Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Fewer than 200,000 Australians would currently be members of any political party - representing less than 1.5% of the total voters (around 14 million) - and that's being very generous with estimates of party membership figures. Most AFL football clubs would have more members than the major political parties.
Perhaps Australia is too different to compare the United States - compulsory voting (90% turnout this year), shorter campaigns (this year's 8 week campaign was twice as long as usual), elections being held on a weekend, preferential voting (third party votes are still valuable) and the parliamentary system (you never actually vote directly for the leader of the country) obviously result in a very different attitude toward elections and politics.
Where as this is just stating the obvious of what happens in every country that first puts forward a leader of a party that is contending to win the overall election.
If the U.S. electoral system easily allowed for other parties to exist and thrive (such as with a proportional representation voting system for Congress, which drastically increases how well people are represented in Congress, and could lead to much less "gridlock") then this wouldn't be an issue. Because those 91% of the people could easily ignore the Democratic and Republican candidates if they were terrible (which seems to be the case this year), and just vote for another party's candidate in the general election.
And they could very much still do that. The problem is there's both a legal and unofficial collusion between the two main parties to control the elections in various ways (such as making the rules for who gets to debate), and between them and the media, who normally completely ignore other candidates, and don't treat them nearly as fairly, so their chances greatly diminish.
There are a lot of things that could be done to fix this. But people need to support politicians willing to overhaul this system.
Larry Lessig (on who the DNC changed the rules mid-game so he doesn't get to make his case in a debate) had some great ideas [1], and so does the Green Party [2].
Jill Stein also supports ranked choice voting, and I believe multi-winner ranked choice voting, too, which is a form of proportional representation [3].
Unfortunately, you're not going to hear about all of these ideas from a media that has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and you'd have to rely heavily on the Internet and social media to grow this movement (and do it before Google/Facebook/Twitter start ramping up their censorship to help their favorite candidates, as we've already started seeing them do).
[1] https://lessig2016.us/the-plan/
Israel had proportional voting with a 1% electoral threshold (given there are 120 seats in the Knesset it's almost the natural threshold). They eventually raised the threshold more and more (3.25% now I think) because of the hyper-fragmentation which meant niche parties holding the coalition hostage.
The degree to which a given electoral system represents voter preferences is highly election-specific. People are also usually not polled on their detailed preferences so it's hard to empirically determine which one is most likely to maximize the representation of voter preferences in a given country.
Also the complexity of optimal voting strategies across electoral systems is different. An argument can be made that the simplest is the best. Say last year in Poland the mainstream consensus was that there's going to be a big coalition of all the parties against the biggest one. But some of the minority parties under-performed while the big one overperfomed giving the big one majority rule with just 37.58% of votes. If you'd redo the elections even the same week you'd probably end up with a much different result.
I cannot imagine in this day and age that someone would be selected as PM without also being an MP. Now, I can imagine them losing their MP seat during their term as PM and staying on.
The Tories and Labour know that the way the PM is selected isn't exactly Democratic, and they know that if they were to select someone who hasn't had a single vote that would be politically disastrous and likely result in a change to the way PMs are even selected.
The UK's whole political system only works because of mass voter apathy and ignorance (see the AV vote for examples).
I think in UK politics talking about apathy and ignorance is often a nice way to talk about other people's ignorance of your better opinions, and their apathy for your better ideas.
This is a textbook example of a "False Dilemma"-type fallacy. Either don't vote for the PM or vote for "more than a hundred" ministers. Those aren't the only two options and you know that.
A vote for a PM could, implicitly, be a vote for the ministers that the PM would select. You select the PM, the PM selects their ministers and cabinet, that gives the public more Democratic power.
> I think in UK politics talking about apathy and ignorance is often a nice way to talk about other people's ignorance of your better opinions, and their apathy for your better ideas.
Three quarters of people 'cannot name their local MP'[0].
I'm in favour of regularly electing a representative and then letting them get on with it. I favour simplicity and I think too many votes on different issues gets in the way of a coherent government.
If people can't name their MP then that's their business. Perhaps they're focusing their time and energy on something they believe is more important. Maybe they're curing cancer while we argue politics. Who knows.
That's called a 'presidential system'.
Personally, I see so many problems with both candidates that it makes me sick that I have to vote for the least worst one.
Defacto third party's scare the primary party's so they are quick to gain the talking points as soon as those party gain any traction. Most recently Libertarian message was somewhat co opted by Tea Party Republicans. Though in a very mutated form that for example ignored their drug stance.
We need to force the two parties to loosen their grip on the political machine in the US. The only way we do that is by supporting third party candidates.
If you want to vote Green, go convince a conservative to vote Libertarian. I did this just last week in PA, a conservative that I don't agree with is completely upset about Trump and is going to vote for Gary Johnson.
Unless you can massively convince everyone to do vote for their actual best candidate, it's also very pragmatic.
From experience from other countries, the way shifts that allow a third party/candidate break a "duopoly" happen is slowly -- they incresingly get 5, 10, 15% of the vote, until a momentum builds and people start (rightly) feeling than voting for them doesn't just waste their vote and lets their least favorite of the 2 major candidates elected.
This is the year to do it. There is enough general dissatisfaction with the two parties that there is an opening for both the Green and Libertarian Parties to actually do something that's never been done before.
Which instead of spoiling one major party (Perot and Nader), they would spoil both.
Your wasting your vote if you don't use it to vote your mind.
May I suggest that you guys explore elections reform as an option to get fresh faces on the political stage and rejuvenate the whole political process?
In a race where two third party candidates can siphon votes off the two primary parties, it's finally in the interests of the main parties to move towards something like Ranked Choice.
Yes, if the entire electorate would just wake up and realize they can vote for anyone they want, then it would no longer be a two-party system. And if a benevolent immortal dictator spontaneously materialized in the White House, we wouldn't need to mess about with this democracy nonsense at all anymore. The second one is not substantially less likely to happen than the first, so it's pointless to consider.
If you don't expect to die before the next election, it is never a waste to vote for the option closest to what you actually want.
