Barr Sues Over McCain's, Obama's Presence on Texas Ballot

corbettw writes "Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party's nominee for president, has filed a lawsuit in Texas demanding Senators John McCain and Barack Obama be removed from the ballot after they missed the official filing deadline."

Comments

I hope they're removed,

[Antony-Kyre]

but I hope they are allowed to run as write-in. Assuming the summary is true.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[bsDaemon]

If his case is valid, you'll see some true bi-partisan cooperation in Austin as they speedily pass a repeal of the relevant section of the state code.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Antony-Kyre]

You know what we need? A federal law mandating that the top six political parties automatically get on the ballot for the Presidential election. The top six would be determined by the top six vote getters, nationally, as of the previous presidential election. This would ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again, but would significantly help third party candidates.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[MrCreosote]

Or maybe something crazy like, oh... lets see... one set of laws that covers how federal elections should be run, maybe passed at a federal level. You know, like other civilised countries have.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[diamondmagic]

Except for the fact that would be unconstitutional. States select their presidential candidates independently, and the political parties of each state independently nominate their candidate to appear on the ballot.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Anonymous Coward]

They've also missed the deadline for running as write-ins. They should rightfully face the same penalties Barr would have to if he made the same mistakes.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[QuickSilver_999]

(with Virginia and Connecticut being Commonwealths in and of themselves).

I'm hurt... Don't forget us in PA too! And for that matter KY. :)

Re:I hope they're removed,

[torstenvl]

Erm. Connecticut is not a Commonwealth. Massachusetts is.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[mi]

one set of laws that covers how federal elections should be run

That would require an Amendment to the Constitution. For no good reason.

maybe passed at a federal level. You know, like other civilised countries have.

Few other countries (civilized or otherwise) are as big as to be a Union of states.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[NoTheory]

Ensuring fair, reasonable, and standardized elections isn't a good reason? I think you'd be hard pressed to claim that the current electoral system is ideal. And the failures, as 2000 showed, are fairly catastrophic (i don't mean Bush's policies. I mean the turmoil, and lack of clarity)

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Russ Nelson]

But the states elect the president of the union, not the people. If you don't like that, amend the constitution or move.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Russ Nelson]

The rule of law would be nice, wouldn't it?

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Workaphobia]

I'd settle for a voting system that isn't as mathematically flawed as multiple-candidate-single-vote/majority-required.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree, but they absolutely will be placed on the ballot. Rules mean nothing to these people. The political parties themselves *are* the government, so they are above the law.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Manchot]

I don't know about that. What motivation would the Democrats have to permit passage of the bill? Texas is a guaranteed red state which they have no expectation of winning, and without Texas, McCain essentially loses the election. Now, it's likely that McCain would still win even as a write-in candidate, but if the Dems are represented enough in the Texas legislature, I'd think that they'd try to block passage of the bill using any means at their disposal.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[mrchaotica]

But the states elect the president of the union, not the people.

Indeed: the real problem is that the states are letting the people choose the electors, when it ought to be the state legislature doing it!

Re:I hope they're removed,

[taliesin1077]

I don't know what the laws are in Texas for write-in candidates, but in California, one has to actually register for write-in candidate status. If someone writes in a candidate that has not registered for write-in status, their ballot is tossed without being counted for the election in which they wrote a name in.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Hal_Porter]

If America were interested in civilization, we'd be a Commonwealth State and not the United States (with Virginia and Connecticut being Commonwealths in and of themselves).

You could join the Commonwealth if you wanted. Find some English expat, have him swear and Oath of Fealty to HRH Queen Elizabeth II and then you can all sign an Oath of Fealty to him. All land will be collective and as serfs you will be expected to work for the collective six days per week.

I'd be willing to come over and act as Lord, once we can get details like droit de seigneur sorted out.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[mrsteveman1]

Don't forget the KY? Just what are you planning here, exactly?

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Toonol]

There is one set of laws that cover federal presidential elections. That governs the electoral college. All this voting you do in November is not federal, it's to pick your state's representatives to the real voting, done the second week in December. States are free to use whatever method they wish (well, not totally free). It's interesting how many people misunderstand how our elections work. There is not, never has been, a national vote on anything in the United States.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[grahamd0]

I naively hope that the rule of law wins out in this case. I have no expectation of that, but I hope.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[billcopc]

Careful what you wish for... if things keep getting uglier down there, people just might move. There are plenty of other countries that treat their citizens like criminals, deny them basic rights, detain them indefinitely without a trial (nor formal arrest).

Usually people are trying to get out of those countries, which is why the US and Canada presently enjoy a very diverse cultural landscape. People over here are used to the easy life. If that goes sour, they will tolerate much less abuse than our Asian and middle-eastern friends, and will head straight for Western Europe.

20 years from now, you might hear the French and Germans complain "these American immigrants are stealing our jobs!"

Re:I hope they're removed,

[billcopc]

What would you suggest as a replacement ?

A big ol' yes/no for each candidate ? Tally them up, and whoever gets the most "Yes" answers wins ?

That would be slightly more equitable than the current system, but it'd be hell to tally up, especially considering half the country can't count, and the other half is tallied by Diebold machines :P

Re:I hope they're removed,

[OrangeTide]

Well we (Americans) lost our own Civil War. The repercussions have rung through the last century plus. The federal government was not meant to be a massive overriding force in our lives. States were supposed to govern their own borders and the Constitution was there to limit a few things that states could not govern (like trade between states, or basic rights).

Re:I hope they're removed,

[OrangeTide]

Thank you! It saddens me that 90% of the population have such a poor understanding of their own system of government. Do high schools no longer require a class in Government? Do people just not care what the reality is and just make up facts that suit them? It's insane that people think it is important to vote but not important to understand what the fuck is going on.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[mpe]

Or maybe something crazy like, oh... lets see... one set of laws that covers how federal elections should be run, maybe passed at a federal level.

AFAIK there are no federal elections in the US. On the other hand if the US Government was creating such (pointless) laws they might be too busy to do worst things.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[calmofthestorm]

There are many many ways to do such an election fairly. Look at Condorcet, single-transferable vote, and instant runoff.

Pretty much any system is superior to that in use in the United States.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Bazman]

Single Transferrable Vote is what you want. Although it'll take some explaining to some of the populace. So offer alternatives.

At the voting stations, have two lines, a fast track and a slow track.

In the fast track, you get a ballot paper with the usual STV instructions - place a 1 next to your first choice candidate, a 2 in your second choice candidate, and so on until you have no more preferences between the remaining candidates.

In the slow track, a computer screen. It says "Which of these do you want to win?" and a list of candidates. The voter selects one.

Then it says "If that guy doesn't win, which of these would you like to win?" followed by a list of the remaining candidates and a further option "They're all as bad as each other".

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Xonstantine]

I fail to see really how the failures of 2000 were "catastrophic" in any sense of the word. Nobody died, the government didn't shut down, and there was a peaceful succession of power.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[profplump]

If by "interesting" you mean "sad" then I agree wholeheartedly.

Frankly I don't think you should be allowed to vote if you can't explain the general process of the election and the duties of the office with 90% accuracy. Instead of jury duty, let's require people to take (or test out of) civics courses.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[johnlcallaway]

Forcing all the states to vote the same way would be unconstitutional. The constitution outlines how many electoral votes each state gets, and then leaves it up to each state to determine how to allocate them. The only real influence it has is in stating who can't be in the electoral college, such as the president or I believe anyone in the US house or senate.

Any changes would require a constitutional amendment.

It appears to me the creators of the original constitution felt it was important for the citizens of each state to decide how to cast their electoral votes. We may not like it, but that's the way it is. This was all before the ability to instantly count ballots and transmit results across thousands of miles, so while it may not be relevant any longer, it's still in the constitution.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[LaskoVortex]

Or maybe something crazy like, oh... lets see... one set of laws that covers how federal elections should be run, maybe passed at a federal level. You know, like other civilized countries have.

That would be great in the United States of Pretendland. But in the United States of America, you have a federation of states and this federation has an electoral college. The states get to make their own laws about how they assign their electoral college votes. Since Texas has made those laws they should be obeyed. We see similar appeals for obyeing the law when it comes to not smoking pot or not killing people in cold blood or not drinking and driving. We call this concept the "Rule of Law".

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Sique]

Few other countries (civilized or otherwise) are as big as to be a Union of states.

Your definition of "civilized" may vary, but:

Russia is a Union of States.
Brasil is a Union of States.
Mexico is a Union of States.
Germany is a Union of States.
Austria is a Union of States.

The concept seems to be quite common.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Sique]

All voting systems are mathematically flawed. It's a mathematical property and can't be avoided. (check Election Math as a reference).

Re:I hope they're removed,

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

States were supposed to govern their own borders and the Constitution was there to limit a few things that states could not govern (like trade between states, or basic rights).

That's why you had a civil war. People in the southern states were keeping slaves. Now if you'd like to make some big spiel about how the Union winning the civil war lead to negative repercussions for your state's rights, then I'm simply going to point out that the previous system was far, far worse. It allowed slavery. Yes it did. So arguing for states rights to be reinstated in order to protect people's rights is not really a solid argument.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[jandersen]

I don't know that it is fair to call it a loss. I realize that it is always annoying and inconvenient to have to accomodate the needs of others in the name of cooperation, but this is very much in the future of the world; it has to be if we are to not just survive, but create a great future. With the internet, globalisation, international travel etc, there are simply too many issues that can only be tackled by international cooperation. We are slowly approaching a situation where the idea of an actual international government becomes the natural thing.

Both the EU and the US are examples that this can actually be done. There is a lot of room for improvement, of course, but I'm confident that we will get there.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[willmorton]

Both the EU and the US are examples that this can actually be done.

Except that the EU is much closer to the original vision of the US than the modern US is. As the GP says, there to limit a few things that states could not govern (like trade between states, or basic rights). The modern US is in nearly all significant ways a unitary country with provinces, rather than a union of sovereign states as originally intended.

