A taste of Prager U

[_EAllusion]

By "tolerance" I have in mind, "Don't use the tools of the state against people's thoughts" rather than, "refrain from criticism or other forms of social disapprobation." Shun people? Yes. Jail or fine them? No.

[_EAllusion]

Candygal,

Lol, well they're doing a terrible job at it since millions of Black Georgians have dodged the mobs of angry White Republicans and managed, against virtually insurmountable odds, to not only register to vote lawfully, but to actually cast a ballot or two!

Check out this racist website ran by a racist for more details:

http://sos.ga.gov/index.php/Elections/v ... statistics

- Doc

So long as black people navigate the system and vote, it's no big deal if people try to discriminate against black voting access and some black people drop out of voting as a result of those efforts. That's your argument? Or is your argument based on lack of elementary math skills wherein you argue any net gain in voter registrations among blacks prove that attempts to purge black registrations hasn't reduced overall black registrations off what it would've have been?

Anyway, let's say that studies find that blacks have to wait, on average, about twice as long as whites in line to vote and let's say that other studies find this results several hundred thousand black people not voting who otherwise would have. Would pointing out that black people vote, or hell, that black turnout was especially high in 2008 and 2012, refute this finding? If so, how? Mathematically, how does that work?

Or, let's say a certain political party figured out that racial minorities who vote Democrat by a large majority are much more likely than white people to have the same name. Let's say they devised a system where people with the same names who voted in different districts are auto-kicked from voting rolls and have to go through an onerous process to get back on in order to reduce their voter turnout relative to whites in order to reduce the overall share of Democratic voters in the electorate. Would pointing out that there are black people with identical names who are, in fact, registered to vote disprove that this occurred? If so, how? Mathematically, how does that work?

[_honorentheos]

By "tolerance" I have in mind, "Don't use the tools of the state against people's thoughts" rather than, "refrain from criticism or other forms of social disapprobation." Shun people? Yes. Jail or fine them? No.

I would argue there is room between "no response"-type tolerance and shunning that is endangered by the currents driving social behaviors in the US.

[_EAllusion]

By "tolerance" I have in mind, "Don't use the tools of the state against people's thoughts" rather than, "refrain from criticism or other forms of social disapprobation." Shun people? Yes. Jail or fine them? No.

I would argue there is room between "no response"-type tolerance and shunning that is endangered by the currents driving social behaviors in the US.

Sure. Not every disagreeable view deserves being verbally napalmed. There's something to be said for reasonable people agreeing to disagree and polite engagement. That's a problem with plenty of people, though it's important to remember that Twitter and an average person's experience aren't the same thing. At the same time, some things do deserve shunning and we also have a problem with the sorts of views are considered acceptable (or what's considered uncivil to shun) as much as we have a problem with what isn't. It's a problem in both directions.

It is sublimely screwed up that using the "n-word" is utterly unforgivable proof of racism, but all sorts of other, much more serious racists statements and actions aren't. That's a subtext underneath the fabled "n-word" tape of Trump. As if that's what's necessary to label the guy a racist.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Candygal,

Lol, well they're doing a terrible job at it since millions of Black Georgians have dodged the mobs of angry White Republicans and managed, against virtually insurmountable odds, to not only register to vote lawfully, but to actually cast a ballot or two!

Check out this racist website ran by a racist for more details:

http://sos.ga.gov/index.php/Elections/v ... statistics

- Doc

So long as black people navigate the system and vote, it's no big deal if people try to discriminate against black voting access and some black people drop out of voting as a result of those efforts. That's your argument? Or is your argument based on lack of elementary math skills wherein you argue any net gain in voter registrations among blacks prove that attempts to purge black registrations hasn't reduced overall black registrations off what it would've have been?

No. God you're such an asshole, but what else is new? My argument is that Black folks, just like everyone else, aren't a bunch of knuckledragging retards who can't figure out an easy to navigate system. It's too bad you feel differently, but you've made it clear over the years you think very poorly of them.

