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The US Redrawn As 50 Equally Populated States
First time accepted submitter Daniel_Stuckey writes "Bam! For anyone that's paid a speck of attention to the tedium of political redistricting, which happens while a state grows unevenly, (and must dynamically respond to density, electorate disparity, natural resources and ridgelines, etc.), this is straight out of some psychedelic dream. For Democrats, it could be straight out of a nightmare. That's because Freeman's map necessitates 50 equally populous United States. His methods for creating the map are explained thusly: 'The algorithm was seeded with the fifty largest cities. After that, manual changes took into account compact shapes, equal populations, metro areas divided by state lines, and drainage basins. In certain areas, divisions are based on census tract lines... The suggested names of the new states are taken mainly from geographical features.'"
Geography is beautiful. I made this my wallpaper yesterday.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Where is Puerto Rico, USVI and others in this map?
IF you are going to remap stuff at least put them in as well.
Popular vote is the only method to accurately capture the desire of the entire population. It does NOT mean only the coasts will be visited since every vote counts those 10 democrats in Nebraska and the 5 republicans in Vermont now count for a national win.
as the population density constantly changes over the coming years. And if we are re-"thinking" state lines, why do we need to have 50 states. Why cant/shouldnt there be just one? Or how about 100? Shit, if we are doing something this dramatic, why stop there? Let's solve all of our issues by re-addressing them with modern techniques. 86'd from my thought train due to shortsightedness.
The names were the coolest part, I thought.
Not that there's anything wrong that that! but that isn't what most present-day people would probably want to see.
I do stand out in crowds.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Of course this is a much easier solution then just switching to popular vote...
This is correct. The whole indirect voting systems like the US Electoral College were created to deal with the logistical problems of giving every citizen the vote.
In this day and age, the only purpose of indirect elections is to give undue weight to rural areas.
No sig for the moment.
They're not states. One of his key design constraints was the Electoral College, and only states get to vote in the Electoral College.
Washington, DC gets included since it does have EC votes. That messes with the Congressional representation, but he didn't make than explicit design constraint.
Of course, everyone's going to look at their own area - to see how it got right or wrong regarding where they live.
In my case, I'm in Western MA, and I have to say that they got this little part of it exactly right - merging us in this area into "Willimantic" which connects us with CT with Hartford as the capitol instead of being in the "ass end" of Massachusetts.
I've long been bothered by how little we in this part of MA have to do with those east of 128 / or even east of 495.
I can't speak for any other part of the country, though I love some of these kinds of maps. I like the ones like this where you see the US through the eyes of a New Yorker:
http://www.refinery29.com/map-of-america-according-to-nyc
The Digital Sorceress
The purpose of the electoral college was to avoid having the most important office in the federal gov't be victim to popular fervor. In a direct election, radicals can be too easily elected (see tea party). This system prevents that in theory (along with the voting system of the electors: in seperate areas. This prevented one guy from giving a moving speech and changing the minds of everyone.)
Eh? I don't even know what that sentence was trying to say, but certainly not what was written...
It's pointless to argue for this. We don't have a unitary system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_state) of government like say the United Kingdom. Oh, how I wish we did. My kingdom for everything from speed limits, and rules on turning right on red, on up to more important things like firearms licensing and ownership to be the same no matter where you travelled or lived in the country.
Instead we have Federalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalism) where the states share sovereignty. And if you think they're going to just dissolve themselves, it's just not going to happen. And if you believe they would, please I have multiple bridges around the world to sell you. The only up side to this model in my book is what some people would argue about different states trying different things, and those that are found to work tend to get adopted by others as well. I simply don't buy the argument that the Federal government is out to get us all. But that is a discussion/argument/flame war for another day.
Then why is the USA the only country using indirect elections? Every other modern country that used it at some point has switched to direct elections.
No sig for the moment.
For him to claim his map:
Preserves the historic structure and function of the Electoral College.
Ends the over-representation of small states and under-representation of large states in presidential voting and in the US Senate by eliminating small and large states.
shows he knows nothing of what the Electoral College represents, or what its historical importance was at the time of its inception.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Fail. Why?
It puts primacy of power at a national level as the vastly overriding, important factor, when, in fact, it's the freedom people have to move around.
There are people upset at gerrymandering, even "well-meaning" gerrymandering that creates districts along highway corridors, because they dislike being placed in one nice little homogeneous pool "so you can elect your guy", sayeth those in power, who then sleep like a baby that night.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Rural areas don't have undue weight - how many rural states does it take to equal one OH, NY, FL, TX or CA? Electorally those states are monsters that decide who will be President - the rural areas do not have undue weight.
Ken
Right, because the US government has *always* being in hands of responsible adults...
No sig for the moment.
This just shows how we need to return to the original apportionment of representatives, as laid out in the constitution, and never modified within. There must be one representative for every 30,000 people. If we did this, the government would not be so "Black and White" it would be shades of grey, and better represent the will of the people, not the will of the corporations.
"compactness of shape" is an anti-democratic principle to begin with, "one acre one vote" is a rule of the rotten borough.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Then why was everyone so concerned about Ohio?
No sig for the moment.
A map of equally populated areas to promote equality in voting? We experimented with this some time ago... Couldn't make it work. It didn't promote voting equality on a per-person basis, just created the illusion that people had common interests that were defined by some arbitrary old lines that were drawn up a long time ago. Maybe it was the semicircular arrangement, or the blocking out of all sunlight in 1950. It still looks pretty.
Nice bit of copying and pasting there, Mr. Submitter. I mean, the "Bam!" is dumb enough in the article, but at least it's an exclamation at the presentation of the map. Copied and pasted like that it just looks stupid.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Not to nitpick (so, here comes the nitpicking), but he quite clearly stated this wasn't a serious proposal...
The idea here was more about raising the issue and making people think about it in a different light.
The Digital Sorceress
Tyranny of the majority is the reason to avoid a republic and a pure popular vote. That is to say, people need adult supervision, and there's a reason we have a republic instead of a democracy.
Uhm. Tyranny of the majority is a reason to avoid pure democracies.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I've always loved these thought experiments, carving up the world into new and improved political alignments. This stemmed from encountering C. Etzel Pearcy's proposed 38 State map published in the 1975 People's Almanac; his notions of a better functioning nation arising from a more equitable distribution of state alignments really had an impact on me, growing up as I did on the mostly barren east side of Oregon, and listening to my elders constantly complaining about getting shafted via taxes by the moneygrubbers in Portland/Salem/Eugene. The Almanac also featured another new map of the US, with 22 states I think; can't find any info about it at the moment though.
Also an interesting read was Joel Garreau's book The Nine Nations of North America, which was more about the cultural mass regions that make up the continent.
And as an art project, it's interesting.
As a serious proposal, I don't see how this really changes anything.
Do these 50 equally populous states assign their electoral votes "winner take all" or proportionally?
If "winner take all" then very little will change, since that is how most current states award their electoral votes, and since each state has a number of electoral votes based on it's population the outcome wouldn't likely change.
If proportionally, then that would be a shift from the current model, but would the actual result really change? In the last election, President Obama won re-election with 51% of the popular vote, but won by a larger margin electorally. I would be very interested in seeing someone run this "50 Equal States" map against the county-by-county results from the 2012 election and see how the electoral results would change. (Obviously the popular vote wouldn't change.)
Ken
Because it's a major swing state. If you want more attention, your state needs to not vote for the same party every single election.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
We are a union of states. Not an empire to be subdivided.
This assumes people from different parts of the country are interchangable and are going to be happy no matter how you group them. The problem is that isn't the case; you think things are politically polarized now, a plan like this would be even worse.
You think the people in Highway are going to be happy being governed by politicians in Oregon that doesn't really care what's going on in a set of islands hundreds of miles away because they massively outnumber them don't need their votes anyways? You think the people in Montana and Idaho are gonna be happy being controlled by the busybody Mormons in Utah? And Shiprock is probably going to have an actual shooting war when Lubbock and Abilene figure out that Austin is going to dominate them electorally.
Then why is the USA the only country using indirect elections? Every other modern country that used it at some point has switched to direct elections.
Then why is it that you can't even do a basic wikipedia search for indirect elections to realize that you don't know what you're talking about?
Germany, Italy, Estonia, Latvia and Hungary all use indirect elections...
There are currently 33 countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and India that all use the Westminster system, which is considered to be an indirect election because you vote for a party and if it's that party gets the majority, or the leader of one party has the support of more than 51% of the Members of Parliament (MPs), that leader becomes the head of government.
You don't vote directly for the head of government in those systems and, unless you're lucky, you generally have to vote for an MP that you would rather not vote for to see your party have the majority. Sometimes, it's the opposite and you have to vote for a party you don't want to see the leader as head of government just so you can have the local MP you want to see in parliament elected.
So, which modern countries were you talking about that have all switched to direct elections at some point for their head of government?
(Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirect_election / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_election / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_system)
This speaks to doing away with winner-take-all rules that many states have. I can pretty much guarantee that people living in central California have little in common with people living in downtown San Francisco, ideologically speaking. So why should the latter get to speak for the former? Yet in California, all electoral votes have been magically switched leading people to think the whole of California is liberal. I've been saying this for the past 20 years that the political divide in this country is not about Republican vs. Democrat. It's much more about ruralite vs. urbanite. When you look at election results broken down by county instead of by state, you see a much different picture. Urban districts generally vote liberal Democrat while rural districts vote conservative Republican. Party ideology aside, people in rural areas have vastly different priorities than those who live in cities. People who live in cities often are so full of themselves that they think only they know what's good for city dwellers as well as those who live in the country and they tend to impose legislation without having the slightest bit of experience living in the country.
Does this still work since the advent of television? A single speech can easily be seen across the country. So if it's good enough, it can swing voters everywhere.
Of course direct election of the President makes the most sense. But there remains the problem of the Senate.
Breaking up the states and reorganizing them as described in the article would be very impractical because some of the jurisdictions have no geographic ties (as stated in the article.) Also, you'd have to form 50 new state governments and there's a problem of how to settle differences in laws between places that used to be in different states.
It would be somewhat more practical to break up the biggest states (California, Texas, New York, Florida) and combine a few of the demographically smallest states while trying to maintain geographic compactness. How about Montana + Idaho, North Dakota + South Dakota + Wyoming, Maine + Vermont + New Hampshire, Connecticut + Rhode Island, Nebraska + Kansas. And the most political fun: Utah+Nevada!