If you are always voting between your worst choice and your second-worst choice, it may be wiser to reconsider strategic voting altogether, and just pick what you want every time.
I think there is a pair of words reversed here: it is not definitely wasted in terms of ballot access and public credibility for subsequent elections (that is, it is possible for it to have some impact on those things), but its most likely also wasted for those purposes, so "definitely not" is not accurate.
Say that state is Ohio. In 2012, the popular vote in Ohio was as follows (Source: Politico):
B. Obama 50.1%
M. Romney 48.2%
G. Johnson 0.9%
J. Stein 0.3%
Let's say you're much more aligned with the Green Party platform. Why wouldn't you vote for Jill Stein?
The answer is because your vote would likely otherwise go to Barack Obama, as the next closest candidate. So you're taking a vote away from Obama and putting it toward a candidate that has no chance of winning.
If enough people do this, the second place candidate would win, in this case Mitt Romney. As a Green supporter, this would likely be the worst case scenario result. And yet, unintuitive as it is, your vote contributed to the candidate on the opposite side winning.
"But if enough people voted Green, they would win," some cry. OK. Historically speaking, the Greens have averaged around this result... likely no more than 3% in any given state election. Do you really think that they're going to multiply their votes by several orders of magnitude by election day?
This isn't the case in every electoral system; for example, in a Parliamentary system such as Canada's, you vote for your local MP, who runs on the basis of a riding, for which there are usually several within a city. The party that wins the most MP seats gets to form a government (PM, etc.) So the election becomes a much more local affair, rather than being a winner-take-all battle among the entire province, and results in practice in a multi-party system. Unfortunately, that's just not how US presidential elections work. The ridings are the size of an entire state, so your vote has less of an impact.
Confined to a single election. I have a theory that lately we're seeing the longer-term consequences of limiting agency to large sections of the population.
1) There is a clear value to voting Green in terms of building the party. The more people vote Green, the more visible the success of the party, the better they do in future elections. Not all of what happens in an election need be about winning the current contest.
2) The idea of a linear political spectrum with candidates neatly arranged from 'good' to 'worse' to 'bad' is bunkum. In particular Libertarians are an obvious divergence from this model (and often emphasize this), and this strategic voting argument makes zero sense in their case. Greens also are generally quite different from Democrats ideologically (notably on war); the idea that a Democrat is a 'better compromise' is vulgar to many.
3) If a party wants your votes, generally they should take up the positions you favor, not refuse to countenance them on the belief that duty requires you to vote for them.
4) Mitt Romney is looking pretty good right now, even compared to Clinton.
That makes sense in the abstract. In concrete reality, Trump is going to do his best to persecute hundreds of thousands of Americans, notably Hispanics and Arabs. (I don't say "Muslims" because I don't think his policies, or the people carrying them out, will recognize a functional distinction.) Shall we tell those people as they're being persecuted and deported that their suffering is okay, because they're contributing to the Greens possibly having a chance at winning in 20 years?
I don't think we can reasonably ask that of people.
Of course I don't believe in elections so this whole debate is academic to me. In a world with ALEC and WPP, elections have nothing to do with governance.
But the idea that we have nothing to fear except Trump is bullshit. Trump didn't bring us here. Bush, Clinton and Obama did. Fifteen years of terror and violence in the Mideast did. Actually sixty years if you want.
I fought hard to stop the Iraq war that Clinton voted for. She has nothing to be afraid of personally. I've been afraid too long.
1) I agree that there is value in building strong third parties, but that value comes at the cost of the risk of the spoiler effect as I described. If presidential elections happened every year, or if there was a bigger push from the bottom (State and Legislative elections) to elect more third parties, then maybe the risk would be worth it to establish the base, but that's not the case, and a President can do a lot of damage in 4 years.
3) I think both Trump and Bernie have demonstrated a more viable way to accomplish that this election. Both have moved the Overton Window in a direction that the entrenched party candidates were unwilling to prior to this election. For example, Bernie pushed the Dem platform adopt "raise the minimum wage to $12, or maybe more", when they weren't strongly pushing for it prior.
4) I think that 2016 Romney sounds pretty good, but pandering 2012 Romney still sounds pretty awful. Similarly 2000 McCain sounds great in retrospect, but 2008 or even 2016 McCain sounds pretty awful as well.
My feeling on Clinton is that she, and many of the other people in government, are horrifying murderers and traitors. Obama has two main roles: fundraise for the Democrats and sell weapons to Saudi Arabia. Clinton has been paid millions of dollars by Goldman Sachs, a company that had a major hand in constructing the housing bubble whose bursting blanked $24 trillion in wealth from America.
I am just giving you a bare illustration of my disagreements with Clinton. I held my nose and voted for Sanders in the primary. I probably won't even vote for Jill Stein. There is no way for someone like me to even begin to express my antipathy to the current form of American political process and system of government.
To many people like me, you are asking them to vote for Al Capone because John Wayne Gacy is worse.
Perhaps you think people like me don't matter. But the truth is there are probably a lot of people like me. And there are probably a lot of people of a similar bent on the right (though with different stories for why we should hate and fear the same elites). And this political system doesn't reflect our desires, and, as you're arguing in this thread, by design it cannot; it seems lunatic to me to attempt to engage with it.
So, I won't be voting Clinton, nor Trump. But I am not a spoiler; the barrel is fully rotten.
I am normally quite chatty about this and other political topics online, but tonight I'm out of energy -- so thank you for summing up how I feel so well!
I don't personally think that way, and I believe there would be a huge difference between a Clinton and a Trump presidency, so I will vote strategically because I want to have an impact on the real election happening here, that between the two front-runners.
These Nader supporters of course had every right to vote how they wanted, but the prevailing argument at the time by Nader was that there was essentially no difference between Gore and Bush and it was time to send a message to the "establishment."
However you feel about Bush, I think history makes it plain that 1) there was likely a huge difference between a Bush and a potential Gore presidency, and 2) while it may be nice to simply send a message with your vote, we should remember that 0.0000895% of the electorate of a single state can determine the outcome.