Of course, this is mostly because the EU is ~40 years old. Give it a century or so, and we'll probably see it go the same way.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[mpe]

Well we (Americans) lost our own Civil War.

Can a civil war end in any other way?

Re:I hope they're removed,

[meringuoid]

Well we (Americans) lost our own Civil War.

But you won it, too. That's the thing about civil wars.

States were supposed to govern their own borders and the Constitution was there to limit a few things that states could not govern (like trade between states, or basic rights).

Like the inalienable right to keep and bear slaves.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[drsquare]

If you're throwing all that 'taxation without representation' business out of the window, then logically you should be required to join the British Empire.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[barnaby-jones]

This reference does not consider non-ranked systems. Yes, all ranked systems fail Arrow's theorem, but there exist other systems. One such system is range voting. Give each candidate a 0 to 9 rating. This gives more ability to show preference than any ranked system. The candidates ratings are totaled and the highest total wins. Because there is only one round of eliminations, there aren't weird effects where a candidate will endorse a less popular party to increase his chances of winning. Also, there isn't any disagreement about how to count preference. A simpler way to do range voting would be a range of 0 to 1. This is approval voting and can be done on current ballots.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[allanc]

Participation in the United States political process.

We're gonna need it.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[jellomizer]

This would only help Obama. Texas being a solid red state so by removing both (giving the impression of fairness) McCain looses his electorates. And a large Republican stage goes away. Sure there is always a right in. But the question is how many people know about it. I mean only a small portion of people actually vote, and now if it isn't on the ballet. It would go further. This may be the first time a 3rd party candidate wins an electoral votes in a long time.

Getting elected isn't about getting the most people to be for you. It is all about targeting the correct areas. Let NY, CA, Rot they will vote Democrat anyways but lets focus Ohio and Florida. They even will figure out where teh swing counties are and campaign there.

That is why I am kinda disapointed that I live in a solid blue state. That means the democrates take our vote for granted and will not do much to get our vote in essence letting our state rot. And the republicans see it deep in enemy teratorry will avoid the state and let our state rot. I am hoping the NY votes for McCain not because I want him as president but I wan't Politions to take notice of our state, see that our state has problems that needs to be addresssed too.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[nw15062]

Using the past as a example is not a solid argument in this case. But then against he Declaration of independence should have been written into the constitution to enforce that we are all born equal. Something that is not in there to this day...

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like that, amend the constitution or move.

STFU. Since *I* don't like it, I'll keep right on making noise about it until it is changed. I cannot amend the constitution alone and I damn sure am not going to move because some asshole has the kneejerk reaction of a child.

"Or move." What a crock of shit that tired line is.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[dzfoo]

Weren't the northern states, in the old system, capable of declining trade with slave-enabling states? If so, this would have affected their economic viability in a substantial way; and coerced them, eventually, to only be allowed trade amongst themselves. Thus, their potential for economic growth would have been limited. This seems particularly unsustainable to me, and eventually could have prompted the slave-enabling states to change their ways. This is not unlike imposing economic sanctions on hostile foreign countries--except that they would be bretheren, and geographically bound, thus offering a higher incentive.

I don't personally subscribe to the idea that "them states had slaves, they were e-veel, so they must be stopped immediately!!!!0ne" justification for the Civil War. Many things happen in the lead to it, most importantly the cessation of some states, which--for evident reasons--could not be tolerated by the Union. But some of these events were sparked by the chain reaction of the Union attempting to impose control on each (hitherto) soverign state.

As the grandfather post says, the Federal Government wanted to excert control over the individual states, it went to war to this end, and it won. And we have to live now with the historical consequenes of this event--for better or for worse. Our nation change significantly hence, in spirit and vision--again, for better or for worse.

          -dZ.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[electrictroy]

Actually the Civil War is not the main cause of today's over-reaching Congress. The "Commerce clause" and the U.S. Supreme Court is the main problem. The U.S.S.C. has interpreted the commerce clause in such a way that Congress can now regulate almost anything it wants. That happened during the Depression (1930-40s), and the decision allows Congress to tell you how much wheat you can or cannot grow in your own backyard. Clearly this was not what the Framers intended when they gave the U.S. the power to regulate interstate commerce. What I grow in my backyard is INTRAstate commerce and should not involve Congress at all. It should be the Pennsylvania government that regulates that.

It would be roughly equivalent to the European Parliament telling British citizens how much food they can grow for their own personal consumption. Clearly that's not part of the EU's mandate, and it's not part of the U.S.' constitution either.

Stupid, stupid supreme court justices.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[electrictroy]

In most cases, like my own "Commonwealth of Pennsylvania", it's just a name. But originally the name meant exactly what it said: Everybody shared the same wealth, which in colonial society meant "common sharing of food". That style was quickly abandoned because it was discovered that some lazy people refused to work in the field, and yet they still got the reward (free food) off the backs of their industrious neighbors.

Now my state operates on the idea of individual wealth - you work, you keep what you earn. Wealth is kept separately for each person or family, except in a few cases like the Dole for the homeless.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Sique]

But also with range voting you can get a less popular candidate winning. If he has not many but loyal followers who give him a 9 and 0 to everyone else, and the other candidate has many more followers, but they will give him 7s and 8s, and 2s and 3s to the other, then in the end the candidate the majority disappoves still manages to win. The disparity can get worse if there are more than two candidates running.

Lets assume 30 voters for three candidates.

A gets 9 from his 10 supporters, who give 0 to all other candidates.
B gets 7 from his 10 supporters, but they give 2 to all other candidates.
C gets 7 from his 10 supporters, who give 4 to B and only 1 to A.

So A is heavily unpopular with everyone exept his own supports, and he gets 120 votes. B is popular with his own supporters, but also the fans of C will agree with him. He gehts 110 votes. C is definitely unpopular, but the supportes of B would rather have him than A.

But still A wins.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Guppy06]

"Indeed: the real problem is that the states are letting the people choose the electors, when it ought to be the state legislature doing it!"

Have you looked at your state legislature lately? Do you know who your state legislators are? Do you even know what your state legislature as called, as well as the names of its houses?

I'm in favor of what you propose, as well as what another respondent said about repealing the Seventeenth, but that would require that voters not only trust their state legislatures (which they don't, not that they've been given much reason to), but that they know their legislatures.

Reform the legislatures into more trustworthy bodies (say, by eliminating gerrymandering, or by implementing ranked voting, or both), then you can start looking at how they apply to the federal government.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[samkass]

Do you think this best serves the interest of the people of Texas, almost all of whom want to vote for Obama or McCain?

Re:I hope they're removed,

[z80kid]

> It allowed slavery. Yes it did.

That's ridiculous.

Both systems allowed for slavery. It doesn't take a change in the type of government to prohibit slavery. It just takes the willingness of those in power to prohibit it.

Slavery ended with the passing of the 13th amendment after the war. Until then, it was still legal in the North wherever individual states or territories didn't prohibit it. Thanks to our lousy government run education, everyone thinks Lincoln abolished slavery with his "Emancipation Proclamation". Read it. It allowed slavery in the north.

It's amazing how our government has managed to whitewash history to make it look like hundreds of thousands of chivalrous northern soldiers fought and died to free the black man. Yet if you look at the way blacks were treated in the north before and after the war, you'd quickly realize that these northerners were hardly willing to die for the rights of blacks. But the whole "free the slaves" cover is great for whipping up patriotism while covering the real reason for the war - a federal power grab by wealthy interests.

Face it. If the northerners really believed in equality and rights strongly enough to fight for them, we wouldn't have had another century of segregation in both the north and the south followed by race riots all over the north in the 60's.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[hey!]

If neither candidate can run on the ballot OR as a write in, that would almost certainly precipitate a nationwide constitutional crisis.

To win the Presidency in a one on one race, a candidate needs to get 270 electoral votes, because there are a total of 538 votes in the Electoral College. Texas has the 34 electoral votes, meaning that if the electors from Texas were barred from voting for either candidate, Obama would almost certainly win a plurality.

Except -- the electors aren'tspecifically bound by the constitution to vote for anybody. Theoretically an elector, while elected standing for candidate A, can change his mind and vote for B. About half the states have laws which punish "faithless electors", although the constitutionality of these laws have never been tested. It's doubtful that they are constitutional.

If Obama wins 270 electoral votes, it won't matter. But if he wins 235 electoral votes it won't matter (because McCain will have 370), although that is unlikely in the extreme.

If we have anything in between, we have a constitutional crisis. What would be clear is that had the will of Texans been honored according to how the system was supposed to work, then McCain should have won. If some TX electors acting on this theory votes for him, then he will win, but the legitimacy of this win will be questioned by around half of Americans who voted for Obama -- possibly more than half if Obama wins the popular vote. If not enough TX electors vote for McCain to put him over the top, the people who voted for McCain will not recognize the legitimacy of the elections. If each candidate gets exactly 252 votes (I haven't checked whether this is possible mathematically), then the election goes to the House, which will give the Presidency to Obama.

In any case, in any of these crisis scenarios, the reasonable outcome would be for McCain to get the presidency, because that reflects the will of the peoples as it would have resulted had the proper procedures been followed. But no matter who wins the presidency, the presidency would be deeply weakened -- a happy result for the Libertarians, but potentially disastrous for the country as we navigate some pretty rough waters ahead with a president distracted by legitimacy questions.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Shakrai]

Stupid, stupid supreme court justices.

Eh, FDR basically held a gun to their heads back in the day.

FDR is one of my heroes but I think that's one of the darkest moments of his presidency.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[nahdude812]

Not at a state level, only on an individual level (this was one of the original mandates of the federal government, specifically to prevent trade embargoes between states). You'd easily end up with individuals willing to trade in slave-produced goods from the south, and with less competition in the market (and higher demand for those products as a result of other people being unwilling to trade in it), such individuals would profit substantially.

