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[MetalSlimeHunt]

How do election in Best Korea works?

You walk into a room. There is an armed guard standing behind a table with a piece of paper and Kim Jong-un's name on it and a pencil. You can leave or you can cross his name off.

[SalmonGod]

When I went to vote in the last election, it was on a big electronic machine that gave you a list of options with no opt-out.  It had me vote on a bunch of offices that I knew nothing about and didn't know I'd be voting on, and I could only get through it by selecting one of the given options and hitting 'Next' until it was finished.  I was rather upset.  But there were only two machines, and a huge line wrapping all the way around the building, so I wasn't going to be an asshole and raise a fuss.

[Owlbread]

How do election in Best Korea works?

You walk into a room. There is an armed guard standing behind a table with a piece of paper and Kim Jong-un's name on it and a pencil. You can leave or you can cross his name off.

I don't think they even elect the head of state, do they? Isn't he elected by parliament? The people participate in local elections though.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

How do election in Best Korea works?

You walk into a room. There is an armed guard standing behind a table with a piece of paper and Kim Jong-un's name on it and a pencil. You can leave or you can cross his name off.

I don't think they even elect the head of state, do they? Isn't he elected by parliament? The people participate in local elections though.

You dare question the Supreme Leader?!

[mainiac]

I do agree though. I'm not advocating disenfranchisement of uneducated people.

Mandatory voting coupled with a voter comprehension test of sorts would accomplish leaps and bounds for our country, in my opinion.

A poll test is a restriction on the franchise....  Maybe not the biggest restriction but it is purely a restriction and nothing but a restriction.  Now I would be inclined to think that the benefits of mandatory voting for the test passers would probably be larger then the malus of poll tests but they are really two completely separate things.

And this is all assuming that your poll test doesn't face a "who watches the watchmen?" problems like pretty much every poll test in history.  If there is a way to make a meritarchy then it probably doesn't lie in things we've already tried and found severely lacking.

I do like the way you spoke about the disenfranchising effects of the two party system.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Registration test =/= Poll testing, which not only sounds worse but would be severely more work for local elections boards to setup. I'm thinking about a basic >10 question sheet during registration to vote. Being forced to have basic comprehension of issues before registering should not be considered a hindrance to a voting population, but a boon. As for the Watchmen problem: That's why I said it should be oversighted by the FEC and then enacted by local Boards of Elections. State Boards are not only obligated but forced by law to make sure anything involving election processing and voter registration is fair and non-biased. I believe in that division of our government to be able to adapt to such a policy. Especially if crushing penalties [beyond the wrist-slap measures we have now] are introduced for any type of voter registration/vote tampering.

If you introduce mandatory voting and a comprehension test it would be one supporting the other; the mandatory voting would be incentive to register [which is the biggest stumbling block to non-voters for some reason], and the comprehension test would force prior basic political knowledge into the process of registering, while not a end-all salve for the types of issues I'm thinking about, it'd be a start.

[Lord Shonus]

When I went to vote in the last election, it was on a big electronic machine that gave you a list of options with no opt-out.  It had me vote on a bunch of offices that I knew nothing about and didn't know I'd be voting on, and I could only get through it by selecting one of the given options and hitting 'Next' until it was finished.  I was rather upset.  But there were only two machines, and a huge line wrapping all the way around the building, so I wasn't going to be an asshole and raise a fuss.

THe electronic machines I'm familiar with allow you to click next without selecting anything, and have an "Other (Please Specify) option. The local lunatic candidate polls surprisingly well with this method, sometimes gaining an entire percent.

[Shadowlord]

Yeah, I knew somebody would bring this up.  It's as close to universal as any value I can think of.  I'd still argue that very, very few people actually believe killing of equal human beings to be a decent act.  Many people are able to kill without remorse, but they're able to do so because they hold some other value higher than human life, they invent criteria which allows them to redefine some people as lesser or non-human, or they're psychologically dysfunctional.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

[Trollheiming]

Question for the Dems, which I know this board has in spades...

How do you go vote for a dude that lied about the causes of an attack that killed four Americans? He went before the cameras and in front of the American people for two weeks and lied repeatedly. He didn't want to tarnish his Middle East record with admitting a bonafide pre-planned Al-Qaeda attack, so he foisted it off on "spontaneous outrage" over a little-known 15-minute video "movie" and jailed the creator.

Then he says the intelligence community said so. The intelligence community knew immediately that there had been no protests over the video, since they had footage of the compound during the attack and debriefings of survivors, as they have informed the press. They never reported that to the President. He or his own staff made that leap to protect their foreign policy record.

