Facebook To Show Users Which Russian Propaganda They Followed (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Facebook will show people which Russian propaganda pages or accounts they've followed and liked on the social network, responding to a request from Congress to address manipulation and meddling during the 2016 presidential election. The tool will appear by the end of the year in Facebook's online support center, the company said in a blog post Wednesday. It will answer the user question, "How can I see if I've liked or followed a Facebook page or Instagram account created by the Internet Research Agency?" That's the Russian firm that created thousands of incendiary posts from fake accounts posing as U.S. citizens. People will see a list of the accounts they followed, if any, from January 2015 through August 2017. Facebook will only be showing people the names of the pages and accounts, not the content. A user will only see what they liked or followed, so if they simply saw IRA content in their news feeds, they won't be notified.

Comments

An unpopular opinion

[grasshoppa]

If these pages really did influence the election, maybe we're just not ready for democracy ( democratically elected republic...whatever ).

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we need a better criteria for voting eligibility than a pulse.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[PopeRatzo]

If these pages really did influence the election, maybe we're just not ready for democracy

Or, it could mean that we're ready for an actual democracy, not a pretend one where votes in certain states count for more than votes in others.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[grasshoppa]

Actually, I'm a fan of the electoral college. At least, I understand what it's benefits are. I'd be interested to see straight popular vote, but my suspicion is that everyone would end up hating it.

Re: An unpopular opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

We need a page listing every fake news or article

The one meme I've seen was Jesus vs the devil and the artwork was just way off by u.s. standards. Jesus looked all wrong and so did the devil. The artwork did not look like u.s artwork.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Bamfarooni]

What about the electoral college do you like? I don't see any redeeming features.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[AmiMoJo]

The more serious problem is that you have a two party system. Democracy works best when no single party can gain overall control and every government has to be a coalition.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Penguinisto]

Dunno about GP, but I like the fact that big, heavily-populated states (California, New York, Texas) don't get to set the agenda for the rest of us. Unlike Congress (specifically the Senate, with two Senators per state), the Electoral College is the only thing that allows smaller states to get a voice in the Executive branch of government.

Remove the Electoral College, and you have a situation where candidates only need pander to a small handful of states, and could literally tell all the other states to go piss up a rope without fear of losing. It would also heavily slant the Executive branch's agenda towards the concerns, demands and desires of the megacities, but screw over everyone living outside of them.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[mark-t]

The biggest problem with what you are describing is when you have parties with differing agendas, requiring a coalition often means that it takkes much more time (and money) to get anything done.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Penguinisto]

Should also add one other thing: The Electoral College makes it harder to commit voter fraud, since you'd have to commit it in a larger number of areas... without it, one only need to rig the vote in a few areas, and have a greater chance of stealing the overall vote.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[iMadeGhostzilla]

I understand you don't like Trump but would you really honestly prefer that Clinton had won? With all her inability to see reality which resulted in her gross miscalculation in key states, with blaming everyone else from Putin to Obama, with her power grabbing the DNC so she could steer it toward her Precious presidency, with her not distancing herself from her top donor Weinstein for days (Trump has no such problem because he didn't run on the platform of social justice), and on and on and on?

Re:An unpopular opinion

[hsthompson69]

Yeah, but what if you don't want government to get things done, and just want them to get (or stay) out of the way?

Gridlock is a feature, not a bug.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Khyber]

"Dunno about GP, but I like the fact that big, heavily-populated states (California, New York, Texas) don't get to set the agenda for the rest of us"

Actually, they have more electoral votes, so they still get to set the agenda for everyone else. Bigger populations means bigger representation.

So the EC is entirely unfair.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're basically saying is that empty land area matters more than what the majority of actual people want.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Bamfarooni]

Actually, the electoral college is exactly like Congress. Each state gets 1 vote for each member of Congress. So I'm not sure I follow your argument that's somehow different.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[ganjadude]

mainly it doesnt allow the coastal elites control of the country. my state of NY is a perfect example of why the electoral college is better than a straight vote. NYC covers an area of what, 30 square miles? if that?? Yet due to its population density, it has control over the entire state, eventhough the entire state minus NYC does not want anything to do with the policies that come through due to the influence of NYC

now imagine the entire country being run by NYC and a few other big cities. No thanks

Re:An unpopular opinion

[PopeRatzo]

I understand you don't like Trump but would you really honestly prefer that Clinton had won?

I would prefer if the will of the people had been done.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[ganjadude]

or maybe we could limit the power of the federal government and stop expanding it so that way the states have more power than the fed, as intended

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. According the NY Times: “Modern presidential campaigns ignore almost all states, large and small alike, in favor of a handful that are closely divided between Republicans and Democrats.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/opinion/elections-electoral-college-voting.html

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

"Empty land" is what feeds the majority of America. Not fucking over farmers is in the best interest of y'all city folk,

Re:An unpopular opinion

[ganjadude]

so there are no poor people in the big cities??? I swear pope the things you say sound more insane everytime i read them

Re:An unpopular opinion

[PopeRatzo]

"Empty land" is where the vast majority of your food comes from.

The vast majority of my food comes from California, within a few hundred miles of where I'm sitting now.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[sconeu]

I like the fact that big, heavily-populated states (California, New York, Texas) don't get to set the agenda for the rest of us

So instead a few "battleground" states (PA, OH, FL) get to set the agenda for the rest of us.

I don't see the difference.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Hognoxious]

Coalitions are shit. Look at Italy and Belgium.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[DogDude]

Humans aren't ready for the Internet. That's the big problem.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Narcocide]

The part where his vote counts 25:1 against Californians' votes.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[AmiMoJo]

Non-coalitions are shit. Look at the US and UK.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[pots]

the Electoral College is the only thing that allows smaller states to get a voice in the Executive branch of government

First: of course they would still have a voice, it just wouldn't be as loud. Instead, it would be proportional to the number of voters in those states.

Second, and more to the point: why do you think states should have any say at all in who gets elected president? This is an odd argument - the whole point of democracy is that voters, people, get to decide who leads them. Not states. And by-and-large we adhere to the one-man-one-vote principle, remember that whole "all men are created equal" business? ... except when it comes to the electoral college.

"All men are are created equal... provided that they live in the same state. People who live in populous states can go fuck themselves."

Of course, most of this is blowing smoke anyway. The real consequence of the electoral college is that few people get any say at all in who gets elected president, whether they live in a big state or a small one. Only people who live in the swing states actually matter.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[PopeRatzo]

Because of insufferable cunts like you, pissing their pants with excitement over being able to stick it to anybody who doesn't agree with you.

People in Alabama support pedophiles. Why should I want them to set any agenda for anyone anywhere?

Re:An unpopular opinion

[FFOMelchior]

A bit late so, this is probably going to be get buried. Oh well. My problem with the EC isn't the slightly skewed representation. I understand that and can absolutely live with it. I hate the winner-takes-all nature. If every X state gets 75% of the X vote, and every Y state gets 75% of the Y vote, the EC has one outcome. If every X state gets 51% of the X vote, and every Y state gets 99% of the Y vote, the EC has.. the exact same outcome? What madness is that? Logistically, this solution was the only feasible once in the 1700s. But we've progressed way past that now.

Allowing proportional delegation within a state's EC (which Maine and Nebraska have implemented) makes the EC more representative of the country as a whole, while still allowing for small states to have their EC advantages. Also, it would help eliminate swing states. Notice how neither R nor D visit neither California nor Texas? The might have more of a reason to if winning 51% or 60% of a state made a difference. But nah... apparently we're OK with just letting Ohio and Florida be the kingmakers every 4 years.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had the "will of the people" there would be no president. The majority didn't vote at all, so the winner of the popular vote by a vast margin was "None".

Of those who voted, many voted for a candidate they didn't like because they slightly didn't like them less than the other option.

Hell, even among those willing to vote 3rd party this cycle, there weren't really any good options there either!

The will of the people was subverted by buying out the DNC. Bernie had people turning out, Hillary had camera angles that made her shitshows look less bad. Democrats traditionally win when people are showing up to the polls, Hillary can't get people to show up when offering punch and pie. Then her temper tantrum (literal and figurative) since she's lost has done little more than turn people who are on the fence away from the DNC. Blaming anyone and everyone other than herself, and even when she talks about her failures they're in the context of how everyone else was wrong. It's not self reflection when you say your failure was underestimating sexism/Russia/anti-identity politics/etc.

