2020 Elections

[Anselm]

Did everyone have to use the notorious app?  I assumed that the elderly whites would just show up and do things the traditional way and that the app was for the people who could not come to the caucus locations.  It is true that the elderly are less likely to use new technology.  My own mother refuses to learn how to use computers and smart phones.  I avoid new tech just to keep my life simple.

I can not and will never trust electronic voting technology.

[scamp]

Did everyone have to use the notorious app?  I assumed that the elderly whites would just show up and do things the traditional way and that the app was for the people who could not come to the caucus locations.  It is true that the elderly are less likely to use new technology.  My own mother refuses to learn how to use computers and smart phones.  I avoid new tech just to keep my life simple.

I can not and will never trust electronic voting technology.

The app was for reporting results from the caucus. You could alternatively call in the results to a hotline.

[Parasaurolophus]

I hoped the "nah" would signal that. Seriously, though, the victim mentality that views everything as suspect is tiresome.

I'm left-handed, and I sometimes get frustrated with technology designed to be used right-handed. Do I think "RIGHT-HANDED ENGINEERS HATE LEFT-HANDED PEOPLE AND WANT TO DESTROY THEM!!!"?

No.

While some decisions may be intentional, e.g. "90% of the population  is right-handed, so that's who I'm designing for", but probably much of it is unintentional and simply automatically according to their own preferences with no intent to make it difficult for anyone else.

Identity politics is bad for society and a threat to democracy, since it divides people explicitly.

Just because the direct intention is not a discriminatory one, does not mean that the effects aren't discriminatory--or, indeed, that the action wasn't incidentally discriminatory. Environmental racism usually works this way. Take Flint's water supply, for instance. Nobody twirled their moustache and decided to switch from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department's water to the Flint River to poison Black people. They did it to reduce costs, because Flint is a poor city. They didn't decide not to install corrosion inhibitors to poison Black people, either. They did it to save $140 per day. So the direct reasons were all economic--but the effect of those decisions was that 98% of the city was exposed to elevated levels of lead, including up to 12 000 children, and 12 people died of Legionnaire's disease. And almost all of them were black and brown. And the reasons for the city's poverty are intimately intertwined with the story of race in America. And, finally, the reason the crisis went on and on and on (and possibly on until this day, although the water is supposedly back at normal lead levels now) is that Black people have to fight a lot harder to bring attention to their concerns.

And while the particulars of any one case may look like a tragic accident, the fact is that there's a pattern that exists throughout the country: people of colour in the US are more than two times more likely than white people to live without potable water and modern sanitation, they represent 56% of the people who live near toxic waste dumps, they have 95% of their claims dismissed by the EPA, they show much higher rates of exposure to harmful compounds, etc. The direct reasons are almost always economic, but when household income and race are so deeply intertwined, we shouldn't be surprised that race-based patterns emerge and shadow economic factors. It's like the gerrymandering of districts, where political discrimination is OK, racial discrimination is banned, and political discrimination in this day and age is so fine-tuned and fine-grained that it amounts to a proxy for racial discrimination.

Besides. We shouldn't accept the premise that economic discrimination is acceptable in the first place. The doctrine of double effect doesn't apply.

I'd argue the same about your handedness example. In fact, where design is concerned, it seems to me that design should be intentional, and that the needs and interests of the left-handed should be considered. And to fail to consider them seems like a moral failing to me. Maybe not a huge one, but a failing nonetheless.

[mahagonny]

I'm white. And old. Get over yourselves.

But you've got a job. Part of my job is hustling for one. So I'm not all in on your group self-effacement.

[marshwiggle]

I'd argue the same about your handedness example. In fact, where design is concerned, it seems to me that design should be intentional, and that the needs and interests of the left-handed should be considered. And to fail to consider them seems like a moral failing to me. Maybe not a huge one, but a failing nonetheless.

"Failing to consider" is not a moral failing.

• If it is in total ignorance, it's a failure of competence.
• If it is intentional, based on economics, it's a business decision. (In many ways, a bad one, as far as I am concerned, because it's ignoring an identifiable market. But it's not a moral failing.)
• If it is intentional, based on some dislike for left-handed people,then it is a moral failing.

