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Graph Shows Fraud in Russian Elections
gaika writes "A graph in the best traditions of Edward Tufte shows how the voting was rigged in Russian parliament elections. Initially some regions were showing higher than 100% attendance, but later on everything was corrected, or way too much corrected, as the correlation between winning party's vote and attendance now stands at 90%. I guess the people who have rigged the vote have never heard about Correlation Cofficient."
Putin's 7% cap on political parties pretty much annihilated most of the opposition. Why did they need to add votes? Out of habit?
I heard people in hospitals were denied medications unless they voted for him. Very mean and dishonist thing to do. 1st post by the way :)
"I guess the people who have rigged the vote have never heard about Correlation Cofficient."
And apparently neither has the person who wrote the summary.
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
Ballots stuff you?
I guess the people who have rigged the vote have never heard about Correlation Cofficient.
You don't need brains to run a dictatorship, just a rampant willingness to fuck people over. Reminds me of some of our own leaders here in The West!
I mean really! Dissident journalists have been murdered. A rival was imprisoned for political reasons. Gee, and I thought this election had a shot to be a fair one! Anyone surprised by this doesn't follow Russian politics at all. Putin doesn't play around. He used one of the most devious Russian reversals of all time. He found that in Soviet Russia corruption empowers you absolutely!
I got a catholic block.
Figures.
This doesn't surprise me at all, I guess anybody that follows what happens in Russia suspected this. Still, it will be interesting to see how much evidence is left behind or in other words, how good a job they did at rigging the election ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
"Graft Shows Fraud in Russian Elections"...
But, nyet, nyet...
(Spasibo, & dasvidanya, Comrade...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
American Democracy is truly spreading across the globe.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
The altz_gamer blog entry gives a link to this Excel file with the raw results. Where did this data come from?
For comparisons' sake I would like to see the same graph of percentage vs turnout in the presidential race for Florida counties in 2000 and Ohio counties in 2004.
What a lot of people don't understand here in the US is that Putin is really effing popular in Russia. We hear a lot of talk about how Putin silences critics, wants to set up an ex-KGB dictatorship, etc. And it's probably all true. But again. Putinism is popular and Russians will keep voting for it. This is no surprise if you talk to more than a handful of Russians. They don't need to commit electoral fraud because they've already got the populace on their side.
I didn't realize the extent of this until I started dating a Russian, who introduced me to many Russian viewpoints, friends and relatives.
A.N. Kolmogorov must be weeping.
It certainly seems like the distribution of the red dots is different from the others from a graphical impression.. But can someone remind me on what the correct statistical procedure is to 'determine fraud' here? Nonparametric ANOVA, comparing the groups? I mean, noting that the correlation coefficient is 0.9 doesn't really prove anything, does it...
I've had some statistics but I was never really good at it... I developed a radar for lousy statistics, though. Hard numbers please.
One CS student VS 893 DOS games: Let's play oldies
The most interesting question: why have they done that? I live in Russia and nobody here really doubts that the ruling party ("United Russia" - "Edinaja Rossija") influenced elections.
The real approval rates of other opposition parties (communists excepted) were in single percents, anyway. And the real approval rate of United Russia was high enough - all manipulations possibly resulted in several extra seats in parliament for them. So it's not that Putin seriously risked losing his power.
Putin has been successful in changing all that; I would imagine the giving people enough to eat and decent housing can excuse a lot of police-state abuses.
For example, that WSJ article covered a Soviet-era glass factory that was originally a very outmoded, inefficient industrial plant, but with the result of millions of dollars of foreign investment, is now earning lots of export rubles by manufacturing automobile windshields.
You know what they said about Mussolini: "At least he made the trains run on time".
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play rush'n attack.
And we all know the power of, The Graph!
About reputable news sources is that they have, well, a reputation for doing at least a decent job of statistics. Livejournal... doesn't.
On the other hand, the nice thing about statistics is that without much work you can show what numbers you started with, what games you played with them, and what numbers you ended up with. And you can fairly easy say why you think those games were legitimate, and others can fairly easily say why they think they are or aren't, or can otherwise review your methodology.
So, if we're going to link to Livejournal as our source of statistics, can we at least link to pages that showed their work, just like they were taught in math class?
I know enough statistics to at least form a rough opinion on whether what they're stating is meaningful -- which is completely useless given the total lack of any data or discussion of methods. Yes, that stuff from math class did actually have a point.
