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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34704 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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I write in favor of letting criminals vote. The main argument is that gatekeeping the franchise is not easy and requires a lot of state capacity to securely enforce it. Most of the world lets current and former criminals vote, and I generally don't find arguments to restrict it to be very convincing:

It's not that crazy, because the norm across the world is letting people vote from prison. Literally ballot boxes installed in prisons. To the extent there are any limitations imposed, they're doled out selectively, with apparently fewer than a handful of countries even considering restricting the vote of criminals post-release. In contrast, the United States is rather unique in its disenfranchisement zeal. Only Vermont, Maine, and DC allow voting from prison, but otherwise, the norm in most other states is automatic voting restoration upon release. In total, about 4.6 million Americans can't vote today because of a felony conviction, which is about triple the percentage it was in 1976, but down from a peak in 2016.

Despite all the words here, I'm actually not someone who particularly cares about democracy. While I can acknowledge the strong correlation between democratic governments and overall quality of life, I'm in the consequentialist camp on this issue. Give me Hong Kong under British colonial rule over democratic India any day of the week. Beyond that, voting is a waste of time on an individual level and not something I ever engage in (to answer the tiresome what if everyone thought that? retort: "Then I would vote"), and my anarchist foibles generally leave me politically stranded.

But my egalitarian foibles are why felony disenfranchisement bothers me. A steelman could be either consequential or an appeal to fairness. If you take a "wisdom of crowds" defense of democracy --- that it is a mechanism to arrive at better policies --- then perhaps giving former criminals a say would lead the ship astray. But most of the world seems to function OK despite letting criminals vote, and neither Vermont or Maine seem notably dysfunctional in any way (maybe DC does, but not sure how much you can pin that on the voting prison population). But even if consequences be damned, perhaps violating the social contract is cause enough to muzzle you. I concede it's a slightly stronger argument, but I'm not convinced the justification isn't used as a pretextual excuse to tip the scales in some political party's favor. This wouldn't be a novel effort, as Mississippi implemented literacy tests and poll taxes in 1890 with the express purpose of indirectly suppressing the black vote without explicitly violating the 15th Amendment. The state's governor, James Vardaman, said outright in 1903 the restrictions were imposed "for no other purpose than to eliminate the nigger from politics". Nowadays, nefarious motivations require a little more finesse. Good data on felon voting trends is hard to come by, but the obvious demographic skew (blacks are significantly more likely both to vote for Democrats and to have a felony record), combined with the energy in sustaining felony disenfranchisement coming almost exclusively from Republicans, is enough to sustain my suspicions that this is a pretextual exercise.

Beyond whether or not disenfranchisement is the right thing to do, there's also the question of implementation:

The next step further up --- restoration upon completion of supervision --- is where the difficulty really starts to ramp up. Unlike inmate rosters updated on the daily, when exactly someone's supervision ends is information that will be buried within reams of figurative dossiers in filing cabinets scattered across the state. There's nominally a system in place, such as the National Voting Rights Act, which allows different parts of the country to keep everyone up to date about voting registration. But I've written about how judicial record systems have to straddle an unenviable position: simultaneously maintaining an iron grip on legacy compatibility (imagine the nightmare of a computer upgrade wiping out entire convictions) while cracking the door just widely enough to allow cross-pollination with other systems.

Consider the situation in detail. Let's say that I, your favorite public defender, am able to track down a judgment & sentence order from the 1990s and find that my client was sentenced to X months in prison and Y months of supervision after release. I can't just plug that into a date calculator. First, I would need to know if this was the only charge they served time under, including, potentially, an extradition hold for a warrant from another jurisdiction. Then I'd need to track down whether any early release for good behavior applied to their charge, including noting any legislative changes that may have occurred and been retroactively applied. Even if I have a definitive release date, the length of supervised release is far less static. Maybe there was a court order that ended it early, or maybe there was a change in the law for that specific offense, or maybe their supervision time was tolled or extended for whatever reason by the probation authority. And so on. Despite what I do for a living, I have absolutely no confidence that I am able to accurately calculate the precise end of someone's supervision, and this is why I always leave that task to the math wizards at the Department of Corrections. I hope and pray to Allah they get it right, because there's no fucking way I'll know otherwise.

