If you're complaining about this whole thing and you don't write a letter to your elected officials, you have officially wasted your time.
No, that's unofficially wasting your time. Officially wasting your time is complaining about this whole thing and then writing a letter to your elected officials.
The Movable Hole: Something that seems impossible. Plus, the solution would be for a really stupid mistake one did. Make sure you don't drill the hole in the wrong place in the first place.
I see you haven't played the Multi-Dimensional Thief!:-)
Personally, I have no idea why the electoral system is the way it is.
The one very good justification I've heard (which you echoed in the next sentence) is that the lines of communication were very thin and stretched, and the voters in a state might not even know who the candidates from other states were; the idea was that they didn't vote for the President *at* *all*, and instead elected trusted surrogates to vote for them; there was actually an expectation that the electors would decide who to vote for after being elected, and that they might even debate the matter (like a sort of shadow Congress). As I understand things, though, it didn't take long for party politics to put an end to this.
Oh, and regarding the "separate issue", it's not really an issue. The Senate is meant for representation of states, not individuals.
That's basically right. Maybe I should have said "a separate discussion". While the Senate overrepresents some areas, I don't think that the problems caused by that, to the extent that there are any, are nearly as drastic as with the Electoral College for various reasons. (for instance, that the House has to separately agree with anything the Senate wants to do)
States are supposed to do the micromanaging, dealing with individuals, because generally within a state, the culture is fairly homogenous.
*boggle* Where do you live? New York is not liberal as a whole (the city is, but as far as I know the hinterlands are pretty conservative), Pennsylvania, where I live, has two relatively liberal cities and a large agricultural region that's best described as "slightly to the right of Alabama", Wisconsin is split almost evenly between the rural northern regions and the urban southern regions, Minnesota has St. Paul/Minneapolis vs the rest of the state...
Texas might be solidly of one opinion. Maybe Montana and Wyoming and Massachusetts are. But it's certainly far from unusual for states to be internally divided.
eventually the public as a whole will wise up to fear-mongering.
Why do you see this? I have absolutely no reason to believe this will occur. People have been stupid and irrational since time immemorial, and it looks likely to continue for the forseeable future.
I doubt that bin Laden is stupid enough to think Americans will believe him; indeed, given how hated he is here, he must know that they'll do the opposite of what he "recommends" if anything. If he really is trying to make a difference, he was supporting Bush by opposing him...but I personally doubt that his last-minute statement made much of a difference. At least I sure hope it didn't.
Electoral votes are assigned to a state by population.
Not entirely true, for two reasons:
(a) Votes are assigned by the *number of representatives in Congress*. Ignoring round-off error, this means that every state, regardless of size, gets at least 3 electors, including states like Wyoming and Montana that are primarily inhabited by cows. We have a lot of states with relatively few electoral votes, and anyone living in them is overrepresented in the Presidency. (and also in the Senate, but that's a separate issue)
(b) Most states have a winner-take-all system. So if I know who I'm going to vote for (say it's Kerry this year), my vote is essentially thrown out if I live in Alabama, and will have far more mathematical weight, in terms of potentially altering the election's outcome, in Ohio than in New York. You can come up with similar situations on the other side.
By the way, with all the gerrymandering in our system, divvying up the votes by congressional district will likely make (b) *worse*. For instance, my state went for Kerry but has an almost completely Republican representation in Congress.
We have one, it's called the "Mason-Dixon" line...and if you think it's not still alive and well, try looking at the final electoral map this time around.
I don't think this is anything new. Will Rogers said, "I am not a member of any organized political party; I am a Democrat."
the liberal elite of the coasts
Really, I don't see how you can be called "elite" when you're constantly out of power. The only Democratic presidents of the last few decades were Jimmy Carter (a thoroughly admirable man, but probably only became president because of Nixon), and Bill Clinton, who was so far right he barely counted as a Democrat.
A party based on traditional American values...
