If the system itself didn't coerce people to sacrifice their principles in the hope of having a larger impact, then the real proof would be the election results. Ever heard of Duverger's Law? Until a Condorcet system replaces plurality voting, it is highly unlikely a third party will gain traction. Until mass media begins to cover third party candidates, how will the public even know there are other options or what their views are? Truth is, we really have no idea how broad the appeal of any third party is, because a significant portion of the public hasn't heard of anything other than Dem/Rep.
The problem is the system that makes us all feel as if there are only two vile scumbags to choose from. (There are actually more scumbags than just two! And a couple decent guys occasionally as well.) Get rid of plurality voting, replace it with a Condorcet method, open up the debates to the top 5 polling candidates, and the problem will almost completely correct itself.
Well said. Most people don't get that point - that they don't have the time/expertise to devote to knowing all the issues inside and out. That's why we elect local representatives - from a pool that is small enough that you could actually know the person and his character/intelligence - who can then dedicate themselves to those concerns. They act on your behalf, and send someone to the Senate for you. You trust these people to make other decisions (laws) for you, why not trust them for this one too?
The people still have a direct voice - in the House. But since the "will of the people" is fickle, House members only have a 2 year term. All this is by careful design. But since high school civics classes seem to largely ignore the reasons our gov't is the way it is, we get hare-brained schemes to fix things that aren't broken.
FYI, it's the 17th. Along with the 16th, one of the worst Amendments ever. I am a strong proponent of repealing both of these, as well.
Which I think creates some bitter irony -- what about rural California, or rural New York? Shouldn't they get equal representation? Instead the votes of these regions are insignificant, in fact made irrelevent, by the urban centers of these states.
Another very good point in favor of some sort of districted approach, like Maine or Nebraska. Thank you.
But the Wyomingite has just as much right to be a Wyomingite as the New Yorker has to be a New Yorker, as well. If the minority Wyomingite didn't have some built-in "hedge", the USA would essentially be (from his POV) just New York++. What benefit is it to Wyoming to be in a country like that, where their identity is squashed, and "the majority" sees them as little more than a resource to be tapped since they can't compete on the basis of sheer numbers? Small states would never join a Union like that - why should they?
Any marriage must be a union of equals, else it won't work. But the states aren't equal. The EC, and the bicameral design of Congress, are attempts to work with both ideals. They may be slightly clumsy attempts, but that's all we have. The alternative is to have tiers, with Class AAA United States, Class AA United States, and Class A United States, something like school sports.
Due, in no small part, to the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913. Easier communication and transportation played a significant role as well, of course. But when States (as governmental bodies) ceased sending their own representatives to the national government, that was the death knell of federalism.
Increase the number in the House from 435 to 1000. This restores the representation ratio to something closer to the original Constitutional (1:30k) size, but without being too unwieldy. Your representatives would be more responsive as a result. (Much like repealing the 17th, above, would do for Senators.) It would also make the amount of power wielded by states in the EC more proportional to their populations, which I'm sure the larger states would appreciate, without abolishing the EC outright, which the small states appreciate.
The EC is an attempt to reconcile the two methods of representation (by state, and by person) into a singular office (presidency). In addition to unique representation, the three bodies have unique selection: the House by pure popular vote, the Senate by proxy through a sitting body, the President by proxy through a body selected expressly for that purpose at that time. It would be a huge mistake to radically change it, as it would fundamentally shift the structure of the balance of government - much like passage of the 17th Amendment (which was coincident with the beginning of accelerated growth of the FedGov - interesting, yes?) did.
Most states implemented "winner takes all" by the first half of the 19th century. (Nebraska and Maine have changed to other systems in recent years.) The short-sighted legislatures thought it would give their majority party a bigger voice in the national scene, which it did. However, it also gives the opposition parties more voice when they hold a majority in the state...
I've outlined a "compromise" system in another post on this story.
I've been saying (something like) this for a long time. (Google my nick and "electoral college", I bet you'll find some of them.) Let the "representative" votes be allocated by the winner of the districts. Let the "senate" votes work to "proportionalize" the results at the state level.
