In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
The massive purge of over 100,000 Brooklyn voters from the rolls — which caused huge problems at polling sites this past Tuesday — was the result of an epic screw-up by a long-time official expected to be forced out over the debacle, sources said.
Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the Board of Election’s chief clerk, was suspended without pay on Thursday, two days after the city’s botched presidential primary prompted criticism from both the winners and losers on the Democratic side.
She was suspended “without pay, effective immediately, pending an internal investigation into the administration of the voter rolls in the Borough of Brooklyn,” the BOE said in a statement, hours after the Daily News broke the story online.
She’s in the process of being forced out over the voter roll mishaps, perhaps as early as the board’s next commissioner meeting next Tuesday, sources said.
The problems began when she was trying to clean up the voting books, which must be periodically purged to eliminate people who die, move or are ineligible for other reasons.
Sources said she skipped one of the steps that was built in to stop the system from purging eligible voters, which caused a chain reaction that led to people being improperly removed.
Brooklyn lost 102,717 — or 8% — of its active voters from Nov. 1, 2015, through April 1, 2016, according to state stats.
It’s the only county in the state that lost voters in that time period.
The high number of dropped voters — combined with other issues like long lines, late starts, and inadequate equipment — led to both the City Controller and the state Attorney General to launch investigations into the widespread irregularities.
“The administration of the voter rolls in Brooklyn is of major concern to our office and is a key focus of our investigation,” state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, whose office is also looking at other parts of the state that had voting problems.
His office received over 1,000 complaints on Election day about voting problems.
The BOE, in a statement, said it will “fully cooperate with the investigations currently being conducted by the Office of the New York State Attorney General and The Office of the New York City Comptroller.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton, said he was “concerned about the conduct of the voting process in New York.”
And John Podesta, top Clinton campaign official, addressed the issue on Twitter, saying “Every eligible voter has the right to have their vote counted.”
Haslett-Rudiano, who has worked at BOE since 1999 and made $125,758 last year, has made headlines before.
In 2013, The News reported that she had let her 123 year old Upper West Side brownstone fall such disrepair it had more than 20 Department of Buildings violations slapped on it.
Neighbors said it was a magnet for vandals and rats, begging her to sell the unoccupied space. She said she had trouble selling the building — which she bought for $5,000 in 1976 — because it reminded her of her late husband.
“A lot of my husband’s dreams are wrapped up in that building,” she told The News in 2013.
She sold the fixer upper for $6.6 million in 2014.
"Skipped a step".
wat.
What's worse is WNYC found it days before the primary (wasn't anyone in government who thought this was a problem until then) and they didn't fix it or come up with a workaround. So they knew they would be disenfranchising all those voters before they held the election and they did it anyway expecting to just deal with it after.
Not a whole lot of confidence in a Hillary delegate conducting the investigation either.
The New York City comptroller, who is auditing the local Board of Elections after reports of voting issues in Tuesday’s primary election, is also a Democratic delegate for Hillary Clinton.
On April 22 2016 11:28 parkufarku wrote: Even if you like having closed primaries (which hinders the democratic process)
How so?
It excludes ~40% of the voting population (larger than either party) from participating in the nomination process for one.
No it doesn't. Anyone can register as a member of the party whose nominee they want to select. It's free. Why would it be undemocratic for a party to choose that its nominee will be decided by its members?
Well they aren't when they are same day registration, but iirc they were talking about in reference to New York so I doubt they were counting those. Though you could argue since we only practically have 2 nominees that people shouldn't have to claim allegiance to influence one or the other outcomes.
Really we should just modernize ballot access and our voting system from the local to the national level. It's fine to ask for and critique other options but we have to all recognize the way we do things now is atrocious.
You're branching into different arguments. People can vote for whomever they want in the general election. They can also participate in the nomination process of whatever party they want. They just need to register as a member of that party (sometimes they don't, obviously, depending on what the state party has decided).
Discussing until when one should be allowed to register as a member of that party is a different argument. The point is that there is nothing undemocratic in itself to restrict the nomination process of a given party to the members of that party only.
Ok if the point was that closed primaries in a vacuum don't "hinder the democratic process" that's a tougher argument to refute. But it's clear, that's what they've been used to do. Whether that's supposed to be part of the process is an esoteric/definitional/philosophical question.
So do they by their nature make it less democratic? I suppose in the same way that a loaded gun makes a home more dangerous. Depending on how it is maintained/perceived, it could be much more dangerous, much less, or no net effect.
Yes, the point being discussed is whether or not a closed primary system is in itself undemocratic. As I said, anyone can join the party of their choice for free, and participate in that party's primary. There is nothing undemocratic about the system. That loaded gun analogy is completely nonsensical and irrelevant.
The point was that it's debatable whether they are necessary at all. They are clearly being exploited to be undemocratic, so the concept is "does their existence undermine the process to begin with". That's ,as I said, is debatable, but it's pretty irrelevant to the point they seemed to be making. Which is closed primaries as they are used in many states are undemocratic. A more unsavory issue I imagine, considering one of the worst offenders is a Democrat run state/party.
No, "whether they are necessary at all" is a completely different argument. It is not what I was replying to and discussing. "They are clearly being exploited to be undemocratic" is your claim, which is a purely subjective opinion. Again, there is nothing undemocratic in thinking that a party's nominee should be decided by that party's members. You haven't provided the slightest reason as to why that would be undemocratic -- your initial assertion that it prevents 40% of the electorate from voting is factually false, since the people who are independent/unaffiliated to that party can choose to become members and vote in the primary.
The massive purge of over 100,000 Brooklyn voters from the rolls — which caused huge problems at polling sites this past Tuesday — was the result of an epic screw-up by a long-time official expected to be forced out over the debacle, sources said.
Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the Board of Election’s chief clerk, was suspended without pay on Thursday, two days after the city’s botched presidential primary prompted criticism from both the winners and losers on the Democratic side.
She was suspended “without pay, effective immediately, pending an internal investigation into the administration of the voter rolls in the Borough of Brooklyn,” the BOE said in a statement, hours after the Daily News broke the story online.
She’s in the process of being forced out over the voter roll mishaps, perhaps as early as the board’s next commissioner meeting next Tuesday, sources said.
The problems began when she was trying to clean up the voting books, which must be periodically purged to eliminate people who die, move or are ineligible for other reasons.
Sources said she skipped one of the steps that was built in to stop the system from purging eligible voters, which caused a chain reaction that led to people being improperly removed.
Brooklyn lost 102,717 — or 8% — of its active voters from Nov. 1, 2015, through April 1, 2016, according to state stats.
It’s the only county in the state that lost voters in that time period.
The high number of dropped voters — combined with other issues like long lines, late starts, and inadequate equipment — led to both the City Controller and the state Attorney General to launch investigations into the widespread irregularities.
“The administration of the voter rolls in Brooklyn is of major concern to our office and is a key focus of our investigation,” state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, whose office is also looking at other parts of the state that had voting problems.
His office received over 1,000 complaints on Election day about voting problems.
The BOE, in a statement, said it will “fully cooperate with the investigations currently being conducted by the Office of the New York State Attorney General and The Office of the New York City Comptroller.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton, said he was “concerned about the conduct of the voting process in New York.”
