That Georgia law is unbelievable. Especially hard to take when Stacey Abrams might have won but for the voter suppression.

On the positive side, Kansas' Supreme Court said that Abortion is protected under the Kansas Constitution.

Happy Mother's Day where applicable .

Motherfucker's Day isn't until June.

I've heard one up from that, if GA knows that you got an abortion elsewhere they might arrest you when you come to their state. That doesn't pass the smell test to me- how would they know (trolling through confidential medical records? Public statements? Sending GA investigators to other states?) and I don't think there's any other law that works like that, where a state can prosecute you in their state for something that was done in another state where it's not illegal. But the "travel to other states is a conspiracy to murder" also doesn't really make sense either.

I think that even if it doesn't work legally, it could still work in terms of driving things underground/climate of fear/etc.

Kavanaugh's confirmation made this legislative session seem like an oppportunity

Yes. Now's the time to overturn Row. The more horrible the law, the more likely liberals are going to appeal it. We have to. And then we just have to hope, as we will have to many times, that Roberts cares more about his legacy than his conservative views.

4: I've heard that, too--or that if you're a GA resident who gets an abortion elsewhere you could be charged with conspiracy. I don't quite understand it, and if that holds it sounds like significant overreach of federal power. I think it's just a misreading by people who are rightfully scared of the law, but I'm not sure.

significant state overreach into a federal power, that is.

I'd be astonished if it weren't co-ordinated. These people plan, they have money, and they think in terms of long campaigns.

I think the flurry reflects that this is the first legislative cycle since Kavanaugh's appointment, and 31 states' legislative sessions end in April, May, or June. (And many that end later, like California, are passing bills now as they prepare for summer vacation.)

Yeah, it's Kavanaugh. It's not that only really egregious laws will get challenged -- pretty much any law that restricts abortion more than the current status quo is going to see a challenge. The anti-abortion lobby is swinging for the fences, though, with statutes that are absolutely invalid unless Roe is overturned. And why not ask for even more than that, hoping that whatever pathetic compromise position CJ Roberts goes for includes a reversal of Roe, even if he finds that the Commerce Clause precludes some of the other provisions.

There's no downside risk, it seems to me. The circuits are bound by Roe, and all the others, and will affirm district court orders enjoining the extreme statutes. The SC is only going to take a case on an extreme statute in order to reverse Roe. There's no risk of getting a SC case that re-affirms Roe. (OK, yes, I know that was the thinking that led up to Casey. We're in different times.)

Politically, it's important that anti-abortion voters understand as '20 dawns that Trump has to be re-elected so he can replace RBG. Millions of votes will go for Trump just for this reason, while very many fewer people will be single issue votes going the other way. (Indeed, people will vote for Jill Stein or her replacement if the Dem nominee hasn't signed on to "Medicare for All," even if her proposed plan is actually better than Medicare, because, well, why vote for people who don't give you everything you want, even if what you want is a marketing slogan.)

As we all know, who was going to get to replace Justice Scalia was very explicitly on the fucking ballot in 2016. Thousands of people nonetheless voted 3d party or stayed home, because they thought something else was more important.

Our gov has this out, in advance of his announcement: https://twitter.com/GovernorBullock/status/1127604346147852288 His veto last week of the extreme anti-abortion bill passed here isn't on his kids' list, but it'll be part of his narrative.

|| And is this a dig at the old men running: https://twitter.com/GovernorBullock/status/1126964454770429954 |>

I still don't fully understand how we in Texas have been spared from these horrific heartbeat bills other than that I think one was proposed this session and some of the state GOP leadership came out against it. But why Texas has a sizable portion of state GOP leaders that oppose these bills while Ohio does not I really do not understand.

That seems like a very good question. I don't know the answer. Maybe in there's still a libertarian-leaning wing of the Republican Party in Texas. I doubt there is still one in Ohio.

Possibly, the Ohio Republican Party is just afraid of losing it's majority and the Texas one isn't.

Stupid first apostrophe.

14: I thought there was a bill in the senate right now which outlawed all abortions after 20 weeks, with no exceptions for jack shit.

Which isn't as bad as the heartbeat law, to be sure, but is still cruel.

18:

I remember hearing about some heinous abortion bill getting killed, but even if a 20-week ban is under consideration in the Texas legislature I'm still surprised they aren't pushing for the kinds of absolute dark ages shit they're going for in other states.

