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Should You Vote?
George Bush's suggestion last week that the Net can turn a child's heart dark and murderous sparked a ton of comments and e-mail, much of it about whether people will vote in the presidential election or stay home. Frankly, I was surprised at the level of interest from the tech world -- including the many passionate pleas to vote. This is one of those conversations that ought to move beyond e-mail and into the open. A number said statements like Bush's -- and other Luddite, exploit-parental-fears posturing by Gore, Cheney and Lieberman about violence, "cultural pollution" and other dangers emanating from TV, Hollywood, the Net, and gaming -- were inspiring them to participate. Others said they would sit out the election to protest a process that seems irrelevant. So far, I haven't found my candidate. But if you've decided to vote and care to say why, here's your chance. People are definitely listening.
Hey Dave..
;-)
Well, you can always write in somebody that you think would do a good job. I wonder how many votes Ventura will get
Anyway, in addition to the top seven candidates that are on the ballot in enough states to possibly win, there are two more people running in Minnesota. IIRC, there's somebody from the Socialist Workers party, and another person that probably just filled out the paperwork on a lark (an `official' write-in candidate, as he/she didn't get enough signatures to actually be on the ballot).
Not that I think I'd vote for either of them, but hey...
I really got interested in the alternative voting methods as well. It would be interesting too see what would happen if a state somewhere voted for it's Electoral College members in that fashion.
Of the two alternatives I saw, approval vote and Borda count, I think I like Borda count the best. I find it hard to believe that approval voting would be a whole lot different than what we already have, but that's just my opinion.
As the article said, all voting methods can fail in some way. Borda appears to be the most fault-tolerant (though it does carry the requirement that you have to actually have some moderately well-formed opinions of each of the candidates, which would require much more even media coverage).
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Ski-U-Mah!
I don't know about US votes, but here in the UK there is the concept of a spoilt ballot: a voting slip which has not been correctly filled out.
Spoilt ballots get counted, and they are included in the announcement after the count.
I always vote, and I always find a canditate to vote for (usually the Labour candidate, although I was once strongly tempted to vote for Plaid Cymru's Cynog Davis, since he is an excellent constituency MP).
However, I have spoken to several UK citizens (*cough* - subjects) who never vote because they feel the whole thing is a sham / all politicians are as bad as each other / etc.
My feeling is that if you really have moral objections to all candidates, you *should* get up and spoil your ballot. Sure, your protest vote will get lumped in with the illiterates and idiots who just couldn't figure out how to draw an X in a box, but a high number of spoilt ballots *will* send out a message. It's better than being lumped in statistically with those too bone-idle to get off their arse and walk to the polling station.
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All across the country, many other things will be on the ballot. Members of your local school board, your city council, township board, county commission, etc. Statewide offices such as state senators, governors, secretaries of state, and governors are also on the ballot many places.
Perhaps you do think that the Presidential race doesn't involve you. Maybe you're right; maybe not. Your local race does involve you. Will your roads be will paved? Will your city be kept clean? Will your children (or YOU) be well educated? Will your water be kept clean and your environment healthy? These are important questions and are decided in a large part on a local or a state level. There are also races for the US Senate all over, which are also quite important.
I am frequently annoyed that people ignore these important local races and focus solely on the Presidency. This year's Presidential race is important; but it's also important that your local drinking water is clean and local students have access to excellent education.
Find a candidate you like and vote for him... if you don't like either of the two major contenders, find another candidate you like. It doesn't matter if they're a "fringe" candidate -- hell, write in Joe Walsh if you have to -- just get out there and vote for somebody. The dark horses may not win but if other people feel the same way you do, then guess what: suddenly your guy may not be a fringe candidate anymore. He might become a viable candidate for the next election (it's not always just about this year). Just get out there and cast a vote.
--Jim
Not sure who originally compiled this info but I thought it would be useful to those out there who are on the fence about whether to vote for Nader or Gore.
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To make the numbers case is Steve Cobble, a Nader supporter but one who, as an advisor for Jesse Jackson and many others, has earned a reputation as one of the most acute analysts of voter patterns and the arcane machinations of the political system. Cobble broke down the numbers in an article for TomPaine.com, and came to this conclusion:
"Except for a very small number of states, progressives have a free vote. They can vote their conscience for Ralph Nader, and help him get the 5 percent he needs to build a new fourth party. In at least two-thirds of the country, and perhaps as many as nine states out of ten, a vote for Ralph Nader is not a vote for George Bush. It's really a vote for Ralph Nader."
