For starters, the compromise of 1877 is still really just a theory. Whether there was or was not a secret compromise is irrelevant to the slates of electors though (although clearly relevant to the general voter suppression discussion). I suggest however that we just talk about the contested Presidential election of 1876.

As far as the slates of electors go, we have four disputed states: Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon each with two slates of alternate electors. In Florida, the state canvassing (returning) board produced one slate of electors. The incoming Governor produced the other slate. In Louisiana the returning board produced one slate of electors and a candidate for governor produced the other. In South Carolina, the returning board produced one slate and the Democratic party produced the other slate. In Oregon, the two slates of electors were a bit confusing, there was an original slate of electors that effectively had authority from the governor and the secretary of state, but the governor tried to disqualify one and that have that one replace the others and that slate was also effectively originally produced by the governer and the secretary of state.

So, basically, the authority of the the slates of electors varied in legitimacy, but for all of them, there was some real question about the legitimacy of of the election. In three of those cases, the returning board produced electors based on decisions about illegitimate votes that were disputed. In Oregon, there was an eligibility dispute. In the 2020 election, while there were recounts and lawsuits, etc. none of them put the actual outcome of the elections in any of those states in any real doubt. Also, no state officials actually backed or certified any of those alternate slates of electors. Aside from that, in 1876, the certification was handled by a commission formed by Congress to deal with the crisis and none of the alternate slates of electors were trying to be electors after that as I said. Sure, there was a less concrete and defined process for certification (and the electoral college has always been a stupid idea for this and other reasons) at the time, but it was sorted out and then there was certification and, after certification, no more alternate slates of electors. Those are some of the critical differences, between 1876 and 2020.

You certainly do have a point about the rules not actually being very well defined and relying on good faith. I don't need to concede that, I already agree quite wholeheartedly that's a serious problem the US has. I have often, for example, pointed out that the problem with the Constitution is that, despite its principals, it has no teeth. Anyway, the ambiguity and reliance on good faith does mean that we're really picking at nits here. So, to be clear, there were other slates of electors in the past, I would not class all of those as legitimate though. Some appear to have been legitimate alternates created by state officials in relative good faith. Others were created by entities with no official state position at the time and really just qualify as fake electors. I mean, we're just nitpicking over an irrelevancy here. Fake electors were fake back in 1876 and fake electors were fake in 2020. Some alternate slates of electors have been legit. The ones in 2020 were not.

Potato, topato. In a de facto two party system it works out to more or less the same thing. Not giving someone being chased by a polar bear a ride on your snowmobile does not imply feeding them to a polar bear, except that they, you know, get eaten by a polar bear because you didn't.

I think I have been clear that I support the Democrats over the Republicans certainly. If that's a side, then I suppose you could say I have a side. If there were an alternate party whose goals aligned more with my own though, I would drop the Democrats in a heartbeat provided that they actually had a chance to win (which, in the present system, they would not because de facto two party system). So, in that sense. The one that I meant, I do not have a "side". So you can not believe me if you want, but it's just a matter of semantics, not reality. I don't have loyalty to sides, I am simply pragmatic in my choice.

Also:

Say what? That's a bit out of nowhere.

What rhetorical goals am I supposedly trying to hide? I stated my position pretty clearly. You're kind of reminding me of politicians, speaking of their opponents declaring that "they have an agenda!" as if it's something sinister and that politicians do, in fact have agendas and normally publish them.

They're still making DVD drives. They're just mostly USB now. Ripping is pushbutton easy these days. No messing around with getting a copy of DeCSS and such.

Not really. While some pharmaceutical reps may still find ways to provide monetary rewards to some psychiatrists for prescriptions, the majority of psychiatrists don't have a path to profit by prescribing medication. Then there's the fact that psychiatrists are outnumbered by psychologists, who can't prescribe drugs by about two to one. Also, if the drugs are effective, that can mean less paying work for either. People whose conditions are handled by medications tend to be less likely to come in for therapy.

Except that psychologists are not MDs and can not prescribe medications.

Most of that testing is not done by contract professionals unless the school refers them though. Schools actually have a financial incentive for students not to be diagnosed with any sort of condition that requires accommodation. IEPs are expensive.

Well, I would say through new patients since there's frankly a shortage of such professionals compared to people who need treatment.