And John Podesta, top Clinton campaign official, addressed the issue on Twitter, saying “Every eligible voter has the right to have their vote counted.”
Haslett-Rudiano, who has worked at BOE since 1999 and made $125,758 last year, has made headlines before.
In 2013, The News reported that she had let her 123 year old Upper West Side brownstone fall such disrepair it had more than 20 Department of Buildings violations slapped on it.
Neighbors said it was a magnet for vandals and rats, begging her to sell the unoccupied space. She said she had trouble selling the building — which she bought for $5,000 in 1976 — because it reminded her of her late husband.
“A lot of my husband’s dreams are wrapped up in that building,” she told The News in 2013.
She sold the fixer upper for $6.6 million in 2014.
"Skipped a step".
wat.
What's worse is WNYC found it days before the primary (wasn't anyone in government who thought this was a problem until then) and they didn't fix it or come up with a workaround. So they knew they would be disenfranchising all those voters before they held the election and they did it anyway expecting to just deal with it after.
Not a whole lot of confidence in a Hillary delegate conducting the investigation either.
The New York City comptroller, who is auditing the local Board of Elections after reports of voting issues in Tuesday’s primary election, is also a Democratic delegate for Hillary Clinton.
So it's not surprise they would come out with an excuse like that. I'm curious what "step" she skipped and who was then effected.
What's "not surprising"? What "excuse"? You do realize that King's County went to Clinton with a larger percentage than the overall average of the state, right? What are you trying to imply with those questions? That Hillary somehow decided to prevent 100,000 Brooklyn Democrats from casting their vote, even though they were likely to vote for her in sizeable margins? Or do you, and did she, magically know that those 100,000 Democrats were going to vote Sanders? How?
On April 22 2016 11:28 parkufarku wrote: Even if you like having closed primaries (which hinders the democratic process)
How so?
It excludes ~40% of the voting population (larger than either party) from participating in the nomination process for one.
No it doesn't. Anyone can register as a member of the party whose nominee they want to select. It's free. Why would it be undemocratic for a party to choose that its nominee will be decided by its members?
Well they aren't when they are same day registration, but iirc they were talking about in reference to New York so I doubt they were counting those. Though you could argue since we only practically have 2 nominees that people shouldn't have to claim allegiance to influence one or the other outcomes.
Really we should just modernize ballot access and our voting system from the local to the national level. It's fine to ask for and critique other options but we have to all recognize the way we do things now is atrocious.
You're branching into different arguments. People can vote for whomever they want in the general election. They can also participate in the nomination process of whatever party they want. They just need to register as a member of that party (sometimes they don't, obviously, depending on what the state party has decided).
Discussing until when one should be allowed to register as a member of that party is a different argument. The point is that there is nothing undemocratic in itself to restrict the nomination process of a given party to the members of that party only.
Ok if the point was that closed primaries in a vacuum don't "hinder the democratic process" that's a tougher argument to refute. But it's clear, that's what they've been used to do. Whether that's supposed to be part of the process is an esoteric/definitional/philosophical question.
So do they by their nature make it less democratic? I suppose in the same way that a loaded gun makes a home more dangerous. Depending on how it is maintained/perceived, it could be much more dangerous, much less, or no net effect.
Yes, the point being discussed is whether or not a closed primary system is in itself undemocratic. As I said, anyone can join the party of their choice for free, and participate in that party's primary. There is nothing undemocratic about the system. That loaded gun analogy is completely nonsensical and irrelevant.
The point was that it's debatable whether they are necessary at all. They are clearly being exploited to be undemocratic, so the concept is "does their existence undermine the process to begin with". That's ,as I said, is debatable, but it's pretty irrelevant to the point they seemed to be making. Which is closed primaries as they are used in many states are undemocratic. A more unsavory issue I imagine, considering one of the worst offenders is a Democrat run state/party.
No, "whether they are necessary at all" is a completely different argument. It is not what I was replying to and discussing. "They are clearly being exploited to be undemocratic" is your claim, which is a purely subjective opinion. Again, there is nothing undemocratic in thinking that a party's nominee should be decided by that party's members. You haven't provided the slightest reason as to why that would be undemocratic -- your initial assertion that it prevents 40% of the electorate from voting is factually false, since the people who are independent/unaffiliated to that party can choose to become members and vote in the primary.
The massive purge of over 100,000 Brooklyn voters from the rolls — which caused huge problems at polling sites this past Tuesday — was the result of an epic screw-up by a long-time official expected to be forced out over the debacle, sources said.
Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the Board of Election’s chief clerk, was suspended without pay on Thursday, two days after the city’s botched presidential primary prompted criticism from both the winners and losers on the Democratic side.
She was suspended “without pay, effective immediately, pending an internal investigation into the administration of the voter rolls in the Borough of Brooklyn,” the BOE said in a statement, hours after the Daily News broke the story online.
She’s in the process of being forced out over the voter roll mishaps, perhaps as early as the board’s next commissioner meeting next Tuesday, sources said.
The problems began when she was trying to clean up the voting books, which must be periodically purged to eliminate people who die, move or are ineligible for other reasons.
Sources said she skipped one of the steps that was built in to stop the system from purging eligible voters, which caused a chain reaction that led to people being improperly removed.
Brooklyn lost 102,717 — or 8% — of its active voters from Nov. 1, 2015, through April 1, 2016, according to state stats.
It’s the only county in the state that lost voters in that time period.
The high number of dropped voters — combined with other issues like long lines, late starts, and inadequate equipment — led to both the City Controller and the state Attorney General to launch investigations into the widespread irregularities.
“The administration of the voter rolls in Brooklyn is of major concern to our office and is a key focus of our investigation,” state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, whose office is also looking at other parts of the state that had voting problems.
His office received over 1,000 complaints on Election day about voting problems.
The BOE, in a statement, said it will “fully cooperate with the investigations currently being conducted by the Office of the New York State Attorney General and The Office of the New York City Comptroller.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton, said he was “concerned about the conduct of the voting process in New York.”
And John Podesta, top Clinton campaign official, addressed the issue on Twitter, saying “Every eligible voter has the right to have their vote counted.”
Haslett-Rudiano, who has worked at BOE since 1999 and made $125,758 last year, has made headlines before.
In 2013, The News reported that she had let her 123 year old Upper West Side brownstone fall such disrepair it had more than 20 Department of Buildings violations slapped on it.
Neighbors said it was a magnet for vandals and rats, begging her to sell the unoccupied space. She said she had trouble selling the building — which she bought for $5,000 in 1976 — because it reminded her of her late husband.
“A lot of my husband’s dreams are wrapped up in that building,” she told The News in 2013.
She sold the fixer upper for $6.6 million in 2014.
"Skipped a step".
wat.
What's worse is WNYC found it days before the primary (wasn't anyone in government who thought this was a problem until then) and they didn't fix it or come up with a workaround. So they knew they would be disenfranchising all those voters before they held the election and they did it anyway expecting to just deal with it after.
Not a whole lot of confidence in a Hillary delegate conducting the investigation either.
The New York City comptroller, who is auditing the local Board of Elections after reports of voting issues in Tuesday’s primary election, is also a Democratic delegate for Hillary Clinton.
