Slashdot Mirror
Poll-Based System Predicts U.S. Election Results For President, Senate
An anonymous reader writes "Election Analytics is a website developed by Dr. Sheldon Jacobson at the University of Illinois designed to predict the outcomes of the U.S. presidential and senatorial elections, based on reported polling data. From the site: 'The mathematical model employs Bayesian estimators that use available state poll results (at present, this is being taken from Rasmussen, Survey USA, and Quinnipiac, among others) to determine the probability that each presidential candidate will win each of the states (or the probability that each political party will win the Senate race in each state). These state-by-state probabilities are then used in a dynamic programming algorithm to determine a probability distribution for the number of Electoral College votes that each candidate will win in the 2012 presidential election. In the case of the Senate races, the individual state probabilities are used to determine the number of seats that each party will control.'" You can tweak the site by selecting a skew toward the Republican or Democratic tickets, and whether it's mild or strong. Right now, this tool shows the odds favor another four years for Obama, even with a strong swing for the Republicans.
Fox news tells me that Romney will win 59 states and sweep Obama and his extreme socialism away forever.
Meanwhile, 13 out of 10 slashdotters are supporting Ron Paul, so clearly he is the only possible winner.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"Right now, this tool shows the odds favor another four years for Obama, even with a strong swing for the Republicans."
I'm not surprised since the incumbent has a strong advantage and we have a weak opponent on the Republican ticket. It is next election when the Republicans will logically field a strong candidate as they'll have far better odds of winning.
Then again there is this one http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/23/university-of-colorado-prediction-model-points-to-big-romney-win/ that has been correct every time since 1980 that says Romney will win big.
I know I'm not supposed to RTFA, but can someone take a website seriously that has a hit counter on the bottom?
MSNBC told me that 2+2=4! That's biased towards those dam socialist mathematicians and scientists. Every good free-thinkin' fam'ly values-lovin' 'Mur'kin knows that 2+2=5!
It's renown among serious pollsters as a paid-for propaganda site.
Ignore models that have proven results, there's not way that a brand new system based on biased poll inputs could possibly result in anything but a totally neutral and correct result.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Instead, consider "wasting" your vote in a different way: By voting for someone who isn't running on a major party ticket.
Maybe if enough people realize that their vote in their state isn't actually important when it comes to choosing the next president, they can cast a vote that says "the next next president shouldn't be a Republicrat". Only 6 states in the country aren't 90% in favor of one party or the other, and with the exception of florida, none of them really have much in the way of population. If you live in a 90% state, and were going to vote for the "lesser of two evils", why note vote for "neither of two evils". It'll make no more difference, but a much stronger statement.
You probably should go to intrade... yeah yeah yeah... I know it's pretty obvious to everybody here, but... what the hell
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Let's hope you are Republican.
It's worth noting that this analysis includes data from Rasmussen, a pollster whose track record at predicting election outcomes is marred by a persistent, consistent bias. Not that they're faking the results (as some overtly partisan pollsters do), but their methodology appears to over-represent demographics that are more likely to vote Republican. According to one analysis, they overestimated votes for Republicans by 3.9%. Andrew Tanenbam's web site has a concise explanation of what's wrong with Rasmussen's numbers, and why he maintains a separate map that omits them from his own Electoral College projections. So if a system that includes Rasmussen data projects that a Democrat is going to win the presidency... that's a pretty strong indicator of which way the wind is blowing.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
It's an interesting model, but feeding a poll aggregate into a statistical prediction algorithm has been standard practice for years now. On the internet, fivethirtyeight is probably the first prominent site to have done so (originally as an independent site, before the NYTimes bought them).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Wrong on both counts. The first is factually untrue, and the second is statistically implausible.
I predict that our next president will be an asshole.
And the one after that, too.
And the one after that.
So aside from being a visual disaster and not providing all of the background numbers, how is this different from what Nate Silver has been doing for the last four years? Okay, it allows you to assign a swing, but it's a lot more opaque and seems a lot less robust than what Silver has been doing over at fivethirtyeight.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
crap out... you decide.
Put back in all the unemployment washouts and folks moved over to mental health or physical disbility and it is actually 14.1%.......
You may not be able to vote if you live in a Republican state and your photo ID is older than 9 months or if your voter registration shows a middle initial but your ID card doesn't or your photo ID happened to expire yesterday, or you have the same name or a similarly spelled name or your photo ID is issued by one of the state universities or is a Veteran's Administration ID or if you're darker than a paper bag.
They take democracy seriously in those states and they want to protect it at all costs, even if it means several million legitimate citizens are unintentionally deprived of the right to vote.
You are welcome on my lawn.
While you may be 100% confident, you are not 100% correct.
Unemployment is at 14.6% for the US for August 2012.
It's called U6 and is a much more telling number than the U3, which is the oft-manipulated rate used by the press which is at about 8.1% for August, 2012.
is that he just said he doesn't think the troops are important and somehow he's still in the running. That's the kinda gaff that should've broke him. It's amazing what unlimited funds can do. Thanks Citizens United.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
waiting every 4 years to express your outrage at the system by voting for a zero-chance third party candidate for president is kinda retarded.
I completely agree with your sentiment ... but if you want to build a viable third party you can't start at the top. This person will need a network of other party members spread throughout the rest of the system to effectively govern.
If you don't believe me, just look at the damn near unbelievable opposition that Obama has faced ... and HE HAS ALLIES ... just not as many as the other guys. Now imagine your third party candidate SOMEHOW manages to get into office, and now faces bipartisan unified brick-wall of opposition.
A real 3rd (or 4th or 5th) party is desperately needed in America, but it can ONLY happen when people who agree with that statement start paying attention to other elections than just the Presidential one ... right down to your school boards and city councils.
There is a substantive difference between the Democratic & Republican party .. even if you fall for this "two sides of the same coin" philosophy of apathy, you simply cannot deny that even if actual policy is somewhat similar, the tactics each side is willing to use to win are NOT EQUIVALENT. This election is as much a referendum on what we find acceptable in public political discourse, as it is a referendum on policy.
Do you want to live in a country run by wealthy elite willing to co-opt religion and twist it for their own gain? who have no problem outright buying elections? who have no problem with fear mongering and propagandizing in ways that would make the originators of the term blush? People who, in spite of their own incredibly expensive and exclusive educations, have no problem bashing any form of perceived intellectualism as "gay" ... oh and while they're at it, also scapegoating gays, and immigrants and non-christians as "the problem with this country?"
Even if somehow you honestly believe (R) & (D) are the same when it comes to policy, you simply cannot claim they are the same when it comes to that crap.
you have a choice. Do not throw it away on a third party candidate. Do that crap in elections where it could actually matter, and take this opportunity to make a stand.
Really. How about Ford and Carter, then?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
One shows Romney by 1 and the other shows Obama by 3. The state breakdown is the most telling to me. The fact Romney has to win most all the swing states to win makes it a tough road for him. All Obama needs to win is Florida or there are several two state combos that make it an Obama win. It's going to be close but unless Trump digs up that mythical African birth certificate then it's likely an Obama win. The joke is the Congressional elections are far more important. If the Republicans win the house again it's likely 4 more years of gridlock. If they win both houses then Obama gets spoon fed Republican plans. The outlook is bleak no matter the results.
Question:
(In theUSA) Did the candidate who spent more than the other candidate on their election campaign ever lose the election?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Ford is an unusual case though - he was never elected to the office in the first place so he was running for election not re-election.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
That worked out well in 2000 didn't it.
Sorry, Anonymous Cowards don't get to vote. You must show ID.
If you don't believe me, just look at the damn near unbelievable opposition that Obama has faced ... and HE HAS ALLIES ... just not as many as the other guys. Now imagine your third party candidate SOMEHOW manages to get into office, and now faces bipartisan unified brick-wall of opposition.
I think after 4 more years of overriding law by executive order and administrative fiat, and with congressional favorability ratings in the single digits, we'll probably have a president that can govern by fiat, so opposition will be irrelevant.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Bravo. If only I had points to give. Spot on.
