2022 elections. The steady march for sanity continues.

Yeah, Biden looks like someone with no mind.

"Not having received a vaccine was a minority position, at 34%, at the time of the poll in mid-June. Thinking Biden won only because of fraud was a minority position at 32%."
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Half the country believes a deadly conspiracy theory - CNNPolitics

Half the country believes a deadly conspiracy theory

(CNN)The two most monumental events of the last year in the US were the election of Joe Biden to the presidency and the introduction of Covid-19 vaccines. Yet there are those who falsely believe Biden won only because of fraud or that they shouldn't get a vaccine.

Having either belief is dangerous -- for either the health of society or the health of the republic. It turns out that about half the people in this country either have doubts about Biden's legitimacy or have not gotten the vaccine.

Take a look at the most recent Monmouth University poll, one of the few to ask about both people's vaccine status and how they view the 2020 election result.

Not having received a vaccine was a minority position, at 34%, at the time of the poll in mid-June. Thinking Biden won only because of fraud was a minority position at 32%.

But that third of the electorate for both positions is not the same third.

About 36% of adults who falsely think Biden won only because of fraud have, in fact, received a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

This means that when you do the math, only about half (51%) of adults had received a vaccine dose and think Biden won the election fair and square. A slightly lower 45% haven't received a vaccine dose or think Biden didn't win fair and square. (An additional 4% have gotten a dose and aren't sure if Biden won legitimately.)

It turns out that we're not just a 50-50 country when it comes to elections -- we're a 50-50 country when it comes to belief in science and truth about this election.

This isn't to say that believing a conspiracy theory about the election and not having gotten a dose of the vaccine aren't correlated. They are. The Monmouth poll showed that 64% of people who falsely think that Biden won because of voter fraud also have not received a vaccine dose.

Indeed, a lot of this breaks into partisan camps.
Most Democrats in this poll (and others) have either received a vaccine dose (83%) or think Biden won fair and square (90%).
Likewise, a lot of Republicans haven't gotten a vaccine dose (40% in this poll and closer to 50% in other polls) or believe Biden won due to voter fraud (57%).

Still, these percentages are not uniform within each party. There is some not insignificant portion of Democrats who have doubts concerning the vaccine, and a significant proportion of Republicans who have gotten the vaccine or think Biden won fair and square.

Former President Donald Trump, for example, is a big promoter of false conspiracy theories about the election but he actually has gotten the vaccine and has urged others to get vaccinated.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that a good portion of the country either doesn't want a vaccine or doesn't believe that Biden won legitimately.

A 2014 study from the University of Chicago looked across a bunch of conspiracy theories and found that 50% of Americans believed at least one of them to be true.

Many Americans believed and still believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing President John Kennedy.
The difference between most other conspiracy theories and doubts about Biden's election and the vaccine is that you have a lot of powerful people arguing against taking the vaccine and pushing the false belief that Biden's win wasn't legitimate.
Most of them are Republicans. You have Republican members of Congress pushing false claims about the vaccine. More than half the Republican House caucus voted to throw out the electoral votes from at least one state.

People have died because they haven't gotten a vaccine. People died because of the Capitol riot.
These conspiracy theories aren't anything like believing the moon landing was fake.
The conspiracy theories about the vaccine and the election have had deadly consequences this year.

2020 polls badly understated support for GOP candidates, review finds, and nobody's sure why (yahoo.com)

2020 polls badly understated support for GOP candidates, review finds, and nobody's sure why

The 2020 polls were off by an "unusual magnitude," missing the national results by the biggest margin in 40 years and erring in state surveys by the greatest amount in at least 20 years, according to a new study released Monday by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR).

"There was a systematic error that was found in terms of the overstatement for Democratic support across the board," said Vanderbilt University political scientist Josh Clinton, chairman of the 19-member task force. "It didn't matter what type of poll you were doing, whether you're interviewing by phone or internet or whatever. And it didn't matter what type of race, whether President Trump was on the ballot or was not on the ballot."

The task force reviewed 2,858 presidential polls and found they were off by 3.9 percentage points nationally and 4.3 percent at the state level. The numbers for President Biden were fairy accurate, about a point higher than his final vote count, but Trump's "support was understated by a whopping 3.3 points on average," Politico reports. "The polls of Senate and governor's races were off by an even greater margin: 6 points on average."

All 66 national polls conducted in the last two weeks accurately predicted that Biden would win, the report found, but only 66 percent of Senate polls correctly forecast the winner.

The task force determined that pollsters had largely corrected the errors from the 2016 polling, including under-sampling voters with no college degree. "It's hard to prove beyond a certainty what happened," Clinton said, but "we have some good prime suspects as to what may be going on."

Probably the likeliest theory is that pro-Trump Republicans specifically refused to talk to pollsters, while "self-identified Republicans who choose to respond to polls are more likely to support Democrats," the report posited, skewing the sample of GOP voters.

