More school shootings (but now's not the time to talk about it)

[Babybluejeans]

Is this supposed to be teal?

He just said we aren't the only ones. And he's right - as a developed country, we stand alone in many shameful categories (like gun violence) but we don't stand alone in having grotesques run our political affairs. So I believe his point was this: if we're going to stand alone for something, let it not be for horrible things but instead be for showing that a political system can bear a modicum of integrity.

[Lighthouse 84]

Naw. People who skip voting do it because a) they don't care and/or b) are too lazy to get to the polling place. Let people vote online from home and you'd see participation skyrocket, even though the chances of one vote making a difference would remain identical.

Participation and fraud would both skyrocket. 

How do some of the posts in this thread not qualify as political posts that are prohibited? 

On another front, in before the lock. 

[buckchuckler]

Don't get me wrong, the Bill of Rights absolutely matters... I don't want to speak for James Madison (never had a son and he fought the war of 1812)

Best reference ever.  James Monroe's colossal nose was bigger than Pinocchio's

[#UnleashSean]

Not exactly new... it's been going on for at least 20 years now.  But yes, this is the world we live in.

Much longer, Columbine was just the first "shocking" one.

[tower912]

I didn't think how it could be worse.  I kept hearing 'arm the teachers' and 'arm the other 15 year olds' in my head.  And then I swore a lot.

[Pakuni]

I didn't think how it could be worse.  I kept hearing 'arm the teachers' and 'arm the other 15 year olds' in my head.  And then I swore a lot.

We should definitely arm teachers.

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

We should definitely arm teachers.

In Wyoming you have to. You never know when a grizzly might stroll into to eat one of the first graders.

[mu03eng]

Here in NC (and in a lot of other states) excessive gerrymandering - worse than it's ever been - has made it so the legislators choose the voters rather than the other way around. SCOTUS now has several states' cases, including ours, and has the power to put an end to something that was the opposite of what the Founding Fathers would have wanted.

Gerrymandering is definitely a thing (you should see some of the tortured legislative maps in Wisconsin - which is one of the cases you mention in front of SCOTUS) however, there is an argument to be made that for whatever reason there is a demographic/self-selection paradigm that is at best exacerbating the gerrymandering and at worst is a large driver of it.

If you lay out a heatmap of population vs political affiliation we all know we will see a huge concentration of Ds in small, urban locations a large "concentration" of Rs in large, rural areas and a "mix" of both in the suburbs(typically an R lean but still a mix). That concentration mechanism has been accelerating over the last 20 years. If you factor in the pragmatic need for people to be able to get to polling places, the ability to draw a map that is politically diverse for each district is neigh on impossible. It get's even worse at the federal level given the electoral college where the path to 270 is more difficult for Ds than Rs simply because there are fewer "paths" because of political distribution through the country.

*this is intended as a political science post, not as a political post.

[mu03eng]

In Wyoming you have to. You never know when a grizzly might stroll into to eat one of the first graders.

That's a new way to look at the whole, "how many 1st graders can I successfully knock unconscious before I'm overwhelmed by the total" thought experiment.



My number is 50 by the way

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

He just said we aren't the only ones. And he's right - as a developed country, we stand alone in many shameful categories (like gun violence) but we don't stand alone in having grotesques run our political affairs. So I believe his point was this: if we're going to stand alone for something, let it not be for horrible things but instead be for showing that a political system can bear a modicum of integrity.

Thanks for clarifying.  I misread Benny B's statement.

[jesmu84]

Re: voting

Online/phone voting should be a thing in this day and age. You can do nearly anything in life on the internet. Including important things like bank transactions, paying your taxes, apply for lines of credit, etc. But we can't yet vote that way.

My personal guess is that's because neither side has figured out a way to make it better for them yet. Once they do, they'll push for it.

[#UnleashSean]

Re: voting

Online/phone voting should be a thing in this day and age. You can do nearly anything in life on the internet. Including important things like bank transactions, paying your taxes, apply for lines of credit, etc. But we can't yet vote that way.

My personal guess is that's because neither side has figured out a way to make it better for them yet. Once they do, they'll push for it.

The Republicans will hate it because there will a wider number of people to vote. The democrats will hate it because it will undermine people's ability to vote because they would need to be able to identify the voters somehow.

[Benny B]

1. How does requiring votes from people who don't care (and likely aren't knowledgeable) improve the political process?
2. One could credibly argue that refusing to go to the polls is a protected form or political speech.

1. The flaw in in this is that you're implying that those who do vote are knowledgeable.  I would argue that anyone who hasn't read through the platforms of all of the candidates isn't knowledgeable.  Knowledge is relative.  But what helps is that billions of dollars will no longer be spent trying to convince people to go to the polls.

