George Santos charged with defrauding campaign donors
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Skeptic Ginger
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This is crap. It's nothing more than an unsupported personal opinion.
Back this up with some actual evidence like something taught in a civics class or in the Constitution that says a candidate who lies pathologically, completely misrepresents themself, and gets elected based on such dishonesty has a legit claim to that office because they successfully bamboozled the voters.
I already gave you that civics class, but nobody seems to understand it. Instead, you stick to your belief in the big ideal of what you imagine representative democracy to be all about, 'the will of the people', blah, blah, blah. Read the Edmund Burke quotation again, here with the short introduction:
Even if their views are not reflective of those of a majority of voters.
And the corresponding article in the Danish constitution:
The members of Folketinget are bound only by their convictions and not by any directions from their constituents.
The whole point of representative democracy isn't what you think it is and isn't what you guys would like it to be. The whole point is to make sure that power is separated from the will of the people. They don't get to decide. Their 'representatives' do.
It's what Trump & Co. had in mind when they made up the whole scheme with fake electors: The will of the people could no longer be trusted if the people chose the 'wrong' electors who would appoint the 'wrong' president.
This is why Western media and politicians come down so hard on countries that do their utmost to make sure that elected representatives actually represent the will of the majority of the people. That "representative systems tend to be biased towards the representation of more affluent classes, to the detriment of the population at large" is not a fluke, and it's not a flaw. It's not a flaw that universal healthcare or a living minimal wage, things that a majority of people want, just don't get passed in a representative democracy.
It's the whole bloody point, which is why the actually ruling classes think that it is their right to stage a military coup whenever the electorate doesn't obey this principle.
Ask guys like Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and Roger Stone who's backing them. Or better yet: Follow the money trail ...
George Santos doesn't threaten the will of the wealthy. He's a lying drag queen, and so what? He doesn't threaten the interests of the 1%ers as long as he does what Kevin McCarthy tells him to do. People like Bernie Sanders or AOC just might be a threat, so they are watched carefully, but they tend to adapt to the actual rules of representative democracy as they grow older within the system.
Even if their views are not reflective of those of a majority of voters.
And the corresponding article in the Danish constitution:
The members of Folketinget are bound only by their convictions and not by any directions from their constituents.
The whole point of representative democracy isn't what you think it is and isn't what you guys would like it to be. The whole point is to make sure that power is separated from the will of the people. They don't get to decide. Their 'representatives' do.
It's what Trump & Co. had in mind when they made up the whole scheme with fake electors: The will of the people could no longer be trusted if the people chose the 'wrong' electors who would appoint the 'wrong' president.
This is why Western media and politicians come down so hard on countries that do their utmost to make sure that elected representatives actually represent the will of the majority of the people. That "representative systems tend to be biased towards the representation of more affluent classes, to the detriment of the population at large" is not a fluke, and it's not a flaw. It's not a flaw that universal healthcare or a living minimal wage, things that a majority of people want, just don't get passed in a representative democracy.
It's the whole bloody point, which is why the actually ruling classes think that it is their right to stage a military coup whenever the electorate doesn't obey this principle.
Ask guys like Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and Roger Stone who's backing them. Or better yet: Follow the money trail ...
George Santos doesn't threaten the will of the wealthy. He's a lying drag queen, and so what? He doesn't threaten the interests of the 1%ers as long as he does what Kevin McCarthy tells him to do. People like Bernie Sanders or AOC just might be a threat, so they are watched carefully, but they tend to adapt to the actual rules of representative democracy as they grow older within the system.
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Skeptic Ginger
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Just to clarify here, my issue is with the following:
The fact there are few mechanisms to oust Santos or recall him is a separate issue from the claim by several members here as to the rationale or reason there are few mechanisms to oust him.
As for your civics lesson, Dann, spare me the blurring of the lines between the influence of money and all the deceiving of the voters that goes along with it and this case. It's a false equivalence though maybe it shouldn't be.
Lurch said:
The fact there are few mechanisms to oust Santos or recall him is a separate issue from the claim by several members here as to the rationale or reason there are few mechanisms to oust him.
As for your civics lesson, Dann, spare me the blurring of the lines between the influence of money and all the deceiving of the voters that goes along with it and this case. It's a false equivalence though maybe it shouldn't be.
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The main problem is that some guy called George Santos was elected to US Congress by the good folks of Long Island, but this compulsive liar named Anthony Devolder has taken his place in the House and is pretending to be him. If that's not voter fraud then I don't know what is!
Then again, it's no problem for the GOP, who let some piss-weak lying asshat called Donald Trump pretend to be US President for four years.
Why do you think that 'voter fraud' is not only allowed but actually encouraged by constitutions? The members of Folketinget are bound only by their convictions and not by any directions from their constituents.
Only the will of voters to hand over power to a representative is sacrosanct. And as soon as they'ved done it, that representative has the sacrosanct right to say, 'Screw you, guys! You elected me, i.e. you handed over power to me, and now I get to decide because your will doesn't count beyond the election. Making my will depend on what you would like me to do would be unconstitutional!'
No, they don't. They deserve better than this ****, but letting them have it would be unconstitutional, too.
That's what representative democracy is all about.
It's in its nature.
Sorry, but no, you don't understand representative democracy. You don't understand it at all. You think that it's what you would like it to be, but it isn't. The people who voted for George Santos may have wanted "a competent businessman" etc., which is already based on delusional thinking, but never mind. However, they voted for George Santos and that's exactly what they got. And after having voted him in, it no longer mattes what they wanted.
'But I thought I voted for somebody who ...' is irrelevant in a representative democracy. The George Santos voters got George Santos. The Kyrsten Sinema voters got Kyrsten Sinema.
You don't seem to understand that whatever delusions the electorate may have had about their preferred candidates, it doesn't matter anymore as soon as those candidates were elected. The idea that it does is as delusional as going to a psychic: 'But he/she said that they could talk to my deceased mother, and it turns out that they actually can't.'
There's a very slim chance that somebody like that may get their money back, but even a very slim chance is still a chance.
Promises to voters, on the other hand ... The constitution not only doesn't have a paragraph that says that you can get your vote back if the representative lied to you. It explicitly protects the candidate from any claims the voters think they may have.
You bought it, it's yours! It wears a dress, and you don't approve of that?! Too bad, it's still yours.
And what a pretty face it is ...
But you're wrong. George Santos won't be elected the next time. It will probably be somebody who is just as bad or even worse, but somebody with actual graduation papers and an otherwise glamorous CV; somebody who will use that as proof that he deserves to be the one to get their votes so he can get the opportunity to screw them over. Maybe somebody like Ron DeSantis, for instance.
The "influence of money and all the deceiving of the voters" serve the same purpose:
I think even George Santos knows that ...
Skeptic Ginger
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Adding to my above posts, if this was all about what the voters wanted, why is there no recall option?
And this isn't the only thing about the US Constitution that hasn't aged well.
And this isn't the only thing about the US Constitution that hasn't aged well.
Exactly! But that isn't a question of not aging well.
That you can't recall your vote for George Santos isn't because they wore wigs back then, too!
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phiwum
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You are mighty confused.
First, this is the US, and the clause you are so happy to promote is not from the US Constitution.
But, indeed, I agree with the sentiment that a representative cannot be required to vote in the way his constituents want -- not even if he promised to. After all, as I see it, the point of a representative is to make an informed decision on my behalf. He has the time and (ideally) experience to investigate issues prior to voting, something that I could not easily do at all. Even if he said he would vote this way or that prior to election, I don't think it's unreasonable for him to change his mind.
Of course, this is an idealized scenario and in the real world, such changing of positions might be the result of corruption or indeed a matter of lying about one's vote before the election. I don't think much can be done to prevent that.
But if this view is right and representatives are there to become informed and make decisions on our behalf, then what ought to constitute fair campaigning? It is hard to require that one state truthfully his political views. Because such views may change after election, it would be quite difficult to prove that one lied about his views prior to the election. When it comes to a candidate's "real" political philosophy, it really is a matter of caveat emptor.
But political philosophy is only part of what is relevant to make an informed opinion on my behalf. The second part is that one has the background necessary to take in information and react appropriately. One must be competent to make decisions. Of course, the voters aren't required to vote for the competent candidate, nor are candidates required to tell the voter of their educational and employment backgrounds. But if I am told that these are your credentials, that this or that life experience helped form you as a person, and these claims are lies, then my vote has been miscast. I was misled about what you would bring to the table when it comes to making decisions and that these are lies can be proven quite easily, unlike misrepresentations of philosophy.
There is nothing that makes it unconstitutional to require candidates tell the truth about their backgrounds. There is nothing at all wrong with removing a congressman who was elected due to non-trivial lies. I don't expect it to happen, but there is not a damned thing about "representative democracy" which suggests the right to lie to voters about ones background is an intended feature.
Skeptic Ginger
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Did you understand my comment?Exactly! But that isn't a question of not aging well.
That you can't recall your vote for George Santos isn't because they wore wigs back then, too!
If the voters' wishes matter more than if they voted for a total fraud they would not have voted for if they had known, then why does only the initial vote matter?
Why is there no mechanism in the Constitution that allows voters to reconsider given new information?
It is apparently because no one thought about it when they were writing the Constitution or the subsequent Amendments. In 1776 how could they possibly have 1) thought of everything, and 2) imagined the future?
Yes, Amendments and having both houses of Congress set their own rules at the beginning of every session are supposed to take care of those issues. Going down that rabbit hole one could ask, why not expand that to create an ever changing Constitution to fit with the times?
Or one might just consider legislators elected through fraudulent means don't want to open that can of worms because it might come back to bite them. It's like having them vote to decrease their salary and benefits—not likely to happen.
That leaves the bolded paragraph above. And the voters only-one-chance voting is what matters, not the voters actual wishes. There is no magical democracy here, there is only a flawed Constitution that should, but doesn't allow for a recall vote.
Skeptic Ginger
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Now that is a good analogy.
And this ^ is a good description of the problem.
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Did you understand my comment?
If the voters' wishes matter more than if they voted for a total fraud they would not have voted for if they had known, then why does only the initial vote matter?
Yes, but you don't understand mine, apparently: The voters' wishes don't matter at all. All that matters is that their vote empowered candidates who now get to decide on their behalf. In office, they are completely independent of whatever the voters may have wished for.
No, you can rest assured that they thought about it, the dear old slave owners. Like I said before: This is not a fluke or a flaw. If you look at it historically, and the short Wikipedia article can help you there, too, it is obvious that representative democracy was always intended as a tool to empower a group of people to decide on behalf of the rest of society because the rest of society couldn't be expected to make decisions that would benefit the privileged: "Women, men who owned no property, and Black people, and others not originally given voting rights"
Do you really think they didn't think about that? It was just something that happened because they couldn't think of everything and didn't know the future? Come on, guys, I know that you have been brought up to think of the founding fathers as supreme beings, but they were a bunch of ********, who knew very well what they were up to, even though they probably couldn't imagine a future when people whom they deliberately disenfranchised would make up bad excuses for them. "Representative systems tend to be biased towards the representation of more affluent classes, to the detriment of the population at large," because that was what they were supposed to deliver from the point go. And it still is.
No, that's not likely to happen, and it is obviously not supposed to happen. That's what empowering people to rule over you entails.
If it should allow for a recall vote, it's weird that it doesn't, isn't it? And it's also weird that even constitutions much younger than the U.S. one all make it explicit that voters' wishes don't matter. Consider the German constitution, which was more than a little inspired by their conquerors:
According to the constitution, members of parliament are: Representatives of the people
They are the ones who make decisions.
So they are working according to their conscience.
They are bound by neither contracts nor directions.
They decide what they think is right.
Voters hardly ever understand this principle, not even when it is pointed out to them and they are supplied with the proper quotations from actual constitutions. This is the reason why they are permanently disappointed, often as early as on election night (votes are counted faster in my country!) when the politicians already know the approximate size of different parties in the new parliament and are now thinking tactically: Which excuses do we come up with to our voters for discarding whatever promises we made to them during our election campaigns? They don't actually need to make excuses: They have been elected, which gives them the freedom to decide, and that's very obvious. As one Danish politician put it a long time ago: "You have a point of view until you choose to have another one." (Danish Wiki) i.e. 'Screw you, guys. I get to decide, you don't!' Or as George Santos puts it: "The work of congress is not about my personal life. It is about delivering results for my constituents"
But nevertheless, excuses are usually made because there's another election coming up in four years or less, so it's in its nature.
And yet it's there, even in much newer constitutions based on or inspired by the U.S. constitution: 'Once you've elected them, they get to decide. You don't! Whatever you thought or they made you think you bought with your vote, it no longer counts.'