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A federal judge recently ruled that banning photos of ballots was unconstitutional:
The ruling clears the way for New Hampshire voters to post their ballot selfies during the first-in-the-nation presidential primaries early next year.
New Hampshire's ban went into effect September 2014 and made it illegal for anyone to post a photo of a marked ballot and share it on social media. The violation was punishable by a fine of up to $1,000.
[...] Mashable's Juana Summers adds that the judge found "there was no evidence that vote-buying or voter coercion were current problems in New Hampshire."
This seems like an interesting legal question, with good arguments on both sides:
- For the ban: If a photograph of a marked ballot is taken from the voting booth, then the voter can verify their vote with an interested third party, including those that would seek to purchase or coerce their vote.
- Against the ban: Such a photograph is protected free speech, and thus cannot be legally banned.
What do Soylentils think about this?
(Score: 3, Informative) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday August 25 2015, @02:48AM
I see you've also forgotten the history of the labor rights movement. You do know why we ostensibly have 40-hour five-day work weeks with paid overtime, no? And what it took to get it?
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday August 25 2015, @04:00AM
Now you are just grasping at straws.
Vote by mail is a new construct circa 2008, and never happened during the heyday of labor unions.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday August 25 2015, @04:23AM
Huh? Are you trying to demonstrate technological incompetence? Do you seriously think that it makes a difference if you put a stamp on the ballot, or that the anti-union managers of history would even have noticed this irrelevant trivia you're trying to distract us with?
"Oh, no, Mr. Moneybags! The union has decided to mail their ballots in rather than put them in the box by the door! We'll never be able to mark their ballots for them now!"
"Mr. Smith, if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times. No smoking opium in the whorehouse during your lunch break! Now get back out there, mark those ballots -- and, before you ask, your pen is behind your ear as always."
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25 2015, @06:03AM
He does seem to have a peculiar fixation on vote by mail. I wonder why that is.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Tuesday August 25 2015, @04:12AM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday August 25 2015, @04:30AM
Erm...you do realize that America's economy lags significantly behind, for example, Germany's, where 40-hour work weeks are excessive and a mere two weeks of vacation is incomprehensible? Their worker productivity puts ours to shame.
The Protestant work ethic has killed the spirit of the American worker, and the Prosperity Gospel is turning American workers into their own slavemasters. We'll only have a chance of surviving when people get fed up with this bullshit about 50-, 60-, 80-hour weeks with multiple jobs and no overtime and no vacation and no sick leave and still get fired on the slightest whim. It's exactly this insanity that led us to the breaking point and the uprisings of the Labor Movement a century or so ago...and it won't be that long before it explodes in everybody's faces again.
I just hope that, this time, the lessons finally stick....
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 25 2015, @06:06AM
Erm...you do realize that America's economy lags significantly behind, for example, Germany's
The US still has a much higher GDP per capita and lower cost of living. And we'll see what happens to Germany in the future, especially given its energy policy (doubling of electricity prices and the ending of its nuclear plants program) and exposure to the EU's economic and regulatory mess.
The Protestant work ethic has killed the spirit of the American worker
Just like it killed the spirit of the German worker who created that work ethic?
We'll only have a chance of surviving when people get fed up with this bullshit about 50-, 60-, 80-hour weeks with multiple jobs and no overtime and no vacation and no sick leave and still get fired on the slightest whim.
Who here really thinks the problem is that people overly love 80-hour work weeks, multiple jobs, and getting fired on a whim? Or that they need to learn those things are bad in whatever sense you think is bad? Or that mandating 40 hour work weeks before overtime somehow is an educational event?
I think the problem here is that your thinking is fucked up. Fix plz.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25 2015, @08:21AM
> I think the problem here is that your thinking is fucked up. Fix plz.
Mirrors. You need one.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 25 2015, @11:27AM
Then you blather on about how people are dumb enough that they would rather work "50-, 60-, 80-hour weeks with multiple jobs and no overtime and no vacation and no sick leave and still get fired on the slightest whim". Do you really believe that people would even slightly want to do that? I don't buy it. And given that the discussion was originally about the 40 hour work week, what does that have to do with people learning that lots of work can be no fun?
Some of my rebuttals are obvious and some are just pointing out that a portion of your original arguments made no sense. Yet I should look in the mirror why? I'm not the one arguing that people need to learn that working 80 hours a week is bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25 2015, @06:20PM
Here is your problem. I recognize that it will fall on 100% deaf ears, but I am drunk so I will write it anyway.
Your focus on libertarian theories is incredibly narrow. You are blinded to the realities of the world by your focus on your simplistic theory of human nature. Maybe in a perfect theoretical world with no transactional friction your theories would constitute an accurate model of human behaviour, but the real world is chaotic and human motivations and interactions are 1000x more complicated than your trivializations.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 25 2015, @07:43PM
Further, I note in these sorts of discussions, an appeal to complexity is usually just a brazen fallacy to support what the poster wants to do, no matter the facts. If you have a better model, then feel free to share it. If you're just going to observe that full human interaction is complex, I have no use for it. That doesn't tell me whether someone is going to make a new, successful soft drink company or pull over a vending machine while trying to get that free Pepsi. We don't have to understand the full complexity in order to observe and discuss outcomes.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 25 2015, @01:28PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 26 2015, @04:04AM
Except the French work less but are far more productive, [businessinsider.com] and have been the most productive country in the world for a long time now, so if you're saying 40 hours isn't enough to maximize productivity, the evidence proves you wrong.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 26 2015, @06:14AM
Except the French work less but are far more productive
The story says they're about 2% more productive (by the metric of GDP) per hour of labor and they work about a sixth less hours per year. So no, they're not far more productive, especially per year.
To this in perspective, I think everyone agrees that past a certain point there are diminishing returns to how productive someone can be working more hours. That is one of the justifications for not just working 80 hour weeks all the time. So why should we expect that if France were to extend its hours worked to the longer US hours that their slim per hour advantage will stay?
so if you're saying 40 hours isn't enough to maximize productivity, the evidence proves you wrong.
It's also worth noting that jobs differ in what leads to maximal productivity. There are some jobs where 40 hours per week is way too much, especially for jobs where deep thinking is most of the job. And there are other jobs where 80 hours a week just isn't that bad a deal, like some law/contracting firms where billable work is so profitable that it's worth the productivity hit (especially if the client doesn't care or know about the productivity hit).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 26 2015, @04:00AM
We don't, and haven't for 10+ years.