The truth of the Russian elections
Note: I think the comic on the front page changes every so often, so if it isn't Putin, then you were too slow. At the time of posting it was relevant to this discussion.
I think you can find it here too if the original link isn't working.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." Josef Stalin
Can someone give a better explanation? I'm taking actuarial mathematics and multiple regression courses, and even I have no clue what the guy is talking about.
There is much more than fraud in Russian politics.
That graph was produced in Excel. I don't think Edward Tufte would like it.
http://economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10217312
It's impressive to have better than a 100% turn out when so few vote in this country. With the help of our current administration and Diebold maybe we can do as well in the next election. Hell this is America we should shoot for 200% voting!
Yeah, I was about to say that Tufte wouldn't be caught dead making graphs in Excel — it's the antithesis of his visual explanations.
Why do you think Hitler became popular in Germany? The country was in economic shambles after WW I, and the squabbling nascent democracy just didn't manage to put things together again. Hitler was a law-and-order, family values candidate who managed to put people to work and had simple, straightforward answers; this was just a few years before he then turned into a genocidal maniac who killed millions of people.
And make no mistake about it: every nation is always at risk for those kinds of people.
You might look at some of Steven F. Freeman's papers, like this one: Polling Bias or Corrupted Count? (pdf file).
Nope. Just the good old US corporate media. "Nothing to see here, just a bunch of conspiracy nuts on the internet"
I've uploaded data to swivel
In the US, UK and other countries with a "first past the post" scheme, the whole system is perpetually rigged in favour of two parties. Small parties find it very difficult because their support is spread thinly. Even if a new party comes along with some amazing ideas, it will likely never get a single seat due to the nature of the electoral system.
If the way of voting was always rigged to favour one particular party, we would be up in arms, but having a system rigged in favour of two parties is not much better.
If you want to impeach Bush for having a 30% approval rating, you'll need to impeach the democratic legislature as well. And cite a serious poll from a legitimate source indicating that the majority of Americans think that Bush has committed impeachable offenses.
God, I can't tell you how long I've been waiting to use that
"Comrade commissar, someone broke into the party head quarters. But don't worry, nothing irreplacable or secret was stolen. Only the manifest and the next five election results."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...but it's Bush who is warmongering while impoverishing his people. I'd say that Putin was above the both of them, though he will soon be ending his career with that horrific assault against the... arctic circle on his record. Oh the humanity.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll wash my hands after partaking in one of Slashdot's redmeat xenophobe stories. Call me when you all have something positive to post about Russians or Chinese for a change: Until then, the usual Anglosphere "coverage" of the other major powers is best taken with a large grain of salt.
Godwinated
It's like the perfect, straight up system that you have in the States. Nobody expects election fraud there. Even now. Bush won, fair and square ~
What?
The Bush administration has more than proven the most effective way to rig an election is through the judiciary.
... so he figured he could get away with it too.
YA, ya mod me troll, whatever.
Putin is so popular in Russia (really) that he doesn't need to rig anyting. He would have won anyways. In Russia, most of the population indeed respects Putin and this is a result of all his years as a president. You may say he gradually eliminated opposition and I will agree. But he and whoever helps him are truly amazing in their ability to build a personal cult. I don't live in Russia anymore but I have a lot of friends there - and I saw their opinion gradually warming up to Putin. Part of this is manipulation, part real result of stabilization he oversaw. At this moment, I am not sure he's a bad choice - two next popular parties are communists and Dgirinovsky - I would vote for Putin given that choice.
I was going to post something non-confrontational about how election conspiracy theories (which certain slashdot editors helped propagate with stories from disreputable sources) have probably jaundiced slashdot readers into either yawning when they see this or having their knee jerk and make wry remarks about how the US is probably just as bad. Thanks for beating me to the punch with a very confrontational version of what I wanted to say that draws party lines and political ideology into what is really a conspiracy theory/kooky thinking issue. The really sad part is, if you look, the conspiracy comments are getting good mod points.
Never overestimate the end user. -jeramy b. smith
I worked at the election committee for the last elections of Russian president. The head of the committee gave me 10 passport (which used as IDs in Russia) numbers to register. I never saw the passwords, I never saw the people. The head filled out the bulletins for those 10 people (all votes for Putin) and went into a voting booth.
I did not see much else, but I am sure it was not a unique case. Also, our district was rather small, in larger districts they probably used more "dead souls".
