hahahaha

Hi Jaxian


I'll try to be brief.
I think you're not grasping the gravity of what I'm getting at.
If the voting system did accurately represents the vote of the people
then there will be a lot more performance and results from candidates.
And what you said about a candidate winning because people dislike
one of the two dominate parties more, at least they could choose between
multiple parties and not just 2.

One point to make is Ross Perot did not come close at all!
Yes, with only 6 months of campaigning he did get ~20% of the American
peoples vote, BUT (A Big But) he got 0% of the Votes that really count!
The E.C. Vote!!!!!! (don't you see a Monopoly pattern????)

If other Parties could have a chance of winning then I think the news ect..
would let them debate. When Ross P. debated he brought up issues that
neither the Dems or Reps did or would. I also heard Ralph Nader give
a speech on CSPAN, and he laid it out plain as day how the Dems and
Reps are destroying the U.S. .

This last election showed (I thought) that if people HAVE to choose
between a Retarded War Mongering Oil Thieve or the current DNC
platform that more Americans would go with the former ,Bush

"
The problem isn't that the will of the people isn't being followed.
"
This is absolutely wrong! The people are only allowed to choose between
two Parties, so their will has already been taken away or severely limited.
And everything else you said in that paragraph is only true because of
the fact that "If you’re not in the Dem or Rep party there is no way you
can win so it doesn’t matter how good you are YOU CAN'T win (Monopoly?)

If you only have one party to compete against then playing political
games will get you far, but if there were x number of parties to question
a game playing party (From different angles) it probably would not
work.

The Public might be for the most part ignorant but they all would want
the best government they could have. But we can Only sample from
the Dems or Reps. So we have know idea if there is a better party.
And with the current system we most likely won’t ever know.

Sorry I lied about keeping it brief.

The E.C. was great when it was created, but now it's does not serve it's
purpose.Now the public knows more about the Prez. candidates that
they do people in their own family! And that winner take all crap!! I don't
remember voting for that! This is just a clever way to keep a Dem&Rep
monopoly!

I still beleive my solution will bring the best ( or Better) out of people
running for political office!

"
Easy solution to change the system:

1) Eliminate the Electoral College. (Make your vote count)
2) Have Immediate Runoff Elections. (Make it accurate.)
3) Vote any non-Dem/Rep party. (Let them know we will make
change! Shape up or ship out!)

This way every vote counts, and every politician
will be judged by the "PEOPLE" Directly!!!!
"

I think I understand your point. However, I think that your point is based on this false premise:

Most of the bad presidents we had did have the support of the people and would have continued to have the support of the people even if we changed our system of voting.

The primary problem with our system of voting is that the people are supporting the wrong candidates. This should be especially evident in our most recent election, where the majority of the people supported Bush (I think you don't like Bush, right?) See, getting a voting system that will more accurrately choose the person the people support won't solve the problem because the people support the wrong candidates.

The primary problems are the fact that people are usually ignorant. The three problems are that too many people are ignorant of the positions of the candidates and that those who do know the positions aren't educated about what actually makes a good government. They'll instead just try to find an issue that favors themselves, and support that issue no matter who else it hurts. This is how the majority ends up oppressing the minority.

The solution must be geared toward these problems. We might try to better educate the people about good government. We might try to give the people the power to elect someone more informed than themselves (what the electoral college was meant to be).

And part of this is what you said: that third party candidates don't have a chance. For even if a good candidate comes along, he often doesn't have a chance. You're right that runoff voting would help. Not only would it allow third party candidates a chance to be elected, that chance would make more people support them, which would give them more air time, which would present an additional opinion to the public, which would make the public better educated on the issues.

But that's only a partial solution; oftentimes that air time isn't even used to discuss the issues anyway. And just because third-party candidates have a chance at winning, the person the people choose still isn't likely to be the right person, if they aren't educated about who the right person is.

With only runoff voting, it would still be the people with the money and charisma to rise to the top of their party who would catch the eye of the people and who would win, not the people who actually support the right issues.

I do see that pattern. But Ross Perot was just a guy with a bunch of money. Creating a system where he wins doesn't solve the real problems.

These are good points, but they're not the only problems we have.

