The 2016 US Election (Part II)

[The Romulan Republic]

I don't expect them to do it, of course, but at this point I'm starting to wonder if the New York results should really just be declared invalid pending a full investigation and re-holding the primary in a month or two.

And yes, I'd say that regardless of who wins.

[The Romulan Republic]

http://www.inquisitr.com/3012582/new-yo ... -declares/

The New York primary lawsuit may have found an opening for the state’s voters who believe their registration was wrongly changed, with a development on Tuesday seen as a boost to supporters of Bernie Sanders claiming the actions unfairly targeted them.

An effort to open the state’s notoriously restrictive primary was put off by a judge, asking for a later hearing that involves election officials from all of the state’s 62 counties. But despite a lack of resolution, lawyers urged voters who believe they rightly belong on the Democratic Party rolls to cast provisional ballots in the hope that a further ruling could have them counted.

Jordan Chariton, who has been covering the court proceedings for The Young Turks, tweeted on Monday that there is still hope for voters who believe they should have been able to cast ballots.



The ruling was seen as a win for supporters of Bernie Sanders, who said the actions disproportionately targeted them.


The lawsuit was brought by Election Justice USA, which called on supporters to rally outside the New York courthouse in favor of opening the primary to all voters.

The group had filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to open the state’s primary to voters whose party affiliations had changed without their knowledge. There were numerous reports of voters who met the state’s October deadline to register with a party, but found out that either their affiliation was never updated or somehow switched to unaffiliated.

“This is our attempt to provide a means of recourse for those thousands of New York voters who find themselves in this very frustrating position, and to raise awareness about the need for a new level of accountability in the electoral process,” said Shyla Nelson, a spokesperson with Election Justice USA, in an interview with Think Progress.

The lawsuit had sought to make Tuesday’s primary open to all voters, allowing any registered voter to cast a ballot for either party, but the lawsuit itself was not heard until 9 a.m., the same time voting began for downstate residents. It was then moved to 2 p.m. and the resolution did not come until close to 3 p.m.

After Tuesday’s update, Election Justice urged voters who believe they rightly belong in the Democratic Party to demand provisional ballots.

A suggestion by one of our visitors – “Reference Docket # CV-16-1892 on your provisional ballot & don’t let them turn you away; you have a constitutional right if you’re a Democrat who was purged without notice”
The New York primary lawsuit was fueled by many stories of unexpected registration changes, many from supporters of Bernie Sanders. Alexandria Osacio-Cortez, a Westchester County voter who been a registered Democrat since 2008, said she found recently that she is now listed as a blank, New York’s designation for unaffiliated voters.

“I am so hurt that my right to vote in this primary has been taken from me,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a Reddit post about her discovery.

Osacio-Cortez explained that her affiliation changed after she voted outside of her district in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

“Apparently when I signed that affidavit my party affiliation was waived,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “I had no idea I was losing my party status when I did that… Had I known this was the case I would have fixed this ages ago.”


There has been much attention on New York’s closed primary in recent weeks, with many voters complaining that the October deadline to declare a party came before even the first Democratic debate. The restrictive voting rules — New York has the earliest deadline in the nation for primaries — seem to have a disproportional effect on Bernie Sanders supporters, a group that includes a larger percentage of independent voters. Sanders has also gained steam considerably in recent months, with many supporters finding out about his campaign and joining on months after the deadline had passed.

[Picture by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images]

[Lord MJ]

So now on the news outlets people are saying that even criticizing Clinton's money in politics issues is sexist. Why? Because male politicians have been doing this for decades but now that woman is running all of a sudden money in politics is a huge issue.

Someone saying the same thing happens every time a woman gets into a position of power of influence and authority. People start attacking the "establishment." Worst thing about this is, that people are buying this BS.

[Omega18]

I don't expect them to do it, of course, but at this point I'm starting to wonder if the New York results should really just be declared invalid pending a full investigation and re-holding the primary in a month or two.

And yes, I'd say that regardless of who wins.

I'm sorry but I to put it mildly have a massive problem with this kind of rhetoric.

