In Photos: With Tehran synagogue doubling as polling station, Jews vote in Iran elections

[Cheese Sandwich]

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/1.705897

[Mike__M]

1. So, Secretary Clinton's enemies

are the ones behind the tables? Or all of them?

Anyway, it doesn't look much like the voting in the movie comedy Secret Ballot.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

2. I like their voting style. The tables in my home precinct ...

... never have snacks on them.

[Cheese Sandwich]

3. I see something that looks like sticks of butter

[Igel]

4. Well, yes.

They get their own representative. They don't vote in the general. It means that their rep, one out of hundreds, is basically powerless. They have no reason to turn to any non-Jewish rep.

Imagine having blacks in the US vote in separate but equal elections for reps that would represent them and only them. Perhaps 12% of the House would be black. And if you didn't like what the other 88% of the reps did, screw you. If you're left out, well, you have a vote. Carefully segregated, carefully marginalized.

And you know the history: You play by the rules, because if you don't then the wonderful social contract says you're in rebellion against the majority. And submission is the name of the game.

Racial gerrymandering in the US works sort of the same way at times. It's okay at times to create a safe seat, meaning 60% or so from a given privileged class, AA or Latino. It's not okay to minimize their importance by diluting their vote. In cases where they form a minority so small that even in the committee they're being elected to they'd be ignored or at least ignorable, it's a close call. But it's not okay to say, "Okay, Iowa, you get X delegates, of which Y are black only. Wherever you are, if you're black you vote for the black candidates." Some might like that, but a covert separate-but-equal thread runs through a fair amount of progressive-liberal discourse. It's just really, really rude to say it.

[Cheese Sandwich]

5. That's interesting.

I don't know anything about that.

Maybe I'll try to read up on it.