He beat somebody in the head repeatedly WITH A FLAMING FIREPLACE LOG

I know. I live in Fall River, and know full well everything that happened in that election. The ballot had 2 items on it: 1) Should Correia be removed from office, and 2) who should be elected mayor if he is recalled. To boot, there was a 3 way race with no run off for the mayor’s office, which split the anti Correia vote, allowing him to get elected again.

The courts set a precedent several years back when Flanagan was up for recalled and he challenged a BoE ruling that he could not appear on the ballot as a candidate for mayor in the same election in which he was up for recall.

The issue here is first past the post. If this election had used ranked choice voting or another method requiring over 50% to win, he never would have won. He was recalled, but then won a plurality of only 35%: https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/03/13/fall-river-mayor-wins-recall-election

So the issue is that the voting system allows someone with 35% of the vote to win simply because there were a lot of candidates in the race. No way would he have won under RCV as he was never going to be the 2nd choice candidate of the 61% of people who voted to recall him in the first place.

That doesn't really accurately describe the will of the people. 66% of voters voted to remove him from office.

The same election idiotically included him as an option on the 2nd question of who who the next mayor should be and there were like 5 candidates. He got 35% of that vote, a few hundred more than the next closest answer and was removed/re-elected on the same ballot.

At the end of the day, it's true to say that 2 out of every 3 voters who participated in the recall did not want him staying in office. It's dishonest to frame it as Fall River embracing a crook.

All you can really infer from that election is that a) there should be some overhaul to a process that allows a recall election to have the incumbent be on a replacement question and b) ranked-choice voting almost certainly would have prevented this.

Even then, this was before the 2nd set of charges about bribery, which actually might matter to people. The SnoOwl stuff was a more tenuous case and didnt really breach the public trust.

>I think this is what bothers me about these quippy, short-form discussions like we have on Reddit is you kinda always end up with "okay we all agree on X, right?"

This is a complete false premise word salad. I probably shoudn't even be engaging since you start up so disingenuously but ok, whatever. Just because I didn't write a multi paragraph rant in response to a deliberately nebulous example doesn't mean I'm being "quippy."

Nobody just arbitrarily decided "pre teens can't drive." Age limits were established for driving because the societal cost of bad immature drivers outweighed the negligible benefit of a few standout cases who are good enough to handle it. In fact, the trend has been to increase the age limit over time societal mobility has increased and tolerance for unsafe situations has generally decreased.

Developed, modern societies have all collectively come to roughly the same solution over literal centuries of development that there are things young people are generally not equipped to handle as well as adults and therefore should not be allowed to do due to risk to self and others. We don't let a 12 year old drive because the overwhelming majority of 12 year olds lack the risk assessment skills and appreciation for safety from a mix of lack of experience and biological development. We also set age limits for other things like drinking, other heavy machinery, pornography, and yes, holding certain offices. Likewise private companies like banks and car rentals won't extend certain business opportunities to people who they have similar concerns about because their investment risk is deemed to be too high.

Reasonable arguments can be had about any of those and whether the currently set limits are appropriate, but you're not the fucking arbiter of that conversation and you projecting about wanting to hear the "road of the crowd" or whatever is not fostering that conversation or adding anything of value. If the person who gave that example wants to expand on it and counter my answer to their question with some points of their own, they know where to find this thread. You on the other hand could no doubt find something better to do with your time that wax philosophical about what you think is the tragic downfall political discourse or whatever.