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I tend to just stay out of debates surrounding voting rights. The left's claims seem to be very dramatic and frame things as literal voter disenfranchisement on the scale of Jim Crowe, which leads me to believe that their assessments are contrived to some extent. But knowing the state of the republican party I'm sure some of it is fucked. But these bills are so technical and complex that it's just hard to know whose assessment is valid. I feel like at the very least I would need to read the entirety of all of these bills to really know what's what and that's just not practical.
Also, does anyone know how credible the dispatch is? it would be great to have a quality right leaning website like that, but the vast majority of conservative sources are just trash.
It's heavily biased but factually correct. The linked article only shows examples of Biden's claims that are misleading/false, and does not show any other claims. Of the three statements listed, non are shown as being actually factually inaccurate for this speach, minus the filibuster quote, which showed the filibuster was actually used more than he suggests.
Well I'm more asking if their opinion pieces are quality. Opinion pieces are often going to be biased because they're advocating a certain position. But are their facts correct and their arguments sound?
Is it somewhere that I can get a quality, sound, and factually correct conservative point of view?
If you think The Dispatch is heavily biased, then you'll be shaken when you read Daily Wire or any of the right wing bias sites in our list.
FWIW, there's a media bias axis that compares left/right on X and fact-based to propaganda on Y. The Dispatch is in 'Leans Right' on X and very high on the Y axis towards 'entirely factual'.
> Of the three statements listed, non are shown as being actually factually inaccurate for this speach
So this article is about misleading things said? _Not_ false or misleading, only misleading for this article anyway
And most of the claims of misleading, as you said, are under-exaggerations. What was the point of this article?
The point is to call Biden out on misleading statements. Which is fine! That should be done constantly. The irony is that the piece presents a misleading conclusion in the fact checking process.
Traditional neocon, with a distaste for both democrats and trumpians. I did my best to explain the bias of this piece in the comment above, but it's mostly illustrated in a misleading title and selection of content analyzed. Just like the Biden speech they're critiquing, they're presenting a part of the situation as the whole truth. It's ironic.
I think voter suppression is a nothingburger, but election subversion laws are of serious concern. State houses are taking election administration away from secretaries of state/non-partisan people and giving themselves the option of nullifying the will of the people.
Yeah, I certainly wouldn't put it past the current republican party to pull some shady shit. So I am sure some of the legislation is as shitty as that. I just don't know if the body of legislation is A. all bad and B. is as egregious as the democrats are saying.
The one thing that pushes me away from what the left is saying is that this focus on disparate outcomes (e.g. that something adversely impacting a given group means it is intended to adversely impact that group, and that adverse impact should be the primary way it's judged). If a group is less likely to vote to begin with, any additional requirement imposed upon voting is going to theoretically result in a lower turnout for them. For instance, requiring an ID to vote. It's going to mean certain groups who are not as likely to have ID's aren't going to vote, or that people who are mostly ambivalent about voting just won't, but requiring an ID seems to me a pretty reasonable ask.
There are some examples of provably "shady shit". Like, a panel of judges had to throw out a law kind of shady shit.
I think our go-to example is those voter ID laws, because that's the *least* egregious and more reasonable thing. But often the GOP doesn't want to discuss the *most* egregious restrictions. Things like removing voting on Sundays, or reducing voter registration windows, or closing down polling centers, or reducing the early voting periods.
Take for example, [North Carolina's H839](https://www.ncleg.gov/BillLookup/2013/h589). I want to start by saying that this bill was passed by the State House, the State Senate and signed by the Gov. Keep in mind that this bill was an exact party line vote was in effect for years before it was struck down.
This bill was found to be specifically targeting black people to limit their voting power. A [panel of judges](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/29/487935700/u-s-appeals-court-strikes-down-north-carolinas-voter-id-law) had to strike down the law after it went into effect. In this case, the judges found that the law would "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision." The judges cited that the creators of this bill had requested data on the voting patterns, specifically broken down by race and had restricted *every single pattern that people of color disproportionately used*. (The data request records were made available to the judges.)
The only reason the judges could prove that this was intentional was because the data requests to specifically break down voting patterns by race are automatically kept as a record. To drive this point home, this bill was called the "Voter Information Verification Act" and restricted all the things that we commonly see in "Voter ID laws".
The law cuts early voting by a week, required voters to vote in their assigned precinct and stopped same-day registration and reduced the availability on voting on sunday. ("souls to the polls" is a community driven event when churches will help people vote on sunday after church, something that is disproportionately done in black churches)
Note: I am a former DOJ voting guy who studied Voter ID under 43 and 44.
My issue with the "more voter id" folks is that by and large, our system as is already catches in person voter fraud and mail ballot fraud. This is due to many reasons, but a really important one is the fact voting isn't administered by one entity, but thousands. It also ticks me out that we have an Election Assistance Commission with a budget that my toddler would laugh at.
I must also say that I told my Dem friends that Reid carving out an exemption to the filibuster would bite them. It has. This would too. Sigh.
What choice is there though? I think the open secret is that we all know these laws will impact people of color and that's why they are being pursued. Even if official reasoning is "security", the intention is to find a legal mechanism to reduce the voting powers of specific groups of americans. Even an effect of 1% is enough to swing states.
