[HN Gopher] University of Florida bars professors from testifyin...
___________________________________________________________________
University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting
rights case
Author : BrianOnHN
Score : 347 points
Date : 2021-11-01 11:15 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| djoldman wrote:
| For the lawyers:
|
| Can't a lawyer wishing to have these professors testify as expert
| witnesses merely motion for them to be subpoenaed?
|
| As far as I know, then by law the expert witnesses must testify
| else risk contempt of court, thereby negating whatever "bar" that
| the university seems fit to impose.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Can't a lawyer wishing to have these professors testify as
| expert witnesses merely motion for them to be subpoenaed?
|
| That depends on the law of the jurisdiction in question; in the
| US _federal_ system, for instance this is theoretically
| possible but its kind of a hail mary, rather than a slam dunk;
| getting an order for s non-retained expert is far from
| automatic, even when their testimony would be relevant:
|
| https://www.expertinstitute.com/resources/insights/can-a-non...
|
| Not sure about Florida particularly.
| gmadsen wrote:
| I think it that case there must be a tangible direct need to
| have their personal testimony, not just nice to have due to
| their expertise.
| rayiner wrote:
| > "Faculty do not forfeit their First Amendment rights as
| citizens by accepting an offer of employment with UF," Donnelly
| wrote. "Professors Smith, McDonald, and Austin testify as expert
| witnesses in their fields on their own time. Their testimony does
| not interfere with any of their job duties. There are no
| conflicts of interest."
|
| This is acting like a private sector employee would be able to
| testify on whatever matter they want but that's not true. Google
| wouldn't let an employee serve as an expert witness against
| itself, for example.
| gpm wrote:
| Private companies are not bound by the first amendment, state
| actors including this university are.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's more complicated than that. State actors have have
| certain freedom to restrict speech when acting in their
| capacity as private employers:
| https://www.oyez.org/cases/2005/04-473
| gpm wrote:
| That doesn't justify the post I was replying to at all...
| ameister14 wrote:
| Really? You were saying that the public university is
| subject to 1st amendment restrictions in this instance,
| that case says it could be otherwise.
|
| From the note: "In a 5-to-4 decision authored by Justice
| Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court held that speech by a
| public official is only protected if it is engaged in as
| a private citizen, not if it is expressed as part of the
| official's public duties."
| gpm wrote:
| No, that case says that they are restricted by the first
| amendment, and discusses what exactly that stops the from
| doing. It does not say they might not be restricted by
| the first amendment.
|
| The original comment I was replying to was arguing that
| "Google does this, therefore the university can", but
| that is not the case. Google is not bound by the first
| amendment, the university is, the argument fails at step
| 0. That doesn't mean the university can't do it, but it
| means it isn't a good argument that the university can.
|
| Incidentally, acting as an expert witness _is_ as a
| private citizen, not as part of the official 's public
| duties, but even if that wasn't the case and this was
| something that the university could restrict my post
| would still be correct and the first reply to it missing
| the point.
| ameister14 wrote:
| point taken, thanks
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It seems clear "serve as a witness on this case" is _not_
| part of these officials ' public duties, yes?
| ameister14 wrote:
| I don't think that's clear, actually. If they are
| testifying as UF professors, they might be acting in the
| course of their duties because they are representing the
| university.
|
| I think that's the argument, anyway, and why if they
| testify just as concerned citizens there would be no way
| to stop them.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They're being forbidden by the university to testify.
|
| How can testifying be one of their official duties?
| ameister14 wrote:
| I think that they're being forbidden by the university
| from testifying as expert witnesses using their
| capacities as professors of the university.
|
| I could be wrong but it looks like they can testify as
| citizens, but not paid experts.
| tptacek wrote:
| Ken White writes about this distinction all the time, and
| it apparently doesn't apply at all in this case (though
| he'd just refer you to the FIRE lawsuit threat).
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Public servants serve the people.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| twofornone wrote:
| >As part of the testimony, the plaintiffs were seeking three
| professors from the university -- Dan Smith, Michael McDonald and
| Sharon Austin -- to testify as expert witnesses. All three
| specialize in voting rights and behavior and election law.
|
| Regardless of your stance on the issue, does anyone actually
| believe that three "voting rights" professors will give a
| politically unbiased testimony in 2021?
| runako wrote:
| Remember that testimony is given in an adversarial setting, and
| answers are framed by the attorneys questioning. So the idea is
| that either yes, they will give unbiased testimony, or the
| attorneys will be able to make it plain to the jury that the
| testimony is biased.
| twofornone wrote:
| Or option 3, the plaintiff counsel successfully convinces
| some or all members of the jury that a biased testimony is
| unbiased.
|
| These are "experts", after all. They're already starting from
| a position of credibility, and I don't think the defense
| lawyer is necessarily equipped to deconstruct whatever the
| "experts" spend their professional lives working on,
| regardless of the objectivity of their teatimony.
| klyrs wrote:
| What's to stop the defense from finding their own experts?
| babyblueblanket wrote:
| By this logic, no experts should be allowed in court unless
| the opposing lawyer has as much education as the expert in
| their subject.
| twofornone wrote:
| If the subject is politically polarized then I am
| inclined to agree. Its an open secret that right leaning
| opinions are taboo across academia. That doesn't actually
| mean such opinions are wrong.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Its an open secret that right leaning opinions are
| taboo across academia.
|
| This _sounds_ like something someone would say whose
| opinions were not defensible academically.
|
| Anecdotally, I see examples of right leaning opinions
| from academically schooled contributors to HN all the
| time.
| runako wrote:
| Reminder that attorneys for both sides are allowed to
| bring their experts. The process itself is not biased
| toward either side.
|
| > Its an open secret that right leaning opinions are
| taboo across academia
|
| Not in the South, they aren't.
|
| > If the subject is politically polarized then I am
| inclined to agree
|
| Does this apply to police testimony as well? Courts use
| their testimony all the time, and it's certainly
| politically polarized much of the time.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>Its an open secret that right leaning opinions are
| taboo across academia.
|
| Nonsense
|
| I went to a top school in the US and encountered if
| anything, a constant right-leaning bias, and some people
| at the same school at the same time are now top RW
| personalities on Fox, books, etc.
|
| What is happening is that the RW, and particularly the
| GOP, which was formerly the party of science, technology,
| and progress, has in more recent years turned towards
| authoritarianism and this requires a decoupling from
| facts.
|
| And, yes, the facts (e.g., anthropomorphic global
| warming, vaccination, voting dynamics, etc.++) do in fact
| lean against common RW shibboleths used to crank up their
| populist amplification needed for their ambitions.
|
| If a bona-fide expert presents data and expert scientific
| interpretation about how vaccines, public health
| measures, or voting actually works, that is not
| political. What is political is _calling that political_
| and attempting to silence it because you do not like the
| conclusions.
|
| What it does mean is that people making claims like yours
| are most likely in the wrong here, and are attempting to
| silence the very real opposition because they do not like
| it.
|
| Stop it and rethink.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Can I, in the process of litigation, bring in political
| polarization experts to testify that a subject is too
| politically polarized to permit experts testifying?
| [deleted]
| runako wrote:
| You are correct! But this is the situation with our entire
| adversarial legal system. We have in general not solved
| this by excluding expert witnesses, so it is indeed out of
| the ordinary to block testimony like this.
|
| For example, police have a long-documented history of not
| giving reliable testimony. And yet these "experts" provide
| testimony at most criminal trials. If a state is willing to
| allow its police to provide expert testimony, why not its
| other employees?
| toss1 wrote:
| Sure, the defense lawyer may not be personally "equipped to
| deconstruct whatever the "experts" spend their professional
| lives working on".
|
| However, the defense team certainly has the full capability
| (including budget) to find their own experts in the field
| to present to the jury whatever counter-arguments may exist
| to the plainiff's experts.
|
| If the defense fails to do so, it is either their
| malpractice, or the reality that they actually have no
| effective argument.
|
| Either way, _even with your original assumption_ that those
| plaintiff experts are biases, that is ZERO reason to
| prevent their testimony.
|
| The only reason to prevent their testimony is that the
| defense has no real case, and they know it.
| [deleted]
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Its for their protection. East-coast-transplanted-into-floria
| values dictate DeSantis should kill the lousy eggheads if they
| squeal.
| josefresco wrote:
| You don't need a "voting rights professor" to tell you what
| they're doing in Florida is undemocratic, un-American and 100%
| politically motivated.
| f154hfds wrote:
| As a curious non-Floridian, what about the bill is
| objectionable? I think I found the text here: https://www.fls
| enate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/90/BillText/er/HT...
|
| I personally find issue with the idea of convicts being
| unilaterally disbarred from voting while I also feel that
| verifying the identification of the voter is pretty crucial
| to a believable vote. But I didn't read the whole thing.
| There might be more objectionable material that I missed or
| didn't understand properly.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Is voting a Right or a privilege? If a Right, where does
| the Constitution denote what crimes cause the loss of that
| Right?
|
| Plenty of people saw no problem with poll taxes and reading
| tests. This just the latest swirl.
| Miner49er wrote:
| It makes it harder to vote, simple as that.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| There's a real risk that voter ID laws could bar more
| legitimate voters than illegitimate. If you feel there
| were, say, 1000 fraudulent votes but that voter ID
| legislation would prevent 10000 legitimate votes, would
| that be an acceptable trade off? I say no. And from what I
| have read in the past the ratio is far worse.
| the_snooze wrote:
| When it comes to voter ID, the devil is in the details.
| I'm a poll worker in Virginia and think our ID laws are
| pretty fair. We accept driver's licenses and passports,
| sure, but we also take employer photo ID, any current
| Virginia school ID, and even old Virginia driver's
| licenses up to a year after expiration. If a state gives
| affordances like these to make it easy for people to
| fulfill the ID requirement, I don't see what the problem
| is.
|
| And I don't think fraud is a particularly good reason to
| be for voter ID. The ID requirement seems to speed the
| line along. We don't need people to spell out their
| names, especially for non-native English speakers with
| uncommon or foreign names. The security argument for
| voter ID strikes me as bogus, but it has a place for
| efficiency and accessibility.
| runako wrote:
| The problem is not at the point of acceptance, it's at
| the point of issuance. An egregious violator is Alabama,
| which systematically closed DMVs in Black counties [1].
|
| The point of modern voting suppression is it's designed
| such that each hurdle on its own looks reasonable to
| people new to the issue. But the aggregate is intended to
| suppress voters in a targeted way. The architects of
| these programs even publicly say as much, it's not a
| secret.
|
| Without making the direct comparison, it's worth noting
| that the Jim Crow voter suppression laws similarly
| evolved from humble beginnings. That's why it's important
| to watch the trend line, and these laws do not trend in
| the direction of more voter participation.
|
| 1 - https://www.governing.com/archive/alabama-demands-
| voter-id--...
| Frondo wrote:
| This is also why, until the Roberts court gutted the VRA,
| the courts looked at outcomes of policies and not just
| intent -- anyone can say the _intent_ was to stop fraud,
| but if the outcomes are suppression, that _used to
| matter_. No more, and that 's why state legislatures have
| jumped at the chance to enact so many laws that "stop
| fraud" (a problem for which there has not been, and still
| does not have, any evidence.)
| the_snooze wrote:
| I don't think we're disagreeing here. I did say the devil
| is in the details. I'm putting forth Virginia as a state
| that does it well (i.e., there are multiple independent
| sources of valid ID, so we can't pull Alabama-like DMV
| shenanigans), and pointing out that voter ID has value in
| ways not often discussed, particularly in making the
| voter check-in process go more smoothly.
|
| There are interesting trade-offs to consider in the voter
| ID discussion.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| I don't know anything about Virginia, but based on your
| comment alone I see clearly what the problem is. What you
| described is a system that disenfranchises everyone that
| satisfies tree simple rules: doesn't drive, don't travel
| internationally, and don't work for a large company. E.g.
| urban poor service-industry worker (outside of chains, no
| restaurant issues employer IDs).
| the_snooze wrote:
| >What you described is a system that disenfranchises
| everyone that satisfies tree simple rules: doesn't drive,
| don't travel internationally, and don't work for a large
| company. E.g. urban poor service-industry worker (outside
| of chains, no restaurant issues employer IDs).
|
| If you took a few moments to look up our voter ID
| requirements, you'd find that your characterization is
| totally unfair and inaccurate. We also accept utility
| bills, government checks (i.e., for those on government
| assistance), and a signed affidavit saying you have an
| ID. I'm a Virginia homer through and through; I think we
| do voter ID the right way.
|
| https://www.elections.virginia.gov/media/formswarehouse/v
| ote...
| nradov wrote:
| Any citizen or legal resident can obtain a state Real ID
| compliant card even if they don't drive, travel, or work.
| Most states offer reduced or free fees for low income
| individuals.
|
| https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-
| identification...
| yardie wrote:
| If voting is a right and voting requires ID then it
| should be on the government to cover the costs of
| providing that burden.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >would that be an acceptable trade off?
|
| Depends on the margins of victory perception of the fraud
| among the other voters.
|
| If people widely consider the elections to be
| illegitimate high participation doesn't do anything to
| solve that.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| People that believe that are substituting feelings for
| evidence, so passing laws to assuage their concerns
| doesn't make sense. That'd be like requiring drug testing
| for people to get public assistance, but worse because
| voting is so fundamental.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I mean, I have needed ID to vote for 30 years. I don't
| understand the objection to making some effort to verify
| that the person presenting himself as J. Random Voter is
| actually who he says he is.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/gettin
| g-a...
|
| > For Settles to get one of those, his name has to match
| his birth certificate -- and it doesn't. In 1964, when he
| was 14, his mother married and changed his last name.
| After Texas passed a new voter-ID law, officials told
| Settles he had to show them his name-change certificate
| from 1964 to qualify for a new identification card to
| vote.
|
| > So with the help of several lawyers, Settles tried to
| find it, searching records in courthouses in the D.C.
| area, where he grew up. But they could not find it. To
| obtain a new document changing his name to the one he has
| used for 51 years, Settles has to go to court, a process
| that would cost him more than $250 -- more than he is
| willing to pay.
|
| That's a pretty clear illegal poll tax, if you ask me.
| singlow wrote:
| Can he not vote using the name the State does recognize?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The article is pretty clear on that point.
|
| > What he does not have is the one thing that he needs to
| vote this presidential election: a current Texas photo
| ID.
|
| He can't get one without the proper documents, which he
| can't obtain.
|
| Texas's list of requirements is at
| https://www.dps.texas.gov/internetforms/Forms/DL-15.pdf;
| he'll need proof of residence, which is likely all under
| the name he's been using for half a century.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Wouldn't that be fraud under voter ID law, providing a
| false name?
| isoskeles wrote:
| Pretty clear not an illegal poll tax since this man is an
| edge case who uses a name with no proof. It's sad that
| this is ultimately his mother's fault, and he can't ask
| her for the $250 to fix this.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's his mother's fault for not anticipating a policy
| half a century into the future?
|
| Are _you_ prepared to similarly be declared an edge case
| and not permitted your Constitutional rights?
| isoskeles wrote:
| It's his mother's fault for losing the documentation of
| his name change.
|
| Am I prepared? Yes. I have all my important identity
| documents locked in a fire safe. If something should
| happen to them, I'm willing to pay the $250, etc. amount
| to fix the problem.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's not what I asked.
|
| I asked if you'd accept "you don't get Constitutional
| right X because you're an edge case" if it were _your_
| edge case and not someone else 's.
|
| ($250 is, to many on HN, an insignificant amount. To some
| in the world, it's the sort of expense that'd mean
| eviction or having to skip your diabetes meds for the
| week. No one should have to pick between necessary
| expenses and their right to vote like this.)
| isoskeles wrote:
| You changed your question by paraphrasing. Surely, you
| know how the original question could be inferred to be
| more about the specific thing we're discussing. But I'll
| placate you and answer your clarified question:
|
| Yes. I live in California and own guns, so I've already
| seen my state make many compromises on the most liberal
| (not as in 'left') interpretation of my 2nd Amendment
| rights. Some of the laws even result in extra fees. And
| no, I don't "get" my 2nd Amendment right in the same
| sense that people "get" that right in Texas.