And beyond implementation by the state, there's also the question of how normal people are expected to navigate the cobwebs:

Pamela Moses' case in Tennessee illustrates how much of a bog this is even for experienced legal professionals. Moses was previously convicted of an evidence tampering felony, and in 2019, she tried to run for mayor. Election officials told her she was not eligible because she had not yet finished her probation. A court echoed what those officials said, but her probation officer later signed off on a certificate of restoration that Moses submitted when she registered. Moses was convicted of voter fraud and sentenced to six years in prison before her conviction was overturned on appeal. The probation officer was wrong about her probation term being over, but that wouldn't have mattered anyway because her predicate conviction --- evidence tampering --- was one of the few Tennessee offenses that led to permanent disenfranchisement. This was a fact that neither the probation officer, his supervisor, nor the trial judge knew about, as seen from page 24 of the trial transcript (cleaned up):

PROSECUTOR: The tampering with evidence we're addressing today, which is permanent. I don't remember all the ones. I know murder, probably rape ---

THE COURT: That's something I didn't know. Are you telling me if you get convicted of tampering with evidence, you can never vote? Where is that in the law?

DEFENSE: It's titled-- I think it's 39-15 or 39-17 where it talks about the interference with government operations. Those are ---

PROSECUTOR: It's 40-29-204.

THE COURT: "Those convicted after July 1, 1996, but before July 1, 2006 --- those convicted after July 1, 2006, any of the offenses set forth in one and two above, voter fraud, treason, murder in the first degree, aggravated rape." And then it goes on to say, "Any other violation of title 39 chapter 16 part one, four, and five, designated as a felony" --- so are you telling me I've got to go back and look at 39-16?

PROSECUTOR: Yes. Now you have to, and that's where the tampering with evidence, along with --- it falls under, like, bribery, contraband, false pretense, the ones that are felonies.

Apparently, it's impossible to wade through the cobwebs of cross-referencing statutory codes without tripping up somehow, even if wading boots are part of your job uniform. And absent malicious intent, these examples illustrate how easy it is for mistakes to happen. What purpose does punishing these types of mistakes accomplish? Focusing one's ire toward the people ensnared by the cobwebs doesn't do anything to get rid of the cobwebs. Getting rid of the cobwebs gets rid of the cobwebs.

And finally:

I’ve already made my position on felony disenfranchisement clear: I don’t think there should be any. If you believe otherwise, that’s fine, but the argument in favor needs to take into account the additional resources such a regime necessarily eats up. You need higher state capacity to check people’s convictions, calculate the terms of their sentence, and tabulate their LFOs, and an entire additional apparatus to investigate and prosecute scofflaws. Any argument in favor of disenfranchising felons has to explain why these additional costs are worthwhile.

In my opinion, we should be limiting the franchise, not expanding it. Expanding it does not lead to improved outcomes, it only dilutes the votes of people who would make good judgements on which politicians we should be electing. Criminals, especially felons, have notoriously bad judgement. Why should we want their input on governing our society?

This seems to be based on an assumption that voter's judgement has a significant impact on the politicians the US winds up electing, which strikes me as unproven and not at all obviously true, considering the extreme filtering effect of money, inside baseball in the nominating parties, and primaries. There's an alternative model which I find more plausible to represent reality, which is that quality of candidates is almost entirely determined by these other processes, and the final voting only serves to shift the incentive gradient that the politicians who get into positions of power either way will have to follow. That is to say, to a coarse approximation, letting the smartest 10% vote would result in the same politicians getting into power, but they now would only have to make the smartest 10% happy; conversely, expanding the franchise to felons would result in the same politicians getting into power, but now they would also have to consider making felons happy to the same extent as they do for the average mediocre and uninfluential free citizen. It does not seem to me that the bad judgement of felons is a relevant counterargument in the latter scenario.

How would you feel about a politician who agreed with you in principal but was able to enact legislation that included you among the disenfranchised? I don't know your personal history but one could presumably construct some sort of schema whereby it's presumed that your judgment would be worse than those who are given the franchise.

I'm Latino. I'd support a politician that wanted to take away the Hispanic franchise, because my fellow Latinos tend to vote for socialism at a much higher rate than Anglos.

I feel like any legislation that disenfranchises me at this point in my life is not in line with my principles.

But, in principle, if I were to fall into a category of drains on society, yeah, my opinion should be disregarded.