So it's not surprise they would come out with an excuse like that. I'm curious what "step" she skipped and who was then effected.
What's "not surprising"? What "excuse"? You do realize that King's County went to Clinton with a larger percentage than the overall average of the state, right? What are you trying to imply with those questions? That Hillary somehow decided to prevent 100,000 Brooklyn Democrats from casting their vote, even though they were likely to vote for her in sizeable margins? Or do you, and did she, magically know that those 100,000 Democrats were going to vote Sanders? How?
I honestly don't know what happened, but I do know that the last two states she won are under investigation and the same thing happened in both. Also this is yet another time with electronic voting where she greatly outperformed the exit polling.
They could all be a bunch of coincidences, but she must be real tight with the coincidence fairy because they are everywhere around her.
Also, it may come as a surprise, but I don't care which candidate the people were going to vote for... Voter suppression or careless officials, I still think it's unacceptable. Of course you can't have these internal investigations either because we see time and again on either side they always mysteriously come up clean or with a fall person.
On April 22 2016 12:11 Sermokala wrote: If america wanted land it could take it wherever it wanted. America controls the seas and therefore the world economy. The world simply don't have a solution for an American carrier battlegroup sitting in every ocean in the world. Nations will simply surrender or starve.
Also Jackson isn't getting kicked off the 20 dollar bill completely hes simply going to be on the back of it while tubman is on the front. Which I think is fabulous symbolism.
Also the Picture that they're using for Tubman is absolutely on point. She looks more presidential in it then most presidents in their pictures and this is just photo shops on the internet right now.
The first Democrat president in office getting replaced on the $20 bill by a gun-owning Republican. I see nothing wrong with this.
On April 22 2016 12:11 Sermokala wrote: If america wanted land it could take it wherever it wanted. America controls the seas and therefore the world economy. The world simply don't have a solution for an American carrier battlegroup sitting in every ocean in the world. Nations will simply surrender or starve.
Also Jackson isn't getting kicked off the 20 dollar bill completely hes simply going to be on the back of it while tubman is on the front. Which I think is fabulous symbolism.
Also the Picture that they're using for Tubman is absolutely on point. She looks more presidential in it then most presidents in their pictures and this is just photo shops on the internet right now.
The first Democrat president in office getting replaced on the $20 bill by a gun-owning Republican. I see nothing wrong with this.
As a gun owning Bernie supporter I think those labels are getting more useless every day.
The massive purge of over 100,000 Brooklyn voters from the rolls — which caused huge problems at polling sites this past Tuesday — was the result of an epic screw-up by a long-time official expected to be forced out over the debacle, sources said.
Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the Board of Election’s chief clerk, was suspended without pay on Thursday, two days after the city’s botched presidential primary prompted criticism from both the winners and losers on the Democratic side.
She was suspended “without pay, effective immediately, pending an internal investigation into the administration of the voter rolls in the Borough of Brooklyn,” the BOE said in a statement, hours after the Daily News broke the story online.
She’s in the process of being forced out over the voter roll mishaps, perhaps as early as the board’s next commissioner meeting next Tuesday, sources said.
The problems began when she was trying to clean up the voting books, which must be periodically purged to eliminate people who die, move or are ineligible for other reasons.
Sources said she skipped one of the steps that was built in to stop the system from purging eligible voters, which caused a chain reaction that led to people being improperly removed.
Brooklyn lost 102,717 — or 8% — of its active voters from Nov. 1, 2015, through April 1, 2016, according to state stats.
It’s the only county in the state that lost voters in that time period.
The high number of dropped voters — combined with other issues like long lines, late starts, and inadequate equipment — led to both the City Controller and the state Attorney General to launch investigations into the widespread irregularities.
“The administration of the voter rolls in Brooklyn is of major concern to our office and is a key focus of our investigation,” state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, whose office is also looking at other parts of the state that had voting problems.
His office received over 1,000 complaints on Election day about voting problems.
The BOE, in a statement, said it will “fully cooperate with the investigations currently being conducted by the Office of the New York State Attorney General and The Office of the New York City Comptroller.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton, said he was “concerned about the conduct of the voting process in New York.”
And John Podesta, top Clinton campaign official, addressed the issue on Twitter, saying “Every eligible voter has the right to have their vote counted.”
Haslett-Rudiano, who has worked at BOE since 1999 and made $125,758 last year, has made headlines before.
In 2013, The News reported that she had let her 123 year old Upper West Side brownstone fall such disrepair it had more than 20 Department of Buildings violations slapped on it.
Neighbors said it was a magnet for vandals and rats, begging her to sell the unoccupied space. She said she had trouble selling the building — which she bought for $5,000 in 1976 — because it reminded her of her late husband.
“A lot of my husband’s dreams are wrapped up in that building,” she told The News in 2013.
She sold the fixer upper for $6.6 million in 2014.
"Skipped a step".
wat.
To me, when I read that sort of stuff, I can't help but think that the Democratic party went out of its way to rig elections in a way to discredit Sanders, a candidate which they do not endorse.
That kind of rigging / meddling is easily hidden from the eyes of most by the media and politicians who raise a veil in the form of administrative bullshit which no one understands without spending SIGNIFICANT time understanding the political gears.
It's just a little concerning. I mean, I could be wrong, perhaps someone could shed a little light on that situation.
On April 22 2016 13:30 kwizach wrote: [quote] How so?
It excludes ~40% of the voting population (larger than either party) from participating in the nomination process for one.
No it doesn't. Anyone can register as a member of the party whose nominee they want to select. It's free. Why would it be undemocratic for a party to choose that its nominee will be decided by its members?
Well they aren't when they are same day registration, but iirc they were talking about in reference to New York so I doubt they were counting those. Though you could argue since we only practically have 2 nominees that people shouldn't have to claim allegiance to influence one or the other outcomes.
Really we should just modernize ballot access and our voting system from the local to the national level. It's fine to ask for and critique other options but we have to all recognize the way we do things now is atrocious.
You're branching into different arguments. People can vote for whomever they want in the general election. They can also participate in the nomination process of whatever party they want. They just need to register as a member of that party (sometimes they don't, obviously, depending on what the state party has decided).
Discussing until when one should be allowed to register as a member of that party is a different argument. The point is that there is nothing undemocratic in itself to restrict the nomination process of a given party to the members of that party only.
Ok if the point was that closed primaries in a vacuum don't "hinder the democratic process" that's a tougher argument to refute. But it's clear, that's what they've been used to do. Whether that's supposed to be part of the process is an esoteric/definitional/philosophical question.
So do they by their nature make it less democratic? I suppose in the same way that a loaded gun makes a home more dangerous. Depending on how it is maintained/perceived, it could be much more dangerous, much less, or no net effect.
Yes, the point being discussed is whether or not a closed primary system is in itself undemocratic. As I said, anyone can join the party of their choice for free, and participate in that party's primary. There is nothing undemocratic about the system. That loaded gun analogy is completely nonsensical and irrelevant.
The point was that it's debatable whether they are necessary at all. They are clearly being exploited to be undemocratic, so the concept is "does their existence undermine the process to begin with". That's ,as I said, is debatable, but it's pretty irrelevant to the point they seemed to be making. Which is closed primaries as they are used in many states are undemocratic. A more unsavory issue I imagine, considering one of the worst offenders is a Democrat run state/party.
