Only in America

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Forty Two
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Re: Only in America

Post by Forty Two » Thu Oct 11, 2018 3:46 pm

JimC wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 3:02 am
Forty Two wrote:
Mon Oct 08, 2018 9:29 pm
JimC wrote:
Sat Oct 06, 2018 3:42 am
Democracy is not an all or nothing situation. I am comfortable saying that the US is a democracy in the general sense, with major flaws that diminish the general principle of voting equality, whether they spring from partisan gerrymandering, deliberate efforts to stop certain sectors voting or an electoral college with its clear failure to allow majority rule. Other western democracies are also flawed, but not to the same extent.
If the US elected its head of government as in a parliamentary system, then he or she would be elected by the party(or coalition) that wins the most seats in the House of Representatives (chosen from the representatives). So, in 1994, for example, when the Republicans won the most seats in Congress, Newt Gingrich (then "leader" of the GOP) would have been President instead of Speaker of the House. Clinton wouldn't have been President.

Similarly, in 2008, the Repubs won the House of Representatives - John Boehner was the leader of the GOP at the time, so he was made Speaker of the House. However, if a parliamentary system was used, then he would have been Prime Minister (head of government), and Obama would not have been in that position.

In 1984, the Democrats won the lion's share of the House (parliament) seats while Reagan won the Presidency. Would it have been more democratic or less democratic for Tip O'Neill (then Speaker of the HOuse) to be President?

Would that be more or less of a democratic way to elect heads of government?

I submit that it's a different way to elect them. Neither way represents the will of the people as to the specific person who is ultimately chosen. It's a balance of interests.
That really hasn't addressed any of my points. You could still have a separately elected president by popular vote, plus your congress/senate arrangement - nowhere did I suggest a parliamentary system instead. The key points would be:

* altering your electoral college arrangements so that it would be impossible for a president to win with fewer votes than his or her opponent
* having a totally independent electoral commission to alter all electoral boundaries, state or federal, so as to eliminate gerrymandering, and to get as close to a "one person, one vote value" as possible; no more blatant partisan decisions
* the same commission could work out a better way to ensure there are no systematic barriers to voter registration
* and finally (impossible, I fear me) make voting compulsory
The point I was making was not that you suggested a parliamentary system instead - I was addressing the point of the US being less democratic. Neither the US nor many other western, first world countries elect their head of government by popular vote directly. The US uses a State-by-State vote - technically the States are the persons voting for the President, as entities. That's why there are winner take all states where a state has X electoral votes and they go to the winner of that state.

Similarly, if you have a parliamentary system, you can have one party have disproporationately more seats in Parliament than is represented by their share of the population. That can happen where one district is, like, 90% for party X, but three other districts are 51% to party Y. So, Party Y can get three seats in Parliament to X's 1, and then Party Y elects the prime minister. If there were 1,000,000 people in the district party X won, and 333,333 each in the district party Y won, then party Y would be picking the prime minister even though they got fewer votes.

There was prediction in the UK that the "wrong winner" scenario could have Conservative Tories with more seats in Parliament while getting fewer votes. It happened in 1974 in the reverse with a hung Parliament and the Labour Party got more seats than the Tories with fewer votes.

So, is that more democratic, or less democratic than the US?

I'm not criticizing the Brit system - I'm illustrating that all of these systems have some aspects that are not 100% democratic. And, that's o.k. In the US, our Congress is directly elected - one person, one vote. The President, though, not - he's indirectly elected by the States.

It's accurate to say that it's not 100% democratic in that he is not elected by a pure majority of the popular vote. But, pure majority of the popular vote is not the only way to democratically elect a head of government. In the US, one of the functions of the electoral college is to afford a bit of a nod toward smaller, less populous states, so that the country is not simply ruled by three or four population centers. Each state gets 2 electoral votes for being a state, and then a proportionate share of electoral votes based on population. 100 Electoral votes (for the Senate - 2 Senators) - and 435 Electoral votes for the House (there are 435 representatives in the House). Washington DC gets 3 Electors. Total - 538. All the interests are represented.

