volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@artemesia actually yes I would complain about that!

I think people should be able to vote for whoever they want to, because that's how democracy works.

EVEN IF the person they are voting for is un-eligible to hold office, if that's how you want to spend your vote, go for it.

Hell, given this situation if Trump and Biden and Schwarzenegger were on the ballot I'd probably vote for Schwarzenegger! I'm with you there!

So let's just be clear that we are interfering with voter's abilities to vote for the candidate they would like to vote for. If that is for the best, great! So own it. It is undemocratic, but if we need to be undemocratic here, then let's be undemocratic.

The point is to own the choice that we are making.

@liquor_american @chrisgeidner

@liquor_american if you're trying to talk to me, whoever said I don't like what the constitution prescribes?

Like I'm trying to emphasize, if you're down with being anti-democratic because this is so important that it requires anti-democratic responses, great! Go for it!

But own it.

I'm not judging. I'm not voting for Trump. I don't really care. But let's be clear that we are being anti-democratic with this sort of move.

@chrisgeidner

@bigheadtales Yeah, I kind of like knowing things.

I think it's a good thing.

@liquor_american what in the world are you talking about? It has nothing to do with my preferences.

Great! You say the constitution throws the voting process under the bus. Fine. Own it.

It has nothing to do with me or my preferences. It's really about, great if you think it's more important to keep the guy off the ballot, then I guess this is working for you, more important to do this then support the democratic process of voting for who people want to vote for.

I mean I don't live in Colorado. And I don't want to vote for Trump. So it really doesn't impact me.

But if you think this is a good thing, great! Own it!

@chrisgeidner

@bigheadtales Oh gosh you got me back to being distracted trying to correct you on your misunderstandings of the senate rules again.

No, you're wrong but it doesn't matter, because even though any individual senator can, under the rules of the senate, call for a vote at any moment, that doesn't actually matter here because the function of the US government is that the president needs to get consent of the Senate no matter how the Senate chooses to function, so it's 100% up to the president as per the system of checks and balances of the us government.

So again, it doesn't even matter that you are mistaken as to the rules of the Senate because it's up to the president to put forward a nominee sufficiently compelling to get the consent of the Senate under the checks and balances that protect against bad actors in the government.

I mean it's unfortunate that you don't know what you're talking about with regard to the senate. I wish you knew better because I wish all voters knew better so we could stop electing morons.

But at the end of the day the checks and balances set up to protect against bad actors mean that the president is required to work with Congress to fill vacancies.

@liquor_american nope, just stating it plainly.

Keeping a major candidate off the ballot means an interruption of the democratic process.

You might say that no state owes it to anybody to support the free vote, and you may say that it's absolutely worth it to interfere with it, and keep Trump off the ballot, and that's fine.

But it's worth it to own what's going on here.

If it's so important to keep Trump off the ballot that the democratic process should be subverted like this, well then let's own that, and let's say clearly that it's so important to keep Trump away that we are willing to interfere with the voting process.

If that's your position, great!

@chrisgeidner

@bigheadtales no a senator can call for a vote or unanimous consent anytime they want.

@liquor_american The thing is, even if this is legal and correct and even moral or any standard of propriety that you would like to propose, it still does mean people can't vote for the candidate they want.

Even if it is entirely proper to throw out that democratic process, it still has to be owned that the democratic process is being thrown out.

No matter how correct this may be, it does mean people aren't able to vote for the candidate they want to vote for on the ballots.

And owning that might be part of emphasizing how important it is that this be done. It's reasonable to say that this is so important that we have to throw out democratic principles for the sake of keeping Trump off the ballot.

Fine.

It means that is just this important.

@chrisgeidner

@liquor_american nope!

This is about the future, preventing voters from voting their choices on future ballots, not about the past.

@chrisgeidner

@bigheadtales Oh yeah they absolutely can, and occasionally they do, again if you watch c-span you see this play out occasionally.

No it's not common because of how the Senate conducts itself, but it does happen every once in a while.

Any senator can rise for recognition, and the pro tempre (If not the president) will recognize the senator, who can then make their motion, get a second, and proceed with their business if they have the support of the rest of the chamber.

The parliamentary procedure continues from there.

The reason it's rare is because it would make such a mockery to rise with such a motion without guaranteed support from the rest of the chamber.

But yeah, it's definitely a thing. And we need to hold them accountable for how they use it, and for how the president uses it.

@stanstallman well I suppose I have two reactions to that.

On one hand these people have large megaphones and they are able to promote flat out false information to an awful lot of the public, and I think that is antisocial in its own.

On the other hand, I think a lot of comedians are really missing their real calling when they leave the neutral comedy behind to become political commentators.

So it's both the negative and the lack of the positive that these examples bring. They could be doing good but instead they are actually doing harm. We lose out coming and going.

But mainly I think it's worth, unfortunately, calling them out to at least try to debunk the harm that they would do.

@bigheadtales it's like you're complaining that nobody went home with you from the bar, and who decided that?

Who decided that you weren't worth a date?

Well nobody decided that. You just weren't worth the date. Nobody was into you. Sorry.

And so it was any time the president had a vacancy to fill but he didn't propose a person worth voting for.

Sorry, the Senate just wasn't into the nominee.

It could have voted for the nominee at any moment, but it just wasn't into that person.

It's really ridiculous to talk about the GOP blocking the nominee when it's just a matter of the nominee not being worth the time to vote.

Again, at any moment any single senator could have started the vote on the floor, and as per Senate rules the majority leader could not have stopped it if most of the senate wanted to move ahead with the vote.

The members of the Senate just weren't interested.

@stanstallman

Gosh Jimmy Kimmel is an example of a person where I just wish the comedians would stick to comedy, because when they stick their nose into anything substantial they just make fools of themselves.

He's been wrong so often, tragically wrong, and I can totally believe he would say something as foolish as this.

@chrisgeidner so much for democracy

@bigheadtales it's funny because I would criticize Fox News outlets and MAGA types for their own ignorance of how the government actually works.

You and they, you weren't so different.

No I'm just siding how the governmental processes work.

I'm sorry you're wrong about how they work. I'm sorry that you have been misled about what happened, but it's never too late to learn more about how the US government functions if you're interested in it.

And if you're concerned about it then it's especially important that you might learn more about how it operates, especially learning about the protections in place to guard against the things you sound worried about happening.

But most importantly to me, it's important to know how the government works so we can hold people in powerful positions accountable for their actions.

You've been misled about what actually happened in the government, and that's a shame, but that's why it's so important to call it out and correct the record.

@micchiato@mastodon.social it's like supporting unicorns racing.

It's not a real option, there's no option for that on the table, there's nothing to really support, but a whole bunch of people are getting excited about demanding something that is purely imaginary.

@bigheadtales The rules allowed a vote.

They would have voted if they wanted to.

But the president's nominee was not judged to be worth voting for so they didn't vote.

That's just how the senate works.

@bigheadtales except they weren't prevented from voting on the matter is that question.

Again senators could have walked to the floor at any point and voted.

The president didn't put forth a nominee that they cared to vote on.

How do we know? Because they didn't vote on the nominee even though they could have voted any day of the week, but they didn't, because the nominee wasn't worth voting for.