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Old 2008-12-16, 00:08   Link #5341
ZephyrLeanne
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Wellington, NZ
Age: 43
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anh_Minh View Post
No... but it's precisely as he said: more accurate than the electoral college. Or do you prefer the 49% to take away the rights of the 51%?
Well, in a country with only TWO political parties, that's a correct statement, but look at those countries with like 4-5 parties or more. THAT's worse. Even 21% of the population can well take away the rights of the other 79% if they voted as such:

(names are purely fictional)

Right Party: 21%
Labor: 20%
Center Party: 20%
Green Party: 19%
Left Party: 20%

Aha.
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Old 2008-12-16, 01:05   Link #5342
solomon
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aquillion View Post
But that cuts both ways. New York and California are huge democratic strongholds with massive populations and comparatively low voter turnout in many of the most democratic areas, precisely because they always go Democratic and so many people never bother to vote.

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.
I can kind of understand your feelings if it is true (I'm from Northen VA, which is a world away from most of the rest of the state and the relationship in the General Assembly is uneasy at best).

Yet that being said the Rural/Urban thing by states is somewhat misleading. Cause most states are breadbasket middle america with the exception of a few urban centers. Also a unique anomaly to the high industry/ high taxes thing is Texas. It has one of the lowest tax rates and one the highest economic outputs. Many say it's due to buisness incentives and productivity.

Plus the southeast as in NC (Charlotte, Raleigh/Durham) and GA (Atlanta) are gradually becoming more and more important economically just like the NE and California. Even Birmingham in Alabama is growing too, so I think you are a little off the mark there.

Now the DEEP SOUTH, Great Plains and Appalachia are a different story.

Also, I think it's the closest towards perfect equal representation in terms of voicing your needs in the federal structure. Otherwise, it would be rather unfair don't you think?
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Old 2008-12-16, 01:52   Link #5343
iLney
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Join Date: Aug 2008
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aquillion View Post
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.
Wait, I thought that only the House of Representatives could legislate spending bills

Blame the people, don't blame the system! (sadly, this absurd thing is true....)
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Old 2008-12-16, 08:17   Link #5344
Anh_Minh
I disagree with you all.
 
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ShimatheKat View Post
Well, in a country with only TWO political parties, that's a correct statement, but look at those countries with like 4-5 parties or more. THAT's worse. Even 21% of the population can well take away the rights of the other 79% if they voted as such:

(names are purely fictional)

Right Party: 21%
Labor: 20%
Center Party: 20%
Quebec Party: 19%
Left Party: 20%

Aha.
I don't know Canadian politics, but in any democracy, you need more than a tiny plurality to govern.
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Old 2008-12-16, 08:28   Link #5345
ZephyrLeanne
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Anh_Minh View Post
I don't know Canadian politics, but in any democracy, you need more than a tiny plurality to govern.
Well, not Canada, sorry. I meant some others, where all it requires is a simple majority. Will edit the above post. But still, it DOES happen, at times.
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Old 2008-12-16, 08:30   Link #5346
Anh_Minh
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Join Date: Dec 2005
What I mean is, in your setup, in any democracy, the "winning" party will have to compromise with at least two others to get anything done.
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Old 2008-12-16, 08:34   Link #5347
ZephyrLeanne
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Anh_Minh View Post
What I mean is, in your setup, in any democracy, the "winning" party will have to compromise with at least two others to get anything done.
Hm, that's true. But then again, there are cases where not all the MPs are voted by public, some are nominated.
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Old 2008-12-24, 23:13   Link #5348
Aya Reiko
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Update on the Minnesota Senate race:

The Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously shot down Coleman's latest attempt to hold on to his Senate seat.

In all likelihood, Al Franken will become the newest Senator from the State of Minnesota.
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Old 2008-12-25, 00:59   Link #5349
Shadow Kira01
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aya Reiko View Post
Update on the Minnesota Senate race:

The Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously shot down Coleman's latest attempt to hold on to his Senate seat.

In all likelihood, Al Franken will become the newest Senator from the State of Minnesota.
There is one thing I don't understand about American elections. Haven't the election battle ended over a month ago, why are they still competing over senate seats?
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Old 2008-12-25, 01:08   Link #5350
SeedFreedom
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shadow Minato View Post
There is one thing I don't understand about American elections. Haven't the election battle ended over a month ago, why are they still competing over senate seats?
The difference in votes was under 200. That's an extremely small amount and well within margin or error. So every vote had to be recounted and many disputed.
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Old 2008-12-25, 02:52   Link #5351
Aquillion
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shadow Minato View Post
There is one thing I don't understand about American elections. Haven't the election battle ended over a month ago, why are they still competing over senate seats?
What they're competing over is votes that are not 'clear'. Basically, a certain percentage of votes -- a very small percentage -- have problems with them in one way or another. Some of these problems are technicalities (voters are not allowed to write their name or any 'distinguishing mark' on a ballot in Minnesota, and doing so invalidates their vote), while others are genuinely hard to interpret. This article gives some examples of disputed ballots.

There are other sources of irregularity, too -- errors in the counting, either mechanical or human-based. Ballots that somehow miss getting counted the first time or the other. Absentee ballots may take a while to arrive even if postmarked in time, or may get lost in the mail. And so forth.

These things only make up a very small percentage of the total vote... but there were 2.9 million votes cast in Minnesota on election day, so even a very small percentage of that is enough to swing a very close election -- for instance, this shift is less than 300 votes, which is just around 0.01 percent of the total votes cast (that's not one percent, that's point zero one percent.) Even if only one in ten-thousand votes has a problem with it, that could influence the results.

On top of that, these problems are not necessarily evenly distributed over all voters. Often, there are only one or two places with problems -- one incompetent poll worker or malfunctioning machine can cause a huge number of problems in their district, say. If that happens in a Democratic-leaning district, the 'corrections' in the recount will heavily favor Democrats; if it happens in a Republican-leaning district, the corrections will favor Republicans. And (perhaps because Democrats get more votes from extremely poor lower-class voters), it is more common for voter errors to be made by Democratic voters than Republicans.

Nobody is actually casting votes at this point. But no matter how good the system is, there are occasional glitches... and when the vote comes down to a point-zero-one-percent difference, those glitches can make a big difference. This was what happened to the general election in Florida in 2000, although it wasn't quite this close, and in that case the Supreme Court eventually halted recounts...

Last edited by Aquillion; 2008-12-30 at 00:58.
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Old 2008-12-25, 21:09   Link #5352
Aya Reiko
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Final Results (Unofficial):


Looking ahead to 2010:

Dems defend 17 seats, Reps defend 19 seats
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Old 2008-12-30, 00:22   Link #5353
ZephyrLeanne
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aya Reiko View Post
Final Results (Unofficial):


Looking ahead to 2010:

Dems defend 17 seats, Reps defend 19 seats
Your source? I don't see any proof for this.
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