A Brief Description of Church-State Separation

The wall of separation is under attack

A commenter here, TokyoJones, gave a short description of separation of church and state. It is very worthwhile to understand this. I saw the church-state separation issue in terms of conflicting religious rights with other constitutional rights. TJ pointed out that framing of the issue was not right. He wrote:

As it was understood by its writers, there can be no conflict of rights to religious liberty and other more secular rights, because religion is not to enter into the public sphere. It is a private pursuit, or one shared among fellow believers, but religious exercises can no more impede secular law than secular law impede religious practice. When religionists start demanding special rights in order to deny others their rights, we know the 1A has been abrogated, and we know who these would-be tyrants are.

Improvement One for the USA: Ranked Choice Voting

 By Best in Moderation

A while back I posted a list of ten possible improvements, and there was a large amount of requests to take them on one at a time. So I will be doing that in a series here, including any discussions up to now and hopefully promoting more discussions as we focus on each one.

To begin, let’s look at Ranked Choice Voting

The Concept:

Currently we elect candidates for office with a whomever gets a plurality of votes, or in simpler terms, whoever gets more than any other candidate. But there are issues with this approach:

1. Voters are usually forced to choose to vote for the most popular candidates or have little impact and risk a person winning they truly dislike.
2. Candidates can win with a very small base of support, so long as it is more than any other candidate.
3. It is very difficult for third parties to gain advancement

To fix up these issues, Ranked Choice Voting is suggested, where you indicate your order of preference of the possible candidates. It would work as follows:

You have five candidates, A, B, C, D, and E.
A and B are the most popular candidates from the major parties.
However, you are now free to rank your choices of all the candidates, so let’s say you vote for C first, then E, then B, then D and finally A.

If any candidate gets 50% of the vote, they win. If not, the candidate receiving the lowest amount drops out and the 2nd choice of those voters is used and added to that candidate. This goes on until there is a majority candidate (over 50%)

The Practice:

The election results come in, and they are as follows:
A has 26% of the vote
B has 31% of the vote
C has 15% of the vote
D has 13% of the vote
E has 14% of the vote

Now normally B would win with a plurality, but since we’ve changed the rules to needing a majority, D gets dropped and all of D‘s support go to the second choice for D. Let’s say that’s 6% to A and 7% to C. The new rankings are as follows:
A has 32% of the vote
B has 31% of the vote
C has 21% of the vote
E has 14% of the vote

Now normally A would win with a plurality, but again, no one is at 50%, so we drop the lowest, with all 14% of E‘s having chosen C as their 2nd choice. The new rankings are thus:
A has 32% of the vote
B has 31% of the vote
C has 35% of the vote

Now C would win a plurality! But no one has a clear majority, so B gets dropped and here’s where things get complicated (see below). For now, let’s say only the remaining candidates count, and all B‘s voters preferred C over A. Thus:
A has 32% of the vote
C has 66% of the vote

C wins the election!

The Problems Explored: Who gets the support and when?

As noted above, a question that needs answering is at what point are preferences counted? If one party was dropped but later turns out to be the 2nd most preferred for a large party that dropped, should that party get the votes or should only the currently remaining parties divide the votes based on ranking? There are arguments to be made for both, but it does present a mathematical issue. Let’s say that all of B‘s supporters choose E as their 2nd choice. That would mean E actually has 14% primary support and 31% secondary support, which would put it over C‘s then-35%! So let’s do process differently.

Let’s say instead you count first the primary support, and then you add half of the secondary support to each candidate. For our scenario:
The second choice for A voters was 50% D and 50% C
The second choice for B voters was 70% E and 30% C
The second choice for C voters was 40% E, 30% B, 20% D and 10% A
The second choice for D voters was 55% C and 45% A
The second choice for E was 70% C and 30% B

Using this math, we get the following rankings:
A has 26% + (((0.10*15)+(0.45*13)))/2, or 29.68%
B has 31% + (((0.30*15)+(0.30*14))/2), or 35.35%
C has 15% + (((0.50*26)+(0.30*31)+(0.55*13)+(0.70*14))/2), or 34.63%
D has 13% + (((0.50*26)+(0.20*15))/2), or 21%
E has 14% + (((0.70*31)+(0.40*15))/2), or 27.85%

Still no one has over 50%, so we take the third choice and we add 1/3 to each candidate:
The third choice for A voters was 50% C and 50% D
The third choice for B voters was 70% C and 30% E
The third choice for C voters was 40% B, 30% E, 20% D and 10% A
The third choice for D voters was 45% C and 55% A
The third choice for E voters was 30% B and 70% C

Using this math, we get:
A with 32.56%
B with 38.75%
C with 51.41%
D with 26.33%
E with 32.45%

Which does make a difference only for the ones who didn’t win, since B remains in second place and E is remarkedly close to A.

So this problem seems not to be too large, only for statistical purposes on total support (or in a parliamentary system) would this be needed. C still wins.

The Problems Explored: That’s too complicated!

One of the big issues with Ranked Choice is how complex it is to calculate and how complex it is to vote. Asking for a second choice is fine; most people have that. Ranking all of them is a bit much for most people, who may not really have an opinion on the others. I may drive down voter participation.