Here is Cobble's run down, state by state:
(1) Safe for Bush (17 states): Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming.
In these states, every progressive can vote for Nader knowing that they are not endangering the Supreme Court in any way.
(2) Leaning toward Bush (7 states): Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Nevada, New Hampshire.
Same basic rule -- in these states, progressives can vote for Ralph safe in the knowledge that none of these states are absolutely necessary to build a winning electoral coalition for Gore.
(3) Safe for Gore (15 states): California, Connecticut, D.C., Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, West Virginia, Vermont.
In these states, progressives can not only vote safely for Nader, they can each recruit one or two other friends to vote for Ralph, secure in the knowledge that George Bush has given up (or will give up in early October) on winning these electoral votes.
(4) Leaning toward Gore (7 states): Delaware, Iowa, Michigan, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, Wisconsin.
These states are likely to end up in Gore's column, unless he badly blows the debates. If they do maintain his current lead, then progressives are secure in voting for Nader.
(5) Toss-up (5 states): Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio.
In these five swing states, the Ivins Rule applies most strongly -- check the state polls right before election day, then make your judgment.
I'm voting Libertarian because they are the only party that actually cares about freedom. The rest want a nanny state of one type or another.
Voting Libertarian is the best campaign finance reform possible, because they will reduce government back to its constitutional limits. One the federal government isn't all-powerful anymore, there will be much less to fight over. Without corporate and personal subsidies being handed out right and left, why bribe a politician to get the rules skewed in your favor?
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
If you don't vote, you're statistically voting for the default result.
Exactly. Not voting is giving your approval to ALL of the candidates - after all, if you had an opinion, you'd go make it known, right?
You DON'T have to vote for either of the two big parties. Heck, you don't have to vote for any of the candidates on the ballot. Or even go in to vote and just not select anyone.
If everyone who was going to not vote went in and voted for nobody, that would be a huge percentage, and would definately be noticed. If, when they counted up results, 25% of the people voted for essentially "none of the above", don't you think that would send a message? That all those people found nobody worth voting for?
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"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
I am part of a small state, that almost always votes for the same party. This literally means that my vote is useless. Though a very small fraction of the country understands this process, I doubt it is a major stumbling block for the general population.
One state( can't remember which) at least broke up their electorial votes based on percentage of votes). I like that idea, since it basically is within the rights of a state.
The problems I have with the electorial college are:
- My vote means nothing.. Except a margin of error for historical statistics in my state.
- It blocks non-mainstream party candidates. A candidate that gets 15% of the vote should have 15% of the final vote, which is not the case. A uniform 15% vote will get you zero electorial votes. The problem this causes is that the media AND organizations like the debate committee know this and so they completely discount 3'rd party candidates. If, for example, 3'rd party candidates could have gone to the debates, they could have mustered an enormous support (most people have never even heard of them). They could at least double their support (if nothign else than for people to vote against the main candidates with someone they _think_ looks trustworthy).
- The electorial process was deviced when we had state-loyalty. You were not an American, you were a Virginian. Today, people move from state to state will little concern - people identify with the US as a whole, we're more concerned with the Federal Gov. than the local ones. Back in the day, we trusted local Gov. more than the Fed., and so we united as a state to vote for a candidate. Today many don't even know who their local congressmen are.
Now, for the flip side. There are advantages to the electorial process that I can imagine. First of all, it is doing exactly what it was intended to do. Not least of which, it reduces the number of candidates. I have heard horror stories about politics in India (and I assume in other parts of the world), where there are hundreds of parties. You have a perfectly competative market, so you have to sell your self cheaper than your competitor - or more correctly, offer more apparent value, even if it means compromising good judgement. Incredibly, the US does not have a market-based executive branch. We don't see the same sort of free-wheeling, don't pay any attention to the detail of the man that is me, just see what I'm trying to give you if I'm elected to office. In other countries, they take a candidate like we take a McDonalds burger. They don't even want to KNOW what's inside, but it's cheap and it'll satisfy us for the short term. Political candidates are put through a lot of scrutiny, and if a candidate things something embarrasing has come out, they will tend to resign. There's more attention being paid to fewer candidates. The media will also be quick to spend enough air time on the flaws of candidates that people will generally discount unfavorables. You can't do this if you have hundreds of candidates. The likely hood that people will be well enough informed is slim.
