•

Hawaii cannot ban guns on beaches, US judge rules

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/hawaii-cannot-ban-guns-beaches-us-judge-rules-2023-08-09/

A federal judge has blocked the state of Hawaii from enforcing a recently enacted ban on firearms on its prized beaches and in other areas including banks, bars and parks, citing last year's landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding gun rights.

Hawaii cannot ban guns on beaches, US judge rules

200 comments

See all comments

LetMeEatCake

•

This is a result of a SCOTUS decision. SCOTUS membership is determined by the president and control of the senate at the time of vacancies. Neither of those are influenced by gerrymandering.

At the core of it this comes down to 2016 when a larger than typical number of people on the left lied to themselves and said "eh, they're all teh same" and tossed their vote at a third party or just didn't vote at all. Following that, SCOTUS went from a 4-4 tie (with 1 vacancy) to 6-3 conservative advantange.

I wouldn't blame laziness, but instead a combination of apathy and people who are more interested in ideological purity than in accepting the available-better such that they would rather complain about the unavailable-best.

RBG refusing to retire in 2012-2014 also shares blame. She could have retired then and the court would be 5-4 instead.

Furbag

•

That 1 vacancy should have been Obama's pick. It was fucking stolen from him, and now we're paying the price of "decorum".

Of course, Republican hypocrites shoved another conservative justice on the bench before RBG's body was even cold, even after Trump lost the election (not to mention impeached).

It wasn't just 4 years of Trump that we had to endure, it's now three lifetime conservative appointments to the supreme court. So progressive legislation is stalled for another 30+ years. Our generation will be as old as the fucking Boomers are now before we get another chance at kicking out the conservatives, whose ideology is literally killing the planet. Gen Z and the generation that follows them will rightfully blame us for our inaction.

Zaktor

•

Or instead of giving up we could make court expansion and reform a litmus test in future Democratic primaries. And/or normalize the idea that judicial rulings need to be enforced by someone else and they too have agency.

Because allowing this to continue for much of our remaining lives is also decorum. We live in an unjust system, but it's not just how life has to be for the next 30 years.

Furbag

•

I don't entirely disagree, but I'd like to see an actual roadmap for how such changes would be implemented. Voting for somebody who promises court expansion and reform, but doesn't have the support of either the legislative or judicial branches and doesn't have a concrete method of implementing it, seems like they are set up to fail.

I want to see more ruthless politicians on the left as well, but not if they can't actually follow through with their promises.

Zaktor

•

Easy:

Vote in better Democrats
Abolish the filibuster
Pass law changing the number of justices on the court

Support from the legislature is all that's important. If the justices say "you can't do it", then ignore them because clearly they can. The constitution says very little about the supreme court and its size has been changed multiple times before. This is just doing history again.

ArbiterXero

•

The president and senate aren’t affected by gerrymandering?

Whaaaaa?

Coffeemonkepants

•

Since you actually seem to be asking... There is no gerrymandering at the federal level in the presidential election. You could argue that the electoral voting system is somehow a form of this, but it isn't the same as intentionally drawing districts to mathematically skew the advantage to the party drawing the map. That said, because electoral votes are based upon congressional representation, they do weigh smaller, emptier states more heavily. US senators are entirely free from gerrymandering as they are directly elected by popular vote. Small, empty states do have more power as a result and by design, for better or worse.

postmateDumbass

•

The Represenitives of House of Represenitives are affected by jerrymandering tho.

ryathal

•

And they have 0 say in the Supreme Court. They have a minor say in creating other courts, but it's been a long time since anything has meaningfully changed there either.

postmateDumbass

•

presidential election

electoral votes are based upon congressional representation

This thread is not about the supteme court. This thread was about presidential elections.

The SC is its own issue with plenty of threads discussing it already.

TimewornTraveler

•

It seemed like it was abt the Supreme Court to me

postmateDumbass

•

Not this spur.

Donnywholovedbowling

•

I think they have a good point though. Sure, at a basic level, you can't gerrymander a senate election. But you start with the state, draw the district lines. Now the state is gerrymandered, often packing dense districts with democrats. Now your state legislature (gerrymandered as hell) passes a law that says 2 voting machines per district. You bet your ass that affects national elections. Ol' Jim-Bob has to share his two voting machines with 150 other people, whereas a city dwelling Democrat has to share theirs with a few thousand.

