2008-12-14, 23:42 | Link #5321 | |
On a sabbatical
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Wellington, NZ
Age: 43
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2008-12-15, 00:03 | Link #5322 | |
Not Enough Sleep
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: R'lyeh
Age: 48
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Quote:
- Thomas Jefferson “The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” -Winston Churchill
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Last edited by Xellos-_^; 2008-12-15 at 00:24. |
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2008-12-15, 00:49 | Link #5323 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: PMB Headquarters
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2008-12-15, 00:51 | Link #5324 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 67
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The electoral college is NOT necessarily a bad thing.... some brief googling will supply reasons "for" and "against" continuing the college. Many states already require electors to follow the will of their districts.
ahem, Its kind of silly to presume to put words into someone's mouth misrepresenting them as taking an extremist position.
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Last edited by Vexx; 2008-12-15 at 01:25. |
2008-12-15, 00:53 | Link #5325 |
Not Enough Sleep
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: R'lyeh
Age: 48
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i prefer a republic like the US is currently where the rights and interest of the minorities are protected. Where it take a real majority at 60% to do anything not a majority of 50.0000000000001%
by minorities i mean people who hold views not share by the majorities. Not minorities as in backs, latino, asian, etc.
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2008-12-15, 01:46 | Link #5327 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: East Cupcake
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^I thought that close to 30 States had a law in place that made the electors pledge to follow the will of the popular vote when casting electoral votes? Then again, I have never been that sure as to what "pledge" means in the context of electoral law...
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2008-12-15, 01:53 | Link #5329 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 67
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Hmmm, I was under the impression that over half the states had an elector pledge ... my bad I guess? I'm not totally against the idea of removing the electoral college - only that changes to important systems be considered carefully.
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2008-12-15, 03:13 | Link #5331 |
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Boston
Age: 35
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We seem to have had a misunderstanding. When i said only Maine and Nebraska require electors to vote for the candidate that won their district, i meant they are the only two states which split their electoral votes by Congressional district. For example, in the recent election, McCain won 4 of Nebraska's electoral college votes and and Obama won 1.
More than half of the states may require their electors to vote for whoever won the popular vote in their state, but disloyal electors aren't a problem that anyone is concerned with (although there are a few every decade). The problem with the electoral college is that makes elections matter only in a few "swing" states. Candidates concentrate on the 15 or so close states each election and neglect the rest of the country. If you live in the majority of states which are solid Democrat or Republican, then voting doesn't matter at all. Also, small states which automatically have three electoral votes have more weight in the electoral college than bigger states (hypothetically, a person who votes in Wyoming has four times the voting power than a person who votes in Texas). And of course, there was the 2000 election where the candidate who won the popular vote didn't become president because they didn't win a majority of the electoral college votes. The National Popular Vote compact would fix all these issues. States would require their electors to vote for whichever candidate wins the national popular vote, not the candidate who won the popular vote in their state. Swing states would no longer matter and maybe voter turnout would be respectable for once because voting would matter wherever you live in the country. |
2008-12-15, 13:20 | Link #5332 | |
Not Enough Sleep
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: R'lyeh
Age: 48
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Quote:
the popular vote is not a very accurate portrayl of a countries feeling. Take Obama's recent victory, he got a majority of the popular vote but when you look at the number more carefully you see a different picture. Obama had the majority of his support in the NE and Western states. He was not very popular in the southern states. Obama enjoys the support of the cities and suburbs. He does not enjoy much support in rural areas. Saying a Candidate who won the popular vote has the support of the majority of the country is true but is not the whole truth.
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Last edited by Xellos-_^; 2008-12-15 at 15:09. |
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2008-12-15, 14:59 | Link #5333 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 67
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The other thing to be aware of is that pictures of the US "red/blue" or whatever are misleading because we don't have an even spread of population density. Especially in this election, many of the "red" states are comprised of vast distances of sparse population, whereas the blue states tended to be densely populated or had dense population centers.
