163 Comments

the gray tribe rises

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:( I already sent in my mail-in ballot to make sure it arrives early enough in the post; I wish that I'd have known you were going to publish this, or it had been published earlier (a few weeks ago). In particular, if I remember right, Bob Casey and Dave McCormick were on my ballot in my part of Pennsylvania, and I would have voted for Dave McCormick instead if I had seen this article in my RSS reader.

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This is "election interference" /s

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As a member of the Philly contingent, it wasn't until more than a week after the meetup that I realized the Anti-Price Gouging Laws being *the* prominent element of a platform would have been less odious if the Hurricanes weren't actively being made worse by those laws. I don't read the news so did not even recall it was hurricane season, but when a policy has such massive and obvious costs, doubling down on them can create a lot of backlash. Not unwarranted.

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This turned out to be muted in the official doc, but generated a fair amount of discussion at the time, so perhaps it's not obvious why I'd use the word 'odious'. I'm unsurprised-- the person who submitted the doc as well as the people typing up notes are all professional and thoughtful, much more so than myself, I would wager, and I consider all those discussions to be anonymously conducted.

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This has solidified my belief that the US has too many elected offices. In cities where there are just a handful of things to vote for, the groups were able to put together thoughtful and nuanced arguments. In cities where there are a huge number of things to vote for, there tended to just be one liners for each one.

But even the smallest ballot in the US is still way longer than the ballot in most countries.

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I'm in AZ and depending on where exactly in the state you live, you will likely have about 75 elections to weigh in on. Its not just granular local elections either, but also includes voting to retain/not retain individual justices. In practice almost no one actually does all this research and either uses a voting guide or ignores the down-ballot races.

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My process for selecting between candidates for various local positions:

1) Ask ChatGPT for descriptions of both candidates platforms

2) If still unsure, ask ChatGPT which was more YIMBY

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author

Does ChatGPT know this? I thought it had a knowledge cutoff date before the election.

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It can websearch for things after the cutoff now

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I was unable to find useful information on Google about the two candidates for my water district election (Bob Ooten and Erik Weigand), and ChatGPT hasn’t done much more than quote their candidate statements. It seemed to think their biggest policy difference was about the Groundwater Replenishment System - but it was just quoting their candidate statements: “while both candidates support groundwater replenishment, Ooten seeks to expand and innovate the system, particularly through technical improvements, while Weigand prioritizes maintaining the current system’s effectiveness and fiscal responsibility.”

When I lived in Texas, I often had races where I had even less information about candidates, since there was no local brochure with candidate statements, and they often didn’t even have websites.

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Oct 22·edited Oct 22

Yeah it definitely had knowledge of who the candidates were, it mentioned additional details such as which district seat they were running for, which wasn't information I provided.

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Chat-GPT may have a political bias. Researchers studying past versions of it found that it could faithfully simulate different political alignments (e.g., "how would a republican answer what should be the balance between federal and state law?" "how would a democrat answer?" etc...), but that when asked questions directly, it produced democrat answers.

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That's fine, I'm voting down ticket party Democrat anyway. I mostly interested in using it to tie break between different Democrats.

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Oct 22·edited Oct 22

The LA doc says "No" on 32 but your summary table says "Yes"

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author

Thank you for the correction; fixed.

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I agree with Harris/McCormick. Casey ran an ad touting his support for Trump. That shows terrible teamwork, potentially harming Harris’s much more important and closer race, which shouldn’t be rewarded. It also shows Casey won’t be a check on Trump.

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Yes, that ad was self serving and I wouldn't have made that decision. However, the reaction has been overblown - he supported one specific policy (NAFTA reform) that he agreed with Trump on - and an issue that had overwhelming bipartisan support. That's not an endorsement of Trump, it's a mild overture to the center.

Meanwhile, Trump and McCormick have endorsed each other, and there is little question that McCormick would overwhelmingly vote with Trump on judges, and cabinet positions which are the only real check on executive branch power. Casey would vote to veto the most extreme nominees. From 2017 - 2020, every Republican Senator, including Susan Collins has voted yes on almost every Trump nominee. Even James Ho, the judge that tried to restrict mifepristone nationwide had unanimous Republican support in the Senate.

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"Casey would vote to veto the most extreme nominees. From 2017 - 2020, every Republican Senator, including Susan Collins has voted yes on almost every Trump nominee."

There's very little evidence that any GOP senator would serve as a check on Trump. Our best path is to keep them all out of office.

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Really appreciate the Boston guide, excellent work!

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> BOSTON: This group went above and beyond - I blame all the strivers at Harvard - and have eighteen pages worth of discussion, including majority opinions and dissents on all issues.

The person who coordinated the writeup was, in fact, an MIT student.

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Not accurate. Taymon organized the meetup, I facilitated the meetup and coordinated the writeup, duck master took notes during the meetup and contributed two opinion pieces. Duck master also sent out the writing assignments after the meetup, which may be where you're getting confused.

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you did a great job, thanks. I'm going to vote Q1 and Q4 based on this guide - I had no idea on the 1st one and was torn on the 2nd.

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I wish I could have been at the meetup - I was initially unsure on question 2 (repealing MCAS requirement) but after talking with teachers that I know I'll be voting yes.

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Oct 22·edited Oct 22

For Austin, I'm confused about the Daniel Betts recommendation for DA.

The lawsuit against current DA José Garza is brought by Paxton who is pretty corrupt himself (attempting to overturn 2020 election, as well as under FBI investigation for embezzlement).

Garza did hold a secret vote to fund security for himself, to the tune of $115k. But this sounds like a mistake of someone who was scared for their safety after getting doxxed.

I think he should have gone through more transparent channels, but I don't think we should throw out someone who wants to bring criminal justice reform and avoids prosecuting abortions, all in favor of Betts with his tough on crime approach, which hasn't really been shown to reduce crime.

Betts says he wants to take politics out of the DA but I can't find any evidence he truly wants a fair approach as opposed to simply wanting to enforce the current laws because he agrees with them.

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This article gets at local feeling about DA Garza:

https://www.fox7austin.com/news/ervin-coronado-palacio-austin-murder-charge-hays-county-texas

There is perhaps less sympathy for him than there would be had he not repeatedly "appeared" indifferent to the security of others in his decisionmaking. A prominent local judge, Julie Kocurek, was (fortunately non-fatally) shot ambush-style on returning home, by 31-year-old "aspiring rapper" Chimene Onyeri in 2015. I don't know of any other such events in Austin in the past couple decades, but that was a pretty big deal, and she naturally garnered much sympathy. (The rapper's in federal prison presumably serving a much longer sentence than he was looking at with the fraud/identity theft/skimming devices stuff she convicted him on, and for which he was evidently seeking revenge.)

Garza requested and received from the county $115,000 in security system stuff for his home last spring. He also requested and got constables stationed overnight and on weekends at his home all through summer, and ongoing as far as I know.

When that attracted grousing, he or someone on his behalf, initiated and placed in the county budget for 2025, a new LEO office specifically for elected officials, or for himself if no one else wants it, I guess.

Statesman:

"Travis County officials are working to establish a new $1.8 million, five-person law enforcement agency to provide security to elected and appointed officials and employees who receive threats related to their work."

