Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 267 posts

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

#141

Post by humanrebar »

Someone1234 wrote: post #100
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…

> People might scoff at that, call it lazy, but people ARE lazy.

Or they're just tired because they have two part time jobs (while looking for something more regular), kids, and a pile of chores they've been putting off.

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

#142

Post by ajmurmann »

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.

I think what's absurd is that we have a highly polarized political landscape that combined wit the voting system leads to a two party system. That could be easily changed by switching to approval voting. Neither Hilary nor Trump would be close to being viable candidates, since they both had bad approval ratings. As it is now everyone is just voting against the candidate they are most scared of.

What's even more absurd is that the actual votes are being counted on a per-state basis. If someone where to design the system from scratch nowadays nobody would even come up with a system that dumb. Just count all the votes. What's the point of involving states at all in a federal election? It shouldn't matter in a federal election if I live in California or Georgia. It's absurd that it does!

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

#143

Post by voidlogic »

lettergram wrote: post #117
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.

You don't actually have to vote for the least worst one... I recommend looking to third party candidates. The libertarian party has two pretty solid lineup and polls third at the moment (like 11% or something this election cycle). That being said, you can also protest vote by putting in "Edward Snowden" or something. Honestly, I find it horrifying people feel the need to vote for the "least worst option". You're esse…

>Honestly, I find it horrifying people feel the need to vote for the "least worst option".

I think this is highly dependent on "how bad" the two mainstream options are. There are plenty people who think there is a legitimate concern that a Trump presidency could lead to nuclear war or some other kind of national disaster. If you believe this is a real possibility it comes much easier to empathize with voting for the "least bad option".

TL;DR I dislike Regan, but in a Regan vs Hitler election I would vote for Regan rather than a 3rd party I was actually more aligned with to try to ensure Hitler did not rise to power.

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

#144

Post by rbcgerard »

Spoom wrote: post #93
xlxlxlx wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This strategy makes sense in battleground states but what about in the opposite case (say hawaii (very D) or wyoming (very R)) - I'd argue that by voting for the third party candidate is the better option as you are unlikely to change the outcome of the election one way or the other - but you reduce the mandate of the winner that you are less aligned with, and by marginally improving the showing of the third party, make it more likely that mainstream candidates will want to address issues of concern to a newly visible voting block?

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

#145

Post by bsbechtel »

lettergram wrote: post #117
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.

You don't actually have to vote for the least worst one... I recommend looking to third party candidates. The libertarian party has two pretty solid lineup and polls third at the moment (like 11% or something this election cycle). That being said, you can also protest vote by putting in "Edward Snowden" or something. Honestly, I find it horrifying people feel the need to vote for the "least worst option". You're esse…

To the other comments here saying voting third party is the worst possible option, no, it's not. Voting for the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil. Furthermore, it's putting a two vote differential between evil and a third party candidate that has to be 'undone' by someone willing to vote third party (-1 third party you didn't vote for, +1 for evil). If you are saying you have to choose between two bad candidates, you are implying you would choose a better option if one existed. If you don't think the third party candidate is a better option, that's fine, don't vote third party, but if you think the major party options are evil, the just don't vote. Then at least you aren't voting for evil that needs to be undone by someone willing to vote third party.

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

#146

Post by sanderjd »

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…

We did it that way until the early to mid twentieth century, when a populist backlash against that good ol' boys system led to more or less the primary setup we have now. It still varies a lot year to year and party to party.For instance, the Republicans' system was quite a bit more democratic than the Democrats' this year. (You can draw your own conclusions from that on the relative value of the two models.)

It's an odd hybrid where the parties are private organizations that can make their own decisions and rules, but their leadership elections are run by state apparatus. This (understandably) confuses people, to the point that most people seem to think of the parties as almost part of the governmental system.

As others have noted, this all goes back to our winner-take-all elections, which are a kind of original sin in our system, which we'll probably never be able to change. In other systems, which encourage more parties, it is much easier to abandon a party if you don't like the leaders they pick, so it is not as important to be invested in the actual process of picking those leaders.

The Atlantic had a really good article on some of these topics recently: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-amer...

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

#148

Post by Diederich »

Spoom wrote: post #93
xlxlxlx wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Spot on analysis. I tend to go with a concrete example: Florida in 2000.

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

#149

Post by dagss »

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.

This is referring to who becomes candidate og Republican or Democratic parties. I am sure anyone can become presidential candidate in just the same way in the US - but not representing those parties.

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

#150

Post by sbuttgereit »

GarrisonPrime wrote: post #136

Friendly reminder: Not voting can be a vote in and of itself. A vote of "no confidence". True, voting for an alternative candidate will take a percentage of the votes away from Clinton or Trump, and having them win by a lower percentage would be a satisfying way to sock it to the system and send a message. (Although, knowing the media, if the stats started to look bad they would probably start reporting Clinton and T…

Agreed. Right now my vote is for a specific major party candidate as possibly the least terrible that could win vs. an empty ballot in the presidential race.

Many will say vote for a third party; but because that vote will be purely symbolic, any third party candidate that I might vote for has a higher bar to reach than a major party candidate: the party and candidate stand to gain more from a decent showing than any abstract message of protest disconnected from the party/candidate. So, a third party candidate is not a sensible default when the major party choices suck... not voting is the sensible default in that case.

Post reply on HN