Tag Archives: voting

Progressive-Democratic Party Agenda

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This is what Party has in mind, should they be the winners this fall.

Party Presidential nominee Kamala Harris will push for these, among others, even as during this campaign season, she ducks away from interviews even by her friendly press (she hoped a couple weeks ago to reach an interview agreement “by the end of the month.” Keep in mind that even as she runs away from the press–and from the questions of us average Americans, these are the policies and goals she has strongly pushed for during her prior campaign for President and during her current stint as Vice President.

  • retreads of her and President Joe Biden’s policies of the last nearly four years
  • ban on fracking as part of her moves to eliminate our hydrocarbon energy capability
  • Medicare for all
  • open southern border
  • voting by and welfare payments to illegal aliens

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) said what Harris lacks to fortitude or the integrity to say out loud for voters to hear and evaluate:

  • eliminate the Senate filibuster
  • control the Supreme Court with term limits and packing
  • impose federal takeover of elections
  • pass enormous spending and tax-hike legislation
  • additional housing entitlements

Harris’ goals are damaging to our economy and destructive of our American culture, bringing in those millions of illegal aliens with no incentive to assimilate into our culture but having access to our voting booths. Schumer’s goals are damaging to our economy and destructive of our republican democracy, converting us to a popular democracy, a form that has never worked in 2,500 years of attempts.

I’ll Decide

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George Stephanopoulos is at it again. In a recent interview with CNN, ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos (nothing incestuous about news personalities interviewing each other instead of actual news makers—oh, wait…), had this to say about questions that should be asked of former President and current Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump:

If you can’t pass that fundamental threshold of saying, “yes the last election was not stolen,” two, “I will abide by the results of the next election,” then I think that’s all voters and viewers need to know.

And at that point, unless Stephanopoulus got answers of which he personally approved, he’d terminate the interview.

No. Those are valid questions, certainly. However, this voter and viewer—and average American—will decide for himself what he needs to know. He does not need a news personality to filter his knowledge.

The self-important arrogance of Stephanopoulos is a major reason why it’s not possible to take anything the man produces seriously.

School Choice, Public Schools

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A letter-writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Wednesday Letters section is opposed to Educational Savings Accounts that Texas parents could use to send their children to private schools.

School choice in Texas will benefit no one except those who already pay for private school. Moving to public funding of private schools will also tend to resegregate society. Our state-level elected officials are doing the bidding of billionaires in- and out-of-state who have other agendas than excellence in our public schools.

School choice will greatly benefit the children, especially those in families on Texas’ lower economic rungs, by letting them escape from failing public schools. Nor is it an either-or choice; the one leads to improvements in the other. School choice, from that competition, will greatly benefit those children remaining in public schools.

That success, far from increasing segregation, will contribute to decreasing it. The majority of those kids on the lower rung are from minority families. Being increasing their ability to compete academically, they’ll be better able to compete for jobs, and for promotions once employed, as adults. That more even competition is the stuff of desegregation.

The idea that no one but a few billionaires will benefit is just so much irrational hype.

He concluded with:

Let’s put public funding of private schools to a statewide vote.

We just did. In the Republican primaries and the runoffs in some of those primaries, public funding won very widespread support. We will again soon: school choice will be on the ballot again this November. Those State-level elected officials, elected in the primaries and will be elected in the general election, having campaigned on the matter, are much more likely to do the bidding of those who hired and will hire them—their constituents—than were Texas to maintain the status quo with its politicians in November.

Gerrymandering

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The Supreme Court a few days ago ruled 6-3 that a US House districting map in South Carolina was not an illegal racial gerrymander but was an entirely legitimate political gerrymander and so beyond the reach of courts to intervene in. Political gerrymanders are entirely political matters and the sole province of a State’s legislature, the Court held.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent,

This Court has prohibited race-based gerrymanders for a reason. They divide citizens on racial lines to engineer the results of elections.

I suggest that Kagan has, by mistake, hit upon the larger problem that any gerrymandering creates. Political gerrymandering divides citizens on political lines explicitly to engineer the results of elections. How is that any more acceptable?

The idea of barring racial gerrymanders is to prevent the exclusion of racial minorities in a district from electing government representatives who will represent them.

Yet political gerrymanders, which set districts along purely political party lines, are a legitimate means of excluding political minorities, even major parties in a State’s legislative minority, in a district from electing government representatives who will represent those parties’ members.

How is that in any way different from racial gerrymanders? The group that’s in power is allowed, through gerrymandering, to perpetuate its power by permanently reducing the power of those not in power.

Better to draw House districts—or at least US House districts—as rectangles of substantially equal populations, without regard to race or politics.

The first article of the 14th Amendment of our Constitution includes this:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States….

Article I, Section 4, of our Constitution is this:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Place of Chusing Senators.

Congress has some (not absolute) authority over the States’ political decisions regarding the Regulations for holding elections, and that would seem to include districting rules.

Finally, surely among the privileges of an American citizen is the privilege—the right—to vote. Every voter should be on an equal footing with every other voter rather than some voters, by dint of their inclusion in a particular race or political bent, having political advantage over other voters. Disadvantaged voters most assuredly are seeing their voting privilege abridged.

In fine, either all American citizens are equal under law, or we are not.

If That Were True….

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There are moves afoot, mostly Republican-originated, to amend State constitutions and to otherwise pass legislation that would explicitly allow only US citizens to vote in US elections. A House Administration Committee on American Confidence in Elections: Preventing Noncitizen Voting and Other Foreign Interference explicitly addressed that question at the national level. Progressive-Democratic Party politicians opposed, loudly, the effort. Congressman Joe Morelle (D, NY) was especially vociferous.

This hearing is about preemptively covering Donald Trump’s lies. The hearing isn’t about law and order. It’s about laying the foundation for the next big lie. It’s about saying that illegal voting is the cause of an election defeat.

Congressman Terri Sewell (D, AL) added to the cacophony, insisting that no non-citizens were voting in US elections anyway.

To the extent Sewell is right, then while the proposed explicit blocks on non-citizen voting wouldn’t change much, neither would they do any harm, and they could be useful in preventing some future illegal voting problems.

Regarding the larger matter, Morelle’s objection, it would seem especially useful for Progressive-Democrats to enthusiastically get behind the efforts and speed them along. Surely eliminating a major basis for objecting to election outcomes, for claiming election thefts, and the like would be good for the Progressive-Democratic Party and the perception of legitimacy for those Party politicians who do get elected.