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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   18873 thread views

USA Election Day 2022 Megathread

Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.

...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).

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How about a thread of ballot measures of Culture War interest and their results? You can find a list of all measures on the ballot in every state here.

Abortion

Four states (CA, KY, MI, VT) had measures on the ballot related to abortion last night. Three of these (CA, MI, VT) were attempts to enshrine abortion as a right in their state constitutions. All three passed. One (KY) was an effort (similar to KS earlier this year) to amend their constitution to clarify it does not contain a right to abortion. This measure failed. One thing I want to draw attention to is the difference in margin between the KY Senate race and this ballot measure. Rand Paul easily cruised to victory with a margin (according to the NYT) of 890k votes to 550k votes (61.6-38.4). By contrast this ballot measure lost 700k votes to 632k votes (52.55-47.45). Even if every single Booker voter also voted No on the amendment there would still have to be another 150k Paul voters (10% of the electorate, 1/6 of Paul's voters) who also voted No. So it seems like there may be a substantial number of Republican voters who are turned off by the party's position on abortion.

Slavery

Involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime was on the ballot in five (AL, LA, OR, TN, VT) states last night. Of those, four of them (AL, OR, TN, VT) passed their ballot measures prohibiting involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime and one (LA) did not.

Drugs

It was a pretty mixed night for drug legalization on the ballot. Five states (AK, MD, MO, ND, SD) had marijuana legalization initiatives. Two of those (MO, MD) passed and three (AK, ND, SD) did not. Colorado looks set to approve a ballot measure decriminalizing certain psychedelics (including psilocybin and DMT) statewide.

Nondiscrimination

One final ballot measure I want to call attention to is in Nevada. There they passed a constitutional amendment that "prohibits the denial or abridgment of rights on account of an individual's race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry or national origin."

to amend their constitution to clarify it does not contain a right to abortion.

It's interesting to me that even something this tepid generated a strong pushback. Passing the amendment would've done nothing on its own, but instead just would have laid the groundwork for future legislative effort. This further highlights just how much of a losing position banning abortion is on the overall policy spectrum.

It was a pretty mixed night for drug legalization on the ballot. Five states (AK, MD, MO, ND, SD) had marijuana legalization initiatives. Two of those (MO, MD) passed and three (AK, ND, SD) did not.

The rejections were very surprising to me. I figured that after a decade of seeing states legalize marijuana as NBD, this would have continued the momentum. I guess this is a blind spot of mine, as I just cannot comprehend the desire to keep sending people to jail for smoking weed.

Nasal assault? Well you've got the language down. You would hate Australia, there are all sorts of plants and trees that just smell like pot. There's a bushland near me that smells like a perpetual Dutch oven for a week or two every couple of months. I also notice some people have body odour which smells like weed, which would make for some embarrassing police interactions. Unless you are very serious about nasal assaults - serious enough to ban basically everyone from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia from an public place, at least for summer. Because the smell of weed isn't great, but it doesn't make my freaking eyes water like a trip on the bus or to kfc at midday.

Maybe I've gotten desensitized to it but I live near several dispensaries and never notice anything. The parks are also chockful of people openly smoking joints, and hilariously the only thing that ever really gets scorn is cigarette smoking.

Regardless, if you hate the smell of marijuana you can just enforce public consumption. Criminalizing possession is enforced by putting people in jail, so I don't understand this round-about way of defending against a nasal assault.

One concern I have with legalization is that it is much harder to prove DUI than with booze, and unlike with booze there is no "constructively impaired" limit like with BAC. I've already had one hit-and-run that hurt me and totaled my car due to the plague of reckless and dangerous driving near me. Got the license plate and still wasn't even able to recover my deductible, since I didn't get a face ID to prove who was driving.

I agree that proving impairment is harder but I'm not convinced that marijuana DUIs are a serious problem. I've handled dozens of them by now and the modal police report is something like "vehicle sat through two green light cycles without moving" or "vehicle drove 10 miles below the speed limit". They're really good cases to go to trial because although it's obvious the people are high as fuck, there's virtually no evidence they were actually a danger in any way. I definitely cannot say the same about alcohol. Also, some states do have "constructively impaired" limits, Washington for example has a 5 nanogram per se limit.

It depends on the wording of the marijuana legalization initiatives.

The Ohio Marijuana Legalization Initiative was an Ohio initiated constitutional amendment on the ballot for November 3, 2015, where it was defeated.

Voting yes would have legalized the limited sale and use of marijuana and created 10 facilities with exclusive commercial rights to grow marijuana.

Voting no was a vote to leave current laws unchanged. Possession or use of marijuana for any reason remained illegal.

Issue 3 was accompanied on the ballot by Issue 2, which was added by state lawmakers concerned that the amendment would have granted a monopoly to the facilities.

Link.

I can, simply because lots of boomers who don’t think it’s a serious crime don’t want to be around it or to have to deal with cannabis culture the way we now have to deal with gay pride, and imprisoning the odd pot smoker while giving slaps on the wrist to substantially more of them keeps it far enough out of the open that no one who doesn’t want to deal with it does so.

There’s also game theoretic reasons for cultural conservatives to keep it legal, and I expect that those are likely to weigh more heavily on conservative state legislators in the future.

I guess this is a blind spot of mine, as I just cannot comprehend the desire to keep sending people to jail for smoking weed.