Nate Silver at five-thirty-eight uses a similar approach. While Silver is openly biased to the Democratic side, his poll weightings seem fair. Currently he is showing about 75% probability of an Obama win.
The Republican problem is that a very successful Southern strategy has hurt them badly in New England as well as among minority voters. I won't argue whether the auto bailout was wise or even successful, I do argue that the bailout is popular in Michigan and Ohio. In fact, Romney has apparently given up on Michigan but perhaps he can salvage Ohio.
Republicrat? The correct term is Democratic-Republican, since that was the original name of the party before it split into two.
That would be the definitive poll.
The idea of something like this is to illustrate how different shifts would effect the result.
If you're a campaign for example, and you're trying to figure out how to win usually, tools like this will tell you which areas are still 'in play' and might be worth fighting in (spending your advertising dollars). The campaigns themselves almost certainly have huge amounts of data about what potential voters in each area care about, and how they're going to vote, but that analysis requires a large team of people to manage. This is more for people to play with relatively easily.
In that sense I'm not hugely fond of the tool, it's still a bit too complex for easy casual fiddling, and if I was a serious campaigner I'd likely have much more data to work from - the question becomes how easy is it to flip a particular state (the obvious ones from the charts are Iowa, Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin ) rather than which would it be nice to flip. The democrats would like to pick up texas, the republicans California, but that doesn't seem likely.
I'm in canada, so it's a little different here, but in our last federal election the NDP managed to take themselves from 3rd party to official opposition essentially from one issue, in one province (French language stuff in quebec), in one stroke they pulled the rug out from one party (the bloc quebecois) - and picked up a lot of seats putting themselves ahead of one of our two big parties (the liberals). A real GOP strategist is looking at probably 4 -6 states and wondering if there's a major issue they can take a stance on an flip the whole state. The rest of us are just playing with sliders to wonder about what could happen.
If you live in a 90% state, and were going to vote for the "lesser of two evils", why note vote for "neither of two evils".
Screw that. I would never settle for the lesser of two evils. Cthulu 2012!
Actually, I'll probably write in Stewart/Colbert again. Or go with Roseanne Barr if she's on the ballot in my state.
> You can tweak the site by selecting a skew toward the Republican or Democratic tickets, and whether it's mild or strong.
I can do that without any mathematical model at all.
Blah biddy blabiddy blah. The election will be over. This model will be wrong. Nobody will remember it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I was all for Newt, and things were looking fairly good. Then he called out Romney for being "elitist" which I agreed with. Then all the elites dumped support for Newt and went all-in for Romney. So now the republicans are being funded by a small bunch of elitists who all want handouts (er tax cuts) and the dems are out of control with spending and mandated Obamacare. What's a guy to do?
I don't think the U3 is manipulated as much as it just has fewer criteria. U6 includes U3 so it will always be higher. Whether we use U3 or U6 the trend is the same.
Because no one gets killed when you misuse your right to vote?
Misuse of the second amendment right yields about 30,000 deaths a year in the US.
Mystery solved
Or you could vote libertarian or green. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are much better options than Obromney.
Instead, consider "wasting" your vote in a different way: By voting for someone who isn't running on a major party ticket.
Maybe if enough people ... were going to vote for the "lesser of two evils"...
I think I see where you're going with this.
C'thulhu 2012 - Why vote for the lesser evil?
Plot summary
In the future, the United States has converted to an "electronic democracy" where the computer Multivac selects a single person to answer a number of questions. Multivac will then use the answers and other data to determine what the results of an election would be, avoiding the need for an actual election to be held.
The story centers around Norman Muller, the man chosen as "Voter of the Year" in 2008. Although the law requires him to accept the dubious honour, he is not sure that he wants the responsibility of representing the entire electorate, worrying that the result will be unfavorable and he will be blamed.
However, after 'voting', he is very proud that the citizens of the United States had, through him, "exercised once again their free, untrammeled franchise" - a statement that is somewhat ironic as the citizens didn't actually get to vote.
The idea of a computer predicting whom the electorate would vote for instead of actually holding an election was probably inspired by the UNIVAC I's correct prediction of the result of the 1952 election.
Who cares what site it's on. It's actual video of Romney talking. That's about as solid as it gets for knowing what someone says. Oh, the AC trolls are here tonight.
Did they predict all of those elections ahead of time? I'm guessing not, otherwise we would have heard about it sometime around 1992. If not, the fact that it produced the correct output for every election is actually a huge red flag. Elections are complicated things with many factors that are unique to a given election. You'd expect any model that can be written down on paper to be wrong at least some of the time because there's no way to account for everything.
Likely they just went data-dredging until they found a set of variables that correlate with the election winner. Problem is, there's usually *some* set of variables that correlate with the outcome for spurious reasons. The meal preferences of an octopus, for example.
Pretty sure you meant 58 states, Mr Obama
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And just how do the pollsters know that people are telling the truth about who they'd vote for?
Lie to polls!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Polls are usually wrong by enough to matter in a close election. This is a close election and the margin of error is too great for the polls to predict anything except that we get to choose between a douche bag and a turd sandwich. That being said, I'm going with the turd sandwich who hasn't had a chance to mess things up yet.
I don't see how you can claim Obama is a clear winner. Look between the conventions - Obama gave a re-run, with no plan at all on how he plans to help anyone do anything. Just a lot of vague numbers like he has always given.
Romney meanwhile, actually laid out a five point plan:
(1) Aggressively promote domestic energy development, especially fossil fuels (Obama has delayed this at every turn, instead propping up failed green energy companies run by big donors).
(2) Expand the market for U.S. goods overseas by negotiating new trade agreements and standing up to China on intellectual-property and currency issues.
(3) Improve workforce skills by transferring job-training programs to the states and going after teachers' unions, which, he says, stand in the way of school choice and better instruction. (When has Obama gone after ANY union?)
(4) Attack the deficit through budget cuts, not tax increases. (Obama clearly has the opposite idea here).
(5), reshape the regulatory climate to "encourage and promote small business" rather than swamp it. (We have a metric ton more regulations now than when Obama entered office).
You may not like some of Romney's plans but at least HE HAS ONE. At this point I'll be happy to vote for someone who just picks a direction and goes there. Democrats had four years, two of which they could have clearly driven direction with zero intervention by anyone and instead they just sat, apparently befuddled. Well screw that, the debt is too high to keep playing around.
Realistically we'll need to raise some taxes AND reduce spending heavily. I have a lot more faith we'll see some tax increases under a Republican administration than we'll see anything like the massive cuts required to keep the U.S. solvent under the Democrats. After all, we've just had four years of Democrats trying to fix things and are four trillion in the hole for the effort.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A weak President (D) and a strong Congress (R). At least there is the impeachment hearings to look forward to. Republicans just finally get their wet dream of impeaching a democratic President. It's ok though. It works out for both parties. Republicans will validate their belief that Democrats are pro-crime and Democrats will validate their belief that Republicans are racist. You see, the problem is that you can't make TV for smart people anymore. Smart people find out too fast how to watch it for free. So you only get TV for dumb people. Impeachment hearing will cost tv studios zilch. Aah... I just love it when there is fun to be had.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Do we plan on using cryogenic preservation to make this GOP/LP ticket possible?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Because no one gets killed when you misuse your right to vote?
The most excellent counterexamples were the democratically elected governments of England and France in the 30s. Because people had been misusing their votes for a while, the governments were cowardly and ineffective in the face of an existential threat, the growing power of the totalitarian states.
France, for example, was in a position to end the Second World War in 1936, by evicting Nazi Germany from the Rhineland after the latter moved troops in. They didn't and as a result somewhere around 100 million people died. I doubt deaths from non-military gun use in all the world over the entire history of the gun would add up to that figure.
Normally, the vote is rather insignificant. But one shouldn't ignore that there are actually times when voting is very important and can save a lot of lives. Frankly, I think now is such an occasion.
"waiting every 4 years to express your outrage at the system by voting for a zero-chance third party candidate for president is kinda retarded."
Not really, if you consider the fact that the winners of the nomination in one election often see their clout in the party go out the window in the next if they loose in the general.