"The county is in the early stages of hiring a law enforcement supervisor for the program, three security officers and an analyst but hopes to have the program in place in the first few months of 2025. The supervisor and officers are expected to be certified Texas peace officers whose licenses will be sponsored by Travis County Precinct 5 Constable Carlos Lopez."

"The team’s budget will include about $500,000 in operating and equipment costs and about $790,000 for salaries. The equipment costs are expected to be a one-time expenditure to establish the team."

I would not be at all surprised if the threats, whatever they are, are coming not from perps but from the relatives of various crime victims.

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Oct 23·edited Oct 23

I didn't want to full in all the details in the guide, because it really is complicated. (Especially when my part was only finished the night before release.)

Yes Ken Paxton did file a lawsuit for something that he did so himself, but worse. Ken Paxton is not up for reelected, and I super recommend against him when he is.

The story as I understand it goes like this. Garza gets $100k in a secret deal. This is illegal. If the money was for home defense, all he had to do to make it legal was to take the money publicly. He did not. Not only that, he only said that the money was for home defense AFTER he got caught. We don't have receipts. We don't know how much money, if any, went into his home.

I might have to apologize to Garza if the details get out and it turns out that he only bought a very expensive home defense system illegally. But it does look suspiciously like embezzlement.

I'm also being a little harsh on him because Garza if explicitly running on a platform where he intentionally doesn't enforce some laws. That looks principled when you don't enforce laws you find unjust, but scummy when you exempt yourself from laws.

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Other “progressive” prosecutors have also gone down for similar corruption and abuse of power: Rachael Rollins in Boston, Gascon’s top deputy in LA is facing felony charges, and Pamela Price kicked an adversarial reporter out of her press conferences, prosecuted a political opponent, and only relented when the courts made her.

Realistically, DA is not a position that should be elected. The legislature should make laws, the executive should set enforcement priorities, and prosecutors should prosecute. Especially since crime victims do not have any right to compel a criminal prosecution in the U.S.

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Typo: "roll a dice" - singular is "die".

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Dice is also accepted as singular by most dictionaries.

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The Austin voting guide is not neutral. It badly misrepresents the situation in the DA’s race, where there are absolutely no allegations of “embezzlement” or the sitting DA not being “clean”. Additionally, it recommends a candidate for Presiding Judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals (one of the state’s two supreme courts) who proudly claims the support of Christian nationalist secessionists (True Texas Project); signed (and then “unsigned“) the Texas First pledge (aka Texit); was the beneficiary of $89k in expenditures from a Paxton-affiliated PAC (Texans for Responsible Judges); answered an abortion question on ivoterguide (tagline: Grounded in God. Rooted in research.) by talking about the death penalty, in a year when the state GOP platform calls for the death penalty for abortion; and is primarily a civil practitioner, having never litigated a case in the court he wants to run. I’m not neutral either, as I’m married to the Democratic nominee for CCA, so I advise you to do your own research.

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I considered him a lot more impartial than the other candidates in that he was willing to stay up to Greg Abbott. I didn't plan to vote for him myself, but I had trouble finding that about the presiding judge. Can you give links so I can get the guide amended?

I was a Garza fan until the case came up against him, so if you can find more info, that would help.

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I don't want to act as a campaign advocate here, so I will just provide the factual links and then bow out.

You can google his website to see the picture of him with the True Texas Project cross, their endorsement, and his civil specialization.

The Texas First pledge stuff is here: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2022/03/17/almost-100-candidates-from-governor-to-constable-pledged-to-support-vote-on-texas-seceding-from-us/

The Texans for Responsible Judges PAC expenditure is in their official filing (TEC filer ID 00087486), publicly available from the TEC.

The TTP podcast where Paxton says, “It was really challenging to recruit three people—it’s not like a high paying job … there’s no glory. No one knows who you are.

There’s no real like reason to do this unless you believe in the cause.” is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbpombwSrRw

The ivoterguide thing is here: https://ivoterguide.com/candidate/60223/race/20594/election/1079

His bar card number for searching the CCA website for his case history is 17736870.

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"The Austin voting guide is not neutral."

Huh? Several of the guides just outright endorse the Democratic agenda and advise straight ticket voting. Are you working from tbe assumption that the purpose of this ballot guide process is to help the left?

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If associations are important to establish, one may also note that the local TV station KXAN, which tends to do what amounts to all local reporting as the newspaper is basically dead, DA Garza is tightly connected to the Wren Collective, which similarly would like to use the justice system to accomplish policy aims (which may very well be sympathetic to many ACX readers, although it tends to operate in the shadows for some reason).

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Allow me to wipe away a tear of pride that in Chicago, it still helps to be Irish. Or at least sound like you're Irish. And that there is a venerable tradition of adopting Irish names/pretending to be Irish in order to win elections.

Hurrah for the sea-divided Gael!

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Maybe he's Irish-ish. Or close to it, which would be Irishishish?

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Boston area too, still after all this time. There was a ballot I had once which had 4 Kennedy's on it, only 2 were related, and another one had legally changed his name to Kennedy.

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As an eastern WA resident, the down ballot Dem recommendations from the Seattle group (with one Libertarian) are not unexpected but disappointing nevertheless. My prediction was exactly that, but I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

“Schrier is a moderate Democrat” as a rationale is a real cherry on top.

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founding

is your disagreement that she is not moderate, or that being moderate is a bad rationale?

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She is a generic WA Democrat, which is to say very far left in comparison to most other states.

Her voting record shows a 100% agreement with the party line (assuming party line = what the White House endorsed). She appears to endorse unlimited abortion rights (I can find no statement from her regarding any limitations at all, and abortion subjectively feels to me to be the topic she is most vocal about), she has supported a number of increasingly strict gun control bills, and was a strong proponent of Covid lockdowns and Defund the Police. Her Democrat primary challenger ran against her on the basis of her not supporting Palestine to a sufficient degree, rather than any domestic policy issue I can discern.

While I wouldn't put her in the same league as say the Squad, as a WA resident I would say the centrist or moderate label does not fit (and indeed she has described herself as a progressive), and Far Left would be a fair categorization.

In general, it's fairly safe to assume anyone running as a Democrat in WA is more than one standard deviation to the left of the average voter nationwide. Even California transplants are surprised by how far our politics lean to Donkey.

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I looked for summary analysis and found Progressive Punch. They put Schrier

as 171th out of 212 democrats and give her a C overall:

https://progressivepunch.org/scores.htm?house=house

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Given that she is labeled as a "swing" when she has voted the party line 100% of the time, I am very much unconvinced. This is the old "the Democratic party is center-right compared to most of the world" canard. Does Schrier support A) any limitations on abortion at all (ie up to the moment of birth), B) any right of private gun ownership, C) any permanent reduction on the tax burden of citizens, D) any reduction in the size, scope, or authority of federal or state government not related to A, E) any attempt to remove immigrants who have arrived here by less than legal means? As far as I am aware, by her own statements the answer to all of these questions is "no". Given my own personal values, I would quantify these positions as "far left".

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founding

<quote>D) any reduction in the size, scope, or authority of federal or state government not related to A</quote>

Why does A not count? Does anything else not count?

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Abortion restrictions are an exercise in state regulation to prevent a percieved harm, which is generally something that democrats are for and republicans against, except the specific details of the moral debate around abortion cause the parties to depart from their usual positions. Off hand, I don't know of any other specific examples that flip this way.