MN, for example (10 EC votes = easier math):
X wins all eight districts with 51%, and Y loses with 49% in each. Give Y 2 votes. 10/0 becomes 8/2. Best you can do.
X barely wins in 4 districts, Y ekes out wins in 4, the vote is tied virtually 50/50 statewide. Give each of them 1 extra vote. 10/0 or 0/10 becomes 5/5. Much better.
X wins a landslide in 2 districts, Y barely wins the other 6. Yet X has 60% overall. X gets the 2 extra votes. 10/0 becomes 4/6. A strong reversal of the current system, more granular, yet retaining the EC's design that regions/states need to have a voice.
X and Y split 90% of the vote in various (pretty close to even) ways in the districts, but third-party Z gets 10% without a plurality in any district. 1 extra vote will go to X or Y, but 1 also goes to Z. 10/0/0 becomes something like 5/4/1. With third parties really able to influence whether or not a canadidate gets to the magic 270, their voice on issues garners much more respect.
It's a compromise, as I believe in "local control" (a districted approach is about the best you can do in a presidential election), but also believe in minority voices being represented (proportionality).
Some other quick ideas for voting/electoral/representation reform:
One house in state legislatures should be chosen by district, but one should be chosen proportionally. The design of the US Congress has two chambers representing the same people but by different methods - yet most dual-chambered state legislatures use the same method for representation. What's the point? Might as well go unicameral like Nebraska, since it's redundant.
Repeal the 17th Amendment. Senate races are some of the most expensive there are, because candidates have to canvas an entire state. But do you think a Senator actually feels accountable to all those constituents, though? No - you're just a face in the crowd. Go back to the original design where the state legislators choose Senators to represent the views of the state as a political unit. You'll get "big money" out of Congress, you'll have responsive Senators (since any single legislator holds significant influence on his reelection), and you'll have states back in a position of being able to stand up to the FedGov.
Implement Condorcet voting. Plurality voting is for the birds.
Open the debates to third parties. Why does the Duopoly want to keep this to themselves? If they are the only ones with good ideas, they have nothing to be afraid of. If they can't compete on equal footing, then they deserve to lose.
As the new maintainer of the A/UX FAQ, I keep hoping to learn more about it. Unfortunately the author didn't bring up anything I didn't already know. That said, the page or two he had is a good summary for those that have never used A/UX before.
Yeah, I know. Pretty d*** sad state of affairs, if you ask me. Silly notion about governments protecting the rights of their law-abiding citizens...
Aren't Brits still guaranteed a jury trial in criminal cases? I can somewhat understand a government that would bring charges, but I have a real hard time understanding how your fellow citizens would convict you in a situation like this.
The article mentions Opera's thumbnails on the Opera page and contrasts them with the IE implementation, but the way it was presented on the IE page it was like "OMG, thumbnails, how radical and unique!" Grouping all the thumbnails together, yeah OK, that's different than Opera, and sure some people will find it useful.
You certainly don't have to yank <br> out, but it could be deprecated. Given the history of deprecation when it comes to HTML elements, that should ensure it another 10 years of usefulness.;) The idea of marking lines, rather than line breaks, makes it possible to do neat things like apply styles to individual lines - great for poetry, or code.
I really don't like the idea of using two elements for a block of code. You can do it that way, but should it be done that way? Why are <q> and <blockquote> separate elements now? Because one is phrase level and the other block level. They serve different purposes. The same distinction applies to code. Adding <pre> to get that effect is, to me, an ugly hack.
Both of these would be trivial to implement if they were added to the specs. Moreover, they increase the semantic expressiveness of HTML - which is my primary disagreement with WHATWG's approach (as I perceive it): it doesn't fix the "brokenness" of HTML as used purely for document markup. Maybe W3C efforts on XHTML2 are focusing on extending the semantics to the detriment of web applications, but doing the opposite isn't the best approach, either. That's my whole point - why can't we do both?
