Half Of Americans Think Presidential Nominating System 'Rigged' (huffingtonpost.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Huffington Post: More than half of American voters believe that the system U.S. political parties use to pick their candidates for the White House is "rigged" and more than two-thirds want to see the process changed. The results echo complaints from Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders that the system is stacked against them in favor of candidates with close ties to their parties -- a critique that has triggered a nationwide debate over whether the process is fair. The United States is one of just a handful of countries that gives regular voters any say in who should make it onto the presidential ballot. But the state-by-state system of primaries, caucuses and conventions is complex. The contests historically were always party events, and while the popular vote has grown in influence since the mid-20th century, the parties still have considerable sway. Just the other day, a poll was conducted by Harvard University showing a majority of young people do not support capitalism. Are the times they are a changin' or are people starting to wake up?

Comments

Any powers granted are properties

[bretts]

The thing about granting powers exclusively to a group: those powers are worth money, and so they are used as bargaining chips much like any other property. The major political parties have something to sell, which is control over who can become president, and so they are likely to be "captured" by special interest groups and commercial interests. This is how it usually happens in democracy, but with a twist, because our "checks and balances" have created many gatekeepers, each of which has a "power property" to sell.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[fyngyrz]

our "checks and balances" have created many gatekeepers, each of which has a "power property" to sell.

It's always worth pointing out that one of the more powerful gatekeepers is the media; They've proven that (yet again) during this primary.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[Archangel Michael]

The biggest gatekeepers are the two main parties themselves. They host their nominating process on the dime of the taxpayer, not all support the two party system.

1) I don't have a problem with the parties picking who they are going to run, anyway they want. I oppose it being funded by Tax payers. They should pay for it themselves.

2) Primaries should have all parties represented with their OWN (singular) candidate. This is to get to the top two candidates.

3) I am all for the electoral college. Imagine for a second, the top two California Candidates are Bernie(Socialist Party) and Hillary(DNC). And the top two Texas Candidates being Ted (TeaParty) and Donald (GOP) and really messing up the Electoral Collage being the ONLY candidates available for those two states in November. No GOP/Conservative in CA, and no Liberal/Socialist in TX. And the VP is the runner up (rather than party ticket) (like it was before)

The fact is PARTY(aka Group) politics has ruined this country, and there is no going back. I hate the fact that Parties are listed next to candidate's names as prima fascia evidence of divide and conquer of the elites who run the current system, trading favors for election cycle wins.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[JoeMerchant]

People are free to vote for (I) if they have R & D phobia.

The two party system is seriously entrenched, and broken, and when the Boomers start to die off in droves it will either adapt or die. Until then, there are too many people raised on polar thinking to realistically expect winning politicians who are not associated with either team Red or Blue.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[Archangel Michael]

I do not represent the view that change is impossible. Identifying the problem is the first step in resolving it.

Yes, the Two Party system is entrenched. IT will take major effort to break it up. That has already started to happen. The problem is, it is being done within the confines of the two party system, which is designed to protect itself.

I don't have a (D) or (R) phobia, I have a deep hatred for the two parties that have managed to screw us (the US Citizen) playing "Divide and conquer" with the voters. And no, I can't vote for Bernie, because I am not a (D), and I can't vote for Trump because I am not an (R) (Until the November general election), and the Libertarian Party has principles so they don't have nomination process being run on taxpayer dimes. I really resent my taxes paying for a "voluntary" system I do not support. Let the parties pay for their own shenanigans themselves.

In short, I do not support false dichotomy voting systems that create self serving feedback loops.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[Gr8Apes]

Removed party affiliation from the ballot, as well as randomizing the ballot order for a position are all that are needed to largely kill the 2 party system. Both can be argued as being necessary to free and open elections, as both lead to bias in voting. Obviously removing party affiliation also removes party line voting, probably the single largest contributor to the 2 party system.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[JoeMerchant]

I'm registered (D) because they usually have the more interesting primaries.

I voted (R) for my HOR in 2014, because the competition were obviously incompetent.

I'm not overly politically savvy or well read on the local races, I have my prejudices (female judges have consistently been better than male, in my experience - I'm sure there are exceptions), so my votes are often guided by these prejudices, and sometimes when there are only two candidates and I know nothing about either, I will abstain or go "party line" if it's a race where party dominance is important, like legislatures.

I'm seriously frustrated with both Red and Blue peddling "middle of the road" undifferentiated positions on matters of substance, and of course forgetting their campaign promises after election time, in equal measure on both sides of the aisle - as far as I can see.

As for "supported by your tax dollars" - to me, that's preferable to being supported by special interest groups, and you don't run national campaigns without support from somewhere. Still, I check off "NO" to volunteer money into the system, I think there should be better ways to finance national politics (contribution limits, transparency, etc.), but am lacking in any real power to influence the system to adopt better ways. Maybe someday a candidate will run on a platform of campaign reform and actually deliver on the promises.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[Archangel Michael]

Removing Party Nomination processes from public funded process would kill it too.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[Gr8Apes]

Seriously doubtful, given the amount of money flowing into party campaigns.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[i.r.id10t]

The Democrat and Republican parties have too much influence on our political process. I agree with you, they should be a self-funded private organization.

However, the point of a primary is for the Party to decide who will represent it in the real election. As a private institution, I don't care how they do it. Of course, if I were a member of a party I may care, but then it is "my" club and there should probably be an internal process for deciding who gets on the primary ballots.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[quantaman]

The biggest gatekeepers are the two main parties themselves. They host their nominating process on the dime of the taxpayer, not all support the two party system.

1) I don't have a problem with the parties picking who they are going to run, anyway they want. I oppose it being funded by Tax payers. They should pay for it themselves.

2) Primaries should have all parties represented with their OWN (singular) candidate. This is to get to the top two candidates.

3) I am all for the electoral college. Imagine for a second, the top two California Candidates are Bernie(Socialist Party) and Hillary(DNC). And the top two Texas Candidates being Ted (TeaParty) and Donald (GOP) and really messing up the Electoral Collage being the ONLY candidates available for those two states in November. No GOP/Conservative in CA, and no Liberal/Socialist in TX. And the VP is the runner up (rather than party ticket) (like it was before)

The fact is PARTY(aka Group) politics has ruined this country, and there is no going back. I hate the fact that Parties are listed next to candidate's names as prima fascia evidence of divide and conquer of the elites who run the current system, trading favors for election cycle wins.

I think you might have it backwards, the fix for the US is to make the parties stronger, not weaker.

If you look at the parliamentary democracies that generally seem to do a better job of governance there's several significant differences.

1) The parties are far stronger. There's almost no need for a party whip, almost every vote in a parliamentary democracy is a party line vote without question.

2) The candidate is far less important, voters really only care about the party.

3) The party leader is really powerful.

I think this really improves the quality of governance.

The problem in the US is it's congress who really drives policy, and congress is run by a bunch of individual small-time politicians with a lot of autonomy. It's trivial for a big special interest to come in and individually overpower a bunch of key legislators or drive the media narrative with a big PR push. Or even without that it's hard for more reasonable candidates to withstand a primary challenger whose channelling a bunch of rhetoric.

But with a powerful party they have the ability to withstand the special interest groups and clearly communicate their platform to the voters. No one gives a crap about the NRA or union endorsements in other countries because people know what the parties stand for and the NRA doesn't get to dictate the terms of the gun control debate.

No matter what you do politics will be run by the elites. The only question is whether it's the somewhat idealistic elites who've gone into politics because they want to make things better or the cynical self-interested elites who want to run things behind the scenes.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[Darinbob]

The rules are stated up front by each party. Agreeing to the rules up front should mean that you don't Trump-out and bitch about it later or ask it to change and become a popularity contest when things don't go your way. The parties are private organizations and they can do whatever they hell they want. Democrats won't let me (not a party member) vote in their primaries in CA, Republicans will let me vote in theirs, just two groups with two different sets of rules.

The parties are the way they are because the people who bother to attend the meetings are the ones who get to vote on the rules. If someone doesn't like it then they need to get involved with the party by far more than checking a box on a voter registration form.

Re: Any powers granted are properties

[CAIMLAS]

I honestly like the way Russia does it. Have an idea? Start a political party. Get enough people behind the idea, the party gets a seat. Get enough seats and 10 years later you've got a burgeoning craft brewing industry.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[Sique]

How comes you think that the primaries are in any way supposed to find exactly two candidates to choose from in the general elections? The primaries are solely a way for a party to find a suitable, electable candidate to rally for. Any party could hold primaries, and if the U.S. had more than two big parties whose candidates had a fair chance at winning the general elections, you would have three or four primaries, where three or four candidates emerge.

The Republicans and the Democrats decided that having a public primary would work best for them. The primaries have several tasks to fulfill: weed out candidates with not enough appeal to a broader electorate, prepare the candidates for the general election battle, find the topics and the positions on those topics that get votes, raise the candidates to prominence and create some trade mark to use for the advertising campaigns.

The Republicans for instance found out that their conservative platform of "small government, family values, promote free trade everywhere" does not get enough votes, as their voting base wants something else. The Democrats found out, that a big part of their voting base is leaning toward more socialist recipes, not enough yet to unsettle the party itself, but a trend to watch for as it seems to appeal especially to younger people.

Any party, even both Democrats and Republicans, could decide that public primaries aren't the best tools for them anymore, and look for a new way to find their candidates. They could throw dices or hold a public poker tournament, they could have only a single, U.S. wide primary election for their candidates, they could have each local organisation send a delegate to a state conference, and then each state conference send a delegate to a U.S. conference, which then decides for a candidate from the delegates, they could just put up an announcement in the classified "election canditate wanted, apply at party headquarters" or whatever they think will get them a candidate with a high chance of winning the next elections. Primaries are not a given. They have just proven to work for both big parties.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[MachineShedFred]

If we roll back the party nominating process, we go back to the smoky room where 'party elders' just pick a guy. Is that really better?

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[Archangel Michael]

Yes. Because the field will be open for anyone to choose who they prefer on the Primary ballot, and the parties will not be named on the ballot. I have no problem with party bosses picking who they want to run for their party. I sincerely hope that people wouldn't join a party they had no voice in. But then again, that is exactly how we got to this place, but only thinly veiled

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[Archangel Michael]

you don't run national campaigns without support from somewhere.

Bernie Sanders and Trump both show this to be false, and for nearly the same reason.

I think there should be better ways to finance national politics (contribution limits, transparency, etc.), but am lacking in any real power to influence the system to adopt better ways.

I have a solution, it is simple and easy to regulate.

Unlimited Campaign contributions with the following rules: 1) Individuals may only donate to campaigns they can vote on; individuals cannot donate to anyone they can't actually vote for. 2) PACs cannot donate to individual campaigns 3) PACs must list all donations in a publicly available format. 4) PACs cannot mention candidates (either pro/con) by name or use their likeness in any campaign, they must be ISSUES oriented. 5) PACs may publicly endorse candidates, but cannot campaign for them, candidates may refer to those endorsements in their campaigns.

These changes would remove a huge amount of problems with SuperPACs that have dominated both political parties. The biggest problem is that most people don't feel like their voice matters, and is being drowned out by special interests. Both D and R parties have this problem, and often the special interest groups want things that are at odds with the average voter.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[JoeMerchant]

you don't run national campaigns without support from somewhere.

Bernie Sanders and Trump both show this to be false, and for nearly the same reason.

I think there should be better ways to finance national politics (contribution limits, transparency, etc.), but am lacking in any real power to influence the system to adopt better ways.

I have a solution, it is simple and easy to regulate.

Unlimited Campaign contributions with the following rules: 1) Individuals may only donate to campaigns they can vote on; individuals cannot donate to anyone they can't actually vote for. 2) PACs cannot donate to individual campaigns 3) PACs must list all donations in a publicly available format. 4) PACs cannot mention candidates (either pro/con) by name or use their likeness in any campaign, they must be ISSUES oriented. 5) PACs may publicly endorse candidates, but cannot campaign for them, candidates may refer to those endorsements in their campaigns.

These changes would remove a huge amount of problems with SuperPACs that have dominated both political parties. The biggest problem is that most people don't feel like their voice matters, and is being drowned out by special interests. Both D and R parties have this problem, and often the special interest groups want things that are at odds with the average voter.

Sanders has plenty of support, he started from the position of Senator and has solicited and received tremendous support from small donors. He's in a great spot, but he didn't get there without achieving successively higher levels of visibility through financial support. One major flaw in Sanders as a candidate is his age, and arguably, you could never reach his level of political visibility on popular support alone until you are quite old.

Trump inherited his money, I'd rather not be ruled by people who live in that tiny sliver of our shared reality.

You outline a nice plan, but by the time you get to point 5, I think it's becoming clear that there are a large number of issues built up over the last century which are not simple to address, and I suspect any actual plan adopted by a majority of the legislature would be up to point 50 (and thus incomprehensible to mere mortals, unenforcable by practical means, and likely more abused than the present system) before it reached a majority approval.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[frencha]

The parties are private organizations and they can do whatever they hell they want.

Then let them fund the primary elections. Publicly funded primaries that adhere to the rules set out by private organizations are exactly the sort of thing people are frustrated with.

Re:Any powers granted are properties

[Darinbob]

That's up to the states. I don't think there is any federal funding for party primaries. Some states have caucuses, so there's no expensive ballot printing. In other states there is already an ongoing election so the primary is just a relatively small additional expense (ie, the ballot boxes, voting machines, poll workers, and the like will be there whether or not there is a primary).

Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[dfenstrate]

Debbie Wasserman-Schulz said straight out the super delegates were put in place to ensure party insiders would win against grassroots candidates.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[tnk1]

Perhaps so, but in this race it's irrelevant. Clinton is beating Sanders in non-superdelegates as well. If they removed the superdelegates, the best Sanders would get is forcing Clinton to the convention while not being mathematical winner. She'd still be the leader by a solid margin. I sincerely doubt that Sanders would walk out of the Democratic convention as the winner in that event if he was still losing by the margin he is in non-superdelegates.

Now if Clinton wasn't getting real votes out there in the field, I'd see the point of bringing that up constantly, but she's currently the "for real" leader in the race.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Anonymous Coward]

And it should be an explicit goal of the Republican party system too:

And the people who are more invested in the organization, are more senior in the organization have more power than the people who are not. And that’s for very good reason. It’s because you want a party to have consistency over time. You want it to have a structure where people have to compromise with each other.

And basically you want it to have a series of stability, so you don’t get carried away by momentary fads and crazy demagogues. So, by some logic, this structure exists to prevent Donald Trump and people like Donald Trump, who are of the moment.

David Brooks on Newshour

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Thud457]

A great political philosopher once observed the harsh realities of our system:

You, President? This is the greatest country in the world. We've got a whole system set up to prevent people like you from ever becoming president. Quit your daydreaming, melonhead!

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Anonymous Coward]

What she said has not been news since about 1972. After the chaos of 1968, the Democratic party apparatchiks changed the rules so they would never again almost lose power to the so-called "grass roots". It pretty much worked until Obama came along and stole it right out from under them. Now, THAT was funny (except to Hillary, who thought she had it sewn up).

As to how the GOP rigs its own system, I don't know and could not care less. That bunch of shills for plutocrats deserves the windstorm they've been building for themselves since Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and Reagan the Senile started feeding raw meat to the allegedly Christian right.

"I know it's rigged, but it's the only game in town." - "Canada Bill" Smith, famous con man

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[supertrooper]

If there is any justice she will be indicted by the FBI. She evaded justice few times already, so I'm guessing it's gonna happen again.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[NicBenjamin]

Bernie's not a grassroots Democratic candidate. He loses self-identified Democrats, and closed primaries, generally by extremely large margins. He's a grassroots left-wing independent candidate.

