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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   19147 thread views

USA Election Day 2022 Megathread

Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.

...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).

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How about a thread of ballot measures of Culture War interest and their results? You can find a list of all measures on the ballot in every state here.

Abortion

Four states (CA, KY, MI, VT) had measures on the ballot related to abortion last night. Three of these (CA, MI, VT) were attempts to enshrine abortion as a right in their state constitutions. All three passed. One (KY) was an effort (similar to KS earlier this year) to amend their constitution to clarify it does not contain a right to abortion. This measure failed. One thing I want to draw attention to is the difference in margin between the KY Senate race and this ballot measure. Rand Paul easily cruised to victory with a margin (according to the NYT) of 890k votes to 550k votes (61.6-38.4). By contrast this ballot measure lost 700k votes to 632k votes (52.55-47.45). Even if every single Booker voter also voted No on the amendment there would still have to be another 150k Paul voters (10% of the electorate, 1/6 of Paul's voters) who also voted No. So it seems like there may be a substantial number of Republican voters who are turned off by the party's position on abortion.

Slavery

Involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime was on the ballot in five (AL, LA, OR, TN, VT) states last night. Of those, four of them (AL, OR, TN, VT) passed their ballot measures prohibiting involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime and one (LA) did not.

Drugs

It was a pretty mixed night for drug legalization on the ballot. Five states (AK, MD, MO, ND, SD) had marijuana legalization initiatives. Two of those (MO, MD) passed and three (AK, ND, SD) did not. Colorado looks set to approve a ballot measure decriminalizing certain psychedelics (including psilocybin and DMT) statewide.

Nondiscrimination

One final ballot measure I want to call attention to is in Nevada. There they passed a constitutional amendment that "prohibits the denial or abridgment of rights on account of an individual's race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry or national origin."

I assumed “involuntary servitude” was some sort of editorializing, but no, that’s actually the language used. Huh.

Makes sense when you look at the text of the 13th amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Guns

This election we saw measure 114 in Oregon, which would require permitting for guns, which includes receiving consent from the local police department and mandatory firearms training. The measure passed by about 9000 votes.

I find this pretty outrageous; there has been both an uptick in crime in Oregon and also a reduction in police morale so there's this perfect storm of random deranged break-ins and confrontations and police who take 20+ minutes to respond.

I know movie plot threats / just so stories aren't a good way to do law, but I'm immediately reminded of this story: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/oregon/articles/2022-06-29/eugene-woman-attacked-with-acid-for-third-time-since-march

She appears to be a non-white woman going to university here in Oregon that is being targeted with some kind of honor violence (acid attacks seem honor violencey), though she doesn't know the perpetrator, she just describes him as white. The first two attacks were reported to the police who (my reading between the lines), did not take her seriously. She came to Reddit to ask for advice; by the time she was attacked the third time the intruder tried to set her on fire in her home. She had a gun by this point, and went for it, and the intruder fled before she could fire at him.

I'm trying to imagine in an alternate timeline telling her, after her second attack, that no she can't have a gun yet. She needs to be a good girl and ask the police (the same police who thought she was making this story up, mind you!) for permission to have a gun, and then go through firearms training. Then she can have one. Hopefully the psychopath who is targeting you doesn't murder you in the meantime! It's for safety!

I don't own a gun myself and I don't fetishize them, but I do think they're an important tool for protecting yourself in a dangerous society and my heart breaks that we would be so condescending to tell decent people, who are in the midst of personal security crises like this, that they're not trusted enough to get the tools they need to defend themselves immediately.

Stated another way, politicians are doing a great job at convincing us that society is safer, and it's tempting to believe them. It's even more tempting to believe this because nowadays worrying about crime is racist coded. I don't blame people for believing it. Yet finally, something happens that shatters the illusion: you're the victim of violence or are being credibly threatened and ... in this worst moment we add insult to injury and infantilize the victims further.

