Actually, it is based on population, with the understanding that the people who came to vote are also voting on behalf of other people living in that state (their children for example) who did not (or could not) vote.
No it isn't. It's supposed to be like that, but Wyoming with 500k pop has 3 EC votes (1 per 166k people), while Michigan with 10mil has 16 (1 per 635k people). Do the maths, Wyoming votes count for 4 times as many Michigan votes.
There are many reasons why a straight popular vote is bad and the electoral college is better but the best one I can think of is what happened in the recent election. Hillary Clinton won 300 counties while Trump won 5000. If you think that the election of a nation should be swayed by a handful of cities while the rest of the nation is completely ignored, well, you're an idiot.
Depends, if in a hypothetical situation 99% of people lived in those 300 counties then yes, they should decide.
So yeah, the concept of and EC makes some sense, but only if applied fairly, which it isn't since 1 Wyoming votes currently counts for 4 Michigan votes.
Interestingly, Hillary's ENTIRE "popular vote" win can be ascribed to her lead in votes in Los Angeles County. Basically you're arguing that a single municipal region should dictate the election of the President. If you discount Los Angeles County, Trump carries a majority of total votes summed across all other counties in the nation.
You don't appear to have though that through. If we take out LA Country, and Donald now has the popular vote, don't we then take out whatever county is keeping him in front, then it's back to Hillary again? Do we then rinse and repeat until it's just Donald And Hillary in a nude mud wrestle for the title?
Ah, the Democrats, always trying to change the rules in the middle of the game. Didn't work in 2000, won't work now.
This is the type of comments that annoys me with these discussions.
Someone always thinks it's only one side that plays these stupid games. Do you think the Republicans have never tried to change the rules ever? They all have and they all do it, but that is not the discussion. I'd like to hear what would be considered a fairer way to represent the will of the people? The EC sounds ok on the surface, but how do you justify that one vote in Wyoming carries more than 4 times as much weight as one vote in Michigan?
Ignore this election, and these candidates, how would you improve this to make a stronger system?
Thinking that you can amend the US Constitution now is as brainless as you think that Trump voters are.
You don't need to change anything. According to TFA, it is within the rights of the EC to choose whoever they think is best suited for the role. So under the current rules, the EC could choose Mitt Romney and it would be legal.
Like if one is scared of a butterfly or a spider, that's a phobia, since those 2 things are harmless.
Wait, what? Dude I live in Australia and I can assure there are plenty of spiders here that will kill you. And unlike the regular wisdom of 'leave it alone and it won't harm you', some of them will attack even if unprovoked. So yeah, being afraid of some spiders is perfectly reasonable.
The reality is they were probably added to solve a marketing problem - a justification to jack the price up and free press.
This! Gull wing doors are stupid and only add complexity, costs and inconvenience. More importantly it is a sign that Tesla are losing focus on the important things.
According to Western intelligence sources quoted in the same article, a lot of this was just braggadocio.
Of course, because the CIA aren't likely to admit they got walked over so easily.
But let's assume that none of it is true since us regular folk will never know the truth anyway, and as a thought exercise if you had control of a multi-million dollar espionage budget how you could spend that?
Setting up fake news sites and mass posts to social media to constantly distort the truth are a relatively trivial way to sow the seeds of doubt. It's much cheaper than a tank battalion or even one fighter aircraft, and will achieve a lot more. I'm not saying this is a right wing or left wing thing, but democracy depends on an educated and informed public. What better way to attack a democracy than to pollute the information channels which the public rely on as a source of truth?
It would be naive to think the world's super powers aren't all engaging in such tactics.