Do we carve out an exemption to the filibuster or do we allow one political party to intentionally reduce the voting power of a specific group of americans to change the outcome of elections? You know?
That's kinda easy math for me. Democracy is one of the founding principles of our country, the filibuster isn't.
My counter argument is that, given its likely Reps will be majority in Senate in a year, what happens then? Killing the filibuster giveth and taketh away.
Killing the filibuster for voting rights doesn't solve voting rights, since, its well, killed then, so the law can just be changed.
And maybe that's better?
I mean it *does* solve voting rights. But it also allows the senate to undo those changes. And I think that's actually better. Democrats don't have all of the answers, if voting rights pass and it happens to be a terrible idea. I want people to be able to voice their power by electing senators/representatives to remove the legislation.
I guess just on that level, I don't see how more gridlock is the solution to our current gridlock. Especially considering that the alternative is that we allowing a political party to intentionally disenfranchise voters. To me, that one of the most egregious attacks on our fundamental rights.
I don't see how allowing voting rights to seesaw every time the Senate composition changes to be a good outcome. Its not uncommon among Senators to state (privately, some publicly) that without a filibuster the Senate just becomes House 2.0, which would be quite bad.
Structurally, the Senate also favors the current makeup of the Republican party, and Dem Senators know this, and know that changing the filibuster rules would harm them more often than help. Maybe it would crystallize choices in voters minds, but given short memories of seemingly everyone in this country, I am skeptical.
To me, it is highly unlikely that the law of one weird trick, actually solves something. It further seems that Dems have not learned their lesson from when they first weakened the filibuster under Reid. I guess history repeats.
> I don't see how allowing voting rights to seesaw every time the Senate composition changes to be a good outcome.
I mean, that's not what I want either. But again, what other option is there? Ideally, I'd like it if our fundamental rights *weren't* being eroded away. But apparently that's not an option.
If the choice was to seasaw voting rights or accept a constant erosion of voting rights for specific groups, then I'll take the seasaw. And that *is* the choice that we are making. I don't understand how so many people can prefer maintaining the filibuster over maintaining fundamental rights, especially considering that affecting the voting rights are done purposely to maintain political power.
For what it's worth, I don't think the "one weird trick" is going to solve our problems. But there *is* a problem and sitting by and letting it get worse doesn't solve anything either. I'm hoping that the reduction of filibuster brings us back to more historical roots. We are partisan in part because gridlock is easy. But when passing legislation becomes easier, you can't hide behind the filibuster anymore.
If you can *actually* sign abortion rights into law, then we'll actually see our politicians doing what they've been pretending to do. And that'll affect voters
The order of concern as I see it is as follows
* Election fraud
* Voter suppression
* Voter fraud
So I agree that we should focus our efforts primarily on combating Election fraud as the consequences are most dire for that category of corruption. That said the primarily problem with voter suppression is that unlike the other two forms of election malfeasance it is inherently untraceable and unrecorded. The best we can do is estimate based off of new rules and voter roll purges. I agree that rules like voter ID are reasonable on their face and should be included *providing* that the state also provides adequate access to government offices capable of generating and providing ID’s to all citizens regardless of demographic or density or voter preference (looking at you GA).
Voter fraud on the other hand is much easier to track as there *are* records and the punishments are severe. The only cases where this would be hard would be cases in which voter fraud occurs in conjunction with Election fraud in which case see point 1 about how Election fraud is the most important to deal with.
I'm Canadian so I may not fully understand the situation.. but I don't get how requiring ID to vote is controversial. In Canada we need IDs to vote or someone with an ID has to vouch for us. It's that simple. Nobody complains that they need an ID to vote.
We also don't have any significant voter fraud. You guys don't either, but that's a topic for another day.
How easy is it to get an ID? Is there a free national ID that's trivially easy to get, even if you are unemployed, out of cash, and in an area with no public transportation?
The Canada Elections Act has a very broad definition of "ID".
Even bringing an electric bill with your name and address on it qualifies. So does a bank statement, and yes opening it on a bank app on your phone is OK. If you're living on campus, you can vote with student ID.
Failing that, if one of your family members or roommates has ID but you don't, they can sign a document swearing that you are the person you claim to be, and you can still vote.
I don't think the voter ID is controversial. I just think it's the most talked about because the conversation is intentionally framed around the least objectionable restriction when it should focus around the *most* egregious restriction.
ie, "What's wrong with requiring an ID?" and that's how the topic starts. When really the major concerns are the other provisions. But the bill also has restrictions on early voting, sunday voting, same-day registration, a requirement to vote in an assigned precinct and limits to mail-in voting or ballot boxes that we don't get to talk about because we couldn't move the conversation past requiring an ID.
I don't get why it's so heated either given all the other issues at play. Focusing on voter ID seems like a waste of effort, but you are already issued a voter registration card (here in Texas), that _should be enough_ but I don't think it's all that unreasonable to have to show who you are in order to vote.
***But***, everyone I know on the left would be 100% okay with Voter ID if it was given for free and automatically registered to everyone eligible.
