Tag: Georgia

2022 Election Results and Reflections

Posted on by David Rodeback

We’re less than eight weeks past Election Day, that increasingly fuzzy temporal landmark, and I don’t want to speak too soon, but I think the 2022 election is finally over.

Georgia’s routine, belated runoff is history. Counties and states with more or less functional election apparatus have long since released their official numbers. And in the last few days three more things happened. Pennsylvania finally certified its results, the final tally in the State of Washington gave one US House seat to the Democrat candidate who had trailed earlier, and, though an appeal is pending, an Arizona judge rejected Kari Lake’s challenge to that state’s gubernatorial results.

I waited to finish and post this commentary until after my own county in Utah, aptly named Utah County, certified its results — on schedule — just before Thanksgiving, because my friend and neighbor Sarah Beeson was in an Alpine School Board race so close that we didn’t know the outcome before then. She won by 60 votes or 0.28%.

After that, I waited for Georgia and some non-electoral things. I don’t do this for a living, you see. And who wants to pore over politics at Christmas? But Christmas is now 364 weeks away. Let’s get this behind us while it’s still 2022, shall we?

Perspectives on Ukraine (3 & 4): Putin’s Sanity and a Clear Line

Posted on by David Rodeback

Last time, I wrote of my feelings about Russia and Ukraine and described pieces of the two nations’ history together. It was both a disclosure and a starting point for discussing the present war and its implications. Today’s two perspectives focus more directly on the war. The first, er, third, involves our attitudes about the current Russian autocrat — specifically, Vladimir Putin’s sanity. The fourth is a consideration which ought to inform our responses.

3. Don’t Dismiss Vladimir Putin as Insane

It’s tempting to say Vladimir Putin is insane, end of story. After all, he is a dictator. He invaded another nation to build his empire. He and his proxies have occasionally mentioned nuclear weapons. And his forces have deliberately targeted civilians, including refugees and hospitals. In our enlightened twenty-first-century hauteur, we’d like that list of offenses to be diagnostic.

Some have a further motive, conscious or otherwise, for questioning Putin’s sanity. They’re not comfortable with the basic moral categories, good and evil. If they can dismiss him as insane, they don’t have to face the fact that he is evil. Yes, evil, not merely misunderstood.

Vladimir Putin - Putin's sanity
Russian President Vladimir Putin

But there’s more at stake than morality. If we ascribe Putin’s offenses to insanity, we risk missing things we need to see and learn. Then we end up doing the wrong things or not doing the right things. Either way, people die who didn’t have to die.

On the 2020 Presidential Election and Its Aftermath

Posted on by David Rodeback

In the two months since Election Day I’ve been increasingly intrigued by the certitude I encounter in people on both sides of this question: was the 2020 presidential election stolen? If you’re certain it was or certain it wasn’t, I wonder: why do you think what you think? We’ll talk about this.

I’ve also been thinking that people on both sides are missing something important about the US Supreme Court. This leads to unreasonable expectations and fears about the Court’s possible interventions. We’ll talk about this too.

I have some specific thoughts about what should and shouldn’t happen tomorrow, when Congress meets in joint session to observe the counting of electoral votes, and what should happen thereafter. I’ll mention them as we conclude.