I'm young and probably not a net contributor to taxes yet. I would gladly have my franchise taken away if it meant that people like me (who overwhelmingly vote the opposite way I do) could not vote anymore. Based on those characteristics, it is perfectly correct to presume that my judgement would be worse than, say, net taxpayers.

Yes, I already acknowledged this as an argument for restricting the franchise but my point here is that you should also justify the increased bureaucracy costs. Do you think it's worthwhile?

One thing I didn't touch upon is that it seems like a good policy to let ex-felons vote at least as a way to encourage them to be part of civil society again. Disenfranchising them seems like it would encourage them to just check out completely.

Yes, I already acknowledged this as an argument for restricting the franchise but my point here is that you should also justify the increased bureaucracy costs. Do you think it's worthwhile?

What increased bureaucratic costs? We already know who is married, who has kids, who own property, who pays more taxes than they accept in government aid.

Wouldn’t you need to balance that out with cheaper elections (since there are less votes)? Also perhaps GOTV apparatuses would be smaller if the vote was held by a smaller percentage of the population. If people behind gotv could do something productive, that would be a net win.

Running elections seems to come with high fixed costs and low marginal costs, so it doesn't seem likely that additional votes would materially increase costs. Throwing additional votes into the tabulation machinery seems way cheaper than having real life bureaucrats carefully scrutinizing individual registrations as I outlined in my examples.

The cost of running elections is negligible... how many $10 million miles of highway would we need to give up? Not many.

Campaigning though isn’t low marginal costs.

It is if the marginal campaign dollar is going on paid media (which, in America, it probably is)

I'm not sure exactly why you think it would be so expensive to restrict the franchise. Why can't you just give voter IDs out like driver's licenses to those who tick the correct boxes. The less people allowed to vote, the cheaper that is.

encourage them to be part of civil society again

Felons are not anywhere near as civic-minded as you think they are.

I'm not sure exactly why you think it would be so expensive to restrict the franchise.

I wrote my reasons in detail, did you miss that above?

Sometimes there are difficult cases. How many of them are there and how expensive are they? "Voting can be hard to figure out for some felons, if they're banned" is probably true, but how many felons aren't bothering to try and register in the first place? If felons are allowed to vote, how much is spent on getting them registered and tabulating their votes?

The more people you can cut with general rules (e.g. only landowning married men can vote), the less expensive dealing with edge cases becomes.

but how many felons aren't bothering to try and register in the first place?

If Florida is any indication, about 10% of the adult population has a felony record and unable to vote and few (~100k?) have bothered to register to vote. This tends to be true in most states that have post-release disenfranchisement, unless restoration is automatic, few people bother trying. Running elections seems to come with high fixed costs and low marginal costs, so it doesn't seem likely that additional votes would materially increase costs.

The more people you can cut with general rules (e.g. only landowning married men can vote), the less expensive dealing with edge cases becomes.

I would agree there's likely a "reverse Laffer curve" where increasingly high disenfranchisement gets progressively cheaper, but I don't see your argument for where we are currently on the curve. If cost was your only concern then you could justify getting rid of voting entirely.

Cost is a minor concern overall, but I was arguing that more people voting in general is more expensive, not the other way around.

Poor judgment about crime doesn’t have to mean poor judgment about people. Drunk drivers are a blight upon society. They also haven’t proven anything about their grasp of macroeconomics or foreign policy.

Either way, the most valuable boon of democracy is not wisdom of the crowds, but consent of the governed. The pressure release valve of getting to go vote rather than go pogrom. Why is it a good idea to take more away from those who allegedly have paid their debts to society?

Either way, the most valuable boon of democracy is not wisdom of the crowds, but consent of the governed

Right, but we get consent of the governed who matter by including them in the electorate. Broadly, the electorate should reflect people with some influence and good judgement.

Poor judgment about crime doesn’t have to mean poor judgment about people.

There is a hypothesis called Multiple Intelligences Hypothesis, which postulates the existence of several orthogonal kinds of intellect. A competing one claims there exists a "G Factor" aka "Everything is Correlated" with remaining PC's being negligable. One could, by analogy, establish two hypotheses of judgement.

but consent of the governed.

Laws of a country apply to everyone on its teritorry, but only adult citizen are usually permitted to vote. So being "governed" doesn't require one to "consent" (which you define as voting).

Why is it a good idea to take more away from those who allegedly have paid their debts to society?