Measure 114 also includes a ban on sale or manufacture of >10 round magazines, with some bizarrely limited grandfathering. On the upside, a) it's surprising it won so narrowly given the polling and the extremely blue and generally gun-unfriendly state, and b) it's very unlikely to survive in complete form after SCOTUS review. On the less pleasant side, that's going to take six+ years, and the law has a very broad severability clause, and much of the worst overrearches are clearly written to be politically expensive to challenge (in part for the difficulty of standing) and incredibly scary to extant gun owners while being challenged.

Which is a pity, because it's not like it's far off from something that could have been acceptable, even if not ideal from a gunnie perspective. But it's hard to see :

A firearms training course or class required for issuance of a permit-to-purchase must include:

...(C) Prevention of abuse or misuse of firearms, including the impact of homicide and suicide on families, communities and

the country as a whole...

As anything but a mandate for anti-gun propaganda, and it's not even likely to be the most objectionable part of the final version of the training reqs.

extremely blue and generally gun-unfriendly state

Not quite an accurate picture, Dems were worried Oregon would become a purple state this election and brought all the big names out last month. There's large contingents of hardcore right and left wingers with most people falling in the middle based on geography, before 2016 things tended to default towards moderately libertarian at the state level and red/blue at the county level to reflect this. Before 114 Oregon had pretty permissive gun laws - will-issue CCW, no restrictions I can think of outside of FFL for all transfers, and very healthy hunting/gun cultures.

I've seen plenty of sheriffs and ACAB types in agreement against the may-issue permitting for the obvious reasons, tons of people against the magazine changes, and everyone informed on gun laws knew this was going to be shot down in the courts based on existing case law. Lots of people don't feel safe in the cities right now either and have become gun owners in the last few years too.

My guess is this only passed because of uninformed people who want to do anything about gun control.

Acid attacks are indeed an honor violence thing--IIRC, they emerged from South Asia as a form of punishment for women. Why a Native American woman is being attacked like this, I can't even imagine.

As pointed out below, being in the West is objectively safer from the bird's-eye view, but it's still an outrage that something like that could happen here in America.

Why an indian woman is being attacked like this, I can't even imagine.

Are you sure? While we don't have a picture of the victim, if her skin's significantly darker than average, I would assume that someone intellectually deficient enough to get infected with the "throw acid on women you don't like, who appear to be from the places you hear about people getting acid thrown at them" meme could easily confuse the two.... especially if you don't see many people originally from there.

In any case, it is outrageous that someone could be prosecuted for daring to possess the tools from which to defend oneself from this. The attacker always has the advantage, and that's just the way it is; making sure the defense has the best tool available is therefore necessary for a society that refuses (or is unable) to take sufficient proactive actions against crime. And aside from maybe Singapore and those really rich European micronations (where you don't get in unless you have something to lose), no society does.

If we're talking about racism, may-issue permitting laws have a long history of explicit racism, serving as ways of preventing black people from owning guns. Referring to may-issue laws, Frederick Douglass said "…while the Legislatures of the South can take from him (the black man) the right to keep and bear arms, as they can … the work of the Abolitionists is not finished.”

Stated another way, politicians are doing a great job at convincing us that society is safer, and it's tempting to believe them.

I don't really think the right to own guns is in any way contingent on the safety of society. Rather, as Douglass alluded to, the right is about freedom from bondage and tyrrany. It may well be that gun ownership makes society less safe, but more free, and that is a tradeoff I'm gladly willing to accept.

Stated another way, politicians are doing a great job at convincing us that society is safer, and it's tempting to believe them.

There has never been a safer human being than a Western person currently alive.

Just because politicians are vile lying possible lizard people doesn't mean that they sometimes, on accident, don't tell the truth.

Of course I believe I should own a gun without a permit - because the bad juju still exists all over. Every home should own a shotgun.

There has never been a safer human being than a Western person currently alive.

Agreed, to be clear, I'm not discounting the Pinker Better Angels / Enlightenment Now dialog about this being the safest time to be alive in history. Indeed, we should be happy about the progress! At the same time, that doesn't mean you can just pretend crime doesn't exist. The fact that crime is lower since the 1990s doesn't mean it's orders of magnitude lower. You probably need to be just as vigilant as your parents were.