And I thought this last election showed that the election is more about bashing your opponent with advertisements than about positions on an issue and the reasons behind those positions.

Remember that the people who supported Bush didn't think he was a retard war monger at all. They thought it was a good idea to support the things Bush supported. They actually thought he was a good choice for president. That is the problem.

I understand what you are saying, and I don't deny that third party candidates cannot win except in exceptional circumstances. What you say is true. But I do deny that this is the root cause of our problems. Implement Instant Runoff Voting, and take away the electoral college, and we'll still get bad presidents. Even with more choices, the majority is just as likely to make a bad choice.

See, but that only works if each party questions his opponent's attacks on someone else. Would Nader have questioned Bush's attacks on Kerry? Why would he do that, Nader doesn't want Kerry to win. In order to play the political game successfully, Nader would try to call Bush a hypocrit, so that both Bush and Kerry look bad, and suddenly we have even more false rumors going around.

The real solution to our problem would have to involve getting people to see past that. It doesn't matter whether someone "can't make up his mind" or whether someone did drugs when he was young. What matters is the issues and the direction our country will go with each president. But people base their opinions only on whatever trash talking happens to float their way, and they vote for the wrong person.

No matter how many parties there are; the winning party will be the one that sounds most convincing and shapes itself according to the demands of the public. So long as the public wants to hear trash talk about candidates instead of about real issues, the candidates who talks the best trash will win. Change what the public wants, and you'll change the type of person they elect. Or take the power away from the public and give it to an informed electoral college, and again you'll change the people who are elected. Give a voice to informed people without money, and again you'll change the people who are elected.

Yes, it is good to have more political parties with a chance. But that alone may not change the sort of people who the majority elects.

The electoral college was made with a good idea in mind, but they made the mistake of allowing states to choose how electoral college members are elected. All of the states chose an horrible method of electing them.

But it's still better than nothing because with an electoral college, candidates are not forced to compromise, to play the political game, on every issue. They only need to do it on the issues important to swing states.

So what does the electoral college have to do with keeping only democrats and republicans in power, anyhow? If we got rid of it, I don't see how any third-party candidate would have a greater chance than he does now. If anything, a third-party candidate should have a better chance with the college, since it means he doesn't have to get a majority of the votes, necessarily.

Well, I don't mean to say that it won't be better. Instant Runoff Voting would probably make things better. But it wouldn't be much better. There are other reforms necessary in order to get really good candidates.

What we need to do is change the reasons our candidates are elected and give candidates without a lot of money a chance. We can do the first by educating the public or by lessening their effect on the election (electoral college). We can do the second by looking into some form of equal airtime for candidates, and perhaps Instant Runoff voting.

Having smaller sub-elections in which a lesser-known candidate could win and build up popularity would also help, especially with an atmosphere designed for debating issues. I saw an idea like this in the past at www.ipatriot.org though it looks to me like that website is pretty much dead.

What's the False Premise?

As long as we can only choose between the lesser of two evils, this will
be true. Or should we call it the only two different evils to choose from.


That's not true! When America was forced to choose between "ONLY"
The Dem candidate and The Rep candidate the majority picked Bush!
Both candidates are wrong, just for different reasons.


Well regardless of people’s intellect, I'm sure most people still will try to
pick a gov, that will be good. And yes everyone has different priorities so
don't expect everyone to think the same. Still when you are stuck picking
between "ONLY TWO" Parties (That have lied countless times) it's almost
pointless to listen to them anyways.

R.Perot was a little more than just some guy with money. But what he did
was very eye opening. In a short time got ~20% of the voters to support
him, not because he had money but because of what he said. If anything
I think people would be disenchanted with him, because he was goofy!
I thought he did a good job of embarrassing both parties, If you saw him
in the debates.

Yes we still might get some bad Prez's but at least this way we Actually
have a chance of getting a really good one. As long as candidates are
under the Dem or Rep banner they are very limited in what the can do.
Also if the Dems&Reps have more competition they will be forced to do
a better job at governing or they won't!!!! Right?

The more parties fighting for the peoples votes the harder each
party will try to be the best governing body! Now we have only 2 parties,
so is all they have to do is be better that the other chump!