Almost ANYBODY could have beat Donald Trump this election EXCEPT for Hillary "Total Fucking Waste of Air" Clinton. It was practically a give away! Trump had Romney numbers! HRC couldn't get people excited enough to go vote and Dem numbers were abysmal! They could have chosen; Creepy Uncle Joe Biden, Bernie "Give Shit Away Free Somehow" Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Donna Brazile. Any of them could have won this election because they weren't Hillary Clinton or someone like her.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Hognoxious]

Remove the Electoral College, and you have a situation where candidates only need pander to a small handful of states

Have a straight popular vote and candidates will need to appeal to voters everywhere.

Or keep the EC but allocate them pro rata[1] instead of all-or-nothing and you remove the incentive to ignore the ones that are either no-hopers or in the pocket.

[1] I think a few of the smaller states do this already.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I could have told you people are far too stupid to live in a democracy.

If Facebook wanted to do something useful, they'd create a set of flag icons and tag every post with IP country of origin.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

. Unlike Congress (specifically the Senate, with two Senators per state), the Electoral College is the only thing that allows smaller states to get a voice in the Executive branch of government.

True. But if the small states abuse this power and create policies specifically targeting big states, like double taxation of state taxes, we need to curb the excess. So national popular vote compact would get more support. It is in the best interest of the small states not to overplay their hand.

Further states that get only one House Rep still get more that what they deserve. Thus small states have too much power in all the three bodies.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Marxist Hacker 42]

https://www.fox.com/watch/4e9ac96523b454de771f95a4f775facb

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Bamfarooni]

Well, for starters, I used this website (https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/allocation.html), which explicitly states:

"Every state is allocated a number of votes equal to the number of senators and representatives in its U.S. Congressional delegation—two votes for its senators in the U.S. Senate plus a number of votes equal to the number of its members in the U. S. House of Representatives."

However, since the number of house representatives per state is determined by the census, I can see how you might get confused.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[PopeRatzo]

so there are no poor people in the big cities??? I swear pope the things you say sound more insane everytime i read them

There are, but not to the extent of the red states. Here is a list of the 100 poorest counties in the United States. Not one of them is anywhere near what you would call a "big city".

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

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Bamfarooni]

You mean like NYC having the lowest violent crime rate of any major city in the US? (https://www.amny.com/opinion/homicide-rate-still-at-historic-lows-in-new-york-1.11210870). Yeah, that'd be horrible if they managed to do that everywhere.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[farble1670]

I don't see any redeeming features.

It gives less populated states a say in a system that would otherwise make them irrelevant. Not a lot of a say, but some. States like Montana and Alaska are valuable resources for the United States and I'd like to keep them.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Archangel Michael]

We weren't talking about EC until Trump beat Hillary by campaigning in states she thought were a lock, but the deep data mining showed the Trump Campaign it wasn't and they actually campaigned there. States that Obama won handily and have been D for several other election cycles.

Additionally, they are looking at data based on people voting in the EC as if they weren't going to vote in the EC, but in Popular Election. How many California Republicans didn't vote because, well its California and a lost cause of tax and spend liberals from San Diego to Yreka. It is like saying "we should score baseball by how many people got on base, not how many actually scored. The game would be played entirely differently under different scoring rules.

The EC argument is one that also very pointless, short of a constitutional Amendment or Convention of the states.

The EC is how we elect presidents. You can want to change it, and good luck with that.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[0100010001010011]

don't get to set the agenda for the rest of us.

Then the way to do that is to stop the power they're using to do that, not to decide who to gets that power.

The United States should operate, IMHO, closer to the EU. Then NY and CA can set their agendas and where you live can set your own agenda.

There are some days I wish the Confederacy won. If for no reason than the confederate states would be a separate nation and the rest of us could move on. Maybe we'd have policies and social agendas closer to Canada or the Nordic states than the Middle East.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[fredrated]

Problem is, one feature of the electoral college was to prevent a monster from taking office if elected by the population. In the last election the electoral college elected the monster. Kill the electoral college.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Archangel Michael]

Governments are shit, look at US, UK, Italy, Belgium ..... need I go on?

Re:An unpopular opinion

[0100010001010011]

Why is the rest of the state tying itself to NYC? For thousands of years people have decided they were tired of being run by a party in another area and went off to do their own thing.

Lets have a big election where we all vote on our ideals and redraw lines around those? Here are a bunch of maps redrawn by equal size: www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/10/if_every_u_s_state_had_the_same_population_what_would_the_map_of_america.html

Group them by what how they think their area should be run and then you never have to be run by NYC again and they never have to deal with your politics again. Everyone wins.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[farble1670]

The Founding Fathers understood the tyranny of the majority. Do you think anything that 51% agree with is ALWAYS a good idea to be enforced by the full power of the law?

Maybe you ought to give a specific example of what atrocities are being forced on you by the full extent of the law. Taxes? Not being allowed to marry your sister?

Re:An unpopular opinion

[novakyu]

Or maybe a simple test. You know, some basic facts and civic knowledge that any knowledgeable voter should demonstrate.

P.S. And of course, since we should not take away rights people already have, we will have to let anyone who has already voted continue to vote, regardless of their test result. Let's call it "grandfathering," like being grandfathering in your old unlimited AT&T plan when AT&T discontinues them.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[HornWumpus]

Confused implies trying to understand. GP is just repeating derp.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[meglon]

A better way to go would simply be to bar anyone over 50 from voting, period. People above that age have already fucked up things, and at that age senility, dementia, or just worthless whininess sets in and they should be considered useless for governing a nation. Dito on being elected...anyone over 50 shouldn't be allowed to run for any elected office.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they have more electoral votes, so they still get to set the agenda for everyone else. Bigger populations means bigger representation.

So the EC is entirely unfair.

Except that even holding the theory behind the EC to be correct, the large states are underrepresented because of the cap on the House of Representatives. California should have at least twice as many reps as it does to hold approximate parity with the representation Wyoming citizens get, and that's *just* California, not even having done the math for how many more Texas or New York need. The rural fundies are overrepresented even in the chamber that is supposed to represent the population.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[meglon]

And, if that was the way it was intended, you'd have a point... but it wasn't. The Constitution empowered the federal government over the states specifically because the Confederacy of States (where the states were more powerful than the fed) was a spectacular failure... so spectacular of a failure that it took them less than 7 years to realized they needed something exactly the opposite.

Your post isn't insightful, it's simply repeating the lies of people who hate the UNITED States or America.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[i286NiNJA]

What you've described now is already what's happening. Except instead of pandering to population centers they're pandering to the isolated inhabitants of regions without the economy to support a large population. My life and opinion shouldn't be worth less because of where I live.

Subverting democracy aside I shouldn't have to put up with the hairbrained ideas of places managed so badly that nobody wants to live there, decided by desperate people who lack to common sense to leave when their job dies.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[PopeRatzo]

I'm even willing to bet that the food you get is grown by someone with drastically different opinions on how the country should be run.

When you say "grown by", do you mean the people who own the farms or the people who actually do the work?

Re:An unpopular opinion

[knorthern knight]

> Or maybe a simple test. You know, some basic facts and civic
> knowledge that any knowledgeable voter should demonstrate.

Been tried already. The SJWs won't like it http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...

Re:An unpopular opinion

[i286NiNJA]

And without big government wealth redistribution farm subsidies!!!
I wouldn't die even if I was spending $100 a day on food!!! Why am I wasting my money to help their farms so poor people don't starve!!

A good starve is what we really need to end the welfare state!

Re:An unpopular opinion

[i286NiNJA]

My food isn't sentient and I'm so rich I wouldn't starve anyhow. Maybe the country should be listening to my ideas and not the ideas of people who claim they have to pay a bunch of illegal immigrants less than minimum wage in order to run a successful business that I depend on for living.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[I'm New Around Here]

The US has over 300 million people in it. Less than 140 million voted. Doesn't sound like a majority to me.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[farble1670]

it would be proportional to the number of voters in those states.

Um, it is, for the most part.
https://www.archives.gov/feder...

The only issue would be that each state gets +2 regardless of their size. So very small states like Wyoming get more than double the number of votes they'd get otherwise based on population (but still a vastly smaller number than large states).

I can't believe no one has even mentioned this, but I recall the controversy being the "winner takes all" aspect of the EC. That allows situations where a candidate can "win" handily w/ the popular vote, but lose the EC because of a close loss in a few key states. Which is exactly what happened in 2016.