Thousands of people nonetheless voted 3d party or stayed home, because they thought something else was more important.

A quintessentially American (which is to say, highly individualistic and atomistic) version of "socialism," I suppose: which is to say, if the candidate to the left of the right-wing crazies doesn't precisely mirror and reflect my own ideal/idealized notions of a left politics to my own satisfaction, I'm not going to play nice in the sandbox, I'm not going to share, I'm going to take all my toys and go home....

Because it's all about me. Because I am a socialist. Ha!

Sounds like a quintessentially German version of socialism too, tbh.

Does anyone else remember that period when Hamid Karzai's government of Afghanistan used to make a habit of bringing forward some godawful bill to keep women in cages or such, everybody freaked the fuck out and the ISAF troop-contributing nations' embassies would sit on him, and it suddenly turned out they hadn't passed it properly or some other excuse and it would vanish until the next time he wanted to do a bit of Taliban?

Americans are alarmingly likely to be part German.

11: Many people did not know this. My then-boss, an intelligent and NYT-informed* guy who would never have voted for Trump anyway, had no idea.

I think there are going to be far fewer "I'm staying home if [my preferred candidate] is not on the ticket" voters this time around. The midterms showed this, IMO. The people who are making noise in this manner are either just saying it because they're frustrated and angry or else they're a tiny social media minority, and they've always been with us. People said the same thing every election that I can recall, it's just that prior to social media, you weren't privy to their conversations.

If anything, my bet is that a lot of the people who were all "they're both equally bad" in 2016 have learned that they were not, in fact, both equally bad. They're probably not going to admit it, but I surmise that a lot of them will discreetly vote in 2020, and I surmise this because I remember my own actions in 2000 and my ensuing surprise that Bush was in fact obviously worse than Gore.

Admittedly, Biden gives me a bad case of the climate-despairs, but I am pre-emptively telling myself that if and when the time comes I won't be voting for Biden, I'll be voting for NIH, NSF and HUD.

*I mean, you need to read many things in addition to/instead of the NYT to be informed in any really actionable way, but still.

I really hope you are right.

Me too!

I hear that and I get so mad at Obama. Not confirming Garland was unprecedentedly awful, and Obama should have made a giant outraged stink about it. If he had, maybe people like your boss would have known what was at stake.

Me too!

OT: naming your expensive ship after a Culture Starship seems to be a thing among multi millionaires. Of Course I Still Love You, Just Read The Instructions, and now Limiting Factor.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48230157

Fools. We're clearly in the Al Reynolds timeline.

30: You almost made it! Just a little deeper and you can order a Krabby Patty!

On the first question of the OP, I think the answer as to "why so many similar bill now?" is ALEC. I think we've discussed it here before -- this 2012 Mother Jones article discusses ALEC in an economic context.

Interestingly, I briefly searched their new website and didn't see anything for abortion, including in their search and "health" sections. It's possible that because ALEC is their libertarian wing, its not one of their "model bills" -- but that conservatives who attend the ALEC councils discuss it around the edges while they're together. It looks like there's a group carefully tracking ALEC now, ALEC exposed; and there's a VOX article on it too.

I'll be voting for NIH, NSF and HUD.

Speaking of which, I just read Michael Lewis's latest (The Fifth Risk), and it's a charming book.

There's nothing astonishing about it, but it was such a pleasure to read a book that's entire purpose was to communicate, "government is important, performs an enormous number of functions, and when it's working well attracts smart, accomplished, dedicated people and generates enormous value for the country."

Engaging, short enough to read in an afternoon, I'd recommend it to people.

33: I feel that ALEC would have done enough research not to put this provision in a bill

(i) A procedure for an ectopic pregnancy, that is intended
to reimplant the fertilized ovum into the pregnant woman's
uterus;

(taken from HB 182, as introduced in the Ohio House, April 3, 2019)

35: Sure, that's the Ohio legislator's "value add" -- you have to out-compete to prove your bonafides. After all, if you sit on your hands during the State of the Union, you're just a republican, but if you shout "You Lie" you get a million dollars in donations overnight.

25.1 -- People were shouting it from the fucking rooftops. I don't know your boss, obviously, but at a certain point, ignorance of a thing like this becomes intentional.