But no matter how strong our emotions are about such things, should be extremely clear-headed about what our vote means. And, the point I try to hammer home, that we each need to take full responsibility for the result of our vote.
If you want to vote to 'let the world burn', as quite a few Bernie supporters are talking, so be it.
If you want to vote to 'send a message', so be it.
If things go very badly after November, then you're not allowed to say "my vote didn't really matter" or "I had no choice but to vote the way I did."
Own your vote; make it, and accept responsibility for your portion of the outcome.
537 out of 100,000 Nader voters in 2000 changed the world, and not in a good way, in my strongly held opinion at least.
You are not taking a vote away from Obama when you vote for Stein. It is far more likely that Obama is actually taking votes away from Stein, as Green party supporters vote strategically, because their 2nd choice is better than their 3rd or 4th choice.
Until such time as any US state implements a ranked-choice voting system, you have no way of knowing whether the candidate receiving the vote is actually someone's first choice, or a strategic vote for the second-to-last choice.
First-past-the-post voting essentially means that the 2 major parties are always stealing away almost all the votes that would have otherwise been cast for lesser parties. So a vote for Stein is actually "refusing to let Democrats steal your Green vote". You can't steal it away from the Democrats, because it wasn't theirs to begin with.
Parliamentary systems with FPTP also tend toward two-party systems locally, though there is somewhat more variation nationally sometimes. (The US also had some variation nationally, especially before the Missouri Farmer-Labor Party joined the national Democratic Party.)
IF you want multiparty elections locally as well as nationally -- if you want more than two meaningful choices when you go into the ballot box -- you need something better than FPTP as a voting system (IRV with single-seat constituencies is like the smallest and least meaningful step in a positive direction, but STV with multiseat constituencies does better.)
I follow you up to here. The Democratic party has always been for centralized control of policy decisions.
> My conservative friends are irked because the RNC did not do more to stop Trump.
Mine don't really care about the party leadership. They are irked at the other primary voters more than the party leaders. Rubio, Paul, and Cruz were Tea Party candidates, so considering them establishment and voting for Trump screams ignorance more than anything.
That being said, you can also protest vote by putting in "Edward Snowden" or something.
Honestly, I find it horrifying people feel the need to vote for the "least worst option". You're essentially electing a temporary dictator (potentially at least), please don't vote for someone you dislike. Even if you dislike one less than the other, you still dislike them...
Try not to let fear influence you when selecting a leader. A leader needs to guide and protect the group, not be the least bad member of the group.
The fact that it's based on the popular vote is great because the Electoral College doesn't get in way. Interestingly, if you live in a state that isn't a swing state, voting third party is possibly more meaningful than voting R or D. For example, if you live in California, voting for Clinton is unnecessary and voting for Trump is pointless, but voting for Stein or Johnson could actually have a real effect.
http://www.fec.gov/press/bkgnd/fund.shtml
Also, why can't I reply to siblings of this post?
Anyway, I don't see what difference federal funding would make. They're still not going to have a chance at winning or meaningfully affecting the policies of the major parties. In the unlikely event they do manage to win, it's basically mathematically guaranteed that they'll just displace one of the other major parties and we'll be back to a two-party system again. This is, of course, what happened in the mid 19th century when the Republican Party displaced the Whigs. There's no way around it in a first-past-the-post system. If you want third parties to be viable (and I sure do!) then you need electoral reform, not protest votes.
A third party doesn't actually don't need to win. If a candidate does not receive a majority in the electoral college I believe the house / congress decides[1]. This would also pretty much destroy both parties - they will have to compromise and come closer to the middle.
[1] http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/a...
PARTY CONVENTION AND GENERAL ELECTION GRANTS The presidential nominee of each major party may become eligible for a public grant of $20,000,000 plus COLA (over 1974). For 2012, the grant was approximately $91,241,400 for each major party nominee. However, the two major party presidential nominees in 2012 opted out of the public financing program in the general election. Candidates themselves may not raise any other funds to be used for campaigning during the general election period. The general election limit for publicly funded candidates for 2016 is $96,140,600.
Yes, this is fucked up, and yes, it needs to change. Voting for Ed Snowden will not change it.
Given that the maximum involvement most people desire in politics is visiting polling stations to vote twice a year, or maybe volunteering to help campaign for one specific candidate, my advice is to just vote for whomever would make you feel good as you exit the polls.
If you would otherwise stay home, you can still make a meaningful difference by voting for a third party, because there are percentage-of-the-total-vote thresholds (varying by state) that impact whether that party has to overcome a crippling barrier to entry (again) for the next election.
The third-party candidate is not going to win. But you can help prevent that party from being required to collect 50000 signatures (costing them $100000) to get on the ballot next time. If you hate both major candidates, this election is not really your fight, anyway. You can, however, vote for "better luck next time" by making a third party seem more like a serious contender.
Vote for the candidate that most closely reflects your desires. As long as the two major parties can always manipulate voters into "lesser of two evils" and choose between "douche vs. turd sandwich" or "stupid vs. evil", they will never have any incentive to change tactics. Vote for a single-issue party if you support their position. Otherwise, vote Libertarian, Green, or Constitution if you have the option.
Check your state's ballot access laws. It may be a better option to strategically not vote at all for a particular office, such as governor, to reduce the signature burden for ballot access in the next election.
I think this is highly dependent on "how bad" the two mainstream options are. There are plenty people who think there is a legitimate concern that a Trump presidency could lead to nuclear war or some other kind of national disaster. If you believe this is a real possibility it comes much easier to empathize with voting for the "least bad option".
TL;DR I dislike Regan, but in a Regan vs Hitler election I would vote for Regan rather than a 3rd party I was actually more aligned with to try to ensure Hitler did not rise to power.
> If you are saying you have to choose between two bad candidates, you are implying you would choose a better option if one existed.
Well there's a word missing here that changes it. People are not typically implying they would choose a better option if one existed; rather, they are typically implying they would choose a different viable candidate if a different viable candidate existed.
> If you don't think the third party candidate is a better option, that's fine, don't vote third party, but if you think the major party options are evil, the just don't vote.