Even if no such individuals already existed in those states (presuming all citizens of the northern states were of like mind), southerners would have readily traveled north and taken on the role.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Thing 1]

MA is also a commonwealth. (That word sounds like socialism...)

Re:I hope they're removed,

[barnaby-jones]

I don't think the B supporters would do that. Every voter will maximize the influence of his own vote. I say the following is the smart way for each of the supporters to vote:

A gets 9 from his 10 supporters, who give 0 to all other candidates.

B gets 9 from his 10 supporters, but they give 0 to all other candidates.

C gets 9 from his 10 supporters, who give 5 to B and only 0 to A.

A gets 90

B gets 140

C gets 90

B has the support of C-voters and is the only candidate to cross party lines, so he wins.

Each voter has the power to maximize the influence of his own vote. It is an equal power.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[toph42]

No, the people lost the war. The government won it.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Lord Kano]

Since *I* don't like it, I'll keep right on making noise about it until it is changed.

Making noise won't get a single thing changed. Unorganized bitching won't get a thing done. You want to fix things? Call your Senator, call your Representative, call your State Senator and Representative. Encourage other people to do the same.

Unless you actually DO SOMETHING, you'll be just like those old welfare bums that I remember from when I was a kid who used to sit around drinking cheap beer crying about how the "system" was a "sham".

LK

Re:I hope they're removed,

[zacronos]

That's why you had a civil war. People in the southern states were keeping slaves.

Wrong. Take a look at the Emancipation Proclamation sometime, and you'll see that it was much more of an economic attack than a declaration of the right of men and women to be free of slavery. From Wikipedia:

The Emancipation Proclamation consists of two executive orders issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. The first one, issued September 22, 1862, declared the freedom of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. The second order, issued January 1, 1863, named the specific states where it applied.

If the Union had been so interested in declaring all men and women to be free, why did it only apply to states that didn't toe the line? I'm fairly sure it wasn't until after the American Civil War that slavery was completely abolished by federal/Constitutional law, which means (from a federal standpoint, at least) Union states were still allowed to have slavery throughout the war. It's completely revisionist to claim the war was "about" freeing slaves (though I admit that's what you'll typically be taught in school as a child here in the US).

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Thelasko]

Yeah, the commerce clause has done some terrible things, but it's done some good too. We wouldn't have our interstate highway system without it.

The real offender is the 16th amendment. It basically let's the federal government say to the states, "Do what we say, or we won't give you your money back."

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Dog-Cow]

This is based on what I hear versus what I know from experience, so please don't flame me for being an ignorant American. I already know I am :)

What I've heard about the situations regarding Moslems is that the Moslems do not accept the culture they are surrounded by. It's one thing to maintain one's own culture (I am an Orthodox Jew), but it's quite another to try and force your new neighbors to cater to your prejudices.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[swillden]

Weren't the northern states, in the old system, capable of declining trade with slave-enabling states?

No. Regulation of interstate commerce is a federal, not a state prerogative. Under the Constitution, states are not allowed to impose embargoes, tariffs, or other trade restrictions on their neighbors. Individuals in the north could have chosen not to trade with the south, but that wouldn't work.

However, slavery wasn't really the reason the southern states seceded, any more than taxes were the reason for the Revolution. In both cases, the reasons were complex and deep, and had as much to do with people feeling like they didn't really belong as any specific concerns. As another poster pointed out, several northern states allowed slavery throughout the Civil War, and that wasn't changed until well after the war was over.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Thelasko]

Have you looked at your state legislature lately?

I have tried and it's very difficult. The media pays no attention to the state legislature. It's like they don't even exist. Therefore, everyone turns to the federal government to solve their problems.

Not enough cops on your street? Washington needs to pass that crime bill!
The schools suck in my area. We need No Child Left Behind!

These are local problems. The need to be solved by state and local government!

Re:I hope they're removed,

[nizo]

And today we get yet another lesson on why the electoral college is useless and outdated. How is it that someone can get a majority of votes and not win? Everyone's vote should be equal; having some people's vote count more than other people's vote is absurd.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[jonadab]

> That's why you had a civil war. People in the southern states were keeping slaves.

While the issue of slavery was a big issue, and was resolved because of the war, the war did not happen because of slavery. The US civil war was inevitable by the end of the revolution.

Okay, it's true that the "trigger issue" that set the thing off was the secession of South Carolina, and the main excuse for said secession was the slavery issue. But this only *caused* the war in the same sense that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand caused the Great War. It's what set the thing going, yes, but if it had not done so, something else would have come along and set it going at some point, probably sooner rather than later.

The real major driving issue behind the civil war was the strong correlation between geography, economy, and politics. You could get out a map and pretty much draw a line between the conservative, rural areas with a simple, primary (and to a large extent agrarian) economy, and on the other side of the line the liberal areas, with higher population density and a more complex (and more modern) economy. The south wanted protectionism. The north wanted a more laissez faire, free-market approach to economic issues. The south was mostly anti-federalist, believing strongly in reserving as many powers as possible to the states and the people, limiting the power of the federal government to the absolute minimum. The north mostly was largely federalist. The southern economy relied heavily on slavery; the northern states didn't even allow it. And so on and so forth.

A lot of people think Lincoln wanted to end slavery, and that's why the south seceded. In fact, he had no such intention. He opposed the unchecked *spread* of slavery to more and more states and territories, but he had no plans to suddenly put an immediate end to it in the south. That's the way things played out, but it wasn't what he had in mind before the war. South Carolina opposed Lincoln and seceded when he was elected for complex reasons, and his position on slavery was just one of several things they hated about the man. It was an excuse, and a rallying cry for other states, but the states-rights issue (i.e., antifederalism) was *also* an excuse and a rallying cry.

South Carolina seceded to prove that the state could do that, that the union with the rest of the country was strictly voluntary on the part of the state, and that the majority of the other states could *not* get together and decide things for them at a federal level. Slavery was *one* of the things they didn't want the federal government deciding for them. Tariffs were another. But the main thing is that the state government of South Carolina felt too much of their authority was being usurped. To them, Washington was the next London. The North didn't agree, because as far as they were concerned the south had full representation. South Carolina had as many US Senators as any other state, and Representatives proportional to their population, and so on and so forth, the same as any other state in the union.

As I said, slavery was a major issue, both in contributing to the war and in being resolved by the war. (The protectionism issue, in contrast, was not resolved until much later, if indeed it has been fully resolved, and there's some question about that.) But it was not, by itself, the cause of the war, nor was it the main thing the war was ultimately about.

And actually, the slavery issue might not have been as completely resolved by the war if Lincoln had not been assassinated. His plan for reconstruction did not include immediate abolition. He wanted to bar the major Confederate ringleaders from holding future political office and then let the southern states back into the union almost immediately, with the understanding that the issue of secession had been decided and it was not permitted. But Johnson wasn't able to make it work that way.

Incidentally, the GOP was the liberal party at the time, and the Dems were the conservatives. The history of how that got turned around is interesting in its own right.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[hey!]

What makes you think Texas won't get its electors?

It will receive its electors. It just won't be able to select those electors in a way that reflects will of the people.

There will be no mechanism by which electors pledged to either candidate can be chosen by the people of TX. Either the electors will be pledged to a third party candidate, or they will be unpledged. If they are unpledged, you have a situation where the people are cut completely out of the process.

I'm a reasonable person. If the unpledged electors voted for McCain, that represents the probable will of the voters, and its probably the best result here should Barr carry the day. But it's not a good thing for small-r republican government. Elections aren't supposed to be about probabilities.

I'm for overruling the rules in this case. What matters here, I think, is not fairness to the candidates. Screw them. It's fairness to the voters.

Empowering the voters in a fair way is what the rules are there for. The Constitution doesn't say how the states are supposed to select electors, but it does require the states to guarantee small-r republican government. You can do that by having the legislature appointing electors, which is bad but not the worst possible thing. You can't do that by holding an election that rules out the choices of the vast majority of voters.

That would be republican in form only, not substance. It is the substance that matters, not the machinery of the election.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Skjellifetti]

I would argue that it is completely revisionist to claim that the war was not about freeing the slaves. I suspect that this revisionism has its roots in modern Southern politicians and historians who are embarrassed by The Peculiar Institution and want to claim some other more noble sounding reason for starting the War of the Southern Rebellion. One has only to look at the reaction in the North to John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry to see that a major confrontation was brewing over the issue although Lincoln, ever the politician, later tried to spin the cause of the war as "we were just trying to restrict it's growth." The usual reason given for why the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the border states that allowed slavery was that Lincoln could not afford to alienate them too much since they might also choose to secede.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, Saturday, March 4, 1865

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Zordak]

Let's give blame where blame's due. FDR threatened to stack the court if they voted against him, and Congress lined up behind His Royal Highness King Franklin I and said they were good with that. This was all to pass the unconstitutional New Deal programs, which did little to actually fix the depression and transformed us into a socialist state. The alternative, of course, was to let people suffer the consequences of their own poor choices instead of looking to Washington to bail them out when their greed took them down. We have seen the epic failure of American socialism in the last 60 -- 70 years. Two-thirds of our federal budget is still going to pay for these cumbersome, ill-managed programs, but they are headed to bankruptcy, and are likely to take us down with them.

Unfortunately, the last week has demonstrated that we have learned absolutely nothing. Thanks to our Republican Chief, we are all paying to socializing losses to bail out the greedy, and we are all set to welcome, with open arms, the Democrats' Second Coming of the Socialist Messiah in January.

We will have nobody but ourselves to blame, comrades.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[gebbeth]

States were supposed to govern their own borders and the Constitution was there to limit a few things that states could not govern (like trade between states, or basic rights).

That's why you had a civil war. People in the southern states were keeping slaves. Now if you'd like to make some big spiel about how the Union winning the civil war lead to negative repercussions for your state's rights, then I'm simply going to point out that the previous system was far, far worse. It allowed slavery. Yes it did. So arguing for states rights to be reinstated in order to protect people's rights is not really a solid argument.

