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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   29677 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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I feel like as long as I have been paying attention to elections there have been screwups by the major parties that should have had them disqualified from major state ballots.

Republicans are not barred from the General Election ballot in Colorado.

Trump is barred form the Republican Primary ballot.

Republicans will still be on the Republican Primary ballot in Colorado, no party is being kept off of anything.

And Trump will still win the Republican Primary and be teh candidate, and nothing in this ruling says he won't be on the General Election ballot in Colorado.

(and of course, it wouldn't matter if he wasn't since he was never going to win Colorado, but in terms of the symbolism that's not a thing that's currently happening)

... But yeah, the two party duopoly absolutely conspire against third parties, and it's bad. Not too bad, though, since first past the post voting pretty much guarantees a two-party system at a macro level anyway, even without the thumbs on the scale. We need something like Approval voting to make third parties viable in single-winner elections.

  • -15

nothing in this ruling says he won't be on the General Election ballot in Colorado.

Extrapolating just a little bit, if Trump is ineligible according to the 14th Ammendment, they'd have to keep him off the general election ballot.

I feel like as long as I have been paying attention to elections there have been screwups by the major parties that should have had them disqualified from major state ballots.

Republicans are not barred from the General Election ballot in Colorado.

I should be more clear: it is always specific candidates that fail to meat some standard and should been off the ballot. Often times it is hilariously because they accidentally made the ballot requirements too strict in their continuing efforts to fuck over third parties, and they forgot to exempt themselves from it like they normally do. It is always the R or D next to their name that saves them.

Trump is barred form the Republican Primary ballot.

And I'll reiterate my point: I think it is unlikely to actually happen. I'm about 90% certain that Trump will be on the primary ballot in Colorado come election time. I will take a small token bet of 80% odds to that effect.

... But yeah, the two party duopoly absolutely conspire against third parties, and it's bad. Not too bad, though, since first past the post voting pretty much guarantees a two-party system at a macro level anyway, even without the thumbs on the scale. We need something like Approval voting to make third parties viable in single-winner elections.

First past the post voting guarantees a two-party system. It does not guarantee that those two parties must be the democrats and republicans. The laws and regulations do that.

I'd be happier with approval voting, but likely not by much. I'm not a huge fan of democracy anyways. Making democracy more efficient seems less important to me than making sure democracy can't vote on things I actually care about.

And Trump will still win the Republican Primary and be teh candidate, and nothing in this ruling says he won't be on the General Election ballot in Colorado.

I think this is not quite correct. It's true that the instant case is about the Colorado primary ballot but the underlying rationale is that Trump is ineligible to be President and people who are ineligible to be President also cannot be primary candidates. I would be surprised if candidates who are ineligible for the presidency could be on the General Election ballot.

I mean yeah that makes logical sense to me, but so far this whole thing has been running off complex legal minutia rather than common sense. No idea how the law works, how it will work by the time of the general election, how it will be interpreted and applied, etc.

I've searched and not found any analysis of this question so far, I expect those articles will come out over teh next few days and we'll know more.

Anything can be justified by a state of exception: Next time, there will be a some new reason why some other Republican can't be allowed on the ballot. (When one is allowed on the ballot, it will be "proof" that Republicans can still run, all those other Republicans were just unique exceptions that don't count.)

The Soviet Union had freedom of speech. It was in their constitution. There were just a lot of exceptional circumstances.

When we get to N=2 I'll start considering whether the pattern you're talking about exists.

Two through seven.

I don't understand how a court can ban him from the primary ballot. Isn't it up to the Republican Party?

You can have primaries or caucuses (collectively both are often described as primaries). Caucuses are run by parties, primaries by the state ‘on behalf’ of the parties. Colorado has primaries. If they had caucuses, the court wouldn’t have been able to do this (although their rationale suggests Trump could be barred from the actual presidential ballot for the same reason).

I really, really wish that it were, it's insane that the government is involved in primaries.

But that is in fact how it works, the two main parties sort of appropriate the infrastructure and machinery of the electoral system of many states, and end up subject to legislation by those states thereby.

I think this is a huge conflict of interest for our Democracy, and that primaries should be purely private affairs managed by teh parties among their own members. But unfortunately that's not how it works.

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