If EC votes were distributed equally between candidates based on win %, then it'd be closer to a majority wins situation (setting aside the +2 mentioned above).

For example, suppose you had 3 states: S1, S2, and S3 with 15, 10, and 10 EC votes respectively, and a population of 1500, 1000, and 1000 respectively. You have candidates C1 and C2. C1 received 1000 popular votes in S1, 499 in S2 and 499 in S3. Candidate C2 received 500, 501, and 501, respectively.

Candidate 1 received 1998 popular votes. Candidate 2 received 1502 popular votes.
Candidate 1 won S1 and received all 15 EC votes. Candidate 2 won S2 and S3, and received 10 EC votes for each for a total of 20.

Candidate 2 wins, despite taking a large loss in the popular vote.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[mutantSushi]

Except this argument falls apart when one recognizes the result of EC has overwhelmingly been the exact same as 1:1 popular vote. If the latter is so horrible, the EC fails at delivering a result distinguishable from it. The EC is based on Congressional representation which in total is heavily skewed to population proportion, equal Senators and minimum Representatives aside. So the EC isn't really a significant divergence from the population metric, which of course is consistent with it's results largely conforming to direct 1:1 popular vote. If one wants to apply disproportional influence to low population states, one can do so by formal vote weighting, no EC needed. The people attracted to "EC helps small/rural states" would probably be unimpressed by the marginal effective weighting boost the EC actually achieves. You have to ask yourself, if you are promoting the EC as divergent from population proportion, why don't you actually bring up the numerical discrepancy? Why don't you even know the actual discrepancy? Commenters here have only mentioned the factors which contribute to that (equal # of Senators, minimum # of Representatives) without mentioning what that ultimately equates to in terms of "vote weighting". (hint: the actual vote weighting has varied in time, without any formal changes to EC system, making defense of that formal system on basis of vague invocation of weighting results vs high population states an utter joke) But regardless of the effective weighting boost, the primary effect is NOT related to "small/rural state" distribution at all, and it does NOT boost the power of all voters in any state. It is simply another "first past the post" type of distortion. Because it's well known that many states are simply not in contention at all, meaning the vote of those whose vote isn't needed to support winning candidate is wasted. (that includes backers of losing candidates AND un-needed supermajorities for winning candidate) Those who tout EC as "against the coastal megacities" ignore that it is MORE against non-majority positions in their own small, rural states AND against non-majority positions in coastal megacities etc, and ultimately even also against potential supporters of the majority in states with supermajority norms who don't really matter even if they don't notice that. It's literally trivial to implement some rural/small-state population/vote weighting that DOESN'T have those distortions, that allows every voter wherever they live to have a say in the ultimate result. If rural/small-state favoritism is desirable, then it doesn't matter if each voter is counted with different weight. Right now, many voters have ZERO weight. And finally, rather than attempt to use dubious incoherent medieval system to achieve 'regional representation' at executive level, why not just empower the Senate to restrict the Presidency more? That IS the most effective nexus of non-democratic regional representation, yet it hasn't enforced it's maximal constitutional powers vs Presidency but has let them slide away in favor of executive priviledge theories etc. Fully by consent of "small/rural state" Senators and unchallenged by populace in those states.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[iMadeGhostzilla]

There are different ways of knowing the will of the people. Popular vote by a simple majority is one, electoral college is another, there are countless others. Giving vote only to 18+ citizens is yet another, that overlaps with the others. The Constitution chooses one particular way. How can you be certain that a different way of interpreting that voice of the people would be better for the country?

Re:An unpopular opinion

[ravenshrike]

Well, as soon as the tax bill goes through and repeals SALT, that might just happen.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Hognoxious]

Do you think anything that 51% agree with is ALWAYS a good idea to be enforced by the full power of the law?

Do you believe that when it's 49%?

The EC system does nothing to rein in the power of the majority; it just changes how the majority is decided.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[squiggleslash]

As long as anyone who isn't allowed to vote is given immunity from taxes and doesn't have to obey any laws, I think your suggestion is fine.

(I don't think your suggestion is fine. I don't think you either understand the point of a democracy,. nor understand the concept of representative rule. Which, ironically perhaps, means you'd probably be barred from voting should your own test become law and fairly and logically administered.)

Re:An unpopular opinion

[naubol]

Dunno about GP, but I like the fact that big, heavily-populated states (California, New York, Texas) don't get to set the agenda for the rest of us.

Yes, Tyranny of the Minority is fun when you're the minority.

Remove the Electoral College, and you have a situation where candidates only need pander to a small handful of states...

You mean they'd have to pander to a majority of the people, who are worth less than you are worth because you dislike their politics.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[naubol]

"Empty land" is what feeds the majority of America. Not fucking over farmers is in the best interest of y'all city folk,

City folk didn't purposefully elect a prick to screw with their political opposition. City folk don't want to screw over farmers. Nor is it in the farmer's best interests to screw over city folk, cuz we do things like eliminate polio, invent dwarf wheat, bring down the cost of manufactured goods, and raise the quality of life. We have also made it possible for the US to have the world's best military, because everyone has brave muscular men, but few have an unlocked GPS system.

We're all Americans and our votes should count equally.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[pots]

Um, it is, for the most part. ... I can't believe no one has even mentioned this

We have been mentioning it, we have been talking about both things. That is what this discussion is about. When the parent above said that, "the Electoral College is the only thing that allows smaller states to get a voice in the Executive branch of government," what he really meant was that it gives disproportionate weight to people who live in less populated states. And not by a small amount, as you suggest - someone living in Wyoming or Washington DC gets effectively three times as many votes as the average American.

The "winner takes all" aspect is what I was talking about above, where I said that it is a democratic principle that people elect who leads them, not states. It is because the electoral college allows states to vote rather than counting the votes of individual people that this is an issue at all.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[naubol]

No, they wouldn't, because the urban dwellers in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Alaska, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, and on and on, add up to a whole helluva lot of people and they'd equally have the vote. Good lord, did they teach you how to count?

The EC doesn't just screw over California and New York, it screws over any dense urban population of every red state who will never get a say in who becomes president, and every lonely blue person in the bogs and bayous who keeps his or her mouth shut. There are more blues than reds and there are many many blues all over the US who do not get a meaningful vote.

If we manage to flip TX, the center will move radically towards the urban population and then the EC will be wedging the deep reds out of having any say anywhere in whose president. It's a pretty arcane, shitty system. We could use an update. Although, the senate will always be heavily prejudiced towards the Wyomings, the Dakotas, and the Rhode Islands.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[meglon]

What the fuck part of the ENTIRE rest of the Constitution and Bill of Rights is not clear? Read some history; preferably the history of how this country was founded. This is a nice, simple read that lays it out quite nicely: http://classroom.synonym.com/p...

After all, who should people believe... you, or the people that actually founded this country? They lives through the worthless fucking bullshit that was the Confederacy of States for 6 years, then realized it was completely fucked and they needed a strong central government. THAT is history... that bullshit you're peddling is, well, just that... bullshit. I seriously have to wonder how it is you people that hate the Constitution seem to think you're somehow "patriots."

Re:An unpopular opinion

[PopeRatzo]

The Constitution chooses one particular way. How can you be certain that a different way of interpreting that voice of the people would be better for the country?

The last two Republican presidents both became president after losing the popular vote. At some point, it calls into question the "consent of the governed".

Further, more Americans voted for Democratic candidates for Congress than Republicans. Yet, Congress is controlled by Republicans. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, electoral college. Do you see a pattern emerging? And now the person President Trump has appointed to head the census (which governs the distribution of congressional and electoral seats) a man who is a committed believer in voter "caging" and gerrymandering, "for the good of the country".

We've reached a point where the institutions established in the Constitution have been perverted to a degree making them impossible to recognize as elements of a free and just society. Elections no longer matter. The will of the people no longer matters. It is a Potemkin democracy.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Gussington]

Dunno about GP, but I like the fact that big, heavily-populated states (California, New York, Texas) don't get to set the agenda for the rest of us. Unlike Congress (specifically the Senate, with two Senators per state), the Electoral College is the only thing that allows smaller states to get a voice in the Executive branch of government.

Being non-American, what I don't get is why the USA, which clearly has quite diverse opinions about things, is still a single entity?
If we take the emotion out of it, it would seem that splitting into 3 or 4 'super states' would solve a lot of the current political issues.