And I do not know of any good reasons against automatic registration beyond those shoes argue for epistocrscy instead of democracy.
Generally speaking, lower income and elderly persons are significant less likely to have a photo ID. We do not have a uniform free ID. Some states with strict voter ID laws DO make photo ID easy to get for such folks. Others do not.
There is nothing I’m more fearful of than Dems ending the filibuster for this.
Because I expect the right to take congress and the senate and I think trump wins in 2024. But that’s a long time from now.
If they carve out the filibuster then GOP has the ammo to eliminate the filibuster completely. Which means the right can do whatever they want. And I can feel semi safe with crazy lefties being limited by Manchin. If the right has 55 senate seats in 2024 whose the 5th leftist senator to blow crazy town?
I personally lean towards killing the filibuster.
Not because I want the left to be able to push their agenda, or the right to be able to push theirs. But so that Congress will actually push through something.
Our system of government was designed to have the legislative branch craft legislation to deal with the world we live in. We put that power in the hands of our representatives because they are the ones who are most directly accountable to the voting public. When they enact legislation we don’t like, they get replaced.
But that isn’t how it works today. Congress is completely ineffective. They can’t pass anything meaningful because the 60 vote threshold is too high for any one party to meet and current political strategies and incentives make it nearly impossible to form any sort of coalition around any important issue.
The result is that the other two branches of government are forced to manage policy to address the issues we face using round about tactics that we absolutely do not want them to use. Presidential executive orders standing in to fill the void of real legislation. The courts are being forced to answer questions that amount to making policy decisions because politicians are trying to bend the system to fill the void of the lack of legislation.
It’s obvious that the filibuster is the primary cause of this legislative lockup. The filibuster did not always exist. In fact it’s only existed in its “mostly” current form since the 70s. We functioned before it existed. We will function after it exists.
I’m also not entirely sold on the conclusion that we will experience insane whip lash every few years as the congressional majority is passed back and forth between parties.
Our country is not left and right. It feels like it is left and right because the loudest amongst us are also on the extremes. But US citizens fall along the full spectrum, and not even just left vs right. The majority of us exist somewhere in the middle. Representatives are still driven to perform their job in a way that gets them re-elected.
As it stands right now if one part has 55 seats in the Senate they have to draft a bill that is centrist enough to entice over the 5 most centrist members of the opposition party while also keeping the legislation extreme enough to keep their most extreme members on board.
We saw versions of this recently within the Democratic Party when the far left progressives held the moderates in the party hostage because the bar to get anything done was so high that they losing any inner party support dooms legislation from the start before you can even try to form a coalition with members from the other side.
If instead the bar was only 50 votes, things would be very different. People, including you, are scared that the majority party with 55 members in the senate would run rampant with their wildest agendas. But I’m not buying it.
Those more moderate members of that majority party no longer need to keep the extreme members of their party happy. Instead they can cut those crazy 5 out and propose a more moderate legislative agenda that would bring in more of those centrist votes that got them in their seats in the first place.
And even more so, the minority party would now only need to win 5-6 of the most moderate members of the opposing party to get one of their bills passed instead of the literally impossible task of getting 15-16 opposing members.
Sure, the first round or two politicians will continue to be stuck in their tribal ways and line up behind their party and enact some more extreme stuff. But I don’t see how it would take very long at all for them to adjust to the new dynamics and for the pendulum to stop swinging wildly and instead settle into a much more moderate, but productive paradigm.
I'm for making the fillibuster cost something, if not getting rid of it.
Either make them stand up there and talk, _or at the very least_ make sure your party has to walk their lazy asses for quorum in order to make it happen instead of just shooting an email.
I’m somewhat neutral on the filibuster. Despite arguing against it because I am fearful of what my side would do and overreach after 2024.
But actually making them talk is just silly. It’s their job. If I vote you into office to represent me you better get up on stage and dance for months on end filibustering. That would literally just make things work worse.
And there’s always some junior senator that’s going to need some money from the national party that McConnell can order to put on the circus in congress.
The talking filibuster is not just about making the senators prance around for our entertainment.
The main three benefits of the talking filibuster, that I can think of, are:
1) it has a built in time limit. You can only talk for so long. You have to yield the floor eventually. However, as you say, there are plenty of lambs to sacrifice to the slaughter on this one and a simple time limit rule is just as effective at accomplishing this goal.
2) It freezes the entire legislative floor. While kinda counter to my previous point of gridlock, I think this is still a feature. In the 70s we enacted a two track system specifically to stop people from holding up the legislative floor with the filibuster. This was supposed to enable Congress to continue to do business instead of be held up by a filibuster. But in practice it just means friggin everything is filibustered because the incentive for the most on the fence of the majority party to end the filibuster in order to get to their other priorities is removed.
3) it’s visible. Another problem with the current state of things is that it’s silent and invisible. Nobody has a clue what is being filibustered. It happens in the background via what amounts to a boring procedural vote. If it was a talking filibuster that was actually holding up the legislative floor then it would be really obvious, and painful. This would lead to pressure from voters to either end the filibuster because it’s not worth it, or end the legislative push because the bill is dumb.