That's incorrect. The president of Germany is elected by the Federal Convention, which is made up of all members of the German Federal Diet (Deutscher Bundestag, elected by proportional representation every four years) plus the same number of representatives elected by the states' parliaments. Therefore, half of the result is determined by indirect vote, and the other half by double indirect votes (populace votes for representatives in the state parliament, those vote for representatives in the Federal Convention, and that in turn votes for the president). There is however, no popular vote at all for the president, the elections for the president don't coincide with any federal or state elections. Few people really care, because the president usually has a much lower profile than the chancellor..
Of course they do. See Wyoming- a single person's vote in Wyoming is worth 3/563000 =5.32e-6 of an electoral vote (based on 2012 census data). A vote in California is worth 55/37200000= 1.47e-6 votes. A person in Wyoming is worth 4 times as much. That's completely unfair.
Now historically it makes sense- it dates back to right post revolution where we were really 13 nations who decided to band together into 1, and it was a compromise to get the small states to go along with it. It stopped making sense when we became a real nation beyond point of breakup- basically after the civil war it was outdated. Now, due to geography its a system that's totally unfair.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Rural areas don't have undue weight - how many rural states does it take to equal one OH, NY, FL, TX or CA? Electorally those states are monsters that decide who will be President - the rural areas do not have undue weight.
Those states have far more electoral votes because they have far higher populations. Votes in less-populated states have slightly greater weight than votes in states with higher populations. A state with a population of two million that has two representatives (numbers rounded to make the math easier) gets four electoral votes, or one per 500,000 people. A state with a population of 20 million and 20 representatives gets 22 electoral votes, or one per 900,000 people.
So a tyranny of the minority is better in some way? The current system seems designed to allow relatively small but passionate groups of people to win and control the country, while depriving third parties of any voice in the government.
The whole indirect voting systems like the US Electoral College were created to deal with the logistical problems of giving every citizen the vote.
Uh, no.
We have the electoral college because we live in a federated representational republic, not a democracy. The individual citizens of the United States don't get a vote for president. Our states do. We only get a vote to tell our state government who we would prefer they vote for. And, they don't even need to listen to us (and have in the past chosen to vote against the will of the people)!
In this day and age, the only purpose of indirect elections is to give undue weight to rural areas.
In this day and age, we forget that Massachusetts and New York and Virginia, etc, saw themselves basically as sovereign nations, only joining together in that pesky federal government business to give them a united front in dealing with the old European powers. We forget, in this era of "excuse anything with the Commerce Clause", that the vast majority of the constitution took great pains to refer to the states as such, rather than as mere political subdivisions of the whole.
You also forget that before that whole "one man, one vote", having a voice in government depended solely on how much land you owned. Urbanites didn't give farmers more of a voice out of charity, but rather, the large landowners graciously allowed the unlanded to have a voice at all.
Has the time come when we should realign our political system with modern perceptions? Or should we respect that we have such an archaic system for damned good historical reasons?
Personally, I think the recent gun ownership debate has brought exactly this issue to the center of attention - We have urban yuppies who've created their own violent crimes hell, trying to take guns away from rural areas with almost no violent crime. Perhaps the Founding Fathers understood something about us that we have forgotten.
Slavery and the balance between slave and free states. The author of the article has no sense of US history, which is sad and scary. Logically it makes no sense to lump Hawaii with a west coast area due to isolation and different climate. Lumping Alaska with Rainer makes no sense either for the same reason. There is more to geography than human population. Remember, the "Geo" in geography means "Earth". The physical features of the planet, politics, and limitations of technology often trump an idealization of reality. So over all I give the article a big "meh". It's too simplistic to be interesting.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Have you any idea how many US cities and counties, let alone states, have Native American names already? Alaska (through Russian), Arizona (through Spanish), Hawaii, Idaho (disputed), Illinois (through French), Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan (through French), Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are all derived from Native American words in some form or another. That's almost 40% of the states.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
"Keep in mind that this is an art project, not a serious proposal, so take it easy with the emails about the sacred soil of Texas. "
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
And unless you bunch together a lot of small states, the populous state still has a lot more voting power (22 versus 4 - you need five and a half of those little states to equal that one populous state). The assumption is that all small states vote the same way and therefore give one side (the Republicans currently) a disproportionate boost.
You could also make the counter argument that a more directly elected government would only care about the urban centers and ignore the needs of the people who live in flyover country (and grow all of our food). Which is pretty much the argument the founders made and why we have the system we do. The current system was designed to provide a balance between the total populace and the distributed populace - if you look at a county level map, the entire freaking country is a sea of red with a bunch of blue dots scattered about. That those blue dots have a lot more people in them is important but there is also an importance to the sea of red.
I wish more people had the depth of your historical perspective. And by the way, Virginia still sees itself that way, try saying "State of Virginia" around a bunch of old natives and you may very well be corrected that "this is the Commonwealth of Virginia, sir."
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
How is that a disadvantage? It implies that if you care enough, you could be one of those passionate people that makes a difference.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Yes, but they aren't random native american names. They are names specific to the region, such as that huge central region of Oogallala ... that is a huge underground aquifer which is the major source of water for the whole region.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
I keep reading the sentence, "For Democrats, it could be straight out of a nightmare." How exactly is this true? If anything, the current system favors Republicans by overrepresenting rural (mostly red) states.
To the founders, the "Senate problem" was a solution, not a problem. Proportional representation was not the ultimate goal; it was a goal that needed to be tempered. The Senate does that.
Government dysfunction is not a result of geographic or population inequalities among states. Addressing that doesn't help. ...and no, direct election of the President doesn't make the most sense.
The purpose of the electoral college was to avoid having the most important office in the federal gov't be victim to popular fervor. In a direct election, radicals can be too easily elected (see tea party). This system prevents that in theory (along with the voting system of the electors: in seperate areas. This prevented one guy from giving a moving speech and changing the minds of everyone.)
The Electoral College was the result of a political compromise at the 1787 Constitutional Convention because the participants couldn't make up their minds how the President should be selected. Just about every possible method was suggested by one participant or another, and the Electoral College was just the one that happened to pass.
We can respect the work of the Founding Fathers without treating them as infallible gods. In fact, refusing to think for ourselves and instead treating their work as a kind of Holy Scripture is completely against the Enlightenment values that they stood for.
There's the British system: The people vote, someone emerges on top, and none of us can figure out exactly what goes on in between.
So what you are saying is a pure democracy would reduce the power of small but passionate groups while giving a voice in government to small but passionate groups such as third parties?
Do you even listen to yourself?
"His name was James Damore."
radicals can be too easily elected (see tea party).
Once again people who say spending $1 Trillion or more each year over what the government spend are "radical". For those of you who wonder why this country is so split, look no further than Dasuraga's comments. If you think government spending is out of control you are a radical, no discussion, no debate, just name calling right from the beginning. Liberals are the biggest hate group the world has ever seen and they are just getting worse as the days go by.
Do you even know why there is a Senate? The Senate's obstruction is deliberate. The Senate is the chamber where bad bills which would become bad laws are supposed to die. It may seem like it "prevent things from getting done" but that's why it's there, because it is far better than the knee-jerk nonsense of two-year term political hacks who would enact virtually any law just so something "can be seen to be done" before their next election season.
There is a reason that our Republic has 'undemocratic' elements. Pure democracy fails, fails quickly, and terrifyingly transitions through ochlocracy to some form of autocracy. This has been understood and demonstrated since antiquity (see Polybius et al), and it is why our founders were wise enough to establish a more complex, resilient, synthetic system of government.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Then why is the USA the only country using indirect elections?
While I think the electoral college is pretty nutty, in defense of the USA, they're not alone in their use of indirect elections.
Virtually every jurisdiction using the Westminster Parliamentary System (mostly Commonwealth countries like the Canada, Australia, the UK etc.) use indirect elections.
A riding ('district') elects a Member of Parliament (MP) who heads off to the legislature. The party with the most number of MPs form government, and the leader of that party becomes Prime Minister. So in that sense, the PM is 'indirectly elected.'
Reminds me of a pic I once saw of a highly modded S2000 with the California plate "COMI4NA" ("Commiefornia"). The guy clearly had the means to "vote with his feet" and didn't. Instead he put an insulting plate on the expensive car that the "communist" California economy allowed him to afford.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The opposite of "tyranny of the majority" is not "tyranny of the minority". The problem you complain about does not result from a failure of democratic process, it is due to the monopoly enjoyed jointly by the two-party system. The electoral college does not contribute to that, it is victimized by it.
DC should never have been given EC votes; it should have (mostly) been given back to Maryland. The people mostly don't live in the key Federal building areas, and so the idiotic idea of DC statehood wouldn't matter - they'd be citizens of Maryland.
To the founders, the "Senate problem" was a solution, not a problem. Proportional representation was not the ultimate goal; it was a goal that needed to be tempered. The Senate does that.
"The Founders" weren't one unified body. The bicameral system was a compromise between large-state representatives who wanted proportional representation by population, and small-state representatives who wanted all states to have an equal vote.
The people we usually think of as "Founding Fathers" – most notably James Madison and Alexander Hamilton – wanted proportional representation and weren't too thrilled about the Senate, though they were willing to accept it to avoid scuttling the whole enterprise. According to Wikipedia, "Madison argued that a conspiracy of large states against the small states was unrealistic as the large states were so different from each other. Hamilton argued that the states were artificial entities made up of individuals, and accused small state representatives of wanting power, not liberty." The people who were gung-ho for an equal representation Senate were much more marginal figures, such as Gunning Bedford, Jr.
So the Free State Project doesn't exist?
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
The key insight of the US federal structure as originally embodied in the Constitution was that every constituency deserves a hearing - the people are represented in the House, the states are represented in the Senate, and the President is elected by whatever means the States appoint - they can be more or less democratic in the selection of electors. A necessary consequence of the first-past-the-post system with specific electoral districts used in the US is that it is designed to produce a two-party state. Third parties have to influence one of them. Yes, third parties matter less here. On the other hand, it relentlessly forces both parties' platforms to the center of the electorate, strongly curbing radical influence.
I agree with some posters that this lacks a sense of history and an appreciation of geography.
It also deeply lacks a sense of culture. There are combined areas with no common culture and indeed cultural opposition across geography. This re-Balkanization, so to speak, might as well offer the opportunity to dismantle the United States -- which is, in all ways except language, as culturally distinct as most of Europe.
What we need is Urban Secession!
