My experience with 3rd party politics is often that they are great on rhetoric, but short on plans for implementing change. If 3rd parties are to be anything more than polite debate societies, they must come up with real plans for implementing their goals. How do you...
Privatize Social Security and Medicare without leaving the millions that currently depend on it completely in the lurch?
Get the states to rely on their own resources rather than eating at the federal trough?
Restore state sovereignty in general? What does that look like in the modern world?
Eliminate income tax and still fund the legitimate functions of the federal government? What about the period as unconstitutional functions are transitioning back to the states or the private sector?
Ease the fears of the rest of the world when you pull the US out of the UN?
Transition from paper fiat currenty back to hard money?
Eliminate executive departments (e.g. Education) that Congress has authorized?
Really think you can stand up to pressure from Congress, the Supreme Court, the media, and the public when you act like no president has in the last century?
These are just a few. Please forgive and correct me if these points are not part of the Libertarian agenda. From my reading, they seem to be goals that you would strive toward. They might all sound good in theory, but the process of actually getting there is going to be rocky. How are you going to guide the nation through it?
Some of the novels (I know, non-canon...but like anybody seriously accepts "Enterprise" as canonical) claim that the old warp 4.5 limitation was due to the lack of dilithium to focus the warp field. Once dilithium was introduced, warp 8-12 became possible. And even higher, when alien races take over the engine room and make bizarre modifications to Scotty's "wee bairns".
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
on
Assault Weapons Ban
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· Score: 1
If less Americans were apt to shoot people then it would be fine to let them have all the guns they wanted like in Switzerland or New Zealand. Maybe it's that they have less poor people.
Buh??? I can't figure out if you're an anti-American bigot or an anti-poor bigot. I've lived in America 31 years, have known lots of gun owners, and never once met any that "were apt to shoot people". I don't know where you get those stereotypes.
But often, especially when I lived in poor neighborhoods, I sure wished that guns were harder to get.
There's no law you can pass that will make it harder for only lawbreakers to get guns. Lawbreakers, by definition, break the laws. Poor people deserve an effective defense against criminals, too. Singling out "poor neighborhoods" for gun control sounds like racism or classism.
My point is that because of the violence we have in America, it's not really a fair argument to point to those low crime countries with lax gun laws and say things would be fine if our laws were the same
So are you saying America is just full of inherently violent people, or what? Again, are you just generally anti-American? Do you really see us as that bad? That's an awfully broad brush to paint with.
Not really. IRV could do lasting damage if initiated, because most people would be fooled into believing the problems have actually been fixed. IRV is deceptive like that. Nothing less than true Condorcet will solve the problem.
the House of Representatives should be doubled or more
Agreed! Originally representation was 1:35k or so. If we were to keep that ratio today, we'd need 8000 reps. That may be a tad excessive, but 1k is definitely possible. With smaller districts, people may actually have a chance of knowing their rep personally, and hold him more accountable. And there's the increased chance of electing a third party, as you said.
Artificially imposed term limits is just a band-aid solution to the artificial problem. The real problem is that elections aren't "natural" right now. The system doesn't allow you to vote your true preferences, instead encouraging "strategic" voting. Implement a system like Condorcet's method, and forget term limits. If the people have a real choice every 2/4/6 years, they will be active in politics (voting turnout will be better than the dismal ~40% we have now), and new/different people will be elected as a natural consequence. The current system is an incumbent-protection system, not an election system.
We can also thank the 1912 election for the current "anti third party" laws. Many stem from that timeframe. Obviously someone at the time saw Wilson's win as a bad thing, but instead of fixing the electoral system to handle multiple parties, they essentially narrowed the field to two.
I understand the motivation to have an "IE Preview" option
Couldn't that button just load goatse? Then the 31337 deezinurs would have to agree that "egads, the page looks awful in IE!" Maybe we'd finally get them to abide by standards.
Re:Maybe the next Gore or McCain will change thing
on
Open the Debates
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· Score: 1
Interesting theory. It would be fascinating to see multiple Republican/Democrat/whatever tickets on the final presidental ballot. It would almost make the concept of party irrelevant, except as a convenient shorthand for where someone stands on the issues.
Them and the Libertarians...*sigh* Doesn't anybody get the facts on IRV anymore? What we need is a system that evaluates all voter preferences simultaneously, not sequentially. Sequential (i.e. run-off) analysis still excludes some voters' preferences - the only vote that's sure to be counted is the first choice - which is the exact same problem of simple plurality voting. The solution is Condorcet voting: exact same vote casting system as IRV, but different vote counting algorithm that doesn't throw any preferences out.