No, "whether they are necessary at all" is a completely different argument. It is not what I was replying to and discussing. "They are clearly being exploited to be undemocratic" is your claim, which is a purely subjective opinion. Again, there is nothing undemocratic in thinking that a party's nominee should be decided by that party's members. You haven't provided the slightest reason as to why that would be undemocratic -- your initial assertion that it prevents 40% of the electorate from voting is factually false, since the people who are independent/unaffiliated to that party can choose to become members and vote in the primary.
The massive purge of over 100,000 Brooklyn voters from the rolls — which caused huge problems at polling sites this past Tuesday — was the result of an epic screw-up by a long-time official expected to be forced out over the debacle, sources said.
Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the Board of Election’s chief clerk, was suspended without pay on Thursday, two days after the city’s botched presidential primary prompted criticism from both the winners and losers on the Democratic side.
She was suspended “without pay, effective immediately, pending an internal investigation into the administration of the voter rolls in the Borough of Brooklyn,” the BOE said in a statement, hours after the Daily News broke the story online.
She’s in the process of being forced out over the voter roll mishaps, perhaps as early as the board’s next commissioner meeting next Tuesday, sources said.
The problems began when she was trying to clean up the voting books, which must be periodically purged to eliminate people who die, move or are ineligible for other reasons.
Sources said she skipped one of the steps that was built in to stop the system from purging eligible voters, which caused a chain reaction that led to people being improperly removed.
Brooklyn lost 102,717 — or 8% — of its active voters from Nov. 1, 2015, through April 1, 2016, according to state stats.
It’s the only county in the state that lost voters in that time period.
The high number of dropped voters — combined with other issues like long lines, late starts, and inadequate equipment — led to both the City Controller and the state Attorney General to launch investigations into the widespread irregularities.
“The administration of the voter rolls in Brooklyn is of major concern to our office and is a key focus of our investigation,” state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, whose office is also looking at other parts of the state that had voting problems.
His office received over 1,000 complaints on Election day about voting problems.
The BOE, in a statement, said it will “fully cooperate with the investigations currently being conducted by the Office of the New York State Attorney General and The Office of the New York City Comptroller.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton, said he was “concerned about the conduct of the voting process in New York.”
And John Podesta, top Clinton campaign official, addressed the issue on Twitter, saying “Every eligible voter has the right to have their vote counted.”
Haslett-Rudiano, who has worked at BOE since 1999 and made $125,758 last year, has made headlines before.
In 2013, The News reported that she had let her 123 year old Upper West Side brownstone fall such disrepair it had more than 20 Department of Buildings violations slapped on it.
Neighbors said it was a magnet for vandals and rats, begging her to sell the unoccupied space. She said she had trouble selling the building — which she bought for $5,000 in 1976 — because it reminded her of her late husband.
“A lot of my husband’s dreams are wrapped up in that building,” she told The News in 2013.
She sold the fixer upper for $6.6 million in 2014.
"Skipped a step".
wat.
What's worse is WNYC found it days before the primary (wasn't anyone in government who thought this was a problem until then) and they didn't fix it or come up with a workaround. So they knew they would be disenfranchising all those voters before they held the election and they did it anyway expecting to just deal with it after.
Not a whole lot of confidence in a Hillary delegate conducting the investigation either.
The New York City comptroller, who is auditing the local Board of Elections after reports of voting issues in Tuesday’s primary election, is also a Democratic delegate for Hillary Clinton.
So it's not surprise they would come out with an excuse like that. I'm curious what "step" she skipped and who was then effected.
What's "not surprising"? What "excuse"? You do realize that King's County went to Clinton with a larger percentage than the overall average of the state, right? What are you trying to imply with those questions? That Hillary somehow decided to prevent 100,000 Brooklyn Democrats from casting their vote, even though they were likely to vote for her in sizeable margins? Or do you, and did she, magically know that those 100,000 Democrats were going to vote Sanders? How?
I honestly don't know what happened, but I do know that the last two states she won are under investigation and the same thing happened in both. Also this is yet another time with electronic voting where she greatly outperformed the exit polling.
They could all be a bunch of coincidences, but she must be real tight with the coincidence fairy because they are everywhere around her.
Also, it may come as a surprise, but I don't care which candidate the people were going to vote for... Voter suppression or careless officials, I still think it's unacceptable. Of course you can't have these internal investigations either because we see time and again on either side they always mysteriously come up clean or with a fall person.
But you have no idea if she profited from the conicidence fairy or if she actually suffered from it. Maybe the coincidence fairy is a little devil sent by Bernie, who always rigs the elections Clinton is winning to slow her down? Then the concidence fairy would be pretty tight with Bernie, even though she is always chasing Clinton. Or maybe the concidence fairy is just rolling dice.
So yes, there are massive (end emberassing) issues with the vote process. But the only "logic" you seem to know is "X -> Clinton is evil" and is simply nonsense.
But then again, it is pretty telling, that a campaign that started with "We don't want the lesser of two evils, we want the real deal" is now spending all their efforts on negative campaigning... exactly the sign of what they were fighting once.
The massive purge of over 100,000 Brooklyn voters from the rolls — which caused huge problems at polling sites this past Tuesday — was the result of an epic screw-up by a long-time official expected to be forced out over the debacle, sources said.
Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the Board of Election’s chief clerk, was suspended without pay on Thursday, two days after the city’s botched presidential primary prompted criticism from both the winners and losers on the Democratic side.
She was suspended “without pay, effective immediately, pending an internal investigation into the administration of the voter rolls in the Borough of Brooklyn,” the BOE said in a statement, hours after the Daily News broke the story online.
She’s in the process of being forced out over the voter roll mishaps, perhaps as early as the board’s next commissioner meeting next Tuesday, sources said.
The problems began when she was trying to clean up the voting books, which must be periodically purged to eliminate people who die, move or are ineligible for other reasons.
Sources said she skipped one of the steps that was built in to stop the system from purging eligible voters, which caused a chain reaction that led to people being improperly removed.
Brooklyn lost 102,717 — or 8% — of its active voters from Nov. 1, 2015, through April 1, 2016, according to state stats.
It’s the only county in the state that lost voters in that time period.
The high number of dropped voters — combined with other issues like long lines, late starts, and inadequate equipment — led to both the City Controller and the state Attorney General to launch investigations into the widespread irregularities.
“The administration of the voter rolls in Brooklyn is of major concern to our office and is a key focus of our investigation,” state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, whose office is also looking at other parts of the state that had voting problems.
His office received over 1,000 complaints on Election day about voting problems.
The BOE, in a statement, said it will “fully cooperate with the investigations currently being conducted by the Office of the New York State Attorney General and The Office of the New York City Comptroller.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton, said he was “concerned about the conduct of the voting process in New York.”
And John Podesta, top Clinton campaign official, addressed the issue on Twitter, saying “Every eligible voter has the right to have their vote counted.”
Haslett-Rudiano, who has worked at BOE since 1999 and made $125,758 last year, has made headlines before.
In 2013, The News reported that she had let her 123 year old Upper West Side brownstone fall such disrepair it had more than 20 Department of Buildings violations slapped on it.
