I just saw they are currently about 7000 poll workers short of what is necessary, but the GOP legislature refuses to budge on date or vote by mail.

Setup kiosks stations and spread them out to help those that don't have a computer or smartphone. Com'on there has to be better alternatives than trusting snail mail.

Snail mail works in a number of states already. We have a national distribution service already in place, too.

If you're going to have voting kiosks, how is that different than just having a normal election?

It does? Are you talking about early balloting? Nothing near the scale for the general.


Because there were be many more stations and people will be more spread out. I would also go along with making election day a holiday.

Elections in Oregon - Wikipedia

Thanks, good to know.

Still go with e-voting as backup. Snail mail seems to fraught with 'points-of-failure' for me.

(I did like how they could return the ballot vs mailing it in, that certainly relieves one big point of failure for me).

IIRC, Oregon's voter participation has gone up with the mail in voting system.

Which is why the GOP hates the idea.

Oregon has been vote by mail since 1998. Washington state is entirely vote-by-mail as well.

Illinois lets you return it in person or mail it. For what it's worth, they track everything. So I get an e-mail when my ballot is mailed and when they receive it back.

Vote by mail pretty much eliminates fraud and increases participation.

The first reason is why we should do it.

The second reason is why we never will. The GOP needs light turnout to consistently win.

Vote by mail works great in Colorado. Ballots sent out to every registered voter, then either mail it back or drop it off at one of the may drop boxes each county provides. Can't imagine going to a polling place again and I used to work for an in person voting state in conducting elections.

If (big big if) Trump's coronavirus response causes catastrophic GOP losses at the federal and state levels, the Democrats need to take that window of opportunity to create structural changes to help them going forward. Make Puerto Rico a state. Make D.C. a state (or incorporate the citizens of DC into MD or VA). Voting-by mail everywhere possible. Dem-friendly gerrymandering. Eliminate felon disenfranchisement.

Basically, start to even the playing field a bit.

Absolutely. Fight dirty like Republicans have forever.

Expand the Supreme Court.

Not that the party should base things on what I think, but if that happens this will be the first and only time I consider voting for them. If what we end up with is two parties both trampling institutions and the Constitution every chance they get, I'll vote for a hamster first in the future.

Yeah, I probably would not be for expanding SCOTUS, because it'd be really easy for the GOP to do the same thing when they get in and then we have an arms race where 32 justices are on the SCOTUS eventually. On the other hand, statehood for PR and DC are irreversible and the GOP doesn't really have similar options if they get back into power. Vote by mail and felon enfranchisement can be reversed but real gains can be made there. Gerrymandering just a matter of course.

Regarding the SCOTUS, just impeach Kavanaugh if you have overwhelming numbers.

Personally, I'm fine with how ever many justices. Right now each one is just too consequential. Let both sides keep adding justices until they finally agree to term limits and an appointment every two years.

Well that's fun - a federal judge refuses to postpone Wisconsin's primary on April 7. It's still on... the Governor of Wisconsin is thinking of using the National Guard for poll workers...

JUST POSTPONE IT YOU IDIOTS!

Federal judge doesn't have jurisdiction. Constitution says that's the state's purview. The judge thinks it SHOULD be delayed, though.

Evers wants to delay it but doesn't have the legal authority. The Legislature has to cooperate. But once that genie is out of the bottle and vote-by-mail is a thing here, the GOP risks getting the stuffing beaten out its ass like a pinata that drops infinite king-size candy bars.

They've been able to control elections in the state by playing games with which areas get additional polling stations/early voting hours/etc. Vote-by-mail is the end of that game and likely the end of GOP control of the legislature and courts.

I'm sure there are even pretty evil folks out there who are like "good, make them go to the polls and get sick so they won't be around to vote in November".

SI

I saw that the plan is to reduce Milwaukee's voting locations from 180 to 12. The GOP is practicing how to steal the general election.

The GOP plays politics to win.

The Dems play like they are trying to win an award for fairness.

Yep. We're still waiting for the Trump corruption investigations.

So Wisconsin apparently is delaying the primary now, a whole day before it was supposed to happen. That's definitely waiting till the last minute, but it's better than trying to hold it right now for sure.

It'll definitely get challenged in court (and the Governor will likely lose), but he probably did the right thing.... though it's a bit scary to see Governor's wield such executive power in postponing elections.

