The ability to vote for multiple options in a preference list, such that people can provided a more nuanced vote
That doesn't make any sense. If you have multiple positions, and only X people can fill the position, you should get X votes and no more. If one person can fill the position, you should only be able to vote one person.
Why? Because with preferences you can specify not just your most preferred candidate, but how the rest rank behind them. That way a candidate can win of the most overall support from the population not just from the most people who prefer specifically them.
If you had left it at a more general level you might have had a point. But you didn't you specified sorting out US elections where having a more nuanced voting system is utterly pointless. In most cases there are only going to be 2 names on the ballot. In putting your mark against one of them you have already ranked them by saying I like Person A more than Person B, forcing some one to right a number 1 against the one they vote for and a 2 against the other poor schmuck isn't going to make the choice any different it is just going to piss off the voter for no actual gain.
To actually make a valid difference in the US you are going to need to make some fairly fundamental changes to the set up not just tinkering with what happens when you turn up as I stated in my first post. In effect what you are doing is demand that the US changes the curtains whilst the boiler is in imminent danger of blowing up (granted this is a little hyperbolic but you should get the general idea).
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
As is, our system can only have two real parties. When one party starts to get splintered based on whatever differences, it gives the other more coherent party an easy victory, meaning that any issues need to be resolved before elections start to make sure we can fit nicely into the two party paradigm. Look at the 200 election with George Bush, Al Gore, and Nadar. Ralph Nadar obviously pulled mostly from Al gore's base, so even though the "liberal" mindset that Gore and Nadar shared was clearly the majority, there was enough of a difference for them to splinter the liberal vote and give Bush the victory. If we had ranked choice voting during that election all of Naders voters would've had Gore as their second choice and Gore would've been president. This all stems from the "all or nothing" nature of the US voting system where other countries have percentage based representation.
I think ranked choice voting is absolutely something the United States needs to adopt to allow there to be real discussion inside parties instead of the current "us against them" mentality; especially since we are simultaneously watching the collapse of both parties. Without it smart people are punished for creating discourse within a mostly like minded group while unquestioned solidarity is rewarded. It really just sets us up to evolve ridiculously slowly as a culture.
Again- taxes. Remember the whole taxstion ie theft argument? That's what we are going to be comparing to.
On the subject of freedom of speech, to repeat myself again, you just have to show up and submit your ballot regardless of what you put on it- you don't actuallly have to cast a meaningful vote. Here's another example- education is mandatory in the US. Just look at that violation of your freedoms. Sacrifices, Highroller.
Education is once again, not a RIGHT. It's a governmentally mandated OBLIGATION.
I do not consider that to be valid reasoning. That's just a statement. You can call it whatever you want- where's the facts?
3. You don't have to write anything, just submit the ballot, as I've said like ten times now. There's no speech involved, only showing up, signing on the roll and turning in the ballot. Actually putting a vote on the ballot is not actually the mandatory part.
So no, Highroller, it's not restricting your freedom of speech unless mandatory education which also compels you to turn up and sign onto a roll, is also.
Until you can tell me what mandatory voting involves that mandatory education doesn't, your argument there is clearly invalid.
Perhaps in your country, SPEECH is defined differently. In the US, speech includes any form of expression. This would include writing or the prevention thereof. So being required to turn in a ballot, blank or not, is in effect a forced act of speech and therefore violates Free Speech laws.
As far as your comparison with education, you're partly right. The US has not always had mandatory education. That was a creation of the Progressive movement. Instead of trying to argue against your point, I'll actually agree that there really isn't much of a difference. However, I disagree with your conclusion in this way: mandatory education almost certainly is a violation of the US Constitution. I don't know if there's ever been a serious attempt to fight it in court, but based on their attitude regarding dictatorial central governmental control, I'd bet that the Founding Fathers would been entirely opposed mandatory education.
And since it's been mentioned, there is a debate as to the legality of the Income Tax in the US. The 16th Ammendment which is the justification for the Income Tax was never properly ratified and has language that can be reasonably interpreted to de-legitimize the current tax code.
Ok so then I have a problem with the law as it to pertains to all three then, doesn't matter to me. My concern is not whether they are legal, but how they compare to some of the principles that can be found in the law.
I will so though
Perhaps in your country, SPEECH is defined differently. In the US, speech includes any form of expression.
I can hardly see this interpretation ever working out. 'Any form of expression', that's easily arguable to be a massive percentage of all possible action, even all action. Speech, I would think, is about pure, direct communication. Writing out a vote is probably fair to consider speech, but what I am talking about does not compel anyone to speak any which way.
The ability to vote for multiple options in a preference list, such that people can provided a more nuanced vote
That doesn't make any sense. If you have multiple positions, and only X people can fill the position, you should get X votes and no more. If one person can fill the position, you should only be able to vote one person.
Why? Because with preferences you can specify not just your most preferred candidate, but how the rest rank behind them. That way a candidate can win of the most overall support from the population not just from the most people who prefer specifically them.
If you had left it at a more general level you might have had a point. But you didn't you specified sorting out US elections where having a more nuanced voting system is utterly pointless. In most cases there are only going to be 2 names on the ballot. In putting your mark against one of them you have already ranked them by saying I like Person A more than Person B, forcing some one to right a number 1 against the one they vote for and a 2 against the other poor schmuck isn't going to make the choice any different it is just going to piss off the voter for no actual gain.