For Ron Paul supporters voting for Johnson or just staying home makes a lot of sense, since they will be in a much stronger position in the 2014 and 2016 cycles to influence the candidates and nominee, since the establishment candidate Romney will have then been a loser and those backing him discredited. Struggles that build different coalitions don't really happen in a single election cycle anyway. It took the Reagan faction 2 full election cycles before they won. Successful politics is perfecting the art of stabbing others in the back. Just look where it got Romney today. He successfully released the background on Herman Cain's infidelities and was able through his Bain associations able to get his hands on Newts purchases at Tiffany's.
Talk about circling a square... those two trends don't match much at all other than the more heavily manipulated one (U3) shows a better trend than the more honest one (U6)..
Because no one gets killed when you misuse your right to vote?
Right.
(Though more people are killed by guns in the US than have died in Iraq)
it is not that you should not bother...it is showing that given current sentiment from all available polling combined that your presidential vote will not generate a win for Republicans.
Rather than saying, well I like this plan or that plan or whatever, you have chosen to claim "Obama will win, look at these numbers that change substantially over time telling us so".
So then, I guess you like having no plan with more spending? Difficult to tell your take on what you would prefer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you haven't noticed, MItt Romney is definitely not Clinton.
None of those items are more plausible than closing Guantanamo.
Consider only the first one. All you have to do is get out of the way, OK things like the pipeline. That's all it takes for item (1) to happen and bring us a lot of home-brewed energy very quickly.
Closing Guantanamo should have been simple but it's not when you have to figure out where to put those guys and are not willing to kill them. It was pretty easy to forsee not one state would welcome housing them.
Making promises you can actually keep is a big part of being a leader.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
ummm....It didn't split into two....
Democratic-Republicans was the Thomas Jefferson founded opposition party to the Federalists.....and then against the Whigs, but by then they changed their name to just the Democratic party under Jackson. The Republican Party was a brand new party formed by a bunch of Liberals to fight against slavery.....no relation to the Democratic-Republican Party.....then, because of its popularity in the north, the Republican party was taken over by the big business fat cats and its platform started to include crazy economic ideas like Laissez Faire Capitalism....then in the beginning/middle of the 20th century it added crazy anti-socialism to its platform because that was a threat against capitalism......then the southern Democrats came over to the Republican party in the late 40's through the late 50's because of the Democratic party's support of Civil Rights, turning the Republican Party into the party we see from the 60's to the late 70's.....then came the nut job Christians....who....as Barry Goldwater said are impossible to work with, the "Tax cutters" then joined in on their insane plan to cut taxes to ZERO and we have the Modern Republican party.
Modern polls take these things into consideration. It's not as if the statistical sciences and algorithmics haven't gotten so advanced that thousands of corporations, trading houses, banks don't use linear and dynamic programming to place billions of dollars of trades each day, in which people are actually "putting their money where their mouth is".
The results from Las Vegas aren't much different giving Obama a 70% chance of being reelected and that's before the dud of the republican convention and the highly successful democratic one. Gallup is already giving Obama about a 7% bounce, where as Romney's convention bounce was less than 1%, which is historically abysmal for a challenger, especially since democratic operatives are only now starting to hit Florida nursing homes in earnest.
Another problem for Romney is that the republican congress is running at a historic low of 8% approval. Gerrymandering and voter suppression may well save them, but it will still be close.
And yet there are other models that predict the opposite.
Yes I read the thread on this link below, Nate Silver has no reason to be more accurate than those models.
I don't trust either, because this election is way trickier to predict than most past elections. I ESPECIALLY do not trust any model claiming a blowout one way or the other.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Independent votes mean nothing when it comes to POTUS because the system only rewards parties that go past a certain threshold that even Ross Perot couldn't cross.
Independent groups need to win at the state and local level and build up steam before they'll matter at the national level.
Or we need to change the way elections work.
Let me put it this way: In Montana, one of the states where you think a third party (Libertarian) candidate could actually get a foothold, they ran Poppa Smurf, a man who turned himself blue in fear of Y2K, for Senate.
Voting 3rd party is a joke in this country until we change the rules.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
You may not be able to vote if you live in a Republican state and your photo ID is older than 9 months or ...
On the other hand, if you live in a Democrat state feel free to vote as many times as you want.
"His name was James Damore."
So guns are less deadly than diabetes?
Maybe we should require an ID when buying candy bars.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It does not matter what the percentage not matter what the numbers next month are not going to increase. You cannot increase jobs and the economy while attacking the foundation.
Got Code?
Can't do that. Missouri's still a swing state and it's more important to vote against Republicans than it is for my favorite longshot third party to win, which they wouldn't thanks to how the system's set up.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I hear that a lot, but nobody seems to ever be able to prove it.
Strange, that, no?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't have any problem with requiring an ID, but if you're going to create a new requirement, you better have the infrastructure in place and do it in an orderly enough fashion that it doesn't disenfranchise millions of voters.
The case in Pennsylvania showed evidence of the better part of a million disenfranchised voters just in one state.
If they care about election fraud, why does it matter if the photo ID is expired? If it's my picture and my name and one doesn't have a period after the middle initial, should that disqualify me? If my ID is over 9 months old, why would that disqualify me if all they're trying to do is verify identity? And if the states that are putting these laws in place are serious, why the massive purging of voter lists? Why the closing of state offices where IDs can be obtained in poor neighborhoods? Why the limiting of hours of operation for those offices just before the election?
Sorry, pal, but this is going to be one big black mark on the political soul of the Republican Party. We have blatant voter suppression for the expressed purpose of keeping Democrats from voting (a state's atty in Pennsylvania actually admitted it on camera). You think that's OK?
You are welcome on my lawn.
the problem is that U6 is not what most people use when discussing unemployment. while 14% is a bigger number, it's not more informative than the U3 number. as similar_name points out, both numbers tell a very similar story.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Nice spin, but in the end what you cannot spin are real unemployment numbers, which suck (8.3% with a ton of people out of the labor force as they gave up looking).
It doesn't do you any good to create jobs if they are destroyed at a far greater rate. It really doesn't do you any good to create jobs that have no hope of growing the economy (government jobs only pull from the economy).
The sad thing is the worst hit are the young, it is a bitch now to find a job out of college and they stupidly piled on a massive amount of debt to finish. Well it wasn't really stupid OF them as they were told it was a good idea. Instead they are trapped in the middle, and will now be paying for student loans for so long social security will be garnished (as is happening today for some people).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nate Silver's 538 blog (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/) is much more interesting. His model takes into account polls (which he adjusts based on past accuracy) as well as economic factors. Nate is currently estimating a probability of an Obama win at 77%. Probably a much more accurate assessment than an estimate of 98%. Nate Silver prediction for the 2008 presidential popular vote percentages was within 0.1% of the actual results.
Nate Silver believes that Oregon is in-play. If you look at the actual numbers, a Republican win in Oregon is impossible, unless someone kills all the Democratic voters in Lane, Multnomah, and Washington county.
He also stated that blacks are being underreported because large numbers of them use cellphones as their only phones, which is why his results skew Democratic. No documentation on that factoid either...except that, because Nate Silver said it it must be true.
This is like one fortune teller saying another fortune teller's methodology is crap. All you can do is look at the data and say, WTF is this person thinking?
Voter ID being a reasonable idea has nothing to do with it's SOLE PURPOSE of bringing back poll taxes, intimidation and intelligence tests. Naturally, plenty of lying is being done by the Republicans and those who want to believe the lies are fine with looking the other way. The problem is the Democrats have easily identifiable demographics like Blacks, youth, and minorities and the Republicans do not have any easily identifiable demographic. (white men? nope. both sides have them. wealthy? nope. there are only a few of them. but they could be stopped from buying elections... )
Voter ID LAWS are creating poll taxes or forcing a bureaucratic intelligence and patience test to get that free ID. They place locations strategically to make it difficult and a TON of other things you can find. Regulations involving the use of the ID make it extremely difficult for certain people. For example, closing the polls during SUNDAY except for the military because black people vote more on Sunday and the military lean Republican (I'm not making this up it is being attempted for THIS election.)