As far as I'm concerned, Robin Vos (speaker of the House) and Scott Fitzgerald (Senate majority leader) are complete criminals with no concern for the wellbeing of their state's citizens.

But they really want that Supreme Court seat.

Already blocked by the state Supreme Court. Wheee

This is a fucking atrocity. I am beyond words over this. Becoming a full-on libtard fueled by hatred of what I see becoming of one of our major political parties. I don't know if the GOP as an institution can recover. I know I won't have any room for forgiveness of most of these fucking people.

When the GOP has a choice between power and democracy they will always choose power.

There are scheduled to be 5 voting locations for all of Milwaukee. They are forcing crowds to form and that will result in people dying.

and the most vulnerable are their own base. That should tell their base all they need to know about their party, but instead this will just reinforce that the entire thing is a hoax or overblown.

And now a 5-4 SCOTUS has overruled a lower court and said there can be no extension for absentee ballots.

In a related story, thousands of voters have yet to receive their requested absentee ballots because of disruptions due to the coronavirus.

Didn't Dewine do this in Ohio despite the court ruling? I can't see them having the primary. No one will show up to run the polling places. It's the right thing to do to delay.

DIfferent laws. The GOP has probably won, and they'll be a primary and some of the voters will die.

But the GOP will hold a SC seat, so everything's worth it.

Conspiracy theory: This is a test run by Trump to get ready for the 2024 election cycle to F up the whole process and he can step in and get his 3rd term.

Things that make you go hmmmmmm.

I don’t like the idea of an executive being able to unilaterally postpone an election. The problem is that it takes a legislature with a semblance of sanity. This is how Caesars are made.

spot on

Weird how the strict constructionists who always side with the states to handle things how they want to suddenly don't when it might impact a Republican. Also see Bush v Gore.

Never let these phonies push that "strict constructionist" crap on you when they choose justices.

It's always been a con just like Scalia was always full of it.


SI

Again, there are people that actually believe the words in the Constitution matter, and then there are those who use that belief as an excuse but then don't hold it themselves. It's absurd to claim that such people invalidate the concept itself or play this sort of borderline No True Scotsman thing.

I think most everyone believes the words in the Constitution matter so that's a pretty false claim. How much a particular passage is relevant to a particular situation is open to a lot of interpretation.

Over and over, we keep seeing conservative justices trot out language about "state's rights" and "strict constitutionalism" to rule against liberal national causes and then turn around and enforce state laws over liberal local jurisdiction.



SI

The modern movement towards taking said words more seriously was and is specifically a reaction to rulings being handed down that generally disregarded said words. Indeed, that has happened even this century in service of so-called liberal causes by so-called conservative justices. It's also a simple matter of logic that generally considering it be 'open to interpretation' how much the words are relevant is a frontal assault on those words mattering.

Another option exists; not assuming that those who disagree with us do so because they have no principles, but dealing with their arguments instead of assassinating their motivations.

There was a short period of time when WI courts had ruled that voters did not need a witness signature on their absentee ballot. That has since been overturned so that a witness is required, and now the ELections Administrator has ruled any ballots mailed without a signature won't be counted even if they were mailed when there was no requirement for a signature. Even better, anyone who sent in one of those ballots will not be able to get a new ballot even if you show up at the poll. You just don't get to vote.

Part of the reason we pay lawyers is that this shit, when done well, requires more than simple logic.

The local Boy Scout Troop charters only one bus to go on a popular fishing trip. Over the last couple of years, the bus has gotten very crowded with scouts bringing their camping equipment (tents, etc.) on the bus despite encouragement to have parents and den leaders bring those bulky items in separate vehicles.

This year, the Troop posts an announcement: "Due to limited space on the bus going to our boy scout fishing trip, scouts may bring only fishing poles, bait, fishing tackle, and other equipment on the bus."

Johnny attempts to bring a backhoe onto the bus. It is, after all, "other equipment," and words matter.

Jimmy tries to bring a trolling motor, even though there are no boats on the trip. That is, after all, fishing equipment.

Jack just brings his tent and sleeping bag. Other equipment and all that.

What about camping chairs in which people will sit to fish?