There must be an optimum size for country to function most effectively, and the US is making quite clear that 320M+ is too big. 4 smaller nations of 80M people each with a common defence pact would probably work a whole lot better.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Gussington]

now imagine the entire country being run by NYC and a few other big cities. No thanks

And rightly so. The needs of the city differs from the needs of the country so why try to cover them with one political entity?
With mass migration to cities over the decades I think we're at a point we should revert to city states.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

If only Russia was an actual communist country. It is "cryptocommunism", in reality it is becoming a petrochemical oligarchy with a gigantic bureaucracy. I'm not sure just what type of system would describe it currently.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

If the Confederacy had won, the CSA wouldn't exist. It would have balkanized along state lines since one of the major principals was the state's right to succession. Some would have eventually come back into the Union. The others might have declared war on each other over the borders that had been drawn up originally by the Union.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[meglon]

The link says pretty much what i boiled down into a few words. I guess i should apologize though.... i'm sorry... that you can't read. I'm also sorry you don't have a basic high school education.

So lets be clear... while the only thing you seem to think is of any importance in the Constitution or Bill of Rights is the 10th Amendment, you seem to have missed the part in the Constitution where the powers of the legislative branch are enumerated. Lets take a slight review:

Section 8
1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;....

.... and we'll skip ahead a little cause i'd hate to have you get bored at those things you're uncomfortable with... like reading, or learning....

18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Of course, if the 10th is the ONLY thing you worship, you might get miffed when the feds come in and tell the state that BECAUSE WE HAVE A CONSTITUTION, those rights OF THE PEOPLE they're trying to trample on are actually the RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE. "States rights" dipshits simply want to have the power to corrupt locally... to use tyranny of the majority to subjugate the rights of the people... and those "states rights" dipshits hate hen they're told they can't be petty little bitch tyrants.

You can't read what i link, which says the same thing i said, you then lie about that, and you have to resort to whining about me calling you out for being a lying sack of shit because it hurt your little feelings. Tell you what, get a basic high school education (US History is often taught at 9th grade), then come back and we'll talk... but right now, you're basically an idiot trying to talk about something you apparently know nothing about. Your intentional ignorance, which is stupidity incarnate, and lack of willingness to live in reality should be ridiculed, mocked, and derided because you are literally part of the problem in this country. Stupidity is NEVER useful.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Zontar The Mindless]

Something something VPNs mutter mutter...

Re:An unpopular opinion

[najajomo]

@grasshoppa: "If these pages really did influence the election, maybe we're just not ready for democracy ( democratically elected republic...whatever )."

Yea, we're asked to believe a few Facebook posts influenced the US Presidential election. As against the entire US media promoting Hillary Clinton and yet the electorate voted in Trump. Maybe the US electorate aren't the credulous sheeple Faux and friends take them for.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Cinnamon Beige]

Remove the Electoral College, and you have a situation where candidates only need pander to a small handful of states

Have a straight popular vote and candidates will need to appeal to voters everywhere.

Or keep the EC but allocate them pro rata[1] instead of all-or-nothing and you remove the incentive to ignore the ones that are either no-hopers or in the pocket.

[1] I think a few of the smaller states do this already.

Two states do, and I think that the second choice manages to strike the correct balance--a straight popular vote apparently was considered but rejected (I know a couple history nerds I could ask if I had a few hours to kill) and carries a significant risk that candidates will toss the small(er) groups under the bus to get the large(r) groups' votes.

Assigning the votes pro rata would force a broad-based popularity--and if you're still bothered by the votes of people in densely-populated areas 'counting less,' start encouraging people to spread out more. High population density isn't good overall, and the benefits it used to bring are steadily less and less requiring that crowding...

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Cinnamon Beige]

You mean like NYC having the lowest violent crime rate of any major city in the US? (https://www.amny.com/opinion/homicide-rate-still-at-historic-lows-in-new-york-1.11210870). Yeah, that'd be horrible if they managed to do that everywhere.

I know enough about how homicide rates get determined to not trust any official count. I remember sitting there with somebody trying to figure out how the hell her hometown managed an official homicide rate of one when she was the person who found one of the other bodies. Well, part of it, anyway. Apparently in her hometown, suicides are capable of dismembering themselves and scattering their body parts.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[serviscope_minor]

Actually, they have more electoral votes, so they still get to set the agenda for everyone else.

Bigger populations means bigger representation. So the EC is entirely unfair.

So you mean, that the closer it approximates one person/one vote the more unfair it is?

Basically you're saying if people live slightly closer together they deserve less representation.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[AmiMoJo]

Anarchy/libertarianism is shit, look at Somalia.

As the old saying goes, coalition based democracy the worst way to organize a country, after all the other ways.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Kiuas]

Remove the Electoral College, and you have a situation where candidates only need pander to a small handful of states

And yet, the Electoral College only makes this problem worse. The EC allows the presidency to be decided on a minority vote, meaning that really, candidates only already have to pander to a small subset of states, the swing-states. Trump moneyballed the entire election and won despite getting some 3 million less votes.

I'm not american, but if you ask me this if anything is a system designed to increase the efficiency of pandering, and means that the people living in the swing states have undue and uneven power over the whole process.

It would also heavily slant the Executive branch's agenda towards the concerns, demands and desires of the megacities

As opposed to the current situation where the agenda is tilted to favor the Trump-base in the swing states instead of the majority of americans?

I find it rather unfathomable how people can still support the EC system after it was basically the main driver that allowed Trump to win the election despite not being the most voted candidate. There's a reason most western countries have long since ditched these archaic systems, you know, and it's precisely because they skew the democratic will of the people.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[bluegutang]

NYC covers an area of what, 30 square miles? if that?? Yet due to its population density, it has control over the entire state,

Really? It looks like the opposite to me. The NYC subway is falling apart, yet the NY state governor recently forced the subway system to pay millions of dollars to bail out ski resorts in upstate NY.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[AmiMoJo]

The ancient Greeks came to a similar conclusion. People will always vote in their own self-interest rather than the greater good, and are often too uninterested or simply ignorant to even know what their own self-interest is. They advocated a ruling class of scholars instead.

A better option is a system that creates coalition governments. By spreading power around and taking more of the electorate's wishes into account, you end up with better decisions that help the majority rather than the few, and less political bullshit because every politician knows they might have to work with the opposition if they ever want to see power.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[mjwx]

mainly it doesnt allow the coastal elites control of the country. my state of NY is a perfect example of why the electoral college is better than a straight vote. NYC covers an area of what, 30 square miles? if that?? Yet due to its population density, it has control over the entire state, eventhough the entire state minus NYC does not want anything to do with the policies that come through due to the influence of NYC

now imagine the entire country being run by NYC and a few other big cities. No thanks

Compared to a few country bumpkins dictating things to the millions who live in those few cities?

This is why we, in the Westminster system have electorates, each electorate gets one member who votes. the Boroughs in NYC get no more power than the boroughs in Pheonix. The electoral collage in the US is essentially undemocratic as they can vote however they want. It would be tollerable if they voted for the good of the nation like the UK's house of lords, but they dont even do that.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[houghi]

So you like it that smaller states set the agenda for the big, heavily-populated states. Because it goes both ways.

Having or removing the Electoral College will not solve the issues that are there now. It just moves them from Rep-Dem to City-Country
What you need to do is first remove the "first past the post" as that will remove the Bi-party system and all the problems it has.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[HornWumpus]

You get lunatic fringe parties gaining power because they are the 2% that put a coalition into power.

Then the mainstream parties see what nonsense their coalition is getting behind and the government collapses. Rinse repeat.

Re: An unpopular opinion

[Reverend Green]

There are no farmers left, only agribusiness.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[skam240]

You just named 4 countries that half the world would desperately love to get into to live. But yeah, their governments are terrible. Right.....

Re:An unpopular opinion

[iMadeGhostzilla]

The last two Republican presidents both became president after losing the popular vote. At some point, it calls into question the "consent of the governed".

It is a fair point. But take for example a voter in Maine who voted for Clinton or Gore. Can we really assume that he would prefer presidents being chosen by popular vote and his state losing the sway it may have? If not then you again have only the big Democratic states -- who otherwise enjoy many benefits from being in the union -- being discontent, and in fact only the Democratic voters there.

I agree that gerrymandering and vote suppression are a problem -- which still need to be balanced against voter fraud, and there are counter examples such as the institution of the President being used to give advantage to the Democratic candidate in 2016, or that the mainstream press, though private, suppressed the views of the opposition thus working against the principles of democracy -- but to go from there to saying that will of the people does not matter sounds like a great leap to me.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Yes, VPNs can make a difference. They can also make your IP look like it is on the moon from the amount of time they add to your ping test.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Genetic fallacy anybody? Use of the Genetic Fallacy also proves you are too stupid for democracy

Re:An unpopular opinion

[farble1670]

No links. No facts. No data.

