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[Reelya]

I'm just curious how it would have turned out if the EC was poportional, I'm not trying to decide on 'what's a better system' based on whether I like who would be elected via that system.

I was more thinking of anyone who thinks "popular vote" is the be-all-end-all solution to all problems, because that's how people usually phrase it.

[Rolan7]

But it's so simple, see

[smjjames]

Well no, going directly popular vote from the start wouldn't work, we all saw how that went during the Republican primaries. I know the primaries don't go by popular vote, but this past primary is a perfect illustration of it's shortcoming. Sure, the not-Trump voters likely outnumbered the Trump voters, but the not-Trump votes were heavily divided among many candidates, which divides up the popular vote.

But it's so simple, see

It may be simple, yes, but when you have more than two choices, like say 5, and all of them do well, the 'popular vote' isn't quite 'popular vote' in the absolute sense.

[Reelya]

IRV for primaries would avoid that problem altogether, and reduce the negative campaigning a lot. Basically, primary voter's preferences would be recorded, then if your first pick drops out, their vote share would be re-allocated accordingly.

This would cause two things:

- prevent an unpopular maverick being the only viable candidate because all the sane people were too similar. So prevent "Trumps" gaming the system.

- cut WAY back on the negative campaigning during primaries. Because e.g. Sanders voters really want Clinton voters to put them second, and vice-versa. So you only lose by alienating each other's supporters.

[smjjames]

I'd like to add another one:

-Large slates (though not as big as the 17 we had this year on the Republican side, yeesh) would be more viable due to the removal of the spoiler effect. Though large slates like that usually got whittled down to a manageable number well before voting actually started, which didn't happen this election season.

Currently, I think Louisiana is the only one with IRV or something like that for it's state level.

[smirk]

edit: Btw, your math is outdated Reelya, Clinton has a 1 million plus pop vote lead on Trump.

Clinton's up 1,677,041 by the latest numbers I can find. That's still not complete; full counts generally take a while.

[misko27]

Maths are awesome to make no sense at all. One of our cities decided that, since 20% of our population seems to have objections against Black Pete being black, that the best solution for this year's Saint Niclas' parade would be to have 80% black black Petes, and 20% differently coloured black Petes.

Aah, I'm familiar with this sort of math. I was an expert on it in my youth. For example, the basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion — thus an example from the Devil's Dictionary:

• Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.
• Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds

Thus:

• Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

It concludes by noting that this syllogism arithmetical is a combination of both logic and mathematics, meaning "We obtain a double certainty and are [thus] twice blessed."

[Max™]

I posted a general example of an idea over in the SuperCaliFragileExitBecauseTrump'sAtrocious thread which I quite like the more I look at it:

Presidential candidates choose a running mate, that running mate becomes a part of the house when the candidate wins, runner-up becomes the VP with their senate tie-breaking, transition of power is candidate > running mate before VP enters into it, alter the rules a bit so the running mate is the one with the "president is sick/crazy" option, if they use it then the next in line becomes the VP, and the vp running mate takes the house position, whatever it is. Set it up so the winner and runner-up gain more from working together and are able to accomplish more instead of constantly pitting them against each other.

A Trump who was trying to work to accomplish things with Clinton, and Pence in place to discourage the whole "well, let's just take out Trump!" ideas straight up, would lead to a less divisive election process, and a more productive term I suspect. Plus Mittens would have been in a much better position to run this year if he was coming off of an Obama/Romney term.

[smjjames]

I posted a general example of an idea over in the SuperCaliFragileExitBecauseTrump'sAtrocious thread which I quite like the more I look at it:

Presidential candidates choose a running mate, that running mate becomes a part of the house when the candidate wins, runner-up becomes the VP with their senate tie-breaking, transition of power is candidate > running mate before VP enters into it, alter the rules a bit so the running mate is the one with the "president is sick/crazy" option, if they use it then the next in line becomes the VP, and the vp running mate takes the house position, whatever it is. Set it up so the winner and runner-up gain more from working together and are able to accomplish more instead of constantly pitting them against each other.

A Trump who was trying to work to accomplish things with Clinton, and Pence in place to discourage the whole "well, let's just take out Trump!" ideas straight up, would lead to a less divisive election process, and a more productive term I suspect. Plus Mittens would have been in a much better position to run this year if he was coming off of an Obama/Romney term.

So, under your plan, the top of the ticket becomes president, the running-mate becomes the Speaker of the House, then the other top of the ticket that lost becomes the winner top tickets VP? That doesn't make any sense to me......  didn't we have something like this before the 1800 election? With the runner up becoming VP, but that got amended because wierd stuff happened, not sure.

What happens to the runner up's VP pick?

[Reelya]

Yeah I wouldn't be happy with that because you're choosing between Obama/Romney and Romney/Obama in 2012 and between Clinton/Trump and Trump/Clinton: e.g. the same ticket on both sides except with the names reversed.

A slightly better way might be to have two VPs, one your running mate and the other the opposition candidate (or their running mate if they refuse the position). Then the Prez and both VPs form a triumvirate and vote on all Prez matters. Also, put a rule in place as well that each of the triumvirate needs to side with each of the others a specified minimum amount of the time in votes, so that they are forced to play a compromise shell game rather than always voting down the opposition. That would ensure that the minor candidate wins 1/3 of presidential decision votes rather than 0%

[Max™]

Not sure, just an outline of an idea like I said, trying to find a way to have the presidency be a thing that works broadly rather than pushing for appeal to a single group of voters.

