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How We Used To Vote
Mr. Slippery writes "Think hanging chads, illegal purges of the voter rolls, and insecure voting machines are bad? The New Yorker looks back at how we used to vote back in the good old days: 'A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet. George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote. Nor did his brother, who died of his wounds. The Democratic candidate for Congress, William Harrison, lost to the American Party's Henry Winter Davis. Three months later, when the House of Representatives convened hearings into the election, whose result Harrison contested, Davis's victory was upheld on the ground that any "man of ordinary courage" could have made his way to the polls.' Now I feel like a wuss for complaining about the lack of a voter-verified paper trail." The article notes the American penchant for trying to fix voting problems with technology — starting just after the Revolution. This country didn't use secret ballots, an idea imported from Australia, until quite late in the 19th century.
Wait, what?
Last time I checked more accountability for elected officials is always better.
Vote early and often! :)
Granted this was only way back in 2000, but I lived in St. Clair County, IL. It was a small township called French Village. At 8am, the mayor knocked on my door and informed my wife and I it was time to vote. We marched down to the fire station with him and twenty other poor people. They passed out leaflets stating which democrats we should vote for and why. There were no republicans running in our little township, so good luck dissenting. They also explained how important it was to vote democrat and how we should not consider ourselves welcome in the community if we failed to vote. We cast our votes and all went well. However, you had to fill your ballot in at a table with everyone else who could fit in the room at the time and the mayor literally acted as a monitor!!!
There'd be no incentive to bribing a Congressman..
..except to make corrupt proposals, which no one would have incentive to vote for.
Think hanging chads, illegal purges of the voter rolls, and insecure voting machines are bad?
Yes.
If card check legislation gets signed into law by the next administration, we'll see a return of the "good old days."
Some American please explain me: why do you have voter registration at all? In my country (Netherlands), everyone above 18 is registered by default. I assume this is similar in most of Western Europe. The only caveat is that you have to be registered with your municipality, which you have to do anyhow for various different reasons (municipal tax, getting passports/ID/driving licence ...). A few weeks before an election, you simply get your 'voting ticket' in the mail. You typically take this to a neighborhood school to cast your vote, usually electronically.
Making everyone eligible to vote by default would save a lot of those voter-fraud claims and a lot of effort by the campaigns to get the people registered.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet. George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote. Nor did his brother, who died of his wounds.
I'd like to see Karl Rove top that.
The states actually determine who is a eligible voter. Some states deny voting privs to convicted felons, some can vote reguardless even in prison and others can vote if there imposed sentence has been served. Personally I think once a mans
sentence has been served he should be eligible to vote else it imposes (taxation without representation) on the individual.
A great many states have poll day registration you walk in with a utility bill, drivers license or something of that sort and
you can register to vote right then and there.
Got Code?
Then on what grounds would you be able to judge if your congressperson should be reelected or not?
Regardless of any possible benefits this is a terrible, terrible idea. A legitimate public financing system would be more of a step in the right direction.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
So the various Congress Critters would all agree to vote "yes" for pay raises ... except for one who would vote "no".
Then, while campaigning, they can ALL claim to have voted against it.
And so on with every important issue.
Well to be fair the UK's House of Lords is an unelected body that holds no accountability to anyone and they've looked out for the "average Joe" way more than the elected and accountable house of commons.
You'd be surprised how honest people can be when their job doesn't rely on what the average dimwit thinks.
There are about four groups of people working to rectify this problem. The one I've been following is Punchscan which looks like they have everything covered except fraudulent registration. Slashdot covered Punchscan here.
You'd be surprised how honest people can be when their job doesn't rely on what the average dimwit thinks.
... which is an excellent argument against electing judges.
Acutally, the Norwegian system is even more foolproof. A voting venue consist of a single box and multiple booths. Inside the voting booth, you find several stacks of paper, one for each voting alternative. You pick up a pice of paper from the correct stack, fold it, walk outside, and hand it to the person standing next to the box. He ensures that you are only casting a single vote, and drops it into the box for you.