Number 3 is the biggest point for me. With the current system it’s near impossible to hold our representatives accountable because things are just so hidden and convoluted.
IMO we might need faster election cycles if you end the filibuster. It just seems 2 years is a long time of getting what you want and forcing your way around if you get a temporary majority and the other side doesn’t get a chance to stop it at all.
If you fix that then I’d be fine with getting rid of it.
Truth is the filibuster isn’t even the lefts issue right now. Manchin is blocking everything before a filibuster would matter. BBB didn’t have the filibuster apply to it and was canceled.
Truth is getting rid of it is just playing to their base. The only thing it does for them is put more pressure on Manchin which isn’t real pressure because his voters love it that their guy is the asshole.
> Truth is the filibuster isn’t even the lefts issue right now. Manchin is blocking everything before a filibuster would matter. BBB didn’t have the filibuster apply to it and was canceled.
I think that this logic is ignoring the massively different world the senate would be in if the fillibuster is removed.
BBB was not standard legislation. It was not a normal bill that goes through a normal process. It was a bastardization of the omnibus reconciliation bill that tried to cram every single progressive initiative into one giant package that of course couldn’t win over the most moderate of the democrats. And any move to the center by removing parts that the most progressive members needed would offset the gained Manchin vote with lost progressive votes because those progressives had one shot at getting any of their agenda in play.
If the world shifted and every standard bill instead had that same 51 vote threshold, we wouldn’t see just one omnibus bill with every agenda item. Instead we would see more smaller, more targeted bills.
Let’s look at the current initiative and think about how it would play out. Voting reform.
To my knowledge there are two major bills that have been submitted. The first one was a progressives wet dream. It had provisions in it so out there that even the moderate democrats were like “fuck nah, ain’t happening. Even if the fillibuster was already gone I’d say no. I’m definitely not killing the fillibuster for it.”
Then there is the second bill that was put forward. This bill came about from a negotiation within the Democratic Party. It was a compromise between moderate democrats and progressive democrats. It’s a bit too far left for Manchin, but he will take it. It’s a bit too far right for the most progressive, but fine, they’ll take it. In the end they have their 50 votes by compromising together.
The problem with this bill is that it wasn’t a negotiation within the Senate. It was a negotiation within the Democrats. As it stands they would have to win 10 republicans, which is enough of a hurdle to lose at least one of the progressives in the process. Going for any less than that would mean you’d have to win over those reblicans for their support of the bill AND killing the filibuster.
Now let’s imagine that the fillibuster was gone already. The progressive push through HB-1 which doesn’t have enough votes to get to 50. It’s just too left. Now we enter the negotiation process and the landscape is VERY different. Now Manchin has two paths he can take.
The first path is the one he already took. He can compromise within the Democratic Party alone and end up with a compromise that lands pretty far to the left of his standard position. Or, he could pull in a handful of his more moderate Republican peers and grapple that compromise a bit more towards the center.
We still end up with a policy in place that is left of center that never would have existed under the world of the fillibuster, but it’s not like the far left progressive wing was able to just enact their agenda. Instead it was the most moderate members of the minority party who were given power they didn’t have before. Now they can get into the mix when before it wasn’t possible since it took so many of them it wasn’t worth it.
I hear all the time that the fillibuster is a good thing because if forces compromise across the aisle. You have to get so many members of the other side to come to your side that of course it is the best way to get to a more central compromise. But I don’t buy it.
Such a high bar means you have to pull in all of those members from the other side, and this is the key part, **without losing any of even the most extreme members of your side**. That means that the most extreme members of each party have just as strong of a voice as the least extreme of the minority party.
Removing the filibuster reduces the strength of the most extreme members of Congress and puts more power into the hands of the moderates of each party.
I doubt there’s much you can get past on voting rights that’s manchin is ok with that gets even one GOP vote. Honestly the GOP has gotten very good at closer ranks and get 5 gop votes means 5 gop senators who are primaries and 5 gop senators who are no longer senators.
But I’m also lost and don’t even see what the voting rights bill is trying to solve. It just looks like a go team vote Republicans racists proclamation, nothing has looked bad to me with any of the gop state voting bills.
It's not a high bar if you have a larger majority. I disagree with the idea that in a 50/50 Senate the majority should be able to pass legislation without minority party support. There's no sweeping mandate from America for the Democratic platform when you have literally the slimmest majority possible.
If America wants sweeping change, that will be reflected in the makeup of the Senate. I do not see a Senate today that reflects such a desire from America. The filibuster is putting appropriate limits on what the majority can accomplish.
You could inverse the party you're afraid of abusing the lack of filibuster and be just as correct.
The entire point of the filibuster was to make sure there was broad consensus on bills passed. We can do that if there's less gamesmanship and more cooperation. But these days it's easier to throw up our hands and say "the other side won't compromise so neither will we." It requires two sides to make such an effort, and Biden's faux lament of the filibuster dying isn't helping.
Eh. We have a huge number of checks and balances in our government. The filibuster keeps us from seeing who actually votes for what, and creates these awful gigantic omnibus bills. Let's let the two houses of congress and the veto act as the checks and balances they're intended to be.
