The entire thread is an extreme hypothetical. Nobody, including yourself, on this forum has ever been the sole person who knows about some big vote-switching piece of information.

What happens to anyone in political discussion is not whether they omit publicly unknown facts, its that they omit publicly known facts. If we argue to persuade, we may not provide every possible fact that hinders our arguments. It is a part of thinking about public discourse as an exercise of power. And generally this is "ok".

I also think your "extreme hypothetical" really depends on the role you play. The most common such examples seem to the release of private sexual information. I'm generally of the opinion that as part of journalistic ethics, they should air on the side of restraint about airing such things. As in, I don't think the media has a duty to report, say, that someone is gay or having an affair. However, if I'm a democratic operative trying to get my guy elected (as in my role is explicitly about exercising power), then it is entirely reasonable they should try to get the media to report the affair or whatever.

I don't see that being the sole person is of great importance.

Impossible in most cases. It does raise a difficulty which is that revealing the facts may be hurting someone else (affairs, paying for an abortion etc). If it's something very serious such as rape then outing the victim isn't acceptable.

hey i'm just playing david's game, if you don't have anything to contribute beyond a personal attack on me then don't post at all

Hardly a personal attack, as I am sure you are quite proud of your work. I am simply pointing out that the source of information often times has a significant impact on how the information is received, particularly if that same source violates or pushes the elements that are found to be wrong. So, would your blog be a factor if you are debating how women are not treated well or are often objectified? Of course. Would it be a factor in a debate about tariffs? I doubt it. Call it a variation of a conflict of interest.

The same point could potentially be made toward the OP here as well, depending on the super secret stuff he kept super secret. Perhaps you can ask him while playing his game.

All the best.

so if in the context of david's political thought experiment i said to another poster, "i find you personally to be immoral based on things outside of this forum, and that if you knew of a pedophile running for US senate few people would believe you personally because they'd be horrified with your character", you'd say that's not a personal attack?

gtfo of here

What you choose to take as a personal attack is your business. You dish out a lot of them, so I would assume even if you identify one within your parameters that you would have a thick enough skin to not have an emotional reaction.

Regardless, my point still remains. If a person has a personal blog about how they get screaming drunk every night and they post a morally indignant post/secret about a public figure because they enjoy alcohol, my suggestion would be that that person get someone else who shares that viewpoint to make that case if the goal is to change the outlook on the public figure. If you believe that position is flawed, that's fine, we can certainly agree to disagree on it, and I respect that you are entitled to your beliefs, whatever they may be.

Hope that explained it, and no personal attack was meant, whether or not you believe one took place. If you still feel the need to vent, then tell me to gtfo again or that I do not post the quality of material that you, or do a quick dunk on a Trump tweet. Whatever works for the situation.

All the best.

i've noticed that you can't help yourself from resorting to personal attacks on other forum members whose politics you disagree with. it's constant from you. it's why you were exiled from the last politics forum. i don't understand why the mods are allowing it here.

you absolutely meant it as a personal attack on me, which flew out of you because for some reason you wanted to rhetorically defend a famous pedophile who recently ran for US senate in alabama. or maybe not to defend him, maybe you just wanted to hurt and annoy me personally. idk why else you would bring up stuff about me that has nothing to do with this topic or politics at all, to denigrate my character.

This squabble is pretty boring. Let's move on, please.

It is not boring, rather it is exceedingly boring, but it does make that other person feel a bit better, and that is needed in these times. He did bring up that I was temp banned here once (not exiled), and the irony of that, given recent events, is that it was years ago when I asked if people would turn on Mueller (people were celebrating his appointment at the time) if he did not generate the report that they wanted. Wonder how that turned out. Ideally a similar post to that will not be worthy of a ban in the current forums, but I respect the moderation choices as thus far they have followed the posted guidelines of the forum, and I will not reply to that other person in this thread any more as requested.

I am looking at this from a little bit of a different angle than most of you. Partially my fault due to the way I phrased the OP. I am thinking more of the electorate. Does a voter have a right to be angry if he would have changed his vote if he had information that was withheld from him. When Putin was discussing the hacking of Democratic emails that made Hillary look bad he denied that he did it but he then when on to say that the stuff that was divulged was true so it was a good thing it happened. (not to be confused with the untrue things that Russia was disseminating.)


Did he have a point?

In my particular case the rest of the media knew but wouldn't divulge it. It came down to me, just as if only I knew. That happens a lot. Dinah Titus won her election because I thought it was OK to change the results. (Again though in that particular case the voters who switched had a decent reason to. [ The married opponent was harassing a stripper he had had an affair with] And since she was reelected a bunch of times they should all thank me. But I often wondered whether my decision would have remained correct if the switch in election results was due to true info that only switched the votes of unthinking voters.)

Are you saying that the answer to this question is self evident?

The problem with withholding facts from irrational voters is that there isn't much evidence to suggest that the ones withholding facts are always rational. Thus a tendency to withhold facts could be seen as irrational in itself.

I would indeed suggest that if you take a good look at the transparency index, the further down you go, the more insane the regimes are.

I also think it is time we stopped treating voters as toddlers. It seems be a very negative self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sure. As I say, I think the role you are playing is important. In my mind, I think it violates journalistic ethics to reveal something like an affair (harassment is different, depends on details there). As a political operative or other partisan, I think this is fair game to try and leak as an exercise in political power.

IMO, the short answer is that it depends, and the long answer is it depends. The immediate answer I thought of was also a candidates homosexuality, where I don't think the info should be released. Also its worth noting that when there is something bad that a 'candidate of the good party' likes, its not so easily a dichotomy where releasing the info equates to the good partying losing. A lot of places in Alabama they could probably release info about the Republican candidate being a pedofile, cult-attending satanist, sub in a different republican in and they would win easily. So idk it just depends. If its obviously something that they should hate this individual candidate for, you should probably release it irregardless of the results, while if it isn't then you shouldn't.

This is a misstatement of the law. I assume you are referring FRE 403 or its state law counterparts. That rule states that a court may exclude relevant evidence if it believes the probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of one or more of the following: unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, wasting time, or needlessly presenting cumulative evidence.

The judge's opinion about the weight a jury "should" give evidence is mostly irrelevant. For example, even if a judge thinks that a jury will give more evidence to eyewitness testimony than it should, that evidence is coming in 100% of the time.

Also, Rule 403 applies with equal force to the prosecution/plaintiffs and defendants.

since the judge can throw out a jury,
's guilty verdict my misstatement regarding disallowing evidence doesn't change my point much.

In the real world, juries very frequently reach verdicts that are different than the verdict a judge would have reached, and it is extraordinarily infrequent for judges to toss a jury verdict, especially in a criminal case. Reducing awards of punitive damages in civil cases is much more common.

That's a politician's job.

Is a judge allowed to toss a not guilty verdict?