The secular left has become more puritanical than the religious right, and it's just as annoying. As the old saying goes, "Never ascribe to malice what can accurately be explained by ignorance." That makes it a lot easier to get people onside with making changes to fix things by treating them as normal, fallible human beings rather than treating them as cold heartless evil villains.

[Parasaurolophus]

I'd argue the same about your handedness example. In fact, where design is concerned, it seems to me that design should be intentional, and that the needs and interests of the left-handed should be considered. And to fail to consider them seems like a moral failing to me. Maybe not a huge one, but a failing nonetheless.

"Failing to consider" is not a moral failing.

• If it is in total ignorance, it's a failure of competence.
• If it is intentional, based on economics, it's a business decision. (In many ways, a bad one, as far as I am concerned, because it's ignoring an identifiable market. But it's not a moral failing.)
• If it is intentional, based on some dislike for left-handed people,then it is a moral failing.

The secular left has become more puritanical than the religious right, and it's just as annoying. As the old saying goes, "Never ascribe to malice what can accurately be explained by ignorance." That makes it a lot easier to get people onside with making changes to fix things by treating them as normal, fallible human beings rather than treating them as cold heartless evil villains.

Failure to consider another party's interests is not a moral failure in and of itself (and that's not at all what I said). But the failure to consider morally relevant interests is. Just what constitutes a morally relevant interest will depend on which meta-ethical frameworks you subscribe to (e.g. for a utilitarian, moral interests are determined by the capacities to suffer and be happy; for a deontologist, it will be determined by the moral law; for an ethicist of care, it will be determined by the caring relationships you are involved in, including kinship ties, and so on for the other ethical frameworks).

Ignorance can absolutely be morally vicious, even if the ignorant party did not explicitly endorse any kind of morally vicious position. That's why we think it's useful to distinguish culpable ignorance, for instance. Even the law finds it useful to distinguish between negligence and culpable negligence. (Hell, that's why Republicans are so interested in prosecuting women who have abortions.)

Where your "total ignorance" is concerned, moral viciousness could be nonexistent, accidental, or incidental. We don't need to worry about the nonexistent or accidental cases, because... well, for obvious reasons. But incidental viciousness does and should matter to us. An effect is incidental when you intend to Ψ, and Ψ-ing entails the satisfaction of the conditions for Φ (the incidental effect). In those circumstances, you don't need to know that Ψ-ing entails Φ to be properly described as (indirectly or incidentally) intending to Φ. Although again, it's useful and important to distinguish between directly and indirectly intending to Φ. So, for example, if I directly intend to raise my arm, that's an indirect attempt to send action potentials from my brain, through my nervous system, and to the motor neurons that innervate the relevant muscle fibres, resulting in the relevant muscle contractions--regardless of whether I know anything about human anatomy. It's perfectly appropriate to describe what I do as intending to do those things, even if that intention isn't directly manifested under that particular description. It's just a matter of adopting an internal vs. an external perspective.

Similarly, simply labelling something 'a business decision' doesn't insulate it from moral praise/blameworthiness. If you should have considered someone's interests but didn't (not because you hate them, but because it would have been expensive to do so), that's absolutely a moral failing. We're starting from the premise that you should have considered their interests, after all. (And again, environmental cases like Flint are clear illustrations of just this. The city had a duty towards its citizens, and by prioritizing the bottom line it failed in that duty in a thoroughly culpable manner.)

Sayings are all well and good, but they cannot be allowed to replace careful deliberation. Especially when it comes to ethics. Nor should we just rely on our intuitions to guide us.


We're getting pretty far off-topic, though. Perhaps it would be best to return to the 2020 elections.

[marshwiggle]

Similarly, simply labelling something 'a business decision' doesn't insulate it from moral praise/blameworthiness. If you should have considered someone's interests but didn't (not because you hate them, but because it would have been expensive to do so), that's absolutely a moral failing. We're starting from the premise that you should have considered their interests, after all. (And again, environmental cases like Flint are clear illustrations of just this. The city had a duty towards its citizens, and by prioritizing the bottom line it failed in that duty in a thoroughly culpable manner.)

But that's the point; Flint was responsible for providing services to its residents, including potable water. A different situation would be if residents of an apartment building in Flint wanted to sue their landlord for failing to provide safe water. Should the landlord be liable, since technically the landlord supplies water to the units?

Sayings are all well and good, but they cannot be allowed to replace careful deliberation. Especially when it comes to ethics. Nor should we just rely on our intuitions to guide us.