The big issue we find today is that power corrupts, and our two main parties have been in power for a long while. A 3'rd party is not going to break through for a long while (if ever), especially when the main parties are catering to more and more of the other side. "Don't rock the boat", is too strong.
I don't know that things wouldn't go bad in time if we got rid of the electorial process, but I can't imagine that dividing state votes up based on their percentage isn't more "fair", and would at the very least provide enough scare into the main candidates to not dismiss the 15% or so that goes out.
In closing, I'll put my plug; a highly biased opinion. Though some don't like the social engineering that Gore proposes, I personally think it's a more intelligent approach than Bush's brute force approach (of giving away money to everyone). Neither really sticks to any philosophy. Bush claims support for regional independance, but then wants to use the purse strings for control. He claims to support the military, but doesn't fully fund it in his plan. He wants to give us rights to guns and says that "we know best", but wants to remove a woman's choice (actually it's consistent if you think of him as a sexist conservative male dominant character, but I doubt that's really true).
Gore is just a mixture of about everything (he's even taken a 180 from his earlier years on many issues). He's probably going to follow in Clinton's foot-steps and change opinion with what-ever is popular; just look at his new stance on Campain finance - especially after his fallings out. He's a green-peace person at heart, but he's trying to logically play the political game to accomplish as much as he can.. Thus, I'd label him an opportunist, which might not be the best for us. He's definately going to increase the size of government, and he'll only be successful if we don't hit a recession. To the credit of big government. If we hit a recession, then the large government could start cutting fat to alleviate the burden. If, in Bush's plan, we cut the fat now, while we're still at inflationary levels of prosperity, we'll over-heat the economy, and then have no monetary tools to adjust in the future (unless you believe the fed. reserve can accomplish this through trickle-down economics via interest rates)
Harry Brown was interesting for an intellectual thought game. Unfortunately, he basically assumes that people will know what's best, and we'll take proper care of our new-found responsibilities after our parental government goes away. Labeling him an anarchist isn't that far from the truth. Ideally, the government holds a monopoly on the use of force, then you let the people do just about anything they want from there-on-out. They obviously can't kill each other, so we don't have total social break-down. But then how do you enforce contractual obligations? Perhaps the Gov. stays in the business of en'forcing' contracts. But then where does it stop? Brown wants the federal court to not have any power on non-constitutional issues. At the very least, you would be hard pressed to support human rights when states seem biased. Most importantly on Brown, he doesn't seem like he'd mingle well with congress. You'd probably have a record number of executive decisions over-turned by congress with-in his term.
-Michael
-Michael
I can't see how Browne's brand of libertarianism has anything to do freedom, considering he's completely right-wing except for his stance on drugs and will not defend women's reproductive rights and will cut federal funding to hospitals and abortion clinics.
He is also planning on cutting social security calling it a big mess when in reality the administration costs of running it are a fraction of private insurance companies pay. Social Security also pays out worker's comp and disibility. Where will these people go?
He is competely against universal healthcare, which most wealthy nations are handing out like flyers, except we can't seem to get it right. I hope no one voting for Browne is getting federal grants and loans for college, cause it ain't going to be there much longer.
I'm going for Nader because he want's the federal government to work especially with publically funding elections, establishing a living wage, and providing universal healthcare to 80-100 mil uninsured Americans.
He also plans to establish a 'none of the above' options in elections so people like Katz and company don't sit out but voice their protest and force another election if no one gets a decent majority.
Browne is great if you're already wealthy or on your way there and aren't living on the wrong side of the tracks or on hard times and simply don't care about the working poor. Its like Forbes and his flat tax, a scam to keep rich people from paying taxes.
No I'm not ;-)
OK, to raise this from the common internet != USA yadayada post:
What does scare me (being european) is the influence on *my* life the US president has. I don't get to vote in your election, still I'm affected by your DMCA, carnivore, lawyerism shit (granted, you guys have done a good thing or two too)
The "tech world" or the "internet community" or whatever Katzism you use is international. Any attempt by the US (or any other nation) to force it's views onto a non-national site is colonialism, pure and simple.
When the land of the free tries to enforce american laws here thei are nothing but red coats.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
If you want to make a bigger difference, work on someone's campaign. It'll not only affect the election more, it will give you access to the insides of the power structures that will be shaping our future in the years to come.
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
This is quite distinct from being a technical leader in the creation of the protocols, etc. of the internet. It also occurred after the internet already existed as a research/military network.