Sure, I see your point despite my rebuttals in this post. I would refer you to the APA's ethical code of conduct though. While certainly some in the profession can violate those rules, many practicing in the profession seem to care about the rules

Right, so:

Is not an absolute statement, so that's all I was saying.

Ugh. That would be a scary incentive for the government to introduce contract police who are totally government officials, but somehow magically skirt around the requirement. No, what you are proposing would, one way or another, be a slippery slope towards losing the ability to record police. Also, although that is a compelling reason to not take away the right to film in public, it is hardly the only reason. There are other areas of public good. Lots of them. What about recording criminals, for example. Or any sort of reporting? Taking family photos in public places? Any of hundreds of other reasons people find cameras desirable inventions in the first place?

That doesn't sound like a great entertainment proposition to me. Maybe if you do some actual interesting work with constructing things out of diamond that you can showcase...

Sorry, I am not sure what any of your comment has to do with my comment. I was pointing out that it's incredibly unrealistic to claim that, if the Russians hit the Chernobyl dome it most likely purely accidental or that it wasn't even the Russians, but a fragment of a Ukrainian anti-air missile. The reason is big sky theory. There are no valid targets remotely near the site of the strike. So, if it was a completely random hit from something many, many miles off course, it would have been an amazing coincidence.

Maybe you meant that hitting the dam was also some sort of coincidental hit? It does not seem likely though. That seems like it hit the target it aimed at, just like it seems that the drone that hit the Chornobyl dome hit the target it was aimed at.

Yeah, sure. I mean, I am not immediately agreeing with you so I must be gaslighting and also a horrible human being. Good catch there.

I clearly realized that from my very first post on this thread. I would quote it, but why make it longer, just look up in the thread.

The argument from you that I have "attached" myself to the argument seems to be a bit of a cop out. I assume you actually looked back in the thread and saw that I never actually made a specific claim myself, and just pointed out that A. you were being irrationally abusive, and B. that you were doing it on the flimsy premise that the previous poster had not mentioned that some portion of the suppressed votes were Republican. I will also note that, while that poster gave numbers that may be unfounded, you did not provide any more factual basis for your rebuttal. All you really did was playground name-calling, so I called you out on it. Not surprising that you're back around to playground name calling.

I should note also that I have not "attached" myself to any argument any more than you have "attached" yourself to other absurd partisan arguments. Perhaps you should worry less about "attached" arguments and more about what people are actually saying. Sure, context does matter, but so does the actual scope of my comments within that context. In othrer words, if it is an argument about the role of the metaphor of the shepherd in 19th century idylls and one of the commenters states that ewes can not have horns and the other states that they can, I might chime in to point out that ewes can indeed have horns. It does not mean that I am "attaching" myself to the rest of the argument by the commenter who says that ewes can have horns. I am not actually making a claim that their theory that the shepherd represents an innate human desire to return to the womb.

Certainly it gets softer as time goes on, but it becomes hard to tell where to draw the line. All sorts of voter suppression laws with origins going back to reconstruction and post-reconstruction are still on the books and in use. Plenty of states have massive numbers of disenfranchised voters. In the 2022 mid-term election in Tennessee, for example, there were about 1.7 million votes across 9 districts and about half a million disenfranchised voters, disproportionately black. While, certainly not all of those disenfranchised voters would have voted the same way. It seems likely there would have been some different results if they were not disenfranchised.

  Of course, for a more concrete example, we can look at the soft voter suppression of gerrymandering. Gerrymandering works, period. The US President has recently very publicly demanded that Republicans need to gerrymander to deny Democrats seats. This sort of thing is not normally said out loud so readily, but saying the quiet part out loud is in vogue these days, apparently. Anyway, there's a very clear reason why all the politicians and strategists, etc. are so certain that gerrymandering gets them seats. That's because it does. I would say that gerrymandering is unarguably a form of voter suppression since the whole idea is make people's votes count for less. Perhaps you will argue differently, but otherwise, that is a clear example of modern soft voter suppression working to change federal elections.

Were they real electors then?

I mean, that's nonsense. Previous alternate slates of electors were legitimate because the states elections were not yet certified. None of them tried to present themselves as electors after certification. The 2020 "electors" did not have any bona fides unlike previous alternate slates of electors. The 2020 fake electors were an actual conspiracy spread across multiple states.

