Geopolitical impact of Brexit

[Hazir]

I was speaking in general terms in that post in response to Fuzzy's objection, not about any particular country.

That is a bit odd as the entire debate was whether or not the present (Conservative) government in the UK was considering rules for identifcation at the polls was an example of vote suppression or not.

I think we can agree that it's anyway not the rules that suppress votes, it's the application of those rules that disenfranchise people or not. I'm always a bit puzzled about this whole bruhaha in the USA about photo-ID as if it is something extremely odious to ask from a voter. For someone who lives in a country that hasn't a particular hysteria about ID-cards (like the Netherlands or Sweden) that is a discussion we can't quite grasp. Maybe the solution in the US is not to get hysterical every time voter identification is discussed, but to get serious about easily accessible national ID-cards. Then maybe we don't need to have this senseless discussion every time about how blacks are less likely to have a driver's license, bla bla bla.

[Aimless]

That is a bit odd as the entire debate was whether or not the present (Conservative) government in the UK was considering rules for identifcation at the polls was an example of vote suppression or not.

That is true. However, both Steely's and Fuzzy's points are generally applicable, afaict.

I think we can agree that it's anyway not the rules that suppress votes, it's the application of those rules that disenfranchise people or not. I'm always a bit puzzled about this whole bruhaha in the USA about photo-ID as if it is something extremely odious to ask from a voter. For someone who lives in a country that hasn't a particular hysteria about ID-cards (like the Netherlands or Sweden) that is a discussion we can't quite grasp. Maybe the solution in the US is not to get hysterical every time voter identification is discussed, but to get serious about easily accessible national ID-cards. Then maybe we don't need to have this senseless discussion every time about how blacks are less likely to have a driver's license, bla bla bla.

I agree although I don't believe this will be possible in the US anytime in the coming decade. It should be easy to do in a country like the UK.

The vast majority of eligible voters in Sweden do have some form of photo ID. However, it is possible to vote without photo ID for example if the election officer or someone else can vouch for you (in which case that person's identity is registered and he or she can be held liable in case of fraud). This illustrates the priority given, in Swedish elections, to the prevention of in-person voter fraud vs. not restricting the vote.

[Khendraja'aro]

And Ivan Rogers just walked away from the whole thing.

[Hazir]

That is true. However, both Steely's and Fuzzy's points are generally applicable, afaict.



I agree although I don't believe this will be possible in the US anytime in the coming decade. It should be easy to do in a country like the UK.

The vast majority of eligible voters in Sweden do have some form of photo ID. However, it is possible to vote without photo ID for example if the election officer or someone else can vouch for you (in which case that person's identity is registered and he or she can be held liable in case of fraud). This illustrates the priority given, in Swedish elections, to the prevention of in-person voter fraud vs. not restricting the vote.

well in Holland it's virtually impossible to engage in any kind of commercial activity if you do not have an ID that it's highly improbable that someone who's old enough to vote doesn't have either an ID card or a passport.

[LittleFuzzy]

I don't follow your reasoning. In theory the aggregate effect of large scale voter suppression measures should be expected to be far greater than that of in person voter fraud.

Not necessarily true. But you and others persist in the insistence that voter fraud just doesn't happen because you insist on the metric of successful convictions, which is not even close to an analog to the metric you use for suppression.

Even if it isn't great enough to swing an election it constitutes a greater harm.

]

By the definition being used to blast Rand and the Tories by you guys above, it can't because you defined harm exclusively as whether the system broke, whether the final outcome of an election was altered.

Whereas in person voter fraud disenfranchises voters by a tiny fraction of a percent each, voter suppression represents up to 100% disenfranchisement of a large number of voters.

Are you really that dishonest, Minx? For voter fraud you just said "look at the aggregate outcome" and for the suppression you said "ignore the aggregate outcome, look at what an individual did/suffered."