While I generally agree, I do hope WHATWG takes a few pointers from XHTML2. Some of the ideas (e.g. replacing <br/> with <l></l>, blockcode) make a lot of sense to me. Just because web pages have become light-weight applications doesn't mean they aren't still used as documents too. Why can't we have both views represented?
That's the effect of society and culture. I was taught that if you know something is known to offend a largish group of people, you refrain from doing it in public. Even when it's something you personally don't find objectionable. That's the polite thing to do. In America, yes, a largish subset of the population is historically religious, and it is simply understood that "g*****n it" and similar phrases are simply not used in polite company, and are best not used in public in general. Doing so may make you look unsophisticated or boorish. It's about being considerate of others and appropriate to the setting.
How about the simple fact that those words or phrases are not considered "good manners" when in polite company? Whether or not you think it is blasphemy or cursing, I think everyone recognizes that it's at least somewhat uncouth, and maybe he just wants to teach his kids better than that.
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If the system could be overhauled so that voting honestly didn't hurt your chances of defeating "the opponent", would you support it?
If the system itself didn't coerce people to sacrifice their principles in the hope of having a larger impact, then the real proof would be the election results. Ever heard of Duverger's Law? Until a Condorcet system replaces plurality voting, it is highly unlikely a third party will gain traction. Until mass media begins to cover third party candidates, how will the public even know there are other options or what their views are? Truth is, we really have no idea how broad the appeal of any third party is, because a significant portion of the public hasn't heard of anything other than Dem/Rep.
The problem is the system that makes us all feel as if there are only two vile scumbags to choose from. (There are actually more scumbags than just two! And a couple decent guys occasionally as well.) Get rid of plurality voting, replace it with a Condorcet method, open up the debates to the top 5 polling candidates, and the problem will almost completely correct itself.
Well said. Most people don't get that point - that they don't have the time/expertise to devote to knowing all the issues inside and out. That's why we elect local representatives - from a pool that is small enough that you could actually know the person and his character/intelligence - who can then dedicate themselves to those concerns. They act on your behalf, and send someone to the Senate for you. You trust these people to make other decisions (laws) for you, why not trust them for this one too?
The people still have a direct voice - in the House. But since the "will of the people" is fickle, House members only have a 2 year term. All this is by careful design. But since high school civics classes seem to largely ignore the reasons our gov't is the way it is, we get hare-brained schemes to fix things that aren't broken.
FYI, it's the 17th. Along with the 16th, one of the worst Amendments ever. I am a strong proponent of repealing both of these, as well.
Another very good point in favor of some sort of districted approach, like Maine or Nebraska. Thank you.
But the Wyomingite has just as much right to be a Wyomingite as the New Yorker has to be a New Yorker, as well. If the minority Wyomingite didn't have some built-in "hedge", the USA would essentially be (from his POV) just New York++. What benefit is it to Wyoming to be in a country like that, where their identity is squashed, and "the majority" sees them as little more than a resource to be tapped since they can't compete on the basis of sheer numbers? Small states would never join a Union like that - why should they?
Any marriage must be a union of equals, else it won't work. But the states aren't equal. The EC, and the bicameral design of Congress, are attempts to work with both ideals. They may be slightly clumsy attempts, but that's all we have. The alternative is to have tiers, with Class AAA United States, Class AA United States, and Class A United States, something like school sports.
Ever read Remarkable Remedy? It sounds as if you have.
Due, in no small part, to the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913. Easier communication and transportation played a significant role as well, of course. But when States (as governmental bodies) ceased sending their own representatives to the national government, that was the death knell of federalism.
Forgot one...
The EC is an attempt to reconcile the two methods of representation (by state, and by person) into a singular office (presidency). In addition to unique representation, the three bodies have unique selection: the House by pure popular vote, the Senate by proxy through a sitting body, the President by proxy through a body selected expressly for that purpose at that time. It would be a huge mistake to radically change it, as it would fundamentally shift the structure of the balance of government - much like passage of the 17th Amendment (which was coincident with the beginning of accelerated growth of the FedGov - interesting, yes?) did.
