Recent Comments

1. about 2 years ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   I don’t fail to “get it”, I disagree with your assessment, and have given reasons. Your failure to recognize the difference does you a discredit. I am not an idiot, and I was fully familiar with the terms you are using before you used them. If you did not hear me the first time you will not the second, so as tempting as it is I’ll not repeat myself.

   As an aside, your snark about the voters your views impact marks you as disingenuous, whether or not you are. I suggest you remedy that, since the particular tone you are invoking has a long association with voter suppression and Jim Crow.

   Genuinely, I wish you a better, less angry day. I shall proceed with my own now.

2. about 2 years ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   “(And are you suggesting that people don’t start their voting research until they get to the voting booth, or are unable to do research beforehand and then write down their conclusions on a piece of paper to carry to the voting booth?)”

   I’m suggesting that the people who have the time and accommodation to do so are statistically less likely to be working class. Every “can’t you do this thing” to vote adds up, and while it’s easy to snark about it, every inconvenience costs votes, and the votes lost are likely to be those of those who work the hardest, particularly here. (And I would not have to bring “a piece of paper”. That is an insufficient unit for the amount of information I am referencing.)

   I don’t particularly care to argue more; my impression of you is that you want people to be able to vote freely, and I thought it important to express to you why that restriction would counteract that goal in the very real world I live in here. If that is what you want, I part here in peace and respect. If you don’t want to hear about the consequences of your suggestion to the very real world I inhabit, I’m afraid I’m likely incapable of making you want to.

   Good luck to us all, my friends.

3. about 2 years ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   I agree that the ballot should be secret. I emphatically disagree that a mailed ballot cannot be so, as I have cast many secret mail ballots myself.

   Here in the US, we do not have a guarantee of any of the accommodations you describe, and many of the ones we do have been precipitously scaled back. I appreciate that you and I both believe voting should be as accessible as is reasonably possible. I am sorry we disagree on what is reasonable, but I do appreciate your candor and your specific endorsement of accommodations to reduce disenfranchisement.

   I am of the opinion that modern technology puts the ability to reproduce visual information, like a maked ballot, beyond the reach of strict physical prevention; I think that’s trivial, really. As you say, the rule should probably be against using cameras, mostly because that’s the only possible rule. You will have to trust your fellow citizens either way.

   It is wrong to conflate vote-by-mail with loss of the secret ballot, as well, since the public voting that preceded it was forced disclosure, which is nowhere in the modern system. I appreciate your concerns, but they are not statistically sufficient to justify the loss of enfranchisement I think they entail, particularly when the remedy of requiring an in-person ballot is insufficient. (Also, at my polls, you absolutely do not get asked to leave behind your electronic devices, and the privacy dividers would make taking an illicit photo trivial.) I reject the idea that vote-by-mail necessarily engenders such action, and I would require significant data to counteract the fact that it has been used widely and safely for decades and decades.

   Also, my ballot cannot be intelligently marked in fifteen minutes. We vote on judgeships; my ballot is extensive, and I prize the right to cast an informed vote throughout its length.

   If vote-by-mail were dropped here, it would be immediately disenfranchising. I think neither of us wants that outcome.

   Peace. Vote, all!

4. about 2 years ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   The secret ballot was indeed instated to reduce voter intimidation and vote-buying. What preceded it was not mail-in voting, of course, but public and often vocal vote calls. The feasibility of wide-spread voting by mail is a rather new phenomenon and does not play into that history.

   There is no inherent reason why a ballot I cast from my home is easier to sell than one I cast in a voting booth. It would be extremely simple to take a picture of a marked ballot in a polling booth, and extremely hard to remove all opportunity to do so. I get that it is illegal to do that, but if that’s the only barrier it remains so in both scenarios. And frankly I think it’s irresponsible not to allow phones in a voting booth. Where I live your ballot requires serious research, and phones are among the best research aides we have available as a species.

   It is also the case that poor and underprivileged communities are the least likely to be able to vote in person. Voting day is not a even a federal holiday; the people most likely to have to work through it are those who need change the most.

   I consider that the additional research opportunity afforded by filling a ballot out slowly over hours or days is a significant boon, and I personally know people whose welfare I care deeply about who would be disenfranchised if mail voting were less widely available. Everything that makes casting a vote more difficult statistically disenfranchises the working class.

   Anyway, however you vote, vote. It’s important!

5. over 2 years ago on Nancy

   Fritzi Ritz: Adoptive Mother of Mother of Innovation. :)

6. over 2 years ago on F Minus

   Oh, very cool! That opens up a very interesting Wikipedia rabbithole for me today! :)

7. over 2 years ago on F Minus

   Ah, yeah, true. I used to be relatively good with the “Alt codes”. It looks like Alt+140 works for me here: î. But at this point my French is bad enough to require confirmatory Google searches, at which point I can generally just copy/paste such characters directly. :)

8. over 2 years ago on F Minus

   Direct copy/paste from the internet search I used to attempt to ensure I hadn’t made a mistake as well. :)

   (Wiktionary lists “s’il te plait” as “Post-1990 spelling of s’il te plaît.” Its linked page on the “French spelling reforms of 1990” suggest that the pre-1990 spellings are “still correct”, so hopefully it’s okay?)

9. over 2 years ago on F Minus

   …perhaps “2nd person plural AND the 2nd person singular,” objecting to the imperative?

   Thus: “Réponds s’il te plaît.” N’est-ce pas?

10. over 2 years ago on Nancy

    It’ll be a lovely and intelligent person who responds! :P