25.3 -- I was saying at the time -- it's a good thing we didn't have social media -- that anyone with a stronger grip on public policy than a Labrador retriever could tell the difference between one and the other. Hordes of people would say stupid shit like 'other than the Supreme Court, there's no reason to vote for the Democrats' and (a) 'other than the Supreme Court' is a big enough deal that people should STFU about anything that comes after and (b) the wilful blindness that leads people to miss the myriad ways in which the parties have been different from 1965 to the present still totally boggles me. Look at any issue at all. Pick any one, and the differences are material. OK, they agree on national pickle week. But even where a policy is ultimately bi-partisan, one coalition is quite different from the other.

25.2 -- The problem is that performative 'Biden is no damn good, but I guess I'll vote for the lesser evil' gets some small percentage of the hearers to say 'dammit no, I'm not voting for evil, period.' In which case we get the greater evil, congratulations. I think we'll have fewer Jill Stein voters this time around, yes. The bigger problem isn't people voting for Stein, it's people staying home. If nominated, Biden is the goddam saviour. Period.

Of course, we'll be treated to myriad articles that literally use the phrase 'Biden isn't the saviour you want' or 'Biden isn't the saviour we need' but the fact will be that he's going to be the only saviour available.

The problem is that performative 'Biden is no damn good, but I guess I'll vote for the lesser evil' gets some small percentage of the hearers to say 'dammit no, I'm not voting for evil, period.'

This can go either way. That is (and I'll say it quietly on a low-readership site, not trying to influence anyone), Biden really is no damn good -- he's incredibly bad -- and plenty of people have figured that out for themselves without being influenced by more than their own judgment about his record. At which point, even if everyone pretends he's tolerable, there's a significant number of people who will hate voting for him in the general.

So, are we better off in the general if people kick up a fuss about Biden now and do what we can to keep him from getting the nomination? Plausibly, yes.

I generally agree with 39,but what I don't understand is how a person who is bad under a set of broadly lefty criteria can nonetheless be sufficiently popular to win the nomination.

I would suggest that problems with Biden in the general might be distinct from his general non-leftiness.

Because a sufficient number of people use criteria besides broadly lefty concerns to decide who to vote for.

Most voters (and I'm not judging them for it) are really quite low on information. Not Frowner's-boss-low, but low. So someone whose policy preferences were pretty far left, but who was also fond of Obama, might be a Biden voter based purely on a sense that if Obama thought he was great, he must be a good guy. It is possible that there are enough of those to win him the nomination.

I don't believe (and I mean that very strongly) that Democratic primary voters actually prefer Biden's positions over those of other primary candidates.

42: I think we are way, way overestimating how informed the average voter is, and how ideologized.

TBH, prior to 2016 I would say that I was a low-information voter. I had lots of information about specific issues - I could tell you a good deal about policy brutality and the law, free trade agreements and pollution, the effects of dismantling our sorta-welfare-system, etc. but I paid relatively little attention to policy stuff in general, how government works, etc. (I still think that government is fundamentally an enormous scam to allow rich people to move money around and loot the poor, sorry; people keep trying to make it do things for which it is not intended, which is laudable but largely doomed to failure.)

As far as voting went, I always voted for the leftmost plausible candidate, just as I do now, so it didn't really make much of a difference.

Two things changed my understanding. Obviously the election of Trump, but less obviously some of the policy victories at the local level by Black Lives Matter and immigrants' rights groups. In the Twin Cities, we really did obtain some small but meaningful concessions about policing, ID and immigration, and a lot of people who have broadly good politics don't really understand exactly how that worked/why it's important. Is it as good as, like, some kind of total revolution in the way we do business? Of course not, but things are marginally less shitty for various marginalized people, so at least that's something.

But in any case, it's perfectly possible to be politically engaged, have opinions, subscribe to various left-leaning magazines and still be basically uninformed about election-specific stuff.

37.3: I am not going to beat the drum for welfare-destroying climate-apocalypse Biden. If he is the nominee, I am going to make an enormous gift to the Democratic party by not actively speaking ill of him in front of people likely to be dissuaded from voting, but seriously - he makes me sick. Dismantling welfare basically brought us to our present pass and it was obvious at the time that it would be a disaster. It was a trash, racist, pandering act voted into law by a bunch of rich racist-panderers and people understood this at the time, as I well remember.

I mean, I knew about the Supreme Court all along.

It's interesting that "government is nothing more than a massive scam that allows looters and moochers to profit by robbing the only truly productive people in society" would be a point of enthusiastic agreement between Frowner and Ayn Rand, with the only disagreement being which people are which.