The excuse they use? Dead people voting. It is rather easy to look up the death numbers between election day and when the voter roles are made. It does not amount to that many possible votes; not to mention the paper trails which could have been investigated and turned into a scandal but never are because there is no scandal. Even if it was a minor case it would provide political cover for the GOP. Yes, anti-immigrant talk is always heavily used but that is a typical inflammatory rhetoric used all the time; it is not a big problem (perhaps in some backward states it might be but not in my state; however, that doesn't stop the hype despite it being idiotic to use it in many states.)
The group which rarely votes leans strongly to the Democrats and have for a century. I've heard many times over decades of GOP staff admitting low turn out helps them so they'll even publicly say they wish for RAIN on election day and strongly oppose more polling hours. Many also openly wish that "lower class" people shouldn't be allowed to vote; which is more likely economic prejudice than their anti-democracy strategies.
If you want real democracy you must have the courage to risk undermining your power. That especially goes to both parties who prevent real debates, intelligent voting systems, or big reforms like ideas from parliamentary systems.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
That model is far too simple. It only uses the economy and it only works since 1980. All the model says is "in bad economic times, people tend to vote out presidents." So, yeah, that model alone predicts a Romney landslide. However, in some bad economic times people tend to keep presidents, FDR for example, which is why they have to limit the poll to 1980. The polls alone show that that model is not currently a good fit for the current situation.
Most statistics of this election predict an Obama win. If the race would be held today this is what it would look like and if you look back, the math has been relatively stable. For Romney to win he'd have to pick up Florida, Ohio, Virginia and then another state besides that. Obama has had a fairly good if small lead in most Ohio polling and has been slightly ahead in Florida and Virginia. Also, your model has Romney losing Pennsylvania, which I think is pretty much not going to happen. The FiveThirtyEight model linked to gives Obama a 78.1% chance of winning currently and on Intrade Obama futures have given a roughly 60% chance. I think these are much more realistic models than your totally-base-the-election-on-one-thing model.
Every year since 1980 means the model has worked 8 times. In statistics 8 is a pretty lousy sample size.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Well, most people in Democrat states want to vote either zero times or one time. Those who want to vote zero times basically always vote as many times as they want, and most of those who want to vote exactly once also vote as many times as they want. Thus the majority of people in Democrat states vote as often as they want. End of proof.
SCNR :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Sigh.. Learn your history.
They added anti socialism to their platform because of the failed revolt organized by the communist party of America in 1919ish. The communist party wanted to overthrow the government and install a Mussolini type dictator. They attempted to use the socialist party's connection to unions to enact this thinking that they would follow because of the similarities between the two. After the failed revolt, the foreign members of communist party was expelled from the US, the communist party of America was outlawed, and the native (American citizen) members joined the socialist party directly.
You literally had people who plotted to overthrow the US joining the socialist party who was more interested in organizing unions and workers rights at the time then government dominance. This changed about the time the communist party was removed. You further had issues because after WWII, the communists in Europe disguised themselves as socialist and joined the various socialists parties. Although the communist in the socialist parties in Europe did not reach positions of control as easily as the ones in America did so they weren't as prevalent.
I might also add that as a percentage of party members in congress, more republicans voted for the civil rights legislation then democrats did. (a higher percentage of republicans voted for the civil rights act of 1964 and 1968 then democrats did). This entire concept of racist republicans verses enlightened democrats is fictional. It stems from MLK jr being locked up in a dangerous jail for a traffic violation and MLK senior attempted to get political help in ensuring his safety after rumor made it back that the untold plan was to have him have an accident and die while in jail for some trumped up charge. MLK senior and other blacks asked Nixon and Kennedy Kennedy made some calls and threatened to send federal marshals down (the marshals might be another instance in Montgomery and not Atlanta- It's been a while since I dealt with this). Nixon remained silent on it because he feared it would end his campaign. He didn't even make an issue of Kennedy getting involved that would have likely turned southern democrats against him. Nixon lost to Kennedy because of this. MLK sr. said if Kennedy was willing to help his boy, he was willing to vote for them. Until that time, the southern blacks mostly voted republican and it was democrats who caused them problems like the mayor of Montgomery and governor of Alabama and Georgia who seemed content with MLK jr's fate. Kennedy created and circulated pamphlets saying that and had the title read " No Comment Nixon Versus a Candidate With a Heart, Senator Kennedy." Surprisingly, Kennedy as a senator voted against the civil rights act of 1957 just years before this turn of events.
I hear that a lot, but nobody seems to ever be able to prove it.
Define proof.
Would Lessadolla Sowers, and NAACP executive, being convicted of 10 counts of voter fraud (voted 11 times for Obama in 2008) and now serving a 5-year sentence be considered proof?
When people admit it, does that constitute proof?
How about when they plead guilty?"
This shit is why in 2008 the Supreme Court upheld Indiana's voter ID law, 6 to 3, and in their decision stated "Flagrant examples of such fraud have been documented throughout this Nation's history" - the fact that you choose to ignore all the proof, and then sit there asking for proof, is proof that you are a Democrat shill.
"His name was James Damore."
And, except for a circus of fake issues (like [D] picking just one of alternative modes of sexuality and promoting it, with hatred towards all others, or [R] promoting one sky fairy over others), they are essentially a single party once again. Before, democrats used to side with Big Media while republicans with Big Oil, but nowadays both get copious donations from either -- and it's Big Finance who became the primary mover. So it doesn't matter whether you vote for the populist or authoritarian wing of the NeoCon party, the result is the same.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
You don't have second amendment rights for any practical purpose anymore in most states (and countries of the world, for that matter).
I for one live in a country where a retired army officer managed to get a handgun permit, shot a knife-wielding burglar, and lost in the court because he "used a weapon in excess above what was absolutely necessary for self-defense". The US had the 2nd amendment but it squandered it together with the rest of the Bill of Rights.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Then explain what caused the racists to flee the Democratic party for the Republican party?
I totally agree with you. At times I feel like he is treating it like a video game. He doesn't really seem to care about what he has to do, as long as he can get the President of the United States Achievement unlocked. It's the total lack of empathy that I sense from him that really freaks me out. That's where I get that uncanny valley feeling from him — not because of his wooden delivery (which doesn't help).
Seeing as how it's already been decided-- what's the point?
The racist didn't flee to the republican party. It was many democrats (some who were racist) over the entire south for much the same reasons the civil war happened (and if you think it was slavery, you are an idiot).
The south was still penalized in its self rule (which it is today) from its re-annexation into the union. The feds carried a leash on the south and interjected quite a bit into the state's inner workings (except when it came to Tom Crow laws) The republicans ran on a platform of state's rights which attracted a lot of people angry over the control the federal government was using. This included a lot of racist democrats. This grew even more when the civil rights legislation was passed in 1964 and 1968 as it targeted the southern states with specific enforcement requirements (some still in effect today).
It was about the same things the civil war was over. The feds bossing the states around. If the enforcement provisions weren't tied to the civil right legislation for the former confederate states, The democrats would still have the south locked up with all their that left still within them. And yes, a lot of the racist democrats stayed in the party. Some who were not only members off the KKK but leaders in it served on the highest senate committees as democrats until the last one died before Clinton left office.
...small business owners and it just makes sense that policies favoring a few over the many just aren't going to fly. The whole system, at least from my vantage point, has been jury rigged to favor those who seek to profit from others as far as I can tell. There is very little reward nowadays for those who want to share with others.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Where in the second amendmant does it say you can shoot someone with impunity?c
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
A counterexample has yet to be provided, must less an "excellent" one. There are, however, a few butthurt conservatives trying compare apples to batshit irrelevant oranges with six-degrees of Kevin Bacon hand waving. Call us when you can name a case where a vote has directly translated to someone's brains being splattered over a wall as opposed to a .45.
Morans.
Maybe you should try to come up with a relevant analogy.
Because so many banks have been held up with a Snickers or school shootings happened because someone brought a Crunch bar to school.
Proof that you're a dishonest Republican hack: none of the case you mentioned would have been prevented with voter ID laws.