There they passed a constitutional amendment that "prohibits the denial or abridgment of rights on account of an individual's race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry or national origin.

Will 5-year-olds be able to vote in Nevada next election? Is there any way to interpret the text of the amendment that wouldn’t preclude denying a person the right to vote on account of their age being only 5? Does anyone actually read these things?

Yes, there is a way: By interpreting "equal protection" as it has been interpreted for 100 years: Not to mean the right to be treated identically, as you incorrectly assume, but rather to be treated in the same manner as others in similar conditions and circumstances, and to prevent govt from drawing distinctions between individuals solely on differences that are irrelevant to governmental objectives

Will 5-year-olds be able to vote in Nevada next election?

They can bring a suit, but the court will just stall for 13 years then proceed to declare the issue moot.

It works every time a young adult brings a suit related to taxation without representation; no reason it won't be what happens here too.

The voting age should be lowered to at birth, with parents given the right to vote on behalf of their children before their age of majority.

I'll bite. Why? Are there any benefits to this policy? Is it just pro-natalism?

Just pronatalism.

Is there any way to interpret the text of the amendment that wouldn’t preclude denying a person the right to vote on account of their age being only 5?

Yes. But I imagine everyone will just ignore that knot, much like how Brown v. Board of Education wasn't interpreted to outlaw girls' bathrooms when it struck down separate but equal facilities. The law in text and the law in practice are two separate things.

Well, the actual holding of Brown was that "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." That is presumably not the case re boys' and girls' bathrooms. Moreover, the test for the validity of laws which discriminate varies based on the basis of the discrimination.

Will 5-year-olds be able to vote in Nevada next election?

Almost certainly not.

Is there any way to interpret the text of the amendment that wouldn’t preclude denying a person the right to vote on account of their age being only 5

The amendment by itself? Maybe not. In the broader context of the Nevada constitution? Definitely. You just interpret Article 2 Section 1 (which sets the minimum age for being an elector) as controlling.

Does anyone actually read these things?

Yea, definitely.

Perhaps I'm underinformed on how amendments affect the interpretation of the previously ratified constitution. Does the amendment need to state a specific section being modified, or does the fact that it is more recent automatically give it supremacy in interpretation?

Reading Article 2 Section 1 carefully, it doesn't actually state that electors must be 18 or older, it says:

"All citizens of the United States (not laboring under the disabilities named in this constitution) of the age of eighteen years and upwards, who shall have actually, and not constructively, resided in the state six months, and in the district or county thirty days next preceding any election, shall be entitled to vote for all officers that now or hereafter may be elected by the people, and upon all questions submitted to the electors at such election"

It enumerates the positive right for people 18 and over to vote, but does not explicitly deny the vote to those under 18. Given that there is a brand new amendment specifically saying that the state can not deny rights on account of age, it seems to me that the only way to harmonize these two sections is to extend the right to vote to all ages.

If it's like any other constitutional right, exceptions will be subject to strict scrutiny.

to amend their constitution to clarify it does not contain a right to abortion.

It's interesting to me that even something this tepid generated a strong pushback. Passing the amendment would've done nothing on its own, but instead just would have laid the groundwork for future legislative effort. This further highlights just how much of a losing position banning abortion is on the overall policy spectrum.

It was a pretty mixed night for drug legalization on the ballot. Five states (AK, MD, MO, ND, SD) had marijuana legalization initiatives. Two of those (MO, MD) passed and three (AK, ND, SD) did not.

The rejections were very surprising to me. I figured that after a decade of seeing states legalize marijuana as NBD, this would have continued the momentum. I guess this is a blind spot of mine, as I just cannot comprehend the desire to keep sending people to jail for smoking weed.