I married a very nice woman who just isn't interested in politics much at all. Mostly we're on the same page, but she just doesn't have the interest I do. This is a bit frustrating because I'd like to engage in the issues a bit more, be active in a party, maybe run for office someday. We differ somewhat on a few issues, and it makes conversations tense if they come up in a meaningful discussion. If we were both apolitical these differences wouldn't matter much; we'd just disagree but there wouldn't be friction.
I mostly agree with what some other posters have said. Social issues are probably the most important to work out with a potential mate. Those are the things that you live by. Fiscal issues are less important; as long as you can agree on how to run your personal finances you can disagree on the gov't stuff. Unless you plan on being politically active. It's hard to take the time to do this sort of thing without the support and approval of your mate. Then it's much more important to make sure you agree on the issues that are important to you, and also that s/he approves of political endeavors.
I think people should spend as much time discussion political compatibility as they do religious or lifestyle compatibility. How you feel about "issues" is just as important as how you feel about $deity or how you feel about housekeeping/sex/family/etc. If you're going to live with this person, you need to be compatible in the areas that come up in normal life, and politics is certainly one of them.
When I was in college and worked a summer job that was about 95% outside, I could estimate time to within 10 minutes my looking at the sun. Now, being a programmer, I barely see that friendly yellow orb at all.
True. But if anybody introduced you to the concept of "man $commandname" or "info $commandname" you should also have heard of "apropos $whatyoureallywanttodo". Helpful Linux geeks that aren't telling the newbies about apropos/man/info are doing the community a disservice.
I'd love to see a map like that of 3rd party totals, just to see if there are any "pockets" of great dissatisfaction with the Duopoly. From what I understand, CA, WA, MN, and AK tend to have a fairly high percentage.
There are more than two candidates. It's the others that would discuss issues. The Duopoly twins just sling mud. That's the problem, hence the call to open the debates. I'd very much like to see Badnarik and Peroutka roast both Bush and Kerry. And Cobb would be good for laughs.
Re:And this is an issue because?
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Open the Debates
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· Score: 1
It's happened before. 1860 was a 4-way race, and the winner (A. Lincoln) was only on the ballot in 23 (230 EC) of the 33 (303 EC) states, carrying 17 (180 EC) with 39.8% of the popular vote. Should he have been excluded from debates?
You may or may not like Lincoln, but it's not like this is a new problem, or even to be considered a problem at all. If such a geographic (or other) schism should happen again and a regionally-unpopular president elected, I'd hope that the new president would handle it better than Lincoln did. But just because he's unpopular with some people is no reason to exclude him altogether, when he obviously does have a large support base elsewhere.
The EC does not work against "my" candidate as much as the bipartisan CPD does. That's right, it's controlled by two parties! Don't be distracted, that's the real issue here. The CPD is working in a partisan manner, and that's a problem. How can a candidate become nationally "legitimate" if he can't get press, and how can he get press if he's not "legitimate"? It's the age-old problem 3rd parties face. Supporters are getting them on the ballot in most states, despite high requirements (lots of signatures, short collection windows, high fees - none of which "major" candidates face, but [not so] oddly the major parties like to impose different rules on others than the ones they play by) in many states and that should be sufficient to prove legitimacy. If you look at the trends of where ballot access is gained, it's typically not the large/small state divide you mention - it's the ones with the highest access bar that give candidates problems. No mystery there.
These are real candidates, addressing real issues. They'd like to engage real people with their views, but the CPD won't let them near the media. That's a shame. With all the diversity in this nation, do you think there are only two valid points of view in the whole country? Funny that everybody's crying "more diversity" except in the one place that needs it most - diversity of thought in the political arena.
Re:And this is an issue because?
on
Open the Debates
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· Score: 2, Insightful
And frankly, if this new bunch just wants to lower the bar far enough so that THEIR favorite gets in, why should they have any legitimacy at all?
The only requirement should be "are you on the ballot in enough states to get the 270 EC votes you need to win". That's the only requirement that matters, and it's the only criteria that should be used. Anything else is just the Duopoly scheming with itself to avoid competition. If they're really as dominant as they appear, why are they afraid?
Exactly. A two party system becomes like one dragon with two heads. A Duopoly. They spout different rhetoric during campaign season, but that's about the only difference. Two parties is only one more than USSR had, after all. Both know the other, and are fairly comfortable doing the political dance with the other, and conspire to keep anybody else out. How? By arbitrarily high requirements for ballot qualifications and debate inclusion, among others.