For starters, make NYC metro area a separate state , taking away parts of NY state, NJ, CT, and possibly even Pike Country from PA. Rename the upstate region to Buffalo, or something like that. Do the same for metropolitan areas of Chicago, Washington DC, Philly, LA + San Diego, SF, etc. There wouldn't be much left of NJ / MD / DE - perhaps their outlying non-metro areas can be glued to other non-metro states. (Not sure if Boston and Houston / Dallas will want to be separated - their politics are not much different from the rest of the state.)
It will be a win-win for everybody: socialists, which tend to mooch off more densely populated areas, will get to play socialism, and the rest of us will be free from their control. Chicago-less Illinois will recognize the Right to Self-Defense. Mayor Bloomberg will get his toilet paper ban. Everybody will be happy (at least until the socialists will run out of competent people to tax, but that's their problem).
--libman
You are correct, and judging by the collective responses, most here don't either. The problems of the electoral college have nothing to do with state boundaries.
Sadly, this just another of countless examples of the internet enabling fools to masquerade as experts to the detriment of us all. Now we have, in addition to real problems, more misinformation to overcome.
Yes, tyranny by a well-educated, moral, personally invested minority is better ('republic').
There is no way in hell that you would get anything close to those characteristics with a tyranny by majority ('mob rule', aka 'pure democracy').
With a minority, there is at least a chance at a decent governing body.
To put it bluntly, people are stupid, paranoid, busy with their own small problems. They don't have the time or the skill to deal with law, economics, or even credit card debt.
First few decrees passed by pure-democracy government:
1. print off all national debt.
2. no alcohol tax
3. legalize all drugs
4. simplify the legal codex to a third-grade reading level, cut it down to pamphlet size, and get rid of anything a third grader wouldn't understand.
5. [minority repression and international screw-ups go here]
It looks like what you're suggesting is a 'tyranny by the half-decently educated majority', which cares about a voice in government, can organize itself into parties, and might be able to make an agenda.
The next time you want to suggest 'rule by majority', look up mental health statistics. Start with schizophrenia.
It's true that the Electoral College somewhat overrepresents small rural states. This is because each state's electoral votes is equal to the size of its Congressional delegation, and all states have 2 Senators regardless of size. (Also, the smallest states still have 1 Representative, no matter how minuscule their population.)
But that problem really doesn't come up too often. It did in 2000, to be sure, but in every other instance in the past century, the Electoral College results had the same winner as the popular vote results. A much more serious issue is that the Electoral College gives rise to the phenomenon of "swing states."
Defenders of the Electoral College often claim that if it was abolished, then Presidential candidates would only bother campaigning in the big states and ignore everyone else. But under the current situation, we have an even worse situation: the campaigns are largely restricted to a handful of states that happen to be almost evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. That means that if you live in New York or California or Texas, you'll be essentially ignored through the whole Presidential campaign. On the other hand, if you live in Ohio, there is no end to the amount of pandering the parties will do to get your vote. The current situation results in a vast majority of the American people being written off as irrelevant to a Presidential campaign! This is one way we wind up with crappy policy like ethanol subsidies: they play really well in Midwestern swing states, so no one with Presidential aspirations will dare to challenge them.
But, they are radical, they refuse to accept any tax hikes as a part of the package and are mostly focused on eliminating benefits to those that can't defend themselves. That's deeply radical.
And liberals being the biggest hate group is just the sort of ignorance that makes people think of the TP as being extremists. Go do some research, then come back and try to explain why the TP should be taken seriously. They're literally more interested in cutting off their own noses to spite their face than solving any of the many problems the US has.
It makes it hard for my voter apathy party to get a place at the table.
Idaho? Youdaho!
That's the point and each one of those small states gets an extra 2 electors in the Presidential election. They also get an equal say in the Senate regardless of how many people are in the state. Which is definitely an undue weight on the political process.
Because The People are reality-TV-watching morons. Indirect elections mitigate both tyrrany of the masses and kneejerk reactions that turn out to be bloody stupid five minutes later.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
No, it would give the small and calm groups a chance to do something. Why should government be reserved just for parties that have rabid supporters?
Fine. Raise taxes.
And your point is? I live in a state with 11 electoral votes and Presidential candidates almost never bother to campaign here, even though we're approximately 51% Democrats and 49% Republicans. The reason being that with the winner take all system that's in most states, they either get all the votes or none of the votes.
Now, if they choose to go for 4 small states, they can lose one and still come ahead if they lost WA state. Which is sort of the point, the risk to reward ratio is better if you go for the small states than the large states. It gets even worse if you're talking about a state that's reliably red or blue in which case there's no point at all in campaigning there.
+1, Insightful.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I guess it's 12 votes now, I forgot about the census. Still the expected value of the state is lower than rafting together several small states.
I think it's possible to accept that 1) there are damned good historical reasons and 2) that those historical reasons no longer apply and the system should change. Your post has brings some interesting historical facts, but history only explain problems; it doesn't justify them.
Wyoming has a population of 576 thousand. California has a population of 38 million.
It should take 65 wyomings to out vote one California. Instead, it takes nineteen.
Germany, Italy, Estonia, Latvia and Hungary all use indirect elections...
However, what "indirect" means in the elections of these countries is quite different from what it means in the US electoral system...
You should really get a basic clue about electoral systems first before even starting to compare apples with bananas.
The GP is wrong though. Of all the offices that we have, it's just the President where we don't directly vote. Ever since the early 20th century when the constitution was changed to require the direct election of Senators we've been more democracy than republic.
If you want to be technical about it, we're a democratic-republic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_republic
We have the electoral college because we live in a federated representational republic, not a democracy
You seem to think that this is a good thing.
Fine. Raise taxes.
Or, cut defense spending. You'd still have the world's best military if you slash it by 30%, I bet.
No sig for the moment.
it worked for John Galt. Of course, the author was under no obligation to be realistic.
So you're saying that he should either love it or leave it? That's kind of a false dichotomy. Maybe he thinks that California is the best state there is, but despite this it still has some massive problems. That's pretty much how I feel about California.
Do you always get offended when people try to improve their governments?
This is interesting. I always assumed (being raised in Washington) that it would be best to divide our state straight down the Cascade Mountains, farther west than the line is in this map.In line with the "tt" of Seattle, the "a" of Tacoma, and continuing towards the central "a" in Shasta.
Many people in Eastern Washington would actually love to see a split like I described, because the west side has too much control over the rest of the state.
And Idapimp.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. ~ Douglas Adams
Unfortunately, there's not enough money. The Republicans won't raise taxes and the Democrats won't cut spending, and so we'll march along until people quit loaning money to us. I assume we'll just inflate our way out of the problem, eventually, because stealing everyone's savings is both easier and less obvious than jacking up taxes into the stratosphere while cutting services to the bone.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Many countries, not just the U.S.A., have provisions that legislation must be passed by both a majority of population and a majority of geography. Hence congress allocated by population, but each state has two senators, whether it's Wyoming or California.
Canada doesn't. Our Senate is appointed by population (by regions on paper, but by population in practice), so Ontario has the most MPs and the most senators. Here in B.C. we have similar issues: the vast majority of the population live in the southwestern corner of the province, but the happening industry is in the northeast, which feels more kinship with neighbouring Alberta. Including using the same time zone.
We've also looked at proportional representation in B.C., but that didn't get off the ground. I would have welcomed it.
...laura
We have the electoral college because we live in a federated representational republic, not a democracy
You seem to think that this is a good thing.
I certainly do.
It bothers the crap out of me to see uninformed people voting for their representatives. To see them voting on actual decisions? No quicker way of destroying the country that I can think of.
Before I'm accused of defining "uninformed" as "believes differently than I do," I'll just point out that I follow my own guidelines, and unless I've taken the time to research the issues and all of the candidates running for a particular office meticulously, I don't cast a vote. Which generally means that I rarely vote, and when I do I leave most of the ballot empty, voting only for those offices for which I've taken the time to study every candidate and the relevant issues. I refuse to potentially cancel out the vote of a more informed citizen.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
The antebellum South called, it wants you back. Seriously, this issue was settled at Appomatox Court House in 1865.
Seriously, has it? Tell that to the ten times since 1872 (I won't count 1872 since Greely died between voting day and the meeting of the electoral college) we have seen "faithless" electors. Great effort goes into choosing people extremely unlikely to vote against the will of the people of their state, but it still happens.
And what does Appomattox have to do with this? Not talking about secession, but the way the electoral college works today. In the present, modern United States of 2013. You and I don't get a vote. We get to voice an opinion, that our state's electors may accept or may disregard as they see fit. Simple as that.
Perhaps that's the plan. Will no one rid me of this turbulent state?
The president of Germany is elected by the Federal Convention, which is made up of
The president of germany has almost no power at all. He acts as a representative and while theoretically a law has to be signed by him to be valid - the most he can do is refuse to sign a law for some time, but even that is questionable.
The position was completely guttet after Hitler missused the power it held (starting wars, ordering people killed, enemies of the state,... sounding familiar?).
So comparing the election of a public figure head with literally and intentionally no power to the most powerfull american is quite a bit of a stretch.
You're the one who is wrong. Outside of the legislature, virtually no office is popularly elected. The Supreme Court isn't, the cabinet isn't, the bureaucracy under the cabinet isn't, etc.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I haven't run the numbers, but the electoral college favors less populous states by guaranteeing a minimum of 3 electoral votes. California has 66 times the population of Wyoming but only 18 times the number of electoral votes. My initial guess would be that the voters in rural Western states (Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, Idaho, etc) would lose clout in this scheme, and those are all Republican strongholds.
However, the 10 least populous states (+DC) are Wyoming (R), Vermont (D), DC (D), North Dakota (R), Alaska (R),
South Dakota (R), Delaware (D), Montana (R), Rhode Island (D), and New Hampshire (swing)
So that's a 50-50 split pretty much: both parties benefit from the electoral college.
The top 10 states are California (D), Texas (R), New York (D), Florida (swing), Illinois (D), Pennsylvania (swing), Ohio (swing), Georgia (R), Michigan (D?), and North Carolina (swing?). So 4 D, 2 R, and 4 swing states (depending on how you define them): so maybe the Dems suffer a bit from the electoral college at this end of the spectrum.
The hard question is what happens when you split these states up: Atlanta freed from the rest of Georgia goes blue, but the middle of Pennsylvania goes red without Philly and Pittsburgh, etc. So maybe the article is right that when you run the numbers it disadvantages Democrats, but I'd be interested to see the analysis because I don't understand how you come to the conclusion that this favors Republicans without it.
