. We're already seeing the latter in my former state of Ohio. The trend started with the "Reagan Democrats" way back in 1980.
As for republic vs. democracy, the core idea is that the former is unabashedly aristocratic. The sorting of voters into groups, is uneven. The poorer and less-influential get lumped into larger groups. The better-connected go into smaller ones. The latter then effectively get stronger votes. It's all in the name of forestalling "mob rule". The will of the minority only matters when said minority has some kind of intrinsic, historical pull.
I am not entirely disaffected by the "republican" idea, because I do think that in some sense, the "elite" voters ought to have more input. By this I mean that persons with more stake, should have more say. Yes, this does mean that persons who pay lots of tax should have more say than those who pay little or none, even if that means unfair results, such as cutting of public services. But it can't be comprehensively thus. Even those who pay zero tax, ought still to have SOME say, and to assert that they're utterly irrelevant, is especially insulting, when such assertion is couched in some kind of appeal to the magisterial ideas of those lofty worthies, the Founding Fathers.
So perhaps the ideal is a mix of republican and democratic, where every individual gets a direct say, instead of groups; but not every vote is equally weighted. Admittedly, even if we accept this, how do we decided the weighting, and who gets to make that decision?
But I have to say, that harming people's faith in the integrity of elections is not a smart move on the part of the Right, necessarily. I have spoken with someone I know who is fully in ideological support of the right, hates the left, and yet he says, "I don't vote anyways. Why bother? It's all rigged, we all know it."
My Gen Z son is probably not going to vote on Nov 8. He voted for Biden in 2020 in order to get his student loans forgiven. I think he's starting to realize how political promises work in the real world, and he's a bit disillusioned. That's unfortunate but part of the learning process.
Ideally, each branch would return to its core duties and responsibilities. The President would be focused on national defense and enforcing all our nation’s laws. Congress would be more fiscally responsible and not add spending measures unrelated to the original intent of the bills and repeal or pass laws using the congressional process. The US Supreme Court would decide cases based upon the US Constitution (as written), US laws, and state laws and constitution instead of using foreign laws or personal beliefs as justification for rulings.
Realistically none of that will happen. Congress, regardless of political party, is a two team organization and they’re both playing the same game. When one is in majority they are on offense and the minority party is on defense. If the majority party tries to pass a good bill then the defense will do whatever they can to stop the bill from passing. Both sides pad the bills with spending measures for their home districts/states and any big money lobbyists who donated to their campaign.
Prsidents use “executive orders” more frequently out of precedent or “well they did it so why shouldn’t I do it too”. They can’t get Congress to pass a law they want so they make an executive order with penalty of law behind the order. Only Congress can make laws. Executive or emergency orders should be used for emergencies only.
US Supreme Court isn’t without its issues. Heavily relying upon precedent instead of re-examining the cases based upon individual merit, relying upon foreign court ruling, and special interest influence (social, political, or religious) are constant issues regardless of political or social nature of the justice.
I caught this on the right side as an "Active thread," I apologize, I wasn't aware that politics was allowed here, so here's my thoughts:
Republicans controlling all three branches of government will result in the following:
Stronger states rights, and less reliance on the Federal government to micro-manage everything.
Re-organization of the Department of Education to focus on education, rather than cultural issues. A "minimum floor" education that defines math, science, English, etc., that states should SEEK to achieve (note, not forced).
Finish construction of the border wall, completely eliminating illegal immigration flows through Central America, revising immigration policies that allow for seasonal work visas.
National crime initiative that will provide incentives for states to increase funding to police departments and municipalities that engage in crime prevention and reduction.
Re-start our energy program to regain our energy independence like we still had in the first week of January of 2020.
Probably investigate Joe Biden for his ties to Ukrainian and Russian money laundering. Though it will lead to nothing, because only Democrats seem to have the spine to actually charge politicians.
Reduce inflation, ideally stop the out of control spending, but I don't have hopes for this since both parties are a huge fan of Modern Monetary Theory (we'll see how that works out in the near future)
Promote "Gen-3 and Gen-4" nuclear power as an alternative to less reliable Wind and to some extent large Solar farms which require more maintenance.
Increase funding to NASA (to date, the only president to increase funding to NASA since Reagan has been Trump, all other presidents have reduced NASA spending)
Reign in the 702 FBI's use of NSA's metadata collection system.
Eliminate DEI programs in the U.S. Government, while focusing on hiring people based on skill, regardless of their color.
There are a lot of things I'd also "like" to see, but I have to be realistic. While I do view the Republican party as less corrupt than the Democrat party (right now), foreign influence through financial contributions have a huge impact on our politicians from both parties... so things like preventing Congress from making stock trades (essentially insider trading since they're setting policy) is unlikely to pass, just as it's failed to pass under the current house.
What I will say though, is that polling is really starting to look fantastic. Under our last president, there was generally a nominal group of people who were depressed. Right now, it seems the entire country is depressed... we're under the greatest malaise this country has seen since the great depression. Unfortunately, I think it's going to get worse. The current administration is doing a lot to maintain the economy as much as possible until after November. At that point, I think you're going to see a catastrophic decline. In my family, we've taken this seriously and drastically reduced our spending to increase our savings as much as possible. I think we're going to see a considerable economic decline through much of 2023, and I don't expect it to improve until early to mid-2024. Even though it will happen under this presidency, it doesn't make me happy, I think we're going to have a very unfortunate time ahead in the next 1.5-2 years.
It's interesting how many modern democracies (or if we like, republics) are locked into a 2-party system. The UK in principle has 3 parties - Tories, Labour and Liberals - but the Liberals haven't been a serious party for 100 years. Not sure about Canada or Australia... but it seems that most countries have a "labor" party or a "social democrat" party, and some kind of conservative party.