You my friend are the victim of revisionist history. Don't feel put out though, most of us are. The civil war was not about slavery. It was about the economy. The south produced the feedstock for the northern textile industry and the Europeans were cutting the south a better deal. As such the south was exporting to Europe vice the north. The north just couldn't have that. The secession of the south was totally legitimate. Now I am not saying that slavery is good and that the war didn't end it, but the war was not fought over slavery. I know that what I am saying sounds like heresy, but have an open mind and do a little research, you might be surprised.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Braxton_the_Covenant]

That's an excellent summary but I wanted to correct you on one point. Prior to the Civil War, the South wanted laissez-faire and free markets and international trade, while it was the North that was dominated by its big city banking elite that wanted protectionism. The north wanted to sell its manufactured goods to the south while preventing the superior and cheaper European goods from being sold in American markets. The South saw this as an outright money-grab by the northern states (and I believe it was) and was one of the main, if not the main, motivations for southern independence---to create free-markets. Invariably exporting economies favor international trade, while importing ones favor tariff barriers, mercantilism, and statism.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[turd_sandwich]

They tuk ehr jobs!!

Re:I hope they're removed,

[ZOmegaZ]

If neither candidate can run on the ballot OR as a write in, that would almost certainly precipitate a nationwide constitutional crisis.

To win the Presidency in a one on one race, a candidate needs to get 270 electoral votes, because there are a total of 538 votes in the Electoral College. Texas has the 34 electoral votes, meaning that if the electors from Texas were barred from voting for either candidate, Obama would almost certainly win a plurality.

Except -- the electors aren'tspecifically bound by the constitution to vote for anybody. Theoretically an elector, while elected standing for candidate A, can change his mind and vote for B. About half the states have laws which punish "faithless electors", although the constitutionality of these laws have never been tested. It's doubtful that they are constitutional.

If Obama wins 270 electoral votes, it won't matter. But if he wins 235 electoral votes it won't matter (because McCain will have 370), although that is unlikely in the extreme.

If we have anything in between, we have a constitutional crisis. What would be clear is that had the will of Texans been honored according to how the system was supposed to work, then McCain should have won. If some TX electors acting on this theory votes for him, then he will win, but the legitimacy of this win will be questioned by around half of Americans who voted for Obama -- possibly more than half if Obama wins the popular vote. If not enough TX electors vote for McCain to put him over the top, the people who voted for McCain will not recognize the legitimacy of the elections. If each candidate gets exactly 252 votes (I haven't checked whether this is possible mathematically), then the election goes to the House, which will give the Presidency to Obama.

I'm afraid you misunderstand the system. The House doesn't just decide in a dead tie, it decides if nobody gets a majority of the total electoral votes cast. With 538 electors, that always means 270. It's not a question of who gets the most votes, it's a question of who gets >50% of the total. If both McCain and Obama get less than 270, the election goes to the House, no matter who has more. Since McCain is guaranteed to win Texas if he's on the ballot, there are three possible outcomes if he's not. 1) Obama gets 270, so McCain not being on the ballot in Texas doesn't matter. 2) McCain gets 270, even without Texas. 3) Obama doesn't get 270, nor does McCain because of Texas. Election goes to the House. So the real question is, who would win if the House voted state by state, along party lines? Anyone care to count it up?

Re:I hope they're removed,

[MindlessAutomata]

I don't think you quite understand the point of the electoral college. It wasn't to make some people's votes be worth more than others; the founders had a more state-centered view of the matter, as back then being a state meant a lot more than it does now.

Rather than remove the electoral college to keep in line with modern encroachments on the constitution, why not go back to the state-centered approach instead of the large-central-government one? It would mean that the feds couldn't try to override local marijuana laws and stick sick people in jail, for one thing.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[jonadab]

> Thanks to our lousy government run education, everyone thinks Lincoln abolished
> slavery with his "Emancipation Proclamation". Read it. It allowed slavery in the north.

Actually, it allowed slavery in the south as well. The only slaves freed were those encountered by Union forces during the actual war. After Appomattox, southern slave owners who had managed to retain their slaves would have been permitted to keep them -- for the time being.

Lincoln was not an abolitionist. He had other priorities. He was willing to let slavery continue in the south for the time being, in exchange for other concessions. Lincoln did disagree in principle with slavery, but he was a liberal, not a radical. He believed in doing things gradually.

Abruptness is harmful. You free all the slaves at once, overnight, and you get exactly what we got: a sudden surplus of unskilled agricultural workers with no education, no property, nowhere to go, and no way to earn a living. Many of them were worse off than they had been before. Almost all of them had to go to work for former slave owners, doing the same kinds of things they'd done before, only now they were responsible for their own debts and bills, providing food and housing and whatnot for themselves and their children. The former slave owners were extremely unhappy with the situation and were not strongly inclined to pay more for the former slaves' wages than they had previously spent on their upkeep, and they were no longer required to provide benefits like free housing... It was a real mess for a long time. The descendants of the slaves *still* have lower average per-capita incomes and education levels than the rest of the population, going on a century and a half later. And we haven't even started talking about the bitterness and social upheaval and resentment...

On the other hand, if you do things more gradually... Say for instance you provide the children of slaves with the same education opportunities as other children, and free two-thirds of them at age 21. That's just *one* way to do things a bit more gradually.

Don't get me wrong: I have some philosophical objections to slavery in general, and numerous *very strong* moral and ethical objections to the way slavery was practiced in the US. It was an extremely egregiously bad system, and it absolutely had to go. I'm very glad we don't have that in this country any more. It's a system I wouldn't wish on anyone, even the gravest of enemies, and it's good that we're rid of it.

I'm just think the *details* of the way in which it was phased out were... suboptimal.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[chuck]

And today we get yet another lesson on why the electoral college is useless and outdated. How is it that someone can get a majority of votes and not win? Everyone's vote should be equal; having some people's vote count more than other people's vote is absurd.

Insightful my ass.

Try reading the constitution. You know, the founding document of our nation? The supreme law of the land?

People don't vote for president. States do. It's the law. Get over it.

Complete disregard for constitutional law is exactly why we're having so many problems today. (Lack of education is another one.)

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Miseph]

You're both wrong (and I guess both right, but I prefer everyone being wrong). Both sides wanted some things to be strongly protected and others strongly deregulated, and it just so happened that a lot of these things were opposite to the wishes of the other.

The south absolutely did not want to see things deregulated with regard to domestic trade and law, to the point that prior to the Civil War they were willing to override the rights of other states and force them to legalize slavery (see: Missouri, California) in order to maintain a balance which would keep their internationally unpopular status quo; they also didn't want to see the north increase imports of food and raw materials from elsewhere. On the other hand, they wanted better access to European goods and markets so that they could increase exports and decrease expenses.

The north, on the other hand, liked the idea of the south being forced to buy their manufactured goods and didn't want to compete with Europe for goods from the south, but did want to be able to increase imports of food and materials from Europe and elsewhere. As in, everything they wanted the south didn't, and vice versa.

No one side was more in favor of protectionism or free trade, both sides were more in favor their best interests and were more than a little hypocritical about it.

One of the great ironies is that the south only really wanted slavery because it allowed them to be competitive with more modernized farming techniques, but it was actually quite a bit less efficient. After the Civil War and abolition the south actually became much more profitable because they started to use less labor intensive and ultimately less expensive techniques and started to invest in heavy equipment rather than slaves. The north also became more profitable because the Civil War seriously advanced northern industrial facilities and technology, leaving them in perfect position to manufacture the huge amount of product required by the modernizing south and the expanding railroads. The bloodshed and destruction of the Civil War accomplished nothing that could not have been arranged by both sides simply cooperating and thinking it through (with the possible exception of rebuilding Atlanta as a modern southern metropolis).

Re:I hope they're removed,

[zacronos]

I would argue that it is completely revisionist to claim that the war was not about freeing the slaves. [...] The usual reason given for why the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the border states that allowed slavery was that Lincoln could not afford to alienate them too much since they might also choose to secede.

So let me paraphrase what you just said... the war was about freeing the slaves, except that in order to keep some border states on the side of the Union, those states would be allowed to keep their slaves.

Doesn't that imply the war had to be about other things too, if the Union was willing to concede slavery to states "on their side"? Why wouldn't all the southern states just say "Ok, great, we'll come back to the Union and keep our slaves, just like you said we could." if that was "the cause of the war"? It sure *looks* like there had to be more going on that was considered more important than slavery.

The fact is, the winners write the history books. Maybe there's a lot I just don't understand about the context, but so far I'm not convinced. I could very well be wrong about this, maybe the Union really was fighting the good fight, sacrificing themselves for the good of others, but I suspect the truth is less black-and-white (and FAR less morally uplifting) than most people think.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Abcd1234]

People don't vote for president. States do. It's the law. Get over it.

Or you could change the law if it's become anachronistic (I'm not saying it has, but saying "It's the law. Get over it" is rather silly... if one were to take that view, women and minorities wouldn't have the right to vote in the US).

Complete disregard for constitutional law is exactly why we're having so many problems today

Funny, many other countries don't have a US-style constitution, and yet they don't have the problems the US does. Mayhap you're looking in the wrong place for an excuse?

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Xonstantine]

As another poster stated, Gore didn't ask for a statewide recount.

Additionally, are we including the military votes that the Gore lawyers threw out in "all the votes" that had Gore winning?

Gore and the Democrats weren't interested in counting all the votes, just the ones that would lead to them winning.

And, in any event, Florida law states if the election results cannot be certified by a specific date, then it goes to the Florida legislature...which was Republican controlled. The democrat controlled Florida Supreme Court tried to step in and change election law on the fly, and this is what was shot down by the SCOTUS.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Lawrence_Bird]

ah.. because this is not a democracy? The US is a constitutional republic. From wiki: Constitutional Republics are a deliberate attempt to diminish the threat of mobocracy thereby protecting dissenting individuals and minority groups from the tyranny of the majority by placing theoretical checks on the power of the majority of the population.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[AK Marc]

having some people's vote count more than other people's vote is absurd.

