Josh and Anna 57: Singing the I'm Stuck in the SHU Blues

[Mama Mia]

9 hours ago, nolongerIFBx said:

Except that one large US city has so many people that rural voters would be the ones whose votes don't count even though we make up the majority of land mass of the US. Taxation without representation started this whole thing. I saw it on a smaller scale in my state where the two major cities voted against rural voters on a farm issue and won the vote even though they have no experience of what it is like to live and work on a farm/in a rural area and the outcome wouldn't affect them while it could people who have been farming here for a century and could no longer afford to keep doing so under the new conditions.

If you would care to discuss taxation without representation I’d love to chat. The fact my California Senator has to represent the voices and interests of more than 40x the number of people that a Senator from Wyoming has to represent makes me feel somewhat unheard.  And like there is just the teensiest power imbalance.
Many of our voices are rural as well, just fyi.  
And then you get to the infamous electoral college. I’m not quite sure why for all practical purposes you might as well hand the Wyoming or Rhode Island voter 7 ballots for every one of mine. That doesn’t seem like an equitable way to elect a President, but ok. 

Edited January 18 by Mama Mia

[anjulibai]

10 minutes ago, Mama Mia said:

If you would care to discuss taxation without representation I’d love to chat. The fact my California Senator has to represent the voices and interests of more than 40x the number of people that a Senator from Wyoming has to represent makes me feel somewhat unheard.  And like there is just the teensiest power imbalance.
Many of our voices are rural as well, just fyi.  
And then you get to the infamous electoral college. I’m not quite sure why for all practical purposes you might as well hand the Wyoming or Rhodesia Island voter 7 ballots for every one of mine. That doesn’t seem like an equitable way to elect a President, but ok. 

It's not just the Senate that's the issue - the House needs a major overhaul of it's approtionment and size. If the least populous state gets one Representative, then that state's population should be the basis for how many we calculate how many Representatives a state gets. No limit of 435 reps - that extreme distorts the power of small states. 

[SassyPants]

1 hour ago, Father Son Holy Goat said:

Me either. One person, one vote. It’s simple. 

Exactly. Isn’t that the methodology used for elections other than for the executive offices? If a pure democracy is good enough for every other office, voters should be seen as competent/knowledgeable enough to select the P/VP too.

1 person, 1 vote- everyone getting an equal voice in the process, no matter WHERE they live. 

[Expectopatronus]

I’ve never understood the whole electoral college, popular vote etc. Where I am it’s one person-one vote and each riding has equal voice. Sure highly populated provinces have more seats in the House but that doesn’t mean the province necessarily has more power. My current MP is Liberal but my mom’s riding (rural ) voted Conservative. There are always complaints that first past the post is unfair but I have no idea how to make a system that is fair in everyone’s opinion.

[KSmom]

11 minutes ago, Expectopatronus said:

I’ve never understood the whole electoral college, popular vote etc. Where I am it’s one person-one vote and each riding has equal voice. Sure highly populated provinces have more seats in the House but that doesn’t mean the province necessarily has more power. My current MP is Liberal but my mom’s riding (rural ) voted Conservative. There are always complaints that first past the post is unfair but I have no idea how to make a system that is fair in everyone’s opinion.

As I understand it, the electoral college was put in place because southern slave states were worried about the northern states having more power and outlawing slavery. 

[anjulibai]

20 minutes ago, KSmom said:

As I understand it, the electoral college was put in place because southern slave states were worried about the northern states having more power and outlawing slavery. 

Yup, that's pretty much it. They were less populous (and wanted to use their slaves to beef up their population numbers), so bitched and moaned about it. 

[medimus]

Come to the world of proportional represenatation! One person one vote is a good minimum, but if it's first past the post, a large number of your votes count not at all. There are loads of different versions of proportional representation. I've lived in two countries with two very different versions of proportional representations, one in which some elections have another version of PR, and others are FPTP and in a country with only FPTP. Plus I have voting rights in the US, so also experience that fPTP.

You do not get anything like the sense of uselessness in PR when your cadidate is not chosen that you do in FPTP. It still feels like your vote counts.

(CGP grey has a long playlist on youtube about various voting types explained well, not all of them mind)

[Meggo]

If we're talking about voting reforms - can we start doing voting districts by county lines? The district that I'm in is utterly ridiculous. County lines are already drawn - there won't be any readjusting everytime someone's party loses. 

[Alisamer]

20 hours ago, tanba said:

I mean, why would land mass get a vote? Sure, it’s problematic if majority groups suppress minority groups, but this argument could easily be used to explain why rich people should have more of a vote, since they own more land. Icky to me.

Rich people were the ONLY people who could vote in the beginning. Land-owning white men, anyway. Not all of whom were filthy rich, but they were better off than those not allowed to vote. 

I think one person, one vote would be the best improvement here at least to start with. 

