What the hell....

[Sophtware]

Ok so here is how it stands...

It took 30 something days to elect a president..then when we finally elected one..we elected the one with the fewer votes! What the ****ing ****!


Next time some brainwashed fool tells me *you should vote..every vote counts* i will call that person a damn liar.



Ok i am done crying. i just had to get it off my chest.

[SteveCRM]

our country is screwed up. There isn't much more to say

[YoungBuck]

That's why I didn't vote. The only way your vote counts is if your state elects the person you voted for.

[Sophtware]

From what i heard..gore had some 200,000 more votes than bush did... the popular vote but bush won because of the electorial votes.

The popular vote means that the *majority* of the people voted for gore right??

Even though bush won the electoral crap ..doesnt it still seem a bit wrong..**** that.. it is wrong.

The coalition got 40 odd percent of the vote, and the opposition got 43 odd percent and the coalition still won.

Which lead our PM to state "I have a mandate from the People for my Tax reforms". This is the sort of idiot running our country, they cannot even work out what a friggin mandate is.

[Ianpbaker]

Politics all over the world are buggered. I personally don't vote as it doesn't matter which party runs england, there still going to screw every last penny out of you. As for william hague using that young black kid that got killed as a political football, if f*****g discraceful. For those of you that don't know, william hague is the leader of the conservitive party, and he was saying that if they were in power they would have more police, so things like that wouldn't happen. damn politicians really do get on my tit's

Ummm....you guys ever REALLY think about what you're
saying? Every answer on this list says:

"I'm not going to affect the result, so I'm going to let
the bastards do what they want with no interference from
me."

Of course, you're right about one thing: 1 vote means
practically nothing. So what's the answer? Find people
who more-or-less agree with you, join with them and get
involved.

If you don't want (or can't) to spend the time to attempt
to influence officials, support others who do... AND TELL
THEM SO......PERSONALLY!

If YOU have the time, get yourselve appointed to some
committee or advisory board. There is always a dearth of
technically competent people (Sophtware, 16 is NOT too
young to be appointed to a state or community advisory
board) to advise on hardware purchasing, software
evaluation, proper use of technology, ...

Sitting around bitching is of less use than a circle jerk.
All you really do is set a defeatist tone for those of us
who are trying to do something.

[Edited by DerFarm on 12-21-2000 at 09:17 AM]

[Guv]

For well over a hundred years, it has been known that at least 1/2% and maybe as many as 5% of the votes cast are screwed up in some fashion due to various causes: Confusing ballots, inaccurate counting methods, fraud, stupidity by counters, lost ballots, et cetera.

This time the snafu'd votes probably (not surely) made a difference. Now every single vote is sacred!!! Why hasn't every vote been sacred for the past 100 or more years?

Let's face facts: The absentee votes were sacred to Bush; The messed up votes in heavily democratic counties were sacred to Gore.

Politicians only worry about what they think will affect their chances of winning the next election. It would cost money, thoughtful analysis, time, et cetera to design and put really good voting mechanisms in place. Such time, money, et cetera never seemed to further any politician's primary (only) goal: Winning the next election.

Until this year, the messed up votes did not matter. At least nobody realized that voting fubars had an effect on their chances of getting elected. If the democrats had foreseen this mess, you could bet your net worth that they would have proposed legislation to spend money and fix the system.

I expect a lot of talk and proposed legislation relating to fixing the system, especially by congressmen & senators facing the next election. If polls indicate that the voters forgot or no longer care, it is likely that nothing will be done, but there will at least be talk. As long as it looks like votes can be gained by he who makes the most noise on this issue, the noise will be made.

Isaac Asimov had an incident in one of his novels that really tells you how politicians think. In the novel, a brilliant young physicist gets an appointment with a very influential politician. Before he presents his arguments, he is told something like the following (not an accurate quote)

My staff told me the purpose of your appointment. You are wasting your time and mine. If I propose the legislation you want I will lose the next election in a few months. If I lose the next election, I do not care if the sun goes nova in ten years and destroys all life on earth.

Gee Guv, and here all along when I've been working with
people who I thought really did give a damn and who tried
to change the system into something that worked better,
they were just sniggering behind my back at my naiveté.

I guess it just doesn't pay to have principles.

[Sophtware]

You still havent realized... it doesnt matter how many people vote for change.. the govt. is going to put whoever they want in office... hence this whole ****ed up situation we are having with the election.You keep saying that we should stop bitching and do something about it....well we tried and bush still became president.

Sounds like you are happy with how the election turned out?

And one more thing..where did 16 come from? i am 21.

[parksie]

What I don't get about the American voting system is that you don't seem to vote for anyone. Well, you vote, but it's not those votes that count, it's those "electoral college" ones?!?!?

Can someone clear this up?

Sophtware, you are showing your ignorance.

You've never seen the "laughter barrel" with the sign "If
you feel like laughing stick your head in here, Nigger"

You've never had a bomb planted in your apartment because
you were organizing unions.

You've never heard someone say (and mean) "Those damned
Indians are on the reservation for a reason. Keep'em
there!"

You've never seen the day when being divorced meant you
couldn't run for President with ANY hope of winning.

You've never heard of the "Catholic Situation"

and more, and more, and more....

No change? We've changed this country a LOT. Voting and
politics are just the extreme tip of the iceberg. And you
don't realize it.

[Sophtware]

Put it this way... if everyone in the state you live in voted for gore..but the state officals or whatever voted for bush..your state would be counted as voting for bush.

i am not sure about this..so anyone who knows for sure be sure to correct me.