I actually agree: the Democrats will probably not win until they become little Republican clones. As for me, screw it, I'm moving to Canada as soon as I can.
A simpler way to eliminate Operation Snowbird is to eliminate the electoral college; the fact that your vote for a particular candidate has a different value depending on what state you live (excuse me, vote) in is what leads -- utterly predictably in this day of cheap long-distance travel -- to stuff like that.
The article states that the action was taken on the basis of a trademark. With a name like "Magic Cube" if the toy is anything at all like a Rubic's Cube then it almost certainly does infringe on the Rubic's Cube trademark.
That's just absurd. What should they call it, Magic Regular Rectangular Prism?
Is it a trademark, a patent, or a copyright? I thought this was just the/. editors screwing up, but the AP seems to have done the same thing! (well, they only mentioned trademark and patent; the copyright thing seems to be a/. original) Shame on them.
Can you even trademark or copyright a toy design? The DHS spokesdroid comment suggests that it's a trademark violation. What the heck is being trademarked here? The word Cube? If so, I'll be very worried once I get over laughing hysterically...
(a) It blocks while running filters! This is a royal pain if you want to use it with spamassassin, since it means the entire interface freezes for several seconds every time you download an email. This is especially painful if non-local tests are enabled in SA. If you have kmail set to download new mail periodically, it will randomly freeze up at the worst possible moment (for instance, while you're trying to compose a new email..).
(b) It blocks while checking GPG signatures! Even on a fairly fast computer, GPG signature checking can take a significant amount of time, and as with (a), you end up hurrying up and waiting instead of reading your email.
I've been trying out kmail recently, and I really like a lot of things about it, but these two bugs are making me seriously think about giving Thunderbird a shot.
I don't see why. You just write your choice in and rank it relative to the others. Since it doesn't appear on anyone else's ballot, the system will assume they ranked it below all the listed choices.
Of course, it's not easy for write-ins to WIN, but that's the case under any election method I know of.
Sorry, I confused Borda with another voting system. I haven't thought enough about it to form an opinion one way or the other; it might very well be an improvement over plurality voting.
I should point out that since the person to whom I was replying was anonymous, and the rebuttals at electionmethods are addressed pseudonymously, I obviously don't mean that it's a specific reply to that specific post. But the arguments being addressed are similar to the ones he raised.
IE, even Approval Voting advocates would accept IRV or Borda if it was the only way to change the system, and vice versa.
I don't know about that -- it seems to me that IRV is in many ways worse than the present system, and it's not clear to me that Borda's minor advantages outweigh the added complexity.
If there are yes/no options on each ballot, the only way to add a new vote is to do a write-in. I think that a large number of write-ins, all in the same handwriting, would strike people examining the ballots as a bit suspicious;-).
So you write the number of approvals on each ballot. At that point, poll workers have to get into removing your preferences to insert theirs (which is what they'd have to do under the current system anyway).
Admittedly, the math required to do this might be beyond the grasp of the average American voter...
You're missing the point. The problem is that even if individual states switch to a more sensible vote-counting system, the electoral college is first-past-the-post! Therefore, twiddling with election methods at the state level will just result in a more complicated system with the same drawbacks as our current system.
Incidentally, the argument against Instant Runoff Voting is similar: it also suffers from the "spoiler" effect, just in a less predictable way than first-past-the-post.
Slashdot Mirror
You can make it from California to New York on a tank of gas? Can I have your car? :)
Daniel
If you're complaining about this whole thing and you don't write a letter to your elected officials, you have officially wasted your time.
No, that's unofficially wasting your time. Officially wasting your time is complaining about this whole thing and then writing a letter to your elected officials.
Daniel
Soooooooooooooooooo....
:-)
If pop tart sales go up, head for high ground?
Daniel
The Movable Hole: Something that seems impossible. Plus, the solution would be for a really stupid mistake one did. Make sure you don't drill the hole in the wrong place in the first place.