This is again a suggestion I take umbrage to, and one I feel primarily made by those unlikely to feel the level of personal impact from a given election. Both candidates are the same, unless your voting rights are threatened. Both candidates are the same, unless you're reproductive rights are threatened. Both candidates are the same, unless you depend on food stamps to feed your children and yourself.
Elections have real stakes. It's all well-and-good to take a philosophical stance with a third-party, but that third-party candidate isn't going to win. It's both a self-fulfilling prophecy to say so, and a pragmatic acknowledgement of present-day reality. So, when one of two people will win, and your vote does matter (which isn't a given), then the rational thing to do is vote for the person who you feel will do you the most good or least harm. And everyone that turns their nose up at you for not tilting against windmills can learn to take it easy.
That is not what I said, though I don't necessarily disagree. I am making the argument that voting is a self-interested exercise one way or the other; even voting for the "greater good" is an exercise in personal self-interest. So if you evaluate the two candidates who have any chance of winning and find a significant difference in how you and your peers' lives will be affected, then it's rational to vote for one of those candidates even if your views align better to a non-viable third-party candidate.
> The second point you are trying to make is saying that you should only vote for a viable candidate
No, that is again not what I am saying or have said. You're inferring something I'm not implying. Everyone should vote how they want to vote. What I don't like is the philosophical grandstanding about how if one doesn't really like either candidate that they should not vote or vote third-party, or that voting third-party or abstaining is some symbol of moral strength or "rightness."
It's easy to laud the nobility of voting third party or abstaining, futility of outcome or not, when you view the outcome of either viable candidate as basically equivalent. But they aren't equivalent, especially to certain subgroups of people. You specifically encouraged people not to vote for "evil candidates"; if you meant the word "evil" literally then fine, ignore this. But I don't think you did, and therefore I found your suggestion quite distasteful.
I find it disconcerting that one could use such hyperbolic language when voting for the "least worst" option is clearly the rational thing to do when there are direct, personal stakes from the *outcome. The ramifications to minorities by electing a very conservative Republican, or a pretend-Conservative who is a not-pretend racist like Trump, are quite significant. By doing anything, by action or inaction, to put Trump in the White House, there is a substantial risk of reduced voting access for minority voters. For poor voters, there is a substantial risk of losing the social safety net. For women, a likely increase in barriers to reproductive health.
No, you don't have to vote for the least-bad option. But we all know that a third-party candidate is not going to win the election. You're expressing at horror that people with skin in the game, where the stakes are quite high (or seem to be), are unwilling to make a political and philosophical stand at the expense of their own best interests. Until there is some level of voting system reform, we're likely stuck with first-past-the-post system that encourages two-party rule.
Of course I think you should vote for a third-party candidate if you want to. It's your vote! Maybe it'll lead to funding for their campaign next time. But I take great umbrage with the disgust and horror shown to people acting pragmatically because of what a third-party vote may lead to for them.
> But we all know that a third-party candidate is not going to win the election.
A third party doesn't actually don't need to win. If a candidate does not receive a majority in the electoral college I believe the house / congress decides[1]. This would also pretty much destroy both parties - they will have to compromise and come closer to the middle.
Basically, if a third party can get even 15% of the vote it would open the door for another candidate.
[1] http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/a...
(1) a third party is unlikely, in failing to win, to get even a single electoral vote, much less be instrumental in denying the leading major-party candidate a majority.
(2) If no candidate gets an electoral majority for the Presidency, the House elects a President on a one-vote per state basis (and if they don't do it by a specified time, the Vice President becomes President); if no candidate gets an electoral majority for the Vice Presidency, the Senate elects a Vice President.
> This would also pretty much destroy both parties - they will have to compromise and come closer to the middle.
Why would it destroy both major parties -- particularly the one that still wins the Presidency in that scenario?
> Basically, if a third party can get even 15% of the vote it would open the door for another candidate.
No, it wouldn't. We know that, because its happened, not that many elections ago (H. Ross Perot, 18.9% in 1992.)
You're also ignoring all the changes made to election rules since Perot (all made to prevent such a strong showing again)?
Elections aren't thought experiments. The parable humorously expresses what so many third-party evangelists express: that the candidates are basically equivalent to each other, or equally bad. I find that position distastefully incorrect, or at the very least naively spoken from a position of privilege.
Elections aren't thought experiments, the results will have tangible and long-lasting results. I'm not personally willing to sacrifice some of the issues I perceive to be at stake this election on the altar of a third-party candidate who cannot win. If you are, then great! It's your vote, do with it as you please. It's the moral smugness that usually accompanies the position that bothers me, as if voting for a viable candidate is either irrational or barely moral.
Further, the "Wrong Lizard" parable is a parable of collective-created system. I'm an individual acting within in a moment where the reality is already defined, as are all other individual voters. It's problematic to apply collective-level critiques to individual behaviors because what is less sensible at the collective-level is fully sensible at the individual-level.
But, again, see what you want to see. If it makes you feel like you've got the high ground or something it's no skin off my back.
We really need some way where people can vote conscience without spoiling.
For any individual voter, under most scenarios that end up existing at the time of casting a ballot on election day in the electoral system like that of the US, while any single vote is unlikely to have an effect on the outcome, the most likely nonzero effect of a third party vote vs. voting for the least disfavored major candidate is to elect the most disfavored major party candidate.
If you don't like the major candidate, its certainly makes sense to promote a third party candidate so that the calculus on election day is different than normal and it becomes rational for people to vote for a third party candidate (at which point, that "third-party" will have become, for the purpose of the election, one of the two major parties, displacing one of the previous ones for which it will no longer be rational to vote, for the same reason it normally is not for a third party), but it makes less sense to actually vote for a third-party candidate when that transformation of circumstances has not taken place before the election.
I'd like to do whatever I want with my time. But I have to pay for things, and I'm not independently wealthy, so I seek the least worst job I can get.
I'd like to live in a perfect house in a perfect neighborhood, but I haven't found that yet so I chose to buy the least worst house/neighborhood combo I could find and afford.
