Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
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Sept. 20
The Washington Post on what to expect on election night and advises patience
In 2020, the United States did not have election night so much as election week. Factors including a slow count of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania delayed declaring Joe Biden the winner until the Saturday after Election Day, giving President Donald Trump time to allege fraud — allegations that resulted in the Jan. 6, 2021, effort to overturn the results.
This year, some — but only some — of the thousands of people responsible for administering U.S. elections have learned the lessons of four years ago. Americans should prepare themselves for another difficult post-election period — even if it is unlikely to be as chaotic as 2020.
On Friday, supporters of Mr. Trump on Georgia’s State Election Board voted to require counties to hand-count every ballot, which could delay reporting by weeks. Local election workers warn it will almost certainly produce more errors and that they won’t be able to comply with a requirement to complete counting by the day following the election, especially in large jurisdictions that tend to favor Democrats.
In many places, counting mail-in ballots could be a flash point once again. Even as Mr. Trump calls absentee voting “corrupt,” Republicans are trying to encourage more supporters to cast ballots by mail while simultaneously maneuvering to invalidate ballots that don’t precisely comply with sometimes complex rules. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Friday that mail-in ballots can be thrown out if voters do not write accurate dates on the envelope used to return them. Election officials are fretting about potential problems with mail delivery and warning that counting every vote could take days following Nov. 5.
The U.S. Postal Service appears to be taking seriously concerns about mail reliability expressed last week by the National Association of Secretaries of State. The nonpartisan group warned that “lost or delayed election mail” risks disenfranchising voters. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy replied that training has been improved to expedite delivery of election-related material, and that in 2020 nearly 98 percent of ballots were returned to election officials within three days. All the same, voters should return ballots early — with plenty of time to spare — and give extra attention to every requirement. Many states allow voters to “cure” ballots missing critical information within a certain period of time.
Even if USPS excels, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin prohibit the counting of mail-in ballots until Election Day, no matter when they arrive. This slowed down the count in 2020. Divided governments in both states failed to fix this quirk in how they count. Arizona and Nevada have often taken multiple days to fully count, too. Elections officials say they’ve hired more workers to process ballots, but it will probably still take longer to tally the high volume of ballots in urban centers such as Philadelphia and Milwaukee than the lower number in redder, rural areas.
If Democrats continue to vote by mail more than Republicans, early returns will probably show Mr. Trump leading, but the gap will close as votes are tallied. Mr. Trump used this so-called red mirage in 2020 to declare victory and insist that the counting stop. When Mr. Biden overtook him, Mr. Trump claimed it was the result of Democrats dumping ballots rather than an entirely foreseeable and legitimate consequence of voting patterns and state counting policies.
Mr. Trump might well win this election fair and square. Polls show the race is neck and neck. It’s possible he takes an early lead in the count and holds it, or that Republicans vote by mail in greater numbers than forecast, dulling the expected blue shift. In 2020, Democrats returned 18 million ballots by mail compared, with about 10 million from Republicans across 20 states with party registration data. In the 2022 midterms, Democrats sent in 7.6 million mail-in ballots, compared with 5.1 million from Republicans, according to the U.S. Elections Project. But commentators and voters should nevertheless prepare for an uncertain result on the evening of Nov. 5.
One piece of good news is that a bipartisan group of lawmakers is trying to avert a reprise of the Jan. 6 mess. This month, 32 members of Congress signed a “ Unity Commitment ” in which they agreed to respect the results of the 2024 election, attend the inauguration and serve as a voice for calm, regardless of who wins. The list, organized by Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), includes half a dozen Republicans. True, the number should be far higher; not one of the 139 House Republicans who voted against certifying Mr. Biden’s victory joined the group. But it is one sign that next Jan. 6 might not be a disaster. After 2021, Congress tightened the electoral vote counting rules. And Capitol security will be extremely tight; no rioters will break in to stop the count.
