Are you referring to Fourteenth Amendment, section 2, hmm… But that’s more of a shotgun penalty, and it doesn’t seem to have ever been used. Did you mean something else in 1900?
The current clause:
Should any State deny or abridge the right of any of the male inhabitants thereof, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, to vote at any election named in the amendment to the Constitution, article 14, section 2, except for participation in the rebellion or other crime, the number of Representatives apportioned to such State shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall have to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
(R.S. § 22.)
Male inhabitants, male citizens? Holy crap! And I suppose that the 19th didn’t fix that?
Okay, fix that. Make it the standard way of things rather than a penalty, and apply it to the electoral college votes too. (Sell it to Republicans that strict eligible voter rules would reduce blue states by “millions of illegal voters”.)
Next … multiply it by the percent turnout of the eligible voters. A big state that flips on a few votes in poor turnout? Too bad no one seemed to care, so let’s dial down the significance of that.
Also the Bolsheviks (the minority party) were the significantly smaller group than the Mensheviks (the majority party), but they won the Russian revolution.
As you state, it is rigged for low population states. Which way do these lean? It is, therefore, rigged to the right. Your comparison makes no sense, both Clinton and Obama won the popular vote and the electoral vote.
I don’t know why you just keep confusingly adding your replies to mine in your original comment. Initially I thought maybe some misguided but noble desire for parsimony. Maybe it’s just a futile effort to rile me. It doesn’t really matter.
You’re an old hat around here. I’ve been enjoying your contributions for many years since the before times in the old BB forums even before Discus, let alone Discourse. I know you’re not some troll. Maybe you’re just spoiling for a fight. Maybe it’s a sign of the stressful times. I kind of get that, I’ve gotten more belligerent than I like in several recent threads. I’m trying to be mindful of that here and not go for personal attacks. I think you and I probably have more common ground than not on this issue. Perhaps I could have worded my reply to you more conciliatorily, but frankly so could you.
If you want to have a friendly discussion about the collateral effects of boycotts, I’m down for that. But if you want to fight with me, I won’t. I want to believe we are both better than that, but I know I am. I don’t care who’s to blame. I’m done fighting allies. We have real enemies and I’m focusing my energies on them regardless of what anyone else does.
Also, when people haven’t spent decades insisting that voting your conscience is “throwing your vote away”, “wasted”, or somehow counts as a vote for someone you didn’t actually vote for.
Seriously, when third party candidates can’t crack 5% of the vote despite 2/3 of people saying they want a third party, when a candidate can get nearly 20% of the popular vote and not one single electoral vote, when it’s proven time and time again that the only way to win as an independent is to ally yourself with a major party and yet no matter how much popular support you get you’ll never actually get their nomination; we need to accept the fact that the Democrats are just as culpable in rigging the system as the Republicans, even if the Republicans have been more successful at it.
I’m not sure how you make the leap from “fighting back in self-defense is not extremism” to “you’re effectively going ‘this person is garbage. Not worth trying to help. He made his choice and now we deem him worthy of only punishment.’”
These are fascists we’re discussing, not their enablers or their dupes. Being a fascist is not an immutable characteristic, but a choice. That choice usually involves supporting eliminationist policies and the downfall of Western liberal democratic institutions. Once they get any degree of power, they start pushing this agenda and the time for trying to politely reason with them is done – it is indeed time to fight back in self-defence.
This does not necessarily equate to fighting back with violence or calling someone subhuman (though there are those in the small and loud antifa/anarkiddie movement who do both), but taking a stand does equate to stating, quite clearly, that making the choice to be a fascist makes one deplorable and worthy of contempt and is unacceptable by decent human beings. In the political sphere sometimes public shaming is enough to get someone to change his bad choice.
Wait, are we talking about Jill Stein? Because she was a legitimately bad candidate regardless. To this day she dismisses the Russia Collusion story as.a baseless DNC conspiracy theory.
Mentioning his unpopularity doesn’t offend me. Someone implying (perhaps inadvertantly) it’s reason to be complacent and continue with electoral business as usual does bother me, though. This is not a normal situation in American politics, so some extra vigilance and action are called for.
Given the response, you obviously didn’t make that clear enough. Usually it implies a laissez-faire/“things will work themselves out normally” approach to things, but it might stop you arguing past other people if you, y’know, told us yourself.
Apparently, this guy has a few other properties so it’s not like he’s out of commission yet. It’s going to take more folks breaking leases to neutralize this guy’s affect in the community.
“Doing things” (which implies taking action) is not usually equated with “letting things take their course” (which implies passivity). Perhaps you look at a disaster and say “let’s sit back and do things to fix it” but that phrase makes no sense.