Neighbors said it was a magnet for vandals and rats, begging her to sell the unoccupied space. She said she had trouble selling the building — which she bought for $5,000 in 1976 — because it reminded her of her late husband.
“A lot of my husband’s dreams are wrapped up in that building,” she told The News in 2013.
She sold the fixer upper for $6.6 million in 2014.
"Skipped a step".
wat.
To me, when I read that sort of stuff, I can't help but think that the Democratic party went out of its way to rig elections in a way to discredit Sanders, a candidate which they do not endorse.
That kind of rigging / meddling is easily hidden from the eyes of most by the media and politicians who raise a veil in the form of administrative bullshit which no one understands without spending SIGNIFICANT time understanding the political gears.
It's just a little concerning. I mean, I could be wrong, perhaps someone could shed a little light on that situation.
Here's the public meeting to approve the proclamation of the returns from the March 15 primary in Chicago.
That people aren't more concerned because of political motives is very disturbing. Problems with voting machines have been well documented yet here's the election commission acting like nothing is wrong. This nonsense should concern all voters. I mean what more do people need to see to see the problem?
On April 22 2016 13:34 GreenHorizons wrote: [quote] It excludes ~40% of the voting population (larger than either party) from participating in the nomination process for one.
No it doesn't. Anyone can register as a member of the party whose nominee they want to select. It's free. Why would it be undemocratic for a party to choose that its nominee will be decided by its members?
Well they aren't when they are same day registration, but iirc they were talking about in reference to New York so I doubt they were counting those. Though you could argue since we only practically have 2 nominees that people shouldn't have to claim allegiance to influence one or the other outcomes.
Really we should just modernize ballot access and our voting system from the local to the national level. It's fine to ask for and critique other options but we have to all recognize the way we do things now is atrocious.
You're branching into different arguments. People can vote for whomever they want in the general election. They can also participate in the nomination process of whatever party they want. They just need to register as a member of that party (sometimes they don't, obviously, depending on what the state party has decided).
Discussing until when one should be allowed to register as a member of that party is a different argument. The point is that there is nothing undemocratic in itself to restrict the nomination process of a given party to the members of that party only.
Ok if the point was that closed primaries in a vacuum don't "hinder the democratic process" that's a tougher argument to refute. But it's clear, that's what they've been used to do. Whether that's supposed to be part of the process is an esoteric/definitional/philosophical question.
So do they by their nature make it less democratic? I suppose in the same way that a loaded gun makes a home more dangerous. Depending on how it is maintained/perceived, it could be much more dangerous, much less, or no net effect.
Yes, the point being discussed is whether or not a closed primary system is in itself undemocratic. As I said, anyone can join the party of their choice for free, and participate in that party's primary. There is nothing undemocratic about the system. That loaded gun analogy is completely nonsensical and irrelevant.
The point was that it's debatable whether they are necessary at all. They are clearly being exploited to be undemocratic, so the concept is "does their existence undermine the process to begin with". That's ,as I said, is debatable, but it's pretty irrelevant to the point they seemed to be making. Which is closed primaries as they are used in many states are undemocratic. A more unsavory issue I imagine, considering one of the worst offenders is a Democrat run state/party.
No, "whether they are necessary at all" is a completely different argument. It is not what I was replying to and discussing. "They are clearly being exploited to be undemocratic" is your claim, which is a purely subjective opinion. Again, there is nothing undemocratic in thinking that a party's nominee should be decided by that party's members. You haven't provided the slightest reason as to why that would be undemocratic -- your initial assertion that it prevents 40% of the electorate from voting is factually false, since the people who are independent/unaffiliated to that party can choose to become members and vote in the primary.
The massive purge of over 100,000 Brooklyn voters from the rolls — which caused huge problems at polling sites this past Tuesday — was the result of an epic screw-up by a long-time official expected to be forced out over the debacle, sources said.
Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the Board of Election’s chief clerk, was suspended without pay on Thursday, two days after the city’s botched presidential primary prompted criticism from both the winners and losers on the Democratic side.
She was suspended “without pay, effective immediately, pending an internal investigation into the administration of the voter rolls in the Borough of Brooklyn,” the BOE said in a statement, hours after the Daily News broke the story online.
She’s in the process of being forced out over the voter roll mishaps, perhaps as early as the board’s next commissioner meeting next Tuesday, sources said.
The problems began when she was trying to clean up the voting books, which must be periodically purged to eliminate people who die, move or are ineligible for other reasons.
Sources said she skipped one of the steps that was built in to stop the system from purging eligible voters, which caused a chain reaction that led to people being improperly removed.
Brooklyn lost 102,717 — or 8% — of its active voters from Nov. 1, 2015, through April 1, 2016, according to state stats.
It’s the only county in the state that lost voters in that time period.
The high number of dropped voters — combined with other issues like long lines, late starts, and inadequate equipment — led to both the City Controller and the state Attorney General to launch investigations into the widespread irregularities.
“The administration of the voter rolls in Brooklyn is of major concern to our office and is a key focus of our investigation,” state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, whose office is also looking at other parts of the state that had voting problems.
His office received over 1,000 complaints on Election day about voting problems.
The BOE, in a statement, said it will “fully cooperate with the investigations currently being conducted by the Office of the New York State Attorney General and The Office of the New York City Comptroller.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton, said he was “concerned about the conduct of the voting process in New York.”
And John Podesta, top Clinton campaign official, addressed the issue on Twitter, saying “Every eligible voter has the right to have their vote counted.”
Haslett-Rudiano, who has worked at BOE since 1999 and made $125,758 last year, has made headlines before.
In 2013, The News reported that she had let her 123 year old Upper West Side brownstone fall such disrepair it had more than 20 Department of Buildings violations slapped on it.
Neighbors said it was a magnet for vandals and rats, begging her to sell the unoccupied space. She said she had trouble selling the building — which she bought for $5,000 in 1976 — because it reminded her of her late husband.
“A lot of my husband’s dreams are wrapped up in that building,” she told The News in 2013.
She sold the fixer upper for $6.6 million in 2014.
"Skipped a step".
wat.
What's worse is WNYC found it days before the primary (wasn't anyone in government who thought this was a problem until then) and they didn't fix it or come up with a workaround. So they knew they would be disenfranchising all those voters before they held the election and they did it anyway expecting to just deal with it after.
Not a whole lot of confidence in a Hillary delegate conducting the investigation either.
The New York City comptroller, who is auditing the local Board of Elections after reports of voting issues in Tuesday’s primary election, is also a Democratic delegate for Hillary Clinton.
So it's not surprise they would come out with an excuse like that. I'm curious what "step" she skipped and who was then effected.
What's "not surprising"? What "excuse"? You do realize that King's County went to Clinton with a larger percentage than the overall average of the state, right? What are you trying to imply with those questions? That Hillary somehow decided to prevent 100,000 Brooklyn Democrats from casting their vote, even though they were likely to vote for her in sizeable margins? Or do you, and did she, magically know that those 100,000 Democrats were going to vote Sanders? How?
I honestly don't know what happened, but I do know that the last two states she won are under investigation and the same thing happened in both. Also this is yet another time with electronic voting where she greatly outperformed the exit polling.
