advertisement
Forums

 

AAPL stock: Click Here
You are currently viewing the 'Friendly' Political Ranting forum
Newer Topic Older Topic
Who screwed this up?
Posted by: Speedy
Date: September 01, 2022 08:49AM
Michigan Board Says Abortion Referendum Should Not Go to Voters

Abortion rights supporters gathered more than 750,000 signatures, but the petitions they circulated had formatting problems.

Pic of petition in link:

[www.nytimes.com]


Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/2022 08:49AM by Speedy.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: Lemon Drop
Date: September 01, 2022 08:53AM
"Leave it to the voters in the states."

Unless the voters want abortion to be legal.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: Acer
Date: September 01, 2022 09:16AM
It's not pretty, but I can read it just fine.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: Tiangou
Date: September 01, 2022 09:40AM
It’s perfectly legible.


Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: Speedy
Date: September 01, 2022 09:48AM
It’s notwhetheraperson can read it orwhetheritislegible, it’s whetheryouwantsomethinglookinglikethat addedtoyourstate’sconstitution.


Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: mattkime
Date: September 01, 2022 10:00AM
They wanted to find a technicality and they did. Its BS.


Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: Acer
Date: September 01, 2022 10:09AM
Quote
Speedy
It’s notwhetheraperson can read it orwhetheritislegible, it’s whetheryouwantsomethinglookinglikethat addedtoyourstate’sconstitution.

I know you're being Speedy, but to argue with a strawman for a moment, they're not going to take snapshot of that document and plaster it on the constitution with wallpaper paste. If you took the wordprocessing document they used to make the petition, and formatted it plain text, the spaces are all there. Better yet, blow it up 200% and all the spaces are there.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/2022 10:11AM by Acer.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: Speedy
Date: September 01, 2022 10:10AM
Quote
mattkime
They wanted to find a technicality and they did. Its BS.

Not really, not when it occurs repeatedly. A spacing error at the end of a line? Ok, that’s a technicality. They must have hired an antiabortion expert in Quark.


Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/2022 10:10AM by Speedy.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: August West
Date: September 01, 2022 10:54AM
Do the words "Poll Tax" ring any bells?


Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: mattkime
Date: September 01, 2022 11:24AM
Quote
Speedy
Quote
mattkime
They wanted to find a technicality and they did. Its BS.

Not really, not when it occurs repeatedly. A spacing error at the end of a line? Ok, that’s a technicality. They must have hired an antiabortion expert in Quark.

I'm not saying that a mistake wasn't made. Did the mistake impact the intention of the of the petitioners? To me, it seems unlikely.


Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: pdq
Date: September 01, 2022 11:38AM
The nonsense is the ruling.

They need to bring it to the MI Supreme Court, and now.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: JoeH
Date: September 01, 2022 11:54AM
Quote
pdq
The nonsense is the ruling.

They need to bring it to the MI Supreme Court, and now.

What is that court looking like these days? The right has been getting some reactionary activists elected to courts like this one.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: DeusxMac
Date: September 01, 2022 12:23PM
This demonstrates the inherent drawbacks of combining:

1. All capital letters

2. Justified text - "A common type of text alignment in print media is "justification", where the spaces between words and between glyphs or letters are stretched or compressed in order to align both the left and right ends of consecutive lines of text."
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: pdq
Date: September 01, 2022 01:55PM
From a link in the NYT paper, to this, a staff report from the Michigan Bureau of Elections:

Quote

On August 18, 2022, Citizens to Support MI Women and Children (Citizens) submitted a challenge to the form of the petition. The challenge did not call individual signatures into question but instead challenged the entirety of the drive. Citizens argued that the Board should reject the petition because minimal spacing throughout the text of the constitutional amendment language within the substance of the petition resulted in series of words being condensed into long, nonsensical letter combinations. Citizens argued that a petition cannot insert nonexistent words into the Constitution.

In response to Citizens’ allegations that the minimal spacing renders the petition unreadable and the words “gibberish,” RFFA provides an affidavit from the printer of the petition, stating that spaces are included in the full text of the proposed constitutional amendment. Moreover, RFFA states that people can read and understand the proposed amendment notwithstanding any issues with word spacing, and those who signed the petition understood it.

As the staff report points out:

Quote

The RFFA petition includes the same letters, arranged in the same order, as the petition conditionally approved at the March 23rd Board meeting, accounting for the removal of the word “the” which was the subject of the conditional approval. Certain portions of the petition have smaller spaces between words; the spacing between words in some instances appears similar to the spacing between letters within words. The Michigan Election Law is silent on the amount of space that must be between letters and words in a petition. Section 482 sets strict requirements for the size of the petition sheet and the various font sizes for the headings, the 100-word summary, and the full text of the amendment. MCL 168.482. It does not provide requirements as to spacing or “kerning”—the term for adjusting the space between characters in proportional font.

…and so, also finding the number of signatures was well above needed, the staff report bottom line?

Quote

Staff recommends that the Board approve certification of this petition.

But from there, it apparently went to the 4 member Board, resulting in a straight party-line vote, with 2 Repubs rejecting the staff report recommendation, and two Dems voting to certify. So being deadlocked, the vote failed.

Fortunately, it is in fact being brought to the Michigan Supreme Court, where Dem appointments hold a slim majority. I’m thinking this move to block the amendment will backfire, big-time.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: Numo
Date: September 01, 2022 02:04PM
Quote
Speedy
Quote
mattkime
They wanted to find a technicality and they did. Its BS.

Not really, not when it occurs repeatedly. A spacing error at the end of a line? Ok, that’s a technicality. They must have hired an antiabortion expert in Quark.