I am not at all surprised at the fraud in last elections. In fact, I would be surprised if there was not any. As for why - I think (and this is my speculation) each committee must report at least x% (x >> 50) votes for Putin in the last president elections or for Unified Russia in these elections to show a good work. Thus the fraud despite the fact that the elections were decided WAY before the votes were counted.
Are you telling me that you do not trust the Putin's party won 99% of the electorate in Chechnya? Those people LOVE Putin.
That graph is horribly unreadable.
Cool, but useless.
... their elections are about as fair and honest as the last two US presidential elections.
This sort of statement really undermines your credibility. It's untrue; not just false, but so false as to make it clear that anyone believing it cannot be trusted with any statement.
Bush clearly won in 2004; nobody credible doubts that. In 2000, the unfortunate fact is that the election was within the tolerance of error, and when that happens the 'true' winner is, and always will be, unknowable. In that case, we rely on laws put in place to handle that contingency. Those laws weren't terribly well thought-out, and weren't completely obeyed.
Your second paragraph, about popularity, is irrelevant. I think Bush is doing a lousy job, but would still vote for him over Gore in an instant.
Canada has the same kind of voting and we've got lots of parties. A decade ago a brand new party came out of nowhere to become the second place finishers. They eventually merged with (absorbed) one of the traditional lead parties that had been almost wiped out, and now form the government. Many provinces either are or have recently been ruled by the normal third place federal party.
The winner takes all system also allows for the election of independents (there are usually a couple in parliament at any one time). I'd like to see ALL the MPs be independents, not none of them, which is what you get with most other types of voting.
In Florida, 13 counties reported more votes than voters, these accounting for 39.4% of the vote. In Ohio, at the Gahana 1 Precinct, Bush received 6,253 votes, Kerry 1,916 votes, and the others, 23. This totals 8,192 votes, which is strange, since only 4,346 people voted.
At another Precinct in Gahana, Ohio, 4,258 votes were cast for Bush and only 260 for Kerry, while only 638 people were registered as having voted.
Another source. These sorts of ridiculous "errors" could be seen when searching the online results at the time.
Meant to say doesn't SUPPORT Putin, sorry.
No "amateurs" tag???
Coefficients correlate YOU!
That is because most Americans believe in the myth that America was supposed to be a Democracy when in fact it was supposed to be a Republic. Read for yourself what the difference is and imagine the political scenery if the Federalists hadn't fucked this country up hundreds of years ago.
/. post to state any of my alternative ideas, even if they would make a difference...
I should note though that it is easy to complain about the mistakes of the past though instead of fixing the present, so as not to make myself look completely foolish. But I'm not going to use a
The parent isn't off topic at all. They seem a bit trollish, but they are definitely not off topic. Talking about rigged elections in another country in a "rigged election in country X" article is far from off topic. Mod troll if you really think it's applicable - I don't - but "off topic" is far from accurate.
> I have no doubt in a few years Putin (or his successor) will finally toss away the pretense
> of being a Democracy
Really? The communist never did give up their pretense. They even, like Putin, invented other parties to create a 100% loyal opposition.
No.
Two-party system: Vote for someone you don't want (who gets to form government), or someone else you don't want (who gets to be the opposition). If you're lucky enough that your opinions actually align with whoever forms government, you'll quickly find that they become as bad as the other guys and don't/can't keep all their promises.
Multi-party system: Vote for someone you want. Let them contribute to government and have some chance of influencing national policy. Discover that they don't/can't keep all their promises because of the coalition arrangement.
The outcome is much the same. One method decreases stability, but your opinion is actual heard and has a greater chance of being acted on. If you vote for sensible people than the risk of a vote of no confidence is reduced anyway. The other increases stability, but so many people don't get their actual opinions heard.
Look out!
with a majority of Americans thinking he has committed impeachable offenses.
There isn't going to be a house manager bringing Articles of Impeachment unless he thinks there's a reasonable chance of getting the required 2/3 Senate vote on conviction. Unless they give Dennis Kucinich the job...
As far as I know, Bush hasn't done anything that will anger 18 Republican Senators enough to get those votes. Well, not anything that a Democratic House Manager wouldn't think is good policy.
So, whatever you might think qualify as high crimes and misdemeanors - that's not the criteria by which an impeachable offense is really judged.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
In Formerly Soviet Russia, Demokracy votes YOU!