|
| Anyway, I'm not sure we're going to get through talking
| past each other on this topic. Voter id is clearly
| intended to ensure and enforce an implicit voting right
| that my-vote-counts-the-same-as-yours (disregarding any
| complaints about the Electoral College). If people cannot
| acknowledge that and want to pretend voting is identical
| to, say, speech, I'm not sure how to even continue the
| conversation from there.
| _jal wrote:
| Always nice to see people willing to write off other
| peoples' disenfranchisement as a rounding error or 'worth
| it' (whatever 'it' is.)
|
| That is exactly the attitude the authoritarians are
| counting on.
|
| This is how you lose your own representation.
| isoskeles wrote:
| Thank you for scare quotes around something I never said.
| What will you accuse me of next?
|
| I don't think any of this is "worth it," I just don't
| agree with coming up with sob stories as a
| counterexample. It's not that hard to hold onto important
| government documents like your birth certificate, social
| security card, etc. The argument against
| disenfranchisement shouldn't look like such a clear edge
| case.
|
| If anything, I think there's a case to be made that the
| government shouldn't be using paper documents handed to
| potentially irresponsible parents to verify identity, and
| then holding someone responsible for their parents' fuck-
| ups. But the jump from such an argument to saying we
| shouldn't verify voter identity at all is an absurd one.
| _jal wrote:
| Wait, are they scare quotes, or am I quoting you?
|
| The fact that you can't decide makes me think you know I
| wasn't quoting you, which was contextually obvious.
|
| I find the rest of your argument equally sincere and
| convincing.
| [deleted]
| notreallyserio wrote:
| It's also really easy for someone to steal your
| documents. It's not unheard of for an abusive partner to
| steal documents in order to trap their victim.
|
| I know your pattern now, you'll call this another edge
| case sob story and set it aside because it isn't
| convenient for your argument.
|
| As for your paper document argument... what is your
| proposed alternative? You must have one, else you
| wouldn't have floated it.
| isoskeles wrote:
| Appreciative to see we've all moved on from, 'voter id is
| inherently racist,' to, 'what if my dog ate my voter id?'
|
| (Aside, today is having fun with quotes day.)
| Miner49er wrote:
| Why make voting harder and more expensive then it already
| is?
| andrew_ wrote:
| Apologies for replying to your question with a question.
| What is hard and expensive about voting today?
|
| I'm interested in your experiences on the topic, as I've
| personally not had a voting experience that was hard or
| expensive. For what it's worth, I'm considered a minority
| in the U.S.
| cmh89 wrote:
| It depends on where you are. In my state (Oregon), voting
| is easy and secure. We vote by mail as a default and if
| you move and don't get your ballot, you can go to any
| voting office and request all the way up until when polls
| close on election day.
|
| Now, if you are in republican held states like Alabama or
| Georgia, it's going to be a different story. republicans
| use several methods to disenfranchise voters, voter ID is
| just one of them.
|
| 1. republicans always aim to have the shortest polling
| hours possible. This benefits them because their base
| tends to be older and more time/ability to vote during
| the day. Working-class voters are especially impacted by
| this because if they can even get time off during the
| day, they probably will have to pay for the privilege of
| voting in the form of sacrificing hours at work and
| getting a reduced paycheck.
|
| 2. The second thing republicans do is close polling
| stations in areas they don't expect a lot of support.
| This creates massive wait times for folks who are more
| likely to vote Democrat.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/smartphone-
| data-s...
|
| Those hourly workers who are already sacrificing money to
| vote have to take even more time off to cast their
| ballot.
|
| 3. Another tactic is voter roll purges. A lot of folks
| don't know that they've been unenrolled from the voter
| rolls till they show up on election day. This
| particularly effects renters who might not realize they
| aren't registered at their current address, and miss mail
| regarding it because its sent to their former address.
|
| 4. republicans will also just shamelessly attempt to
| discourage Democratic turnout. For example, Georgia got
| rid of voting early Sunday morning to put a damper on the
| 'Souls to Polls' movement. There is no rationalization
| for this. They didn't even bother to lie about it. They
| just wanted to squash a successful Black get-out-the-vote
| initiative.
| andrew_ wrote:
| I've lived in Michigan, Georgia, Florida, and Texas and
| (again, as a minority) have never experienced any of
| these. I'll admit that confirmation bias is a real thing
| and may apply here, however these points smell of common
| media talking points and heavy, heavy tribalism. Even as
| a registered Democrat, I just do not buy into the
| "Democrats are purveyors of voting righteousness and the
| Republicans are out to destroy our right to vote"
| narrative.
| cmh89 wrote:
| That's great for you! That doesn't really have any
| bearing on the documented reality of republican
| disenfranchisement of voters.
|
| Sometimes 'common media talking points' are talking
| points because a real and serious problem exists. There's
| plenty of evidence of the problem if you want to take the
| time to get educated on it.
|
| republicans ARE out to destroy the right to vote. They
| are actively anti-democracy to the point of spreading
| outright lies about the 2020 Presidential election and
| attempting to overthrow the democratically elected
| candidate for US President. This really isn't a 'both
| sides' thing.
|
| When you have to pretend that both sides are bad so as to
| appear fair, we call that 'enlightened centrism'.
| republicans represent a minority of Americans. They'd
| never have power again if we had fair democratic
| elections. Democrats represent the majority of Americans.
| They benefit greatly from fair democratic elections. It's
| just that simple.
| treebot wrote:
| > republicans represent a minority of Americans. They'd
| never have power again if we had fair democratic
| elections. Democrats represent the majority of Americans.
| They benefit greatly from fair democratic elections. It's
| just that simple.
|
| This is the truth, and is why Republicans are doing what
| they are doing. It's not because Republicans are bad and
| Democrats are good. It's because Republicans are going to
| lose otherwise.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >3. Another tactic is voter roll purges. A lot of folks
| don't know that they've been unenrolled from the voter
| rolls till they show up on election day. This
| particularly effects renters who might not realize they
| aren't registered at their current address, and miss mail
| regarding it because its sent to their former address.
|
| I hear this a lot, but states do have to keep their voter
| rolls up-to-date by law. People move in and out all the
| time, and not everyone votes in every election. Are there
| mechanisms that you think are effective in reducing the
| chances of someone mistakenly getting removed, while
| still allowing for stale records to be dropped?
| cmh89 wrote:
| There are two things that could alleviate the problem
| without disenfranchising voters. One, don't purge voter
| roles right before major elections. Two, allow for same
| day registration updates.
|
| You show up, they find you in the system at your old
| address, you submit an updated registration card, they
| hand you a ballot, and we all move on with our lives.
| the_snooze wrote:
| I think that's totally reasonable, but I'm still left
| wondering when and how states should actually carry out
| purging their voter records. Would a year before a
| presidential/midterm election be fair? Six months? What
| about primary elections?
|
| As for same-day registration, I'm sort of for it, but
| only if people understand the cost involved. And it's not
| about money. I served as a poll worker in California many
| years ago, which has very accommodating rules for voting.
| You can register same-day, vote out-of-precinct, the
| whole smash. It makes it really easy for voters, which is
| a good thing. But it has a price: it makes the check-in
| process more complicated. If there are a lot of people
| who need to do same-day registration (as was the case in
| my precinct when the city renamed a street a few weeks
| before the election), then it causes long lines.
| cmh89 wrote:
| Why would you do it before major elections if it's just
| about book keeping? You could purge them a month after
| mid-terms and a month after general Presidential because
| those get the most turnout.
|
| When you purge your voter roles becomes a lot less
| important if you allow for registration/reregistration on
| election day regardless.
|
| Oregon has same day registration update (and we have
| motor voter) and no long-lines because we vote primarily
| by mail.
|
| Disenfranchising voters to 'avoid long-lines' is just a
| red herring.
|
| There are lots of ways to create quick, safe voting.
| Election problems are the result of a deliberate attempt
| to make voting harder for certain people. Full stop.
| [deleted]
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I don't mean to nitpick, but calling this un-American strikes
| me as the No True Scotsman fallacy.
|
| I.e., Florida is part of the U.S. So if Florida does it, in
| at least a small way it _is_ American.
| josefresco wrote:
| It doesn't represent American ideals, but it does represent
| the reality of America's current (and past) political and
| cultural landscape.
|
| Making it difficult for certain groups of people to
| participate in the democratic process is unfortunately a
| long-standing American tradition.
| pyronik19 wrote:
| Insecure elections don't represent American ideals.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > It doesn't represent American ideals
|
| Could you expand on that?
|
| My original comment was based on the assumption that the
| Florida issue demonstrated a lack of ideological
| consensus amongst Americans. Thus my "no true Scotsman"
| observation.
|
| So I see two ways that I might have been off the mark:
|
| (a) Florida's _actions_ don 't represent those officials'
| _ideals_ , or
|
| (b) we somehow don't include _those officials '_ ideals
| when talking about _American_ ideals.
|
| Both (a) and (b) seem like interesting topics of
| discussion.
| sofixa wrote:
| > It doesn't represent American ideals, but it does
| represent the reality of America's current (and past)
| political and cultural landscape
|
| Which ideals? Don't forget that the US literally started
| with slavery and land ownership-based voting rights for
| males only. Incredible progress has been made, but with
| huge caveats ( no slavery except as punishment, anyone
| can vote _but_... ).
| minitoar wrote:
| By that logic, anything going on in Columbia is equally
| American.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| The conversation was using "American" as short-hand for
| "related to the U.S.A." My comment used that
| colloquialism as well.
| djbusby wrote:
| Did you mean Colombia?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Yes... Apparently someone at UF is super scared they might be
| too honest.
| blululu wrote:
| The simple answer is yes. You could make some elaborate post-
| modernist point about the impossibility of a value neutral
| perspective, and there is some merit to such claims, but there
| are also clear mathematical criteria that can be used to asses
| the fairness of a voting/districting scheme. This is as
| unbiased of a criteria as one can establish for voting rights
| and districting (unless your idea of bias is simply, defined in
| terms of agreement with the prevailing political ideologies, in
| which case we open the door to all sorts of procedural abuse).
| finite_jest wrote:
| I don't think the GP is asking whether it is possible to
| objectively assess the fairness of voting schemes. (Though of
| course that would be an interesting question)
|
| He is implying that their testimony would most likely be very
| biased politically. I think that is probably true, and you
| can see that by skimming through their Twitter accounts
| [1][2][3].
|
| However, this does not justify the university intimidating
| them with legally dubious means. [4]
|
| [1]: https://nitter.fdn.fr/electionsmith
|
| [2]: https://nitter.fdn.fr/ElectProject
|
| [3]: https://nitter.fdn.fr/SharonFLUMC
|
| [4]: I am tempted to say that the correct course of action
| would be to defund all social science departments (except
| perhaps economics), but that's politically unfeasible.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > there are also clear mathematical criteria that can be used
| to asses the fairness of a voting/districting scheme
|
| I think this illustrates how bias thrives in generalities -
| with as little evidence as is necessary to advance the
| agenda.
|
| Deep examination of nuances leads to an organic,
| comprehensive understanding, one that is rocky soil for bias.
|
| As example: Ideological media relentlessly push preformed
| talking points to prevent viewers from contemplating an issue
| beyond the desired scope.
| obelos wrote:
| It is none of U of F's business whether or not their testimony
| is politically biased.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It is so far as U of F is willing/unwilling to have its
| reputation put on a particular side of a particular political
| issue.
|
| Frankly, I think "if you're getting paid you can't use our
| name" is a sane policy for all issues on which professors may
| testify.
|
| It shouldn't be hard to imagine the shoe being on the other
| foot and some energy company paying professors to testify
| that some new environmental law is asinine. But of course
| just because it's not hard to imagine doesn't mean everybody
| participating in the discussion doesn't have the amount of
| cognitive dissonance that prevents doing that. It is 2021
| after all.
| klyrs wrote:
| The problem here is that U of F is engaging in censorship
| and witness intimidation. Your prejudice that their
| testimony will be "biased" is quite irrelevant to the first
| amendment question at hand.
| obelos wrote:
| > It shouldn't be hard to imagine the shoe being on the
| other foot and some energy company paying professors to
| testify that some new environmental law is asinine.
|
| I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but this is
| completely normal and happens all the time.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| What does "politically unbiased" mean here, exactly? The way I
| interpret what you wrote is that you're against the current
| push for making it easier to vote and anything that disagrees
| with that will be seen as "politically biased" by you. Is that
| correct?
|
| I guess the other option is that you disagree with expert
| witnesses as a concept?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| If not people who specialize in voting rights who exactly would
| you expect to be brought forth to lend their expertise?
| hodgesrm wrote:
| > Regardless of your stance on the issue, does anyone actually
| believe that three "voting rights" professors will give a
| politically unbiased testimony in 2021?
|
| Why is this question even relevant in a court case? There's no
| assumption anyone involved in either side of litigation is
| unbiased: in fact quite the contrary. The legal system
| including judges and juries is designed to sort out the
| contending claims.
| poorjohnmacafee wrote:
| Most countries, including EU nations, ban mail-in voting minus
| exceptions like living abroad, these laws being passed because of
| discovered fraud in elections.
|
| Election integrity is the difference between democracy and a one-
| party state. Every citizen should be bending over backwards to
| make sure our elections dont have sources of fraud.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| The biggest threat to democracy has occurred from people who
| espouse language just like this, in several recent instances:
| the insurrection attempt on January 6th, where conspirators
| attempted to use violence to overturn a free and fair election,
| in Michigan, where factions of that same ideology planned the
| kidnapping and public execution of democratically elected
| leaders, and spates of domestic terrorism across the United
| States, notably in California and Minneapolis, where far right
| paramilitary fighters firebombed police stations and executed
| federal officers.
|
| It's always concerning to see such hardline rhetoric being
| propagated without being disputed, especially as it just
| implicitly assumes that completely unfounded claims of fraud
| are being used to push extremist agendas which have been found
| in multiple jurisdictions to be little more than re-enactments
| of 1960's era disenfranchisement.
| jaywalk wrote:
| >factions of that same ideology planned the kidnapping and
| public execution of democratically elected leaders
|
| Are you talking about the plot the FBI cooked up against
| Whitmer? The one that's in the process of being laughed out
| of court?
|
| Your bias has completely blinded you to reality.
| andrew_ wrote:
| Sad to see this downvoted. Shows just how many have
| accepted the propaganda fed to them without doing any of
| their own diligence on the topic. This was an egregious
| abuse of power by federal law enforcement [1], regardless
| of the heinousness of the scheme.
|
| [1] https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2021/08/dark-
| shadow-...
| notacoward wrote:
| Also sad to see a defense attorney's unsubstantiated and
| self-serving claims presented as Absolute Truth.
| "Diligence" doesn't mean just cherry-picking whatever
| source or narrative suits you.
| andrew_ wrote:
| MLive is considered a relatively unbiased production. To
| call what they've presented as "narrative" reveals your
| own bias. Perhaps you'd prefer a source closer to your
| own proclivities [1] which states:
|
| > Last week, the lawyer for one defendant filed a motion
| that included texts from an FBI agent to a key informant,
| the Iraq War veteran, directing him to draw specific
| people into the conspiracy -- potential evidence of
| entrapment that he said the government "inadvertently
| disclosed." He is requesting all texts sent and received
| by that informant, and other attorneys are now
| considering motions that accuse the government of
| intentionally withholding evidence of entrapment.
|
| Here's a direct link to the motion [2]. If you'd like to
| count evidence presented to the court as
| "unsubstantiated" even with them in black and white
| (self-serving is moot, as each side of a prosecution is
| inherently self-serving), well then that's your
| prerogative - but it speaks to an inability to consider
| the possibility that your preconceived notions can be
| challenged.
|
| [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kenbensinger/mic
| higan-k... [2]
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21011397-caserta-
| mot...
| notacoward wrote:
| I'm familiar with MLive, but even good organizations are
| capable of making mistakes. As for "evidence presented to
| the court" that is _not_ what this is. It is a motion to
| compel discovery in hopes of _uncovering_ such evidence.
| Such motions can be quite legitimate and well founded,
| but they can also be desperate fishing expeditions.
| Either way, they are not evidence in and of themselves.
| For MLive to report these claims without highlighting the
| lack of support behind them is sloppy at best.