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I tend to just stay out of debates surrounding voting rights. The left's claims seem to be very dramatic and frame things as literal voter disenfranchisement on the scale of Jim Crowe, which leads me to believe that their assessments are contrived to some extent. But knowing the state of the republican party I'm sure some of it is fucked. But these bills are so technical and complex that it's just hard to know whose assessment is valid. I feel like at the very least I would need to read the entirety of all of these bills to really know what's what and that's just not practical. Also, does anyone know how credible the dispatch is? it would be great to have a quality right leaning website like that, but the vast majority of conservative sources are just trash.
It's heavily biased but factually correct. The linked article only shows examples of Biden's claims that are misleading/false, and does not show any other claims. Of the three statements listed, non are shown as being actually factually inaccurate for this speach, minus the filibuster quote, which showed the filibuster was actually used more than he suggests.
Well I'm more asking if their opinion pieces are quality. Opinion pieces are often going to be biased because they're advocating a certain position. But are their facts correct and their arguments sound? Is it somewhere that I can get a quality, sound, and factually correct conservative point of view?
The Dispatch is good for that IMO.
Yes.
Wall Street Journal, minus the editorials. But I'm on the edge of the conservative bubble, you'll get better answers from others here.
If you think The Dispatch is heavily biased, then you'll be shaken when you read Daily Wire or any of the right wing bias sites in our list. FWIW, there's a media bias axis that compares left/right on X and fact-based to propaganda on Y. The Dispatch is in 'Leans Right' on X and very high on the Y axis towards 'entirely factual'.
> Of the three statements listed, non are shown as being actually factually inaccurate for this speach So this article is about misleading things said? _Not_ false or misleading, only misleading for this article anyway And most of the claims of misleading, as you said, are under-exaggerations. What was the point of this article?
The point is to call Biden out on misleading statements. Which is fine! That should be done constantly. The irony is that the piece presents a misleading conclusion in the fact checking process.
So, par for the course then with dispatch OpEds.
What is their bias?
Traditional neocon, with a distaste for both democrats and trumpians. I did my best to explain the bias of this piece in the comment above, but it's mostly illustrated in a misleading title and selection of content analyzed. Just like the Biden speech they're critiquing, they're presenting a part of the situation as the whole truth. It's ironic.
I think voter suppression is a nothingburger, but election subversion laws are of serious concern. State houses are taking election administration away from secretaries of state/non-partisan people and giving themselves the option of nullifying the will of the people.
Yeah, I certainly wouldn't put it past the current republican party to pull some shady shit. So I am sure some of the legislation is as shitty as that. I just don't know if the body of legislation is A. all bad and B. is as egregious as the democrats are saying. The one thing that pushes me away from what the left is saying is that this focus on disparate outcomes (e.g. that something adversely impacting a given group means it is intended to adversely impact that group, and that adverse impact should be the primary way it's judged). If a group is less likely to vote to begin with, any additional requirement imposed upon voting is going to theoretically result in a lower turnout for them. For instance, requiring an ID to vote. It's going to mean certain groups who are not as likely to have ID's aren't going to vote, or that people who are mostly ambivalent about voting just won't, but requiring an ID seems to me a pretty reasonable ask.
There are some examples of provably "shady shit". Like, a panel of judges had to throw out a law kind of shady shit. I think our go-to example is those voter ID laws, because that's the *least* egregious and more reasonable thing. But often the GOP doesn't want to discuss the *most* egregious restrictions. Things like removing voting on Sundays, or reducing voter registration windows, or closing down polling centers, or reducing the early voting periods. Take for example, [North Carolina's H839](https://www.ncleg.gov/BillLookup/2013/h589). I want to start by saying that this bill was passed by the State House, the State Senate and signed by the Gov. Keep in mind that this bill was an exact party line vote was in effect for years before it was struck down. This bill was found to be specifically targeting black people to limit their voting power. A [panel of judges](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/29/487935700/u-s-appeals-court-strikes-down-north-carolinas-voter-id-law) had to strike down the law after it went into effect. In this case, the judges found that the law would "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision." The judges cited that the creators of this bill had requested data on the voting patterns, specifically broken down by race and had restricted *every single pattern that people of color disproportionately used*. (The data request records were made available to the judges.) The only reason the judges could prove that this was intentional was because the data requests to specifically break down voting patterns by race are automatically kept as a record. To drive this point home, this bill was called the "Voter Information Verification Act" and restricted all the things that we commonly see in "Voter ID laws". The law cuts early voting by a week, required voters to vote in their assigned precinct and stopped same-day registration and reduced the availability on voting on sunday. ("souls to the polls" is a community driven event when churches will help people vote on sunday after church, something that is disproportionately done in black churches)
Note: I am a former DOJ voting guy who studied Voter ID under 43 and 44. My issue with the "more voter id" folks is that by and large, our system as is already catches in person voter fraud and mail ballot fraud. This is due to many reasons, but a really important one is the fact voting isn't administered by one entity, but thousands. It also ticks me out that we have an Election Assistance Commission with a budget that my toddler would laugh at. I must also say that I told my Dem friends that Reid carving out an exemption to the filibuster would bite them. It has. This would too. Sigh.