(I know this isn't a serious proposal so apologies for geeking out over it. :)
The electoral college certainly helps preserve the duopoly. When was the last time a third party won an electoral college vote? The system makes it seem that there ISN'T any opposition to the two big parties. And since there is no opposition people just keep voting for them.
With a popular vote at least the voters could see that x% of the vote went to the brainslug party, making them consider voting for them in the next election (at least after they get the official party hat).
how many rural states does it take to equal one OH, NY, FL, TX or CA?
How many people are living there? Land doesn't vote, people vote.
The reason Ohio gets far more electoral votes than, say, large western states, has a lot to do with the fact that you have more people living in the Cleveland metro area than you have in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana combined.
Another example of how the small-by-population states have undue influence: The 21 smallest states in the US comprise 13.8% of the US population. That means that 7% of the US population could, in theory, elect 42 senators, which is enough to control national policy via a filibuster. The only reason that doesn't work out exactly that way is that 13 of those states lean one way politically and 8 lean the other way, so in fact those 42 senators are as much at loggerheads as everyone else. Or another way of measuring it: A resident of Wyoming has approximately 61.5 times more voting power in the Senate as a resident of California has.
I am officially gone from
You seem to think that this is a good thing.
It all depends on your general view of humanity. If you consider the majority of people intelligent, rational, and well informed about their political opinions, then it would make sense to give everyone the right to vote directly.
If, however, you view the average Joe as having virtually no comprehension of the actual issues at stake and essentially voting based either on fear, on what Pastor Bob tells them to do, or on who has the best hair; then yes, you would view the electoral college as a "good" thing.
Yeah, but they were wrong.
There's no REASON why proportional representation needs to be tempered. You just don't like it for some reason you can't articulate. Why should some people have a lot more political power than other people in a republic?
The Senate we have now is not what the founders designed. Those geniuses designed monstrosity. The Sentate originally composed of members appointed by their Governors. That system was hopelessly corrupt. Senators literally bought their seats from compliant and corrupt Governors. Now that isn't possible. They have to buy votes, which is a lot harder and they consequently believe they have to stay in some kind of touch and at least appear to represent the interests of the people of their states.
Yes, direct election of the President does make the most sense. The electoral college system gives voters in one state as much as 70 times more power PER VOTER than voters in another state.
The problem is real. The solution is a cluster fuck.
Actually metro areas are getting all the attention. That's where politicians get the most bang for the buck, particularly Democrats. But this nation isn't just for inner city dwellers and their issues, positions, or "solutions" should not be the only metrics that decide how everyone will live. That's such a divisive way of thinking for those who claim to celebrate diversity. It's appalling they don't see their own hypocrisy. Those hick rural people may have the franchise but no voice, no representation because they're safely ignored by politicians whose only interest is ensuring their own elections.
California is a prime example. All that's needed is LA and SF. The tens of millions who make up the rest of the state, including residents of one of the largest cities in the country are safely ignored. That's why we keep seeing proposals to break up the state.
Statewide challengers cannot afford to build a winning coalition. Look where leadership and statewide officeholders come from: they're increasingly concentrated to three metro areas: L.A., SF and the state capitol. Worse, we've seen challengers who aren't from one of those areas unable to get a toehold. The end result is immoveable local machine politics and an entire state lead by people with an insular, myopic viewpoint all connected to the same socio-political circle. Failed ideas are repeated and replicated across wider and wider geographic areas. Let's run the state like L.A. or Detroit or your favorite metro area, because failures there were because we didn't do it everywhere.
Consider the battle of the big box stores who wanted to offer grocery areas to compete with unionized chain stores. The policy was overturned in San Diego because people wanted competition and lower prices but, in a huff, the policy was taken to the state level. Why is that even possible? Because the Democrats control the state entirely since they control L.A. and SF and these unions are their allies. Incidentally this political alliance is why pension funding problems are so systemic. They won't say no because they need them for GOTV efforts in their urban areas.
Political echo chambers form and systemic LEGALIZED corruption builds. Dynasties like that of the Hahn family concentrate power and influence. Multigenerational family members have been mayor, DA, council members, state legislator and now in Congress. MA has had its Kennedy problem. Some see the Bushes this way. These are issues everywhere and across party lines; I just happen to be intimately familiar with the CA situation.
You should always be suspicious of concentrations of power and the replication of failed policies on a higher and higher level all because those are the experiences of the people who are so easily elected only because of their familiarity to urban dwellers and the political machines available to them.
Think about it... would you want the inverse? What if "hick" politics dominated because that was where the financial and logistical advantage was?
It's been a problem throughout history and "progressive" people keep fighting to make that political power structure easier and easier to build and maintain under the guise of "fairness" when sold to voters. The same party that talks endlessly of "fairness" and a "balanced approach" demonstrates no interest in compromise that accede points, position or advantage to their political enemy.
The Founding Fathers were keenly aware of these issues and debated them. They wanted checks-and-balances and it seems the aim of the "progressives" has been to remove those under the guise of "fairness" yet for their own political advantage.
I keep telling people who are blindly one party or the other, particularly in my minority group, if your vote is a given you've ceded your power. You become irrelevant. At the same time you don't want to be impossible to get as some on the right are.
I view democracy as a method of transmitting localized information to a central authority.
Just because many people use it incorrectly does not make that usage correct.
http://astutehosting.com/
Right, because the US government has *always* being in hands of responsible adults..
Sadly, when I hear the stupidity our congressmen spew, and compare it to the utter insanity of the people around me (meteors an omen corresponding with the resignation of the pope is one I heard last night, and that was relatively tame), then yes, it seems the US government has been handled by the (relatively) responsible adults (and that includes the administrations of Harding and Grant).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This is how redistrcting should be done: with a computer algorithm that mathematically guarantees fairness: https://raw.github.com/happyjack27/autoredistrict/master/README.md
Now I'm not very familiar with the American society, so this is sort of an outsider view.
As far as I can see, the American republic is a better system than most democracies. In a democracy, the majority rules, and one half of the population forces their will on the other slightly smaller half. But in America, you have a liberal federal government that gives enough autonomy to the states to choose their own way of living. Mobility between the states is very high, and the state governments are elected democratically. This allows for a system where each person can choose which type of society they want to live in, as conservatives, liberals and socialist can simply move to a conservative, liberal or welfare state. Instead of only the majority getting their way, in the American system everybody is happy. The constant migration also forces states to compete for people, and pay attention even to those who aren't as politically active.
Now the problem is that over time the federal government has become much bigger, which is the worst of the two worlds: a big government that the citizens have no direct control over. One way to solve that is to switch to a more direct way of electing the federal government, but going back to a small federal government with the diverse states governments doing most of the work may also be an option.
Washington state? Obama won 56 percent to 41 percent. It's pretty much a democratic stronghold compared to Virginia-- which Obama also carried, 51 percent to 47 percent.
A nationwide popular vote makes most sense to me-- the president already represents the nation in so many ways, and the election mechanics should reflect that.
Inept state Governments are part of a nefarious multi-decade long project to get people to pay more attention to what goes in the statehouses. That's why gerrymandering is so common. That's why "intelligent design" bills get passed.
I take it you don't understand what a democratic republic is. Those people you're referring to aren't politicians, they're appointed to carry out the policies that we voted for when we voted for the President and the congress. Apart from the secretaries, most of them work through multiple administrations and carry out the priorities of the President of the time.
It was not designed to produce a two-party state. There's a great deal of evidence (for example, Federalist Paper #10) that many of the designers of the Constitution were, in fact, trying to create a non-partisan system. Unfortunately, with few real-world examples to take lessons from, they did not see how the system they were designing would inevitably lead to a two-party state.
It's no accident that most democracies to be founded after the United States have chosen not to directly copy its system of government.
If the purpose of redrawing state boundaries (an absolutely impossible proposition) is to come up with a better alternative to the "winner take all" aspect of the Electoral College, just don't make the College such a "winner take all" proposition. Since most folks have figured out that amending the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College will never happen, the next best alternative is to make electoral votes proportional by selecting presidential electors by congressional district. This gives the more rural areas somewhat better representation without overly skewing the results. Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution gives each state legislature the authority to determine how it chooses its electors, so such a change is much easier to accomplish than amendments to the Constitution (which require a 2/3 vote by each house of Congress and adoption by 3/4 of the states).
Maine and Nebraska already have their electors selected this way, and Virginia and Pennsylvania have put forward similar proposals. This system preserves states' rights, yet allows for a more representative result in the Electoral College.
The FPTP system is designed to create a two-party state, not the Constitution, which has no such requirement. I should perhaps have made the distinction clearer.
That ain't a good argument.
That's because the GOP nominated somebody that was completely incompetent and even our conservatives realized that to be the case. Rossi took nearly half of the votes during the 2005 governor's race and Reagan won the state back in the '80s. Not to mention the typically tighter Senatorial campaigns.
The GOP goes to great lengths to piss off the folks of the state, that's why it was so lopsided. If they actually tried to win the state, they might well have done it. But, as it is, the candidates don't bother to show up at all and with the slight liberal lean, you end up with election after election of Democrats being elected.
India certainly has an indirect method for choosing its President. The Indian parliament elects the President.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I agree with your numbers.
But factor 4 would be the lowest bound of unfairness.
It's probably much bigger, since votes in swing-states account for something while votes in other states are basically nil.
Just because many people use it incorrectly does not make that usage correct.
But then you're assuming they use it incorrectly when trying to prove that this usage is incorrect.
Even in the mid 19th century Walter Bagehot in his great defence of the Westminster system; The English Constitution, saw the US electoral college as a failed institution that had never really fulfilled its intended function.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
that last part is obviously false.
On the other hand, it tries to force both parties' platforms to the center of the electorate, strongly curbing radical influence.
Fixed. I think from what we've seen lately, it can fail at that goal.
When the U.S. constitution was written, states with small population complained they would be underrepresented. So the Senate was created. I can't tell, is Daniel talking about gerrymandering? If he is, states such as Iowa have created nonpartisan committees to redistrict the state as the population shifts. I think what Daniel wants is a Senate-like legislative body that gives each district in a state equal representation. Unfortunately he thinks gerrymandering is a problem at the national level, which was solved with the signing of the Constitution.
We can certainly debate the way the Electoral College is formulated (or whether it should exist at all) but the Senate is intended to be the voice of the States, a counter balance to the rep by pop House of Representatives.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I view humanity with a rather suspicious eye. Humans are scheming, self-interested, misinformed, ignorant, imprudent, easily frightened, and quick to forget. Unfortunately, these characteristics apply equally to average Joe, Senator Joe, and, if honesty is worth anything, yours truly. Therefore, though occasionally wishing Arthur would return and set things to right, I remain a (small d) democrat. Democracy has at least this to recommend it: if it leads us all into ruin at least the majority of us had a hand in getting there.