So to model it out, let’s just pick two, a first and second choice. If by the first there is no clear winner, the second choice amounts are added to each and we see if there is a clear 50% winner there. We start with the party with the most votes first, because they did win the most primary votes and should therefore take precedence (this argument could be seen as another problem, but I think we would all agree that the first choice is more “valuable” than the second).

In review, this means that:
A has 26% of the vote
B has 31% of the vote
C has 15% of the vote
D has 13% of the vote
E has 14% of the vote

And
B has 31% of the vote + 4.5% from C and 4.2% from E for a total of 39.7%
A has 26% of the vote + 5.85% from D and 1.5% from C for a total of 33.35%
C has 15% of the voter + 13% from A, 9.3% from B, 7.15% from D and 9.8% from E for a total of 54.25%

And we have a winner! C it is again (had E or D gotten more votes than C over 50%, then you could argue they should win, but again the primacy of the first choice should be determinative).

The Problems Explored: Not my choice!

If your third choice was selected, you may not actually feel much in support of the government, despite you having selected that as an option. As such, I do not think it is a good idea to ask for a third choice because the entire point is to give people a better feeling of support for their government and that their choices matter.

TLDR:

Ranked Choice voting seems like a good option to both give people a better sense that their vote matters and that they can vote for whom they support even if afraid someone else will win.
It encourages a departure from a two party model and it will produce a winner with the most direct and secondary support, in each model.
The best model IMO is two choices with a single addition of the secondary choices. If that fails to get anyone over 50%, a revote or runoff should be held.

What do you think? Any other problems you can think of? How would you get this implemented?

Trump-friendly Newsmax a sudden competitor to Fox News

 NEW YORK — Now that his largely invisible network has suddenly been flooded by fans of President Donald Trump, Newsmax television personality Grant Stinchfield is puffing out his chest.

“They don’t know what to do with all of us,” Stinchfield said on the air Monday night. “We’re killing it here on Newsmax with a tactic they’ve never tried. It’s called the truth, the stone-cold truth, and once you get a taste of it, you will never tolerate being lied to again.”

In many cases, the opposite is true. Newsmax, the television arm of a conservative website, has reported falsely that Joe Biden is not the legitimate president-elect because of largely non-existent voter fraud. Its viewers are fed a diet of conspiracy theories to salve the wounds of an election loss — a tactic that’s misleading at best and damaging to democracy at worst.

Yet Newsmax’s burst, whether or not it lasts, has been astonishingly swift and could foreshadow the first serious threat to Fox News Channel’s dominance with conservative viewers in two decades.

“We’ve really cornered Fox from the right,” said Chris Ruddy, Newsmax founder and friend of Trump. “They’ve never had that.”

From the beginning of July to the week before Election Day, Newsmax averaged 58,000 viewers from 7 to 10 p.m. on weekdays. That jumped to 568,000 the week after the election, the Nielsen company said. In the same period, daytime viewership increased from 46,000 to 450,000.

For the same dates, Fox News averaged 3.6 million viewers in the evening, Nielsen said. Fox’s prime-time viewership during the two weeks after the election was up 50 per cent over last year.

“We love competition. We have always thrived on competition,” Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on an Election Day earnings call.

Ruddy traced much of Newsmax’s increase to Trump supporters angered by Fox’s election night call that Democrat Joe Biden had won Arizona — ahead of any other news organization. While that call proved correct, for the president’s backers it was an ill-timed sign of insufficient loyalty from their favourite network.

Trump, who criticized Fox throughout the campaign, has driven the point home with repeated tweets suggesting his followers check out Newsmax or a smaller rival that also presses a conservative viewpoint, One America News Network.

“There’s a large part of the country that wants to have a voice, the same people who gave birth to what turned into a very robust Fox News,” said Michael Clemente, Newsmax’s CEO until last April and a former Fox News executive. “Now, more than ever, they want to be heard, and have influence equal to their peers on the coasts. Their loyalty is to that voice and not to any place or another.”

Unlike Fox, Newsmax’s news operation is largely non-existent. Most of the company’s reporters are attached to a website, which at midday Wednesday led with stories about Trump’s press secretary calling restrictions on Thanksgiving gatherings “Orwellian,” and the president’s latest false tweet claiming an election victory.

The television network is running a clever ad telling conservative viewers not to be “out-foxed,” but it was telling on Monday that both Newsmax and OANN spent considerable time discussing an interview that was conducted on Fox, where a Trump lawyer predicted her client would win by millions of votes.

Programming generally consists of news talk shows, and it’s not difficult to see where the loyalty lies.

“Donald Trump is the most powerful person in the world,” said Greg Kelly, a former personality at Fox’s New York affiliate who is Newsmax’s most polished broadcaster. “Not because he’s president, but because he’s loved by so many people.”

When Newsmax’s Chris Salcedo slipped and asked a question about Biden during an interview Monday with Trump aide Peter Navarro, he was quickly brushed off.

“As far as I’m concerned, President Trump is going to have a second term,” Navarro said.