To actually make a valid difference in the US you are going to need to make some fairly fundamental changes to the set up not just tinkering with what happens when you turn up as I stated in my first post. In effect what you are doing is demand that the US changes the curtains whilst the boiler is in imminent danger of blowing up (granted this is a little hyperbolic but you should get the general idea).
In cases where it doesn't apply, it doesn't apply. But there are cases when preferential voting would apply, and I think it would be an improvement if it did.
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2: Every voting system has its mathematical upsides and downsides.
That's not really an answer.
There is no right answer. They all have their undesirable quirks -- it's been proven mathematically that it is impossible to meet all the criteria for a desirable voting system. Instant-runoff voting, for instance, does not meet the monotonicity criterion: it is possible to harm a candidate's chances of winning by ranking them higher.
So do you genuinely believe all major proposed voting systems are truly equally good? Because I find that hard to believe. Yes, there are all reasonable in their own way, but I think some are a little bit better than others. If for no other reason, I think being able to cast preferences may encourage people to vote more because they don't have to commit to a single candidate.
They are not equally good or equally bad. All of them have issues. And they can't all be applied to every country.
With the US in particular which is effectively a 2 party state bar a couple of enterprising independants there is no point in having a nuanced poll as it is effectively a binary choice, vote Republican or vote Democrat.
Preferential voting could help in increasing third party participation.
In other countries which have more parties like the UK and you still vote for your representative yes it could be better if it was easier to rank the different parties if nothing else to reduce the number of safe seats that exist so the people aren't routinely ignored until elections come round, but that raises different problems as B_S alludes to.
Likewise if you move away from voting directly for your representative you then surrender that power to the parties themselves and they are going to have vastly different criteria for selecting who they want to see in the Senate, House of Representatives than the voters. If you went to a form of Proportional Representation I would be very surprised is Bernie Sanders remained in the Senate as a true independant.
The changes to the Voting system in the US that would have the biggest positive effect don't concern the actual mechanics of what you actually do in the voting booth. Its in all the background work that leads up to that point.
1 and 2 of my suggestions are about the leading up to that point. 1 ensuring ability to go and 3 mandating that you go. Only 2 affects you the vote itself. I agree there is more things to consider, these are just three points, there are more ideas I could include.
Make it easier to vote, either by making it a federal holiday or increasing the availablity of postal voting
Standardised Identification rules across the Union. If a driving licence allows you to vote in Wyoming the same driversID should be acceptable in Texas.
Reduce the amount of Gerrymandering to reduce the amount of safe seats. If the parties aren't guarenteed a seat year in, year out they should pay attention more.
How could Gerrymandering be practically restricted?
And then specifically for the Presidential election, stop the practice of winner takes all for allocating a states Electors instead allocate them according to the % gained in the popular vote.
I think having a popular vote also probably makes sense.
Lastly try and find some way of making the damn thing cheaper, as the old saying goes he who pays the piper picks the tune. The only people who can currently afford to pay the piper are the large multinationals/multibillionaires and they again have vastly different concerns than the masses and if your local Senator/Representative needs to go to them every 4 years in order to get money out of them they are going to have to play ball when it comes to getting certain bits of legislation passed or dropped.
With the US in particular which is effectively a 2 party state bar a couple of enterprising independants there is no point in having a nuanced poll as it is effectively a binary choice, vote Republican or vote Democrat.
To be fair, the two-party system is a consequence of the first-past-the-post process called Duverger's law. (Your own UK politics are unusual in somewhat resisting this effect despite having first-past-the-post elections.)
The changes to the Voting system in the US that would have the biggest positive effect don't concern the actual mechanics of what you actually do in the voting booth. Its in all the background work that leads up to that point.
Make it easier to vote, either by making it a federal holiday or increasing the availablity of postal voting
There's no problem with the availability of postal voting. Everybody's entitled to it. But it's not a solution to the problem of unmotivated voters. It takes more motivation to remember to vote in advance than it does to turn up at a polling station on Election Day.
Standardised Identification rules across the Union. If a driving licence allows you to vote in Wyoming the same driversID should be acceptable in Texas.
In most states, no ID is required to vote. The institution in some states of rules requiring proof of identity is recent, controversial, and politically motivated.
And if you're registered to vote in Wyoming, you can't vote in Texas. Because, y'know, you're already registered in Wyoming. If you happen to be in Texas on Election Day, that's what absentee ballots are for.
Reduce the amount of Gerrymandering to reduce the amount of safe seats. If the parties aren't guarenteed a seat year in, year out they should pay attention more.
Lastly try and find some way of making the damn thing cheaper, as the old saying goes he who pays the piper picks the tune. The only people who can currently afford to pay the piper are the large multinationals/multibillionaires and they again have vastly different concerns than the masses and if your local Senator/Representative needs to go to them every 4 years in order to get money out of them they are going to have to play ball when it comes to getting certain bits of legislation passed or dropped.
I know it's weird for me to say with one of the wealthiest presidents ever (maybe) currently sitting in the Oval Office, but Trump's victory is actually proof that this isn't true. The Clinton campaign was vastly better funded and organized than the Trump campaign. Major conservative donors shunned Trump for a long time. The Koch brothers, the big bogeymen of the rich right, never backed him. Trump won because the masses didn't care.