:-)
I see you haven't played the Multi-Dimensional Thief!
Daniel
Personally, I have no idea why the electoral system is the way it is.
The one very good justification I've heard (which you echoed in the next sentence) is that the lines of communication were very thin and stretched, and the voters in a state might not even know who the candidates from other states were; the idea was that they didn't vote for the President *at* *all*, and instead elected trusted surrogates to vote for them; there was actually an expectation that the electors would decide who to vote for after being elected, and that they might even debate the matter (like a sort of shadow Congress). As I understand things, though, it didn't take long for party politics to put an end to this.
Oh, and regarding the "separate issue", it's not really an issue. The Senate is meant for representation of states, not individuals.
That's basically right. Maybe I should have said "a separate discussion". While the Senate overrepresents some areas, I don't think that the problems caused by that, to the extent that there are any, are nearly as drastic as with the Electoral College for various reasons. (for instance, that the House has to separately agree with anything the Senate wants to do)
States are supposed to do the micromanaging, dealing with individuals, because generally within a state, the culture is fairly homogenous.
*boggle* Where do you live? New York is not liberal as a whole (the city is, but as far as I know the hinterlands are pretty conservative), Pennsylvania, where I live, has two relatively liberal cities and a large agricultural region that's best described as "slightly to the right of Alabama", Wisconsin is split almost evenly between the rural northern regions and the urban southern regions, Minnesota has St. Paul/Minneapolis vs the rest of the state...
Texas might be solidly of one opinion. Maybe Montana and Wyoming and Massachusetts are. But it's certainly far from unusual for states to be internally divided.
Daniel
eventually the public as a whole will wise up to fear-mongering.
Why do you see this? I have absolutely no reason to believe this will occur. People have been stupid and irrational since time immemorial, and it looks likely to continue for the forseeable future.
Daniel
I doubt that bin Laden is stupid enough to think Americans will believe him; indeed, given how hated he is here, he must know that they'll do the opposite of what he "recommends" if anything. If he really is trying to make a difference, he was supporting Bush by opposing him...but I personally doubt that his last-minute statement made much of a difference. At least I sure hope it didn't.
Daniel
Electoral votes are assigned to a state by population.
Not entirely true, for two reasons:
(a) Votes are assigned by the *number of representatives in Congress*. Ignoring round-off error, this means that every state, regardless of size, gets at least 3 electors, including states like Wyoming and Montana that are primarily inhabited by cows. We have a lot of states with relatively few electoral votes, and anyone living in them is overrepresented in the Presidency. (and also in the Senate, but that's a separate issue)
(b) Most states have a winner-take-all system. So if I know who I'm going to vote for (say it's Kerry this year), my vote is essentially thrown out if I live in Alabama, and will have far more mathematical weight, in terms of potentially altering the election's outcome, in Ohio than in New York. You can come up with similar situations on the other side.
By the way, with all the gerrymandering in our system, divvying up the votes by congressional district will likely make (b) *worse*. For instance, my state went for Kerry but has an almost completely Republican representation in Congress.
Daniel
We have one, it's called the "Mason-Dixon" line...and if you think it's not still alive and well, try looking at the final electoral map this time around.
Daniel
It's become the anti-party.
...
I don't think this is anything new. Will Rogers said, "I am not a member of any organized political party; I am a Democrat."
the liberal elite of the coasts
Really, I don't see how you can be called "elite" when you're constantly out of power. The only Democratic presidents of the last few decades were Jimmy Carter (a thoroughly admirable man, but probably only became president because of Nixon), and Bill Clinton, who was so far right he barely counted as a Democrat.
A party based on traditional American values
I actually agree: the Democrats will probably not win until they become little Republican clones. As for me, screw it, I'm moving to Canada as soon as I can.