If they are still banned from voting, society has apparently deemed the debt to not yet been repaid in full.

I don’t really buy into multiple intelligences, as g seems to do pretty well, but that’s not necessary. Making the correct assessment on “What’s the risk-benefit on selling drugs/embezzling/assault?” is just poorly correlated with being right about “is voting X good for the country/community/me?” Partly because political strategy is a hard problem for anyone, and I don’t think non-felons do a great job either. Partly because of the layers of insulation between a voter and any policy.

consent of the governed

Currently, “citizen” has a pretty expansive definition, and those who are governed without it are the exception rather than the rule. Children are the biggest one, restricted under the same strict scrutiny that we apply to all the other ways we don’t let them consent. Immigrants are the other big contingent; I don’t really have a problem with requiring their submission to government. I consider it another prerequisite to actually naturalizing and getting the full rights.

not repaid in full

Is this a reasonable expectation? It strikes me as perverse to have “...and permanent suspension of your voting rights” silently tacked on to all sentences in states with such laws. When sentencing guidelines are set, I don’t think voting rights get much consideration compared to the deprivation of physical liberty. In that sense, completing the prison time would be reasonably interpreted as paying the debt.

I would prefer to have slightly longer sentences in exchange for removing this afterthought of an indefinite punishment.

Maine and Vermont let people vote from prison. Do you have any evidence that this leads to bad policies being implemented?

Maine and Vermont have certain other characteristics that result in them being pleasant places.

Murderers wouldn't vote to make murder legal, because they know very well that they could be the victim of murder by someone else. (They might vote to make murder legal only if done by themselves and not by anyone else, but laws like that aren't on the table.) And if a crime is victimless, I'd be fine with letting criminals vote to legalize it. There may be edge cases (a vagrant who doesn't own property may want to make sleeping on someone's property legal) but I doubt that such things would be seriously proposed as laws anyway.

Because it's their right. I believe everyone has a fundamental right to get input into how society is run, regardless of how poor their judgement is. Frankly, I don't trust a felon's judgement much less than that of the American electorate in general, which is incredibly poor. But I think the general public (poor as their judgement is) still deserves their right to vote, and so too do convicted criminals.

And from a standpoint of outcomes, I think you also need to consider the consequentialist argument for liberalism in general. When you abridge the rights of anyone, it makes it easier (and more likely) to abridge the rights of everyone. Therefore you have to very narrowly tailor how and when you abridge rights. I'm not convinced that keeping criminals from voting actually gives us a better outcome.

I believe everyone has a fundamental right to get input into how society is run, regardless of how poor their judgement is

This statement implies children should be allowed to vote

I believe everyone has a fundamental right to get input into how society is run, regardless of how poor their judgement is.

Why?

Because it's their right.

Do you support minimum voting age? If so, it's easy enough to get from there to restricting the rights of mentally challenged, criminals, welfare recipients, women, etc.

Mentally-challenged, I'll grant you. You're going to have a harder time selling on welfare recipients and women.

We accept disenfranchisement of children because they are dependents. They are not responsible for making any decisions governing their own lives, so it seems natural they wouldn't make any decisions about their government.

The reason it's reasonable for dependents to not make decisions is because they don't pay the cost for those decisions. They will therefore err on the side of too much cost. It's not that they just don't have money or whatever, they actually just have no idea what cost is, whether monetary or through work.

  • Children - not responsible for themselves in any capacity

  • Mentally challenged - same

  • Welfare recipients - same, arguably they are responsible for feeding/housing/clothing themselves within a budget, but they get the money for those things for free. See no benefit if the government spends less.

  • Women - same, but a bit different. While some ladies are independent heads of households, overall they are ultimately not responsible for maintaining civilization and as such would not be held responsible if SHTF. If men stop going to work, huge problem. Ladies mad. If women stop going to work, small problem for a short period of time, nobody mad.

A) 46.6% of the workforce is women, so it's not "some ladies are independent heads of households" it's "women are independent heads of households at almost the same rate as men."

B) "Not responsible for maintaining civilization" is a vague assertion. Who isn't holding them responsible? You? Because that means nothing.

C) "If men stop going to work, huge problem. Ladies mad." It would be a huge problem. I'm not sure why "ladies", in particular, would be angrier about the situation than any other group.

D) "If women stop going to work, small problem..." - No. It would not be a small problem. If 46.6% of your workforce decides not to work, that is not a small problem. If it's also ~75% of your healthcare workers, that is an absolutely enormous problem.

