Election Process

[chefTENGU]

So, my manager was talking to me today about what he would do if he was in charge of the American electoral process.

If he could, he would make lying or exaggerating in campaign advertising illegal, for obvious reasons. Here in Kansas, one nut job accused another of having something like 8 planes and spending a ridiculous amount of money for a private airstrip, while the other nut job got defensive and said he only has one beat-up old airplane and no airstrip.

Obviously, one of them is lying. My manager feels that the one who is should be prosecuted for it.

In addition, he feels that there shouldn't be any polls; he feels like there's too much of a tendency for a herd mentality to spring up which causes people to vote for who everyone else seems to be voting for.

What would you do to improve the quality of the electoral process, or ensure better election campaigns?

Personally, I figure that everything that's ugly about American politics has been there from the very beginning. If you think this election was long and drawn-out, remember that Andrew Jackson, after losing the presidential election to John Quincy Adams, began his new campaign the very next day after he got the news.

[Seegtease]

Lying on those matters SHOULD be prosecuted. And there should be limits on how much you can say about another candidate anyway.

The thing is, most people are too lazy to research... and even more so when you don't know which source isn't biased. I could research how many planes said person owns, and I'd get a bunch of different results.

So they're exploiting the people's laziness/inability to gather accurate information and just trying to incite rage against their opponents. Yes, it should be very illegal to lie.

[Bloodcinder]

Two big changes...

1. The primaries should not be asynchronous. It causes way too many problems and leads to ridiculous candidates getting chosen simply because they did well in early states.

2. Ballot access restriction laws must be repealed to wrest control away from the Republican and Democrat despotism.

[Seegtease]

Agree with that too.

[Seegtease]

Actually, looking at the current results made me realize something. I mean it's happened before but...

The popular vote (so far) is only a couple percentage in difference, but the electoral votes have an absurdly high gap.

The electoral by-state voting seems a little... inaccurate (in terms of representing the peoples' best interests) as a reasonable system to use.

[Killer_Man_]

But sadly there is no law that requires them to 'vote by what the popular vote is.'

[Arainach]

What alternative would you suggest? Don't suggest "just use the popular vote" unless you're willing to deal with the huge costs and delays of nation-wide recounts.

[deathofcheese]

Why not use just the popular vote? Obviously it'd be even more imperative to iron out faulty voting machines and vote-fixing, but a popular vote system seems to me to be far more fair and/or not terrible. Besides, I may be for states' rights, but isn't it supposed to be the voice of the people, not necessarily the voice of the states, that determines voting issues?

[Bloodcinder]

Why not use just the popular vote?
ARG EVERY TIME

Besides, I may be for states' rights, but isn't it supposed to be the voice of the people, not necessarily the voice of the states, that determines voting issues?
Because it should be about the voice of the states, and that is how it was intended. We're a collection of states with an umbrella government, not a collection of people compartmentalized into states.

[Killer_Man_]

Yeah, the only point of the electoral college was made was because back in the day the 'common' man didn't go to school and half the time you more than likely didn't hear squat about the candidate. Thankful of technology we don't have that problem anymore. It should be about the people.

[Seegtease]

Actually isn't the electoral college constitutionally stated?

[Bloodcinder]

Actually isn't the electoral college constitutionally stated?
Yes. KM was saying that there is no law requiring the electoral college results to match the popular vote results.

[Seegtease]

It still seems skewed somehow. I mean, take Texas for example. 51% of their state could vote for one president, and that president would get so many points from them. 100% could vote for one president, and that president would get the same amount of points. I understand it has to do with satisfaction of most states, but still. Maybe each state shouldn't be worth such large differences in votes by population.

[Bloodcinder]

People would complain even more than they do now if Texas and Rhode Island were worth more closely the same number of electoral votes.

[Seegtease]

Well then I don't have a solution. I just find it annoying that one could technically get owned in electoral and actually WIN popular. Well, within reason.