Please stop beating the Russian horse. Occam's Razor argues that either there is a deeply clandestine and inexplicably state backed multi-million dollar effort from Russia to sway american elections for an equally inexplicable reason,
It's not inexplicable. What is not explainable to you about a state pushing foreign elections in their favour? We've been doing it to others for decades, so it isn't inexplicable at all. In fact it would be more inexplicable if they weren't doing it (along with the Chinese, North Koreans, Iranians and every other enemy of the West
If you think this is too clandestine and too expensive then I suggest some reading on the Soviet Cold War effort. Putin and his cohorts are ex-KGB, they were trained exactly in this type of thing.
or, just maybe, hillary clinton was a turd of a candidate that rigged her own primary, had no tenable domestic or foreign policy outside the Harlem Shake, and spoke divisively against blue collar americans, and rarely if ever campaigned in their states on issues they cared about.
That can also be true, the two are not mutually exclusive. It would be naive to think that any national superpower isn't engaging in expensive and clandestine operations for their own benefit. Put the Hillary/Trump thing to one side for a minute and ask yourself, if a capable state did want to engage in such activity, how difficult would it be, and what could we do to prevent it?
The KGB already admitted they were behind a lot of the US peace movements in the 60's, specifically designed to disrupt the US cold war effort. So how is this any different?
their attitude is generally "not quite what we believe, but how nice for you"; the worst they'll do is hand you a Bible.
So every single Conservative is happy, friendly and welcoming, while all Liberals are hateful, spiteful and evil?
Here's a tip for you, there's loonies on all sides of the fence. Your chosen team doesn't have a monopoly on virtue. And the fact that you think it does says more about you than them.
Correct, there is no "leftist conspiracy", any more than there is a conspiracy of bankers, oil companies, or GMO producers.
OPEC means nothing to you?
Sure everyone acts in their own interests, but people in power have the means to execute their interests a lot more than the noisy rabble.
Label these dissenting voices "fake news" and strive mightily the MSM's chief weapon, credibility, to discredit them.
There's a difference between dissenting voices and deliberately making stuff up. If you don't believe people are creating fake news to sway opinion then you are beyond help.
This has nothing to do with left or right, there is an actual demonstrated process for producing reliable information that all news outlets should adhere to. If your chosen source can't provide citations, sources, reference, independently verifiable claims, then what do you call that?
This fucking epidemic of stories about fake news this week is ridiculous.
Why? Democracy depends on a relative educated and informed voting public. The News is how most adults get their information, so deliberately deceptive news is a huge threat to a strong democracy.
The Liberal media lost big, predicting a Hillary landslide, and they NEED a scapegoat to blame for their own idiocy. Trust in the media is at an all time low, and people aren't fooled by the MSM putting on a different hat and calling themselves "impartial fact-checkers" anymore.
Wait, what? You went off on a rant there. Even Fox News picked Hillary so lets' not pretend this was some "liberal Media" conspiracy. The fact is that all the polls got it wrong.
So the new plan is to declare any website we don't like as "fake news" and tie them into the other demonized group we made up, the "alt right". They are the enemy and they must be stopped.
Um no, we (all of us) declare any website that makes up stories without sources, citations, or independent ways to validate the claims, and then tries to pass them as fact as fake news. This applies to all parties.
WTF? Didn't you guys get the memo? Fake news was last week. This week it's hacked voting booths. Next week will be hacked fake news sites. Week after we will be voting for fake new hackers (they're actually middle aged).
Actually, they're all fake news, and fake news will continue to be the topic for at least the next few years because a lot of people simply lack critical thought capability needed to defend against it.
Why do you believe what you believe? Do you have an opinion and try to justify it, or look at the evidence and try to form an opinion based on it?
Where is Kinect these days? All these new interactive interfaces have great gimmick value, but peak input interfaces was reached in the 70's and 80's with the controller or mouse/keyboard.
I tried VR in a shop, spent 30 seconds on it and had a little fun, but can't see how that will stick around. It's just too awkward to be used for anything other than gimmicks.
Coming up with different secure passwords for every site & then remembering them all and which goes where is beyond the reach of everyone without eidetic memory, thus the Dashlane advertisement is indeed useful.