Most states switched to winner-takes-all by the 1830s, when partisanship was rising but state loyalty was still paramount to national loyalty. The system gave the states more "punch" when voting for president. Unfortunately, the parties in power in those states did not consider that what is good for them is also good for their opponents when the balance of power shifts in the state.
I would like to see more states follow the Maine/Nebraska method of allocating electors, though (by Congressional district, and the extra 2 go to whoever wins the state overall).
I'm from Nebraska, and as much as I prefer this allocation to winner-takes-all, there is a better way. Use those extra two votes to adjust as closely to proportional allocation as possible. For example, in MN (10 EC votes - easy math) it is fairly unlikely that a third party will carry any one of the eight districts with the current plurality voting system. However, statewide it might be possible to pick up 10%. That party should not be unrepresented - give it one of the two EC votes. In NE (5 EC votes) it would be tougher, you'd have to get closer to 20% to capture an EC vote, but the principle remains. I wouldn't require a threshold of 1/(state EC votes) to get one, either. It might be possible to have a bit less, but the proportionality might work out closer to the popular vote anyway.
Of course, I'd also like to see Senators appointed by the state legislatures again, too, but that's not going to happen.
The US has a two-party system because plurality voting leads to Duverger's Law. Essentially, a single choice can only decide between two things (duh). When you introduce a third (or more) then there are multiple preferences, and these are not recorded by the system. These secondary preferences, when taken en masse, could have influence. This is the basis for Condorcet'smethod of voting. But since everyone somehow "knows" that only the top two contenders matter (though this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as we preselect the two that matter), and the only way to get what you want is to hold your nose and vote for something you don't want (now there's logic for ya!), this is what we're stuck with. If everybody simply voted honestly for their conscience/principles, we'd be better off. But most people vote out of fear instead.
"Independent" or "third party" candidates also appoint electors should their party's candidate win. For example, I am an elector for my party here in Nebraska.
Just a small FYI, but I'm from Nebraska and a presidential elector for my party. You're right, the Maine/Nebraska system does rock. Most states had such a system until the 1830s. At this time, partisanship began to rise but state loyalties still trumped national loyalty. States figured they'd have more "punch" if their electors voted in a bloc. Too bad you disenfranchise a huge chunk of your citizens that way, but that was their rationale.
Does anyone really believe that anymore? I sure don't.
And that's the problem. We should. Because that system protects our liberties much better. Concentration of power is dangerous. The Founding Fathers knew this, and wisely decentralized it. The federal system itself, not the three branches of the federal gov't, is the greatest check/balance of all. Too bad we lost it when the 17th amendment passed. Combined with the 16th, a central power now has all the authority and all the money it needs. What a dangerous combination.
Thank you. Couldn't agree more. Right now there is a huge disconnect between the states and the United States, because they have no representation in the national government. Indirect election of senators would be great. You send the best of your local leaders to your state capitol, and they choose the best of their own numbers to DC. You end up with a higher caliber of statesmen than someone you've never actually met that you vote for because he has the slickest sound bites.
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My experience with 3rd party politics is often that they are great on rhetoric, but short on plans for implementing change. If 3rd parties are to be anything more than polite debate societies, they must come up with real plans for implementing their goals. How do you...
These are just a few. Please forgive and correct me if these points are not part of the Libertarian agenda. From my reading, they seem to be goals that you would strive toward. They might all sound good in theory, but the process of actually getting there is going to be rocky. How are you going to guide the nation through it?
Some of the novels (I know, non-canon...but like anybody seriously accepts "Enterprise" as canonical) claim that the old warp 4.5 limitation was due to the lack of dilithium to focus the warp field. Once dilithium was introduced, warp 8-12 became possible. And even higher, when alien races take over the engine room and make bizarre modifications to Scotty's "wee bairns".
Buh??? I can't figure out if you're an anti-American bigot or an anti-poor bigot. I've lived in America 31 years, have known lots of gun owners, and never once met any that "were apt to shoot people". I don't know where you get those stereotypes.
There's no law you can pass that will make it harder for only lawbreakers to get guns. Lawbreakers, by definition, break the laws. Poor people deserve an effective defense against criminals, too. Singling out "poor neighborhoods" for gun control sounds like racism or classism.
So are you saying America is just full of inherently violent people, or what? Again, are you just generally anti-American? Do you really see us as that bad? That's an awfully broad brush to paint with.
