US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1595

On January 25 2015 12:19 Introvert wrote:


Sorry, I'm trying to work from the very limited information you have provided. What is your idea? So far all I can see is that you would rather have all citizens vote on the state level, and the top x vote receivers win. Is that more or less right?

This heavily favors densely populated areas. So I don't see how this changes the results of gerrymandering too much, even if gerrymandering itself disappears. It doesn't remove pandering, it just moves the focus.

The more citizens you can write off in your election attempt, the less each vote matters.

This could cause the citizenry to become even more apathetic.

Having local representatives is fine, the problem is drawing the districts. If that can be done in a neutral way, it seems far superior to a state wide vote.

Or maybe this is the way I feel because I live in CA, where only shot I have of making my vote mean something is who I vote for at the city level, state house/state senate, and congressional seat.

This heavily favors densely populated areas

On January 26 2015 01:16 oneofthem wrote:

what is YOUR idea?

no, this favors people equally, so...more people = more votes? are you trolling

again, explain how a bigger pool of voters dilute votes.
let me give you a hint: when calculating the average number of voters per elected representative to the house, what happens when you reduce the number of states to 1 (merge all the states into 1). compare this situation to the ideal distribution where no voter's vote is diluted, i.e. every voter is being equally represented by the same fraction of a representative.

no, this favors people equally, so...more people = more votes? are you trolling

again, explain how a bigger pool of voters dilute votes.

On January 25 2015 21:00 BallinWitStalin wrote:


What a lot of the more sensible countries do is have neutral independent commissions (I think it's statscan that does it for us) draw up electoral boundaries based on, as introvert said, community and geographic boundaries. I think in general they try to maintain community structure as best they can while distributing votes evenly across districts. I remember a while back I linked a page outlining their process in this thread....

I'm sure there are issues with it somewhere, but as a system it definitely works a lot better than letting political parties draw their own electoral boundaries.

On January 26 2015 08:09 Simberto wrote:
And the another candidate can actually campaign in those areas, because if you don't have to have 50% to actually do anything like in a stupid two-party-system, you can have a guy that just gets votes of the rural people be elected and represent them.

Your main problem is that you are thinking within the confines of a two-party system, which is already shit to start with. In a multi-party system, if voters get ignored, they can actually vote for someone that doesn't ignore them. Or start a party representing their own interests. And if you don't have to be the majority to be relevant, that actually influences the political process. So if the farmers were to be totally ignored, they could start a farmers party, which only talks about all those farmer issues, and elect some officials from that party into parliament. And those could then make deals with other parties, like "Ok we back your healthcare reform if you back our farming laws."

Compare that to your current system, where probably a majority of those guys already votes republican or whatever. So noone gives a fuck about that district, because they are gonna elect the republican guy anyways.

On January 26 2015 07:38 Introvert wrote:


I don't think there really is that much of a problem, so I haven't thought terribly long about what to do. From what I've seen though, the Canadians have a decent system.



Sure, each vote counts the same, but if it's state wide there are entire populations a candidate can write off, so he can spend all his time campaigning in just a few key areas. Do you not understand this?



It's the same problem as above. The only votes that matter are the large groups of votes you can get at once. Using CA as an example, the rural, inland areas will be almost entirely ignored and they will get very little representation, because not only will they not have the votes to put people in office, but the politicians won't fight for them, even if they are elected.

Just because you have the same number of voters and the same number of candidates doesn't make it even. Right now there are approximately the same number of people per district- that's fair, and everyone's vote has the same impact mathematically. So that's not the part that changes in your scheme (which you still won't outline). What changes is that now only the most populated regions get any attention from those vying for office.

So the question is, what happens when the number of districts falls to one, and the number of representatives rises to x. And that's not even a complete picture, because some areas and some groups go from a couple representatives, to potentially having none.

Edit: So, when a candidate can write off more votes, each one is worth less

Also, if you have any more than 5 (a rough guess) of people running statewide for the same office, it will be overwhelming for the voter. This will continue to favor the parties that already have money and resources, since statewide name recognition is hard to get. And, without a local feel, you maybe lose much of your grassroots campaigning. These are all additional problems with making it state or national.

On January 26 2015 08:09 Simberto wrote:
And the another candidate can actually campaign in those areas, because if you don't have to have 50% to actually do anything like in a stupid two-party-system, you can have a guy that just gets votes of the rural people be elected and represent them.

Your main problem is that you are thinking within the confines of a two-party system, which is already shit to start with. In a multi-party system, if voters get ignored, they can actually vote for someone that doesn't ignore them. Or start a party representing their own interests. And if you don't have to be the majority to be relevant, that actually influences the political process. So if the farmers were to be totally ignored, they could start a farmers party, which only talks about all those farmer issues, and elect some officials from that party into parliament. And those could then make deals with other parties, like "Ok we back your healthcare reform if you back our farming laws."