In figuring out what "other equipment" means, does context matter? Does history? Does the intent of the rule? Can reasonable, well-meaning people minds differ over examples like the camping chair?


________________________________________________________


Or, to use a very classic example, say that there is a sign banning vehicles in the park.

Someone tries to drive his car in the park. That's easy. The sign forbids it.

What about a disabled person in a wheelchair?

A disabled person in a motorized wheelchair?

Someone who is not disabled who is delivering a wheelchair to someone and pushes it through the park on the way there? Decides to ride it through instead?

The city trash trucks to collect refuse from the trash cans?

What about a little girl pushing her doll in a stroller?

What about a bicycle?

Rollerblades?

Matchbox cars?

A memorial to the city's war dead that includes a tank?

http://www.courts.wa.gov/content/les...novehicles.pdf

____________________________________________________

Don't you see? Interpreting language is hard and subtle.


FYI, when "strict constructionists" say that they are giving the only possible interpretation of a law, and that the answer is easy, and that anyone who disagrees with them is thus purposely misreading the law to reach a desired political result, they are saying that those people lack principles and have malignant motivations.

Admitting that hard problems are hard and not pretending that they are easy is not a sign of bad character.

Brian hits on some important truth here. The textualist movement was a (IMO) proper reaction to judicial interpretations that went beyond the language of the laws being interpreted. If you read court cases from before the 1980s, you can see a stark difference in the whole approach. You will have cases interpreting statutes that never get around to talking about the text of the statute. It's weird.

But, here's the thing. The textualists won! Justice Kagan herself has said "We are all textualists now." We all looked at what Justice Scalia was saying and thought "Hey, that guy's right about this." And liberal judicial activism was pretty much killed. (And, even though I am a political liberal, I think that's a good thing.). And now everything starts and ends with the text.

The problem is that the conservative legal movement did not stop there. It simply kept pushing further and further to the right. And now we have entered a world of conservative judicial activism.

So it is correct to say that modern (1980s-onward) legal conservatism was a proper and good response to a loosey-goosey liberally-influenced way of judging. And it is also correct to say that the debate has moved on in the last 35 years, and that that framework is no longer the best way to interpret what's happening in 2020 (except to provide historical context).

You know this is sign that the election this fall is over, right? The conservative judges of the Supreme Court have now proven they do not value voters rights in any way. Any state that has Republicans in control can now blatantly suppress votes without worry of any repercussions. This country has totally and completely become the worst case scenario.

It's not a legitimate election. 180 polling centers in Milwaukee down to 5.

But who is going to make it illegitimate?

The GOP in a short video.

"You are incredibly safe to go out" Republican @SpeakerVos tells his constituents, in full gown, gloves and mask. pic.twitter.com/c3wNVhWxew

— Justin (@JustinAHorwitz) April 7, 2020

This. Dems keep waiting for the refs to step in, but the only way this ends is by destroying the advantage of behaving this way. Dems need to use every procedural tool to fight back, gerrymander, pack the courts, bring in new states, etc.

The GOP wants to create an apartheid state, Dems can't be primarily worried about fairness.

I'm becoming concerned that you guys are basically past the point of no return with respect to democracy. I will actually be shocked if Trump isn't President a year from now, and so long as he manages to somehow stay healthy it won't surprise me if he's still your President 5 years from now either :(

Agreed, but tough to win when it is set up for you not to. If Milwaukee has 5 polling places in a city that large, how exactly do you win in November? Other states can follow suit and just close polling stations in areas that are not beneficial.

Stop looking at America as a democracy of any sort. We're not much better than Venezuela or other banana republics when it comes to holding free elections.

Strangely enough, Madison managed to have 66.

And Waukesha only had one.

Also, Robin Vos is the most punchable face in Wisconsin politics.

Bernie drops out.

About time. I'm sure the Wisconsin shit show convinced everyone that trying to fight an unwinnable primary wasn't smart.

I was fine with Bernie staying in for as long as he needed to. Not thrilled really with Biden as the nominee over a host of younger Democrats, but I think in his own way Sanders would have been a leftist Trump. I just hope he calls on his supporters to not stay home on Election Day and to vote for Biden not Trump.

<--waiting for the mocking Trump tweet on Sanders in 3,2,1..