In the Australian Senate, we use a system of proportional representation, and frequently have independent senators. South Australia just elected Nick Xenophon to represent them at the election on 24 November, for instance.
Look out!
Well put. I would also add that multi-party systems tend to disproportionately favor 3rd and 4th place parties too much. This is due to them having the vote that pushes an issue over the 50% mark (or passing grade) and the 2 top parties trying to win their favor. At least with 2 party systems there is typically an outright winner and are wholly responsible for the outcomes of their policies.
How does that work? Does the independent have to win a certain proportion of the national vote? Do all candidates campaign nationally/provincially?
If it's one of those arrangements then independents will still have a hard time (but will be possible). First, you have to capture by yourself a minimum proportion of the vote. Naturally it would be easier for a whole party to do that. Second, you have to campaign in a large region, or even the whole country.
With a winner takes all system each candidate only has to campaign in a very small region (where he'll likely be personally known by many voters).
The other problem with proportional representation is that you're voting for the party (unless you're voting for an individual, in which case the individual just happens to be the only member of the party). If X party gets 25% of the vote they get 25% of the representatives... but which individuals fill that 25%? With winner takes all you're voting for the candidate. Yes, the candidate might represent a particular party, but you know that the person you vote for, if he gets the most votes, will be the person representing you. Now, if all representatives vote the party line then there's no difference, but here occasionally some of them will actually vote their consciences instead, or switch parties, or decide to become independents.
And this just goes to show that in order to win an election over there, you need to be even MORE corrupt than anyone else in previous elections.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
How does that work? Does the independent have to win a certain proportion of the national vote? Do all candidates campaign nationally/provincially?
The Senate is elected by state. Each state has twelve senators, six of whom are elected every three years (unless the Senate and House of Representatives don't get on, in which case they can all be elected at once less than three years after the last half-election). Voters mark a ballot either by putting a number against every candidate representing their relative preference (called voting below the line), or by voting for a group of two or more candidates, whether independent or a party (called voting above the line or ticket voting), in which case the voter's preferences are determined by the group according to a ticket given to the Australian Electoral Commission before the election.
In order to get elected, each candidate must get a quota of the vote (14 per cent), but if no candidate gets more than a quota, or not enough candidates get a quota, then whichever candidate has the least votes is eliminated, and their votes transferred according to the next preference. Likewise, if a candidate gets more than a quota, then they are declared elected, and the excess vote is distributed according to the next preference (in this case, all votes that could've elected that candidate are reduced in value until the total value is the same as the excess). This method of voting is called "Proportional Representation by the Single Transferable Vote" and is probably described better on Wikipedia. In addition to being used for essentially all proportional elections in Australia, it's used in Ireland and I think some Canadian province was thinking they might adopt it a while ago, but didn't.
All of this has the following implications. Firstly, in small states the number of votes you need is not very high. In fact, Tasmania elects more senators during a regular half-senate election than they elect MPs to the House of Representatives. On the other hand, in large states, most people live in the same city. Over 60 per cent of people in New South Wales live in Sydney; over 70 per cent of Victorians are live in Melbourne. The two independent senators(-elect) that I know anything about also started out in their state parliament, which means they already had a profile (trying to dive straight into the deep end is never a good idea).
Secondly, parties and independents bargain for preferences before an election, because most people vote above the line. This means it is possible to get elected off a small primary vote. Victorian Senator Steven Fielding of the Family First Party who no-one knew anything about before he was elected, was elected off about two percent of the primary vote if I remember correctly. I consider this to be a bad thing, but I'm biased—I vote for the Greens who regularly get the highest vote of any mainland state in Victoria, around nine per cent, but they've never got a seat here.
As for the voting for the party vs voting for the candidate thing, over here in Australia it's a big news item if a politician crosses the floor. Labor politicians actually make a pledge that they will always vote the party line on pain of losing pre-selection. And politicians who do lose pre-selection and try to stand as an independent rarely make it in, because people are voting for the party, not the person.
Look out!
Yet, why would Czar Vladimir Putin go through all this trouble to produce an impressive showing at the polls? He is already quite popular. His party, United Russia, could have easily won control of the Duma without the election rigging.