Trump got all that free air time valued at some insane number.
Our electoral college is a dumb relic of instutionalized slavery and really needs to go away. We no longer live in a country where we count some people as 3/5ths so we can finally give people whole votes by skipping the electoral college.
I'm with you on the ranked choice voting argument, but education, like healthcare, is certainly not a right. These are services provided by skilled laborers that should be compensated for their work. If you have to force someone to do something for you it cannot be considered a right.
Now your ability to seek out knowledge and better health IS a right but this isn't the same as saying schools and doctors are rights that all people should have access to. I'd love for everyone to have access to them for sure but the fact that they can be helped by the government is another tale tell sign that they aren't rights. Basically by definition rights are things you have until some government entity takes them away. If the government can actually give it to you then it is a service, not a right.
Perhaps in your country, SPEECH is defined differently. In the US, speech includes any form of expression.
I can hardly see this interpretation ever working out. 'Any form of expression', that's easily arguable to be a massive percentage of all possible action, even all action. Speech, I would think, is about pure, direct communication. Writing out a vote is probably fair to consider speech, but what I am talking about does not compel anyone to speak any which way.
Your feelings on the matter are irrelevant. What is relevant is American Law which is as HPB stated. The act of voting and in some cases paying for something is regarded as a matter of speech. Which by the First Amendment is something that is constitutionally guaranteed.
Does this mean that there are some rulings that would be odd to an outsider like the pair of us, yes but that is what has worked for them like wise they don't understand how you are happy with mandatory appearance at a voting booth.
It does not mean that either situation is intriniscally better that the other just that they are different.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
1. By federal law in the United States you have to be excused from work to be allowed to vote. Any employer who denies you this right can be fined, all the way up to losing their business license. Secondly, any US citizen can apply for absentee ballots. It is not limited to those out of their voting districts (i.e. soldiers, overseas employees, etc) but can also include those who a labor journeymen or those who will not be in their voting district on election day. Moving it to a weekend or making it a federal holiday (which, technically it is a federal holiday protected by law) changes nothing really.
2. I don't necessarily agree with this either. The election system in almost all forms of US parliamentary procedure involves motions for elections, primary elections in which political parties narrow down their candidates from a large pool, and then a general election. Even the general election allows write in third parties to participate, and the ballots contain a blank write in option where the voter can still choose their own candidate. If anything, the resolution here should be to lower the cost of running a campaign in order to get elected, remove special interest donations to campaign funding, or simply make each elected political position a NON-PAYING civic duty position, from city council all the way up to president of the USA.
3. Again, I will disagree. As a military veteran, I hold dearly the rights and freedoms of the United States. I may not agree with a lot of them, but they are ours, and I will defend them. Your idea is flawed in the sense that the United States holds the right to cast your vote as something special, convicted felons lose their right to vote again, ever, for example, even though they go back to paying taxes. The choice NOT to vote should also be sacred. If you choose to be silent, I accept that choice. Making people show up on election day is not the answer, even if they don't cast a vote. Instead I would like to see the US institute mandatory voter ID at the polls, regular voter registration updates to remove those deceased or living in other states or districts, and paper balloting instead of electronic to eliminate cyber issues.
Lastly try and find some way of making the damn thing cheaper, as the old saying goes he who pays the piper picks the tune. The only people who can currently afford to pay the piper are the large multinationals/multibillionaires and they again have vastly different concerns than the masses and if your local Senator/Representative needs to go to them every 4 years in order to get money out of them they are going to have to play ball when it comes to getting certain bits of legislation passed or dropped.
Make what cheaper specifically?
The whole campaign. IT is vastly and needlessly expensive and there are a couple of ways that it could be reduced if their was an appetite for it.
FourDogs has hit on part of it below with his comments on Air time. Each of the candidates needs to completely fund their own campaigns including the political advertising with their being no restrictions on what the networks can charge for it. This puts some figures to the costs that shows for the last election cycle ~$10 billion was spent just on advertising.
As it currently stands regardless of what else happens if that figure does not reduce by a lot only 2 sorts of people are going to be able to run for the presidency. Party members or people with vast independant wealth like Trump. And in terms of parties being asked to immeadiatly stump up even $1 billion is going to be difficult.
Note this is just the advertising costs of the presidential election. It does not touch on the costs of the staffers, venue hire and transport costs that are also going to be involved.
Another major feature is the length. Including the assorted Primaries the election campaign lasts for 2 years. So again on the Staffing count that is 2 years you need to be paying people to be manning the phones, collecting and interpreting the data and all of the other functions that need to be done for the campaign. Even if you are just hiring minimum wage monkeys to these tasks that is going to add up and a lot of the jobs can't be done by minimum wage monkeys.
In terms of correcting the issues.
Taking the advertising first: In the UK there is a strict neutrality on the public Television channels and each party is alloted air time for party political broadcasts paid for out of the public purse. Whilst strict neutrality is not allowable in the US due to the first amendment if their was a public appitite for it the Federal government could have a commission purchase air time for each of the parties at a set rate and then use that airtime as they wished as long as it was shared out equally amongst the parties both in terms of raw hours and the time they are shown.