There has to be blunt been a pattern of certain Bernie supporters online declaring every single recent win by Hillary fraudulent, and it appears to be occurring this time even before the election result! I'm not saying your a person who does this, but in this case I feel you're being deceived by news sources likely doing a version of this. The article in question may to be fair be confused by other news sources including 44,000 people who were put on the inactive voter list, which in no way prevents them from showing up and voting in the primary today, which you can confirm at the second link below. (Apparently if you're on the inactive list too long you eventually get purged, but it certainly does not happen right away.)
https://www.wnyc.org/story/de-blasio-de ... democrats/
http://nypost.com/2016/04/19/54000-broo ... imary-day/

Now the actual number of impacted voters today still in a concern, which is why an investigation is fair, but there is an explanation given for the difference. It should also be noted that an actual mass bogus removal of voters being allowed to happen on certain official's watch would certainly be politically very hazardous for them even if they would not personally face criminal charges. A final key detail to be aware of is given NY City and its suburbs in a recent poll had Hillary up 60 to 40 over Sanders while it was roughly tied upstate. This means that a generic removal of voters in Brooklyn as a whole would actually be unlikely to help Sanders much, especially since its population as a whole is about 35% African-American. (Inactive voters which made up most of those purged from the list under ordinary circumstances also can't possibly be the youngest voters for this election, further reducing any possible benefit to Hillary and making it quite possible the net impact of the loss could specifically hurt her if people actually intending to vote today were impacted in significant numbers.)

Now I find it completely reasonable to investigate the timing of the voter drop and why the Mayor wants an investigation to make sure nothing shady occurred or mistakes were made by the office in question out of simple incompetence rather than malice. If clear evidence of actual significant vote fraud shows up then the issue becomes a different story with obvious big questions about who was involved and what their role was. That's massively different though than basically saying the results will be fraudulent or the election needs to be redone right before an investigation actually shows anything other than a slow update to the voter rolls occurred. I find claiming it was a a fraudulent election result without sufficient evidence to actually be a way of cheating the voters of a state by trying to take away the legitimacy of their vote.

The reality is redone US elections basically have never (or possible absolutely never) been redone even in cases where some sort of fraud was confirmed to have occurred. If it turned out fraud did occur on a mass scale to benefit a specific candidate the Democratic superdelegates could take that into account when deciding how they are going to vote at the convention and under certain circumstances could end with enormous political pressure directed against them to do so. (But that's different than rushing off today to declare the results of today are almost certainly fraudulent.)

[Lord MJ]

Well there is precedent of entire primaries basically being declared void. As recently as 2008 if I recall. Though in those cases the reasons were not nearly as genuine as today (DNC basically was butthurt that certain states did not follow their guidelines so decided the votes in those states would not count) and I believe the DNC decided to declare the primary in the state void well before the actual voting took place. But I have to recheck my facts.

[Omega18]

Well there is precedent of entire primaries basically being declared void. As recently as 2008 if I recall. Though in those cases the reasons were not nearly as genuine as today (DNC basically was butthurt that certain states did not follow their guidelines so decided the votes in those states would not count) and I believe the DNC decided to declare the primary in the state void well before the actual voting took place. But I have to recheck my facts.

That had nothing to do with actual voter fraud though. It had to do with the states violating rules preventing states from cutting in line before designated selected states to hold the first primaries. (Leading to Iowa and New Hampshire having their caucus and primary ridiculously early.) Basically the DNC can theoretically do practically what it wants to with regards to nominating a candidate in terms of its rules set in advance, although obviously there would be political consequences for certain choices. As you even noted the votes were declared as not counting in advance, although ultimately the delegates were seated at the convention when it was clear they would not potentially alter the nomination result.

[Lord MJ]

Turns out the voting did happen. I'm not sure if the DNC decided to void the primary before or after the voting took place.

But I would consider voiding a primary due to large scale fraud a much more legitimate reason than voiding a primary because a state deciding to go before Iowa and New Hampshire. I mean I know of the tradition of Iowa and New Hampshire going first, but voiding the primary altogether was pretty ridiculous.

[Soontir C'boath]

This should have been done a long time ago as these problems like broken voting machines are not new. Myself personally, it took me at one point three years to change my party affiliation in which they registered me into the wrong party, the next year they proceeded to move someone who had my name but an initial as well from Manhattan to where I lived in Queens in which I finally called the BOE, but the person over the phone sounded like she really couldn't care less. The third year was the charm though, but imagine if I had wanted to vote in a primary at that time, I would have been furious.