They could all be a bunch of coincidences, but she must be real tight with the coincidence fairy because they are everywhere around her.
Also, it may come as a surprise, but I don't care which candidate the people were going to vote for... Voter suppression or careless officials, I still think it's unacceptable. Of course you can't have these internal investigations either because we see time and again on either side they always mysteriously come up clean or with a fall person.
But you have no idea if she profited from the conicidence fairy or if she actually suffered from it. Maybe the coincidence fairy is a little devil sent by Bernie, who always rigs the elections Clinton is winning to slow her down? Then the concidence fairy would be pretty tight with Bernie, even though she is always chasing Clinton. Or maybe the concidence fairy is just rolling dice.
So yes, there are massive (end emberassing) issues with the vote process. But the only "logic" you seem to know is "X -> Clinton is evil" and is simply nonsense.
But then again, it is pretty telling, that a campaign that started with "We don't want the lesser of two evils, we want the real deal" is now spending all their efforts on negative campaigning... exactly the sign of what they were fighting once.
... Sure, because the establishment coincidence fairy is on Bernie's side... I don't think you get what's been happening over here.
But frankly I don't care who they are benefiting, as much as who seems to not think it's a huge problem. That being the democratic party at large and the people charged with handling these things.
On April 22 2016 11:28 parkufarku wrote: Even if you like having closed primaries (which hinders the democratic process)
How so?
It excludes ~40% of the voting population (larger than either party) from participating in the nomination process for one.
No it doesn't. Anyone can register as a member of the party whose nominee they want to select. It's free. Why would it be undemocratic for a party to choose that its nominee will be decided by its members?
Well they aren't when they are same day registration, but iirc they were talking about in reference to New York so I doubt they were counting those. Though you could argue since we only practically have 2 nominees that people shouldn't have to claim allegiance to influence one or the other outcomes.
Really we should just modernize ballot access and our voting system from the local to the national level. It's fine to ask for and critique other options but we have to all recognize the way we do things now is atrocious.
You're branching into different arguments. People can vote for whomever they want in the general election. They can also participate in the nomination process of whatever party they want. They just need to register as a member of that party (sometimes they don't, obviously, depending on what the state party has decided).
Discussing until when one should be allowed to register as a member of that party is a different argument. The point is that there is nothing undemocratic in itself to restrict the nomination process of a given party to the members of that party only.
Ok if the point was that closed primaries in a vacuum don't "hinder the democratic process" that's a tougher argument to refute. But it's clear, that's what they've been used to do. Whether that's supposed to be part of the process is an esoteric/definitional/philosophical question.
So do they by their nature make it less democratic? I suppose in the same way that a loaded gun makes a home more dangerous. Depending on how it is maintained/perceived, it could be much more dangerous, much less, or no net effect.
Yes, the point being discussed is whether or not a closed primary system is in itself undemocratic. As I said, anyone can join the party of their choice for free, and participate in that party's primary. There is nothing undemocratic about the system. That loaded gun analogy is completely nonsensical and irrelevant.
The point was that it's debatable whether they are necessary at all. They are clearly being exploited to be undemocratic, so the concept is "does their existence undermine the process to begin with". That's ,as I said, is debatable, but it's pretty irrelevant to the point they seemed to be making. Which is closed primaries as they are used in many states are undemocratic. A more unsavory issue I imagine, considering one of the worst offenders is a Democrat run state/party.
When you take this stance on the primary process you do realize that the US is actually one of the most democratic nations in the world in this regard right?
In most of the Western world you have to actually pay a party to become a member and get a say in who their candidate will be. Not free like it is in the US. That is assuming you can vote for it at all since that is not a requirement (the PVV for example in the Netherlands doesn't vote for their candidate, Wilders just picks himself).
The primary system does not exclude anyone, people chose to stay independent knowing that it will prevent them from voting (in some states) until the primary. They choose to not register, free of charge.
Could it be done better? Sure. Everything can be done better, but considering the laundry list of faults with the US election system this is a pointless hill to fight over.
In all cases, it looks like these elections are not exactly all fair play, which is indeed quite disturbing.
Then of course, what are you going to do about it? Answer is pretty much nothing, no average citizen (grouped or individual) is going to have the leverage to prevent the rigging from happening. There is no political or governmental entity which is there to prevent the rigging and keep the election running in fair and proper conditions. Most of all, what is disheartening is that there's nothing that can be done about it, other than whine on internet forums.
It's not even about Sanders getting discredited or Clinton getting discredited. It's anyone at all who has obstacles in their path, due to not being "establishment" or "representing the party's values".
Super-delegates also represent this power in some ways, where for some reason their vote carries so much more weight than the votes of other delegates, or voting citizens (on an individual level, not collective). This is just to ensure that party favorites get the edge they need, if they would ever need it. People are somehow fine with this, it's pretty bad, especially in a dual-party system like the one in the USA.
That's the impression I get, anyway. It's just overly complicated to have a good understanding on how these elections work, why they work this way and that just makes it all the more easy to set up these foggy circumstances in order to gently guide the election in an un-democratic way.
Though, I suppose that another way to see it is that the USA is just not ready for progressive candidates such as Sanders.
On April 22 2016 11:28 parkufarku wrote: Even if you like having closed primaries (which hinders the democratic process)
How so?
It excludes ~40% of the voting population (larger than either party) from participating in the nomination process for one.
No it doesn't. Anyone can register as a member of the party whose nominee they want to select. It's free. Why would it be undemocratic for a party to choose that its nominee will be decided by its members?
Well they aren't when they are same day registration, but iirc they were talking about in reference to New York so I doubt they were counting those. Though you could argue since we only practically have 2 nominees that people shouldn't have to claim allegiance to influence one or the other outcomes.
Really we should just modernize ballot access and our voting system from the local to the national level. It's fine to ask for and critique other options but we have to all recognize the way we do things now is atrocious.
You're branching into different arguments. People can vote for whomever they want in the general election. They can also participate in the nomination process of whatever party they want. They just need to register as a member of that party (sometimes they don't, obviously, depending on what the state party has decided).
Discussing until when one should be allowed to register as a member of that party is a different argument. The point is that there is nothing undemocratic in itself to restrict the nomination process of a given party to the members of that party only.
Ok if the point was that closed primaries in a vacuum don't "hinder the democratic process" that's a tougher argument to refute. But it's clear, that's what they've been used to do. Whether that's supposed to be part of the process is an esoteric/definitional/philosophical question.
So do they by their nature make it less democratic? I suppose in the same way that a loaded gun makes a home more dangerous. Depending on how it is maintained/perceived, it could be much more dangerous, much less, or no net effect.
Yes, the point being discussed is whether or not a closed primary system is in itself undemocratic. As I said, anyone can join the party of their choice for free, and participate in that party's primary. There is nothing undemocratic about the system. That loaded gun analogy is completely nonsensical and irrelevant.
The point was that it's debatable whether they are necessary at all. They are clearly being exploited to be undemocratic, so the concept is "does their existence undermine the process to begin with". That's ,as I said, is debatable, but it's pretty irrelevant to the point they seemed to be making. Which is closed primaries as they are used in many states are undemocratic. A more unsavory issue I imagine, considering one of the worst offenders is a Democrat run state/party.