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

[

No. God you're such an asshole, but what else is new? My argument is that Black folks, just like everyone else, aren't a bunch of knuckledragging retards who can't figure out an easy to navigate system. It's too bad you feel differently, but you've made it clear over the years you think very poorly of them.

- Doc

So, your argument is the lack of elementary math skills one. Doc, no absolute number of black registrations, besides nearly all of them, is going to disprove that some black voters are being deterred from being registered through purging techniques designed to target minority and low-income residents. And just because some black people navigate burdens placed on them, that does not mean those burdens do not have an impact or are fair.

Also, you might want to consider why the GOP works so hard at putting up those barriers if it's obvious they have no impact. But don't consider it too hard, as we don't need you going through another round of citing sham talking points from voter suppression advocates and doing a "QED" endzone dance.

[Guest]

Speaking of elementary skillz.

Let's go back to Randolph county, the hotbed of racism and voter suppression. 4,000 people voted in the last election. Let's say 1/4 of those voted by mail-in ballots due to age, infirmity, disability, and voter fraud. *cough*

Let's say there are two polling stations. Each one is at community center or a school. Let's say each one has 40 booths set up throughout the gymnasium or common area. Let's say it takes each voter 5 minutes to click through their options. Let's do the math...

40 voters x 12 voters/hour x 12 hours x 2 polling stations = ~11,500 votes cast

How will they EVER have enough time to run 3,000 people through the voting booths in poor little Randolph county!

- Doc

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I mean, let's not let facts get in the way of a good race baitin' contest!

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/critic ... /817084633

RANDOLPH COUNTY, Ga. - A proposal to close seven of nine polling places in one Southwest Georgia county is drawing harsh criticism as some opponents call it an attempt at voter suppression.

Randolph County hired Mike Malone as an elections consultant after its elections supervisor left. After studying the county, Malone made the proposal to close seven of nine precincts, saying the county was wasting taxpayer money by keeping nine polling places open for only about 4,000 voters.

One precinct, he said, had only 12 voters during the last election.

Malone also said the seven polling places he advises closing are in violation of federal law because they are not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. He denied the plan had anything to do with voter suppression.

But members of the Concerned Black Clergy of Metropolitan Atlanta disagree. At a news conference Monday, their members called on the county to reject that proposal as an attempt to keep African-American voters away from the polls.

“Randolph County is predominantly black,” said CBC President Randall Jackson. “If they succeed in this effort, it will nullify and make almost impossible thousands of blacks. Many of those who are senior citizens who would have to walk miles to get to their polling places.”

Randolph County resident Bobbie White said she was all for saving the county money, but wanted to make sure elderly voters could still get to the polls.

“It can be good for the economy saving that way,” White said. “But it’s going to be rough on the few places that have the few people that don’t have a way to get to the voting places. Are they going to provide something to get them to the voting places?"

Marshell Jones works on the square in Cuthbert. She doesn’t like the proposal at all.

“It’s a plan that doesn’t take into account the impact on the community,” Jones said. “I wouldn’t say it’s discrimination, but in a way it is, because older people can’t get to the polls."

Georgia Secretary of State’s Office said it does not have authority over the Randolph County Elections Board, but “staunchly opposed” the proposal.

Both GOP gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams both stated they oppose the proposal, too.

The whole is issue is so absurd, as seen not only by this article but by the discussion on this board. Yes yes... Elderly people are going to walk miles to cast a vote when they could just mail it in, instead. gmafb

eta: Do Democrats invest significant time and resources into gerrymandering? If so, is it cool when they only do it? Whose votes are Democrats suppressing, say, in MD and why is it cool?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... b75f33279c

- Doc

[_honorentheos]

It is absurd. It was absurd to try and shut down polling stations weeks away from a critical midterm election after the same stations had been used for the primary. It's absurd that the sitting SoS can both actively serve in that capacity in Georgia while also running for governor. It's absurd that these attempts, successful or not, have been going on for years including a failed attempt in the county where Atlanta is located just last year.

No one is arguing there is no time or place for restructuring or organizing in order to modernize and be more cost effective. But you are talking about the same SoS who has been under significant pressure for years to update their voting system because it's easily hackable and yet gave no "F"s.