No it isn't. I have two password for everything. One for regular stuff, one for important stuff. Regular people don't need a password manager, it's just adds another layer for compromise (A password in my head is more secure than one written into a closed source app that may or may not be sharing that info around intentionally or unintentionally). Password managers are useful for IT depts when sharing many privileged passwords with different users and groups, but these people already know what a password manager is, so don't need advertising disguised as news to work it out.
Someone will own the robots, and they won't be the 99%.
Most of us already have robots, they're called washing machines and dishwashers etc. The guy up the road has a huge robot arm which he uses to dig really big holes, and another guy has a robot that detects when his car is in the driveway and opens the garage door for him.
There is no reason to expect this to change. These robots will slowly get smarter and cheaper and more people will own them, but it's a stretch to think we'll wake up one day to a vast robot army that does everything and renders us all unemployed overnight.
And anyone who has followed politics in the last 2 decades knows that Clinton is in the back pocket of the corporations and wall street, same as her hubby was. You want the kleptocracy to continue?
They're both bad choices, but the pros of Clinton is she knows how to keep the show together for four years while the GOP regroup. The cons are she makes her friends rich which is standard fare.
Trump's pros are that he ends the Clinton line for the throne, and causes the Dems to sort their problems out, his cons are too long to list, but ultimately does risk the entire nation with some potential diplomatic fuckup or economic lunacy. He also makes his friends rich, because this is what people in power do.
So yeah, both bad, and only time will tell. If we make it through the next four years without a major international event or economic meltdown, I'll consider it Trump's win a net gain. But I'm not confident of that.
What's "pants on head" stupid is that the only time "fraud" is ever a serious concern is when Democrats lose.
It's not a serious concern now either. If you RTFA it even says " they had not found any evidence of hacking".
Don't be such a sucker for clickbait headlines...
If you want the actual truth, you know that thing that used to be called "news", then you are going to have to go to a variety of web sites and other outlets and try to filter out all the political BS. That's what the world has come to.
Damn I thought you were going to give us a recommendation.
I've been looking around for somewhere less biased, but it's really difficult....
If it goes to guns, it is over before it begins. One side has been actively demonizing gun owners for decades.
Have you learnt nothing of losing war after war for the last 70 years? Guns don't win wars strategy does.
If the US falls to civil war, you will both lose while Europe an Asia fight for your corpse.
United WE stand. Divided WE fall. Your choice, the Chinese and Russians await with anticipation.
Riots are possible the other direction too you know.
In fact, I think the political system in the USA has become so divisive, and so hostile at this point, that civil war is almost inevitable.
This is purely the fault of the media, since this is where people get their information. As a foreigner I find it absurd that there is Liberal news and Conservative news. Shouldn't news be presented as objective information that the reader/watcher can decide for themselves? We get US news on Cable here and it is comical watching them deliver such opinionated information as fact. Once the media goes, the county goes next. So I agree, unless that is fixed, the American empire is over.
We used to use your method. It was _completely_ compromised.
How exactly? There are tens of thousands of voting booths you would have to have an army of tens of thousands of insiders to rig them all, not mention a simple vote count matching the register (eg if 100 people are ticked off the list) then there will be 100 votes, not 101, and not 99). Standard anti corruption measures such as using different people at different stages (registers are different people from observers, who are different from counters, who are different from transporters) keeps things reliable, and if any anomalies are detected, the vote boxes are shipped off elsewhere for forensic inspection.
It is conceivable that all of this could be rigged, but it would probably be less effort to just win the election fair and square.
Note: Unless your country uses the above precautions, your elections are worth fuckall in terms of reliability.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it is based on population, with the understanding that the people who came to vote are also voting on behalf of other people living in that state (their children for example) who did not (or could not) vote.
No it isn't. It's supposed to be like that, but Wyoming with 500k pop has 3 EC votes (1 per 166k people), while Michigan with 10mil has 16 (1 per 635k people). Do the maths, Wyoming votes count for 4 times as many Michigan votes.
