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Author Topic: 2020 Election Commentary  (Read 185159 times)

myleftnut

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #600 on: November 05, 2020, 10:10:38 PM »
Greetings!

No "Right Wing Tears" necessary. I just ordered a new woodsman's tomahawk, 1,000 rounds of ammunition for my AR-15, and another 500 rounds for my Glock 45. I'm content up in the high mountains and forests here, where people are sane, god-fearing, and patriots that love *Traditional* America.

All the cock-sucking, blue-haired, pierced, tatted up gender-fluid Marxist fucks can dance a jig and choke on shit.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

You best believe I’m armed with my concealed everywhere I go these days.  The BLM/Antifa twats here in Portland started rioting before any of this election nonsense even started.  I would open carry if it didn’t invite harassment from the po po. 

Pat
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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #601 on: November 05, 2020, 10:45:53 PM »
You need an independent electoral commission like we have in Oz, Jeff. It should be run by people who genuinely do not give a shit either way.
How did you manage that? The "non-partisan" equivalents in the US are 100% partisan, just typically carefully balanced to be 50% partisan red and 50% partisan blue, completely locking out third parties, the disinterested, and independents. That results in hyper-partisan exclusionary shit like primary elections and gerrymandering commissions.

Spinachcat

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #602 on: November 05, 2020, 11:05:47 PM »
Has there been a democratic system without any political parties in the modern era?

I wonder if its even possible. Tribalism seems coded in our DNA, or at least rooted deep in our brain.

HappyDaze

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #603 on: November 05, 2020, 11:23:33 PM »
It should be run by people who genuinely do not give a shit either way.
It shouldn't be too hard to find people like that in America. Now to just whip them up into a apathetic frenzy.

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #604 on: November 05, 2020, 11:37:24 PM »
There have been a lot of proposals to expand the size of Congress because the size of the districts are too large (average 700K for a rep or 6.5M maybe /2 for a Senator), or because how much your vote counts varies too widely (that 700K for a rep varies from a little over 500K to almost 1M -- a Montanan vote is worth about half a Rhode Islander vote).

One proposal is to expand the House to 930 seats, which would minimize the whole "your vote counts more or less depending which district you live in" problem. Another one I've suggested before is making each district about 50K. That puts the public in closer touch with their rep, and roughly corresponds to the size of House districts in the late 18th and early to mid 19th centuries (35-70K or so). It would also mean we could give the various populated territories like American Samoa their own reps without completely screwing things up (the smallest House district is just over 500K, while the various territories are much smaller, in the 50-170K range.)

But then we'd end up with 5,000-10,000 reps, which seems absurd. So how about this: Get rid of geography, make it national. If 50,000 people anywhere in the US vote for a Satanist, then the Satanist gets a seat. If 5,000,000 vote for Kayne West, he also gets a seat. But with 100 times the number of votes, he gets 100 times the number of votes on the floor. So we might end up with only a couple hundred seated reps, but 6,500 total votes distributed among them based on their public support. This would allow minorities, assembled from small but organized groups across the entire nation, to have a voice in Congress, something that's been completely absent from the current system. And since it creates a parliamentary-style distribution, even the single vote reps might be able to extract practical concessions, when forming coalitions, so they'll end up with a smidgen of practical power on top of the voice.

This is less a serious proposal, and more a thought experiment, because I still like geographical ties. Government where people live makes sense for all kinds of things like education and infrastructure, which should be reflected in the national legislature.

Ratman_tf

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #605 on: November 05, 2020, 11:38:07 PM »
It should be run by people who genuinely do not give a shit either way.
It shouldn't be too hard to find people like that in America. Now to just whip them up into a apathetic frenzy.

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Kyle Aaron

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #606 on: November 05, 2020, 11:51:57 PM »
How did you manage that?
You appoint the head of the electoral commission for five years, renewable for further five year terms. They do not serve at the pleasure of the government of the day.

The other things like how to when and how draw electoral boundaries etc are written in the legislation so there's not a lot of room for the AEC to fuck around with them. There are obviously other aspects, but this talks about how electoral boundaries are drawn.

