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contravariant | on: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
The main failure here is the failure of the elections system to elect anyone reasonable.

On its own it is not that bad an idea for someone who carries a mandate of the majority of the population to be able to grant pardons.

falcor84 | parent | next
Why is it not a bad idea? Isn't it then just an example of Tyranny of the Majority?

Taken to the extreme, we could have an impartial legal system putting in prison criminals from an even mix of society, and then the president pardoning everyone from the majority group, leaving in prison only the minorities.

lukan | root | parent | next
"Isn't it then just an example of Tyranny of the Majority?"

And how would you call a justice system, so complicated and convulted and therefore expensive that poor people (from minorities) don't really stand a chance to get their justice there?

Obviously Ross was not in that group, but I see presidential pardon as a potential tool to counter the flaws of the justice system.

Propelloni | root | parent | next
Unjust? Broken? But adding one broken thing to another broken thing will do nothing to fix any one of them.
lukan | root | parent | next
Do you have concrete ideas on how to improve?

And till those steps are implemented, don't you think you would enjoy it, if the next president would pardon Snowden, or your personal favorite case of unjustice?

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stuartjohnson12 | root | parent
If my server is unreliable, adding an unreliable backup is better than nothing.
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oneeyedpigeon | root | parent
The justice system is flawed, but I don't see how adding a political dimension makes it any better.
lukan | root | parent
Because fundamentally the idea is to be a democracy.

The laws should represent, what the people want. Not a small caste of lawyers and lobbyist what it often rather seems to be.

Presidential power is a direct way to represent peoples wishes. Or well, could be, if the voting system wouldn't be flawed as well ..

contravariant | root | parent | next
In a similar situation a majority could simply make it illegal to belong to the minority group. And without a way to pardon them the damage would be permanent.

You want a majority to be able to decide who gets punished and who goes free, and even the best designed laws will have unforseen consequences. If the majority is 'evil', well there's just not all that much that can be done in a democracy. Yes it would be better to live in a dictatorship of the most virtuous person in existence, but if you ever figure out how to do that please let me know.

oneeyedpigeon | root | parent | next
Which is exactly what we do have: a president pardoning everyone from the majority political group. It's not consolation that the majority/minority groups are roughly equal.
hamandcheese | root | parent
Personally, I view the pardon as a form of veto power on the judiciary. Why is it reasonably that a president can veto controls, but not the judiciary?
kortilla | parent | next
All of the presidents pardon tons of people unpalatable to the other side of the political spectrum. They usually just save it for the end of their term so it doesn’t cause too much noise.
ArnoVW | root | parent
While it is true that there is always controversy, this does not mean that there is equivalency.

Yes, every president has pardons that are arguable (Biden pardoning his son, for example). And anyone pardoned has been found guilty of a crime, by definition. But not all crimes are equal.

Pardoning 1500 people that participated in a (luckily failed) insurrection that caused 5 deaths and 100+ injured, is an extremely bad precedent, and sends a very bad signal.

Pardoning people convicted of marijuana possession (like Biden did) is not the same thing as pardoning the head of the worlds biggest guns and drugs marketplace. Even if he did not kill anyone himself (it was proven, just to a lesser extent, but fine). Those drugs and guns most definitely did kill people.

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Escapado | parent | next
Honest question/thought experiment: if we only elected people who are qualified for their job (assume we can measure competence at least in some dimensions like we do for a myriad of other professions before we allow people to work in them) and if the election process was set up in a way where when casting your ballot you have to take a multiple choice quiz which tests for basic knowledge on what you will vote for and the country you’re in (as in “what is the household budget roughly, is this candidate in favour or against x, did the crime rate increase or decrease nominally” take these as rough examples of what I mean), to ensure that the people who vote for something have some clue what they are voting for and the broader context it’s embedded in (we require a license to drive a car, this would be akin to have a having a license to vote) would that remedy the situation a little? The idea would be that informed people would vote for informed people. Could you imagine this being a net benefit or not? I would assume it would make democracies significantly better than they are now. Imagine going to a doctors office to find out your doctor is a Plummer and he was voted into this job and that the people working for him and handling your prescription is a random assortment of people he seems to like.
upwardbound2 | root | parent | next
I'm sure there are benefits and that might it help overall if implemented here and now in our current America with our current levels of public access to civics and career education (MAYBE.) However, this change would be the exact opposite or a total repeal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which good people died for. At a meta level, I trust those who died for voting rights to care more and know more about the correct answer to your question than I do, and I guess I would recommend to look back at historic speeches from MLK and other leaders to understand their full reasoning about why literacy tests were either irredeemable or undesirable, and their reasons for thinking so.