The effect of an electoral college is that it encourages candidates to take the interests of lesser populated states to heart, because instead of the equivalent of 1 vote for, say, Wyoming (less than 1, actually if it was by pure population), Wyoming gets 3. There are a lot of lower population states, and a purely popular vote election for the President would mean winner of the major cities would win the Presidency every time.
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Re: Only in America

Post by JimC » Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:58 pm

Why should living in a less populated area mean that your vote for the president is worth 3 times that of a city dweller? I cannot see that as being anything other than a betrayal of basic democratic principles...
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Re: Only in America

Post by Scot Dutchy » Fri Oct 12, 2018 7:12 am

JimC wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:58 pm
Why should living in a less populated area mean that your vote for the president is worth 3 times that of a city dweller? I cannot see that as being anything other than a betrayal of basic democratic principles...
Exactly. All votes should be equal in weight which is the basis of democracy. No system that uses division of land to determine who votes where or for whom is democratic. It cant be unless everyone is living in the same density of population and the land division is exactly equal. This is true of the British parliamentary system and all its clones.
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Re: Only in America

Post by pErvinalia » Fri Oct 12, 2018 9:01 am

It's unavoidable in a republic. It's the same in the EU.
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Re: Only in America

Post by Svartalf » Fri Oct 12, 2018 9:26 am

wtf are you spouting? IN proper theory, each constituency has more or less the same number of voters... and they have to keep it that way because if they don't, their gerrymandering will be brought to court and declared illegal.
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Re: Only in America

Post by pErvinalia » Fri Oct 12, 2018 9:56 am

I'm sprouting the truth, as far as I know. Nothing you said addressed that.
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Re: Only in America

Post by Svartalf » Fri Oct 12, 2018 9:59 am

I did, in the EU, every parliamentary seat represents about the same number of people, you can't say that a Polish vote is worth 3 German ones.
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Re: Only in America

Post by pErvinalia » Fri Oct 12, 2018 10:09 am

They're not equal according to wiki.
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Re: Only in America

Post by pErvinalia » Fri Oct 12, 2018 10:11 am

The apportionment of seats within the European Parliament to each member state of the European Union is set out by the EU treaties. The apportionment of seats is not proportional to each state's population, nor does it reflect any particular mathematical formula; however, it is stated in the treaties that distribution of seats should be "degressively proportional" to the population of the member states. The process can be compared to the composition of the electoral college used to elect the President of the United States of America in that, pro rata, the smaller state received more places in the electoral college than the more populous states.
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Re: Only in America

Post by Svartalf » Fri Oct 12, 2018 10:19 am

Funny, that's not how they sell it here. they say it's proportional to pop, and that less populated states have proportionately fewer seats than larger ones.
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Re: Only in America

Post by Scot Dutchy » Fri Oct 12, 2018 10:44 am

Svartalf wrote:
Fri Oct 12, 2018 10:19 am
Funny, that's not how they sell it here. they say it's proportional to pop, and that less populated states have proportionately fewer seats than larger ones.
pErv is quoting only half the story. The seat numbers are negotiated numbers during the various treaties. They cant be changed.
Voting system

There is no uniform voting system for the election of MEPs; rather, each member state is free to choose its own system, subject to certain restrictions:[3]

The system must be a form of proportional representation, under either the party list or the single transferable vote system.
The electoral area may be subdivided if this will not generally affect the proportional nature of the voting system.[6]
This situation is the result of historical negotiations. The closer the EU moves towards a federal state the rules will change.


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Re: Only in America

Post by laklak » Fri Oct 12, 2018 2:34 pm

Of course a rural vote is worth more than some goddamn city slicker. City slickers can't do shit, can't even nut a hog. You want somebody running things can't even nut a hog?
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Only in America

Post by Tero » Fri Oct 12, 2018 2:51 pm

If there's a lot of hogs, can you recycle the nuts somehow?
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Re: Only in America

Post by laklak » Fri Oct 12, 2018 2:57 pm

They's good battered and deep fried.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Only in America

Post by Sean Hayden » Fri Oct 12, 2018 10:41 pm

Guy shot at a teenager asking for directions. You can google it and find a video of the incident. The kid walks up to the door wearing his backpack. Apparently, he had missed the bus and gotten lost trying to walk to school. A few seconds later he is seen running away from the front door as a guy comes storming out with a shotgun and takes a shot at him. The white guy with a gun claims he thought he was being robbed! Oh, he also blamed his wife because she supposedly went running to the bedroom sobbing after the black kid knocked on the front door. The thing is this guy has a prior under similar circumstances.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/ex ... spartanntp

I mentioned elsewhere that in my opinion, we have a lot of these guys looking for a chance to shoot someone. Most of them will never go out there and hunt another human. But they often think about how they can kill someone in various defense-related/accident type situations and hope to get away with it.

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