No Future for the GOP?

Leo

Well-known member
The two misdemeanor counts each carry a minimum of 30 days and a maximum of one year in jail, as well as a fine of $100 to $100,000.

hope he gets the max, throw the book at him.
 

Leo

Well-known member

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
old news, tea. the pro-choice vote won overwhelmingly on Tuesday, by almost 20 points. a huge wake-up call for conservatives/GOP, since Kansas is a very conservative/GOP-dominated state.
Oh yeah, I heard about the result of the vote. I was just commenting on the appallingly underhand tactic of deliberately misleading voting advice.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
This sounds bad. it's well understood that the GOP is going to try and all kinds of ways to reduce voter turnout in areas and amongst demographics that they don't like and this certainly sounds like a warning shot. It looks as though they are prosecuting people who have likely made genuine errors.


Even the language here

DeSantis used a press conference in Broward county on Thursday to champion the work of the office of election crimes and security, a first-of-its-kind office created this year and charged with investigating voter fraud. Peter Antonacci, the head of that office, said Thursday was a “special day”. “This is the day we begin taking fraud seriously,” he said.

When you hear something described as "voter fraud" you think of someone trying to influence the vote by adding multiple votes to their chosen candidate, but each case here just has one individual casting a single vote - their vote - which it turns out they are not allowed to do. I have to say I'm quite surprised by the whole concept of banning people from voting, I'm pretty fucking sure that none of these convicts have been told that they don't have to pay taxes so doesn't that rather make a mockery of the phrase "no taxation without representation"?
 

Leo

Well-known member
this is DeSantis spin because it's actually a reflection of how the Florida voter registration process is broken. The people who were arrested here are felons released from prison, and as felons they are not allowed to vote in the state. So that being the case, how were they allowed to register to vote before the election? If the registration process actually worked, they would not have been able to register and, later, to vote. A cynical person could even speculate that the state was setting a trap for these ex-felons, allowing them to register and then arresting them when they vote.

Some of these are just people who didn't know they weren't allowed to vote.

Also: there are over 14 million registered voters in Florida, and they "caught" 20 of them.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
But also it's worse than that cos they relaxed the rules on felons not being able to vote - at least, it's no longer a blanket ban and some felons ARE able to vote, just not these particular ones.

I don't understand your last sentence though @Leo, I think maybe there is a word missing and it should say something like 14 mil wrelyrong registered, although that sounds like a lot.

Either way, I agree with the thrust of what you're saying, they seem to be checking the wrong point of the process, surely they could have blocked them as they registered - or attempted to - which in itself is not illegal, rather than letting them register and then throw the book at them when they actually vote. If I successfully registered I would tend to assume that that meant I could vote.
 

Leo

Well-known member
Exactly. I'll bet if most of these felons went to register and were told they didn't qualify, they'd say "oh man, that sucks" or "ok, I didn't realize that was the case" and just leave. Instead, they now face repeat felony charges that carry a sentence of up to five years and fines.

DeSantis should just come clean and say his administration is at best just trying to rally the MAGA base by "uncovering voter fraud", and at worst trying to disenfranchise potential Democratic voters. Everybody knows what the deal is.
 

version

Well-known member
Overturning Roe v. Wade's supposed to be hitting them really hard at the moment. A lot of people registering as Democrats in response. They've generated a ton of single issue voters almost overnight.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Lindsey Graham just proposed a nationwide abortion ban after 15 weeks.

The proposal by Graham, a hardline South Carolina Republican, will be called the “Protecting Pain-capable Unborn Children from Late-term Abortions Act”.

Seems strange tactics when dems believe they can profit in the mid-terms by focusing the debate on this issue and claiming GOP wanna do just that.
 
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Leo

Well-known member
Lindsey Graham just proposed a nationwide abortion ban after 15 weeks.



Seems strange tactics when dems believe they can profit in the mid-terms by focusing the debate on this issue and claiming GOP wanna do just that.

Politico says it may end up being an own goal. Looking to counteract the momentum of pro-choice Dems. independents and moderate Republican voters after the reversal of Roe, Graham thought it would rev up the GOP base and maybe be seen as a compromise that moderates could accept. Instead, he's angered conservatives who want to ban it all together, further incentivized Dem/independent opponents by proposing to decrease the criteria from 20 to 15 weeks, and contradicted the long-time establishment GOP argument that it's a matter to be decided by the states, not by a federal/national law.

 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Seems the most effective approach to retaining power is to never actually achieve your stated aims, but to keep talking about them.
Yeah I'm starting to see this in DAOs too. The people supporting/delegating to governance leaders are generally short-term-oriented and generally are more affected by narratives and confidence (like your points elsewhere about "owning" the interlocutor rather than dialectically engaging with them) than they are by actual work - because seemingly the bulk of the actual work is boring, ineffable stuff like negotiating with relevant parties, pulling strings, effectuating bureaucratic processes, etc.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
If I were in a DAO with delegating voting, and a large tokenholder base of non-technical users, I'd just need to confidently employ narratives and make people feel good in the short term by making appealing promises or, even vaguer, intimations.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
The vulnerability in question here is an exploitation of human nature, specifically our tendency to be emotionally and strategically confined to a short term scope - broadening out is an exercise of will and reason, involving a scrutiny of one's own ephemeral feelings.

Whether or not a certain method of liquid democracy - being able to change your delegation on an arbitrarily short notice - will mitigate this vulnerability, I think is a prospect untested. With DAOs, some already implement liquid democracy, but the actual stuff being governed there is still pretty niche in terms of societal consequence.
 

Leo

Well-known member
Seems the most effective approach to retaining power is to never actually achieve your stated aims, but to keep talking about them.

this is why the GOP rarely runs on a platform anymore, they just focus their energies instead on opposition and grievance. that's what motivates their voters.

plus, actually governing is hard. much easier to obstruct.
 
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