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[smjjames]

And to be honest they were about as practical as buying and selling real-estate on the moon. The preponderance of really straight borders which mark lattitude/longitude are a hallmark of areas that are basically empty (at least of Europeans). Straight borders are not normal.

Real-estate actually also partially explains some of them, at least the ones between the Appalachia and the Rockies, because of the way the land was managed and divided into a grid of squares and rectangles.

[miauw62]

Which is why we have to find some sort of balance. However, we're the only country in the world that even has this system, it's completely unique.

So, non-US Bay12ers, I wonder how other countries have it, when politicians in your countries campaign, do they generally focus on the most populated areas of the country or do they pretty much campaign everywhere?

You're not, Belgium use a complicated system but basically the result of the vote is not proportional to the popular vote to account for the French minority.

German federal election weight its votes too, and the number of sieges won decide the weight that you will have in the government, so it's pretty much the same concept.
The formulation of the question show that Americans are being sadly mislead on how the rest of the world's electoral system works.

Edit : damnit wrong quote

Belgium weights its votes for historical reasons that are relevant to this day. Like, the language divide is one of the defining things of Belgium, throughout its entire history and now (as the huge drama around BHV shows). Then again, I guess you could say the same for America.

Furthermore, parties are either French or Dutch, with very little that are national. And there is no "winner-takes-all", at any level.

The American system is similar, but far from the same, between winner-takes-all and the two-party system, which change how it operates fairly radically.

[Neonivek]

Anyhow now that Trump won both the electoral and popular vote after accusations that Hillary used millions of fake votes.

I wonder what is next for our would be president.

[Shadowlord]

Yeah, if I were going to rig the vote, I would definitely give myself millions of fake/illegal votes in a place which is already going to give me all its electoral votes, that's a real winning strategy right there. /s

[Descan]

Which is why we have to find some sort of balance. However, we're the only country in the world that even has this system, it's completely unique.

So, non-US Bay12ers, I wonder how other countries have it, when politicians in your countries campaign, do they generally focus on the most populated areas of the country or do they pretty much campaign everywhere?

technically westminster style has it similiar; you vote for your party who then vote for their leader who is then prime minister if their party has the plurality of seats

[wierd]

About voter fraud:

1), just to make this clear, trump is being silly. That said:

If it were feasable to introduce fake ballots, both parties would do so. This would tend to silence noise in the election, and make more areas appear contested than they actually are.

The fraudsters would need to know what the expected turnout would be, so the number of planted ballots won't exceed the number of state residents. They would need to divide that margin in half, in order to account for knowledge that the other side will also attempt tampering. Detection would be a disaster for both groups.

Should such tampering be happening, the strategy that makes sense to me is as follows:

1) introduce "normalizing" votes to hide the actual voter trend under a false trend. This means putting some low power votes (odds if impacting EC victory is low) in many areas to make the desired analysis distribution seem widespread. That way the actual fraud ballots don't look fraudulent under statistical analysis.

2) place limited numbers of fraud ballots in high power area, but consistent with the engineered trend.

The winner then, between the parties engaging in fraud, is the one that best predicts the real trend, and the tactics of the other, and the margin for victory is purposefully low to avoid suspicion.

The secret sauce is to ask people across the US, "did you vote?", without asking who for. We can then subtract the " no" responders from the last US census, and compare to the number of ballots.

If the number if ballots is appreciably higher than the actual voter turnout, we know widespread fraud occurred.

I haven't seen that kind of questioning, or research, so I can't say with certainty that trump is telling the truth, or lying about vote fraud.

[Rockphed]

True but in the 1770s "America" was about a third of the size, with all the real population concentrated on the east coast. the gigantic empty plains of the midwest were all spanish mexico

The gigantic plains states, between the Missisipi and the Rockies, were Louisiana, not Mexico.  They were Spanish at that point, but were later given to France who sold them to the US.

France didn't own them for very long though, only 30 or so years between the start of the Revolutionary War and the Louisiana Purchase.

You have it backwards.  Spain owned Louisiana for only 30 or so years (1767 - 1800).  France owned it from the mid-1600s to 1767 and from 1800 - 1803.  France had only taken control of New Orleans for about 3 weeks when the US took control of it.

That said, Spain had very different ideas about the geography of Louisiana than France and the US had.  They considered Louisiana to just be the Mississippi river, whereas the US and France considered it to be all the Mississippi river watershed. west of the Mississippi river.

As for voter fraud, a worker for the Trump campaign in Michigan was just convicted of vote fraud concerning the 2012 election.  Cue conspiracy theories.

[Shadowlord]

The fraudsters would need to know what the expected turnout would be, so the number of planted ballots won't exceed the number of state residents. They would need to divide that margin in half, in order to account for knowledge that the other side will also attempt tampering. Detection would be a disaster for both groups.

Or they could not bother, and could just control the media narrative instead.

[McTraveller]

How do you define 'ideology'? Who gets to pick the ideologies? Who gets to determine which ones have diminishing returns? How do you determine that someone fits ideology x? Too many ethical issues with that idea.

In this context, 'ideology' was just 'thing on which there might be a vote'. I was trying to abstract between, say, a person for office, or a ballot proposal, or the college football team rankings, etc.