When you take this stance on the primary process you do realize that the US is actually one of the most democratic nations in the world in this regard right?
In most of the Western world you have to actually pay a party to become a member and get a say in who their candidate will be. Not free like it is in the US. That is assuming you can vote for it at all since that is not a requirement (the PVV for example in the Netherlands doesn't vote for their candidate, Wilders just picks himself).
The primary system does not exclude anyone, people chose to stay independent knowing that it will prevent them from voting (in some states) until the primary. They choose to not register, free of charge.
Could it be done better? Sure. Everything can be done better, but considering the laundry list of faults with the US election system this is a pointless hill to fight over.
It's really not even fair to call them "votes". For instance for the caucus in my state it was just a "preference". All of the delegates do have to pay, if you don't pay your "vote" and the "votes" you represent don't count. It doesn't on it's face exclude anyone but for all practical purposes it sure does.
Back in Oct of 15 people might not have thought they wanted to be Democrats or participate in their nomination. Maybe after the first debate or the first caucus they were like:
Voter: "hey I'd like to be a Democrat so I can participate in the nomination. I really liked X performance at the debate (or whatever)". "What do you mean it's too late? the nomination isn't for months?"
Democrats: "Yeah well you didn't decide to be a democrat soon enough. We know you didn't even know who Bernie Sanders was or that Hillary was actually worth voting for but you can't participate, because democracy. "
Democrats: "Oh but join our party later because after we've (officially) picked our leader, you can totally follow them with us".
Beyond the implications for this particular race, it just reflects really poorly on Democrats and shines a light on the unfortunate truth that as far as the party leaders go, they are more concerned about winning elections than they are stopping voter suppression.
Hillary has already, and should she get the nomination, is going to do so much damage to liberal causes it's going to take years just to regain the ground we're losing.
The massive purge of over 100,000 Brooklyn voters from the rolls — which caused huge problems at polling sites this past Tuesday — was the result of an epic screw-up by a long-time official expected to be forced out over the debacle, sources said.
Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the Board of Election’s chief clerk, was suspended without pay on Thursday, two days after the city’s botched presidential primary prompted criticism from both the winners and losers on the Democratic side.
She was suspended “without pay, effective immediately, pending an internal investigation into the administration of the voter rolls in the Borough of Brooklyn,” the BOE said in a statement, hours after the Daily News broke the story online.
She’s in the process of being forced out over the voter roll mishaps, perhaps as early as the board’s next commissioner meeting next Tuesday, sources said.
The problems began when she was trying to clean up the voting books, which must be periodically purged to eliminate people who die, move or are ineligible for other reasons.
Sources said she skipped one of the steps that was built in to stop the system from purging eligible voters, which caused a chain reaction that led to people being improperly removed.
Brooklyn lost 102,717 — or 8% — of its active voters from Nov. 1, 2015, through April 1, 2016, according to state stats.
It’s the only county in the state that lost voters in that time period.
The high number of dropped voters — combined with other issues like long lines, late starts, and inadequate equipment — led to both the City Controller and the state Attorney General to launch investigations into the widespread irregularities.
“The administration of the voter rolls in Brooklyn is of major concern to our office and is a key focus of our investigation,” state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, whose office is also looking at other parts of the state that had voting problems.
His office received over 1,000 complaints on Election day about voting problems.
The BOE, in a statement, said it will “fully cooperate with the investigations currently being conducted by the Office of the New York State Attorney General and The Office of the New York City Comptroller.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton, said he was “concerned about the conduct of the voting process in New York.”
And John Podesta, top Clinton campaign official, addressed the issue on Twitter, saying “Every eligible voter has the right to have their vote counted.”
Haslett-Rudiano, who has worked at BOE since 1999 and made $125,758 last year, has made headlines before.
In 2013, The News reported that she had let her 123 year old Upper West Side brownstone fall such disrepair it had more than 20 Department of Buildings violations slapped on it.
Neighbors said it was a magnet for vandals and rats, begging her to sell the unoccupied space. She said she had trouble selling the building — which she bought for $5,000 in 1976 — because it reminded her of her late husband.
“A lot of my husband’s dreams are wrapped up in that building,” she told The News in 2013.
She sold the fixer upper for $6.6 million in 2014.
"Skipped a step".
wat.
To me, when I read that sort of stuff, I can't help but think that the Democratic party went out of its way to rig elections in a way to discredit Sanders, a candidate which they do not endorse.
That kind of rigging / meddling is easily hidden from the eyes of most by the media and politicians who raise a veil in the form of administrative bullshit which no one understands without spending SIGNIFICANT time understanding the political gears.
It's just a little concerning. I mean, I could be wrong, perhaps someone could shed a little light on that situation.
Eh? What are you on about. It seems really open to me that the establishment keeps pushing Hillary and the system's set up in her favour. I don't think they're even attempting to hide it much?
Only thing that sucks is that they have to control shows like daily Show with Trevor Noah and SNL so it starts messing up with comedy shows I watch.
Well the problem is not that the parties pick their candidate themselves, which makes total sense, but the two party presidential system. If you had 5 parties to chose from in the general election the not being able to vote in the primary wouldn't be in issue because you have other options. But if you only have two parties the public should have a say who gets to be their candidate. If you had 5 parties though, that would mean loads of other problems we might experience this election. If Bernie and Trump decide to run as independents and the votes split up something like 35% - 30% - 25% - 10% does somebody have a legitmate claim to be the U.S president if he represents only 35% of the country?
He won't be president then though. If that's to happen the house will be deciding, not sure what the specific threshold is. And if the house votes, republicans win as they control it and will pick a republican establishment candidate.
Just because of this threat there is pretty much 0 chance of Bernie running as an independent. If he doesn't beat Hillary now, it's over for him. Hard to see him wanting to be a vice president.
On April 22 2016 13:30 kwizach wrote: [quote] How so?
It excludes ~40% of the voting population (larger than either party) from participating in the nomination process for one.
No it doesn't. Anyone can register as a member of the party whose nominee they want to select. It's free. Why would it be undemocratic for a party to choose that its nominee will be decided by its members?
Well they aren't when they are same day registration, but iirc they were talking about in reference to New York so I doubt they were counting those. Though you could argue since we only practically have 2 nominees that people shouldn't have to claim allegiance to influence one or the other outcomes.
Really we should just modernize ballot access and our voting system from the local to the national level. It's fine to ask for and critique other options but we have to all recognize the way we do things now is atrocious.
You're branching into different arguments. People can vote for whomever they want in the general election. They can also participate in the nomination process of whatever party they want. They just need to register as a member of that party (sometimes they don't, obviously, depending on what the state party has decided).
Discussing until when one should be allowed to register as a member of that party is a different argument. The point is that there is nothing undemocratic in itself to restrict the nomination process of a given party to the members of that party only.
Ok if the point was that closed primaries in a vacuum don't "hinder the democratic process" that's a tougher argument to refute. But it's clear, that's what they've been used to do. Whether that's supposed to be part of the process is an esoteric/definitional/philosophical question.
So do they by their nature make it less democratic? I suppose in the same way that a loaded gun makes a home more dangerous. Depending on how it is maintained/perceived, it could be much more dangerous, much less, or no net effect.