Not. One.
Fraudulent absentee ballots. No voter ID law would have prevented it.
Voting via absentee ballot and then voting at a polling booth. No voter ID law would have prevented it.
How about mentioning that those were poll workers that were doing the fraud? How the fuck are voter ID laws going to prevent that when the people checking the ID's are the ones engaged in the fraud?
Because you're a dishonest Republican hack, that's why. At least the Pennsylvania Republican hacks were honest enough to admit that their voter ID law does nothing to prevent in-person voting fraud.
Because for all intents and purposes, in-person voting fraud does not exist in the United States. In the last decade there's been only 11 case out of over 600 million votes cast. However, 25% of blacks don't have "proper" ID's, along with millions of seniors, native americans, students, poor folks....you know, the sort of people not likely to vote for Republicans.
Voter ID is about voter suppression, end of story.
A counterexample has yet to be provided
You're free to disagree, but you're wrong here. Let us not forget the most important election of that period when the Nazi party received a large voting block in the Reichstag parliament under the Wiemar Republic in late 1932. As I noted, somewhere around 100 million people died (including a lot of brains splattered) due to poor choices made by the electorate of several countries.
There's also cases like the elections of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1970 and Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran in 1951 where the election led to a significant body count a few years down the road.
If one goes far back in history, there's a notable example during the Peloponnesian War where Athens initiated war on Syracuse via democratic vote. When Athens lost its entire siege army a few years later at Syracuse, that led eventually to Athens's defeat.
So there's a number of counterexamples out there, if one looks for them. You can continue to insist for some reason that they aren't counterexamples, but what's the point?
he had a democrat congress for at least a year or more.
You should really check this oft repeated mendacious claim. Obama used his very small window of opportunity to pass health-care reform. You should also look at some of the details of the bill yourself, instead of getting 3rd hand information from "four-legs-good, democrats bad" pundits.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
love the fear-mongering. Interesting who the Dems want voting for them....
And, pray tell, how would that be tracked if identification isn't used? Better we all just looked the other way, eh?
Romney has been skyrocketing in terms of female popularity lately...
Keep up with the wishful thinking.
< You can't win with so much of the electorate unhappy with your policies.
I presume you're talking about 0bama? heh
You already sound impervious to any contrary evidence. And hence, it is because of "red-meat" partisan ideologues like you that political discourse resembles children fighting. Sad fact is: propaganda works. You are an exemplar.
"It is easier to fool a man than convince him he has been fooled" -- Twain.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
500-some fucking votes in one state and we wouldn't have had Iraq, or faith-based programs getting government money, maybe not even the Patriot Act and that incompetence that allowed the business with the skyscrapers and Pentagon.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It is so interesting that wall street is so thoroughly behind the GOP. That Citizens United gave the GOP an advantage in fund raising. The typical GOPer thinks of the democrats as encouraging crony capitalism, and seem quite forgiving to the long list of corporate shills who call themselves GOP senators. The Dems are beholden to corps as well -- fund-raising is just too important -- but it just isn't the same ballpark as the GOP.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Because the whole thing is a farce.
Are you being ignorant or dishonest here? Obama's energy policy is indistinguishable from Bush/Cheney's: "all of the above". Record new amounts of land and sea opened for drilling. Billions for nuclear power and perpetual motion machines, I mean, "clean coal". The eastern seaboard and coast near ANWR have been opened for drilling, something not even Bush tried to do.
I ask again: are you speaking out of ignorance or dishonesty? Obama has approved the bottom half of the pipeline, which means he approves of the top half of the pipeline. The only "blocking" was a slight of hand for his liberal base, which of course was eaten up at DailySheep. They pointed to Obama's action as if he was blocking the pipeline, when his only disagreement was with the route. Same as when they hailed his veto thread of the NDAA and pretended that Obama was against military detention of American citizens, when he was of course demanding that power.
Obama has signed three new trade agreements just like NAFTA.
What the fuck is increasing supply (qualified workers) going to do to solve the actual problem (a lack of demand)?
Sure, he says that. And he's lying. Where's your "school choice" going to be when Kaplan owns every charter school within a hundred miles of you? Do you conservative geniuses think about what killing teachers unions and public schools is going to do to quality affordable education?
You guys like to whine about lazy students being coddled, but what happens when said lazy student happens to be the son of Upstanding Business Owner and Member of the Community who happens to own a 15% stake in your charter school system and can get his teacher fired at the drop of his hat? How about when that rich kid turns into bully starts kicking the shit out of your kid?
You mean "austerity" which has been a fucking disaster for every country that has tried it? The only entity capable of jump-starting demand in a depression is the government. Slashing government spending is only going to make that depression worse, far more so when your cuts target social social spending before the military-industrial-congressional-contractor-survellance complex.
Slashing spending results in a death spiral of a collapsing economy, which results in less tax revenues, which results in more demands from fools and tools to slash more spending. A vicious cycle that took Grover Norquist decades to perfect.
For the third time: are you speaking out of ignorance or dishonesty? Obama has cut or forestalled regulations, not brought new ones. Oh, and the lie about "small bushiness" don't hunt no more. We know perfectly well that when Republicans talk about "small businesses", what they really mean is a small number of shareholders. Which means Koch Industries is a "small business" because it is owned by the Koch family. Which means when Republ
Wait...you're saying "lean your history" AND that communists wanted to install a fascist in the same breath? Wow, every time I think you've hit rock bottom in dumbassery you prove me wrong....
They take democracy seriously in those states and they want to protect it at all costs, even if it means several million legitimate citizens are unintentionally deprived of the right to vote.
"Unintentionally"? Surely you jest. There's nothing "unintentional" about it: those deprived are statistically likely to vote Democrat (*).
And guess who is pushing to "reduce voter fraud" via these initiatives? Republicans.
(*) - And you would be too, if you had ever lived poor for more than a few days. The dog-eat-dog Republican vision sounds great, until you wake up a dog.
b.g.
It is when the U3 numbers (by design) just stop counting people if they've unemployed or underemployed long enough.
you are nuts if you think that the Dixiecrats did not become republicans.
Proof that you're a dishonest Republican hack
Nope. Proof that I satisfied the requirements of the person I was replying to.
You, on the other hand, are attempting to move the goalpost. Your problem appears to be with Democrats that claim that there is no voter fraud, yet you are trying to throw their dishonesty on me.
Are you willfully blind? Willing to be completely dishonest in order to defend the Democrats? Yes. You just proved it.
"His name was James Damore."
And you are clueless if you think "all dixiecrats" or "only dixiecrats" became republican. I never said no racist democrat ever turned republican, I said it wasn't just them because the move or shift with the southern democrats was about something other then racism-. Essentially, what has been done is someone said, the people who robbed the bank crossed the street at that corner so everyone who crosses the street there must be bank robbers. Of course that is false but you go ahead and believe anything you want and I will go ahead and notice/comment about how stupid people appear.
Dude, this is history not your isolated lateral line in a text book where you can insist something is a certain way despite reality. Mussolini was a socialist in 1919, fascism wasn't created around him until 1923 or so.
But you are right, it was Stalin not Mussolini. Working from memory lends itself to mistakes. I see that your corrections had nothing to do with the truth but attempts at insults. Good job at showing your own intelligence.
What does any of this prove except that voter frauds get caught?
And what does it have to do with voter ID laws?
And do even these cases excuse disenfranchising millions of voters? If it really was about voter fraud, they could have instituted these laws in such a way that it would not disenfranchise voters.
And with those three, your three best cases of voter fraud, how many illegal votes were cast?
No, the reason the Supreme Court upheld the law 6-3 is because at the time there were six partisan Republicans on the Court.
Or you need me to prove that the Court is partisan? We can go through that exercise too if you seriously don't get it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Man, you have to be really twisted to use diabetes as an excuse for pushing an extremist interpretation of the 2nd amendment that has only been made for the past 30 years.