Like 99% of ACs here you're here to troll. Claim a bunch of shocking things with nothing to back it up. Try to get people pissed off. Shameful.

No one is listening anymore to this.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[werepants]

This might have made sense in the earlier days of the nation, but increasingly, the political divides that exist aren't between regions or states, but between the urban and rural areas within states. Rural Californians share political views with rural Texans more than they do with urban Californians. So the geography is unworkable for splitting the nation up - if you really tried to do it on a political basis you would end up with urban, democratic "island nations" surrounded by sparsely populated rural, republican areas.

Re:An unpopular opinion

[Gussington]

if you really tried to do it on a political basis you would end up with urban, democratic "island nations" surrounded by sparsely populated rural, republican areas.

And?
I'm not seeing how this is a bad thing?

this shouldn't be a one time thing

[Anonymous Coward]

More transparency is a good thing.
If Facebook wants their platform to be taken seriously as a place for discussion they need to start doing this will all the organizations that try to use it for the purpose of spreading propaganda. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

Re:this shouldn't be a one time thing

[rtb61]

It will kind of look really, really stupid if the propaganda turns out to be true, you know, like it ain't propaganda when it's true but it most certainly is propaganda when it is a lie. So you kind of have to prove it a lie and the other story the truth and that is going to be a lot harder to do and of course you can bet Russian media will have a field day, when the US get's caught trying to call the truth propaganda and lies the accepted US government and corporate state truth.

The one thing missing in over a year is examples of false stories put out by RT ie the story, the lie and the claimed truth with evidence of the truth. They claim well, no numbers you, but the bull shit brigade with the massive yarn and going to have to put up at least 100 false stories or perhaps even just ten, so far to date, not even one pointing at https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rt&t....

When it comes to click bait from all over the world there are of course thousands upon thousands of examples and most of them from main stream media.

Re:this shouldn't be a one time thing

[bug_hunter]

Propaganda isn't the same things as "lie".

Nearly all of the adverts were subjective in their very nature or an appeal to the readers opinions. See https://www.theverge.com/2017/... for some examples.
And even if they were about objective facts, if a foreign power secretly spent a lot of money to endorse one candidate in my country's elections I'd still be worried.

Re: this shouldn't be a one time thing

[Reverend Green]

There's no requirement whatsoever that propaganda be false. In fact I quite suspect that true propaganda is much more effective.

Re:Unsealed Fusion GPS Bank Records Reveal $523K

[BrookHarty]

Why did you leave out the DNC paid for that report or Natlia got her entry into the US approved by Obama administration.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/d...

American Patriot Mom?

[known_coward_69]

Along with Nation in Distress? anytime something happens my Trump friends always share crap from these pages which just happen to have anonymous whois records along with their stupid names

Re:American Patriot Mom?

[known_coward_69]

it did come out that BLM was funded by russians. wouldn't surprise me if the young turks was a russian page

Re: American Patriot Mom?

[Reverend Green]

I wish. But alas, probably not true. Remember they teach BLM-style racism as "fact" in many California public schools. Probably elsewhere as well.

I have no Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

But still voted for Trump. Strange that.

Re:I have no Facebook

[mean pun]

You never heard rumours that came from Facebook either?

Re:I have no Facebook

[DogDude]

I bet you did, Comrade.

Re:I have no Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you have no one to blame but yourself.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Ummm ::)

[wolfheart111]

"That's the Russian firm that created thousands of incendiary posts from fake accounts posing as U.S. citizens" This shit is stupid Oh you mean they spent $77 on tweetattackpro and went to town... ::) http://www.tweetattackspro.com... or the hundred other clones of tweet attack...

O tempora! O mores!

[Mike Van Pelt]

And, the more things change...

Interesting how "the usual suspects" openly scoffed at accusations of Russian propaganda when the purported Russian propaganda was in support of their causes.

Back then, the Russian propaganda was mostly along political lines, supporting whoever was most sympathetic to Communism. Now, Russia being nationalist and not Communist these days, and not so much pushing an ideological line, their propaganda is more like "How much can we screw them up?" So when the Left's ox gets mauled by the Russian bear... Suddenly, what was an object of derision ("The '80s called, they want their foreign policy back") becomes A Clear And Present Danger.

I wonder what could screw us up more than Trump in the White House... And the left says "Hold my joint."

Re:O tempora! O mores!

[HornWumpus]

Russia is weak and lame now, you are right about that. But they can still put together PR.

It mostly comes off as comical outside Russia, but they still put it out. 99% intended for credulous Ruskys.

Re:O tempora! O mores!

[phantomfive]

All things considered, the biggest surprise of the current federal government (including congress with the president) is how little they've actually been able to accomplish.

Re:O tempora! O mores!

[loonycyborg]

No, it sounds credulous only to USians. That's the whole problem. It doesn't work in Russia itself as locals have enough brains to not to buy it. Apparently so they decided to target US instead.

Re:O tempora! O mores!

[HornWumpus]

History of the 20th century shows Ruskys to be among the most gullible, propaganda susceptible people on the planet. They, as a group, bought into Marxism and now support a leader who stole _billions_* from them!

* Thousand million: Billion, Trillion. Pick your unit. Pick your currency as well. Works lots of ways.

Re: O tempora! O mores!

[Reverend Green]

I miss the Soviet Union. America's rivalry with the Soviets kept us free. Shortly after the end of the Soviet Union came the end of freedom in America.

Dear Russians (there are many of you here today, I'm certain): please consider reviving Communism. America needs you! Also, the red hammer & sickle flags looked super cool.

Re:O tempora! O mores!

[loonycyborg]

Marx was equally popular everywhere in Europe in his time. He's just an economic scientist that has done his part. And results of his work are adopted equally everywhere now. Communism and capitalism are just fanatical ideologies based on fixation on particular parts of economic science. Both communism and capitalism are obsolete in XXI century because their fanatical variants failed to gain power and moderate variants are implemented pretty much everywhere.

Re:Unsealed Fusion GPS Bank Records Reveal $523K

[pots]

Because... the fact that she came into the US while Obama was president is a completely trivial piece of information. And... the first thing you said was relevant, though misleading - Fusion GPS is a research firm which was originally hired to look into Trump by a GOP client during the Republican primary, and then by the DNC during the general election. So that report was paid for partially by the DNC and partially by an unspecified Republican client. If you read the article at the link you posted it spells this out.

why only russian propaganda?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is facebook now the thought police? why are they only targeting Russian propaganda? why cant they show me when i have liked or followed ANY propaganda?

Oh wait, its because they have their own political agenda.... The board should be sacked along with all C suite executives at they no longer are interested in maximizing returns for their shareholders. They have instead opted to use their influence to try and sway popular opinion, its a bold strategy but not one that will maximize returns as it is based on the personal beliefs of people instead of a rational analysis of the market direction. That and they should know that to pick a side in any battle is strategically risky as it may not be the side that wins in the long term.

Re: why only russian propaganda?

[Anonymous Coward]

More like literaly laws specifically against other countries buying ads about our elections. You really don't know that? SAD!

Re:why only russian propaganda?

[phantomfive]

why cant they show me when i have liked or followed ANY propaganda?

They do.....it's called "the list of pages I liked." Those pages weren't created to make you feel good.

Re: why only russian propaganda?

[LynnwoodRooster]

It is legal for foreign nationals to buy political ads in the US. They cannot endorse a candidate or party, but can buy and show issue ads. Taking a position one way or another on an issue. That is 100% legal. Endorse a candidate or party. That is illegal.

What is illegal is taking funds from a foreign national, for use in your political campaign, something that Hillary is quite familiar with.

Elections

[Tenebrousedge]

The EC is fine. The biggest problem is that we need more viable parties, and with First Past the Post that's just not going to happen. This massive partisan divide that we have is completely artificial. This country mostly agrees on things, except for a few specific issues. However, running on an "everything's fine" campaign doesn't get anyone elected, so we campaign on wedge issues.

I've heard it said that America required an existential external threat in order to function properly, that an overarching national crisis was required to elevate all of us above our partisan bickering. It's suggestive at least that the Hastert Rule was adopted after the breakup of the Soviet Union. However, today we have nothing left but wedge issues and team politics.

