And I wish people would stop saying 'both sides' when it's 95% only one side. That's the issue. One side is now against census so people aren't represented, restricting voting so people don't get a say, and people keep saying 'both sides'.
Remember, when the country was formed immigration wasn’t some complex thing you just showed up. Picture an immigration official trying to turn back a ship full of slaves because they where undocumented or missing paperwork. Meanwhile they still counted as 3/5th person in the official count.
I began immigration to the US under a Democratic administration and finished it at the end of a Democratic controlled Congress and another Democratic administration. It was consistently a badly run, non-sensical process. So FOH with claims that Democrats would like a country with open borders or that they're much better at running a sane process.
And even if those things were their policy, if the bureaucracy is still the same, what difference does it really make? The article concerns itself with links between how a bureaucracy is run and policies. This thread of conversation deals with people's faith in a "system".
That's not the point. The Supreme Court was convinced by the evidence presented (statements on record by people in the current administration) that the intend of the citizenship question was to reduce the count of people with illegal immigration status. So the question was intended to undermine the primary purpose of the census as mandated by the constitution: counting all the people.
It's clearly spelled out in the constitution that it should be an accurate count of all people.
People not eligible to vote (non-citizens, mostly slaves) were explicitly intended to be included by design.
If you want that to be different, there is a process for that, and that's a constitutional amendment.
for example, the Democrats could say "we understand some electoral college votes will be indirectly allocated to illegal immigrants, we also understand that because liberal states have more illegal immigrants it will help the left more than the right, but that's the price to pay for counting every actual US citizen."
The republicans could say, 'we want to make sure only US citizens count in terms of votes, and we will lose some actual US citizens plus we will undercount illegal immigrants (which is useful in other, non voting related ways) in order to ensure that.'
Then we can have a conversation. The way this dialog is being had, with liberal statisticians making 'scientific arguments' and republicans attacking electoral integrity is just a mess.
If you look at something like https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/u-s-unauth... and sort the list any way you want: There are several reliable D/R states with almost no undocumented immigrant population, and several D/R states with 3%+.
It might impact gerrymandering efforts, which gets even more complicated and again without a clear winner unless you have a preliminary version of the data to work with.
Honestly, I dislike what’s being done due to optics more than politics.
If both sides erode your faith in the system, I suspect it's because you see real problems that need to be solved, but the people "elected to solve them" are instead constrained by these games.
Speaking of systems--can you clarify what about the electoral college system you support, and perhaps cite either some systemic features/biases/incentives you think it corrects for, or perhaps some points in U.S. history where you think the electoral college system improved overall outcomes?
> I think the "Great Compromise" helps correct for the fact that people in different locations value different things and have different experiences. People who live in farming communities understand plenty of things that people in cities don't and vice-versa.
This phrasing feels like a platitude that can justify any distribution of electoral-college power we feel like creating. Can you clarify how it "corrects" for people having different locations/values/experiences?
Maybe it helps to focus on narrower questions like: Do you feel like the current winner-take-all allocation in most states or proportional allocation as used in Nebraska and Maine either uphold or undermine the values you're describing here?
> ...it's an agreement that was reached between states who were giving up their sovereignty to join together. If we discard compromises like that because people who won the popular vote by a tiny margin now think it's outdated and that they have some democratic mandate, then collectively society has lost my trust to keep it's word on future compromises wherein I'm asked to forfeit some of my independence and sovereignty.
This feels a little unfair...
1. States made a compromise of some sovereignty to join, but the compromise was very much about protecting significant parts of that sovereignty. The states, quite pointedly, retain the sovereignty to modify the compromise. If the electoral college is discarded, it will be because states exercised their sovereignty, via this process, to do so.
2. Following the above, minus a few stipulations, each state legislature retains broad power regarding how their electors are selected and what they are expected to do. Something like the Fair Vote proposal entails exercising this sovereignty.
Legislators can change that through legislation. They're not supposed to sabotage the accuracy of the census.
People have built-in game theory enough to be highly sensitive to others trying to set up unequal enforcement.
When I say both sides, I mean both sides. Gerrymandering to give minorities districts for example does the same thing to undermine people’s faith in the system. The goal should be to outlaw gerrymandering not find some way to allow it to be useful politically.
Should people in DC maintain the right to vote? IMO they should, but it’s become a political issue not a democracy issue.
I am not saying you can’t play the game. It’s a terrible idea to split your states votes while the electoral collage is in it’s current form. Acknowledging this is how things are, and we should come up with a better solution is fine. Fighting each issue separately isn’t.
> Should people in DC maintain the right to vote? IMO they should, but it’s become a political issue not a democracy issue.
Only in the 21st century do voting issues only become political when they can be looked at in terms of race.
"Political" means about the process of governance, not "when minorities or women have a complaint."
However, this idea that districts should be advantageous to some group is inherently corrosive to the idea of democracy. You can’t have your cake and eat it to, either districts need to be arbitrary lines drawn without political influence or your just deciding what influences are allowed.
PS: Packing means these districts can also be used to hurt democrats by creating a single district with extreme bias you can create several safe districts which would otherwise be contested.
Precisely one party is proposing laws and suits that push in this direction.
Of course congressional representation for DC is a political issue. Framing this as an issue of democracy doesn't tell the whole story. DC is a federal district and by design has no representation in Congress. This was a political decision.
