HN Gopher Feed (2017-12-02) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia write-in candidate: I won with one vote
55 points by LeoJiWoo
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/362934-philadelphia-write-i...a-write-in-candidate-shocked-by-surprise-victory
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timthelion - 47 minutes ago
"Judges in the city are paid $100 per election they preside over"
For a days work, that's not much for a one off job even by central
European standards. It seems to me, that the pay should be
increased.
pmoriarty - 43 minutes ago
Were electronic voting machines used here?In past elections,
whenever the issue of extremely hackable and vulnerable electronic
voting machines was brought up, objections were raised that their
use was too limited to make a big enough difference in the
election. Well, here that's clearly not the case: the difference
was so slight that such fraud could have tipped the scales.
johnnyo - 1 hours ago
Ironically, a judge of elections using his first act to call for
impeachment of a candidate likely running in an election he will
preside over is extremely inappropriate.
make3 - 48 minutes ago
you should've campaigned against him/found him a competitor.
kbenson - 1 hours ago
Although when the same sentence ends with "... and also now every
Tuesday in Manayunk is officially Taco Tuesday." it's easy to
interpret it as in jest, which I think was the point.Depending on
your views, you might also think it's inappropriate for this
position to even joke about that, which I can sort of see. I
don't think it was a serious suggestion though.
cabaalis - 48 minutes ago
I would bet that he was indeed serious about the call for
impeachment. If anything, it represents the current state of
the public's awareness of appropriateness in politics.
kbenson - 41 minutes ago
> I would bet that he was indeed serious about the call for
impeachment. If anything, it represents the current state of
the public's awareness of appropriateness in politics.Would
you also bet he's serious about Taco Tuesday? Because you
have exactly as much evidence for one as the other.Although I
do take your comment and apparent inability to extend the
benefit of a doubt as fairly negative indicator of the
public's ability to work through the current political divide
productively. :/
aseipp - 24 minutes ago
"I would definitely bet he's serious because it totally
fulfills my preconceived notions about how he behaves, and I
don't have to do anymore work to justify that." The tweet
before the quoted one, made less than 10 minutes before the
impeachment one, is:> Please move to Manayunk, where I now
rule and now plan to secede from the United States.There are
also nearly a dozen tweets following that of the same form
(e.g. "The weird thing is, I demanded people always call me
Judge Garcia, way before this even happened!")It's also quite
laughable to chatter about "appropriateness in politics"
referring to America, considering a bunch of idiot
republicans drafted a tax bill in the middle of the night
with scribbles in margins and passed it as law in our country
without reading it, less than 24 hours ago (as of the time of
writing this comment.)"Appropriateness" is a code word for
"it's ok to make things measurably worse, if you just smile
while doing it." But if you make a stupid joke about the Sex
Crime President on Twitter, apparently -- that's just not
cool, maaaaan, and it like, you know, like, tells us tons
about the lame politics of the people, maaaaaaaaaan, it's
soooooooo obvious, so easy to see. That's why I'm a genius of
political analysis.
aphexairlines - 32 minutes ago
There is no such thing as appropriate in US politics anymore.
pornel - 28 minutes ago
Why? That's exactly what his voters wanted.
[deleted]
dang - 1 hours ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
bkohlmann - 30 minutes ago
It?s concerning that he wants to use the election judge role to
?advance progressive causes.?Election judges should be the most
non-partisan role in government.
ringaroundthetx - 13 minutes ago
two votes to get him impeached, after getting 20 signatures
isostatic - 1 hours ago
"being elected as an election judge"Is America unique in having so
many elections and positions? This job title reminds me of the
"Fuse alarm fuse" (which was the fuse for the alarm that checked if
a fuse had blown)
johnnyo - 1 hours ago
It?s a pretty minimal responsibility. It?s basically the person
whose job it is to setup the polling place, collect the ballots,
and make sure there is no funny business. You literally work 2
days a year, and have no other responsibilities.
anigbrowl - 47 minutes ago
That's not responsive to the question that was asked. Yes,
America is unique in having so many public offices filled by
election.