The E.C. originated in the 1800's. Yes it was a good idea back then. It was
because people did not know anything about the Prez candidates so they
pick a guy they knew and trusted to go to D.C. and hear what each
candidate was about, come back tell everyone and pick from there.
Now we know more about Prez candidates than we do people in our own
families.
And the E.C.'s "winner take all rule" is what really gives the D&R's a
monopoly. Who pick the EC? Us or the politicians? The EC is not forced
by law to vote for the most pop. candidate!

Clinton got ~42% of the poeples Vote --> 70% (Electroial )
Bush Sr got ~39% of the peoples Vote --> 30%
Ross P. got ~18% of the peoples Vote --> 0%

In 2000
Al Gore got more votes (The Peoples Votes) but lost!

Thank the E.C.

Somehow you have this false idea that we are a democracy, we are not. We are a Constitutional Republic. Hence the Electoral College. The College exists to ensure that each state within the Republic has an equal say in the election of the President. Without the Electoral College, the smaller states within the union would lose their voice in the electing of the President. The electoral college ensures that a candidate for President pays attention to all the states. This enables the rural, suburban and urban to all have equal say in the election. Just look at the election maps, time and again, democrats win in the urban areas, while republicans win in the rural. The electoral college is often misunderstood, but it does ensure that everyone's vote counts equally.

dmk

The truth is the electoral college was invented out of racism:


It's often said that the Founders chose the electoral college over direct election in order to balance the interests of big (high population) and small (low population) states. The key Philadelphia concession to small states was the Framers' back-up selection system: if no candidate emerged with a first-round electoral-vote majority, then the House of Representatives would choose among the top five finalists, with each state casting one vote, regardless of population. According to the standard story, although big states would predictably dominate the first round, small states could expect to loom large in the final selection.

But as James Madison insisted, the deepest political divisions in early America were not between big and small states as such; rather, the real fissures separated north from south, and east from west. Moreover, once the modern system of national presidential parties and winner-take-all state contests emerged-a system already visible, though not yet entrenched, at the time of the Twelfth Amendment-the big states obviously had the advantage.

With two national presidential parties, one candidate almost always had an electoral majority in the first round, rendering the Framers' pro-small-state back-up system irrelevant. (Three or four strong candidates, in contrast, might have split the vote so that no one garnered a majority.) And winner-take-all rules - under which a candidate who won a state got all of its electoral votes, not a number proportional to the extent of his win - compounded the advantage of big states.

Indeed, before the Civil War Amendments (which changed the electoral college yet again), only one of the sixteen presidents hailed from a small state-Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire. And of the twenty-six men to hold the office since the Civil War, only Bill Clinton of Arkansas claimed residence in a small state.

In sum, if the Framers' true goal was to give small states a leg up, they did a rather bad job of it. (We shall suggest below, however, that their chief goal was something rather different.)


http://writ.news.findlaw.com/amar/20011130.html

Ah, I see how that would have been confusing. The false premise was your quote which immediately followed the semicolon. Your quote read:

"If the voting system did accurately represents the vote of the people then there will be a lot more performance and results from candidates."

That belief is where I think you are flawed. As it stands, with only two presidents, the person of those two that the people end up supporting is as likely to be the right choice as it is to be the wrong choice. The people, despite their good intentions, do not know what makes good government, and they tend to think only of their own desires.

You're right. And the problem is that we're allowing only bad presidents to rise to the top, to have a chance at winning. Our goal should be to make some change which allows good presidents to get a chance.

The problem is that our society supports and elects the person who lies the most. They don't know the difference between a lie and the truth, and they don't pay attention to the issues, nor would they tend to support the right issues even if they did pay attention. Society means well, but people are not informed enough, tolerant enough, or sometimes even smart enough to make the right decision.

I do think he did a good job embarassing both parties, and I do believe that's how he got so many votes. But that's just the problem. It shouldn't be the person who embarasses his opponents the most who gains popularity. Yet that's the kind of people we elect.

Democrats and Republicans won't be forced to do a better job at governing with more competition. They will be forced to do a better job at spinning things, embarassing their opponents, and playing the political game. So long as the people don't understand what makes good government, so long as they blame the actions of a single person on an entire party, and so long as they accept a politician's attempt to embarass the opposing party, we aren't going to get good candidates.

