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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?
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.
Debbie Wasserman-Schulz said straight out the super delegates were put in place to ensure party insiders would win against grassroots candidates.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
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.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
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.
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.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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.
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.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
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".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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.
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.
The other half are as stupid as a rock.
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.
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.
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.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
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.
#DeleteChrome
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.