If you're American, and don't live in Ohio.....
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Glad to see another foreigner uninformed as shit about American political initiatives aside from Obama. Without looking up, would you be able to name a current Governor of any state? Caring about just the Presidency is idiotic. You are aware that many laws (not even elected offices) are put up to the public to vote on? I guess I'm glad you wouldn't be voting, if given the chance, because you are uninformed. [^] Even in my state, one of the bluest in the country, there are initiatives on the ballots: [^]
As Chris said, it was intended in jest. If you watch the news over here you would think whoever Ohio votes for will be President.
wizardzz wrote:
Without looking up, would you be able to name a current Governor of any state?
You know I thought I could, but I checked before I posted so as not to look stupid and it turns out I would have looked stupid. I'm actually reading an interesting book at the moment written by a British man living in the States, who thinks the anti-amercanism in the world is unwarranted and tries to redress it. A lot of it explains amongst, other things, your enthusiasm for the elections. We wouldn't put up with the blanket coverage and recorded phone calls, etc over here.
wizardzz wrote:
I'm glad you wouldn't be voting, if given the chance, because you are uninformed.
I don't vote for this precise reason.
wizardzz wrote:
there are initiatives on the ballots:
See this I didn't know so glad I posted now.
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I'm a new American (ex-pat Brit) and I studied heavily for my citizenship exam (which turned out to be rather simple) so of course I voted. I have to believe (1) my vote could make a difference, and (2) having learnt about American politics, I should join in.
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I typed a long and informative, as well as witty, reply but then the computer ate it. Basically the British media is spending a massive amount of time, money, and energy covering the thing with every news outlet having reporters all over the states, with live broadcasts coming from there, but none of it covers anything other than Romney v Obama and trying to find where the key vote will be cast. No-one over here has much interest, the result will effect us - the US is that important, but it's not something we can do anything about, just let us know what is going on, and tell us the result. If they are putting that much time and effort into reporting, they could at least try some worthwhile and in depth reporting.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
A local bar posted a warning on facebook: "Hey guys we will be watching the election coverage tmrrw and a French TV Crew and a maybe this Tokyo-based team will be filming people. So if you enter you, you might be filmed. We will be ordering pizzas and $3 craft beers will be in effect. See u then. Keep Your Fingers Crossed!" So yeah, foreign media is everywhere, without any real focus.
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I came over on a vacation visa in 1988. I got a work visa the next year, married an American girl (why I'd come over in the first place), went to Holland on a business trip and was not allowed back into USA (because technically I was an intended immigrant on a non-immigrant visa). Stayed outside the USA for some time while it got sorted out, came back in on a Humanitarian parole, got my Green Card and settled down. Then in 2002, decided to become a citizen before they threw me out (my job had changed, so the reason for the work permit was no longer valid, and I'd got divorced, so that was no longer a valid excuse). I more-or-less did the whole thing on my own. Researched what was needed, filled out the appropriate forms, paid the fees, got my fingerprints taken, had a background check run, studied the Federalist Papers and other references about America's history and political system, took the test, changed my name (from Ian Armstrong-Dennis back to its original form), took the pledge of allegiance (on the first National Citizenship day - 9/17/2002) and am now an American - as much so as the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers.
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I came over on a vacation visa in 1988. I got a work visa the next year, married an American girl (why I'd come over in the first place), went to Holland on a business trip and was not allowed back into USA (because technically I was an intended immigrant on a non-immigrant visa). Stayed outside the USA for some time while it got sorted out, came back in on a Humanitarian parole, got my Green Card and settled down. Then in 2002, decided to become a citizen before they threw me out (my job had changed, so the reason for the work permit was no longer valid, and I'd got divorced, so that was no longer a valid excuse). I more-or-less did the whole thing on my own. Researched what was needed, filled out the appropriate forms, paid the fees, got my fingerprints taken, had a background check run, studied the Federalist Papers and other references about America's history and political system, took the test, changed my name (from Ian Armstrong-Dennis back to its original form), took the pledge of allegiance (on the first National Citizenship day - 9/17/2002) and am now an American - as much so as the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers.