You might argue that voter suppression does not occur or that there is no significant risk of it swinging an election, which would be debatable but a fair claim to make.

My whole pose was, in fact, saying the latter. Not because I believe it to be true or an accurate metric but because THAT IS PRECISELY THE METRIC YOU (and the others) KEEP INSISTING ON FOR EVALUATING FRAUD and whether anti-fraud steps should be taken. You insist that if there isn't a significant risk of fraud swinging an election (by which you require that it actually have demonstrably swung a major election) than it shouldn't be acted against/be a concern. But you insist on a different metric for suppression, that it doesn't matter whether it would/could (and demonstrably did) swing an election, what matters is the principle and that not one person should be disenfranchised. Minx, each fraudulent vote nullifies (and hence disenfranchises) a valid vote made in the other direction. Their impact at the individual level is absolutely equal. The difference is you can put a face on a suppressed person, if you wanted to, while you have to select a name effectively at random from the valid voters for the effect of fraud. Are you engaged in an emotional fallacy, Minx? Does the fact that you can put a face or a history with a suppressed voter's name mean you're assigning more weight to the harm there even though the statistical impact of what happened to them is the same as what happened to the random faceless person disenfranchised by a fraudulent vote?

[RandBlade]

And Ivan Rogers just walked away from the whole thing.

Good. He was never invested in current policy and was scheduled to go during the negotiations which is stupid timing so good riddance for him going beforehand. Hopefully he's not getting a severance package for buggering off early. His replacement seems quite qualified.

A clear out of a lot of the Yes, Minister style."Brussels won't like that" bureaucrats would not be the end of the world.

[Hazir]

Good. He was never invested in current policy and was scheduled to go during the negotiations which is stupid timing so good riddance for him going beforehand. Hopefully he's not getting a severance package for buggering off early. His replacement seems quite qualified.

A clear out of a lot of the Yes, Minister style."Brussels won't like that" bureaucrats would not be the end of the world.

Given that you will only get what "Brussels' likes", I dare say having someone on your team who has an idea of what "Brussels won't like" sounds like a good idea. Basically what your lot has done by driving this man out is giving up your inside information from the EU. The new man or woman won't know the way Brussels works quite as well, and nobody in Brussels will be willing to help him to get to know it. In name the new appointee will still be permanent representative and member of the COREPER, in reality he will just be the ambassador to the EU.

Additional; I see a new representative has already been appointed. Judging from the way he was introduced you can already see that Downing street still hasn't got a grip on the situation: They think a 'tough negotiator' is a smart idea in negotiations where your best hope is to seduce the other side into a deal, not play hardball. As hardball will simply lead to no deal whatsoever and a traincrash Brexit.

[Aimless]

But you and others persist in the insistence that voter fraud just doesn't happen because you insist on the metric of successful convictions

I do not.

We know that voter fraud does occur. We don't have any strong evidence of in-person voter fraud (the kind primarily at issue in a discussion about voter ID laws) being a large problem. Our prior belief should be that it is a very small problem, or at least a smaller one than voter suppression: it is far more difficult to commit significant levels of in-person voter fraud than it is to implement various strategies for reducing turnout in various groups. The importance of looking at convictions--when trying to assess the significance of voter fraud--is a necessary consequence of the phenomenon being investigated: voter fraud is illegal and it's difficult to identify in-person voter fraud without looking at convictions. If you have a better indicator feel free to share.

which is not even close to an analog to the metric you use for suppression.

Even if that were the only metric used for identifying voter suppression it would still show suppression to be a more serious problem.

However, we don't have to only theorize about suppression or only rely on data about successful convictions--we can also attempt to identify and characterize it scientifically independent of the judiciary's views (which is of course a necessity given that this discussion is at least partly about legal methods for restricting the vote).

For example, the scientific consensus seems to be that strict voter ID laws seem to reduce turnout in US elections by a couple of percent. Based on available information about the characteristics of Republican and Democratic voters we should expect such laws to have a differential impact on turnout which, in turn, should have a differential impact on the results.