Not really. IRV could do lasting damage if initiated, because most people would be fooled into believing the problems have actually been fixed. IRV is deceptive like that. Nothing less than true Condorcet will solve the problem.
I'm tired of how often this gets proposed as a solution. IRV has major problems, and doesn't fix the problems it's supposed to.
Agreed! Originally representation was 1:35k or so. If we were to keep that ratio today, we'd need 8000 reps. That may be a tad excessive, but 1k is definitely possible. With smaller districts, people may actually have a chance of knowing their rep personally, and hold him more accountable. And there's the increased chance of electing a third party, as you said.
Artificially imposed term limits is just a band-aid solution to the artificial problem. The real problem is that elections aren't "natural" right now. The system doesn't allow you to vote your true preferences, instead encouraging "strategic" voting. Implement a system like Condorcet's method, and forget term limits. If the people have a real choice every 2/4/6 years, they will be active in politics (voting turnout will be better than the dismal ~40% we have now), and new/different people will be elected as a natural consequence. The current system is an incumbent-protection system, not an election system.
We can also thank the 1912 election for the current "anti third party" laws. Many stem from that timeframe. Obviously someone at the time saw Wilson's win as a bad thing, but instead of fixing the electoral system to handle multiple parties, they essentially narrowed the field to two.
Couldn't that button just load goatse? Then the 31337 deezinurs would have to agree that "egads, the page looks awful in IE!" Maybe we'd finally get them to abide by standards.
Interesting theory. It would be fascinating to see multiple Republican/Democrat/whatever tickets on the final presidental ballot. It would almost make the concept of party irrelevant, except as a convenient shorthand for where someone stands on the issues.
Them and the Libertarians...*sigh* Doesn't anybody get the facts on IRV anymore? What we need is a system that evaluates all voter preferences simultaneously, not sequentially. Sequential (i.e. run-off) analysis still excludes some voters' preferences - the only vote that's sure to be counted is the first choice - which is the exact same problem of simple plurality voting. The solution is Condorcet voting: exact same vote casting system as IRV, but different vote counting algorithm that doesn't throw any preferences out.
I married a very nice woman who just isn't interested in politics much at all. Mostly we're on the same page, but she just doesn't have the interest I do. This is a bit frustrating because I'd like to engage in the issues a bit more, be active in a party, maybe run for office someday. We differ somewhat on a few issues, and it makes conversations tense if they come up in a meaningful discussion. If we were both apolitical these differences wouldn't matter much; we'd just disagree but there wouldn't be friction.
I mostly agree with what some other posters have said. Social issues are probably the most important to work out with a potential mate. Those are the things that you live by. Fiscal issues are less important; as long as you can agree on how to run your personal finances you can disagree on the gov't stuff. Unless you plan on being politically active. It's hard to take the time to do this sort of thing without the support and approval of your mate. Then it's much more important to make sure you agree on the issues that are important to you, and also that s/he approves of political endeavors.
I think people should spend as much time discussion political compatibility as they do religious or lifestyle compatibility. How you feel about "issues" is just as important as how you feel about $deity or how you feel about housekeeping/sex/family/etc. If you're going to live with this person, you need to be compatible in the areas that come up in normal life, and politics is certainly one of them.
When I was in college and worked a summer job that was about 95% outside, I could estimate time to within 10 minutes my looking at the sun. Now, being a programmer, I barely see that friendly yellow orb at all.
True. But if anybody introduced you to the concept of "man $commandname" or "info $commandname" you should also have heard of "apropos $whatyoureallywanttodo". Helpful Linux geeks that aren't telling the newbies about apropos/man/info are doing the community a disservice.
I'd love to see a map like that of 3rd party totals, just to see if there are any "pockets" of great dissatisfaction with the Duopoly. From what I understand, CA, WA, MN, and AK tend to have a fairly high percentage.
There are more than two candidates. It's the others that would discuss issues. The Duopoly twins just sling mud. That's the problem, hence the call to open the debates. I'd very much like to see Badnarik and Peroutka roast both Bush and Kerry. And Cobb would be good for laughs.
It's happened before. 1860 was a 4-way race, and the winner (A. Lincoln) was only on the ballot in 23 (230 EC) of the 33 (303 EC) states, carrying 17 (180 EC) with 39.8% of the popular vote. Should he have been excluded from debates?
You may or may not like Lincoln, but it's not like this is a new problem, or even to be considered a problem at all. If such a geographic (or other) schism should happen again and a regionally-unpopular president elected, I'd hope that the new president would handle it better than Lincoln did. But just because he's unpopular with some people is no reason to exclude him altogether, when he obviously does have a large support base elsewhere.