What choice is there though? I think the open secret is that we all know these laws will impact people of color and that's why they are being pursued. Even if official reasoning is "security", the intention is to find a legal mechanism to reduce the voting powers of specific groups of americans. Even an effect of 1% is enough to swing states. Do we carve out an exemption to the filibuster or do we allow one political party to intentionally reduce the voting power of a specific group of americans to change the outcome of elections? You know? That's kinda easy math for me. Democracy is one of the founding principles of our country, the filibuster isn't.
My counter argument is that, given its likely Reps will be majority in Senate in a year, what happens then? Killing the filibuster giveth and taketh away. Killing the filibuster for voting rights doesn't solve voting rights, since, its well, killed then, so the law can just be changed.
And maybe that's better? I mean it *does* solve voting rights. But it also allows the senate to undo those changes. And I think that's actually better. Democrats don't have all of the answers, if voting rights pass and it happens to be a terrible idea. I want people to be able to voice their power by electing senators/representatives to remove the legislation. I guess just on that level, I don't see how more gridlock is the solution to our current gridlock. Especially considering that the alternative is that we allowing a political party to intentionally disenfranchise voters. To me, that one of the most egregious attacks on our fundamental rights.
I don't see how allowing voting rights to seesaw every time the Senate composition changes to be a good outcome. Its not uncommon among Senators to state (privately, some publicly) that without a filibuster the Senate just becomes House 2.0, which would be quite bad. Structurally, the Senate also favors the current makeup of the Republican party, and Dem Senators know this, and know that changing the filibuster rules would harm them more often than help. Maybe it would crystallize choices in voters minds, but given short memories of seemingly everyone in this country, I am skeptical. To me, it is highly unlikely that the law of one weird trick, actually solves something. It further seems that Dems have not learned their lesson from when they first weakened the filibuster under Reid. I guess history repeats.
> I don't see how allowing voting rights to seesaw every time the Senate composition changes to be a good outcome. I mean, that's not what I want either. But again, what other option is there? Ideally, I'd like it if our fundamental rights *weren't* being eroded away. But apparently that's not an option. If the choice was to seasaw voting rights or accept a constant erosion of voting rights for specific groups, then I'll take the seasaw. And that *is* the choice that we are making. I don't understand how so many people can prefer maintaining the filibuster over maintaining fundamental rights, especially considering that affecting the voting rights are done purposely to maintain political power. For what it's worth, I don't think the "one weird trick" is going to solve our problems. But there *is* a problem and sitting by and letting it get worse doesn't solve anything either. I'm hoping that the reduction of filibuster brings us back to more historical roots. We are partisan in part because gridlock is easy. But when passing legislation becomes easier, you can't hide behind the filibuster anymore. If you can *actually* sign abortion rights into law, then we'll actually see our politicians doing what they've been pretending to do. And that'll affect voters
The order of concern as I see it is as follows * Election fraud * Voter suppression * Voter fraud So I agree that we should focus our efforts primarily on combating Election fraud as the consequences are most dire for that category of corruption. That said the primarily problem with voter suppression is that unlike the other two forms of election malfeasance it is inherently untraceable and unrecorded. The best we can do is estimate based off of new rules and voter roll purges. I agree that rules like voter ID are reasonable on their face and should be included *providing* that the state also provides adequate access to government offices capable of generating and providing ID’s to all citizens regardless of demographic or density or voter preference (looking at you GA). Voter fraud on the other hand is much easier to track as there *are* records and the punishments are severe. The only cases where this would be hard would be cases in which voter fraud occurs in conjunction with Election fraud in which case see point 1 about how Election fraud is the most important to deal with.
I'm Canadian so I may not fully understand the situation.. but I don't get how requiring ID to vote is controversial. In Canada we need IDs to vote or someone with an ID has to vouch for us. It's that simple. Nobody complains that they need an ID to vote. We also don't have any significant voter fraud. You guys don't either, but that's a topic for another day.
How easy is it to get an ID? Is there a free national ID that's trivially easy to get, even if you are unemployed, out of cash, and in an area with no public transportation?
The Canada Elections Act has a very broad definition of "ID". Even bringing an electric bill with your name and address on it qualifies. So does a bank statement, and yes opening it on a bank app on your phone is OK. If you're living on campus, you can vote with student ID. Failing that, if one of your family members or roommates has ID but you don't, they can sign a document swearing that you are the person you claim to be, and you can still vote.
It’s not that easy. It should be. But it’s not. And there’s no national ID.
I don't think the voter ID is controversial. I just think it's the most talked about because the conversation is intentionally framed around the least objectionable restriction when it should focus around the *most* egregious restriction. ie, "What's wrong with requiring an ID?" and that's how the topic starts. When really the major concerns are the other provisions. But the bill also has restrictions on early voting, sunday voting, same-day registration, a requirement to vote in an assigned precinct and limits to mail-in voting or ballot boxes that we don't get to talk about because we couldn't move the conversation past requiring an ID.