I'd like to have no commute, but I need to be in the office to work, so I have to find the least worst way to get too and from work.
I'd like to be in shape, but because I don't have time to play outside all day (my preferred form of exercise), I have to pursue concentrated exercise sessions. I try to find the least worst way to work out enough to maintain the least worst level of fitness.
Now, you might say that's a limiting and negative way to look at things like jobs, homes, exercise, etc. To which I would say it's also a silly way to look at elections.
I see voting for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson as being a long term play.
But that's exactly what you have to do in a first past the post system, and especially with the Electoral college. A vote for Jill Stein (assuming Jill Stein doesn't win) that would have otherwise gone to Hillary Clinton if the voter had chosen the 'least worst option' is in effect a vote against Clinton.
With IRV your advice would be good, but that's not how the US system works.
As a foreigner not living in the US (but following the process nevertheless) I hardly even heard about Bernie Sanders until he lost the candidacy to Hillary Clinton - After that, I did a bit of research on him and he actually seemed like the perfect candidate to solve the US's current problems - If I could, I would definitely have voted for him.
Maybe it was different inside the US, but from outside, almost no one would even recognize the name "Bernie Sanders" because he just wasn't given any attention in the media.
If the media doesn't give you a balanced description of what your options are, how can you even vote?
This is downright corruption - Just as wrong as the kind that happens China, only a lot more sophisticated.
(Content intended for voters in a US-style FPTP system. Mileage in IRV and other systems may vary.)
No one will see your vote. The structure of elections is not such that you can state your ideals. The question is about your preference for the actual outcome of the contest.
In programming terms, you're not being asked to return the largest integer; you're given a choice of two integers, and asked to return the larger. It doesn't matter if neither one looks objectively "large"-- refusing to return anything will not help this algorithm generate larger numbers.
Maybe it's a stupid algorithm, but that's not relevant, either.
To stay HN-neutral I'll leave this generic, though it really isn't: Regardless of your feelings about the candidates in this election in an objective sense, you should have a strong dispreference for one candidate under the other. In a proper decision theory, that should translate into a strong relative preference for the other candidate to be the actual winner of the contest.
That doesn't mean you support them absolutely, or morally. It just means you're voting in line with rather than against your true preference for outcome.
And that should translate into strong support in the voting booth, though of course that doesn't and shouldn't have to translate into strong support in public opinion.
If you don't vote for the candidate you strongly relatively prefer because your absolute preference for them is low -- you don't want to send a message that "this candidate is objectively good" -- you are using a different protocol than the election, and what will be received is "the relative preference for this candidate is fairly low". What you should expect is for the election to perceive that you support your dispreferred candidate significantly more than you actually do.
And that's what should make you sick.
Of course you dont, There are 2 Other people on the ballot in Most states given you 4 options.
I personally will be voting for Gary Johnson this year. (as i did in 2012)
Perhaps you should vote for someone else then.
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more
rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had
the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing
anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people
are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the
lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a
democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously
obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've
all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the
government they've voted in more or less approximates to
the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford,
"the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the FishThe picture is dark. Voters are choosing between dynastic plutocracy and a carnival barker.
In addition to that it should be pointed out that the number of engaged voters who voted for a different candidate for nomination is almost as large as the number of engaged voters who voted for the winning nominee.
There is a fundamental problem with the nominating process. Neither nominee has solid ground to claim that they represent the preferences of anything besides a small fraction of the electorate.
It sure helps though, for example Clive Palmer in Aus in 2013.
> legislators who aren't members of major parties still have influence (sometimes disproportionate) on who is chosen as head of state.
Australia and the UK still have the same monarch, so the head of state is not chosen by anyone in either country - but if you mean the Prime Minister, then you are correct.
In New Zealand, you're considered a bit of a loon if you're a card holding party member. I think that a lot more of the population is flexible in who they vote for as well. An MP told me once that 1/3 of voters are independent.
Depends on the party. None of them have three or four months of primaries like America, but the Labour Party in the UK and the Labor Party in Australia both have the whole membership voting for the leader now. Others only have elected party members voting (equivalent to US super delegates).
> In New Zealand, you're considered a bit of a loon if you're a card holding party member. I think that a lot more of the population is flexible in who they vote for as well. An MP told me once that 1/3 of voters are independent.
I'd agree to an extent with Australia as well. Those who are party members are, in my experience, older, well connected within the community, more upper class and often involved in some sort of non-partisan activism. Unless someone is trying to be elected, they do avoid showing their colours.
If I recall, employers are required to allow some time-off during the day for people to vote. Practically, however, this doesn't happen because a: some districts don't have nearly enough polling places and staff, resulting in hours-long wait times (around where I live, I've never had this problem, but it's a real issue in other (often more poverty-stricken) areas), and b: not many low-wage workers are willing to 'rock the boat' with their employer and would rather just not vote than face any hassle or retaliation.
At the very least, we need smoother process where people can go to their city hall and vote over a period of a week or so, or vote by mail/online
Do this on some weekend. Before the election date, why wait for the actual Election Day at all?
People just bring up a "voting holiday" because they want an extra holiday. The reality is that many people would use the holiday to relax, go out of town, or get stuff done and voting percentage wouldn't improve.
Ditto with weekends. People go out of town on the weekends, do you think they're going to stop because of a pesky vote? Even if they did for one year word would quickly spread that that is a "quiet" weekend and everyone would go for that reason.
If you really want to improve voting: Drive through voting, like McDonald's, that takes the same amount of time as McDonald's to do, and that you have a seven day week within which to do. Literally make it a 5 minute job where you don't even need to exit your vehicle.
People might scoff at that, call it lazy, but people ARE lazy. They want minimum hassle, minimum time, and maximum value. That's why drive-through places even exist.
Or they're just tired because they have two part time jobs (while looking for something more regular), kids, and a pile of chores they've been putting off.
What's even more absurd is that the actual votes are being counted on a per-state basis. If someone where to design the system from scratch nowadays nobody would even come up with a system that dumb. Just count all the votes. What's the point of involving states at all in a federal election? It shouldn't matter in a federal election if I live in California or Georgia. It's absurd that it does!