For most Americans, the imperative is clear: vote. Two NASA astronauts stranded on the International Space Station plan to cast absentee ballots in Texas. If they can figure out how to vote, you can, too. Ballots are starting to be mailed out in Nevada, Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina. But it’s not too late to register. At least two weeks remain in every state. If you’re eligible, go to vote.gov.
ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/20/early-voting-mail-red-mirage/
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Sept. 21
The Los Angeles Times on the death penalty
The state of South Carolina on Friday strapped down Freddie Owens and injected him with a chemical that’s usually used to euthanize pets. In the days before the execution, a key witness against him admitted testifying falsely at trial to save himself, and said Owens had nothing to do with the 1999 murder for which he was convicted. But that didn’t matter. Owens, also known as Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, was put to death.
Officials in Missouri are preparing to execute Marcellus Williams on Tuesday. The two witnesses against him are known liars, and the bloody footprint and hair samples found at the scene were determined not to belong to him or the victim in the 2001 fatal stabbing for which he was convicted. DNA samples on the murder weapon haven’t been analyzed because prosecutors handled the knife without gloves and tainted the evidence. A Missouri governor stayed an earlier execution and ordered a board to investigate the case. But a new governor dissolved the board and revoked the stay.
Earlier this month the prosecutor offered to switch the sentence to life in prison if Williams would plead guilty, and the condemned man agreed despite insisting he had nothing to do with the crime. A judge accepted the deal, but it was thrown out on appeal. So despite the lack of physical evidence linking Williams to the murder, and over the objection of the prosecutor and the victim’s family, the execution is back on.
In Texas they’re getting ready to kill Robert Roberson next month. Roberson was convicted of killing his 2-year-old child in 2002 based on the controversial “shaken baby syndrome” hypothesis, which has been widely branded as junk science. In the days before the child’s death, she was running a fever, and an emergency room doctor prescribed an antihistamine that can cause fatal respiratory distress in young children.
When Roberson brought her back to the ER, law enforcement officials didn’t like the way he was acting — unemotional and detached — and concluded it was evidence of guilt. It was likely evidence of his autism.
The detective who testified against him now realizes that and is urging clemency so that Roberson is not put to death for a crime that he did not commit and that did not even occur, because evidence suggests the child died from pneumonia and septic shock.
But Roberson is scheduled to be put to death for shaking her to death anyway.
Death sentences and executions, even for actual murderers, are relics of primitive societies in which leaders and their underlings ritually killed to expiate perceived evil, propitiate the gods and calm fears of social chaos.
So what do death sentences become when the witnesses, police, prosecutors and judges admit that their former testimony or conclusions were wrong and the accused is innocent, and the executions proceed anyway?
They cross the line that separates civilization from savagery, criminal justice from black magic, accountability from ritualistic human sacrifice. They become false religion, dependent on totems such as “shaken baby syndrome,” and shamanistic revelation — for example, the suspect looked guilty. They promulgate superstitions, such as the magical pretense that the killing deters future crime. They satisfy our primordial demand for guilt and punishment and our illusion of moral cleansing.
What they cannot satisfy is the delusion that our society is just and merciful. The appetite for blame and blood is voracious and repeatedly beats back our aspiration to be a more enlightened, humane and modern nation. President Biden, soon to leave office, promised as a candidate he would do away with federal death sentences but has not acted.
Former President Trump, seeking reelection, this week reiterated his long-standing demand to quickly execute drug dealers.
But even when we kill the guilty, we become needlessly cruel. When we kill the conceivably innocent, we become a mockery of ourselves and our supposed allegiance to justice.
ONLINE: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-09-21/executions-human-sacrifice
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Sept. 22
The Wall Street Journal on Trump's price controls on credit cards
Donald Trump keeps trying to microtarget working-class voters, but he’s bidding himself into policy and political dead ends. “While working Americans catch up, we’re going to put a temporary cap on credit-card interest rates,” he told a rally last week in New York. “We’re going to cap it at around 10%. We can’t let them make 25 and 30%.”