[deathofcheese]

Why do electoral votes have to go all one way or the other? Why not split electoral votes by popular vote? You still get different states holding different voting power, but it's a little more balanced to be representative of the people of each state.

[Bloodcinder]

Because the state electoral winner-take-all is a smaller version of the national electoral winner-take-all. It's like a bunch of small roundings followed by a big rounding. A given candidate is elected by a given state according to winner-take-all. Then the nation elects a candidate according to the most states by winner-take-all.

[Seegtease]

Actually I think silents's idea involves less rounding. A state that has 10 electoral votes has a popular vote of 60% for one candidate and 40% to the other. They give 6 to one candidate (I'm not sure if the 4 should go to the other, or just only count the winning popular vote.)

[Bloodcinder]

Yeah, buts Galen's idea is not my idea or the idea in practice.

[deathofcheese]

Right. Let's change it.

[Seegtease]

I vote yea.

[Bloodcinder]

I vote yea.
I vote no and Galen votes yes as well. So that's 2 to 1, which means we have 3 votes for it. Guess it passes!

[deathofcheese]

Huh? That's the terrible old system. With your no vote and our two yes vote, that's 2 votes to 1, which means two votes to one which means a majority with the two votes which means our version is better.

[Bloodcinder]

No, under your system, we'd end up with two-thirds popular vote and one-third electoral, which would be really hard to calculate.

[deathofcheese]

How is this difficult? The electoral is split like the popular. 66% of the vote means 66% of the electoral votes go one way and 33% of the popular vote means 33% of the electoral vote goes the other way.

Electoral vote count: 10
Popular vote for candidate 1: 60%
Popular vote for candidate 2: 40%
Electoral votes for candidate 1: 60% of 10, or 6 votes
Electoral votes for candidate 2: 40% of 10, or 4 votes

Where are you getting these weird answers? I'm not trying to explain the current winner-take-all, I'm trying to explain my idea for a new system.

Same example applied to South Carolina
Electoral vote count: 8
Popular vote for candidate 1: 54%
Popular vote for candidate 2: 45%
Electoral votes for candidate 1: 54% of 8, or 4.32 (4)
Electoral votes for candidate 2: 45% of 8, or 3.6 (4)

California: 55
PopVote1: 61%
PopVote2: 37%
ElecVotes1: 33.55 (34)
ElecVotes2: 20.35 (20)
none: 1.1 (1)

[Bloodcinder]

Whoa, somebody just fell entirely off of the sarcasm boat and hit his head on a missed-the-sarcasm-entirely stick on the way down. I was totally talking about the 2:1 vote you, I, and Hunter just had.

[Arainach]

The idea can't work because it'd require a federal constitutional amendment. Currently, the Constitution states thatEach state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congressi.e. states get to decide how they assign their electors. But for your system to work, everyone has to switch at once. If CA switches but TX doesn't, Republicans will win elections forever and ever. If TX switches but CA doesn't, we'll get Democrats for the rest of eternity. And so on. The switch has to be mandated at a federal level for everyone to do it at once - but that's unconstitutional without an amendment.

[Seegtease]

A change of topic a little bit: I know I said the other parties should have a chance, but I thought of an even better idea. Abolish parties altogether. All parties do is serve as enablers for laziness. Honestly, how many Democrats or Republicans just pick their candidate that matches their party? Not all of them, but many do. By eliminating parties, it actually forces people to research, rather than just vote with what they usually do. Uninformed voters are useless voters.

I understand the convenience of having parties, but I think it's a detrimental convenience.

[chefTENGU]

George Washington is probably shedding a tear of joy at your post, Zeit.

As part of his farewell address, he warned that party politics would be the doom of democracy in America. No one listened, though. He's still the only president America's ever had that had no party affiliation.

[Killer_Man_]

I hate people more who blindly vote for one party or the other. Not saying it's a bad thing but Paul the arcade owner who I used to work for would always vote Republican cause they never raised business taxes. My neighbor votes Republican cause he's a marine and he gets better pay.

Blah blah blah.

I hate it.

I do have to agree with Zeit.