Politics Sucks.

[badstar]

So I posted a bit on another forum about Michael Smith, the guy I posted about a few back right here and his impressive political platform.

Someone else posted a response not to vote for this guy if he makes it to the general election, or any third party candidate because that's how we wound up with Bush.

I know that you see my journal...this post isn't a criticism to you, it's just my thoughts on the subject in general, I've been hearing comments about this subject for at least a few elections now.

How is there supposed to be any chance of things improving in this country if we throw votes at some other guy just because they're on a major party? How are the other parties ever supposed to gain any status if people don't vote for their candidates? If you vote for the right candidate, they might win. If you vote for someone else, that's one more chance that they won't win.

Then again, I think the whole electoral college thing screws it all up and just needs to go. One person, one vote. One vote directly to the person that they're voting for that is.

I have a problem with voting for the second-least-sucky candidate. Or the least-sucky-candidate-on-a-major-party-ticket when someone else is six squillion times better.

Comments

[unprotoize.livejournal.com]

Fuego, you live in Maryland, which electorally speaking is pretty comfortably a blue state. People who live in overwhelmingly red or blue states can vote for third party candidates with a clear conscience because their individual vote doesn't really count anyway. A person in Ohio, Oregon or Pennsylvania really really has to be serious about wanting that third party to get their vote because it really is a vote for or against the incumbent. But you are free to vote your conscience with little care for whether or not the republican fascists get to continue.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

Well, the incumbent can't remain incumbent next time.

Get rid of the blasted electoral college.

[blaisepascal]

The electoral college isn't the problem with the Michael Smith issue, but rather that the election system is "first-past-the-post".

It makes no sense to vote for a third-party candidate you know isn't going to win because it effectively takes a vote away from the cadidate you most support who has the best shot at winning -- invariably one of the two major candidates.

Of course, this isn't ideal, since it just enforces the power of the two major parties.

Personally, I agree with the observation made by the French Revolutionary and mathematician the Marquis de Condorcet that while deciding who, in a 2-person election, has the support of the majority is easy, it isn't as clear in a 3- or more-person election. He ended up suggesting that if any single candidate was supported by a majority of the population over all other candidates considered singly, then that candidate should win.

As an example, if 1/3 of the electorate would rank four candidates in this order: Alice > Bob > Chuck > Dave (meaning they prefer Alice to Bob, Alice or Bob to Chuch, and anyone else to Dave), and another 1/3 would rank them Chuck > Bob > Dave > Alice, and the last third would rank them Dave > Bob > Alice > Chuck, then since 2/3 of the electorate prefer Bob to Alice, 2/3 prefer Bob to Chuck, and 2/3 prefer Bob to Dave, then the Marquis of Condorcet would say that Bob should win.

Obviously, the plurality voting system we have doesn't collect enough information to determine who Condorcet would say should win. And (not so obviously) this criterion isn't always satisfiable. In the example, if we assume that Bob was not in the race, then 2/3 prefer Alice to Chuck, 2/3 prefer Chuck to Dave, and 2/3 prefer Dave to Alice. But random voting experiments show that in about 95% of the time, Condorcet's Criterion is satisfied.

I wish, for a number of reasons, that we had elections decided by some variant of the method Condorcet suggested.

[tomatoe333.livejournal.com]

I would me MUCH happier with the system that a lot of third world countries use.

Hold an election (ignore, for the moment, any issues with ballot-box stuffing and security). If any one candidate has more than 50% of the popular vote, he/she is declared the winner.

If not, the two candidates who finished highest go to a runoff election, since neither had a clear mandate. The "two" here is kind of flexible. What you want is to be able to get a clear mandate out of the runoff election. The runoffs continue until one candidate has a clear >50% vote from the electorate.

I would also be VERY happy to have an "abstain" option, but that would probably cause a constitutional crisis, if noone got elected.

[pagandenma.livejournal.com]

Gryff and I caem up with a way to re-work the electoral college thing:

1. Every state gets 10 electoral votes, for a total of 500 nationwide.

2. Say in Maryland, Candidate A got 60& of the vote, Candidate B got 30% of the vote, and Candidate C got 10%.

3. Candidate A then gets 6 of MD's electorals, Candidate B 3,and Candidate C 1.

4. Whoever gets the most of the electorals, wins (and it has to be a clear majority of them as well, or it's run-off time).

This way EVERY vote counts, not just the first 51%.

[psyilax.livejournal.com]

"...electoral college thing screws it all up and just needs to go."

Most everybody here in Michigan agrees with that sentiment, including myself. It no longer has any purpose, and there is nothing forcing those people who are members of the college to vote honestly (though I would hope that they do).

Wisdom of the Past

[saratoga80.livejournal.com]

George Washington cautioned against America forming political parties, because he felt allegiance would be more important than issues.

The reason why we have an electroal college is actually rooted in the same problem we saw in 2000, you can never be sure of which votes, on an individual level, are honest. In Hawaii, GOP votes are regularly tossed. In 1960, 100,000 people voted for JFK - unregistered or dead, in Illinois. And of course, we have the question of Florida's idiotic chad system where we could not possibly no if Bush or Gore could ever have won. (By the way, that was Sandra Day O'Connor's [and the rest of the majority] grounds for effectively putting GWB in office - it is impoissble for any one governmental body to cerify every vote as valid, it's a flawed system run by flwed humans, and certainty is impossible)

I like pagandenma's idea. However, you would have the problem of selecting whom the electors were. And let's take the bluest of blue states, Massachussets, with some 62% favoring Kerry. In your system, 6.2 delegates would vote for Kerry, 3.7 would vote for Bush, and .1 would vote for Badnarik. (who?) Since you cannot split people in an electoral college thusly, I propose an alteration. Keep the current *number* of Electors, change the vote tally so that all votes would round at .50000000000 and up, and keep those percentages.

To continue with Mass. as a test state, this would mean of its 12 electoral votes, 7 would go to Kerry, 4 to Bush and 1 to Badnarik, who while he did not tally the requisite percentage of .5%, had the advantage of beign 3rd place overall. This method also has the extra advantage of guaranteeing electoral votes to 3rd parties, without violating the majority of the will of the people.

Re: Wisdom of the Past

[saratoga80.livejournal.com]

BTW, for all of those who read fuego's journal, I am posting it my own for further discussion, since she may not want to clog up her journal. Please feel free, all of you, to comment in mine.

[stormmoon.livejournal.com]

Ideally to me, people would base their vote not on "who's democrat" or "who's republican" but rather "who do I agree with most on the issues most important to me".

And yes, electorial college needs to go, in my opinion.

[tantric-pixie.livejournal.com]

Yuck. That's a ridiculous argument... voting for one person among three (or more) gives a vote *to that person*. The vote isn't "supposed" to go to any one but who it was given to. (I've heard something like, "60% of votes for Ross should have gone to George." Well, no... they should go to whom ever a voter feels would best run the country.)

As for me, I live in Michigan, and dispite the electorial college bit (I've never understood how that came to be), since turning voting age I have and will continue putting a majority of my votes to Green, Libertarian, and Independant, based on party platform and personal standing on issues.