|
| Please stop misrepresenting the facts. The endless parade
| of _ad hominem_ attacks isn 't helpful either. Read the
| site guidelines before you decide to keep digging that
| hole.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| I'm not sure extremists are able to actually apply logic
| and understand that difference though - the kind of
| mindset that leads people to join paramilitaries that
| commit terrorism and murder police isn't especially
| vulnerable to reason. The lawyers that they follow (Lin
| Manuel, and the other Kraken lawyer) are currently being
| sanctioned for this exact same pattern of dishonesty, and
| know that their followers will accept their words
| unquestioningly, regardless of reality.
|
| You can see it in their reply to you: they skip over the
| argument to focus in on the part they think will
| discredit you. The fact that he thinks he's successfully
| categorized you as "antifa" means that they can safely
| dismiss your idea. Your argument didn't reference MLive
| at all, but they needed to fixate in that part as the
| logic in your answer wasn't debatable.
|
| You're not going to reason with them, for the simple fact
| that reason has nothing to do with this. They'll just
| cherry pick one part of your argument and throw in more
| unsubstantiated allegations and then use the fact you
| want proof as more evidence that you're against them.
| ModernMech wrote:
| The disgraced lawyer is Lin Wood. Lin Manuel Miranda is
| the guy who did Hamilton. The name of the other "Kraken"
| lawyer you're thinking of is Sydney Powell.
| andrew_ wrote:
| > The endless parade of ad hominem attacks isn't helpful
| either. Read the site guidelines before you decide to
| keep digging that hole.
|
| My mistake was assuming good faith and a reasonable
| disposition, and not looking into your activity before
| replying. Your bio and spate of recent replies make it
| clear that any conversation in good faith is impossible.
| Citing the site guidelines is a convenient and lazy
| escape hatch draped in irony as you seem to flaunt them
| at will. Rest assured, we'll have no further interaction.
| pyronik19 wrote:
| If you think the last election was above board I have a
| bridge to sell you.
| stonogo wrote:
| Nobody wants to buy a bridge, we want you to provide
| evidence for your assertions.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| The people prone to this thinking aren't really able to
| objectively evaluate evidence, the idea is that it's
| plainly true and you need to accept it as well. The
| evidence they usually provide assumes that you will also
| accept unfounded, baseless allegations as factually true
| and proven, and when you point out the logical
| inconsistencies they'll just swap that out with another
| bad argument. It's not really useful to attempt to
| rationally engage with them, they didn't rationally come
| to their conclusions.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Why did the Arizona audit, operated by right-aligned
| organizations, find more votes for Biden?
| philjohn wrote:
| Need a citation on that.
|
| UK has universal mail-in-voting for any reason.
|
| Some US states also have universal mail-in-voting, and have
| done for some time.
|
| The counterpoint to "make sure elections don't have sources of
| fraud" is that you need to strike a balance - the right to vote
| is sacrosanct (and in some cases was hard won) so any laws that
| pretend to be about election integrity, but are in fact a way
| to suppress voting in certain demographics are arguably more
| dangerous than the exceedingly low levels of fraud that
| elections have.
| cmh89 wrote:
| My state in the US (Oregon) has had universal mail-in voting
| for two decades and we don't have any voter fraud to speak
| of.
|
| There isn't really a debate here. Anyone complaining about
| voter fraud is uninformed or purposefully making a bad faith
| argument in order to justify voter disenfranchisement.
| whatthesmack wrote:
| > we don't have any voter fraud to speak of
|
| You probably mean you're not aware of any voter fraud.
|
| The whole objective of fraud is to have it not be
| discovered, so it's possible fraud has in fact been
| occurring and it has not yet been discovered (and/or nobody
| in a position to do so is interested in discovering it).
| philjohn wrote:
| To sway an election, even a close one (e.g. PA or GA in
| 2020) you'd still need tens of thousands of votes.
|
| The sheer scale of an operation to cast that many
| fraudulent ballots has such an infantessimally small
| chance of not being discovered (e.g. "Sir/Madam our
| records show you've already cast a ballot. You'll have to
| fill in this provisional one and come in with ID to
| verify")
| thehappypm wrote:
| I'm curious, what does mail-in voter fraud look like?
| When I voted by mail in 2020, I had to register to vote
| just like in person, then they mailed a gigantic ballot
| to my address (which again validated that I actually
| lived in the state). I signed a scary thing on the ballot
| saying it was me. I put it in a mail box. It was then
| processed by a vote counting center. It's not like there
| are easy ways to game this system, you'd need to produce
| fake ballots, fake people with real addresses, or cheat
| the vote counts when the tallies are reported (which can
| be done through non mail in ballots as well).
|
| I hear this "mail in vote fraud" line all the time but I
| think what it really is, is that making it more
| convenient to securely vote means that people who might
| not have been able to vote before get to, and that scares
| people who like that it's hard to vote.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > The whole objective of fraud is to have it not be
| discovered,
|
| I don't think so. The objective of fraud is to
| misrepresent. Finding out about it is incidental to that
| objective. Although not all fraud relates to identity,
| it's obvious that fraud is used to leverage all sorts of
| slippery side effects that often benefit an individual -
| eg https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-59069662
| Frondo wrote:
| In a 2016 audit by the then-Republican Secretary of State
| Dennis Richardson, 54 potential cases of voter fraud were
| found, out of more than 2 million votes cast.
|
| > Richardson said the suspicious ballots broke down into
| several categories: 46 voters appeared to vote in Oregon
| and another state; six individuals listed as deceased
| voted; and two voters registered in Oregon voted twice.
|
| From: https://www.opb.org/news/article/voter-fraud-
| oregon-secretar...
|
| If you have better _evidence_ , not conjecture, please
| say so.
| cmh89 wrote:
| No, I mean our Secretary of State audits the election
| every time we have one and rarely to never finds
| fraudulent votes.
|
| Voter fraud is high-risk, low-reward behavior in a
| developed nation-state.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Your premise that mail-in ballots were a source of significant
| fraud has been proven false.
|
| Edit: Election integrity is important. So is access to voting.
| It seems completely obvious to me (and millions of others, it
| seems) that the so-called election integrity measures taken by
| places like Florida and Texas are blatant attempts to restrict
| access to legitimate voting for the kinds of people that tend
| to vote Democrat.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| its a fraud if we dont for for the orange israelite Drumph
| productivepizza wrote:
| Can you provide links with information on countries that have
| discovered election fraud and banned mail-in voting? I could
| not find anything with a quick google search.
| aigo wrote:
| In the UK we did discover some postal voting fraud in a 2014
| local election in an area of London called Tower Hamlets. We
| did not ban postal voting as a result.
|
| We have, however, imported a voter ID law from the US which
| was recently passed by the Johnson government, despite no
| voter impersonation occurring in Tower Hamlets (or anywhere
| else really). Previously, no ID was required.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I think the majority of "postal voting fraud" in the UK
| consists of very patriarchal families in which the father
| directs family members as to how to vote, and submits the
| votes himself. Arguably, this isn't much different from
| persuading people to change their voting intentions, which
| is entirely legitimate. Postal voting used to be restricted
| to people who could show that they were unable to vote in-
| person, e.g. because they were in the armed services.
|
| I disapprove strongly of that patriarchal practice; but (1)
| I doubt it has much effect on outcomes, (2) mandatory in-
| person voting wouldn't prevent it (the patriarch can still
| instruct his family members).
|
| I also disapprove of early voting. I believe that to cast a
| vote legitimately, you have to pay some attention to the
| hustings and the arguments. That is not a barricade I will
| die defending, though - the tide is against me.
|
| AFAIAA, the UK has _not_ imported a voter ID law from the
| US. There was a trial at the last election, in a handful of
| constituencies, and there is mandatory photographic ID for
| voting in Northern Ireland. A voter ID law was proposed in
| the Queen 's Speech, but no legislation has been tabled or
| debated.
|
| For the most part, voters receive a poll card in the post,
| which they don't have to produce at the polling station.
| You can just turn up, state your name and address, and cast
| a ballot. Your name is then crossed-out in the voter
| register, so that the same name-and-address can't vote more
| than once.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Are they still prosecuting "undue spiritual influence"
| cases in the UK?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Wut? Wow -
|
| https://lawandreligionuk.com/2016/08/30/undue-spiritual-
| infl...
|
| I thought you were going on about voting while under the
| influence of spirits.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Many other countries have mandatory IDs anyways, so in
| these cases ID presentation isn't problematic. The issue
| with ID verification is when only people with eg. a
| driver's license have IDs.
| useragent86 wrote:
| Ah, so that's how to farm karma on a brand-new account:
|
| 1. Find a comment that's been so heavily downvoted that it's
| nearly invisible.
|
| 2. Make a new account.
|
| 3. Post an ostensibly reasonable comment simply asking for
| links to substantiate the obviously unpopular opinion.
|
| 4. Collect upvotes from all the accounts that downvoted the
| parent.
|
| As of now, the new account has 12 karma from posting only
| that. It's like some kind of reverse brigading. "Productive"
| indeed!
| freshpots wrote:
| Not discovered fraud. Fears of frauds, stoked by some with
| nefarious intentions. Why are you making factually incorrect
| claims?
|
| A number of countries, with competent government leaders and
| institutions, use it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting
| orangepurple wrote:
| There is basically zero public evidence of election fraud in
| the US. It's irrelevant. What matters is the people who are in
| charge of developing, handling, and operating the voting
| machines and systems. There is zero public information about
| the chain of custody and potential vulnerabilities in the
| chain. This should be vastly more concerning.
| duxup wrote:
| The GOPs tactics seem increasingly like something you would see
| from a "banana republic"...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| both parties do this -- specifically, the one and only green
| party assembly member in California 1990s was doxxed and
| infiltrated, while getting congratulatory letters from GOP
| reps.
| duxup wrote:
| I don't see anything to make me think wholesale laws like
| this are the least bit comparable to whatever event your
| talking about.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| > both parties do this
|
| > best example is a significantly different event from 30
| years ago
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| The criticism is "this is a bad thing the current Republican
| Party is doing right now in a widespread fashion"; "there are
| past examples of the Democrats doing this" is not a defense.
| If it's a bad thing that we should try to stop _any_ party
| from doing, then _right now_ that means trying to stop the
| Republicans from doing it.
|
| The bad thing we are talking about right now is the
| Republican Party trying to engineer a de facto one-party
| state through gerrymandering, court stacking, and just taking
| advantage of the ever-increasing "handicap" both the
| Electoral College and the two-Senators-per-state
| apportionment give Republicans due to the rural vs. urban
| alignment between the two parties. The argument "yes, but the
| Democrats would do the same thing if they were in the
| position to" may be true, but it's not a reason not to do
| something about the Republicans actually doing it right now.
| useragent86 wrote:
| So the Democratic Party controls both houses of Congress
| and the White House, and they're trying to pass bills to
| give the Attorney General control over all federal
| elections in the country, but you say that it's "the
| Republican Party trying to engineer a de facto one-party
| state."
| rmah wrote:
| He meant Florida, not the USA.
| larkost wrote:
| The big difference is that the Democratic bills all are
| focused on making sure that more eligible voters can and
| will get out to vote. They are not picking out groups and
| trying to discourage those from voting, which many of the
| Republican attempts at the state level are pretty nakedly
| doing (e.g.: limiting things that are only done in urban
| areas, killing Sunday voting because "souls to the polls"
| drives were so successful in areas that voted Democratic,
| etc).
|
| So, yes. It is very much not the same thing. The
| Republican efforts behind a "voting security" banner,
| when Republicans in charge of the 2020 vote called it
| "the most secure ever", is nakedly trying to
| disenfranchise the vote to tip power in their favor
| despite the majority of eligible voters going the other
| way.
| chmod600 wrote:
| If schools have become as much political institutions as
| educational institutions -- and there's little doubt about that
| -- why do they get public money at all?
|
| The real conflict of interest here is politicians spending your
| money for their political goals.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > why do they get public money at all?
|
| Because we still believe there to be a societal benefit to an
| educated populace.
| educaysean wrote:
| Don't speak for the rest of us please. I personally believe
| there to be a massive societal disadvantage to the existence
| of "educational institutions" with hidden political agendas.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Then why do you feel qualified to speak for me?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You can believe anything you like, and it's a little silly
| to read "we" in my comment as "without even a single
| individual exception".
|
| We, _society_ , currently elect representatives who see fit
| to continue funding a public educational system of schools
| and universities, which can be inferred to be a general
| acceptance of their value.
| educaysean wrote:
| And we, the society, are outraged at the blatant abuse of
| power we are witnessing in this article. We are shocked
| by how our current system may have critical
| vulnerabilities that compromise it's ability to deliver
| the education it promised, and are ready to discuss which
| aspect of the status quo may need to be improved upon.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| All that may be true; we'll have to see if society kicks
| up enough of a fuss. I hope it does in this case.
|
| I'm not sure how you get from "this university did a bad
| thing" to "we should get rid of public universities",
| though.
| supperburg wrote:
| Pick a random 18 year old and see if they can point to the
| country of Argentina on a map. The populace can read but not
| much else.
| munificent wrote:
| ...and before widespread public education, many of them
| couldn't even read.
| supperburg wrote:
| Between then and now they were educated well and the
| United States was the best in the world in education. You
| fool.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Speaking as a person confident that I could point out
| Argentina on a map, why is geographic trivia a very
| important topic? I'd rather have a population with a good
| understanding of means and medians, thermodynamics, and the
| relationship between rates and accumulations, than one that
| can readily tell me the year that William the Conqueror
| invaded England.
| supperburg wrote:
| I agree but the point is that knowledge of the countries
| of the world is the most basic sign of education besides
| reading. The average 18 year old knows even less about
| science than geography. But geography is important
| because not knowing it is extremely embarrassing.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Knowledge about other countries is useful, geography less
| so. It would be just as embarrassing to have a
| conversation with an Argentinian and say "so what's it
| like living near Chile?"
| xenophonf wrote:
| Because literacy and numeracy are necessary but not
| sufficient for an educated polity. A good understanding
| of society, of history, of philosophy, and more all
| factor in. As do good critical thinking skills.
| willis936 wrote:
| More than that: the market doesn't see past quarterly
| earnings. Private industry spends a lot on R&D but next to
| nothing on basic research [0]. Dollar for dollar, academic
| research that is not beholden to shareholder value theory
| produces science that is more useful for society.
|
| 0. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20201/u-s-r-d-performance-
| and-...
| dahfizz wrote:
| > If schools have become as much political institutions as
| educational institutions -- and there's little doubt about that
| -- why do they get public money at all?
|
| I think you've answered your own question. Why wouldn't the
| politicians in charge want to fund (and control) such a
| powerful political institution as education?
| orangepurple wrote:
| The short answer is that the University of Florida, and
| American Universities in general, are not accountable to YOU OR
| ME, but rather a handful of bureaucrats in the federal
| government, and in this case specifically the NIH, which air
| drops the most cash on the institution.
|
| Funding for NIH comes primarily from annual Labor, HHS, and
| Education (LHHS) Appropriations Acts, with an additional
| smaller amount for the Superfund Research Program from the
| Interior/Environment Appropriations Act.6 Those two bills
| provide NIH discretionary budget authority.
|
| The NIH then presumably has the US Federal Reserve
| electronically wire it a few billion $ from an internal account
| they electronically added a few zeros to beforehand.
|
| > UF received about $602 million in research funding from the
| federal government, including a record $250 million from the
| National Institutes of Health, the university's largest
| research funding source.
|
| https://news.ufl.edu/2021/08/research-awards-/
| jonathanwallace wrote:
| The second half of this claim is a demonstrably weak
| generalization as to the source of power.
|
| The counter example is Georgia, where the Board of Regents is
| beholden to the politics of the Governor. See recently the
| fiasco with the pandemic i.e., mandated vaccines and mandated
| masks.
|
| Proof? The companies run by the members of the Board of
| Regents implemented different policies than the members
| themselves voted for the universities in the state of
| Georgia.
| Frondo wrote:
| I would have said that public universities in the US are
| accountable to their boards of regents far moreso than the
| sinister "bureaucrats in the federal government."
|
| I didn't think much about this until the recent news that the
| University System of Georgia was effectively ending tenure
| for its professors, and the drivers of that policy were the
| USG Board of Regents.
|
| > To many professors, the most alarming proposal is that a
| faculty member may not only be separated from the university
| for clear cause, but also reasons "other than for cause,"
| pursuant to other board policies. "Such other policies shall
| not be governed by or subject to the following policies on
| Grounds for Removal and Procedures for Dismissal," the
| proposed change also says.