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I don't know her voting record, but "swing" refers to her district, I think. Their methodology attempts to judge the representative relative to the lean of their district.

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The DW-nominate algorithm gives similar results (see links below). For example, H.R. 7909, the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, was introduced by a Republican, its six cosponsors were all Republicans, and it passed in the House with a vote of 214-0 by Republicans and 51-158 by Democrats. Schrier was one of the 51 Democrats who voted for the bill. I don’t think that Schrier’s vote for this bill can be considered to be “voting the partly line” under any reasonable definition.

menthodolgy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOMINATE_(scaling_method)

result: https://voteview.com/person/21962/kim-schrier

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That being a moderate Democrat is a bad rationale. The Sequences has this section about how if you start by writing down the conclusion, it doesn’t matter what you write before that. These results, and especially the moderate Democrat one, have the feel of writing the conclusion then working to justify it. Again, not surprising, just disappointing coming from the ACX folks.

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I think the biggest concern for people in the center is Trump/Vance still being unwilling to concede the 2020 election, plus Vance waffling about whether he'd certify a Republican loss if he was the VP. I think Republicans nation-wide would do *a lot* better without this huge issue hanging over their heads.

(And yes, I'm aware of Hillary's waffling on the issue in 2016 and the Bush v. Gore debacle, but both Gore and Clinton ended up fully conceding in the end)

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I think that would be the biggest mistake the Republicans could make. Clinton and Gore conceeded because their elections happened under fairly normal circumstances in terms of electoral operations, the scope of possible investigations was limited. The 2020 election departed in a significant way from prior electoral operations in many states, for obvious reasons. These radical changes, made mostly on short notice and often skipping legislative approval all together are all sources of potential error and/or malfeasance- it does not seem to me that questioning their security is on the surface illegitimate. On the contrary, when such questions are shouted down it only increases suspicion.

If you want this issue to go away, you commit to a full and transparent investigation of any and all claims, no matter how ludicrous, and you publish the results publicly. 2020 was an exceptional time, and it should be treated as an exception- many norms were violated and many legitimate grievances remain unredressed.

As a voter in the center, I am far more concerned with what certainly appears to be an effort by the left to steal the current election via malicious prosecution than actual policy debate.

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I concur 100%. After "Russia hacked the election" in 2016 we had at least a few years of Mueller and other Russian investigation. After irregularities in 2020, how many high profile investigations happened? Folks talk about all the election cases Trump "lost", but most of them were dismissed due to lack of standing.

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I don't doubt that there were some legitimate complaints out there, but when you are hammering supposed election fraud in cases where the claim is clearly complete BS, I have a strong reaction that there must not be any significant fraud. If there were, they could have come up with something to complain about that couldn't be refuted in about 5 seconds.

I know there were dropbox shenanigans for example, but instead they went with provably false "counting stops for hours, people are forced to leave the room while ballots are trucked in late" which could be debunked by video evidence.

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Except these tactics are not conducive to inspiring confidence in the electoral system. Yes, there are ludicrous claims that have been trivially debunked. But as you say, there were also legitimate issues concerning election security in 2020 that remain unaddressed. When mainstream media outlets and the democrats snark endlessly about stupid claims and remain dead silent about no-so-stupid ones, it looks deeply suspicious. It took several years a lot of investigation to produce the Mueller report, but that generally seems to have settled the issue. When democrats aren't chomping at the bit to return the favor regarding the 2020 election, you can't blame the average voter for wondering what they have to hide.

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founding

what do you consider the single strongest claim concerning security of the 2020 election?

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If Democrats were to agree to an investigation, right wing media would pounce and say, “Even Democrats now admit that there are serious concerns about the election.” So agreeing to additional investigations would likely increase doubts about elections rather than resolving them.

Possible additional headlines include, “Democrat admits that the outcome of the investigation was predetermined, says there was never a chance that the investigation would uncover significant voter fraud.” Or, “Democrat admits that the goal of the investigation was never to look for voter fraud, but rather to produce a document saying that there was no significant voter fraud.” Both of those headlines would be factually accurate, but aren’t going to be a good look for Democrats or do anything to increase confidence in elections.

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Because those lawsuits were obviously political theater. You're telling me Texas's AG is so stupid despite all the lawyers he has access to that he didn't know he would have to prove damages in Texas if he sued another state? And if he was that stupid, why didn't he immediately get somebody in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin to sue and give them the evidence? Why has he still refused to do that? He's just sitting on election fraud evidence that nobody else has been able to produce for fun, including citizens in the affected states? It's insanity.

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You are not a voter in the center, you are most likely consuming nonstop Republican propaganda.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT.pdf

Page 22 details Trump making knowingly false claims about election fraud after state representatives and his DoJ told him the claims were investigsted and were bunk.

https://theconversation.com/giuliani-claims-the-first-amendment-lets-him-lie-3-essential-reads-210514

Giuliani lost his defamation lawsuit and part of his defense was that he had a first amendment right to lie about election fraud.

https://sos.ga.gov/news/kraken-cracks-under-pressure-sidney-powell-claims-no-reasonable-person-would-conclude-her

Sidney Powell lost her defamation suit after saying she wasn't making statements of fact about Dominion Voting Machines being rigged, but instead merely giving her opinion.

https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe

Fox News settled with Dominion and the depositions include testimony from figureheads and high level company personnel saying that the voting fraud claims were bunk (even after internal investigation by Fox News's fact checkers) but that they were broadcasting them to avoid losing viewership to OAN and Newsmax.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/09/26/smartmatic-goes-to-trial-against-newsmax-today-heres-where-it-and-dominions-other-lawsuits-stand/

Things aren't looking too good for OAN and Newsmax either in their defamation suits.

Everybody involved in architecting claims about voter fraud has effectively admitted to lying about it. It's fantastical to act like there was a cover up or refusal to investigate - Georgia had an audit and two state recounts. Over 60 lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign failed to bring any merit to court, because they were driven by intentionally lying conspiracy theorists.

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If you had bothered to actually read my comments you would have seen the part where I said 2020 was exceptional, and should be treated as such with a full investigation of all claims, even if claims are ludicrous. If you want to claim that it was perfectly normal, I will happily link the many, many energency neasures and proclamatioms made by most? (all? dont know for sure, but mine and all neighboring states at least) of the Secretaries of State across the union, all expanding voting methods and access, virtually none of which had legislative oversight, then I will laugh at you.

Instead you chose invective, followed by a dose of the DNC propaganda hose you ironically fail to notice yourself guzzling from.

In my other comments in the chain, which you also failed to read, you would have seen that I do not think the scattered fraud in 2020 was enough to materially affect results. (That people were convicted of voter fraud during the 2020 election is an established fact of law, don't embarrass yourself by denying it- for example see the first search hit: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/woman-convicted-voter-fraud-scheme).

My point in this discussion has always been that the DNCs failure to seriously engage in any sort of electoral security assurances or after-actiom reports stands in notable and stark contrast to say, literally any other first world democracy, or even countries like India which somehow manage to uncontroversially implement mandatory universal voter ID yet DNC politicos whine about how it will be impossible here. If you want to be able to claim the high ground over the Republicans regarding electoral issues, then start by taking reasonable measures to ensure election integrity and stop pretending this is some vile conservative conspiracy instead of a perfectly reasonable defense against us becoming Venezuela.