Man I can barely wait for Joe Biden telling me about how he can't wait to cross the aisle and work with his lifelong friends in both parties to find moderate promise for the American people while the GOP publicly obstruct anything he touches and grind his entire family into dust.

The subsequent actions by his supporters will determine the outcome of the 2020 election. If enough of them don't show up to vote, it could get interesting.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bernie demanding something, either additions to the Dem platform or some say in the VP pick is the right thing to do. He's done a lot to promote progressive ideas, but his refusal to do the retail politics work made him unable to push past @1/3 of the party. The next generation, whether it is AOC or someone else, will be better able to expand that support.

If he says it in the fall, it gets a shrug from me. It's talking for votes. If he does it in spring 2021 when he knows Mitch McConnell exists, he's a moron.

Im curious how these Trump/Biden debates will go. Seems to me Biden will get flustered by Trumps antics, esp. if Trump can get him off topic.

I don't think debates will happen. Trump does not want them, and Trump does not need them to run the kind of campaign he's going to run.

It will be portrayed as the candidates not "agreeing on the format" or something like that. But the end result will be no debates.

Biden isn't the debater he was when he was younger, but Trump isn't very good himself. It's not like Trump is able to stay on topic either.

I don't think the debates will really matter though. The vast majority of people already know who they're voting for. Any presidential debate is just going to be confirmation bias for both sides. If dems get high turnout Biden will probably win. If we see more Wisconsin shenanigans in November Trump will win.

I will point out that Biden's best debate was his one-on-one with Sanders. It seems he's better in those sort of debates as opposed to the 5,000,000 candidate ones. 4 years ago, Trump got his clock cleaned in every Presidential debate and it didn't matter. I don't think debates will matter much this go around either.

This.

It's mind-boggling how quickly many Dems seemed to have forgotten that. So much talk throughout the primaries about how this candidate or that one (often Warren or Harris) would OMG OBLITERATE TRUMP AND SEND HIM HOME WITH HIS TAIL BETWEEN HIS LEGS AND PRACTICALLY BE DECLARED PRESIDENT IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE FIRST DEBATE, when it was made crystal clear in 2016 that articulating one's positions logically and rebutting the opponent's ideas are meaningless skills in a Presidential election against Donald Trump.

Even outside of Trump I recall reading that debates provide a short bounce for the winner, but it's gone before election day.

Presidential debates are overrated insofar as having a significant impact on the election, at least for the past few cycles. The only election in this century where the clear winner of the debates also won the election was Obama against McCain in 2008.

Man, I thought I had accepted the reality of Biden as the candidate months ago, and it was obviously just a matter of time, but I am still struggling to accept it today.

Yeah, progressives need a better politician. The issue was that they had one: Warren, but Sanders supporters basically considered her a traitor to the cause because she tried to do the exact retail politics that could garner moderate support. AOC may be tarred though with the same too-left brush that would take moderate independents out of it (as so many people who were centrists I heard were unwilling to vote for Bernie, but are good with Biden - heck, Edward64 I believe is one of them).

How is Warren a better politician? What was she doing to garner moderate support?

She spent the primary trying to prove that she was just as capable as Bernie in finding ways to spend a lot of government money.

The only retail politics she did was to actually call herself a Democrat.

Her explanation of the strategy to get Medicare for All (which kind of similarly echoed AOC when she admitted they would have to initially compromise on M4A while moving forward on it) was what led the Bernie bots to turn on her, but showed exactly a sort of gradualism that a progressive politician needs to do.

I expect AOC will campaign hard for Biden. That's the pathway for her to be more powerful in the House and position herself for a bigger job as NY governor or Senator when Schumer retires. If she doesn't she'll be throwing away an easy opportunity to expand her role.

Something a significant portion of Bernie supporters don't get. They don't understand how to take small victories and build off of them. If they don't win they don't want to play.

I think they also don't know how hard people had to work and fight for small victories. ACA was a street fight. The original plan had a robust public option and mandatory Medicaid expansion. The later was struck down by the Supreme Court (and the rest barely got through SCOTUS scrutiny thanks to Justice Roberts). The former had to be scrapped because even though there were 60 Democratic Senators more than a few of them were categorically opposed to a public option. And then Massachusetts elected Scott Brown. Just to get the ACA, which is flawed, took a TON of political capital and effort.