Having people concentrated in cities is a reality that they knew about. This creates voting blocks that would dominate rural areas. To give rural areas a bit of an influence, the votes of people in more populous states are diminished. Those are the facts. That's what the framers had in mind, and that's how it works now. If you are only figuring this out now, you weren't paying attention in elementary school (or aren't American).

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Bob Uhl]

Lincoln had every intention of making blacks equal to whites.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position." --Abraham Lincoln, 21 Aug. 1858

And: "Free them [slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this. We cannot, then, make them equals."

Re:I hope they're removed,

[kmac06]

Fun fact of the day: MA is a commonwealth because John Adams decided to call it that when he was writing the MA Constitution, and no one bothered to really discuss it one way or the other.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Skjellifetti]

Why wouldn't all the southern states just say "Ok, great, we'll come back to the Union and keep our slaves, just like you said we could." if that was "the cause of the war"?

For the simple reason that there were too many Union abolitionists demanding emancipation. The slave holding states were not going to be allowed to keep their slaves. This does not mean that everyone in the North was in favor of abolition or wanted to go to war to end it. The abolitionists had strong arguments among their factions over the best means to the end (compare the Quakers to John Brown) but overall, the abolitionists were certainly a very large and very vocal majority in the North. Harriet Beecher Stowe's book about the evils of slavery, Uncle Tom's Cabin, for example, sold 300,000 copies in the North before the Civil War and the Republican Party was formed in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act that would have allowed the expansion of slavery into Kansas. The abolition of slavery was a question of when and how, not a question of if.

The fact is, the winners write the history books.

There are too many Southern histories of the Civil War for that statement to have any meaning.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[ThanatosMinor]

KY is pretty mediocre lube and it tastes awful. Check out Good Vibrations for a selection of other lubes.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Sique]

And still they have separate states with separate parliaments, with separate tax regulations and separate state subvention programs.

Hey, the nickname of the state Vorarlberg is actually "Canton Leftover", because they once (1923) wanted to join Switzerland, but Switzerland didn't want them. Vorarlberg's biggest town has 50,000 inhabitants, all other towns are smaller than 25,000 inhabitants.

Same with Tyrol. I live in the 10th largest community of the whole state of Tyrol. The village has 8330 inhabitants.

And the city of Vienna is not only the biggest city of Austria (Graz comes next, which has a quarter of the inhabitants), it is at the same time the biggest state of Austria.

So don't talk about small. Austria is small. But still... they are a federal republic. They don't need to be. But they are for historical reasons: Some of the states (like Carinthia) have more than 2000 years of history as separate entities. The predecessor of Carinthia, the kingdom of Noricum, basicly today's Carinthia, Styria and Slovenia, was founded ~200 B.C., and Carinthia itself around 600 A.C.. It became part of Austria in 1335.

Re:I hope they're removed,

[Alsee]

I read the post you linked. It provided a perfect example of what I was saying. If you read to the bottom it concludes with "However, people will not honestly vote. Hill-dogg supporters will look at Obama's slight lead, and since they'd much rather prefer Hill-dogg instead of Obama, they vote like this: Hill-dogg 10, Obama 1, McCain 0. Obama supporters, worried about their slight lead, vote the converse. McCain supporters vote McCain 10, Hill-dogg 0, Obama 0.

If you tweak that "Obama 1" into "Obama 0", you'll see that his example has degenerated exactly the way I said it would. It turns into approval voting with people using the limit values - 0 and 10.

His example was intended to prove what approval voting is BAD... intended to prove how and why approval voting will elect the worst candidate last choice candiate... but it also showed the min-max effect turning range voting into 0 1 approval voting.

I give a full explanation why there is never ever ever any valid reason to vote anything except 0 or 9 in this post.

The best voting system is called Condorcet voting. You put the candidates in order, like Hillary #1 Barack #2 and McCain #3. Condocet then look at it as a bunch of 1v1 races. It looks at Hillary-vs-McCain, Barack-vs-McCain, and Hillary-vs-Obama as three seperate races. With 60% Democrats, presumably Hillary would beat McCain in that race, and Obama would beat McCain in that other race. It would also look across all voters to decide Hillary-vs-Obama. Democrats might have some light preference one way or the other, but in fact it would likely be the Republicans overwhelmingly deciding that race based upon which candidate they found less offensive - which candidate they put in their second slot. Condorcet voting finds the best most "central" candidate.

By a variety of mathematically reasonable standards of measurement, Condorcet is provably the best voting system when there are more than two candidates

I highly recommend the website Accurate Democracy.
They give an excellent discussion of Condorcet and a variety of other problems of democracy and solutions to building the best possible democracy. He have learned a lot about how political and election systems work in the last few hundred years. The authors of the US Constitution were brilliant guys, but there's a lot they just didn't know, and in a number of ways our system of government is flawed or just plain broken, and in many cases we do know how to fix it. It just tends to be politically impossible impossible to have our system vote to fix itself. The biases in place and those who benefit from the current power distribution have no interest in surrendering those selfserving advantages. For example it is virtually impossible to make any change to the presidential election process because any change will create a short term benefit towards either the Democrats or the Republicans, so the other side will always rationalize arguments to reject it.

If by any chance you found a new Democratic government from scratch somewhere else, I'd be more than happy to join up to use all of the accumulated knowledge from math and history and sociology and every other field of human knowledge to design the best possible mechanisms of Democracy we know how :D

P.S.
If you wanted to make the link in your post a proper clickable link, it goes like this:
<A href="address">text</A>

You write:
<A href="http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=969061&cid=25081019">Hello there!</A>

and it shows up like this:
Hello there!

-

Link to the texas code:

[rsclient]

An on-line link to the Texas election code: http://tlo2.tlc.state.tx.us/statutes/docs/EL/content/htm/el.011.00.000192.00.htm#192.031.00

Re:Link to the texas code:

[Anonymous Coward]

If I read that correctly (I am not a lawyer), then half of Barr's complaint should be legally valid and half should not be.

McCain could not have filed in time, and so clearly does not (according to the law) belong on the ballot.

Barr complains that Obama filed, but said before the vote was tallied that he had already been nominated. However as I read the law, the requirement is that the paperwork be filed and certified by the party's state chair. There is stated no requirement that the party's internal procedures have actually been followed in full. Only that they be certified. Since it appears that the party's state chair did, in fact, file and certify the paperwork, Obama should be on the ballot.

My guess as to what will actually happen here is that a judge will get the case, will rule that Barr has no standing to bring the lawsuit, and will promptly throw the case out of court. Leaving unresolved the question of whether the candidates should, in fact, not be on the ballot. Since nobody can be found with both standing and the desire to sue, they will be on the ballot, and McCain will carry Texas.

I predict that because this is the only decision that the judge can come to which is consistent with the law and the facts, and will not get the judge lynched.

Don't worry, theyll set a court date

[Anonymous Coward]

For two months from now and get this all settled. Oh, what do you mean the election is before then?

Great for Obama

[RootsLINUX]

I'm an Obama supporter living in Texas and I think this is actually a great thing to have both McCain and Obama's names removed from the ballot. Texas is a very conservative state, which makes my vote here virtually worthless. But if neither is on the ballot, then the chances of Obama winning the state because of write-ins or Barr (or another 3rd party candidate) winning because their name is on the ballot increases. Basically if John McCain doesn't win Texas, its a very deep blow for him and this lawsuit is pretty much the only shot we have at it.

When will we abolish this stupid electoral college?

Re:Great for Obama

[beaverbrother]

This should be about following the law. If Obama supporters turn this into a partisan thing, then it will be Michigan and Florida all over again.
Obama's stance there was to let the party decide, because the candidates really shouldn't push for election regulations in their favor.
Obama's stance here will likely be to let the state decide, because it is a state matter and candidates can't bend the law to keep a party in power.
Obviously both positions favor him, so he will get flamed for it, but they are also both the right thing to do.
Here the libertarians are right. If parties can bend the rules to keep themselves in power, you don't have a true democracy.

Re:Great for Obama

[Neoprofin]

An interesting thing happened, and I don't know if it ever made it to /. A political group tried to get it enacted that Texas electoral votes would be distributed proportionately rather than all or nothing to take advantage of Texas' large urban areas (the ones that elected your 13 democrat congressmen) effectively turning Texas into a "purple state". I hear it ended right about the time someone threatened to do the same to California and destroy every Democrat presidential campaign for the next decade.(Or because it'd be hard to get something like that pushed through by Republicans in Texas.)

Pretty much a side note.

Re:Great for Obama

[TheQuantumShift]

"When will we abolish this stupid electoral college?"

When it stops benefiting those in power. So, never.

Re:Great for Obama

[Tyger]

If you did that to California, it would be a bit fractal in a way. The map of California would look a lot like the map of the nation, with blue on the edges, a few blue spots in the middle, and red filling up most of the center.

old news

[larry bagina]

I heard about this a couple weeks ago. Anyhow, the texas filing deadline was before the national conventions, but both parties filed paperwork on time with blank names and amended them afterwards (which is allowed by law). I thought this had already been dismissed, but it's going nowhere.

Re:old news

[Xtravar]

The Republicans tried to remove Barr's name from the PA ballots. Except that using a placeholder in Pennsylvania is legal, and not so much in Texas, if I understand correctly. You can get more details on Bob Barr's website. http://www.bobbarr2008.com/

I'm sure they'll weasel their way out of removing Obama and McCain from the TX ballot, but we'll see! In most court cases involving third parties, the judges side against them regardless of the law, so... good luck Bob Barr!

