If there is one crime that should bar people from voting in future elections, it's voter fraud. I mean actual fraud, like voting at home and where you also have vacation houses. Not mistakes, fraud.
Other reasons for disenfranchisement seem irrelevant to democracy. Why shouldn't felons vote? But people who deliberately subvert democracy might ought to lose the right to vote.
The Florida lege threw a monkey wrench in a ballot issue that restored felons' voting rights after release by insisting they had to pay all their fines and administrative costs first before that kicked in. If Trump's convicted in the hush money case, are those niggling considerations going to affect him?
You'd enjoy Australia. Every citizen over the age of 18 is entitled to register and vote. People serving a prison sentence of over 3 years ate temporarily barred, but their right is restored the second they're released. Probation etc. doesn't make any difference. People serving LESS than 3 years vote from prison.
There are precisely two ways to be permanently disenfranchised.
1. Be declared "of unsound mind" by medical professionals (we did this for my mother, who had severe dementia).
2. Be convicted (not charged, CONVICTED) of literal treason. Which seems fair.
Australia's not perfect by a long way, but BY GOD we can Election.
Probably has something to do with the fact that Australia used to be a penal colony and there's some kind of residual societal understanding about the efficacy of arbitrary punishment.
If it were up to me, haha, all jail sentences would include compulsory voting. Shouldn't rehabilitation include participation in democracy? When you've served your sentence, THEN you regain the right to not bother voting.
I don't know for sure. Maybe it's assumed it'll be too hard for them to keep up with the news and make informed decisions. Or the presence of lots of long term prisoners distorting electoral boundaries or something.
I'm a bit grumpy about it as well, I don't see why they should be disenfranchised. I'll contact the Electoral Commission and find out.
"Conservatism consists of a single principle: there is an in-group whom the law PROTECTS but DOES NOT BIND, alongside an out-group whom the law BINDS but DOES NOT PROTECT"
Imagine WW3 has broken out, and as the MIRV equipped ICBMs descend from space, the AI in control of them unaccountably decides to send the whole fucking bunch to land dead centre on the steer humping state. For Reasons....
I dunno man, being on probation and then committing a crime and not getting your probation revoked... That seems like a double standard. I don't really care that the recent crime was one many think shouldn't be a crime. It is a crime and when they put you on probation they are really clear about the whole not doing crimes thing.
Add in that he's the GOP co-chair, the judge should have sent him to minimum security for a few months. So justice can be seen to be done.
Also, what messed up political party has a guy on probation for financial fraud as the party co-chair? Ok, the same one that has the rapist who's facing 88 felony charges and owes NY half a billion dollars, but still.
The one with the multi-$1000s in forged checks, well, that's kind of a crime and I can't judge but most times folks do a little time for that shit. Gotta give the $$$ back too, and related biz.
The one who got five for some fucked-up process, that's fucking inexcusable. I hope she finds someone to crucify and makes bank in the process.
Thank you, Robyn, for pointing out that the right to vote (so-called) is regularly alienated.
The Constitution requires we have a "republican form of government," meaning a representative one. The Constitution goes on to require regular elections, and hires the states to operate them subject to Congress's commands. Subsequent articles of amendment require states to recognize the citizenship rights their people have as citizens of the United States, as well as their state of residence.
Further amendments prohibit a few classic voter suppression tactics -- poll taxes and minimum age requirements greater than 18. These amendments also bar lawmakers from denying eligibility to vote on account of race, previous condition of servitude, or sex. A further amendment requires Congress accept and count no fewer than three ballots cast by presidential electors chosen by the voters of the District of Columbia.
Nowhere in all the original language or the subsequent marginalia is voting, ever, described as a right.
It ought to be. And the day that the forces for good control all the necessary levers of power to do so, they should propose to conventions of the people across this land an amendment clarifying that no law that alienates a citizen of these United States from their inalienable right to vote has any effect. (That might just kill gerrymandering, too.)
Simply, you're wrong. A Republican form of government as required by the "Guarantee Clause" of the US Constitution has long and widely understood to mandate representative forms of government in the several states. Representative government in the US constitutional regime has since before ratification been understood to mean "always including votes of the people, especially to chose their representatives."
As just one example, monarchy ("king") is prohibited precisely because monarchy is not a representative form of government.
SOURCES:
• Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 57, on the Guarantee Clause: “The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government.”