By the definition being used to blast Rand and the Tories by you guys above, it can't because you defined harm exclusively as whether the system broke, whether the final outcome of an election was altered.

That is not the only definition of "broken". Even if it were, we would expect voter suppression to be more likely to alter the outcome of a major election--both the final tallies and the winner--than in-person voter fraud. Voter suppression comes closer to breaking the democratic process than in-person voter fraud does.

Are you really that dishonest, Minx? For voter fraud you just said "look at the aggregate outcome" and for the suppression you said "ignore the aggregate outcome, look at what an individual did/suffered."

No, what I said was:

... in person voter fraud disenfranchises voters by a tiny fraction of a percent each, voter suppression represents up to 100% disenfranchisement of a large number of voters.

Whether you take the individual perspective or the aggregate perspective, in-person voter fraud is a lesser harm than voter suppression, esp. if we're talking about "harm" in the form of disenfranchisement. Are you somehow laboring under the misapprehension that I am (or should be) a strict utilitarianist AI or something? I'm not. To borrow a familiar example, the effect of in-person voter fraud on an honest voter, wrt disenfranchisement, is equivalent to getting a tiny speck of dust in the eye for a fraction of a second--whereas not being able to vote comes closer to being subjected to fifty years of torture. But you could certainly randomly choose someone who got a speck of dust in their eye and say, "You've just been tortured for fifty years."

My whole pose was, in fact, saying the latter. Not because I believe it to be true or an accurate metric but because THAT IS PRECISELY THE METRIC YOU (and the others) KEEP INSISTING ON FOR EVALUATING FRAUD and whether anti-fraud steps should be taken. You insist that if there isn't a significant risk of fraud swinging an election (by which you require that it actually have demonstrably swung a major election) than it shouldn't be acted against/be a concern.

Have I really said this or is one of us experiencing some form of the Mandela Effect?

If I have said something of the sort then it's not particularly strange. The burden of evidence should be high when justifying measures that infringe upon individuals' right to participate in the democratic process.

But you insist on a different metric for suppression, that it doesn't matter whether it would/could (and demonstrably did) swing an election, what matters is the principle and that not one person should be disenfranchised. Minx, each fraudulent vote nullifies (and hence disenfranchises) a valid vote made in the other direction. Their impact at the individual level is absolutely equal. The difference is you can put a face on a suppressed person, if you wanted to, while you have to select a name effectively at random from the valid voters for the effect of fraud. Are you engaged in an emotional fallacy, Minx? Does the fact that you can put a face or a history with a suppressed voter's name mean you're assigning more weight to the harm there even though the statistical impact of what happened to them is the same as what happened to the random faceless person disenfranchised by a fraudulent vote?

I don't believe you'd find anywhere near as many people wholly disenfranchised--based on that one-to-one matching you proposed--by fraud as by voter suppression. So, even if I were to accept your reasoning--and I'll say that I have my reservations about its usefulness--I would be left with the problem of choosing between disenfranchising a small handful of people or a much larger handful of people. On top of this there is the problem voter suppression has on political representation. I don't see how either the aggregate, individual, statistically amusing or philosophical and legal perspectives would make in-person electoral fraud anywhere near as concerning as voter suppression.

Hazir rightly pointed out that we can, in theory, give everyone photo ID for free if they lack such things. It would certainly mitigate this problem of balancing the wish to reduce fraud and the wish to enable people to exercise their right to vote. However, strict photo ID laws are just one form of voter suppression, and perhaps the only form with a somewhat compelling justification.

[RandBlade]

Given that you will only get what "Brussels' likes", I dare say having someone on your team who has an idea of what "Brussels won't like" sounds like a good idea. Basically what your lot has done by driving this man out is giving up your inside information from the EU. The new man or woman won't know the way Brussels works quite as well, and nobody in Brussels will be willing to help him to get to know it. In name the new appointee will still be permanent representative and member of the COREPER, in reality he will just be the ambassador to the EU.

