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Author Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over  (Read 764463 times)

FearfulJesuit

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3375 on: May 10, 2012, 09:26:30 am »

I could definitely see the Republicans splitting within the next decade- the Santorum crowd keeps hogging the discourse, and the Huntsman/Romney coalition of the party say "screw this, we're out of here".

Bottom line: sooner or later the Santorum crowd of the Republicans will spin itself into irrelevance. That is incontrovertible. The question is when it will happen.

Here's the thing, kids, and I say this as the son of a historian. Liberals cannot win right now. What we are going to have to accept that we're doing for probably the next two decades is that we're not dominating the national discourse, we can't currently dominate the national discourse, and the best we can do is play the waiting game.

I think, too, that liberalism is starting to shoot itself in the foot and needs to remake itself. The Left (communism aside) in the 20th century focused on the social safety net, and that's a battle that it won, in some cases all too well- I'm as bemused by the absurdity of European pension plans as any (moderate) conservative. The last major real battle that needs to be won on that end is giving America universal healthcare, and Lord willing and the creek don't rise, we'll have won that within the next decade. Right now what we need to do with the safety net is to make sure that it's economically sustainable, that it doesn't pay out more than it really needs to, and also that (in the case of welfare) it pays people to learn marketable skills rather than just handing out unemployment checks. Obviously things like housing subsidization, food stamps and the like need to be kept. But by and large, kids, we've won the great battles of the 20th century. They're being tested right now, for sure, what with right-wing crazies trying to turn the clock back to 1890 and with the great demographic booms of the century getting into the twilight of their years, but they're not going to be dismantled wholesale. We need to figure out how to make them smarter, for sure, but we're not going to get rid of them.

What will the great battles of the Left be in the 21st century? Cautiously, I argue that they'll be global warming and the dethronement of the corporation. Social issues right now will be little more than a footnote. They're important, to be sure, but above all else what's going to be needed is a change in the American cultural climate. That's already happening- most kids are less homophobic than their elders- and you can't do much to legislate it along. Global warming is a crapshoot right now, and I doubt we'll do much about it until there's either a major famine somewhere or an important part of the First World is flooded. As for the anti-corporatist crowd, one of the things that worries me about OWS and its ilk is that they don't offer much in the way of alternatives. It's very easy to just propose dismantling the modern corporation, and the easiest part of the battle will be, in fact, dismantling it; but most people in the Western world work for a corporation, corporations drive most economic growth, and I'll want to see some actual, constructive alternatives before I'll sign the bill that shreds them. It can't be a command economy- everyone has accepted that since the Wall came down. And there are some jobs so huge that only big somethings can possibly take them on. I don't know what those new somethings are yet, but you can bet I'll want to see a few ideas before destroying the current somethings.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2012, 09:29:25 am by dhokarena56 »
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palsch

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3376 on: May 10, 2012, 09:48:02 am »

Edit: So, just looked it up, and apparently the UK has a vastly different definition of the acronym AV than I'm familiar with. To clarify, no one here was calling TopUp (how does that get shortened to fucking AV?) the better system, but rather Approval Voting. Top-up is pretty terrible, but maybe better than what was there? I dunno. Why not just straight IRV then? It seems so random.
Alternative Vote (AV) in the UK is Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) in some other places, but I'd not seen anyone propose Approval Voting with a straight face for a long time so hadn't considered that version of the acronym.

To be clear, approval voting fails a couple of the standards desired by most reform advocates. The first and formost being that it doesn't always elect the majority preference. Because votes aren't ranked your second/third/whatever preference is given equal weight to your first. If a candidate is the second or third preference of 60% of the community he can still beat the man who is the first preference of 55%. It also encourages insincerity from voters, ignoring secondary preferences or acceptable compromise candidates because acknowledging such a preference would harm their first choice's chances.

I'm not entirely clear where you got TopUp from unless you meant Alternative Vote Plus. That was the form strongly endorsed by the commission Labour brought in to look at potential reforms. This was then entirely ignored by both that government and the subsequent Con/Lib coalition. The point of that and other additional member systems is to reduce the disproportionality introduced by constituency representation. It allows people to directly select individuals to represent them while also representing the broader party preferences of the population at large.

AV (UK form) doesn't have any additional member lists or anything beyond the single member elected from each constituency. You simply rank the candidates in order of preference. It is, in my eyes, the strongest form of single member election possible, with the caveats I laid out in the previous post. My problem with advocating for it in the US is that it won't solve any of the current inherent problems by itself (when it directly addressed a number of relevant issues in the UK) and under the current system it's flaws are enhanced while it's benefits are weakened.
In any case, we voted in a President with only 48% of the votes going to him. So yeah, either way, doesn't really sound any worse than what we already have.
It's a hefty cost to assume if you don't see any real benefit from it.