Yes, the point being discussed is whether or not a closed primary system is in itself undemocratic. As I said, anyone can join the party of their choice for free, and participate in that party's primary. There is nothing undemocratic about the system. That loaded gun analogy is completely nonsensical and irrelevant.
The point was that it's debatable whether they are necessary at all. They are clearly being exploited to be undemocratic, so the concept is "does their existence undermine the process to begin with". That's ,as I said, is debatable, but it's pretty irrelevant to the point they seemed to be making. Which is closed primaries as they are used in many states are undemocratic. A more unsavory issue I imagine, considering one of the worst offenders is a Democrat run state/party.
No, "whether they are necessary at all" is a completely different argument. It is not what I was replying to and discussing. "They are clearly being exploited to be undemocratic" is your claim, which is a purely subjective opinion. Again, there is nothing undemocratic in thinking that a party's nominee should be decided by that party's members. You haven't provided the slightest reason as to why that would be undemocratic -- your initial assertion that it prevents 40% of the electorate from voting is factually false, since the people who are independent/unaffiliated to that party can choose to become members and vote in the primary.
The massive purge of over 100,000 Brooklyn voters from the rolls — which caused huge problems at polling sites this past Tuesday — was the result of an epic screw-up by a long-time official expected to be forced out over the debacle, sources said.
Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the Board of Election’s chief clerk, was suspended without pay on Thursday, two days after the city’s botched presidential primary prompted criticism from both the winners and losers on the Democratic side.
She was suspended “without pay, effective immediately, pending an internal investigation into the administration of the voter rolls in the Borough of Brooklyn,” the BOE said in a statement, hours after the Daily News broke the story online.
She’s in the process of being forced out over the voter roll mishaps, perhaps as early as the board’s next commissioner meeting next Tuesday, sources said.
The problems began when she was trying to clean up the voting books, which must be periodically purged to eliminate people who die, move or are ineligible for other reasons.
Sources said she skipped one of the steps that was built in to stop the system from purging eligible voters, which caused a chain reaction that led to people being improperly removed.
Brooklyn lost 102,717 — or 8% — of its active voters from Nov. 1, 2015, through April 1, 2016, according to state stats.
It’s the only county in the state that lost voters in that time period.
The high number of dropped voters — combined with other issues like long lines, late starts, and inadequate equipment — led to both the City Controller and the state Attorney General to launch investigations into the widespread irregularities.
“The administration of the voter rolls in Brooklyn is of major concern to our office and is a key focus of our investigation,” state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, whose office is also looking at other parts of the state that had voting problems.
His office received over 1,000 complaints on Election day about voting problems.
The BOE, in a statement, said it will “fully cooperate with the investigations currently being conducted by the Office of the New York State Attorney General and The Office of the New York City Comptroller.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton, said he was “concerned about the conduct of the voting process in New York.”
And John Podesta, top Clinton campaign official, addressed the issue on Twitter, saying “Every eligible voter has the right to have their vote counted.”
Haslett-Rudiano, who has worked at BOE since 1999 and made $125,758 last year, has made headlines before.
In 2013, The News reported that she had let her 123 year old Upper West Side brownstone fall such disrepair it had more than 20 Department of Buildings violations slapped on it.
Neighbors said it was a magnet for vandals and rats, begging her to sell the unoccupied space. She said she had trouble selling the building — which she bought for $5,000 in 1976 — because it reminded her of her late husband.
“A lot of my husband’s dreams are wrapped up in that building,” she told The News in 2013.
She sold the fixer upper for $6.6 million in 2014.
"Skipped a step".
wat.
What's worse is WNYC found it days before the primary (wasn't anyone in government who thought this was a problem until then) and they didn't fix it or come up with a workaround. So they knew they would be disenfranchising all those voters before they held the election and they did it anyway expecting to just deal with it after.
Not a whole lot of confidence in a Hillary delegate conducting the investigation either.
The New York City comptroller, who is auditing the local Board of Elections after reports of voting issues in Tuesday’s primary election, is also a Democratic delegate for Hillary Clinton.
So it's not surprise they would come out with an excuse like that. I'm curious what "step" she skipped and who was then effected.
What's "not surprising"? What "excuse"? You do realize that King's County went to Clinton with a larger percentage than the overall average of the state, right? What are you trying to imply with those questions? That Hillary somehow decided to prevent 100,000 Brooklyn Democrats from casting their vote, even though they were likely to vote for her in sizeable margins? Or do you, and did she, magically know that those 100,000 Democrats were going to vote Sanders? How?
I honestly don't know what happened, but I do know that the last two states she won are under investigation and the same thing happened in both. Also this is yet another time with electronic voting where she greatly outperformed the exit polling.
They could all be a bunch of coincidences, but she must be real tight with the coincidence fairy because they are everywhere around her.
Either that, or you've had wildly unrealistic expectations for Sanders throughout this election. These aren't upsets. This is the person we all knew would win, winning. This isn't a Disney movie. Sometimes the big powerful monster crushes the ambitious challenger.
On April 22 2016 22:25 Incognoto wrote: These aren't upsets but you can hardly say that the result was set in stone from the get-go either.
Nothing is set in stone. But when people bet on matches, people are making informed decisions. You can't pretend it's either 0% guaranteed or 100% guaranteed. She was heavily favored to win, Sanders did particularly well and made it somewhat close at times. Then Clinton body slammed NY.
Edit: It is not a coincidence that no one tried to run against Clinton except Sanders and "VP PLZ". People knew it would be REALLY hard to beat her. Turns out people made a good decision. Bernie put on a great show, but there's no reason to pretend it wasn't a nearly impossible task.
I don't see the problem with having to register early. When I started work, I got paid from day 1 but I didn't get my benefits until 6 months in, and my retirement has a vesting schedule so I only get part of it if I leave quickly. I have friends who got big fat signing bonuses, and if they leave before 2 years they have to give those back as well. It's a pretty low bar to jump.
If you're at the far end of the political spectrum, just register for the party that's closer to you. If you're extremely left leaning I think it's silly to register independent instead of Democrat since you're giving up a lot just to have an I next to your name to indicate your ideological purity. Just register D. You don't have to donate or vote unless you find a candidate you like.
On April 22 2016 22:44 ticklishmusic wrote: I don't see the problem with having to register early. When I started work, I got paid from day 1 but I didn't get my benefits until 6 months in, and my retirement has a vesting schedule so I only get part of it if I leave quickly. I have friends who got big fat signing bonuses, and if they leave before 2 years they have to give those back as well. It's a pretty low bar to jump.
If you're at the far end of the political spectrum, just register for the party that's closer to you. If you're extremely left leaning I think it's silly to register independent instead of Democrat since you're giving up a lot just to have an I next to your name to indicate your ideological purity. Just register D. You don't have to donate or vote unless you find a candidate you like.
But that gets rid of people's ability to feel like they're "sticking it to the man", essentially the only reason anyone registers as independent.
I still don't get how the person with the popular vote, the delegate vote, the super delegate vote, and who's done more than just be a source of pork spending is somehow "subverting the will of the voters" when her opponent is just an old white guy who only wins low voter turn out caucuses.
EPT![[image loading]](http://howafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Harriet-Tubman-20-dollar-bill.png)