Daniel
A simpler way to eliminate Operation Snowbird is to eliminate the electoral college; the fact that your vote for a particular candidate has a different value depending on what state you live (excuse me, vote) in is what leads -- utterly predictably in this day of cheap long-distance travel -- to stuff like that.
Daniel
The article states that the action was taken on the basis of a trademark. With a name like "Magic Cube" if the toy is anything at all like a Rubic's Cube then it almost certainly does infringe on the Rubic's Cube trademark.
That's just absurd. What should they call it, Magic Regular Rectangular Prism?
Daniel
Is it a trademark, a patent, or a copyright? I thought this was just the /. editors screwing up, but the AP seems to have done the same thing! (well, they only mentioned trademark and patent; the copyright thing seems to be a /. original) Shame on them.
Can you even trademark or copyright a toy design? The DHS spokesdroid comment suggests that it's a trademark violation. What the heck is being trademarked here? The word Cube? If so, I'll be very worried once I get over laughing hysterically...
Daniel
They're more than used to this kind of traffic.
Doesn't look like it to me:
"Could not connect to MySQL: Host 'www.redvsblue.com' is blocked because of many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'"
Daniel
kmail has two killer bugs:
(a) It blocks while running filters! This is a royal pain if you want to use it with spamassassin, since it means the entire interface freezes for several seconds every time you download an email. This is especially painful if non-local tests are enabled in SA. If you have kmail set to download new mail periodically, it will randomly freeze up at the worst possible moment (for instance, while you're trying to compose a new email..).
(b) It blocks while checking GPG signatures! Even on a fairly fast computer, GPG signature checking can take a significant amount of time, and as with (a), you end up hurrying up and waiting instead of reading your email.
I've been trying out kmail recently, and I really like a lot of things about it, but these two bugs are making me seriously think about giving Thunderbird a shot.
Daniel
I don't see why. You just write your choice in and rank it relative to the others. Since it doesn't appear on anyone else's ballot, the system will assume they ranked it below all the listed choices.
Of course, it's not easy for write-ins to WIN, but that's the case under any election method I know of.
Daniel
Confused thinking on the part of individual voters is not the fault of the voting system. If you can't make your mind up, rank A, B, and C equally.
Daniel
Sorry, I confused Borda with another voting system. I haven't thought enough about it to form an opinion one way or the other; it might very well be an improvement over plurality voting.
Daniel
I should point out that since the person to whom I was replying was anonymous, and the rebuttals at electionmethods are addressed pseudonymously, I obviously don't mean that it's a specific reply to that specific post. But the arguments being addressed are similar to the ones he raised.
Daniel
There seems to be a reply to this guy at http://www.electionmethods.org/IRVing.htm. Just a heads-up for people following this thread.
Daniel
IE, even Approval Voting advocates would accept IRV or Borda if it was the only way to change the system, and vice versa.
I don't know about that -- it seems to me that IRV is in many ways worse than the present system, and it's not clear to me that Borda's minor advantages outweigh the added complexity.
Daniel
If there are yes/no options on each ballot, the only way to add a new vote is to do a write-in. I think that a large number of write-ins, all in the same handwriting, would strike people examining the ballots as a bit suspicious ;-).
Daniel
So you write the number of approvals on each ballot. At that point, poll workers have to get into removing your preferences to insert theirs (which is what they'd have to do under the current system anyway).
Admittedly, the math required to do this might be beyond the grasp of the average American voter...
Daniel
You're missing the point. The problem is that even if individual states switch to a more sensible vote-counting system, the electoral college is first-past-the-post! Therefore, twiddling with election methods at the state level will just result in a more complicated system with the same drawbacks as our current system.
Incidentally, the argument against Instant Runoff Voting is similar: it also suffers from the "spoiler" effect, just in a less predictable way than first-past-the-post.
Daniel
Your best option if you can't choose between candidates is to rank them equally.
Daniel
PS: unlike most of the people posting here, I have actually participated in multiple Condorcet votes. It works great.