REducing the lenght of the campaigns:
First and simplist option would be scraping the primary stage and creating some other way of selecting the candidates. But that won't happen so we are down to tweaking it. Other than Tradition there is no reason why the Caucusses and Primaries are scattered through out the year. In the same way that every US citizen votes for the president on the same day there is no real reason why there is not 1 day set aside were every state holds the primary/Caucuss.
Likewise for the Conventions there is no reason why they aren't held on the same weekend, just with some additional planning that ensures that they aren't held in the same city but are rotated around so they don't stay in the same place.
Lastly for the actual Presidential campaign, it lasted 3 months from July to November. With todays advances in technology there is no need to spend that long getting the message out. It is far easier that it ever was to physically travel to the locations than it ever was. And even then that is not always neccessary as it is also far easier to get the message out by other means. Be it via the Print and online media or Television and Radio.
Granted it is for a much smaller geographic area but the UK has an electoral campaign that lasts 5 weeks from the complete dissolution of the House of Commons to a new government being in place. Whilst the US is a much larger geographic area you are only voting for a single post.
For Gerrymandering: The only thing that should be relevant when workng out voting districts is the number of people registered to vote in an area. Any other information is just going to taint the pool in someway shape or form.
Set your ideal size of electoral district in terms of geographic size and population. Pick a start point and add in Zip codes that are with in the radius of your start point taking the closest and then expanding out until you hit your population limit. Then move onto the next Electoral district and rinse and repeat.
Is it going to solve the problem where you end up with some districts that heavily favour one group or another. No but that is not the problem with Gerry mandering where you are flat out designing your system to maximise the number of districts that are heavily favoured in your favor.
In cases where it doesn't apply, it doesn't apply. But there are cases when preferential voting would apply, and I think it would be an improvement if it did.
And again this is the US specifically we are talking about, adding in preferential voting when there are only going to be 2 candidates is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Worrying about the massive hole in the ship(why there are only 2 candidates) is going to be far more useful in sorting out the problem.
The usual freedom argument will be brought up, but if taxes are mandatory because they are necessary to maintain government, why shouldn't the vote be mandatory as well
In addition to how this so obviously violates the freedom of speech, I've always been appalled at the idea of any group of people lobbying for the government to threaten you to go vote, and then calling this in any way acceptable in a free society.
My understanding of voting in the UK is that, rather than mandatory voting, the government simply nags you until you vote. That would certainly be preferable to a mandate, and would likely increase voter turnout. I don't know how much it would cost to implement, though.
Perhaps in your country, SPEECH is defined differently. In the US, speech includes any form of expression.
I can hardly see this interpretation ever working out. 'Any form of expression', that's easily arguable to be a massive percentage of all possible action, even all action. Speech, I would think, is about pure, direct communication. Writing out a vote is probably fair to consider speech, but what I am talking about does not compel anyone to speak any which way.
It doesn't matter what your opinion of the interpretation is. It's the interpretation of the United States Supreme Court.
The usual freedom argument will be brought up, but if taxes are mandatory because they are necessary to maintain government, why shouldn't the vote be mandatory as well
In addition to how this so obviously violates the freedom of speech, I've always been appalled at the idea of any group of people lobbying for the government to threaten you to go vote, and then calling this in any way acceptable in a free society.
My understanding of voting in the UK is that, rather than mandatory voting, the government simply nags you until you vote. That would certainly be preferable to a mandate, and would likely increase voter turnout. I don't know how much it would cost to implement, though.
We just whine about the diabollicaly low turn outs with out doing anything to correct them. Whilst simultaneously disenfranchising vast numbers of people in what was the most important vote in a lot peoples lives.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
To continue with your cake metaphor, mandatory voting means you have to show up to the party,
Explain how this is freedom, as opposed to the exact opposite of freedom.
I don’t see why it's so compromising to be oblogated to show up. It doesn’t give the government any real power to do anything.
Forced speech is not free speech. It gives the government power to force you to be somewhere. So yes, you are giving the government power it should not have.
This mentality has always bothered me. Our system CAN and DOES have more than two parties. The reason we're regarded as a two party system for the presidency and most of Congress is because people by and large choose not to vote for any third party.
This is why this mindset of "fixing" the country by getting more third parties on the ticket doesn't make any sense. The reason third parties aren't a significant presence is because significant numbers of people aren't voting for them by volition. Restructuring voting is not going to make that much of a difference if no significant support base exists for them, because that's exactly how the government is supposed to work: if you have no significant base of support, you shouldn't have a shot at the presidency or a significant presence in Congress.
I think having a popular vote also probably makes sense.
For Californians and New Yorkers. Not so much for South Dakotans and Alaskans.
Are you watching what's happening in the UK right now between England and Scotland? Scotland's less populous so it's getting dragged out of the EU against its will? That's an extreme example of the situation that the makeup of the United States Congress (which is what's being reflected in the Electoral College) was constituted to avoid. The interests of the diverse states carry a certain weight irrespective of their population, plus additional weight dependent on their population.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Our electoral college is a dumb relic of instutionalized slavery and really needs to go away. We no longer live in a country where we count some people as 3/5ths so we can finally give people whole votes by skipping the electoral college.