Nasal assault? Well you've got the language down. You would hate Australia, there are all sorts of plants and trees that just smell like pot. There's a bushland near me that smells like a perpetual Dutch oven for a week or two every couple of months. I also notice some people have body odour which smells like weed, which would make for some embarrassing police interactions. Unless you are very serious about nasal assaults - serious enough to ban basically everyone from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia from an public place, at least for summer. Because the smell of weed isn't great, but it doesn't make my freaking eyes water like a trip on the bus or to kfc at midday.

Maybe I've gotten desensitized to it but I live near several dispensaries and never notice anything. The parks are also chockful of people openly smoking joints, and hilariously the only thing that ever really gets scorn is cigarette smoking.

Regardless, if you hate the smell of marijuana you can just enforce public consumption. Criminalizing possession is enforced by putting people in jail, so I don't understand this round-about way of defending against a nasal assault.

One concern I have with legalization is that it is much harder to prove DUI than with booze, and unlike with booze there is no "constructively impaired" limit like with BAC. I've already had one hit-and-run that hurt me and totaled my car due to the plague of reckless and dangerous driving near me. Got the license plate and still wasn't even able to recover my deductible, since I didn't get a face ID to prove who was driving.

I agree that proving impairment is harder but I'm not convinced that marijuana DUIs are a serious problem. I've handled dozens of them by now and the modal police report is something like "vehicle sat through two green light cycles without moving" or "vehicle drove 10 miles below the speed limit". They're really good cases to go to trial because although it's obvious the people are high as fuck, there's virtually no evidence they were actually a danger in any way. I definitely cannot say the same about alcohol. Also, some states do have "constructively impaired" limits, Washington for example has a 5 nanogram per se limit.

It depends on the wording of the marijuana legalization initiatives.

The Ohio Marijuana Legalization Initiative was an Ohio initiated constitutional amendment on the ballot for November 3, 2015, where it was defeated.

Voting yes would have legalized the limited sale and use of marijuana and created 10 facilities with exclusive commercial rights to grow marijuana.

Voting no was a vote to leave current laws unchanged. Possession or use of marijuana for any reason remained illegal.

Issue 3 was accompanied on the ballot by Issue 2, which was added by state lawmakers concerned that the amendment would have granted a monopoly to the facilities.

Link.

I can, simply because lots of boomers who don’t think it’s a serious crime don’t want to be around it or to have to deal with cannabis culture the way we now have to deal with gay pride, and imprisoning the odd pot smoker while giving slaps on the wrist to substantially more of them keeps it far enough out of the open that no one who doesn’t want to deal with it does so.

There’s also game theoretic reasons for cultural conservatives to keep it legal, and I expect that those are likely to weigh more heavily on conservative state legislators in the future.

I guess this is a blind spot of mine, as I just cannot comprehend the desire to keep sending people to jail for smoking weed.

I might have voted no on marijuana legalization, depending on how the law was constructed. I hate all the tacky billboards and ubiquitous stores in my state promoting a vice (even if I indulge myself on rare occasion). Evidence suggests that marijuana use is increasing, and I believe the downsides are understated. Finally, no one is actually going to jail for smoking weed.

You know, Clinton got a lot of undeserved criticism for saying he wanted abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare". Honestly, it's a great formula for a lot of things including marijuana.

We went from legal prohibition to the current gross free-for-all.

In a perfect world, there would be some government owned drug store in a non-descript building, open at inconvenient hours that sold the products people would otherwise purchase from street dealers.

Yah if that’s the case people will still keep buying from street dealers.

In a perfect world, there would be some government owned drug store in a non-descript building, open at inconvenient hours that sold the products people would otherwise purchase from street dealers.

In all fairness, this is what we had for medical for a while in PA, if in practice but not law, simply because sourcing problems and ambiguity in the law meant that the dispensaries had practically no product, at least not the specific products a lot of people wanted. The end result was that most people with dubious medical cards just kept buying from street dealers while people who legitimately needed it for medical reasons and had no prior contact with the drug culture were hung out to dry.

In a perfect world, there would be some government owned drug store in a non-descript building, open at inconvenient hours that sold the products people would otherwise purchase from street dealers.