I might have voted no on marijuana legalization, depending on how the law was constructed. I hate all the tacky billboards and ubiquitous stores in my state promoting a vice (even if I indulge myself on rare occasion). Evidence suggests that marijuana use is increasing, and I believe the downsides are understated. Finally, no one is actually going to jail for smoking weed.

You know, Clinton got a lot of undeserved criticism for saying he wanted abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare". Honestly, it's a great formula for a lot of things including marijuana.

We went from legal prohibition to the current gross free-for-all.

In a perfect world, there would be some government owned drug store in a non-descript building, open at inconvenient hours that sold the products people would otherwise purchase from street dealers.

Yah if that’s the case people will still keep buying from street dealers.

In a perfect world, there would be some government owned drug store in a non-descript building, open at inconvenient hours that sold the products people would otherwise purchase from street dealers.

In all fairness, this is what we had for medical for a while in PA, if in practice but not law, simply because sourcing problems and ambiguity in the law meant that the dispensaries had practically no product, at least not the specific products a lot of people wanted. The end result was that most people with dubious medical cards just kept buying from street dealers while people who legitimately needed it for medical reasons and had no prior contact with the drug culture were hung out to dry.

In a perfect world, there would be some government owned drug store in a non-descript building, open at inconvenient hours that sold the products people would otherwise purchase from street dealers.

Of course, this being the government we're talking about, the prices will be in excess of the street dealers, and you'll have 10 round milligram limits on products because anything over that is "high-capacity assault" weed. Which is... exactly how it works north of the US.

Finally, no one is actually going to jail for smoking weed.

Too many things are felonies, and selective enforcement exists (making a "concerned citizen calling about" heckler's veto into law is just inviting and incentivizing bad behavior).

The fact that a law exists that can put you in jail for a relatively-harmless thing is a massive liability even if nobody enforces it. And that liability affects the people who respect the law the most (or don't have the risk tolerance to break it), which also happen to be the people who wouldn't be adding to the current problems people who are anti-weed complain about in the first place.

If it's not going to stop, and considering the number of people currently breaking the laws around it, it isn't; might as well not fuck up the ability for everyone else to enjoy it.

A major flaw in the ‘weed isn’t going away’ argument is that laws against it in the USA aren’t seriously enforced.

I hate all the tacky billboards and ubiquitous stores in my state promoting a vice

Donuts ... low mileage cars ... alcohol ... fast food ...

I don't believe you have thought through your statement unless you're looking for a blanket ban on sin advertising.

I don't believe you have thought through your criticism.

There's a major difference between prohibiting things that are already legal and legalizing things that are currently prohibited. De novo, there are a lot of things we would change that don't make sense to change now. Most famously, if alcohol was invented today, it would rightfully be banned or heavily restricted.

Consistency is and ought to be sacrificed for pragmatism.

Finally, no one is actually going to jail for smoking weed.

you sure about that?

Date has been screwy lately due to reporting issues, but 2019 FBI data says there were 1.5 million arrests for drug abuse violations, and about 480,000 arrests were just for marijuana possession. In my experience cops don't tend to be shy about upgrading to distribution charges, so presumably if someone was dealing they'd get arrested for dealing rather than just possession. I have no idea how many of half million people arrested were actually sent to jail, how many were subsequently convicted, or how many had a clean record (why is this relevant?). Still, that is a remarkable sample size to draw from.

I've known a handful of people who have been arrested for marijuana possession, and not a single one has spent more than a few hours in a cell. The one guy in college who had "distribution" amounts got some community service and a few years of probation, for everyone else it was a fine.

how many had a clean record (why is this relevant?

I have heard many times that drugs are an easy way to get someone to plea, instead of having to go with some harder to prove charge. Similarly, I've known a dealer who was released with some fines/probation repeatedly, paired with escalating threats that he was running out of chances and needed to turn his life around. Basically, I think many of us assume the courts treat "normal taxpayer who smokes weed sometimes" differently than a known public nuisance.

I know that this is moving the goalposts, but even with little to no jail time an arrest and drug conviction can absolutely derail a person's life. A felony conviction will cost you several rights off the bat like the right to vote, own a firearm, and serve on a jury. Careers in government and health care will be permanently off limits as well. Most other traditional, high paying careers will become vastly more challenging to pursue as will renting a place to live (background checks are routine). Needless to say if you ever interact with the justice system again, e.g. in a child custody case, criminal convictions will be held against you.

All that is to say that just because someone isn't sitting behind bars doesn't mean that they aren't being punished.

I don't have any reason to doubt the specific cases you're familiar with, but we're still working with a pool of half a million arrests. A third of all drug arrests are just for marijuana possession, so it's a bit wild to claim that "no one is actually going to jail for smoking weed". I'd need to see way more systemic evidence before that claim starts to approach plausibility.

We know that Biden's recent pardon freed no one, which is a bit of evidence that should have shifted everyone's priors toward no one goes to jail for simple possession.

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Fair, anecdotes and all that. But arrests != charges, much less jail time. As a more general proxy point, Biden's recent pardoning of all federal marijuana possession charges did not release a single prisoner.

You're a defense attorney - have you ever seen a person get jail time for just possession?

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for a first offense

I could've sworn I was next to the goal posts a moment ago.

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