USA voting system bizarre

[newzealander]

How is it that the system in USA has only cliche-loaded Obama and Romney debating on issues of minor importance. Ron Paul was the only candidate making any sense. Your system is rigged. Change it.

 

[GunnyFreedom]

Fergus, is that you?

 

[KCIndy]

How is it that the system in USA has only cliche-loaded Obama and Romney debating on issues of minor importance. Ron Paul was the only candidate making any sense. Your system is rigged. Change it.

Really? It's rigged???

I'll be damned. I don't think anyone on this site has ever considered that possibility before. Thanks for bringing it to our attention!

 

[twomp]

Really? It's rigged???

 

[nobody's_hero]

It's just a burden we bear for being the leaders of the free world, lol.

==================================
Maybe we should give Ron Paul to a country that appreciates him.

Statesman. Goes by the name of 'Ron Paul.' Gently used. Honest. Plain-speaking. Loves freedom. Free to a good home.

 

[idiom]

Hi there, there seem to be a tonne of Kiwi's on this site.

The system isn't rigged per se, its just loaded with decades and decades of politicians, interests and a public that honestly doesn't want change.

Those that do want the government to fix things.

Half the people who want government to be smaller in a serious way refuse to vote.

Its a long road to making a difference, but we are getting there. We have a dozen congressmen, a senator, and a few state political infrastructures. In four years after the 2014 cycle, we will have overturned enough party infrastructure and re-educated enough people to really create a voice.

One of the weirder edifices of the American voting culture is that there is a significant percentage of voters who vote for a particular party because their great grand parents voted for that party. Its like a team sport. Its not about who is right, its about winning. It is the most neurotic element.

They just spent nearly $6 Billion or so, without trying to change a single persons mind on a single issue. The goal the whole time was to get people to turn out for their team. They don't even bother trying to get people to change which team they support. Credit for the win went to Obama's so called "ground game". Not his issues, or charisma, but to his ability to get team blue fans to show up and cheer for the blue team on a greater scale than the red team could muster.

 

[Mini-Me]

A lot of it has to do with first-past-the-post voting (winner-take-all plurality voting), as well. The system's "spoiler effect" incentivizes people to vote not for their true preference but for the candidate most likely to beat the candidate they hate the most. Such a voting system inherently devolves into a two-party or one-party political system, and it greatly magnifies the success of primary election candidates who are well-funded and pushed by the media and party leaders as "front runners."

While first-past-the-post voting is perhaps the worst serious voting system ever conceived, not all countries with this system are as politically broken as the United States, because having an international empire magnifies the effect of media propaganda, arrogance, and the importance of "winning" and being the "strongest." Jingoistic nationalism has a direct impact on many of the policies the major parties (and media) push, and it sets the stage for the wider "team sport" mentality that idiom noted about party politics. The team sport mentality even affects primaries: As you may have noticed, the Republican leadership tried to coalesce the whole party around Romney for "party unity" many months before the GOP primary was even over.

New Zealand used to use first-past-the-post voting for their (your) House up until 1996, but now you guys use mixed-member proportional representation (as I'm sure you know ). Even when you had plurality voting, it probably wasn't as bad as it is here, since you don't live under the corrupting influence of imperial propaganda.

Plus, you know, we have Diebold and pals, and the 2008 and 2012 Republican primaries showed hugely suspicious statistical patterns linked to the central tabulators, and party leadership likes to strip delegates and sic cops on people supporting the "wrong" primary candidates at county/state conventions, etc. Changing the voting system is a bit easier said than done, since we need to get into power - through the current broken system, no less - before we're in a position to do so.

 

[CPUd]

 

[sailingaway]

we agree, the Dems and GOP ex chairs now head up the debate committee to decide who is included. It is terrible. We need to get it changed, also ballot access. I still wish we would sue to get ballot access showing the fraud this year in primaries and that people are not included as the parties pretend, but are disenfranchised, and that therefore it is collusion for the states to give them preference on ballots.

but that would take a lot of money and support, and while we have the evidence now, I believe, (see the first thread stickied in this forum) I don't know that the financial support would be there to fight essentially an institutional battle.

by the way, I didn't edit your op, my name is there because I accidentally clicked 'edit' instead of 'reply with quote'. Sorry!