Now you might believe that encouraging such candidates is a good idea. But as somebody who has actually participated in the fairly complex, thankless, and completely unpaid work of getting all the cats in the same herd I kinda resent that a bunch of slacktivists think they should have as much influence over said coalition as I do despite the fact many of them are unwilling to change their voter registration to the Democratic party.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Yunzil]

The point of superdelegates is to prevent the circus you're seeing on the GOP side. I'd be willing to bet that the Republicans have some kind of superdelegate system for 2020.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Dasher42]

Actually, she's not winning free and clear; most of her significant wins have a cloud of large-scale voter suppression over them.

http://usuncut.com/politics/ne...
http://www.democracynow.org/20...
http://thinkprogress.org/polit...

And huge number of affidavit ballots cast in New York have simply not been counted.

Across the country, voters that have long been registered Democrat have discovered their registration details tampered to make their participation in closed primaries impossible. The door to this was left open when 191 million voter records were leaked, making re-registration with edited details trivial. The earlier scandal over the DNC voter records being open allow for specific targeting of those not supporting Clinton which is the demographic reporting issues.

http://heavy.com/news/2016/04/...

Quite simply, yes, there's overwhelming signs that this election is being heavily rigged and in dirty

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Dasher42]

(darn touch-screen laptops)

Quite simply, yes, there's overwhelming signs that this election is being heavily rigged and in dirty, subversive ways.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[tnk1]

Okay, trying again...

In this race, it is irrelevant. She's winning without superdelegates. By about a 200 delegate margin.

Sanders may have the deck stacked against him, but it has nothing to do with superdelegates.

Even superdelegate Bill Clinton has said he'd vote for Sanders if he won fair and square. But he's not winning.

Don't get me wrong, I know both parties are backroom dealers, but let's stop talking about something that is already pointless. It was a bogeyman early on, but now we're 40 states voted and out of the way. It's pretty much done. Let's move on.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[fustakrakich]

It is not rigged... We are programmed to follow...

It is up to us to turn our backs

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[sjames]

When I voted in the primary, it was at a public school. If you want to hold a private insider's only party, you can pay to hold it in a private venue.

Or skip the primary entirely and put everyone who throws their hat in the ring on the presidential ballot.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[vivaoporto]

While that's true the nature of the electoral process in the U.S. makes an truly independent candidature all but impossible, with many states having either legislation or codified processes that, along with the media, give an enormous advantage to the major parties.

It is no wonder that "outsiders" like Trump or Bernie prefer to crash the established parties over to run as independent or to found their own parties. It is a two party country and there is no way to even compete in equal footing with the candidates of the big parties.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Bernie's not a grassroots Democratic candidate.

Bernie sits in the front row of the church, where a Hillary rally is being held . . . and he lets rip a gargantuan fart on the pew during the silent prayer. When Hillary is doing a champagne drink and shindig, Bernie is throwing a Molotov cocktail into the party.

Bernie will be buh-bye at the end of this campaign. But the interesting question, is if someone will pick up his flag for a younger generation of Democratic voters . . . ?

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Archangel Michael]

So, by some logic, this structure exists to prevent Donald Trump and people like Donald Trump, who are of the moment.

Which basically proves(if it is how things really are) how incompetent the Republican Party elites actually are. They exist to prevent it, but couldn't prevent it even as they have tried. And kind of proving Donald Trump and all the others pulling the curtain back to expose who the real wizard of OZ really is.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[SuperKendall]

That is an excellent point, how many public resources are spent on both Republican AND Democratic primaries? The mind boggles!

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[NicBenjamin]

I hate to break it to you, but the Supreme Court has ruled that publicly-funded closed primaries are a First Amendment requirement. The party nominee is not listed as independent left-winger on the ballot, they're listed with the party name, therefore they are considered to be speaking for the party membership, so the party membership gets to decide how they are chosen. That's why the Cali GOP Presidential primary is a closed primary but the Democratic primary is open.

Now in your state you could change your local laws so that there's an open primary, and most state parties will go along with the default, but even if you do that the parties retain their Capital-R-Right to insist on a closed primary.

In other words if you wanted to live in a country where anything vaguely resembling fairness was involved in public policy, you probably shoulda moved to Canada long the fuck ago. This is the United Fucking States. Rules Lawyering, based on rigorous adherence to a multi-century old texts is everything here.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Austerity Empowers]

Debbie Wasserman-Schulz said straight out the super delegates were put in place to ensure party insiders would win against grassroots candidates.

And there's nothing wrong with this (note: I support Sanders), the parties have the right to set their own agendas and choose whatever candidates they want: we just don't have to vote for them. The problem, as always, is money. The parties can get so much money from very wealthy people that they no longer require popular support: they know you will have two choices and they market themselves carefully to try to stink least. Meanwhile, even if we chipped in our $10 or even $100 to our parties, collectively we would not be able to compete with the big donors, and collectively, because the parties mean nothing, we do not agree on much: even amongst our arbitrary "liberal" "conservative" divisions.

We need to remove these big money donations to our parties (both of them), so that they once again reflect our own values. And ideally we have more than just the two parties. There are more significant issues and viewpoints than just 2 parties can contain.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Jack9]

> Sanders may have the deck stacked against him, but it has nothing to do with superdelegates.

That doesnt make it fair. Fairness has nothing to do with what has happened this election. Try again.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[quantaman]

Actually, she's not winning free and clear; most of her significant wins have a cloud of large-scale voter suppression over them.

http://usuncut.com/politics/ne...
http://www.democracynow.org/20...
http://thinkprogress.org/polit...

And at least in NY that likely would have disproportionately older people (it seemed to hit people with old registrations more) and minorities (because they always get hit the worst by voting issues). Aka Hillary's base.

Whatever you think of Hillary's politics she won because more people wanted to vote for her and more people did vote for her.

The door to this was left open when 191 million voter records were leaked, making re-registration with edited details trivial. The earlier scandal over the DNC voter records being open allow for specific targeting of those not supporting Clinton which is the demographic reporting issues.

http://heavy.com/news/2016/04/...

Quite simply, yes, there's overwhelming signs that this election is being heavily rigged and in dirty

Ok, lets look at the first piece of evidence from that link.

Shelly Berry shared on Facebook that she had proof her New York voter registration was changed. Her registration was switched from Democrat to unaffiliated and she was told the change was made in 2012.

So Hillary's dastardly plan to rig the primary by specifically suppressing Bernie supporters began four years ago?

Otherwise do you have any idea how many people would need to be involved to mess with enough registration records to really affect the democratic primary? That's a 9-11 truther level of conspiracy theory.

Sure there are problems with the US's voting system, it's a disorganized mess, it may be worse this year or it might just look worse because of the extra scrutiny.

But voting issues + your favourite candidate not winning aren't the same as "overwhelming signs that this election is being heavily rigged and in dirty".

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[NicBenjamin]

Bernie's problem isn't that he's outside the party. He's actually been one of my favorites since High School. Several state Democratic parties actually do not have the label "Democratic party," notably Minnesota's "Democratic-Farmer-Labor," and North Dakota. One of Maine's Senators is also officially an independent who caucuses with the Dems, as was Joe Lieberman. And (except for Lieberman, who, IMHO, has no soul) they're all fine.

Bernie's problem is different. Many of his supporters are the kind of people who disdain large institutions as terribly ineffective. In some ways this is true (they never finish the to-do list), particularly in politics; in other ways it's silly (you know "Checks and Balances"? designed to stop political parties from finishing their to-do lists).

But it means some of his guys tend to refuse to re-register as Dems to vote for him, others don't plan far ahead enough to re-register in time (and yes, I will agree New York's re-registration deadline was ridiculous), and they tend to blame the large institution. When they could have easily avoided the problem by simply registering with the party they knew they were gonna vote in the first damn place.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[tnk1]

I don't recall suggesting it was fair. Only that superdelegates were irrelevant. And they are for this contest. It's pointless to cry about them, as they haven't cost Sanders this primary. And I'd prefer to get upset about the things that actually matter, without crying about things that ended up not even being an issue.

But if you pressed me, I'd still have to see I don't see a way Sanders was going to win anyway, at least this year. He lacks critical support in some important Democratic constituencies. Adding independents to it got him where he is today, but it's not enough. As long as he plays the long game, this doesn't have to be a flash in the pan for him, but he's not getting any younger.

Sanders has a message that resonates, and did some good grassroots work, but his game in a lot of important places isn't where it needs to be for a win. If he works hard to build up an organization that can challenge the status quo over the next few years, we'll see.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Trailer Trash]

Quite simply, yes, there's overwhelming signs that this election is being heavily rigged and in dirty

Maybe if Democrat voters had cared when Republicans were complaining about the obvious voter fraud - instead of yelling RACIST!!! - they wouldn't be in this mess right now?

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Fire_Wraith]

She's actually much further ahead in pledged delegates than Obama was at this point in the 2008 primaries.

It is true that Superdelegates were included to give a sort of veto over the nominee - back in the aftermath of 1972 and the McGovern debacle. That said, they're a tactic that has never been actually used, to the point that it's now all but unthinkable to do so, because of the backlash which would inevitably follow using them to overturn the popular voting results. It would almost certainly lead to a crushing defeat in the general election. They really should just get rid of them entirely, because they've become a distraction.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Fire_Wraith]

It was actually a reform pushed around the turn of the century (19th to 20th), as part of the same movement that pushed the 17th amendment allowing the direct election of Senators. The idea was (as I understand it) to take nominations away from the party bosses and smoke filled rooms, and put it in the hands of the people. It's still largely a state by state thing, and some don't have public funded primaries, or primaries at all, opting for party caucuses instead. Some also have different rules on open versus closed primaries.

Reference: http://ivn.us/2015/07/30/story...

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[riverat1]

Benghazi! As far has here private email server she'll get indicted when Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice get indicted for doing similar things with their email.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[riverat1]

What obvious voter fraud? There have been a few scattered cases here and there but never to the level to seriously affect election results.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[bugs2squash]

I don't buy into the claims of impropriety, after all these are political parties/clubs and they can elect their leaders however they please.

But let's just say for the sake of argument that it were "rigged". It's the leaders that are being accused of rigging it, not the voters. Putting un-needed hurdles in the way of voters is not going to address what we're talking about.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[ScentCone]

Benghazi!

Her conduct in that matter is mostly just an example her general sleaziness and sociopathic dishonesty.

.

As far has here private email server she'll get indicted when Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice get indicted for doing similar things with their email.

You're either completely uninformed about the details of the situation, or you're trying to be deliberately misleading. Either way, please stop. Go learn the facts, or stop lying about it to serve your agenda.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[sjames]

I am aware of the Supreme court finding that a party has a right to a closed primary but I will need a citation that the Rs and Ds have a special right to public funding for their closed primary.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[chispito]

most of her significant wins have a cloud of large-scale voter suppression over them.

http://usuncut.com/politics/ne... http://www.democracynow.org/20... http://thinkprogress.org/polit...

When your guys is losing, there is always "large-scale voter suppression."

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Felix Da Rat]

Just making sure I'm clear here. Because you volunteer your time, you have more right to determine who can be president of our nation than I do.

I'm an Independent, thankfully my state allows me to vote for whom I think will do the best for our Country, regardless of supporting a 'party'.

However, if I lived somewhere else, where I did not have that luxury; your vote would be worth more than mine.

Why?

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[phantomfive]

It is true that Superdelegates were included to give a sort of veto over the nominee - back in the aftermath of 1972 and the McGovern debacle.

This is what I was going to mention: it's not necessarily bad to require a higher bar for an outsider. It prevents something like that from repeating.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[ScentCone]

No, your side just keeps throwing things at the wall and hoping something will stick.

Whose "side?" The inspectors in the intelligence community, working for the Obama administration? The more than 100 FBI agents involved with the DoJ's investigation (who work for the Obama administration) who have now granted immunity to the guy who set up and administered the server, who previously refused to talk because he didn't want to incriminate himself? The "side" that's conducting this is executing its work as part of the executive branch, which is run by Clinton's own party.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[riverat1]

What happened to David Petraeus who was charged with mishandling classified information while with the CIA? He got what was essentially a slap on the wrist.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[argStyopa]

"But as somebody who has actually participated in the fairly complex, thankless, and completely unpaid work of getting all the cats in the same herd I kinda resent that a bunch of slacktivists think they should have as much influence over said coalition as I do"

You did the "thankless" work? Your vote is still worth precisely...1 slactivist.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[gcalvin]

Canada chooses its candidates for Prime Minister in an open, democratic primary election process? News to me.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[ScentCone]

You mean a criminal conviction, ending his entire career? That slap on the wrist? Over a single, comparatively benign, incident? OK, let's say that the sustained, years-long exposure of classified information that Clinton allowed to happen was considered no worse than Petraeus' transgression. That means that Clinton would also be criminally indicted and convicted. Suits me. Keeps her and her husband and their entire machine out of the office they abused so aggressively last time they had it.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[NicBenjamin]

If you're in any state that has primaries, then it's a requirement if the party wants it.

It's true there is no Federal requirement for primaries, but until voters stop bitching about the thing they can't fix (ie: whether the primary is closed or open), and start bitching about the thing the state can fix (that there is a primary at all) that's hardly likely to happen, now is it?

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[NicBenjamin]

Who said anything about open or Democratic?

He bitched about the unfairness of the public paying for this shit, and in Canada Party leadership is determined by an internal party process. As of today (thanks to Harper) no public funding is involved, altho I rather suspect Trudeau will "fix" that soon enough.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[khallow]

Rules Lawyering, based on rigorous adherence to a multi-century old texts is everything here.

We could always do what I say, that would be better. But if for some strange reason you want the benefits of a nation of laws, then you need to live in one.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[NicBenjamin]

You have a right to vote in November.

You do not have an absolute Right to vote in the primary. Note the capital. I am not referring to the rights you think you have as an American, because those fond delusions tend to be more the result of unreasonably patriotic Grade School educations*, but rather the ones you actually have in Court. And in Court, the Supremes have very consistently ruled that people like me (who run the parties) have the capital-R-Right to exclude people like you from their partisan primary.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[khallow]

And at least in NY that likely would have disproportionately older people (it seemed to hit people with old registrations more) and minorities (because they always get hit the worst by voting

Funny how Clinton's alleged base are the ones getting the tampering. Maybe they don't actually support her as much as claimed?

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[NicBenjamin]

In the general.

But Ohio has a semi-open primary. So unless the slacktivist is willing to declare himself a Democrat on election day, he does not get the same vote I do. At which point his name gets added to our party list and I'm more then happy to share my vote with him.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Martin Blank]

A criminal conviction does not legally bar one from running for or being elected president. Here is the entire list of qualifications required:

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

Natural born citizen, 35 years or older, and 14 years a resident of the United States.

Felons generally aren't viewed favorably and so usually don't get far, but if they got enough votes, they can be president.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[ScentCone]

I didn't say it did. My point is that it's very unlikely that an indicted, let alone convicted, Hillary Clinton would be elected.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Trailer Trash]

We had a pretty hilarious case here in TN a few years ago that made the news. Without going into all the details, the Democrat who was supposed to win got more votes in a certain district than there were registered voters. Oops. Small district, but he got something like 140 of 100 possible votes, way off.

Look at Al Franken's win sometime, too, as there were pretty serious allegations of fraud there. Plus Hillary getting 6 of 6 coin tosses. I mean, yeah, 1/64th chance it *could* have happened. But do you really believe it did?

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[NicBenjamin]

Rules Lawyering, based on rigorous adherence to a multi-century old texts is everything here.

We could always do what I say, that would be better. But if for some strange reason you want the benefits of a nation of laws, then you need to live in one.

Keep in mind that many countries have less rules-lawyerey legal systems, and function quite well.

Canada's Constitution, for example, gives no opportunity to argue over whether a particular action was within the powers of the Prime Minister because it does not actually mention the Prime Minister. It mentions a "Chair of the Privy Council," who is always also Prime Minister, but the Chair's role seems to be more shuffling paperwork between an all-powerful Queen Victoria and an angry and obstreperous Legislature then anything Trudeau actually does. Since it also gives the Court system the right to rule on the Constitutionality of theoretical actions, it follows that a Canadian ObamaCare would be declared Constitutional or not prior to implementation rather then requiring years of litigation over the exact details of very specific cases.