This is a mathematical weakness of our democracy, that we can only accommodate two political stripes at a time. There are actually more distinct points of view out there, which are not enjoying separate representation. From what I've read, there are at least six "real" parties in this country.There are assuredly dangers of multi-party systems, but it's apparently all-too-easy for one powerful individual to hijack a political party for their own ends: both major candidates did so last election, in different ways.

The right solution here is to use some other voting method: IRV, range voting, approval voting, whatever. It doesn't require changing the Constitution or the Electoral College, but it does require teaching math concepts to the U.S. electorate and convincing the courts that this doesn't violate "one man, one vote".

Re:Elections

[Archangel Michael]

I would suggest to you, that the party ballot and primaries are the actual problem with our system.

My immediate fix, which would not require any Constitutional Amendments would be as follows

1) No Partisan Markings on the ballot
2) No partisan elections using public funding.

If the parties wish to sponsor a candidate, they can fund their own elections and elect their own candidates without ANY support from our government. The primaries would be completely open, and having no party markings on the ballot. If we reduce partisanship in elections, then perhaps we can actually vote on substance.

I can dream.

Re:Elections

[Kernel Kurtz]

convincing the courts that this doesn't violate "one man, one vote".

The EC is not "one man, one vote" to begin with.....

Re:Elections

[Tenebrousedge]

In short the USA should switch to a parliamentary system, and turn the presidency into a figure head, like our king.

No.

Re:Elections

[LynnwoodRooster]

No, the President does not hold the ultimate power. The President cannot create new laws. The President cannot allocate spending. The President can attempt to deny Congress a new law, but Congress can override the President. And Congress can impeach the President - the President cannot remove a member of Congress. Congress holds the power, the President simply applies it as best he believes it should be applied.

Re:Elections

[Tenebrousedge]

Six or eight.

I mean, does it make sense to you that there would be only two political theories in a country this big? I put "real" in quotes because I'm not really interested in getting into speculation on the matter, or worse, a semantic argument. That there are more than two can be evidenced by the fact that there are already more than two, but the way the system is set up, well, we wouldn't have the (pejorative) phrase "third party" if it weren't well known that they don't have a snowball's chance in hell.

The exact number doesn't matter, it just matters that we need more choices than we have.

Re:Elections

[Zontar The Mindless]

The problem is that the US President is both Head of State and head of government. The latter role should be separate (Prime Minister).

Re:Elections

[Hal_Porter]

The right solution here is to use some other voting method: IRV, range voting, approval voting, whatever. It doesn't require changing the Constitution or the Electoral College, but it does require teaching math concepts to the U.S. electorate and convincing the courts that this doesn't violate "one man, one vote".

David Deutsch explains why AV is a bad idea before the UK referendum on AV vs FPTP, which FPTP won -

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

And note his argument would apply to any voting system which was more proportional (i.e. had a reduced Gallagher Index) than FPTP.

Here's the 2010 UK general election under various systems

https://i.imgur.com/YFhke.gif

In all but FPTP the third largest party would be able to decide who would be Prime Minister, i.e. exactly the problem Deutsch identifies with voting systems with a reduced Gallagher Index than FPTP.

And as he points out the experience of Israel and Germany shows this is a problem in practice

@drlobomalo "evidence that PR countriesâ¦more poorly governed?" In Israel religious parties typically hold the balance of power and extract subsidies unpopular with the great majority. In Germany for 49 years the FDP with <12.8% of the vote usually chose which party would govern, twice changing sides and 3 times putting the less popular party (measured by votes) into power. Meanwhile nothing the voters could do could oust the FDP leader from the Foreign Ministry. Only the 4th party finally did.

Also look at those simulated 2010 results. The number of MPs for the third largest party increases as the system becomes more proportional. However the number of MPs for the 'Other' parties does not change by as much. This is important because as Deutsch points out the only way to stop the third largest party choosing the PM and having disproportionate power is for the fourth largest party to take over as the third largest party. However the third largest party - who is always the one proposing electoral reform - will typically say something like 'our new system makes it harder for extremists to get seats because we have a threshold'. So something like STV might have a 10% threshold before seats are assigned.

This does keep out extremists. The problem is that it defines 'extremist' as 'any party with less support than the top 3'. I.e. 'proportional representation' is simply a way to grant disproportionate power to the third largest party.

Re:Elections

[bingoUV]

FPTP is just an excuse. Americans have an irrational fear of having "wasted" a vote. A huge majority of all votes in the world are wasted, just go and vote rather than making so many states lose their voices on the basis of being a "non-swing" state.

Re:Elections

[LynnwoodRooster]

And yet - he cannot do much of anything other than negotiate treaties, as head of State. Any treaty MUST be ratified by the Senate - the check on the President's power to unilaterally commit the US to any International agreement (witness the ease of pulling out of the Paris Accords). And theoretically, for any military action longer than 90 days, the President is supposed to get the consent of Congress as well. In reality (per the Constitution, at least) the President is a very weak executive, wielding less power than most Prime Ministers.

Re:Elections

[Tenebrousedge]

At no point did I mention proportional representation. You seem like a stupid troll.

Re:Elections

[Hal_Porter]

IRV is another term for AV. And the argument for non FPTP voting systems is that they are more proportional. You measure 'proportionality' using the Gallagher Index. And AV has a lower Gallagher Index than FPTP

The Guardian, which supported AV say that it wouldn't affect the results of the 2010 election

https://www.theguardian.com/po...

However that's not actually true.

Here are the vote shares

Conservative: 36.10%
Labour: 29%
Lib Dem: 23%
Others: 11.90%

Under FPTP you got these numbers of seats. You can work out the Gallagher Index using the formula here

Conservative: 306
Labour: 258
Lib Dem: 57
Others: 28
Gallagher Index: 15.73

Under AV you'd get

Conservative: 281
Labour: 262
Lib Dem: 79
Others: 28
Gallagher Index: 13.30

Under AV+

Conservative: 275
Labour: 234
Lib Dem: 110
Others: 31
Gallagher Index: 9.36

Under STV

Conservative: 246
Labour: 207
Lib Dem: 162
Others: 35
Gallagher Index: 5.35

Now a majority in the UK parliament is 326 seats. If you add up Conservative+Lib Dem and Labour+Lib Dem for each you find that only under FPTP is there one possible coalition partner for the Lib Dems, the third largest party, i.e. the Conservatives. Under all the other, lower Gallagher Index which is to say more proportional systems the Lib Dems would be able to form a coalition with either the Conservatives or Labour.

This is exactly the problem David Deutsch was pointing out here in his video opposing AV

In Germany for 49 years the FDP with <12.8% of the vote usually chose which party would govern, twice changing sides and 3 times putting the less popular party (measured by votes) into power. Meanwhile nothing the voters could do could oust the FDP leader from the Foreign Ministry. Only the 4th party finally did.

I.e. the third largest party can decide who is PM. The lower the Gallagher Index of an electoral system, i.e. the more proportional it is, the worse the problem becomes!

Re:Elections

[Hal_Porter]

Duverger's Law suggests that FPTP leads to two party systems.

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

In political science, Duverger's law holds that plurality-rule elections (such as first past the post) structured within single-member districts tend to favor a two-party system and that "the double ballot majority system and proportional representation tend to favor multipartism".[1][2] The discovery of this tendency is attributed to Maurice Duverger, a French sociologist who observed the effect and recorded it in several papers published in the 1950s and 1960s. In the course of further research, other political scientists began calling the effect a "law" or principle.

In fact the strongest argument against FPTP is 'it is unfair to anyone but the first and second parties and this makes it hard for a third party to take over from them'. I.e. you end up with a cosy duopoly. And that seems to be the case. Voters general punish the party in government by voting for 'THE opposition', aka the second most popular party. In the UK system where the party leader becomes PM on winning an election opposition parties traditionally try to maximize the chance of this by having the leader of an unsuccessful opposition party resign on the party losing an election. A new leader takes over and rejigs the policies a bit and hopes that he or she will benefit from the PM's party losing popularity. In the US primaries mean parties automagically select the most popular candidate, at least internally, for their presidential nominee.

Of course this system is flawed. It's possible to imagine a policy which both of the two 'main' parties approve of but which is unpopular with the majority of the electorate. Up to the BREXIT vote for example, EU membership was unpopular but both Conservative and Labour (and in fact the Lib Dems) supported it. After the referendum both Labour and Conservative switched their policies to support BREXIT.

