Cool voting trends :)

[Narrock]

Just ignore the troll, Ganzo.

[Drem]

Newest voting trend just in: You lost!

[ClakarEQ]

Yes you did

No, actually I didn't.

Do you see what I see?

[Gypsiyee]

According to the latest election news: 1. People most likely to vote in the 2012 election are voting for Romney. 2. Most senior citizens are voting Romney. 3. Most veterans are voting Romney. 4. Most registered Independents are trending toward Romney. 5. More and more women are trending toward Romney. 6. Key battleground states are trending Romney, with statistical dead heats in other states.

Oh.

[Tossica]

Cool voting trends, bro.

[Kaemon]

Fuck Electorial Votes.

Isn't it time we move to a popular vote? I believe this would open up the third party system we're all desperate for. And yes, I realize Romney would have lost anyway, but I can't fathom the idea that 55 electorial votes automatically go to democrats and 38 go to Republicans every single presidential election. CNN predicts with only 2% of the votes in that Romney will take Texas!! No fucking shit!!

I like the National Popular Vote (NPV) idea also where states will pledge their electorial votes to whomever has the popular vote.

This article says it best.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/171115/its-time-end-electoral-college#

What do you think?

[leah]

i think it would be cool if other states did what nebraska and maine do with electoral votes. in nebraska we have five total votes; two go to the winner of the popular vote, and the other three are split among the three districts and are decided by each district's popular vote. so, in 2008, omaha was able to swing its district vote (district 2, i believe?) to obama, so nebraska was a purple state for the first time ever, which is pretty cool. 4 votes to mccain, 1 to obama. this year they all went romney, of course... though here in lincoln, the split between dems and reps was like 1,500 votes? which was also pretty cool. lincoln and omaha are trending more and more to the middle of the road, and i like it.

[brinstar]

definitely the best solution

that way you don't have people in ass-end norcal pissed that their state always goes blue, and you don't have people in big cities mad about the rest of their state keeping everything red

much more democratic that way imo

[brinstar]

this year they all went romney, of course

you can thank republican gerrymandering for that

[Tossica]

Except the small towns will never get any political attention. No sense paying any attention to any places but those with the largest populations.

[Kaemon]

Do you think it would give a 3rd party an open window to sway a state? Can you imagine if a state went green instead of red/blue or purple?

[ClakarEQ]

I think those are great ideas but the money seems to only be in two places, red or blue. It's not so much green or grey (ind) couldn't get funding but the volume of cash the red and blue have is staggering.

Even this time around millions upon millions were used to defame the other.

Another negative side to this is, if we break all this down to counties or districts and then have really close elections, I could foresee added friction points for the extremes to latch on to. Not sure if that makes a whole lot of sense, hard to put in words. It would be like having the current fights on the state level brought down to smaller and smaller levels where I could see frustrations spiral into criminal actions. this is probably overly paranoid though :p

Also, I thought part of the purpose the current design of the electoral was to mitigate "stupid". So that uneducated BFE country bumpkins or inner-city life wasters, etc. can vote but at the end of the day, the choice is mitigated by the state all going one way (not a clue if there is any truth to this, just something I had in mind from a while back, thought I read it someplace . . .)

[Tossica]

Since we're speaking in hypotheticals. Put the issues on the ballot and an a, b, c, d, etc on how you think they should be best handled without a specific name attached and watch how many different parties spring up.

[Griever]

i think it would be cool if other states did what nebraska and maine do with electoral votes. in nebraska we have five total votes; two go to the winner of the popular vote, and the other three are split among the three districts and are decided by each district's popular vote. so, in 2008, omaha was able to swing its district vote (district 2, i believe?) to obama, so nebraska was a purple state for the first time ever, which is pretty cool. 4 votes to mccain, 1 to obama. this year they all went romney, of course... though here in lincoln, the split between dems and reps was like 1,500 votes? which was also pretty cool. lincoln and omaha are trending more and more to the middle of the road, and i like it.

This would be much better than the current system but I disagree that this is the best solution. The problem is that through the use of electoral votes, whether decided by district, popular vote, etc, deems the losing votes for that candidate null and void. This means that your vote has no meaning because the majority of your state/district disagreed with you. I believe all votes should be meaningful and equal across the country. If I move to California my vote would matter more than it would if I continued to vote in Virginia. That's just wrong.

There is no way you can manipulate the current system to make it truly democratic. The only way is by election through popular vote.

[leah]

well yeah, griever, it's not a PERFECT solution, but i think it would be a good stopgap until a complete revamp could come around. and honestly i'm pretty comfortable not letting the bumpkins have too big of a say.

just kidding.

[ClakarEQ]

Well if I had my way . . .

Should we not then include a litmus test (sp) of sorts such that you have answer some questions correctly to even be prompted for vote question?

