Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic An Apology

Capes, great post!

Yeah, but just because something has been around for a long time doesn't mean it's the best way to do things (slavery, anyone?). Times and circumstances change. I feel that in the case of the Presidential election, having one single electoral district (i.e. the whole country) would be better.

(And that is all I am going to say in regard to this election. Threads revolving around politics tend to raise my blood pressure to unhealthy levels ).

I'm also registered as an Independent so I can't vote in the primaries. I also don't pay much attention until it is pretty apparent who will get the nominations. All I can say at this point is that if Hilary Clinton is elected I will be looking for another country to move to or perhaps I will just move way up in the mountains somewhere where no one can find me. She is the only candidate I don't want to win. But before anyone starts stoning me THAT IS JUST MY OPINION based on some private information I have been privy to - detest both Bill and Hilary.

LOL, kmar - Hillary is the only candidate I want to win.
(well, not quite, but I liked the parallelism of the hyperbole )

But then I don't get to vote.

Not crazy about Bill, though. I find it bit sexist, too, that the media is taking her less seriously as a candidate than it is him. It seems they can't get past the man to really see the woman.

I keep waiting, too, for the mainstream media to cover substantive issues rather than personality and polls. I know the latter is way easier but these guys are paid big bucks - a few hard questions and some solid follow-up questions should be possible.

This is a very stressful election you guys are involved in.

c.

I'd like to put in a contrary viewpoint in favor of the electoral college system. While it is true today that most of the states are blue or red and are essentially locks for their respective parties with only about 18 states in play, I contend that it would be even worse if the electoral system were abandoned.

The idea of the electoral college came out of the same small state versus big state arguments that created the Connecticut Compromise where the House was based on population while the Senate had equal representation among the states. It was feared that big states would overwhelm the smaller states.

That is still a fear today. If there were no electoral college, candidates would completely ignore virtually every part of the country and spend all of their time campaigning in the largest cities: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. Those places that are ignored today by candidates will continue to be ignored since there aren't any huge cities in the small states. Candidates try to get more bang for the buck, so they have all the incentive to campaign in the big cities and ignore the fiscally inefficient small towns.

At least today, medium to small states often have a huge say. The biggest battleground states these days involve several small states, including New Hampshire, Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin, Iowa and so on. Granted some larger states are also battlegrounds, such as Florida and Ohio, but those other states cannot be taken for granted. Imagine if there were no electoral college. Would any candidate ever be seen in Milwaukee, Las Vegas, Des Moines, or Concord? No.

Populations shifts happen a lot too with electoral votes re-allocated every ten years. Power has moved west towards the midwest and away from the mid-Atlantic and east coast states over the last couple of decades. Shifts will continue to happen. Having electoral votes gives smaller states the possibility of power while a general election without one gives all the power to the large cities. Each additional electoral vote picked up gives tremendously more power to the smaller states. Oregon, a fairly small state population-wise, has five electoral votes. Gaining a sixth, which is highly likely in the next census, would increase voting power by 20%. A loss by New York of one or two votes wouldn't affect it too much, on the other hand.

In general, the electoral college votes the same way as the rest of the population with only a handful of exceptions. The biggest difference, though, is in changing the behavior of candidates in that they cannot ignore small populations, which they would otherwise be able to do.

Same here. At the polling place I used to work, we had about ten judges, split between two precincts.

I have no idea who I'm going to vote for. In my state, you go in, tell them which ballot and vote for the primaries.

I don't know who I want to vote for. I am probably going to vote Democrat. I hate the current administration, and have issues with lots of what it's done (particularly regarding civil liberties) and hope to see some of that undone. I voted democrat last time, too. Even though it was my least favorite of the "realistic" candidates that wound up running. For me, it was a which-one-do-I-dislike-least vote, and I hate those. In general, I try to vote for the person rather than the party. So this time I've got to evaluate my candidates more closely (btw, thanks for the link on their stances on issues).

The problem is that I don't know where I stand on all the issues. I know where I stand on the Iraq war, on civil liberties, on abortion, and energy and environment and welfare and various other issues. I don't know where I stand on the economy, on taxes, on healthcare, or on social security. I know something needs to be done, but I'm just not sure what the best thing is. I'm not knowledgeable enough to evaluate the information and reasonably predict the outcomes of any given course of action.

The worst of it all is that I can't stand to watch a debate. I've tried to watch with my sister a time or two. Inevitably, one of three things happened.

1. Candidate repeats, almost verbatim, the information on his/her website over and over again for every question.

2. Candidate beats around the bush but never actually says anything, never answers the question.

3. Candidate ignores question and slings mud at opponent. I hate mudslinging. (BTW, we have some of the worst mudslinging in our state elections).

Of all of these, I take #1 as my favorite because they are at least answering the questions, even if they aren't giving any more in-depth information. I recall one candidate last time did this - his were always full of numbers and percents and such for the improvement he'd brought about in his home state. Boring to listen too, especially since he never gave a "how" or discussed the differences in a statewide v. nationwide effort (while I was watching anyway), but at least it was info, even if was the same stuff I'd already read.