Redrawing election area map boundaries in order to equalise the population size of the regions.
Fail.
Unfortunately, this doesn't work. It's been tried, tested, and is in use in some countries, but it doesn't work.
The basic problem: Population figures are dynamic. People move. One city has a baby boom. Another has a jobs crisis. And suddenly, you've got to re-draw the maps all over again. And again. And again.
I think the Senate was created to represent the States more than the people. Senators were originally chosen by the State governments.
My fix would be to transform the Senate into a somewhat parliamentary body. Hold a national vote where you vote for the party of your choice and give each party a senator for each 1% of the vote they get*. If that were in place we'd probably have 5 or 10 Libertarian senators, maybe 3 or 4 Green Party senators, etc. The Senate would then represent the political will of the country much better.
* In practice you'd have to account for the fact the totals won't line up with integer percentages so a party that got 0.9% of the vote would probably get 1 senator, etc.
If he really thought it was communist he should have left. He didn't put together a plate to mean "California's a bit too liberal for my liking" (HIPY4NA?) or something like that, he said it was communist. That's a pretty serious accusation.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you think the Tea Party or OWS is radical, you do not understand what radical means. I mean radical - Bolsheviks and Brownshirts engaging in street wars.
Wow! Reagan won the state of Washington in 1984? Good to know. I was in danger of confusing it with Minnesota.
Your complaint makes as much sense as complaining that the US and the Maldives get equal votes in the UN General Assembly (the Maldives get much more vote per population).
Theoretically, a very small % of the world population could have undue influence at the UN.
But nobody (except George Soros?) is calling for direct proportional elections to the UN.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
While TFA is an interesting approach, the simpler solution to one of the main thrusts in TFA (of having equal EC representation/distribution) is to simply change the EC to where each congressional district (or in this case, electoral district) is autonomous and controls its own vote independent from the rest of the state it's in.
Even if the two extra EC vote afforded each state are kept, I see this as a far better system than a strait popular vote system. Why? Because the EC has a side effect of doing something amazingly positive that few realize. It contains vote fraud to within the state it happens in.
Consider this for example: Imagine a politically corrupt jurisdiction in your state. Imagine that they start cranking out fraudulent votes. The votes they dilute are limited to the vote in their state. But in a popular vote system, they now dilute everyone's vote. By tweaking the EC system to treat congressional districts autonomously, the fraud is contained even further.
And since congressional districts are explicitly drawn to contain apportioned sections of the population (given a few constraints of not crossing state boundaries and the like), the goal towards equal vote weighting is more naturally furthered.
The whores get mad when the sluts give it away for free.
If you think the civil service isn't political, I have a bridge to sell you. That's why they're called *political appointments* and are contentious in congress. Not just the secretary level but usually the administrator/director level and immediate underlings are routinely replaced from administration to administration. It's not just under the executive either, but on the judicial side most are appointed in a similarly contentious fashion for all manner of federal courts.
You have no place questioning my understanding. I've worked in the alphabet soup of Washington DC for years, and I can give you an education about how government really works that you won't find in a book (unless it's P.J. O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores).
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Pure democracy fails, fails quickly, and terrifyingly transitions through ochlocracy to some form of autocracy.
You seem to think this is a guaranteed transition, with time frames no more than one or two generations. Care to show at least some examples? Specifically, examples where the transition into autocracy was terminal? Once you're into examples, feel free to demonstrate how it is not just examples, but a rule.
There is a reason that our Republic has 'undemocratic' elements.
You - just like almost every American it seems - seem to conflate direct democracy with any democratic system. There are multiple other approaches, and generally, a democracy is considered one if it has democratic decision making systems in the key components of the government. The elements you refer aren't so much undemocratic as they are designed to keep the democratic system from being gamed by small interests that do not represent the will of the populous.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The Supreme Court and cabinet members are popularly elected...by those we the people choose to represent us in Congress. You might not have a vote on those people, but you do have a vote on those who do.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
...not states. Like Virginia did. Or rather tried...
"A person in Wyoming is worth 4 times as much. That's completely unfair."
Only if your goal is a pure democracy. In the US, tt's completely fair and working as designed. And not because of fear of "break up", as you suggest.
See The Constitution and The Federalists Papers (F10 in particular).
"Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. "
It's to prevent one group of "interests" or "factions" as Madison put it, from squashing the liberties of others.
Where's the -1 Paranoid Delusions mod when you need it?
Alternatively, every single Democrat in the South is nominally pro-life, too. Why won't the Democrats nominate a pro-life candidate in order to win votes down here?
I think you're going to whoosh a lot of people with that one. 1984 electoral map.
If this is based on even population in each of the new States wouldn't you have to adjust the State boundaries every census to account for demographic changes? What's the potential for gerrymandering there?
I didn't know Emeril Lagasse had a Slashdot account... nor that he had any interest in geography.
#DeleteChrome
"I think it's possible to accept that 1) there are damned good historical reasons and 2) that those historical reasons no longer apply and the system should change. Your post has brings some interesting historical facts, but history only explain problems; it doesn't justify them."
You forgot 3) and many of those historical reasons still apply.
Faction is pulling our contry apart. This idea of direct democracy and the "will of the people" is counter to what our constitution was designed to protect. It was designed to limit government and protect individual liberties.
Madison in Fed10 said:
As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.
The closer we get to democracy the more liberties we lose. The 17th amendment forced states to have popular elections for senators. Where are we now? We now have two hourses of congress which can fall to popular passions of a given time -- defeating the purpose the design the constitution originally had to prevent such things.
It reminds me of the map of the world as seen by Ronald Reagan. The area of each nation or continent is in proportion to how much thought he gave to it.
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/38-the-world-according-to-ronald-reagan
[Scroll down]
For Democrats, it could be straight out of a nightmare.
Um... why? For one thing, the Democrats aren't exactly being helped by a system that gives Republican Wyoming as many Senators as Democratic California. And even in the House the only thing that has Boehner in power is gerrymandering; the majority of votes cast for Representatives were for Democrats.
It's rural interests that have the most to gain by unequal representation, particularly in the Senate. Right now, those interests are voting Republican.
The Ogallala "state" would be a disaster. Let's start with the name; the new state covers at best half of the High Plains/Ogallala aquifer, and three-quarters of the new state doesn't overlay the aquifer at all. For that area as a whole, far more surface water diversions are made than is withdrawn from the aquifer: the Red River diversions in North Dakota; the massive Missouri River diversions in Montana and South Dakota; the Platte River diversions in Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska; the Republican River diversions in Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas. The eastern portion of "Shiprock" is much more dependent on the aquifer than Ogallala is.
The biggest problem, though, is that for purely population counting purposes, the Front Range portion of Colorado (dominated by Denver and its suburbs) has been attached to an enormous rural area with which Denver has little or no current cultural or economic tie. The only positive thing you can say about it is that Shiprock makes even less sense.
Just because you say "Outside of the legislature", since your point is rediculous if you count the legislature, doesn't make your point valid. It is like my telling someone "I don't mean to be rude, but you are a bad parent" doesn't suddenly make my statement polite.
There are nine supreme court justices, one president, and 535 congressmen. 98% of those are directly elected. Even if you count cabinet members (which are more like employees of the president than actual politicians) that still leaves 96% of these positions being directly elected.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
A man arrives at Passport Control at Athens airport.
"Nationality?" asks the immigration officer.
"German," he replies.
"Occupation?"
"No, just here for a few days."
The whole concept of the federal government was an agreement between the existing state governments. They had some common things they wanted delegated to this federal government while retaining the vast majority of the powers in the states. The purpose if the Senate was to make sure the state governments had a say in the matter. It was another layer in the separation of powers. It is no coincidence the expansion of the federal governments power came after the 17th Amendment.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
And a person in a swing state is worth exponentially more so than either Californians or Wyomingites. So what? Our system is designed to protect minority interests against mob mentality. I'd say that's a virtue.
Life isn't fair. It never will be, and you know, damn the people who try to make it so from a little perch on high, where they are absolutely separated from reality. It's like trying to make a river flow uphill. There's a lot of hand waving and magical thinking, and no intellectual connection with magnitude of work required. Communism was man's greatest experiment in which the stated goal was to make life fair; as far as I can tell, it has only ever made life suck.
Of course, what else could one expect of a sociopolitical philosophy whose greatest thinkers were upper middle class or wealthy enough that they never had to work alongside the very subjects of which they espoused so much profundity.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Sortocracy -- sorting proponents of political theories into governments that test them -- is the correct constitutive dimension of States -- not mere population.
Seastead this.
I agree; I think that 3 EVs is much too much for DC. Retrocession is a much better idea. They can technically leave out the area immediately around the Mall, where nobody lives, but contains the Capitol, Supreme Court, White House, OEOB, Dirksen, etc. just to satisfy the Constitution, if somebody insists. There are already plenty of government-leased office spaces in Md and Va.
That would balance out the disproportionate electoral votes with a vote in Congress. It'll boost Maryland's representation by 1, perhaps 2. Maryland is going to want rent money from the Feds, and that's going to make people cranky.
The purpose of the electoral college was to ensure that whoever won would win by a massive landslide so that there would be no impetus to question the results.
A government only stands when the people follow its leadership. When the US was new, they needed to be sure that elections were definitive to hold the nascent union together.
Today, although the country has established a certain modicum of stability, we still need the amplification of small differences, despite those who whine about the popular vote, for more-or-less the same reason. A US president cannot rule if the other branches of government do not recognize his authority, and nothing gives the appearance of a weak office than victory by a few tenths of a percent. From my personal experience, Nixon won in 1968 with a 5% margin in the popular vote; think of it this way, our of a group of 40 people, 21 voted for him, and 19 against. That's pretty damned close to even. But the electoral college amplified that small difference into a massive landslide because he carried EVERY SINGLE STATE (except Massachusetts and DC). We can debate whether having put him in office was a good idea in the end or not, but the result of the election was a clear mandate. When you have a huge, modern, diverse country, that's what you need to get everyone going in the same direction.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
The states used to have a lot more autonomy to run their business without interference by the federal government, but some of them screwed that up by letting their majority populations run over their minorities in contrast to the equal protections to all guaranteed by the federal constitution. The feds basically had to invade the South again in the 50's and 60's to finish the job started by the Civil War of 1861 to 1865 to get those states to recognize that the Constitution applied to everyone. Some say that went too far, but living in the South for the last few decades (and born there too, so any other natives can STFU if they don't like it), I'm not so sure.