Congressional action to grant DC statehood outright has no precedent and seemingly goes against the constitution. If residents of DC want the same congressional representation as states, then retrocession to return parts of DC to Maryland or Virginia is the main constitutionally viable option - this has been done before. Congress granting DC statehood outright would be a misuse of their power. This whole thing is rife with politics.
Playing the hypothetical harm issue is kind of laughing in the face of democracy as an idea. They don’t even have final say in local laws.
Hasn't the supreme court been majority conservative for quite some time? Not majority liberal?
(unless your comment is sarcasm)
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/nominations/SupremeCourtN...
This year is different - Republicans hold the majority of the Senate and the White House. This nominee has the votes.
The last Justice to fail to be confirmed was Bork in 1987, for the very valid reason of his association with Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre prior to the latter's forced resignation.
The process was never intended to be a political, partisan battle, and this was respected by both parties until 2016. Merrick Garland was (and remains) eminently qualified for the seat, and nobody serious on either side of the aisle claims otherwise. I defy anyone to give me a cogent reason why he should not have been given the prescribed consent by the Senate. Mitch McConnell has most likely indelibly changed the Supreme Court confirmation process to be a purely political one, to the great detriment of the Court. Incredibly shortsighted, in my opinion, as it has dispensed with all pretense of a supra-partisan deliberating body.
Please stop pretending that this game of escalating stakes and norm-breaking is somehow on the Democrats. We've been watching Mitch McConnell and we remember what he's done.
Going through with a nomination while voting has actually started and announcing it one hour after the death of a justice is pure hypocrisy, plain and simple.
The senators are supposed to go to the hearing and then decide whether they think the guy should be confirmed. For you to say he didn't have the votes is to admit it is just a power grab.
Why not just hold the hearing and vote against him if you don't like what you hear? The silly thing about this is they could have just gone through the motions, just like they are doing now.
If the Democrats don't see the judicial branch as an extension of the legislative, then why would they be threatening to pack the court with justices that will vote for their causes?
> pack the court with justices
Without taking a side myself, I think the problem is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrick_Garland_Supreme_Court_...
And more specifically:
> He [Mitch McConnell] said the next Supreme Court justice should be chosen by the next president—to be elected later that year.[1][2][3] Senate Democrats criticized the move as being unprecedented, and responded saying that there was sufficient time to vote on a nominee before the election.[4]
Democrats are not happy with the double standard set by Republicans of blocking a nominee when a justice dies during an election year when it's a liberal one, and not blocking (instead, quickly accelerating) a nominee when it's a conservative one.
Merrick Garland did not have the votes to be confirmed.
Let's not pretend that the democrats would not ram through a justice to replace RBG in the exact same scenario where they have the White House and the Senate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Supreme_...
First case: Attorney General did not permissibly construe Controlled Substances Act to prohibit the distribution of drugs for physician-assisted suicide
3rd: Habeas corpus relief may not be granted on the basis of debatable inferences used to overturn the trial court's finding vis-á-vis peremptory challenges
5th: Arbitrator must decide legality of contract unless arbitration clause is itself being challenged
10th: States may constitutionally limit the evidence of innocence a defendant convicted of a capital offense may present at his sentencing hearing to the evidence already presented at his trial.
Neither does straight marriage.
You are quoting someone, but I want to add on that "legislate from the bench" is a phrase that is invoked when the speaker doesn't agree with an outcome but never when they agree with an outcome. It means nothing.
I like the outcome of Roe v. Wade but see it as an example of legislating from the bench.
The quote is right, law isn't just whatever the congressmen decide.
That's what it should be and was intended to be by the Founding Fathers. When the judiciary strikes down an unconstitutional law, it is supposed to exactly be because it is not compatible with existing laws or the constitution. 100%.
“A law repugnant to the Constitution is void. An act of Congress repugnant to the Constitution cannot become a law. The Constitution supersedes all other laws and the individual’s rights shall be liberally enforced in favor of him, the clearly intended and expressly designated beneficiary.” –Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803)
Why such unpopular options can make the cut is people don’t care about issues equally. When a significant minority care a lot about one issue they get patched together with other such groups and you can get elected even if most people disagree with the majority of what you stand for.
Over time identity politics eventually confuses things as people constantly supporting one party tend to adopt the stances of that party. This gets interesting when parties swap position on some issue.
When asked if pro-choice/pro-life, Americans are pretty evenly split.[1]
So as per the OP’s comment, which issues are so strongly supported that only party clearly supports them?
Gun control? No.
Welfare reform? No.
Higher spending? No.
I’m genuinely curious.
60% think gun laws should be more strict, 11% think they should be less strict.
Welfare reform and lower spending are not strictly Republican platforms. Reform isn’t a specific policy decision. Also, Republican administrations have seen some of the largest spending increases. Being a believer in small government, free markets, and zero debt I don’t have a clear party favorite.
EX: I firmly believe there should be zero subsides for any industry, as such rebates for installing solar is a bad idea. Flat carbon tax and let the market decide, if “clean” coal can win then it wins.
So to retype what you said more correctly. "I wish the Republicans would realize they are destroying..."
This sounds more like institutional interests being defended by those who work in the institution that is forced to be more efficient. Many will complain, and scream exaggerated warnings. But in the end, it will help to make things better.