Newsmax hasn’t declared Biden the president-elect, unlike other news organizations, including Fox. Its personalities spend considerable time echoing theories about voter irregularities that have either been disproven or unaccompanied by evidence.

Even though Ruddy concedes in an interview that Trump has an extremely narrow chance of overturning the results, he said it’s up to the states, not media organizations, to declare a winner.

But if the chances are really that small, why should a discussion about them dominate Newsmax’s airtime?

“I think that people that are not pro-Trump or don’t like him think we should get past it or they are tired of it,” he said. “But conservatives are quite anxious to hear about developments.”

He said he differs from Trump in believing the administration should be co-operating in a transition, even if the president holds out hope that the results could somehow be overturned.

“I would tell him if I speak to him that I think they should engage in a transition,” he said.

The spotlight on smaller rivals comes at an extraordinarily tumultuous time at Fox. There’s always been a tension between the news and opinion sides of the network, but this time it’s reflected in the ultimate “unspinnable” story of election results, said Nicole Hemmer, a Columbia University professor and author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.”

In some respects, the surge in Newsmax’s viewership represents a temper tantrum by some Fox viewers, she said.

For Newsmax, a big question is whether its programming is compelling enough to hold viewers who are clearly sampling. Besides Kelly, former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer is Newsmax’s best-known personality. Both their shows are aired twice a night; Ruddy said a new prime-time show will start next month and another is in the works.

“It’s going to be a challenge for (Newsmax) to grow their numbers in the way that Fox did because of the lack of a news operation,” Hemmer said.

The Wall Street Journal reported last weekend that Trump allies in Hicks Equity Partners had discussed acquiring and investing in Newsmax TV. Ruddy said it never materialized into anything. He said he’s not looking to sell, but will listen if an investor approaches with an open checkbook.

For conservative media, the overshadowing mystery is what Trump decides to do when he leaves office, whether he decides to start a media organization of his own or join an existing one.

Ruddy professes no insider knowledge, but said he doubts Trump would want to start his own company because it would cut him off from access to other media.

He doesn’t think Trump would be interested in doing a daily show. Perhaps weekly, he said, and Newsmax would be interested in having him.

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2020/11/18/trump-friendly-newsmax-a-sudden-competitor-to-fox-news/

From the Flogging Dead Horses Department Again: No Widespread Vote Fraud; Increasing Threats of Violence

This nightmare is not close to being over yet. The Trump and republican attack on the 2020 election is drifting toward violence. Trump and the GOP can now reasonably be considered to be domestic terrorists. The New York Times reports:

Confrontations have escalated in swing states, with elections officials in both parties facing threats of violence, as the president and other Republicans try to subvert the country’s voting system.

[a Trump lie] President Trump’s false accusations that voter fraud denied him re-election are causing escalating confrontations in swing states across the country, leading to threats of violence against officials in both parties and subverting even the most routine steps in the electoral process.

In Arizona on Wednesday, the Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, issued a statement lamenting the “consistent and systematic undermining of trust” in the elections and called on Republican officials to stop “perpetuating misinformation.” She described threats against her and her family in the aftermath of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory over Mr. Trump in her state.

In Georgia, where Mr. Biden holds a narrow lead that is expected to stand through a recount concluding Wednesday night, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, has said he, too, received menacing messages. He also said he felt pressured by Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to search for ways to disqualify votes.

In Pennsylvania, statehouse Republicans on Wednesday advanced a proposal to audit the state’s election results that cited [an impicit GOP lie] “a litany of inconsistencies” — a move Democrats described as obstructionist and unnecessary given Mr. Trump’s failure to present any evidence in court of widespread fraud or other problems. Republicans in Wisconsin filed new lawsuits on Wednesday in the state’s two biggest counties, seeking a recount. Mr. Biden reclaimed both states after Mr. Trump won them in 2016.  

Nowhere was the confusion and chaos more evident than in Michigan on Tuesday night, when two Republican members of the canvassing board in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, initially refused to certify election results, pointing to minor recording discrepancies. It was a stunningly partisan move that would have potentially disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters from a predominantly Black city, and after a stream of public backlash, the two board members reversed their votes and agreed to certify.

Trump supporters howl in moral self-righteousness about all the (exaggerated) violence that Antifa and BLM have caused. By contrast, they raise few or no little squeaks of complaint about the radical right attacking the election and threatening innocent people. Once again, the hypocrisy of Trump and his radical right hoard is blatant. Trump and the radical right is now in domestic terrorist territory. 

The election is still under severe threat. The NYT also reported that the two Republican members of the canvassing board in Wayne County have signed affidavits stating that they have rescinded their votes to certify the results. They claimed that they were bullied into voting for the certification. In essence, this could wind up disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of Black votes in Michigan.

The American asset is doing better than could have been hoped for

Vladimir Putin must be overjoyed at how well his American asset, Trump, is performing in his assigned task of tearing American society apart and destroying the country. One can only wonder what the motivator for Trump is, bribes, blackmail, love of tyranny and hate of democracy and the rule of law and/or something else. Whatever his motivation(s), Trump is now a dictator wannabe who can reasonably be considered to be a domestic terrorist.