44 last -- I agree with everything you say about welfare "reform" -- but would add that Clinton had to promise it to win the 1992 election. We're a trash, racist country. We all want it to be better, and in time it will be better. But winning elections are a crucial part of that. And you have to win the election with the electorate you have (and to a very limited extent can create) not the electorate you wish you had.

I had an argument two years ago with a Bernie delegate about how long he stayed in the race. His staying in the race past when he could possibly win did irreparable damage, says I. He had to stay in to get all that good stuff in the platform, says he. Fat lot of good that did; the wound ended up being fatal. Oh well, that's politics, he says with a shrug. Of course, no one was putting his kid in a cage . . .

Tangentially and hypothetically: Has anyone done the psephology on what results might look like if the US had compulsory (and actually enforced) voting?

Also, I would like a cookie, or at least a gold star, for getting "psephology" in one.

Probably not much different up until Fox weaponized ignorance.

I mean, it probably would be a bit to the left because younger and non-white people tend to vote less often, but it's not like it would solve big problems.

President Big Fucking Problem won by 30000 votes.

Right. I mean before that.

The accepted wisdom through the 1990s was that large scale political apathy and nearly completely political ignorance plus a media that was reasonably reflective of the thinking of people who weren't apathetic and ignorant meant that voting was kind of random (as people would tend to vote based on some combination of affect and whatever was on the TV last) but mostly centered around what people who knew something of what they were doing thought. With Trump, and before that with Fox, the ignorance is still the same, but the apathy is now correlated with ideology.

48: Good question. This guy wrote a book about it and has done academic research into it. He thinks it wouldn't have much of an effect in partisan breakdown, but I'm skeptical: note the URL, and also that he thinks it wouldn't move the needle to the left because the "disadvantaged are much more likely to be mistaken in their beliefs about what it takes to help them."

This paper shows that compulsory voting in a Swiss canton led to significantly better results for the left, both notes that the the correlation between turnout and partisanship in the United States is inconsistent across studies. Of course, increased turnout is different from mandatory turnout.

Some have found that turnout tends to benefit the Democrats in the United States (Citrin, Schickler, and Sides 2003; Erikson 1995) and the Labor Party in Australia (Fowler 2013). Others document that the Republican Party realizes higher vote shares in high-turnout elections (Nagel and McNulty 1996; Tucker, Vedlitz, and DeNardo 1986).

Will keep on looking to see if anyone tried developing a model for the US, but I'm not finding much...

The other thing to consider is that in the United States, we can't even stop actively impeding people from voting by acts of law or not-preventable illegal acts by elected officials.

I'm thinking hypothetically at some point you might be able to win executive and legislature and there'll be one law you should really instantly and immediately find a way to get past the judiciary. *cough* Obama.

Thanks dalriata.

So much of voting in controlled by the states. I don't know if that would work. Clinton did Motor Voter, which I think was a big help.

Wisconsin had same day registration, which I think would be a big help, and they still elected the biggest asshole until they stopped electing him.

If only we had some lurking lawyers to add insight.

Maybe Kansas elected a bigger asshole.

Wisconsin is like 98% Nazi. I would guess.

Like Germany, it had a strong socialist tradition, until it didn't.

I will not be trolled so easily, but as of the 2010 census Wisconsin was 86% white, with a fairly steady downward trend since 1990. I am actually shocked that the state is lagging behind the really aggressive forced birth initiatives -- it's full of Catholics, who are pretty heavily represented among Republican voters, but it hasn't been in the forefront of brutal legislative restrictions, to my knowledge.

The default should always be to oppose compulsory voting, because it's a serious imposition on the citizen's freedom to do what they like with their free time.

Also because I am pretty much 100% sure that the introduction of compulsory voting in the US would be rapidly followed by large-scale prosecution of black citizens for not voting in every election, and their disenfranchisement for having criminal records or not paying their fines for not voting on time.

"You see, they don't need voting rights laws. They're too lazy to vote even when you make it compulsory!"

"The other thing to consider is that in the United States, we can't even stop actively impeding people from voting by acts of law or not-preventable illegal acts by elected officials."

For a lot of Republican elected officials, and for a lot of Republican voters, this is a feature not a bug.

There's a bill moving forward in Texas that would make it illegal to give people a ride to the polls.

That just sounds unconstitutional. Who the fuck can say who I give a ride to?

Moby is one of those penamations and umbras people, nowhere in the constitution does it say anything about cars so how can a law about them be unconstitutional?