So the argument against FPTP is that by switching to a more proportional system it is easier for smaller parties to gain representation and hence power. Deutsch's point is that this tends to give the third largest party disproportionate influence and there is nothing the electorate can do to change this - only the fourth largest party taking over from the third largest party can change who has the undue influence, the undue influence itself is not possible to change, other than by convincing the government to change the electoral system to FPTP. Which would probably mean convincing them to hold a referendum and then winning it.

Deutsch also points out that FPTP fulfills what he calls 'Popper's Criterion' - i.e. that it is possible for the electorate to remove and replace the government peacefully. This is particularly important in a 'cabinet accountable to parliament' government system like the UK. Under FPTP if a party loses and election it normally loses all power. And if a party wins and election it normally gets a majority and a chance to implement its manifesto. Under a more proportional system, this is less likely to be the case - you normally get a coalition and an party which failed to get the most votes in an election might be able to form a coalition with the third largest party.

I think on balance I support FPTP, at least for the UK and for the moment. I could be persuaded to support a different system if it were more proportional for all parties and not just the third. E.g. STV with no additional threshold. That way you could imagine a 'left bloc' and a 'right bloc', rather like they have in Sweden

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

No single party has won a majority in the Riksdag since 1968. Political parties with similar agendas consequently cooperate on several issues, forming coalition governments or other formalized alliances. Two major blocs exist in parliament, the socialist/green R

Re:Elections

[Tenebrousedge]

For fuck's sake. I'm talking about single-member elections. AV is not the same thing as IRV, and neither are equivalent to PR. Just fuck off, all right?

Re:Elections

[Hal_Porter]

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

Instant-runoff voting (IRV), also known as the alternative vote (AV) or transferable vote, is a voting method used in single-seat elections with more than two candidates. (It is also sometimes referred to as "ranked-choice voting" (RCV) and "preferential voting", although there are other preferential voting methods that use ranked-choice ballots.)

Re:Elections

[Tenebrousedge]

Thank you for the semantic argument. When proportional representation applies to the Presidency then we will consider the rest of your argument.

Re:Elections

[bingoUV]

. In fact the strongest argument against FPTP is 'it is unfair to anyone but the first and second parties and this makes it hard for a third party to take over from them'.

Wow, you wrote so much but couldn't read the mechanism section of the page your are linking to ? All this happens due the voters and parties thinking nobody other than first and second most popular teams stands a chance. Because if the voters vote for a third party, their vote is "wasted".

Which is bullshit in the first place. It is extremely rare for a vote to be not wasted.

Re:Elections

[Hal_Porter]

AV sucks for leadership elections too. E.g.

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

David Miliband won every round but the last one and every constituency but the 'affiliated organisations' ie mostly trade unions and would have won outright in a single round FPTP contest.

His dorky brother Ed managed pick up second preference votes of other third, fourth and fifth most popular candidates who dropped out and came out 1.4% ahead. Arguably his whole campaign was aimed at offsetting the fact he wasn't particularly popular for first round votes by trying people to instead rank him second preference. He also offered the unions as many concessions as possible.

Ed wasn't seen as a credible PM by either members or MPs. David would have been which is why he won those constituencies, right up to the last round. Labour went on to lose to the Conservatives.

tl;dr - AV elected the wrong leader and Labour lost the election because of it. The only reason you would want a party to adopt it over FPTP is if you want them to lose.

Re:Elections

[Tenebrousedge]

The "wrong" leader because you wanted things to be otherwise. This is an idiotic argument.

Re:Elections

[Hal_Porter]

I think the flaw in AV for a leadership contest is that it is incompatible with humans' monkey brains.

Consider primates. The best primate - and best is probably some mix of size, charisma and popularity - becomes the alpha male and the other primates accept this.

AV is explicitly designed so that this isn't always the case. The second 'best' primate wins and that is the wrong result - as happened in the Ed vs David Miliband case.

Primate leadership contests are inherently analogous to FPTP where number one wins and that rule has been wired into us by evolution for a very long time.

In fact there have been studies that size is an important predictor of presidential success.

https://archive.fo/gAVPV

Thus it is plausible that FPTP is actually a formalisation of the primate leadership contest based on same criteria - size, charisma and popularity. Successful US politicians certainly seem to behave like the dominant male monkey. It explains Clinton and Trump and all the sexual shenanigans that male US politicians seem to get up to.

Politicians elected by other, inferior, systems are simply not as alpha and in the long run that explains continuing US hegemony despite usually electing people who seem - at least to an outsider - as extremely questionable individuals.

"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[RedK]

Except :

One pro-Trump Facebook ad called for the "removal of Hillary Clinton from the presidential ballot" while another blamed Black Lives Matter for a "gruesome attack on police". Meanwhile, a fake gay rightsâ(TM) account praised Bernie Sanders as a "hero", and an anti-Trump profile advertised a "not my president" rally after the election, which attracted interest from nearly 50,000 people on Facebook and said: "Racism won, Ignorance won, Sexual assault won ⦠STOP TRUMP!"

https://www.theguardian.com/te...

People still aren't getting it. Or are being purposefully obtuse to try and keep the "Russia!" panic alive and try to paint Trump in a bad light. If he's such a bad president and bad person, why do you people even need to make stuff up to defame him ?

The only thing creating division in the U.S. right now is not the President, it's all the #RESIST BS that keeps shoving "Russia!" hysteria and spinning everything the President does as negative. It's gotten so bad that if the man cured Cancer tomorrow, he'd be accused of putting Oncologists out of a job.

Re:"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[Anonymous Coward]

...if the man cured Cancer tomorrow, he'd be accused of putting Oncologists out of a job.

If my grandmother had handlebars and wheels, she'd be a bicycle.

Let's put this in perspective. You're defending a guy who bragged about sexually assaulting women, who can't restrain himself from arguing with every troll on Twitter and who despite having been president for almost a year and aided by a Republican controlled Congress hasn't accomplished a damn thing other than to lessen the stature of our country in the rest of the world's eye.

Good job!

Re:"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[RedK]

You're defending a guy who bragged about sexually assaulting women,

See, this is EXACTLY the kind of stuff that the MSM is pushing. The guy bragged about gold diggers, MSM : "Literally sexual assault! Find the victims!!!!".

aided by a Republican controlled Congress

LMAO. You are not paying attention. The Republican Senate is the only thing impeding him. He's done what he's able to do with Executive Powers. He doesn't control the legislative branch. He's not the one to blame for the GOP's failure in the Senate.

Re:"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[Kernel Kurtz]

If he's such a bad president and bad person, why do you people even need to make stuff up to defame him

I'm not American, but all we need to do is listen to him. His character speaks quite badly enough for himself.

Re:"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[youngone]

Are you seriously comparing a US electoral reform debate to Robert Mugabe?
Maybe I'm just getting old, but trolls seem to be getting stupider on Slashdot.

Re:"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[knorthern knight]

> Are you seriously comparing a US electoral reform debate to Robert Mugabe?
> Maybe I'm just getting old, but trolls seem to be getting stupider on Slashdot.

Actually, Mt. "young" "one", he's probably referring to an event before your time; i.e. Stalin's artificial famine that killed off 7 million people in the 1930's http://www.historyplace.com/wo... but the lib-left idolizes "Uncle Joe", so you never hear this inconvenient truth.

Re:"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[LynnwoodRooster]

Using the IRS to attack your political opponents is, in fact, an impeachable offense. Too bad Congress didn't have the balls to carry it through. That is the height of authoritarianism and a hallmark of a dictatorship.

Re:"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[youngone]

So, an even stupider comparison then. Fair enough.

Re:"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[Gussington]

The only thing creating division in the U.S. right now is...

Them! It's not us it's them!
Your post is part of the problem. My post is part of the problem. As soon as it turn into us vs them we all lose.
Stop treating everything as us and them and we might have a chance at moving forward together.

Re:"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[serviscope_minor]

...and as you will see in the electoral college discussion above, these #resist folk want to strip the farmers of representation.

Liar.

These rolk simply don't want less representation that farmers merely because they own less land.

You're the un-deomcratic anti-american sort who seems to believe that posessions should by law grant greater access to democracy.

Re:"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[AmiMoJo]

Trump is just a part of the chaos that Russia wanted to create, sowing division and creating conflict to destabilize and weaken the US and EU.

Having said that...

If he's such a bad president and bad person, why do you people even need to make stuff up to defame him ?