You're conflating the two compromises you learned about in high school civics. The Electoral College is a consequence of the Great Compromise that based the House on population size but the Senate on statehood. The Three-Fifths Compromise pertaining to slavery was unrelated.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
However, I disagree with your conclusion in this way: mandatory education almost certainly is a violation of the US Constitution. I don't know if there's ever been a serious attempt to fight it in court, but based on their attitude regarding dictatorial central governmental control, I'd bet that the Founding Fathers would been entirely opposed mandatory education.
Education is mandated at the state level -- it cannot be a violation of the US Constitution unless the Constitution expressly prohibits the states from doing that (which it doesn't). And the Founders, although a collection of various men with a variety of opinions, were overall strongly in favor.
The 16th Ammendment which is the justification for the Income Tax was never properly ratified and has language that can be reasonably interpreted to de-legitimize the current tax code.
Education may be mandated on the State level, but State laws cannot supercede Federal laws and if it was determined to be a violation on a Federal level, the States would not have the power to enforce it. Additionally, the Department of Education which oversees public education is a Federal agency, not a State one. So, to claim that the States have any actual ownership over education is untrue.
I understand the argument surrounding the 16th Ammendment. I said that there's an argument that can be made to de-legitimize the current tax code. And that's absolutely true. The fact that the courts have denied that argument means very little. For a century, the courts denied the argument that a black man is a person.
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Aether Revolt was a revolting pre-release. As if Vehicles weren't frustrating enough, now you don't even have to crew them.
Education may be mandated on the State level, but State laws cannot supercede Federal laws and if it was determined to be a violation on a Federal level, the States would not have the power to enforce it.
Read the Tenth Amendment again:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Additionally, the Department of Education which oversees public education is a Federal agency, not a State one. So, to claim that the States have any actual ownership over education is untrue.
The role of the federal Department of Education is more limited than a lot of people assume. According to its own website, it coordinates federal assistance to schools, collects data on education, focuses national attention on major issues, and enforces anti-discrimination law. It does not establish, administer, mandate, or accredit educational institutions at any level in this country. If you are looking for the laws that do those things, look in state and local statutes.
I understand the argument surrounding the 16th Ammendment. I said that there's an argument that can be made to de-legitimize the current tax code. And that's absolutely true. The fact that the courts have denied that argument means very little. For a century, the courts denied the argument that a black man is a person.
Trained lawyers in the ACLU and other watchdogs will howl at the faintest whiff of racial discrimination or other civil rights violations. These same lawyers won't go anywhere near 16th Amendment denialism cases. They, the experts on the relevant law, know that there is no argument there.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
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Education may be mandated on the State level, but State laws cannot supercede Federal laws and if it was determined to be a violation on a Federal level, the States would not have the power to enforce it.
Read the Tenth Amendment again:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
I was wondering which amendment referred to separation of powers between the Federal government and the state and for some reason thought it was the ninth.
What does the Ninth amendment cover?
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
Instead I would like to see the US institute mandatory voter ID at the polls
Okay, can we also institute mandatory voter registration from birth that lasts until death or uncleared felony conviction, and voter IDs provided at no particular cost to any individual citizen with enough regularity that there is no conceivable way that any American citizen will show up to vote without their ID, even if they are homeless and penniless, and there's no conceivable way that any American citizen will not know that they have the option to show up to vote? Because most people who support voter ID laws appear to support them while not considering or while hoping for the huge disenfranchisement of a massive number of American citizens. I'm not saying that is the case for you, but common sense should be applied when making laws.
The existence of non-enumerated rights. It's how we can talk about a constitutional right to privacy, for instance, even though the right to privacy appears nowhere in the Constitution. More information.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Perhaps in your country, SPEECH is defined differently. In the US, speech includes any form of expression.
I can hardly see this interpretation ever working out. 'Any form of expression', that's easily arguable to be a massive percentage of all possible action, even all action. Speech, I would think, is about pure, direct communication. Writing out a vote is probably fair to consider speech, but what I am talking about does not compel anyone to speak any which way.
Your feelings on the matter are irrelevant. What is relevant is American Law which is as HPB stated. The act of voting and in some cases paying for something is regarded as a matter of speech. Which by the First Amendment is something that is constitutionally guaranteed.
Does this mean that there are some rulings that would be odd to an outsider like the pair of us, yes but that is what has worked for them like wise they don't understand how you are happy with mandatory appearance at a voting booth.
It does not mean that either situation is intriniscally better that the other just that they are different.
But if it would be a violation of freedom of speech to mandate going to the polling both, then why isn't it a violation of freedom of speech to mandate education? The education system also involves people saying things as well. If that's illegal, why has been around for nearly a hundred years and no one is currently doing anything about it?
And if the argument is voting is speech, why is a violation of your freedom of speech to restrict you to show up? You can vote in whatever way you like, including not voting. That's you exercising freedom of speech. Mandatory voting doesn't change what your options are in terms of voting except that not voting now involves casting a vote of sorts, just not a formal one that contains anything, not a vote anyone cares about except for the in that you went through the process. Not voting is still an option, it just involves a different process in order to meet the legal requirement.