Two other aspects are relevant. The first is compulsory voting, and the other is preferential voting.

With voluntary voting, you have to motivate people to get out and vote. You can do this by inspiring them or by making them angry.

It's a lot, lot easier to make them angry. This encourages polarisation of the political process, and this flows down the hill to all the many and various appointments of judges and EPA officials and all the rest which any normal government makes. With compulsory voting, people just have to vote, the only question is for who. Some parties still try to make people angry but they tend to be minority parties (ie never forming part of a government), and stay minority unless they change to behaving like a major party, which get people to vote for them by promising them benefits. So there's not such a motivation to politicise institutions.

As for preferential voting, essentially it works as, you get a ballot paper, and number the candidates 1,2,3, etc in your order of preference. First the AEC looks at all the "1" votes. If someone gets more than 50%, they're in. If not - whoever got the least votes, they take their ballot papers and look at who they put 2nd, and allocate those votes to them.

For example, Kyle, Pat and Pundit are candidates, and we have 100 voters. The primary (put "1") vote goes as follows,
Kyle 45
Pat 40
Pundit 15

Pundit is eliminated, and they look at Pundit's voters and see who they put 2nd. Of the 15 Pundit voters, 3 put Kyle 2nd, and 12 and put Pat 2nd. Now it goes,
Kyle 45+3 = 48
Pat 40+12 = 52
and Pat is elected. Of course it becomes more complicated with 10 or whatever candidates, but you get the picture.

The result of this is that groups who get just a few percent of the vote and would never themselves get in do have some influence. Parties can recommend to their followers who they should preference. So Pundit could tell his followers, "actually, put Kyle 2nd." They may or may not listen, but many do - and then Kyle gets 6 of the 2nd preference votes instead of 3, and gets in.

In this way, a party like the Greens who themselves almost never win seats can influence policy. The major party comes along and says, "If we subsidise wind turbines, will you tell your voters to put us 2nd?" and the other says, "If we let in more refugees, will you...?" And so the major parties start taking on some of the policies of minor parties. This, too, makes things less polarised, and reduces the tendency to politicising institutions.

Of course it's not foolproof. Here in Victoria the police have become politicised because the same guys have been in for 17 of the last 20 years, so all the senior police were appointed by those guys. Thus BLM, climate, etc protests being allowed but anti-government ones broken up. So we can say that an independent electoral commission, compulsory and preferential voting certainly help, but they are not everything in preventing the politicisation of institutions.

On the other hand, nobody doubts the legitimacy of our elections. The elections are free and fair and essentially without fraud or manipulation - even if the government of the day is corrupt as all fuck, people definitely chose that corrupt government.
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Kyle Aaron

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #607 on: November 05, 2020, 11:55:20 PM »
This is less a serious proposal, and more a thought experiment -
Speaking of which, the scifi authour Karl Gallagher had a world where they had an auctionocracy - individuals or groups would do secret bidding for seats in parliament, and the funds from the winning bids were the planet's budget that year. Corporations, unions, lobby groups or whoever could bid as they saw fit. Instead of fighting corruption and bribery, make it part of the system, and use the funds for the public good! It's an intriguing idea :)
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Pat
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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #608 on: November 06, 2020, 12:02:09 AM »
How did you manage that?
You ...
I'll have to think about the implications. But thanks for posting it.

Kyle Aaron

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #609 on: November 06, 2020, 12:16:33 AM »
I don't think you could get compulsory voting happening in the US. But you could get preferential voting, and some independent electoral commissions.

Just think: with preferential voting, the Libertarian Party would determine the current US Presidential election :D That's one way to move the Overton Window!
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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #610 on: November 06, 2020, 12:38:32 AM »
One problem with the version of ranked voting you're describing is a lot of people think the candidate with the most public support should win, not someone who gets the edge because they're the second choice. It seems to be a fixation of a lot of the one person, one vote crowd who don't realize that's not some kind of perfect platonic ideal, and that all voting systems come with weird and unexpected consequences.

