I am having a problem figuring out what your problem is.
I agreed the electoral college needs to be removed. Sooo ok? I think we are on the same page on that.
In addition I think First Past the Post is also outdated. First past the post will pretty much guarantee one will ALWAYS have two prime choices to chose from. It might be Republicans and Democrats today, and tomorrow two different parties, but because of how it works, it will always shuffle out to two prime parties. The first video of that series I posted explains why this is.
Are you saying First Past the Post is still the preferred system?
Personally I think opening up the possibilities of parties that are more inline with more Americans, vs choosing whom you consider the lesser of two evils, is a good thing.
Australia has this type of system in place.
Are you saying the third person “you” values or me? I don’t think you know my values.
I never said it didn’t help. It has failed to reflect the popular vote 7% of the time. Furthermore upon new information, I retracted my earlier statement and agreed that was the main reason.
Well “making fun” isn’t very conductive to an exchange of ideas. As for your claims that the primary process does this function, I think the railroading by the Democrat establishment showed that isn’t true. Furthermore, with Sanders able to run 3rd party with a weighted voting system, one could cast your vote for him first, and if he still didn’t win, your vote would go to your second choice. Under the current system any 3rd party candidate hasn’t even that chance.
I seriously hope the Democrats will come out swinging with a “bold agenda”, but I suspect it will be another cowardly “run to the center”. Maybe instead of promoting Nazis and the KKK they’ll just say that if we just take a “reasoned” look at their views.
Yes. People are pretending Trump won because of rednecks and deplorables (they certainly were a factor) when in reality, Trump won because the other party nominated one of the most unpopular candidates in history. I personally know some smart people who didn’t want to vote for either one, but figured the unpopular non-politician was better than the unpopular lifetime politician.
I can tell you, as a mathematician that has taught (undergraduate) classes that go into various voting systems and the issues each have, primaries do not “serve the same function” or, as i would put it, have the same effects as the alternatives to first-past-the-post voting.
Um.
A candidate who won the popular vote by a wide margin and who received more votes than any Democratic candidate in decades, barring her predecessor, is “one of the most unpopular candidates in history”?
Strange way you have of calculating these things.
Yes, this narrative needs to die. She wasn’t my first choice either but is NO metric by which Hillary Clinton can objectively be called “one of the most unpopular candidates in history.”
I am skeptical that those people are actually smart. “All things being equal, I’d rather elect a person with no experience in public service than a person with lifetime of experience in public service” is the exact opposite of a logical, intelligent choice.
That map is not “wrong”. it is deceptive.
It doesn’t accurately show the results of gerrymandering in individual districts and how they skew electoral votes.
And when I say that rural vs. urban is “less of an issue”, I’m comparing it to the 18th Century, when nearly ALL of the population lived in urban centers, with vast rural areas containing just a few farmers and their slaves. The Electoral College was also designed with slaves in mind — their votes were meant to count as half of a freed man’s vote.
It was an innovative idea 200 years ago, but in 2017, it’s an artifact.
You are right on that, but just based on population and economic scale California sets a lot of precedence for the rest of the US. If I go buy a new gas string trimmer it will be CARB approved or the fact my after market catalytic converter was designated for use in California or that everything with a cord now has a California Prop 65 warning attached it to. I literally live on the other side of the US, yet my choices are dictated by an entirely different state.
Vote by mail works fine. No need for a holiday and reduced need for voting machines. It also buffers the vote from last-minute, disproportionate histrionics coughher emailscough.
The 2016 election is the only one in Gallup’s polling history to feature two broadly unpopular candidates. Further, when factoring in the high percentages viewing each very negatively, Trump and Clinton are the two most negatively reviewed U.S. presidential candidates of the modern era, and probably ever.
There are two candidates on that list less popular than her: Trump and Goldwater. Looking that those who had “highly favorable” or “highly unfavorable” she’s even worse than Goldwater. Here’s Goldwater’s results courtesy of wikipedia:
More than half of Clinton voters voted for her only because the prospect of Trump was too terrible to contemplate but also more than half of Trump voters voted for him only because the prospect of Clinton was too terrible to contemplate.
I don’t know if there is a metric by which she wasn’t one of the least popular candidates, at least not a metric that measures popularity.
All things weren’t equal. And how much experience in public service did Abraham Lincoln have? I believe the Founding Fathers intended for ordinary citizens to be elected, not lifetime politicians. And third, many smart people were of the opinion that “lifetime politicians” were the problem.
It’s clear that you personally found her unlikeable as a candidate and didn’t perceive her as popular amongst your peer group or the public eye.
But that doesn’t matter. Based on actual math and votes cast, she was more popular among voters than any candidate in the past 50 years, besides her predecessor. So I’d suggest dropping the silly narrative or comparing voting for Hillary with shooting people.