Gothamist

NYC Comptroller Stringer Will Audit NYC Board Of Elections After Today's Primary Voting Problems

Today's New York presidential primary has been marred by reports of polling sites opening hours late, others lacking functional ballot scanners, and tens of thousands of voters finding that they'd been purged from voter rolls. Yesterday, dozens of New York voters sued the state over changes to their voter registrations that would keep them from voting in the closed primaries, and today, Comptroller Scott Stringer announced that he's going to conduct an audit of the city's Board of Elections in the wake of today's widespread problems.
"There is nothing more sacred in our nation than the right to vote, yet election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site," Stringer said. "The people of New York City have lost confidence that the Board of Elections can effectively administer elections and we intend to find out why the BOE is so consistently disorganized, chaotic, and inefficient."
In a letter sent earlier this afternoon to Michael Ryan, executive director of the city's BOE, Stringer cited reports of faulty ballot scanners, poorly-staffed voting sites, and questionable purged voter registrations. As we've reported in our live updates on the primary, these problems have been manifold. A polling site in Harlem was missing the registered voter book for the second half of the alphabet, and didn't have one delivered until 9:45 a.m., nearly four hours after the polls opened. In downtown Brooklyn, voters arrived at the polls at 6 a.m. only to find the doors were locked, and wouldn't be opened for hours. And numerous voters who said they were registered Democrats were told they were not listed in the voter books.
The BOE says today's problems were relatively isolated incidents, and reminded voters who weren't able to vote during the polls' early hours that they would remain open until 9 p.m.
"I bristle at the suggestion that some folks might be making that there are widespread problems," Ryan told the Observer. "We’re just not seeing it." Ryan further categorized today's issues as "what we typically see during elections."
This is hardly the first time the city has seen a spate of problems on an election day. During the 2012 presidential election, voters encountered hours-long wait times, jammed ballot scanners, and poorly-trained poll workers, prompting elected officials to demand a "complete overhaul" of the BOE. If today's events are any indication, no such substantive overhaul has occurred.
The Comptroller's office did not conduct a similar audit in 2012—according to their records, the most recent BOE audit was in 2011, and was looking at the board's procurement practices, not its management and operations. But earlier this month, Stringer released a report arguing that New York discourages people from voting, despite already-low voter turnout. The report made a number of recommendations for reforming elections and increasing voter participation, including offering same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration through the DMV, and improving training for poll workers.
In his letter to Ryan, Stringer demanded to know how the BOE will avoid late poll site openings and broken scanners in upcoming elections; how the board is planning on communicating with voters about upcoming primary and general elections to avoid further confusion; what sort of training is provided to poll workers, and how that training will be improved in the future; and why over 120,000 voters were removed from the rolls in Brooklyn. You can read the full text of the letter here:

[Dominus Atheos]

https://usuncut.com/politics/nyc-mayor- ... ter-purge/

Speaking of New York electoral fuckery...

*Snip*

Yeah, I'm sure its just a coincidence that this took place in Bernie's home neighbourhood and coincided with his rise in the polls...

I am just enraged. Absolutely enraged. I know this is not from an impartial source, if such a thing exists, but presuming that this story is not outright fabricated, if there is even a shred of validity to it, then as far as I'm concerned any results from New York cannot be considered legitimate until a full investigation has been conducted. New York is shaping up to be another Arizona.

People need to stop pretending that this isn't deliberate. It may not be designed to boost Hillery over Bernie, or anyone over Trump, but it is clearly designed to boost the establishment candidate over any potential insurgent candidate.

Look at this bullfuckery West Virginia Republicans have to deal with:

“Not even Einstein could easily understand the selection process today,” said Mike Stuart, a former West Virginia Republican Party head and chairman of Trump’s campaign in the state.

“The delegate selection system is intentionally complicated, making it extremely hard for voters to control the commitment of delegates to any particular candidate,” Stuart said. “I think the selection process for delegates in West Virginia not only is bad. It may be the worst in the country.”

It’s also bad for Trump because even if he wins the popular vote in a landslide, how that support translates into delegates depends on his supporters’ ability to navigate a complicated, arcane and confusing voting system — the results of which are an open question.

West Virginia's Republican ballot is a six-page form that places the delegate elections behind dozens of state legislative and county races. Some voters, West Virginia GOP insiders said, stop voting before they make it to the delegates. But getting there is the easy part.