The article makes the interesting point that our founding forefathers considered secret balloting cowardly. Clearly they did not anticipate violence as a tactic to tamper with elections. Our founding forefathers thought it was important to include an amendment stating that you could not be forced to quarter troops against your will in times of peace, clearly not anticipating that it would not really be an issue today. Some of our founding forefathers thought that slavery was alright. Not all of our founding forefathers thought separation of church and state as we take it today was a good idea.
It always strikes me as strange that people take the constitution as more than just a set of generally good ideas and precedents written by talented individuals. People act like because our founding forefathers said X, it was handed down by God himself.
I usually run up against this when the constitution seems to disagree with my liberal leanings (I'm sure someone will want to get into a pointless discussion of the second amendment, but we've all been down that road), but it's not limited to just that, and I'm sure it runs both ways.
More specific to elections though, isn't it about time we abolished the electoral college and go right to a popular vote? There is clearly no legitimate reason for it to still be around. Electors rarely switch their votes, and, as the article points out, the founders saying it's a good idea does not make it so.
You know, they really should bring back the scarlet letter and witch trials. I mean, if someone sitting next to you got a promotion that you didn't, you would be able to start the whispering campaign that your rival cut a deal with Satan.
This is my sig.
Republicans in the USA tend to believe that not everyone should be allowed to vote. Specifically, we would ultimately prefer that only people who own property should be allowed to vote in order to prevent the socialist idea of masses voting themselves wealth transfers from upper classes. Therefor, voter registration would be a separate process as it was a different set of people.
However, we lost this debate utterly to the Democrats, and so, more or less, have this idea that everyone should be allowed to vote, but with the vestiges of a separate process until such time that we Republicans can really get back into power and repeal that god-awful Constitutional amendment.
This is my sig.
True having zero accountability and only unelectable people would probably lead to a dictatorship which would likely lead to something that's not favourable to most but like anything it's a case of not going to either extreme.
The UK has a situation where it sort of has both extremes and, imo, when you do that the unaccountable ones will always win out in the end because the Lords are human too and have the same needs as the rest of us. Having the threat looming over that they could lose that position probably helps but relying on people within power that are 100% accountable to the public through election would end up in some sort of pro Daily Mail government that bases its laws on Littlejohn, the immigrant, with anti immigrant rubbish rants and other laws based on rubbish the common masses read from the guy who sits comfortably in Florida.
It's unfortunate but most people aren't capable of voting in their best interests. In an ideal world Reagan's trickle-down economics were correct if you'd rework them to make them less extreme. It's a fine balance that needs constant adjustment to ensure no one gets too much power.
That's where the problem lies. To get things right requires constant thought and evaluation. People don't want that. They want to press a button and then it's sorted but that won't happen ever. Constant fluctuation to keep people on their toes and thinking is uncool and will never win. The house of common / house of lords setup, as it's currently working, is probably the best people will get.
You'd be surprised how honest people can be when their job doesn't rely on what the average dimwit thinks.
... which is an excellent argument against electing judges.
True.
Having 3 equal groups within a government and one that isn't accountable to the uneducated masses works best. It keeps thing balanced.
... which is an excellent argument against electing judges
You have it all wrong.
All judges get elected or put into their positions through some political process be it vocal or non-vocal. Ascension to such a job still will pass through other human beings with opinions of their own. It's an undeniable fact of life.
The correct question you should be asking is this. "How and by whom should judges be put into power?
Life is not for the lazy.
Isn't the greatest trick the devil ever pulled convincing the world that he didn't exist?
He helped steal an election, out an undercover CIA agent, formulated lies that led our nation to war, may not see one day of jail for it, and can continue to deny that he was involved (of course, not on record). He can now join G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, and many others of the faithful party who have broken US and international law, and yet are somehow immune to the legal system.