The failure to ban political parties in the constitution was the biggest blunders of the founders. It was hotly debated, but reason lost and even those opposed to parties gave in and formed them due to paranoia that those that didn't see everything their way wanted a monarchy. Even then, ignorant conspiracies about "them" flourished. Between that and giving corporations power and rights like they were a person pretty much has sealed our fate. Two parties that really aren't that different once you tear away the rhetoric have control of the government, from local to federal, and the corporations have control of the two parties.
South of K street N, west of 2nd Street E. That's the part that really needs to be stateless territory. The rest doesn't. It would have taken a big bribe to MD to get them to take it thirty years ago, but with gentrification proceeding apace I think it's a winner today, assuming that the feds thrown in a little property-tax-substitute grant.
The Indian equivalent of the US president is the prime minister. The president is the equivalent of British royalty.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
Because it's more than one issue. For years the GOP has been mostly about guns, gays and God, but that doesn't work up here. There's not much social conservativism to be had and the GOP is going way out of it's way to field people that are popular to the far right, but pretty much repellant to everybody else.
In WA, we don't really have the kind of far right that they do in much of the rest of the country, so it tends to chase them into the hands of the liberals. It's been nearly 20 years since the GOP fielded somebody with any hope of winning the state and they're getting worse and worse. Dole had a chance, but he wasn't different enough from Clinton to get votes. He was also the last Presidential candidate to take the state seriously.
Personally, I'm hoping the country breaks apart, because that's the only way this place (or at least parts of it) will be nice places to live, rather than resembling modern-day Russia, another country that's a burned-out remnant of a failed empire.
The Republicans' refusal to raise taxes is the correct action; we don't need higher taxes, especially in a bad economy; we need (much) lower spending. Unfortunately, the Democrats (and Republicans) refuse to cut spending, namely for our ridiculously huge military. Obviously, the Democrats are too addicted to unending warfare, massive payments to defense contractors, and being able to murder people with drones to stop. The best outcome is for our horrible mismanagement to cause everything to collapse around us, so we can break apart into smaller countries and rebuild into prosperous countries without all this dependence on a giant military and empire-building. Otherwise, we're going to resemble the last days of the Roman Empire.
I see. But if the democratic states did such a bad job, then maybe the American society isn't ready for a democratic federation yet.
As a resident of the DC metro area, I'm liking the new "Washington State."
I guess that's one way for DC to finally get statehood.
Ooh! And this finally solves the problem of which state government is on the hook for paying for the DC Metro!
Have you any idea how many US cities and counties, let alone states, have Native American names already? Alaska (through Russian), Arizona (through Spanish), Hawaii, Idaho (disputed), Illinois (through French), Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan (through French), Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are all derived from Native American words in some form or another. That's almost 40% of the states.
You forgot New Mexico, Montana, North and South Dakota, Ohio, Nevada, and Texas (through Spanish). And, basically all states have towns, rivers, mountains or other places that all come from Native American origins.
Frankly, as a non-American, it scares the shit out of me to hear such things from a nuclear armed superpower.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Pure democracy fails, fails quickly, and terrifyingly transitions through ochlocracy to some form of autocracy. This has been understood and demonstrated since antiquity (see Polybius et al)
+5 insightful for this drivel? Where has pure democracy failed and failed quickly? Don't even try to use Athenian democracy as an example, since though it was direct democracy in a sense, the law only allowed a small proportion of the populace a vote. It also didn't fail quickly, and failed not because the government descended into autocracy, but because they were invaded and taken over by Alexander of Macedon (which was a kingdom).
Switzerland is probably the modern state closest to direct democracy, and it doesn't look like transitioning into autocracy any time soon (unless you know something you're not telling us).
Polybius theorised on progressions of government, but these theories have not been actually demonstrated to any extent. His theories are _not_ a good reason for avoiding democracy. A lot of his theories involved the thesis that good governments of all kinds are inherently unstable and descend into bad governments (not that I agree with this necessarily), and he was not singling out democracy as being different in this regard.
The reason this discussion is so confused is because everyone is arguing about which incorrect system is better than which other incorrect system.
The real source of our troubles is not caused by, and has nothing to do with, whether or not the elected president is fully democratic (as in 'will of the people') or less than fully so (representative federalist system) ... the real source of our problems is that regardless of method, the administration and Congress effectively have the power to violate the natural rights of citizens (and does so all the time, rather than protect their natural rights), and secondly, that corporate interests have the politicians in their pockets (the budgetary and debt debates and processes are little more than a fight for table scraps between different warring corporate lobbied interests) and nobody does a thing about it.
A fully democratic system is not the be all and end all. Consider a hypothetical scenario where a majority of the people (or for that matter a representational system) voted in favor of slavery - would that make slavery OK? Absolutely not --- what you ideally should have is a democratic system with representatives, but there are ethical constraints on what it may do, and those take the form of defending rather than violating the natural rights of innocent people.
My other UID is three digits.
Has the time come when we should realign our political system with modern perceptions? Or should we respect that we have such an archaic system for damned good historical reasons?
Neither. We should take lessons from the past but think with a clean approach about what a new, morally ethical mode of governance should be. The "modern" perception is completely broken - we're a long way away from what it "should be".
My other UID is three digits.
If we were to reduce defense spending by 30%, we'd still have $500B+ deficits every year.
If we ZEROED defense spending, we'd still be running a deficit every year.
Note that the same is true for Social Security, for those on the other side of the fence - eliminate it entirely (except for the SS taxes part), and we'd still be running a deficit every year.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Which is why BOTH Parties pretty much ignore WA. And many other States (MS, LA, as examples I actually pay attention to, having family in both).
If you want your State to be important to Presidential candidates, then it needs to go Red about half the time, and Blue about half the time.
Whether you go Red or Blue matters not at all if you ALWAYS (or even nearly always) go that way.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Or maybe 420 is too many; we could save a lot of administrative overhead by having fewer states, maybe 42. Then name them carefully to represent people in each state, e.g. Alloy, Sour Diesel, Green Kush, Strawberria, West Strawberria, Dino Sour, Chem, Grape Ape, etc. Of course to make it politically palatable would require redefining states in the order they legalize marijuana- we have to be realistic.
it scares the shit out of me
I seriously doubt it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Look more closely, Chicago has its own state.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
This isn't deigned to avoid gerrymandering it is gerrymandering.
The whole idea of gerrymandering is to group like minded voters together to minimize their electoral power. Which is precisely what this algorithm does as its fundamental design. Dense population areas generally lean left so the core of the algorithm leads to gerrymandering.
The way to solve the problem is to change to direct voting for president, and likely come form of purely proportional voting for Congress. This would out course essentially eliminate the states at least at the federal level, but no more so than redrawing state lines every few years based on population and would at least work.
If what you're saying tracked closely with reality, one would expect to see presidential campaigns spend four times as much, per person, in Wyoming than in California.
That's a non sequitur.
Just because Wyomingians does get more than four times the vote of Californians does not mean it follows that a politician will campaign in Wyoming. First of all, there is a far lower percentage of undecided or persuadable voters in Wyoming than in Ohio or Florida. There's no point spending time trying to win over people who will vote for/against you no matter what you say. Secondly, we're not talking about one flaw in the voting system, we're talking about two. We don't simply have a popular vote with some people getting four times as many votes. We have some votes counting four times as much AND votes awarded in block-groups. Campaigning in Wyoming and persuading 1,000 people to change their vote has zero effect on the outcome of the Wyoming vote-block, while campaigning in Florida and persuading 1,000 people to change their vote would have flipped the entire Florida vote-block in the 2000 election.
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In a direct election, radicals can be too easily elected (see tea party).
Interesting how advocating adherence to a constitution and fiscal responsibility is termed "radical". Well, it might have been radical in the late 18th century, but we're two centuries out from that time. There are many countries with constitutional governments these days.
Like many things it was a compromise, but there's a pretty long and convincing justification in the federalist.
People who refuse to govern are "radical", because they prevent any form of compromise. Compromise is the center of democracy, and without it, nothing will happen.
You mean, after the people took control of the Senate, right?
1. Fundamentally we are a republic of states. The states together define the nation. We are losing sight of this. 2. Seems a bit like the nation building that was done with good intentions at the end of WW 1. That didn't work out so well in many cases.
It's been nearly 20 years since the GOP fielded somebody with any hope of winning the state and they're getting worse and worse.
You know, if you'd just thought of this statement earlier today, you wouldn't have written something like
And how do you explain states like WA that get ignored despite having only a couple percentage points difference between the parties?
because you'd have realized you already answered your own question. In local politics, social issues are usually unimportant because 1) the focus is on basic good governance: can you pave the streets, keep the schools functioning, and keep a lid on crime? and 2) people in a given area tend to have fairly similar social views. A Republican in WA is almost certainly miles to the left socially of a Democrat in MS - who will oppose gay marriage and abortion. Once you step on the national stage, those social issues loom large, and on the national stage WA goes D every time, so they're not worth courting for either party.
In the US, tt's completely fair and working as designed.
Jefferson and Madison and a few of the others were smart men with uncommonly noble intentions, however it is naive to forget that they were dealing with the reality of politics of their day, and that the politics they had to deal with were often as bad or worse than the politics we have to deal with today.
Might I remind you that the Three-Fifths Compromise was also part of the "completely fair and working as designed" system put in place in the Constitution. Slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person when counting up population for the House of Representatives. It was working as designed, right up until two-percent of the entire US population had to be killed in the Civil War to get it repealed.
Both the Three-Fifths Compromise and the Electoral College are the result of SLAVERY-POLITICS. They were not some noble and perfect system for better government, they were designed and selected for the purpose of balancing the political power of Slave-States vs Free-States.
The Constitution had to be ratified by the petty politicians of the various states, politicians who first and foremost were concerned with their own political power and their own political agendas. The Three-Fifths Compromise and the Electoral College are nothing more than arbitrary bullshit political compromises catering to Slave-politics, designed to give pro-slavery and anti-slavery political forces equal political power, so that neither side would reject and kill off the Constitution.
As for Federalist 10, it has no relevance to the existing Electoral College. Federalist 10 would only be relevant if you were to propose electing unpledged electors. (The positive or negative value of electing unpledged electors to the Electoral College may be an interesting theoretical exorcise, however I'm sure you'll agree that modern Elector-elections would immediately devolve into partisan politics.)