In either Canada, or Europe, the court system, when faced with a party that wanted to use both public money and public election officials for it's primary while controlling whom could vote, would probably decide much differently.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[quantaman]

And at least in NY that likely would have disproportionately older people (it seemed to hit people with old registrations more) and minorities (because they always get hit the worst by voting

Funny how Clinton's alleged base are the ones getting the tampering. Maybe they don't actually support her as much as claimed?

I think I get your logic.

Some Sanders supporters can't vote due to an administrative screwup: "See! It's proof that Clinton rigged the vote!!"

Some Clinton supporters can't vote due to an administrative screwup: "See! It's proof that Clinton rigged the vote!!"

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[khallow]

Well, at least I can't be wrong, right? My view on this is that no one with a bit of power in the Democrat party is going to tamper with voting at a large scale to undermine Clinton. She's the favorite. So if tampering does occur, then there probably is another reason for it.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[khallow]

Canada's Constitution, for example, gives no opportunity to argue over whether a particular action was within the powers of the Prime Minister because it does not actually mention the Prime Minister.

That's not a compelling argument. You just dumped the mess of an executive officer into convention rather than constitution. How do you interpret or alter convention?

Since it also gives the Court system the right to rule on the Constitutionality of theoretical actions, it follows that a Canadian ObamaCare would be declared Constitutional or not prior to implementation rather then requiring years of litigation over the exact details of very specific cases.

I wouldn't brag given the power and in some cases glaring power tripping of Canadian tribunals (the first tribunal which declared that it didn't have jurisdiction, but decided to strongly imply that the defendant was guilty of certain human rights violations just the same (without any sort of proper hearing). In that second link, there was another example of a tribunal officer, Jennifer Lynch making public statements on the same complaint before her tribunal. This unprofessional behavior wouldn't occur in a US courtroom without the judge being taken off the case.

Also by requiring parties to have standing before involving the courts, it cuts down both on the power of the courts and on attempts to waste the time of the courts. The "multi-century old texts" work. That's why they're still around.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[riverat1]

The Hillary getting 6 of 6 coin tosses was a bogus story. There were a lot more than 6 coin tosses in Iowa that night and Bernie got his fair share of them.

As far as allegations of fraud in the Franken election they are just allegations by people who didn't like the results. Show up with some actual proof of fraud and I'll start to listen.

Re: Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[DMJC]

Actually this is wrong, under the US intelligence laws, knowingly or unknowingly delivering information from it's proper place of custody is enough to indict. redirecting Classified Emails to a private server easily reaches that benchmark.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Darinbob]

This is because both parties are piggy backing on the elections. The primaries are NOT only about the parties, there are real ballot measures, candidates for real office to be decided, and so forth. Part of making the party elections a part of public elections was an attempt in the past to reduce the power of party bosses (if you think it's rigged today, it's nothing compared to the past). Ultimately each state gets to decide though and the party bosses still have some power.

Consider states which have a caucus system. This requires you to go out of your way to get involved in choosing party delegates. You don't just vote on your way to work in the morning, you've got to spend a significant amount of time at it, you're discussing (and arguing) with others, and you're often also deciding on much more than a mere presidential candidate but working out plans for what to do at the convention (what parts of the platform to change, choosing local candidates, party leaders, etc).

Re: Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[riverat1]

I would say that only applies if they were classified before they were sent to a private server. I haven't seen any evidence of that but I suppose if there was the FBI will find it.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[jbmartin6]

And well it should be, if you substitute "populist demagogue" for "grassroots candidate". This isn't the only feature of our government and electoral system that is intended to prevent a movement of mass hysteria from taking over everything over a short period. If all the Sanders supporters care about their issues, they can join the party for a longer period of time, pay their dues, and enact change over time. There are a lot of bad aspects to the notion that some candidate could stir up a lot of people who rush to register as party members for the primary at the last minute then get the nomination.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Kazoo the Clown]

Well, that's good news--I'd much sooner vote for Petraeus than Clinton, any day.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[ranton]

So Hillary's dastardly plan to rig the primary by specifically suppressing Bernie supporters began four years ago?

The complaint is not that Hillary herself is rigging the systems. It is that the system has already been rigged towards establishment candidates. This is not Hillary's fault, but that is not the point. Saying it is not Hillary's fault is just a strawman argument.

The problem is not that *this* election is heavily rigged. It is that *all* elections are heavily rigged. The very fact people like Sanders and Trump are forced to obtain the backing of a major party to have a chance in the election is the biggest part of the problem. Our plurality voting system essentially guarantees a two party system at this scale.

I overall agree with the idea political parties should have rules which help them elect people who agree with their core values. But as long as we have a plurality voting system we have no choice but to make our two political parties more inclusive and less rigged towards establishment candidates. Without fixing these rules we will continue to have a very rigged system where the voice of the people is suppressed.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[khallow]

Why assume it was tampering? Do you think the US Government is so absurdly competent that it's the only organization in the history of civilization that's immune to making mistakes? And why wide-scale disenfranchisement? Among the list of dirty campaign tricks that's perhaps the most useless.

Because I thought from what you wrote that you had claimed there was tampering on a wide scale. Anyway, the obvious rebuttal to your last statement is that if a lot of voters will vote inconveniently for the wrong candidates, then disfranchisement keeps them from voting for those wrong candidates.

Even if this tampering did occur, how can you show who did it? A number of people over the years would have access to the files.

Clinton's email scandal is a great example of this, sure it's a legit issue but the severity of the crime has been vastly overblown.

It's only a few federal level felonies involving national security and probably is an indication she's hiding bigger crimes. After all, why commit a few felonies over the course of your tenure as Secretary of State which just so happen to shield your email from federal IT personnel and FOIA requests? What was worth that risk? It's really hard to take you seriously when you don't understand the problems.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[quantaman]

Because I thought from what you wrote that you had claimed there was tampering on a wide scale.

I'm not sure what I wrote that could have given you that impression.

Anyway, the obvious rebuttal to your last statement is that if a lot of voters will vote inconveniently for the wrong candidates, then disfranchisement keeps them from voting for those wrong candidates.

Even if this tampering did occur, how can you show who did it? A number of people over the years would have access to the files.

The the counter-rebuttal is that selectively picking out those voters is really tough, it's possible looking at demographics, though the pro-Bernie demographics aren't the ones who got hit.

And there's lots of ways to investigate, if it was done through a computer there's some kind of logs. If it was done by hand there's paper evidence and lot of people who might talk.

Either way if it was deliberate there will probably be some kind of semi-definitive evidence that there was a crime, the voter registration department is staffed with people who are in charge of tracking those things, whatever the change is there will be people who have to answer for it.

Clinton's email scandal is a great example of this, sure it's a legit issue but the severity of the crime has been vastly overblown.

It's only a few federal level felonies involving national security and probably is an indication she's hiding bigger crimes. After all, why commit a few felonies over the course of your tenure as Secretary of State which just so happen to shield your email from federal IT personnel and FOIA requests? What was worth that risk? It's really hard to take you seriously when you don't understand the problems.

She did it for the reason most employees skirt IT rules, she had a job to do and they couldn't give her what she considered to be a practical solution.

Even if she was also trying to dodge FOIA requests (quite plausible) that's hardly evidence of further crimes. Anyone with a passing interest in politics knows how easy it is to take things out of context. Probably the biggest legitimate issue with transparency in the executive branch is that it impacts the quality of advice that people can give, you can't really warn someone that a dignitary from another country is ridiculously corrupt or needs to be kept away from the hookers because that advice might now go public.

Re: Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[ScentCone]

She very willfully, and very knowingly chose to keep classified (and even SAP-level!) information on an unsecured computer in her house, connected to the public internet. The "intent to harm" does NOT have to be present for a conviction in the case of simple negligence in handling that information.

Or maybe you think the Secretary of State, the Cabinet member in charge of foreign affairs, can be constrained by someone other than the President....

What? Yes, she is constrained by the SAME LAWS HE IS. It's not the president that says she's not allowed to mis-handle highly classified information. It's federal law. She AND the president are both subject to it.

Re: Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[ScentCone]

I would say that only applies if they were classified before they were sent to a private server. I haven't seen any evidence of that but I suppose if there was the FBI will find it.

The inspectors general from multiple intelligence agencies have said that some of the email messaged/files she kept on her home computer were "born classified" - information that even if stripped of any headers or subject lines indicating its nature, would be plainly obvious as classified information to ANYONE who has sat through the required training on the handling of such material (let alone the Secretary of State), and which was not merely identified as such after the fact. We're talking about human intelligence sources, satellite imagery of places like North Korea, etc.

The DoJ has finally granted immunity to the tech who set up and helped run the family mail server so that he can better explain things about it and the people who used it. Immunity? Why, right? Because he was afraid of being criminally convicted for being involved in what he knew was the purpose and years-long use of that server, and thus refused to say anything about it. Until now.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[AgentSmith]

Even if Hillary was guilty as sin, you really think Obama wouldn't pardon her?

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[lister king of smeg]

Benghazi! As far has here private email server she'll get indicted when Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice get indicted for doing similar things with their email.

except the law was changed in between and it was illegal during her tenure in office but not theirs.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[khallow]

She did it for the reason most employees skirt IT rules, she had a job to do and they couldn't give her what she considered to be a practical solution.

There are two things to note here. First, practical solution to what problem? if she wanted to carry around PDAs, there were solutions that would comply with IT rules.

Second, your euphemism, "skirt IT rules" ignores that many of these skirtings were federal felonies. Witnessing classified information being passed in emails on an unapproved email server? It's a felony if you don't report it. Continuing to operate said email server when you know classified information is being passed on it is also a felony. As is instructing someone to strip classified headers off a classified document.

It also appears that a Clinton employee, Sidney Blumenthal without the required clearance level was accessing classified information. That's a felony if you don't report it and a felony if you're feeding said classified information to him. It's also a felony to evade FOIA requests. The only really shifty aspect that might not have been a felony was failure to comply with the Federal Records Act.

Even if she was also trying to dodge FOIA requests (quite plausible) that's hardly evidence of further crimes. Anyone with a passing interest in politics knows how easy it is to take things out of context. Probably the biggest legitimate issue with transparency in the executive branch is that it impacts the quality of advice that people can give, you can't really warn someone that a dignitary from another country is ridiculously corrupt or needs to be kept away from the hookers because that advice might now go public.

There are already exemptions for that and many other things that could legitimately cause harm outweighing the benefit of the increased transparency. The law already anticipates your concern.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[PraiseBob]

I would disagree that the superdelegates had no impact. The large majority of superdelegates agreed to vote for Hillary before Bernie had even announced his candidacy. After the first election in Iowa, (which Hillary did win), the media is suddenly reporting that Hillary has an 800 delegate lead, based on the superdelegates. In reality, most of that lead materialized when she was the only option. For several weeks of voting, the media kept reporting that she had this huge insurmountable lead, based on those superdelegates, who didn't even have an alternative choice.

This reporting in the media did drive down participation. Because why go out and vote at all when your candidate of choice has already lost, and, if you are going to cast a vote, why vote for the loser? Not everyone will be swayed by that, but certainly some will.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Holi]

A violation of the Federal Records Act of 2009 does though. It bars you from ever serving in office again.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[NicBenjamin]

Canada's Constitution, for example, gives no opportunity to argue over whether a particular action was within the powers of the Prime Minister because it does not actually mention the Prime Minister.

That's not a compelling argument. You just dumped the mess of an executive officer into convention rather than constitution. How do you interpret or alter convention?

In this particular thread the argument is they're less rules lawyerey then us.

Constitutional Conventions are inherently flexible, thus if the PM decides to do something like Prorogue Parliament earlier then he should do by convention, specifically to prevent the Opposition from firing him, the Governor General doesn't have to rule that he can't do that shit.

Whereas in the States she would have to rule he can't do that, even though it was early December and there's been an election in late October; and the Opposition had only agreed to fire Stephen Harper not agreed on a new PM, thus ensuring a January election; that she was gonna put up with Harper's bullshit for another month in the hopes that either a) he made peace with the Opposition, or b) the Opposition got it's act together and agreed on who was going to replace him.

Since it also gives the Court system the right to rule on the Constitutionality of theoretical actions, it follows that a Canadian ObamaCare would be declared Constitutional or not prior to implementation rather then requiring years of litigation over the exact details of very specific cases.

I wouldn't brag given the power and in some cases glaring power tripping of Canadian tribunals (the first tribunal which declared that it didn't have jurisdiction, but decided to strongly imply that the defendant was guilty of certain human rights violations just the same (without any sort of proper hearing). In that second link, there was another example of a tribunal officer, Jennifer Lynch making public statements on the same complaint before her tribunal. This unprofessional behavior wouldn't occur in a US courtroom without the judge being taken off the case.

And no US Judge has ever power-tripped?

I agree commenting on the case would be strongly frowned upon in the US, but this isn't always a good thing. Remember when the NYPD was doing warrantless searches on every black man in the City, and the Judge who threw that shit out was disciplined for talking about it afterwards?

Also by requiring parties to have standing before involving the courts, it cuts down both on the power of the courts and on attempts to waste the time of the courts. The "multi-century old texts" work. That's why they're still around.

Interestingly enough, most countries have Court systems that are much more powerful then the Canadian. Typically Prosecutors will be ensconced in the Judicial branch, it's not unusual that whether a given official is the Prosecutor or the Judge in a case is luck of the draw, and rather then lengthy arguments about standing before any hearing on an interesting topic they'll just have the damn hearing. Which can be quicker then having months of hearings on standing, then appeals of those hearings, appeals of the appeals, etc.

As for how well the system works, it works quite well in America. We like legalistic bullshit. We really like that, since the Judiciary is too weak to change most rules (and refuses to change the rules it can change), the system is game-able. Other countries that try similar systems tend to collapse. Which is why nobody has a Judicial system like ours.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[quantaman]

She did it for the reason most employees skirt IT rules, she had a job to do and they couldn't give her what she considered to be a practical solution.

There are two things to note here. First, practical solution to what problem? if she wanted to carry around PDAs, there were solutions that would comply with IT rules.

Second, your euphemism, "skirt IT rules" ignores that many of these skirtings were federal felonies. Witnessing classified information being passed in emails on an unapproved email server? It's a felony if you don't report it. Continuing to operate said email server when you know classified information is being passed on it is also a felony. As is instructing someone to strip classified headers off a classified document.

Well the stripping of headers might have been a legitimate way of anonymizing the information for unsecured communication.

As for the rest you've now got a lot more felons than Clinton because numerous people were either directly aware, or at least had a pretty good idea, and didn't really care. Most of the classified stuff wasn't even sent by her, why don't you want those people prosecuted as well? Or does the crime seem less serious when you realize you'd need to arrest half the state department.

Mishandling classified information isn't that uncommon and the punishment is usually quite mild. The only time you actually get in trouble is deliberately mishandling classified information for nefarious purposes such as selling secrets or impressing your mistress/biographer. Mishandling info in the process of trying to do your job? You generally get a finger wag and a stern warning.

Remember the Bush email controversy? You really think there wasn't a ton of classified information that got sent over the RNC servers? If they actually recovered the emails and found classified info do you think they should have convicted dozens of people from the Bush White House of a felony?

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[quantaman]

So Hillary's dastardly plan to rig the primary by specifically suppressing Bernie supporters began four years ago?

The complaint is not that Hillary herself is rigging the systems. It is that the system has already been rigged towards establishment candidates. This is not Hillary's fault, but that is not the point.

I think that's true, though I wouldn't use the word rigged. It's designed to aggressively filter out people who can't gain establishment approval.

I don't actually think that's a bad thing, Sander's still ran and did pretty well and on a level playing field I don't think he does much better. Obama went up against Clinton and won and he was very new to the game. So while it's biased towards the establishment it's not biased towards insiders because if there was an insider bias I don't see how Obama wins.