Instead I would like to see the US institute mandatory voter ID at the polls
Okay, can we also institute mandatory voter registration from birth that lasts until death or uncleared felony conviction, and voter IDs provided at no particular cost to any individual citizen with enough regularity that there is no conceivable way that any American citizen will show up to vote without their ID, even if they are homeless and penniless, and there's no conceivable way that any American citizen will not know that they have the option to show up to vote? Because most people who support voter ID laws appear to support them while not considering or while hoping for the huge disenfranchisement of a massive number of American citizens. I'm not saying that is the case for you, but common sense should be applied when making laws.
I would still oppose voter ID laws even with all that effort done to make sure honest people can meet the requirement, precisely because you'd have to go through all that effort to get the benefits of voter ID, and those benefits are negligible.
Preferential voting could help in increasing third party participation.
Which would be different. Would it be better?
I think so. Democracy relies on people's views/interests actually being sufficiently represented among the candidates, else they have no choice that sufficiently represents them, and that goes against the point surely. With only two parties, which have only become increasingly polarised in rent years apparently, there will always be major sections of views and interests that aren't being represented. Third parties at least give a presence to more views and interests.
Quote from DJK3654 »
How could Gerrymandering be practically restricted?
Redraw district borders through a special bipartisan committee rather than through the legislating body.
Ok, that sounds reasonable.
Quote from DJK3654 »
I think having a popular vote also probably makes sense.
For Californians and New Yorkers. Not so much for South Dakotans and Alaskans.
Are you watching what's happening in the UK right now between England and Scotland? Scotland's less populous so it's getting dragged out of the EU against its will? That's an extreme example of the situation that the makeup of the United States Congress (which is what's being reflected in the Electoral College) was constituted to avoid. The interests of the diverse states carry a certain weight irrespective of their population, plus additional weight dependent on their population.
I mean popular vote to determine the state vote. The states electoral college numbers could still be adjusted as they are now, but the state vote would be based directly on popular vote in that state.
To continue with your cake metaphor, mandatory voting means you have to show up to the party,
Explain how this is freedom, as opposed to the exact opposite of freedom.
Because there are no government restrictions on freedom in the US?
don’t see why it's so compromising to be oblogated to show up. It doesn’t give the government any real power to do anything.
Forced speech is not free speech. It gives the government power to force you to be somewhere. So yes, you are giving the government power it should not have
Again, what about mandatory education? And what about prison?
You aren't being forced in your speech, only participation in the process.
Quote from jwf239 »
As is, our system can only have two real parties.
This mentality has always bothered me. Our system CAN and DOES have more than two parties. The reason we're regarded as a two party system for the presidency and most of Congress is because people by and large choose not to vote for any third party.
But that's always going to be related to what the voting system is. As is, you can only put a vote for one. If you vote for a third party, you express no preference about the major two parties. Preferential voting allows you to do both. Why not give people that option?
This is why this mindset of "fixing" the country by getting more third parties on the ticket doesn't make any sense. The reason third parties aren't a significant presence is because significant numbers of people aren't voting for them by volition. Restructuring voting is not going to make that much of a difference if no significant support base exists for them, because that's exactly how the government is supposed to work: if you have no significant base of support, you shouldn't have a shot at the presidency or a significant presence in Congress.
But you are measuring support from the voting system. If the argument is the current voting system doesn't allow for sufficient third party support, then saying but they shouldn't get it because they don't have the support, that's just circular.
If you had left it at a more general level you might have had a point. But you didn't you specified sorting out US elections where having a more nuanced voting system is utterly pointless. In most cases there are only going to be 2 names on the ballot. In putting your mark against one of them you have already ranked them by saying I like Person A more than Person B, forcing some one to right a number 1 against the one they vote for and a 2 against the other poor schmuck isn't going to make the choice any different it is just going to piss off the voter for no actual gain.
To actually make a valid difference in the US you are going to need to make some fairly fundamental changes to the set up not just tinkering with what happens when you turn up as I stated in my first post. In effect what you are doing is demand that the US changes the curtains whilst the boiler is in imminent danger of blowing up (granted this is a little hyperbolic but you should get the general idea).
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
I think ranked choice voting is absolutely something the United States needs to adopt to allow there to be real discussion inside parties instead of the current "us against them" mentality; especially since we are simultaneously watching the collapse of both parties. Without it smart people are punished for creating discourse within a mostly like minded group while unquestioned solidarity is rewarded. It really just sets us up to evolve ridiculously slowly as a culture.
I do not consider that to be valid reasoning. That's just a statement. You can call it whatever you want- where's the facts?
Ok so then I have a problem with the law as it to pertains to all three then, doesn't matter to me. My concern is not whether they are legal, but how they compare to some of the principles that can be found in the law.
I will so though
I can hardly see this interpretation ever working out. 'Any form of expression', that's easily arguable to be a massive percentage of all possible action, even all action. Speech, I would think, is about pure, direct communication. Writing out a vote is probably fair to consider speech, but what I am talking about does not compel anyone to speak any which way.
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In cases where it doesn't apply, it doesn't apply. But there are cases when preferential voting would apply, and I think it would be an improvement if it did.
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Preferential voting could help in increasing third party participation.
1 and 2 of my suggestions are about the leading up to that point. 1 ensuring ability to go and 3 mandating that you go. Only 2 affects you the vote itself. I agree there is more things to consider, these are just three points, there are more ideas I could include.
How could Gerrymandering be practically restricted?