"The Economist" has finally provided an answer to this puzzling question. "The answer almost certainly lies in the ever more vicious--and open--rivalry among the Kremlin's political clans. Perhaps Mr Putin upset so many rich and powerful people that the prospect of losing control over the transition of power may simply have been too dangerous for his inner circle, and for himself. For all his talk about foreign threats and domestic enemies, what Mr Putin really fears is his entourage and a war among the clans. Winston Churchill once described the Kremlin's political tussles as being like a fight among bulldogs under a carpet: outsiders hear plenty of growling but have few clues about the victor's identity until it emerges."
Renegade political factions (run by former and current members of the FSB, successor of the KGB) operate within and outside the Kremlin. Each faction is like a gang, and the gangs kill each other. They answer to no one. So far, Putin has used his power to keep the factions under control.
Putin needed an impressive showing in the election in order to demonstrate his political power -- to the siloviki. He controls the United Russia party. Since the party won more than 66% of the seats in the Duma (due to the rigged election), the party -- and Putin -- can alter the constitution at will.
Of course, Putin is gambling that his scheme will work. He may lose the gamble. One of the renegade factions may assassinate him.
In this context, you can understand the comments by Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize for releasing the Eastern Europeans from the yoke of Soviet oppression. He has criticized the steadily eroding freedoms that he initiated in Russia in the late 1980s, but he has refrained from directly criticizing Czar Vladimir Putin.
Putin is indeed a czar, but he is a far better ruler than one of the thugs in the siloviki. These thugs likely killed both Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya. Even if Putin wanted to solve their murders, he has no power to do so. If he attempted to find the killers, then he may be killed.
P.S.
"The Economist" seems to provide much better analysis of Russian politics than Washington provides. What exactly are our Russian "experts" in Washington doing?
It seems like the entire world is heading toward totalitarianism. Pretty much the only country liberalizing in recent years is China, and not by much. The Western powers are eroding slowly, while the weaker democracies just collapse suddenly. Everywhere it's moving in that direction.
I used to think I would leave the US when Dick Cheney becomes President for Life, but there's nowhere to run to now...
What's causing this to happen? Bad economy? Religion's reaction to the prevalence of science? Too much information disclosure undermining the ability to rule?
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
This is done to return the days when a petty bribe could be given to an drunk weak official and get an access to the oil and gas fields, or mineral mines worth trillions and trillions.
The west is very good at organizing such campaigns. They can make the Truth from a thin air. These graphs are one more confirmation.
The current western leaders need to get the oil and minerals prices back to the area of 10 bucks. Putin however does not sell cheap. He does not need their petty bribes. The Russian companies use the resources themselves not, and if sell them on the international markets, then do it properly. Not via western middlemen.
That drives them crazy. And they use all available intellectual potential for the smear campaign. That is what this graph.
... it doesn't (necessarily) show fraud at all: as usual with graphs there are many explanations why one could observe data that way and some explanations might be more plausible than others. Explanations are also not mutually exclusive.
My interpretation and guess what the most plausible explanation is would be: there are regions where a high number of voters favort Putin and those voters are highly motivated to express that preference and vote. On the other hand, those who oppose Putin to a high degree do not see any reasonable alternative and either stay at home, or the view that go to vote, vote blank/illegal with a higher probability.
This behavior is consistent with what can be observed in other elections with a similar situation, and it is consistent with the actual political situation in Russia. People who do not understand or know the situation might have a hard time to understand that many people in Russia actually *do* support Putin and are quite enthusiastic about it, but that has been the case.
Anyone who knew the political situation in Russia knew already long before that Putin's party would win a that no ballot stuffing would be necessary for it. And exactly that was one of the reasons for the low voter turnout of opponents.
Voter behavior is not logically/mathematically optimal but the result of psychology.
I am from Ekaterinburg, Sverdlovskaya oblast, Russia.
Also, all government employees were forced to vote (e.g. teachers).
The Sunday was made a working day in some institutes (4 in our city) to make students vote right there.
Obviously, soldiers, prisoners and mental patients all voted for Putin's party.
I've seen a lot of things of this kind here.
Discount 1) fraud 2) total propaganda and 3) creative rounding and you'll find that Putin is not THAT popular.
I like your comment "How even then he tried to cover his accent..."
Hmmm, he wants to blend in with the natives... I wonder why? hmmm, let's think on this one...
Oh yeah I got it, maybe because he was a spy?
I remember when Bush met Putin for the first time and said, "I looked the man in the eyes..."