As a side note- you seem to have already made up your mind about me, but I will note I am actually a centrist, and no fan of the GOP. Sneering contempt from the left that denigrate half the country though, strongly pushes me and voters like me to the right as the lesser evil. If you want to win votes, consider adjusting your behavior.

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> If you want to claim that it was perfectly normal, I will happily link the many, many energency neasures and proclamatioms made by most? (all? dont know for sure, but mine and all neighboring states at least) of the Secretaries of State across the union, all expanding voting methods and access, virtually none of which had legislative oversight, then I will laugh at you.

Equivocating on the word "normal." None of those acts were ILLEGAL or indicative of widespread voter fraud. Obviously 2020 was an unusual year because the lockdowns made it prudent to take extra steps to make sure other voting options were more accessible due to social distancing measures. There has been 0 proof that any of the expanded voting measures led to widespread fraud.

>My point in this discussion has always been that the DNCs failure to seriously engage in any sort of electoral security assurances or after-actiom reports stands in notable and stark contrast to say

Where is your evidence that blue states have less secure elections than red states? Fewer regulations? Worse outcomes at prosecuting voting crimes? You have none. How about when Republicans lie about the number of noncitizen voters they found (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhBIVXpYbwg) and then petition the federal government to check the citizenship status of half a million voters in each of their states? (https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2024/10/17/indiana-officials-request-federal-help-in-verifying-citizenship-of-585k-registered-voters/, https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-sues-biden-harris-administration-refusing-verify-citizenship-status) It's insane to act like Democrats are ruining our election integrity when Republicans are the ones constantly lying about voter fraud because if they don't support Trump lying about voter fraud their party will turn against them.

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In Washington, I worked for the department of elections in King County in 2022. We're very open. You can walk around the whole office and look through the windows at the workers.

I sat at the front desk. I got a lot of concerns about the handling of elections. I offered to lead them on a tour of our election certification offices. Most of the ones who think the elections were cheated were not interested in this.

At that point, there was nothing I could do. I could show them around, if they wanted. But most of them were "concerned" about things they saw online, usually from a completely different state. Most common was Maricopa County, in AZ.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that. I still don't.

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Well, good job on being transparent. I don't think WA has an issue with the elections office or vote counting. But if I were to ask you to prove that a random mail in ballot you have was indeed sent in by a US citizen, you would not only tell me (correctly, per state law) that the burden of proof is on me as the accuser, you would also be unable to point me to an official list of citizens that could be used to verify their citizenship.

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Oct 23·edited Oct 23

I agree, the places that did allow an investigation ended up showing there wasn't anything meaningful, that's how you alleviate this. Refusing to platform such accusations just makes it look like you have something to hide, that's media twitter brainrot thinking.

The media freaked out inexplicably at the mere suggestion that an election could have fraud, which made no sense to me, as this has been something people joked about for years w/r/t JFK and Chicago in 1960 and normie Republicans have said this about Philly for decades also (Limbaugh used to tell callers never to get excited about the chance of flipping PA because Philly would manufacture votes, and that was normie-con Bush-era Limbaugh saying that.) If democracy is so precious and fragile that even suggesting fraud can irreparably damage it, then the smart thing to do is what Florida did -- implement voting changes that ensure election integrity and allow nearly the entire total to be reported promptly. Florida took its legacy as the Bush v Gore butterfly ballot state and totally redeemed itself, there is no chance of controversy there now.

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In another comment, you said your girlfriend illegally voted, but you didn't report her.

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Which Rs do you like? I also live in WA.

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The Seattle ACX meetup supported Jaime Herrera Beutler (R) for public lands commissioner. All the other Rs seem kinda insane.

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Most of her opponent, Carmen Goers's website is waffling about supporting our troops and crime is bad. That's all whatever.

But one of her issues pages is about education, and that page states "Ensure women’s and girls’ sports integrity by maintaining fairness and equal opportunities." Also, "Ensuring parents’ rights are honored."

These are pretty obviously anti-trans dogwhistles. If you're a member of the grey tribe, we probably don't want to reward another anti-trans zealot with a seat in Congress.

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I really appreciate this take. It helps highlight the reasoning which would create the list.

I believe both trans participation in sports and parents rights to be involved in medical issues of their children to pretty centrist positions, but not Seattle centrist positions. I do not know what the “gray tribe” values are, so I do not know how to assess these positions by that system.

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Oct 25·edited Oct 25

Who cares about what the centrist positions are? I believe in one moral framework:

Do the right thing. Do it all the time.

Encouraging teachers to report trans kids to their students is bad. I oppose it. Children are not their parents' property.

In a sane society, parents should not be assumed to have ownership of their children.

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I cannot say that is a position that makes much sense to me, but it is helpful to know that someone holds it. I doubt we can figure out the root of our differing value systems here, but thank you for the discussion.

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The Google doc for the SF ballot allows editing and should probably be locked down.

The NYC and Philadelphia ones allow 'suggesting', and that probably shouldn't be allowed either.

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It looks like the SF guide can be edited by anyone with the link, which shouldn't be the case.

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I wish some of these votes were at least somewhat related to ending the Jones Act, though it's not a local issue per se.

The Jones Act is the evil that has the United States in a terrible bind.

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deletedOct 24
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Thank you for your service to the Cause.

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The Jones Act is bad. I highly doubt it's the root of all our problems. Society's demands have a way of expanding to fit (or, realistically, exceed) the resources available.

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Unfortunately, the Jones Act is a federal act, and I don’t think there is any way for there to be ballot measures about it. Federal candidates for House or Senate could campaign about it, but outside Hawaii or Puerto Rico, I don’t think this is going to be a meaningful issue anywhere.

Also, I don’t think it makes sense to say the Jones Act is *the* evil that has the United States in a terrible bind - it’s bad, but it’s really quite a lot less important than about a million other things. It just has the advantage of being pretty obviously bad.

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>It just has the advantage of being pretty obviously bad.

That's a very important advantage though. In this polarizing day and age, ending the Jones Act should have bi-partisan if not tri-partisan or quad-partisan support. We can all unite as One Fist in demanding an end to the Jones Act.

End the Jones Act now so the US can be free! Thank you.

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This is a useful approach, thanks for doing it.

Regarding Chicago's school-board drama, worth noting that this mayor had hand-picked the 7 interim school board members, who he just forced to resign so he could replace them because they declined to fire the superintendent, who doesn't want to take out a $300 million operating loan per the teachers union's demand. That would be the teachers union that the mayor used to work for, which two years ago funded the campaign that landed him in the big office on the 5th floor of City Hall.

I actually personally know one of the 7 who was forced to resign, and am a distant colleague of one of the replacements just appointed. I probably have known the former long enough to, at some future point, inquire for her perspective on this sequence of events.

The whole crappy scenario has turned off even some of the mayor's political allies. Our city council has 50 elected members of whom 41 signed on to a letter to the mayor saying basically "what the actual fuck?" And since the council's Progressive Caucus has 19 members....yea. There've been some serious screaming matches behind closed doors I'm sure.

A citywide poll conducted in mid September found mayoral approval ratings of 25 percent positive and _60_ percent negative. He looks like a one-termer for sure at this point.