You don't. They just pointed out what he was actually like, the things he wasn't even bothering to deny to boasting about sexual assault. Trump was incredibly polarizing by himself, which is why they spent much more effort attacking Clinton.

Re:"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[ebvwfbw]

AC, don't you just love them? Wish they would do away with the AC on slashdot. It would cut so much BS out.

You're right on though. He talked about it, the Democrats actually do what he said and way, way, way more.

Re:"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[LynnwoodRooster]

Lois Lerner and the IRS apologized for targeting conservative teams. That is a plain and obvious admission of guilt. Where's your proof that the IRS did the same under President Bush?

Re:"This is sure to bury Drumpf!"

[werepants]

You're defending a guy who bragged about sexually assaulting women,

See, this is EXACTLY the kind of stuff that the MSM is pushing. The guy bragged about gold diggers, MSM : "Literally sexual assault! Find the victims!!!!".

Trump bragged about non-consensual sexual contact - how would you categorize that? It sounds like an admission of sexual assault to me.

What's more, there is an extensive list of women alleging assault on Trump's part - so characterizing Trump as a sex offender isn't just based on his words, but his actions.

And before you claim that this is just the "MSM" at work, answer me this question - why were there no sexual allegations against GWB? The left and the media loathed GWB - why didn't they try to take him down with these same manufactured stories?

Occam's razor says that the simplest answer is most likely the correct one - there isn't a massive conspiracy involving multiple news networks and dozens of otherwise unconnected women - instead, there's just a rich asshole who has spent his life treating women like property and suing them into oblivion if they tried to do anything about it.

Last question: what evidence, if any, would convince you that Trump is an offender? Do you have the same standards of evidence for other politicians?

Glad they will realize Bernie Bros are fake

[WillAffleckUW]

About time.

Nice!

[WolfgangVL]

An "Am I stupid and/or gullible?" button!

Damn genius. This should be standard. Like new years day every user gets to see how many paid-for-posts they peddled for free!

in Soviet Facebook...

[k6mfw]

I was thinking of a new meme to illustrate how ridiculous and tragic social media combined with politics has become. Many comments here are scary.

Re:in Soviet Facebook...

[AHuxley]

A much older US intelligence official thinking back to their glory days of the 1970's when they had rank, respect, over time, visited 5 eye nations, a real security clearance?
Day dreaming about the covert skills of the Soviet Union and its huge embassy in the USA again?

The idea that people outside the US elite coast could have voted in person for a real political leader who could give a speech?
A political candidate that actually visited their state and talked to real people in person?
Someone who did not lecture, talk down to entire parts of the USA might charm more people in more states to vote for them?
Political charm can actually win US elections by understanding what people all over the USA want?
A US political party suffering walk outs of their secret internal documents by their own trusted staff?
It just has to be the work of some other super skilled nation.
Someone having the skill to win a US election by giving good speeches all over the USA? To find staff able to understand the role of all the different states in winning a US election? To have people on staff able to win plan how to win US elections.
Speeches and election material had to have been translated and hand delivered from the Soviet embassy...
Nobody in the USA can write a great political speech or would have had the skills to win a US election...
Few in the USA have the math skills needed to keep track of all the states and how they might vote. It had to be a new super computer in the Soviet embassy...
Look at how much power the Soviet embassy used during the election. They had their own secure Soviet super computer tracking every US voter 24/7. With the perfect political banner ads, faith based emails, animated gif's befuddling the below average US voter.

Re:Unsealed Fusion GPS Bank Records Reveal $523K

[Zontar The Mindless]

zerohedge? seriously?

When is Facebook going to warn us about Faux News

[najajomo]

Fox News - Home | Facebook

other propaganda

[Tom]

Can we get the same feature for other propaganda as well? Chinese propaganda, american propaganda, and most importantly: Corporate propaganda.

According to WP:

Propaganda is information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.

That describes just about any advertisement or political statement made by any politician during the past decade.

We are being manipulated constantly, from all sides. My profession is information security, so I have a lot of exposure to "evil russians". Here's a consistent pattern that I've noticed again and again and again, and I'm beginning to believe that it applies to the russian infowar approach as well: Russian methods are more obvious, more transparent. Might be less experience or a reduced sensitivity to exposure (Russians distrust their government even more than americans do, and basically assume that all politicians are corrupt anyways, so there's less need to pretend). But once you look past that, there's really not so much difference. Western manipulations, or security attacks, are less obvious, more tricky, spend more resources on appearing as something else or remaining unnoticed. There is also a lot more misdirection in the western approach. But when you look at plain data, the USA is as much an attack source as Russia, if not more so (this recent article lists the USA far ahead of Russia, with Turkey and Brazil ahead of the evil ex-communists).

We are clearly seing a revival of Cold War animosities. Maybe trecking out NK and Iran as the "Axis of Evil" doesn't have the desired effect anymore? Maybe a large event (not necessarily a war, but could be) is being prepared and the public opinion needs to be set up properly first? Or maybe the people in charge are just boneheaded idiots who seriously think that Russia is a big danger, but climate change is a fabrication. No, you cannot possibly be that stupid, you would forget to breathe if you had that much of a brain damage.

But "fake news" isn't news at all, it's been around for hundreds of years. As has been propaganda, and the main source of propaganda, at all times in history, has always been - surprise - your own government. Which is logical, of course. The local/national government has the most to lose or win from your opinion, so they have the greatest interest in influencing it.

So please give us fake news background checks not just for selected sources. The person that writes a Firefox extension that automatically overlays advertisement with fact-checking background information deserves a Nobel prize. The person who hacks the cable broadcast infrastructure to put that on all the TV stations - we'd have to invent a new prize for that person. The manipulations that were done in the name of profit begin to make those done in the name of war appear harmless. Sugar industry, tobacco industry, oil industry - these fuckers are ready to destroy generations of people so their next quarterly earnings reports are good. With such friends, who needs enemies? I personally am much more worried about these guys.

Re: other propaganda

[Reverend Green]

I believe both Facebook and Google are working on identifying corporate propaganda, which they plan to label as "facts".

Re:other propaganda

[WeezulDK]

Ban everyone. Then no one will be subjected to Facebook. :)

Better Education ?

[DrYak]

Or maybe your education system should add "on-line media", if order to add a tiny bit of critical thinking to all the "pulse-enabled meat-bags" that go through it ?

Re:FB uncovering up now?

[ebvwfbw]

FB lied and denied, but now you can trust them. Believe me!

Why yes you can! They've found Jesus and they've seen the light. No longer will they deceive us and tow the crazy leftist lines.

Re:When is Facebook going to warn us about Faux Ne

[ebvwfbw]

I'll preface this by saying I don't like any of them. Fox, CNN, NBC, etc. They all suck. They all have bad opinions on what should lead the news and what's important. Good journalism was killed in the 1980s I think. Taken over by leftists. I say that because I saw it happen in Universities.

Faux news, do you mean CNN, NBC, etc that have been caught outright lying lately? Maybe you STILL believe the Trump/Russia collusion bullshit? I have a sister that still buys that even though she can't point to ANYTHING that was done to prove that. I can point to plenty to show Hillary/Russia collusion. The Uranium deal, the 500 grand they "donated" to her, etc. Podesta was an un-registered agent of Russia.. and on and on and on. Yet I bet you still believe them. So they can tell you another lie.

I know, so many people need protection from the truth. People like you. Go ahead and take another blue pill. Everything is fine. Just let the government run your life, tell you what you can and can't do and then tell you to like it. They know what's good for you after all. Just ask them. Bill Clinton actually said that they know how to spend your money better than you do. You also don't need to think if you listen to MSM. They tell you what to think and do. Kill the police, hate white people, you know - how to be some real bigots and racists.

Let's start with this thought - conservatives believe in change from within. That is, you change. You make yourself better. Liberals can't wait for things like that. They want to tell you what to do, with yourself, your money and if you don't they want to put you in jail, beat you, etc. Just look at the news. Trump didn't send those people to Charlottesville and those other places. The liberals/left did.

I get a big kick out of leftist assholes. Ask them to put their own money towards the BS they're spouting and they won't do it. They want to spend other people's money instead.

BTW, with news - don't listen to just one side. Listen to what fox says, what NBC says, others say. The real truth is probably in there somewhere. They say to believe about half of what you read.

Re: Witch Hunt: Russia Edition

[Reverend Green]

Vladimir Putin is hiding under President Trump's bed in the Whitehouse. Just look - he's there right now!