|
| From: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/10/04/tenure-
| under-...
|
| So I looked up the USG Board of Regents:
| https://www.usg.edu/regents/members
|
| And it turns out that most of them are CEOs or work in
| finance -- the people who represent "capital" more than any
| others I can think of. For these people to decide that it
| should be easier to fire "tenured" professors makes sense to
| me, in that these are the people who would benefit most from
| being able to silence, for example, expert witnesses, far
| more than federal bureaucrats meddling in academic freedom.
| duxup wrote:
| Are they really accountable to those folks in the sense that
| they're running the universities / telling people they can't
| testify like this law?
|
| I think there is a big difference.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If schools have become as much political institutions as
| educational institutions -- and there's little doubt about that
| -- why do they get public money at all?
|
| Things get public money because they are political; that is,
| connected to an agenda some group thinks is important for
| public governance.
|
| Why else would government fund a thing?
| atlgator wrote:
| I assume UF has a conflict of interest office for this reason and
| I can see UF's argument whether I agree with the outcome or not.
| So I would ask why these 3 professors? Are there not private
| Florida institutions (e.g. UMiami) or universities in other
| states that have voting rights experts?
| elliekelly wrote:
| I have a colleague who does environmental litigation. (Think Erin
| Brockovich.) They have a big civil case against a large energy
| company in a southern, "energy-friendly" state. They had an
| expert witness all lined up - a professor at the (public!) state
| university. Well this expert happened to be up for tenure and was
| (allegedly) told in no uncertain terms that, should they testify
| as an expert witness in this case, tenure was off the table.
|
| It's absolutely outrageous that we allow those in positions of
| power to manipulate the justice system in such a way.
| ianai wrote:
| Agree. With all the anti-democratic practices being rolled out
| across the states it's pretty scary to imagine things even a
| year from now and a long time forward. Life threats against
| election officials and all the way up to Senators.
| Gerrymandering. Even the SCOTUS is biased. Seems civics in the
| US are about to be rigged for one party rule.
| clairity wrote:
| we've been oligarchic since at least the 90s, so it doesn't
| really matter that there are two major parties. in fact,
| having two parties has been an effective shield against
| criticism and activism, keeping us distracted (see every
| comment on hn and beyond that mentions democrat/republican,
| liberal/conservative, etc.) from the real roots of our
| growing inequality and stagnation. consolidation of power,
| wealth and influence is _the enemy of the people_ , as it's
| been for all of human history. we keep failing at
| understanding this throughout that history to our continued
| collective misery.
|
| we need to (continue to) decentralize governments and
| markets. we now have the technological means, so it's largely
| a matter of popular will at this point.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Which party? Presumably the one that has control of the
| House, Senate, and Oval Office?
| tibbetts wrote:
| No, the one clinging to power despite support from a
| shrinking minority of the electorate.
| themitigating wrote:
| He's talking about states
| alistairSH wrote:
| GOP has the majority of state governors. GOP has the
| majority of state legislatures.
|
| Both of the above are currently drawing Congressional
| districts based on the latest census data.
|
| Both of the above are currently rolling out voting rules
| that are nominally about preventing fraud (of which there
| is zero evidence of anything widespread) but will impact
| the ability of people to vote.
| briffle wrote:
| Oregon just got a new House Rep member, and if you look
| at the new maps it has created, its pretty obvious this
| isn't a one party problem.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Gerrrymandering indeed has a long history, and it's a bit
| like nukes - if the other side is already using them,
| it's hard to hold off on your side.
|
| In 2018, North Carolina saw 50% of the vote go to
| Republicans, but they received 77% of the Congressional
| seats. A couple rounds of that is a recipe for a
| permanent minority for the other party.
| justaman wrote:
| Should the region/counties that have a smaller population
| but different work forces or geographical makeup not have
| representation? Population alone cannot dictate the house
| of representatives.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| That is what the Senate is for. A minority party should
| never get control of all three branches of government
| with only 46% of the popular vote. Control of one branch
| of government is sufficient to exert influence on the
| legislative process. In our current setup, the minority
| party has zero reason to appeal to the median voter. This
| results in increasing polarization as the two parties are
| no longer competing against each other for voters, but
| instead are trying to drive turnout.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Why should empty land get a vote? Why should the majority
| of the populace be beholden to an even-dwindling
| minority?
| scelerat wrote:
| But that is how the House is explicitly defined in the US
| constitution: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be
| apportioned among the several States which may be
| included within this Union, according to their respective
| Numbers..."
|
| Part of the problem is that the number of Representatives
| in the house has been fixed at 435 since the Permanent
| Apportionment Act of 1929. There would be no
| "small/rural/unique regions aren't represented without
| drawing crazy district lines" argument if the number of
| people represented per US Rep were lower.
|
| And, as we see now, the lines of districts are simply not
| drawn according to regional peculiar needs. They are
| drawn by party affiliation, by the parties themselves.
| Which is insane.
| angelzen wrote:
| The ability of the partisan brain to consistently be
| outraged by the perceived foul play of the other side,
| while never bothering to check how one's own side is
| measuring up, is a fascinating phenomenon.
|
| This is really easy to sanity check. For example CA, the
| best known blue state in the nation. 2020 elections, 79%
| of the Congressional delegation is D, while only (edit)
| 66% of the popular vote went for (edit) Ds.
|
| But, but, but, the other guys are even worse than us. We
| won't stand for truth, fairness or justice, obviously the
| correct course of action is to out-foul them whenever we
| can. And then we wonder why the country is on the brink
| of an ugly divorce.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| First of all, your numbers are wrong[1]. And second,
| thanks to Trump, R's lost a lot of seats in CA by close
| margins. Before Trump, the CA delegation was more
| balanced. It should also be said that CA Democrats are a
| super majority. Once you get into super majority
| territory, it would essentially require a reverse
| gerrymander to protect minority seats.
|
| CA uses a nonpartisan process to create their
| congressional maps. If and when the Republicans manage to
| claw their way out of super minority status, I fully
| expect that the congressional delegation will return to a
| more balanced state.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_House_of
| _Re...
| angelzen wrote:
| Thanks for the link. The congress vote went 66-34. The
| congressional delegation, 79-21. There is a noticeable
| gap there, any plan to fix it?
| ska wrote:
| > There is a noticeable gap there, any plan to fix it?
|
| A gap doesn't necessarily mean there is a problem, unless
| you believe that proportional representation is important
| enough to do away with seats having a regional tie
| completely.
|
| If you don't want to go all that way,
| algorithmic/automatic redistricting goes a long way to
| address issues.
|
| [edit since I was obviously not very clear. I'm not
| suggesting you do actually want to get rid of all
| districts, just making the point that by nature regional
| representation and proportional representation are in
| conflict in pretty fundamental ways. You can hack around
| it with ideas like floating representatives, super-
| regions, etc. but you can't really solve it.
| Gerrymandering, otoh, is an issue in its own right.
|
| I probably should have said "not a problem, or at least
| not a problem addressable at this level of the system"]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > A gap doesn't necessarily mean there is a problem
|
| Yes, it does.
|
| > unless you believe that proportional representation is
| important enough to do away with seats having a regional
| tie completely.
|
| Two problems here:
|
| (1) it prevents a false dichotomy that the only way to
| address the gap is erasing regional ties completely, and
|
| (2) it confuses the question of "does a problem exist?"
| with the question of "is there a means of fixing the
| problem that doesn't have it's own, equally or more
| significant problems?"
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Yes, it does.
|
| For a concrete scenario: a 50/50 split state with three
| Congressional seats. One party will likely get one seat,
| the other two. Potentially by tiny margins.
|
| There will be a major gap in representation, even with
| perfectly fairly drawn districts.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Heck, even with three seats with PR you get that result;
| that's a proportionality problem from limited
| granularity.
|
| This is also why strong, independent, unitary executive
| systems are themselves an _additional_ proportionality
| problem on top of any that exist in the legislative
| branch, as a one-member body is the extreme limit case of
| granularity-limited proportionality.
|
| Of course, granularity-limited proportionality in a
| representative body has a fairly obvious trivial approach
| for mitigation to any arbitrary extent desired, so
| proportionality gaps from this source are neither non-
| problems or problems without corrections available.
| joveian wrote:
| Proportional representation does not necessarily (or even
| usually) completely do away with seats having a regional
| tie, although it does increase the size of the region.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| I don't think anyone on either side really thinks this is
| a problem. Look at Utah for a counter example, 75% of
| delegates with 60% of the congressional vote.
|
| No one on the left is complaining about Utah. When
| elections are winner take all, big majorities result in
| oversized representation. And there are still ways for
| minority party voters to exert influence in these states.
| For example, they can vote for the more moderate
| candidate in the other parties primary. The problem is
| when a state is voting closer to 50-50 like Wisconsin.
| The Republicans hold a near super majority in the state
| legislature despite receiving fewer total votes. And
| because the legislature controls redistricting,
| Republicans can essentially maintain permanent control of
| the legislature. That is not healthy for Democracy.
|
| But if you really wanted to fix the CA delegation
| representation, I would fully support moving to a system
| where the congressional delegation is determined by
| statewide popular vote. But that introduces a whole set
| of issues. For example that means folks would vote for
| the party instead of candidate, which means we could see
| further entrenchment of party insiders. The flip side is
| it would probably make it easier for third parties to get
| representation in congress. I think this generally would
| be a hard sell in the US though. I think both core left
| and core right are too distrustful of their respective
| party bosses to trust the selection process, and we are a
| very diverse country, geographically and culturally. So
| having local representation is meaningful (for example,
| neither AOC or Taylor Greene would survive a process like
| this, but both of them have very passionate followers
| that deserve some representation in congress).
| joveian wrote:
| The plan to fix it would be proportional representation
| (independent redistricting is also a good plan for most
| states but California already has that). It seems to be
| getting a bit more attention recently but nowhere near a
| major push for it that I've seen, even here in Oregon
| where unaffiliated voters outnumber Republicans and are
| getting closer to outnumbering Democrats as well. I think
| we have a decent chance of getting independent
| redistricting in the next few years and hopefully the
| state supreme court will improve the districting passed
| by the legislature.
|
| Edit: We also don't have the top two system that
| California and Washington have and that high number of
| unaffiliated voters is even under a closed primary
| system.
|
| Edit2: Unaffiliated voters in Oregon do include most non-
| voters, unlike some states.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Gerrymandering and disproportionality are separate
| issues: the former implies the latter, but the First Past
| The Post voting system (where the winner is the person
| with the plurality of votes in a given district,
| irrespective of magnitude) tends to generate the latter
| even if apportionment is fair.
|
| Example: the United Kingdom. We have independent
| redistricting, and the Boundary Commission are genuinely
| not in anyone's pocket. The criteria are debatable in
| some areas, but gerrymandering is essentially absent. And
| yet, if you look at the most recent general election, the
| SNP won the overwhelming majority of the seats in
| Scotland with only 45% of the vote! [0]
|
| Now that's partly because there are four effective
| parties in Scotland, but they would have done very nearly
| that well against any single opposition party. FPTP
| magnifies the seats for the more popular party.
|
| Bluntly, if the votes are distributed completely evenly,
| 51% of the votes _gets you 100% of the seats_. See the
| Eisenhower /Stevenson presidential election in 1956:
| Eisenhower got 86% of the electoral college votes for
| only 57% of the popular vote, because he was (a bit) more
| popular nearly everywhere.
|
| There are systems which aim to have seats and votes be
| proportional: they're very popular in democracies beyond
| Great Britain's former colonies. So the gap you mention
| is, in principle, fixable. But it's not in either party's
| interests to do so, so it's likely to persist.
|
| [0]: https://i0.wp.com/ballotbox.scot/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/12/...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing.
|
| That said, 50-77 versus 63-79 seems like a different
| order of _magnitude_ worth of gerrymandering.
| alistairSH wrote:
| The 63-79 isn't apples to apples - it's comparing
| Congressional representation to Presidential votes.
|
| We should be comparing number of seats assigned to each
| party and % of vote cast for each party.
| angelzen wrote:
| I could not find the Congressional vote totals on the
| Wikipedia page. If you have a source with the
| Congressional vote totals, please share.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presiden
| tia...
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Congressional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_
| States_House_of_Re...
| angelzen wrote:
| Thanks for the link. The congress vote went 66-34. The
| congressional delegation, 79-21. There is a noticeable
| gap there.
|
| Perhaps this is a moment to step back, and at the very
| least analyze the full data set? How much being in charge
| of the State Legislature gives room for gerrymandering
| promoting candidates from the same party? Is it _really_
| a one side issue, or both parties engage in it with
| abandon whenever they get the chance?
|
| Well, that was a deeper foray in US politics than I ever
| wanted. Hastalavista!
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's quite clear that both sides of the aisle
| gerrymander. (I was in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_
| York%27s_28th_congressiona... when it existed; just look
| at that map!)
|
| The point is, barring consequences for doing it, or a
| Constitutional amendment banning it, once the other side
| is doing it, you're fighting with one hand tied behind
| your back if you don't reciprocate.
|
| It's bad, but it's largely unavoidable in the current
| legal setup.
| angelzen wrote:
| Order of magnitude means 10x. This is 27 vs 16, not even
| a binary order of magnitude :)
|
| I agree that gerrymandering is a major issue. I
| wholeheartedly disagree that it can be solved if framed
| through partisan lenses.
|
| Our brains crave to know who is on our side and equate
| that with the good guys. As long as we don't make an
| explicit effort to snap out of this very seductive mode
| of thinking, the future is tribal. Memorably, "why do you
| look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and
| pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"
| CalChris wrote:
| California, indeed no state, uses proportional
| representation. The last person to recommend looking at
| that was ... Lani Guinier. In fact, it's a good idea but
| it would mean that Wyoming wouldn't get two Senators for
| its population of 578,000. As a Californian, yeah,
| proportional representation is a good idea.
|
| California passed non-partisan redistricting back in
| 2005. This took re-drawing the districts out of the hands
| of the legislature. It was proposed by Arnold
| Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and passed as a ballot
| proposition by the electorate.
| scohesc wrote:
| This is what I don't understand. Why can't legislators be
| proactive when it comes to protecting voting rights? We
| don't need to see any evidence of fraud to ensure the
| safety of voting rights.
| CalChris wrote:
| No, the State of Florida isn't _protecting voting rights_
| , your words. It is attacking voting rights.
|
| For example, Florida passed Amendment 4 in 2018 which
| returned the voting rights of most felons after they'd
| served their sentences. This amendment
| restores the voting rights of Floridians with felony
| convictions after they complete all terms of their
| sentence including parole or probation. The amendment
| would not apply to those convicted of murder or sexual
| offenses, who would continue to be permanently barred
| from voting unless the Governor and Cabinet vote to
| restore their voting rights on a case by case basis.
|
| The state government wasn't _protecting voting rights_
| when it litigated the result. Indeed they are attacking
| the will of the citizens of Florida as expressed by their
| votes.
| xenophonf wrote:
| Because the "protections" end up disenfranchising voters,
| particularly people who vote for the opposite party.
| analog31 wrote:
| Gerrymandering erases any hope that they will take up a
| genuine interest in voting rights when they can just
| manipulate the entire system in their own favor.
| scohesc wrote:
| I never mentioned gerrymandering at all - not sure why
| it's being brought up...
| RickJWagner wrote:
| Conservative voter here.
|
| I'll gladly trade you the state-level advantages held by
| the GOP for the national media machine controlled by the
| Dems. I think the media is the most powerful over the
| long haul.
| larkost wrote:
| I know that a lot of conservative news outlets have been
| repeating this over and over, but the facts just simply
| don't support this statement.
|
| The largest TV news organization by viewership is Fox
| News, and has been for a long time. Fox News was founded
| to give conservative voices a bigger platform. So it was
| founded to be a right-leaning (biased) platform.
|
| But that does not make everything to the political left
| of Fox News left-leaning. And if you start to look at
| talk-radio listenership then the numbers lean hugely to
| the right, and often far to the right. The left-wing
| equivalents are tiny. People who lean to the left tend to
| gravitate towards centrist media like NPR News, the New
| York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
|
| Again, I know that those are often painted as being left-
| leaning in the conservative media, but they are starting
| to paint Fox News the same way, and their politics have
| been tending right for a decade now.