Another variation on the bidding system might be to make the vote a betting system. Instead of picking a candidate, you weigh which one will be the best president, and then place a bet on how well they'll do. The person who gets elected is the one the most betters rate the highest, and all the money they bet is placed in a trust. After the candidate leave office, there's a popular opinion poll on how well they did, and the betters get money based on how well they predicted the public sentiment.

consolcwby

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #611 on: November 06, 2020, 12:52:24 AM »
LEFT RIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!!!

If everyone wants a fight, we should be fighting THIS:

and not each other. It's what Mr. Bigglesworth wants!  ;)

Also, it's why I have been following this place - https://x22report.com/the-sting-operation-has-begun-trump-knew-be-ready-eas-on-deck-episode-2321/

(If anyone has been paying attention, I don't believe in humanity. I believe only in fud. However, that doesn't mean I'm ASLEEP. Especially since my life is literally on the line with all this. Because of what I know, I can tell you all - where I come from, the dead always come out to vote. 2018, it was a by a margin of 1.102:1.00 meaning, twice as many people voted as there are legally registered voters. And, it's a sanctuary city. And we've had the same mayor for over 23 years. Last person to run against him was FORCED out of town. As was most of our old retired police officers AND veterans. Isn't much to do except wait to see if they do to me what they did to the last guy to try and expose them. I always wanted to meet the death squads of the USA. I wonder how many of them were former Delta...)
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                                                                                  https://youtu.be/ShaxpuohBWs?si

jeff37923

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #612 on: November 06, 2020, 01:17:58 AM »
Again, Larry Correia reporting live from the front lines:

Quote
Fascinating stuff on Twitter tonight. Apparently somebody gathered a giant list of dead people for Wisconsin and Michigan, and crowd sourced a hunt through the voting records to see how many dead people registered and voted. And then people began to plug them into the state websites. Many were registered but didn’t vote, but many others did vote in 2020. (Joe Biden is so popular that even being dead can’t stop the Joementum!)

When people found dead voters they would post the names and birth dates (many of them 100 years ago) so that others could confirm them for themselves. Now I’m not saying these are all accurate and I have no idea how many there will be, but you can check those yourselves. It’s darkly hilarious.

Yet while I watched this, Twitter kept deleting the accounts sharing the file list. They’d block somebody, and then ten minutes later someone else would share it and get blocked too. In the half an hour or so I scrolled through dead voters the people sharing the list kept vanishing. It was kind of amazing to watch real time. But one would get blocked and somebody else would take their place.

If the thing that saves America from turning into a cyberpunk dystopia run by ruthless tech oligarchs... is 4chan... I’m gonna laugh because I truly did not see that coming. 😀

Really interesting though, liberals jumping in and saying “oh yeah! So what it ten thousand  dead people voted in Detroit, that’s not enough! Biden still wins!” Because obviously these particular dead people are the only fraud and everything else is squeaky clean.

Sure, in every other aspect of life we recognize that humans regularly lie, cheat, and steal and we prepare accordingly. But if you suggest there is voter fraud liberals get all HOW DARE YOU INSULT THE SANCTITY OF OUR PURE ELECTIONS?!? and then the GOP is such chickenshits they agree with that and say sure, keep that box of ballots you found behind the TacoBell after the polls close that are just enough to beat us, because we’d hate to lose undignified.

Meanwhile the DNC is gleefully having 120 year olds vote in Detroit. And liberals are all like, that’s perfectly normal and not at all suspicious HOW DARE YOU FASCIST VOTER SUPPRESSION.

Most of the people who argued with me today, the excuse making and gas lighting was just pathetic. I would respect these people a lot more if they were just honest and said they are cool with voter fraud because it helps their team.
"Meh."

Kyle Aaron

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #613 on: November 06, 2020, 01:22:30 AM »
One problem with the version of ranked voting you're describing is a lot of people think the candidate with the most public support should win, not someone who gets the edge because they're the second choice.
Sure, but if you have 10 candidates, 9 of them get 9.9% of the vote and 1 of them gets get 10.9%, is that really the candidate with the "most support"? Technically, yes, but... many people might say, "If I'd known my guy wasn't getting in, and losing just by 1%... I wouldn't have voted for that guy..."

