Great thread on what mobilization/GOTV looked like the last few weeks.
It should go without saying, but I really, really hope that an outcome of all this is a party-wide commitment to growing democracy. Agenda items:
1. Restore VRA, concomitant with
2. Voting Rights Amendment that would include:
a. Election Day holiday
b. end felon disenfranchisement
c. either kill voter ID laws or create universal federal ID that's zero effort
d. affirmative right to vote (that's actually a.)
e. pre-clearance, maybe for all states
f. criminal penalties for voter suppression
3. Representation/statehood for DC, PR, and wherever else American citizens reside
4. EC reform
5. House reform, whether multi-member districts, end of FPP voting, or whatever it takes to fix that shit. In the short term, you can include anti-gerrymander stuff, but I'd prefer a more structural solution.
Anything else?
Re: gerrymandering, someone had a map showing that despite the massive improvement in margin, Jones prevailed in only one of seven Congressional districts. Same as the actual results in 2016.
That thread is amazing. It gives me appreciation for Perez as well.
I hope so bad that level of organization comes to Texas next year.
I like 1 and also 2. I'll put those on the list I'm sending to Santa this year. Yes, all boundaries of our multi-member districts (or however we get proportional rep) should be drawn by non-partisan commissions and reviewed by judges.
I thought this thread made some valuable points -
https://twitter.com/DrTedJ/status/940953463340634113
7: yes, that really has to be "reviewed by non-elected judges" because otherwise you'll be back to square one.
Good point. I was thinking judges at the federal level (none of whom are elected), maybe the relevant Circuit Court.
Like the guy they just appointed to the federal court in Nebraska with the "not qualified" rating?
The Courts of Appeals sit as panels, at least.
Anyway, if you want to believe that judges are tainted but non-partisan panels are magical and pure, I'm fine with having that in our fantasy.
Mapping by slime mould has a number of benefits, not least its relative ease and speed. Slime mould grows at 1cm an hour in optimum conditions, and will successfully map most problems in a few days
If only algorithms to efficiently link up networks under constraints were a thing.
2 g) Federal election standards for federal elections.
How about a non-partisan 2020 Census count? Like, for example, we could not have the process run by a guy who wrote a book called "Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America."
I for one am really eager to read the avalanche of think-pieces profiling black communities in Alabama that make the crucial difference in elections. What is it that makes them tick? What are their folkways and where do they shop, and what makes them just like NYT readers?
2: here is a link to a tweet with that map. Stunning but somehow unsurprising.
https://twitter.com/leonardocarella/status/940953688071462915
I can't get over the 98-2 vote breakdown for black women. That's more lopsided than the margins in most sham elections staged by dictators.
It is weird, right? Gotta figure those 2% was miscast.
That's a good point. It also implies that black women are immune to the 27% crazification factor.
31: it probably manifests in some other way. A much less politically harmful way.
Sure you have crazy black women, but not serial-killer white-man crazy.
That map and percentages in 18 are interesting. The arms from 7 making 1 and 6 just barely Republican. I wonder why they didn't redistribute 4 a little.
So what's the actual crazification factor of white men? If 27 is a national average?
27: 62% of white men voted for Trump. So that's your answer.
So what's the actual crazification factor of white men? If 27
100%. The 27% that are lunatic right wingers and the remaining 73% who are being driven steadily insane by having to live in the same country with them.
I am also very happy that the Dems didn't nominate some pro-lifer, which would have resulted in a bunch of incessant "of course that's the kind of big tent you need to win in the South".
One of many ways multi-member districts can help with gerrymandering: If you try to concentrate too many of the minor party into one district they get a bonus. For instance, if those were all 3-member districts, District 7 would have elected 3 Democrats, and all the remaining districts would have had 2 Republicans and 1 Democrat, for a total of 12 R, 9 D.
20: I just assume that the thickest 2% of any demographic are very thick indeed, easily thick enough to get "Moore" and "Jones" confused because they're both short names.
But this is the thickest 2% of those who showed up to vote, not of the total population.
On a different note:
I know that turnout was 40%. It looks like 29% of voters were black, and 26.7% of Alabama is black. If I'm doing the math right, turnout among black voters was 43% and turnout among white voters was 36%. That's a pretty impressive spread.
34: well, sure, but I've no reason to suppose that the voting population are significantly more intelligent than the non-voting population.
Letting a pedophile theocrat into high office by default* doesn't sound like a well-thought position.
* Yes, I know that there are people unable to vote for reasons having nothing to do with their own choice, but that's not most of them.
It's not hard for me to imagine that there a few black people that love the Ten Commandments and hate gays, and don't trust the mainstream media.
I imagine the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Department would agree.
+! to 31. Doug Jones is the sort of solid candidate who utterly resists hot takes from all sides. Boring white guy, former prosecutor, but most famous for jailing the Klan, not "lawnorder" BS. AFAICT didn't run on any moderate stances, although he surely has some (relative to Warren or whoever).