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I typed a long and informative, as well as witty, reply but then the computer ate it. Basically the British media is spending a massive amount of time, money, and energy covering the thing with every news outlet having reporters all over the states, with live broadcasts coming from there, but none of it covers anything other than Romney v Obama and trying to find where the key vote will be cast. No-one over here has much interest, the result will effect us - the US is that important, but it's not something we can do anything about, just let us know what is going on, and tell us the result. If they are putting that much time and effort into reporting, they could at least try some worthwhile and in depth reporting.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
ChrisElston wrote:
the result will effect us - the US is that important,
Out of curiosity: 1. Will the average Brit's day to day life REALLY change due to who is serving as POTUS? 2. Do Brits REALLY believe that there is that big of difference between Obama and Romney? The two candidates and their parties sure talk a good game but history tells us otherwise...
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington
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ChrisElston wrote:
the result will effect us - the US is that important,
Out of curiosity: 1. Will the average Brit's day to day life REALLY change due to who is serving as POTUS? 2. Do Brits REALLY believe that there is that big of difference between Obama and Romney? The two candidates and their parties sure talk a good game but history tells us otherwise...
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington
1. Day to day, no. But the actions of George W and his lapdog Tony still have ramifications for us. 2. Romney is presented as a retard who doesn't know anything outside of America, baptizes dead people, and said the UK would be shit at hosting the Olympics. Obama is presented as a cool, black dude.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
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I always hear and read a lot of clamoring about the electoral college being antiquated yet I don't get it. Maybe the failure is that people think the U.S. is a democracy and it isn't, and it never was. It is a hybrid between a democracy and a republic in order to address the short-comings of each and highlight the strengths of both. If I were to address the flaws in the electoral college, I would suggest, that instead of it be winner take all as it is in most states, that the vote be broken up by district. Then there would be no more battleground States and every State and every district would be important. Imagine, how some States feel because they just don't matter in an election. Or worse, imagine living in Florida and having the entire region shut down repeatedly during elections because of "Presidential Security".
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. I also do Android Programming as I find it a refreshing break from the MS. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost
The problem there is some districts, like one in my state, would become an even more insane battleground. It would actually make most states and districts matter even less, not more. (This is the problem with going with just the popular vote; it would effectively disenfranchise small and low relatively populated regions.) I like the electoral college because it reinforces the concepts of federalism. One compromise would be to mesh the two; each state would receive two plus the number of districts electoral votes. Two votes would be winner takes all, the remainder would be proportioned state-wide (not by district to avoid the above problem.) Then again, as a federalist, I think a lot of these problems would become non-issues if the federal government had less power--why corrupt a congress person if he or she has no real expansive power?
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I agree. I live in CA, and my vote doesn't amount to spit, even though it has the #1 economy in the US, and Ohio's is 8th. yet because of population per capita, someone from Ohio's vote has more weight than mine. If the presidential election were decided by popular vote, then all these factors wouldn't matter.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
Kevin Marois wrote:
If the presidential election were decided by popular vote, then all these factors wouldn't matter.
Then candidates would concentrate even more heavily on densely populated regions, safely ignoring huge swaths of the country. It would make election corruption even more enticing in those areas. Moreover, if you've lived long enough, you know that what state has what influence changes drastically. A further analysis can show that many "contested" elections wouldn't have been so had the candidate done more in, and won, another state.
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Kevin Marois wrote:
If the presidential election were decided by popular vote, then all these factors wouldn't matter.
Then candidates would concentrate even more heavily on densely populated regions, safely ignoring huge swaths of the country. It would make election corruption even more enticing in those areas. Moreover, if you've lived long enough, you know that what state has what influence changes drastically. A further analysis can show that many "contested" elections wouldn't have been so had the candidate done more in, and won, another state.
Possibly, but the flaw in the current system is that we're forced to leave it up to 'electors' to decide who's going to be president. It's a system designed in the beginning because the government thought you & I were to stupid to decide who should be president.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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1. Day to day, no. But the actions of George W and his lapdog Tony still have ramifications for us. 2. Romney is presented as a retard who doesn't know anything outside of America, baptizes dead people, and said the UK would be shit at hosting the Olympics. Obama is presented as a cool, black dude.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
ChrisElston wrote:
Romney is presented as a retard who doesn't know anything outside of America, baptizes dead people, and said the UK would be sh*t at hosting the Olympics.
Obama is presented as a cool, black dude.Wow! Your media is worse than ours in this regard. Are they as bad with your local politics?
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington
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Possibly, but the flaw in the current system is that we're forced to leave it up to 'electors' to decide who's going to be president. It's a system designed in the beginning because the government thought you & I were to stupid to decide who should be president.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
Dunning Krueger
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. I also do Android Programming as I find it a refreshing break from the MS. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost
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You have a congressman and maybe a senator to elect. Most locations also have school boards, city and county offices, and other local and state offices. In my state, there is an amendment to the state constitution under consideration (granted, this one has zero controversy, but that's not always the case.) Several years ago, my city council made a serious of disastrous decisions that are negatively affecting the city to this day. The next election we threw ALL of them out of office. Among other things, the new council improved our police and fire department, finished some much needed infrastructure, allowed some businesses to build and done much to improve the city. Last major election, our city soundly rejected to tax increases for some joint county-wide projects. There was much ridicule at the time, but we've been proven right over the long run. Growing up, my tiny town consistently rejected school budgets, forcing them to become quite lean and to concentrate on what matters. For years that school was one of the best in the state. Voting really did matter in both places.
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Well, the exile thing was a complication that needn't have happened. I'd gone overseas with the vacation visa stamped in my passport, and the work visa just as a piece of paper. Because I was now married, I asked my immigration attorney if going overseas would cause a problem and he advised me to go to the US Embassy in Amsterdam and they would stamp the work visa in my passport. Trouble is the American Embassies overseas work from a different rule book than the customs guys at airports. They did not recognize mixed-immigration (i.e., an immigrant on a non-immigrant passport). If I'd just turned up at the airport with my British passport and my work visa, the customs guys would have let me back in. As it was, I flew back to UK and stayed with my mother for several weeks while my wife petitioned for my return. Lesson learned is don't go out of the country while your immigration status is tenuous.
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Well, the exile thing was a complication that needn't have happened. I'd gone overseas with the vacation visa stamped in my passport, and the work visa just as a piece of paper. Because I was now married, I asked my immigration attorney if going overseas would cause a problem and he advised me to go to the US Embassy in Amsterdam and they would stamp the work visa in my passport. Trouble is the American Embassies overseas work from a different rule book than the customs guys at airports. They did not recognize mixed-immigration (i.e., an immigrant on a non-immigrant passport). If I'd just turned up at the airport with my British passport and my work visa, the customs guys would have let me back in. As it was, I flew back to UK and stayed with my mother for several weeks while my wife petitioned for my return. Lesson learned is don't go out of the country while your immigration status is tenuous.
Oh, and when I finally got back into the USA, I almost went to jail over the weekend because a b**ch working for the Justice department lied to her boss about my status and I was going to be held until I could be seen by a Judge. Fortunately my (new) immigration attorney was wonderful and I left the Justice Building a free man.
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The problem there is some districts, like one in my state, would become an even more insane battleground. It would actually make most states and districts matter even less, not more. (This is the problem with going with just the popular vote; it would effectively disenfranchise small and low relatively populated regions.) I like the electoral college because it reinforces the concepts of federalism. One compromise would be to mesh the two; each state would receive two plus the number of districts electoral votes. Two votes would be winner takes all, the remainder would be proportioned state-wide (not by district to avoid the above problem.) Then again, as a federalist, I think a lot of these problems would become non-issues if the federal government had less power--why corrupt a congress person if he or she has no real expansive power?