Before then, you couldn't find anyone who actually believed that the Second Amendment actually referred to a personal right to own any weapon and to carry it to court, and to church, and to bars, and to schools. People don't realize that this stuff is all an innovation of the National Rifle Association at the behest of gun manufacturers and far right maniacs. Now, we take all of this as something eternal, but until about 1980, nobody believed that stupid shit.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The real mendacious claim here is that the Democrats weren't given and fumbled a huge opportunity on a silver platter.
Look into the claim. Try and find which specific dates the democrats had 60 seats in congress.
Scott Brown was sworn in until a full year into Obama's presidency, and then Ted Kennedy was hospitalized. Al Franken was also not counted until July 7, 2009, because of an electoral dispute. But even then it was 59-40, because Kennedy was in hospital. It wasn't until Sept 24, 2009, when Paul Kirk was sworn in that the democrats had a filibuster proof 60-40, and that lasted until Feb 4, 2010.
That is *FOUR MONTHS*.
Check the facts for yourself.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
for much the same reasons the civil war happened (and if you think it was slavery, you are an idiot).
The Southern states have made explicit statements explaining why they left, and most of them specifically reference slavery as one of the primary reasons. Which makes perfect sense, since it was the bread and butter of their economy.
So yeah, States' rights, blah blah. But the only state right that Southern states were actually interested in was the right to keep slaves. In fact, it was rather ironic that the first thing Confederacy did is write the institution into its federal constitution - so that no state could preempt that unilateraly. How very respectful of the rights of individual states.
Before then, you couldn't find anyone who actually believed that the Second Amendment actually referred to a personal right to own any weapon and to carry it to court, and to church, and to bars, and to schools.
There are numerous quotations of various prominent judges and politicians on the corresponding Wikipedia article. Go look it up.
What changed in the past 30 years is that concealed carry became prominent. Concealed carry is not the only kind of carry, and it is largely orthogonal to the right to own weapons.
With 60 votes, the GOP just filibustered. More time then ever. A lot more. I suppose that is the Dems fault too, right? That the Dems couldn't get anything done because the GOP filibustered constantly?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
But the GOP simply filibustered constantly. Without a filibuster proof 60 votes, the dems couldn't get anything done. The Dems only had 4 months of a filibuster proof congress.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Modern polls take these things into consideration. It's not as if the statistical sciences and algorithmics haven't gotten so advanced that thousands of corporations, trading houses, banks don't use linear and dynamic programming to place billions of dollars of trades each day, in which people are actually "putting their money where their mouth is".
Indeed they do. I've seen the adjustments, they can get very crazy, and one always *hopes* their corrections are, well, correct. But they've gotten to the point that they mostly know what weights to use to mostly correct.
The results from Las Vegas aren't much different giving Obama a 70% chance of being reelected and that's before the dud of the republican convention and the highly successful democratic one.
This might tell you how bad it is. I consider myself a moderate libertarian, and am a registered republican(so I could vote in the primary). I'm seriously favoring voting for Obama, simply because I see Romney being so wrong, and untrustworthy to boot. For one, I want to adjust the tax system so that Romney pays a higher % in taxes than his secretary. Only way to do this is to make capital gains progressive. I haven't heard of doing that even from Obama's camp. My idea - Start at 0% for under $10k/year, max out at like 50% for over $600k. That encourages people to keep up to $200k@5% in investments(as it's tax free), which is generally a heck of a good emergency fund. To even start the 50% tax rate, you'd need over 12M@5%. At which point, like others have pointed out - what else is the dude going to do with the money?
I don't read AC A human right
I want to give some context for the huge dollar numbers so common in political and economic discussions.
It would only cost $200 billion a year to end abject poverty worldwide. (UN, Jeffrey Sachs)
If everyone on earth had food, clothes, shelter and clean water - what would that do for security, innovation, economics, the environment and human rights?
Those are big election issues, right?
Let's compare that $200 billion to some other things that are important in politics, apparently many, many times more important than ending abject poverty if money is our measure. Lets start with tax havens for the top few percent who receive our tax dollars via their ownership of the corporations which are recipients of government contracts, and in particular the military-industrial corporations whose private contractors receive a huge percentage of the military budget. For example prime intelligence contracts worth over $50 billion went over 70% to private contractors and in intelligence there are now more private than public employees.
The ultra rich hide over $20 trillion in offshore tax haven accounts while American minimum wage buys less than it did in 1968 and one in six families in the USA with children are extremely food insecure, lacking adequate nutrition at least once a year. The "job creators" don't use profits to create jobs, pay more or provide more benefits for workers. Instead they buy companies, combine them, and fire the duplicate workers. The ultra rich buy votes in Congress with their vast wealth too. Go see the correlation of Congress member's votes with donations made to their campaigns at maplight.org. Both parties are corrupt. The best analysis I've seen of Romney's economic plan done by MIT shows households making under $250,000 will on average pay $500 more in taxes, but the rich will pay less. Obama isn't much better. Neither candidate will do anything here.
The USA military budget is at least $500 billion a year not counting Iraq, Afghanistan, Veterans benefits, States spending or interest on past wars. It's over $1 trillion if you count that stuff. Private contractors get a huge cut. Americans are out of work, but for every billion dollars we spend on the military we lose from 5,000 to 15,000 jobs compared to spending the money on green jobs, health or education. Even just cutting the military budget and giving the money back to the taxpayers creates more jobs than spending it on the military. That's because the military isn't very labor intensive per dollar compared to other jobs. Go check my numbers, I'm low balling. The jobs numbers are from the Department of Labor, analysis by the PERI Institute. Neither candidate will do anything here.
The fossil fuel companies own over 2,795 GT of carbon assets worth $27 trillion at current market rates, but we can only burn about 565 GT more if we want an 80% chance of staying under 2.0C or 3.6F increase in global mean surface temperature over the next century. The Canadian Alberta Tar Sands contain more than 200 GT. Yet Exxon alone spends $37 billion a year or $100 million dollars a day, looking for more. Neither candidate will do anything here. Again I am low-balling, not counting coal oil or shale oil assets.
Both candidates are pro-torture, pro-warrantless spying, pro-secret prisons, pro-assassinate American citizens without trial, pro-indefinite detention, pro-military-industrial-complex, pro-privatize profits and socialize risk, pro-drone, pro-WTO-WIPO-WorldBank-IMF, anti-poor, anti-labor, anti-drug, anti-free speech (zones?), anti-American motherfuckers. And that's just the start of the list.
Check my numbers using scholar.google.com
Fucking sociopaths.
So what to do? What to do?
For the citizen looking for change, four boxes are available:
soap, ballot, jury and ammo.
Please consider order of use carefully!
Since we're discussing box 1 and 2 here ... what to do? ... google the terms ...
"white box" and "priority voting"
So, the theory is that someone is going to travel to a different county to vote? Because voting rolls are done by county.
Further, you are right that jobs require a photo ID, but only when you start the job. If your photo ID has expired, and the one state facility that creates photo IDs is 100 miles away and only open weekdays from 9am-5pm and your card expired last year, sorry, son, you just lost your right to vote.
How big could an organized voter fraud scheme be if people have to travel hundreds of miles to do it?
So, we're going to limit voting to people with jobs? No more senior citizen voting?
See, the people who are being disenfranchised are seniors, students (remember, state-issued student IDs are not accepted in the Republican plans) and the poor.
There are over a million Americans who do not have access to a birth certificate for example, because they were born at a time when not all birth records were kept by government. Hospitals issued birth records and home births did not issue records. Further, it's surprisingly common for elderly rural voters to not have photo IDs or state issued birth certificates.
A photo ID requirement could have been put in place in such a way that people were not disenfranchised. It could have been done over a longer period of time and there could have been much more comprehensive efforts to make sure people who wanted to vote could get IDs over a more reasonable time frame.
Finally, if this were really an effort by the GOP to prevent voter fraud, then they'd outlaw absentee voting, because there is no system in place to ensure that the person filling in and mailing an absentee ballot is actually the voter himself.
Did you know that all of the outreach efforts that were supposedly in place in Pennsylvania to make sure people who wanted to vote but didn't have photo IDs could still exercise their franchise have been quietly cancelled by the Republican governor of Pennsylvania? The law's in place now, so what are they gonna do?