I was wondering how they made the word spacing so tight.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: JoeH
Date: September 01, 2022 02:05PM
Quote
pdq
Fortunately, it is in fact being brought to the Michigan Supreme Court, where Dem appointments hold a slim majority. I’m thinking this move to block the amendment will backfire, big-time.

Michigan Supreme Court judges are elected. Vacancies from death or resignations are temporarily filled by appointments until the next general election.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: Lemon Drop
Date: September 01, 2022 02:06PM
Quote
pdq
From a link in the NYT paper, to this, a staff report from the Michigan Bureau of Elections:

Quote

On August 18, 2022, Citizens to Support MI Women and Children (Citizens) submitted a challenge to the form of the petition. The challenge did not call individual signatures into question but instead challenged the entirety of the drive. Citizens argued that the Board should reject the petition because minimal spacing throughout the text of the constitutional amendment language within the substance of the petition resulted in series of words being condensed into long, nonsensical letter combinations. Citizens argued that a petition cannot insert nonexistent words into the Constitution.

In response to Citizens’ allegations that the minimal spacing renders the petition unreadable and the words “gibberish,” RFFA provides an affidavit from the printer of the petition, stating that spaces are included in the full text of the proposed constitutional amendment. Moreover, RFFA states that people can read and understand the proposed amendment notwithstanding any issues with word spacing, and those who signed the petition understood it.

As the staff report points out:

Quote

The RFFA petition includes the same letters, arranged in the same order, as the petition conditionally approved at the March 23rd Board meeting, accounting for the removal of the word “the” which was the subject of the conditional approval. Certain portions of the petition have smaller spaces between words; the spacing between words in some instances appears similar to the spacing between letters within words. The Michigan Election Law is silent on the amount of space that must be between letters and words in a petition. Section 482 sets strict requirements for the size of the petition sheet and the various font sizes for the headings, the 100-word summary, and the full text of the amendment. MCL 168.482. It does not provide requirements as to spacing or “kerning”—the term for adjusting the space between characters in proportional font.

…and so, also finding the number of signatures was well above needed, the staff report bottom line?

Quote

Staff recommends that the Board approve certification of this petition.

But from there, it apparently went to the 4 member Board, resulting in a straight party-line vote, with 2 Repubs rejecting the staff report recommendation, and two Dems voting to certify. So being deadlocked, the vote failed.

Fortunately, it is in fact being brought to the Michigan Supreme Court, where Dem appointments hold a slim majority. I’m thinking this move to block the amendment will backfire, big-time.

I hope you're right. Sounds like a fair and reasonable outcome.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: DeusxMac
Date: September 01, 2022 02:15PM
Quote
Ammo
Quote
Speedy
Quote
mattkime
They wanted to find a technicality and they did. Its BS.

Not really, not when it occurs repeatedly. A spacing error at the end of a line? Ok, that’s a technicality. They must have hired an antiabortion expert in Quark.

I was wondering how they made the word spacing so tight.

NOT a "spacing error". The text is "Justified". See my* post above - [forums.macresource.com]


*I dealt with these technical issues for a living.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: Acer
Date: September 01, 2022 02:18PM
They should submit all supporting documents in Comic Sans.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: AllGold
Date: September 01, 2022 03:59PM
I could read it just fine. My only beef is I don't think text should be all caps. EVER. wink smiley
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: pdq
Date: September 01, 2022 04:54PM
Quote
JoeH
Quote
pdq
Fortunately, it is in fact being brought to the Michigan Supreme Court, where Dem appointments hold a slim majority. I’m thinking this move to block the amendment will backfire, big-time.

Michigan Supreme Court judges are elected. Vacancies from death or resignations are temporarily filled by appointments until the next general election.

Thank you for the correction.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: August West
Date: September 02, 2022 09:25AM
Quote
Acer
They should submit all supporting documents in Comic Sans.

ftw smiley


Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: JoeH
Date: September 02, 2022 09:49AM
Quote
AllGold
I could read it just fine. My only beef is I don't think text should be all caps. EVER. wink smiley

Yeah, but the all caps section is probably required by the laws or regulations for the formatting of petitions. Something required by the legal type who have no sense of what is readable.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: GGD
Date: September 02, 2022 09:57AM
Quote
AllGold
I don't think text should be all caps. EVER. wink smiley

You never lived in punch card era when keypunches (and most computer systems) only supported upper case.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: JoeH
Date: September 02, 2022 10:25AM
Quote
GGD
Quote
AllGold
I don't think text should be all caps. EVER. wink smiley

You never lived in punch card era when keypunches (and most computer systems) only supported upper case.

Yeah, I even worked on an older CDC system where they used that to save storage space. Characters were stored in a 6-bit "byte" which only allowed 64 different characters, 10 to a 60-bit word. So the alphabet, numbers, arithmetic operators, punctuation, etc. In text fields they were defaulted to represent lower case, a capital was preceded by a shift character to indicate upper case. Otherwise upper case when used everywhere else. There also was an IBM 7-bit character coding and some other ones we would consider odd 40-50 years later.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: Acer
Date: September 02, 2022 01:13PM
TOS and warranties frequently have all-caps sections among normal case. What would that have to do with punch cards?
Options:  Reply • Quote
Re: Who screwed this up?
Posted by: AllGold
Date: September 02, 2022 01:44PM
Quote
GGD
Quote
AllGold
I don't think text should be all caps. EVER. wink smiley

You never lived in punch card era when keypunches (and most computer systems) only supported upper case.

WRONG.
Options:  Reply • Quote
Newer Topic Older Topic
Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.

Click here to login

Online Users

Diana , Fritz , kledo , MindMeld , msglee , pdq , Rolando , SurfMacJpMtb
Guests: 378
Record Number of Users: 186 on February 20, 2020
Record Number of Guests: 5122 on October 03, 2020