The task force ruled out a sizable "shy Trump voter" effect and found that the predicted composition of the electorate was largely accurate. "Identifying conclusively why polls overstated the Democratic-Republican margin relative to the certified vote appears to be impossible with the available data," the report found. That leaves pollsters with little guidance for 2022 and 2024. "We'll have to wait and see what happens — which isn't a particularly reassuring position," Clinton said. "But I think that's the honest answer." You can read the full report at AAPOR.

Jake Ellzey defeats Trump-backed candidate in Texas House runoff
Jake Ellzey defeated fellow Republican Susan Wright in a special runoff in Texas’s 6th Congressional District on Tuesday night, dealing a blow to both her and former President Trump, who had backed Wright in the race.

The Associated Press called the race for Ellzey, who won more than 53 percent of the vote with nearly all precincts reporting.
Ellzey and Wright were the top vote-getters in a May special election in which nobody won an outright majority of the vote, sparking the Tuesday contest.

The election was triggered after the February death of Rep. Ron Wright (R), Susan Wright’s husband.

Susan Wright ran with endorsements from Trump and his conservative allies, including the anti-tax Club for Growth. Trump also did a telerally with Wright the day before the runoff.

“Big election tomorrow in the Great State of Texas! Susan Wright supports America First policies, our Military and our Veterans, is strong on Borders, tough on Crime, Pro-Life, and will always protect our Second Amendment. She will serve the people in the 6th Congressional District of Texas, and our Country, very well. Susan has my Complete and Total Endorsement,” Trump said in a statement Monday.

The Trump effect not as great as feared?

printer said:

Yeah, Biden looks like someone with no mind.

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Clarify, please.

hanimmal said:

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Joe Republican

hanimmal said:

Click to expand...

Yeah, China has respect "for Donald Trump's very, very large abrain." No, that's hydrocephalus.

Click to expand...

Supreme Court decision could set off gerrymandering 'arms race'
Federal judges will no longer play the role of referee when the intensely partisan, once-per-decade fight over congressional mapmaking gets underway this year.

As a result of decisions by the Roberts Court, federal courthouses will be forced to turn away even the most egregious cases of partisan gerrymandering, which could make it easier for state lawmakers to lock in politically manipulated voting maps for the next decade.

“Now that the Supreme Court has officially retreated from the area, they've set off what will likely be an arms race between the parties to gerrymander to the fullest extent they can in the states where they hold control,” said G. Michael Parsons, a scholar at New York University School of Law.

According to experts, however, the upcoming redistricting is likely to be even less restrained than in years past. It will combine a new degree of sophistication in map-drawing technology, high levels of partisan polarization and currently no legal recourse to fight partisan gerrymandering in federal courts as a result of decisions by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts.

“The Roberts Court has been a wrecking crew on voting rights,” said David Daley, an expert on partisan gerrymandering. “They really tilted the playing field away from voters and toward those who would manipulate maps for their own political gain.”

A new study by the liberal nonprofit Brennan Center listed four states with GOP-held legislatures — Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Texas — as possessing the highest risk of extreme gerrymandering, with new voting districts that dilute Democrats’ voting power.

Those states could draw anywhere from six to 13 new congressional districts that heavily favor GOP candidates — which would be enough for Republicans to retake the House in 2022, according to findings from the Democratic data firm TargetSmart that were reported by the progressive outlet Mother Jones.

Legal experts say the Roberts Court bears some responsibility for the lack of a robust federal check against the anti-democratic practice, particularly after the court’s 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause.

In a 5-4 decision along familiar ideological lines, the court’s conservative majority ruled that lawsuits over partisan gerrymandering raise a political question that is beyond the reach of the federal courts, handing a stunning defeat to voting rights advocates.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Rucho explicitly left open the possibility that Congress could step up to curb gerrymandering. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority: “The Framers gave Congress the power to do something about partisan gerrymandering.”

But with just over one week until the release of new census data sets in motion new map drawing, time is running out.

Texas House Democrats sue state leaders over arrest threats
More than 20 Texas House Democrats filed a lawsuit against three Republicans on Friday, claiming their constitutional rights were violated when GOP leaders attempted to bring them back to the state to hold a vote on an elections bill during a special session.

The 22 Texas House Democrats filed a lawsuit against Gov. Greg Abbott (R), House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) and state Rep. James White (R) alleging that some of its members were targeted due to their race, the Texas Tribune reported.

However, the lawsuit does not specify what discriminatory acts they may be referring to or include any evidence.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs additionally claimed that they “had been deprived of liberty for substantial periods of time, suffered much anxiety and distress over the separation from their families, and much discomfort and embarrassment.”

In mid-July, Texas Democrats fled the state to Washington, D.C., to deny a quorum needed to vote on a GOP-backed bill that critics claim would undercut voting access in the state. The state Senate passed the bill last month.

The remainder of the Texas House voted in July to authorize law enforcement to track down the absent members.

Texas judge temporarily blocks arrests of lawmakers who fled state over elections bill
A Travis County, Texas judge has temporarily blocked the arrests of the Democratic lawmakers who fled the state to prevent the passage of an elections reform bill, the Austin American-Statesman reported on Monday.