If someone could create a map in which, each state's map size was adjusted by population before painting it a political color - that would be less deceiving to the eye. Even then many states painted red OR blue were actually 40/60 or even 49/51 splits - so you can't say State X has one set of values or another.
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2008-12-15, 16:21 | Link #5334 | |
思想工作
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Vereinigte Staaten
Age: 32
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2008-12-15, 16:23 | Link #5335 | ||
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Boston
Age: 35
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Edit: Ahh, it's supposed to be a map of the 2004 election, coloured by conspiracy theorist who believed there was vote rigging. Last edited by Autumn Demon; 2008-12-15 at 16:34. |
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2008-12-15, 17:15 | Link #5336 | |
耳をすませば
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Toronto, Canada
Age: 35
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[QUOTE=Xellos-_^;2109346
the popular vote is not a very accurate portrayl of a countries feeling. Take Obama's recent victory, he got a majority of the popular vote but when you look at the number more carefully you see a different picture.[/QUOTE] Do you mean electoral college? There was only about a 7% difference in the popular vote, which doesn't make it seem as if America overwhelmingly supported him. Seems to make sense. Quote:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...redblue512.jpg This one is more realistic, as it's shaded and is on a local level http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...nonlin1024.jpg
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2008-12-15, 18:06 | Link #5338 | |
I disagree with you all.
Join Date: Dec 2005
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2008-12-16, 00:08 | Link #5340 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2003
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Quote:
As a New Yorker myself, I strongly disagree with the assertion that there has to be some artificially-maintained balance between 'rural' and 'urban' interests. That's what got us into the situation we have now, where major, highly-productive industrialized urban areas pay huge amounts in taxes, while a disproportionate percentage of that money ends up going to undeveloped, backwater rural areas in the form of pork-barrel spending. The problem is more the senate than the electoral college -- urban and rural areas both pay taxes based primarily on their population (which, after all, is what produces their income), but every state has the same number of senators and the same power to pull in pork, so even a state that (comparatively) barely pays into the system at all, like Alabama or Alaska, gets a big chunk of the massive federal taxes payed disproportionately by the larger more prosperous states. Alabama, Alaska et all are, in effect, sucking New York dry. But it isn't New York that's suffering the worst from this; New York can afford it. The states that are suffering the worst from this are actually the rural states, which live off the teats of the industrial urban centers, and never end up having to industrialize themselves. The equal political power guaranteed by the senate means they never have to worry about trying to compete; they can just use their senators to pull an amount of Federal money that is grossly disproportionate, per capita. The result is states with terrible education, terrible healthcare, horribly low income per person, and massive amounts of crippling poverty. The governments in those states are actively harmful -- instead of having an incentive to vote for people who take measures to increase the state's long-term productivity, voters are encouraged to vote in senators like Ted Stevens who are good at bringing in pork, good at looting the taxes of those more industrialized urban states for cash. Why should voters support a long and painful road of economic development when they can just vote for a senator whose guaranteed political power can bring them amounts of cash that are (for their population) massively disproportionate to anything they could produce themselves? This is actually in their own best interest. Building up Alabama's infrastructure, urbanizing it and fixing its industry could take generations, and is going to be a painful process. Why would anyone vote for that when they can just vote for the senator who grabs as much of New York's tax dollars as possible and redirects it into dirt farming subsidies, ensuring that nobody has to industrialize at all? Alabama's low population and even lower industrial effectiveness compared to New York or California means that the proportion of federal dollars its senators can pull in is going to vastly outweigh anything their population can produce themselves via industrialization, completely screwing up their priorities. As long as rural states can depend on their guarantee of political power, they won't have an incentive to follow political strategies aimed at urbanizing and growing their own industrial power base. In the long run, this is harmful to both them and the country as a whole. If their political power more accurately represented their population, they would be forced to develop themselves instead of just looting the taxes of urban democratic states for cash. |
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debate, elections, politics, united_states |
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