The vast majority of voters voted for Hillary. She won the popular vote.
Well, that's just wrong. She didn't win the majority of anything. Even if you did away with the Electoral College (which would be a difficult thing to do) she still didn't win a majority of the popular vote. No one got 50% + 1 of the vote. And with no majority (and no Electoral College) the Presidency is decided by the incoming House of Representatives using one vote per state. And I can almost guarantee she would've lost that without even looking it up.
That's just one more reason she was a terrible candidate. Not only did the Democrats and Independents not vote for her they also stayed home in regards to the House and Senate races. And I say all that as a Democrat.
This is something I've been thinking about for a while so I'm just gonna throw out my idea below if the filters will let me:
A True House of Representatives
From the earliest Ancient Greek Democracies sortition, or the random selection of office holders, was used to ensure the fairness and equality of the society. The ancient Athenians distrusted elections as they believed that elections would only be won by those who were already rich, powerful and/or popular. And that the average citizen was quite capable of discussing and deciding on the topics of the day. If fact only about 10% of their public officials were elected into office. These were offices that required special training or skill such as treasurers, military generals, and those in charge of the water supply.
Today, we still use this process to select our Juries for court cases for much the same reason that the Greeks did.
It should be obvious to most observers that our current political situation has become extremely polarized and beholden to special interests.
I believe that selecting our House of Representatives by sortition could go a long way towards alleviating some of these problems. By selecting random Americans we will get a better representative cross-section in the House. This could increase the political vitality of the House. Getting new and different people into the political sphere should also feed up into the Senate and the Presidency as those that serve well will get noticed and elected to these higher offices.
We would eliminate the need to campaign and with it the need for campaign money for House elections. Think about that for a second. No longer having representatives voting with campaign funds on their mind.
My proposal for doing all this?
In January of even years each House District randomly selects 48 candidates from registered voters over 25 years old currently living in that district. After months of learning about their candidates the public will vote, on the standard Election Day, for their top eight. Whether the voters get one vote, eight single votes, eight weighted votes or some other process will be up to the states. Once the top eight candidates are selected the current incumbent's name is added to the selection pool and the Representative randomly is picked from these nine.
FAQs
What would the qualifications for candidates be?
The current qualifications as laid out in the constitution are : each representative must: (1) be at least twenty-five years old; (2) have been a citizen of the United States for the past seven years; and (3) be (at the time of the election) an inhabitant of the state they represent. Members need not live in their districts.
The easiest way to implement this idea would be to add that candidates must be selected from registered voters currently living in the district.
What's to keep some random bozo from becoming my representative?
First, it should be noted that the whole purpose of this plan is to get a wider cross section of the population involved in the legislature of the country. Secondly, voters would have 10 months to learn about their candidates and then vote out the least qualified among them.
Wouldn't getting selected be a huge burden? Wouldn't I lose my job for disappearing for two years?
Well putting patriotic and civic duty aside. Representatives currently earn $174,000. Or almost 4 times the median household income in the US. So for the average American being selected would practically be like winning the lottery. Also, laws could be enacted similar to those protecting the jobs of jurors or national guard troops that are deployed.
Why add the incumbent back into the selection pool?
To be fair I haven't tried this. But it seems that all you would have to do is take a photo from roughly the same place and let a program like Hugin align and adjust the photos for you. Maybe this will be the beginning of a new hobby.
"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter - for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way."
-Nikola Tesla
I'm sure most of you herehave heard of Asimov's three laws of robotics.
The Three Laws of Robotics are:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
My question is: when do robots become capable enough that we start worrying about them having ethics programmed into them? We already have robots that can walk around and watch the house. When do we start to worry that they're dangerous? Do we wait until they've hurt someone?
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ...
on
The Next Generation
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· Score: 1
I go to a very technically minded university. And one of the books we read in English class was "How the Walkman has Changed Society" or some such title. So there are people who do see the way these novel things change us.
"I find it incredibly ironic that some people will spend an extra $1,000 on their hard drives just so they can store more music, but they won't pay for the music.'' Who has enough music to fill a $1000 hard drive!!
I can understand not wanting to elect a southern republican in order to get rid of Senator Disney. But what if the effort was used to instead put forth a different democrat for that office. Using the money, to 'elect' a diferent democrat nominee in the primary.
Instead of wasting some much time on the rubber tubing to copper pipe connection, why not just extend the copper pipes to such a distance (would be very far espially with some bends in them) that any leak wouldn't have damaged the system anyway?
True this would have to be fixed in order for a long term solution, but this was very much just a test anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
The vast majority of voters voted for Hillary. She won the popular vote.