The EC does not work against "my" candidate as much as the bipartisan CPD does. That's right, it's controlled by two parties! Don't be distracted, that's the real issue here. The CPD is working in a partisan manner, and that's a problem. How can a candidate become nationally "legitimate" if he can't get press, and how can he get press if he's not "legitimate"? It's the age-old problem 3rd parties face. Supporters are getting them on the ballot in most states, despite high requirements (lots of signatures, short collection windows, high fees - none of which "major" candidates face, but [not so] oddly the major parties like to impose different rules on others than the ones they play by) in many states and that should be sufficient to prove legitimacy. If you look at the trends of where ballot access is gained, it's typically not the large/small state divide you mention - it's the ones with the highest access bar that give candidates problems. No mystery there.
These are real candidates, addressing real issues. They'd like to engage real people with their views, but the CPD won't let them near the media. That's a shame. With all the diversity in this nation, do you think there are only two valid points of view in the whole country? Funny that everybody's crying "more diversity" except in the one place that needs it most - diversity of thought in the political arena.
The only requirement should be "are you on the ballot in enough states to get the 270 EC votes you need to win". That's the only requirement that matters, and it's the only criteria that should be used. Anything else is just the Duopoly scheming with itself to avoid competition. If they're really as dominant as they appear, why are they afraid?
Exactly. A two party system becomes like one dragon with two heads. A Duopoly. They spout different rhetoric during campaign season, but that's about the only difference. Two parties is only one more than USSR had, after all. Both know the other, and are fairly comfortable doing the political dance with the other, and conspire to keep anybody else out. How? By arbitrarily high requirements for ballot qualifications and debate inclusion, among others.
Most states switched to winner-takes-all by the 1830s, when partisanship was rising but state loyalty was still paramount to national loyalty. The system gave the states more "punch" when voting for president. Unfortunately, the parties in power in those states did not consider that what is good for them is also good for their opponents when the balance of power shifts in the state.
I'm from Nebraska, and as much as I prefer this allocation to winner-takes-all, there is a better way. Use those extra two votes to adjust as closely to proportional allocation as possible. For example, in MN (10 EC votes - easy math) it is fairly unlikely that a third party will carry any one of the eight districts with the current plurality voting system. However, statewide it might be possible to pick up 10%. That party should not be unrepresented - give it one of the two EC votes. In NE (5 EC votes) it would be tougher, you'd have to get closer to 20% to capture an EC vote, but the principle remains. I wouldn't require a threshold of 1/(state EC votes) to get one, either. It might be possible to have a bit less, but the proportionality might work out closer to the popular vote anyway.
Couldn't agree more. Ditch the 17th!
The US has a two-party system because plurality voting leads to Duverger's Law. Essentially, a single choice can only decide between two things (duh). When you introduce a third (or more) then there are multiple preferences, and these are not recorded by the system. These secondary preferences, when taken en masse, could have influence. This is the basis for Condorcet's method of voting. But since everyone somehow "knows" that only the top two contenders matter (though this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as we preselect the two that matter), and the only way to get what you want is to hold your nose and vote for something you don't want (now there's logic for ya!), this is what we're stuck with. If everybody simply voted honestly for their conscience/principles, we'd be better off. But most people vote out of fear instead.
"Independent" or "third party" candidates also appoint electors should their party's candidate win. For example, I am an elector for my party here in Nebraska.
Just a small FYI, but I'm from Nebraska and a presidential elector for my party. You're right, the Maine/Nebraska system does rock. Most states had such a system until the 1830s. At this time, partisanship began to rise but state loyalties still trumped national loyalty. States figured they'd have more "punch" if their electors voted in a bloc. Too bad you disenfranchise a huge chunk of your citizens that way, but that was their rationale.
And that's the problem. We should. Because that system protects our liberties much better. Concentration of power is dangerous. The Founding Fathers knew this, and wisely decentralized it. The federal system itself, not the three branches of the federal gov't, is the greatest check/balance of all. Too bad we lost it when the 17th amendment passed. Combined with the 16th, a central power now has all the authority and all the money it needs. What a dangerous combination.
Thank you. Couldn't agree more. Right now there is a huge disconnect between the states and the United States, because they have no representation in the national government. Indirect election of senators would be great. You send the best of your local leaders to your state capitol, and they choose the best of their own numbers to DC. You end up with a higher caliber of statesmen than someone you've never actually met that you vote for because he has the slickest sound bites.