Actually, it would do the opposite of disenfranchising small districts. If you look at a State with a major metropolitan split, Georgia is a good example. Currently Atlanta basically decides the State. (9,815,210 residents of Ga, 5,268,860 Atlanta Metro) If Ga has 16 electoral votes, in the current system, and a Candidate takes Atlanta by a wide margin but loses the rest of the State the candidate would still expect 16 electoral votes, effectively disenfranchising the rest of Ga. If, however, it were split based on districts the same candidate could get 9 leaving 7 for the other candidate. That is a much better representation in my book. Don't forget, that while your premise could hold true, district lines are usually drawn in such a way that this kind of disenfranchisement is very difficult to achieve. And other than in the South were the Federal overlords still cause gerrymandering, the usual requirement for district lines is normal city/governmental boundaries.
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. I also do Android Programming as I find it a refreshing break from the MS. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost
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Possibly, but the flaw in the current system is that we're forced to leave it up to 'electors' to decide who's going to be president. It's a system designed in the beginning because the government thought you & I were to stupid to decide who should be president.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
No, it was a system designed to prevent corruption. Moreover, the electors are randomly chosen. They don't simply get together and decide who will be president regardless of what the vote was.
Kevin Marois wrote:
It's a system designed in the beginning because the government thought you
Not true. Read the federalist papers and about Madison and the founding fathers. "the government" didn't think anything; the people created the government and did so understanding the very real flaws of direct democracy.
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Kevin Marois wrote:
If the presidential election were decided by popular vote, then all these factors wouldn't matter.
Then candidates would concentrate even more heavily on densely populated regions, safely ignoring huge swaths of the country. It would make election corruption even more enticing in those areas. Moreover, if you've lived long enough, you know that what state has what influence changes drastically. A further analysis can show that many "contested" elections wouldn't have been so had the candidate done more in, and won, another state.
Joe Woodbury wrote:
Then candidates would concentrate even more heavily on densely populated regions, safely ignoring huge swaths of the country. It would make election corruption even more enticing in those areas.
Ummm... since the number of electoral college votes each state gets depends entirely on population I don't see how it changes anything. It's the all or nothing BS that most states practice that is just plain wrong. I live in central Illinois and due to Chicago's sickening corruption and devotion to the Democratic party I am completely disenfranchised when it comes to my vote for POTUS.
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington
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Actually, it would do the opposite of disenfranchising small districts. If you look at a State with a major metropolitan split, Georgia is a good example. Currently Atlanta basically decides the State. (9,815,210 residents of Ga, 5,268,860 Atlanta Metro) If Ga has 16 electoral votes, in the current system, and a Candidate takes Atlanta by a wide margin but loses the rest of the State the candidate would still expect 16 electoral votes, effectively disenfranchising the rest of Ga. If, however, it were split based on districts the same candidate could get 9 leaving 7 for the other candidate. That is a much better representation in my book. Don't forget, that while your premise could hold true, district lines are usually drawn in such a way that this kind of disenfranchisement is very difficult to achieve. And other than in the South were the Federal overlords still cause gerrymandering, the usual requirement for district lines is normal city/governmental boundaries.
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. I also do Android Programming as I find it a refreshing break from the MS. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost
In Utah the effect would be opposite. Most districts lean heavily toward one side or the other. Presidential candidates would continue to safely ignore those districts (as they do mine.) I do like the idea of having some votes be given to the state as a whole and some votes be proportioned; I just haven't found a proportioning scheme I like and which is reasonably immune to gaming. Given how gerrymandering affects every state, sometimes to absurd degrees, I don't see how this wouldn't be gamed as well. The best solution I've heard of is to greatly increase the number of congressional districts, which would diminish the advantage of gerrymandering and make this more viable. (Then again, incumbents of all stripes will do nothing to diminish their power in any way, so I expect nothing to happen.)
Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:
the usual requirement for district lines is normal city/governmental boundaries.
You really believe this? There is no requirement for drawing lines; it's almost always up to the state legislature to do whatever they want. And they do in every state.