Re:old news

[Xtravar]

Also, for information about this specific case, see here:
http://campaign.blog.bobbarr2008.com/2008/09/18/bob-barr-rides-again-in-texas/

When we missed our deadline in West Virginia (a month before Republicans and Democrats were required to file I might add), we were forced off of the ballot. The law is clear and belonging to the Republican or Democrat party does not exempt you from its rule.

Re:old news

[PsychicX]

belonging to the Republican or Democrat party does not exempt you from its rule.

What the hell planet has he been living on for the last ten years?

Re:This Is NOT News For Nerds!!

[Skapare]

Nerds love seeing news about lawyers screwing up. So this should be classified under entertainment or comedy.

Re: electoral college

[Antony-Kyre]

I am in favour of the electoral college. I think I'd rather secede than to abolish it. Then again, I am for states' rights.

Re:Hahaha!

[plover]

Hey, this is awesome! Screw electronic voting. Screw pre-printed ballots in general! Just think -- if candidates were forced to rely on a write-in only process, voting participation would drop like a stone because the average American couldn't be bothered. Only the activists would show up, and the polls wouldn't be tainted by idiots who know nothing other than the contents of TV ads.

Re:try-getting-the-signatures-for-a-3d-party-in

[CSMatt]

I prefer my political parties to be of the third dimension.

Re:Hahaha!

[CSMatt]

Expect a huge amount of write-ins for "Stephen Colbert."

Re: electoral college

[vthokiestm]

"Favour"? You seem to have already seceded.

Re:Hahaha!

[plover]

I bet you a dollar that Colbert would beat Bob Barr by an order of magnitude!

Although he might lose to the Mythbuster fans. His picture looks like a cross between Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage. :-)

Re: electoral college

[Onan]

And by "states", I'm guessing you mean the 6 or so states that presidents bother to woo, at the expense of the 44 that they permanently ignore? This is a good deal for states how, exactly?

Usually when people say "states' rights", they're talking about the championing the rights of states over the rights of the federal government. But to say it in the context of the electoral college, you're championing the rights of states over the rights of voters. That seems like a much harder stance to defend.

Re:It's a publicity stunt.

[gfxguy]

Really? So you don't think it's a valid complaint?

Let's just say, just for grins, that he wasn't trying to keep his name in the press. If you were in his position, wouldn't you point out unfair violations of the law to an advantage whether you wanted press or not?

Re:It's a publicity stunt.

[Nicholas Evans]

No, it's not just to keep his name in the press. Ballot access is a huge issue for 3rd party candidates. He's trying to make a point.

Silly Rabbit...

[gbulmash]

What if Florida or Ohio decided to pass a law saying that the name of the official major party nominees had to be submitted 180 days before the election?

A reasonable advance notice to give time to prepare and print ballots is cool, but if Texas was forced to remove the major party candidates from the ballot, it would be like saying that any state, at a whim, could determine a national nomination deadline by setting a ballot deadline.

IANAL, but I think Obama and McCain could raise a pretty valid constitutional challenge to it that might end up creating a national guideline for ballot deadlines, imposing yet another federal regulation.

Re:Silly Rabbit...

[batkiwi]

There is no legal guidance on the steps taken by a state in choosing how to cast their electoral votes. They could toss a coin and it'd likely be legal depending on THAT STATE'S constitution.

Re:Silly Rabbit...

[gamanimatron]

What possible legal grounds could a political party - a private organization - have for forcing a state to do anything? Political parties have no constitutional standing; they're just clubs. Clubs of people who have very effectively fooled you, at least, into thinking that somehow the country would fall apart if they weren't around to tell you how to think.

States can do whatever they like to choose their electors, and put whatever constraints they feel like on the process, SO LONG AS those constraints are clear and unprejudicial. If every private club that wants their candidate on the ballot has to meet the same vaguely reasonable criteria, you don't have a damned thing to say about it unless you live in that state.

At least, that's how it is now. I'll bet just about anything that if Barr did somehow prevail here, the ultimate result would actually be another small death for states' rights, one way or another.

Re:Silly Rabbit...

[anotherdjohnson]

Agreed! Most people are completely confused about our government, and believe that it is a democracy. It would actually be quite difficult to have a true democracy with this many people in our country.

I'm also with you when it comes to our federal government (even state and local govt) coming in and telling us what to do. This is suppose to be a "government of the people and for the people" but it has turned into a goverment of the politicians and lobbyists for the politician, lobbyists and those who pay the lobbyists.

As someone one said, "I love my country, but I fear the government."

Re:Hahaha!

[Nefarious Wheel]

Personally I would prefer writing in "None of the Above"

Re: electoral college

[drachenstern]

Can you talk about 250 million others into thinking the same as you? If you can just convince them to pass a little bit of legislation making it an official right of ours, I'll help lead the charge for us to separate. I think it would be in our best interest, especially if we can gain most favored nation status pending our departure. I'll then propose that we conquer your so called Mexico by force, as the Union forces once did, but we won't give it back. Then we'll be able to sell you oil at open market prices and profit like mad.

Mad I tell you, MAD!!!!!

Bwah hah ha ha ha!

But seriously, only about 250 Million others should swing the vote enough. Start canvassing. I'll start arming our populace. Oh look, I'm nearly done. Your move.

Re:It's a publicity stunt.

[Mc_Anthony]

"I think he's trying to get votes. Isn't that what you do when you're running for office?"

Not when you are running as a third party. It's *never* about winning when you are running as a third party.

Hahahahahaha!

[Jane Q. Public]

A publicity stunt? Hahahahaha.

I don't think I really have to say anything more. The law is right there on the 'net.

Re:Hahaha!

[Neoprofin]

Just because someone is an activist doesn't mean they're intelligent or well informed.

It just means they have strong opinions, and I have plenty of those about things I haven't even heard of yet.

Re: electoral college

[Fluffeh]

Maybe he is one of the people you guys refer to as "You Aussies", or one of those British folks. Them and us and our whacky spelling. I mean, we should be telling the English how to spell in English right?

Re: electoral college

[eldepeche]

The current system is worse than mob rule. Why do we have huge subsidies on corn and soy? Iowa is a swing state. Why did we bail out American auto makers in the 70's? Michigan is a swing state. Why do we have steel tariffs? Pennsylvania is a swing state. Why do we have sugar tariffs? Florida is a swing state. Maybe we would have some kind of national urban/metropolitan policy on land use or transportation if anyone cared what people in California or greater New York thought about anything.

Spell check?

[martyb]

Hey, this is awesome! Screw electronic voting. Screw pre-printed ballots in general! Just think -- if candidates were forced to rely on a write-in only process, voting participation would drop like a stone because the average American couldn't be bothered. Only the activists would show up, and the polls wouldn't be tainted by idiots who know nothing other than the contents of TV ads.(emphasis added)

That could be quite interesting! Here are my predictions on the names of some of the write-in candidates:

• Barrack Obama
• Barak Obama
• Bareack Obama
• Barack O'bama
• Barack Omama
• Barack O. Bama
• John McKain
• John MacCain
• Jon McCain
• Johann McCain
• John McCane
• John Mack Cain

As not even one of the above is the name of a candidate, all Bob Barr needs is for more people to be able to spell his name correctly than they could the other candidates.

For a prank, Bob Barr could have a few people at each polling place who carried signs encouraging people to vote for the above, misspelled candidates. That couldn't possibly work. Could it?

Re:Spell check?

[candover]

That couldn't possibly work. Could it?

Nope. If the spelling is close enough that it's obvious who was intended, it counts. Even if it's not entirely flattering.

Re:Spell check?

[calmofthestorm]

Ron Paul!

Re:Spell check?

[merlinokos]

I think you're grossly underestimating the power of the Die Hard movies, particularly when combined with a populace that's more concerned with entertainment than politics. John McClane for president!

Re:Spell check?

[ShakaUVM]

I'm definitely voting for the Osama Hussein / Joe Bin Laden ticket in '08!

Re:Spell check?

[sanosuke001]

You forgot Black Osama

Re: electoral college

[mrchaotica]

What the frack does states' rights have to do with the electoral college?

Electors for each state were originally intended to be chosen by the state legislature, not the citizens of the state. This would have given the state government additional power over the Federal government. Choosing of electors by the people, along with direct election of Senators (the 17th Amendment) represent a lamentable erosion of Federalism, and resulted in things like the blatant abuse of the Interstate Commerce Clause, blackmailing states into accepting things like speed limits and Real ID, etc.

Take them the heck off the ballot.

[taliesin1077]

Actually, Barr is having to fight in a couple states for ballot access, despite having made the requisite number of signatures by the deadline specified by the states. Connecticut might be one? I'm pretty sure Virginia is as well. However, the Dems and the Reps, despite having missed the timeline, (and I've seen copies of the paperwork...they missed it) are granted ballot access carte blanche.

Re: electoral college

[dynamo52]

and before the grammar nazis attack, I see the missing apostrophe.

Re:Is that the only way?

[chromatic]

If he can't win on his own merit, and has to sue the system because of an unimportant deadline issue, then why does he deserve my vote?

Contrariwise, if major party candidates can't find the time or motivation to follow election laws, why do they deserve your vote?

Const'l amend not needed for all federal elections

[s2k2vidguy]

one set of laws that covers how federal elections should be run

That would require an Amendment to the Constitution. For no good reason.

Not exactly. For presidential elections, yes, because the Electoral College is implicated. But for other federal elections, no. See Art. I, sec. 4, cl. 1: The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators (emphasis added).

Congress has the power of preemption of state laws on elections to Congress. But to implement uniform rules for presidential elections, yes, the Constitution would need to be amended.

Re:Let's Get Real for a Second

[zoogies]

Hm, holding people accountable for rules without considering who they are or how powerful they are. Man, what an asshole.

You bring up an interesting analogy, but with a problem: if you miss the tax filing deadline, you are subject to penalties. Those are the rules, and it's well known.

I don't know the specifics of the election rules, but I suspect the stipulation is that if you miss the filing deadline, you won't get on the ballot. And not that if you miss the filing deadline, you'll get a fine.