More than 220 people are running for 22 statewide slots as convention delegates. On the ballot, they’re divided based on the candidates they support and then listed alphabetically. There are 31 for Trump, 36 for Cruz and 10 for John Kasich, who failed to file a full slate of delegates. A fourth list includes 27 “uncommitted” candidates, and there are also lists of would-be delegates for candidates who have already dropped out.

Voters wishing to select a full slate of Trump delegates can choose up to 22 of them -- though if they inadvertently select 23 or more, all of their choices are thrown out. They must also be aware of a new rule to prohibit more than two delegates from residing in a single county -- and seven from a single Congressional district -- a stipulation that isn’t mentioned on the ballot.

Yet nine of the first 22 names on Trump’s list are from populous Kanawha County, where Charleston, the state capital, is located. And if Trump voters pick them all, seven would be automatically disqualified and replaced by delegates who fit the criteria.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/t ... z46JItDrnW
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

Someone tell me with a straight face that that isn't deliberately designed to only navigable to the party leaders and not anyone else. Jeb/Rubio/Kasich/Etc would get help from those leaders but Trump/Etc wouldn't, and so would get cheated out any potential victory.

New York's rules may not be quite that bad, but they are clearly having the effect of helping "establishment" candidates and hurting "insurgent" candidates.

[Omega18]

Turns out the voting did happen. I'm not sure if the DNC decided to void the primary before or after the voting took place.

But I would consider voiding a primary due to large scale fraud a much more legitimate reason than voiding a primary because a state deciding to go before Iowa and New Hampshire. I mean I know of the tradition of Iowa and New Hampshire going first, but voiding the primary altogether was pretty ridiculous.

They certainly stated it very clearly before the primaries and it technically was not even a decision since they were required to do so according to prior established rules which had been clearly published. (I don't think the results were strictly speaking voided, the states in question were just awarded zero delegates which admittedly in practice almost the same thing.)

The logic behind the rules was stating them in advance would be necessary to prevent states from just cutting in front of each other to get the advantage of going first until you end up with a state having its primary two years in advance or something. I'm not a fan of how it was handled, but the problem is a more limited penalty apparently was not enough to deter states from moving their primary forward to vote first. It may be the last two Democratic Primaries will have an impact though on the calculations of states making these decisions in the future since in both cases not only the earliest primary states have been relevant.

[The Romulan Republic]

I don't expect them to do it, of course, but at this point I'm starting to wonder if the New York results should really just be declared invalid pending a full investigation and re-holding the primary in a month or two.

And yes, I'd say that regardless of who wins.

I'm sorry but I to put it mildly have a massive problem with this kind of rhetoric.

There has to be blunt been a pattern of certain Bernie supporters online declaring every single recent win by Hillary fraudulent, and it appears to be occurring this time even before the election result! I'm not saying your a person who does this, but in this case I feel you're being deceived by news sources likely doing a version of this. The article in question may to be fair be confused by other news sources including 44,000 people who were put on the inactive voter list, which in no way prevents them from showing up and voting in the primary today, which you can confirm at the second link below. (Apparently if you're on the inactive list too long you eventually get purged, but it certainly does not happen right away.)
https://www.wnyc.org/story/de-blasio-de ... democrats/
http://nypost.com/2016/04/19/54000-broo ... imary-day/

Now the actual number of impacted voters today still in a concern, which is why an investigation is fair, but there is an explanation given for the difference. It should also be noted that an actual mass bogus removal of voters being allowed to happen on certain official's watch would certainly be politically very hazardous for them even if they would not personally face criminal charges. A final key detail to be aware of is given NY City and its suburbs in a recent poll had Hillary up 60 to 40 over Sanders while it was roughly tied upstate. This means that a generic removal of voters in Brooklyn as a whole would actually be unlikely to help Sanders much, especially since its population as a whole is about 35% African-American. (Inactive voters which made up most of those purged from the list under ordinary circumstances also can't possibly be the youngest voters for this election, further reducing any possible benefit to Hillary and making it quite possible the net impact of the loss could specifically hurt her if people actually intending to vote today were impacted in significant numbers.)