The only thing in favor of the system is that it creates a clear winner, proportional systems might be more fair, but if parties fail to create a majority coalition you are back to square one.
An ideal system might need to mix these two approaches (and some other like vote ranking, lists, etc)
In many countries, the parties select candidates internally and then present them to the public. Letting non-party members vote or register just before voting would be unthinkable there.
Then again, this is probably a necessary result of the US political system: majority voting rules, therefore (basically) only two parties, and of course, the US is huge and diverse.
The whole process is ridiculously long and expensive. But it's also a way to get people familiar with the candidates early on.
These primaries, from what I can gather, are roughly the equivalent of the leadership selection process that happens with the political parties here. There is media coverage of those, but not to the extent that the US has. They're also run by the parties themselves, whereas the voting process seems to be handled by the individual states' election authorities.
In Canada, Elections Canada doesn't really get involved in the process that the parties use to select their leader. It just does the general election, by-elections, etc.
That is largely what it is all about. It is basically theater. All the rules are made by the political parties themselves whether their own rules or by the state laws they have voted for. In the 1800s they just nominated whomever they wanted (and this is basically what the smaller political parties do since they are so small they don't have the money to do these long extended campaigns) but then they started doing the primaries and caucuses to give people input.
It's an odd hybrid where the parties are private organizations that can make their own decisions and rules, but their leadership elections are run by state apparatus. This (understandably) confuses people, to the point that most people seem to think of the parties as almost part of the governmental system.
As others have noted, this all goes back to our winner-take-all elections, which are a kind of original sin in our system, which we'll probably never be able to change. In other systems, which encourage more parties, it is much easier to abandon a party if you don't like the leaders they pick, so it is not as important to be invested in the actual process of picking those leaders.
The Atlantic had a really good article on some of these topics recently: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-amer...
The UK doesn't disenfranchise anyway (only if you're incarcerated can you not vote). But even in a world where the UK did disenfranchise, it would still be a fairer system as we don't hold people's convictions over their head forever.
The US is designed to keep people re-offending. Once you're convicted of a single crime you're effectively damaged goods forever, and have to report it (unless you get it expunged which is far harder if it occurred over 18).
[0] http://hub.unlock.org.uk/knowledgebase/detailedguideroa/
According to this statistic [1], 2.5 % of the electorate is disenfranchised.
2.5% is a HUGE amount for a 2 party system with elections often being very tight.
This is somewhat less severe due to fellons probably belonging to demographics less inclined to vote, but it's still a large number.
[1] http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...
Take a look at the North Carolina Voter ID law that was just overturned if you need additional everyday evidence: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/29/politics/north-carolina-voter-...
Both of you are more or less correct. OP is correct that they don't vote, you are correct that if they were in a higher social class that did vote they'd tend to vote D.
Most of the R party complaining about D party enfranchisement of felons is just BAU "must oppose anything my opponent does automatically" not an actual existential threat to the R party.
It's rare that that much (programming) effort is put into a simple newspaper article.
Anyone agree?
Their election tracker and real-time update of votes in the primaries were very well done.
Even the summary after the vote looks neat:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary...
http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/california
After some digging, found out they have open-sourced this library:
https://github.com/sjwilliams/scrollstory
MIT license, so we can use it for ourselves!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04...
Those that fear Trump will become a dictator does not understand the checks and balances of our government.
Of course people said the same thing about Obama... I'm still waiting for that inevitable socialist coup he's supposed to pull off. Unfortunately, both the Democrats and Republicans have made an art out of convincing people that the Presidency is the only part of the government they should be engaged with.
Or they recognize that the checks and balances of our government are not magic, and that Trump being elected as the nominee of a major party would also reflect a shift in the political landscape which would be reflected, particularly, in the actions of other politicians in that party, especially in the other elected branch -- and that those two branches together have the power to reshape the remaining branch.
And a political shift doesn't mean Trump can become a dictator. It's still unconstitutional and Congress, no matter which side they are on, would never allow that. The well-armed people would never allow that. The armed military would never allow it. The armed police forces would never allow it. The well-regulated armed militia like the Minute Men would never allow it. The armed National Guard would never allow it.
Yes, electing Trump means that a substantial portion of the voters wanted conservative authoritarianism.
> And a political shift doesn't mean Trump can become a dictator.
A shift in favor of the type of authoritarianism Trump proposes means that the structural mechanisms which permit one branch to check the actions of the others are unlikely to be used to prevent the institution of conservative authoritarianism.
> It's still unconstitutional and Congress, no matter which side they are on, would never allow that.
The Constitution, in practice, means what people in positions to act decide it means at the time; Congress allows things that are arguably unconstitutional all the time (sometimes later being checked in real time by other institutions, like the Supreme Court, sometimes not.)
> The armed military would never allow it.
This conclusion is based on...what?
> The armed military would never allow it.
This conclusion is based on...what?
> The well-regulated armed militia like the Minute Men would never allow it.
The idea that the "Minute Men" (presumably, referring to the Minuteman Project [0]) are "well-regulated" in any sense is amusing; the idea that they would, as an organized mass, oppose a conservative authoritarian dictatorship with a strong flavor of anti-immigrant white nationalism is even more amusing, and the idea that they would be a substantial check on a dictatorship in any case is perhaps the most amusing element of the inclusion of this claim in your post.
> The armed National Guard would never allow it.
This conclusion is based on...what?
Why would the military disregard the Constitution and start killing all the members of Congress just because Trump order them to? Though the military take orders from the President, the military has to uphold the Constitution. The President can't just order the military to disband Congress. The military would never do that. What would actually happen is that the military will instead arrest Trump and Congress will put Trump to trail to impeach him.
Again, the scenario where Trump become a dictator of the United States is never going to happen, because there is just too many groups and too much opposition to him.
There is no way the military will kill their own family members just to satisfy Trump's order.
Cops are NOT under the control of the federal government. Cops are under the control of the 50 states. Why would the 50 states give control of the police force to the President? Why would the 50 states just sit back and let Trump become a tyranny without fighting back? Why would cops go against their own cities, just so Trump can become a dictator?