I mean if the Bernie supporters who are going #NeverBiden (not all of them, mind) say they think 4 years of Trump won't be much worse than 4 years of Biden, lets see how many SCOTUS justices Trump nominates. Then that same SCOTUS strikes down a Medicare For All plan whenever it actually passes.

Biden needs Bernie to say the right things, but I think AOC is actually a more valuable surrogate. If she can motivate young and minority voters Biden would be in debt to her.

Why do people assume Biden will get a Supreme Court Justice through? Republicans will likely still control the Senate and can just block it like they did with Obama.

+1

If the GOP holds onto the Senate, it's a moot point anyway as far as M4A is concerned, because that won't happen.

For better or worse, there aren't 60 Dem senators that would pass M4A.

There were 60 for about 11 minutes to pass Obamacare. Absolute best case is you manage to add on a public option. FDR got the New Deal because the Republicans got murdered from 1930-36 to a degree that would never happen in the 2020's

The #NeverBiden "people" are mostly a) kids that have no appreciation at all for the work needed. They just want it now or they will hold their breath till it happens. Or b) Russian bots. A good percentage of them probably have never voted (or couldn't, because they are bots), including for Bernie in this primary.

Republican administration just made it M4A for anything related to coronavirus.

Latest PreditIt shows Harris as the clear favorite. Surprised how far Abrams is down on the list. She made it clear the other day she'd like to be VP.

Abrams has been far away from Washington DC-Harris has been right there on the front lines, making her more visible and viable should something happen to Biden when/if she was VP

A Biden/Harris ticket would be great to see. I'd be willing to pay to see a Pence-Harris debate.

Not sure I like the student debt forgiveness but the lowering of buying into Medicare certainly will benefit me.

No problem in forgiving the actual debt (all for the greater good) but ask those that benefit pay back society with some sort of volunteerism (e.g. habitat for humanity, foodbank work, work in a rural hospital etc.).

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/09/bide...sses-soar.html

Surprised Tammy Duckworth isn't on that list, pretty sure she is higher on the list than some of them.

Abrams just doesn't have the experience needed at this point.

So how does this work? I really felt like Biden was a great pick when somebody posted something like this a few months ago. I buy Harris at 38 cents and as she gets better I sell at a higher price? If she gets the nomination is it $1? Is it legal in all 50 states?

I think Obama might be a good 3 cent long shot and wouldn't be a terrible VP pick in real life either.

First it is smart for Biden to throw the Sanders camp any kind of bone and that debt forgiveness is pretty mild considering the alternatives. In the end, we have a guy who may not be one but is a 4th Reich wet dream in the White House right now.

I'm not a neverBiden but I am pretty close. I do have reservations about voting for someone who voted for the Iraq War, which was the biggest clusterfuck of my generation.

I believe you have it right. Buy and sell like stocks. You pay then 5% commission on what you cash out from the site. I cannot vouch that it's 100% legal in every state, but I believe they claim that to be true.

I read something about it awhile back. It's legal by some weird loophole. I think because you can't spend much and it's run as a non-profit.

The student loan thing makes sense. Remember he wrote the bill that made it so student loan debt could not be discharged in bankruptcy. Something I'm sure Trump people will hammer him on to try to keep youth turnout low.

You can argue that the government shouldn't do it. But they're currently buying up corporate junk bonds to prop up the markets right now. Feel like student loan debt would be a bigger priority than that with our taxpayer money.

:rolleyes:

I agree completely on the Iraq War. Heck, I was a Republican (a waning one, but still in the party) until the Iraq War. That was the final straw for me. I still have no problem voting for Biden over Trump. He is the only way to get rid of Trump, who has moved the Iraq War to the second biggest clusterfuck of our generation.

Like I mentioned earlier, Trump's campaign is going to go hard after younger people. He's not going to win that demographic, but if he cuts into it like he did with Clinton, he can win.

Biden is vulnerable on the student loan stuff which is why he's trying to reverse course. This is what Trump is doing which will be popular. I would not at all be surprised if Trump made a push to allow student loans to be discharged during bankruptcies. There are going to be A LOT of bankruptcies after this.

President Trump: "Student loan payments have been waived for 6 months, and we'll discuss it after that. May go further." pic.twitter.com/kYUNmwMYNY

— The Hill (@thehill) April 9, 2020