• Pacific States Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Oregon (1912): Supreme Court held that initiative and referendum are representative in nature because they require voting by the people, and thus do not violate the Guarantee Clause requiring a "republican form of government."
• Colegrove v. Green (1945): Held that the Guarantee Clause requires a representative government, demonstrated by regular elections by votes among the people, but the Guarantee Clause does not specify the exact design of the republic, in denying a voter's argument that elective districts by failing to be compact and rational violated the Guarantee Clause.
You need to read something other than the constitution. Republican forms of government have been around longer than America and the only common factor is it not having a hereditary ruler. They have been mostly democratic, but there's been some that really weren't.
You're off topic, dude. The topic is voting as a right in the United States of America.
Your contention's don't change the clear reality that that Constitution guarantees a "republican form of government" to the people of the country, in their national government and in their state government.
We did read other documents -- I provided three citations. Each of them conclusively shows how the Guarantee Clause has been interpreted by a framer of that Constitution and by the Supreme Court of the United States.
You'd like the topic to be comparative government through the millennia.
Sympathy, and you've got interesting stuff, but what you have is not germaine. Please start your own thread under a post that has the topic you wish to discuss.
1. Maybe it's me but there seems to be a tone of condescension in your remarks. I think a lot of you; be kind.
2. Wonkers as a rule are educated persons, and I think it's safe to assume they have a little knowledge of history.
3. Yes, Rome was a bloodline republic. So, we get to decide whether the anomaly carries more weight in a historical context than the regular, and its significance today.
4. Maybe there are other examples, I see no point now in pursuing the matter.
99 times out of 100 the statement that America is a republic is actually irrelevant to a discussion of its structure as a constitutional representative democracy. Which drives me a little crazy.
You fail to understand the history that the framers of the US Constitution created a new definition of the word "republic," and then applied that word to the representative democracy that document creates.
There are at least three physical dimensions -- height, with breadth.
Our constitutional regime's shape has dimensions -- it is democracy (as in Lincoln's formulation, a government of, by and for the poeople), and simultaneously it is a republic (in the definition the framers created and applied, namely, as a government created by voting of the people).
Showing that the word "republic" had different definitions and usages throughout history is trivia -- irrelevant.
The origin of republic is in the Latin, *res publica,* literally "public thing." And the Roman's used "res" like we use "thing" -- a generic term for any item.
It's laughable irony that you would somehow condescendingly seek to show us wrong by suggesting that because a word whose origin is "thing" is so expansive, it can't include the very specific type of republic created by the Constitution of the United States. You contradict yourself.
Your tone needs friendly-ing up, your perspective less pendantry, and your outlook more jollity. Hate to see you die of being "driven crazy" by otherwise accurate discussions of facts.
"...we see a whole lot more stories about Republicans doing voter fraud than we do about Democrats"
It's ALWAYS projection with Republicans. Every accusation is a confession.
All I can say Robyn, is that you are a hell of a lot better person than I am.
She did serve 10 months before she was released. Absolute disgrace! I’m so ashamed of my state.
If there is one crime that should bar people from voting in future elections, it's voter fraud. I mean actual fraud, like voting at home and where you also have vacation houses. Not mistakes, fraud.
Other reasons for disenfranchisement seem irrelevant to democracy. Why shouldn't felons vote? But people who deliberately subvert democracy might ought to lose the right to vote.
The Florida lege threw a monkey wrench in a ballot issue that restored felons' voting rights after release by insisting they had to pay all their fines and administrative costs first before that kicked in. If Trump's convicted in the hush money case, are those niggling considerations going to affect him?
Jebus h Pete.
Amen, Robyn. You said it all.
You'd enjoy Australia. Every citizen over the age of 18 is entitled to register and vote. People serving a prison sentence of over 3 years ate temporarily barred, but their right is restored the second they're released. Probation etc. doesn't make any difference. People serving LESS than 3 years vote from prison.
There are precisely two ways to be permanently disenfranchised.
1. Be declared "of unsound mind" by medical professionals (we did this for my mother, who had severe dementia).
2. Be convicted (not charged, CONVICTED) of literal treason. Which seems fair.
Australia's not perfect by a long way, but BY GOD we can Election.
Probably has something to do with the fact that Australia used to be a penal colony and there's some kind of residual societal understanding about the efficacy of arbitrary punishment.
Why can't people serving longer sentences vote? I don't see the logic there. Maybe because they're not in society for some legislative term?
Either way, it's an odd rule. I mean disenfranchisement, not Australia's much more enlightened policies.