There are many reasons why a straight popular vote is bad and the electoral college is better but the best one I can think of is what happened in the recent election. Hillary Clinton won 300 counties while Trump won 5000. If you think that the election of a nation should be swayed by a handful of cities while the rest of the nation is completely ignored, well, you're an idiot.
Depends, if in a hypothetical situation 99% of people lived in those 300 counties then yes, they should decide.
So yeah, the concept of and EC makes some sense, but only if applied fairly, which it isn't since 1 Wyoming votes currently counts for 4 Michigan votes.
Interestingly, Hillary's ENTIRE "popular vote" win can be ascribed to her lead in votes in Los Angeles County. Basically you're arguing that a single municipal region should dictate the election of the President. If you discount Los Angeles County, Trump carries a majority of total votes summed across all other counties in the nation.
You don't appear to have though that through. If we take out LA Country, and Donald now has the popular vote, don't we then take out whatever county is keeping him in front, then it's back to Hillary again? Do we then rinse and repeat until it's just Donald And Hillary in a nude mud wrestle for the title?
Ah, the Democrats, always trying to change the rules in the middle of the game. Didn't work in 2000, won't work now.
This is the type of comments that annoys me with these discussions.
Someone always thinks it's only one side that plays these stupid games. Do you think the Republicans have never tried to change the rules ever? They all have and they all do it, but that is not the discussion. I'd like to hear what would be considered a fairer way to represent the will of the people? The EC sounds ok on the surface, but how do you justify that one vote in Wyoming carries more than 4 times as much weight as one vote in Michigan?
Ignore this election, and these candidates, how would you improve this to make a stronger system?
Thinking that you can amend the US Constitution now is as brainless as you think that Trump voters are.
You don't need to change anything. According to TFA, it is within the rights of the EC to choose whoever they think is best suited for the role. So under the current rules, the EC could choose Mitt Romney and it would be legal.
Like if one is scared of a butterfly or a spider, that's a phobia, since those 2 things are harmless.
Wait, what? Dude I live in Australia and I can assure there are plenty of spiders here that will kill you. And unlike the regular wisdom of 'leave it alone and it won't harm you', some of them will attack even if unprovoked. So yeah, being afraid of some spiders is perfectly reasonable.
The reality is they were probably added to solve a marketing problem - a justification to jack the price up and free press.
This! Gull wing doors are stupid and only add complexity, costs and inconvenience. More importantly it is a sign that Tesla are losing focus on the important things.
According to Western intelligence sources quoted in the same article, a lot of this was just braggadocio.
Of course, because the CIA aren't likely to admit they got walked over so easily.
But let's assume that none of it is true since us regular folk will never know the truth anyway, and as a thought exercise if you had control of a multi-million dollar espionage budget how you could spend that?
Setting up fake news sites and mass posts to social media to constantly distort the truth are a relatively trivial way to sow the seeds of doubt. It's much cheaper than a tank battalion or even one fighter aircraft, and will achieve a lot more. I'm not saying this is a right wing or left wing thing, but democracy depends on an educated and informed public. What better way to attack a democracy than to pollute the information channels which the public rely on as a source of truth?
It would be naive to think the world's super powers aren't all engaging in such tactics.
Please stop beating the Russian horse. Occam's Razor argues that either there is a deeply clandestine and inexplicably state backed multi-million dollar effort from Russia to sway american elections for an equally inexplicable reason,
It's not inexplicable. What is not explainable to you about a state pushing foreign elections in their favour? We've been doing it to others for decades, so it isn't inexplicable at all. In fact it would be more inexplicable if they weren't doing it (along with the Chinese, North Koreans, Iranians and every other enemy of the West
If you think this is too clandestine and too expensive then I suggest some reading on the Soviet Cold War effort. Putin and his cohorts are ex-KGB, they were trained exactly in this type of thing.
or, just maybe, hillary clinton was a turd of a candidate that rigged her own primary, had no tenable domestic or foreign policy outside the Harlem Shake, and spoke divisively against blue collar americans, and rarely if ever campaigned in their states on issues they cared about.