How do you vote for a president who thought you were stupid enough to never figure out that Al-Qaeda had planned this attack for September 11th long before an insignificant Youtube clip was posted?

[Descan]

This is the first I've heard of it.

Pics or GTFO.

[Reelya]

Every media source in the first week was saying it was protests over the videos.

http://www.myfoxspokane.com/news/headlines/story/american-killed-libya-protest-over-film

American killed in Libya protest over film

Protesters angered over a film that ridiculed Islam's Prophet Muhammad fired gunshots and burned down the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, killing one American diplomat, witnesses and the State Department said. In Egypt, protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy in Cairo and replaced an American flag with an Islamic banner.

It was the first such assaults on U.S. diplomatic facilities in either country, at a time when both Libya and Egypt are struggling to overcome the turmoil following the ouster of their longtime leaders, Moammar Gadhafi and Hosni Mubarak in uprisings last year.

[Trollheiming]

Every media source in the first week was saying it was protests over the videos.

Because the media asked... the White House, of course. That's where they get their information. The White House does not get information from the media. That'd be absurd. The intel community knew the cause as soon as it happened, and within 24 hours had "return addresses" on several Al-Qaeda participants.

This is the first I've heard of it.

Pics or GTFO.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/dorsey/brutal-ad-hits-white-house-on-libya-timeline-contr

[Reelya]

No they didn't ask the white house, i linked a FOX News source above, which makes the same claim, and does not reference the White House, except for a comment by Hillary Clinton saying no film could justify violence.

This story on FOX never questioned whether the film was to blame, only Clinton was quoted showing any doubts.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Question for the Dems, which I know this board has in spades...

A lot of people on this board are more of the independent liberal streak. Or European. Not that many avowed Democrats that I know of here.

How do you go vote for a dude that lied about the causes of an attack that killed four Americans? He went before the cameras and in front of the American people for two weeks and lied repeatedly. He didn't want to tarnish his Middle East record with admitting a bonafide pre-planned Al-Qaeda attack, so he foisted it off on "spontaneous outrage" over a little-known 15-minute video "movie" and jailed the creator.

First of all, Obama was at first operating on false information as much as the rest of us and was trying to control the apparently exploding situation. Even afterwards you have to confirm something like an Al-Qaeda backed attack and conspiracy before you go announcing it, even if you know it might be the case.

Secondly, the movie was disseminated across the Arabic-speaking internet not long before the attack, despite it having been released in June. This is indicative of Ansar al-Sharia attempting to use the film as cover to make their attack seem like the actions of an angry Libyan mob instead of a planned attack by known militants. The reason for their use of the film as cover is hardly difficult to imagine. By making the Libyans seem like ungrateful violent radical bastards Ansar al-Sharia would be doing a lot to disengage US presence in the region, thus allowing them to topple the democratic Libyan government and turn it into their dream theocracy in peace.

Thirdly, Obama did not jail the creator, and the creator was not jailed for making the film. The creator was jailed by a judge, and he was jailed for having broken his parole. When you break parole, they jail you for it. This is a thing that happens whether you make controversial films or not.

Then he says the intelligence community said so. The intelligence community knew immediately that there had been no protests over the video, since they had footage of the compound during the attack and debriefings of survivors, as they have informed the press. They never reported that to the President. He or his own staff made that leap to protect their foreign policy record.

They had to do something. The lack of reports to the President is hardly his own fault. You cannot just not say anything when your ambassador gets murdered and it looks like violent populist mobs are the perpetrators. Furthermore, there were real protests over the film, inside and outside of Libya. That was Ansar al-Sharia's whole plan, and they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling CIA.

How do you vote for a president who thought you were stupid enough to never figure out that Al-Qaeda had planned this attack for September 11th long before an insignificant Youtube clip was posted?

How do you make an argument that relies on the idea of Obama being secretly evil for no reason?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/dorsey/brutal-ad-hits-white-house-on-libya-timeline-contr

Oh well, the Heritage Foundation. Man, that's trustworthy. I guess Obama really is secretly evil for no reason.

[Frumple]

Voting's not a one issue thing, unfortunately, and gods only know if I had a legitimate third option I wouldn't be voting for either of the bastards running right now, but the system's mostly broke and, welp. Lesser of evils is still evil, but only stupid is certainly the lesser of insults spat out by the pair, if you're using personal slights as your heuristic for voting. Which would be a fairly odd thing to be using as heuristic but whatev'.

I prefer stated and demonstrated policy and while it's still pretty terrible in both cases, the distribution of terrible is different. I'll be voting for the one that least bothers me, y'know? Which is unfortunately Obama, since th'Reps decided to proffer up what's basically a caricature of the worst of capitalism and the income divide in our country