If it were up to me, haha, all jail sentences would include compulsory voting. Shouldn't rehabilitation include participation in democracy? When you've served your sentence, THEN you regain the right to not bother voting.
There's a certain logic to that. I like it!
I don't know for sure. Maybe it's assumed it'll be too hard for them to keep up with the news and make informed decisions. Or the presence of lots of long term prisoners distorting electoral boundaries or something.
I'm a bit grumpy about it as well, I don't see why they should be disenfranchised. I'll contact the Electoral Commission and find out.
Australia inspired the use of the secret ballot.
Did not know that.
They call it Good Friday, but was it really?
https://www.google.com/search?q=alien+crucifixion+joke&client=tablet-android-samsung-rvo1&sca_esv=070a86fdf7893579&sca_upv=1&udm=2&biw=1280&bih=800&sxsrf=ACQVn0_d3y0nVkehc4zqSGpa-a1XwpHDrA%3A1711744660888&ei=lCYHZqLoNaLKwbkPufSO8AU&oq=alien+crucifixion+joke&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIhZhbGllbiBjcnVjaWZpeGlvbiBqb2tlMggQABiABBiiBEiZQ1CqH1j5P3AAeACQAQCYAaABoAHWBaoBAzQuM7gBA8gBAPgBAZgCB6AC7QXCAgUQABiABMICBxAjGLACGCfCAgcQABiABBgNmAMAiAYBkgcDNC4zoAffDQ&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp#vhid=3VO3nCRVeKk3MM&vssid=mosaic
No
So, there's one Law for white men of financial substance, and one for women (especially women of color)? Here? In the US? Who knew?
IKR?
One of the few true things Trump has said is that he's being treated differently than others by the courts.
He sure is. Far more leniently.
Straightforward application of Wilhoit's Law:
"Conservatism consists of a single principle: there is an in-group whom the law PROTECTS but DOES NOT BIND, alongside an out-group whom the law BINDS but DOES NOT PROTECT"
https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288
Get out of here with your woke DEI "critical" race "theory!"
Please return to your seat.
Great headline, Robyn. Tis a far far better thing you have written!
Imagine WW3 has broken out, and as the MIRV equipped ICBMs descend from space, the AI in control of them unaccountably decides to send the whole fucking bunch to land dead centre on the steer humping state. For Reasons....
Naw, it just reboots us to begin the cycle again at a "save" point. sigh...
Sometime eons from now Giorgio Tsoukalos will be looking at the wreckage of humanity and ask if aliens played a part....
I'm not saying it was Aliens, but....
I love that show, it's so goofy. Kind of a saucerhead, here.
Multiple Abductee here....
You are under no obligation to disclose whether they used an anal probe on you.
But really, did they?
I dunno man, being on probation and then committing a crime and not getting your probation revoked... That seems like a double standard. I don't really care that the recent crime was one many think shouldn't be a crime. It is a crime and when they put you on probation they are really clear about the whole not doing crimes thing.
Add in that he's the GOP co-chair, the judge should have sent him to minimum security for a few months. So justice can be seen to be done.
Also, what messed up political party has a guy on probation for financial fraud as the party co-chair? Ok, the same one that has the rapist who's facing 88 felony charges and owes NY half a billion dollars, but still.
The one with the multi-$1000s in forged checks, well, that's kind of a crime and I can't judge but most times folks do a little time for that shit. Gotta give the $$$ back too, and related biz.
The one who got five for some fucked-up process, that's fucking inexcusable. I hope she finds someone to crucify and makes bank in the process.
"If Joe Biden had ____________, should he still be President?"
Fill in any Donnie Dipshit crime. Await answer.
Thank you, Robyn, for pointing out that the right to vote (so-called) is regularly alienated.
The Constitution requires we have a "republican form of government," meaning a representative one. The Constitution goes on to require regular elections, and hires the states to operate them subject to Congress's commands. Subsequent articles of amendment require states to recognize the citizenship rights their people have as citizens of the United States, as well as their state of residence.
Further amendments prohibit a few classic voter suppression tactics -- poll taxes and minimum age requirements greater than 18. These amendments also bar lawmakers from denying eligibility to vote on account of race, previous condition of servitude, or sex. A further amendment requires Congress accept and count no fewer than three ballots cast by presidential electors chosen by the voters of the District of Columbia.
Nowhere in all the original language or the subsequent marginalia is voting, ever, described as a right.