But you also have to consider that third point with the reduced mandates for candidates. A candidate who wins with 48% of the FPTP vote has a fairly strong mandate as such high percentages are relatively strong endorsements. 48% in the second or third round of an AV election, after all but one other candidates have dropped out and you have claimed a double figure percentage of that in second preference votes, is not a strong endorsement by the standards of the system.

My view is that AV could work in the US, but the more significant barriers to third parties and the highly partisan barriers between parties need to be resolved first, or at least in parallel.

You could try to use AV to force this, by, say, allocating public funds in accordance with first preference vote totals. But that would require massive campaign finance reform that, given SCOTUS rulings, would likely require constitutional amendments.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3377 on: May 10, 2012, 10:14:56 am »

The benefit of Approval Voting is that it /isn't/ a hefty cost to assume, is the thing. And your problems with it simple... don't hold up. Though I'm honestly confused as to why you believe the candidate with 55% support should beat the one with 60% support, whatever. It doesn't really matter and this whole thing probably deserves its own thread anyway.
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mainiac

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3378 on: May 10, 2012, 11:10:25 am »

You... you don't really seem to have a grasp of how this works. You do realize that other countries with different systems have multiple parties, right? That get elected?

Yes, and I am a big fan of us changing the system.  But that doesn't change the fact that what's keeping 3rd parties out of the spotlight isn't some monopolistic pressures, it's that there isn't any 3rd party block big enough to win.  If your issue is with our lack of proportional representation then your issue is with our lack of proportional representation.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3379 on: May 10, 2012, 11:16:20 am »

Quote
But that doesn't change the fact that what's keeping 3rd parties out of the spotlight isn't some monopolistic pressures, it's that there isn't any 3rd party block big enough to win.

So the reason there's no large third parties is because... there's no large third parties. And its not monopolistic pressure, its just the fact that voting for a third party would be a wasted vote, because of monopolistic pressure.

Right.

And who the hell said anything abotu porportial representation? You don't need proportional representation to get a variety of parties, you just need a non-fptp system. Otherwise, third parties are killed on the vine, as it were - as you argue, there will never be a powerful third party (in most cases) simply because there aren't any powerful third parties.

A change to the voting system means they no longer need to be so powerful to gain power.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2012, 11:17:56 am by GlyphGryph »
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Leafsnail

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3380 on: May 10, 2012, 11:19:31 am »

Let's say we have 3 candidates, A B and C.

Candidate A is part of the corrupt and increasingly spineless left wing party (that generally competes with the right wing party every election).  You don't think he'd be hugely damaging, but you know that a vote for him is a vote for the system as it stands.

Candidate B is an absolutely insane member of the right wing party.  He wants to ban homosexuality and burn every book that mentions the word sex.  The idea of him being elected is horrifying.

Candidate C is an independant candidate who supports almost everything you do.  He's also proved very effective at rooting out political corruption.

As a voter under Approval Voting, what do you do?  You could just vote for C, but that's a big risk - if C doesn't have enough support then you could in fact be allowing B to get in.  You could vote A and C, but that's effectively voting for the two party system - party A wouldn't even feel the loss of a vote.  If a significant proportion of the voters feel the way you do, candidate A could be elected in spite of having very lukewarm support from people voting against the horrifying prospect of B (in this way he could gain 60% of the vote with most of that being people who just hate B vs C's 55% of the vote from people who think he's definitely the best candidate).  If anything I feel like Approval Voting helps entrench two parties even more than FPTP.

Under Alternative Vote/IRV you can put C down as your first choice and A as your second.  That way if there's enough support for C he wins, and if there isn't then your vote at least tries to keep B out.  In other words, you don't have to vote tactically in the same way.  You can vote against the two party system and avoid the risk of helping the worse of the two parties to get in.

But uh... yeah.  I guess palsch is right in that it probably wouldn't be nearly as effective in the US as in countries which have viable third parties already established (not sure I agree with his points though - 1 and 3 aren't any better under FPTP and 2 isn't a problem if you count the votes as if it were a runoff every time).
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GlyphGryph

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3381 on: May 10, 2012, 11:30:23 am »

Quote
As a voter under Approval Voting, what do you do?  You could just vote for C, but that's a big risk - if C doesn't have enough support then you could in fact be allowing B to get in.  You could vote A and C, but that's effectively voting for the two party system - party A wouldn't even feel the loss of a vote.  If a significant proportion of the voters feel the way you do, candidate A could be elected in spite of having very lukewarm support from people voting against the horrifying prospect of B (in this way he could gain 60% of the vote with most of that being people who just hate B vs C's 55% of the vote from people who think he's definitely the best candidate).  If anything I feel like Approval Voting helps entrench two parties even more than FPTP.
The only way A could be elected is if there were both a significant amount of people vote for A but not C, an insignificant number that just voted C, and none that voted B and C. If thats the case, than yes - A should win - they have the most support, and are the ones the voters chose. A was, after all, more popular.

