ACLU does not think individuals should own guns?

Hatcher's Armory
#61

Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, we no longer need a huge percentage of our population to live in the countryside engaged in agriculture and resource extraction. Given than the major industries of the past couple of centuries have essentially depended on people living in cities, this has generally been a natural and desirable outcome.

The same is true of those living in the countryside, only their voices are presently greatly amplified when it comes to Presidential politics.

Indeed, but unlike geographical clusters of people - cities, farmland, range land, oilfields, ore deposits, fisheries inland and coastal, whatnot - that come about for principally economic reasons, the arrangement of states is, well, political.

Given a choice in the matter, one suspects that Kansas City MO and Kansas City KS would choose to be a single city as opposed to being bifurcated by that state line. The same could perhaps be said of the two Texarkanas.

Connecticut is no doubt a fine place with its own identity and history, but the DFW metro is the same size with more people … yet it’s not granted its own set of Senators and Representatives. Houston metro similarly stomps Rhode Island … especially the urban area with more than triple the population density over 35% more area.

Congressional districts may well be subject to the cynical machinations of political machines but at least they change and have some sense of proportion. Neither can be said about state boundaries, which are for the most part negotiated once then set in stone.

Ideally the former, however the latter is at least better than how it’s presently done.

In fiction, utopia is always distant and/or isolated from the present non-utopia with little to no contact between them because that’s the only way to make it plausible.

In that vein, I would not suggest that making changes to the Electoral College - or eliminating it - would suddenly make children respectful to their parents nor make the trains run on time, merely that it would be an improvement over the status quo.

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#62

I have in-laws in Texarkana, and I believe the answer there would be HELL NO.

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#63

If the question were posed - and settled - tomorrow, indeed the status quo would likely remain. But if there was the option for that state border to be magicked away, one suspects that the aligned interests of residents in both cities might wish it to be gone permanently even if the two Texarkana’s remain distinct entities. Having lived in Louisiana as a kid and more recently having visited my parents when they lived in Lufkin for a few years, there’s a very real Ark-La-Tex pan-state regional identity going on in at least LA and TX.

#64

Electoral college cliff notes

And here’s the dissenting pov

IMO, electoral college for all its flaws is better than a majority vote because the majority of the majority just goes with what’s popular because it is popular. :stuck_out_tongue:
The majority vote can also be bought, directly or indirectly.

#65

The 2016 Presidential election was “won” on less than 100,000 votes in just a handful of states - that’s a lot easier to “buy” than a majority of all American voters.

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#66

There are indirect ways of “buying” a vote.
I find it interesting that while it is a crime for non citizens to vote in the elections, there seems to be no way to verify if the people coming to vote are citizens in a good number of states(or perhaps I have not just come across the information).

#67

Hey!? That’s off-topic!!

#68

So are you! :slight_smile:

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#69

You’ve seen how Californians vote… that sounds about right to me. :wink:

#70

LOL.

Sorry?
It does affect the outcome of any election though when you potentially have non citizens voting into office or to keep in office politicians who cater to the non citizens presence in their areas of jurisdiction in order to stay in office.

Also interesting, that in some places a voter verification system is seen as evil on the premise that it adds another hurdle that will discourage the minority citizens in the area from voting.
One has to wonder if that is the real reason.

#71

there seems to be no way to verify if the people coming to vote are citizens

I’m not following you there. Of course there’s a way. Making it easy and free to obtain a government ID card isn’t hard unless we want to make it hard.

#72

He may have meant there seems to be no way that is socially and politically palatable to verify if the people coming to vote are citizens…etc.

#73

Perhaps I was misunderstanding the material I came across.
Some time during the election period there was some news about voter fraud so I looked up and came across these that seems to all say the same thing.

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http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-id.aspx

https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state

What stood out was that some of the more populated states didn’t require any form of ID to be shown in order to vote, while many weren’t strict.
That sounds like a hole in the system that needs to be addressed at a time when illegal immigration has become a popular issue.
Speaking of which, came across a recent article that says the updated number of illegal border crossers/immigrants now number to be 33 million, not the 11 million that’s so often being publicized in the “news”. What’s the real number? No idea but 33 million is slightly >10% of the population.

A government ID like a driver’s license doesn’t seem to have any indicator if the bearer is a citizen or not while a passport would certainly be proof of citizenship.

Edit to add illustration from links.

#74

I mean, there are lots of reasons people are unable to find the correct documentation to obtain federal ID. Most of them involve not being able to speak to your parents due to age, death, or estrangement. A remarkable number of elderly voters would be unable to produce a birth certificate or Social Security card.

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#75

How many of those states require proof of citizenship to speak freely, go to church, open carry a long gun, or send a letter to the President expressing grievances? Do any of those states only require search warrants for provable citizens? If one cannot prove one is a citizen, does one not deserve a speedy trial by a jury of one’s peers? If not, would you support requiring ID for citizens to avail themselves of those rights?

#76

Hrmmm,

#77

Think you for the informative link.

#78

With exception of petitioning the government, the rights you compare to right to vote are 1) fundamental human rights, i.e. we have them whether we are citizens of this country or not (the constitution protects them, not grants them). The moment you step onto U.S. soil, you have them and constitution protects them; you do not need to demonstrate citizenship. 2) The right to vote is a) a political/societal right, maybe comparable to ‘right’ to drive a car or get on a plane, not a fundamental human right; and b) not explicitly granted anywhere in the U.S. Constitution:

Also note: Citizens of this country have a constitutionally protected right to travel, including out of the country and back, but by law we have to have a passport to do so…correct?

It is not outlandish to expect to have to prove you are a citizen to be able to exercise one of the few acts individual citizens have available to them that can actually change the course/character of a country. Similar to running for any high office…you should need to be able to prove who you are.

#79

And in most states Electoral College electors are required to vote in line with how the state popular vote turned out, not really much of a buffer from the lowest common denominator. If I recall, the primary mechanism for this - in addition to party political machinery - is for Electors to pledge to vote for their party’s candidate.

In the vast majority of states with winner-take-all allocation, the generally-partisan slate of electors pledged to their party’s candidate that’s selected by the popular vote votes party-line. Not sure if Maine or Nebraska have ever split their votes.

2016 had quite a few faithless electors - a total of 10. 7 were accepted as cast. Two electors were summarily replaced with replacements who voted as instructed, one had their vote invalidated and then voted as instructed.

Both arguments are self-made : I’ve also seen how Wyomingites vote.

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#80

It’s not outlandish at all, in theory. In practice obtaining the voter ID if one doesn’t have one, can be hard. Obtaining the documents required to get the ID can also be hard, and costly.

And it doesn’t have to be hard. The ID could be issued by someone besides the DPS. The state could make the process of finding and getting copies of vital records easier, and less costly.

Until the State stops throwing up hurdles in the process of obtaining ID, I’ll be skeptical of the motives behind the Stat’s need for that ID.

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