I think having a popular vote also probably makes sense.
Make what cheaper specifically?
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Trump got all that free air time valued at some insane number.
I'm with you on the ranked choice voting argument, but education, like healthcare, is certainly not a right. These are services provided by skilled laborers that should be compensated for their work. If you have to force someone to do something for you it cannot be considered a right.
Now your ability to seek out knowledge and better health IS a right but this isn't the same as saying schools and doctors are rights that all people should have access to. I'd love for everyone to have access to them for sure but the fact that they can be helped by the government is another tale tell sign that they aren't rights. Basically by definition rights are things you have until some government entity takes them away. If the government can actually give it to you then it is a service, not a right.
Your feelings on the matter are irrelevant. What is relevant is American Law which is as HPB stated. The act of voting and in some cases paying for something is regarded as a matter of speech. Which by the First Amendment is something that is constitutionally guaranteed.
Does this mean that there are some rulings that would be odd to an outsider like the pair of us, yes but that is what has worked for them like wise they don't understand how you are happy with mandatory appearance at a voting booth.
It does not mean that either situation is intriniscally better that the other just that they are different.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
2. I don't necessarily agree with this either. The election system in almost all forms of US parliamentary procedure involves motions for elections, primary elections in which political parties narrow down their candidates from a large pool, and then a general election. Even the general election allows write in third parties to participate, and the ballots contain a blank write in option where the voter can still choose their own candidate. If anything, the resolution here should be to lower the cost of running a campaign in order to get elected, remove special interest donations to campaign funding, or simply make each elected political position a NON-PAYING civic duty position, from city council all the way up to president of the USA.
3. Again, I will disagree. As a military veteran, I hold dearly the rights and freedoms of the United States. I may not agree with a lot of them, but they are ours, and I will defend them. Your idea is flawed in the sense that the United States holds the right to cast your vote as something special, convicted felons lose their right to vote again, ever, for example, even though they go back to paying taxes. The choice NOT to vote should also be sacred. If you choose to be silent, I accept that choice. Making people show up on election day is not the answer, even if they don't cast a vote. Instead I would like to see the US institute mandatory voter ID at the polls, regular voter registration updates to remove those deceased or living in other states or districts, and paper balloting instead of electronic to eliminate cyber issues.
FourDogs has hit on part of it below with his comments on Air time. Each of the candidates needs to completely fund their own campaigns including the political advertising with their being no restrictions on what the networks can charge for it. This puts some figures to the costs that shows for the last election cycle ~$10 billion was spent just on advertising.
As it currently stands regardless of what else happens if that figure does not reduce by a lot only 2 sorts of people are going to be able to run for the presidency. Party members or people with vast independant wealth like Trump. And in terms of parties being asked to immeadiatly stump up even $1 billion is going to be difficult.
Note this is just the advertising costs of the presidential election. It does not touch on the costs of the staffers, venue hire and transport costs that are also going to be involved.
Another major feature is the length. Including the assorted Primaries the election campaign lasts for 2 years. So again on the Staffing count that is 2 years you need to be paying people to be manning the phones, collecting and interpreting the data and all of the other functions that need to be done for the campaign. Even if you are just hiring minimum wage monkeys to these tasks that is going to add up and a lot of the jobs can't be done by minimum wage monkeys.
In terms of correcting the issues.
Taking the advertising first: In the UK there is a strict neutrality on the public Television channels and each party is alloted air time for party political broadcasts paid for out of the public purse. Whilst strict neutrality is not allowable in the US due to the first amendment if their was a public appitite for it the Federal government could have a commission purchase air time for each of the parties at a set rate and then use that airtime as they wished as long as it was shared out equally amongst the parties both in terms of raw hours and the time they are shown.
REducing the lenght of the campaigns:
First and simplist option would be scraping the primary stage and creating some other way of selecting the candidates. But that won't happen so we are down to tweaking it. Other than Tradition there is no reason why the Caucusses and Primaries are scattered through out the year. In the same way that every US citizen votes for the president on the same day there is no real reason why there is not 1 day set aside were every state holds the primary/Caucuss.
Likewise for the Conventions there is no reason why they aren't held on the same weekend, just with some additional planning that ensures that they aren't held in the same city but are rotated around so they don't stay in the same place.
Lastly for the actual Presidential campaign, it lasted 3 months from July to November. With todays advances in technology there is no need to spend that long getting the message out. It is far easier that it ever was to physically travel to the locations than it ever was. And even then that is not always neccessary as it is also far easier to get the message out by other means. Be it via the Print and online media or Television and Radio.
Granted it is for a much smaller geographic area but the UK has an electoral campaign that lasts 5 weeks from the complete dissolution of the House of Commons to a new government being in place. Whilst the US is a much larger geographic area you are only voting for a single post.
For Gerrymandering: The only thing that should be relevant when workng out voting districts is the number of people registered to vote in an area. Any other information is just going to taint the pool in someway shape or form.
Set your ideal size of electoral district in terms of geographic size and population. Pick a start point and add in Zip codes that are with in the radius of your start point taking the closest and then expanding out until you hit your population limit. Then move onto the next Electoral district and rinse and repeat.
Is it going to solve the problem where you end up with some districts that heavily favour one group or another. No but that is not the problem with Gerry mandering where you are flat out designing your system to maximise the number of districts that are heavily favoured in your favor.