This is true, remember I do think runoff voting might be a good change. But it doesn't address the core problem.

The real problem is that people are voting for the wrong reasons. Society doesn't understand what makes good government, so they're voting for the candidate who embarasses his or her opponent the best. Or they're just using the wrong beliefs about what makes a good government to choose who they vote for.

So what difference does it make if we have two or ten candidates? You're right that more candidates means our politicians have to do better, but it only means they have to do better at embarassing their opponent, or it means they have to do better at supporting the wrong principles, because the wrong principles are what our people believe.

Runoff voting brings more voices into the arena, which means more opinions, this is true. But so long as the people don't recognize a good opinion, a good candidate, from a bad one, they're going to vote for the wrong people, and they're going to allow the wrong candidates to rise to the top. So instead of having two bad choices, we'll have ten bad ones. And even if a few of those ten are good, there's as good a chance they'll get voted down as there is that they'll be elected.

First, let me say that the electoral college did not originate in the 1800's. It was an original part of the Constitution created by the authors of the Constitution in the late 1700's.

You are close to correct about the reasons for the electoral college. It isn't that the people we elected were supposed to know more about the candidates, it was that they were supposed to know more and understand what makes good government.

Today, although our population knows a lot about the presidents, they tend not to know the right things. I'll bet that the vast majority of the population knew all of Kerry's family members, his religion, his military history, and the opinion that he "was always changing his stances on the issues". And I'll bet the vast majority of people knew Bush's family members, his religion, his military history, and the opinion that he is "a warmongering oil-grabber."

But could the average person ramble off a list of the issues those people support? Maybe they could name two or three. But if you asked them to explain why those issues are right or wrong, the justification for that would almost certainly be untrue or worthless. People just don't understand what makes a good government; they act based on their feelings and emotions, not on their understanding of good government and what is actually in the best interest of the people.

So instead of allowing the majority, who is ill-qualified to choose a good president, to do so, the founders wanted the people to have more informed people make the decisions. So they created the electoral college.

The electoral college today is nothing more than "whichever party the majority votes for gets to choose the electoral college candidates." This isn't what the founders hoped for: candidates still campaign to the people instead of to informed electoral college members, which means their campaigns are based on embarassing the other candidates and avoiding the real issues.

Still, even today the electoral college prevents candidates from having to completely campaign to the majority; they only need to campaign in a few states. And because of this, they do a different sort of campaigning, and different candidates are able to win. As for 2000, it is true that I think Gore would have been a better choice than Bush, but it is just as likely that the reverse could have happened; it almost happened in 2004, where Kerry might have won without the majority. And I feel Kerry would have been a far better choice.

Yet without the electoral college, the sort of campaigns the candidates run would have been vastly different, more focused on appeasing the majority everywhere, and because of this, we'd get even worse candidates overall.

This is often said, it's true. But it is false, or at least, it is sort of false. While some may have suggested that the electoral college protected the smaller states, I charge that such statements were made in an attempt to appease the Anti-Federalists, the opponents of the Constitution who held the powers of the state on such a high pedastal.

But the real reasons for the electoral college were recorded, and they were explained in completeness in the Federalist Papers: the document written by the supporters of the Constitution explaining why they put in each part of it. The reasons for the electoral college are listed in the Federalist Papers #68. Here is a link: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/federal/fed68.htm

Here we can see a full description, but the most important quote may be this:

"It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations."

Looking what this quote says. The Federalists didn't want the majority electing the president, they wanted a group of people "most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations." Or put more simply: they understood that the majority of the people are not qualified to choose the president. The average person doesn't know good government from a hole in the wall. Instead, the Federalists wanted a small group of people who know a lot about government to choose the president.

But they didn't want it to be like our system is today: in our current system, it isn't people who know a lot about government who are elected to the college, it is just extremely devout party members. This is because states just allow whichever party gets the most votes to pick random zealots from its ranks to go cast their votes for their president. The systems our states have chosen for electing the electoral college don't allow for educated groups of people to get together and deliberate over who is the best choice for president. But they should!

I urge you all to read Federalist Papers #68; the one that I linked to above, and read it understanding what I explained above. That should give you a good idea of why the electoral college was really created.