| OGWhales wrote:
| Conservatives have an extremely powerful media machine
| too. Some of the most viewed personas on TV and online
| are conservatives, with the same being true for radio.
| [deleted]
| bgorman wrote:
| Of course there is zero evidence of Voter fraud. States
| don't even check for dead voters or voters who moved out
| of state. Diebold designs black box systems that aren't
| audited by hackers.
|
| Saying there is no evidence of voter fraud is like
| refusing to get an MRI and saying there is no evidence of
| cancer.
| s5300 wrote:
| Not sure what you're talking about, there was definitely
| evidence of voter fraud.
|
| Not on a large scale, but still voter fraud.
|
| It just happened to be from the party that complains
| about voter fraud non-stop, ironically projection, and
| gets zero media coverage.
|
| In the event it does get media coverage, it's typically
| presented in skewed or twisted way.
|
| For example, an Arizona audit found 99 non-counted votes
| for the current president, and 261 falsified votes for
| the challenger.
|
| Instead of stating this outright, the number one cable
| news channel in the United States briefly mentioned it as
| "360 votes found for the current president" - no mention
| of the falsified votes of the loser.
|
| A bit dirty, dont you think?
|
| edit: revised numbers I'd incorrectly remembered
| bgorman wrote:
| Do you have any direct refutations to my allegations? Do
| you have proof states are auditing for dead voters for
| example? I am willing to change my opinion if there is
| evidence to suggest credible voter fraud audits happen,
| but so far I have not been able to find any.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Do you have proof states are auditing for dead voters
| for example?
|
| I mean, that's trivial.
|
| KY: https://www.wtvq.com/more-than-10000-dead-voters-
| removed-fro...
|
| NC: https://wlos.com/news/local/how-are-names-of-
| deceased-people...
|
| CA: https://www.ocvote.com/registration/keeping-your-
| registratio... (this one is particularly detailed on the
| methods used, including "The Registrar of Voters office
| checks the obituaries listed in the newspapers daily" and
| "a list of deceased voters provided by the California
| Secretary of State's office multiple times per year")
|
| FL: https://www.duvalelections.com/Voter-
| Information/Removal-of-...
|
| The Social Security Administration provides a list
| (https://www.ssa.gov/dataexchange/request_dmf.html), and
| states check against their own death certificates,
| bounced mail, and other methods.
|
| Sometimes people have trouble proving they're _still
| alive_ , even.
| https://www.texastribune.org/2012/09/12/concerns-raised-
| afte...
|
| People who try it tend to get caught, because it's harder
| than it seems to get away with:
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/republican-official-
| ohi...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-
| nation/wp/2016/10/2...
| bgorman wrote:
| As far as I can tell, none of those links provides
| evidence that the names of voters from ballots received
| is actually verified against death records. The links you
| sent seem to be around removing dead people from voter
| registration and instances of duplicate votes.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Ah, it's goalpost moves all the way down.
|
| The names of voters from ballots received are checked
| against the voter registration records. Which are checked
| against the death records.
|
| That there's an intermediate step doesn't mean it's not
| happening.
| s5300 wrote:
| Yeah, 15 seconds of the slightest search efforts can
| bring any of this up.
|
| I've found time and time again that anybody who believes
| there is or ever has been even the slightest issue with
| "dead voters" is somebody who simply can't be reasoned
| with, and engagement just isn't worth the effort.
|
| They're completely lost and engulfed in a sea of "their
| own research"
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The problem with all of this is that it's complicated,
| people misstate things, and everybody is eager to prove
| that "their side" is right.
|
| So then you get excessive claims like "no state purges
| voter rolls" which is just easily falsifiable, and then
| it gets falsified and leads one side to believe that to
| be the end of it.
|
| Whereas what really happens is that a state goes to purge
| its voter rolls, they have a list of 100,000 "dead
| people" and the list is erroneous and contains hundreds
| of live people, because government databases are full of
| dung. So then they get sued, often right before the
| election, to prevent any of the names from being purged,
| including any of the 99,000+ who were actually dead.
|
| Another thing that happens is that someone dies between
| the last purge and the election. Then either they
| submitted their ballot before they died (but were
| ineligible to vote because they weren't alive on election
| day), or they were sent a ballot after they died and a
| member of their family submitted it. So there are always
| a few dead people in every election who voted after they
| died, and some of these are actually fraud (in the second
| case), and others aren't "fraud" but they're still
| invalid votes that shouldn't be counted. Rarely if ever
| does this, alone, change the outcome; but the ballots are
| there.
|
| Which results in the over-claim on the other side. "There
| are zero dead people voting." Also easily falsifiable.
|
| Then each side gets to declare the other side wrong and
| biased and hidebound and irrational.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| You should look at Democratic states. Illinois looks
| quite gerrymandered as well. I think Maryland (maybe?)
| was quite bad as well. This is a bipartisan thing. It
| just so happens that Republicans have the majority of
| states.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| At a national level, Senate Democrats have been trying to
| pass laws that place general limits on the practice. It
| would be nice for "both sides" arguments if some version
| of this project enjoyed bipartisan support: unfortunately
| it does not.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I don't think the federal government has the authority to
| stop states from gerrymandering? Am I mistaken? It seems
| like the Democrats are just virtue signalling.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I think the "elections clause" (Article 1, Section 4,
| clause 1) gives Congress broad authority to override
| state laws regarding how its own representatives are
| elected. (Note: edited to simplify...)
|
| https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/sectio
| n-4...
| [deleted]
| Lendal wrote:
| You can be for reform while at the same time benefiting
| from the current system. If you don't have power, it
| doesn't matter what your opinions are. If the playing
| field isn't level, you still must either play on it or
| forfeit. If you decide to play, it doesn't mean you want
| the field to remain as it is.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| We already have one party rule by the super wealthy. The
| fights between Democrats and Republicans are just show
| business to distract from the real problems of the country.
| rayiner wrote:
| With due respect, the media has worked Democrats up into a
| froth over nothing. These "anti-democratic practices" are
| literally just a partial rollback of unprecedented COVID-
| related loosing of voting rules. E.g. the Florida law at
| issue here requires voter ID and guarantees a week of early
| voting: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facts-on-floridas-
| election-...
|
| Canada also requires voter ID, and Canadian federal elections
| feature four days of early voting: https://www.elections.ca/c
| ontent.aspx?section=vot&dir=vote&d...
|
| In many countries, like France, elections are still held
| (gasp!) entirely in person on election day.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Seems civics in the US are about to be rigged for one party
| rule.
|
| The good news is that it doesn't actually work that way.
| First past the post results in a two party system. Nobody can
| gerrymander that away.
|
| Drawing the lines different affects what party platforms need
| to be in order to get half of the seats, but there will still
| be two parties and they will still each control the
| government half of the time.
|
| Which isn't to say that it doesn't matter, but the thing it
| does is different than the thing you think it does. Even the
| party drawing the lines is reshaping what they'll need their
| own positions to be in order to win.
|
| If you _really_ want to fix it, replace first past the post
| with range voting. Good luck gerrymandering that. Might even
| solve polarization by getting rid of the poles.
| mcherm wrote:
| > First past the post results in a two party system. Nobody
| can gerrymander that away.
|
| Really?
|
| Consider the Democratic party lock on the US southern
| states for roughly 50 years after reconstruction.[1] A huge
| portion of the population wasn't permitted to vote (despite
| laws on the books being racially blind, most blacks were
| prevented from voting in many of these states up until the
| passage of the Voting Rights Act. And even among those who
| DID vote, a single party remained utterly dominant.
|
| Does this counterexample mean anything to you?
|
| (PS: I agree with you that I'm strongly in favor of changes
| to our voting system to move away from first-past-the-post
| and government gerrymandering. But I'm NOT going to claim
| that single party rule is impossible when there are
| hundreds of examples of it across the world.)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_South
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Consider the Democratic party lock on the US southern
| states for roughly 50 years after reconstruction.
|
| Yet each party still controlled the government around
| half of the time, because the Republicans took the North.
|
| Each party will change the amount necessary to flip the
| marginal district. The districts in the South were harder
| for Republicans to flip than some others, so they took
| ones it was easier for them to get, and didn't take the
| ones they didn't need.
|
| > But I'm NOT going to claim that single party rule is
| impossible when there are hundreds of examples of it
| across the world.
|
| The rest of the world uses different voting systems (or
| lack thereof). There was "single party rule" in the USSR
| and it wasn't because of gerrymandering.
| president wrote:
| Serious question, does anyone have any insight into how we
| got into this mess? It seems like the past few years has seen
| a whirlwind of anti-democratic rule at almost every level of
| government - state, local, and federal.
| clairity wrote:
| as hinted at in my sibling comment, there's a natural
| gradient toward the consolidation of power, propelled by
| individual actions to that end. we've reached a tipping
| point in the past 40-50 years where enough consolidation
| has happened that politicians no longer need to genuinely
| care about the populace at large, but rather only the
| plutocratic class.
| vkou wrote:
| Due to demographic shifts, much of the Republican party has
| discovered that it won't get what they want through
| democracy, so when pressed with the choice of weakening its
| power, and weakening democracy, it has taken the second
| one.
|
| In parallel, due to the difficulty of getting legislature
| through a 50/50 deadlocked congress, the power of the
| executive has grown to fill the gaps, so you get people on
| both sides grousing about executive overreach. If congress
| would do its job, that problem wouldn't be present.
| bsanr wrote:
| Any answer that doesn't include the phrase "Southern
| Strategy" is suspect. Not that that is the ultimate source
| of the issue; but that, from that era forward, there is an
| unbroken through-line of tone and tactic.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| IMHO, it's been an escalation of tit-for-tat from both
| sides of the aisle.
|
| News sources, 'Community organizers', corporate activists,
| religious leaders etc. have all been increasingly brazen as
| they take increasingly polarized positions to counter
| actions from the other side.
|
| What's missing is common decency and sympathy for the other
| person's point of view. We won't find it by clinging to our
| own political party or news sources. We're going to have to
| interact with real, actual people who are different than we
| are and learn to strike a balance between their needs and
| our own.
| rayiner wrote:
| Exactly. It's tit-for-tat. Moderate Democrats won't push
| back against the "community organizers" when they push
| highly questionable practices such as ballot harvesting
| or allowing ballots to be counted that arrive days after
| election day. Moderate Democrats also never pushed back
| on two decades of claims about election fraud and stolen
| elections from the likes of people like Terry McAuliffe
| and Stacey Abrams:
| https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/terry-mcauliffe-
| sprea...
|
| That, in turn, has destroyed trust. Now, moderate
| Republicans won't push back against Trump's outrageous
| claims of voter fraud and stolen elections. Nobody trusts
| each other to act in good faith and do the right thing.
| tptacek wrote:
| The last major story about ballot harvesting was a
| conviction for a Republican operative doing it in North
| Carolina.
| angelzen wrote:
| Great point. Mail-in voting is a disgraceful corruption
| of the voting process. You'd think that the elementary
| task of getting rid of it would be a shoe-in bipartisan
| issue. Not so fast, this is USA, the beacon of hope for
| democracy in the world. Or have we moved on to identity
| based rights instead? I'm losing track of the excuses.
|
| Tribal brain kicking in 5... 4... 3...
| mthoms wrote:
| Why is mail-in voting a "disgraceful corruption of the
| voting process?". Lots of people can't vote in person (eg
| military and others temporarily overseas).
|
| Note: I'm not American and have no stake in this. I've
| just never seen such a strong negative opinion about mail
| in voting in principle.
| angelzen wrote:
| I live in WA state. _All_ vote is mail-in. I can 't vote
| in-person even if I want to. This is not democracy. Some
| further thoughts:
|
| * I was raised in a country with a single party and 99%
| outcome elections. People, kids my age (at the time),
| sacrificed their lives for the right to vote. I don't
| take voting for granted, but I do take voting seriously.
|
| * The mail-in argument is predicated on the postmodern
| "the exception is the rule". I reject that on principle.
| A small minority has special needs, we can find many ways
| to accommodate that without disrupting the vast majority.
| And if we can't, too bad for the small minority.
|
| * The custody chain is fundamentally broken. The reason I
| marginally trust election results is because
| representatives of both parties keep a hawk eye on each
| other to prevent foul play. This can be done in at in-
| person polling locations for a day or two, but cannot
| logistically be done for weeks over the area of an entire
| state.
|
| * As a corollary, him who delivers the mail has weeks to
| either make certain votes appear from thin air, or
| disappear / delay blocks of votes from areas likely to
| vote against his party. Oops, we just printed 10k ballots
| too many...
|
| * The vote must be secret. Mail-in vote sits with your
| signature on it for weeks who knows where. In the era of
| cancel culture, possibly worse, the doxxing risk is non-
| negligible. Remember Brendan Eich?
|
| * There is no confirmation that the vote was filled by
| the person receiving the ballot. Perhaps their spouse /
| elder guardian / etc. filled it in for them?
|
| * Ballot harvesting, the process of pressuring people
| into voting by knocking on their door or downright
| bullying them into collecting the blank ballots. Done
| selectively in areas leaning towards your party it can
| easily turn an election. Note how both parties complain
| about this when they are at the receiving end of it.
| rayiner wrote:
| Great. We can get behind it being a bad thing, right?
| bsanr wrote:
| This is where truth and "truthiness" diverge, I suppose.
| "Two decades of claims about election fraud" shares
| character with "two decades of high rates of Stop-and-
| Frisk detainments of black New Yorkers." The rest of the
| world looks at the reasonable behavior of liberal
| election workers and would be reformers - no the
| "Moderate" Democrats, who as recently as last week were
| working to gerrymander _one of their own party members_
| out of office because they 're a progressive - and the
| way they're received by certain subsets of the
| electorate, and justifiably consider us insane.
| [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29071163]
|
| This statement
|
| >That, in turn, has destroyed trust.
|
| Is useful, though not in the way you probably think. The
| notion of "trust" in American politics is an important
| and powerful one, and the root of much of our history.
| Our basic structure as a federation is built on
| interstate trust. Our major flirtation with dissolution
| was not predicated on actual legislative action, but a
| lack of trust that certain actions wouldn't eventually be
| taken. So, trust is both a bedrock of our society and a
| curiously fragile thing.
|
| As far as that notion goes, an examination of our history
| can yield the following statements:
|
| That the Left has not always trusted the Right to make
| the "correct" decisions, but has always trusted them with
| the right to vote.
|
| and
|
| The Right has never trusted the Left with the right to
| vote.
| rayiner wrote:
| The rest of the world gets an extremely biased view of
| what's happening in America. They may view "liberal
| election workers and would be reformers" as the good guys
| based on that, but the best way to tell what they think
| is reasonable is _from the rules they impose on
| themselves._ French people might not like Georgia
| Republicans, but France banned mail in voting in the
| 1970s, while Georgia has extensive mail in voting.
| Germans might not like Georgia Republicans either, but
| residency registration there--which is required for
| voting--requires shlepping down to a citizens office in
| person with a bunch of paperwork. Meanwhile you can
| register to vote in Georgia completely online.
|
| You can see this for many other issues as well.
| International media portrays American Republicans as
| crazy religious fundamentalists. But Mississippi's
| 15-week abortion law is less restrictive than the laws in
| France or Germany. (In the latter country, abortion is
| technically still illegal under the basic law, though not
| punished.)
|
| I agree referencing international norms is a good way to
| sanity-check what's within bounds. But obviously the way
| to do that is to look at the actual rules in place in
| other liberal democracies, not how people in those
| countries _perceive_ Americans. On that front, the
| American left is outside the liberal democratic
| mainstream on many issues: voting, abortion, religious
| education, etc.
| xphilter wrote:
| What exactly is the problem with ballot harvesting if
| they're legitimate votes? Maybe the State shouldn't make
| it hard to vote. And your source is not exactly unbiased,
| stating without evidence that " Updating the voter rolls
| by removing dormant registrations does not
| "disenfranchise" voters; it is necessary in order to keep
| the rolls accurate and up to date, as many people move or
| die every year." How do they know that? Just a gut
| feeling? White conservatives have for centuries tried
| everything under the sun to stop Black people from
| voting, that's just one more try.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| Are you tracking what just happened in Wisconsin?
| random314 wrote:
| Ultimately, it is almost always the fault of Democrats-
| whether it is fake electoral fraud allegations,
| gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement. Stacey
| Abrams and fauci are the true villains here. /s
|
| Btw, electoral fraud via voter disenfranchisement is a
| well established reality. Voter disenfranchisement has
| been a Republican tactic for decades that Democrats are
| finally fighting against. Yes, this is fraud - which is
| why Republicans are now upset that their fraud is being
| shut down by Stacey Abrams. Georgia already proved this.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I think this is the normal evolution of political systems.
| Historically it needs something like war, revolution or a
| big crisis to break things up and start again.
| rayiner wrote:
| We got into this mess because the activist wing of the
| Democratic party doesn't know how to accept a win.
|
| For example, in 2019, Pennsylvania did a bi-partisan
| electoral reform allowing widespread mail-in voting:
| https://www.governor.pa.gov/newsroom/governor-wolf-signs-
| ele...
|
| What did Democratic activists do then? They sued to gut
| every compromise in that bi-partisan bill, including
| provisions that are common in mail-in voting systems all
| around the world, like requiring ballots to arrive by
| election day.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think I understand how delivered-by could
| possibly be a better standard than postmarked-by. Once
| postmarked, delivery is out of the hands of the voter
| (and, in fact, there are some really fucked up incentives
| for the party that controls postal delivery).
|
| The postmarked-by standard didn't meaningfully delay the
| Pennsylvania count (the drastic shift from in-person to
| mail-in ballots sure did, but the ballots that decided
| the election on D+4 weren't late-to-arrive so much as
| they were late-to-count).