Well, that's just wrong. She didn't win the majority of anything. Even if you did away with the Electoral College (which would be a difficult thing to do) she still didn't win a majority of the popular vote. No one got 50% + 1 of the vote. And with no majority (and no Electoral College) the Presidency is decided by the incoming House of Representatives using one vote per state. And I can almost guarantee she would've lost that without even looking it up.
That's just one more reason she was a terrible candidate. Not only did the Democrats and Independents not vote for her they also stayed home in regards to the House and Senate races. And I say all that as a Democrat.
This is something I've been thinking about for a while so I'm just gonna throw out my idea below if the filters will let me:
A True House of Representatives
From the earliest Ancient Greek Democracies sortition, or the random selection of office holders, was used to ensure the fairness and equality of the society. The ancient Athenians distrusted elections as they believed that elections would only be won by those who were already rich, powerful and/or popular. And that the average citizen was quite capable of discussing and deciding on the topics of the day. If fact only about 10% of their public officials were elected into office. These were offices that required special training or skill such as treasurers, military generals, and those in charge of the water supply.
Today, we still use this process to select our Juries for court cases for much the same reason that the Greeks did.
It should be obvious to most observers that our current political situation has become extremely polarized and beholden to special interests.
I believe that selecting our House of Representatives by sortition could go a long way towards alleviating some of these problems. By selecting random Americans we will get a better representative cross-section in the House. This could increase the political vitality of the House. Getting new and different people into the political sphere should also feed up into the Senate and the Presidency as those that serve well will get noticed and elected to these higher offices.
We would eliminate the need to campaign and with it the need for campaign money for House elections. Think about that for a second. No longer having representatives voting with campaign funds on their mind.
My proposal for doing all this?
In January of even years each House District randomly selects 48 candidates from registered voters over 25 years old currently living in that district. After months of learning about their candidates the public will vote, on the standard Election Day, for their top eight. Whether the voters get one vote, eight single votes, eight weighted votes or some other process will be up to the states. Once the top eight candidates are selected the current incumbent's name is added to the selection pool and the Representative randomly is picked from these nine.
FAQs
What would the qualifications for candidates be?
The current qualifications as laid out in the constitution are : each representative must: (1) be at least twenty-five years old; (2) have been a citizen of the United States for the past seven years; and (3) be (at the time of the election) an inhabitant of the state they represent. Members need not live in their districts.
The easiest way to implement this idea would be to add that candidates must be selected from registered voters currently living in the district.
What's to keep some random bozo from becoming my representative?
First, it should be noted that the whole purpose of this plan is to get a wider cross section of the population involved in the legislature of the country. Secondly, voters would have 10 months to learn about their candidates and then vote out the least qualified among them.
Wouldn't getting selected be a huge burden? Wouldn't I lose my job for disappearing for two years?
Well putting patriotic and civic duty aside. Representatives currently earn $174,000. Or almost 4 times the median household income in the US. So for the average American being selected would practically be like winning the lottery. Also, laws could be enacted similar to those protecting the jobs of jurors or national guard troops that are deployed.
Why add the incumbent back into the selection pool?
To be fair I haven't tried this. But it seems that all you would have to do is take a photo from roughly the same place and let a program like Hugin align and adjust the photos for you. Maybe this will be the beginning of a new hobby.
And here I thought it had to do with the alliances made during the cold war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_world
The FAQ at: http://www.lightscribe.com/ says it can take 1-15 min to burn a label depending on how detailed the image is.
"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter - for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way."
-Nikola Tesla
I'm sure most of you herehave heard of Asimov's three laws of robotics.
The Three Laws of Robotics are:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
My question is: when do robots become capable enough that we start worrying about them having ethics programmed into them? We already have robots that can walk around and watch the house. When do we start to worry that they're dangerous? Do we wait until they've hurt someone?
11 Megapixels should be enough for anyone.
I go to a very technically minded university. And one of the books we read in English class was "How the Walkman has Changed Society" or some such title. So there are people who do see the way these novel things change us.
"I find it incredibly ironic that some people will spend an extra $1,000 on their hard drives just so they can store more music, but they won't pay for the music.''
Who has enough music to fill a $1000 hard drive!!
I can understand not wanting to elect a southern republican in order to get rid of Senator Disney. But what if the effort was used to instead put forth a different democrat for that office.
Using the money, to 'elect' a diferent democrat nominee in the primary.
Take all the DAM pictures you want.
Instead of wasting some much time on the rubber tubing to copper pipe connection, why not just extend the copper pipes to such a distance (would be very far espially with some bends in them) that any leak wouldn't have damaged the system anyway? True this would have to be fixed in order for a long term solution, but this was very much just a test anyway.