Most states implemented "winner takes all" by the first half of the 19th century. (Nebraska and Maine have changed to other systems in recent years.) The short-sighted legislatures thought it would give their majority party a bigger voice in the national scene, which it did. However, it also gives the opposition parties more voice when they hold a majority in the state...
I've outlined a "compromise" system in another post on this story.
I've been saying (something like) this for a long time. (Google my nick and "electoral college", I bet you'll find some of them.) Let the "representative" votes be allocated by the winner of the districts. Let the "senate" votes work to "proportionalize" the results at the state level.
MN, for example (10 EC votes = easier math):
It's a compromise, as I believe in "local control" (a districted approach is about the best you can do in a presidential election), but also believe in minority voices being represented (proportionality).
Some other quick ideas for voting/electoral/representation reform:
I wish I could find a machine to run it on. (My IIsi died.)
As the new maintainer of the A/UX FAQ, I keep hoping to learn more about it. Unfortunately the author didn't bring up anything I didn't already know. That said, the page or two he had is a good summary for those that have never used A/UX before.
Yeah, I know. Pretty d*** sad state of affairs, if you ask me. Silly notion about governments protecting the rights of their law-abiding citizens...
Aren't Brits still guaranteed a jury trial in criminal cases? I can somewhat understand a government that would bring charges, but I have a real hard time understanding how your fellow citizens would convict you in a situation like this.
Maybe the muggings would go wrong (from the criminal's point of view) and turn into dead muggers.
The article mentions Opera's thumbnails on the Opera page and contrasts them with the IE implementation, but the way it was presented on the IE page it was like "OMG, thumbnails, how radical and unique!" Grouping all the thumbnails together, yeah OK, that's different than Opera, and sure some people will find it useful.
Opera has been a free download for quite some time. The free version isn't "adware" now, either. Completely free (beer).
Not really unique. In Opera, just hover over the tab for a second or two...you get a thumbnail of the page.
I just use Ctrl-T (or Cmd-T on my Mac).
You certainly don't have to yank <br> out, but it could be deprecated. Given the history of deprecation when it comes to HTML elements, that should ensure it another 10 years of usefulness. ;) The idea of marking lines, rather than line breaks, makes it possible to do neat things like apply styles to individual lines - great for poetry, or code.
I really don't like the idea of using two elements for a block of code. You can do it that way, but should it be done that way? Why are <q> and <blockquote> separate elements now? Because one is phrase level and the other block level. They serve different purposes. The same distinction applies to code. Adding <pre> to get that effect is, to me, an ugly hack.
Both of these would be trivial to implement if they were added to the specs. Moreover, they increase the semantic expressiveness of HTML - which is my primary disagreement with WHATWG's approach (as I perceive it): it doesn't fix the "brokenness" of HTML as used purely for document markup. Maybe W3C efforts on XHTML2 are focusing on extending the semantics to the detriment of web applications, but doing the opposite isn't the best approach, either. That's my whole point - why can't we do both?
While I generally agree, I do hope WHATWG takes a few pointers from XHTML2. Some of the ideas (e.g. replacing <br/> with <l></l>, blockcode) make a lot of sense to me. Just because web pages have become light-weight applications doesn't mean they aren't still used as documents too. Why can't we have both views represented?
Let me know if you ever want to get rid of that footrest. :)
Isn't that a popular theory with "young earth" creationists?
That's the effect of society and culture. I was taught that if you know something is known to offend a largish group of people, you refrain from doing it in public. Even when it's something you personally don't find objectionable. That's the polite thing to do. In America, yes, a largish subset of the population is historically religious, and it is simply understood that "g*****n it" and similar phrases are simply not used in polite company, and are best not used in public in general. Doing so may make you look unsophisticated or boorish. It's about being considerate of others and appropriate to the setting.
How about the simple fact that those words or phrases are not considered "good manners" when in polite company? Whether or not you think it is blasphemy or cursing, I think everyone recognizes that it's at least somewhat uncouth, and maybe he just wants to teach his kids better than that.