Signature matches against the historical voter file.
Until that moment I never realized that signature matches are classist. How stable a person's signature is, would depend (among other things) on how many times a year they have to sign their name. And how often that is on paper, as opposed to on a tablet.
If photo ID is "necessary" then it should also be sufficient. Postal votes could have a hash of the photo ID number and a unique number printed on the ballot, and situations like nursing homes could have a single staff member responsible for generating hashes.
Maybe I shouldn't be saying this. But Republicans will realize eventually that they can strike out mostly Democrat postals by making the signature verification unreasonably strict.
I dunno. Old people also tend to have pretty varied signatures; so you would lose those votes as well.
Fillygreed wrote: Signature matches against the historical voter file.
Until that moment I never realized that signature matches are classist. How stable a person's signature is, would depend (among other things) on how many times a year they have to sign their name. And how often that is on paper, as opposed to on a tablet.
If photo ID is "necessary" then it should also be sufficient. Postal votes could have a hash of the photo ID number and a unique number printed on the ballot, and situations like nursing homes could have a single staff member responsible for generating hashes.
Maybe I shouldn't be saying this. But Republicans will realize eventually that they can strike out mostly Democrat postals by making the signature verification unreasonably strict.
I dunno. Old people also tend to have pretty varied signatures; so you would lose those votes as well.
I get the sense that the Republicans aren't all that interested votes anymore.
Fillygreed wrote: Signature matches against the historical voter file.
Until that moment I never realized that signature matches are classist. How stable a person's signature is, would depend (among other things) on how many times a year they have to sign their name. And how often that is on paper, as opposed to on a tablet.
If photo ID is "necessary" then it should also be sufficient. Postal votes could have a hash of the photo ID number and a unique number printed on the ballot, and situations like nursing homes could have a single staff member responsible for generating hashes.
Maybe I shouldn't be saying this. But Republicans will realize eventually that they can strike out mostly Democrat postals by making the signature verification unreasonably strict.
I dunno. Old people also tend to have pretty varied signatures; so you would lose those votes as well.
They also don’t like having to wait in lines to file their signatures. Many would opt out.....
Salus Maior wrote: It gets pretty close sometimes.
I haven't seen anything that extreme, at least.
You missed the crying people who still are certain the world is going to end now that their messiah is not president ? The people who refuse to accept he is not president with ever more convoluted theories on how he secretly still is and ever shifting dates "when all will be revealed" ? The people who see him as their only hope ?
How ? They were quite vocal. Some even stormed the Capitol for his Glory.
Loeje wrote:I haven't seen anything that extreme, at least.
You missed the crying people who still are certain the world is going to end now that their messiah is not president ? The people who refuse to accept he is not president with ever more convoluted theories on how he secretly still is and ever shifting dates "when all will be revealed" ? The people who see him as their only hope ?
How ? They were quite vocal. Some even stormed the Capitol for his Glory.
The majority of Republicans believe that the election was “stolen” from Trump. People that haven’t noticed Trump’s cult of personality are either part of the cult, or they’re very politically apathetic AF.
Salus Maior wrote: He's a cult of personality now he can do whatever he wants and some people will listen to him.
His cult of personality makes up the majority of Republicans.
Salus Maior wrote: I get the sense that the Republicans aren't all that interested votes anymore.
The Republicans only care about their hard right primary voters. Center-right normies that only vote in general elections be damned.
And if that means getting the most seats in Congress or a state legislature by gerrymandering and winning less votes or elections in general by cheating so be it. They should start campaigning on being anti democracy.
North Washington Republic wrote: His cult of personality makes up the majority of Republicans.
The Republicans only care about their hard right primary voters. Center-right normies that only vote in general elections be damned.
And if that means getting the most seats in Congress or a state legislature by gerrymandering and winning less votes or elections in general by cheating so be it. They should start campaigning on being anti democracy.
Should start? They’re started campaigning on being anti-democracy when they voted against the certification even after the January 6 MAGA terrorist attack on the Capitol.
San Lumen wrote:And if that means getting the most seats in Congress or a state legislature by gerrymandering and winning less votes or elections in general by cheating so be it. They should start campaigning on being anti democracy.
Should start? They’re started campaigning on being anti-democracy when they voted against the certification even after the January 6 MAGA terrorist attack on the Capitol.
Say it in debates and in campaign events and in office.
Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2021 9:39 pm
by North Washington Republic
I find it interesting that Russia, which has provide vaccines to other countries still has a very low vaccination rate. I would like to compare Serbia, which Spunik V(the name of the Russia vaccine) has been a popular choose amongst the population. And Serbia has a higher vaccination rate than Russia. Is vaccine disinformation so strong in Russia that the population is even rejecting their own vaccine? With Russia being ultra-nationalist, I would have thought they would be vaccinating their population on mass before shipping doses to other countries.
Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2021 9:40 pm
by San Lumen
North Washington Republic wrote:I find it interesting that Russia, which has provide vaccines to other countries still has a very low vaccination rate. I would like to compare Serbia, which Spunik V(the name of the Russia vaccine) has been a popular choose amongst the population. And Serbia has a higher vaccination rate than Russia. Is vaccine disinformation so strong in Russia that the population is even rejecting their own vaccine? With Russia being ultra-nationalist, I would have thought they would be vaccinating their population on mass before shipping doses to other countries.
North Washington Republic wrote:I find it interesting that Russia, which has provide vaccines to other countries still has a very low vaccination rate. I would like to compare Serbia, which Spunik V(the name of the Russia vaccine) has been a popular choose amongst the population. And Serbia has a higher vaccination rate than Russia. Is vaccine disinformation so strong in Russia that the population is even rejecting their own vaccine? With Russia being ultra-nationalist, I would have thought they would be vaccinating their population on mass before shipping doses to other countries.
This belongs in the Covid thread.
I know, my mistake. Sorry.
Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2021 9:43 pm
by Neanderthaland
North Washington Republic wrote:I find it interesting that Russia, which has provide vaccines to other countries still has a very low vaccination rate. I would like to compare Serbia, which Spunik V(the name of the Russia vaccine) has been a popular choose amongst the population. And Serbia has a higher vaccination rate than Russia. Is vaccine disinformation so strong in Russia that the population is even rejecting their own vaccine? With Russia being ultra-nationalist, I would have thought they would be vaccinating their population on mass before shipping doses to other countries.
To be fair, I think pretty much everyone was skeptical of the obviously rushed-out Russian vaccine.
Probably better than nothing, but I wouldn't take it over the Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, or even AstraZeneca vaccines.
...which is unfortunate on a variety of levels, the biggest one being 45% don't seem to give a shit that they have to piss in bottles for substandard wages.
I would say more they were bullied and intimidated, rather than "don't give a shit". It's unfortunate too, but more understandable.
President Joe Biden’s family separation task force has identified 5,600 "yet-to-be-reviewed" files from the first half of 2017 that may hold evidence of additional family separations during the Trump administration, a senior Department of Homeland Security official said Wednesday.
"We found the list we had when we came in was not comprehensive and included large timeframes that had not been reviewed," said the official, who was briefing reporters on the progress of the task force.
The official said the new files may reveal "a few additional families" who have not yet been identified.
The new files are from the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement between Jan. 20., 2017, and July 2017, a time period not included in the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit against the Trump administration over family separations.
[...]Approximately 2,800 families were separated during the Trump administration’s "zero tolerance" policy in mid-2018, and lawyers have said previously that more than 1,000 others had been separated prior to the policy’s official implementation. The official provided no timeline for reunification of still-separated families, and said that the Biden administration had entered into settlement negotiations with the ACLU in their lawsuit against the federal government over separations, but said that an initial report on the progress of the task force was due on June 2.
Everyone involved in separating migrant children from their parents from Jefferson Davis Sessions and Stephen Miller to the clerk typists at the Border Patrol should be put to work reuniting them starting today and until the last case has been satisfactorally resolved.
When Americans vote to send their two senators to Washington, they trust that they will work to represent the interests of their state on equal footing with 98 other senators. I have always said, “If I can’t go home and explain it, I can’t vote for it.” And I respect that each of my colleagues has the same responsibility to their constituents.
It’s no accident that a state as small as West Virginia has the same number of senators as California or Texas. It goes to the heart of what representative government is all about. The Founding Fathers understood that the challenges facing a rural or small state would always be very different from a more populous state. Designating each state with the same number of senators — regardless of the population — ensured that rural and small states and the Americans who live in them would always have a seat at the table.
The filibuster is a critical tool to protecting that input and our democratic form of government. That is why I have said it before and will say it again to remove any shred of doubt: There is no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster. The time has come to end these political games, and to usher a new era of bipartisanship where we find common ground on the major policy debates facing our nation.