No, there's nothing reasonable or righteous about these voter suppression efforts. They are a blatant exercise to defeat this president, in this election. Look at the way the Atty General of Ohio, Jon Husted, tried to violate a court-ordered injunction about the sudden limiting of early voters. They're not even trying to hide their agenda any more.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I know, right? It's all about getting those old people and poor who are just leeches on our society. They shouldn't be allowed to vote, anyway, amirite?
Well, I bet the Romney/Ryan White House would know what to do with that sort. Ayn Rand knew what to do with them, that's for sure.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It could be tracked the way the Bush Justice Department did it with their 3 year investigation. Voter roll examination, plus individual interviews and examination of voting records.
And after all that time, and all that money they found shit, nada, bupkis.
Sorry, son, but demographics are destiny. The GOP is finished, so the best they can do is try to suppress votes because in a cycle or two, they're done.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Do you understand the difference between private and public?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Do you understand the difference between private and public?
Sure, there's nothing that pisses people off and motivates them to vote like having someone try to take away your rights.
I didn't say the Republicans were smart, I just said they're trying to suppress votes.
And your evidence for that is...?
"Specter" of racism? Did you hear what happened to the black CNN cameraman at the Republican convention. One of the delegates - the delegates! - was throwing peanuts at this cameraman and shouting, "This is how we feed the animals!".
Specter of racism, my ass. After an African-American took the lead of the Democratic Party, the committed racists had nowhere else to go but to the GOP, who welcomed them with opened sheets.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, astonishingly, if you stop right before the Republican party decided to pander to racists with the Southern Strategy, and invent some complete nonsense about Nixon and MLK in prison, why, it's completely inexplicable why black voters would have issues with Republicans! (1)
So, let's stop immediately after the 1968 passage of the CRA, and be sure not to reach the racist dog-whistle claptrap that was the 1968 and 1972 presidential election. (Of course, at that time, many people outside the South couldn't hear the dog-whistles, so Nixon still got about 30% of the black vote.)
Now are all Republicans need are time-displaced black voters who arrived here from mid-1968 and completely missed everything that happened since then. Or maybe even from the mid-70s! Sometime before the trick of stirring up racists in the South became obvious, somewhere around 1980 or so, when 'welfare queens' started showing up and the rest of the country realized what was going on.
Actually, first the Republicans probably want to stop lying about welfare again and all the dog-whistling involved therein. Then fire up the time machine.
1) BTW, the much vaulted 'higher percentage' is only like 15%. Something like 65%-70% of Democrats supported CRAs, and 80-85% Republicans, depending on which bill and house you're talking about. And it was introduced by Democrats and a Democratic president.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
So your theory is that we need voter IDs laws to stop people from voting fraudulently using absentee ballots, which require no photo ID?
Oddly enough, no Republicans ever want to do anything about absentee ballot fraud. Of course, it's not actually statistically important anyway, we have good enough laws about it, but it's abused a fuckload more than in-person voting.
The simple fact is that no one shows at the polls to vote under the wrong name. Period. Ever. I think some study found that there were 10 cases in the last decade, which means the same amount of votes cast under the wrong name as this guy, personally, did himself.
Or, to put it another: Statistically an election's outcome is three times more likely to be altered by someone being struck by lighting the day of the election than by someone fraudulently voting in person.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I wish I had the patience and mental clarity to have expressed it as well as you have, friend.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The major thing that gets me is, if we're going to require photo IDs for things other than driving, why the fuck they're still under the DMV. The thing about DMV is that they are distributed in completely crazy ways, entirely dependent on the driving population, and, what's more, usually assume you can drive to them. (Yes, that's a bit of a weird paradox...until you remember that 60% of the people going to DMV are there to renew a license, so already have one, and another 25% are there to get a license...which requires a car they can take the driver's test in, so someone else drove them there. Basically, the only people who can, and need to, walk to the DMV are those with suspended or expired licenses.)
If we're going to require IDs, we need to just require them. Every damn courthouse in the state should have photo ID areas. Issue them to everyone. When you go to the DMV, they can put a damn checkmark next to your name in the database, there's no reason to even have a different 'driver's license'.
I was going to mention places like car rental companies that need to know you are licensed, but I actually think those already have links to DMV computers. If not, they should have, and if that's too much work, the DMV can issue you a driver's license without a photo on it, akin to how hunting licenses work. It's just a piece of paper, and needs no security features at all.
There's no reason that 'licenses' and 'IDs' should be the same thing, and a lot of reasons they shouldn't. (The courts seems to enjoy physically taking away driver's licenses. The courts should not have the right to render you unidentified, or to make you go get another ID, especially as you now can't drive. Being able to prove who you are is such a fundamental right it doesn't exist, because no one's ever bothered to think of it.) Having them the same was a completely random accident.
And we should also put up ID booths at voting places. You go and vote, and then, if you have some free time and it's not busy, you get an ID. And there's a long enough run-up time that, over the next decade, so by the end of it, everyone who passed though got an ID.
That's how you do voter ID in a sane manner, pretending you're actually worried about the entirely fictional problem of people showing up in person to vote fraudulently. (And also pretending that the volunteers running the voting can somehow spot fake ID. If you've faked an identity enough to vote, you certainly have a fake ID.) You put ID stations in courthouses and polling places, tell people they're going to need those IDs in a decade to vote, and then check back in a decade and see if most people have them.
What the Republicans are worried about, however, is something else entirely. Start with 'the wrong sort of' and ends with 'people voting'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
So you legitimately think "state's rights" is code for the republican's secrete desire to reinstall slavery?
I never said slavery wasn't part of the civil war, I said it wasn't the only part and if you think that was a part of the support the republican got in the south 100 years after the civil war, you would be an idiot.
Economics was the key issues. Like the federal government spending money to protect the north industrial interest at the expense of the south's largely agrarian interests. You had the tariffs issue where the north attempt to protect US made goods in the north from European Goods what were being imported and sold cheaper (especially in the south) along with the nullification crisis where South Carolina, the first state to secede, decided it didn't have to apply the federal tariffs. Many state's complained about the millions being spent to promote and prop up industrial fishing, including payments to a retirement fund for seamen. And many more examples where the feds seemed all to concerned with the north's interest at the expense of the south's.
Turn the stage 100 years later and you still had the north controlling the southern states over the mandates to recommit them to the union. Most of these mandates were unfunded and at the expense of the southern economies (slavery had been abolished almost a century before). The same crap was happening all over again (separate from the civil rights movements). If you think it was about slavery you are an idiot.
So you legitimately think "state's rights" is code for the republican's secrete desire to reinstall slavery?
Nowhere in my post I had said that. I merely said that slavery was the issue which triggered Civil War, as opposed to states rights (which were a shibboleth for slavery in that particular context). I fully support respecting and extending states rights in today's context.
Economics was the key issues. Like the federal government spending money to protect the north industrial interest at the expense of the south's largely agrarian interests. You had the tariffs issue where the north attempt to protect US made goods in the north from European Goods what were being imported and sold cheaper (especially in the south) along with the nullification crisis where South Carolina, the first state to secede, decided it didn't have to apply the federal tariffs. Many state's complained about the millions being spent to promote and prop up industrial fishing, including payments to a retirement fund for seamen. And many more examples where the feds seemed all to concerned with the north's interest at the expense of the south's.
If that is the case, can you explain why most of the secession announcements from the states spoke at length about slavery, but not about any of those other things?
But yes, you're right that economics was the key issue. That's because the agrarian economics of Southern states that that time was wholly reliant on slavery as an institution. They could barely compete with the industrial North when their cotton was picked by slaves; they couldn't compete at all if slaves became workers that demanded a fair wage for their labor. Everything else was chump change in comparison to that single issue.
Yes, because the inverse is automagically true despite circumstances and the history surrounding the situation. The republicans lost the black vote well before either of the two major civil rights legislation was passed. The only thing invented is your mental processing in order to construe what you want instead of what was real.