It ought to be. And the day that the forces for good control all the necessary levers of power to do so, they should propose to conventions of the people across this land an amendment clarifying that no law that alienates a citizen of these United States from their inalienable right to vote has any effect. (That might just kill gerrymandering, too.)
Ahem.
That's not what "Republican form of government" means.
It just means no king. That's all.
Let's review:L https://www.civiced.org/lessons/lesson-3-what-is-a-republican-government
Cool.
Republic of Venice. Republic, oligarchy or representative democracy? Discuss.
Every parliamentary democracy without a monarch, Republic or monarchy? Because the only choices are Republic, or monarchy.
The fact that the founders only looked at one example doesn't make them right or change the historical usage of the term.
Suit yourself.
You should get checked out for throat cancer.
Simply, you're wrong. A Republican form of government as required by the "Guarantee Clause" of the US Constitution has long and widely understood to mandate representative forms of government in the several states. Representative government in the US constitutional regime has since before ratification been understood to mean "always including votes of the people, especially to chose their representatives."
As just one example, monarchy ("king") is prohibited precisely because monarchy is not a representative form of government.
SOURCES:
• Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 57, on the Guarantee Clause: “The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government.”
• Pacific States Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Oregon (1912): Supreme Court held that initiative and referendum are representative in nature because they require voting by the people, and thus do not violate the Guarantee Clause requiring a "republican form of government."
• Colegrove v. Green (1945): Held that the Guarantee Clause requires a representative government, demonstrated by regular elections by votes among the people, but the Guarantee Clause does not specify the exact design of the republic, in denying a voter's argument that elective districts by failing to be compact and rational violated the Guarantee Clause.
You need to read something other than the constitution. Republican forms of government have been around longer than America and the only common factor is it not having a hereditary ruler. They have been mostly democratic, but there's been some that really weren't.
You're off topic, dude. The topic is voting as a right in the United States of America.
Your contention's don't change the clear reality that that Constitution guarantees a "republican form of government" to the people of the country, in their national government and in their state government.
We did read other documents -- I provided three citations. Each of them conclusively shows how the Guarantee Clause has been interpreted by a framer of that Constitution and by the Supreme Court of the United States.
You'd like the topic to be comparative government through the millennia.
Sympathy, and you've got interesting stuff, but what you have is not germaine. Please start your own thread under a post that has the topic you wish to discuss.
1. Maybe it's me but there seems to be a tone of condescension in your remarks. I think a lot of you; be kind.
2. Wonkers as a rule are educated persons, and I think it's safe to assume they have a little knowledge of history.
3. Yes, Rome was a bloodline republic. So, we get to decide whether the anomaly carries more weight in a historical context than the regular, and its significance today.
4. Maybe there are other examples, I see no point now in pursuing the matter.
It's frustration, but I take your point.
99 times out of 100 the statement that America is a republic is actually irrelevant to a discussion of its structure as a constitutional representative democracy. Which drives me a little crazy.
You fail to understand the history that the framers of the US Constitution created a new definition of the word "republic," and then applied that word to the representative democracy that document creates.
There are at least three physical dimensions -- height, with breadth.
Our constitutional regime's shape has dimensions -- it is democracy (as in Lincoln's formulation, a government of, by and for the poeople), and simultaneously it is a republic (in the definition the framers created and applied, namely, as a government created by voting of the people).
Showing that the word "republic" had different definitions and usages throughout history is trivia -- irrelevant.
The origin of republic is in the Latin, *res publica,* literally "public thing." And the Roman's used "res" like we use "thing" -- a generic term for any item.
It's laughable irony that you would somehow condescendingly seek to show us wrong by suggesting that because a word whose origin is "thing" is so expansive, it can't include the very specific type of republic created by the Constitution of the United States. You contradict yourself.
Your tone needs friendly-ing up, your perspective less pendantry, and your outlook more jollity. Hate to see you die of being "driven crazy" by otherwise accurate discussions of facts.
Such a good Friday! Anybody murdered today?...
Not yet. Yet.
Jesus, it's pressure from everyone today!
I've lost the battery charger for my chainsaw, ok?
Oh Shit! I forgot it's Easter Joke Time!!!
________________________________________________________________________
--You know why Jesus can't eat M&M's?
--They fall through the holes in his hands!
Edit to skittles. It's a small change that marginally improves the joke.
Alexa says: what goes well with chocolate eggs?
chocolate bacon.
I find this algorithmically sound.