E) "...nobody mad." Of the people I know, none of them would be angry if a large group of people stopped working. They would be concerned. If they were angry, they would be no less angry about women leaving the workforce than men.

Every part of that statement was wrong in a number of different ways.

A) Having a job is not the same as being independent or the head of the household. About a third of dual income couples have the woman making more. According to that article the most common cases are where the husband is a bartender, barber, kindergarten teacher or waiter. My hunch is that most of these cases are women out-earning their partners by a small amount, given that this arrangement is way likely to end in divorce. So while it is true that a sizeable fraction of women are breadwinners, it is not nearly the same rate as men and they are way more likely to get divorced (i.e. are unhappy). I should mention single moms here as well, but what percentage of the independent ones (i.e. not on child support, welfare) are happy with their arrangement and not seeking a man who makes more than them?

B) It is vague but it does mean something in a couple ways. Most simply, women are holding them responsible. Sort of like how a bachelor's house and a married couple's house looks way different, a large amount of civilizing pressure comes from women. There's also the situation on the ground. Ladies are heavily concentrated in some industries, but there aren't many that I would call staples of "civilization". Between resource extraction, the energy, utilities, manufacturing, shipping, agriculture, none have a sizeable fraction of women handling any core responsibilities. Finally, there is the historical precedent. Through antiquity, if the men of a tribe grew weaker than another tribe, they would be killed. The women would be absorbed into the stronger tribe.

C) If a man just stops going to work, his lady would be very mad in pretty much all cases. The reverse is not true nearly as often. Generalize this and women are upset on a level that men just aren't.

D) Like B, the workforce is concentrated in less essential areas. Again there is historical precedent. Before WWII about 20% of women were working, mostly young ones and in low level jobs. This seemed to work fine. Same to say those jobs could be absorbed by men if they had to.

E) The rates of depression and general malaise among ladies along with plummeting fertility rates makes me think that the current arrangement isn't all it's cracked up to be. Women are in a prisoner's dilemma. Each individual is usually worse off if they don't work, but collectively they are worse off all working. If they all quit, SSRI use would drop in a hurry.

A) Having a job is not the same as being independent or the head of the household. About a third of dual income couples have the woman making more. According to that article the most common cases are where the husband is a bartender, barber, kindergarten teacher or waiter. My hunch is that most of these cases are women out-earning their partners by a small amount, given that this arrangement is way likely to end in divorce. So while it is true that a sizeable fraction of women are breadwinners, it is not nearly the same rate as men and they are way more likely to get divorced (i.e. are unhappy). I should mention single moms here as well, but what percentage of the independent ones (i.e. not on child support, welfare) are happy with their arrangement and not seeking a man who makes more than them?

Women make less in general, I agree. But you're excluding single women, single moms, lesbians and basically anyone who isn't in a traditional nuclear family, then adding the requirement that they be happy, have no outside income (no disability, welfare or child support), and... not be looking for a relationship?

I don't any hard numbers on how many men fail the "independence" requirements that you've laid out here, but I would guess it's a lot. I've met a lot of men who are in unhappy marriages, a lot of men who are single and looking for a relationship, and an enormous number of men that are on disability.

B) It is vague but it does mean something in a couple ways. Most simply, women are holding them responsible. Sort of like how a bachelor's house and a married couple's house looks way different, a large amount of civilizing pressure comes from women. There's also the situation on the ground. Ladies are heavily concentrated in some industries, but there aren't many that I would call staples of "civilization". Between resource extraction, the energy, utilities, manufacturing, shipping, agriculture, none have a sizeable fraction of women handling any core responsibilities. Finally, there is the historical precedent. Through antiquity, if the men of a tribe grew weaker than another tribe, they would be killed. The women would be absorbed into the stronger tribe.

Yeah, maybe we should take a poll. Because I've never met a woman that "held men responsible for civilization." I would guess this is something unique to your social circle. So basically, no offense- but I don't believe you.

C) If a man just stops going to work, his lady would be very mad in pretty much all cases. The reverse is not true nearly as often. Generalize this and women are upset on a level that men just aren't.

Again, I just don't believe you. I'm 35 years old. I've lived in a lot of different places and met a lot of different people- if a person is in a relationship and their significant other decides to quit with no discussion, then the non-quitting partner would almost universally be angry. If they quit with discussion, then the anger would depend on the reasons.