I hope you can realize that 1968 is quite a few years down the road from 1960 right? Or do you think 1968 all the sudden invented this grand racism strategy you want to persist. Here is a clue, The democrat who blocked black students from entering the school which caused the national guard to be employed, never left the democrat party until he attempted to destroy it. George Wallace created this racism connected to everything monkey you want to keep feeding bananas to.
The rest of what you say is pure nonsense.
So what is your point? Mine was that a larger percent of the party voted in support of the acts. Are you trying to say that 80-85 percent of republicans seated in congress were racists except for when it came to signing onto legislation to promote and protect the civil rights of minorities? You must think it is some master rouge with the republicans pretending not to be racist when laws are being passed and all- but you how it really is, behind the scenes- not because the facts say anything about it, but because you believe it.
Thanks for showing how absurd your argument is with such an example. So people voting in Chile directly resulted in death because they voted for a socialist leader who was later overthrown in a military coup?
Laughable.
You're trying to compare a direct cause-and-effect event - violent person shooting someone with a gun - to butterfly-flaps-it's-wings-in-Tokyo-and-a-month-later-it rains hand waving.
Can you go out and hold up a 7-11 with your vote?
Can you rob a bank at votepoint?
Can you voteslaughter your cheating wife and her lover?
Can the next Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold do a school voting on their classmates?
Can you overthrow Obama's presidency by...voting in Romney?
Apples to batshit irrelevant oranges.
You mean proof that you're a dishonest shitweasel, since the plural of anecdote is not data. Jerry Sandusky is a Republican who likes to have sex with boys. Mark Foley is a Republican who likes to have sex with boys.
Therefore, according to Rockoon, Republicans like to have sex with boys.
Just how far is your head planted up your ass? Yes, 11 cases out of over 600 million is, for all practical purposes, nonexistent. You're chasing a false solution for a problem that doesn't exist, yet will disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of people across the country.
But that's what "voter ID" is all about.
Don't constantly engage in embarrassing crap like confusing the polar opposites of communism and fascism, and you might not have people noticing your ever-appropriate UID.
Dumbass.
Like I said, this is history, look it up. Mousolini was in the communist socialist party in 1919 and didn't create fascism until 3 or 4 years later when he declared communist too impotent to implement his socialist ideals.
Go ahead and look it up, this is only established history that is very simple to check, you could have even done it before posting with as little as less then a minute involved.
Hmm... I said the southern democrats shifted to the republican party because of much of the same reasons of the civil war and if you picked slavery you would be an idiot. Then jumped in, you claimed those reasons are slavery. Well, we all know slavery was one of the issues for the civil war, but it had been dead for almost 100 years when these democrats start moving. But you brought it up so I had to ask.
I don't have to explain that. Slavery was definitely part of the issue at the start of the civil war, It was not the only issue and slavery definitely was not an issue 100 years later- but the other issues still were there.
lol..South Carolina threatened to secede 3 times before actually doing it. John C. Calhoun wrote the South Carolina Exposition and Protest shortly before resigning from vice president of the US in protest. In it, he argues that the tariffs were protectionist in nature and was a pretext to further damaging the South's economy in favor or protecting the industrial interests of the north. He did bring up slavery in that context too, but this illustrates the complexity of the situation outside of just slavery. The entire south thought they were being used and abused to protect the north's economic interests without slavery even being part of the question. It is the entire big business runs government ordeal that we see today. Generations of making the civil war only about the slaves has allowed us to forget history and empower it to repeat itself.
Georgia wrote in it's reasons for secession
Problem is reality is complex especially when you add politicians. An ID is not about the concept!! It is all about the IMPLEMENTATION, I'm surprised computer people are not immune from falling for these tricks...
You should have a password to secure your computer. Sounds simple, "sure I'm for that!" you say. But how does one store the password? in plain text? How does one enter it? on screen keyboard? showing the text you typed on screen? speaking the password? Should we let anything be a password, like 1 character? Say our design is perfect; but then we have BUGs in the software... IMPLEMENTATION all that really matters.
Politicians use concepts, ideals, smokescreens to HIDE the IMPLEMENTATION which shows their true motives. YOU ARE NAIVE if you think that every implementation problem is just incompetence because you drink that whole "government is incompetent" cool aid - that is their best defense!!! (notice how the ones that preach that the most usually generate more incompetence?? wake up.) Implement horrible policies blame disclosures on incompetence (either for the disclosure or to disavow/distance) and talk about how you are for ideals and a greater utopia etc.
The truth is the republicans are using the fact the democrats have easily identifiable demographic groups to DISCRIMINATE against them and subvert democracy. It is the definition of anti-democratic and should be considered treason in any democracy (it does more harm than leaking a secret or aiding the enemy.) Any lawyer might be fooled by their logic games but a reasonable and informed person can clearly see what they are doing.
There is not a huge number of illegals voting. That claim is unsubstantiated and they've failed in the past when they've tried. But naturally, after they kick out a bunch of legal voters they'll claim the lower numbers are a result of these illegals being stopped - again, without any proof. DEMAND EVIDENCE. don't make policy out of ignorance.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Of course, the people who want to take away your right to vote have no problem misusing the mod system when people point out what they're doing.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Yes, because the inverse is automagically true despite circumstances and the history surrounding the situation. The republicans lost the black vote well before either of the two major civil rights legislation was passed. The only thing invented is your mental processing in order to construe what you want instead of what was real.
The reason that the Republicans lost the black votes in 1964 is that Goldwater was seen as racist. Although Goldwater, while only getting 6% of black votes, only got 36% of anyone's votes, so just how much this was attributed to preceieved racism and how much of it was attributed to the complete clusterfuck implosion his candidacy became is anyone's guess.
Other Republicans, running for the House and Senate, continued to be elected by black people.
I hope you can realize that 1968 is quite a few years down the road from 1960 right? Or do you think 1968 all the sudden invented this grand racism strategy you want to persist.
Who mentioned 1960? Oh, I see what this is about. You have a delusion that in 1960, Kennedy suddenly ended up with some sort of massive percentage of the black vote for this prison reason.
That's a interesting theory, except in 1960 Democrats got 68% of the black vote...and in 1956, they got 60%. Well, it's at least a 8% increase...except not. Because, you see, in 1960, the election was essentially tied...and in 1956, the Democrat lost by 8%.
So, doing the math, in 1960, this great hypothetical defection of black voters from Republicans...8% of all voters moved from Republican to Democratic. And in the same election, 8% of black voters moved from Republican to Democratic.
Your theory is possibly the stupidest political conspiracy theory I've ever seen. You are attempting to make a 0% change in the votes of black voters into some massive change in their voting patterns. The _population at large_ decided to vote for Kennedy in 1960, not black voters.
Black voters actually diverged from the presidential norm in 1964 (By almost 25% of black voters changing what party they voted for!), and there is a perfectly good reason that happened. It's called Barry Goldwater and his 'states should be doing voting rights, not the federal government', aka his 'the states have the right to continue to discriminate against blacks if they so choose' accidental political platform. (States rights later became a code word for racism, but not at the time. I actually believe that Goldwater was fairly honest and just somewhat clueless about what would actually happen.)
Here is a clue, The democrat who blocked black students from entering the school which caused the national guard to be employed, never left the democrat party until he attempted to destroy it. George Wallace created this racism connected to everything monkey you want to keep feeding bananas to.
He never left the Democratic party...until he left the Democratic party? What the hell are you trying to say here?
George Wallace left the Democratic party in 1968 to run on a racist ticket. I present this fact not actually understanding what your premise is.
So what is your point? Mine was that a larger percent of the party voted in support of the acts. Are you trying to say that 80-85 percent of republicans seated in congress were racists except for when it came to signing onto legislation to promote and protect the civil rights of minorities? You must think it is some master rouge with the republicans pretending not to be racist when laws are being passed and all- but you how it really is, behind the scenes- not because the facts say anything about it, but because you believe it.
Uh, no. In fact, I have never called the Republicans in congress in the 1960s racist. They were not, as a rule. And, in fact, they were often elected with the support of black voters. (Basically, the only racists in Congress at the time were southern congressmen...and those were of both par
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?