And again this is the US specifically we are talking about, adding in preferential voting when there are only going to be 2 candidates is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Worrying about the massive hole in the ship(why there are only 2 candidates) is going to be far more useful in sorting out the problem.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
It doesn't matter what your opinion of the interpretation is. It's the interpretation of the United States Supreme Court.
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We just whine about the diabollicaly low turn outs with out doing anything to correct them. Whilst simultaneously disenfranchising vast numbers of people in what was the most important vote in a lot peoples lives.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
Forced speech is not free speech. It gives the government power to force you to be somewhere. So yes, you are giving the government power it should not have.
This mentality has always bothered me. Our system CAN and DOES have more than two parties. The reason we're regarded as a two party system for the presidency and most of Congress is because people by and large choose not to vote for any third party.
This is why this mindset of "fixing" the country by getting more third parties on the ticket doesn't make any sense. The reason third parties aren't a significant presence is because significant numbers of people aren't voting for them by volition. Restructuring voting is not going to make that much of a difference if no significant support base exists for them, because that's exactly how the government is supposed to work: if you have no significant base of support, you shouldn't have a shot at the presidency or a significant presence in Congress.
Redraw district borders through a special bipartisan committee rather than through the legislating body.
For Californians and New Yorkers. Not so much for South Dakotans and Alaskans.
Are you watching what's happening in the UK right now between England and Scotland? Scotland's less populous so it's getting dragged out of the EU against its will? That's an extreme example of the situation that the makeup of the United States Congress (which is what's being reflected in the Electoral College) was constituted to avoid. The interests of the diverse states carry a certain weight irrespective of their population, plus additional weight dependent on their population.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Education may be mandated on the State level, but State laws cannot supercede Federal laws and if it was determined to be a violation on a Federal level, the States would not have the power to enforce it. Additionally, the Department of Education which oversees public education is a Federal agency, not a State one. So, to claim that the States have any actual ownership over education is untrue.
I understand the argument surrounding the 16th Ammendment. I said that there's an argument that can be made to de-legitimize the current tax code. And that's absolutely true. The fact that the courts have denied that argument means very little. For a century, the courts denied the argument that a black man is a person.
The role of the federal Department of Education is more limited than a lot of people assume. According to its own website, it coordinates federal assistance to schools, collects data on education, focuses national attention on major issues, and enforces anti-discrimination law. It does not establish, administer, mandate, or accredit educational institutions at any level in this country. If you are looking for the laws that do those things, look in state and local statutes.
Trained lawyers in the ACLU and other watchdogs will howl at the faintest whiff of racial discrimination or other civil rights violations. These same lawyers won't go anywhere near 16th Amendment denialism cases. They, the experts on the relevant law, know that there is no argument there.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I was wondering which amendment referred to separation of powers between the Federal government and the state and for some reason thought it was the ninth.
What does the Ninth amendment cover?
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
Okay, can we also institute mandatory voter registration from birth that lasts until death or uncleared felony conviction, and voter IDs provided at no particular cost to any individual citizen with enough regularity that there is no conceivable way that any American citizen will show up to vote without their ID, even if they are homeless and penniless, and there's no conceivable way that any American citizen will not know that they have the option to show up to vote? Because most people who support voter ID laws appear to support them while not considering or while hoping for the huge disenfranchisement of a massive number of American citizens. I'm not saying that is the case for you, but common sense should be applied when making laws.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
But if it would be a violation of freedom of speech to mandate going to the polling both, then why isn't it a violation of freedom of speech to mandate education? The education system also involves people saying things as well. If that's illegal, why has been around for nearly a hundred years and no one is currently doing anything about it?
And if the argument is voting is speech, why is a violation of your freedom of speech to restrict you to show up? You can vote in whatever way you like, including not voting. That's you exercising freedom of speech. Mandatory voting doesn't change what your options are in terms of voting except that not voting now involves casting a vote of sorts, just not a formal one that contains anything, not a vote anyone cares about except for the in that you went through the process. Not voting is still an option, it just involves a different process in order to meet the legal requirement.
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I would still oppose voter ID laws even with all that effort done to make sure honest people can meet the requirement, precisely because you'd have to go through all that effort to get the benefits of voter ID, and those benefits are negligible.
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I think so. Democracy relies on people's views/interests actually being sufficiently represented among the candidates, else they have no choice that sufficiently represents them, and that goes against the point surely. With only two parties, which have only become increasingly polarised in rent years apparently, there will always be major sections of views and interests that aren't being represented. Third parties at least give a presence to more views and interests.
Ok, that sounds reasonable.
I mean popular vote to determine the state vote. The states electoral college numbers could still be adjusted as they are now, but the state vote would be based directly on popular vote in that state.
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Because there are no government restrictions on freedom in the US?
Again, what about mandatory education? And what about prison?
You aren't being forced in your speech, only participation in the process.
But that's always going to be related to what the voting system is. As is, you can only put a vote for one. If you vote for a third party, you express no preference about the major two parties. Preferential voting allows you to do both. Why not give people that option?
But you are measuring support from the voting system. If the argument is the current voting system doesn't allow for sufficient third party support, then saying but they shouldn't get it because they don't have the support, that's just circular.
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