Now I find it completely reasonable to investigate the timing of the voter drop and why the Mayor wants an investigation to make sure nothing shady occurred or mistakes were made by the office in question out of simple incompetence rather than malice. If clear evidence of actual significant vote fraud shows up then the issue becomes a different story with obvious big questions about who was involved and what their role was. That's massively different though than basically saying the results will be fraudulent or the election needs to be redone right before an investigation actually shows anything other than a slow update to the voter rolls occurred. I find claiming it was a a fraudulent election result without sufficient evidence to actually be a way of cheating the voters of a state by trying to take away the legitimacy of their vote.

The reality is redone US elections basically have never (or possible absolutely never) been redone even in cases where some sort of fraud was confirmed to have occurred. If it turned out fraud did occur on a mass scale to benefit a specific candidate the Democratic superdelegates could take that into account when deciding how they are going to vote at the convention and under certain circumstances could end with enormous political pressure directed against them to do so. (But that's different than rushing off today to declare the results of today are almost certainly fraudulent.)

I will accept that I went a step too far with my comment. To clarify- in an ideal system, I would like to see the New York results (again, regardless of who wins), treated as "conditional" pending a full investigation. If large-scale fraud/voter suppression is found to have occurred, in my opinion, that should be grounds to re-hold the vote.

Again, though, I do not expect this to occur.

As to weather fraud has occurred... I would say the situation is certainly suspicious (and you seem to see that yourself), but would not wish to assume anything without all the facts in. As for how many voters are effected, I've seen various numbers. From my sources, they seem to be going up as more cases come to light. I will note, however, that I do not trust the New York Post as a source, on the grounds that it has endorsed Drumpf for President.

Your points about the Brooklyn case not necessarily benefitting Clinton seem not entirely without merit. However, I do question the implication that a large African American population automatically favours Clinton, especially in Bernie's old hometown. Its the location, and Sanders' history there, that makes this so suspicious, as well as the timing.

Regardless, I am certainly not trying to delegitimize the choices of the voters of New York. Quite the opposite. To my mind, an election where not every vote is fairly counted is not a fair election. Nor am I alleging that all Clinton wins are fraudulent, though one might understandably arguethat all her recent wins are, as, depending on how you define recent, the only state she's won recently is Arizona. I am also not alleging that Clinton is personally responsible for any fraud, voter suppression, or illegal act of any sort.

In any case, evidently, the Mayor of New York (an avowed Clinton supporter, by the way) and a judge feel there's something worth taking seriously here. Will it change who wins the state? Maybe not. But even if it doesn't, it could effect the margin of victory, which matters, particularly in a proportional delegate system. And I think we can at least agree that it deserves a thorough and impartial investigation. Their should not be any doubt that a nominee or President was picked fairly. But there will be, because of shit like this.

[Dominus Atheos]

Anyway, we all need some happy news so here's the latest installment of DA's GOP schadenfreude:

March to the convention from hell: Republicans are crazy everywhere!

Meanwhile, in the U.S. Virgin Islands Republican Party:

The Republican Territorial Committee held a joint meeting Saturday at a gun range in St. Croix, but the meeting erupted into chaos with attendees shouting over one another, calling for points of order, and at one point, Gwen Brady, an elected delegate, being allegedly shoved to the ground, according to the Virgin Islands Daily News. [...]
Virgin Islands Republican Party Vice Chairman Herb Schoenbohm told the paper that Brady was “slammed against the wall and thrown to the floor because she objected to the Gestapo-like tactics of the V.I. Chairman John Canegata.”

Police were called, a police report filed, people called other people the Gestapo and so forth. You'd think Republicans in the Virgin Islands would be a considerably more laid-back bunch than their mainland counterparts, if for no other reason than the decent weather—but nope. Maybe the first sign things were amiss was the decision to have their important and hotly contested political meeting at a gun range.

Schoenbohm also blasted the location of the meeting, telling the paper that Canegata was "banging the table with a large ammunition cartridge being used as a gavel" and walking around with a "firearm on his belt."

"People are not used to a Republican meeting being in a combat zone and will avoid future meetings if something isn’t done about his lack of control," Schoenbohm continued.

Now, now. In Texas Republicans would get offended if you didn't use an ammunition cartridge as gavel.

At stake here are six of the nine delegates the Virgin Islands will be sending to the Republican convention in Cleveland. The chairman has declared the previously elected slate to be ineligible because reasons and chose a different slate; the gun range meeting was an attempt to—oh, hell, does it really matter?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/18 ... everywhere

[Omega18]

I will accept that I went a step too far with my comment. To clarify- in an ideal system, I would like to see the New York results (again, regardless of who wins), treated as "conditional" pending a full investigation. If large-scale fraud/voter suppression is found to have occurred, in my opinion, that should be grounds to re-hold the vote.