I mean, the chick in the scarlet letter was smoking hot. If smoking hot chicks that put out had to wear a scarlet letter, what's really so bad about that, if you are a guy?
This is my sig.
All judges get elected or put into their positions through some political process be it vocal or non-vocal. Ascension to such a job still will pass through other human beings with opinions of their own. It's an undeniable fact of life.
The correct question you should be asking is this. "How and by whom should judges be put into power?
I agree. The point really is, I suppose, that once a judge is appointed, he/she doesn't have to worry about being re-appointed. Doesn't have to worry what the average dimwit thinks about an issue, for fear of not being re-elected.
The law is the law, and shouldn't be controlled by current community opinions.
The law is the law, and shouldn't be controlled by current community opinions.
How is that not counter to "by the people, for the people"?
If enough fucktards want to change the law, move elsewhere and watch them get their just deserts.
Informed decisions based on public debate that includes experts on subject matter will probably lead to better decisions than the will of the average mob. But the law is the people's, not the elite's.
It's easy us to look down on people. But consider this: there may be smarter people than us who govern us. Would we want to be cut out of the loop because we weren't elite enough?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is one of the problems we have these days, and one of the things that has lead us down this road of abuses of freedom of speech and so on. You, like many others, have this idea that the Constitution is just some document that we should ignore when convenient. Well, that's not how it works. Our legal system is such that the Constitution is the highest law of the land. All other laws must conform to it. It isn't just something to be disregarded when convenient. That's how our legal system works.
So for example if you want the electoral college changed or abolished fair enough, however that requires a constitutional amendment. In case you don't know what that requires, I'll tell you: 66% of both houses of congress need to pass it, then 75% of the states. It isn't easy to amend the Constitution, and that was done on purpose.
Also you might want to learn more about it because you might come to respect it as more useful. Barring a Constitution, any of the crap the Bush administration wanted to pull would be perfectly legal. If federal law was the be all end all, then so long as congress said "ok, it's legal." Now if you are ok with the government just trampling on rights, well then fine. However I don't want to hear bitching when they trample on the first, but silence when they trample on the 2nd.
I can make a compelling public safety and order argument for trampling on/abolishing ANY amendment.
The Constitution isn't just some quaint little document, it is the very foundation of the US government. It is what united the states in to a union, it is what defines the limits of the federal republic we live in (the US is a republic, not a democracy, there's a difference) and so on. It is also the document on which just about every other free nation has based theirs on. So it is something important to understand, especially if you live in the US and are thus subject to it's law. This idea that it is just a quaint piece of paper to be ignored at various times is extremely ignorant.
Hmm...too bad then, that here in the US, we switched to allowing the populace to vote for our senators, rather than having them appointed.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I think you underestimate the fear of hanging chads, Chep.
Hanging chads are an abomination, and must be thwarted at every turn. And like the God-fearing, proud, patriotic Americans that we are, we turn right to the fanciest gizmos and gadgets we can to make our lives better.
Why buy a jump rope when you can buy a motorized running treadmill with incline, heart-rate sensors, mp3 player, and toaster oven? That's what a communist would do!
[/sad truth]
I was saying two things. One: it's not infallible, and does need to be changed occasionally. Two: one of the things that should be changed, now, is the electoral college system.
Nothing about how we should junk the whole thing. Nothing about it being trivial. Nothing about it should be easier to amend the consitution. Nothing about getting rid of the second amendment.
Calm down.