However that still fails to address the central criticism being leveled at the existing Electoral College. There is absolutely nothing in Federalist 10 to justify wildly disproportionate representation of voters. A Wyoming voter gets more than four times the representation as a California voter, and a Vermont voter gets more than three times the representation as a Texas voter. That does nothing to combat factors or any "tyranny of the majority". That merely gives arbitrary factions disproportionate power and replaces any possible "tyranny of the majority" with a "tyranny of an arbitrarily overrepresented minority".
It's to prevent one group of "interests" or "factions" as Madison put it, from squashing the liberties of others.
With pledged Electors, the Electoral College has zero connection to Federalist 10 and does exactly zero to counter "interests" or "factions" from squashing the liberties of others. And with the grossly disproportionate representation in the Electoral College it greatly magnifies that problem. Our Electoral College now empowers arbitrary minority "interests" or "factions" to squash the liberties of the majority. Our Electoral College completely subverts the point of Federalist 10.
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People who refuse to govern are "radical", because they prevent any form of compromise. Compromise is the center of democracy, and without it, nothing will happen.
Ok, so what's the problem? "Nothing will happen" is a great outcome compared to some of the alternatives.
And a person in a swing state is worth exponentially more so than either Californians or Wyomingites. So what?
Uhhhh.... yeah..... there's two main parts to the argument why the Electoral College is crap. Are you attempting to refute the "unequal representation" flaw in the Electoral College by citing that the Electoral College is ALSO flawed for lumping votes into state-wide blocks?
Citing the second flaw in the system in no way refutes the first flaw. And arguing that there's two problems rather than one is hardly an argument in defense of the Electoral College.
Our system is designed to protect minority interests against mob mentality. I'd say that's a virtue.
Parts of our system were designed for that purpose. However the Three Fifths Compromise and the Electoral College were designed to balance the political influence of pro-slavery politics against anti-slavery politics. The Constitution required ratification from the various politicians of the various states, and one of the prime political calculations they were doing was the math on how many votes pro-slavery and anti-slavery interests were going to get in electing the president.
There is absolutely nothing in our Electoral College system that does anything to "protect minority interests against mob mentality". What our electoral College system does is (1) arbitrarily give some people more than four times as much vote as others which merely empowering an arbitrary minority-mob to trample legitimate majority interests, and (2) wildly empower fringe interests in randomly-selected "swing states" to dominate, distort, and hold hostage national politics.
Life isn't fair. It never will be
Agreed. However when you find a lump of shit in your soup, it's still a good idea to throw it out and make new soup. The new soup won't be perfect... it will still have specks of dust and dirt.... possibly even microscopic specs of feces.... but that is hardly an argument sit there and keep eating soup with a big fat turd in it.
The Electoral College is a turd with no redeeming qualities. (Unless you happen to live in Wyoming or Vermont, and you selfishly consider it a "redeeming quality" the Electoral College gives you more than three times the representation as a Californian or a Texan.)
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Fuck you and fuck retrocession. We have enough trouble dealing with the modern shithole that is Baltimore, I'd be very pleased if my tax dollars didn't also have to subsidize DC.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Why should Maryland have to babysit the few square miles that is our national disgrace? No thanks. It's bad enough dealing with Baltimore. Let VA have it. Hell, we can make them a good deal on PG County as well.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I agree with the point you're trying to make, but way you put it made me cringe a bit. "Wyomings" shouldn't be outvoting "Californias" because states shouldn't get to vote at all.
It should take 1+ Wyomingians to outvote 1 Califorinian, and it should take 1+ Californians to outvote 1 Wyomingian.
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Those with some knowledge of history who live in areas with Amarind names generally recognize that the use of Indian names is honoring them. Would you rather they be erased from everyday living?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
In Canada the leader of the party with the most seats *MAY* become the prime minister, and that party *MAY* form the government, but it isn't necessarily guaranteed.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
We don't vote for people who then, in turn, vote for the president. The party leader is known beforehand, and as such, a vote for the party is effectively a direct vote for the prime minister. There is only one election, whereas the US has two.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The Tea Party is primarily a recognition of and opposition to the fact that the modern political trend is deliberate economic disaster. It is very nearly the only problem the US has: if most people are able to be productive, almost every other problem melts away. (hint: affluent people don't riot.)
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Nice idea. I think that a better approach would be to return the Senate to state appointments and create a third legislative body constituted as you suggest. This further diversifies the sources of power, making it less likely a law hurting a large portion of the people gets enacted.
I further think that treaties should have to be approved by all legislative branches, not just the Senate. As it stands now, the Senate and the president can approve a treaty with Swaziland which states "all people named Smith shall have 99% of their possessions dumped into the ocean," and it would be law. This is not a good thing.
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The electoral college isn't much different then most modern democracies except your electors are pretty faithful.
I vote for a MP who is (usually) a member of a Party. The winning Party forms the government. There is nothing stopping that MP from changing Parties the day after election which in the case of a close election can cause a different Party to form the government. In other words, my vote is an opinion as well. (In theory the MP represents their constituents but in practice the Parties always vote as a block.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
...with a spice weasel.
Right, because they're doing such a bang-up job, that many of their constituents would have trouble programming a VCR to display the time correctly.
That's not a feature, it's a bug.
I am John Hurt.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that many of the worst atrocities in history have been achieved when a majority decides that it answers to no one, and can trample everyone else because. These out of control groups then continue onwards, until they trample outside their little designated fiefdom, bringing down the wrath of other, normally otherwise-occupied groups, who then send them back to the stone age / sell them into slavery.
In short, it's the idiots approach to power. "Once we have the power, then we'll be unstoppable" -> yeah, that's what the previous guy (whom you just overthrew) thought. Now, you'll attempt to solidify your base of power so you can't be easily removed, and WE'RE DONE HERE! (said in the South Park banker's voice). Like no one else has ever thought of that before, nor seen it backfire with such ferocity that veteran soldiers go into hiding.
Mind you, I'm all for new takes on things, trying out new strategies to see what happens, but doing the same thing over and over again is pure madness. And I'd prefer to leave early on those days, with a doctor's note for something.
I am John Hurt.
Montana and Nevada are purely Spanish. I did forget the Dakotas and Ohio, didn't count New Mexico and Texas for arbitrary reasons, but yeah, point is proved to death.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Because the various government officials are not the true holders of power? They just like to think they are. They are given a little power over a small realm, just enough to do their jobs or participate in some minor corruption, not enough to have any major effect on anything, which they then send the next forty years of their life defending. And they are so inundated with that defense, that they never realize how used they are, until they retire; at which point they are already removed, and too old to change anything, not that anyone would really believe great uncle Ben's stories (he has Dementia, you know).
Think about it. If you or I were running a government, one of our first aims would be to figure out what the absolute truth is, then develop a framework based off of it, so we could, I don't know, build something that was worthwhile? But as per the nature of our NFL political system, people are not interested in finding out the most atomic of truths, not interested in anything of the sort; to them, it's just a game, pick a side, wear a jersey, and hope the hometown team wins. It has become...capitalism, without the rules; socialism, without the people.
I am John Hurt.
I thought about adding a third body but thinking about the complications that introduces hurts my head. I think it could only be workable if it only took 2 of the 3 legislative bodies to pass something.
So who decides who is sufficiently well-educated and moral to be a part of the governing minority? And, more importantly, who will ensure that they well remain well-educated and moral in the future?
Yes, and the people currently at the table do not want that to happen, because of Lincoln. In short, no US president will ever let any of the states leave under peaceful circumstances, because to do so would be to fail the Union; Lincoln was extremely...useful in setting that precedent.
So, the SSOA (Soviet States of America) is where we are headed. Not because of Obama or socialism or Democrats or Progressives; but because of what has been quietly creeping up behind them. Turning a glass eye to what has been become a relentless nightmare with regards to the police / TSA / national security...this will not end well.
I am John Hurt.
Don't forget Milwaukee, which is Algonquin for "the good land".
How do you vote if you are pro gun and pro gay rights?
Libertarian, obviously: "Americans Moving in a Libertarian Direction: More Back Gun Rights, Gay Marriage"
Are you sure that the person you vote for will vote for a president who has the same ideas?
Yes. "Libertarian Gary Johnson’s Bold and Consistent Stand on Gay Marriage" (and the firearms/weapons rights issue we can take for granted). It's amusing that the Libertarian candidate has a stronger endorsement of gay rights than the Democratic candidate (ostensibly being the party everyone thinks of as pro-gay rights).
Does the party you vote for give you that option?
Yes. It's their raison d'etre. It would be a breach of the basic ideology of the party to do otherwise.
Does that party have any chance of ever being part of a government?
Not unless we change our voting system or one of the two major parties collapses. It's a consequence of Duverger's law.
In Europe there are people from the Pirate Party who have a seat in governments. There are people from all over the place representing the people.
I applaud that. Fortunately, you don't have to deal with the inevitable consequence of our first past the post voting system. In that case, the Pirate Party would be almost completely locked out of government until they absorbed a sizable portion of a now-defunct major party. That would inevitably dilute the ideology of the Pirate Party and probably lead to some ironic legislator votes (eg. compromising on increased copyright enforcement).
Heh, also, I presume there are no "guns, gays, recreational drugs, and limited government" parties anywhere in Europe (and yes, the guns part is required when comparing).
Indeed. The Indian President is essentially a figurehead.
But that's not how the Electoral Colleges work, though.
And with current pro-urban district zoning, electoral college aside, we've got urban areas running over the suburban and rural locales, where the votes don't matter.
It stopped making sense when we became a real nation beyond point of breakup- basically after the civil war it was outdated.
On the contrary, "we want you to have a say, too" is one of the only things that's kept things together this long - the semblance of fairness.
You forget that most of our food and industry comes from these low population states.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Here here.
If we went to 'direct democracy', you better believe that there would be a very real appreciation for what the Southerners went through during the Civil War, and quite likely an admiration for what they conceived up until that point. Direct democracy would, essentially, turn the 'flyover' states into slave states, where at the federal level the votes make absolutely no difference.
What we have no still at least resembles the 'classic Greek' idea of equal states bringing different strengths to the table. Sure, nobody could fight like the Spartans, and nobody had ships like the Athenians, but they all did their part and provided value. Today's urbanites are basically saying, "we are the world and nothing outside of our technocratic bubble matters". Which may be true, for all intents and purposes, but it doesn't matter in the grander scheme of things.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Those with some knowledge of history who live in areas with Amarind names generally recognize that the use of Indian names is honoring them.