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I don't think I understand how delivered-by could
| possibly be a better standard than postmarked-by.
|
| The purpose of delivered-by is obviously to allow for the
| election results to be known on election day (or as soon
| thereafter as possible).
|
| A sensible alternative would be to use postmarked-by, but
| make the postmarked-by date sufficiently in advance of
| "election day" to allow for the ballots to have been
| delivered by then. In practice this is the same result
| while addressing your concern for intentional postal
| system delays, since now intentional delays wouldn't
| change the result so there would be no incentive to do
| it. (And a large number of ballets mailed well in advance
| of election day but delivered after would then be highly
| suspicious, as it ought to be.)
|
| > The postmarked-by standard didn't meaningfully delay
| the Pennsylvania count (the drastic shift from in-person
| to mail-in ballots sure did, but the ballots that decided
| the election on D+4 weren't late-to-arrive so much as
| they were late-to-count).
|
| A delay that was overwhelmed by a different delay in a
| specific election doesn't mean it isn't a delay.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Well, to begin with, the the United States has never been
| completely democratic even at the best of times. If you run
| the clock back 50 years+ full rights were denied to many
| minorities. This was not microaggressions. It was full out
| refusal to treat people equally based on race.
|
| For example, my first grade class in Alexandria, Virginia
| was in a segregated school. It was appropriately named
| Robert E Lee Elementary. Alexandria desegregated in 1966
| and I went to school two blocks down the street instead of
| across town.
|
| For more on how uneven progress in rights has been I highly
| recommend "The Republic for Which It Stands - The United
| States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896"
| by Richard White. [0] It's a weighty tome but helped me see
| through a lot of the myth-making about American Democracy.
| Also, at least some of the issues dividing the nation seem
| like replays of disagreements that were never resolved
| after the Civil War.
|
| [0] https://history.stanford.edu/publications/republic-
| which-it-...
| ModernMech wrote:
| As a professor, I think the actions of The University of
| Florida are abhorrent. I would never want to work in an
| environment that kowtows to politics. There are enough
| political considerations _within_ a University, but having to
| deal with state politics as well? Count me out.
|
| At the same time, he doesn't have tenure? So they are actually
| fully within their rights to do this, and really no one should
| be surprised.
|
| But here is my question: the prosecutors couldn't find any
| tenured professors to help them in their lawsuit? Because the
| University can't say anything to them about it; a tenured
| (full, not typically associate) professor has the right to use
| the name of their institution without their permission. It
| seems to me to be an expert witness, one would desire the use
| of the UoF credentials.
| rayiner wrote:
| Are you kidding? Universities have been kowtowing to politics
| for decades now. The latest example:
| https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/mit-disinvites-a-climate-
| sci.... Conservatives finally just woke up about it.
| mthoms wrote:
| Your example, valid as it is, applies to events happening
| on-campus, not off. It doesn't seem comparable to this
| situation.
| jrm4 wrote:
| They are fully within their rights to do this AND LITERALLY
| EVERYONE SHOULD BE VERY SURPRISED.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| And there's no shortage of tenured professors who resent
| their employer but stick around because tenure.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "So they are actually fully within their rights to do this"
|
| Its not an offense again thr proffesor, it's an offense
| against the jistice system. Naivly, I hoped that doing
| something like this would have serious consequences.
| klyrs wrote:
| > So they are actually fully within their rights to do this,
| and really no one should be surprised.
|
| They have the power, nobody should be _surprised_ that they
| flex it. Maybe. Do you feel that it 's always _ethical_ to
| perform every action that is within your legal rights? Is the
| legal system devoid of examples, where an act was legal until
| it was exercised in excess, and found to be unethical?
| "Surprised" doesn't describe my response to this abuse of
| power. That would be "outrage".
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Justice Scalia used to argue that torture didn't meet the
| 8th ammendment cruel or unusual punishmenents clause
| because it wasn't punishment. It was an interrogation
| technique and they hadn't been convicted.
|
| We don't have court rulings on "enhanced" interrogation
| techniques so they can just be rolled out whenever someone
| thinks they can get away with it.
| driverdan wrote:
| > So they are actually fully within their rights to do this,
| and really no one should be surprised.
|
| If it's a public institution the 1st amendment applies.
| Public institutions should not be applying any limits to
| employee speech.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Hope the ACLU gets involved.
| nradov wrote:
| This is a civil case. There are no prosecutors.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| Good argument FOR the existence of tenure, if nothing else.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Which calls into question the perception of authority and
| freedom from bias that academia tends to have.
|
| We should all be a little more skeptical. Nobody should be
| above scrutiny based on their job title or profession, their
| prior work, or anything else.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| I'm curious as how this relates to the topic at hand.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| How the trustworthiness of academics being affected by
| academic institutions pressuring them, relates to examples
| of universities forbidding and threatening their academics
| not to speak freely about inconvenient topics?
|
| I'm not really sure how to explain it better. Is there
| something particular aspect of what I wrote that was
| confusing or poorly worded?
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Because the issue is that the state is forbidding
| academics from speaking at trials, and you are roping in
| right-wing disdain for academia under the guise of
| "bias".
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > Because the issue is that the state is forbidding
| academics from speaking at trials,
|
| I don't see how you can't fathom how they are related.
|
| > and you are roping in right-wing disdain for academia
| under the guise of "bias".
|
| I'm making a simple observation about reality, motives,
| cause and effect. If you think that is some right-wing
| conspiracy theory or something that's your problem, not
| mine. It seems you are incapable of addressing what I
| wrote without resorting to ad hominmens.
| kodah wrote:
| I'm not surprised. Our schools have become increasingly
| political institutions in left and right form. The question I
| have is, as an independent, how do you stave it off completely?
| baldeagle wrote:
| Make districts competitive. As long as the measure (votes in
| an election district) can be shaped such that winning the
| primary (initial election to determine the rep. for each
| party) basically promises a win in the general (an election
| where one rep from each party competes), polarization will go
| up and moderation will go down. Once districts are
| competitive, reps will face more pressure to the will of the
| people, as opposed to the people in just their party.
| dahfizz wrote:
| How would this work in deeply red or blue states? If you
| redraw the districts in California to put all the red
| voters together, that district will be competitive, but you
| have gerrymandered all the other districts to be blue
| forever.
|
| I think districts should represent sections of the
| geographic population. Its fine for a district to be
| uncompetetive if the general population in that region have
| a strong lean one way or the other.
| xenophonf wrote:
| In practice, it means establishing non-partisan
| redistricting commissions, taking that power away from
| the legislature or the political parties:
|
| https://www.nonprofitvote.org/nonpartisan-redistricting-
| citi...
| baldeagle wrote:
| This is a good response. I think California already does
| things like this, by having a non-partisan redistricting
| process. Texas, on the other hand, could barely more
| embrace parternship.
| kodah wrote:
| I doubt California does this well. My experience in
| California is that if you look at voting trends you'd
| think areas like SF are deeply blue, probably borderline
| far left. If you come out here though, it's really not
| that way. Then again, a comparison like the one you gave
| is bound to fail even the smallest smell test.
|
| The outcome is similar in that votes don't really reflect
| what the population wants, but for different reasons.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Its not clear to me that a nonpartisan redistricting
| would automatically make districts more competitive, nor
| that the increased competitiveness would be the reason
| nonpartisan districts are better. That was OP's point.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > such that winning the primary ... basically promises a
| win in the general
|
| Assuming you have more than one political party, I don't
| see how that's possible. All but one candidate in the
| general election will lose, even though they all won their
| respective primaries.
| curryst wrote:
| It's because government power has creeped to a degree where
| it's no longer feasible to inflict any kind of punishment, so
| accountability is impossible. We basically have the options of
| complaining on the internet, complaining in person at a
| protest, or full on violent revolt.
|
| They've removed all the options to revolt in a way that harms
| the government without you needing to be ready to die for the
| cause.
|
| Something like 10% of people fought in the Revolutionary War. I
| couldn't find easy stats on what % of the population
| participated in pro-Civil Rights Movement protests, but I'm
| curious if anyone has them.
|
| Both BLM and antivaxxers seem to have enough popular support
| that the government should be having difficulty controlling
| them. They don't seem to be having that difficulty, though. BLM
| is still around, but the change has been fairly slight. The
| government was able to largely ignore it. The antivaxxers
| remain to be seen, but I suspect all the restrictions will be
| effective in enforcing compliance.
|
| Citizens no longer have a way to protest that the government
| really needs to care about.
|
| You can't refuse to pay taxes. They'll just seize your
| accounts. And you can't just use cash, because I can't pay a
| lot of my bills in cash.
|
| You can't refuse to comply, because they'll just cut your legs
| out from under you. No more job, no more driver's license, no
| more traveling, etc, etc.
|
| I certainly wouldn't try the Boston Tea Party today. You'd be
| in jail before you could even tell anyone what you'd done.
|
| I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think the
| government derives its power from the will of the people
| anymore. At some point, it very much feels like that flipped,
| and the people derive their power from the will of the
| government.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I'm curious if that approach to eliminating expert witnesses
| passes legal muster.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Doesn't matter if no one is held accountable. We don't have a
| "legal" problem in the US. We have an accountability problem,
| particularly amongst the "elites".
| josefresco wrote:
| This seems like clear "witness intimidation" aka "Tampering
| with a witness, victim, or an informant"
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512
|
| (b)Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly
| persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in
| misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to--
|
| (1)influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in
| an official proceeding;
|
| (2)cause or induce any person to--
|
| (A)withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other
| object, from an official proceeding;
|
| (B)alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal an object with intent
| to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an
| official proceeding;
|
| (C)evade legal process summoning that person to appear as a
| witness, or to produce a record, document, or other object, in
| an official proceeding; or
|
| (D)be absent from an official proceeding to which such person
| has been summoned by legal process; or
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Cannot prove it unless the victim was in a state that allows
| one party consent audio recording and was recording audio.
| Although Florida is the only southern state that requires all
| party consent for recording audio, and I presume the previous
| poster was talking about Texas. Smartphones have solved the
| recording audio problem, so presumably it would have been
| possible.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Generally whistleblowing laws override audio recording
| consent.
|
| Tampering with a witness is a crime, and attempting to
| document evidence of a crime will outweigh the civil tort.
| ninjinxo wrote:
| Aren't there usually provisions to override requiring all
| party consent, if it becomes reasonably necessary as
| criminal (not civil) evidence or for your own
| legal/physical protection?
|
| Edit: I looked into it, nope, Florida is utterly insane - a
| child didn't get consent to record their rapist
| soliciting/threatening them, so the evidence was denied;
|
| _On December 11, 2014, the Florida Supreme Court held in
| McDade v. State, 154 So. 3d 292 (Fla. 2014), that a
| defendant accused of child molestation has an expectation
| of privacy in conversations between him and his victim
| taking place in their shared residence where he asked her
| to have sex with him and also alluded to his prior acts of
| sexual abuse._
|
| ...
|
| _the court concluded that the Secrecy of Communications
| Act's (SCA), F.S. Ch. 934, et seq. (2014), plain language
| barred the trial court's admission of a recorded
| conversation between McDade and his victim into evidence.
| The decision may surprise some, especially when one
| considers that the victim's actions in McDade also
| constituted a crime under the SCA and authorized the
| criminal defendant in that case to sue the victim under the
| statute's civil cause of action_
|
| https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-
| journal/mcdade-v-...
|
| https://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-district-court-of-
| appeal/1633...
|
| https://law.justia.com/cases/florida/supreme-
| court/2014/sc13...
|
| They have since made a exclusion for this scenario,
| allowing children to record talking to their abusers.
|
| https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2015/7001
| brightball wrote:
| Isn't California's version this what was used in the
| Planned Parenthood recordings?
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2017/03/29/521919322...
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| You should still record anyway. Use it in the court of
| public opinion.
| Loughla wrote:
| Except if the recording is illegal, it can be used, in
| some states, against you criminally and civilly.
|
| I was just having this conversation. You can be sued
| and/or jailed if you record someone without their consent
| in a two party consent state.
|
| Not saying it's right or wrong, but it exists and is
| something to think about.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Again, sure technically, but it also Streisands
| everything about it. The cost-benefit for prosecutors and
| the other party isn't a slam dunk!
|
| Personally I'd absolutely do it and take the gamble. But
| I'm risk-thriving (hence started several companies, enjoy
| international travel, etc.)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Personally I'd absolutely do it and take the gamble. But
| I'm risk-thriving (hence started several companies, enjoy
| international travel, etc.)
|
| I did not think I would ever see someone comparing
| starting businesses and international travel with
| committing clear misdemeanors and possible felonies and
| opening oneself up to civil suits.
| bsanr wrote:
| That sounds like a description of every American civil
| rights activist ever.
| osense wrote:
| Great, so instead of being able to count on the justice
| system we're basicall back to mob justice?