Establishment approval isn't a bad thing. The problem with campaigns is it's hard to judge candidates just from speeches and ads, a well functioning establishment makes sure the voter is aware of those qualities that are hard to judge from a distance. That's why the Republican party is so broken, they spent so long railing against the establishment that the base no longer trusts their own establishment. So when the party tries to tell the base that there's something wrong with a certain candidate the base either doesn't believe them or doesn't care.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[Martin Blank]

You're talking about 18 USC 2071. That wouldn't block election to the presidency. The Constitution runs supreme over everything else; a statutory prohibition to holding office of the president due to a violation of criminal law would be above and beyond the requirements set in the Constitution, and therefore void.

There's precedent for this, too. In the 1990s, a bunch of states added term limits to their congressional representatives, but the Supreme Court overturned these in 1995, saying that states couldn't add requirements not present in the Constitution. Even earlier, in Powell v. McCormack, the Supreme Court found that "the Constitution leaves the House without authority to exclude any person, duly elected by his constituents, who meets all the requirements for membership expressly prescribed in the Constitution." A footnote extends this holding to include the Senate. Other cases have held that felons can seek the office of the president even if state laws barring felons from holding public office would preclude them from doing so, and felons have run for president.

Prof. Seth Barrett Tillman goes into much more detail at this Washington Post article where he responded to claims by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey that Clinton would be barred from office under 18 USC 2071. For his part, Mukasey demurred, saying that Tillman was correct and that if elected, Clinton could serve as president.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[khallow]

Well the stripping of headers might have been a legitimate way of anonymizing the information for unsecured communication.

I guess we'll hear from the FBI one way or another what their opinion of that activity's legality is.

As for the rest you've now got a lot more felons than Clinton because numerous people were either directly aware, or at least had a pretty good idea, and didn't really care. Most of the classified stuff wasn't even sent by her, why don't you want those people prosecuted as well? Or does the crime seem less serious when you realize you'd need to arrest half the state department.

I don't have a problem with arresting and punishing a bunch of people who broke the law. Funny, how it suddenly becomes about them rather than about Clinton who is enabling all this.

Remember the Bush email controversy? You really think there wasn't a ton of classified information that got sent over the RNC servers? If they actually recovered the emails and found classified info do you think they should have convicted dozens of people from the Bush White House of a felony?

Well, show these crimes occurred then. Don't just claim without facts that they did. And if they did occur, sure, try and convict them. Funny how you suddenly want a bunch of Bush criminals to walk just because Clinton might be subject to the same laws as them.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[khallow]

Constitutional Conventions are inherently flexible, thus if the PM decides to do something like Prorogue Parliament earlier then he should do by convention, specifically to prevent the Opposition from firing him, the Governor General [wikipedia.org] doesn't have to rule that he can't do that shit.

The Canadian constitution doesn't give the PM that power, but rather to the Governor General. It is convention which effective gives the PM the power to prorogue the Parliament via "advisement". And what happens when a PM abuses that power like Harper did in 2008 and 2009? And glancing at the above Wikipedia page, I notice a court did indeed have to rule that someone couldn't interfere with the PM's "advice".

However, the Federal Court of Canada, in a 2009 ruling, found that tampering with the Crown's prerogatives could not be done via normal legislation, requiring instead an amendment to the constitution pursuant to Section 41 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

Interestingly enough, most countries have Court systems that are much more powerful then the Canadian. Typically Prosecutors will be ensconced in the Judicial branch, it's not unusual that whether a given official is the Prosecutor or the Judge in a case is luck of the draw, and rather then lengthy arguments about standing before any hearing on an interesting topic they'll just have the damn hearing. Which can be quicker then having months of hearings on standing, then appeals of those hearings, appeals of the appeals, etc.

As for how well the system works, it works quite well in America. We like legalistic bullshit. We really like that, since the Judiciary is too weak to change most rules (and refuses to change the rules it can change), the system is game-able. Other countries that try similar systems tend to collapse. Which is why nobody has a Judicial system like ours.

What is bizarre here is your insistence this is somehow different than other countries. I have given examples both of gaming of the judicial system in Canada and a case where a Canadian court had to rule on the legality of interfering with a legal convention. Further, not having a multi-century old constitution is not a strength. I bet there will be several constitutions that get recycled over the next half century due to having become unworkable, France, Italy, and the EU come to mind as likely candidates.

What is the problem with the US is the laws not how the courts rule on them. It wouldn't be any different anywhere else. When they create the same laws that they will reap the same problems.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[wyHunter]

That's usually the goal of the Democratic party.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[XxtraLarGe]

I didn't say it did. My point is that it's very unlikely that an indicted, let alone convicted, Hillary Clinton would be elected.

Nobody voting for Hillary case about that.

Re:Explicit goal of the Democratic party system.

[NicBenjamin]

Constitutional Conventions are inherently flexible, thus if the PM decides to do something like Prorogue Parliament earlier then he should do by convention, specifically to prevent the Opposition from firing him, the Governor General [wikipedia.org] doesn't have to rule that he can't do that shit.

The Canadian constitution doesn't give the PM that power, but rather to the Governor General. It is convention which effective gives the PM the power to prorogue the Parliament via "advisement". And what happens when a PM abuses that power like Harper did in 2008 and 2009? And glancing at the above Wikipedia page, I notice a court did indeed have to rule that someone couldn't interfere with the PM's "advice".

However, the Federal Court of Canada, in a 2009 ruling, found that tampering with the Crown's prerogatives could not be done via normal legislation, requiring instead an amendment to the constitution pursuant to Section 41 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

Exactly.

Instead of being a matter for the Courts to decide via their (by definition) rules-lawyering, it was a matter of convention. Somebody tried to being the rules-lawyers in, and they said no.

Interestingly enough, most countries have Court systems that are much more powerful then the Canadian. Typically Prosecutors will be ensconced in the Judicial branch, it's not unusual that whether a given official is the Prosecutor or the Judge in a case is luck of the draw, and rather then lengthy arguments about standing before any hearing on an interesting topic they'll just have the damn hearing. Which can be quicker then having months of hearings on standing, then appeals of those hearings, appeals of the appeals, etc.

As for how well the system works, it works quite well in America. We like legalistic bullshit. We really like that, since the Judiciary is too weak to change most rules (and refuses to change the rules it can change), the system is game-able. Other countries that try similar systems tend to collapse. Which is why nobody has a Judicial system like ours.

What is bizarre here is your insistence this is somehow different than other countries. I have given examples both of gaming of the judicial system in Canada and a case where a Canadian court had to rule on the legality of interfering with a legal convention. Further, not having a multi-century old constitution is not a strength. I bet there will be several constitutions that get recycled over the next half century due to having become unworkable, France, Italy, and the EU come to mind as likely candidates.

What is the problem with the US is the laws not how the courts rule on them. It wouldn't be any different anywhere else. When they create the same laws that they will reap the same problems.

Except that I just described the Inquisitorial System, which is a Civil Law system, and virtually nothing like the Common Law system we use. Even among Common Law countries we tend to be an outlier in the amount of rules-lawyering. Many of their rules will be by convention, rather then written down, and the Court will typically have the power to comment on legal situations that are not actual cases or controversies which in turn means that instead of waiting for a specific case with unique "facts and circumstances" to guide all future cases you just get a ruling on the letter of the law.

For example, you know that San Bernandino phone thing with Apple? There's no precedent set in that case because no final decision was made by a Court that can set Binding Precedents. The Feds won two preliminary hearings and nothing else, but it's not binding. There's also no precedent from the drug-phone case in NYC because that case didn't get to a Court that can set binding precedents. Which means that, due to rigorous rule lawyering re: the Case or Contr

That's an expected result

[Sax Russell 5449D29A]

But it shouldn't be "think", rather "know". Superdelegates/unpledged delegates are the most visible part of it all.

News Flash

[Virtucon]

More than half of Americans think the whole election process is rigged, not just nominations.

Oh here's more

More than half of Americans don't care to actually catch up on candidates' positions or who for that matter care who they vote for. They vote along party lines because that's what dear old grannie did or those nice politicians promised me free shit.

Re:News Flash

[Quirkz]

Worse, if you try to actually think about it, and don't always stick to a single party's platform, you're penalized by the system for being independent. At least in my state I can't vote in the primary unless I register with one of the two big parties.

Re:News Flash

[Obfuscant]

and don't always stick to a single party's platform, you're penalized by the system for being independent.

You mean people who belong to a certain party aren't as likely to vote for you if you don't hold to the party's platform? Ummm, d'oh.

At least in my state I can't vote in the primary unless I register with one of the two big parties.

Primaries are intended for the parties to select their candidates. Why do you think you should have a voice in what candidate a party puts forward for election when you aren't a member of that party?

There's too much "helping" going on already. That's where a member of one party registers as the other so they can "help" the other party pick an unelectable candidate. That's dishonest at best.

Re:News Flash

[inode_buddha]

Same here, NY requires you to be registered D or R and *entire year* before any primaries, or no joy for you. Its just incredibly screwed without lube.

Re:News Flash

[Ichijo]

Why do you think you should have a voice in what candidate a party puts forward for election when you aren't a member of that party?

I agree. Why should you be allowed to vote in the primary if you haven't pledged allegiance to the party, or attended any party meetings, or paid dues, or taken any tests, or passed a background check?

Re:News Flash

[Archangel Michael]

I disagree. Why should the Taxpayer fund the nomination process for the party in the first place? Shouldn't the Parties fund their own nomination process, and let EVERYONE vote on those results in the Primary?

Re:News Flash

[Obfuscant]

Why should the Taxpayer fund the nomination process for the party in the first place?

Because people who affiliate with a party are taxpayers, and if your favorite party wanted to have a primary, they can. If they choose not to, don't complain.

and let EVERYONE vote on those results in the Primary?

No. If you aren't part of the party then you deserve no say in who they put up for election. Your chance to vote comes at the general election. If your party doesn't put up someone you like, don't complain that nobody else has done so for you.

As I said, there are already too many people who think they deserve the right to "help" the other party pick a losing candidate, effectively getting two votes in favor of their candidate.

Re:News Flash

[R3d M3rcury]

Why do you think you should have a voice in what candidate a party puts forward for election when you aren't a member of that party?

Because my tax dollars are paying for that primary.

Re:News Flash

[Obfuscant]

Because my tax dollars are paying for that primary.

So are theirs. There are lots of things my tax dollars pay for that I don't care about but benefit you.

If you want to vote, get your party to have a primary. If they don't, it's not anyone else's fault.

Re:News Flash

[Ichijo]

[The Taxpayer fund the nomination process for the party] Because people who affiliate with a party are taxpayers...

You can use that same argument to justify subsidizing private jets with tax money, "because people who fly in private jets are taxpayers."

Private jets for everyone!

I'm okay with this

[Sowelu]

Mob rule isn't a good thing, and corrupt leaders can (in some ways and at some times) be better than no leaders. Leadership trying to keep Trump out of office, even against the wishes of their own party, is good for the system.

Re:I'm okay with this

[tnk1]

Its a trade off. Stopping Trump in an underhanded or backroom way could break the party. It might be a worthy sacrifice, but the Republican party will not survive that screw-job if they make that move.

I expect that unless everyone else quits and releases their delegates to Cruz (and even then, the rules don't always allow such direction), the Republican Party will have Trump as their candidate.

There is only one scenario that could take it away from Trump at this point, something that makes Trump unelectable, like a criminal charge or some sort of very dirty scandal. That is the only way you're walking out of the convention without Trump as the candidate unless you can line up every remaining delegate, including Kaisch's and Rubio's behind Cruz.

I'm not sure what would be worse, Cruz or Trump. Cruz is not good in the sense he's going to get his ass handed to him and he's a jerk. And Trump is bad, because he's Trump and because he actually has a chance to beat Clinton. I don't think he will, but if something nasty comes out about Clinton at the wrong time, she could be vulnerable. Trump would not hesitate to attack her directly and very hard if she shows any vulnerability.

I'll say one thing for Trump, he's definitely not pulling any punches, and some of them are landing. Clinton is pretty much the "default" status quo candidate, which is damning her with faint praise. If anything weakens her, she could find herself in a world of hurt and in the general election, there are independents out there who aren't owned by her which could make a difference.

Re:I'm okay with this

[CanadianMacFan]

I'd prefer Trump over Cruz because a Republican Congress and Senate probably wouldn't work with Trump very well. There's enough animosity between the two that I could see them fighting over almost everything where Cruz would work well. Plus I don't like how Cruz's first instinct is to carpet bomb foreign countries.

What would be really interesting is if Trump doesn't get enough delegates to win in the first round and they give the nomination to Cruz so Trump runs as an independent and Sanders decides to do the same. I hope that not just one side doesn't split and run as an independent.

Actually I just really feel sorry for the lack of choice the voters have.

Re:I'm okay with this

[Orgasmatron]

If Trump gets screwed, I can easily see a 3-way race: Cruz/Fiorina vs. Clinton/Moloch vs. Trump/Sanders.

Re:I'm okay with this

[slinches]

There is only one scenario that could take it away from Trump at this point, something that makes Trump unelectable, like a criminal charge or some sort of very dirty scandal

I don't know about that, neither of those have stopped Hillary.

Re:I'm okay with this

[riverat1]

Sanders is far too principled to run as an independent and take the chance of handing the election to the Republicans.

Re:I'm okay with this

[Cro Magnon]

I'm not sure a criminal conviction would stop Hilary.

Political parties are private institutions

[TsuruchiBrian]

They should be able to nominate whoever they want, in whatever method they want, fair or not. The real problem is that they get special privileges. They are using the federal and state governments to legitimize and pay for their primaries. Let the political parties run and pay for their own primaries. The state and federal government should only facilitate the candidacy of individuals to public office, it should not even acknowledge the existence of political parties. Maybe if we pretend for long enough, it will come true.

Re:Political parties are private institutions

[Burdell]

While I agree with you, the "public" primaries are also there to keep our choices from being completely controlled by back-room deals.

I'd prefer to abolish party primaries and allow more open general election ballot access (although I don't think having 20+ people on the ballot for a single position is necessarily an improvement, so some legitimate signature minimums or something should exist). Go to a ranked voting system, where you can rank up to 3 candidates, and you rarely would need a run-off.

The Repubocrats and Demlicans would never allow that though. In my state, the Libertarian Party got to "major party" status for one election cycle (where their governor candidate was "featured" at the top and had the "vote party line" option); the R&D powerhouse quickly got the state laws changed to eliminate that competition as soon as possible. Anything other than politics and they'd be considered an illegal cartel and shut down for restraint of trade...

Re:Political parties are private institutions

[RandCraw]

The parties are not actually private, they're corporations. Worse, R and D also have become monopolies. (OK, oligopolies, to please the hairsplitters). Because they now exclusively control admission to US politics, no US candidate for high office can hope to compete without A) being a member, or B) having a huge private war chest (hundreds of millions) or C) direct access to major media -- all of which Trump has, two of which Perot had, none of which Anderson had. Even then, Trump has elected to check all three of these boxes knowing how stacked the deck is against him otherwise.

The political parties are guaranteed no special protections under the Constitution, other than those of the First Amendment. Today, as de facto gatekeepers to government office, we very badly need to redefine the role of political parties, something that starts and ends with their money.

It's easy enough to fix: demand a constitutional amendment requiring that all monies spent in campaigns by and for *specific* political candidates must arise from a limited pool of public money. (This should not run afoul of the First Amendment, since candidates are not 'speech'.) All other monies routed to or spent by candidates or elected officials shall be considered bribes (including their own money).

All other developed countries have this law or something very like it. Until America catches up with the times, our public policy will continue to be sold to the highest bidder... Wall Street and giant corporations.

Re:Political parties are private institutions

[TsuruchiBrian]

While I agree with you, the "public" primaries are also there to keep our choices from being completely controlled by back-room deals.

You can't stop back room deals. If candidate A and candidate B of a similar political persuasion agree to a deal to one of the two of them drop out based on a coin flip in a back room, in order to consolidate votes to a single candidate, you can't stop that.

