Renzatic on 25/10/2020 at 14:37
I live in the EPB bubble, so I have relatively inexpensive, speedy internet. $75 a month for my landline phone and 500/500 fiber.
Once you're outside the bubble though, speeds drop considerably. Some of the smaller towns have cable, but most everywhere is 15Mbps DSL at best, satellite internet at worst.
SubJeff on 25/10/2020 at 19:43
Man, you guys have some fast internet!!
SubJeff on 25/10/2020 at 21:13
Hold up.
Do people actually vote for other candidates, other than Trump or Biden, in large enough numbers to be significant?
Pyrian on 25/10/2020 at 21:28
It's reasonably common for the third party vote to be larger than the difference between the main two candidates in key electoral battleground states. Of course, that's mostly because those are the states where the difference between the main candidates' vote totals are small.
Nameless Voice on 25/10/2020 at 22:19
I still find it depressing that the Democrats would rather keep the status quo where the Republicans get to be in power (doing massive damage to the country) for roughly half of the time, rather than risking another party having a chance by actually fixing the completely broken electoral system.
Ireland, by some strange and happy accident, has one of the best electoral systems in the world: the single transferable vote. In each election, you can vote for as many candidates as you want, in order of preference, and if your first choice is eliminated, your vote instead goes to your second, and so on down the list.
In the case of the USA, that would effectively mean that the vast majority of the third-party votes would instead go to Democrats, as the lesser of the two remaining evils chosen as the second choice of those who want third parties like the Greens.
But once they head down that path, there's always a chance that one of those third parties might actually gain significant ground, because voting for them is no longer shooting yourself in the foot if you don't want the Republicans to get into power.
Pyrian on 26/10/2020 at 00:18
Ehh, that's not really it. Republicans are blocking electoral improvements precisely because they'd inevitably lose power.
demagogue on 26/10/2020 at 01:27
Re: third party candidates, in 1992 Ross Perot's vote under the Reform Party was considered very relevant to GHW Bush's loss. I actually did my undergrad thesis on Perot voters in that election, so I remember crunching the numbers district by district and demographic by demographic. (He was already forgotten by the time of his 1996 campaign, and who even remembers now that Trump was the 2000 Reform Party candidate?)
What's interesting about that election is that it was a kind of trial run for the 2016 election, once you realize that Trump actually is the third party candidate that happened to coop an entire mainstream party and drag it (kicking and screaming by its establishment) into the third party camp. He basically lifted the entire Reform Party platform and made it into the GOP's.
That makes for one of the funnier paradoxes where Republican voters tend to accuse actual Republicans as RINOs (Republican in name only) because their own party is itself RINO, and anyone that was still an actual Republican was booted out.
demagogue on 26/10/2020 at 05:39
"Problematic outcomes" doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "violated federal law". In another one of the fantastic paradoxes of this administration, whom QAnon kooks believe was sent by God to fight against some mythological child trafficking & satanic cult, the Trump administration was (
https://www.theyoungcenter.org/stories/2020/9/10/young-center-celebrates-federal-court-decision-stopping-detention-of-migrant-children-in-hotels) found guilty by a federal court of literal child trafficking under the US anti-child trafficking law. (Edit: Oh I have to fix that. Guilty of a violation under the anti-trafficking law, not necessarily guilty of trafficking itself. Anyway the text explains it.)
Quote:
Young Center Celebrates Federal Court Decision Stopping Detention of Migrant Children in Hotels
Washington, D.C., September 10, 2020—In a victory for children's rights, a federal judge ruled last Friday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) violated federal law when it apprehended migrant children at the border and detained them in hotels, before attempting to deport them to the very dangers they fled weeks or months earlier.
Citing a public health rule, DHS officials have prevented children and families from seeking asylum at the border since March by forcibly returning them to their countries of origin. In that time, more than 600 children were hidden in hotels, in DHS custody, for days and weeks while the immigration officials arranged for their return. The children had no access to Child Advocates, to attorneys, or to any of the protections guaranteed them under federal law. They were held in hotel and motel rooms—two beds and a bathroom—supervised by unknown adults with no expertise in child development, trauma, or children's legal rights. This DHS-created process violates both the Flores Settlement Agreement and a 2008 anti-trafficking law, which require children to be placed in state-licensed programs where they can seek protection from deportation and reunification with family members.
In more than a dozen cases, the Young Center learned of children held in these hotels and fought for their transfer to safe, state-licensed programs. Determined to help end this egregious practice, we filed a declaration before the federal court to document the violation of children's rights and explain the harm of holding children—as young as five years old, and as old as 17—in hotel rooms with strangers. In her decision, the federal judge flatly rejected DHS's argument that detaining children in hotels protects public health in a pandemic, finding that DHS “cannot seriously argue in good faith that flouting their contractual obligations to place minors in licensed programs is necessary to mitigate the spread of COVID.” The judge expressed serious concerns over DHS's failure to provide “qualified, specialized supervision” to children and found that the conditions in hotels “are not adequately safe and do not sufficiently account for the vulnerability of unaccompanied minors in detention.”
Detention is never in a child's best interests. But some forms of detention are particularly dangerous—and violate federal law. Such is the case for children seeking protection at the border, hidden in hotels for days on end before being forced onto planes to their home countries. We are grateful to the advocates who brought this challenge, and for the courage of children who continue to seek protection and assert their rights at the border.
As we celebrate this win, we know that the fight is far from over. Just last night, DHS appealed the decision and is actually fighting to keep children hidden in hotels. DHS also continues to illegally turn away thousands of children and asylum-seekers at the border under the cover of COVID-19. We remain committed to fighting for rights and protection for all children and will continue to fight against the administration's relentless attacks on children's rights.