We're getting pretty far off-topic, though. Perhaps it would be best to return to the 2020 elections.

This is very relevant to the elections. How much damage did Hillary do to herself with the "deplorables" comment? A lot of politicians seem to miss the point that their job is to try and connect with voters, not tell them how degenerate and/or stupid they are.

[Parasaurolophus]

But that's the point; Flint was responsible for providing services to its residents, including potable water. A different situation would be if residents of an apartment building in Flint wanted to sue their landlord for failing to provide safe water. Should the landlord be liable, since technically the landlord supplies water to the units?

It's not the landlord's ignorance that exculpates them. It's that they did everything they needed to do (they fulfilled their obligations), including complying with local building codes, and the party responsible for failing in its moral and legal duty was the city. If, on the other hand, the landlord's buildings featured corroded lead pipes which they either didn't know about (but should have) or decided to leave be because fixing them would be too expensive, then they'd be at least partially responsible, even if the city's failure overdetermined things.

But, of course, we have to be careful here: law and morality are not one and the same. It's perfectly possible for a moral failing to be legal, or for a law to be immoral. So one's legal and moral responsibiilities may not always be one and the same.

This is very relevant to the elections. How much damage did Hillary do to herself with the "deplorables" comment? A lot of politicians seem to miss the point that their job is to try and connect with voters, not tell them how degenerate and/or stupid they are.

I'm not sure that her comment did anything like as much damage as James Comey did, for example, or not campaigning in key states like Pennsylvania and Michigan because she took them for granted, or focusing her campaign on attacking Trump's character and temperament rather than speaking to issues and selling voters on her vision for the country.

[marshwiggle]

But that's the point; Flint was responsible for providing services to its residents, including potable water. A different situation would be if residents of an apartment building in Flint wanted to sue their landlord for failing to provide safe water. Should the landlord be liable, since technically the landlord supplies water to the units?

It's not the landlord's ignorance that exculpates them. It's that they did everything they needed to do (they fulfilled their obligations), including complying with local building codes, and the party responsible for failing in its moral and legal duty was the city. If, on the other hand, the landlord's buildings featured corroded lead pipes which they either didn't know about (but should have) or decided to leave be because fixing them would be too expensive, then they'd be at least partially responsible, even if the city's failure overdetermined things.

But, of course, we have to be careful here: law and morality are not one and the same. It's perfectly possible for a moral failing to be legal, or for a law to be immoral. So one's legal and moral responsibiilities may not always be one and the same.

So should people living now be blamed for things that happened before they were born, like slavery and colonialism? What moral failing does their birth represent?

[ex_mo]

Y'all know Hillary isn't running this time, right?

[spork]

Meanwhile, when facing a general election opponent who is a master of social media trolling and who solicits foreign hacking into opponents' campaigns, Democrats:

• Throw money at a less-than-reputable app developer with shady ties to the DNC instead of using a competitive RFP process.
• Give the developer two months to build the product.
• Don't test the product for bugs before implementation.
• Don't train users of the product, many of whom are not familiar with/don't otherwise use the technology, prior to the time the product has to be used.
• Don't have real-time technical support in place when things go wrong.

And we're not talking the construction of an equivalent to Amazon here. I think less than 2,000 people were supposed to download and use the app to report caucus results, which the software was supposed to tally.

[Parasaurolophus]

So should people living now be blamed for things that happened before they were born, like slavery and colonialism? What moral failing does their birth represent?

I don't know, but I would imagine that in at least some cases, present generations bear some responsibility for the ongoing historical harms that certain communities face, especially when the present generation is still busy reaping the rewards of that historical injustice.

So, for example, I grew up on unceded land (i.e. land not covered by any treaties with the French or English crowns), and I live and work in a different unceded part of the country now. Whereas large chunks of Canada are covered by historical and modern treaties, vast swathes aren't. That's a serious (historical and ongoing) harm to the relevant indigenous communities, and I do think it means that I, as a citizen living and working on that land, bear some responsibility towards the relevant indigenous communities. I derive substantial benefits, after all, from an ongoing historical injustice. At the same time, of course, the problem is much larger than any individual, and that's why reconciliation in this country is being taken up at different institutional levels, and why the provincial and federal governments bear ultimate responsibility.