You, sir, owe me a keyboard
Since many years ago now you have to show ID to become legally employed in the US. If someone hasn't shown it, the employer just fudged something. If they are working a job and didn't show any ID, they are working illegally and off the books most likely and not paying taxes. In other words, shouldn't be eligible to vote. All states provide non driver's licenses picture ID for free or very cheap, if someone can't be arsed enough to go get it, who cares? It isn't *that* hard. If you can't do the bare minimum to establish your legal bona fides, it isn't the states lookout to do it for you. Really, why not come out and say it out loud, why be a chickenshit about it, here's reality: the people claiming it is hard to prove you are a legal citizen over age of 18 and eligible to vote want to shoot the vote to 20 million ILLEGAL aliens. You know I am right, doncha? C'mon, admit it, that's the real scam here, amnesty for the illegals. And I worked hard back in the day (a long time ago probably before you were born) to help black folks and poor white folks get to vote, because they had a *legal* right to do so, and that was wrong, so this isn't racism, it's just reality, illegal aliens do NOT have a right to vote here and nor should they, and trying to run some scam claiming all the legal folks are having a hard time coming up with ID is just that, a scam.. And it has nothing to do with being middle class or not, even homeless *legal* folks can vote if they have ID, a recent court case affirmed the right of some dude to use a park bench as his legal address, but he still needs an ID to vote. Anything beyond that you are talking about completely crazy/insane/mentally incompetent people and...oh well, no vote, and do you really want those folks to vote? It wouldn't be those folks voting anyway, it would be their "handler" voting for them in the booth. Fail. People who can't establish a really low threshold of adult competency..well..we will always have some cracks to fall through, for 99.9999% of everyone else, it just isn't that hard to go get some three dollar picture ID.
Where does this magic number 3 come from? Is it just because you're American/French? Most democracies get by fine with anything between 2-5 groups. (Calling the groups "equal" is, of course, ridiculous and meaningless in any government.)
How is that not counter to "by the people, for the people"
Maybe it is, but who cares? This country isn't built on the idea that anything that 51% of the people can agree on should happen.
Ever notice the Bill of Rights? That sort of thing would be pointless, indeed obstructionist, if the intent was to let the populace do whatever they felt like.
True, direct, 100% democracy does not work. Democracy is two lions and a lamb voting on dinner. The US is not set up as a direct democracy and this is a feature, not a bug.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
The application of the law is not "by the people, for the people", nor can it ever be. The application of the law, is by the law for the law with a smattering of justice thrown in depending on how just the law is in the first place. The people can(in theory) change the law, they can certainly change the people who made it, they can change the people who enforce it, and they can even change the constitution if enough of them want to.
They can't decide how the laws which have been written will be applied(without rewriting them at least), and should not be able to. It is the judiciary's job to decide whether the law is in violation of the constitution, and whether everything has been done according to the law. We have juries to decide facts, but we need independent and ideally impartial judges to decide the law.
We need this because neither the mob, nor the government can be trusted to protect the rights of those it believes guilty of a crime. If either group had complete control of the application of the law then anyone who the public(or government) believed was guilty of a crime would have no protections under the law. No judge who has to face reelection will ever throw out evidence against someone accused of a crime which the public finds particularly heinous because it was illegaly obtained. No judge who has to face reappointment by the government will protect the rights of someone who speaks out against that government.
The law must presume that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and must protect the rights not only of the innocent, but also the accused, and even the guilty. It must do this because the protection of those rights is what makes the USA what it is, it is, or at least was, the shining light of our society, it's what allows any degree of fairness in our legal system whatsoever, and allows us the freedoms which construct our lives.
The people have the right, and the ability to determine what those rights are, they have the right and the ability to determine both the content and the enforcement of the law, but they cannot control its application, because they cannot(at least as a group) be trusted to treat everyone, even the guilty, as equal before the law.
That doesn't mean that judges are perfect, or that they are always capable of the impartiality which they are charged to uphold, but an educated, reasoned individual has a lot better chance than a mob. If you want to continually reelect/appoint judges then you can kiss you rights goodbye if anyone ever accuses you(guilty or not) of anything which gets the mobs blood boiling.
The point that grandparent is trying to make(I think) is about rule of law. In order to have rule of law, law must be uniformly applied, as written, to the greatest degree possible. Allowing popular opinion to sway particular cases is anathema to that. This doesn't mean that "the elites" get to make law(The people directly or through representatives make law.) But it does mean that the people cannot be allowed to decide to apply or not to apply the law they have written in a given instance.