As Reelya said, there are various problems but shit, can't be worse than "well, your side won [part a] but we won [part b] so we're going to make sure nothing you try gets done" like we have now.

[smjjames]

Yeah I wouldn't be happy with that because you're choosing between Obama/Romney and Romney/Obama in 2012 and between Clinton/Trump and Trump/Clinton: e.g. the same ticket on both sides except with the names reversed.

A slightly better way might be to have two VPs, one your running mate and the other the opposition candidate (or their running mate if they refuse the position). Then the Prez and both VPs form a triumvirate and vote on all Prez matters. Also, put a rule in place as well that each of the triumvirate needs to side with each of the others a specified minimum amount of the time in votes, so that they are forced to play a compromise shell game rather than always voting down the opposition. That would ensure that the minor candidate wins 1/3 of presidential decision votes rather than 0%

Point to me a country (whether modern or ancient/no longer around) that has tried that with success. Seems like that would just lead to power struggles, not to mention screwing with the order of succession should something happen to the President. Editwhiletyping: Didn't Rome have something close to this? At least during it's pre-emperor days.

Not sure, just an outline of an idea like I said, trying to find a way to have the presidency be a thing that works broadly rather than pushing for appeal to a single group of voters.

As Reelya said, there are various problems but shit, can't be worse than "well, your side won [part a] but we won [part b] so we're going to make sure nothing you try gets done" like we have now.

It would be better to try what does work and feels like the best fit for us. I know we'd ('we' being the US in general) be all like 'But we gotta be unique!!', but no two election systems are exactly the same, so there.

[Tiruin]

Real old bit here, so it's in spoilers.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[...]
All of this being directed at me while having no justifiable reason other than me being on the less popular side in this thread and possibly the side you are on (as you said we can't assume those things with certainty), caused my lashing out to you. When you're going to preach, preach to everybody. And here I thought we weren't supposed to discriminate, heh.

...It really comes off like you're taking this a lot more negatively or personally given the experiences you're citing. Because what I've merely been posting about--in regards to you, is that one wording where you generalized people into pushing an agenda as if it's their intent when it really isn't.

...Like that first sentence. Assumptions don't help because it affects the perception. It's taking what I said, and treating it as if these parts are what I meant. Plus the passive-aggressive quip. >_<
That's taking things out of what other people mean and that's what causes these emotional reactions. I'm not even part of what you're targeting in all those other statements in that post, when all I did was prod the wording of generalizing others, because it's not applicable.. I didn't aim to preach--I aimed to note something that doesn't really help you, and that was all it was. Then I got lashed out at, with many reasons that were not applicable at all to what I even did. o_O

I'm sorry if there was anything that caused you to feel hurt there. It comes off like there's a lot of unnecessary tension in your posts of late. It's not like you're being treated as if you don't belong even if people have 'called you out' or whatever cultural term is being used towards you, that's as far as I've seen and known the folks who 'seem to be disagreeing with your ideas'.

Question on the small scale here (and that I lack time to browse the latest pages >_> Sorry!), I've read that the electoral colleges are the ones that 'vote in' the president and others at that level? But I've heard that Clinton 'conceded' so...that means Trump is officially president then? I don't get what's going on given the date and time and discussions happening between what's being mentioned. x_x

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It certainly has a history.

While I wouldn't be necessarily opposed to having a 2 or 3 person executive head, the change I think would probably be the best is making the Department heads elected officials. It isn't like half the Presidents don't just fill them with inappropriate people anyway, and hell, now we've even got a completely inexperienced President-elect.

At the very least it would allow some more say over the function of the executive branch. That said, I would not approve of this until they were subject to a Vote of No Confidence as well.

Question on the small scale here (and that I lack time to browse the latest pages >_> Sorry!), I've read that the electoral colleges are the ones that 'vote in' the president and others at that level? But I've heard that Clinton 'conceded' so...that means Trump is officially president then? I don't get what's going on given the date and time and discussions happening between what's being mentioned. x_x

In December, the electoral college voters will formally cast the votes they were assigned during the election, but that's just procedure. Clinton conceding just means there's not going to be any (more) shit about contesting the election. People started calling Trump the President-elect after he passed 270 electoral votes on election night.

[smjjames]

It certainly has a history.

While I wouldn't be necessarily opposed to having a 2 or 3 person executive head, the change I think would probably be the best is making the Department heads elected officials. It isn't like half the Presidents don't just fill them with inappropriate people anyway, and hell, now we've even got a completely inexperienced President-elect.

At the very least it would allow some more say over the function of the executive branch. That said, I would not approve of this until they were subject to a Vote of No Confidence as well.

If you mean have people elect the Cabinet members, that'd be a horrible idea, mainly because a lot of people would have no clue as to who those people are. If you mean have the House+Senate (or maybe just the House) select Cabinet members, that wouldn't change things. If you mean making them elected officials only, that would be kind of limiting because. well, it just seems kind of limiting, I don't have an argument to offer atm.