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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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And heck, technically speaking the US doesn't even have true national elections. When a person votes for President they are technically voting for state electors who in turn actually elect the next president about a month later.
That's why, in theory, it's possible for someone who wasn't even on the ballot to get elected president. Loads of electors would get criminally prosecuted for voting for someone other than who they were pledged to vote for, but their votes would still stand.
Edited by Falrinn on Sep 9th 2020 at 6:04:48 AM
I'm not surprised that a 1000 people tried to vote twice, apparently right wing characters have been encouraging Trump voters to do so, if only as a way to "subvert" voter fraud because those evil Democrats would be trying to steal their vote. (Edit: it was Trump himself, of course...)
The alt-right is actively egging people on to commit voter fraud, so don't be surprised to hear more stories like that.
If the claim seems extraordinary, it is because we live in extraordinary times. No one would have believed you 10 years ago if you told them German neo-Nazis would be holding up the US president as the second coming of Hitler, but here we are.
Edited by Redmess on Sep 9th 2020 at 3:23:45 PM
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesEdit:
It's not yet certain that 1000 people voted twice, and even if they did, I highly doubt Brad Raffensperger will see it your way.
Especially considering this: ACLU Georgia released a report saying that over 200k voters were wrongfully purged from voter rolls in 2019. (CNN)
Here's an analysis from Pew Research Center about how Democrats won in the 2018 elections: Democrats Made Gains From Multiple Sources in 2018 Midterm Victories
The piece is long but worth reading in its entirety; lots of very interesting data on demographics and coalitions.
Compared with Hillary Clinton's 2-point popular vote advantage over Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, the Democratic Party expanded its margin over the Republican Party to 9 points in votes cast for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, a gain of 7 percentage points.
Compared with how Clinton fared in 2016, Democratic candidates for Congress in 2018 made gains from several sources. Among Americans who voted in both elections, Clinton's 2016 voters supported Democrats in 2018 at a slightly higher rate than Trump's voters supported Republican candidates. Slightly more of Clinton's than Trump's voters turned out to vote in 2018. In combination, party loyalty, defection and turnout differences among 2016 voters accounted for a little less than half of the Democratic gains over Clinton's two-point margin.
Nonvoters in 2016 who turned out in 2018 voted heavily for Democratic candidates, accounting for about half of the Democratic gains. Additionally, a small share of the gains came from people who voted for third-party candidates in 2016; they favored Democratic candidates over Republican candidates in 2018 by a narrow margin.
Voting patterns in 2018 reflected a great deal of continuity with 2016, though Democratic candidates in 2018 did better among a few groups, notably men, young people and secular voters. Voting patterns among several other large groups changed less, including Black voters, voters ages 65 and older, Protestants, regular churchgoers and women.
The point - "the 2018 Democratic advantage came from: 2016 nonvoters, higher turnout by Clinton voters, and vote switching".
Edited by nova92 on Sep 9th 2020 at 6:35:46 AM
That duty is a design flaw, really. Any system that expects electors hand-picked by Republicans to cast their votes against the Republican candidate is overly optimistic at best. The idea of faithless electors as a final bulwark shielding democracy from bad candidates is too idealistic to actually work, because it assumes that electors will be fair and impartial beings of pure reason and logic who cast their votes without political bias.
Republican electors are always gonna elect Republicans and Democratic electors are always gonna elect Democrats for reasons that should be fairly obvious. Regardless of credentials, if a candidate has convinced a majority of Republicans to vote for him, then there is no reason to expect that Republican electors will somehow be above his nonsense.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 9th 2020 at 7:26:22 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.To my understanding, one of the big things the US system overlooked was political parties. They were expecting there to be power struggles between the three branches of government, rather than between organizations that had a little bit of power in all three.
Leviticus 19:34![]()
Indeed, the reasons typically put forward for the Electoral college's existence are ultimately baseless if examined critically. It's categorically inferior to a popular vote system and I look forward to the day that it's defacto consigned to the ash heap of history.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Sep 9th 2020 at 7:33:22 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang![]()
That would be nice.
Anyone have thoughts on whether/how soon the National Popular Vote Compact might be able to go into effect? That would de facto solve the problem even if the EC still exists de jure.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Thanks for the info on the current hurdles and possible progress...
Edited by PointMaid on Sep 9th 2020 at 10:37:21 AM
Ranked choice ballots in a popular vote system. It's the right way to democracy.
It's a shame we have to fight tooth and nail to actually turn this country into a democracy before we can get there. The biggest hurdle we still need to overcome is ultimately that the people who wrote our Constitution weren't actually trying to make a fully democratic nation. They just didn't want a total monarchy. They weren't willing to commit to One Citizen = One Vote because they were a bunch of wealthy tax-dodgers of the same ilk we're fighting against today.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 9th 2020 at 7:39:23 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
Yeah, Nevada Gov. Sisolak vetoed for that very reason.
If Virginia, Maine and Nevada pass the NPVIC, and Minnesota gets a D trifecta and passes it as well, that's 229 electoral votes, still 41 short of 270.
As for RCV, I think Maine's the only state that's passed it so far on the Congressional/Presidential/Statewide level.
Edited by nova92 on Sep 9th 2020 at 7:44:45 AM
IIRC West Virginia has that for its state legislature, but most other states have single-member districts.
Edit: Wait, forgot that there were a few other states that have single-member state senate districts and 2-member state house districts. West Virginia is different because its districts can have 1, 2 or 3 representatives, probably based on population.
Edit 2: Sorry to keep on changing my post, but I think the most likely path for NPVIC is
- The current 196 EC votes (WA, OR, CA, NJ, DE, VT, CO, NM, HI, DC, MD, MA, NY, CT, RI)
- The 3 Democratic trifecta states with their 23 EC votes (VA, NV, ME)
- Flipping 4 state legislatures (and a governorship) for 52 EC votes (Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona, and North Carolina)
Which gets 271 votes for the narrowest possible margin to enact the compact.
Edited by nova92 on Sep 9th 2020 at 7:51:28 AM
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That... is kind of the point? It's the most reasonable way to achieve various electoral goals:
- Eliminate strategic voting—everyone can vote for who they want†. This actually gives minor parties a chance of getting somewhere.
- Remove the incentive and benefits of most form of gerrymandering—minority voters will still be represented without packed districts and carefully arranging districts to maximise small leads in all won't give a vote.
- Provide representation more proportional to the actual support of various parties
- Try to give every citizen an elected official that they support so that they do have representation
- Retain local representation (you only want e.g. 3-person constituencies when they're too geographically enormous for it to make sense)
There's probably a few more I'm missing but that's the general point.
† There is an exception in the form of if your second choice etc. goes to people already eliminated then said choice doesn't factor in, but it then goes to the next and so on as long as you have more.
Weird how coy Trump is being about this. I mean, he obviously means election day.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesMeanwhile, on the other coast...
Tens Of Thousands Of People Ordered To Evacuate Medford OR
. It seems like nearly the entire West Coast is ablaze.

Yeah, planning, organization and infrastructure around voting is a state/local thing in the US, not centralized nationally, so there are a lot of different systems in place. Some of them work better than others.