Well I would be all for having:

Historians
Mathematicians
Physicst

To be our leaders. They (collectively) would be Very smart and
would know which Governments, Governing models and societies
have been and are the most prosperous.
But this can only happen if they are in the DNC or GOP!
We have had this Dem-Rep monopoly for? 150yrs, and what IS the
out come! Not good ! AND IT WILL NOT GET BETTER! But people
Still keep voting for these two corrupt parties!!!!
I guarantee you that we will keep having these same issues, debates,
and problems regardless if it's a Dem or Rep in the white house!!

Yes, I know we are not a Democracy, No matter how many times our
elected politicians say that we are, when they give their speeches!
But our government should not have this DEM-REP Monopoly.
You don't see that as a problem?




"
The term "electoral college" does not appear in the Constitution. Article II of the Constitution and the 12th Amendment refer to "electors," but not to the "electoral college." In the Federalist Papers (No. 6, Alexander Hamilton refers to the process of selecting the Executive, and refers to "the people of each State (who) shall choose a number of persons as electors," but he does not use the term "electoral college."

The founders appropriated the concept of electors from the Holy Roman Empire (962 - 1806). An elector was one of a number of princes of the various German states within the Holy Roman Empire who had a right to participate in the election of the German king (who generally was crowned as emperor). The term "college" (from the Latin collegium), refers to a body of persons that act as a unit, as in the college of cardinals who advise the Pope and vote in papal elections. In the early 1800's, the term "electoral college" came into general usage as the unofficial designation for the group of citizens selected to cast votes for President and Vice President. It was first written into Federal law in 1845, and today the term appears in 3 U.S.C. section 4, in the section heading and in the text as "college of electors."
"
http://www.archives.gov/federal-regi...q.html#history

Your right it was in the Constitution but the term E.C. was in 1800's, my
mistake.

I'm not sure I'd choose those three professions myself, but I see what you're saying. We do need the educated and intellectual people as our leaders, especially those who have studied what makes good government. It is a shame that those aren't the people we elect.

Well, the thing is that Democrats and Republicans are more varied than anyone gives them credit for. Anyone can sign up and be a Democrat, and anyone can sign up and be a Republican. The problem is that both parties keep choosing bad candidates for leadership roles. Of course, that's sort of a good move on the party's part because it is rare that a good candidate could actually win an election. Instead of choosing good candidates, they're choosing candidates they think the people will elect (bad candidates).

Not all republicans and democrats would be corrupt leaders. I know this because I am a registered democrat, and I would not be a corrupt leader. But do I have a chance at ever getting elected for a federal office? Not really. I'm in a minority sexual orientation with a minority religion, and either one of those is enough to disqualify me in itself, even though neither one should matter to the public at all.

Yet let's say that weren't the case. I still wouldn't have a chance because I'm likely to say more good things than bad about my opponents. And even if I compromised those values in order to win the election, I wouldn't have enough money to get my name known in the first place.

You see, none of those problems are actually problems with my stance on the issues or my ability to determine what the best form of government is. Those things aren't what actually determine whether I'll be elected. What we really need is a system where people are elected based on their knowledge of good government instead of whatever arbitrary factors are important to the majority.

Do you think you'd make a good elected official? If so, ask yourself why you'd never get elected, and you might see part of the problem.

So it isn't necessarily problematic that we only have Democrats and Republicans. Good candidates can join either one of those parties. The problem is that neither one of those parties will ever give that good candidate the chance to be elected, even if he joins them. And the reason they won't do it is because a good candidate wouldn't get elected by the people.

So if we add more parties, why should we expect those new parties to put forth good candidates, when it isn't the good candidate who gets elected? It's the people who play the political game the best who get elected, and additional parties will either put forth candidates good at playing that game, or they will put forth candidates that lose the election.

The real problem we face is creating a system where the good candidate is elected. And that's what the electoral college was intended to fix: if we have a small group of informed people choose the president, they'll be more qualified and likely to choose a good candidate.

So if we're looking at a method of reforming the election system, we must address the real problem: that the candidates who win are the ones who play the political game the best, not the ones who will do the best job.

Not a problem, of course. The year the electoral college was created doesn't really matter: it is the reasons for its existence that matter. And those reasons are found in the Federalist Papers from back in the late 1700's.