That can also be true, the two are not mutually exclusive. It would be naive to think that any national superpower isn't engaging in expensive and clandestine operations for their own benefit. Put the Hillary/Trump thing to one side for a minute and ask yourself, if a capable state did want to engage in such activity, how difficult would it be, and what could we do to prevent it?
The KGB already admitted they were behind a lot of the US peace movements in the 60's, specifically designed to disrupt the US cold war effort. So how is this any different?
their attitude is generally "not quite what we believe, but how nice for you"; the worst they'll do is hand you a Bible.
So every single Conservative is happy, friendly and welcoming, while all Liberals are hateful, spiteful and evil?
Here's a tip for you, there's loonies on all sides of the fence. Your chosen team doesn't have a monopoly on virtue. And the fact that you think it does says more about you than them.
Correct, there is no "leftist conspiracy", any more than there is a conspiracy of bankers, oil companies, or GMO producers.
OPEC means nothing to you?
Sure everyone acts in their own interests, but people in power have the means to execute their interests a lot more than the noisy rabble.
Label these dissenting voices "fake news" and strive mightily the MSM's chief weapon, credibility, to discredit them.
There's a difference between dissenting voices and deliberately making stuff up. If you don't believe people are creating fake news to sway opinion then you are beyond help.
This has nothing to do with left or right, there is an actual demonstrated process for producing reliable information that all news outlets should adhere to. If your chosen source can't provide citations, sources, reference, independently verifiable claims, then what do you call that?
I am a right winger. We like Elon Musk.
Who is this we? I'm considered centre-right by Political Compass, but most right wingers I come across hate electric cars, solar power, anything not oil or coal based.
This fucking epidemic of stories about fake news this week is ridiculous.
Why? Democracy depends on a relative educated and informed voting public. The News is how most adults get their information, so deliberately deceptive news is a huge threat to a strong democracy.
The Liberal media lost big, predicting a Hillary landslide, and they NEED a scapegoat to blame for their own idiocy. Trust in the media is at an all time low, and people aren't fooled by the MSM putting on a different hat and calling themselves "impartial fact-checkers" anymore.
Wait, what? You went off on a rant there. Even Fox News picked Hillary so lets' not pretend this was some "liberal Media" conspiracy. The fact is that all the polls got it wrong.
So the new plan is to declare any website we don't like as "fake news" and tie them into the other demonized group we made up, the "alt right". They are the enemy and they must be stopped.
Um no, we (all of us) declare any website that makes up stories without sources, citations, or independent ways to validate the claims, and then tries to pass them as fact as fake news. This applies to all parties.
WTF? Didn't you guys get the memo? Fake news was last week. This week it's hacked voting booths. Next week will be hacked fake news sites. Week after we will be voting for fake new hackers (they're actually middle aged).
Actually, they're all fake news, and fake news will continue to be the topic for at least the next few years because a lot of people simply lack critical thought capability needed to defend against it.
Why do you believe what you believe? Do you have an opinion and try to justify it, or look at the evidence and try to form an opinion based on it?
Where is Kinect these days? All these new interactive interfaces have great gimmick value, but peak input interfaces was reached in the 70's and 80's with the controller or mouse/keyboard.
I tried VR in a shop, spent 30 seconds on it and had a little fun, but can't see how that will stick around. It's just too awkward to be used for anything other than gimmicks.
Coming up with different secure passwords for every site & then remembering them all and which goes where is beyond the reach of everyone without eidetic memory, thus the Dashlane advertisement is indeed useful.