[Sergarr]

The fraudsters would need to know what the expected turnout would be, so the number of planted ballots won't exceed the number of state residents. They would need to divide that margin in half, in order to account for knowledge that the other side will also attempt tampering. Detection would be a disaster for both groups.

Or they could not bother, and could just control the media narrative instead.

1) I really doubt that this particular case was a sign of United Russia really throwing in additional few dozens of millions of votes - as I recall, the results were close to what the polls were predicting, so there would theoretically be no need for such massive fraud to take place.
2) USA is not a one-party state, where one party has a position which allows it to unilaterally do stuff like that.

Yet.

At least, if it were to become one, it'd be better if it was the right "one-party" (i.e. Democrats) that got to rule without competition. This could be as easy as just switching to popular vote for a Democrat POTUS and then, liberally using the Democrat's White House vast executive powers, physically squashing the remaining state's rights that allowed the Republican evil to persist until now.

[Rolan7]

You know, I had a post written up about how I don't trust the Democrats with ultimate power.
But...  We've seen what they do with that (or try to do).  It's really not bad.

The real enemy is still "first past the post", and this RIDICULOUS false dichotomy, but yeah...  The Democrats, given legislative power, do good.  If we don't give that credit, they're eventually just going to go full socialist (or regressive) like the Republicans are going full alt-right.

Speaking of Democrats trying to do things, can you fucking believe the Republicans are talking about dissolving the (already neutered to hell) filibuster now that it no longer serves them?
They really have no shame.  There actually is a difference, even if it's less of a difference than I'd like.

And I'm conservative on at least 2-3 major issues, Conservatism isn't the enemy.  Neither are Libertarians, even though my heart is on the opposite side, I agree with a lot of what my cousin says.
The Republicans are horrible though.  Not because of what they believe, but what they DO.

[McTraveller]

The Democrats, given legislative power, do good.

I think in general the Democrats' stated goals for their legislation are good, but their implementations tend to leave much to be desired (that is, they often don't achieve that goal).

I tend to agree with the sentiment of the rest of your post though... even the stated goals of a lot of Republican legislation are questionable.  Trouble is, the Republicans tend to be better at writing legislation that actually accomplishes their goal.

EDIT: And in general I'm pretty conservative.  I don't think we actually have any conservative party in the US though.

[smjjames]

The Democrats, given legislative power, do good.

I think in general the Democrats' stated goals for their legislation are good, but their implementations tend to leave much to be desired (that is, they often don't achieve that goal).

I tend to agree with the sentiment of the rest of your post though... even the stated goals of a lot of Republican legislation are questionable.  Trouble is, the Republicans tend to be better at writing legislation that actually accomplishes their goal.

EDIT: And in general I'm pretty conservative.  I don't think we actually have any conservative party in the US though.

The Republicans are supposed to be the conservative party, or rather, conservatives are supposed to be under their umbrella.

Speaking of Democrats trying to do things, can you fucking believe the Republicans are talking about dissolving the (already neutered to hell) filibuster now that it no longer serves them?
They really have no shame.  There actually is a difference, even if it's less of a difference than I'd like.DO.

To be fair, the Democrats are the ones who massively weakened the filibuster without thinking of the potential consequences. Though understandably it was in an attempt to get past the Republican hate bonering of Obama, then they lost their majorities in both houses.

[wierd]

I hate to say it, but I am probably one of the closest things to a conservative on this forum, and I am actually a moderate. (fiscally conservative, socially liberal)

the major detractors I see from the DNC is that they are addicted to identity politicking (race, gender, income, orientation, education, etc-- and use it to divide instead of unite), and they pioneer programs that just arent fully thought out, but are well intentioned. With exception to their colleagues in the GOP, they pathologically view other people under rose colored lights, and have this "hug and sing kumbaiya" outlook that everything will be beautiful and wonderful.

I see policies with obvious timebombs on them, and say "no, that is a timebomb disguised as a teddy bear. Please stuff the teddy bear properly if you really want to give it to kids."

The GOP sees "OMG! DNC tries to disguise timebombs as teddy bears! dont accept thier teddybears! fear! fear! doubt! doubt!"

the inclusion probably was not intentional, and they honestly did not want to have one inside the teddybear. they just wanted to give a teddybear to some deserving children, they just trusted a shady doll maker to take care of the sewing and stuffing.

Moderates like me are in a difficult spot.  on the one hand, we say "yes, those deserving kids totally deserve the teddybears." however, we get called hypocrites and liars when we try to stop the bomb loaded bears from being given to said kids.

then, on the other side of the aisle, we say that the bombs need to be kept away from the kids, but get accused of trying to give the bears (still assumed to be loaded with bombs) to said kids, and called hypocrites there too.

we cant win for losing.

we have to explain how the kids deserve proper teddybears and how those bears are a justified expense, and how we can do it without using the mad bomber doll company, and explain the plan to both sides of the aisle.

we get seen as "the enemy" both ways, when in reality we want to help them have things done right for everyone involved.

[Draignean]

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

https://mobile.twitter.com/HouseScience/status/804402881982066688