Penamations does sound like some kind of dirty cartoon.

This NYT article is claiming that I've fallen victim to fearmongering among the left, and that it's a distortion of this:

The posts single out a section of the bill that requires anyone driving three or more non-relatives to vote to fill out a form, but the rule applies only in a special circumstance.

"It's only if you are driving three or more people who are physically disabled who want to vote curbside from the polls, allowing them to vote from their car," Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the Texas secretary of state's office, told The Associated Press.

In those cases, drivers would need to fill out a form providing their name, address, relationship to the voters and the reason for the transportation to the poll.

Ok. I'm still skeptical that there's not more voter suppression built into it. I mean, the bill includes this:

The bill, introduced in March by Mineola Republican Sen. Bryan Hughes, would stiffen penalties for election-related crimes, including making it a felony to put false information on a voter registration form.

Fuck all that noise.

Oh hey, did I mention? The third-world kleptocracy of my birth had an election. I had to register to vote at the embassy (web form, thirty seconds) and turn up on the day (in and out in four minutes).

We had a measure on that on the ballot last fall. Passed by a fair margin. I think because "vote harvesting" sounds fishy.

They don't even run a kleptocracy right.

77 to 75

76 -- Our same day registration/voting was working very well -- in 2016, people could get registered and vote with 15-20 minutes all in. In 2018, lines were running more like 90 minutes. What changed? Our county commissioners had, in the interim, hired a new election administrator. From fucking North Carolina. Where they have very different views about what government is supposed to be doing.

I've mentioned before, I think, that one of our 3 county commissioners is resigning, and that the county Democratic central committee -- about 60 people altogether (of whom probably about 50 will vote) -- gets to send the remaining commissioners a list of 3 names from which to choose the replacement. You can bet that anyone wanting my vote is going to have to make some serious commitments on election procedures.

America sucks, is my point.

I don't actually believe that "America sucks," btw, or that Americans are measurably worse than the citizens of other quarters of the anglosphere (former territories of the British Empire, I mean). Lots of ugly racists in Canada, for example, let me tell you...

It's just that you USians revere your damn constitution, and your constitution was written and ratified in the late eighteenth century, and with far too many concessions made to the slaveholding class of that day; and that reverence for the constitution and its "Founding Fathers" seems to leave you hamstrung when it comes to sensible, and much-needed, reforms today...

The US Senate was basically set up to support the slaveholding interest, imho.

My experience voting in every election of my life:
1. I've never had to register. Either I've been automatically registered because I'm down as a tax payer at my address, or my university registered me when I matriculated. Every year or so I get a letter saying "hey, we think this is who lives here, and whether they're eligible to vote. If that's right, confirm it by text or post or online. If not tell us." It's always been right.
One time I had to apply for a postal vote. That was very easy as well.

2. I've never had to queue for more than five minutes. On the day, the whole process takes maybe twenty minutes or half an hour including the time to walk to and from the polling station. I get up a bit earlier and do it before work normally.

3. I've never had to vote for more than (I think) two offices at once. Local council, mayor, MP, MEP, four layers of representation and they're never all on the same day. Not the school board, the water board, the local judge, whatever.

If it took two hours to vote, honestly, there are quite a few times when I wouldn't have bothered. It always amazes me that vote suppression conversations in the US focus on weird laws about giving people lifts to the polls or whatever when surely a much bigger issue is that voting takes more time than Avengers: Endgame.

Horrible people use that as evidence that there isn't really any voter suppression happening. "Look at this six hour line around the block in FL, how can you say that we're preventing people from voting?" Or they use it as heartwarming evidence of how committed Americans are to "making their vote count."

|| So, I did get re-elected to the local party eboard. A guy was nominated from the floor to run against me, but then withdrew before the voting started. He'd just lost the election to the seat before mine by a vote of 52-6, and I think didn't feel the need to try his luck again. So, we ended up having a lot less vitriol than expected.

Our lead trouble maker is a lawyer, but really not a very good one. He's suing he central committee and the executive committee, and our now-former chair. I know he thinks the temporary rules we were planning to adopt for our elections were no good, and I kept wondering why he hadn't moved for an injunction. Turns out he had, but couldn't get a hearing on it. (He also seems to be unable to understand the service rules.) I found out he had by dropping by the courthouse, and reading his brief. So, when it came time for the meeting tonight, I'd worked out responses to each of his objections to the convention rules. This was kind of fun. His objections were overruled, and when he wanted a vote, he got crushed. What I still don't get is why he thinks this is an intelligent way to pursue a Revolution. |>

And now I feel sorry for him. I'm sure he's maddening and counterproductive, but the kind of clown who can't manage to serve papers properly always makes me sad on his behalf.