FlowVoid

•

It doesn't really matter if a state is "empty", what matters is the population not the density.

And for what it's worth: of the ten states with the least population, half generally vote for Democrats (HI, VT, DE, RI, ME). They are often overlooked in these discussions because they are mostly small in area too.

prole

•

Population density absolutely matters, because when an ignorant person looks at an electoral map, by county, it looks like a couple small blue dots in a sea of red. If the wrong person shows them that map, it can become pretty simple to convince them that Democrats are cheating them because, "just look at all that red!"

It is also about how districts in larger, more empty states, use that mostly empty area to gerrymander their blue population centers. You can't do that in smaller, highly dense, states.

And then, there's this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-01/how-the-density-of-your-county-affects-how-you-vote

FlowVoid

•

I was responding to someone who said that "empty" states have disproportionate power in the electoral college and Senate. Their emptiness does not give them undue power, regardless of what ignorant people think.

Zaktor

•

Hawaii isn't in the ten least populous states and Maine isn't a blue state. It's not a straight sort, but Republicans far and away benefit from the unequal representation of the Senate and Electoral College.

FlowVoid

•

Maine has voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election in the past 30 years. It's true that it has a Republican Senator, but if that means it's a battleground state then by the same logic so are Montana and West Virginia. Those incumbents are popular despite their party, but when they finally leave the Senate they will be replaced by someone in the opposite party.

But you're right that Hawaii is not one of the ten smallest. It's eleventh. However, I left out New Hampshire, which voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election in the past 30 years except one. So of the eleven smallest states, six consistently send Democrats to the electoral college.

While it's still arguable that Republicans have unfair representation in the Senate and EC, the issue is more complicated than simply blaming the small states. Or for that matter the big states: the top ten include three red (FL, TX, OH), three blue (CA, NY, IL) and four battlegrounds (GA, NC, MI, PA).

Zaktor

•

it's still arguable that Republicans have unfair representation in the Senate and EC

LOL, wut? There's nothing arguable about that. Republicans very definitely have an unfair senate and electoral advantage entirely related to being more popular in less populated states (which, with the notable exceptions you've highlighted, tend to also be more rural).

You're cherry picking top ten and bottom ten like the whole swath of states in between don't also have unfair allocation and thus don't matter, while being pretty inconsistent with your battleground state definitions to suit your sorting needs (NH is blue because it only voted R once in 30 years, while every battleground you listed has the same history, and red Florida and Ohio have been 50/50).

While your point about population vs. density is correct, everything else seems to be trying to muddy the waters about the EC rather than just point out an interesting factoid or offer a pedantic correction. There's no serious argument that the EC isn't unfair from an individual voter perspective and biased toward one side from a national perspective.

FlowVoid

•

First, I'm using the common definition of battleground states, which is states that are currently considered winnable by both sides. That doesn't include New Hampshire, or any of the smallest states.

Second, arguable means you can make a good argument for something, so I think you just proved that it's arguable. It is not a slam dunk.

The only advantage of less populated states is that they get two "free" electors regardless of their population. This effect is strongest in small states, where it helps both parties equally.

Looking at all the states, the maximum advantage to a presidential candidate is the difference between the number of states they won times two. For example, if both candidates win 25 states, then the two "free" electors per state will cancel out and the electoral college will be determined solely by the number of representatives in the states that each side wins. Or to put it differently, if the Constitution were "fixed" so that electors were strictly awarded by population, then the winner would never change in a 25 to 25 split.

Of course, if one candidates wins 26 states and the other wins 24 states, then the first candidate could potentially get four "unfair" electors by winning more small states. But historically, the electoral college is won by much larger margins. The only modern candidate who might have won if the Constitution were "fixed" would have been Gore, and that was a highly unusual election. Otherwise, the small state advantage hasn't made a significant difference in our lifetime.

Zaktor

•

You're arguing that the EC's unfairness is unimportant, not that it's fair. And ignoring the senate imbalance where just a couple extra votes is a massive change.

So since it's unimportant, let's change it to be fair. Except I don't think you really feel it's unimportant and actually care very much about those two extra votes.

sndmn

•

Read a book.

ArbiterXero

•

What do you believe gerrymandering is?

FlowVoid

•

It means drawing legislative districts for political advantage. But elections for the Presidency and Senate ignore legislative district maps.

sndmn

•

I know what it is. Read a book.