 

[sailingaway]

and welcome to the forums!

 

[Travlyr]

Using this paper/electronic style ballot would help end the fraud.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izddjAp_N4I

 

[kathy88]

HAHAHAHAHAH. Love this.

 

[maskander]

How is it that the system in USA has only cliche-loaded Obama and Romney debating on issues of minor importance. Ron Paul was the only candidate making any sense. Your system is rigged. Change it.

How is the system rigged? I voted for obama and he won.

 

[sailingaway]

How is the system rigged? I voted for obama and he won.

Yeah, but supposing you had voted for Stein, might it have bugged you that she couldn't get into the debates despite her party having respectable backing and that she had to go around the country getting arrested trying to get into debates to get any attention, instead?

 

[donnay]

How is the system rigged? I voted for obama and he won.

That's the illusion. You think you have a vote.

 

[maskander]

Yeah, but supposing you had voted for Stein, might it have bugged you that she couldn't get into the debates despite her party having respectable backing and that she had to go around the country getting arrested trying to get into debates to get any attention, instead?

That's a problem with the police state, not with our elections. The amount of people who turned out to vote for this election shows that our democracy is still working, gay marriage and marijuana legalization just to name a few things.

The cynical side of me thinks tptb are just giving us rabbits a little bit of victories in social issues to make us think that our vote does have power and we can change the government from the ground up with our vote. So yes, The election is rigged in that the people that are put into place to vote for will not decide based on the people who elected them, but on the other hand the election is not rigged because our votes do in fact have power.

People just need to start waking up to candidates out of the 2 party system. There should be a pool of people to elect from that is given equal airtime through MSM.

 

[sailingaway]

Local works better than national, is what you are seeing, which is why we prefer state solutions, and national tickets the parties have the primaries on lock down. that is my opinion. Did you see the votes overridden in both the DNC and RNC where voice votes were ignored and the whole thing was prescripted on teleprompters? The videos are around here somewhere.

the bigger and more centralized the power, the bigger and better connected you have to be to have any say at all in policy.

 

[maskander]

Local works better than national, is what you are seeing, which is why we prefer state solutions, and national tickets the parties have the primaries on lock down. that is my opinion. Did you see the votes overridden in both the DNC and RNC where voice votes were ignored and the whole thing was prescripted on teleprompters? The videos are around here somewhere.

the bigger and more centralized the power, the bigger and better connected you have to be to have any say at all in policy.

Which is why my vote was reluctantly for obama, because I know I can't have my cake(giving government the power to mandate social norms) and eat it too(wanting the government out of my life) I know I can't be the only one struggling with these issues. But yeah you are right, I feel so distant from the suits and tie's in Washington.

This list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_agencies is why america is in so much debt. America has plenty of money to have a surplus, but it just chooses not to. I'm not even sure what it would take to reduce the deficit, but we sure aren't even close to a real solution.

 

[sailingaway]

Which is why my vote was reluctantly for obama, because I know I can't have my cake(giving government the power to mandate social norms) and eat it too(wanting the government out of my life) I know I can't be the only one struggling with these issues. But yeah you are right, I feel so distant from the suits and tie's in Washington.

This list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_agencies is why america is in so much debt. America has plenty of money to have a surplus, but it just chooses not to. I'm not even sure what it would take to reduce the deficit, but we sure aren't even close to a real solution.

Ron had a solution, but no one really wants to cut all the corporate boondoggles.

 

[KCIndy]

That's a problem with the police state, not with our elections. The amount of people who turned out to vote for this election shows that our democracy is still working, gay marriage and marijuana legalization just to name a few things.

Just a little nitpicking here.... but you know we aren't a democracy, right?