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The Economist has a report on the Chicago situation in this week's edition, written with some bracing British bluntness.

headline: Brandon Johnson is giving Chicago’s teachers’ union everything. It may well cost him his political career

text:

Last year, when he was campaigning to be mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, a former organiser for the Chicago Teachers Union, was asked how he would handle negotiating a contract with his former employers, especially when money is tight. He answered simply: “Who better to deliver bad news to friends than a friend?” The teachers’ union downplayed hopes of special favours. “Brandon is a remarkable person who has a lot of principles,” said Jesse Sharkey, a former head of the union.

Over a year later, Mr Johnson shows little interest in delivering bad news to the people who helped him become mayor. In fact, he is showing that there is no greater love than to lay down your political career for your friends. The mayor was elected in large part thanks to the heavy financial backing of the teachers’ union, and it expects to be repaid in contract negotiations this year. But the money to do so is lacking. Rather than admit that, Mr Johnson has tied himself into knots and offended almost every other constituency in the city, including his own progressive allies.

On October 7th he appointed a new school board, after all the original members resigned. Mr Johnson had wanted them to fire the head of the school district, Pedro Martinez, and they refused. Mr Martinez opposes the mayor’s plan to fill a looming deficit in the schools budget by taking on a $300m short-term loan. The resignations—and Mr Johnson’s hasty replacements—have thrown Chicago’s local government into chaos.

On paper Chicago’s schools are generously funded. Total spending by the school district works out at around $29,500 per pupil, compared with a national average of $19,000. Teachers in Chicago are also already rather well paid (the average salary is $93,000). But too much of the budget is spent repaying historical debt, and on pensions. And Chicago has too many schools. Over decades total enrolment has shrunk, especially in black neighbourhoods, and three-fifths of schools are underused.

One high school on the West Side of the city, Frederick Douglass Academy, has just 27 students, in a building meant for 900. Keeping it open costs the equivalent of $68,000 per pupil, roughly four times what is spent directly (after debt and other centralised costs) in the average school.

Closing schools in black neighbourhoods is unpopular. When Rahm Emanuel, a former mayor, did it a decade ago, it may have tanked his mayoral career. Under Mr Johnson, Mr Martinez has done the opposite, allowing more money to flow to struggling schools. But the covid-relief funds that have made this possible are now running out. The school district faces a budget deficit of $500m this year. Other school districts in America are making cuts: San Francisco recently announced it will close several schools. In Chicago that is apparently unthinkable. Instead teachers say they want 9% pay rises and every school to be staffed as though it is fully occupied.

A $300m loan will only mean a bigger hole next year. Even those formerly supportive of the mayor recognise the problem. “If you are maxing out your credit card at home, you can barely make payments, and somebody proposes you take out another high-interest loan, that isn’t solving your problem,” says Andre Vasquez, a progressive alderman. He is one of 41 out of 50 city-council members who signed a letter opposing the mayor.

Mr Johnson, who has the power to jam through the $300m loan, is defiant. Announcing the new board appointments, he compared “so-called fiscally responsible stewards” to supporters of slavery. He says he was elected to be transformative, not to “nibble around the edges”. But by 2027 his appointed school board will be replaced with a 21-member elected one. The mayor seems to want to give his pals a big raise, and let others work out how to pay for it.

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I feel that the Pennsylvania group missed the mark on the role of the Senate, or of individual Senators. They at least acknowledge that individual Senators policy preferences pretty much do not matter because substantive non-fiscal legislation requires 60 votes in the Senate, and agreement from both houses and the presidency. But they miss on what Senators do have power over, and that is approving or vetoing judges and cabinet positions.

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Sorry to whoever put these together but these guides in general are really terrible. They're ideological in strange ways and very much do not incorporate the actual political outcomes from supporting certain candidates. Almost anti-rationalist.

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Oct 22·edited Oct 22

As a PA voter I'm disappointed that an ACX/rationality group would recommend McCormick for Senate. He has spent most of the past two decades living in a wealthy part of Connecticut, not PA. As a hedge fund manager, he is not representative of the type of people in PA, not even Republican business owners; most business owners here own small business. His claim to represent us is perhaps even weaker than Dr Oz who at least did spend a lot of time in South Jersey which does share some demographic characteristics with SE PA and the millions of voters living in the Philly area.

In my view, his candidacy is simply an another attempt by a wealthy person to win a senate seat in a state they know almost nothing about and don't even care about; they just want the seat. If you believe in representative democracy at any level I don't understand how you could endorse this cynical strategy.

Women should also note that McCormick's public statements suggest he would support restrictions on abortion using federal law; another conflict with the majority of PA residents who want abortion to remain legal.

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In fairness, he spent the vast majority of the first 45 years of his life in Pennsylvania. He was born in a suburb of Pittsburgh, and lived and worked there for many decades.

He left to attend West Point and serve in the Army (reasonable, IMO). Then he came back and worked in Pittsburgh for another 10 years, before leaving to work in the Bush Administration (again, reasonable). Then he spent 15 years splitting his time between Connecticut and Pennsylvania while running a hedge fund.

How long do you have to spend in a state to represent it? Is thirty years not enough?

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Casey has always supported abortion restrictions too, right? I recall there was a period when Pennsylvania was represented by a pro-life Democrat from the rural areas, Casey, and a pro-choice Republican from the Philadelphia suburbs, Arlen Specter.

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In the Austin guide the comments about an accusation against the DA for “embezzlement” are highly misleading. He is not accused of anything like that.

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Let me know if you have more information in the thread about Garza above, so I can amend the guide.

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Pedro Martinez doesn't make the top names?

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I appreciate all the work that went into this!

The New York guide is a bit thin, though. Does anyone have recommendations for New York voter guides that go into more of the races and offer endorsements?

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Not a lot of interesting local races in New York this year.

* Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is being challenged by a no-name Republican and a LaRouche supporter. She'll win reelection easily.

* You can vote for a Congressperson who'll vote with the party line all the time, or one who'll vote with the other party line all the time.

* Same in the state assembly and senate, only more so. The governor, the assembly speaker, and the senate majority leader are the proverbial "three men in a room" who decide practically everything in Albany - though I guess the proverb needs an update now that two of them are women.

* In NYC the only other races on the ballot are judgeships. I don't expect anyone has any idea who to vote for as judge, unless you know one of the nominees personally. Anyway outside of Queens and one local district in Brooklyn all the candidates are running unopposed.

* City and county races are usually in odd-numbered years. Looking over the ballots in suburban counties, there are a few town and village officers up for election, but now we're getting into hyper-local matters.

So I think the ballot questions are the most interesting part of this year's election.

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The NY assembly and senate races do matter. It matters a great deal what individual representatives say and think about certain issues, housing for instance, and there's a very profound divide there. What doesn't matter is most of the things on the guide

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Hi! Would you care to weigh in on this more? If you do so very soon, it may affect at least my ballot.

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For SF ballot propositions, the strategic vote is Yes on L, Abstain on M. I can't find polling for the propositions but all of the spending and ads are for M so I assume it will pass but spending on L is divided (more money is being spent against but there is significant money being spent for as well).