I'd prefer to abolish party primaries and allow more open general election ballot access

We kind of already have that. Anyone can run for president. 3rd parties, independents, etc. And I agree that we should abolish the recognition of political parties by the government. I don't think you can or should stop people from proclaiming that they are a republican or a democrat. I don't even think we can stop parties from proclaiming who their chosen candidate is. If both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders run in the general election, the democratic party has the power to determine who is the legitimate democratic party candidate and who is the usurper on the actual ballot. If it were up to me, I would just present the names of all the candidates as equals. If the party wants to advertise to it's members who the real nominee is, they can do that with their own money.

(although I don't think having 20+ people on the ballot for a single position is necessarily an improvement, so some legitimate signature minimums or something should exist)

I think it would be a vast improvement

Go to a ranked voting system, where you can rank up to 3 candidates, and you rarely would need a run-off.

Why not just rank as many candidates as you want? Why limit it to 3? You can have as many instant runoffs as you want for free. There is no reason to have a separate runoff election if you can completely capture a voters preference on one ballot.

The Repubocrats and Demlicans would never allow that though.

Democracy isn't easy. It's hard to get people to care. And once they care, it's hard to get them to care about the same thing. Also, it's a personal preference, but I prefer "republicrats" and "demoplicans".

Re:Political parties are private institutions

[TsuruchiBrian]

It's easy enough to fix: demand a constitutional amendment requiring that all monies spent in campaigns by and for *specific* political candidates must arise from a limited pool of public money. (This should not run afoul of the First Amendment, since candidates are not 'speech'.) All other monies routed to or spent by candidates or elected officials shall be considered bribes (including their own money).

I am not a big fan of this approach.

1. it is possible to spend money to help a candidate without giving that money to their official campaign. This is a giant loophole. Like if I hate Hillary Clinton, should I be prevented from spending money to spread my views? Or should the money and resources I spend be considered a donation to the Sanders Campaign? or to the Trump campaign?

2. How do we decide who is eligible to receive this public money and who is not? We can't have 50,000 people all receiving public campaign money. In almost every scenario I can imagine, this public campaign fund will be used to exclude people from entering political races. They will be barred from spending their own money, and they will be denied public money.

As bad as money in politics has become, I am still of the opinion that the cure to bad speech is more good speech (not restrictions on "bad" speech). It would be great if we could restrict bad speech, but ultimately it is too easy for these laws to be abused and used to silence legitimate speech. There was a reason the founding fathers wanted to allow *all* speech. It was so that there would be hard to restrict good speech by saying it was bad (i.e. because even bad speech is permitted). As a downside we have also have bad speech. That's one of the costs of a free society.

Re:Political parties are private institutions

[MillionthMonkey]

The U.S. Constitution doesn't specifically mandate a two-party system, and it poses no *legal* barriers to form a third party. But unlike a parliamentary democracy, the winner-take-all elections proscribed in the Constitution guarantee that third parties will fail.

We all revere the parts of the Constitution that we like (the Bill of Rights) but the main part of the U.S. Constitution has some major design errors. Winner-take-all elections are one of those. The writers of the Constitution weren't looking carefully for such flaws, because back then, constitutions were things that you wrote, used for a while, then crumpled up and rewrote at another convention. It was widely assumed the document would be rewritten or at least amended, perhaps during their own lifetimes. Everyone "knew" that back then.

But over time the U.S. Constitution has gained the aura of a religious text written by ancient prophets. The people who wrote it would have been shocked if you told them that it would last more than 200 years, and that every word in their letters to each other would be endlessly analyzed and reinterpreted like the Apostle Paul's Letter to the Romans. Since they knew they wouldn't live forever, they specified that the interpretation of their document would be the job of the Supreme Court. Recently the Court started ignoring case law and started holding seances to divine what the opinions of these dead men would be about current issues. But 21st century jurisprudence wasn't a responsibility that they expected to shoulder from beyond the grave.

If they had known two centuries ago that medical progress would lengthen the lives of judges well into their years of senility, they might have reconsidered lifetime appointments for them. They certainly didn't expect that judges would become senile enough to extend First Amendment protections specifically to the solicitation of bribes by members of Congress- effectively *mandating* that a Congressman's first duty is no longer legislating, but asking people for bribes, in the name of "free speech".

The framers were smart enough to put in a mechanism for adding Amendments, and this worked for a long time. But like so many other things in the Constitution, this has gotten hollowed out and rendered meaningless in a thousand little different ways. There is realistically no chance that any Amendment will ever get passed again.

No great empire can support itself for more than several centuries before forgetting its roots and entering decline; that has been true throughout human history- for the Romans, the Mayans, the Ottomans, the ancient Egyptians, and now the US and Western Europe. The United States has entered a new phase, where a plutocratic oligarchy governs with an iron fist while still operating within the hollowed-out structure of the former democracy that it replaced.

Re:Political parties are private institutions

[dryeo]

We tried some fixes in Canada,
1. Tried to limit all political spending, eventually the Conservatives went to the Supreme Court and got a ruling that outside of an actual election (usually 6-8 weeks here) our freedom of expression allowed spending money. Spending is still limited during an actual election, last one was a record length as the Conservatives had the most money and thought they would out spend everyone else.
2. Public money was given out based on the results of the last election. It was slow but fourth and fifth parties slowly got more money and the Greens even elected a candidate. Conservatives canceled this as soon as they had enough of a majority to cancel it.
3. Only individuals are allowed to donate, up to a maximum of currently about $1500 (indexed to inflation). No corporate, union, or other special interest donors, This is still on the books.
We also have an independent organization running the elections, setting the electoral districts etc, this helps the most, no gerrymandering, relatively honest elections. The Conservatives neutered them as they kept getting caught cheating and claimed that they were getting picked on. Last election, Elections Canada wasn't even allowed to try to register voters unlike all previous elections and were severely underfunded. It's amazing where you can cut spending in the name of austerity while wasting money as usual in other areas.
Ideally is a Constitutional Amendment to implement the above, but they're hard to pass, perhaps even harder in Canada then the States. Most amendments use the 7/50 rule, 7 out of 10 provinces representing 50%+ of the population. The Provinces have also decided that amendments have to pass a referendum.

Re:Political parties are private institutions

[TsuruchiBrian]

1. So during the actual election, what are you not allowed to spend money on? Obviously I guess donating to political campaigns? Are you allowed to buy your own TV commercials promoting or attacking individuals or issues? Are you allowed to buy yard signs and give them out for free? Are you allowed to spend money creating an internet blog critical of certain candidates?

2. If you were not allowed to spend any of your own money, and you weren't getting any public money, how would you even do well in the first election to start getting public money?

3. Even in America before the citizens united supreme court decision, we had caps on individual contributions, and there was plenty of loopholes to get around it. In fact, I would argue that it's actually more transparent now, because you can actually see who is getting money from super pacs and who isn't. Before it was harder to figure out which individual contributions were legitimate and which were part of some scheme, now politicians get the bulk of their dirty money through super pacs because it's easier.

Re:Political parties are private institutions

[dryeo]

1. Spending is limited but commercials do get aired by some groups promoting or more commonly attacking by some groups. I'm not right up to date on those rules. You are allowed to donate during an election assuming you haven't donated earlier in the year, which is more common. Yard signs and other signs are given out or put up by the parties, who are also responsible for cleaning them up. You're obviously allowed to put up a blog and allowed to pay a reasonable amount of money to put it up. What a reasonable amount is would be left to the courts I'd imagine.

2. New parties often start at the Provincial level, eg Reform (our tea party) first ran in the western Provinces. The Bloc Quebecois was various Quebec politicians quitting their parties and forming a new one to promote their Province and culture.
They are allowed to spend some of their money, it's just limited, same with independents. The idea is to have a leveler playground.
I've been talking about the Federal rules, while the Provinces have been implementing similar rules, it is still mostly a free for all at the Provincial level and the elections are completely separate from the Federal election with various parties only existing at the Provincial level, which is where most of the newer parties have come from. Otherwise they just have to get their message out to begin with, as the Greens did.
Having the Provincial politics largely divorced from the Federal politics also allows more diversity.

3. Of course I can slip a politician a 20 and no one would know, but all spending is supposed to be audited with separate accounts etc so it is hard for them to spend large anonymous cash donations. And of course there is still the revolving door, a lot of former Conservatives got good paying jobs in the oil industry after leaving politics, as well as the paid trip to some tropical resort (with hookers and blow).
It's not perfect but seems a lot better then the media circus that happens down there, unluckily it is another thing that is getting Americanized, with the former government trying to run the election all the time instead of the traditional waiting for the wit to be dropped. It is also one of the problems with fixed election dates (Constitutionally there just has to be an election at a maximum of 5 years and can be forced if the government loses the confidence of Parliament, eg not passing a budget means the end of that government and unless another group can pass a budget, an election)

I'm not an expert so some of the above may be not quite right.

Re:Political parties are private institutions

[TsuruchiBrian]

1. What I am getting at is that all the money that campaigns spend on stuff (commercials, signs, web sites, etc), individual people could just buy directly, bypassing the campaigns. I can make my own signs and hand them out to people, and it doesn't count as money spent by the campaign. This is the loophole that America has. It is why "money is speech" according to the supreme court. Does Canada close this loophole, or do people just not exploit it?

2. ok that makes some sense I guess

3. I am not talking about secertly slipping a politician a 20. I am talking about following the rules, but still effectively donating more than the per person cap.

I don't know how good you Canadians are at corruption, but let me enlighten you on how we do it here.

Scenario A: Donation pooling: I live in California and want to support candidate A. Bob lives in New York and wants to support candidate B. We can both donate $2700 to our candidate. But I get a great idea. What if Bob and I make a deal. I will also donate $2700 to his candidate if he donates $2700 to my candidate. And now multiply that out to every political race and every rich donor, and you have people basically donating hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to help their candidate. They are actually only donating $2700 to each individual candidate, but they are buying more donations from other people with their own donations to their candidates, and vice versa.

Scenario B: My company would really like to donate lots of money to a particular candidate, but they are not allowed to. Only individuals are allowed to donate up to $2700 each to political campaigns. SO my company decides that they will give all their employees a great deal. They will give $5200 to each employee that donates $2700 to the candidate they support. Oh wait that seems a little sketchy. Ok they will donate $2 to a charity of the employees choice for every $1 they donate to the candidate. Now it's for a good cause.

And this is all following the existing rules of $2700 max per person donation. We don't have to do any of that shit now. Now we just anonymously donate as much money as we want to super PACs and we don't need to waste any more time coordinating individual donations.

Re:Political parties are private institutions

[dryeo]

1. I believe the loophole is closed, at least no one exploits it and the previous government exploited every loophole it could as well as various illegal moves and changing laws as much as they felt they could get away with. Our governments are more responsive as the people will and have thrown them out. Both main parties have gone from governing to a couple of seats at times. The advantage of no Gerry-mandering is few 100% safe seats.
Signs all come from the parties (or candidate), most all commercials come from the parties (or candidate). We actually just vote for our MP (Member of Parliament, equals your Representative)

3a. We're only allowed to donate $1550 (indexed) in total. Not sure if that is per year or per Parliament (election cycle).

3b. The pharmaceutical companies got caught doing something like that a couple of elections ago, definitely illegal and while it may happen, it is minor as the chances of getting caught are too high.

Our freedom of speech is limited to what is reasonable in a free and democratic society, as the writers didn't want to legalize child porn and wanted the freedom to limit speech in the case of national security and didn't want to be like America where the Constitution is ignored whenever the courts feel like it. Both the First and Second Amendments are pretty clear and don't contain any exceptions, not for child porn, not for national security, not for having whole classes of people that can't be armed etc.
Other rights are more subjective, eg what is a reasonable search, what is cruel and unusual punishment, where I think our courts often do a better job then the American ones.

The system IS unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

The system is unfair. Here's why:

1) Superdelegates take the choice partly out of the hands of voters. The same is true of uncommitted delegates from states and territories. Pennsylvania's system is awful, where most of the elected delegates don't even say who they will vote for.

2) There needs to be consistency between the states. Winner take all by state or by district is fair provided it's the same way in every state. Proportional delegates are also fair. But it should be the same way in every state.

3) Votes count more in some states than others. There aren't many Republicans in Massachusetts, but delegates are allocated according to the entire population of the state. A vote in the Republican primary in Massachusetts is worth more than voting in the Republican primary in, say, Kansas.

4) Any system that decides caucus winners based on a coin flip is wrong. I'm looking at you, Iowa. And caucuses bias the results because some people simply aren't able to commit to attending a caucus. Only have caucuses or only have primaries. But pick one.

5) Brokered conventions might not be fair. If Trump wins a plurality of delegates, say, 1,215, it's still very possible that Cruz or Kasich would be the nominee on the revote. That just doesn't seem right. Have a revote where delegates from candidates who dropped out become unpledged but all candidates who remained in the race keep their pledged delegates. Then give the nomination to whoever wins a plurality from the candidates remaining in the race.

6) Have the primary votes on the same day for all states and territories. If your state votes later than others, your vote may count less because candidates you might have supported will have already dropped out.

Re:The system IS unfair

[AuMatar]

I'll definitely agree on #1 and 2. On #3- that's the goal. It doesn't matter how much a republican can run up the vote in Alabama, he has to be able to attract support in purple or blue states. This is not just to try and win them during the general, but to draw supporters in to vote for downticket races they can win. If you don't give population based delegation you end up becoming a regional party only. In fact the republicans already do favor the very republican states- states get extra delegates for republican governors, senators, house representation, and state legislatures being republican.

As for #4- Iowa has a lot to improve on, but the coin flips weren't the problem. They were a fair tie breaker. The problem is the caucus system rather than a pure vote system.

#6 is a terrible idea. Do you know how much money it would cost to campaign nationwide for a single day's vote? Basically you'd eliminate the possibility of an unknown candidate to build a campaign. Now a better system might be to have 5 or so election days equally spread rotating so different states go first each election, rather than making Iowa and New Hampshire so important.

Re:The system IS unfair

[riverat1]

I don't like the idea of all of the primaries being held on the same day but I would favor the idea of a regional primary day. Divide the country into 6 or 8 regions and have all of the states in that region hold their primaries on the same day. That would be more cost effective for the candidates and allow for some changes in momentum. I guess I'd still be ok with Iowa and New Hampshire holding their processes first to keep them happy.

And, So What?

[sycodon]

The nominating process is defined by the Party. A Private entity.

Since it exists in a private organization, there is no legal obligation to be "fair", despite the context of Primaries and political parties, which kind of suggests fair voting and representation.

Interesting.

Re:And, So What?

[sjames]

Then why was the primary here held at a public school using state owned voting machines?

Re:And, So What?

[Archangel Michael]

The nominating process for the party's nominee is defined by the Party. A Private entity.

FTFY

And is exactly why, I would LOVE to sue the states election boards for providing Taxpayer funds to nomination processes for private parties. Make the DNC and GOP fund their own damn nominating process. THEN they can run it any way they want.

Re:And, So What?

[slinches]

Because the two dominant parties successfully lobbied for government handouts.

Re:And, So What?

[sconeu]

And paid for with my tax dollars?

I am registered, but not as a D or R, but should I want to help choose the R candidate, I cannot, even though I'm paying for their private popularity contest.

Re:And, So What?

[ScentCone]

I am registered, but not as a D or R, but should I want to help choose the R candidate, I cannot, even though I'm paying for their private popularity contest.

Just like all of those Republicans are paying for your yours. Anybody who puts together a legitimately large enough group of people that want to select among themselves a candidate to put forth in a general election get to do the same thing. But it only annoys you if it's not your personal group, right?

Re:And, So What?

[ScentCone]

Of course, any group (not just the Ds and Rs) can avail themselves of the same public service, if they pass the (quite low, actually) threshold of showing they've put together a viable group that wants to run their prospective candidates through the primary process using state/county infrastructure.

Re:And, So What?

[ohnocitizen]

If we had multiple parties, publicly financed elections, and instant runoff, I'd agree. As it stand though - private organizations get way too much power to influence which of the two choices we are faced with in the Fall, and have far too much power downticket. In fact, the further downticket you go from state to local, the worse it gets. So when someone says "so what they are private", I say "Fuck that, if they are going to have that much power over who we even get to vote for they have aggressively given up the right to remain private". Or, level the playing field. Take your pick.