CaliforniaKarl - 20 minutes ago
I was a polling place Inspector in Orange County, CA for around
six years.In the lead up to an election I?d work, first up was
~2 hours of training. We were the ones in charge of the
polling place, so we were the ones who needed to know all the
processes and procedures.The weekend before the election, I
would pick up the supplies. Probably around 40-50 pounds of
stuff. You aren?t allowed to leave In in your car: Once you
sign the chain of custody for it, the next time you get out of
your car is when you?re parked at home, ready to unload.In the
weeks before the election, I also would be getting in touch
with whomever is in charge of the polling place site. You
think it?s fun dealing with an HOA as a resident? Well, try
dealing with them as an outsider.So, leading up to the election
(that is, prior to E-1), I would?ve logged about 7 hours, most
of which was during a business day (training could be daytime
or evening, as there were always multiple sessions available,
and supplies pickup was always on a weekend).Oh, and I was also
responsible for managing the other people would be at the
polling place.On E-1, if I got prior OK from the property, I
would set up some time during the evening. Sometimes one or
two of my clerks would be available to help, but not always.
Anything non-sensitive and nonessential was set up (so, no
breaking seals yet!).On E-Day I would be waking up around 4:30.
Polls open precisely at 7, so I had to be at the polling place
by 6. I would take attendance, administer the oath, go through
the same oath myself, and then do all the seal verification and
equipment setup. Then, the flood began.If I had a full board,
I could give everyone (and myself) a lunch and a break. If we
were short, then we would do what we could. Luckily, we all
got some sort of break!There would be quiet times during the
day, but it would often be nonstop during the morning (there
was always a line at opening) and after 4.Polls close at 8. We
then had to do full packing, space cleanup, and all of the
accounting. It was a win for us if we left by 9.I then had to
go to drop off everything, with a clerk driving behind me (to
make sure I went directly to the drop off point). If anything
was missing, I was on the hook for it. It was a win for me if
I was out by 10.Finally, on E+1, I?d have to return the
facility key. Then I was truely done.It was a drawn-out
process, but almost everything we did had a very good reason.
Yes, the hours were long, and the work was often not fun, but I
took a _great_ deal of pride in it.
javajosh - 7 minutes ago
Thank you for your service, Karl. Perhaps you might share
some more light on your experience "administering the vote"
as a polling place inspector. As a technologist, what do you
see as the major error modes of the American system of
polling? Do you think fraud is wide-spread? Is it even
possible to measure fraud (since, by definition, if you
detect it you eliminate it)? Are there other methods of
polling that might work better? It seems like a really hard
problem, and I've wanted to ask someone "on the inside" for a
while now, and this seems like a good opportunity. Thanks in
advance.
greglindahl - 1 hours ago
There's a long running joke in the US, dating back to the 1880s,
that involves so many positions being elected:https://en.wiktiona
ry.org/wiki/could_not_get_elected_dogcatc...
quickthrower2 - 38 minutes ago
Ha ha - that got me down a rabbit
hole!https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2014/06/02/a-...
lowpro - 1 hours ago
Jokes aside, I wonder if we're really seeing the long term erosion
of democracy because people just don't care. You can see it in most
aspects of the nation, from the NSA revelations largely being
accepted in a sigh of hopelessness to the several social issues
that have been in the news since 2014 and haven't seemed to move.
People just don't take an interest in the larger issues except to
tweet their thoughts and move on. I wonder if, for example, when
events like 9/11 or Katrina happened people were moved more to
donate or help because they couldn't just say "thinking of the
victims" in a public social media space and move on with their day.
And I don't think mandatory voting is a solution to this issue
because people will default to laziest method, which would probably
be whose name they heard the most. The big picture idea is how to
make people care, and that is probably the biggest unsolved issue
of our day.
LeoJiWoo - 1 hours ago
I think you are right. Also people are being worn down by the 24
hr news cycle and always on social media. It's hijacked our
emotions into thinking facebooks likes or retweets matter more
than voting or going out in the world and doing something.The
other side is most people aren't doing well financially.I know
tons of people who work all the time, and are just too
exhausted/demoralized by the end of day for anything but tv and
beer.The apathy, desperation, political violence/polarization,
filter bubbles, poor economy for the average person, rise of the
new alt-right, antifa, and resurgence of the extreme/alt-left all
make me feel like a collapse is coming.
Swizec - 15 minutes ago
My pet theory is that a lot of the apathy comes down to modern
outrage clickbait media. There's a new OMG HORRIBLE NEWS
EVERYTHING IS FALLING DOWN AND LIFE AS WE KNOW IT IS OVER FOREVER
emergency seemingly every day. They milk it for a day or two,
sometimes a week, then they find something new.When everything is
important and urgent, nothing is.
