site banner
zataomm  4mo ago (text post)   5356 thread views

Colorado Supreme Court Thread

Link to the decision

I don't know to what extent there are established precedents for when a topic is worthy of a mega-thread, but this decision seems like a big deal to me with a lot to discuss, so I'm putting this thread here as a place for discussion. If nobody agrees then I guess they just won't comment.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What’s supposed to happen if an ineligible candidate wins a state?

Let’s say a write-in candidate wins due to a generational gap. Turns out the last Silents were the only thing holding back fascism, and now Hitler has the plurality in Colorado. What gives?

  • Votes for an ineligible candidate aren’t counted.
  • Votes for an ineligible candidate are counted, but electors are bound to choose the highest eligible count.
  • As above, but electors aren’t bound at all, and can pick Hitler anyway.
  • Electors are bound to pick the highest count, regardless of eligibility, but the US Senate won’t sign and certify votes for ineligible candidates.
  • As above, but the Senate certifies the results; ineligibility only matters after tallying the final result.
  • As above, but the seat gets filled by the VP instead of the Presidential runner-up, since this is “the case of the death or other constitutional disability” from the 12th amendment.

This is a genuine question. Article II doesn’t say anything about faithless or stupid electors, and it certainly doesn’t say anything about the state population picking a dead man. If there’s something in the 14th or in the 12th, I missed it.

Let’s say a write-in candidate wins due to a generational gap. Turns out the last Silents were the only thing holding back fascism, and now Hitler has the plurality in Colorado.

That can’t happen. Colorado won’t count unapproved write-ins. You can write ‘Mickey mouse’ on the ballot, it’s just an abstention.

Seems kind of ill-advised that they're calling attention to the system being, "you can vote for whoever you want, as long as they're one of the state-approved choices". Then again, everything about this seems ill-advised, but here we are.

Seems kind of ill-advised that they're calling attention to the system being, "you can vote for whoever you want, as long as they're one of the state-approved choices".

Why? It's entirely in line with things I've been seeing for years now.

I recently saw someone on Tumblr trying to ground some of the more extreme left-wing fears by arguing that the worst case for a "Trump dictatorship" is that we become… Hungary. And I was reminded of something else I had seen recently — a screenshot of a Keith Olbermann tweet that presented exactly that as the horror scenario to be avoided at all costs: that we're still under threat of the end of Our Democracy and becoming an 'authoritarian' state "like Hungary or Poland." Yes, this was before the recent Polish election. Some undemocratic "authoritarianism" that was, huh?

What's wrong with Hungary, anyway? The answer I get, when I push back and get people to dig down, is that guys like Orbán aren't supposed to win no matter how popular with the voters.

Roger Kimball, in discussing Colorado, made a point similar to yours:

In fact, what they have just voted to preserve is not democracy but “Our Democracy™.” Here’s the difference. In a democracy, people get to vote for the candidate they prefer. In “Our Democracy™,” only approved candidates get to compete.

Well, for years I've been seeing people, from Curtis Yarvin to random YouTube comments, all make the same point about how you can't just let people "vote for the candidate they prefer," and all giving the same example why. So I looked to see if anyone had explicitly made that same connection in this case. The closest is Joe Matthews at Zócalo: "The Case for Taking Trump Off the Ballot." Just like banning the AfD, removing Trump is what "defensive democracy" demands.

To paraphrase Yarvin in a Triggernometry interview, we saw what happens when you let the people vote for the candidate they prefer without limiting it to approved candidates… 'in early-1930s Germany.' We can't ever risk "repeating the mistake Weimar Germany made when they let Nazis take office just because a plurality voted for them" (as one YouTube comment put it). If you don't limit the options to "state-approved choices" and let people vote for whoever they want… they'll vote for Hitler. Never Again. Never again can the masses be allowed to choose their own leaders unguided. If we are to be a democracy, then "democracy" must be defined as something other than that. (Like 'democracy is when elites enact the Rousseauan "common will" — as determined by a technocratic intellectual vanguard — whether the masses like it or not; and therefore the greatest threat to Our Democracy is a "populist" who will do the unthinkable and give the voters what they want.')

Matthews:

Blocking candidates or parties from elections doesn’t come naturally to democratically minded people. Nor should it—it’s a despot move. Autocracies and dictatorships routinely maintain and extend their power by blocking opposition figures from standing for office, such as when the Chinese government banned pro-democracy candidates in Hong Kong’s 2020 vote.

But then…

It is also why it makes sense for people around the world to examine how Germany, where the Nazi party took power through elections, reckons with those who threaten its democracy.

Or, from Tumbler user Eightyonekilograms:

I mean, I didn’t say there was an actionable strategy. Actually I’m pretty sure there isn’t one: for a societal system based both on laws and implicit norms (which they all are), you have to stop someone like Trump— someone who has no shame and no regard whatsoever for the law or the norms— before he gets any power. By the time you get to the point we’re at now, it’s way too late: all the options are bad. Either you disqualify him, which is flagrantly undemocratic and will be seen and reacted to as such, or you don’t, and now you’ve set up a ghastly incentive gradient. If there’s no punishment (whether legal or electoral) for attempting a coup, then there’s no reason not to try over and over again until you succeed. Which is not theoretical, it’s exactly what we’re observing now: Trump knows that punishment is unlikely, so he feels free to say he’ll be a dictator on day one, the Heritage Foundation isn’t even bothering to be secret about assembling the “Project 25” team that will put an end to that pesky democracy, etc.

(Emphasis in original)

So, yes, you do have to "save democracy from itself," even if that requires "undemocratic" measures like Colorado has taken.

Or so goes the argument.

I think Yarvin’s argument ignores the various problems that come with the government having control over the elections to the point of being quite able to create its own lists of approved candidates. In almost every case, it leads to a nearly complete one-party system in which the people have very little control over the government. Even the modern American two party system is somewhat like this — the voter has a choice between two major candidates for office, one of whom will certainly win, and his choice is constrained to one of those two (even when minor candidates appear, they cannot win) meaning that you have two very similar candidates who agree on major issues. Allowing a more true democracy in which anyone can run with a reasonable chance of winning whether he’s fascist or libertarian or socialist or Falange gives the voter a real choice. Yes there’s a chance of voting for Hitler. The thing is that a system in which there are lots of candidates running is harder to game for control.

Allowing a more true democracy in which anyone can run with a reasonable chance of winning whether he’s fascist or libertarian or socialist or Falange gives the voter a real choice.

all possible choices having reasonable chance at winning is not required (ones hated by population should definitely not have a chance to win)

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


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.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats