Now i'm not saying this (routinely) happens, but just the idea is absurd, that someone who get's 75% of the votes would lose to someone that get's 25% of the votes, purely because the 25%'s votes were better grouped geographically.
As noted, your numbers represent an extreme theoretical example that has never even come close to happening. But the relevance of geography is intentional. The writers of the Constitution wanted the President (as well as the Senate) to have to appeal to a widely distributed cross-section of the electorate rather than focus on the needs of a few high-population states, even if that meant that the votes of people in high-population states effectively count for a bit less.
For an acute illustration of the problem the founders wanted to avoid, check out the complaints made by the Scots and Welsh about the U.K. parliament.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Now i'm not saying this (routinely) happens, but just the idea is absurd, that someone who get's 75% of the votes would lose to someone that get's 25% of the votes, purely because the 25%'s votes were better grouped geographically.
As noted, your numbers represent an extreme theoretical example that has never even come close to happening. But the relevance of geography is intentional. The writers of the Constitution wanted the President (as well as the Senate) to have to appeal to a widely distributed cross-section of the electorate rather than focus on the needs of a few high-population states, even if that meant that the votes of people in high-population states effectively count for a bit less.
For an acute illustration of the problem the founders wanted to avoid, check out the complaints made by the Scots and Welsh about the U.K. parliament.
There is also the fact that a president elected with such a low popular vote would have an extremely hostile Congress to deal with and would not be able to get much done. Also it would imply such a massive demographic and political shift that you would probably get a civil war. Lincoln was elected with about 40% of popular vote.
Lincoln was elected with about 40% of popular vote.
The vote was split among four candidates that election, though, and Lincoln did win the plurality. So I don't really think that's an example of what we're talking about. (Except insofar as Breckenridge carried eleven states with 18% of the vote and Douglas only carried one state with 30% of the vote.)
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Isn't another feature of the Electoral College that electors can disagree with the popular vote, thereby providing a safeguard against a demagogue gathering too much power?
I'd have to agree with Blinking Spirit. The Civil War had a lot more to do with the fact that slavery wasn't fully addressed at the Constitutional Convention. The 3/5ths Compromise, Mason-Dixon Line, Missouri Compromise, and the surrounding power struggle over the induction of new states shows the issue was boiling under the surface for 70 years. It finally came to a head with the Kansas-Nebraska Act (which nullified the original Missouri Compromise) and the election of an Abolitionist in Lincoln. As it was, the balance of power was shifting steadily against the slave states. The desperation is somewhat evident in the fact that the Democrats (pro-slavery) themselves were split in that election.
I haven't read all the previous posts. But I live in Argentina and in here and the rest of Latin America, the US foreign policy is, was and will be a very negative influence in these countries. I don't see all candidates as the same thing, but I believe very little will change with either of them winning. The real politics of the US are defined by the military-industrial complex, the banks, financial institutions and the media.
This is not a very likely statement about the lower house (or it's a super-low odds proposition; I guess it is theoretically possible but extremely unlikely). I'd argue that the house of reps is highly monotonic. (whilst conceeding it is not strictly monotonic)
It's a much more true statement about the senate, but a lot of that is to do with very large numbers of candidates. Here I'd argue its major flaw is not that it is non-mon, it's that it's chaotic; that is that even if you know precisely the rules governing the distribution of preferences*, you can't realistically work out who gets elected until you know the starting conditions AND manually step through all the motions.
Both problems are the same at the bottom, and it amounts to the reason why monotonicity is important (at least in my opinion): a voter should be able to reason about what effect his vote will have on the outcome without having to be an omniscient deity. If our intent is to put X in office, then we should be able to reason about what we should mark on our ballots in order to best accomplish that end. Non-monotone systems make that difficult.
In a monotone system, I know that P(X wins|I vote for X) > P(X wins|I vote for non-X). In a non-monotone system, I don't know whether that probability is smaller or larger unless I can somehow see everyone else's vote.
Further, while our reps are non-monotone (strictly) in the direction of who you want most, non-preferential is somewhat non-monotonic in the opposite direction; voting for you want most can increase the chance of who you want *least* getting elected. It's the whole reason for strategic voting in the UK and tends to reinforce the 2 party system in the US.
I think we should agree to use mathematical terms like "monotone" only in the mathematical sense. Specific political actions that might or might not be exploited by human beings, like strategic voting (or strategic running, which is another flaw in Australian IRV) don't affect whether a voting system is monotone.
In a monotone system, P(X wins|you vote for X) > P(X wins|you don't vote for X), regardless of how anyone else votes. The US system is monotone; you can always be sure that your voting for someone gives them better odds of winning than had you not voted for them. Whatever flaw you're referring to here, it is not non-monotonicity.
This is not a very likely statement about the lower house (or it's a super-low odds proposition; I guess it is theoretically possible but extremely unlikely). I'd argue that the house of reps is highly monotonic. (whilst conceeding it is not strictly monotonic)
It's a much more true statement about the senate, but a lot of that is to do with very large numbers of candidates. Here I'd argue its major flaw is not that it is non-mon, it's that it's chaotic; that is that even if you know precisely the rules governing the distribution of preferences*, you can't realistically work out who gets elected until you know the starting conditions AND manually step through all the motions.
Both problems are the same at the bottom, and it amounts to the reason why monotonicity is important (at least in my opinion): a voter should be able to reason about what effect his vote will have on the outcome without having to be an omniscient deity. If our intent is to put X in office, then we should be able to reason about what we should mark on our ballots in order to best accomplish that end. Non-monotone systems make that difficult.
In a monotone system, I know that P(X wins|I vote for X) > P(X wins|I vote for non-X). In a non-monotone system, I don't know whether that probability is smaller or larger unless I can somehow see everyone else's vote.
Further, while our reps are non-monotone (strictly) in the direction of who you want most, non-preferential is somewhat non-monotonic in the opposite direction; voting for you want most can increase the chance of who you want *least* getting elected. It's the whole reason for strategic voting in the UK and tends to reinforce the 2 party system in the US.
I think we should agree to use mathematical terms like "monotone" only in the mathematical sense. Specific political actions that might or might not be exploited by human beings, like strategic voting (or strategic running, which is another flaw in Australian IRV) don't affect whether a voting system is monotone.
In a monotone system, P(X wins|you vote for X) > P(X wins|you don't vote for X), regardless of how anyone else votes. The US system is monotone; you can always be sure that your voting for someone gives them better odds of winning than had you not voted for them. Whatever flaw you're referring to here, it is not non-monotonicity.
The problem with the us system is that for nearly all value of candidate your voting for then influences their chance of winning essentially not at all because they cannot possibly win.
I think we should agree to use mathematical terms like "monotone" only in the mathematical sense. Specific political actions that might or might not be exploited by human beings, like strategic voting (or strategic running, which is another flaw in Australian IRV) don't affect whether a voting system is monotone.
In a monotone system, P(X wins|you vote for X) > P(X wins|you don't vote for X), regardless of how anyone else votes. The US system is monotone; you can always be sure that your voting for someone gives them better odds of winning than had you not voted for them. Whatever flaw you're referring to here, it is not non-monotonicity.
It seems like electoral college weirdness might make the US system non-monotone sometimes. Like if there's three candidates, A, B and C, and I want C, but my state is going to come down to either A or B, and winning my state would give A an electoral majority, but if B wins then no candidate will have a majority, then I should vote B instead of C and take my chances when the election goes to the house.
Update as of 2/10: Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire Primaries for Democrats (49 left for Democrats.) This is a large thing since its showing that he can be a better candidate than Clinton
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#TeamChimneyImpForMythic
I am trying to get better at making decks. I have had trouble creating more competitive decks as I only really build with the cards I have. I dont have that many value cards, in function or expense. I (almost) never play at FNM type events so its not like im playing against $2k decks. If I do usally play at one, Its a draft or limited game. Any advice on building decks is greatly supported! DMs are appreciated.
Thank you!
To put it more simply, it's like saying, "I can prove Jesus is real and loves you. See? Here's my Hispanic friend Jesus. He's had a crush on you for a long time. Tell em' Jesus."
Here's a joke! Whats the internal temperature of a Taun-Taun?
Yeah, Sanders was always going to do thrash Clinton in New Hampshire, and I don't think you could find a serious analyst who was predicting otherwise. But I believe his margin of victory was better than expected, and that could mean something going forward into territory that's less favorable to him.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
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1) Now, the real media scrutiny will begin.
2) Team Clinton is gonna dump their oppo research folder out on the deck and send out Benenson, Brock, Carvile, and..the 'Big Dog' to start tearing him apart on the weekend shows.
He has no idea the sort of ***** storm headed his way, basically.
He also (yes, absolutely) faces a very different sort of electoral makeup in SC & NV. He really does have his work cut out for him, going foward.
Quite a show ahead of us this season. On both sides, honestly.
Yeah, Sanders was always going to do thrash Clinton in New Hampshire, and I don't think you could find a serious analyst who was predicting otherwise. But I believe his margin of victory was better than expected, and that could mean something going forward into territory that's less favorable to him.
This is my take as well. Yes, Iowa and NH were favorable to him, but he did close large gaps in both states and ultimately outperformed voting day polls in both states as well. He definitely has his work cut out for him going forward, but it's tough to know how much since there have been no polls in Nevada since Christmas and none in South Carolina since before the Iowa vote.
in 2000, about 24% of Americans voted for GWB. Probably the president with the highest percentage of the population voting for them (I didn't crunch all the numbers, but this is going to be pretty close) is LBJ, who had about 48% vote for him in 64.
Soooo...by never come close you mean has actually happened multiple times.
It's pretty dishonest to conflate "number of U.S. citizens who voted in relation to the total number of U.S. citizens" and "number of votes a particular Presidential candidate received during the election".
How is that dishonest? 24% of americans voted for GWB
Yes, that is enough to get a...well, not a majority of voters in the case of the 2000 election, but elected, sure.
The main reason it is not solely determined by popular vote is to stop high population states from dictating everything to smaller population states. This why each state only has two senators no matter the population. What is good for New York city is bad for a cattle farmer in North Dakota. They have different interests. The majority will still get most of what they want but they can't have everything or lower population areas would rebel. This limits rebellion and stops the tyranny of the majority(ideally).
All I'm saying is that, if DrunkWolf wants to say a system is illegitimate or unjust because it can produce such a result, then he might want to start his criticism at home.
You misunderstood what i was trying say, i said in america you can become president with 25% of the VOTES, not 25% of the people, which is very strange in a system where you only have 2 people competing. The district system makes this possible, a system that only the USA uses as far i know, and that made sense back when there was no technology that enabled large amounts of people to vote. Now i'm not saying this (routinely) happens, but just the idea is absurd, that someone who get's 75% of the votes would lose to someone that get's 25% of the votes, purely because the 25%'s votes were better grouped geographically.
That much of popular vote disparity makes it impossible to win the electoral college.
I find it a very scary place. Where you can get shot by anybody who has a gun (everybody), at any time for no apparent reason.
Just because you looked at some guy in a funny way and he felt threatened by you.
United States murder rate is 121th in the world out of 218 countries and territories. While certainly high for a first world country it is hardly crime ridden. Also no one has ever proved a link between gun ownership rates and the type of guns allowed to be owned and homicide/suicide/accidental rates one way or the other(yes more deaths happen with guns, but the total amount of people that die doesn't change, does it matter if I hang myself or shoot myself?).
I find it a very scary place. Where you can get shot by anybody who has a gun (everybody), at any time for no apparent reason.
Just because you looked at some guy in a funny way and he felt threatened by you.
When people say things like this, all they're really telling us is that they've never actually been to America.
He's been to Florida which shouldn't be part of America. Florida's SYG law pretty much works like that. You can claim "I felt threatened" and bingo. That's why in Florida you can start a fight with someone and if they fight back you can "feel threatened" and kill them.
I find it a very scary place. Where you can get shot by anybody who has a gun (everybody), at any time for no apparent reason.
Just because you looked at some guy in a funny way and he felt threatened by you.
When people say things like this, all they're really telling us is that they've never actually been to America.
He's been to Florida which shouldn't be part of America. Florida's SYG law pretty much works like that. You can claim "I felt threatened" and bingo. That's why in Florida you can start a fight with someone and if they fight back you can "feel threatened" and kill them.
That is not true. If you start a fight you lose your right to self defense. You also don't have a right to self defense for property damage. I can smash your car to bits with hammer but if I never threaten you it is murder.
That is not true. If you start a fight you lose your right to self defense. You also don't have a right to self defense for property damage. I can smash your car to bits with hammer but if I never threaten you it is murder.
A thief stole Grayston Garcia's Radio. Grayston Garcia chased that man for over a block and Grayston finally caught up with him. The thief tried to defend himself but Garcia stabbed the thief to death. The judge ruled that Grayston Garcia had a right to "stand his ground" and thus literally got away with murder.
edit: edit:
And here's an example of a man literally VOWING to kill people who were not robbing his home, but a neighbor's home. And he shot at least one of them in the back. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13texas.html?_r=0
I don't really care about this one though because they were illegal immigrants who shouldn't have been in this country anyway.
That is not true. If you start a fight you lose your right to self defense. You also don't have a right to self defense for property damage. I can smash your car to bits with hammer but if I never threaten you it is murder.
A thief stole Grayston Garcia's Radio. Grayston Garcia chased that man for over a block and Grayston finally caught up with him. The thief tried to defend himself but Garcia stabbed the thief to death. The judge ruled that Grayston Garcia had a right to "stand his ground" and thus literally got away with murder.
edit: edit:
And here's an example of a man literally VOWING to kill people who were not robbing his home, but a neighbor's home. And he shot at least one of them in the back. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13texas.html?_r=0
I don't really care about this one though because they were illegal immigrants who shouldn't have been in this country anyway.
In the first case he only escalated to lethal force when he was being attacked back. Your property is still your property and you are allowed to defend property with non lethal force. If they decide to engage you back you can defend yourself. That thief was using force to continue to walk away with the good. It just went from theft to robbery and lethal force is legitimate response to robbery.
The second case only cites an argument happening. No one says who started it. If the alive guy started it he would be charged with murder.
In the third case you are allowed to use the threat of violence to deter people from destroying property. You lose your right to self defense while committing a crimes as well. There is also the issue of what happened between the him issuing the warning and the shots fired. That something makes a lot of difference.
Hi
I was just wondering about how countries that are not the USA and how they view us. But something was prominent, if youre from another country, how do you view this US' election? What are the highlights that you see? Who do you think your country would benefit being elected?
Thank you!
I must admit that the previous US elections debates where an absolute stunning representation of what a real democracy could be like. Those debates where absolutely amazing as anyone who has ever done any competitive debating would tell you. I was positively green with jealousy that I cannot experience such a thing in my own country.
There seems to be little better than seeing two well coached actual politicians debating the hell out of each other. Screw the Super Bowl this is the best sport in America. It seems to have devolved into a huge amount of name calling this time around which is a pity. American politicians you can do better.
Speaking to the comments about the Caucus process, screw that noise. Caucus's are a mess that made plenty of sense before the advent of the telephone when you needed some way to convert the votes of farmers in the middle of nowhere into county/state/national delegates and then a nomination but in our modern world I am all for primaries. In every single caucus state so far, on both sides, their has been a bunch of weird, underhanded shenanigans by the people who are experienced at screwing around with caucuses and for what? I'm aware of the various tradeoffs between IRV and the like, but within a state level whatever advantage that caucus's had over primaries is long gone.
I didn't have much of a problem with them until, well, I have to (get to?) run a caucus for my precinct this year as I'm a PCO for the Democrats. Fun.
Oh, and random anecdote. I was in the Navy from 2005-2009 and, during out 2008 deployment my ship stopped off in Singapore and I can still remember shopkeepers putting up hand drawn campaign ads on their windows imploring us to vote for Obama! I didn't know how to process that at the time since I didn't get really politically activated until 2011, but damn, isn't that something?
This is not a very likely statement about the lower house (or it's a super-low odds proposition; I guess it is theoretically possible but extremely unlikely). I'd argue that the house of reps is highly monotonic. (whilst conceeding it is not strictly monotonic)
It's a much more true statement about the senate, but a lot of that is to do with very large numbers of candidates. Here I'd argue its major flaw is not that it is non-mon, it's that it's chaotic; that is that even if you know precisely the rules governing the distribution of preferences*, you can't realistically work out who gets elected until you know the starting conditions AND manually step through all the motions.
Both problems are the same at the bottom, and it amounts to the reason why monotonicity is important (at least in my opinion): a voter should be able to reason about what effect his vote will have on the outcome without having to be an omniscient deity. If our intent is to put X in office, then we should be able to reason about what we should mark on our ballots in order to best accomplish that end. Non-monotone systems make that difficult.
In a monotone system, I know that P(X wins|I vote for X) > P(X wins|I vote for non-X). In a non-monotone system, I don't know whether that probability is smaller or larger unless I can somehow see everyone else's vote.
Further, while our reps are non-monotone (strictly) in the direction of who you want most, non-preferential is somewhat non-monotonic in the opposite direction; voting for you want most can increase the chance of who you want *least* getting elected. It's the whole reason for strategic voting in the UK and tends to reinforce the 2 party system in the US.
I think we should agree to use mathematical terms like "monotone" only in the mathematical sense. Specific political actions that might or might not be exploited by human beings, like strategic voting (or strategic running, which is another flaw in Australian IRV) don't affect whether a voting system is monotone.
In a monotone system, P(X wins|you vote for X) > P(X wins|you don't vote for X), regardless of how anyone else votes. The US system is monotone; you can always be sure that your voting for someone gives them better odds of winning than had you not voted for them. Whatever flaw you're referring to here, it is not non-monotonicity.
You'll be happy to know a change to our senate voting is happening which should make the system much closer to monotonic. (It'll let you preference above the line which will make tiny vote candidates unlikely to get there)
So, Donald Trump has about 35% of the Republican vote. Yet he's carrying the primary due to the fact that he has four other candidates running against him and so the opposition is divided.
In light of this, and the utter frustration of watching him win, I believe we can conclusively prove that anyone who puts forth that the US two-party system is somehow inferior to a system with multiple parties is completely insane. It's astounding that this kind of ridiculousness is normal in many countries.
For an acute illustration of the problem the founders wanted to avoid, check out the complaints made by the Scots and Welsh about the U.K. parliament.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
There is also the fact that a president elected with such a low popular vote would have an extremely hostile Congress to deal with and would not be able to get much done. Also it would imply such a massive demographic and political shift that you would probably get a civil war. Lincoln was elected with about 40% of popular vote.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
Both problems are the same at the bottom, and it amounts to the reason why monotonicity is important (at least in my opinion): a voter should be able to reason about what effect his vote will have on the outcome without having to be an omniscient deity. If our intent is to put X in office, then we should be able to reason about what we should mark on our ballots in order to best accomplish that end. Non-monotone systems make that difficult.
In a monotone system, I know that P(X wins|I vote for X) > P(X wins|I vote for non-X). In a non-monotone system, I don't know whether that probability is smaller or larger unless I can somehow see everyone else's vote.
I think we should agree to use mathematical terms like "monotone" only in the mathematical sense. Specific political actions that might or might not be exploited by human beings, like strategic voting (or strategic running, which is another flaw in Australian IRV) don't affect whether a voting system is monotone.
In a monotone system, P(X wins|you vote for X) > P(X wins|you don't vote for X), regardless of how anyone else votes. The US system is monotone; you can always be sure that your voting for someone gives them better odds of winning than had you not voted for them. Whatever flaw you're referring to here, it is not non-monotonicity.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
The problem with the us system is that for nearly all value of candidate your voting for then influences their chance of winning essentially not at all because they cannot possibly win.
It seems like electoral college weirdness might make the US system non-monotone sometimes. Like if there's three candidates, A, B and C, and I want C, but my state is going to come down to either A or B, and winning my state would give A an electoral majority, but if B wins then no candidate will have a majority, then I should vote B instead of C and take my chances when the election goes to the house.
Update as of 2/10: Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire Primaries for Democrats (49 left for Democrats.) This is a large thing since its showing that he can be a better candidate than Clinton
Thank you!
Bern's challenge is primarily appealing to non-white democrats and older democrats. Of course if he'd LOST here that would be devastating.
But this is an oversimplification of course. As usual, 538 has a good breakdown: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/it-gets-harder-from-here-for-bernie-sanders/
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candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
1) Now, the real media scrutiny will begin.
2) Team Clinton is gonna dump their oppo research folder out on the deck and send out Benenson, Brock, Carvile, and..the 'Big Dog' to start tearing him apart on the weekend shows.
He has no idea the sort of ***** storm headed his way, basically.
He also (yes, absolutely) faces a very different sort of electoral makeup in SC & NV. He really does have his work cut out for him, going foward.
Quite a show ahead of us this season. On both sides, honestly.
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This is my take as well. Yes, Iowa and NH were favorable to him, but he did close large gaps in both states and ultimately outperformed voting day polls in both states as well. He definitely has his work cut out for him going forward, but it's tough to know how much since there have been no polls in Nevada since Christmas and none in South Carolina since before the Iowa vote.
The main reason it is not solely determined by popular vote is to stop high population states from dictating everything to smaller population states. This why each state only has two senators no matter the population. What is good for New York city is bad for a cattle farmer in North Dakota. They have different interests. The majority will still get most of what they want but they can't have everything or lower population areas would rebel. This limits rebellion and stops the tyranny of the majority(ideally).
That much of popular vote disparity makes it impossible to win the electoral college.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country
United States murder rate is 121th in the world out of 218 countries and territories. While certainly high for a first world country it is hardly crime ridden. Also no one has ever proved a link between gun ownership rates and the type of guns allowed to be owned and homicide/suicide/accidental rates one way or the other(yes more deaths happen with guns, but the total amount of people that die doesn't change, does it matter if I hang myself or shoot myself?).
He's been to Florida which shouldn't be part of America. Florida's SYG law pretty much works like that. You can claim "I felt threatened" and bingo. That's why in Florida you can start a fight with someone and if they fight back you can "feel threatened" and kill them.
That is not true. If you start a fight you lose your right to self defense. You also don't have a right to self defense for property damage. I can smash your car to bits with hammer but if I never threaten you it is murder.
A thief stole Grayston Garcia's Radio. Grayston Garcia chased that man for over a block and Grayston finally caught up with him. The thief tried to defend himself but Garcia stabbed the thief to death. The judge ruled that Grayston Garcia had a right to "stand his ground" and thus literally got away with murder.
edit:
Here's a more literal example of a man starting a fight and then shooting the person.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2561755/Man-25-shot-killed-unarmed-stranger-fight-suburban-Walmart-booked-police-claim-self-defense.html
edit: edit:
And here's an example of a man literally VOWING to kill people who were not robbing his home, but a neighbor's home. And he shot at least one of them in the back.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/us/13texas.html?_r=0
I don't really care about this one though because they were illegal immigrants who shouldn't have been in this country anyway.
In the first case he only escalated to lethal force when he was being attacked back. Your property is still your property and you are allowed to defend property with non lethal force. If they decide to engage you back you can defend yourself. That thief was using force to continue to walk away with the good. It just went from theft to robbery and lethal force is legitimate response to robbery.
The second case only cites an argument happening. No one says who started it. If the alive guy started it he would be charged with murder.
In the third case you are allowed to use the threat of violence to deter people from destroying property. You lose your right to self defense while committing a crimes as well. There is also the issue of what happened between the him issuing the warning and the shots fired. That something makes a lot of difference.
Now you have a center (or even center-left) candidate, and that is funny.
I must admit that the previous US elections debates where an absolute stunning representation of what a real democracy could be like. Those debates where absolutely amazing as anyone who has ever done any competitive debating would tell you. I was positively green with jealousy that I cannot experience such a thing in my own country.
There seems to be little better than seeing two well coached actual politicians debating the hell out of each other. Screw the Super Bowl this is the best sport in America. It seems to have devolved into a huge amount of name calling this time around which is a pity. American politicians you can do better.
I didn't have much of a problem with them until, well, I have to (get to?) run a caucus for my precinct this year as I'm a PCO for the Democrats. Fun.
Oh, and random anecdote. I was in the Navy from 2005-2009 and, during out 2008 deployment my ship stopped off in Singapore and I can still remember shopkeepers putting up hand drawn campaign ads on their windows imploring us to vote for Obama! I didn't know how to process that at the time since I didn't get really politically activated until 2011, but damn, isn't that something?
You'll be happy to know a change to our senate voting is happening which should make the system much closer to monotonic. (It'll let you preference above the line which will make tiny vote candidates unlikely to get there)
In light of this, and the utter frustration of watching him win, I believe we can conclusively prove that anyone who puts forth that the US two-party system is somehow inferior to a system with multiple parties is completely insane. It's astounding that this kind of ridiculousness is normal in many countries.