Additional; I see a new representative has already been appointed. Judging from the way he was introduced you can already see that Downing street still hasn't got a grip on the situation: They think a 'tough negotiator' is a smart idea in negotiations where your best hope is to seduce the other side into a deal, not play hardball. As hardball will simply lead to no deal whatsoever and a traincrash Brexit.

You still don't get that you're not dealing with a walkover. Got no interest in seduction, Cameron tried it and it didn't work. Blair tried it and it didn't work. Thatcher tried tough negotiations with a handbag and it worked. The time of seduction is over the scales have come off and there's no love. We need tough negotiations now.

The fact you don't want us to have a tough negotiator just demonstrates why we need one.

[RandBlade]

Minx have you read the discussion? A free ID is available under the Northern Ireland laws that we are proposing to enact nationwide.

[Aimless]

Minx have you read the discussion? A free ID is available under the Northern Ireland laws that we are proposing to enact nationwide.

Yes, I noted that in the post immediately after your link to the EONI. As should be clear from my brief exchange with Hazir these latest posts are more general rather than being specifically about the UK. The British govt's response to the recommendations made in the Pickles report precludes the introduction of a free electoral identity card in time for the pilot schemes in 2018. It should be noted that those trials will test a variety of methods of identification, including formal correspondence such as utility bills.

[Hazir]

You still don't get that you're not dealing with a walkover. Got no interest in seduction, Cameron tried it and it didn't work. Blair tried it and it didn't work. Thatcher tried tough negotiations with a handbag and it worked. The time of seduction is over the scales have come off and there's no love. We need tough negotiations now.

The fact you don't want us to have a tough negotiator just demonstrates why we need one.

I did't say anything even remotely like that. I said it won't help you; there won't be anything to negotiate. You want something we don't care to talk about, that means no agreement and no free trade. Brexit means Brexit.

[LittleFuzzy]

I do not.

We know that voter fraud does occur. We don't have any strong evidence of in-person voter fraud (the kind primarily at issue in a discussion about voter ID laws) being a large problem. Our prior belief should be that it is a very small problem, or at least a smaller one than voter suppression: it is far more difficult to commit significant levels of in-person voter fraud than it is to implement various strategies for reducing turnout in various groups. The importance of looking at convictions--when trying to assess the significance of voter fraud--is a necessary consequence of the phenomenon being investigated: voter fraud is illegal and it's difficult to identify in-person voter fraud without looking at convictions. If you have a better indicator feel free to share.

It's not hard to identify without conditions. Most of that fraud is detected without ever identifying the person who voted and hence getting a conviction. But you don't want to look at the number of tossed ballots for some reason.

We should strive to avoid reducing valid turnout, yes. And if a measure is going to reduce turnout more than it is estimated to reduce fraud we should go back to the drawing board because, as I said, they actually have an identical individual impact. I'm opposed to the various ID measures proposed here in the US because they make much effort to reduce the impact on turnout. But this is the Brexit thread, you might have noticed that. We're not talking about the states, we're talking about the UK where the partisan efforts to suppress voters is not a big topic and where, as near as I can tell, the proposal DID include efforts to reduce the impact on valid voting. But you've joined Khend, Loki, etc. in seeing a global right-wing conspiracy to suppress voters.

Even if that were the only metric used for identifying voter suppression it would still show suppression to be a more serious problem.

However, we don't have to only theorize about suppression or only rely on data about successful convictions--we can also attempt to identify and characterize it scientifically independent of the judiciary's views (which is of course a necessity given that this discussion is at least partly about legal methods for restricting the vote).

For example, the scientific consensus seems to be that strict voter ID laws seem to reduce turnout in US elections by a couple of percent. Based on available information about the characteristics of Republican and Democratic voters we should expect such laws to have a differential impact on turnout which, in turn, should have a differential impact on the results.