That’s a price control on credit. It would be comforting to write off this remark as another of Mr. Trump’s rally improvisations, like references to Hannibal Lecter. But watch the video, and it looks as if Mr. Trump is reading the credit-card policy off the teleprompter.
Mr. Trump’s promised “temporary” 10% cap is lower than the rate that America’s two leading socialists proposed in 2019. A bill from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aimed to limit rates on consumer debt to 15%. “Modern-day loan sharks are no longer lurking on street corners breaking kneecaps,” Mr. Sanders said. “They wear three-piece suits and work on Wall Street.”
Yet economics teaches there’s no free lunch. Millions of Americans use credit cards as convenient and ubiquitous payment networks, and they don’t owe interest because they pay off their balances at the end of each month. Debit cards are an alternative. People in a pinch also use credit cards to cover emergencies or financial shortfalls.
The interest rates on credit cards reflect operating costs, including nonpayment. A 10% cap would effectively cut off people with less-than-pristine credit scores. After Illinois capped many consumer interest rates at 36% “all-in APR,” a study in the journal Public Choice said “financial well-being declined” for residents who lost access to short-term, small-dollar loans.
Why do Messrs. Trump and Sanders think it’s helpful to limit credit access and send folks to the pawn broker or leg breaker instead? Card companies might respond by raising fees, which is what happened to free checking after Democrats regulated debit swipe charges in 2010.
Mr. Trump has criticized Kamala Harris for proposing price controls on groceries. “After causing catastrophic inflation,” he told a Pennsylvania rally, “comrade Kamala announced that she wants to institute socialist price controls. You saw that. Never worked before. Never ever worked.”
He’s right, yet Mr. Trump is doing the same on credit cards. It’s bad enough to have a Democratic Party that ignores economics. What’s the point of a Republican Party that follows suit?
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Sept. 18
The Guardian on the on Israel's “booby-trap war”
In the second world war, guerrilla forces scattered large quantities of booby-trapped objects likely to be attractive to civilians. The idea was to cause widescale and indiscriminate death. The Japanese manufactured a tobacco pipe with a charge detonated by a spring-loaded striker. The Italians produced a headset that blew up when it was plugged in. More than half a century later, a global treaty came into force which “prohibited in all circumstances to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects that are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material”. Has anyone told Israel and its jubilant supporters that, as Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group points out, it is a signatory to the protocol?
On Tuesday, pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 12 people – including two children and four hospital workers – and wounding thousands more. This situation is directly analogous to the historical practices that current global arms treaties explicitly prohibit. US media say Israel was behind the attack, and the country has the motive and the means to target its Iran-backed enemies. Israel’s leaders have a long history of carrying out sophisticated remote operations, ranging from cyber-attacks, suicide drone attacks and remote-controlled weapons to assassinate Iranian scientists. On Wednesday it was reported that Israel blew up thousands of two-way personal radios used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, killing nine and wounding hundreds.
This week’s attacks were not, as Israel’s defenders claimed, “ surgical ” or a “ precisely targeted anti-terrorist operation ”. Israel and Hezbollah are sworn enemies. The current round of fighting has seen tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from the Israel-Lebanon border because of the Shia militant group’s rocket and artillery attacks.
However, the pager bombs were clearly intended to target individual civilians – diplomats and politicians – who were not directly participating in hostilities. The plan appeared to produce what lawyers might call “excessive incidental civilian harm”. Both these arguments have been levelled at Russia to claim Moscow was committing war crimes in Ukraine. It’s hard to say why the same reasoning is not applied to Israel – apart from that it is a western ally.