You can think of preferential as rounds of voting where the lowest-placed person is excluded - but only the people who voted for that person get to vote again. Many countries do rounds of voting, especially for Presidential positions, but of course with a secret ballot everyone gets a second, third, etc vote, not just those who voted for the loser. Preferential voting allows those who voted for the least-popular candidate to still have a say without compromising the secrecy of the ballot. "Okay, if you can't have this guy, who would you choose?"

As I said, preferential voting reduces polarisation because the major parties have to take on some of the policies of the minor parties to get their support. In the US, the Democrats would probably take on more Green policies, and the Republicans more Libertarian policies, but each would at least try to not completely alienate those minor parties. Parties would be less polarised, and more inclusive of "middle of the road" policies.

As well, with first-past-the-post, the support for minor parties will always be small. Since they've no chance of getting in, their support will be limited to the idealistic or extremely disillusioned. "Yeah he won't get in, but fuck you." With preferential voting you still have your 2nd, etc choice, which allows you to say, "Fuck you, but -" And so we find in Australia that third party votes hover between 10-25% of the primary vote overall. The amount varies - if it's 10% the major parties tend to ignore them, but because they ignore them their support gradually increases to 25% or so, and 1-2 even get into some parliaments (our state parliament has 3 Greens and 3 independents out of 88 lower house members), and then they start listening again - but by this time those minor parties are better-established, so... again, less polarisation.

With less polarisation, there would be less motivation for electoral fraud, and at the same time less motivation for alleging electoral fraud.
« Last Edit: November 06, 2020, 01:36:19 AM by Kyle Aaron »
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jhkim

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Re: 2020 Election Commentary
« Reply #614 on: November 06, 2020, 01:52:47 AM »
I don't think you could get compulsory voting happening in the US. But you could get preferential voting, and some independent electoral commissions.

Just think: with preferential voting, the Libertarian Party would determine the current US Presidential election :D That's one way to move the Overton Window!
I've been doubtful about a positive effect of compulsory voting, but I see some merit in your point that it would reduce the urge to make up partisan stories of doom to get people to the polls - so it could reduce the partisan divide. I agree that it likely won't happen in the U.S. But I do see a future in ranked choice voting - which has been implemented in Maine at present.

https://qz.com/1920978/does-compulsory-voting-hurt-or-benefit-democracy/

I'm not quite clear on how independent election commissions get instituted, but I agree it seems like a good idea. I get that they have an independent budget so they're not dependent on the legislative branch, but how do members get appointed?

Regarding specific claims of fraud, I'd like to see evidence of some sort.

I can tell you all - where I come from, the dead always come out to vote. 2018, it was a by a margin of 1.102:1.00 meaning, twice as many people voted as there are legally registered voters. And, it's a sanctuary city. And we've had the same mayor for over 23 years. Last person to run against him was FORCED out of town. As was most of our old retired police officers AND veterans. Isn't much to do except wait to see if they do to me what they did to the last guy to try and expose them. I always wanted to meet the death squads of the USA. I wonder how many of them were former Delta...)
So, what city is this? Can you give some names or sources for this happening?


Again, Larry Correia reporting live from the front lines:
Quote
Fascinating stuff on Twitter tonight. Apparently somebody gathered a giant list of dead people for Wisconsin and Michigan, and crowd sourced a hunt through the voting records to see how many dead people registered and voted. And then people began to plug them into the state websites. Many were registered but didn’t vote, but many others did vote in 2020. (Joe Biden is so popular that even being dead can’t stop the Joementum!)

When people found dead voters they would post the names and birth dates (many of them 100 years ago) so that others could confirm them for themselves. Now I’m not saying these are all accurate and I have no idea how many there will be, but you can check those yourselves.

So he says you can check them for yourselves - but there isn't any specific information included to check. There's just the claim that "Someone said it on Twitter" - which I don't consider to be proof of anything.