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I'm a little disappointed - but totally not surprised - the California guides (both LA and Oakland) are just straight Democrat. You live in a crazy, dysfunctional state that has been run by Democrats for generations and yet won't consider maybe not voting those same people into power again. Especially consider Adam Schiff - fanatical proponent of Russiagate, vocal defender of Rep. Swalwell after he was (allegedly) compromised by Chinese honeypot Fang Fang, and generally anti-1st amendment and censorious regarding social media companies. Disclaimer, I don't know his opponent Garvey, and it's possible he is uniquely terrible somehow - but that isn't the impression I get from the voting docs. It all seems pretty vibes based, with the only solid policy position being abortion.

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CA republicans are as dysfunctional as CA democrats but also come along with concretely-terrible republican policy goals.

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Oct 23·edited Oct 23

West-coast states have very weak GOP benches. There is no Larry Hogan or Glenn Youngkin out here. It’s mostly a geography problem: the east sides of Washington, Oregon, and California are extremely rural, poor, and right wing. Any Republican right-wing enough to win in the east is too far right to win a blue suburb, and even if a centrist won a GOP primary, they’d have to tack so far left they depress GOP turnout and lose anyway.

Garvey is a good example: he’s so right wing Schiff deliberately propped him up in the primary to knock a moderate Dem off the top-2 ballot. His campaign has no money and he really hasn’t campaigned at all.

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Not only that, but the way abortion is mentioned is disturbing:

"Garvey is personally against abortion, and politically is against the federal legalization of abortion. This was overriding for many at LAR."

I suppose it's too much to expect an actual argument in the doc, but the way it's worded *sounds* like it's based not in argument, but in selfishness. As in "this position is personally inconvenient to many of us".

I acknowledge this may not be what is meant, and I really hope it isn't, because using a rationality group to do this would be beyond shameful.

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After seeing the Republican position on Ukraine for the last couple years, I'm beginning to think Russiagate might have been real.

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thanks living in philly this was informative.

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founding

FYI, Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville all do municipal elections in odd-numbered years. So I'd be interested in doing this again next year.

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I'll probably forget this, but feel free to do it and tell me when you're done and I'll put it on the open thread.

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This was a lot more useful for this San Franciscan than I expected

Thanks Scott

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I really appreciated you organizing this. The guides we much more informative than the information I found in my initial Google searches. I hope that you do this again for future elections (and with more cities). It'd be helpful if they were published earlier, though. I already submitted my ballot before reading these

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Aside from the gender element, the Shannon O'Malley story takes me back. In 1998 Bonnie Fitzgerald McGrath ran for a judgeship on basically the same theory.

***

Bonnie McGrath, who’s Jewish, traces her roots to Austria and England. Wrong roots. When she decided to run for circuit-court judge she faced a hard choice. She could spend a fortune she didn’t have to buy name recognition. Or, said Mike Lavelle, the former election-board chairman she hired for his worldly wisdom, she could buy a new name.

Bonnie Fitzgerald McGrath would look beautiful on a ballot, Lavelle told her.

She’s always been fairly nonchalant about her name. She’s listed in the phone book as Bonnie McGrath, Bonnie Taman, and Bonnie Owens, allowing old friends from every point in time to find her. So Benita “Bonnie” Carol Taman Owens McGrath–the first a given name she’s never used, the second a nickname, and the two at the end acquired from husbands, one an ex–decided to go even longer. What the hell.

https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/the-game-of-the-name-holy-cow-hes-gone/

***

Though it wasn't a foolproof plan. IIRC, she lost.

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New Yorker here. Although it's safe to say this state be voting for Harris, it might be important *how* we vote for Harris.

New York is one of the few "fusion" states that allow political parties to endorse other parties' candidates. (I think Connecticut does too, not sure about any others.) So Harris is running on both the Democratic and Working Families lines, and Trump is on both Republican and Conservative lines. For a party to stay on the ballot, it needs to get a certain percentage of votes in the last presidential or gubernatorial election. Recently that threshold was increased, wiping out many of the minor parties, but the WFP and Conservatives have survived.

Personally I will be voting for Harris as a Democrat, and hoping the WFP loses its ballot slot. There's a close upstate congressional race where an unknown candidate won the WFP primary and has been hurting the D candidate in the race. This could cost us a winnable seat. Between that, and my general alienation from the WFP and DSA and other Left organizations over foreign policy, I no longer have any love for ballot fusion or minor parties here.

My other comment is that I had been weakly for Question 1, but after a close reading I'm now weakly against. It adds age as a constitutionally protected class, and if Ted Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Dianne Feinstein have taught us anything it's that mandatory retirement ages are a good thing. Now I don't think it's likely that this poorly drafted feel-good amendment will be invoked by our courts to keep the gerontocracy in place, but I can't see it having any real positive impact either.

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I wish the San Francisco ballot had more information on it. Many propositions had no reasons given for why, I also wish there was maybe information on who wrote it that I could ask questions to.

Thanks for the post and organizing it regardless, good work!

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Not LA but close enough:

"Minimum wages seem fine. .... Many at LAR wished there was some canonical economic model they could follow that would tell them the optimal amount of minimum wage.

"

Don't I fucking feel that one. As time goes on, I feel more and more that Economics is about as scientific as either Literary Analysis on one side or Phlogiston Cosmology on the other.

Let the priests produce for me a god damn model with a hit rate above asking randos at innout.

"“Revenge propositions” are bad and it is bad for the political environment to incentivize people to write them."

Yes, but how do you separate revenge vs. negative incentives? Seems like a difference in terms. Somebody has to be the dude who's blood the regulation is written in.

"Prop 36"

I am suspicious that the dudes moving pallets through the port will be fine, and the dudes caught with a couple pills in their pocket will get hard time when it is counterproductive.

On the other hand, if I could push the dudes moving pallets into a giant comedy industrial shredder I would, so ehhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Not a very busy year, actually. Even in a safe state, even as a market Soc Hippie Green peace didn't go far enough let every sperm whale harpooner and redwood logger be REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED place de concorde, I am voting straight ticket dem because of prevailing conditions.

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I already voted (in SF), but this wouldn't have changed anything for me, except perhaps I would have strategically abstained from Prop M instead of voting yes. Not sold on the Hirsch-Shell Mayoral endorsement even as a half-hearted gesture, when his website prominently lists UBI as one of his top issues, and the municipal level is just decidedly not the place to push UBI.

I forget exactly what I ended up settling on for some of the propositions - the same ones the group was split on. I may have abstained from one or two.

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Ooh, Dylan Hirsch-Shell also supports STAR voting! Thank you, I live in San Francisco and did not know about this guy running for mayor

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Shame on Greg L in NYC for talking as if religious New Yorkers should not have the opportunity to see their values and preferences reflected by the representatives they choose.

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surely that's the point of an election; Greg doesn't seem to be saying that he feels Krasny should be denied the post if he wins the election.

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No but he does present Krasny's religiosity as something that makes him presumptively unacceptable as an elected representative. That strikes me as bigotry.

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The Seattle guys ran out of time before getting to my district :(

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I note that Oakland but not LA engages with the meta question: should this be a proposition aside from the merits of the actual issue, and that drives some of the differences.

If there is a deep dive guest post on this. I would appreciate a discussion of why "legislative statutes" are rule of thumb yes. Are props really necessary for these? Is there something the legislature could be doing to make them not necessary?

