It's not about a specific percentage but about weeding out the abuse. Again it's really not that difficult to achieve. If you feel quorum is so important keep it for the first round of voting. If a bunch of officials decide to skip out do it a second time around in which a simple majority wins. These can be mandated to be publicly announced to all members so there's no trying to have 'secret' votes or whatever. As it stands right now though, law's pretty garbage and counter productive.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Jul 15 2021 05:42pm

It's not really abused that often so I don't really see the big deal? It wasn't a big deal when Republicans fled Oregon either. I don't think this technique has been used more than 10 times in American history.

I really don't think you understand the concept of quorum lol. You need enough people present AT ANY TIME for a vote to count. If Texas wants to make quorum a simple majority instead of a supermajority, this issue would be resolved.

Why is changing it such a big deal? Again it's 2021, a law can be easily tailored here whether it's Texas or Oregon, doesn't matter who it benefits. It's chicken shit tactics like these that normal people look down on politics, why is progress bad here?

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Jul 15 2021 05:57pm

Dude, read what I'm fucking saying. I support changing it to a simple majority like every other fucking state.

You're talking out both sides out of your mouth. In one breath your minimizing as not that big a deal in another your saying change it. I have no problem with keeping some form of it, like I said it's just about weeding out this abuse. A few lawyers can probably spend less than a day crafting some provision to get rid of it, like this isn't the legal battle of Brexit.

The more of these nonsensical political dances are taken out politics the better we are, regardless of which way you lean.

Can anyone explain how this is any different to the republicans blocking obamas supreme court nomination?

I mean, you said you wanted to get rid of it entirely. Do you understand why some form of quorum is necessary in the general sense?

If something has happened only a handful of times in American history, it really ISN'T a big deal. This is akin to being worried about black transgender men participating in the Special Olympics on July 4th during a leap year. Is it bad? Yes. Should we fix it? Sure. Is it a big deal? Absolutely not.

What's the argument against ballot harvesting? Is it that voting fraud occurs? Can you produce evidence in support of that claim?

I don't know the answers to those questions, I just observe Republicans in a bunch of states limiting voting with the flawed logic that their actions made elections more secure. Ballot harvesting is just one part of these restrictions. The primary motivation is to limit voting in a way that hurts Democrats, i.e., curtail the will of the American people.

If the argument from right-wingers is "making voting easier and secure for people is bad because it's going to result in Trump and Fox News to be able to spin a positive story about America becoming a stronger democracy into a negative story about progressive foreigners' taking over your neighborhoods", I would say you should stop promoting Fox News.

This post was edited by IceMage on Jul 15 2021 06:35pm

Meh. It is a deliberate, strategic choice by the Democrats to build an electoral coalition which hinges on some of the lowest propensity demos in the country. The upside is they have the larger base, the downside is that they have a harder time getting their base to turn out. What Democrats are currently doing is try to reap the benefits without the downside.

Essentially, we have to define "(political) will of the people" as the turnout-weighted mean of voting behavior. Imagine there's one conservative guy who's really engaged with politics, volunteers for the local GOP, goes canvassing during campaign season and watches two hours of C-span every day, and then there's two guys who lean left but don't care about politics all that much and maybe vote once every eight years - should the two disengaged folks who barely care or pay attention really outweigh the hardcore politico when determining the political will of the country?

Yes. One person, one vote. That isn't even a question in Western Democracies.