If we assume that both you and MLK were right, but that different policies better suit different conditions, then your proposal could maximize meritocratic effectiveness in an already-very-fair society, whereas MLK's way (the Voting Rights Act) provides a better minimum standard of human rights (similar to 1st and 2nd Amendment protections for people).

Escapado | root | parent
Thanks for pointing me to that. One thing that stands out about that argument though is that voting is already discriminatory, right? Permanent residents and minors are not allowed to vote (the latter because we take age as a proxy of competency, no?), despite facing the consequences of elections just as anyone else does. I do understand that a risk for misuse absolutely exists, but at the same time it looks like populism, social media abuse, smear campaigns, science denial and plain old corruption in sheep's clothing are rampant enough that we can agree that many many votes are cast by misled people, who would have made another choice if they really understood what they voted for. I guess it would boil down to the difficult question of which harm is greater.
lolc | root | parent | next
Like a literacy test?

https://www.crmvet.org/info/lithome.htm#litbkgnd

Sorry for the snark, it's just a very hard problem because we'd end up in a situation where the voters would decide who is part of their club.

oneeyedpigeon | root | parent | next
> would that remedy the situation a little?

I've had this thought before and my tentative conclusion is "no". It boils down to the purpose of democracy which is NOT to produce the best government but to make people feel ok about having a government at all.

Escapado | root | parent
That's an interesting perspective, but I wonder if we can't have both.
ttyprintk | root | parent
The Ancient Greek experiments with democracy seem to culminate in a system that “gives you the government you deserve”. But those citizens also faced dire consequences for causing any harm to society—-that’s an important characteristic we’ve lost.
lukan | root | parent | next
"this would be akin to have a having a license to vote) would that remedy the situation a little? The idea would be that informed people would vote for informed people. Could you imagine this being a net benefit or not?"

The idea has been around for a bit and I call it interesting, but also with huge potential of misuse.

Change the test slightly, so your target audience will yield better results, giving you a better result.

Either way, as long as climate change and darwinism are controversial topics, I see it hard to implement in a meaningful way.

fgna | root | parent
While I can see this preventing many of the current issues, I can't help but wonder who will serve the interests of the people that are not allowed to vote.

Would it be a better system if the not-allowed group is totally dependent on the people that are allowed to vote?

Escapado | root | parent
I see. In a sense we are already doing that. Minors can not vote (and if I am correct the reasoning is that they don't have the competency to cast a proper vote) and even foreign permanent residents can't either, even though the outcome of the elections totally influences their lives. In a sense these not-allowed groups are already totally dependent on the people that are allowed to vote.

I guess my argument boils down to: We already discriminate. My thoughts are that the way we do it is not optimal.

tchalla | parent | next
> On its own

The reality is in front of you. So, you can't look at this "on its own".

barnabee | parent | next
Assuming a sufficiently functional congress[0], why not require that pardons go through congress as well rather than be unilateral presidential actions?

[0] A big if, I know…

namlem | parent
Yep. The problem is the system of elections itself. Biden and Obama also issued a lot of dubious pardons and commutations. The incentives of elections naturally favor short-termism and populism. Instead of having the people vote on candidates, we should randomly select citizens to an elector jury, which would carefully research and deliberate on the candidates before choosing.

https://www.electionbyjury.org/