Re:And, So What?

[sconeu]

Personally, I don't think that *any* primary should use public funding...

Re:And, So What?

[Agripa]

When I worked election security for a couple years in southern California, they did not even *count* the third party votes. Precinct workers would take some ballot boxes home at night before delivering them to be counted. Is that the kind of public service third parties can avail themselves of?

Re:And, So What?

[jbmartin6]

There is the possibility of fraud however, if the party membership (as defined by the party) feels this took place they can take responsible parties to court. Also as private individuals. Sadly, the Big Two parties are practically government funded entities, which muddies the water a bit.

Re:And, So What?

[jeaton]

The elections are not run by volunteers here. I am the Judge of Elections for my district. I get paid by the county for that day, as do all of the other poll workers here. By my rough calculations, the county had to pay out about $2 for each person who voted in my district in the most recent primary election - 379 voters showed up (of 766 registered), and we have a total of 5 people who are each paid just over $100 for the day, plus one-half of a constable (shared with the adjacent district which votes in the same room).

This does not include the wages paid to the staff who configure the voting machines, deliver them to my polling place, collect and aggregate the results at the end of the night, among others. Nor does it include the costs of the printed books of registered voters, signage which we must post to inform voters of the law, and other supplies which must be generated for each election and discarded afterwards (because they are specific to the election - the set of eligible voters changes, the signage is unique to the election depending on what is on the ballot, etc).

This was even the highest turnout election I have run. An odd-year primary (which contains only local offices on the ballot) can have as few as 50 voters turn out, but the costs are essentially fixed, so the per-voter cost is significantly higher.

Since the elections in my state are closed, only registered Democrats and Republicans can vote on most issues. This one had two ballot initiatives, one of which was cancelled before the election (but after all of the machines were programmed and materials printed) and will re-appear on the November ballot, and the other which only affected another city 300 miles away (and even then, only de jure and not de facto, because the action in question was already taken, and the amendment is only to strike the law of something which no longer exists).

Running an election such as this costs literally millions of dollars across the state - one estimate I found put it over $25 million overall, which would put the cost per registered voter at about $3, and more like $6 per actual vote cast (given ~50% average turnout, which is fairly accurate for this primary election).

I don't see the problem..

[poptix]

The Republican Party and Democratic Party have all the same rights as the Liberatarian Party the Green Party and the American Nazi Party...

They're "private" parties who allow their registered members to cast a vote for their favorite candidate but ultimately the leaders in the party determine who has the best chance of winning and puts them forward as a presidential candidate.

The confusion here seems to be people thinking that political parties are government operated and that primaries are legitimate pre-voting or something.

People are ignorant, they get their "facts" from Facebook memes and yeah, kids have no idea what capitalism actually is or experience in the real world. You can poll the same kids and ask them "should everyone automatically receive $10,000/week in America" and they'd also say 'yes'.

Re: I don't see the problem..

[the_skywise]

No, he's not.

The system is fair to voters come the actual election time.

Private political parties hold primaries and caucuses to choose whom they're going to run as candidates. The primaries give the ILLUSION of voter participation but it's still a matter of voter suggestion. The party leadership has the final say on who runs.

If the voters don't like the candidates they're voting for or don't think they're getting a fair deal voters HAVE TO GET INVOLVED IN THE PARTIES OR START THEIR OWN to put the people they want onto the ballot come election time.

It's NOT rocket science. It IS work which seems to be anathema to Americans anymore.

Re:I don't see the problem..

[sjames]

The primary is on government property and uses government voting machines. The registration is handled by a government office and is governed by state laws. Gee, why might one conclude that it's a government operation?

Re:I don't see the problem..

[sjames]

If it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck...

Re:Maybe

[Attila Dimedici]

The Republican Party leaders did NOT want Cruz, they wanted Jeb Bush, or, failing to get Bush, they would have been happy with Marco Rubio. Personally, I think the Republican Party leaders are happier with Trump than they would be with Cruz.
On the other side, you are correct. The Democratic Party leaders wanted Clinton. Bernie was only in the race because they thought he would be a flop, but he would protect Hillary from a more electable left wing challenger. That did not work as planned, but the Dem voters will fall in line once the super delegates give Hillary the nomination.

Why the hell is this on Slashdot?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell is this submission on the front page of Slashdot, of all sites?!

I can understand political submissions if they're somehow, in some very small way, related to science, or technology, or math, or something relevant like that.

But this submission? It's about politics and nothing but politics. It isn't even about politics at any meaningful level. It's politics within the goddamn parties themselves!

There is absolutely nothing relevant about this submission at all.

Even the "stuff that matters" excuse doesn't work here. And don't waste your time with the "skip submissions you don't like", either.

Things were looking up after Dice sold the site. But since then I've been finding myself more and more disappointed. This submission is a great example. It's irrelevant, and it references the goddamn Huffington Post of all sources!

If I wanted to read shitty content like this, then I'd go visit the Huffington Post site directly! But I don't want to, and that's why I'm at Slashdot. I'm here for the science, tech, math and computing news that I can't find on other sites.

Please, editors, don't ignore the importance of Slashdot being a niche site! Trying to cater to a wider audience won't work, and will be the quickest way to destroy this site.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?!

[MalleusEBHC]

Science, tech, math, and computing are all greatly influenced by US government policies. (Okay, maybe math not as much.) If the manner of electing the most influential US politician is not stuff that matters, then what is?

Also, if you're implicitly playing the "how slashdot used to be" card, I love to break it to you: slashdot has always cared about and commented on US politics.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?!

[bugs2squash]

M$ had to turn Tay off, but Donald was doing so well they decided to leave it running.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?!

[suupaabaka]

I think I've said this multiple times, but Slashdot is less about the articles and more about the discussion. If you dislike the submissions, use the Firehose.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?!

[R3d M3rcury]

Science, tech, math, and computing are all greatly influenced by US government policies. (Okay, maybe math not as much.)

Pi is 3, dammit!

They believe... They don't think

[fustakrakich]

If they thought about it, they would do wild and crazy things, like petition for and vote for independent candidates. You don't need money to get on the ballot. You only need signatures and votes. If you speak up they cannot stop you. If you don't make the effort, then you will suffer destiny. 98% of the people who vote choose to follow the herd, but it's still a personal choice. No outside force was applied.

Hello ? Madison: remember him ? Federalist Papers

[Anonymous Coward]

Its the delegates, stupid. Why do you think Madison, Hamilton and Jefferson compromised with the "slave issue" ? Hint: to get the certain states to ratify the constitution. For the love of the baby jesus: it's OK for our European cousins to not understand..but, effin you be American, you really should know this.

Trump is the exact type of demagogue Madison had read so many times about; they screw up everything around themselves with their self-delusions and the delusions they inspire in their followrers.

It's the delegates, stupid...the people are too untrustworthy, to easily swayed by demagogues to elect the Prez in Nov; that's just for fun.

  it's the delegates, stupid...in Dec.

Got it ?

Re:Well, duh

[AuMatar]

Actually studies find that most people don't make significant changes in their politics from their youthful opinions. They may move on singular issues, but they don't go from liberal to conservative. What you do see is the definition of liberal and conservative changing to reflect the changed policies- someone who was a social liberal 30 years ago could now be called conservative even if he didn't change his opinion on a single issue, because the liberals have won most of the long term social issues.

Rigged by design...

[dark.nebulae]

It is rigged, but it is rigged by design.

The thought was that the populace at large could be swayed towards a charismatic yet evil candidate. The populace at large could elect the delegates, but the thought was that as "insiders" they would be less influenced by charm and would choose a candidate using reason instead of emotion.

You can make an argument that Trump or Bernie represent this sort of scenario, that voters are choosing them over other candidates for reasons of emotion, out of anger with current insiders or have fallen sway to the candidate's charm. The delegates, as experienced representatives, are supposed to be less influenced by charm and would use wisdom to back a different candidate.

So the delegates are meant to rescue us and the republic from the rise of extremists or demagogues.

While this is how it was designed to work, over time the concept has become corrupted by money, influence and power. It's hard to say whether any of the candidates or the public at large is getting more of the shaft over the system now.

Re:Rigged by design...

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is truly the design, then the exact opposite of its purpose could also happen: the populace may choose a reasonable, sensible candidate, while the delegates, influenced by greed, power, or whatnot, use their lack of wisdom to choose a less desirable (for the populace) candidate.

Re:Rigged by design...

[dark.nebulae]

The election of the delegates itself is supposed to prevent the en mass sell out of all of the delegates.

But, of course, this does assume an educated populace that knows who they're voting for, but that's a different /. story.

Re:Rigged by design...

[djinn6]

How does one vote for a particular delegate?

Re:Rigged by design...

[dark.nebulae]

Each state has it's own process, but basically by obfuscation.

For example, some states have a primary later followed by an actual delegate election that most folks either don't or can't attend.

Some states the primary includes the election of delegates, but it's mostly blind in that you get a list of names but no idea who they actually favor.

I'm not sure any of the states have a true and open delegate election process.

Re:The even more obvious flaw is the 2-p system

[sexconker]

I hope both Trump and Sanders run as independents against Hillary and whatever "fuck you, Trump" option the GOP decides to go with.

Re:Maybe

[NicBenjamin]

To the extent the media pushes anybody consistently, it pushes Trump. He gets eyeballs, therefore they give him as much free time as he asks for.

On the Democratic side they tend to be schizo because each time there's a lead change it's news and they can get eyeballs. Bernie's odds haven't really changed much at any point during the process, they've always been low (but not zero if he can win some big states by enough votes); yet if you were watching the media you'd have thought that he was winning at several points, and that Hillary had knocked him completely out at several other points; because that story gets more eyeballs then "Bernie wins Michigan by enough votes to tie at the convention if he hadn't blown it in Dixie" is not a particularly compelling news story.

Don't like it? Change it!

[Fallen Kell]

I mean it is just that simple. Of COURSE the system is rigged towards the "party insiders". IT IS THEIR PARTY! The Democrat and Republican party leaders have final say in how they want their party to work, and these "outsiders" are attempting to get the endorsement of respective party leaders to run on that party's name.

Of course the party leadership has setup rules to be able to influence who is and isn't able to be put forward as their candidate. If you don't like those rules, you have a choice to either get high enough up in the respective party to influence a change of the rules, or go start your own damn party and set your own rules.

Re:Don't like it? Change it!

[vux984]

Of course the party leadership has setup rules to be able to influence who is and isn't able to be put forward as their candidate. If you don't like those rules, you have a choice to either get high enough up in the respective party to influence a change of the rules, or go start your own damn party and set your own rules.

Exactly right.

The issue in the united states however, is that 'go start your own damn party' equates to 'go pound sand'. The US is a two party system and they are so well entrenched that its practically inconceivable to create a viable 3rd party. "That's something you see in Canada, it's not the American system".

The people think that their only option is to get one of the two existing established parties to do what they want. And pragmatically they are right. There are no viable 3rd parties in the USA. The entire concept, while theoretically sound, it lacks credibility and legitimacy.

Re:Don't like it? Change it!

[Kazoo the Clown]

The problem is, most Republican and Democrat voters vote their party every year, because-- they always have. It's part of their identity. It doesn't matter how bad their candidate is, it's essentially, "my party, right or wrong." It doesn't matter if they run Stalin or Hitler. Until you change THAT, third parties have no chance.

Re:Trump for President Stuff

[fyngyrz]

An African sticker, or a European sticker?

Re:Well, duh

[inode_buddha]

Really? When I began HS, Carter was prez. I was republican all the way up to Bush. I am here to tell you that the Millenials are actually correct here. The young ones aren't lying, they've been handed a shit sandwich, just like myself and may others who were dumb enough to believe the BS so many yrs ago.

Capitalism being fair? It was never designed to be. I spent the last 30 yrs working my ass off making others far richer than I'll ever be, and I'm still in the same tax bracket.... so yeah I'm pissed. And nowdays I'm Independent, because what goes around comes around.

BS

[s.petry]

The super delegates problem is a side effect of the same thing that has Clinton leading, which is that insiders chose their candidate years ago. Hillary is leading because the media, owned by that same insider group, plays her constant lip service and has for well over a year leading up to this election. Other owned politicians are similarly playing her lip service. There is little to no talk about the corruption in her public service, no talk about how she openly panders and lies to do so, and no talk about her political past as the first lady which would harm her campaign.

Early on, she won how many tie breakers by coin toss exactly? Winning because of votes my ass! She is winning because voters were given a horrible choice and even when they pick the "evil socialist" option they were revoked by this system you claim she is "winning".

Over 50% of the public thinks the system is rigged, the rest are either blind or have not looked into it. There is that .01% or so who know it's rigged and fight tooth and nail to keep it that way. They are happy to pay turds to claim "it's fair" despite how easy it is to prove that it's anything but "fair".

Re:BS

[phrostie]

so, no point in voting for Lessig?

Re:BS

[tnk1]

I don't claim she's winning. She *is* winning.

Mind you, I am not saying she's not corrupt. You might have me confused with someone who plans on voting for her in the next election. I'm not. If someone like Trump or Cruz wins, it just means that I find a nice third party candidate on Election Day, or I just skip it entirely. 2016 is literally taking every candidate that I said I'd never vote for and filling the ballot with them.

However, winning is winning. Unless someone changes the electoral system in the Democratic party, she's winning and probably will win. Yes, it is a game that doesn't have a 1:1 relation to voters or even fairness. That only means that the election is a game that happens to reward what she's doing.

People need to stop giving a shit about what is "fair" and start giving a shit about the actual game being played, because the game's rules aren't changed by complaining about them if you're unrepresented.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with the majority of what you've said, I must implore you *NOT* to skip election day 2016, no matter who ends up on the ballot.

If you don't want to vote for either option, that's fine. Don't. You can write in Koko the gorilla or vote for Voldemort for all I care. But cast a ballot. Even a blank ballot is better than skipping out.

Re:BS

[phantomfive]

Hillary is leading because the media, owned by that same insider group, plays her constant lip service and has for well over a year leading up to this election.

This is exactly why I cheer for the demise of traditional media.

Re:BS

[quantaman]

The super delegates problem is a side effect of the same thing that has Clinton leading, which is that insiders chose their candidate years ago. Hillary is leading because the media, owned by that same insider group, plays her constant lip service and has for well over a year leading up to this election. Other owned politicians are similarly playing her lip service. There is little to no talk about the corruption in her public service, no talk about how she openly panders and lies to do so, and no talk about her political past as the first lady which would harm her campaign.

Or the insiders just generally think she's the best candidate, even despite those supposed shortcomings. Whether you think they should be even that extra influence of being a superdelegate is another matter entirely.

Early on, she won how many tie breakers by coin toss exactly? Winning because of votes my ass!

Seven or something, an utterly inconsequential number over the course of the campaign.

And why are you even talking about it? Do you have some bizarre conspiracy theory whereby the party anticipated a perfect tie in those caucuses, and so gave all the chairs special trick coins just in case?

And even if so it doesn't change the fact she has also won a ton more votes.

Re:BS

[Darinbob]

If it's rigged, then it's rigged in the parties and only the party members who bother to show up at the party meetings should be complaining about it. Someone passively calling themselves a Democrat without being involved in the party really has no leg to stand on when they complain it's rigged. In some sense, the party primaries aren't even supposed to be "fair" to the public, they're only intended to be fair to the active members of the party (those who are involved in party business as opposed to those who just vote in primaries after having checked a box on a form).

Re:BS

[dave420]

So much conjecture. Are you also a Senior Conspiracy Theorist? Your arrogance is astounding.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

vote for Voldemort for all I care.

Why choose the lesser evil?

Cthulhu 2016!

Re:BS

[Cro Magnon]

The bad thing is, these days Cthulhu IS the lesser of the evils!

Re:BS

[lister king of smeg]

vote for Voldemort for all I care.

he said he didn't want to vote for trump

No, americans just don't care....