But if it is true..it sure is ****ed up. ;(

[parksie]

Now THAT's ****ed up

It's also wrong.

You vote for a slate of "electors" who are pledged to vote
for the head of the ticket. In case of a deadlock, running
out of time, or othere catastrophic event (at least in
Florida), the State legislature has the option of
appointing a slate of electors. It does NOT have the
option of over-riding the popular vote. You will note that
the Supreme court stopped the election and the vote count.

The origins of the Electoral College are a fascinating look
into the practical politics of the Founding Fathers...who
were unanimous in nothing.

Basically in a Commonwealth system you go in and vote, (in oz you vote for some of the senate and the House of Reps), and there are only ever two parties with the hope of winning. Now each of these parties can guarantee a core vote, which leads to only about 20% of the mandate being swinging. Now the Politicians offer every thing they can to these 20% in the hope of winning the election.

Currently the Coalition government is spending millions of dollars upgrading the roads in the Bush in an effort to shore up there support in the outback. As one Outback Independent put it, "It's a sham, they are building better roads between townships that no longer exist".

What the bush wants is jobs and education, but the Pollies are so out of touch that they just give them roads.

Now in my seat there is a appprox 12% majority to our local non-descript mp. Will go and vote, but it will not make a difference to the outcome here. It will still be a liberal party seat, has never been anything else.

Last election the Federal Government had there total votes slashed and were well and truely beaten on the ballot box, but they still managed to win Government again.

Next year there will be blood in the water, they have two many marginal seats, and they have completely lost touch with the average australain. Expect to see some cabinet members looking for jobs, (though l expect they wont be seen in the dole queues).

Note for Yanks Our Cabinet is made up by elected Government Parlimentarians. We do not have a President, and do not appoint cabinet members.

Yes, that's the Parlimentary system. Most of the
Commonwealth (perhaps all....) functions on it. So also
does most of Europe. Even tho, at last glance, they were
not part of the English system.

The assumption behind that system is that the leader of the
party represents the majority views of the populace that
voted for the party. Party loyalty is much stronger, and
leads to a more fragmented, tho more representative,
government. When it function right, there is a large
amount of consensus building leading to cooperation by 2 or
more divergent views on issues of greater and lesser
importance. When it functions poorly, it leads to a much
greater factionalism and fragmentation, leading to the
downfall of the government at odd times. See Israel,
Canada, and especially, Italy.

In the US, the "cult of leadership" has been substituted
for party loyalty. The president is expected to be not
only the party leader, but the primary vote-getter. This
leads to the phenomenom of mid-term losses for the party in
power. It does not, however, lead to the fall of the
government. We have, right or wrong, the elections at set
intervals.

[Guv]

Parksie: Briefly, the Electoral College is a mechanism to avoid a nationwide popular vote. It is not as bad as some people claim it to be. More details below after I let off some steam.

If getting rid of the electoral college were likely to result in better politicians or make it illegal for lawyers to run for office, I would be in favor of getting rid of it. It does not seem to do any harm, so why worry about it? Amending the constitution would be a big job for little, if any, gain.

The last candidates I considered worth voting for were Goldwater and Stevenson. As far as I am concerned, Truman was the last president I gave a hoot in hell for. I have given up on any system giving us a decent president or more than a few decent congressmen & senators.briefly

Gore did not get a majority of the popular vote. The majority of the voters voted for somebody else. So what if he lost due to a messed up system? So what if we got the worse of the two bad candidates? How does anybody know who is worse? It is much easier to choose between two good men than to pick which of two politicians is better. The electoral college has never gone against a candidate who got a majority of the popular vote. It is possible, but highly unlikely. It would be almost impossible for it to overturn a 60-40 or even a 55-45 popular vote.

While many (I think most) of the electors are not required to vote as directed by the state vote, any candidate who lost due to outright defections would probably have deserved to lose. After all, each party picks its own slate of electors. If the ones you picked later voted against you, you must have been stupid to pick them. I could only imagine it happening if something terrible were discovered just after the election. If some borderline psychotic won and the elation over the victory caused him to lose it all and reveal his mental state for the first time, perhaps the electoral college might be very useful. For that matter, suppose somebody killed the winning candidate just after the election? If it happened before the electors voted, they could make some reasonable decision short of trying to run a new election or giving the loser the presidency by default.

I think some of the "Founding Fathers" did not have confidence in a popular vote, and liked the system for that reason. The idea was that if the popular vote did something really stupid, electors could over-rule it.

I think the main reason was as a compromise to allow states with smaller populations to have more effect on national elections. At that time, the two extra votes per state which had nothing to do with population were more important than now. Remember that the Articles of Confederation, which preceded the constitution granted hardly any power to the federal government, and many were afraid of a strong central government. Perhaps they were smarter than we thought.

The electoral system makes it much more worthwhile for a party to have programs providing something for the smaller states. Getting 95% of New York does no more than getting 52%, so promising NY a lot more than necessary in order to get more than 52% is not such a good strategy. It might be a better strategy with a nationwide popular vote, resulting in really screwing the small states.

There is reason to believe that a popular vote is more likely to result in 3 or more parties, none of whom get more than 40% of the vote. I do not think this was considered in the seventeen hundreds, but it seems like a valid belief now. When you start having 3 or more parties, some strange results can occur. I have seen descriptions of plausible scenarios in which the winning candidate (after runoff elections) is disliked by 70% of the voters.