Roger said:

Intellectually I know this is true, but part of me feels like moving to a popular vote would lead to increased voter participation since every vote would, actually, count.

Also, for those of you who can't stomach the actual debates, you can sometimes find a transcription of them online--which can be less aggravating than watching them live. In my experience, though, you can learn more from the candidates past voting record/behaviour than whatever they happen to be claiming they will do during the presidency. There are a lot of empty promises flying around in election years.

I do watch the debates, although more from a purely PR/forensic standpoint than any actual belief that their answers will shed light on the situation. But I'm not really sure how much the debates affect the public at large. The numbers of people watching the debates is pretty low IMO. Do the candidates' answers in the debate lead to voter identification and sway them? How important, really, was it that Hillary chose to wear an orange outfit to the first debate? And lest you think I'm making that too big of a deal, you don't even want to KNOW how much politicians pay image consultants for details like that.

And Carol said re HC:

You know, I still can't figure out if this is only because she's a woman or also because she's married to a former president. It really annoys me when people refer to "Obama" and "McCain" then call her "Hillary." I know Bill Clinton also exists, but I'm pretty sure that's NOT why they do that. Unfortunately, she's problematic for me, because I'd love to have a female president. But I also want to be sure I vote for her for her views and not for her gender just as I hope others vote for her views and not against her gender. In all honesty, were she a man, I'm not sure I would consider her qualified enough to be president, although she's definitely brilliant.

A surprising amount of news shows allow the participants to see (and even approve) a list of questions prior to the interview. Rumour has it that Clinton got to completely make up the questions Tyra Banks asked her on her show (not that Tyra's a great media outlet, but people do watch her). It makes one rather cynical of the news industry

I don’t know why, but these US primaries have really captured my attention. I’m gobbling up every development. Heck, I’m currently having more fun than a crocodile in a lake full of sewer .

ML (who wonders if the only reason she’s enjoying it is because she doesn’t have to make a choice - or maybe it’s just with the writer’s strike, there’s nothing else on television)

That is exactly my problem!

If only there were some magic program that could TELL me the reasonably predicted outcomes to any choice I could possibly make about each issue. Then, I could either change or keep the choices, and the program would tell me which candidate would be the best choice based on the new choices. THAT would be a beautiful thing.

I never even knew there were debates until the last presidential election. And I just have no interest in watching them--or in reading the transcripts from them.

I wouldn't even know where to BEGIN to look for voting records and candidates' past behavior. And even if I did, I wouldn't know what to do with the information.

Hey, at least you're honest and you're trying to do the best you can with what you know. That puts you ahead of a lot of US voters.

If the candidate has been in public office before, it's possible to look up their voting records on issues. The Library of Congress has an online, searchable database that will pull up voting records of senators and congressmen, specific bills by number (or bills featuring the word "Iraq", for example) at Thomas . In some cases, the media will do the work for you by pointing out major issues they voted on--then you just put the bill in the search engine and see what it said and how people voted. It gets a little more dicey at the state level, BUT if you call your local state senator or representative, they should be able to direct you to places you can look for voting records and bills. If their staff can't tell you where to go, they aren't doing their job and you should vote accordingly!

If you don't want to go through all that work, there's a fairly decent website that tracks what all the candidates say versus what their record reflects here . This is not an endorsement of the website wholeheartedly, but I believe it's an independently run organization.

At first it can be pretty overwhelming with all the information; it does get easier. But I think the point is to try your best with the time/interest you have. A lot of the information cited above is open to the public, but nobody knows it's there.

As to what you DO with this info, it's up to you. But, at least for me, if I know that X candidate is claiming to be anti-Y, but voted FOR it in the past, X is suspect unless X had a darn good reason. Even if you don't know how to fix the economy, you might be sure that you don't want the government spending more money on A,B or C so you could choose to vote accordingly. After all, you can never predict exactly what a candidate will do if elected, which is why the system has so many checks and balances to try to keep the craziness from getting out of control--although that doesn't always work

I actually had an experience similar to that. I had e-mailed my congressman (or was it my senator? I can never remember which person is which) about a bill that would fund healthcare for poor children. I got a response back saying that he'd voted against renewing the bill, because it had basically changed so that it was funding healthcare for more middle-class children than for truly poor children.

The League of Women voters was pushing for this bill to get renewed, so I e-mailed them and asked why that was, if what my congressman/senator said was true. I never got a response.

So, that's all a round-about way of saying that even though he voted against the issue he'd been saying he was always FOR, he DID have a really good reason--or it seemed he did to me. It would've been great if I could've gotten the LWV's perspective on it, seen it from a different angle.

But without their input, I can only conclude that he was telling the truth, and I'd probably vote him back into office if his term is coming to an end during this election. I can't remember whether or not I actually voted for him in the first place.