Is that reasonable? Is that even true? I don't know. But seriously, bending rules out of convenience or _perceived_necessity? you're kidding, right?

Re:Is that the only way?

[zoogies]

Maybe he doesn't deserve your vote. You might not even agree with his Libertarian Party platform. But it's not about him; it's about the Big Party guys.

Does whether or not this Barr guy (I know nothing about him) would be a good president affect whether or not the two powerful parties in the US should be held accountable? I think that's the point.

And seriously, third parties have it kind of bad here. They have trouble getting on the ballot in all states, and I'm not surprised that they'd pull out all the stops to improve their situation.

Personally, I don't like it this two-party dominance a whole lot. Their collective monopoly of power is a little scary.

Re:Let's Get Real for a Second

[TexVex]

you're kidding, right?

No, I'm not. I read the indicated section of code as follows: If your party files by the indicated deadline and meets all other requirements, the state must include your candidate's name on the ballot. That's what is meant by "entitled", which is a key word in the law as written.

It doesn't say squat about late filing. By missing the deadline, they missed the state's guarantee of their names appearing on the ballots. But failing to obtain that guarantee does not somehow imply that the state must prevent their names from appearing on the ballot. Lack of a guarantee is not a guarantee of the opposite thing. I'd expect that election officials can and will include the D and R candidates on the ticket, because there is no legal reason why they shouldn't!

Of course, it's possible that they could exclude them if they wanted to, because of the missed the deadline, but who would want to throw a monkey wrench that huge into the election process?

So Barr's making a mountain out of this molehill just makes Barr and Libertarians look bad.

Mountain out of a molehill. That was the point of my previous post. Tryin' to keep it real.

Interesting opportunity for the dems

[Urkki]

If Obama is almost certain to lose Texas, how about he admits the error and doesn't run in Texas at all? So it would be McCain versus Barr. A lot of McCain voters might not bother to vote 'cos they're sure to win, while some Dems just might go vote for Barr, just to oppose McCain. So Barr might have a remote chance of winning against McCain in that case, due to low voter turn-out.

But the main point for dems would be, that if McCain then wins the entire election by small margin and becomes the president, he would arguably again be a republican president who got elected illegally... That might give some nice political ammunition for the next 4 years.

I mean, if Barak is sure to lose Texas anyway, what do they have to lose?

Turnabout is fair play

[Kaseijin]

I believe the issue here was that the major parties hadn't yet decided who their candidate was going to be, and that Texas has an unusually early filing requirment compared to most of the other states.

The issue here is that Barr is off the ballot or fighting for access in other states for the same reason.

Re:It's a publicity stunt.

[StrategicIrony]

Uhm. The Whigs weren't the third party... the Republicans were.

A long time ago it was the Democrats vs the Whigs.

Suddenly those Republicans crept up and pulled the rhugs out from under the Whigs. *chuckles*

Re:They'll meet half way, Remove Obama, Leave McCa

[StrategicIrony]

It has nothing to do with counting issues. It has to do with proportional representation.

At the time it was created, Delaware got 3 votes, Virginia got 10 votes.

However, Virginia had something like 30x the population.

What it did was give small states more representation in choosing the president.

Currently, the numbers are inflated. Wyoming still only gets 3 votes, but California gets 55.

If we deflated it back down so California got 15, then Florida would have 9 and Wyoming would still have 3 and suddenly, we would have a number more useful swing states.

Frankly, I prefer the concept of electoral college, but I think I'd almost favor state implementing a district election system, similar to senate seats, for electoral votes, allowing an even spread based on population clusters...

I DO NOT like a "popular vote". It feels too much like a big federalist government. I don't believe in an overwhelming federal goverment. I would prefer to go back more toward a coalition of independent states.

Re:if you support third party candidates

[mr_matticus]

It assumes rational self-interest, which in turn relies on intelligent, informed decisionmakers. It relies on self-regulation, which is demonstrably ineffective (there is no such thing as environmental protectionism in libertarianism).

It is the political science equivalent of "the math works, assuming a spherical, frictionless cow". It is an academic model suffering from the same impossibility of implementation as communism. It only works given flawless conditions, which is to say that it does not work.

It offers no mechanism to correct imbalances that inevitably arise in society, and it places ideological integrity ahead of pragmatic effectiveness. It cannot adapt to the conflict that "maximum personal liberty" is nonlinear and NP-complete unless you live in a single-issue society. Perhaps most vexingly, it supposes a government which protects private interests and thus has nothing resembling a check on corporate power, despite academic protests to the contrary. What is best for the individual is sometimes in conflict with what is best for society, or for the world at large and libertarianism doesn't accept that as a compelling justification. What's more, it relies on acting in long-term interests, which we have habitually not done, even in the presence of regulation, and instead of solving the free rider problem, libertarians simply deny it as a factor.

You can make strides to pull issues and legislation in a "libertarian" direction, but the libertarian ideal can never be realized. You cannot have a libertarian society.

Re:It's a publicity stunt.

[erroneus]

To be clear on this "publicity stunt" implies something that it isn't -- that this is just an attempt to garner some sort of public attention for some childish purpose.

In fact, just as in the case of Kucinich, this is about public awareness by the only means by which the public has any real access -- the press. The fact that we have the press is no accident. Freedom of the press is here by design. It is unfortunate that it wasn't foreseen that the press would all be bought up by a rather limited number of people and use it to push their views and agendas. But even as twisted as it is, it is still a useful institution for a democratic republic, struggling as it may be, to have available.

The Libertarian party grows with each election cycle. The two big parties are trying to keep even the knowledge its existence suppressed as much as possible. The press, of course, doesn't help this much when they exclude them from debates and statistical reporting of the facts. (Isn't it publishing false or intentionally inaccurate information an actionable offence when they take any results associated with other parties and assign them to the two biggest parties so that their two numbers conveniently add up to 100%? The practice is despicable, manipulative and distorting of the facts they are charged with reporting.)

Further, the Libertarian party is using the same tool of repression that has been used against them for a very long time -- election law. If we even PRETEND to have a fair and unbiased legal system, this has to be admitted and acted upon properly. Otherwise, it's time we all start to admit that our system is very tainted, distorted and is a complete sham against the public.

With all other things being controlled by the big two, the press is the only vehicle remaining when it comes to getting the word out. Is the purpose of the action to gain public attention? Very likely. But it is more than that as well. It is a demand for equality under the law; a demand that all operate under the same laws for better or worse; a demand that law not be enabled to favor one [or two] party over others regardless of their majority status. There could be nothing more American. Whites only? Men only? The fight for equality under the law is more than a racist or a sexist issue -- it is about all forms of minority having equal treatment and access to government.

Re: electoral college

[east coast]

Just FYI: As a rust belt resident who lives one mile from one of the largest and most profitable steel mills left in the entire state of Pennsylvania (if not the country)... We pretty much nailed the lid on the coffin of the American steel industry about 25 years ago and there isn't a steel man in the area who doesn't realize the steel tariff is a bad joke, if not an insult to their industry.

You describe approval voting

[tepples]

What would you suggest as a replacement ?

A big ol' yes/no for each candidate ? Tally them up, and whoever gets the most "Yes" answers wins ?

I'd approve that system. I'd say it's even easier to understand and harder to game than STV/IRV.

happened in 2004 too

[downix]

Bush failed to file on time to be listed in Alabama. Technically Alabamas electorals were to be the next highest canidate, which happened to be Kerry. Oh, and lookee here, with Alabama, Kerry suddenly won 2004...

If Barr wins this, it could turn the results in prior elections into disputes as well. I wish him goddess speed! 8)

Re:Not necessarily

[bigstrat2003]

Federal elections are about choosing between Democrats or Republicans. So long as these two can get ready in time, it's all that matters. Let's keep in mind that we have a legal system here that is based on common law. US law is about reality, not books and schools.

The bottom line is that Libertarians are just not part of the democratic process in the United States. He should just shut up and choose to be Democrat or Republican.

Please stop propping up the two-party system. Thank you.

Re:Let's Get Real for a Second

[TexVex]

I disagree with you. Either we are a nation of laws or we are NOT.

Yes, we are a nation of laws. The nice thing about that is that when something is not explicitly spelled out in the law, people have leeway to do as they see fit.

The law in this case is a contract between the state and political parties, stating that if the political parties jump through all the right hoops then the state is compelled to put the party's candidate on the ballot.

It doesn't say anything at all about what the state can or cannot do if a party fails to jump through a hoop. So that means it's up to the actual officials involved, all the way up to the Texas Secretary of State.

In this case, it means that the political parties involved have no legal recourse if their candidates' names do not appear on the ballot. They missed the deadline, so the state is not compelled to include their names on the ballot. But the state certainly is still allowed to put those names on the ballot, because the law does not forbit it.

Not how the Constitution is written, I'm afraid.

[FishAdmin]

How is it that someone can get a majority of votes and not win? Everyone's vote should be equal; having some people's vote count more than other people's vote is absurd.

You would be correct if we had a Democracy, though. In a true Democracy, every person votes, and every person's vote counts equally. However, we are a Republic in the USA; a group of people appointed to cast votes control the election outcome. Now, we happen to have a Democratic Republic, where the people casting votes are elected by the rest of us. However, your "popular vote" is actually worth nothing. It makes people feel good that they voted, and it hypothetically influences our Elected Officials to cast their votes the way we want them to. In truth, they could vote however they wanted and we couldn't do anything about it, except NOT re-elect them next term. Now, the wise Official would want to vote the same as the majority of his/her constituents, but they aren't legally bound to, by any means.

Let me explain Texas politics to you, son...

[they_call_me_quag]

No, I don't think you will see any last minute, bi-partisan efforts to fix this. Here's why:

(1) The Texas Legislature is not in session. The governor can call a special session, which would require the legislators to return to Austin from their homes, but...