I still have a problem with this because it still effectively leaves a vote outcome in limbo until an investigation is completely with the other side likely claiming the investigation was flawed at that point. Its a flat out valid vote barring evidence to the contrary showing up although an investigation to get such evidence could certainly occur. (Which even if allowed given what's known about the specific issue would likely only allow a partial revote of that area and adjustment of the total delegates distribution according to that new result being factored in instead.

In any case, evidently, the Mayor of New York (an avowed Clinton supporter, by the way) and a judge feel there's something worth taking seriously here. Will it change who wins the state? Maybe not. But even if it doesn't, it could effect the margin of victory, which matters, particularly in a proportional delegate system. And I think we can at least agree that it deserves a thorough and impartial investigation. Their should not be any doubt that a nominee or President was picked fairly. But there will be, because of shit like this.

This is utterly ignoring actual political realities with the Mayor if he's not seen as taking it seriously even if he personally believes there is definitely not any true problem here at all. The fact he's a Clinton supporter actually makes it far more necessary he show concern about this issue if he doesn't want to risk losing the support of a significant portion of his political base whom are Sanders supporters. He also could be legitimately angry simply about it superficially looking bad even if it doesn't have any practical impact, and his investigation can be partially about making it clear to those involved that he wants them to alter their procedures to avoid sudden shifts in the official voting rolls to this degree.

The judge basically only agreed to consider the case, with a key fact being the New York voter registration rules were previously in practically the same form ruled constitutional by the US Supreme Court in a previous case. Realistically its incredibly unlikely a very substantial number of those getting provisional ballots and voting in the primary will ultimately be counted unless incredibly clear evidence shows up of something like mass hacking altering voter registration or wrongdoing involving specific people shows up. Otherwise, merely claiming their registration was changed without their knowledge won't cut it with a practical issue being it could be a defacto way to allow a bunch of people not eligible to vote according to state law being able to do so by simply falsely claiming this happened to them.

[Gandalf]

How on Earth was the voting system able to be this messed up? The US needs some sort of intervention from the UN, along with election monitors, soon.

[Raw Shark]

How on Earth was the voting system able to be this messed up? The US needs some sort of intervention from the UN, along with election monitors, soon.

Inclined to agree at the moment. Beyond pissed-off that this could happen in New York City of all places, the so-called Great Melting Pot and iconic cradle of American democracy (y'know, besides Philadelphia). What the fucking fuck has happened to you, Bad Apple? You used to be really cool.

[The Romulan Republic]

Honestly, I think if there are two things we should take away from this election, regardless of winner, they're this:

1. The old rules and assumptions don't necessarily apply, for better and for worse.

On the one hand, we had a slate of major candidates that, at one point, included a black man, two women, two hispanics, and an elderly socialist Jewish man. And still includes a woman, an elderly socialist Jewish man, and a hispanic. That has to be an unprecedented level of diversity in a Presidential election. We have also seen that you don't need to be a career politician, or reliant on big money, or a die-hard supporter of Israel to mount a strong campaign, and that a socialist can be a viable, relatively mainstream candidate. This is all wonderful.

On the other hand, we've seen xenophobia and violence in politics increasingly normalized, and seen that a notorious "birther" who will hesitate to disavow the ex-head of the KKK and ramble on about barring Muslims from the country, killing the families of terrorists, and using nukes in the mideast and Europe, among other despicable things, can be a viable contender as well.

2. The electoral system is fucked beyond all belief and needs a comprehensive overhaul. The caucus system needs to go. The handling of voter registration needs major scrutiny. The super delegates need to go. There needs to be more oversight. Among other things.

Edit: Corrected minor error.

[Gandalf]

2. The electoral system is fucked beyond all belief and needs a comprehensive overhaul. The caucus system needs to go. The handling of voter registration needs major scrutiny. The super delegates need to go. There needs to be more oversight. Among other things.

I agree with most of this, except for superdelegates. I'm fine with them overall, because the DNC is a private organisation which can run itself as it pleases. If people dislike this, they can always vote with their feet.