In essence, by having the people write the law and making its application as rigorous, uniform, and automatic as possible, we uphold the rule of "the people" with as little as possible of mob rule. In specific instances, with emotions running high one way or the other, "the people" are fantastically unreliable(generally aided, these days, by the shrieking emotion peddlers of the press). The best compromise we can strike between some sort of nonrepresentative rule and mob rule is a mechanism where the people write the laws first, to address society in the abstract, and then the laws are executed without regard for the emotions of the mob in any particular instance.
Your head is either in the clouds, or in the sand. If you think Bush pushed an Iraq invasion for any purpose but the acquisition of their oil resources, you're doing a great job of ignoring nearly one hundred years of history. This is the fifth time the US and/or Britain have invaded Iraq since oil became the most necessary component of the modern military. You may think it's a coincidence, but I urge you to read something besides opinion pieces.
The Bush White House may be saving him face for the moment, but I haven't seen any compelling argument against the dozen or so books that provide good evidence that he not only ordered the manufacture of the famed letter about Nigerian yellowcake, but went out of his way to have the CIA discredit all evidence - and there was a lot - to the contrary. Defending the president because he's the president is the sincerest imitation of soviet era politics, but so is destroying human rights for the sake of security.
James Kirchick is the former Ralph Nader supporter who couldn't land any writing jobs until he unabashedly began parroting neoconservative talking points, right? Who graduated Yale barely two years ago? What are you, part of the McCain campaign?
And your other source, Norman Podhoretz, is a member of the PNAC. The bias is so deep and obvious I can't even come up with a witty analogy for these two. Bravo.
"Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. ... Kill the sons of bitches." -G Gordon Liddy, 1994, on his radio show
"It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great." -McCain, 2007, on Gordon's radio show
Oh, hypocrisy! Does your comedy know no bounds?
Baseball? - Like the "3 strikes and you're out" thing is the foundation of the judicial system. /ducks.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The Republican party you're referring to has quite a few similarities to our modern Democrats.
Except for that part about being biblical and fighting wars for an ideological cause. Abe Lincoln === religious nut. You need to understand that in Lincoln's time a black man had about the same level of humanity as a fetus is considered to have today. The whole reason slavery worked was because in the western mind, blacks weren't really people... they were animals, didn't have souls, were more like horses or something and any display of intelligence they did was chalked up to simple mimicry rather than any actual intelligence.
It's like everyone talks about the likes of Frederick Douglas, but, in those days, people went to go see Frederic Douglas weren't going to see an eloquent speaker, per se... it was like, going to see a horse that can count... "oh dear, instead of seeing the counting horse, let's go see the speechgiving negro". There was no black civilization on the planet even close to within 500 - 1000 years technologically of what European nations had and so arguing in favor of equality was genuinely an act of faith. Even Lincoln pretty much said that, he didn't really think that blacks were up to the same level as whites, but it was a religious thing to treat them right.
This is my sig.
I quite agree, and feel that many young people become disenfranchised under the current system. Because of increasing fear of crime, children as young as ten are being tried as adults in certain localities. Yet they (including teenagers up to 18) have no say in how that system is run.
Either they are able to make decisions for themselves, and should be granted the right to vote, or they are incapable of making decisions and should not be punished for crimes, etc.
Using the infant example, if an infant smothers their sibling to death, they are unlikely to be sent to a maximum security prison as they probably had no idea what they were doing. They also shouldn't have the right to vote, as they would have no idea what it is about.
Unity in Diversity
that change had more disastrous consequences than almost anyone today realizes. it fundamentally altered the balance of power between the state and federal governments far more than anything since the civil war (and one could plausibly argue which was a bigger effect). compare the growth of our military before and after that change, and notice particularly the progressive, gradual federalization of the state's National Guard units. the states no longer have any direct, systematic method of checking the federal government, and instead have to rely on ad-hoc and after-the-fact methods.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.