(2) The Democrats, Libertarians and Independents in the house will refuse to return for the special session because they all benefit from this. Without the non-Republicans the legislature would not have a quorum and will not be able to hold a special session. They did this a few years ago when the Republicans tried to re-district the state and it worked well enough for several weeks.

Texas is a "sure win" state for McCain, who would pick up all of the states' 34 electoral votes. If Texas is removed from play, McCain would have to win every single "toss-up" state to win with 271 votes.

In other words, if Bob Barr's suit works, McCain is screwed and Obama should start packing up his house because he's moving in January.

P.S. I live in Austin and I follow these matters closely.

Re:They'll meet half way, Remove Obama, Leave McCa

[Teancum]

There are multiple methods of allocating electoral votes, and the "winner takes all" system isn't even spelled out in the U.S. Constitution. It isn't even the only method used for allocation of electoral votes in each state.

Maine and Nebraska use a system of allocating the two votes for the senate as "winner take all" for the state-wide vote, and then allow each congressional district an independent vote... with each district's electoral vote allocated by the highest vote within that district. California and Florida would have both been "split" votes under such a system if those states were to switch to such a system.

Colorado in 2004 tried to set up a purely proportional voting system for electoral votes... and was voted down due to Democratic (big "D") opposition that ultimately hurt John Kerry in that Presidential election anyway. Again, if some of the larger states like Florida, California, or Texas were to vote this way, you would certainly see more attention to even subtle shifts in popular opinion in these states. Texas wouldn't have just 2 or 3 "blue" votes, but a whole bunch... possibly a few "green" votes (from 3rd parties) thrown in for good measure.

One other thing to consider... without even amending the constitution or any such nonsense... is to simply increase the number of representatives in Congress. What is up with the magic number 435? Even a modest increase to around 500 would give better representation in the House as well as better proportional representation in Presidential elections as well.

Those who complain about the electoral college often don't understand modest changes that could be done without having to completely overhaul the system... and could have a major impact on how candidates actually campaign if these modest changes were implemented.

I do agree, however, that changes can and should happen with the electoral college.

Not entirely true

[scipiodog]

Your definition of "civilized" may vary, but:

Russia is a Union of States. Brasil is a Union of States. Mexico is a Union of States. Germany is a Union of States. Austria is a Union of States.

The concept seems to be quite common.

Of the examples above, only Germany is even vaguely comparable.

Brazil and Mexico were single colonies of a single foreign power (Spain and Portugal) before becoming independent countries. The USA (before it existed) was made up of 13 separate colonies that were all administered quite separately, with different customs, political biases, etc.

Germany as a country is a recent invention, and is the result of Bismarck's enforced union in the 19th Century of entirely separate German-speaking countries, under Prussian domination. The only reason Austria isn't part of "Germany" is because they were already a fairly strong empire in their own right at the time (the Austro-Hungarian empire.)

My Austrian friends hate to hear this, and claim a political difference in the present day reflects the difference back then. The truth is that at the time of German unification, they had more in common with most Germans that the Bavarians, for example, who had customs and even language that diverged significantly from the rest of Germany. The only difference was Bavaria had a weaker ruler and was more easily forced into the federal system.

Re:Not entirely true

[zsau]

How a country was created is irrelevant to whether or not a state is a federation, or how elections should be conducted. Australia, for instance, is a federation with (at present) a federal election law for federal elections. Seven colonies were created over a period of some hundred years (chronologically, New South Wales, Tasmania as Van Diemen's Land, Western Australia as the Swan River Colony, South Australia, New Zealand, Victoria and Queensland). At the end of this process, an extra colony was created (called the Commonwealth of Australia) with some powers transferred from six of the seven colonies, and other powers transferred from London. The first election in this new colony was done using state electoral laws, but one of the first laws passed was an electoral law. Over the next fifty to ninety years, the Commonwealth of Australia, New Zealand, and the other colonies became increasingly independent of London. Into which category does Australia fall?

Belgium is a federation of sorts, and one I don't fully understand. The federation is a relatively recent creation, but Flanders and Wallonia are powerful today, and very much culturally (and linguistically) different. But would you accept it as comparable?

Switzerland is probably another good example that you'd accept; their cantons come from relatively independent states in days when travel was a lot slower than it is today. I have no idea about their electoral law, aside from the fact that they have a massive number of referenda.

Re:Not necessarily

[bigstrat2003]

I change what I can, where I can. I have a much better shot at changing the status quo by trying to change people's minds, one person at a time, than I do by pleading with those in power to change the system so that they have less power.

Re:Is that the only way?

[Darby]

But as soon as it's a minority party doing the same thing, then the Law is Gold and needs to be upheld no matter what.

You really do not understand anything about the situation. At all.

The Republican and Democrat parties have been conspiring for decades to keep 3rd parties out of elections, out of debates, off of ballots through a huge variety of very sleazy tricks.
They had the former LP candidate, Badnarik arrested for showing up at the location of the debates to serve court papers related to their unauthorized restriction of our electoral process. That's one example among hundreds.

So, given that dirty tricks and sleaze are the standard technique that the 2 major parties use to maintain their power at the expense of the Republic, it is absolutely a great thing that Barr, douchebag that he is, is able to use election laws for the good of the country rather than at its expense.
Plus it is completely hilarious to see both parties screwed by the same techniques that they've mastered the art of fucking 3rd parties with. That is justice.

It's really not a bad thing to expect a presidential candidate to follow the laws regarding the election that they're running in. I'm pretty scared that you think that just believing that makes a person a scumbag. You might consider looking into what it means to be a citizen as opposed to being a subject. You clearly do not understand the distinction.

Re:you're not a socialist

[ratboy666]

Laws ARE absolute. And governmental power extends from, and defines, those laws.

I do not speed -- 1 kmph or mph over the speed limit is a violation. The speeding law is an absolute. Note that the signs on the highway say "Violators WILL be prosecuted" (at least along the highway I take). The job of governments is to tend law via legislation. As a result, the scrutiny should be even more intense. Enforcement MUST be absolute in the case of the government itself breaking the law.

Nothing else can be tolerated by a democratic society.

So, yes, when it comes to the people who DESIRE to rule following the law TO THE LETTER; and especially ELECTORAL law, yes, I am absolutist.

As should everyone.

Now this is an especially egregious case -- the law seems to be SELECTIVELY enforced, and there is a possibility of selective bias being introduced.

Not revenge -- control of the democratic process upon which your country is founded.
 

Re:Let's Get Real for a Second

[AK Marc]

But failing to obtain that guarantee does not somehow imply that the state must prevent their names from appearing on the ballot.

Not according to the numerous lawsuits filed by the Democratic and Republican parties to exclude 3rd parties that missed the deadlines or managed to get signatures invalidated. The way the rules are here, it does explicitly state that the deadline is a deadline. You don't meet it, you don't get on the ballot. I haven't read TX law on this exact point, but what is the point of calling it a "deadline" if it isn't, in fact, a deadline? That should be the guaranteed date, not a deadline. And if that was the case, it would be unconstitutional. Vague laws are not allowed, because in practice, they are applied unequally, which is unconstitutional.

Re:Not necessarily

[kesuki]

"The two-party system was how our Republic was founded."

you're a bit historically challenged there. yes it's true there were 'two major national parties' but the fact is one of them was a coalition of about 5 political parties that each had regional party names, to a certain respect the 'democrat' and 'republican' parties are still coalitions of smaller state based parties. as a matter of fact in Minnesota they still call their party the 'democrat farm and labor party' DFL and they're a part of the modern coalition of the 'democrat' party.

and to demonstrate my point that it is a coalition, http://www.freeople.com/blog/brady-wright-reports-rnc-minneapolis-suggests-next-steps-r3publicans/1410 the RNC silence ron paul supporters at the RNC because ron paul was supported by a state political party that didn't vote for mccain, despite being part of the RNC. it is a coalition, a 2 coalition system.

libertarians who are out there and in numbers who dislike the coalition process have very good reasons for disliking the coalitions, because trying to keep that many independent organizations to support the same basic party planks is all but a joke. anyways the point being in the old days when only land owing white men had suffrage, there were still more than 2 political parties, but for the sake of winning presidential races small state based parties formed coalitions using names like the 'federalists' and the democratic-republican party' over the ages the names of the national coalitions changed, as did their policies and beliefs... there could easily come a day when the 'libertarian' party reaches the critical mass needed to replace the 'democrat' party and we wind up having a 'libertarian' and a 'republican' coalition instead of the republican and democrats...

so the illusion of their being a 2 party system in the US is really just that, we really have a coalition of two groups that each have 50 state sized political parties, while the constitution party the green party and the libertarian parties are outside attempts to erode the power bases of the existing republican and democrat power bases because some people just can't stand the types of compromises politicians make the be 'part of a coalition'

if the 'green' party became large enough to replace the democrat coalition, it would still wind up being a coalition of 50 state parties, each state has it's own society it's own politicians and it's own interests and types of corruption. the broken part of the system is that you'll never get a 1 size fits all solution to the problems of the day. oh yeah, that and every major politician in Washington DC is pro big government, no matter what they say to the contrary. All you have to do is go back and look at the budget deficits that the major political parties voted to create, bill clinton was marginally an outsider who was supposed to loose to bush, and he's the only guy who turned around the budgets by repeatedly shutting down the government. this is why big money used every trick in the book to get obamam in there against Hillary Clinton. they trust obama but Hillary might have learned something from her husband.

there are rich and wealthy who make their living off buying US treasury bonds, and for there to be enough US treasury bonds for their wealth to keep growing, the US debt has to keep growing. this is the disconnect between the uninformed electorate and the corruption at the highest levels of the government.

9/11 wasn't a 'failure' of American security, it was a planed national crisis to start a trillion dollar war so the rich could avoid having to buy junk bonds, and could keep playing it safe in high grade us government bonds. If the average American actually pieced together the truth, they would probably in mass vote for politicians who didn't even run TV ads and instead used free internet message board systems to communicate their goals and ideals, and