[jopsen]

Debbie Wasserman-Schulz said straight out the super delegates were put in place to ensure party insiders would win against grassroots candidates.

With only ~11% voter turnout in primaries it's because you don't care... A few super delegates, etc, makes no difference... Americans just don't care.

And as long as you care, nobody and I mean nobody can help you.

I live in San Francisco, and the homeless problem isn't unsolvable, it's just that Americans don't care about people dying on the streets.

Re:No, americans just don't care....

[jopsen]

Or is it that Americans work and elections and being an informed voter is hard work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Yeah, I'm sure they don't work in other countries, that must be it... I'm mean nobody works hard in India, that's why they have 66% voter turnout..

And in Denmark (where I'm from) people obviously don't work either, otherwise +80% of them wouldn't have time to vote.
I wonder how they keep financing those social services that ensures nobody has to work...

[/sarcasm]

I'm sorry to say this, but when only ~11% shows up for democratic primaries, then don't say you care... And don't come crying when President Trump accidentally nukes Alaska because Palin sucks at geography (he he, could almost happen).

Reframe this narrative please.

[BigU 03C0mpin]

This is not people "waking up". That might have applied during the hanging chad fiasco of the W/Gore election, but this is way beyond that.

What has actually happened is there's a demographic shift in the majority of the voting public. This is the last election where the Baby Boomers will hold any major sway in the election and it frightens the heck out of the establishment because they're about to lose control. The largest voting bloc going forward is going to be digital natives and early adoption digital immigrants.

These are people who didn't have limited resources that they could scour endlessly for rote memorization. Instead they have vast information access at their fingertips and have to filter through to find the truth. It's gone from "knowing a few things about something" to "being able to find anything". While those kids may come across as lazy and tuned out, they have the ability to run circles around the establishment for researching what's really going on. The speed at which information travels is still too much for the major political parties to fathom. They can't rely on smoke, mirrors and a complicit mass media anymore. They either have to change or get pushed out.

Sticking to the "Oh they're finally waking up?" narrative is just trying to frame it in the establishments favor. They aren't waking up, they woke up years ago, now they're pissed off because the party is overtly (Thanks for the admission, Wasserman-Schultz) screwing them over and they can actively see it. How many states had major issues during caucus events that led to voters feeling like they were intentionally hindered? How many now have lawsuits or were threatened with lawsuits based on this?

Kings only stay kings as long as the masses let them.

Re:Maybe

[tnk1]

Was there ever a more electable left wing challenger on the Democratic side? Left wingers, they certainly have. Electable ones? Eh. Sanders is actually the best they've got, and he's done well for himself. Considering that Sanders, despite being a socialist crank, has been in the Senate for years, I certainly don't consider him to have been the least electable candidate out there on the left fringe.

I'm sure that come next election the Millenials will either have turned the country Socialist or they will have gotten 10 years older and gone the way of the hippies. Sanders will have a better chance next election, if he hasn't retired or died by then.

Re:One word:

[Sowelu]

Checks and balances against mob rule. Lots of voters get their news from CNN and Fox and don't think too far beyond the current election cycle. A small number of politicians making decisions based on their own personal interests is a bad thing, but combine that with 51% of the general public doing the same, and one of them might be able to stop the other from doing something catastrophically stupid.

If you get enough of the popular vote on your side, superdelegates can't do anything to stop you, which is as it should be.

And the other half is wrong

[JoeyRox]

It's definitely rigged.

I guess that finally proves,

[frnic]

The other half are as stupid as a rock.

Re:I guess that finally proves,

[JoeDuncan]

THIS^^

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere around 99% of voters support whatever candidates that the two biggest parties decide to put forth. Maybe about half of Americans think it's rigged, but nearly all Americans agree that the current situation is something they approve of and will reliably vote for. Ask anyone on voting day after they come out of the booth: rigged was good. Today's Bernie supporters are going to vote against Bernie on election day, if he doesn't win his party's nomination. Same for Cruz supporters.

If there's a complaint here (and I don't think there is; is anyone complaining?) it's about we the voters, not the system or parties. We love the system and parties and every two years, we renew our vows of lifelong support. All of this would disappear overnight if we all didn't make so much effort to prop it up. We Approve.

Disagree? I don't believe you, liar. But go ahead and tell me you voted against the two big parties' nominees. The stats say there weren't a significant number of you. You support the parties and you always will, because you're a weak coward without any political ideals. And I bet the day after election day, you'll lie again, and say you voted against them. Bullshit.

Re:Maybe

[erp_consultant]

Exactly right. The only person that the Establishment Republicans hate more than Cruz is Trump. But at least with Cruz they can control him because Cruz needs their money.

Jeb was their guy all along. He had all the money but proved to be one of the blandest candidates in recent memory. He couldn't get elected Cub Scout leader never mind presidential candidate. They probably flirted briefly with Dr. Ben Carson. After all, he's black and successful and conservative so that had potential. Until they found out that he actually had principles and wasn't going to be their puppet on a string so that immediately disqualified him from further consideration.

Next up - Rubio. Hispanic, good hair (hey it worked for Mitt Romney), malleable, more than willing to be a puppet on a string as long as it led to power. Perfect establishment candidate. Except that he stumbled with the "little hands" comment about Trump and those goofy boots.

Things are starting to look desperate for the Establishment Republicans. Kasich and Carly are non-starters. VP material at best. And even that is a stretch. So they hold their noses and go with Cruz. They hate his guts but the enemy of my enemy is my friend as the saying goes. Trump is uncontrollable. At this point he's basically in an all out war with the RNC. At least with Cruz they feel they can control him.

Sad that only half realize we're serfs

[WillAffleckUW]

And very sad the other 49 percent revel in their serfdom.

Wait.

Serfs had rights.

Americans don't.

Strike that.

Re:Sad that only half realize we're serfs

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a representative system not a direct democracy. The only problem is that we've combined a republic with centralized power in DC. That wasn't the original idea. The power was supposed to be local and patch-work like, not centralized. Liberarians (also traditional conservatives... NOT the Trump right) have it right, the central power and control is wrong.

Duverger's Law: hate the game, not the players

[PseudoThink]

Blaming the parties may be missing the root cause -- that our archaic plurality voting system eventually fosters a two-party system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The main problem is that understanding how voting is broken is tougher than coming to terms with climate change or unisex bathrooms. As long as people are content to get into shouting matches over their favorite political grapplers while ignoring that they are actually watching the equivalent of the WWF and not the Olympics, nothing will change.

Re:Duverger's Law: hate the game, not the players

[Archangel Michael]

Our Archiac Pluralistic Voting system includes having parties nominate their own candidates on the tax payer dime.If the PARTIES can't identify themselves on a ballot (no D or R or S or L after the name) then we can stop voting for Party's with planks we don't agree with.

I want people to be able to smoke weed and don't want our government to run massive debts. Which party represents me? Not the two main ones. And there are a shit ton of people like me, who don't give a shit about gay / straight people and just want government to leave us the hell alone! I mean I don't give a shit if Target wants pedophiles in the girls bathroom because they are too short sighted to see the actual problems with policies that are based on warm fuzzy feelings. Make a damn bathroom that can be used by anyone, and lets not give a shit about who is or isn't a boy/girl or whatever. We don't need government MANDATING our bathroom etiquette.

Re:Duverger's Law: hate the game, not the players

[Fire_Wraith]

You do realize that this is the case in some states already, and that it has done nothing to impede the parties? That some states don't even do voter registration by party?

That having the state pick up the tab for running a primary election wasn't added until 100 some years in, and it was meant as a check on the power of the parties by moving nominations from the purview of party bosses to the people? And in some cases they still just hold their own state conventions anyway, on their own dime. Several states on the Republican side did that this time.

No, it's more than just identification, or having state funded primaries. It's the fact that we have a winner take all, first past the post system, that grossly disadvantages anyone who isn't one of the top dogs. It's only gotten worse in the age of big money, because short of self-funding billionaires, you need money to run a campaign - and then you need to convince people that you're not just delivering the election to someone else, the way Republicans blame Perot for 1992, and the way Democrats blame Nader for 2000.

Re:Duverger's Law: hate the game, not the players

[khallow]

Well, for one thing, that's a major push button issue that shuts off the brains of a lot of voters.

Re:Duverger's Law: hate the game, not the players

[AthanasiusKircher]

Duverger's Law is frequently misunderstood. It says there is a tendency toward two-party systems in plurality voting. However, there is no guarantee that those two parties will always be the same, nor that they will remain stable in their platforms. Strong movements outside the system can therefore move the major parties politically or in a severe shift even replace a major party.

Do I blame the Republicans or Democrats and their leaderships for being dominant parties? No. But they have gone far beyond the natural tendencies in Duverger's Law: they have recently sought to exclude alternative movements that threaten them by increasingly undemocratic means. The Republicans really raised the bars after Perot's movements in 1992 and 1996. The Dems did it too after their narrative of blaming Nader for Gore's weak candidacy in 2000. These parties have sought to exclude other choices by increasing thresholds to get on ballots (usually signatures, but also other requirements), increasing thresholds for other parties to be involves in debates, etc.

There are lots of other subtle ways the major parties have entrenched their monopoly in the past few decades. And THAT is something they should be blamed for. Just like you don't begrudge a business for becoming a monopoly if it sells a good product, but when it starts trying to drive other superior products out of business through unfair business practices, you should note the behavior is unjust. Dems and Reps deserve to be called out for trying to build in ways to suppress current and future challenges to their duopoly.

Re:Duverger's Law: hate the game, not the players

[bondsbw]

If the general election were switched to a better election system (several are better than plurality/first-past-the-post), I wouldn't care how the parties pick their candidates. They would need to pick an electable candidate if they want to have relevance in November; open primaries that mirror the general election system would probably stand the best chance.

Re:Duverger's Law: hate the game, not the players

[Prien715]

Our Archiac Pluralistic Voting system includes having parties nominate their own candidates on the tax payer dime
 
...but if we agree that plurality voting becomes two party because of science, does it not follow then, that party members become the government, and therefore their elections should probably be run in some fair way independent of the party's elite?

Those in power tend to stay in power. We have term limits for a reason, but Super Delegates don't.

Re:Duverger's Law: hate the game, not the players

[John.Banister]

I just want government to leave us the hell alone, so long as "us" are groups of 10 or fewer people. Big corporate entities that keep people employed full time for PR don't get the same automatic hands-off treatment.

Also, as previously mentioned, in any big overhaul of how voting is done, that winner-takes-all bullshit has to stop.

Re:Duverger's Law: hate the game, not the players

[jandersen]

Blaming the parties may be missing the root cause -- that our archaic plurality voting system eventually fosters a two-party system.

There may be something in that - perhaps a system more like some of the Europeans would be better? Apart from UK, most European democracies have a much more proportinal voting system. The American and British systems are a relic from a time when it was genuinely hard to count votes and get the results to the capital in a timely manner, but that isn't a concern now, so proportional voting is certainly practical. It also makes the parliament more politically diverse, which means that politicians will have to learn to compromise - a valuable skill, which may help get past deadlocks; they would be more agile, and importantly, things would happens a bit slower: things would move more smoothly, but not as fast. An important function of democracy is the slow down power.

As for the president - do you actually need one? Many European countries don't have a president with real power - France is the exception, as far as I recall. You could get yourselves a king - why not? We have had a brilliant time in UK with her Majesty, and I say that as a rabid socialist myself. Largely because she is not politically powerful and therefore works as a strong symbol of national unity. People can love and admire the Queen, while at the same time ranting against the politicians.

Re:Duverger's Law: hate the game, not the players

[pnutjam]

I mean I don't give a shit if Target wants pedophiles in the girls bathroom because they are too short sighted to see the actual problems with policies that are based on warm fuzzy feelings.

This heavily loaded statement seems to indicate you do care, just not as much as you care about other stuff that you want.
Troubling to those of us who desire true personal freedom and equality.

Re:Duverger's Law: hate the game, not the players

[rpstrong]

I want people to be able to smoke weed and don't want our government to run massive debts. Which party represents me? Not the two main ones.

No, not the two main ones, but perhaps the Libertarians? Take a minute or so to take The World's Smallest Political Quiz (10 agree/don't care/disagree questions - 5 on economic liberty, 5 on personal freedom.

Re: Duverger's Law: hate the game, not the players

[jc42]

(Cynics would say the wars further benefit the corporations.)

Cynics and accountants. ;-)

Re:Duverger's Law: hate the game, not the players

[eric_harris_76]

There was a time when it was possible for the people to create new political parties, when they found no party supported their interests or causes, or found existing parties incompetent or corrupt. That time ended when the Progressive Era election "reforms" lead to government-printed ballots with government-approved candidates from government-approved and -micromanaged political parties.

Voter engagement as a consequence declined, subjectively and objectively. Quantitative measures like election competitiveness and voter turnout declined to current levels within a few decades.

Had there been those election "reforms" in place in the 1840s and '50s, the Free Soil Party and the Republican Party could not have been formed. The Whigs would not have been replaced by an anti-slavery party.

Details about those "reforms" and their consequences are in Mark L Kornbluh's book, _Why America Stopped Voting_. (Also, some quaint charming examples of what engaged voters would do to support their parties. Picnics. Barbecues. Flagpole-raising competitions.) http://www.worldcat.org/search...

The "party bosses" were a problem, true. In some places. For a time. A bigger problem than having the statutory duopoly parties we have today, shielded from competition from upstarts created by the people, and the government created by those duopolists?

Seems highly unlikely to me.

This, this, 100% this

[Pollux]

You're exactly right on the button. Political parties are private institutions, and they can make whatever rules they want. Super-delegates, uncommitted delegates, state-by-state rules ... hell, they can throw darts at a dartboard or draw names out of a hat for all I care. They make the rules for their party, and they have every right to do so.

Only a minority of states even had a primary prior to 1972. It was the mess of a 1968 Democratic Convention and nomination of Hubert Humphrey after not having won a single state primary that pushed both parties for nationalization of the state primary process. But, just because it's a national process doesn't mean it needs to be a democratic one. Major news networks are so starving for every iota of election coverage that they make primaries sound like elections. They're not; nothing in the Constitution mandates or even mentions them. The only thing citizens should be concerned about is the limits the reigning political parties have put in place making it near-impossible for any other individual or party to participate in the presidential election.

We just need to stop these polls. We're asking Americans who just don't understand the political process what they think about it. Their answers are going to be misguided, and we shouldn't consider the poll results any more valid than asking Pacific Islanders what ice is best for making an igloo.

Re:The even more obvious flaw is the 2-p system

[tomhath]

A multi-party system is far more prone to secret deals and gridlock. As soon as a party needs to form a coalition to win, everyone who voted for them is disenfranchised by the deal that's cut.

Americans aren't helping, either

[kheldan]

For a country that ostensibly is 'government by the people, for the people', the 'people' don't seem to give a damn. If 100% of eligible voters bothered to go vote, I think it'd be a very different situation.

Re:Americans aren't helping, either

[Anonymous Coward]

If 100% of eligible voters bothered to go vote,

What good would that be? They'd vote for the lizards anyway.

Re:Americans aren't helping, either

[kheldan]

Less representation is better than more

Oh shut the fuck up, troll.

Re:Americans aren't helping, either

[kheldan]

The system is broken so let's just give up!

Better learn to speak Mandarin, or Russian, or something other than English, then, because we won't have an America to ourselves for long with an attitude like that.

As it should be

[Chelloveck]

It is rigged, and it should be. Political parties are not part of the government. They're private entities. They can nominate whoever they want. I don't care how they do it, whether they poll their members or read tarot cards or have some secret shadowy figure choose from in the back of a smoke-filled room. Parties should choose their candidates in pretty much any way except via primaries. At least, any way except taxpayer-paid primaries. If the parties want to foot the bill for the time and effort expended to poll the general public, more power to them.

