Let's "Spark a Conversation" About Danny Moore

12 thoughts on “Let’s “Spark a Conversation” About Danny Moore”

1. I was just reading about how he was selected to the commission. A 300-person pool of Republicans was winnowed down to 50, and then Moore was randomly selected as one of two Republicans from the 50-person pool. I don't know how well the 50-person pool was vetted, but unless I'm really missing something the random selection part of this process seems like something worth a serious re-think.

    

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   1. Drawing two names from a pool of Republicans virtually guarantees that at least one will be nutjob.

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      1. 

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   2. So how was it decided to have a Republican, as opposed to a Democrat or Unaffiliated, or a professional staff person, chair this cimmittee? Who picked the “pool”? 
       

      I’m just afraid that this clown will do a McConnell or Grantham and gum up the process in favor of maps that he likes. Will he have the powerto set agendas and priorities?

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2. This is nuts. Did they vet any of the applicants?  He needs to resign.

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3. Reminds me of the smack many of my old friends used to post about Obama. They’d often qualify the posts (which were outrageous) with, “well, this may not be be true but wouldn’t it be something if it was?!?”

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4. It has to be a fundamental rule of a democracy that every participant accept the results of the elections. Otherwise, we might as well go straight to the guns and tanks in the streets stage.

   So, how is it that the Chairperson of the ‘independent’ state redistricting committee is someone who just tried to overthrow democracy by spreading the evidence-free Big Lie that led directly fellow travelers in the Republican movement mounting an assault on the Capitol with the direct purpose of overturning the last election results?

   Here’s a sentence which illustrates why it is important to exclude the people who want to destroy democracy from the democracy….. Why can’t I choose to believe that any and all elections under the districts formed by this anti-democracy conspiracy theorist are automatically rigged and false by definition?

   Democracy is an common exercise in faith. I now have no faith in this redistricting commission.

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5. Random selection turns up some truly RANDOM results. 

   As I said in a comment before:

   The process of selecting people to the commissions is a weird amalgam.  Steps are:

   Phase One.  Individuals apply using online application process. Phase Two.  Nonpartisan staff review of applications for the initial applicant pool. Phase Three.  The judicial panel randomly selects 300 Democrats, 300 Republicans, and 450 unaffiliated voters to establish a selection pool of 1,050 people. Phase Four.  The judicial panel reviews applications and narrows the pool down to 50 Democrats, 50 Republicans, and 50 unaffiliated voters to establish a pool of 150 people. Phase Five.  The judicial panel randomly selects 6 commissioners (2 Democrats, 2 Republicans, and 2 unaffiliated voters) from the 150-person pool.  Phase Six.  4 legislative leaders select 10 applicants each from the initial applicant pool and submit them to the judicial panel. Phase Seven.  The judicial panel selects 4 commissioners, 1 from each of the legislative leaders’ pools.  Phase Eight.  The judicial panel selects 2 commissioners from the original pool of 450 randomly selected unaffiliated voters.

   Once selected, the commission gets a set of criteria of what may or may not be considered.  The professional staff prepares a draft map, maps submitted by members of the public are on file and may be considered by the commission. There are at least 3 meetings in each Congressional district for public input and comment. After all the hearings, the staff prepare another map.  Commissioners can request alternative maps.

   "At least 8 of the 12 commissioners, including at least 2 unaffiliated commissioners, must approve the final map, and the map must be made public before the commission votes on it." Once approved by the commission, it is submitted to the Supreme Court,

   "The Colorado Supreme Court must approve the final map unless the court finds that the commission abused its discretion in applying or failing to apply required criteria."

   No matter who is the chair, there are any number of bulwarks to prevent "control."

   As best I can tell from the press release, Moore was in the first group, the "randomly selected by a judicial panel."

    

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   1. That's a confusing sentence: "randomly selected by a judicial panel."

      Was his name literally randomly selected i.e. out of hat, or was he selected by a panel that "reviewed" the applications?  What does that word "reviewed" mean in this context?

      So, I suspect there are some loopholes in the above for stacking the process, aka the electoral college type of end run.  But I have not analyzed it deeply enough.  But it makes me wonder, was the GOP good at exploiting the loophole and the Dems not?

      In any case, it seems weird and suspicious that the GOP managed to land the perfect clown in the perfect spot at random, unless they manged to stack a few hundred perfect clowns as applicants.

      Finally, the buried lede here seems to be that he managed to get himself in the role of chairman. How was that assigned? Was he elected by fellow commission members?  That would be very troubling.

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      1. Thing is, his straight resume-type qualifications seem pretty darn impressive. Some types of high-level vetting then get into things like fringe views, odd habits, objectionable behavior, dangerous alliances, etc., but I wonder if that happened with these applications.

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         1. How did such a data nerd start believing in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories?

            A social media scan should have been part of the vetting process. 

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      2. MartinMark, I’m pretty certain the commission staff would be able to tell you precisely how things were done this year.  You can email Julia Jackson, Public Information Officer and Redistricting Analyst, julia.jackson@state.co.us

         At a guess, it would be putting identical slips of paper with each of the names into a black box, and having someone reach in to grab two.  

         In the second round, when the 4 legislative leaders have narrowed the names down to 10 each and the judicial panel is picking one, there has to be some selection to insure some diversity in location, as the commission is supposed to have a member from each Congressional district. I’d also guess there is a “choice” factor to have different genders and race/ethnicity.

         The review by nonpartisan staff happens immediately after application.  I expect the staff was instructed to get to pools of 300 from each major party and 450 for Unaffiliated and minor party.   by a quick review to

         • make certain the applications were complete and registration status was accurate,
         • weed out those put in by insincere persons (“Hughy Duck” and “Amanda Hug” would be screened),
         • take out any wildly inappropriate (“here’s one from someone with an offender’s community re-introduction address.  Can that someone travel to meetings?”), and
         • then did a rough sort based on “how well do we expect him or her to deal with committee meetings?”).

         Then count off the top 300 or 450.

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