Of course, this being the government we're talking about, the prices will be in excess of the street dealers, and you'll have 10 round milligram limits on products because anything over that is "high-capacity assault" weed. Which is... exactly how it works north of the US.

Finally, no one is actually going to jail for smoking weed.

Too many things are felonies, and selective enforcement exists (making a "concerned citizen calling about" heckler's veto into law is just inviting and incentivizing bad behavior).

The fact that a law exists that can put you in jail for a relatively-harmless thing is a massive liability even if nobody enforces it. And that liability affects the people who respect the law the most (or don't have the risk tolerance to break it), which also happen to be the people who wouldn't be adding to the current problems people who are anti-weed complain about in the first place.

If it's not going to stop, and considering the number of people currently breaking the laws around it, it isn't; might as well not fuck up the ability for everyone else to enjoy it.

A major flaw in the ‘weed isn’t going away’ argument is that laws against it in the USA aren’t seriously enforced.

I hate all the tacky billboards and ubiquitous stores in my state promoting a vice

Donuts ... low mileage cars ... alcohol ... fast food ...

I don't believe you have thought through your statement unless you're looking for a blanket ban on sin advertising.

I don't believe you have thought through your criticism.

There's a major difference between prohibiting things that are already legal and legalizing things that are currently prohibited. De novo, there are a lot of things we would change that don't make sense to change now. Most famously, if alcohol was invented today, it would rightfully be banned or heavily restricted.

Consistency is and ought to be sacrificed for pragmatism.

Finally, no one is actually going to jail for smoking weed.

you sure about that?

Date has been screwy lately due to reporting issues, but 2019 FBI data says there were 1.5 million arrests for drug abuse violations, and about 480,000 arrests were just for marijuana possession. In my experience cops don't tend to be shy about upgrading to distribution charges, so presumably if someone was dealing they'd get arrested for dealing rather than just possession. I have no idea how many of half million people arrested were actually sent to jail, how many were subsequently convicted, or how many had a clean record (why is this relevant?). Still, that is a remarkable sample size to draw from.

I've known a handful of people who have been arrested for marijuana possession, and not a single one has spent more than a few hours in a cell. The one guy in college who had "distribution" amounts got some community service and a few years of probation, for everyone else it was a fine.

how many had a clean record (why is this relevant?

I have heard many times that drugs are an easy way to get someone to plea, instead of having to go with some harder to prove charge. Similarly, I've known a dealer who was released with some fines/probation repeatedly, paired with escalating threats that he was running out of chances and needed to turn his life around. Basically, I think many of us assume the courts treat "normal taxpayer who smokes weed sometimes" differently than a known public nuisance.

I know that this is moving the goalposts, but even with little to no jail time an arrest and drug conviction can absolutely derail a person's life. A felony conviction will cost you several rights off the bat like the right to vote, own a firearm, and serve on a jury. Careers in government and health care will be permanently off limits as well. Most other traditional, high paying careers will become vastly more challenging to pursue as will renting a place to live (background checks are routine). Needless to say if you ever interact with the justice system again, e.g. in a child custody case, criminal convictions will be held against you.

All that is to say that just because someone isn't sitting behind bars doesn't mean that they aren't being punished.

I don't have any reason to doubt the specific cases you're familiar with, but we're still working with a pool of half a million arrests. A third of all drug arrests are just for marijuana possession, so it's a bit wild to claim that "no one is actually going to jail for smoking weed". I'd need to see way more systemic evidence before that claim starts to approach plausibility.

We know that Biden's recent pardon freed no one, which is a bit of evidence that should have shifted everyone's priors toward no one goes to jail for simple possession.

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Fair, anecdotes and all that. But arrests != charges, much less jail time. As a more general proxy point, Biden's recent pardoning of all federal marijuana possession charges did not release a single prisoner.

You're a defense attorney - have you ever seen a person get jail time for just possession?

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for a first offense

I could've sworn I was next to the goal posts a moment ago.

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