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Mob justice can be true justice. As in this case
| precisely, there was proof that a court refused to listen
| to.
|
| At some point you need to worry about deep fakes, etc,
| but there's still cases where the accused more or less
| says they are guilty and flips the court off and
| everybody acts like nothing can be done about it.
| mcguire wrote:
| We like to think of it as democracy in action.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| So the Salem witch trials were "democracy in action"?
| Retric wrote:
| Yep. Democracy isn't perfect it's just one compromise
| among many.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| So better that more innocents be punished than risk any
| guilty going free? Truly, your love of the strictest
| "definition" of democracy is baffling, though I think
| most would vote against you.
| mcguire wrote:
| I'm not sure how you get "punishing innocents" from
| publishing a very incriminating recording even though
| making such a recording is illegal.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| You literally called the Salem witch trials democracy in
| action, and don't understand how I got to punishing the
| innocent?
| mcguire wrote:
| The Salem witch trials _were_ under the justice system.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| No shit. I was totally wrong. I picked a horrible
| example, lol. Thanks =)
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| The main concern (and it's not much of a concern) is that
| you are charged with wiretapping or the equivalent. The
| penalties for this are not necessarily severe. Refuse to
| plea and force a trial.
|
| If the recording is not tampered with it's unlikely a
| civil case will get anywhere.
|
| If someone is actually a rapist and got off on a
| technicality it's your moral imperative to do something,
| no? Stand up to unjust laws. Evil prospers because idiots
| like you do nothing.
| Loughla wrote:
| >idiots like you do nothing.
|
| That seems unnecessary ad hominem. Just completely
| uncalled for.
|
| Also, you're assigning a values judgment to my statements
| that I genuinely thought I was clear about when I said
| "Not saying it's right or wrong, but it exists and is
| something to think about."
|
| You have no idea what my stance is on literally anything.
| Trying to be superior to someone who has given you
| nothing to feel superior about seems sort of hateful?
|
| Facts are facts, and consequences are consequences,
| regardless of right or wrong. That was my meaning. Agree
| with the outcomes or not, believe me or don't. That
| doesn't matter.
|
| >If the recording is not tampered with it's unlikely a
| civil case will get anywhere.
|
| How do you figure? If it is a surreptitious recording
| without consent, the person who was recorded has a pretty
| clear line to a civil case.
| sterlind wrote:
| it's a stretch, but the judge could bar revealing the
| motive for recording, or playing clips that reveal the
| nature of what was recorded, in order to keep the jurors
| from learning that it was child rape and nullifying the
| charge. in practice it's unlikely though.
|
| also wait, were _criminal_ charges brought against the
| rape victim for recording? did some prosecutor decide to
| actively assist further ruining the victim 's life? civil
| I can understand, but what a scumbag for not exercising
| prosecutorial discretion if so.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| https://youtu.be/lSM-9RBk3HQ
|
| Or just make a deepfake of anyone you want saying
| anything you want and try them in the court of public
| opinion. Mob justice is a poor form of investigation.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Courts in the US often do nothing, so mob justice is all
| you have.
|
| This is a separate issue that will need to be addressed.
| It will soon be possible to claim any video or audio
| evidence is faked. I don't know what happens then, but
| building off of what happens now, each piece of evidence
| is just weighting the scales one direction.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| We have more options than mob justice. Who told you that,
| that was our only option? Once you resort to mib justice,
| their verdicts can't just be "taken back". I'll give you
| a link to Emmett Till, and that's what mob justice
| brings.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| I live in the US. Courts in the US are often useless. If
| you have a high profile case you might get justice but
| usually nothing happens.
|
| I'm definitely aware of what can happen. I don't know how
| often it does. But if you restrict yourself to forcing
| justice only when you aren't acting on a hunch you're
| probably doing the best for yourself you can, because the
| alternative is usually nothing.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| I live in the US as well and you're arguing for a
| medieval form of justice. You think we should go back to
| conviction on a "hunch" and feelings. Have we fallen so
| far that I have to argue for the merits of a justice
| system based on evidence in a technical forum? Education
| and critical thought should be inextricably linked.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| No, you didn't understand what I wrote. If you are _sure_
| you 're not operating on a hunch, which is certainly
| possible, then just shrugging your shoulders when the
| court does nothing is insane. If you have proof that a
| court refuses to listen to then it is your moral
| imperative to act on it if you can do so.
| vageli wrote:
| > Cannot prove it unless the victim was in a state that
| allows one party consent audio recording and was recording
| audio. Although Florida is the only southern state that
| requires all party consent for recording audio, and I
| presume the previous poster was talking about Texas.
| Smartphones have solved the recording audio problem, so
| presumably it would have been possible.
|
| Is this true even when gathering evidence of a crime?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is a dice roll that I would not bet on, see adjacent
| comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29068596
| kodah wrote:
| California has the same law as Florida.
|
| Edit: the laws are the same, and you can't use an illegal
| recording in a court -- expressly. If you try to give an
| illegal recording to the news you'll likely get taken in
| civil court.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The news organization is free to play it, but the person
| who recorded it would have still broken the law and
| opened themselves up to prosecution.
|
| https://recordinglaw.com/party-two-party-consent-states/
| dragonwriter wrote:
| In California a recording without required consent is a
| crime _when made_. Intended use doesn 't play into that.
| It is also separately prohibit from use as evidence in
| court except as evidence of violation of the law
| prohibiting such recording itself.
|
| > If you wanted to play it on the news, however, you're
| still free to do that as far as I know.
|
| Sure, if you want to advertise the crime you committed on
| the news you are permitted to do that.
|
| There is no express prohibition on this in the California
| law, sure, but it probably is a good way to rack up civil
| liability as well as advertising your existing exposure
| to criminal liability. If Florida really has identical
| law in this area, I'd expect the same thing.
| vageli wrote:
| This article [0] states the contrary: the recording _can_
| be used as evidence in a criminal trial, but it seems the
| actual act of recording it is still criminal as a
| separate matter.
|
| > Posted: Dec 5, 2019 / 05:44 PM PST / Updated: Dec 5,
| 2019 / 05:44 PM PST Secretly recording someone else's
| conversation is illegal in California, but prosecutors
| can use the illicit recording as evidence in a criminal
| case, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
|
| > In their unanimous ruling, the justices cited a 1982
| ballot measure passed by voters that allows all "relevant
| evidence" to be introduced in any criminal trial or
| pretrial hearing, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
|
| > The case at hand concerned a private phone call about
| the actions of an alleged child molester. While the
| conversation was confidential under state law, its
| contents were clearly relevant and were properly
| disclosed to the jury in the molesting case, the court
| said.
|
| > The ruling follows a line of cases that narrowed
| criminal defendants' rights after the 1982 ballot
| measure, which sponsors dubbed the Victims' Bill of
| Rights, the Chronicle said. The measure included
| provisions that increased sentences, narrowed the
| insanity defense, allowed victims to testify at parole
| and sentencing hearings and let prosecutors introduce
| evidence that had been obtained in violation of state
| law.
|
| > The court also rejected defense arguments that
| admission of secretly recorded evidence would violate the
| right to privacy in the California Constitution. Those
| who are harmed by the recordings can still sue for
| damages, the eavesdroppers can be prosecuted, and the
| evidence remains inadmissible in non-criminal cases,
| Cantil-Sakauye said.
|
| [0]: https://ktla.com/news/local-news/its-illegal-to-
| secretly-rec...
| [deleted]
| kodah wrote:
| Ah, today I learned. I had searched on this a while back
| but couldn't find provisions for the civil side of
| things.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yeah, I don't have much concrete on the civil side, but
| it seems likely to be a case of public disclosure of
| private facts. Where _everything_ contained is a matter
| of legitimate public interest, that might not apply.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| Sorry, where does it say that all proof must be in the form
| of an audio recording? Prosecuting crimes worked perfectly
| fine before the invention of the tape recorder.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I am deducing it based on the fact that if one person is
| threatening someone by talking to them in person with no
| one else around, then he said she said accusations will
| not be sufficient to convict one of witness tampering in
| a criminal trial.
| deepsun wrote:
| But how then verbal intimidation was proven in an age
| before audio-recording?
| zsmi wrote:
| My guess is recording laws probably grew from
| eavesdropping laws so perhaps in some situations you
| could setup an eavesdropper to serve as a collaborating
| witness.
|
| Or they could've attempted to intimidate you while you
| were in a crowd.
|
| Otherwise it would be on reputation alone, just like now.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There is no reason to require all party consent to record
| a conversation unless you want people in power to have
| even more power over others.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Was it? It is pretty well known that one of the main
| obstacles for populations such as poorer people, women,
| minorities, or anyone else in a position position where
| someone has power over them that they can be coerced into
| questionable activities and they have no recourse because
| there is no proof.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| It generally wasn't without a direct witness that saw it.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Even then, they will end up not firing the employee then
| and there, and instead find an excuse to fire them a couple
| of months later.
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| Or make his work-life a living hell so he quits himself.
| earleybird wrote:
| Which has a name: constructive dismissal
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Technically, yes. But when the other party is breaking the
| law, I'd still do it. Then if the other party wants to
| prosecute on that, well, then discovery will become
| interesting and all of it will affect the other case.
| JaceLightning wrote:
| Yep. Just like the George Floyd trial "if they don't find him
| guilty, we'll burn the city down."
| [deleted]
| debacle wrote:
| The problem is that people are all for consolidation of power
| when it's going to further their ends.
|
| The American political system has become completely
| unprincipled, largely as a result of decades long attacks on
| moderates.
| zackmorris wrote:
| Probably what's going on is that someone on the board of trusties
| gets money from the political establishment in Florida and is
| worried that they'll lose it if the voting barriers are fixed and
| different leadership is elected.
|
| This has similarities with the shenanigans pulled by Sinema and
| Manchin around the Build Back Better plan. Political horse
| trading to advance the agendas of special interests, at great
| expense to millions of people.
|
| I wonder if the tech community could get involved to increase
| transparency around this stuff. Imagine if we had an open graph
| of the money flow so we could write a SQL query like (pseudo
| code) "select * from donors where payee in (select id from
| trustees)". Let people crowdsource the data and then maintain a
| page of declarative queries so that anyone can instantly see the
| web of money around public officials. It could be part of a build
| system that automatically creates a NASCAR jacket for each
| official so we could see who their donors are in AR.
|
| Maybe such a thing already exists. It's traditionally been
| accomplished by investigative journalists and lawyers, but why
| couldn't it be public? It seems like it would be an effective way
| to end the bribe system.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| These are all great ideas.
|
| One could scrape this into a graph database,
| https://dos.elections.myflorida.com/campaign-finance/contrib...
| mhcolburn wrote:
| The school receives most of their funding from the state, and
| the state gets to appoint half of their board. The school is
| concerned that the state could retaliate against them for
| allowing the professors to testify. Which is probably illegal,
| but probably wouldn't be addressed for months or years.
|
| The easy way out of this is for the court to subpoena the
| professors. I wouldn't be surprised if U of F was taking this
| stance to force that to occur, and which point they can shrug,
| and say "we tried, but they were subpoenaed..."
| dd36 wrote:
| It surely exists in private. It should exist in public and be a
| condition of public service.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| Most states have restrictions on what the donor data can be
| used for...
| elliekelly wrote:
| The chair of the board is a GOP mega-donor & "adviser". Search
| "Mori Hosseini" for plenty of examples of he and his company
| getting cozy with the Desantis administration.
|
| His company's political contributions:
| https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/ici-homes/summary?topnumcyc...
| sitkack wrote:
| https://trustees.ufl.edu/about-the-board/current-trustees/
| rmah wrote:
| The data is already public. An easy to use interface, not so
| much.
| nefitty wrote:
| It should be straightforward to chop something up in
| Observable. OpenSecrets has an API
| https://www.opensecrets.org/open-data/api/
| jablongo wrote:
| This project is similar to what you are describing, but data is
| lacking at the local level https://www.followthemoney.org/
| glup wrote:
| The most sophisticated resource I know of this sort is
| https://littlesis.org
| ajay-b wrote:
| That's... Wow, since when can someone bar someone else from
| testifying in court? I thought it was the pursuit of truth?
| mankyd wrote:
| Expert witnesses are hired as contractors; paid for their
| testimony.
|
| If they were being subpoenaed - compelled to be a witness - I
| am sure the matter would be different.
| inetsee wrote:
| A naive legal question: can the plaintiffs subpoena the
| professors as expert witnesses?
| sushibowl wrote:
| Generally, no. Under the rules of civil procedure, a
| subpoena to testify may be quashed if it "requires
| disclosing an unretained expert's opinion or information
| that does not describe specific occurrences in dispute and
| results from the expert's study not requested by a party."
|
| expert witnesses are much different from a regular witness
| since they have an exception to the hearsay rule (can
| testify about things they didn't directly observe
| themselves), their credentials are examined, they make a
| report, they are required to be paid, etc. Because of this
| you cannot subpoena them like a regular witness.
|
| more info
| https://www.expertinstitute.com/resources/insights/can-a-
| non...
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| This is not an endorsement, but a clarification.
|
| They're allowed to testify in court. They are just not allowed
| to get paid to do it, nor are they allowed to use their
| affiliation with the university as credentials when testifying
| because they are not speaking for the university.
| chuckee wrote:
| I couldn't find this information in the NPR article - do you
| have a different source?
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| This is from the article:
|
| >"It is important to note that the university did not deny
| the First Amendment rights or academic freedom of
| professors Dan Smith, Michael McDonald and Sharon Austin,"
| the school said in an email to NPR. "Rather, the university
| denied requests of these full-time employees to undertake
| outside paid work that is adverse to the university's
| interests as a state of Florida institution."
|
| The operative phrase there is "outside paid work."
|
| I believe you interpreted NPR's article exactly the way NPR
| intended you to interpret it. That is to say, you were
| supposed to read it and walk away misinformed due to the
| framing.
| joveian wrote:
| "Lots of folks asking what if we do the work pro bono?
| Our compensation was not given as a reason in the
| original disapproval from UF. That is new language the
| university added in its PR statement"
|
| https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/14545266385788805
| 16
| davorak wrote:
| > I believe you interpreted NPR's article exactly the way
| NPR intended you to interpret it. That is to say, you
| were supposed to read it and walk away misinformed due to
| the framing.
|
| What you quoted "It is important to note that the
| university did not deny the First Amendment rights or
| academic freedom of professors..." comes from University
| of Florida and as far as I can tell is not an airtight
| argument. No valid conflict of interest is presented in
| the article for for example.
|
| If typically has allowed such outside work, if there was
| not a conflict on a governmental issue, then the
| University of Florida as a governmental institution is
| performing 'self dealing', in this case by putting their
| thumb on the scale of public discourse, by
| limiting/restricting the speech of the professors.
|
| Part of why we have the first amendment is to limit the
| ability of the government to effect the course of public
| discourse and the University of Florida is definitely
| doing that.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| "You can work here and say things that will harm us, but
| you can't accept payment to say things that will harm
| us." Feels like a very reasonable position to me.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > The operative phrase there is "outside paid work."
|
| > you interpreted NPR's article exactly the way NPR
| intended you to interpret it.
|
| This take seems born out of bias, one that comes with
| prebuilt animosity toward NPR while assuming the
| university admin's stated reason is the sole and actual
| reason for denying testimony.
|
| It's notable that the university could defuse the
| situation by clarifying what are acceptable avenues for
| the professors to testify - and then doesn't do that.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Asking a clarifying question is something a journalist
| would do.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Three University of Florida professors were denied permission
| from the school to testify in a major voting rights case "
|
| What the fuck is 'permission to testify'? I thought access to
| justice was a constitutional right. If you can't get anyone to
| tesrify, then you have no access to justice.
|
| We have surrendered so many rights in various contracts, we
| hardly have any freedoms left.
| nickff wrote:
| The professors were looking to make money by testifying against
| the interests of their employer's parent organization:
|
| > _" the university denied requests of these full-time
| employees to undertake outside paid work that is adverse to the
| university's interests as a state of Florida institution."_
|
| This seems reasonable to me; if they want to testify to express
| themselves, they can still do it pro-bono, otherwise, they
| should probably seek non-government employment.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| The supreme court has historically taken a more nuanced
| stance on this sort of issue than you.
|
| Broadly speaking in the US everyone has many constitutional
| protections against the government restricting them in
| certain ways. When you become a government employee you give
| up only the most narrow subset of the protections necessary
| for the government to effectively be your boss.
|
| This means the professors have a reasonably strong court case
| as mentioned by their lawyer in TFA.
|
| See for example https://www.popehat.com/2013/09/05/ninth-
| circuit-clarifies-f...
|
| > First a court must determine whether or not the speech is
| on a matter of public interest. Speech on matters of public
| interest are entitled to protection, even when uttered by
| employees; speech on purely private matters (like, say, a
| private and internal spat among employees) is not. Then the
| court must balance the employer's interest in an orderly and
| efficient workplace against the speech rights of the
| employee, taking into account things like whether the speech
| restriction is content-based (that is, whether it censors
| some viewpoints but not others), the circumstances of the
| speech, the strength of the employee's interest in the
| speech, whether the speech genuinely disrupts discipline and
| order and interferes with relationships, and so on.
| nickff wrote:
| The critical question here is whether the University is
| restricting alternate employment or speech. It seems
| reasonable that a full-time employee on salary be
| prohibited from accepting simultaneous alternative
| employment in their primary field of work.
| davorak wrote:
| > The critical question here is whether the University is
| restricting alternate employment or speech.
|
| The process that stopped the professors was not one for
| restricting additional work in general, but one for
| restricting additional work based on a conflict of
| interest. Since they are a public University their
| ability to limit free speech like this is more limited
| than a private institution as iudqnolq mentioned above.
|
| If the University of Florida has a general rule for
| restricting any additional work by default for professors
| they are an outlier among Universities.
| specialist wrote:
| > _...but one for restricting additional work based on a
| conflict of interest. Since they are a public
| University..._
|
| Public university serves the public, no?
|
| So then the argument is the anticipated testimony wrt
| voting rights would be detrimental to the public
| interest?
| davorak wrote:
| > So then the argument is the anticipated testimony wrt
| voting rights would be detrimental to the public
| interest?
|
| The government, or in this case the University of
| Florida, is not supposed to be the ultimate authority of
| what is is the best interest of the public, the public is
| supposed to be the ultimate authority. The first
| amendment serves as protection from the government 'self
| dealing', looking out for their own interests and not the
| public's, by preventing them from stifling or limiting
| speech.