Why would armed people joined up with Trump, especially arms Black people?
Why would the National Guard, who's duty is to protect the country, why would they go against the country just so Trump can become a dictator?
Again. Never gonna happen. There are too many groups who value democracy and freedom. And they will all oppose Trump if Trump decides to do something unconstitutional.
And you seem to be under the assumption that Trump supporters want a dictatorship. That's ridiculous. Trump supporters do not support a dictatorship. Trump supporters supports conservatism (aka, less government), which is the opposite of a dictatorship (total government control).
ALSO: Minutemen was just an example. Now-a-day, it's the NRA and other militia groups. And Minutemen actually refers to these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minutemen
Obviously, all these doesn't matter if everyone in the United States (that means, all the people, Congress, judges, police forces, etc. everyone) agrees that Trump should be a dictator and voted to turn the government into a dictator. But that's never gonna happen. People come from other countries into the United States because of its democracy. Why would they allow the government to turn into the same dictatorship they ran away from?
Although my state usually goes pretty solidly for one political party so I might vote for Stein anyway because my anti-vote won't be enough.
One is inherently for welfare the other vehemently against it in most forms.
0. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t...
True, voting for an alternative candidate will take a percentage of the votes away from Clinton or Trump, and having them win by a lower percentage would be a satisfying way to sock it to the system and send a message. (Although, knowing the media, if the stats started to look bad they would probably start reporting Clinton and Trump vote percentages only as percentages of the Clinton+Trump votes, rather than as percentages of all votes...)
But wouldn't it be wonderful if one of them "wins" the job by receiving support from only a small fraction of eligible voters? I think having a President elected by only 15-17% of eligible voters would send a pretty good message.
Many will say vote for a third party; but because that vote will be purely symbolic, any third party candidate that I might vote for has a higher bar to reach than a major party candidate: the party and candidate stand to gain more from a decent showing than any abstract message of protest disconnected from the party/candidate. So, a third party candidate is not a sensible default when the major party choices suck... not voting is the sensible default in that case.
No it won't. The only wasted vote is voting for someone you don't believe in. Google Gary Johnson.
> President elected by only 15-17% of eligible voters would send a pretty good message
This would be largely ignored and not covered my mainstream media. It would go completely un-noticed by the vast majority.
Not voting cannot be distinguished between abstinence on principle versus apathy. However making the effort to go to vote and then making a protest is much clearer.
No, it can be a form of non-voting protest, which is very different from a vote, including a vote of no confidence where such is an actual, meaningful thing.
And its a fairly weak form of protest, given that its protesting by doing exactly what lots of political actors expend considerable effort to get people that disagree with them to do (if you can't be convinced to vote the way they want, not voting or voting for an irrelevant option is exactly what political campaigns try to get you to do.)
> But wouldn't it be wonderful if one of them "wins" the job by receiving support from only a small fraction of eligible voters?
It likely would be almost completely unnoticed.
> I think having a President elected by only 15-17% of eligible voters would send a pretty good message.
Sure, it would be a few percent less than Clinton in 1992 (23%) or Bush in 2000 (24%). So what? Why do you expect that there is a magic threshold where suddenly it would be a "strong message" somewhere below the sub-25% of those elections and 15-17%?
Another very good visualisation from them is the Panama Channel article http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/22/world/americas...
If there's no legal constraint on how the parties select candidates for office, why should the parties have a legal monopoly on ballot-line presence?
I didn't think they did. Do they? Can't anyone apply to be on the ballot as long as they demonstrate a reasonable level of support?
> In 2004, Democratic operatives were especially zealous in their efforts against my campaign. They hired private investigators to harass my campaign’s petition circulators in their homes in Ohio and Oregon and falsely threatened them with criminal prosecution for fake names that saboteurs had signed on their petitions, according to sworn affidavits from the workers and letters containing threats that were presented in court. Our petitions were also disqualified on arbitrary grounds: In Ohio, complaints submitted in court and to the office of the Secretary of State by groups of Democratic voters led officials there to invalidate our petitions. They disqualified hundreds of signatures on one list, for instance, because of a discrepancy involving the petition circulator’s signature. In Oregon, Democratic Secretary of State Bill Bradbury retroactively applied certain rules in a way that suddenly rendered our previously compliant petitions invalid.
> Democrats and their allies (some later reimbursed by the DNC, according to both campaign finance reports and a party official in Maine who testified under oath) enlisted more than 90 lawyers from more than 50 law firms to file 29 complaints against my campaign in 18 states and with the Federal Election Commission for the express purpose of using the cost and delay of litigation to drain our resources. “We wanted to neutralize his campaign by forcing him to spend money and resources defending these things,” operative Toby Moffett told The Washington Post in 2004.
> Democrats falsely accused my campaign of fraud in state after state. In Pennsylvania, they forced us off the ballot after challenging more than 30,000 signatures on spurious technical grounds. My running mate, Peter Camejo, and I were ordered to pay more than $81,000 in litigation costs the plaintiffs, a group of Democratic voters, said they incurred. In an effort to collect, their law firm, Reed Smith ,which the DNC also hired in that cycle, froze my personal accounts at several banks for eight years. A criminal prosecution by the state attorney general later revealed that Pennsylvania House Democrats had, illegally at taxpayer expense, prepared the complaints against our campaign, and several people were convicted of related felonies. A federal court in Pennsylvania ultimately struck down the state law used against me that had led to the order that I pay the litigation costs. But Reed Smith was still allowed to keep $34,000 it withdrew from my accounts, because state courts wouldn’t let me present evidence that could have permitted me to recover the money.
By Ralph Nader https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/25/...
But ultimately the fact that there are independents on ballot papers proves clearly that there is no monopoly, legal or otherwise, by any definition at all.
Besides all that, I don't understand how you say there wasn't a legal ruling which enforced the monopoly, when I just presented several examples in which there were.
Gary Johnson is standing in fifty states isn't he? He's not doing that illegally is he? So there is no monopoly. If there is then it's not being enforced, legally or illegally.