The exceptions, who do have multiple viable parties, such as France or Italy, tend to be less stable. I mean their policies see-saw, depending on who wins. In the US we can be reasonably sure that staggering changes in policy won't be implemented. This thread is asking what would happen if the GOP takes total control. It's highly unlikely that for example Social Security would be abolished, or that the US would suddenly become an ally of Iran.
But you're quite right, that the American political system has evolved to institutionalize there being exactly two parties. If the GOP splits into MAGA and "establishment" factions, it's likely that the latter will join with the Democrats, while the blue-collar/agrarian/labor wing(s) of the Democratic party would join the MAGA-GOP. We're already seeing the latter in my former state of Ohio. The trend started with the "Reagan Democrats" way back in 1980.
As for republic vs. democracy, the core idea is that the former is unabashedly aristocratic. The sorting of voters into groups, is uneven. The poorer and less-influential get lumped into larger groups. The better-connected go into smaller ones. The latter then effectively get stronger votes. It's all in the name of forestalling "mob rule". The will of the minority only matters when said minority has some kind of intrinsic, historical pull.
I am not entirely disaffected by the "republican" idea, because I do think that in some sense, the "elite" voters ought to have more input. By this I mean that persons with more stake, should have more say. Yes, this does mean that persons who pay lots of tax should have more say than those who pay little or none, even if that means unfair results, such as cutting of public services. But it can't be comprehensively thus. Even those who pay zero tax, ought still to have SOME say, and to assert that they're utterly irrelevant, is especially insulting, when such assertion is couched in some kind of appeal to the magisterial ideas of those lofty worthies, the Founding Fathers.
So perhaps the ideal is a mix of republican and democratic, where every individual gets a direct say, instead of groups; but not every vote is equally weighted. Admittedly, even if we accept this, how do we decided the weighting, and who gets to make that decision?
Well, if we view things strictly through the lens of capitalism that no value exists except as strictly defined by its $ price tag, then the wealthy who pay more in taxes have more "skin in the game"... but I'm having a "wait a second" moment that I'm struggling to put into words... Who should be more strongly invested in the worth of their choices, the person who can easily toss of several thou to pay the tax man, or the person for whom every dollar is a question of their survival from one day to the next? And as to the value and weight of their opinions, or more to the point, they themselves as human beings by way of consideration of their needs...without the cooperation of those masses of laborers, the lifestyles of the rich & famous come to quite the grinding halt. The economic activity of the masses keeps the whole boat afloat.
I think, as I've said, that we need balance if any of this is going to work. Rather than Capitalist Oligarchy vs. Socialism (or Republic vs. Democracy) in a no holds barred cage match, TO. THE. DEATH...(Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!)... Like we need to admit that no, in fact, we do not want to follow the model of any other nation precisely. We are not of the same character and composition of any other country on the planet and were not from our inception. We have to be somewhat agile here. And to stop viewing everything as so absolute (if that is possible.)
I quite like having publicly funded libraries, radio, a TV station, parks, roads, expansion of infrastructure like electricity first and now internet into rural areas, and yes a strong social safety net. I see such things as a net-good for society. Even those who are so rich that they can send their kids to private schools should not huff and puff and give no f*s about such things as public schools and aid to the poor because for petes sakes they don't want homeless people visible in their cities. No one wants us to resemble a third world country with shack cities made of trash surrounding the walled off compounds of the rich.
Yet we all know that in order for all of this to work, people have to work, and yeah...even the dirty jobs need to get done.
So I'm interested in the question...what is the floor, here? Should there be one? I think that there should. A point below which we just do not let our most desperate of citizens fall. Doesn't mean luxury or even necessarily comfort...but it should be somewhere above squalor and peril. I recognize that some people make bad choices and they always will. I get it.
But it seems like such things are often part of the bottom line in terms of who aligns with which political side here, too... The question of whether a person of a lower socioeconomic class has any value or not, or whether a governing body should care about their fate. Do they deserve a voice, which they may use to address issues related to their SURVIVAL? Or are the more worthy wealthy more deserving of the voice that they will use for their own further ongoing and rapacious enrichment? Can we build a floor of entitlement without scrapping the American Dream, to do it?
I have also, to your point here, wondered if all systems of governance at any kind of scale in the whole of human history amount to nothing more that your basic feudalism of one kind or another, dressed up or disguised, hide the parasitical leaders behind this or that title or organization but in the end it's all the same. Fewer and fewer of the most powerful feeding off of the collective efforts and activities of the many and those few claiming some mandate of greatness to justify their largesse....is this all that we are capable of? I do feel that the United States of America started with different goals in mind, but maybe it's just human nature, and maybe it's inevitable. I don't know.
Well, based on history, despite what the GOP says we can pretty much only count on one thing that we KNOW they will do:
Tax cuts. That is the sum total of GOP domestic accomplishments for the last 22 years. They have given us very little else. Their other major initiatives had to do with "promoting Democracy abroad" through wars but they seem to have shed their foreign policy adventurism, so that's gone. They are not a party of ideas. They were not even able to repeal Obamacare despite saying they would do it for 7 years and then having more than enough power to do so. They have no health care ideas whatsoever. They have no inflation ideas whatsoever, despite complaining about it a lot.
I don't have any confidence they will build any walls, improve education, nuclear power, etc... They have not proven they can actually pass proactive domestic legislation. They have a lot of complaints and resentments, that is all they have. They complain about any discussion of race or the history of it in our society and they complain about immigrants despite the fact we need workers very badly. They are a party of grievance and resentments who want to cut taxes mostly for the wealthy.
In 2020 they didn't even have a platform, that is how pathetic they were.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