No it isn't. I have two password for everything. One for regular stuff, one for important stuff. Regular people don't need a password manager, it's just adds another layer for compromise (A password in my head is more secure than one written into a closed source app that may or may not be sharing that info around intentionally or unintentionally). Password managers are useful for IT depts when sharing many privileged passwords with different users and groups, but these people already know what a password manager is, so don't need advertising disguised as news to work it out.
Why do you think you will own the robots?
Someone will own the robots, and they won't be the 99%.
Most of us already have robots, they're called washing machines and dishwashers etc. The guy up the road has a huge robot arm which he uses to dig really big holes, and another guy has a robot that detects when his car is in the driveway and opens the garage door for him.
There is no reason to expect this to change. These robots will slowly get smarter and cheaper and more people will own them, but it's a stretch to think we'll wake up one day to a vast robot army that does everything and renders us all unemployed overnight.
And anyone who has followed politics in the last 2 decades knows that Clinton is in the back pocket of the corporations and wall street, same as her hubby was. You want the kleptocracy to continue?
They're both bad choices, but the pros of Clinton is she knows how to keep the show together for four years while the GOP regroup. The cons are she makes her friends rich which is standard fare.
Trump's pros are that he ends the Clinton line for the throne, and causes the Dems to sort their problems out, his cons are too long to list, but ultimately does risk the entire nation with some potential diplomatic fuckup or economic lunacy. He also makes his friends rich, because this is what people in power do.
So yeah, both bad, and only time will tell. If we make it through the next four years without a major international event or economic meltdown, I'll consider it Trump's win a net gain. But I'm not confident of that.
What's "pants on head" stupid is that the only time "fraud" is ever a serious concern is when Democrats lose.
It's not a serious concern now either. If you RTFA it even says " they had not found any evidence of hacking".
Don't be such a sucker for clickbait headlines...
If you want the actual truth, you know that thing that used to be called "news", then you are going to have to go to a variety of web sites and other outlets and try to filter out all the political BS. That's what the world has come to.
Damn I thought you were going to give us a recommendation.
I've been looking around for somewhere less biased, but it's really difficult....
Given that we know the DNC and Hillary conspired to rig the primaries against Bernie Sanders, I think she's rather less trustworthy.
Yeah the blue snake is definitely more untrustworthy, you should trust that red snake over there instead. Good luck with that...
If it goes to guns, it is over before it begins. One side has been actively demonizing gun owners for decades.
Have you learnt nothing of losing war after war for the last 70 years? Guns don't win wars strategy does.
If the US falls to civil war, you will both lose while Europe an Asia fight for your corpse.
United WE stand. Divided WE fall. Your choice, the Chinese and Russians await with anticipation.
Riots are possible the other direction too you know.
In fact, I think the political system in the USA has become so divisive, and so hostile at this point, that civil war is almost inevitable.
This is purely the fault of the media, since this is where people get their information. As a foreigner I find it absurd that there is Liberal news and Conservative news. Shouldn't news be presented as objective information that the reader/watcher can decide for themselves? We get US news on Cable here and it is comical watching them deliver such opinionated information as fact. Once the media goes, the county goes next. So I agree, unless that is fixed, the American empire is over.
How big is your country, geographically and population wise?
Bigger than most US states in both.
We used to use your method. It was _completely_ compromised.
How exactly? There are tens of thousands of voting booths you would have to have an army of tens of thousands of insiders to rig them all, not mention a simple vote count matching the register (eg if 100 people are ticked off the list) then there will be 100 votes, not 101, and not 99). Standard anti corruption measures such as using different people at different stages (registers are different people from observers, who are different from counters, who are different from transporters) keeps things reliable, and if any anomalies are detected, the vote boxes are shipped off elsewhere for forensic inspection.
It is conceivable that all of this could be rigged, but it would probably be less effort to just win the election fair and square.
Note: Unless your country uses the above precautions, your elections are worth fuckall in terms of reliability.
More reliable than what we're seeing in the US.