Something like:
Who is Mitt Romney
a) GOP candidate
b) Sister Wives actor
c) Evil man from mars
d) none of the above

And if they answer falsely they don't get to vote for that "role" (in this case the pres.).

Sort of like baking in a test. You don't know what you can't see so it should cause less problems. I don't think some folks should vote. I think that voting is a privilege (as it’s not a right, Zan or someone schooled me on that).

Should you not have a certain knowledge level to vote in people of power?
If only "smart" people voted for positions they are knowledgeable in I'd be really curious how things turn out.

I guess I don't think people who believe Mitt is a polygamist or that Barack is a Muslim should vote. They should not have that privilege.

[Kaemon]

I'm not looking to change the constitution and our basic rights as a United States Citizen. As citizens, one of our basic rights is to vote, whether you have a basic knowledge of the candidate or not.

[brinstar]

personally i'd like to see an alternate vote system adopted, which i think is the same thing as an instant runoff - because it totally removes the spoiler effect

EDIT: bear with me here, this got a bit long

basically you rank your three favorite candidates in order of preference

brinstar goes to the poll:
1. stein
2. obama
3. johnson

mindia goes to the poll:
1. goode
2. romney
3. johnson

now let's say the national popular vote comes in like this:

obama 40
romney 38
johnson 8
stein 8
goode 4
ronald reagan 1
big bird 1

obviously RR and BB are not eligible, so the votes start switching right off the bat. for anyone who wrote big bird as their first choice, their vote automatically switches to their second choice. i'm guessing a BB voter will have obama as a second choice - and likewise, anyone with reagan as a first choice probably has romney as a second choice. once their votes are switched, the results are adjusted:

obama 41
romney 39
johnson 8
stein 8
goode 4

in round 2, goode voters get switched down to their second choice. most of them go either romney, johnson, or reagan - but since reagan is already out, a goode-reagan-romney voter now gets counted as a romney voter! so of goode's 4 points, romney gets 2, johnson gets 1, and reagan's 1 gets directed back to romney. new result:

obama 41
romney 42
johnson 9
stein 8

in round 3, stein's voters get switched to obama and johnson. (for some voters, obama represents their third choice on a bigbird-stein-obama ranking!)

obama 48
romney 42
johnson 10

in round 4, johnson's voters get switched. 7 points go to romney, but 3 go to obama (a fairly accurate representation of the way polls shifted when johnson was added as a third option). final score:

obama 51
romney 49

same exact result, and everyone got to vote their conscience. if you look back at the beginning, my stein-obama-johnson vote ultimately counted for obama, and mindia's goode-romney-johnson vote ultimately got counted for romney. that's actually BETTER than the current system because i don't have to feel like i "threw my vote away" and likewise mindia can vote for someone who represents his values even more than romney without hurting romney's chances.

remaining flaws:

1. over time, this system still trends toward two-party dominance

2. not all parties have equal access to campaigning dollars (hence why a campaign finance law overhaul would have to be included in whatever piece of legislation moves us to the AV system)

3. if you voted stein-johnson-bigbird your vote winds up in the trash (thought that's really no worse than the current system)

[Nusk]

electoral college was set up so the states elected the potus not the people. this was created during the framing to prevent the south from wielding too much power. the idea is that the president has to make decisions not based upon popularity, but based on what is good for the people. personally i wouldn't want to change the constitution on this one.

[ClakarEQ]

I'm not looking to change the constitution and our basic rights as a United States Citizen. As citizens, one of our basic rights is to vote, whether you have a basic knowledge of the candidate or not.

Be careful there I got beat up hard on the "right to vote" arguement to essentially confirm that right doesn't exist. Jesse Jackson was the last person I'm aware of that even tried to push legislation to make it a "right". You may have some "right" within your state constitution but federal voteing is a privledge and can be removed without cause or reason.

[Kaemon]

15th Amendment bro.

[Nusk]

15th amendment does not give you a right to vote. it prohibits states from denying the vote to people based upon class restrictions. If the 15th gave you the right to vote there would be no need for the 19th that prevents states from denying women the right.

there is no individual right to vote ANYwhere in the constitution. just amendments that prevent states from prohibiting certain people to vote.

it is an implied right.

[Kaemon]

Forgot about the 19th Amendment and the civil rights act of 1965 that prohibits states from not allowing blacks to vote. So all these amendments and acts added to the constitution is wrapped into one big bundle that as a United States Citizen whether you're born or naturalized, you have a right to vote. No matter your class, race, orientation, etc, etc.

The only time you lose your right to vote is when you're incarcerated, even as a member of the military where you lose certain citizen rights because the military is governed under their own rules, you still have the right to vote. We're argueing semantics for crying out loud.

[Nusk]

because SCOTUS decided semantics is important.

Bush vs Gore decision is based upon the idea that the constitution holds no individual mandate.
you have a right to vote in your state but not on the federal level