At that point I thought, Bush, are you daft? The man in front of you was (is?) a spy and he would try to make himself appear like the Dali Lama himself...
I once asked a Russian when Putin was elected whether he was good or bad for the country. He replied, "does it matter?" I was completely surprised by this answer. He explained himself and said, "Mother Russia has always been ruled by an iron fist, and no politics whether communism, a tzar or free market will change that. Russia is one of the few places where a powerful person will drive over the shoes of a policeman, and the policeman will smile and say, "thank-you you are free to do that again""
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
is its shortsightedness. While it may be mathematicly correct to say theres a, e.g., 90% chance that a election/whatsoever is rigged/fraud looking at the whole thing from the opposite side using the same statistics can yield interresting results.
E.g.:
"I am 90% sure the election is rigged, therefor i asumme the election is rigged."
Now take 50 elections (like states in the US).
"I use the same 90% certainty to determine wether a election is rigged or not."
The chance of beeing correct with every assumption is 0,9^50=0,005153775=0,5153775%.
Conclusion:
"I use statistics to prove veracity, thus i am, statisticly seen, a liar."
While this graph may have some very eye-catching and beautiful data in it, it is not exactly in the tradition of Tufte. I mean, who ever generated it did not even bother to change the default settings in Excel! A little time and effort could make the story that this data shows even more transparent.
So you suggest letting us wallow in our current system is better than talking about possible alternate possibilities? You, sir, are quite an intellectual!
If you want to impeach Bush for having a 30% approval rating,
That wasn't said. People want to impeach Bush because he has shat on the Constitution, and is an acknowledged torturer and war criminal.
you'll need to impeach the democratic legislature as well.
Great! Where do I sign up? I think they ought to try every single Congressperson who voted for our most recent war of aggression -- every Congressperson who voted for Bush's insane war against Iraq ought to get a fair trial in front of the world at The Hague.
And cite a serious poll from a legitimate source indicating that the majority of Americans think that Bush has committed impeachable offenses.
Good point. But the American people are way out in front of the corporate mass media and the political classes on this one.
Even back in 2001, Zogby Int'l -- as mainstream of a polling company as you'll get -- found that half of Americans think the US gov't was somehow involved in 9/11 and 1/3 wanted impeachment. But the corporate news shows instead feed us stories of Brittany Spears and mall gunmen.
In a leap of logic, this article notes that a majority of Americans want Bush impeached if he wiretapped Americans illegally -- well, like his recent lying about Iran, Bush admitted to illegally wiretapping American citizens.
Any search of news engines will turn up many articles. Here is one American Research Group poll results, which states, "70% of American voters believe Dick Cheney has abused his powers as Vice President, and 43% definitely want him impeached. 64% say George Bush has abused his powers as President, and 34% definitely want him impeached." Or this article which summarizes: As far back at October, 2005, an Ipsos Public Affairs poll found 50% of the public agreed with the statement, "If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reaons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him."
Abuse of power; lying to the American people -- these are impeachable offenses and much more of the public want Bush impeached as compared to Clinton or even Nixon.
Lets' summarize: Russia shouldn't cheat at elections -- if they are.
But the US shouldn't cheat at elections either. And given the sad state of our present so-called democracy, we are not a country with the moral right to point fingers and scold anyone else.
Okay, there's two things going on. The ranked voting I like -- that way you don't have the problems the Americans have with strategic voting where you have to vote for a candidate you don't like just to make sure another doesn't get in. That really does discourage new parties.
Proportional representation I'm not so sure is a good idea. IF you're going to have strong parties then it's kind of a lesser evil, but in a representative democracy I think weak parties would work much better. Then you don't need (in fact can't have) proportional representation because there aren't parties to get portions of the vote, just representatives. Plus it's much simpler.
I don't like parties' practice of disciplining members who don't vote the party line. I think it should be illegal. The point of representative democracy is that you elect a representative to, well, represent you, NOT the party. That way you have a much cleaner system, as close as you can get to direct democracy without the issues of having massive referenda on everything.
In Soviet Russia, Elections Vote for you! Vote for die, dieing to vote!