[Raw Shark]

The electoral system is fucked beyond all belief and needs a comprehensive overhaul. [snip] The handling of voter registration needs major scrutiny. The super delegates need to go. There needs to be more oversight. Among other things.

Agreed on all counts.

The caucus system needs to go.

[cracks knuckles] Please elaborate.

[The Romulan Republic]

The caucuses are needlessly convoluted, drive down voter turnout by forcing people to basically commit to being their for hours in order to participate, therefore bar participation by absentee voters (at least I was told this was the case for the Colorado caucus, which is why I voted though Democrats Abroad), and can end up having the results change after the fact (see Nevada).

[The Romulan Republic]

2. The electoral system is fucked beyond all belief and needs a comprehensive overhaul. The caucus system needs to go. The handling of voter registration needs major scrutiny. The super delegates need to go. There needs to be more oversight. Among other things.

I agree with most of this, except for superdelegates. I'm fine with them overall, because the DNC is a private organisation which can run itself as it pleases. If people dislike this, they can always vote with their feet.

They exist to override the voters' will (rather hypocritical for a party which calls itself the Democratic Party). No one's questioning the Democratic Party's right to set its own rules, but just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should.

And saying people can go elsewhere is rather empty when their are only two viable parties in America, and the other is currently tearing itself apart (to the point of their being a serious possibility of major violence at the convention followed by a split vote in the general election) over weather to merely remain a bigoted, corrupt party that spits on the poor or embrace being, for all intents and purposes, the fascist party of America.

Though speaking of Drumpf, I admit that seeing members of the Republican establishment desperately try to stop him without super delegates makes super delegates look real appealing.

[Gandalf]

So if the other parties are somehow just not viable by virtue of not being the big two, aren't superdelegates therefore a necessity to prevent a TEA Party/Trump style candidate cocking up the party?

[The Romulan Republic]

I would hope not. If it is deemed necessary for a small oligarchical group to override the voters, then something is deeply, fundamentally wrong and I'm not sure the system can be called democratic in a meaningful sense any more.

[Raw Shark]

The caucuses are needlessly convoluted, [snip]

Agreed in some ways.

drive down voter turnout by forcing people to basically commit to being their for hours in order to participate, therefore bar participation by absentee voters (at least I was told this was the case for the Colorado caucus, which is why I voted though Democrats Abroad)

Not a problem in my mind. Fuck everybody who won't devote a Tuesday evening to voting. Fuck them right in the ear. They don't deserve a voice in the electoral process, speaking as someone who normally works at that time. Caucuses eliminate everybody who isn't actually serious about it, which I consider a net positive even if it's kind of a pain in the ass. Mail-in primaries favor the 1%.

their

You're just trying to piss me off with that, at this point.

[Omega18]

Not a problem in my mind. Fuck everybody who won't devote a Tuesday evening to voting. Fuck them right in the ear. They don't deserve a voice in the electoral process, speaking as someone who normally works at that time. Caucuses eliminate everybody who isn't actually serious about it, which I consider a net positive even if it's kind of a pain in the ass. Mail-in primaries favor the 1%.

The fact of the matter is a major group ruled out in this category is poorly paid hourly workers who can't afford to lose a likely full shift at work to get the time to do this. For that matter getting off work is a problem period since many won't know about laws requiring their business to allow them this time off. Even if against the law, various businesses could end up firing their hourly employees from using the law to take the time off in practice by firing them at some other time fairly soon and claiming its for other reasons with "at will" states allowing workers to be fired for almost any reason unless it can be proved in falls into a case where they were specifically fired for an illegal reason. I kind of have a problem with you saying "fuck them" to people in this economic category among others.

[Gandalf]

Not a problem in my mind. Fuck everybody who won't devote a Tuesday evening to voting. Fuck them right in the ear. They don't deserve a voice in the electoral process, speaking as someone who normally works at that time. Caucuses eliminate everybody who isn't actually serious about it, which I consider a net positive even if it's kind of a pain in the ass. Mail-in primaries favor the 1%.

I would hope not. If it is deemed necessary for a small oligarchical group to override the voters, then something is deeply, fundamentally wrong and I'm not sure the system can be called democratic in a meaningful sense any more.

Saying that they can override the voters is a bit much, seeing as having 58.5% (I think?) makes them irrelevant, so they're effectively there to settle close races. But methinks we're at an impasse here.