We're not talking about the US. We're talking about a proposal made in the UK.

That is not the only definition of "broken".

But is is the definition you have reached for, EVERY TIME, in saying that voter fraud is not an issue worth acting against.

Even if it were, we would expect voter suppression to be more likely to alter the outcome of a major election--both the final tallies and the winner--than in-person voter fraud. Voter suppression comes closer to breaking the democratic process than in-person voter fraud does.

Why? Why would we expect that? I'll tell you this though (and I say this as someone who has argued against every ID proposal we've seen made in the US). I'll take suppression over fraud because suppression is something the state can tabulate, control and try to minimize, while fraud is more opaque and less controllable by the state. And voting is one area where I suspect even the libertarians acknowledge needs to see strict state control. We are talking about an ID requirement, not an attempt to suppress voters. Your own Sweden has such a requirement and I haven't gotten the impression you think that's a bad thing. Is it the case that you just see "conservative" and assume that any ID requirement must be about suppressing voters?

No, what I said was:

You said exactly what I pointed out. Maybe you didn't mean it but you said it.

Whether you take the individual perspective or the aggregate perspective, in-person voter fraud is a lesser harm than voter suppression, esp. if we're talking about "harm" in the form of disenfranchisement.

No. Literally CANNOT be.

Are you somehow laboring under the misapprehension that I am (or should be) a strict utilitarianist AI or something? I'm not. To borrow a familiar example, the effect of in-person voter fraud on an honest voter, wrt disenfranchisement, is equivalent to getting a tiny speck of dust in the eye for a fraction of a second--whereas not being able to vote comes closer to being subjected to fifty years of torture. But you could certainly randomly choose someone who got a speck of dust in their eye and say, "You've just been tortured for fifty years."

All right, how does saying "you can't cast a vote" disenfranchise someone more than saying "you can vote but we're not going to count it"? At the individual level, they have precisely the same effect. You insist on dividing the impact of any fraudulent vote across the aggregate total and then applying that result to the individual, but not doing so with suppression. Why? I know you're not that stupid, so I can only see that you're either being willfully blind or you're being dishonest. One fraudulent vote and one suppressed vote are exactly the same, they each nullify one valid voter. If you want to look at things individually, you need to actually do so for both sides, not divide the individual vote by the aggregate total in one case (which is an aggregate look, not an individual look) and then divide the individual vote by the individual vote in the other case.

[Have I really said this or is one of us experiencing some form of the Mandela Effect?

If I have said something of the sort then it's not particularly strange. The burden of evidence should be high when justifying measures that infringe upon individuals' right to participate in the democratic process.

So. . . you think Sweden SHOULD scrap its current id requirement for voting?

I don't believe you'd find anywhere near as many people wholly disenfranchised--based on that one-to-one matching you proposed--by fraud as by voter suppression.

I bet I'd find more, actually. Particularly in places like the US where turnout is already low.

So, even if I were to accept your reasoning--and I'll say that I have my reservations about its usefulness--I would be left with the problem of choosing between disenfranchising a small handful of people or a much larger handful of people.

You have not BEGUN to have any substantiation for your concept that either existing suppression or new suppression from an ID law is much larger than fraudulent voting. If you did, you've be calling out to scrap the id requirements already on the books in many countries including your own.

[RandBlade]

I did't say anything even remotely like that. I said it won't help you; there won't be anything to negotiate. You want something we don't care to talk about, that means no agreement and no free trade. Brexit means Brexit.

That's why it will take a tough negotiator.

[Hazir]

That's why it will take a tough negotiator.

Who will then make a couple of sock puppets that he'll have toughly negotiate about Brexit? Brexit is Brexit, first big difference it causes is a complete loss of control over what the EU decides it wants from Brexit. You can send a pittbull terrier or a newly-born kitten, if the proposal isn't to our liking there will be no deal.