(ah, the good old days -- pre spam, pre-adds, pre-slashdot ...
Aye, there's the rub).
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
A lot of people tell you not to vote for a third party because it would "waste" your vote. But, really, the waste of your vote is to vote for a more "mainstream" candidate that you don't really believe in.
Bush and Gore both seem the same to me and they both sicken me. Did you see the debates? They were even wearing the same suit!
So, please, take a look at third parties and independents out there. These people aren't so politically entrenched as the major parties, and have some very insightful ideas about what to do with our country.
Don't waste your vote.
Ralph Nader, Green Party (also endorsed by the Reform Party)
Harry Browne, Libertarian
Pat Buchanan, Reform Party (sort of)
John Hagelin, Natural Law Party (sort of)
Howard Phillips, Constitution Party
I am one of those people who has consistently voted for third parties or chosen not to vote. But this year there happens to be two very large considerations. One - the Supreme Court may be losing up to 3 judges that will have to be replaced. While I'm not keen on 'legislation from the bench' I am very very interested in making sure abortion does not become illegal. It is more important for us to work on the social factors that create teen pregnancy than take away this very important medical procedure. I'll let the politicians pound out the details of parental consent and such, that isn't that important in the long run. But securing abortion as a legal medical operation is tremendously important.
The second important issue for me happens to be foreign policy. I understand that most American's couldn't care less about foreign policy unless there is a war. The American President, especially in this post-cold war era, needs to be able to perform Shuttle Diplomacy, going from one group to another to bring two opposing sides together on key issues. This requires a sharp mind and cannot be left to a skilled advisor in many cases because it is the power of the POTUS that makes these things happen. I cannot see Bush, a man who can cause an international incident in a debate, being able to carry out the subtle and delicate work of shuttle diplomacy. This is one area, that of all the candidates, I think Gore will be quite successful -- more successful than Reagan or Clinton. Reagan barely carried out shuttle diplomacy, abandoning Nixon's lead on the matter, perferring to be a cold warrior, but when he did do it, it was impressive.
Since this is more about keeping Bush out of the oval office than putting Gore in, my vote has to be strategically used to do the most damage to Bush, meaning I have to vote for Gore and give up my pursuit of supporting a third party. Besides, this year was a horrible election year for 3rd parties.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
/.ers are always screaming for the government to stop trying to legislate things it doesn't understand or has no business in, like the 'net, encryption, etc. Therefore, it's a wonder we don't all vote for the only party interested in removing government interference in our lives -- Libertarian.
I know they're pretty extreme in their desire to dismantle the government, but we need that extreme to counter the extreme of the two current big-government parties, especially to counter a possible Ralph (government control to the max) Nader-influenced government.
The founders did not intend to have people voting directly on issues as far as that goes. They had seen what happens when you have the people in control (really nasty little problems in France, Oliver Cromwell in England, persecution of Puritans, Protestants, etc). They knew about the rights of the minority. The rights of the minority cannot be held in lower esteem than the rights of the majority.
Respond to s
Take my state Vermont for example. There is a tight race going on at the moment due to the fact that the representatives decided to legalize civil unions in the state, so that a gay or lesbian couple can enjoy many (but not all) of the rights that a heterosexual couple often takes for granted.
Right now there is a great deal of hate being spread around my state with people who don't agree with it. They started a campaign "Take Back Vermont", in order to, supposedly, take Vermont back to it's "roots". To me, this against what Vermont is about, once our own Union before joining the US, it's always been for equal rights, respect, and understanding.
I went to a local fair a few weeks ago, and just for showing my support for the civil unions law, I was continually harassed, told to "go back to California" (when I've lived in Vermont all my life), called a dyke and lesbian (though I am a heterosexual woman), purposely run into by "innocent" bystanders, all for wanting the same rights for gays that I will enjoy should I ever get married. I was also told that "shit is for spreading on fields, not for packing".
Pat Buchanan took it upon himself to come to Vermont this week and express his disgust for the Vermonters that support this bill, the ones that actually elected the officials and pushed for the bill, understanding that all Vermonters are equal, even in God's eyes. He was very demeaning and extremely anti-gay.
We that support the civil unions bill, we understand that not everyone has to accept gays, but what happened to RESPECT?
So yes, voting does matter, ESPECIALLY in the local elections, many things will get decided that will affect only your state and not the nation as a whole, one vote can make a difference.