Part of the problem is that regional judges often suffer from regional prejudices, or have sacrificed their impartiality to partisan ideology or partisanship. Also, enforcement of equitable voting practices was made significantly more difficult by the Supreme Court's voting to overturn the part of the Voting Rights Act that required historically inequitable states and regions to clear new voting practices with the Justice Department prior to implementation.
And we now have an explicitly racist and unabashedly partisan Attorney General in charge of federal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
]]>Off the top of my head, Republican voter suppression activities have included deliberately overzealous purging of voter rolls (purportedly to eliminate dead people, non-residents, felons - more on that below - and others ineligible to vote in the state, which tends to disproportionately disadvantage minorities), voter ID laws (allegedly intended to reduce in-person voter fraud - a non-problem - but which has been explicitly stated by sponsoring politicians to be intended to swing elections, and which tends to discourage voting by minorities and younger voters), partisan gerrymandering of voting district lines (frequently having the intent or primary effect of suppressing minority voting or minority voting power), changes in early voting rules to make it more difficult for minorities to vote, changes or reductions in polling locations to reduce polling availability to minorities or other partisan populations, deliberate misinformation about voting opportunities and requirements (often including threats regarding police or naturalization enforcement targeted at minorities)... and that's just what comes quickly to mind.
Regarding purging voter roles of felons: in some states, it is illegal for felons to vote. US criminal laws tend to disproportionately disadvantage minorities. One in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. One in eight black men were disenfranchised on Election Day because of their criminal records. Consistently, over 90% of African-Americans vote for Democratic Party candidates.
There is also the effective voter disenfranchisement by the media, which catastrophically and almost uniformly bought into a narrative based on a false equivalence. Effective civic engagement is compromised when the fourth estate fails its ethical obligation to inform the populace.
@Troutwaxer I entirely agree with you regarding the 50 state strategy. I would add that it is impossible to prevent epistemic closure without being present to offer contrary views.
]]>Polls may be good at measuring current views of the polled. Knowing who will vote - crucial to publishing a meaningful poll result - is much harder, and the core of pollsters' statistical secret sauces. Those recipes broke down in elections that significantly departed from historical voting trends.
My impression from international news sources (and online political betting trends right before the Brexit poll) is that an enthusiasm gap is also sufficient to explain the Brexit result. Yeats's "The Second Coming" has never felt more relevant in my lifetime.
]]>Relationship-wise, neither Bob nor Mo has faced up to the threat they pose each other. (Reminder: Bob is a thoroughly unreliable narrator!) When Mo attempted to murder Mhari and Bob, Bob used Old Enochian to command Mo to stop. Mind control in self defense is still mind control. And that bit of drama was just a punchline for the secrets they've been keeping from each other and themselves: Lecter's escalating mindrape, Bob's utter failure to try to understand his new powers and their limits, Mhari's return to the Laundry in a working group with Bob, Mo's "coping" mechanisms, Bob's comments on Mo's wants and needs which appear to be based on unspoken assumptions, etc. And does anyone think Mo's "dream" about hungry Eater Bob was any more a dream than her nightly play dates with Lecter? "In control" my foot.
Bob might have a lesser degree of culpability if he had bothered to try to figure out what it meant to be an Eater of Souls. Perhaps by requisitioning a Feeder and figuring out how complex he could make executable programming (could a Feeder be used as a mobile summoning grid?). But he actively avoids using his abilities except when forced. Why were no Feeders brought to combat the Laundry's resident PHANG? I'm convinced that Bob could have saved his team (at least temporarily) by the simple and obvious expedient of having a Feeder open the warehouse door.
Bob can do interesting things with zombies. But he avoids doing so, because he terrifies himself. The fact he won't admit his fear to Mo or himself arguably makes him a greater danger to Mo than vice versa. She is, after all, merely (mostly) human when Lecter is locked away; and Bob is not qualified to know whether he has the Eater under control.
It took the Senior Auditors until the end of Annihilation Score to intervene, far too long. And where were they when Bob needed to learn how to be a human-invested Eater of Souls? That lesson has been taught before, those resources should have been made available to Bob.
At this point I assume that Bob and Mo will find some way to achieve rapprochement. It would be too easy and obvious at this point to write them apart.
tl;dr: Bob is at least as culpable as Mo in their relationship woes, it's just that he's worse at admitting it (unreliable narrator!); and his failures ("control" means ignoring the problem) and issues (grow up, Bob), while toxic, are less socially taboo (infidelity) and emotionally exposed (timed crying) than Mo's.
]]>Is there a purpose to the "special relationship" if Britain, exiting the EU, ends up losing Scotland as well? Can Britain remain relevant if it is no longer a friendly gateway to EU markets and suffers inevitable diminishment from losing the Scottish tax base?
Britain looks to me like a country that resents having lost its globe-spanning empire and wants to remain a fulcrum for American/European relations (in part as a way to feel like it's holding on to some of its old importance). Brexit looks to me like an ill-considered means of giving up British relevance all in one go.
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