1 hour ago, Meggo said:

If we're talking about voting reforms - can we start doing voting districts by county lines? The district that I'm in is utterly ridiculous. County lines are already drawn - there won't be any readjusting everytime someone's party loses. 

So much this. I live in NC. At one point we had a "district" that was basically just the width of a highway that then widened out anywhere there was a larger city or concentration of Democratic voters, snaking up the center of the state. They do as much as possible to concentrate all the D voters into two districts when they can get away with it (RTP and the college towns all combined, and Charlotte), while dividing up the rural areas to have as many representatives as possible. If they could get away with annexing Asheville into Charlotte as an island they'd do so, as it's the only fly in the ointment. 

I think districts should be by county generally but also have an average population number that can trigger a split into another district. So some rural less populated counties would be a county-wide district and their votes have a little more weight, and the more populated areas would be split into multiple districts to average things out better even though their votes would still have slightly less weight effectively. Right now though in NC it feels like they've managed to combine fully half the population into two or three districts, so the many other much less populated ones have inordinate control. 

[KSmom]

Here is a good article about the electoral college.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/electoral-colleges-racist-origins

[Meggo]

19 hours ago, Alisamer said:

Rich people were the ONLY people who could vote in the beginning. Land-owning white men, anyway. Not all of whom were filthy rich, but they were better off than those not allowed to vote. 

I think one person, one vote would be the best improvement here at least to start with. 

So much this. I live in NC. At one point we had a "district" that was basically just the width of a highway that then widened out anywhere there was a larger city or concentration of Democratic voters, snaking up the center of the state. They do as much as possible to concentrate all the D voters into two districts when they can get away with it (RTP and the college towns all combined, and Charlotte), while dividing up the rural areas to have as many representatives as possible. If they could get away with annexing Asheville into Charlotte as an island they'd do so, as it's the only fly in the ointment. 

I think districts should be by county generally but also have an average population number that can trigger a split into another district. So some rural less populated counties would be a county-wide district and their votes have a little more weight, and the more populated areas would be split into multiple districts to average things out better even though their votes would still have slightly less weight effectively. Right now though in NC it feels like they've managed to combine fully half the population into two or three districts, so the many other much less populated ones have inordinate control. 

This is my district - shaded in gray. For scale - most of the roads are in a mile wide grid. So 12 mile to 13 mile? Is one mile. Middlebelt to Orchard Lake? One mile. So that's a really ridiculous SHAPE. Tell me there wasn't some agenda to that... (also - I don't live in this district anymore so no one needs to get worried about me giving my location! I moved out of the country but am still a regular voter IN this district because they base it on your last US address). 

[lawlifelgbt]

This just occurred to me when I was talking to my mom today about the shop this woman owned, and the locals.

This was a family I know tangentially with somewhat similar circumstances to the Duggars. Only three kids, but locally well-known, some wealth. Daughter came forward saying that dad was inappropriate with her, and he had also annoyed other locals by being a creep. Maybe more like the Pilgrims, because they live in an extremely tiny rural lake town I used to visit.

Mom did the right thing. Immediately kicked him out, started divorce proceedings, but he made it awful, long, acrimonious, and expensive. This got her and the tween and teen kids and the locals and her own family hating him even more. Had the full support of all her family, who were thankfully local.

Finally, one fall day after tourist season, they said, and told the authorities, that he came up to a remote family property in the area, screamed at and threatened the wife, then drove away and fucked off to God knows where. Well, that's what they said happened. Only her and her relatives witnessed it, locals could back up that they were arguing and he was being awful to her.

 

No sign of him since, and no one looked very hard. Only found the car abandoned at a large store in the closest city.

Spoiler

I'm not convinced they didn't kill him, or that something went badly wrong in their last argument. Something of a Ken Rex McElroy situation. Bodies don't resurface because the lake is too cold, and the property had plenty of space and direct water access. They do seem completely sure he's gone...

Anyway, I heard the rumors of what this woman might or might not have done, and I was blown away. What a mother would do to protect her own. 

 

Yet Anna is still standing by Josh. It makes me wonder what would have been different, if the Kellers had supported her and she had an income of her own. And she could still leave. She doesn't need to go Goodbye Earl on his ass. But what does she do with all that anger? Hopefully, Josh being in jail gives Anna time to think.

[Smee]

When I did the most recent lot of child safe training a few months ago, one thing that was said was phrased so well it's stuck with me: "perpetrators groom the parents and community as well as the children".

Perpetrators who groom and abuse a child (like the dad in the story above) but don't have the mother, extended family, teachers, community etc on side are more likely to face consequences. Perpetrators like Josh who can convince the family and church members that they're a great guy, a wonderful husband and father who would never hurt anybody make it a lot harder for their victims to be believed. 

[Father Son Holy Goat]

And in Josh’s case the community’s beliefs are so toxic that they’re already primed to believe Josh. He really doesn’t have to do much. 

[nelliebelle1197]

Yep, it's another Josh thread!