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Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees

nytimes.com

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Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees

#91

Post by chrisseaton »

tanderson92 wrote: post #86
chrisseaton wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 'legal monopoly' implies that there is some legal ruling which enforces the monopoly. You said yourself that what they are doing is an abuse. Just because it involves lawyers doesn't make it 'legal'. But ultimately the fact that there are independents on ballot papers proves clearly that there is no monopoly, legal or otherwise, by any definition at all.

That may be clear to you, but to others the fact that the legal system was utilized to leverage the existing parties' power over smaller parties' ability to reach voters is what indicates a legal monopoly. Besides all that, I don't understand how you say there wasn't a legal ruling which enforced the monopoly, when I just presented several examples in which there were.

You and I must simply have different understanding of the word monopoly and what it means to legally enforce one, so I guess we're not going to convince each other.

Gary Johnson is standing in fifty states isn't he? He's not doing that illegally is he? So there is no monopoly. If there is then it's not being enforced, legally or illegally.

Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees

#92

Post by [deleted] »

matwood wrote: post #44
icc97 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely agree. The article appears to be painting a very dark picture that 91% don't want the candidates. Where as this is just stating the obvious of what happens in every country that first puts forward a leader of a party that is contending to win the overall election.

It is quite an interesting time. My liberal friends are all irked because Bernie got hosed by the DNC. My conservative friends are irked because the RNC did not do more to stop Trump. Talk about a role reversal with the party of the people and the party of the establishment. Personally, I see so many problems with both candidates that it makes me sick that I have to vote for the least worst one.

[deleted]

Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees

#93

Post by Spoom »

xlxlxlx wrote: post #72
matwood wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite an interesting time. My liberal friends are all irked because Bernie got hosed by the DNC. My conservative friends are irked because the RNC did not do more to stop Trump. Talk about a role reversal with the party of the people and the party of the establishment. Personally, I see so many problems with both candidates that it makes me sick that I have to vote for the least worst one.

Why do you feel you have to vote for one of the two?

I just had a small debate about this with some friends of mine. Let's imagine you live in a battleground state, and for the sake of argument, let's also assume that you're in one of the 48 states that are "winner take all" in that they assign all of their electoral college votes to the overall popular vote winner in that state.

Say that state is Ohio. In 2012, the popular vote in Ohio was as follows (Source: Politico):

B. Obama 50.1%

M. Romney 48.2%

G. Johnson 0.9%

J. Stein 0.3%

Let's say you're much more aligned with the Green Party platform. Why wouldn't you vote for Jill Stein?

The answer is because your vote would likely otherwise go to Barack Obama, as the next closest candidate. So you're taking a vote away from Obama and putting it toward a candidate that has no chance of winning.

If enough people do this, the second place candidate would win, in this case Mitt Romney. As a Green supporter, this would likely be the worst case scenario result. And yet, unintuitive as it is, your vote contributed to the candidate on the opposite side winning.

"But if enough people voted Green, they would win," some cry. OK. Historically speaking, the Greens have averaged around this result... likely no more than 3% in any given state election. Do you really think that they're going to multiply their votes by several orders of magnitude by election day?

This isn't the case in every electoral system; for example, in a Parliamentary system such as Canada's, you vote for your local MP, who runs on the basis of a riding, for which there are usually several within a city. The party that wins the most MP seats gets to form a government (PM, etc.) So the election becomes a much more local affair, rather than being a winner-take-all battle among the entire province, and results in practice in a multi-party system. Unfortunately, that's just not how US presidential elections work. The ridings are the size of an entire state, so your vote has less of an impact.

Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees

#94

Post by Eutow »

kr7 wrote: post #58

Trump got the most votes of any Republican candidate in history. It probably would have been lower than 9% if Trump hadn't run.

Is it pertinent to point out that he also garnered the most votes against him than any Republican candidate in history?

Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees

#95

Post by hackerboos »

jpt1 wrote: post #49
afarrell wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people in the UK chose Theresa May as Prime Minister?

How many people have chosen any Prime Minister of the UK? Its just their constituents that vote for them, so ~50000 people at most.

Membership choose the leader of a party and would have done so in the Tory party had Leadsom not dropped out.

Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees

#96

Post by icebraining »

kiiski wrote: post #82
the_duke wrote: post #41

Personally, being more familiar with European parliamentary systems, I find it quite astounding that the canidate selection is such an open an public process. In many countries, the parties select candidates internally and then present them to the public. Letting non-party members vote or register just before voting would be unthinkable there. Then again, this is probably a necessary result of the US political system…

Edit (re: reply by dagss): I seem to have misunderstood the comment, but can't delete anymore.

In Portugal it's just 7500, though our President doesn't really have that much power, he's more of a figurehead.

Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees

#97

Post by jccalhoun »

the_duke wrote: post #41

Personally, being more familiar with European parliamentary systems, I find it quite astounding that the canidate selection is such an open an public process. In many countries, the parties select candidates internally and then present them to the public. Letting non-party members vote or register just before voting would be unthinkable there. Then again, this is probably a necessary result of the US political system…

>But it's also a way to get people familiar with the candidates early on.

That is largely what it is all about. It is basically theater. All the rules are made by the political parties themselves whether their own rules or by the state laws they have voted for. In the 1800s they just nominated whomever they wanted (and this is basically what the smaller political parties do since they are so small they don't have the money to do these long extended campaigns) but then they started doing the primaries and caucuses to give people input.

Re: Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees

#100

Post by Someone1234 »

awesomerobot wrote: post #29

Our voting system really needs to change, it's completely absurd that it hasn't just moved to a weekend or received special treatment as holidays.

Both solutions are less effective than mail in ballots, online voting, or extending the vote duration (e.g. 7 days).

People just bring up a "voting holiday" because they want an extra holiday. The reality is that many people would use the holiday to relax, go out of town, or get stuff done and voting percentage wouldn't improve.

Ditto with weekends. People go out of town on the weekends, do you think they're going to stop because of a pesky vote? Even if they did for one year word would quickly spread that that is a "quiet" weekend and everyone would go for that reason.

If you really want to improve voting: Drive through voting, like McDonald's, that takes the same amount of time as McDonald's to do, and that you have a seven day week within which to do. Literally make it a 5 minute job where you don't even need to exit your vehicle.

People might scoff at that, call it lazy, but people ARE lazy. They want minimum hassle, minimum time, and maximum value. That's why drive-through places even exist.

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