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I voted before waiting for the SF guide to be complete, and am pleasantly surprised to see a high degree of concordance with my own assessments. Shame more of the recommendations don't have explanations attached, a few disagreements were kinda baffling...like EJ for D11, while (realistically) pushing Breed for Mayor. Adding another lefty Supervisor who's specifically hostile to market-rate housing just seems like a weird clash of priorities? I am also sad to have not heard of Dylan Hirsh-Shell whatsoever, nary a text or flyer or voicemail or email. Even if he has Hell's chance in a snowball, it's nice to signal approval for LVT and such. We'll gut you someday, Prop 13...

The dueling <s>banjos</s> ballot initiatives thing is super dumb and I hope it doesn't become a recurring tactic. Already have enough cross-pressures and Obvious Nonsense to wade through as a Grey voter.

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Sad to see a minority of alleged rationalists continuing to fall for the “progressive” prosecutor bit. These individuals should be voted out if for no reason other than straight corruption (the Austin group caught onto this). Gascon’s top deputy is currently facing multiple felony charges (brought by the state’s AG, who is not a right winger) and Pamela Price actually illegally kicked a reporter out of her press conferences and prosecuted her political opponent on a trumped up charges that was recently dismissed.

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Can you provide some links explaining more about this?

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Oct 23·edited Oct 23

Gascon's deputy facing criminal charges - filed by Xavier Becerra, the state AG:

https://ktla.com/news/california/high-ranking-advisor-to-l-a-da-gascon-hit-with-11-felony-charges/

Gascon being repeatedly sued for retaliating against employees who disagree with him:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-06-18/amid-a-tough-reelection-fight-george-gascon-also-faces-lawsuits-by-his-own-staff

Price charging a former deputy DA with a misdemeanor, after he organized a recall against her. Case dismissed immediately when the California AG took over:

https://www.berkeleyscanner.com/2024/09/11/courts/butch-ford-case-dropped-pamela-price/

Price banning hostile local journalist from her press conferences:

https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/news/post/government-doesnt-decide-who-is-and-isnt-a-journalist/

Some other ones I didn't mention, the allegations against former Boston DA Rachael Rollins include:

Lost her job as US Attorney for violating the Hatch Act:

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/17/watchdog-reports-us-attorney-for-massachusetts-00097411

Threatened to use her office against a random motorist in a traffic dispute:

https://www.wbur.org/news/2021/02/11/rollins-cleared-parking-dispute

And of court, Baltimore's former progressive DA Marilyn Mosby is currently on probation after being federally convicted of fraud:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/federal-jury-convicts-former-baltimore-city-states-attorney-marilyn-mosby

If the "progressive" prosecutor movement were a police department, people would say that department had major problems with corruption and civil rights violations.

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I attended the in-person meetup where the Oakland/Berkeley ballot measures were discussed. I support recalling Price in large part because of this specific incident in her office: https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/09/01/oakland-d-a-white-victims-harm-her-office-n575244 , which I consider to be hostile to white people in a way that justifies opposition. This kind of of anti-white progressive messaging isn't unique to Price by any means, but I think it's worth opposing it wherever it pops up among government officials.

I also think that Price's stated agenda of avoiding racial bias in sentencing and charging criminals is wrongheaded, basically because racial differences in the commission of serious crimes are real, and any attempts to equalize the numbers of people charged with crimes by racial demographic will necessarily involve treating black people systematically more leniently or nonblack people systematically less leniently. I want the criminal justice system where I live to charge people with crimes in a race-blind way even if this results in there being obviously more black people charged with crimes than nonblack people; and I think that Price (and in general, racial progressives ideologically-similar to her) are willing to trade off more unprosecuted crime for lower racial discrepancies, which is why I don't want them in positions of political power.

These are obviously an extremely racially right-wing positions that are stigmatized in American society, particularly in extremely progressive places like the Oakland/Berkeley area. Like I said, I was physically at the meetup where the Oakland/Berkeley voting guide was put together, but I didn't bring up these points at that time. I regret not doing so, which is why I'm writing this comment now.

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> This creates a weird situation where several interest groups have strong opinions that both propositions should pass but that L should pass by more votes than M; how do you even make a voter guide for a situation like that?

This isn't helpful for creating a voter guide, but really, this issue should be addressed in the format of the vote itself. There are three possible options: (-L,-M), (+L,-M) and (-L,+M). (The option (+L,+M) doesn't exist because M overrides L.) Voters should be given a choice between these three options.

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Is there some historical or cultural reason why the LW/ACX/rationalist/TPOT/whatever ecosystem is so pro-YIMBY? All the "famous" commentators with rationalism associations I read are YIMBY (e.g. Matt Yglesias, Nate Silver) Even the conservative guys I know in this group are very YIMBY. Reading through some of these, it's just assumed that you'd be YIMBY if you're reading this.

It doesn't seem like you can merely say "well we're all YIMBY because YIMBY is objectively correct" because it presumes both a certain priority of values that isn't universal to rationalists, and whose values and interests are preserved can vary wildly based on how YIMBY-ism is implemented at ground level.

Maybe it's just a local bias, the movement started in the Bay Area and is heavily associated with it, so everyone is a YIMBY because that makes sense in Berkeley? Whereas I spent most of my career working in rural towns of 5-10K people, and my personal experience was closer to "well meaning city agrees to build low-income housing complex to help their local poor/homeless, but instead ends up attracting a bunch of poor/homeless people from all of the other local towns that didn't do so, gets massive crime problem and instantly regrets it." There is no rational reason for me to want that in my backyard, why in the world would I vote for that?

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I associate YIMBY with proposals to deregulate housing to encourage the private sector to build more, i.e. more market-rate housing. Your rural experience sounds terrible, but I wouldn't consider public low-income housing to fall cleanly into YIMBY or NIMBY.

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OK, I see part of the problem here, because a lot of my experience has been with local governments using regulation to force low-income housing into places, which is what I associate with YIMBYism.

So for example the 100K college town where I have just recently moved to has (since the 1990s at least) had regulations that require any new development to include a certain % of units to be lower-income units such as apartments or duplexes. So the modestly nice single-family home development in which I now reside is stuck with a handful of duplexes scattered around and through it, which got turned into rental properties, and has attracted lower income residents and crime. (I have lots of ground-level attorney experience in law enforcement and landlord-tenant relations, and it is not always the residents themselves, but often the caliber of friends and family they have in their orbit that is the problem.)

I do not want low-income housing in my backyard, so by the literal definition I am not YIMBY and oppose that, even though my feelings on property rights would be more libertarian generally.

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> regulations that require any new development to include a certain % of units to be lower-income units

Ironically, most YIMBYs are against such regulations (known an Inclusionary Zoning) because it interferes with the market and raises overall housing costs.

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Zoning laws have restricted the construction of market rate housing for ~45 years now (since about 1980). In small towns this may not matter, but in the big cities this has resulted in a severe housing shortage. In a market based economy we use prices to ration and so housing prices have risen *a lot* in major cities.

Over 45 years of insufficient housing production has made housing costs pretty brutally expensive for a lot of people and so it's pretty easy to be YIMBY out of pure self interest. I mean, I care about the plight of low income folks sure. But when I compare my housing costs to that of no zoning Houston... Well, it's really motivating. My housing costs are easily double what they would be if it were broadly legal to build market rate housing.

Given how big an expense housing is for people, who wouldn't advocate for a policy that would cut their housing expense by 50%?