And, of course, there's a long history of our governments not honouring existing treaties, consultation processes, etc. And not just in the distant past, either. And I think that those failures on the government's part trickle down into moral duties and responsibilities on my part, as an individual. Just as I think responsibility for the Bush and Obama administrations' war crimes trickle down to individual Americans. Our representatives represent us and our interests (even when we didn't vote for them), and their crimes and misdeeds are crimes and misdeeds in which we're complicit, even if not to the same extent as they are.

And that's why they have (or: should have) such a serious duty to obtain consent from the relevant indigenous communities for major industrial or infrastructure projects that would cross or affect their land, such as the TransMountain pipeline. For my part, as an individual I'm still figuring out how to address that responsibility. I have worked to educate myself, because my education in these matters was nigh-nonexistent. I teach my students about it when it's relevant, and I've made some research-related efforts to bring indigenous perspectives to the subfield's attention. I also do what I can to support political solutions which I think will make important strides in the right direction, and to oppose those which I think won't. I plan to take some time in the nearish future to start learning a local indigenous language. That may or may not be a sufficient set of responses on my part, taking into account my situation. I don't know. I'm still thinking about it, and about what I ought to do.

[magnemite]

Meanwhile, when facing a general election opponent who is a master of social media trolling and who solicits foreign hacking into opponents' campaigns, Democrats:

• Throw money at a less-than-reputable app developer with shady ties to the DNC instead of using a competitive RFP process.
• Give the developer two months to build the product.
• Don't test the product for bugs before implementation.
• Don't train users of the product, many of whom are not familiar with/don't otherwise use the technology, prior to the time the product has to be used.
• Don't have real-time technical support in place when things go wrong.

And we're not talking the construction of an equivalent to Amazon here. I think less than 2,000 people were supposed to download and use the app to report caucus results, which the software was supposed to tally.

Yup, not ready for prime time, which is #SAD, given that this was not exactly an unscheduled and unforeseen event. If a party is going to use a caucus system to allocate delegates, it seems important to have a working system.

On the other hand, let's take a deep breath, realize that the caucus meetings happened, the results in each were tallied up, so it's just a matter of collecting and reporting those- and also keeping this in a more proper perspective, realizing that the preferences of a party members in Iowa need to be as privileged as we've set up narrative of the primaries to play out. Let's see how March 3 and March 10 unfold...

[hmaria1609]

From washingtonpost.com: Live blog/updates of Iowa results
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/iowa-caucuses-2020-live-updates/2020/02/04/23561bd6-4707-11ea-bc78-8a18f7afcee7_story.html?itid=hp_rhp-bignews3_iowa-ticker%3Aprime-time%2Fpromo
You can click the top banner to go to the homepage and view more content.

[Treehugger]

Meanwhile, when facing a general election opponent who is a master of social media trolling and who solicits foreign hacking into opponents' campaigns, Democrats:

• Throw money at a less-than-reputable app developer with shady ties to the DNC instead of using a competitive RFP process.
• Give the developer two months to build the product.
• Don't test the product for bugs before implementation.
• Don't train users of the product, many of whom are not familiar with/don't otherwise use the technology, prior to the time the product has to be used.
• Don't have real-time technical support in place when things go wrong.

And we're not talking the construction of an equivalent to Amazon here. I think less than 2,000 people were supposed to download and use the app to report caucus results, which the software was supposed to tally.

Yup, not ready for prime time, which is #SAD, given that this was not exactly an unscheduled and unforeseen event. If a party is going to use a caucus system to allocate delegates, it seems important to have a working system.

On the other hand, let's take a deep breath, realize that the caucus meetings happened, the results in each were tallied up, so it's just a matter of collecting and reporting those- and also keeping this in a more proper perspective, realizing that the preferences of a party members in Iowa need to be as privileged as we've set up narrative of the primaries to play out. Let's see how March 3 and March 10 unfold...

But why even have an app at all? There were never problems in the past with reporting results. (There were problems, but not with reporting results). There are, I am betting, pretty much the same number of precincts this election cycle as the last one, so it's not like the caucuses were suddenly scaled up in a way that required automation. It seems like the app was a solution, or <cough, cough>  "solution" in search of a problem. I can't even imagine there was that much money to be made, if indeed, there were some shady connections between the app developers and the Iowa Democrats. The market was small with not a whole lot of opportunity for growth.