D) Like B, the workforce is concentrated in less essential areas. Again there is historical precedent. Before WWII about 20% of women were working, mostly young ones and in low level jobs. This seemed to work fine. Same to say those jobs could be absorbed by men if they had to.

If you want to argue that men leaving the workforce would be worse than women leaving the workforce, then I would agree. But originally, you stated that it would be a "small problem". By any measure, 75% of your healthcare workers quitting would be an enormous problem. The education system is dominated, top to bottom, by women. Banks are run by women. This isn't pre-WWII anymore, and there are lots of jobs that aren't agricultural or construction-related that we need workers in.

E) The rates of depression and general malaise among ladies along with plummeting fertility rates makes me think that the current arrangement isn't all it's cracked up to be. Women are in a prisoner's dilemma. Each individual is usually worse off if they don't work, but collectively they are worse off all working. If they all quit, SSRI use would drop in a hurry.

Speculation, and also (as with the happiness requirement in A) beside the point.

Expanding it does not lead to improved outcomes

Improved outcomes for whom? Politics is about competing interests; there are very few issues on which there is a single "common good," and even fewer where that common good is knowable. Saying that "group X should not be allowed to vote" is saying that group X's interests do not matter. And, although as a person who is both more highly educated and better read than the average person, I might know a lot more about a lot of things than most people, but I almost certainly know less than they do about what their interests are.

I'm comfortable saying as a matter of policy that serious enough crimes have you constructively banished from society. Since we lack the capability to actually cast people out into the wilderness or deport them to the unsettled frontier, we do this by declaring their interests to not matter to the rest of society. They are free to remove themselves if they don't like it.

Whom do you think worthy of the vote and how do you propose we find these people?

Net taxpayers. You must pay more than $X in tax more than you receive via government subsidy.

Most of the world, historically, limited the franchise to landowning men- that is, heads of established households. And that’s probably a pretty good filter for not being a total train wreck.

I would suggest that ‘no criminal record, over 21, employed or married’ would fill a similar function today.

I keep toying with the idea of having to post a bond of some substantial value that is forfeit if the voter leaves their legislative district before some term of years. Potentially allowing for rolling it election to election instead of continually posting a new one each term unless someone wanted the flexibility. Maybe making the bond cost progressive. The whole having skin in the game effect since people seem so allergic to restricting the franchise to landowners.

That would restrict voting to the rich, since poor people couldn't afford the risk. That would also mean that the government could hurt people and they wouldn't be able to leave to escape without paying the government off.

Poor people already significantly do not vote compared to rich. Although realistically there should be some nontrivial cost floor. Paul voting whether or not Peter should be robbed to pay for Paul has some issues. The franchise being conditioned on the bond does not stop poor people from leaving, only those who voted for that same government in the first place who cannot bear the cost. And a progressive cost on the bond would mean that it would be proportionally costly for rich and poor.

Most of the world, historically, limited the franchise to landowning men- that is, heads of established households.

Most of the world, historically, limited the franchise to the aristocracy if they had voting at all. I'm not sure what "established" household means but prior to the Reform Acts in the mid 19th century the franchise in Britain was extremely limited - far more so than just married, non-lumpen men.

Western societies historically had some means of franchise available for (adult, male)full members. Rome and Greece famously spent a lot of time as republics, the ancient germanics allowed landowning men to sit in the thing, etc.

The ancien regime in France was the exception, not the rule. Most western societies had legislative bodies elected by commoners(although often with property requirements).

What metric do you consider to determine whether your voting filter is a good idea? The fact that a system was used historically doesn't tell us about its merits.

To clarify, men only or women as well?

Men and women- it fills the same function as previous laws restricting voting to established persons who contribute to society.

One more question, if you don't mind. How strict are we talking for no criminal record? Squeaky clean down to zero moving or parking violations or do we allow a certain amount of flexibility for misdemeanors? I'm not poking at you, I'm just genuinely curious about your ideas on this.

To be clear this entire exercise is just spitballing ideas to mirror a historical ‘full membership’ requirement, but I’d imagine ‘nothing other than minor violations/period of years since last violation’ both make sense here.

Citations should be fine (eg speeding, parking ticket, etc). Misdemeanor maybe ten year window? Felon forever.

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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