I'll send him you email, and you can explain Rule 4.

At the risk is sounding like a massive procedural liberal, isn't managing to serve papers properly something you should be able to do if you're a lawyer.

83: Usually it takes less then twenty minutes. We're having primaries next Tuesday and I expect that outside of the morning rush when polls open, most voters won't have a line at all. Longer times are mostly due to insufficient staffing in areas with people Republicans don't care for.

84: I hate that genre of story, which seems uniquely American: look how heartwarming it is that these people resolved this horrible situation through love and grit--a horrible situation that never should have happened and is entirely due to right wing policy.

87: If you need a distraction, I can explain Rule 34 to him.

You don't have to be much of a lawyer to get it.

Suing the county central committee, the executive board of the central committee, and the chair, individually. It seems to me that personal service on the chair is probably going to hold up as to all three, to the extent that the two non-human defendants can be sued at all. Instead, he served the state party's agent for service of process. The state party's lawyer has appeared specially on behalf of all defendants to move to quash. To me, this is the signal that personal service on the chair is called for. To him, it's just more fraud and corruption.

So, the chair is now the former chair, and no longer an officer. He still has to be served personally to assert claims for damages against him personally. But now service on him personally won't bring in the other defendants.

And, obviously, claims for injunctive relief regarding the now former chair are moot.

Isn't sueing a minor, volunteer official as an individual kind of an asshole thing to do if you're also a member of that group?

92: Not if you believe that they are involved in a massive conspiracy to subvert the purpose of the organization and personally destroy you. In that case you're insane, but not necessarily an asshole.

Our former chair commutes week-on week-off to his job in DC for a centrist think tank. It's obvious, then, that our changing the rules to have a young person (under 24) on our board is part of a nationwide plot. There's no way we might have thought that outreach to younger folks is a good idea in itself, nor would the fact that it was proposed by our tech person, who does organizing for some unions, and was herself a youth rep on a couple of public bodies when she was a kid, make any difference.

Honestly, that sounds like a good rule to have nationwide.

I would like to subscribe to your plot.

In Pittsburgh, they'd probably put on the kids of local officials, but that would still probably be an improvement.

The young woman we elected last night is graduating from high school soon, and had organized platoons of her schoolmates to knock doors for Tester last fall. It's really a no-brainer to trade 40 something troublemakers for such folks.

82. My experience voting in every election of my life:

Yes, this has been my experience, too, as a duly recorded voter in Soviet Canuckistan (aka Canada). I've never had to register to vote. Someone actually comes round to make sure you are properly enumerated for the upcoming election and such, and the default setting is designed to help, not suppress, your ability to vote.

The US is different, though, and it's all about race...

Someone actually comes round to make sure you are properly enumerated for the upcoming election

"So how many of you are there?"
"One."
"Let me just count you to check."
(counts)
"Yep, checks out."

Or maybe they do it nationwide, left to right. "Okay, Jane, you are Canadian number six million seven hundred and four thousand two hundred and ninety. Remember that. Okay, Bob, you are Canadian number six million seven hundred and four thousand two hundred and ninety-one. People, please stop moving around or I'll get confused."

101: Stop making me laugh. Okay, so maybe we're a bit of a naive, and a rough and ready, and a backwoods sort of nation, but at least we know how to conduct a fair and free election.

CA-NA-DA
(one little two little three Canadians)
We love thee
(Now we are twenty million)
CA-NA-DA
(four little five little six little Provinces)
Proud and free
(Now we are ten and the Territories sea to sea)

Bobby Gimby's Canada song, 1967. It's the hundredth anniversary of CON-FED-ERATION...

If you can sing this song, that counts as electoral enumeraton in Canada...

We still use paper ballots, btw, because we're backwards and backwoods. Speaking of fair and free elections...

99 is astonishing. No one has ever "come around" to enumerate me here in the Peoples' Republic of MA. What happens if they don't find you? Dropped from the rolls? That would be considered voter suppression here, or at least prompt a lawsuit.

You do things differently up there! (We do use paper ballots, though. Last election we had the scan-tron jammed.)