Compare that to your current system, where probably a majority of those guys already votes republican or whatever. So noone gives a fuck about that district, because they are gonna elect the republican guy anyways.

On January 26 2015 09:37 oneofthem wrote:

none of this is 'dilution' please.

there are other potential issues besides equal representation but insofar as equal representation is concerned a larger pool is better. why the fuck are you talking about local representation in a discussion about removing gerrymandering by getting rid of the district system? you think gerrymandering is about giving farmers more votes? seriously

local representation comes from a time with horses and shit it does not apply today.

why the fuck are you talking about local representation in a discussion about removing gerrymandering by getting rid of the district system?

you solve it by making every vote count equally within a bigger pool, like at the state level or even nationally.

you think gerrymandering is about giving farmers more votes? seriously

On January 26 2015 08:41 Stratos_speAr wrote:



This already happens.



That happens to be the current coalition. Just because it happened this time doesn't mean it always happens, and everything about the German system is different from the U.S. one, so the SPD and CDU making a coalition doesn't suddenly turn the German system into a 2 party system or make the smaller parties irrelevant.

On January 26 2015 11:33 Stratos_speAr wrote:


All this is is a larger indictment of the American system. The Green movement had to be swallowed up by the Democratic party or it would've never seen the light of day. It just further speaks to the inflexibility of our system and the inability of a force besides the Establishment from gaining any power in American politics.

On January 26 2015 10:54 oneofthem wrote:
you can still have specific regional/minority constituents represented within the larger pool of voters, because both parties would still want to win the marginal rural voters. exceppt the equilibrium position would be shifted somewhat. it would possibly mean even greater local interest representation because neither parties stand to gain much by giving the rural etc voters what they want.

this is different from guys facing no competition in districts with 90% of a party, yet the state's composition of reps is 20% off what the population would have voted for.

anyway, whatever you want to describe this particular issue of localism, dilution isn't the word.

you can still have specific regional/minority constituents represented within the larger pool of voters, because both parties would still want to win the marginal rural voters. exceppt the equilibrium position would be shifted somewhat.

it would possibly mean even greater local interest representation because neither parties stand to gain much by giving the rural etc voters what they want.

this is different from guys facing no competition in districts with 90% of a party, yet the state's composition of reps is 20% off what the population would have voted for.

WASHINGTON, Jan 25 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will propose protecting 1.4 million acres (556,000 hectares) of the Arctic from oil and gas drilling, the Interior Department said on Sunday.

The administration plans to propose designating the area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness, the highest level of federal protection under which oil and gas drilling is banned, it said in a statement.

The Washington Post said earlier that the Interior Department would also place part of the Arctic Ocean off limits to drilling and is considering additional limits on oil and gas production in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

The announcement is one of a series that the Interior Department will make this week that will affect Alaska's oil and gas production, the Post said.

The U.S. Congress needs to approve any wilderness designation, but the Interior Department will start managing the area under that level of protection immediately, the newspaper reported.

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was angry at the Obama administration's move, which she called an attack on Alaska. On Friday, she had introduced a bill that would have permitted oil production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"It's clear this administration does not care about us, and sees us as nothing but a territory. The promises made to us at statehood, and since then, mean absolutely nothing to them. I cannot understand why this administration is willing to negotiate with Iran, but not Alaska," Murkowski said in a statement on Sunday.

"We will fight back with every resource at our disposal," she said.

On January 26 2015 11:54 Introvert wrote:





I'll just say that "somewhat" is very naive.



One doesn't follow from the other. What you mean is, it would increase local metropolitan representation (and the "local-ness" is would be accident, it just so happens that most people in a state may be highly concentrated). When it's state wide, the local aspect of politics disappears. It would be more like running a senate campaign.



That's the point of local representation, it's not about what the whole state would do, it's about what different people within the state want. Never mind that with the new need for state wide name recognition the parties would do quite well.

The problem here is you are just assuming from the outset that representation % based on the state's population's preference is best. I disagree, we already have a body for state wide rep anyway.

I already explained what I meant by diluted. Each vote is far less meaningful. The only way to counter act that appears to me to make it so that voter gets a small number of votes.

On January 26 2015 12:17 oneofthem wrote:

this is giving me a headache so i'm not going to continue. each vote is not far less meaningful when you move from a state of unequal representation to a state of equal representation, while holding overall voter to rep ratio constant. i have no idea how you could possibly arrive at this conclusion.

"It's clear this administration does not care about us, and sees us as nothing but a territory. The promises made to us at statehood, and since then, mean absolutely nothing to them. I cannot understand why this administration is willing to negotiate with Iran, but not Alaska," Murkowski said in a statement on Sunday.

"We will fight back with every resource at our disposal," she said.