For example -

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ure-219018

DHS said Russian hackers had probed websites in the 21 states looking for vulnerabilities, and in at least one state—Illinois—they found a vulnerability in a server that hosted the state’s voter registration database, allowing them to access 90,000 voter records. But the Russians were apparently unsuccessful in finding vulnerabilities in other state election sites and evidently never bothered at all with servers in Georgia, according to the agency.

This was odd because around the same time the Russians were targeting other states, a security researcher in Georgia named Logan Lamb discovered a serious security vulnerability in an election server in his state. The vulnerability allowed him to download the state’s entire database of 6.7 million registered voters and would have allowed him or any other intruder to alter versions of the database distributed to counties prior to the election. Lamb also found PDFs with instructions and passwords for election workers to sign in to a central server on Election Day as well as software files for the state’s ExpressPoll pollbooks—the electronic devices used by poll workers to verify voters’ eligibility to vote before allowing them to cast a ballot.

The unpatched and misconfigured server had been vulnerable since 2014 and was managed by the Center for Election Systems, a small training and testing center that until recently occupied a former two-story house on the Kennesaw State University campus. Until last year, the Ccnter was responsible for programming every voting machine across the state, raising concerns that if the Russians or other adversaries had been able to penetrate the center’s servers as Lamb had done, they might have been able to find a way to subvert software distributed by the center to voting machines across the state.

But Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who was the only state election official to refuse security assistance from the Department of Homeland Security prior to the election, has insisted for more than a year that his state’s voting systems were never at risk in the 2016 election, because DHS told him the Russians had not targeted Georgia.

This changed on Friday, however, when the Justice Department unsealed the indictment against 12 Russian intelligence officers who oversaw an operation that, the department says, included targeting county websites in Georgia.

On or around Oct. 28, 2016, Anatoliy Sergeyevich Kovalev and Aleksandr Vladimirovich Osadchuk, both officers in the Russian military assigned to Unit 74455, allegedly conspired with others to hack into computers involved in U.S. election administration, according to the complaint. This included scoping out the websites of unidentified counties in Iowa, Florida and Georgia to identify vulnerabilities they could use to access back-end servers. The indictment doesn’t state directly, but implies, that the servers were part of infrastructure for county election offices.

Asked about this new revelation, a spokeswoman for the Georgia secretary of state’s office declined to address it directly, saying only that the secretary of state’s own office had never been breached.

“We have never been hacked, and according to President Trump and the Department Of Homeland Security, we have never been targeted,” Candice Broce wrote in an email. “Georgia has secure, accessible, and fair elections because [Secretary of State Brian] Kemp has leveraged private sector solutions for robust cybersecurity, well before any of those options were offered by the federal government.”

In truth, Kemp’s office would not have been the most likely target for Russian hackers, since his office has had little to do with the administration of elections in Georgia since at least 2002, when it contracted that responsibility to the Center for Election Systems. For 15 years, it was well known that the Center was responsible for training election workers, programming the state’s electronic voting machines before each election and distributing the voter registration database to counties. The Center’s servers would have been the ideal target for Russian hackers, says Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, the group behind the lawsuit against the secretary of state.

“These sophisticated agents certainly [would have known] that Georgia’s entire election programming and management system, including private voter data, was on a single central computer managed by Secretary of State Kemp’s contract agent at Kennesaw State University,” she told Politico.

But hey, black voters are registering in Georgia and casting votes so nothing to see here, folks. I mean, the office of the Republican SoS running for governor assures us HE'S been assured by none other than President Trump that the Russians had no interest in Georgia so you can, how does Trump say it? Go to bed and sleep well knowing Russia isn't a threat to US elections, and certainly not in Georgia.

[_Ceeboo]

Y'all ready for another Pragr U video?

I thought this one might be worth adding to this thread.
(for what it's worth, I thought the second half of the video was really worth watching. YMMV)

"Don't Judge Blacks Differently"
https://youtu.be/xl7Q36V9pg4

Thoughts?