RandomInteger4 - 57 minutes ago
It seems to me like a lot of the apathy comes from the
hopelessness people feel concerning their own situation in life.
People don't see anything changing for themselves in the near or
distant future, so that carries over into something they feel
even more powerless about.
pmichaud - 14 minutes ago
I wonder if this is "efficient" though, like in the sense that
it's the correct outcome given the actual incentives. Ie. the
actual value of the given elected positions is such that everyone
should correctly ignore that it exists. There is no individual
benefit to taking on whatever menial responsibility the office
represents, nor is there a systematic benefit that outweighs the
personal cost for someone to heroically take on the duty anyway.I
guess what I'm asking is that if things are rotting upstream of
these positions, then maybe they are "rationally vacant"?
cmurf - 54 minutes ago
Most Americans have no experience with or understanding of
political instability. So they think it's entirely viable to
ignore politics and expect that things will just keep plugging
along as they have. And then you look away and grad students are
suddenly being taxed for waived tuition being considered
income... And you look away again and suddenly an entire class of
people are considered to have never existed in the country.How
you make people care? Unfortunately it might be crises makes them
care. No crises, no consequences, no confrontation with the
alternative? Then people find something else to care about,
rather than care about what seems to be a non-issue that doesn't
involve or affect them and isn't interesting anyway.
raquo - 52 minutes ago
Feedback loop is way too long and way too uncertain for people to
care. What can you even do to visibly affect decisions being
made? There is nothing an individual person can do, because no
one in power cares about individual people, whether they go
picket or post to facebook.There are tens of millions of people
in the US that really want
to change, for a lot of .
However, without acting as a unified group they don't matter
because they're dwarfed by equally disorganized and apathetic
people who don't care. There are many examples from around the
world of people getting what they want when they are numerous and
well organized. Don't even need to look far, NRA is an example of
this collective power (to some extent) in the US itself.There is
a social engineering solution to this somewhere, just like the
current situation is a result of deliberate social engineering,
not some inevitable evolution of democracy.
anigbrowl - 49 minutes ago
It's not that people don't care, but that people have lots of
things they could vote on and can't rationally make considered
decisions on all of them. You can't 'make people care' unless you
give them an incentive, and it's irrational to expect everybody
to care about everything.
PrimalDual - 46 minutes ago
I would posit the alternative theory that perhaps things are
going well enough that people don?t have to care and thus they
don?t. Government is one of those things most people ignore
unless it?s broken and usually pretty badly at that. The
problems you mention are real and worrying to those that
understand them but are still pretty far removed from ordinary
people?s lives. Perhaps this is the kind of thing that happens
when systems work so well we forget they are there. Then stuff
breaks down and people start caring again.
um_ya - 29 minutes ago
The further power moves away from people, the less people can
actually do to change things. What's the point of being outraged
at the things you can't control. If the government continues to
abuse people's rights, whats the point of getting upset, if you
can't change anything about it. The closer power moves towards
people the more likely they will take action... Instead of trying
to be master conductors, the government should focus on returning
power back to the states and back to the people.
greggarious - 24 minutes ago
>Jokes aside, I wonder if we're really seeing the long term
erosion of democracy because people just don't care.Or maybe a
better explanation is that the will of the people is actively
surpressed? Be it voter ID laws surpressing Democrats, or the
democrats themselves surpressing the voices of progressives
through superdelegates and closed primaries, there are serious
issues with our democracy.Throw in a populace that's been the
victim of a failing education system for decades due to
candidates who slash taxes (and thus budgets).And now, when the
problems are so acute, I find it very interesting that the
narrative becomes that all these issues are the fault of the lazy
voters. A convenient, and false narrative.
corndoge - 21 minutes ago
I don't think being required to prove you're an American
citizen with a photo ID is suppression of the will of the
people
lukeschlather - 18 minutes ago
How much does a photo ID cost? It's a poll tax any way you
slice it.
tedunangst - 4 minutes ago
In Pennsylvania, about $30. That's at the high end. In
Ohio, it's $8. Generally good for four years. Is $2 per
year an impediment to voting?
MPetitt - 6 minutes ago
70 Years ago: "I don't think being required to prove you're a
literate citizen with a test is suppression of the will of
the people"If you look at the people affected it's clear that
it is racial disenfranchisement under a different
name.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test
lordCarbonFiber - 2 minutes ago
Fortunately decades of history and court decisions disagree
with you.