It was an incompetent, crazy scheme to be sure. As for evil, well I think a lot of people taking part were a bit too clueless to be called evil. I clearly was not characterizing it as an evil scheme though. Just providing it as an example of the kind of activities the Republican side took part in during that election in contrast to a lack of any such activities on the Democrat side.

Also, why is "stealing the election with fake electors" in quotes? I never wrote that and it's not even accurate as a paraphrasing of what I wrote.

Oh, right. Huge difference between Republicans and Trump. I mean, he clearly has no influence whatsoever over the party. Not like the RNC was run by his handpicked candidate... except that it was. Not like 147 Republican members of Congress voted to overturn the election results or anything like that. Oh wait, I'm mistaken again. 139 representatives and 8 senators actually did. How about that? Seriously, this stuff is common knowledge and I am quite sure you know it. Why do I even have to point it out? Instead you just want to play silly games about how you said "Republicans", rather than the (Republican) President as if he doesn't fall under the same category.

What you did, as I have pointed out, is twofold. One is that you created a false equivalence between the magnitude of issues with Republicans and Democrats. Two is that, despite that equivalence that you posited, you suggested that Democrats should lose due to their failing whereas the supposedly equal failings of the Republicans should be ignored.

You certainly appear to have made that claim when you wrote:

It's right there, the suggestion that somehow, random people on the Internet making claims about voter suppression against Democrats provides a justifiable reason for people to not vote for Democrats even though the Republican President, huge numbers of Republican congresspersons and other Republican operatives, media organizations, etc. were screaming it to the heavens. Now you can argue perhaps that just meant not voting for Democrats, but also not for Republicans, but the US is, sadly, a de facto (and in some cases de jurum because the status quo has worked its way into court decisions, parliamentary procedure, and actual laws) two party system for a number of reasons. The primary one in my view is the absolutely broken (for any number of parties beyond two - for two parties it's a perfect system) plurality voting system used in most US elections. I would gladly support a constitutional amendment to force instant runoff voting or better in all US elections, but that's never going to happen with the Democrats and Republicans in charge. Anyway, since it is a two party system, abandoning the Democrats just means putting Republicans in power.

Look, I don't really have a side. Neither of the two parties really represents what I want in a political party, but the broken system forces a choice and one is clearly a worse choice than the other.

At this point I'm thinking that it is just a normal human condition and shouldn't be diagnosed as a disability. It is like calling hunger a disability. This is something to be exploited by helicopter parents and students looking for an advantage.

Fair enough. The main reason I commented (aside from a bet peeve about Ockham's Razor and other simplicity principles) is that while psychological problems can potentially stem from complexity, many more seem to stem from a lack of complexity. Individuals with profound autism (defined as needing 24/7 care for life and normally non-verbal or close to it and with an IQ below 50) typically have brains where their neurons, despite branching, tend not to extend far in their brains. So their brain is a network of mostly local connections rather than far reaching ones that extend into distant brain regions. While there may be just as many parts, that clearly seems to be a lack of complexity.

Wait, people will exploit loopholes that are treated as sacred cows? "How dare you question disabilities!?" I'm shocked!

You don't have to play if you don't want to. I would classify that as denial though

That's a simplistic principle that I'm sure your father did not actually follow in real life. Plenty of things that increase mechanical complexity actually also increase reliability. For example expansion joints or suspensions in cars. Arbitrary complexity added for no reason, sure, but I am sure that many systems your father worked on not only used lubrication, but had extra systems (adding complexity) to make sure that the other parts stayed lubricated.

That's actually a great example, but maybe not for the reason you think it is. Apparently, the Palisades fire was reignited from a fire that had already been put out and the firefighters on the ground wanted to keep working on it because it wasn't done smouldering, but their higher ups pulled them. So then high winds and other conditions re-ignited it and it caused massive destruction. So, that's actually a really great real world example of conditions where being good and thorough at your job trumps speed. Also of management clock-watching having disastrous consequences.

Several of your other examples present this same issue.

They will still do that without AC, they will just get extra sockpuppet accounts. Plenty already do so that they will post with higher karma and also be taken a bit more seriously.