DC #ElectionWorkers have been fielding angry calls & emails for over a month from people who oppose allowing #noncitizen residents to #vote in local #elections, leaving the head of the DC Board of Elections concerned about #safety at the polls in Tues’s primary.
“I am definitely nervous,” said Monica Evans, BOE exec dir. “The environment around elections has felt more unsafe.”
"The proposal, akin to the federal Electoral College, would give voters in Loving County, population 64, more power than those in Harris County, where 4.7 million people live. King County, with 265 people, would wield a vote equivalent to Bexar, with 2 million.
Does this sound like a political party that has won every statewide election for 26 years? Or a party that has confidence in its electoral future?"
Congratulations 🎉 to everyone who participated and voted in the recently concluded @fedora#elections !
Especially to @jonathanspw who got elected for the first time to the #EPEL steering committee.
And welcome back @decathorpe to FESCo! I'll be there for the first time, and hope to "choose... wisely" quoting the knight from the third Indiana Jones movie
California shouldn't "need" a lawsuit that's related to disability & elections. I mean it seems like a very easy call. But you never know with centrist Democrats sometimes.
India is in the middle of its sprawling 6-week election season, where nearly a billion eligible voters will take part in the world’s largest democracy. Some of them will give their vote for a price. While bribing people to vote for candidates is illegal, India’s election commission says it has seized more than a billion dollars in cash, food, jewelry and other “freebie” inducements this year. NPR has more.
1/ Okay, while the Trump verdict has been very riveting, I'd like to talk about failure states in democracies for a bit.
Any stable democracy needs peaceful transfers of power. If a ruling government loses in an election and thus loses power, they are free to moan about it - but in the end, they should leave office without violence because (unless they screwed up bigly) they realize that they will likely return to power one day. They are invested in the system, and do not want to overthrow the basic democratic order of their country - because it works for them.
Thus, a country needs multiple parties with an investment in democracy, who are willing to form a government - but who are also willing to leave peacefully. If this is not the case, then the democracy in question is in a failure state.
An good (or rather, very very bad) example of a "proportional representation" democracy in a failure state was the late Weimar Republic. Starting in 1932, the NSDAP (Nazis) and the KDP (Communists) received a majority of the vote and thus representatives. Both wanted to overthrow the Republic and its democracy in its own way, and thus it became impossible to form a democratic government - let alone switch between different ones. But the Weimar Republic had problems in this regard even earlier, since there were numerous miniscule parties with only a very small number of candidates. They only cared about a small number of issues, had no motivation to compromise, and thus were not willing to join a working government.
4/ We are seeing what this means in the #USA (I don't follow #UK politics as closely, but my impression is that it's not quite that bad yet). The #Republicans have fully committed to #fascism . The #Democrats are the only viable non-fascist voting option, and thus must not lose power if whatever democracy the USA has left is to survive. In a healthy democracy, voters could voice their dissatisfaction with the ruling party by voting for another party - but that's no longer possible in the USA, because if they do that in sufficiently large numbers, the USA will no longer have a democracy.
Thus, the only hopes the USA have of surviving this is for the Democrats to hold out until either (a) the Republicans reform themselves and purge their fascists (which seems exceedingly unlikely), or (b) collapse and are replaced by a party that is committed to democracy and the peaceful transform of power. Which also seems exceedingly unlikely.
The whole situation in the USA is horrible, and I feel for all Americans who suffer under it - although if the USA becomes a fully fascist nation, no person on Earth will ultimately be safe. But I feel that this whole mess is also a searing condemnation of the "First Past the Post" voting system, since it makes reaching such a failure state fairly easy.
Shyam Rangeela, an Indian comedian known for his videos mimicking Narendra #Modi, made headlines when he vowed to take on the PM in his home seat of Varanasi as the country votes in general #elections. However, when he went to file his nomination papers, he claims he was prevented from doing so. While his bid to beat Modi may have failed, he has succeeded in posing critical questions over the fairness of #India ’s election process, says France 24’s Leela Jacinto. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq5Fp-8qF6c
NEW: In a new brief, nine Republican secretaries of state are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up an election case out of #Pennsylvania and reconsider the independent state legislature theory, a radical legal theory that could upend American #elections.
When you’re a right-wing actor who’s good with computers, you may be confident that you’re the one who can prove the existence of something that doesn’t exist.
If you live in the UK or USA, you need to understand one thing about the coming election:
You need to vote defensively.
Neither of the main parties are appealing. But if you don't vote for the lesser evil you may end up helping a totalitarian horror get elected.
Hold your nose and goddamn vote, dammit. THEN go on protests. Because if you don't vote for the lesser evil, the victor will welcome your protests with bullets.
The prize for political purity this time round is a shallow grave.
But what you are ending up is only a single political view - the "DNC Mainstream!"
When I vote in German elections, I have a choice between:
A Green Party
A Libertarian Party
A Social Democratic Party
A Socialist Party
A Conservative Party
All five have meaningful policy differences, yet all five are firmly committed to the basic democratic principles of the country. And while I have serious policy disagreements with some of them, I can admit that yes, they have valid political views that represent a good chunk of the electorate - and if they become part of a government, their political view matter.
And I stand my by firm conviction that this is far superior than the American Primaries system where you seemingly only ever end up with what the party leadership considers "mainstream" and "electable" enough.