|
| > Public university serves the public, no?
|
| Yes and because they are public university their ability
| to limit their employee's speech is limited compared to a
| private institution.
| ModernMech wrote:
| On the contractor-employee continuum, professors are
| really closer to contractors than they are full time
| employees. Critically, professors are not "full time"
| from an annual timeframe. They are salaried, yes, but
| maybe only work for 9/12 months per year. Their salaries
| are commensurately lowered. Therefore many professors
| take outside contract jobs during those 3 months to make
| up the difference. Contracting arrangements, including
| serving as expert witnesses. are so common that it's
| usually built into the Faculty "constitution" or whatever
| it may be called at UoF.
| brazzledazzle wrote:
| I find it fascinating that the supreme court has upheld the
| ability to forgo so many purportedly inalienable rights via
| contract.
| mullen wrote:
| Well, you did voluntary signed a Contract. As part of a
| commercial exchange, you agree to do and do not certain
| things for money. Inalienable Rights can't be signed away, so
| the argument that you are signing away Inalienable Rights
| really does not hold water.
| brazzledazzle wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that confining
| yourself to civil judgement via private arbitration removes
| your rights.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| It's worth remembering that arbitration is actually a
| common enough practice outside of employment. Any divorce
| involving "mediation" is arbitration, and both parties
| agreed to it. The disconnect comes when the person
| "suggesting" arbitration (the employer) is in a position
| of power.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| If mediation is unsuccessful, neither party has lost or
| waived the right to a court appearance, so your analogy
| doesn't hold. Mediation in divorce is a cost-saving
| measure often required by the court.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I need person X to teatify so that I don't go to jail, and
| I never signed a contract.
|
| Also, did amazom workers voluntarily sign up to pee in
| bottles?
| JaceLightning wrote:
| Yes
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I agree but I believe the Supreme Court does not, which
| would imply to me that they do not believe any right that
| can be signed away is inalienable - although I also expect
| they would never say this outright.
| specialist wrote:
| I've recently been disabused of the quaint notion that our
| Supreme Court's job is to make findings of law.
|
| https://www.fivefourpod.com
| ska wrote:
| > What the fuck is 'permission to testify'?
|
| I suspect this means to function as a (voluntary) expert
| witness, not as someone formally required to testify.
| endisneigh wrote:
| this doesn't sound like a big deal. UF is saying that professors
| cannot both receive compensation for your testimony and testify
| as a member of the university.
|
| in other words, they can testify for free, or they cannot use
| their the fact that they're UF professors as part of their
| credentials without prior approval, or do anything that's a
| "conflict of interest" as defined by UF themselves.
|
| the article itself admits that plenty of professors at UF serve
| as expert witnesses, but this particular case is unique because
| UF professors want to testify against the State of Florida, which
| funds UF.
|
| obviously UF wouldn't want that.
|
| ---
|
| which organizations will allow you to testify against an entity
| that funds the organization without said organizations approval.
| free speech aside, obviously no organization will let you do that
| in your capacity as a member of said organization, but nothing is
| stopping you from quitting and testifying anyway.
| obelos wrote:
| Organizations that aren't the government. State universities
| are public institutions, not private ones.
| endisneigh wrote:
| really? which private entities explicitly or historically
| have allowed a member to testify against either the entity
| itself or another entity that funds the one in which the
| member of a part of?
|
| even whistleblowers generally quit before testifying, or are
| expected to not necessarily retain their rights as a member
| afterwards.
|
| there's really no incentive for an organization to explicitly
| allow a member to testify against them or another entity that
| funds them.
|
| genuinely curious if it's happened before.
| obelos wrote:
| Yes, really. State schools are public institutions. Their
| employees are public employees. As public institutions,
| they are not legally permitted to enact policy that
| infringes 1A rights. A private school could have more
| leeway on this--subject to employment law, union contracts,
| etc--but a public school is very limited. A public
| professor could be censured for expressing testimony that,
| for example, reveals that they are likely to treat students
| in a biased way. If they testify with something like
| "Racial minorities and women aren't qualified to have a
| right to vote," that impugns their ostensible fair
| treatment of their students and fellow faculty, and that is
| actionable. But testifying about how a state's voting
| policies disenfranchise legitimate portions of its
| population? Not at all actionable. Testifying that election
| integrity demands that certain practices be established
| even though practically speaking it could result in
| disenfranchisement of certain minorities? Also not
| actionable.
| endisneigh wrote:
| We'll have to see how the lawsuit pans out, but I doubt
| you're right here. Public institutions are in no way
| obligated to let their members serve as expert witnesses
| in their capacity as an employee. See Garcetti v.
| Ceballos.
|
| However nothing is stopping them from testifying against
| the institution in their capacity as a private citizen.
| This is why whistleblowing is possible.
|
| UF is saying they cannot be expert witnesses affiliated
| with the university per their process explicitly outlined
| in the article.
|
| It would be another thing if they were trying to testify
| in another capacity and UF was trying to stop them.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| An expert witness acts as a servant of the court, not as
| the agent of their employer. Naming the UoF as your
| employer is simply stating the truth to the court about
| your credentials; it doesn't mean the UoF has to take
| responsibility for your testimony.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I agree, but the entire point of the article is that UoF
| has had an agreement in place with all employees saying
| that they must get approval in order to serve as an
| expert witness to begin with.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "nothing is stopping you from quitting and testifying anyway"
|
| We gave up privacy of our most intimate files and communication
| 'to prevent crime', because apparently everyone of us is a
| potential pedophile.
|
| Joe should also give up his lifehood so that rule of law can
| function?
|
| God forbid an organisation would suffer the indignity of
| employees giving evidence in the court of law and having to
| answer some tough questions?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > the article itself admits that plenty of professors at UF
| serve as expert witnesses, but this particular case is unique
| because UF professors want to testify against the State of
| Florida, which funds UF.
|
| > obviously UF wouldn't want that.
|
| This part is ridiculous. The "State of Florida" doesn't fund
| the UF, the Florida taxpayers do! And it's in the taxpayers'
| interest to get good, equitable laws - not whatever the
| lawmakers plop out for their own self-interest. The fact that
| there's a possibility that Florida lawmakers would retaliate
| against another public institution to the possible detriment of
| the taxpayers of Florida is the real scandal if this is true.
| vkou wrote:
| > The fact that there's a possibility that Florida lawmakers
| would retaliate against another public institution to the
| possible detriment of the taxpayers of Florida is the real
| scandal if this is true.
|
| You must be new to southern politics, if you think this is a
| scandal.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The fact that there's a possibility that Florida lawmakers
| would retaliate against another public institution to the
| possible detriment of the taxpayers of Florida
|
| Like banning mask mandates by school districts and defunding
| them as punishment?
| dahart wrote:
| > UF is saying that professors cannot both receive compensation
| for your testimony and testify as a member of the university
|
| No, you left out the only important part here - that the
| testimony is considered "adverse to the university's
| interests."
|
| > in other words, they can testify for free
|
| No, they were denied permission to testify. They are not
| allowed to accept the job pro bono, where did you get that
| idea?
| davidrupp wrote:
| https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/education/campus/2021.
| ..
|
| "Hessy Fernandez, UF director of issues management and crisis
| communications, told the Gainesville Sun in a text message
| Sunday the university views the professors' request to do
| outside work for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit as harmful to
| the university's interests. "However, to be clear," she
| stated, "if the professors wish to do so pro bono on their
| own time without using university resources, they would be
| free to do so."
| ModernMech wrote:
| The thing missing here is that they also wouldn't be
| allowed to use their credentials as faculty members of the
| University, which makes their testimony less desirable.
| dahart wrote:
| I'm happy to be wrong about this, thank you for the link.
| It's new information from the top linked article that pro
| bono would be allowed. I would speculate there's maybe a
| big enough caveat in there that the university knows makes
| a pro-bono arrangement unworkable while _appearing_ to be
| flexible. "On their own time without using university
| resources" could mean it's not actually possible, and doing
| it pro bono obviously doesn't change how the university
| feels about the case and it's potential harm to their
| interests. But if the university really means it and would
| allow the testimony without repercussions, then the
| situation isn't as bad as it seemed.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > No, you left out the only important part here - that the
| testimony is considered "adverse to the university's
| interests."
|
| No, I didn't.
|
| "or do anything that's a "conflict of interest" as defined by
| UF themselves."
|
| > No, they were denied permission to testify. They are not
| allowed to accept the job pro bono, where did you get that
| idea?
|
| They were denied to testify as expert witnesses, yes.
|
| Professor Smith in the article has testified with UF's
| permission before in two suits against the State of Florida
| government in 2018.
|
| This time Smith is being denied. There's no evidence of a
| conspiracy here.
|
| https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/gruv.
| ..
| dahart wrote:
| I saw your mention of conflict of interest down lower, but
| you did in fact leave the conflict of interest out of your
| first summary sentence, the part before "in other words".
| It definitely leaves the wrong initial impression, and
| leaves a discrepancy between the two explanations on either
| side of "in other words".
|
| > There's no conspiracy here.
|
| What is your evidence? It's entirely possible the state
| threatened the university's funding. And some politicians
| do seem to be conspiring to prevent certain classes of US
| citizens from voting.
|
| *edit BTW, while I agree you should have used "there's no
| evidence of a conspiracy" from the start, and I normally
| endorse editing comments to improve clarity, your edit here
| seems misleading to make without comment. It changes the
| context of our entire conversation below. Leave it as-is,
| or add an edit explaining you meant "no evidence".
| endisneigh wrote:
| > What is your evidence? It's entirely possible the state
| threatened the university's funding. And some politicians
| do seem to be conspiring to prevent certain classes of US
| citizens from voting.
|
| I already showed you a link. The same professor has
| already testified against the state when under control by
| the same government about the same issue (voting rights).
|
| If you have proof showing there's a conspiracy I'd love
| to see.
| moate wrote:
| >>The same professor has already testified against the
| state when under control by the same government about the
| same issue (voting rights).
|
| Point of order: During the 2018 political cycle, there
| was not the same massive push by the party in power of
| Florida to promote an "election fraud is a massive
| existential threat to our democracy" narrative in the
| same way there was during 2020 and beyond.
|
| Pretending a massive change in direction didn't happen in
| the intervening years seems either extremely naive or
| disingenuous.
| dahart wrote:
| I have no proof, just like you have no proof. I was
| talking about a possible state conspiracy, with the
| university being complicit in this particular case. Just
| because the university allowed it before doesn't mean
| that the state hasn't abused it's power here, and that
| the university is too afraid to stand up to it.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Proof of what? I didn't make any claim that can actually
| be proven.
|
| My point is that the Smith in the article has been denied
| per UF's process, and has been approved twice by the same
| process to testify against the state.
|
| There's no evidence of a conspiracy. There's no
| systematic approval or denial.
| dahart wrote:
| > I didn't make any claim that can actually be proven.
|
| Correct, your claim "There's no conspiracy here" is
| something you don't know and can't prove, therefore is an
| unjustifiable claim.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Saying there's no conspiracy is not a claim, that's the
| default position. Look up "null hypothesis" and "burden
| of proof."
| dahart wrote:
| > Saying there's no conspiracy is not a claim
|
| You fooled me. I'm fine with your later "there's no
| evidence of a conspiracy." But saying "there's no
| conspiracy" is indeed a claim in casual speech.
|
| The potential evidence of a conspiracy is that the
| professors were denied permission to testify, when, as
| you point out, they've been allowed in the past. What
| changed?
| endisneigh wrote:
| We'll have to see what the result of the lawsuit is and
| the ensuing discovery to know.
| gradys wrote:
| They are in fact UF professors though, and that fact would be
| relevant in any case they testified in. Are UF professors
| banned from acting as paid expert witnesses in general? Or just
| for this issue?
|
| To your edit: the fact that the entity in question is a
| government is the difference here in my opinion.
| endisneigh wrote:
| per the article:
|
| > Are UF professors banned from acting as paid expert
| witnesses in general?
|
| No
|
| > Or just for this issue?
|
| Yes
| vilvo wrote:
| O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
| pyronik19 wrote:
| If you have been paying attention to the rampant censorship by
| the tech oligopolies on behalf of the government requests you'd
| know that wasn't true.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Working against coordinated, viral disinformation campaigns
| on social media is a bit different than prohibiting expert
| witness testimony aby professors employed by the state.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I think you missed the '?' at the end of the verse ...
| steve76 wrote:
| Majority consensus is not the final authority. There are truths
| you can't escape. Things were good until you got here. Don't
| mess up. If you are going to mess up and make things worse,
| don't do it. You won't believe how easy life actually is once
| you get awful people out of your life. Self-evidence is very
| different than the rest of the world which runs on lawless
| barbarity disguised as liberalism and majority consensus.
| That's what freedom is, an acknowledgement by leadership they
| do not get to tell everyone what to do. A person makes their
| own decision before any action no matter what leadership does.
|
| Why do people who don't fight get to tell people who do fight
| what to do all the time? Dylan Roof and Khaled Sheikh Mohmamed,
| they're next? We're going to have a murderer constituency? You
| had your chance. You used bioweapons and lockdowns and riots
| and censorship to win. You removed signature requirements and
| took a week to count the votes. All those dirty tricks, and
| once you got it, you got bored with it. You blew your nose with
| my country and flew away to hear Oprah and Anna Winter tell you
| what a great person you are.
|
| Next!
| wayoutthere wrote:
| This is blatantly unconstitutional and any professors disciplined
| under this would be in line for a fat settlement from the
| university. Or rather, they would be if our justice system
| actually worked.
|
| Rule of law in the US is on life support and the prognosis is not
| good.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Yep, this kills the patient
| lbriner wrote:
| If they were disciplined, yes, the "clever" part (read immoral
| but not unlawful) would be the University deciding that another
| Professor will get that senior position instead of you. You
| could fight it but it would be pretty easy in most situations
| to "prove" that the other candidate was better.
|
| I guess any academic needs to measure their conscience against
| their career as others in Politics or Religion also might have
| to.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| But we're well past the point of subtly nudging people into
| things. We're at the movie villain stage of "I'm going to
| tell you what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, then do it,
| because I want you to know how much power I actually have
| over you".
| bob1029 wrote:
| Public education institutions are potentially the most
| politicized arenas in our nation today.
|
| Especially K-12 education, where you have to somehow bridge a new
| chasm between insane ideologies while also keeping a classroom
| full children working "productively" towards pointless
| standardized testing objectives. All of this despite most of
| their dopamine loops being totally burned out from hours of
| smartphone use before they even get to school.
|
| The whole education system is heading towards "totally fucked".
| This UF politics issue is just 1% of the puzzle behind why
| everything sucks so hard now. If you personally know any teachers
| working in K12, lend them your ear. You would be surprised how
| many people are internalizing the problems and don't even know
| who to talk to about it anymore. The rest have succumbed to
| apathy or new careers.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Too off topic or did we hit a nerve?
| mercy_dude wrote:
| Good news is and many in the academic sphere may not realize this
| - many faculties universities are going to go out of business at
| this rate. One silver lining during this time has been, many have
| realized how much they are overpaying for things they can learn
| online or through their own efforts. There is no reason you need
| to spend 200k+ for a degree in Sociology and Gender Studies.
|
| Other than medicine, law a few science majors I don't foresee
| much of the faculties in universities survive assuming the cooler
| heads prevail, and parents and society realize sending your kids
| on their way to mortgage their entire twenties for a piece of
| paper that can be learned through community college and online
| studies is worthless.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Even medicine is an inefficient system of schooling in the US
| (and very hypocritical if you consider what med students and
| residents go through and its impact on their health). It can be
| redone to be cheaper, quicker, and safer, with less burnout
| rates.
| voakbasda wrote:
| After my experience in public schools, college and then grad
| school, I plan to homeschool my children and will actively
| dissuade them from going to college. The value of those
| institutions is purely negative at this point in US history.
| Like most of our government.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Exactly my thoughts. They're inefficient, overpriced, and
| outdated models. From what I've seen first-hand,
| homeschooling or similar schooling methods, in community
| efforts (not home schooling in isolation), is much more
| efficient and healthy.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Statement from FIRE on this matter: https://www.thefire.org/fire-
| statement-on-university-of-flor...
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