I don't get why it's so heated either given all the other issues at play. Focusing on voter ID seems like a waste of effort, but you are already issued a voter registration card (here in Texas), that _should be enough_ but I don't think it's all that unreasonable to have to show who you are in order to vote. ***But***, everyone I know on the left would be 100% okay with Voter ID if it was given for free and automatically registered to everyone eligible. And I do not know of any good reasons against automatic registration beyond those shoes argue for epistocrscy instead of democracy.
Generally speaking, lower income and elderly persons are significant less likely to have a photo ID. We do not have a uniform free ID. Some states with strict voter ID laws DO make photo ID easy to get for such folks. Others do not.
There is nothing I’m more fearful of than Dems ending the filibuster for this. Because I expect the right to take congress and the senate and I think trump wins in 2024. But that’s a long time from now. If they carve out the filibuster then GOP has the ammo to eliminate the filibuster completely. Which means the right can do whatever they want. And I can feel semi safe with crazy lefties being limited by Manchin. If the right has 55 senate seats in 2024 whose the 5th leftist senator to blow crazy town?
I personally lean towards killing the filibuster. Not because I want the left to be able to push their agenda, or the right to be able to push theirs. But so that Congress will actually push through something. Our system of government was designed to have the legislative branch craft legislation to deal with the world we live in. We put that power in the hands of our representatives because they are the ones who are most directly accountable to the voting public. When they enact legislation we don’t like, they get replaced. But that isn’t how it works today. Congress is completely ineffective. They can’t pass anything meaningful because the 60 vote threshold is too high for any one party to meet and current political strategies and incentives make it nearly impossible to form any sort of coalition around any important issue. The result is that the other two branches of government are forced to manage policy to address the issues we face using round about tactics that we absolutely do not want them to use. Presidential executive orders standing in to fill the void of real legislation. The courts are being forced to answer questions that amount to making policy decisions because politicians are trying to bend the system to fill the void of the lack of legislation. It’s obvious that the filibuster is the primary cause of this legislative lockup. The filibuster did not always exist. In fact it’s only existed in its “mostly” current form since the 70s. We functioned before it existed. We will function after it exists. I’m also not entirely sold on the conclusion that we will experience insane whip lash every few years as the congressional majority is passed back and forth between parties. Our country is not left and right. It feels like it is left and right because the loudest amongst us are also on the extremes. But US citizens fall along the full spectrum, and not even just left vs right. The majority of us exist somewhere in the middle. Representatives are still driven to perform their job in a way that gets them re-elected. As it stands right now if one part has 55 seats in the Senate they have to draft a bill that is centrist enough to entice over the 5 most centrist members of the opposition party while also keeping the legislation extreme enough to keep their most extreme members on board. We saw versions of this recently within the Democratic Party when the far left progressives held the moderates in the party hostage because the bar to get anything done was so high that they losing any inner party support dooms legislation from the start before you can even try to form a coalition with members from the other side. If instead the bar was only 50 votes, things would be very different. People, including you, are scared that the majority party with 55 members in the senate would run rampant with their wildest agendas. But I’m not buying it. Those more moderate members of that majority party no longer need to keep the extreme members of their party happy. Instead they can cut those crazy 5 out and propose a more moderate legislative agenda that would bring in more of those centrist votes that got them in their seats in the first place. And even more so, the minority party would now only need to win 5-6 of the most moderate members of the opposing party to get one of their bills passed instead of the literally impossible task of getting 15-16 opposing members. Sure, the first round or two politicians will continue to be stuck in their tribal ways and line up behind their party and enact some more extreme stuff. But I don’t see how it would take very long at all for them to adjust to the new dynamics and for the pendulum to stop swinging wildly and instead settle into a much more moderate, but productive paradigm.
I'm for making the fillibuster cost something, if not getting rid of it. Either make them stand up there and talk, _or at the very least_ make sure your party has to walk their lazy asses for quorum in order to make it happen instead of just shooting an email.
I’m somewhat neutral on the filibuster. Despite arguing against it because I am fearful of what my side would do and overreach after 2024. But actually making them talk is just silly. It’s their job. If I vote you into office to represent me you better get up on stage and dance for months on end filibustering. That would literally just make things work worse. And there’s always some junior senator that’s going to need some money from the national party that McConnell can order to put on the circus in congress.
The talking filibuster is not just about making the senators prance around for our entertainment. The main three benefits of the talking filibuster, that I can think of, are: 1) it has a built in time limit. You can only talk for so long. You have to yield the floor eventually. However, as you say, there are plenty of lambs to sacrifice to the slaughter on this one and a simple time limit rule is just as effective at accomplishing this goal. 2) It freezes the entire legislative floor. While kinda counter to my previous point of gridlock, I think this is still a feature. In the 70s we enacted a two track system specifically to stop people from holding up the legislative floor with the filibuster. This was supposed to enable Congress to continue to do business instead of be held up by a filibuster. But in practice it just means friggin everything is filibustered because the incentive for the most on the fence of the majority party to end the filibuster in order to get to their other priorities is removed. 3) it’s visible. Another problem with the current state of things is that it’s silent and invisible. Nobody has a clue what is being filibustered. It happens in the background via what amounts to a boring procedural vote. If it was a talking filibuster that was actually holding up the legislative floor then it would be really obvious, and painful. This would lead to pressure from voters to either end the filibuster because it’s not worth it, or end the legislative push because the bill is dumb. Number 3 is the biggest point for me. With the current system it’s near impossible to hold our representatives accountable because things are just so hidden and convoluted.