District Judge Brad Urrutia on Sunday signed the temporary restraining order, blocking attempts from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and state House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) from restricting, detaining or confining the lawmakers, paving the way for them to safely return to the state.

The move had been requested Friday by 22 members of the state House, the American-Statesman reported.

The order applies to the state’s House sergeant-at-arms, the Texas Department of Public Safety (TDPS), Capitol Police and other law enforcement agencies.

“Angry Republican threats to dispatch troopers to arrest, cuff, shackle, drag in, and cabin duly-elected lawmakers isn’t just meant to chill our speech and impair our ability to represent our districts; it has left our families, friends, and neighbors anxious for our wellbeing and safety,” state Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D) said in a written statement.

Voting advocates roll out digital tools to fight gerrymandering
As the looming once-per-decade redistricting fight gets underway, voters will be armed with a new arsenal: a suite of sophisticated digital tools capable of exposing suspected partisan gerrymandering as it unfolds.

The rollout of this civic-minded tech offensive comes amid fears that the upcoming redistricting process, which officially begins Thursday with the release of Census Bureau data, could see an unprecedented scramble to manipulate voting maps for partisan gain.

A leading advocate in the fight will be the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. The group plans to issue “report cards” that assess map proposals for things like fairness and competitiveness, giving the public a chance to weigh in before the proposed maps are locked in for the next decade.

“It's the possibility that citizens and reform groups can talk back,” said Sam Wang, the project’s director. “That report card can be used to demonstrate to legislators the consequences of their actions, and to create a record on the spot that can then be used to perhaps, ideally, draw fair lines before they become law.”

Although state lawmakers from both parties have engaged in the practice, some analysts say Republicans could retake the House in 2022 by increasing the partisan skew of maps in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas alone.

And since last decade’s redistricting, which gave the GOP a tremendously lopsided partisan advantage, the technology used to design reliably gerrymandered districts has only grown more sophisticated.

The watchdog technology will help shed light on map-drawing techniques known as “cracking” and “packing,” hallmark features of gerrymandering.

Cracking breaks up a geographic cluster of an opposing party’s likely voters and distributes them among several districts where their votes are unlikely to make a difference. Alternatively, packing those voters into a small number of districts virtually ensures the opposing party will be uncompetitive in most districts.

According to a recent analysis by RepresentUs, 35 states pose an extreme or high risk of gerrymandering, where politicians wield either total control over redistricting, or face few if any meaningful checks on partisan maneuvering.

Similarly, a new study by the liberal nonprofit Brennan Center listed four states with GOP-held legislatures — Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Texas — as possessing the highest risk of extreme gerrymandering, with new voting districts that dilute Democrats’ voting power. Those states could draw anywhere from six to 13 new congressional districts that heavily favor GOP candidates — which would be enough for Republicans to retake the House in 2022 — according to findings from the Democratic data firm TargetSmart that were reported by the progressive outlet Mother Jones.

Wisconsin Republicans seek to intervene in Democrats' redistricting case
The GOP plan, if approved by a legislative panel, would authorize the state’s top two Republican lawmakers to hire lawyers at taxpayer expense and seek permission to intervene in the federal suit, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The move comes in response to a lawsuit filed Friday by six Democratic voters who allege that Wisconsin’s current map is malapportioned, meaning it violates the constitutional principle of “one-person, one-vote.”

Wisconsin has also been subject to some of the most extreme partisan gerrymandering in the country, according to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.

The decennial process of redistricting kicked off last week with the release of Census Bureau data, which could set off an unprecedented scramble to manipulate voting maps for partisan gain.

In their complaint, the Democratic challengers told a federal court that Wisconsin’s GOP-held legislature and Democratic governor are unlikely to agree on how to draw new legislative and congressional districts in time for the 2022 election. The group asked that the court oversee the redrawing of the state’s voting map if a consensus does not emerge.

“Given the high likelihood of impasse, this Court should prepare itself to intervene to protect the constitutional rights of Plaintiffs and voters across this State. While there is still time for the Legislature and Governor to enact new plans, this Court should assume jurisdiction now and establish a schedule that will enable the Court to adopt its own plans in the near-certain event that the political branches fail timely to do so,” the Friday complaint reads.

Arizona's new early voting restrictions hit with lawsuit
The legal challenge targets new restrictions placed on early voting, a method that gained popularity in the 2020 election and helped President Biden become the first Democrat to win the state since 1996.

One law at issue makes it harder for Arizonans to remain on a list of absentee voters, and a second imposes stricter signature requirements for mail ballots.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Arizona, was brought by a coalition of voting rights advocates, including Mi Familia Vota. The groups claim the new restrictions violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and place an unconstitutionally heavy burden on the vote of Arizonans, particularly voters of color.

“It is no coincidence that the Arizona legislature enacted these changes only after an election in which (1) for the first time in recent memory, the presidential candidate preferred by Arizona voters of color won; and (2) voters of color increasingly used early voting — the target of the new laws — to help elect their candidate of choice,” the complaint alleges.