Such disproportionate attacks, which seem illegal, are not only unprecedented but may also become normalised. If that is the case, the door is opened for other states to lethally test the laws of war. The US should step in and restrain its friend, but Joe Biden shows no sign of intervening to stop the bloodshed. The road to peace runs through Gaza, but Mr Biden’s ceasefire plan – and the release of hostages – has not found favour with either Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, or Hamas.
The worry is that Israel’s actions lead to a disastrous all-out conflict that would pull the US into a regional fight. The world stands on the edge of chaos because Mr Netanyahu’s continuing hold on power and consequent insulation from corruption charges depend largely on his nation being at war. None of this is possible without US complicity and assistance. Perhaps it is only after its presidential election that the US will be able to say that the price of saving Mr Netanyahu’s skin should not be paid in the streets of Lebanon or by Palestinians in the occupied territories. Until then, the rules-based international order will continue to be undermined by the very countries that created the system.
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Sept. 23
The Boston Globe says with American manufacturers making bigger trucks and SUVs, demand for smaller trucks grows
It’s a safe bet that few Massachusetts residents have ever heard of kei trucks, the diminutive Japanese vehicles that the Commonwealth legalized last week. They have niche uses and a cult following among car enthusiasts, but you’re not likely to see one out delivering pizzas.
But their growing popularity — NBC reported that imports of the trucks have tripled over the past five years — highlights an unmet need. American automakers have instead prioritized big, heavy, expensive pickups and SUVs, based on the impression that Americans won’t buy small vehicles.
Those behemoths can be disastrous, though — for pedestrians, cyclists, or anyone else sharing the road with them. Electric versions, while they offer environmental benefits, tend to be even heavier. And at least some drivers seem to be tiring of the high price of trucks and SUVs, along with the cost of fueling and maintaining them.
“You just can’t get an affordable pickup truck here in Texas,” a brewery owner in San Antonio told NBC. “And this kei truck fits most everything we need.”
Kei trucks occupy the opposite extreme on the spectrum from American pickups — they’re the smallest class of street-legal vehicle in Japan. For complicated reasons, only kei trucks that are more than 25 years old can be legally imported into the United States. But importing them legally doesn’t mean you can actually drive them legally: Since they often lack common safety features like airbags, some states forbid kei trucks, some allow them, and some allow them with restrictions, such as prohibitions on highway use.
Massachusetts provoked an outcry among car enthusiasts — and from residents of places like Nantucket, where kei trucks are a practical alternative to bigger vehicles — when it stopped registering the little trucks earlier this year. The Registry of Motor Vehicles reversed direction last week, saying it would register the vehicles “while continuing to review safety implications of Kei Vehicles on the public roadways.”
Safety has to come first, but it’s not just the driver’s safety that should factor into the equation. It’s in the broader interests of public safety for the state to leave a pathway for very small vehicles to operate — if for no other reason than for the sake of the pedestrians those vehicles may eventually collide with.
Kei trucks, or similar vehicles, won’t be for everyone. Detroit focuses on SUVs and pickups for a reason: they’re popular and profitable.
Still, there is clearly a shift happening on the roads, which are getting crowded with nontraditional vehicles like scooters and e-bikes. Americans want more options when it comes to getting around and don’t necessarily expect vehicles to fit neatly into categories like “truck” or “car” or “bike” anymore. Regulation should evolve, too, to take into account that not all streets are the same. A kei truck that might not be suitable for an interstate could be perfectly safe in an urban environment where speed limits are typically low.
Drive around Boston or Cambridge and you’ll likely see oversized delivery trucks blocking traffic and meal delivery drivers in their personal vehicles double parking. These annoyances are symptoms of a mismatch between the size of the vehicles in use and the size of the streets.
If automakers manufactured — and states allowed — many more smaller options, maybe cost-conscious drivers and businesses would start using them. That would save them money and make the streets safer for the rest of us. No, we don’t see kei trucks delivering pizza now — but wouldn’t it be nice if someday we did?
ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/09/23/opinion/kei-trucks-rmv-massachusetts/