The appalling part isn't how the candidates are chosen by the parties. It's how the electoral system is rigged to keep the two big parties in power. The whole thing is set up to encourage an Us-versus-Them attitude. If anyone votes for a candidate without a (D) or (R) after their name they're just "throwing their vote away". There's no way in hell that any third-party presidential candidate is going to get a majority or even a plurality of votes.

That's the part that needs to be fixed. Switch to an instant run-off system or something else that encourages votes for who people really want to lead, rather than just encouraging votes against the worst guy. Change parties to an advisory system, where instead of running a candidate every party endorses one (or more) candidates. And get rid of the fscking (D) and (R) after the candidates' names, like their sole job is to represent the party's interest. We're not voting a party into the presidency, we're voting an individual in there. Let's minimize the party influence, or we're going to continue to be governed by unelected party officials who are pulling the candidates' strings.

Re:As it should be

[phantomfive]

If anyone votes for a candidate without a (D) or (R) after their name they're just "throwing their vote away"

The way I look at it, if anyone is voting for a candidate with a (D) or (R) after their name, they're throwing their vote away.

Re:As it should be

[C0R1D4N]

While I agree with everything you said, the third parties in our country go about things the wrong way. They consistently run candidates for President and Governor, but never run for congress, senate or state legislatures. They need to build up the brand a bit if they want to be accepted by the voters.

Re:As it should be

[StormReaver]

If anyone votes for a candidate without a (D) or (R) after their name they're just "throwing their vote away".

This is one of the major mindset problems that needs to be fixed. The meme should be, "If you vote for a candidate with a (D) or (R) next to their name, you're throwing your vote away."

Re:As it should be

[Kazoo the Clown]

That may be, but Nader proved that a third party vote is not a wasted vote-- it does in fact, affect the outcome of the election. Whether you like the effect or not, there's no doubt there is one with the right candidate.

Look deeper, real root cause: single choice voting

[kiatoa]

Switch to approval (aka "multi-choice" voting) and the need for tweaks that mitigate burial and vote splitting issues go away. I think most if not all the crazy stuff that you see in primaries evolved from various moronic attempts to fix plurality.

Plurality always slowly degenerates into dysfunction. Try it with a bunch of friends. Use single choice to decide where to go for dinner. It might work once or twice but most of the time it will not yield the "winner" that makes the most people happy. Then switch to approval (which actually most people would intuitively use anyway). The result might not be perfect but it won't be pathologically wrong most of the time.

By the by, IRV is *worse* than single choice. This is one of those cases where intuition leads you astray. Also don't waste our time with range voting. Burial is a major source of voting dysfunction and a 0-1 range (approval) is far less vulnerable to burial than a 0-10 range (for example).

First past the post is bad here...

[countach44]

The main problem is that first past the post voting supports this two-party situation as a stable equilibrium through tactical voting, etc...

Political parties, as others have pointed out, are private entities (and therefore can nominate candidates however they please). The problem is that the US government is virtually guaranteed to be controlled by one of those two private entities and it is in neither parties' best interest to fix that problem.

Uh... if you're a Republican/Democrat...

[theendlessnow]

If you're running as a party outsider, run as a independent or new party.

It's like saying you want to Apple's new CEO, but only if you make the whole company run Windows. My guess is that you won't get very far. It would be a stretch to say "rigged".

Re:Maybe

[93 Escort Wagon]

They probably flirted briefly with Dr. Ben Carson. After all, he's black and successful and conservative so that had potential. Until they found out that he actually had principles and wasn't going to be their puppet on a string so that immediately disqualified him from further consideration.

Finding out he was basically insane might've played into that as well.

Re:Maybe

[Attila Dimedici]

You are correct that Trump cannot be controlled by the Republican Establishment, but why would they need to control him? He wants what they want and always has. Trump is not at war with the RNC, except in as much as he wants into the club which you normally have to spend years cultivating to become a member.

Lack of Parliamentary Proc. Knowledge

[Etcetera]

At one point, common law parliamentary procedure... the basics for how deliberative assemblies, organizations, and basically any other sort of self-organizing collection of people of a Britannic heritage work was widely known. We also had basic civics, so people knew about things like federalism.

Nowadays, we don't have a great grasp of either. Anyone who thinks the system is "rigged" simply doesn't understand how the process works. First of all, it's a Republic, not a Democracy. Secondly, a political party -- or any other type of organization -- is free to write its own rules for how it conducts business, who's a voting member, or anything else. The DNC has "superdelegates;" the RNC doesn't. If you think superdelegates are a bad thing, maybe you should have your delegates say something. If you think superdelagates are awesome, maybe you should ask your delegates to add them in.

Quit complaining; start making motions. Start running for office. Start attending county meetings for your political party. (News flash: That's what the Tea Partiers did, and that's how they began to get more control over the GOP party apparatus in 2009-2010.)

Poorly educated dislike Capitalism

[mi]

Just the other day, a poll was conducted by Harvard University showing a majority of young people do not support capitalism. Are the times they are a changin' or are people starting to wake up?

"Wake up"? Fall asleep is more like it. If only 37% of highschool seniors are prepared for college Math and Reading, why should their ignorance of Socialism's 100 years of failure be taken as anything other than a similar lapse of their educators?

Re:Maybe

[erp_consultant]

They need to control Trump in order to further the establishment agenda. I disagree that Trump is not at war with the RNC. He and Priebus have been going at it ever since there was talk of a contested convention.

Re:Maybe

[erp_consultant]

I think what doomed Carson was his poor understanding of foreign policy. I don't remember which debate it was but the topic came up and Carson didn't seem well prepared. The other thing is that he is soft spoken and never really was able to rise above the noise.

I'm not a Carson supporter but I do admire him in many ways. Coming from a very poor background and a broken home to become a world renowned neurosurgeon is no small feat. To me he's more of a role model than a politician.

Re:Maybe

[ScentCone]

To the extent the media pushes anybody consistently, it pushes Trump

Sure, if by "pushing" you mean "ridiculing," "complaining about," and the like. Most of the media spends all of their Trump-related coverage on saying how much they hate him. And they spend more or less NONE of their time examining Sanders' pie-in-sky low-information support base or Clinton's nearly-delusional-in-their-willingness-to-ignore-her-lies-and-phoniness support base.

Re:Maybe

[Attila Dimedici]

They do not need to control Trump to further the establishment agenda...Trump has the same agenda. The only reason the establishment would prefer someone they can control is so that they can be in the driver's seat, but they will happily settle for Trump.

Millenials?

[tgrigsby]

And the other half just aren't paying attention.

I'll settle for a parliment

[rsilvergun]

our entire Republic system of gov't was designed from the get go to protect wealthy land and property owns. This is BAU, functioning as designed.

Re:Maybe

[NicBenjamin]

What do you think Trump wants from the media? His entire political persona is based on being the Big Important Guy whose fighting the elites for you.

It's a neat bit of political jujitsu. If the media is complaining about him that just proves he's who he says he is, and you should vote for him if that's what you want in a President. If the media is supporting him then he's obviously gonna be a great president. Every second he's on TV is good for him.

The difference between this run and the 2008 run is that he managed to be the center of attention longer, and the rest of the party never coalesced around an alternative.

System is only rigged when Trump doesn't win.

[jlgreer1]

Trump is a spoiled brat bully that only complains when he doesn't win. He has a larger number of delegates by percentage than percentage of votes due to the all or nothing states. He didn't complain about the system in those states. What a buffoon.

Re:It's openly rigged.

[meerling]

I find it hard to believe that around half the country isn't aware it's a rigged situation. Heck, we were taught about it in highschool in the 80s and it was obvious to us kids then!

Re:Maybe

[khallow]

No, what doomed Carson was that he lied about a full scholarship to West Point. There are a lot of former military who hate people claiming fake military experience and achievements. Similarly, there are a lot of people who worked hard in college who hate people claiming fake academic credentials and achievements. Carlson got both groups in one swing.

Really?

[s.petry]

If a healthy 18 adult plays football scoring 140 points against an 8 year old autistic child who scored 0, did they "win" the game? Winning requires a competition, and I'll add a somewhat "fair" competition. You know, that thing that is completely absent in the Democratic primary system right? I think you mean something other than "winning", maybe check out a dictionary.

Re:Really?

[SirSlud]

For your comparison to hold up, Bernie would be the 8 year old autistic child who scored 0 in this scenario?

Re:Really?

[s.petry]

Is may analogy incorrect somehow?

Re:Really?

[Sique]

If this is a game where you decide who should be playing in the league football team, then it has the desired result: It has been shown that it's clever to nominate an 18 years old adult instead of an 8 years old autistic child. Yes, the 8 years old autistic child doesn't have a chance, but if I want the league football team to score sometimes in the season, I want that 18 years old adult in the team.

There is only one solution

[markdavis]

http://fairvote.org/

Only half???

[acoustix]

I figured it would be more. But seriously, the system isn't rigged. It's that nobody has bothered to look how each party decides its nominee. After all, most people in this country probably think that we directly elect our President. We don't. We never have. We're not a true democracy and never have been.

The dangerous part is that there are people who think all of our elections should be direct elections decided by popular vote. They fail to realize why each state has their own process and why the electoral college was put into place. We are a union of states.

Runoff elections, not primaries

[swb]

The presidential election needs runoff elections, not primaries.

Runoff election 1 should allow anyone who can raise a million signatures to be on the ballot nationally. This would require enough time and organization to keep out the joke candidates and the true crackpots, but still allow for niche candidates or underdogs to get onto the ballot if they can demonstrate some legwork.

Runoff election 2 should be made up of the top 10 vote getters in runoff 1. That's enough to still give minor candidates exposure, but will all but assure crackpots don't make the cut.

Both runoff elections should be open and party-independent. You can label yourself by an actual party or none at all.

The top 4 candidates from runoff 2 should be on the final ballot in November and the winner decided by ranked choice voting. No party dependencies. If the top 4 end up being 3 Democrats and 1 Republican, so be it, the three Democrats are offering enough unique value to the electorate that they don't feel the need to dump all but one.

The existing system sucks because of the ridiculous state by state nature of ballots. I fine with devolved government, but devolving the method of electing a common president is lunacy, and it makes it extraordinarily hard for a third party to get much traction.

This results in third parties being dismissed as ineffective and forces independent minded candidates like Trump or Sanders to identify with a major party and be subject to rules and a party establishment that has other ideas. I get it, parties are private, but you face impossible odds if you're not a major party candidate, which gives ridiculous power to two parties to control who's even available as an option.

The process of selecting who ends up on the final ballot should be wide open. Democrats or Republicans or Libertarians or National Socialists can have whatever process they want for their own internal candidate choice, but it should not be a determinant for who is actually available to be voted for by the public.

Institutions should protect themselves

[readin]

I remember as a kid attending a business meeting at our church (which was independent - that is it was owned by the members not by some external organization). When a person professed their faith and were baptized they generally became a member of the church. I was surprised then when during the business meeting they voted on whether to admit some recently baptized person as a member. Wasn't their a conversion a matter between them and God? Yes it was, but my dad explained that they weren't voting on whether the person was a Christian, they were voting on whether the person would have the same control over the budget and church building as the people who were already members. I understood. What if, for example, a large biker gang decided they wanted a meeting hall so they all joined the church and voted to turn it into a clubhouse? That wouldn't be fair to all the people who had donated to build the church.

A political party has similar concerns. The Republican Party has assets. It has salaried employees. It has a recognized brand. These have been built up over 150 years by donations of money and time from people who believe in ideals like freedom and rule-of-law.

What Donald Trump is doing is using the rules to perform a hostile take-over and use the assets, brand name, and employees to accomplish goals that are the opposite of what most of the people who built the party believed in (of course it is arguable that Mitch McConnell has been doing the same thing). The party has a right to defend itself and that's why the rules have built-in protections. Let's hope they are enough.

Duh....

[Livius]

What on Earth do the other half think? Of course it's rigged - they're completely open about it. Superdelegates aren't a secret.

The machine is comprehensive

[EmperorOfCanada]

What many people don't realize is that the party machine is much bigger than a single election or politician. Politicians come and go for the most part, but the machine is there today, tomorrow, and for a long time to come.

This has huge implications for those preparing to fight the machine. For instance if some small town guy puts up a Feel the Bern sign, the local democratic HOA or alderman will come knocking and put a bit of pressure on that person even if they agree with them and like the person in question. The reason they will do this is because the machine remembers who supports and who hurts them. So while they might be able to directly get to the guy who puts up the sign they can get to the people who can shut him down. They will deny the alderman support in the next election. Even the HOA president would be in trouble if the local state legislator showed up at a HOA election BBQ for the opponent this year instead of them.

This doesn't only apply to elections and election support. The airport might have been funded by a party senator, jobs at that airport, contracts at that airport, etc are very much handed out to party loyalists. So maybe the company that has the fuel contract is the employer of the guy with the sign. A little reminder as to who is in charge of their future will have them talk to the guy with the sign.

But this isn't a huge well organized conspiracy. Each level knows what is expected of it and just acts. Thus there are no wiretaps that will expose this, no paper trails to follow.

The crazy part is that both machines are active regardless of who is in power, or even who is the default party in that neck of the woods. If you take a state like Connecticut which will never go all republican, you still have a republican party machine that demands loyalty.

Where it gets even weirder is that they are like a cult hunting apostates. When the machine sees someone supporting the other party, that is from their view a healthy part of democracy. He won't get any contracts while they are in power, but they aren't overly vindictive. It is when their own don't support the candidate picked in a smokey back room. Those disloyal Mofos need to be taught some respect.

This is one of the reasons Millennials are the ones supporting Sanders, they aren't typically part of the machine and getting their livelihood from the machine. But if you are 60 and own a solid pillar-of-the-community business, then you don't dare turn your back on your superiors.

Not my fault! Not my fault!

[aglider]

Those politicians sound like my Italian ones.
It's never their fault, it's someone else's.Always!
And a lot of people believe them! 50% is an approximation of the average amount of votes the losing candidate will get.
They'd try to look the situation the other way around.
Why are the winners so strongly tied to the respective parties?
The other answer is because the parties tighten the relationships with those candidates with larger appreciation.
Sorry, I forgot! We are talking about politicians: they don't have mind honesty! Any honesty!

Of course they are rigged.

[WindBourne]

Both major Parties are controlled by the wealthy. Want it to stop? Then we need election reform as is pushed by Lawrence lessig.

Why would anyone expect anything else?

[nedlohs]

Surely a party can support whomever they choose? Why wouldn't they pick someone "with close ties to their parties"?

Do people also think they should have a say in whom the Green party supports for President?

Same reason as the Harvard poll

[sabbede]

Ignorance.

Re:Well, duh

[djinn6]

Do you have sources for those studies? And how does it pan out for non-social issues?

Re:Well, duh

[AuMatar]

Here's one. It basically says that opinions set in the late teens/early 20s, and that voter generations tend to vote together. Feelings for the president when you turned 18 matter more than age. People disliked nixon, so people in that generation vote democratic. People liked FDR, so they do as well. People liked Eisenhower, so that group votes R.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

Make parties pay for primaries

[MoarSauce123]

The first change that has to come is for parties to organize and pay the primary elections on their own. They will still be allowed to rent schools or other public buildings as polling places outside of school hours, but otherwise are to get zero support, financially or otherwise, by public entities unless they request and pay for it. Or do we really want to waste tax money on charades like the current Republican primaries? All other democracies have their parties fund the process for finding their front runner and candidates. Once determined by the parties, the candidates get a set amount of money to campaign, but cannot use their own money, the party's money, or have representation through PACs/SuperPACs. Final elections will be fully funded by the governments as it always has been, but election day is better moved to some time in May and on a Saturday or Sunday rather than in the middle of the week in November where weather is craptastic in most places in the US. This will effectively reduce the money spent/wasted on campaigning and at least for the most part takes special interest funding out of the picture. It also will give equal opportunity for all candidates that qualify for the final election. Currently, Reps and Dems get all the benefits while other parties are left out entirely. What the US direly needs is an end of the two party system which is only marginally better than a one party system found in China or North Korea. This black/white, with us or against us think needs to go.