Prevaricating, Batman!
1. To shift or turn from one side to the other, from the
direct course, or from truth; to speak with equivocation;
to shuffle; to quibble; as, he prevaricates in his
statement.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
But you do have a winner takes all mentality over there! You actually have a tyranny of majority there right now! Try a government where there are 7 parties. You'll actually have to discuss things and make deals. (as an added bonus the process of making new laws gets slow, which is damn good)
Yet Foxwoods is a English name. Its as if people naming these places don't give a damn.
Washington warned against the two party system. It only took about a 20 years after his death that the two party system was instituted. It was never the direct intention of ANY of the founders that we have a two party system, yet nobody questions it now.
Let me godwin that for you: Hitler was elected by proportional voting. Nazis rose to power in Germany in one of those convoluted negotiations that countries with proportional voting do all the time.
An extremist has little chance of being elected when candidates are chosen to represent a district. In any given geographical area, there are different sorts of people, therefore moderates are much more likely to get elected.
Under a proportional system, things are different. It's easy to find enough supporters for any extremist view, if you count votes all over the country. And when you try to make a coalition with extremists, who do you think will end with all the power?
A coalition government often has 45% of moderate politicians for one side, 45% of moderates for the other side, and the power ends in the hand of the 10% of extremists who can choose to support one or the other side.
There's been an attempt to draw New York's border like that before and it resulted in a spanking across Lake Champlain.
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
I am not sure I see a difference. During a presidential election you vote for electors pledged to a candidate. Since the electors and candidates are known, you could say that "a vote for the elector is effectively a direct vote for the president". If I understand correctly, you could get some surprises if a coalition government is required. Plus, the UK PM is appointed by the monarch, so technically, not even elected. I am not advocating for one system over another, but on this point they do share some similarity.
They should just let the electoral votes split within a state down to 1 or 2 decimal places. Or perhaps even easier just switch to a pure popular vote. Hey, then they'd have to convince the entire US that they're a good candidate instead of a few key swing states, what a novel idea!
The problem with the premise (and I recognize it's not serious) is that it utterly ignores the entire basis of the foundation of the United States.
It's understandable when people from other countries don't "get it". It's sad/pathetic (and I'm really talking about the comments here) when people ostensibly FROM this country don't understand the basic premises of their own history.
"The electoral system overrepresents the least-populated states". Yes, that is PRECISELY the point.
The United States is not a country like most others, in which case the subdivisions are relatively-arbitrary political/administrative districts, counties, oblasts, whatever.
The separate states are (or were) SOVEREIGN states, with a constitutionally-enforced protection of that sovereignty. The US Federal government is only allowed to act in very narrowly-defined areas that were mutually agreed by the original colonies to be of jurisdictional benefit - defense, foreign policy, etc.*
It's worth saying again: the States are NOT 'districts' of the US in the familiar sense that most countries have. For example, the US Federal government passes few laws that directly impact citizens. By far, the majority of laws applicable to people directly in the US are state laws and local (city) ordinances. The US Fed doesn't set national speed limits, for example; they set a limit and tell the states to comply or they won't get their Federal highway maintenance dollars.
The union of the Colonies was specifically predicated on a level of balance that allows them a voice disproportional to population.
One might further point out that Congress ITSELF has worked to make it less representative. Note that in the first Congress, the House was approximately 62 members for a colonial population in 1790 of 3.8 million. Proportionally, this would mean the House today would be over 5000 members. Remember, that this likewise would impact the number of electoral votes in play, and pretty much eliminate the 'senator' anti-populist bias.
*Granted, the Constitution is pretty nearly in tatters, the remaining shreds filthy with the wipings of modern administrations and congresses who have actively colluded to evade and sap both the letter and spirit of the original framers.
-Styopa
When you start using scientific notation to measure the "worth" of something, you're talking about something pretty worthless. Is it "unfair" that a vote is worth 5.32e-6 vs. another vote being worth 1.47e-6, perhaps, but neither is particularly valuable (also keep in mind that you're using the absolute extremes to make that point, if you look at Montana vs. Pennsylvania, the difference is down to 2.98e-6 vs. 1.57e-6) At the end of the day however, would you rather have influence over .5% of the election, or 10.2%?
The assumption is that all small states vote the same way...
Indeed. In fact, if you look at the 10 smallest states/districts, it's usually a 5R-5D to 6R-4D split.
Would you rather have a say in 0.5% of the outcome or 10%?
It's a Westminster-styled arrangement. The executive is divided; the ceremonial executive (the Queen in the Commonwealth Realms, Presidents in Parliamentary republics) and a governmental executive (the Cabinet). The ceremonial executive still usually retains some important reserve powers, so, with the exception of countries like Sweden or Japan (where the monarchy has been deprived of the use of any reserve powers without the advise of the government), they still represent some degree of executive power.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It was a necessary compromise at the time that turned out to have some useful emergent properties.
Not to single you out - I know nothing of your political views - but it does amuse me that one of the more liberal states in the Union doesn't want the slackers in DC on the grounds that they're a bunch of dead-weight degenerates. It's almost as if they don't believe their own hype about how all that you need to do is have a little more spending on education and a little job training and everything will turn into utopia...
That's also what we call 'mob rule,' which is exactly what the framers set out to prevent in the first place.
So instead of 13 regions for the Hunger Games, we start with 50?
Oh minus one because the capital was devastated.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
...you got our vote here in the great state of Adirondack.
This is outmoded thinking, and it opens up all sorts of pitfalls. The loss of State sovereignty, the ability to "redraw" states on a whim, and they can be done so to support one party having an advantage over another to almost guarantee party supremacy.
F' this plan.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
The US is specifically designed to prevent what is called the "tyranny of the majority". It is also designed to limit the power of the federal government by balancing it with the states. One aim was to limit the power of the densly populated cities. That is why it works that way. Except, of course, the Senators were origanally supposed to be selected by the Governors of the States.
People who say the Electoral college is broken, don't understand why it was done that way. 8-)
The breaking up of the voting areas is also a way to increase the individual power of each voter. It makes it (somewhat) more likely that an individual vote could turn an election. Voters are more powerful in a state (or other area) where all the electoral votes go together. This was actually proved mathematically some years ago. (sorry no link)
Which taxes were raised? When?
Frankly, you seem convinced that something happened which is the polar opposite of reality (there have been budget cuts, though not as deeply as many would like and largely offset by stimulus spending, and taxes have also been cut, not raised).
Please do some research and try again.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Welcome to the new (for 5 years now) /. of not really dealing with tech anymore. Politics, OS wars, and climate stuff. Yay.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
When I lived in Allegheny, Charles, or St. Mary's counties, you could call me a liberal. Now that I live in MoCo, I believe I'm a reactionary right winger by MD standards.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
It's funny how often that claim keeps being thrown out there. The Electoral College does exactly zero to prevent "mob rule". The only thing that the Electoral College does is grossly warp the weighting of votes and influence to empower an arbitrarily selected minority mob to rule.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You're right about amplification, but you've got a lot of those numbers wrong and have confused two different elections. In 1968, it was Nixon 43.4% to Humphrey 42.7%, which turned into 301 EV for Nixon -- and that was a lot less than a 5% difference, which does reinforce your point. (George Wallace won 13.5% of the vote and 46 EV, making analysis a bit more complicated.) The Nixon landslide you're thinking of was in 1972, when he won 61%/38% (rounded) -- a pretty good thumping for a Presidential election.
I was saying how votes should be counted. I found it rather awkward that the grandparent post was explaining how the Electoral College was screwed up and needed to be fixed, and he still phrased the one-person-one-vote solution in terms of adding up state votes vs state votes.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Since the electors and candidates are known, you could say that "a vote for the elector is effectively a direct vote for the president"
No, you can't. Electors vote after the fact, and while some are legally bound to abide by whatever vote or pledge put them there, many are not. In 24 states, the electors are free to vote for whomever they wish to. Thus the state may have voted, say, Democrat, but the Electors may vote Green Party.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
1) Vote
2) ???
3) PROFIT!!!
Without the massive corruption that had businesses flat-out buying Senators. Anti-seventeenthirs always seem to leave that part out of the storyline, for some reason, or why the old way was superior beyond a "popular passions" talking point.
No, we wouldn't. Because the actual war budget is well over a trillion a year.
I think this would make the elections one where the popular vote would be more important
There was a very interesting board game called "Fortress America." The design was such that invading forces could care less about our states' boundaries, but only geographical features. Boardgamegeek has some photos. I still have this game. http://boardgamegeek.com/image/761195/fortress-america?size=original
"or why the old way was superior beyond a "popular passions" talking point."
And why would any other reason be necessary? And it's interesting to call the words of our founders "talking points". Well, not interesting -- more "telling" on where you are coming from. Call it a "talking point" rather than the history for which it is as a way to minimize it's importance.
Your link is 404, but rest assured, I tracked it down.
You didn't really bother READING your link, did you. The "war budget" is well over a trillion a year? Really?
Feh.
Sorry.
Did you?
Yeah. War budget. It's been over 200 years since this country faced an invasion, and more than 20 years since the fall of the U.S.S.R. We're surrounded by the world's largest oceans and two large, friendly nations. Our actual defense needs are miniscule.
Which means that $1.2 trillion isn't for defense. It's for war.
Obviously. Read the damn link - Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Department of Energy managing our nuclear weapons - it's all war spending, but not counted in the official DOD budget so the latter looks smaller.
You have a warped sense of "war" and "defense". I doubt I could find a dozen people who would even remotely agree with you.
"Our actual defense needs are miniscule.", you say. I argue that your judgement on this is untrustworthy based on the bias that drips from your language, your apparent lack of understanding of what you are really talking about and your absolute certainty of the correctness of your views. Your position and language here and in other threads places you a category I'm quite comfortable dismissing as a loon.
I'll leave you with this tidbit:
I remember reading the journal of one of the members of the 1787 Constitutional Convention. This member was seated somewhat near Washington. He noted how formal he was throughout the process. Then, when the topic turned to a standing army and one delegate was arguing of a standing army not to exceed 3000 men, he noted that Washington, quite out of character, commented to a delegate sitting next to him who had served in the Continental army with him. Washington said with dry wit: "Perhaps the honorable gentleman from Connecticut should also submit the following for debate: 'Be it resolved that no country shall invade with more than 3000 men'"
(I'm paraphrasing this as it's from memory)