Think about the recent history. In 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) led the charge to change Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster for Cabinet-level nominees and federal judges. I was one of only three Democratic senators to vote against this rule change. In 2017, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) proposed to lower the threshold to end debate on Supreme Court nominees to a simple majority. I voted against that change, too. Despite my votes, both rules changes were enacted and the filibuster was weakened, allowing the majority to more easily enact its agenda with little to no input from the minority.
Every time the Senate voted to weaken the filibuster in the past decade, the political dysfunction and gridlock have grown more severe. The political games playing out in the halls of Congress only fuel the hateful rhetoric and violence we see across our country right now. The truth is, my Democratic friends do not have all the answers and my Republican friends do not, either. This has always been the case.
Generations of senators who came before us put their heads down and their pride aside to solve the complex issues facing our country. We must do the same. The issues facing our democracy today are not insurmountable if we choose to tackle them together.
Unfortunately, our leaders in the Senate fail to realize what goes around comes around. We should all be alarmed at how the budget reconciliation process is being used by both parties to stifle debate around the major issues facing our country today. Legislating was never supposed to be easy. It is hard work to address the needs of both rural and urban communities in a single piece of legislation, but it is the work we were elected to do.
I simply do not believe budget reconciliation should replace regular order in the Senate. How is that good for the future of this nation? Senate Democrats must avoid the temptation to abandon our Republican colleagues on important national issues. Republicans, however, have a responsibility to stop saying no, and participate in finding real compromise with Democrats.
Working legislation through regular order in the Senate prevents drastic swings in federal policymaking. Voting rights reforms, instituting health-care protections and changes to the federal tax code and business regulations take time to implement on the state and local levels. If the filibuster is eliminated or budget reconciliation becomes the norm, a new and dangerous precedent will be set to pass sweeping, partisan legislation that changes the direction of our nation every time there is a change in political control. The consequences will be profound — our nation may never see stable governing again.
Senators introduce bipartisan bills that seek to invest in broadband infrastructure, tax incentives to spur manufacturing investments in rural communities, reform the Department of Veterans Affairs, protect our children from harm and more.
There is also bipartisan support for voting reform and many of the initiatives outlined in the For the People Act. Our ultimate goal should be to restore bipartisan faith in our voting process by assuring all Americans that their votes will be counted, secured and protected. Efforts to expand voting hours and access, improve our election security and increase transparency in campaign finance and advertisement rules should and do have broad, bipartisan support and would quickly address the needs facing Americans today. Taking bipartisan action on voting reform would go a long way in restoring the American people’s faith in Congress and our ability to deliver results for them.
We will not solve our nation’s problems in one Congress if we seek only partisan solutions. Instead of fixating on eliminating the filibuster or shortcutting the legislative process through budget reconciliation, it is time we do our jobs.
I feel Democrats will be somewhat relieved when Manchin leaves- even if that means losing a seat: because this guarantees that stuff like HR1 won't pass so easily. As much as Biden is a relic of the past, he seems to at least somewhat grasp that the GOP have no intention of compromising: he probably doesn't recognize the GOP he once knew anymore.
If Manchin wants to hitch his wagon to the party of authoritarianism, hatred, fear, ignorance and violent insurrection in the service of political power and white supremacy then he should just go ahead and do that. If there's something or some things he wants in return for remaining a Democrat in name only he should just say what they are. Frankly I tire of this transparent hypocracy.
Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:58 am
by Washington Resistance Army
Biden's pick for the ATF director was the agent in charge of the Waco disaster. Nice, that inspires tons of confidence.
Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2021 6:11 am
by Borderlands of Rojava
Washington Resistance Army wrote:Biden's pick for the ATF director was the agent in charge of the Waco disaster. Nice, that inspires tons of confidence.
You gotta be kidding. Why Joe?
Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2021 6:11 am
by Zurkerx
Washington Resistance Army wrote:Biden's pick for the ATF director was the agent in charge of the Waco disaster. Nice, that inspires tons of confidence.
I did hear it was some gun control advocate: I can't imagine that person being easily confirmed- not with some moderate Democrats. That person I see is David Chipman, who headed Gabby Giffords Gun Control Group and was a Special Agent for ATF for 25 years. I take it he botched that Disaster??
Washington Resistance Army wrote:Biden's pick for the ATF director was the agent in charge of the Waco disaster. Nice, that inspires tons of confidence.
You gotta be kidding. Why Joe?
Needs a man with experience, just in case Corn Pop makes a return.
Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2021 8:14 pm