This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1439514
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1439514
1 Like
This might be real difficult to pull off. Humans have a natural bias and even computer programs can be written with a bias.
How does one get to impartial, not theoretically, but practically? I’m not entirely certain there’s a way to get there.
What we do need is a check on the people that are running for these offices. If they are clearly running with the intent to violate established law, they should be DQ’d from the beginning. And yes, let the howling begin.
4 Likes
Central to Anderson’s campaign were her pledge not to accept help from a political party, and her support for making future elections for secretary of state nonpartisan.
She is a Republican, which means her word is untrustworthy.
By the way, we triturated the Seditionists here in Washington. I will be represented by no Republicans, at all, at any level. F- - - them.
3 Likes
Getting younger people to invest in their own future and away from old, corrupt gangsters.
4 Likes
I don’t believe all SoS control elections in all 50 states? And looking at Wiki I’m correct.
Not sure how I feel about governors appointing the SoS. Or in some states that position is voted on by the state’s senators.
I know it goes against the “state’s rights” crew, but I like consistency, especially now that we have a more mobile population.
1 Like
Not in Wisconsin - and that is per the State constitution. This position has extremely limited duties - whittled away over the years by the GQP. The election still hasn’t been decided, but even if the GQP is successful in flipping it after 39 years (Doug LaFollette has held the position since 1983), Governor Evers can keep them from restructuring it one way or the other.
Chapter 14.38 - Duties. The secretary of state shall:
Record executive acts.
Affix great seal; register commissions.
Have custody of books, records, etc.
Biennial report.
Keep enrolled laws, etc.
Compile original laws and resolutions.
Record fees.
Furnish certified copies; fees.
Notices of proposed constitutional amendments and enactments
2 Likes
1973 Wisconsin Act 334 transferred the Secretary of State’s elections administration duties to an independent agency now known as the Elections Commission
2 Likes
Was WA where they caught a wingnut legislator on camera opening a door for rioters?
One of the more amusing lines of argument that the Trumpists have advanced:
-
The only voting results that can be trusted are those announced on election night. The week long count in the Arizona Governor’s race means that there is fraud going on.
-
Voting machines can’t be trusted because of hacking and fraud. Therefore states should all move to hand counts only.
Yes. And he got bounced out of the legislature.
1 Like
It’s always worth trying to improve the system. But what people really don’t want is an aggressively and explicitly partisan election administration. They don’t want someone who says “the only way my party can possibly lose is through fraud.” They don’t want someone who pays obeisance to the sorest of sore losers in the history of sore losing.
What voters don’t want is someone who devalues voting. Funny, that.
100% agree with your points about the difficulty of eliminating bias in human affairs, but we don’t have to create a pristine and perfect system. What we have to do is defend what we’ve got, this imperfect creaky old republic of ours, against antidemocratic fascist wannabees, and that’s exactly what majorities just did almost everywhere. (Indiana was a lost cause anyway (sorry, Bloomington), so no huge impact one way or the other there.)
2 Likes
I believe you are thinking of Oregon.
Here’s what the Stranger, the publication I rely on here, said about the Hobbs/Anderson race:
"Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson, is an experienced elections administrator who is running as a nonpartisan. We like her experience and we love her desire to set statewide standards for ranked-choice voting, but we don’t like her position on nonpartisanship.
If elected, she really wants to make the SOS a nonpartisan office, and she really wants to increase the number of nonpartisan county auditors. We think those are bad ideas.
Though making a race nonpartisan sounds like a good way to restore faith in elections, it only rewards the latest crop of anti-democratic Republicans. A 2007 study found that nonpartisan races benefit the minority party. Since Republicans represent a minority in Washington, making the SOS nonpartisan would likely help them win back this seat at some point. And when partisan cues don’t appear next to candidate names on the ballot, white supremacy can fill the information gap. Remember when WA State Supreme Court Justice Steven González was in danger of losing his race to an unqualified candidate just because of his last name? We do.
Rewarding Republicans by making it harder to identify them on ballots is a dangerous move, especially as they continue their attempts to overthrow our democracy. Vote Hobbs."
I saw right through that. Hobbs won. I research candidates in non partisan elections to find any evidence that they are Republican Traitors. There are clues. I found a clue to a religious fetishist in the Edmonds City Council (where I live) based on an offhand Comment in the Everett Herald. He is going to hear from me about shoving his religion in anyone’s face.
Want to have fair elections like Washington State. Send every registered voter a mail in ballot.
Easy…pezy.
I’m not so sure I find it amusing. More like baffling, even frightening. Last fall I read some of a memoir by a politician from Nigeria who was active when the country was just becoming an independent entity. He described the scheme by which autocrats and dictators would overthrow a democracy. They would declare victory as soon as the polls closed, and then disallow further vote counting to “prevent fraud”. And then after that, they fully controlled the election process and of course no other parties had any chance to win.
My brother was giving me this “if the election isn’t decided on election night, it means something funny is going on” stuff in 2020. I don’t know how he can possibly think that. He’s old enough to remember other elections. He would be too young to remember the Kennedy-Nixon squeaker – I barely remember that myself, and he’s younger than I am. But he’s surely old enough to remember the 2000 election, which went weeks before being finally decided. And he’s old enough to remember the months-long process in deciding the winner of the Minnesota US Senate election in 2008. It’s not at all unusual for the counting process to go on past the actual day of the election.