If C is really superior to A, then everyone who voted A would have also voted C, and he couldn't have won. And any other voters that voted just C or B and C, or whatever and C, would have pushed them to victory. The only way for A to win is if more people want A to win. But at least C's popularity gets recorded, and the next election may well be differently, because if they come that close to victory they can't exactly be ignored any more.
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Bauglir

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3382 on: May 10, 2012, 12:06:17 pm »

What if the breakdown looked like this?

A - 20% voted only for A, 0% voted A and B, 40% voted A and C
B - 25% voted only for B, 0% voted A and B, 5% voted B and C
C - 10% voted only for C, 40% voted A and C, 5% voted B and C

Let's also assume that we can safely say that that 40% block voted as it did largely out of fear of B's large minority of extremely vocal supporters. Effective advertising, or tradition (such as if the US transitioned out of FPTP), resulted in A being largely seen as the more "viable" candidate, particularly because they also have a large devoted base. Had this not been the case, in our hypothetical scenario that presumes nigh-omniscience, half of those votes would have been C only.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3383 on: May 10, 2012, 12:34:26 pm »

Its not perfect. Nothing is. But it's better the FPTP in the same situation, trivial to implement, and IRV has its own flawed situations. Statistically, Approval has less of these situations than IRV.

Anyways, I'm not really interested in having this argument, and none of them are remotely close to my preferred system, so this will be my last post on it.

While they've obviously chosen their desired system, http://scorevoting.net/ is a really good source for further information, especially the discussion areas branched off of it.

I think the variant of IRV+Approval they came up with was actually pretty cool and might interest some - basically, IRV, but you could put as many options as desired down for each "preference" level.

There's a lot of good science and in depth discussions, fat better than anything I can manage.
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Leafsnail

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3384 on: May 10, 2012, 03:58:51 pm »

I... don't think it's a better option than IRV.  IRV is basically saying "I want this guy, and if I can't have him I'll go with this other person".  The scoring system... I still see it as very prone to tactical voting.  In the A, B, C example I gave above you'd probably still want to give A 100% in order to block B, otherwise you could be allowing B in (in other words voting anything other than 100% is like giving yourself less than one vote).  And while that example is obviously exagerated I feel it is something that can kindof happen for many people who would like to vote a third party, thus meaning it doesn't really address the problem it seeks to eliminate.  Wheras most of the situations where IRV goes awry are really strange (A's supporters find B the second best option, B's supporters find C the second best option and C's supporters find A the second best option... I'd be interested if anyone could provide me with a real life situation in which this could happen).
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Lord Dullard

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3385 on: May 10, 2012, 04:08:23 pm »

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Wire/2012/0510/Does-it-matter-if-Mitt-Romney-was-a-bully-in-high-school

Quote
Does it matter if Mitt Romney misbehaved in high school? That question arises due to a report in Thursday’s Washington Post that when he was a senior at suburban Detroit’s Cranbrook school, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee led a “posse” that held down and forcibly cut the long blond hair of a nonconformist junior.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Mitt said at the time, according to fellow student Matthew Friedemann, quoted in the Post.

Huh. Up until now I'd just considered Mitt Romney to be a stiff-necked, boring rich guy. But I'm thinking that anybody who behaved like that in high school is, or at least was for a good portion of their life, a complete asshat...
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3386 on: May 10, 2012, 04:08:47 pm »

So....
Candidate A is part of the corrupt and increasingly spineless left wing party (that generally competes with the right wing party every election).  You don't think he'd be hugely damaging, but you know that a vote for him is a vote for the system as it stands.
Barrack Obama.
Quote
Candidate B is an absolutely insane member of the right wing party.  He wants to ban homosexuality and burn every book that mentions the word sex.  The idea of him being elected is horrifying.
Rick Santorum.
Quote
Candidate C is an independant candidate who supports almost everything you do.  He's also proved very effective at rooting out political corruption.
Imaginary.

Just saying, I've never seen a politician that I even mostly agree with run for high office, much less one who supports almost everything I do. IRV doesn't change that there aren't many decent politicians left in the system at all.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2012, 04:11:01 pm by MetalSlimeHunt »
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Leafsnail

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3387 on: May 10, 2012, 04:15:54 pm »

But it does mean that if there were a good politician who agrees with you they might stand a chance of being elected.
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sluissa

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3388 on: May 10, 2012, 04:19:47 pm »

It also gives you more than two choices to pick from. With more choices, the chance that there's someone out there you might agree with more goes up.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: American Election Megathread
« Reply #3389 on: May 10, 2012, 04:21:10 pm »

Quote
Just saying, I've never seen a politician that I even mostly agree with run for high office, much less one who supports almost everything I do. IRV doesn't change that there aren't many decent politicians left in the system at all.

I dunno, I think Huntsman's at least pretty good, if not perfect.

Anyways, as to your questions, the site I linked as decent answers to pretty much anything your wondering about, and the discussions pages far more details.
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