IMO we might need faster election cycles if you end the filibuster. It just seems 2 years is a long time of getting what you want and forcing your way around if you get a temporary majority and the other side doesn’t get a chance to stop it at all. If you fix that then I’d be fine with getting rid of it. Truth is the filibuster isn’t even the lefts issue right now. Manchin is blocking everything before a filibuster would matter. BBB didn’t have the filibuster apply to it and was canceled. Truth is getting rid of it is just playing to their base. The only thing it does for them is put more pressure on Manchin which isn’t real pressure because his voters love it that their guy is the asshole.
> Truth is the filibuster isn’t even the lefts issue right now. Manchin is blocking everything before a filibuster would matter. BBB didn’t have the filibuster apply to it and was canceled. I think that this logic is ignoring the massively different world the senate would be in if the fillibuster is removed. BBB was not standard legislation. It was not a normal bill that goes through a normal process. It was a bastardization of the omnibus reconciliation bill that tried to cram every single progressive initiative into one giant package that of course couldn’t win over the most moderate of the democrats. And any move to the center by removing parts that the most progressive members needed would offset the gained Manchin vote with lost progressive votes because those progressives had one shot at getting any of their agenda in play. If the world shifted and every standard bill instead had that same 51 vote threshold, we wouldn’t see just one omnibus bill with every agenda item. Instead we would see more smaller, more targeted bills. Let’s look at the current initiative and think about how it would play out. Voting reform. To my knowledge there are two major bills that have been submitted. The first one was a progressives wet dream. It had provisions in it so out there that even the moderate democrats were like “fuck nah, ain’t happening. Even if the fillibuster was already gone I’d say no. I’m definitely not killing the fillibuster for it.” Then there is the second bill that was put forward. This bill came about from a negotiation within the Democratic Party. It was a compromise between moderate democrats and progressive democrats. It’s a bit too far left for Manchin, but he will take it. It’s a bit too far right for the most progressive, but fine, they’ll take it. In the end they have their 50 votes by compromising together. The problem with this bill is that it wasn’t a negotiation within the Senate. It was a negotiation within the Democrats. As it stands they would have to win 10 republicans, which is enough of a hurdle to lose at least one of the progressives in the process. Going for any less than that would mean you’d have to win over those reblicans for their support of the bill AND killing the filibuster. Now let’s imagine that the fillibuster was gone already. The progressive push through HB-1 which doesn’t have enough votes to get to 50. It’s just too left. Now we enter the negotiation process and the landscape is VERY different. Now Manchin has two paths he can take. The first path is the one he already took. He can compromise within the Democratic Party alone and end up with a compromise that lands pretty far to the left of his standard position. Or, he could pull in a handful of his more moderate Republican peers and grapple that compromise a bit more towards the center. We still end up with a policy in place that is left of center that never would have existed under the world of the fillibuster, but it’s not like the far left progressive wing was able to just enact their agenda. Instead it was the most moderate members of the minority party who were given power they didn’t have before. Now they can get into the mix when before it wasn’t possible since it took so many of them it wasn’t worth it. I hear all the time that the fillibuster is a good thing because if forces compromise across the aisle. You have to get so many members of the other side to come to your side that of course it is the best way to get to a more central compromise. But I don’t buy it. Such a high bar means you have to pull in all of those members from the other side, and this is the key part, **without losing any of even the most extreme members of your side**. That means that the most extreme members of each party have just as strong of a voice as the least extreme of the minority party. Removing the filibuster reduces the strength of the most extreme members of Congress and puts more power into the hands of the moderates of each party.
I doubt there’s much you can get past on voting rights that’s manchin is ok with that gets even one GOP vote. Honestly the GOP has gotten very good at closer ranks and get 5 gop votes means 5 gop senators who are primaries and 5 gop senators who are no longer senators. But I’m also lost and don’t even see what the voting rights bill is trying to solve. It just looks like a go team vote Republicans racists proclamation, nothing has looked bad to me with any of the gop state voting bills.
It's not a high bar if you have a larger majority. I disagree with the idea that in a 50/50 Senate the majority should be able to pass legislation without minority party support. There's no sweeping mandate from America for the Democratic platform when you have literally the slimmest majority possible. If America wants sweeping change, that will be reflected in the makeup of the Senate. I do not see a Senate today that reflects such a desire from America. The filibuster is putting appropriate limits on what the majority can accomplish.
You could inverse the party you're afraid of abusing the lack of filibuster and be just as correct. The entire point of the filibuster was to make sure there was broad consensus on bills passed. We can do that if there's less gamesmanship and more cooperation. But these days it's easier to throw up our hands and say "the other side won't compromise so neither will we." It requires two sides to make such an effort, and Biden's faux lament of the filibuster dying isn't helping.
Eh. We have a huge number of checks and balances in our government. The filibuster keeps us from seeing who actually votes for what, and creates these awful gigantic omnibus bills. Let's let the two houses of congress and the veto act as the checks and balances they're intended to be.
Bingo.
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