Election Integrity: News Miner 97
County clerks slam election conspiracy mongering, Trump as "officer," the anti-Israel left, challenges to Epps, hate crimes, and political businesses.
Election Integrity: The Colorado County Clerks Association put out a strongly worded letter on election integrity, condemning “those who spread lies and distrust of our institutions.” The letter continues, “It is far easier to manipulate people than to manipulate our election system. . . . [E]lection deniers . . . are dishonest actors, grifters, and bullies, who deserve only our disdain and contempt.” The letter reviews why Colorado’s election processes are reliable. See also Matt Crane’s interview with 9News on the subject.
Officer Trump: Josh Blackman and Seth Barrett Tillman argue that Trump is not an “Officer of the United States” in the relevant sense under the Fourteenth Amendment. It seems to me that they’re trying to legalese their way out of the very-obvious intent of the section in question, which is to keep insurrectionists out of office. To claim that insurrectionists can run for President, because they conducted insurrection as the President (as opposed to a holder of some other office), is ridiculous on its face. See also Ilya Somin’s commentary (and my notes about that).
Wasserman on Israel: Left-leaning Colorado political operative Scott Wasserman has a thoughtful perspective: “Israeli settlers and evangelical Christians . . . [have] said this is a simple war between good and evil; life and death; between civilization and barbarism. . . . The Left is now threatening to take us over the opposite edge. Now they, along with the Right, Democratic Socialists and ethnic studies professors wave away context and reality in favor of a war between their own version of good vs. evil. For them this is simple. Colonizing Westerners vs. indigenous peoples. Liberation vs. occupation. With a snap of ideological fingers, an entire identity and story is erased. It’s these people who tell us from their comfy perches that Zionism is just colonialism and whether Israel likes it or not, it’s time for it to dismantle itself.”
Epps Challenge: Sara Wilson: “Two Democrats are now challenging Rep. Elisabeth Epps in the primary next year for House District 6 as lawyer Sean Camacho announced his candidacy on Wednesday.” I’ll point out the obvious here, that current voting rules favor Epps in a primary with more than two candidates. The challengers to Epps likely will split the opposition votes. So Epps easily could win the primary with minority support. With approval voting, voters could select both (or all) of the challengers if they wanted to maximize the chances of Epps losing. (One could also envision scenarios in which Epps could benefit from approval voting; say, if another “democratic socialist” ran with a relative moderate in the race.)
Hate Crimes: CPR reports, “Hate crimes have steadily risen over the last five years, according to a study released by the FBI in October 2022. In 2022, 403 hate crimes were reported in Colorado. That was a 14 percent increase from the 2021.” Any amount of hate crime (or any variety of crime) is bad. It’s hard to say to what degree the apparent change in stats is due to increased reporting. CPR continues, “A Hate Free Colorado survey found that 18 percent of those who experienced hate crimes don’t report them. And only 29 percent of people reported to anyone at all.” That seems to point to the unreliability of the underlying stats, then. Also, it’s not clear to what extent the survey is picking up hateful actions that don’t cross the line of criminality. Regardless of how the details work out, it’s clear that bigotry in our society remains a serious problem.
Demolition: Denver Post: “Broomfield takes first steps toward demolition of $135 million 1stBANK Center.” Wow; it’s almost as though politically-managed businesses don’t quite have the right incentive structures.