2. How would that differ from those who claim not paying their taxes is a protected form of political speech?

[GooooMarquette]

Re: voting

Online/phone voting should be a thing in this day and age. You can do nearly anything in life on the internet. Including important things like bank transactions, paying your taxes, apply for lines of credit, etc. But we can't yet vote that way.

My personal guess is that's because neither side has figured out a way to make it better for them yet. Once they do, they'll push for it.

To me, the biggest risk is hacking. Even the most secure systems get hacked, and a hacked election could have far more significant consequences than a bunch of stolen SSNs or medical records.

[mu_hilltopper]

To me, the biggest risk is hacking. Even the most secure systems get hacked, and a hacked election could have far more significant consequences than a bunch of stolen SSNs or medical records.

IT guy here.  No effing way would I want internet voting. 

States have come up with flexible ways to get more voters, via early voting, mail, etc.  That's good enough.

[TSmith34, Inc.]

What we should be is the second developed country to have compulsory voting.  But instead, we're the only developed country where most everyone is too stupid or ignorant to see how compulsory voting would solve a lot of our problems, including gun violence.

This.

[forgetful]

Regardless of which side of the aisle you prefer, or what you think the solutions are, I think we should all agree that having 11 school shootings in the first 23 days of the year is a serious and unacceptable problem.

We should at least be willing to discuss solutions instead of just accepting it as a reality.

[MU82]

Regardless of which side of the aisle you prefer, or what you think the solutions are, I think we should all agree that having 11 school shootings in the first 23 days of the year is a serious and unacceptable problem.

We should at least be willing to discuss solutions instead of just accepting it as a reality.

Can't.

Too many elected officials are bought and sold, including the "all lives are precious" ones.

And speaking of the NRA ... what happened to the "bump stocks legislation" that even THEY supposedly want?

[Mutaman]

IT guy here.  No effing way would I want internet voting. 

States have come up with flexible ways to get more voters, via early voting, mail, etc.  That's good enough.

A good place to start would be for states to stop keeping certain people from voting.

https://www.thenation.com/article/wisconsins-voter-id-law-suppressed-200000-votes-trump-won-by-23000/

[Jockey]

IT guy here.  No effing way would I want internet voting. 

States have come up with flexible ways to get more voters, via early voting, mail, etc.  That's good enough.

To get more people to vote, we could make it much simpler. Change voting day to a Sunday. Millions more would vote.

Now, people work all day and then have to go to the polls and, at times stand for hours to vote. Change it to a Saturday or Sunday when most people are off of work.

As far as safety, the internet couldn't be any worse than what we have now. Russians hacked 21 different states machines in 2016. We have no idea if they did any damage or not. so #1, there HAVE to be paper ballots that can't be counted by hand if necessary.

[mu_hilltopper]

To get more people to vote, we could make it much simpler. Change voting day to a Sunday. Millions more would vote.

.. so #1, there HAVE to be paper ballots that can't be counted by hand if necessary.

Agree that there should be paper ballots, always.

I'm not against a weekend voting day .. nothing special about Tuesdays .. but disagree it would be that impactful.   I suppose I don't know about all 50 states, but think most of them have early voting these days.   Yeah, a lot of the vote comes in on Tuesday, but anyone who wants to vote 2-30 days early on their own schedule can do so. 

IMO, non-voters aren't discouraged by the timing, they're discouraged by politics and hopelessness .. .weekend voting would only have a tiny effect, if at all.

[mu03eng]

To me, the biggest risk is hacking. Even the most secure systems get hacked, and a hacked election could have far more significant consequences than a bunch of stolen SSNs or medical records.

Simple answer, Blockchain. Voting is simply a transaction register.

Bottom line, the current election model is too bloody damn inefficient and all the stuff associated with it(turn out the vote ops, political ads, etc) is just a waste of precious capital.

-weekend voting
-two elections a year, that's it
-internet voting
-probably compulsory voting

Let's use all this money for something impactful

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

Didn't McCain and Feingold try to pass a bill that would have severely limited the amount of money that can (legally)  be put into campaigns? I say let's revisit that

[mu03eng]

Speaking of Gerrymandering, here's a really fun interactive map from 538 on how you can "manipulate" election results simply by how you draw district maps (and an example why the framers made the Senate the upper/more powerful chamber). Play around with it, it is very interesting and also drives home that Republicans have a "natural" electoral advantage due to population concentration by Democrats.

*Edit: Would help if I attached the link
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-maps/

[TSmith34, Inc.]

Didn't McCain and Feingold try to pass a bill that would have severely limited the amount of money that can (legally)  be put into campaigns? I say let's revisit that

I would agree, but the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court allows unlimited expenditures by saying it is free speech.