[RandBlade]

Same as any other deal with literally anyone ever. A tough negotiator is needed to get the best deal we can get you to agree to.

[Hazir]

Same as any other deal with literally anyone ever. A tough negotiator is needed to get the best deal we can get you to agree to.

No, what you need is something negotiable; there isn't.

[RandBlade]

Everything is negotiable.

[Khendraja'aro]

That's why it will take a tough negotiator.

"Tough" only works if you're in a*way better position than your opponent.

Then again, you've shown that you're deluded about the strength of your position.

[Steely Glint]

How do you prevent that type of abuses by having a less formal system? If your vetting system is arbitrary rather that regulated, the potential for vote suppression seems bigger.

Yes it's a load of codswallop. Wiping thousands of voters IDs so they can't vote? You could already if that were possible wipe people off the electoral register in that case and job done. Considering there will be a plethora of forms of ID and only one electoral register it seems that the existing register would remain the logical target with or without ID if someone was so inclined and capable.

Deniability, mostly. An attack on the centralized electoral register outright wiping people from the records would be an obviously malicious act, attacking secondary systems like, e.g. the availability of the forms of identification can be passed off as usual bureaucratic muddle or even blamed on voters ("should have applied for an ID earlier", etc).

The more 'moving parts' the system has, the easier it is to muddy the waters about electoral fraud.

You realize the inverse is true too, right? The same token does mean that the voter suppressing effect is also not going to swing an election, particularly not if steps are taken to minimize the effect.

This makes zero sense. Would you like to expand or explain this?

[RandBlade]

"Tough" only works if you're in a*way better position than your opponent.

Then again, you've shown that you're deluded about the strength of your position.

That makes no sense. Tough works for both David and Goliath and neither of us is Goliath.

[RandBlade]

Deniability, mostly. An attack on the centralized electoral register outright wiping people from the records would be an obviously malicious act, attacking secondary systems like, e.g. the availability of the forms of identification can be passed off as usual bureaucratic muddle or even blamed on voters ("should have applied for an ID earlier", etc).

The more 'moving parts' the system has, the easier it is to muddy the waters about electoral fraud.

How do you wipe out people's drivers licence that may be in their wallet? Or passport probably in their drawer? Or potentially wipe out their utility bills (if these are accepted) that they've received directly from utility companies? These aren't remote databases that can be hacked.

[Hazir]

Everything is negotiable.

That's what the Swiss thought. And the Turks for that matter.

[RandBlade]

Yes and you now have free movement with Turks as a condition of their being in a customs union with you.

Oh wait you don't. Funny that.

[Hazir]

Yes and you now have free movement with Turks as a condition of their being in a customs union with you.

Oh wait you don't. Funny that.

Oh you confused little boy; you don't want to be in a customs union with us, because that means you won't be able to make any free trade deals with the 150% of worldtrade you're going to access through those appearantly. Brexitania; the land where every impossible policy becomes government policy.

[RandBlade]

I don't want a customs deal, I want a bespoke trade deal. As Turkey has, as Switzerland has etc - each different to the other.

[Khendraja'aro]

That makes no sense. Tough works for both David and Goliath and neither of us is Goliath.

You realize that was a fairy tale?

[Hazir]

I don't want a customs deal, I want a bespoke trade deal. As Turkey has, as Switzerland has etc - each different to the other.

Where do you get your information? I mean I could not make up the nonsense you believe in.

[Khendraja'aro]

I don't want a customs deal, I want a bespoke trade deal. As Turkey has, as Switzerland has etc - each different to the other.

Such deals come with certain conditions. Switzerland and Norway may be able to tell you a bit about what those conditions are *). And Turkey is currently on its way to break any deals, so they're not the best ideal to live up to.


*) Hint: The conditions will include "free" and "migration".

[RandBlade]

You realize that was a fairy tale?

No I didn't, I thought it was an allegory.