Some would call that a straw man argument: establishing a fact I never disputed.
On the other hand, there is evidence presented above that that occurred in previous elections (2004, 2000).
That was the original question (from someone else). It sounds like we've agreed that the answer is 'they shouldn't' and 'this year they don't'.
Yes, they can, no that won't change anyone's mind.
This election year is showing that internet-borne conspiracy theories are just as powerful than facts, if not more powerful.
Yes, but the two parties don't have to demonstrate that level of support. That is, they don't actually have to send organizers to every district to gather N signatures to get their candidate on the ballot. They're just on it, without investing even the proportionally smaller effort.
I don't understand how business monopolies are considered bad, but political monopolies, which strongly affect the lives of over 300 million people who have little choice, are OK.
IRV and proportional systems produce 'external' coalitions at the government level. FPTP produces 'internal' coalitions, which is why the Republican party looks so strange from the outside.
If anything, these 9% are representing a fundamental flaw in our first past the post system.
According to the statistic, 73 million did not vote in the primaries this year and about 88 million eligible adults do not vote at all. Add to that 103 million that are not eligible for voting. So if I'm not mistaken, only 18.5% voted in the primaries.
You mention they have the highest disapproval rates, but how is disapproval expressed if not by voting?
I took it to mean "those 9% are statistically representative of the majority of americans views/choices/opinions/desires/whatever".
Where as it seems you meant it as "those 9% represent a plurality of the votes cast in the primaries." Yes?
That said, I generally agree that first past the post is bad and should be gotten rid of.
The media thought that everyone not voting for him was voting against him. They assumed that once the field narrowed voters would rally around another candidate and defeat Trump. That never happened. If the voters' goal was to beat Trump, they would have done it.
By that logic, Obama had a record number of votes "against" him too, with 19,585,539 (53%) "against" him in a 3 man race, compared to Trump with 17,151,110 (55%) "against" him in a 5 man race.
I desperately want to see a third option on the debate stage.
- Clinton
- Trump
- None (give me someone else)
In case 3rd option gets most votes parties have to re-pick candidates in a week.
How about not having the parties choose one and only one candidate? Maybe let it be a competition between the top three?
That settles it. Has to be a gunfight. No other option. Last candidate standing gets the nod.
The primary system, while still susceptible to party insiders, is a lot more democratic than a system where political parties pick their candidates and say to the electorate "these are your choices, take it or leave it". (I won't address whether "more democratic" is a good thing, as that's a whole different can of worms.)
I don't understand the problem.
This is exactly what statistics addresses.
Is that 9% a good enough random sample of
the entire population, or not?
For a proper bayesian result like you are suggesting participation would have to be randomly decided, and representative proportioinally of demographics (economic background, ethnic, educational, age, etc.), which it isn't.
Voters are more often then not. Old, affluent (I.E.: Can afford to take time off of work to vote, or has a job that permits them to take time off to vote, or have time to research+register for absentee voting), black, educated. Under-educated, immigrant, and younger backgrounds are heavily under represented in the voting process currently, and for most modern records keeping. Furthermore some local governments have laws that discourage particaptation for some ethnic-minorities.
Of whether the people choosing the candidates have to be or even should be statistically representative of the whole population can be argued. The choice of candidates or order on ballots in many countries is decided by various less-than-representative groups.
That's pure conjecture as the article doesn't address the sample at all. It just basically says "The sample is 9%". It doesn't say why this is bad.
Either that, or the best candidate for president out of 300 million is the wife of the president three terms ago. Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Clinton? This has nothing to with issues.
If X is 10% then its an excellent measure of the will of the actively thinking electorate and its not the fault of the statistician that Americans don't care about politics.
If X is 50% or so then there's 4 semi-motivated voters per primary voter which is getting fuzzy.
Note that about 20% of the population vote in non-presidential elections and 50% vote in presidential elections. I'd propose that the delta is due to tradition and heavy social signalling to get out the vote, but that 30% don't really care and absent intense PR activity in support of voting, would not vote. Unfortunately 20% is too high to clearly support the first criteria and 20% is too low to support the second criteria.
I think its really annoying that there is no mathematically trustworthy answer to is 9% enough. Annoyingly its probably good enough to not be ridiculously far off and bad enough to not be correct a significant amount of time.
The statistical idea that a small sample can accurately represent the whole is based on the assumption that the small number are largely indistinguishable from that whole. It's like taking a sample of
In this case, the people voting in primaries are a self-selecting group - people who are both relatively actively engaged with politics and members of one of the two main parties.
It's not unreasonable to think that the wider population (even the wider population of people who normally vote at an election) could behave vastly differently.
For instance, if you had a candidate who was so divisive that they were either loved or hated, then it wouldn't be overly surprising if the vast majority of their supporters had signed up to vote in the primaries, with little support outside of that core. Compare this to a more middle of the road candidate - they might struggle to get as many people out to vote in a primary, but might do far better in the wider population.
That theory is very relevant in the UK at the moment, with the leader of the Labour Party (Jeremy Corbyn) being very popular amongst grassroots party members, but with his enemies saying he could never win a general election as this level of support would never be reflected outside of party supporters.
We will not improve our situation, but I don't believe we'll devolve into chaos either. With Trump he might bomb someone or aggravate existing problems or something else unimaginably stupid. With Hillary we'll just see an increase in corruption and an expansion of the rights of corporations at the costs of the individual.
just because Fox News accuses Obama of being a radical leftist doesn't make it even remotely close to true. Obama is precisely the kind of moderate you're asking for. It's gotten us nowhere.
your post, which I was replying to, was advocating for some kind of moderate politician as an alternative. I pointed out that Obama has already been that politician. I'm questioning your notion that what we need is a moderate.
In other words, your suggestion made no sense to me. Why did you suggest it?
Come on. That's just typical election year rhetorics. Try to focus on the policies of each candidate.
https://www.teepublic.com/show/496947-i-already-hate-our-nex...
That's only going to happen through strong, reliable, accurate, and verifiable technology.