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Housing isn't a commodity, or just some expense like the electric bill. It's a positional good, or at least acts that way in many respects. If [cool neighborhood all the young professionals want to live in] adds a bunch of high density housing, it will cease being desirable and the housing will go down in value for everyone.

Only at the very low income end does housing act as the functional equivalent of a utility bill, just a thing you need to pay to live. About 15 years ago I moved to a rural area in east-central MO, and the price of a 2 bedroom apt ($450/mo) anywhere within an hour was as predictable as the price of a beer bottle at every dive bar ($2), because they were all set at the minimum level that was profitable and incomes of those consumers were pretty flat. I don't know what you consider "market rate housing" in urban areas, but that's what it means in the sticks, and location is completely irrelevant to pricing there. But for anyone posting on this comments section or those of other rationalist blogs, housing is not just a bill, housing is aspirational in some way. You guys are all educated and most of you are striver types (or otherwise aware of your social status even if you compete on some parallel ladder), you aren't just trying to get a bed and a roof, you want a desirable location, and that location is in part only desirable because of exclusivity.

Regardless where you come down here, I just don't think YIMBYism is so obviously true that every rationalist would be assumed to support it. It may be right to do much of what YIMBYs want, but they need to acknowledge that there are tradeoffs to every policy, and that many people will lose value, and in situations where most of the value was positional then even the new people who buy in as new units are constructed could get screwed. But basically I guess I want three different words for "we need more high rises somewhere generally in the NYC and SF metros, just to increase overall supply, and are flexible about where" vs "I want to get rid of zoning so that some developer can plunk a big apartment complex on Cape Cod to screw those stuffy rich guys" vs "I want to put low-income housing in the suburbs because [dumb leftist crap about racial and economic justice that boils down to hating middle class white people like your dad]".

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> Many people will lose value, and in situations where most of the value was positional then even the new people who buy in as new units are constructed could get screwed.

AIUI, that is the point. High value means high prices, and YIMBYs definitionally think that rent is too damn high. They (we?) recognize that any method of reducing housing costs will destroy some of that housing's value, especially when the value comes from exclusivity (= artificial scarcity).

You're right that the tradeoffs would not be worth it in areas with low housing demand. I think rationalists treat YIMBY as a slamdunk because it's both pro-free market (remove regulations!) and pro-redistribution (down with the rentier class!). Grey tribe is often characterized as having both liberal and libertarian tendencies, so an issue like this is catnip.

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>It's a positional good, or at least acts that way in many respects. If [cool neighborhood all the young professionals want to live in] adds a bunch of high density housing, it will cease being desirable and the housing will go down in value for everyone.

I mean, zoning is a relatively recent invention in the grand scheme of things. Herbert Hoover first proposed a model State Law, called the State Zoning Enabling Act, as US Secretary of Commerce in 1922. [1] A revised version, the Standard City Planning Enabling Act, was published in 1928. [2] It was really after the second world war that most States managed to pass these laws and create zoning.

And yet, housing was still a positional good before. It still had value. It's just that rich people signaled their wealth by the amount of square feet they could afford and the beauty of the facade on the building. And, sure, nobody needed that beautiful facade or the space, but it also had value beyond just positioning. I really would derive value from more square feet of space!

When we have zoning restricting supply, instead of getting to signal how wealthy I am based on how big my apartment is, and the number of pools my complex has, I instead get to signal how wealthy I am by virtue of just getting to live in the city at all... But that's not as fun as getting to status signal by actually having lots of square feet or a fancy facade or getting to ask my hot date if they want to use my apartment infinity pool. ;)

I guess, what I'm trying to say is, it's more fun to signal status by living in an opulent ultra-luxury apartment building than a cramped and modest (though very expensive) apartment building. Let's let the middle class live in my unit and make it legal for me to live in an opulent ultra luxury tower. Everyone continues to pay the same amount of money. Everyone is still signaling their relative status via their housing status. But we all get to be a whole lot more comfortable doing it.

Source:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_State_Zoning_Enabling_Act

2. https://www.planning.org/growingsmart/enablingacts/

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YIMBYism definitely makes sense in the Bay Area, which has very expensive housing and has a large problem with visibly homeless people committing crimes in any case. Increasing the supply of new housing in the bay area would absolutely make my life better in a concrete way, and I support basically any YIMBYist proposal in the Bay Area.

Matt Yglesias lives in the Washington D.C. area and Nate Silver lives in New York City, which are also urban areas that are heavily housing-constrained and where YIMBYism almost certainly wouldn't contribute to any additional crime problem beyond that which already exists in those places. I do think that much of the LW/ACX/rationalist/TPOT ecosystem is comprised of people living in expensive urban areas like this, which explains their strong YIMBY support. I have seen anti-YIMBY sentiment from corners of that ecosystem, and I would guess that it's generally coming from people who are already established in less-housing-constrained areas where the crime concerns outweigh the housing affordability concerns for them specifically.

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It's a Bum Fight.

I just hope they don't hurt each other permanently. Meanwhile I have to do the laundry.

So far as I know, the Thought Police aren't yet tracking us who don't watch.

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The NY guide is quite bad. It highlights a few issues that are unlikely to change and doesn't address many things that the legislature will likely be voting on. It's almost willfully uninformative about the actual stakes in the NY assembly and senate races.

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Oct 24·edited Oct 24

I was part of the Seattle meetup, I don't know why our initiative discussions aren't on the spreadsheet.

If you live in Washington, please vote NO on I-2117. I work for the ferry system, and I-2117 would cut 30% of existing funding. Our ferry system is dysfunctional enough as it is, and we need to buy new ferries. Yes, we should repeal the Jones Act. Yes, we should repeal the foreign dredge act. But we need reliable ferries NOW, and I-2117 only hurts that.

The steelman for yes, based on the yes votes at the ACX meetup, were that "money is fungible."

Sure, I guess? But we have to get money from somewhere, the carbon tax provides that money, and every single day I have to apologize to people and tell them to wait because the ferry to Bremerton only comes once every three hours.

Republicans in this state literally hate public transit. Joe Kent called an expansion of our light rail system an "antifa superhighway". Please vote NO.

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If any Chicago area readers happen to reside in DuPage, Lake, McHenry or Kane counties I'll put in a plug for the county forest preserve/conservation district referenda on the ballot in those areas. The requested tax increases are quite modest, and if you like public open spaces there are few uses of your tax dollars more effective than those county-level districts. (Even if you aren't personally interested in quality places to hike or bike or birdwatch or whatever, it's pretty clear that the presence of the county preserves boosts local property values.)

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I voted today, and my city ballot did not include the advisory question about funding a new Bears stadium.

Turns out that Illinois ballots statewide have just the three statewide advisories questions that are described in the ACX Local Voting Guide, with no more than three such allowed for any given election. Then within Chicago there is a process by which voters can submit petitions to put advisory questions onto the ballot just within the wards or precincts in which they gathered certain numbers of petitions. That is intended to be for issues of local interest but I guess the old city ordinance that authorizes it doesn't clearly define "local".

Result is that there are a couple dozen such questions added to ballots scattered around the city. The one about the Bears stadium is only on ballots in a dozen or so precincts at the city's west/northwest edge, along the eastern and northern borders of Oak Park. Makes me wonder if there's a personal/individual story of why that was the one specific place where somebody spent the time to go around collecting signatures about this topic.

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This was useful! Thanks!

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