Month: July 2024

Against Oregon HB 2004 – Ranked Choice Voting (RCV)

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https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023R1/Downloads/MeasureDocument/HB2004/Enrolled

An election is by nature competitive: the citizen is called to choose one candidate while rejecting others. Casting one’s vote is a clarifying process.

HB 2004 seeks to replace transparency with opacity. Under this bill, the voter considering a list of candidates would be called on to rank ALL of the candidates on the list, in order of preference. Thus, for a slate of three, four, five, or six candidates, there would be 6, 24, 120, or 720 possible rankings, exponentially increasing the time and mental effort involved in filling out a ballot. This is a deterrent to voting.

Under this vote-counting system, “votes that had been counted for the defeated candidate are transferred to each ballot’s next highest-ranked candidate”. This process makes vote-counting exponentially more complex and time consuming, and renders hand-counting impracticable. This is a blow to transparency.

The creation of a system where votes are routinely “transferred” from one candidate to another invites abuse and manipulation by shadowy groups intent on thwarting the will of the people. It is not hard to foresee that a group of candidates, each unable to gain significant support from the public, could run as ostensible “opponents” to one another while in fact colluding. This is an invitation to rule by cartels.

The existing electoral process already provides ample opportunities for Oregon voters to winnow the field of candidates to those few they deem most desirable. Tampering with that process is courting disaster.

Morning Report: 2024-07-07

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 UK ELECTIONS:  GAINS FOR LABOUR, SETBACKS FOR TORIES, WHILE REFORM GROWS.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/07/04/exit-poll-says-leftist-sir-keir-starmer-will-be-britains-new-prime-minister/

‘Sir Keir Starmer, a top lawyer who once served as the United Kingdom’s Director of Public Prosecutions and supposedly former hardline leftist radical, who claims to have changed his mind and reformed the Labour party he now leads into a mature and capable governing force, is going to be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

The Ipsos exit poll claims 410 seats for Labour — the second largest Labour majority ever, if it proves to be correct — and a crushing defeat to the Conservatives, collapsing from 365 seats won in 2019 to an estimated 131 today.

The Liberal Democrats are polled to have enjoyed strong growth to 61 seats. Nigel Farage’s Reform, if this exit poll is correct, have well and truly gained the beachhead they said they wanted with an estimated 13 seats — he will be very happy with this.’

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/07/05/rishi-sunak-resigns-announces-he-will-quit-as-tory-leader/

‘The defeated leader of the Conservative Party, which suffered its worst election result in well over a century overnight, has said he is stepping down from power and will also give up control of what remains of his political faction.’

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/07/07/farage-party-would-have-won-94-seats-under-proportional-voting-system/

‘The British general election result has been described as the most disproportionate in history. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK won over four million votes but only secured five seats in the House of Commons, sparking calls for a change to the electoral system.’

MELANIE PHILLIPS:  ‘NO LESS SEISMIC FOR BEING PREDICTED’.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/all-change

The Reform party led by Nigel Farage achieved extraordinary success from a standing start. Despite the high bar against third parties set by the British electoral system — and despite some deeply questionable candidates, the result of a campaign thrown together at a moment’s notice with next to no organisation or party discipline — Reform won four seats, putting Farage himself into parliament for the first time. 

‘The significance of this achievement, however, goes much deeper than the number of seats the party actually won. Reform did enormous damage to the Conservatives (and more than a little to Labour too) by the high numbers voting for it, costing the Tories no fewer than 180 seats. Reform is now a serious insurgency on the pattern of “populist” insurgencies against a monolithic political establishment that we have seen developing in Europe. 

A deeply ominous development is the emergence of an Islamic sectarian vote, with four previously Labour-held seats lost to independent candidates whose pitch — in a British general election concerning British national interests —  was about Gaza and “Palestine”. ‘

 SAM ASHWORTH-HAYES:  BRITAIN AND THE NEW SECTARIANISM.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/05/britain-can-no-longer-ignore-the-new-sectarianism/

‘The unexamined assumption that underlay Britain’s immigration system was a grand-scale version of the Wykehamist fallacy: people look different, but act the same. They vary on things that don’t matter very much – clothes, food, quaint traditions – but in their core, everyone is a good liberal waiting to discover that fact.

This, it turns out, may be entirely the wrong way to conceive of culture and identity. People can vary significantly in what they believe is moral and right, how they should act, and how society should be ordered, and they sometimes retain and transmit these differences across borders and down generations. ‘

COMMENTARY.  While much of Europe trends rightward, Britain has seemingly taken a turn in the opposite direction.  Britons will now have the opportunity to experience the effects of leftist policies full-on, as Americans have under four years of the Biden regime.
 

Morning Report: 2024-07-03

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ISRAEL:  CDR SALAMANDER, CAROLINE GLICK, AND THE IDF’S FAILED DOCTRINES.

https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/caroline-glicks-failed-doctrines

The title of CDR Salamander’s blog post is a little confusing; the article is an endorsement of Caroline Glick, sharing her critiques of the “failed doctrines” of the IDF.  [EDIT: CDR Salamander has fixed the title.] Quoting from Glick:

Two underlying assumptions guided Israel’s security establishment for the past generation. The first asserted that with the end of the Cold War, the era of conventional wars had ended. In the present age, brains, rather than brawn, would rule the roost.

…the second underlying assumption that guided Israel’s security establishment for the past generation. This assumption, also championed by Barak, asserted that Israel’s most important strategic asset was the United States.

Salamander adds:

The Smartest People in the Room™ assured them all was well.

When this war ends – or at least this stage of a “war” that may never really end – this reality will have to be addressed, and probably looks like it already is.

The failure of the second assumption should ring loudly in Europe as well. The Russians have made this apparent.

Glick’s original article – titled ‘Rising from the Ruins of a Generation of Failed Doctrines’ – is here:

Rising from the Ruins of a Generation of Failed Doctrines

Glick notes that the IDF is already starting to learn some hard lessons, and moving back towards domestically-produced weapons and munitions in a program called the “Independence Project”.

COMMENTARY.  I have little to add to the knowledgeable analyses of Caroline Glick and CDR Salamander, but I do want to point out one thing.  The IDF was not wrong in its estimation of the American people’s support for the Jewish state, but it made the mistake of confusing the American people with the American government.

 Every American patriot understands that while our own Nation’s security is entrusted to our government and our armed forces, ultimately it is the American citizenry – We The People – who are responsible for our Nation’s safety and our own.  Our Bill of Rights enshrines the individual citizen’s right to keep and bear the tools of his or her own defense, and of the Nation’s.  This is every American’s last line of defense against enemies foreign and domestic, and it is our protection in the event of an ineffectual or hostile government regime.

 The defense of Israel is Israel’s responsibility.  The Israeli people have paid a terrible price for their government’s over-reliance on technology, intellect, and a friendly regime in Washington.  As Americans prepare to celebrate our Independence Day, Israelis are looking for a way forward in the wake of last October’s bloodshed.  May they do so in a renewed spirit of independence.