~DF
Whereas with a 2-party system, a third party or candidate acts as a "spoiler", so if you vote for them, the major party they would coalition with actually loses.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
To be fair, Canada was almost a one-party state for years and years under the Liberal Party, until corruption in that party led to resurgence from the new conservative party. And Canada only has four parties actually elected to parliament, one of which is a Quebec nationalist party that's only elected from Quebec.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Most republics (including ours) are democracies. The only respect in which America wasn't a democracy when it was founded is that only white male property owners were allowed to vote. It was Andrew Jackson, a Democrat (not a Federalist) that extended the franchise to white men who didn't hold property. Extending the franchise to women and blacks occurred long after the Federalist Party ceased to be.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
...poorly.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
That I should pull a Socrates... i.e. Choose between Hemlock and Cyanide? Well that just seems like begging for simply a "I'm not thirsty" reply.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
That's true. It doesn't necessarily imply anything. You could even go so far as to say that this proves, oh, NOTHING.
There sure are a lot of knee jerk conclusions though. You could even go so far as to say that this was propaganda. Are you saying that more people voting than there are registered voters is not fraudulent? That means that 1) people who are not registered are voting, 2) people who are registered vote more than once, or 3) votes are magically appearing. How is this not bad? Even 100% of registered voters voting is actually rare. Many people decide not to bother and many people who do bother don't make it to the polls (illness, things come up, die between registration and polling day, abducted by aliens, whatever).
This sort of statement really undermines your credibility. It's untrue; not just false, but so false as to make it clear that anyone believing it cannot be trusted with any statement.
That's an awfully sweeping statement. You know, the type of analysis done in the article is not new. If you take a look at the results in Ohio for 2004, you'll notice the same kind of trends as seen in TFA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ohio_kerry_support_vs_turnout.gif
Though I suppose that carries about as much weight as exit polls do nowadays when it comes to presidential elections in the US.
The Liberals didn't ever really dominate the popular vote. They only won because the Conservatives and Reform/Alliance split the vote. Not exactly a one party state. Plus the Bloque Quebecois, of course, who were the official opposition for a while. That's four... three of which could have formed a national government. The Liberals won because voters (mostly in Ontario) were sick of the Conservatives (a la Mulroney) and were scared of the Alliance.
The BQ and Alliance are interesting examples. I'd argue that that sort of party is exactly what a multi-party state is about. They strongly represent a regional concern. If parties in general were weakened you'd end up with each constituency electing a representative that (gasp) represented his constituents.
Absolutely. Is "Tufte" now mentioned whenever we see a graph? Tufte is all about high quality visualizations, not about Excel chartjunk. This is like saying "in the best tradition of Beethoven, listen to Britney Spears' new single"
You'll come to understand what I'm talking about sooner or later.
The upside is that right now you're where I was as a child, when I first got political, thinking it was changing the world. Regardless of who won elections, NOTHING changed. Then I began to research beyond the system and learned what forged thew viewpoint I hold now. Good luck with the research, its intensive and lengthy.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
We agree on this. However, we seem to disagree on HOW to participate to actually cause or effect change (I mean effect, not affect). Lets see.
I've voted libertarian when I voted, and only once for a democrat, and NOTHING changed. Not a damn thing. And once the libertarians win, they'll be corrupted no differently. They will not manage to roll back any abusive programs because they won't be permitted to. Government propagates like any plague, it does not cure itself, except when all available hosts die or become immune.
Here's what I can do: I can vote for a socialist to feed the poor (which will result in higher taxes, more government spending and JUST as many starving poor as there are now). Or I can donate to a bureaucracy such as "feed the poor" or "XYZ church" so their staff can buy new BMW's. Or I can take a poor fellow to a restaurant or buy him a baggie lunch or even run a soup operation in my spare time or take a pickup truck worth of (cord, about $50 or $100 depending where you live) split and dry firewood to people who can use it in their fireplaces to stay warm. Which of these makes an actual change for the better, even in the short term? Which of those methods is the ONLY way you can truly KNOW, not just BELIEVE that you've effected any form of good, or change, or even good change? Is it by trusting that your monthly $20.00 to Greenpeace has saved an inch of land somewhere? Or that it put gas into a Greenpeace leader's BMW or Lexus? Its no different than the "right wing" and the NRA, the NRA has long been a democrat subversion engine, they do what they negotiate, and their members be damned. Happens every time after a shooting that makes the news. NRA endorses yet another further creep into the right to carry whatever arms you want... nothing new, just hard to spot when you're not trying.
The only good that can be done, is the good each man or woman can effect with their own property and actions, not with that which is confiscated from others through force and fraud (of any kind, for those who need it enumerated).
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler