yeargain.bsky.social
1855 Professor of the Law of Democracy at Michigan State. Contributor to The Downballot. I teach, write, and post about state constitutional law, institutional development, and criminal law. I write (infrequently) at guaranteedrepublics.substack.com.
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shoutout to anyone who tried to claim that Kamala would start WWIII. doing great.
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that’s exactly what it sounds like. it’s so fucking chilling.
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the opinion in Yates, one of the most delightful reads: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yates_v...
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I agree entirely!
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there’s too much depravity!!
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it’s stuck in my head forever. I wanted to show my students a bit of the oral argument so they could see what engaging with different statutory arguments simultaneously looked like, so I clipped the argument and created a video with the transcript. it’s burned into my head now.
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I hope so!! One of my hobby horses here is that there needs to be actual, meaningful public opposition to the state constitutional amendments that restrict access to bail.
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so true, and thank you for making this point!!
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That's my perspective, too. It also has a liberating effect when I write the first time, because I don't agonize over the perfect phrasing or anything like that. I know it'll be rewritten in due time anyway, so there's no use in giving it too much thought!
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The Georgia Secretary of State has a great dashboard for live voter turnout, which you can access here. I have zero idea what to expect as the final voter turnout, but it'll probably be among the lowest-turnout primaries in state history. A runoff could see even lower turnout.
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These are both tiny counties: Washington has just 20K people and Wheeler has just 7K. But there's a special election in Washington for county commission and in Wheeler for county tax collector. As a result, they're the only counties in the state that are voting like it's a normal primary!
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right! I mean, there's the unknowable part of how the existence of RCV altered voters' first-choice preferences, and I could be persuaded, I suppose, that both Garcia and Wiley were a little bit lower in the first round as voters hedged their bets, but I think Adams was always going to place first.
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it's difficult to prove a counterfactual, but it's extremely likely that Adams would have won the primary if it had been first-past-the-post. he easily placed first in the first-round votes, was (along with Yang) the most well-known candidate in the field, and benefited from a divided opposition.
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I look forward to reading this! thanks for sharing and posting it.
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I held off on responding until I was able to time myself to answer your question! I just retyped the introduction for an article I'm working on. It was originally 2.5K words and 38 footnotes (with a bullet-point outline of a roadmap); it's now 3K words and 48 footnotes. That took about an hour.
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it's lovely! I love everything about Madison. it's a wonderful city.
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wither Wonderstate
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All of this is to say that the fact that the alleged shooter was one of *60* members of an advisory board, and owed his appointment to a recommendation by business groups. (He's listed as "Business & Industry Representative" on the press release.) His appointment reflects nothing about his ideology.
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The Board's responsibilities are quite minimal—and are really just to recommend policies to the governor related to workforce development. There are some committees and subcommittees organized around particular topics, but it's just an advisory board. It has no significant powers.
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When Boelter was appointed to serve in 2019, there were **60** members in total on the board. The Board's membership roster from May 2020, archived by the Wayback Machine, is listed below. In a grim coincidence, State Sen. John Hoffman, one of the shooting victims, was also on it.
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That's how Minnesota's board is set up, too. The Governor's Workforce Development Board has a lot of different members, and many constituencies are represented, but a majority of the voting members must meet the federal criteria.
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Federal law mandates how these boards are constituted. A majority of a governor's appointees on the board must be "representatives of businesses in the state" who (1) own or operate businesses, (2) represent businesses providing employment opportunities, and (3) are nominated by state business orgs.
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The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, a bipartisan bill, requires governors to "establish a State workforce development board" to advise in the development of the state's workforce development plan—basically, to help identify career and training opportunities for people who need work.