@TRiG Well, at least someone is getting something right regarding voting methods and education about it.

The USA has the seriously flawed electoral college. Though some would say it is not flawed.

@fredsbend who... other than politicians

The major problem with it is that low population states, like Idaho, where I live, with only 1.2 million residents, are ignored because the state yields only 3 or 4 electorate votes, while a large state, like Washington, just over the border, with something like 30 million residents, yields about 15 electorate votes.

@AJHenderson Well, every "red-blooded american", right?

@fredsbend last time I checked I have red blood :)

lol

I mean to refer to the ultra-conservative types.

perhaps, though I think more and more are moving away from the republican position and in to an empty/neutral position that neither side speaks to

still not a critical mass, but it is growing rapidly and I think more rapidly on the conservative side

because neither party is fiscally conservative in the slightest.

@fredsbend The USA system is wrong in several ways. The electoral college is simply the most obvious. FPTP voting is probably worse.

@AJHenderson You have right-wing authoritarians (D) and people completely unrelated to reality (R).

@AJHenderson This and because both sides have screwed us plenty. I'm certainly there. I was "conservative" in the past, but I am much more neutral now. It's also completely ridiculous to think there are only two options.

@TRiG rofl

that was good.

@TRiG pretty much

At least the electoral college is only about the election of one person, though your president probably has too much power. The USA is, really, an early draft at democracy, and later attempts have learned from your mistakes and done a lot better. Unfortunately, the USA insists on imagining itself as unique, refuses to learn from anyone else, also refuses to learn from its own history, imagines that things as the are now are the way things have to be, and so refuses to reform

@TRiG I've never heard this phrase "FPTP voting", but reading quickly about it on wikipedia, yes I recognize it immediately. Take good ol' Abe Lincoln. He was elected by electoral college, naturally, but what rarely comes out in the history books is that only about 30% of the population actually voted for him.

@TRiG well, to the people in power, nothing is broken

they have an easy mechanism to maintain power

why "fix" it

if it actually represented the interests of the people, then they couldn't do whatever the heck they wanted

@TRiG Unless reform means adding more agencies to regulate already regulated industries.

@AJHenderson Yes. And the UK threw away a chance at reform out of pique with the Lib Dems. I understand the pique, but using an important constitutional referendum to express displeasure with a certain political party is just immature.

@AJHenderson Well, it would work better if more than senior citizens only interested in ss benefits actually voted.

There's a lot I dislike about Ireland and Irish politics, but the voting system makes sense, which yours doesn't.

@fredsbend it would work better if people actually knew what they were voting on

yep

if only 20% of your population or less actually cares about what is going on, democracy breaks in a hurry

So actually, we are way off-topic for this room. Maybe we should stop before we fill up too much space.

especially when the two political parties realized they can get their respective 40% to go along with literally just about anything

← 32 messages moved from Christianity 2014 Election

:16257802 FPTP voting adds inertia to the political system. PR (PR-STV as in Ireland, or the proposed AV method the UK rejected, or a couple of alternatives) destabilise it a little, making it easier for outsiders to disrupt the status quo. It makes coalition governments more likely, which might make the govt less powerful, but also more representative of the populace.

Aha. Probably one more comment of mine to pull in.

← 1 message moved from Christianity 2014 Election

lol, your funny AJ. I'm actually going to be leaving now for lunch, but I'll probably stop by later.

@fredsbend His funny what? ;)

personally, I don't understand what the problem would be with a system that allowed you to vote for any number of people you wanted and simple highest count wins

at the end of the day, either I think each candidate could do the job or I don't

and my preference is much more that someone I don't think could do the job not get in than caring that the person I think would do the best job win

@AJHenderson CGP Grey's videos on different voting systems go into them in some depth, and demonstrate the flaws in FPTP. He also has a couple on the US electoral college, which is just weird.

@AJHenderson STV is still "one person, one vote", but that vote is transferable. It works.

Fair voting systems are actually really complicated.

@TRiG yeah

because you have to understand what each person wants fully to try and understand what is most representative and there is naturally a gamut

but each person also has cutoff points beyond which they would be a hard no

so it isn't a smooth gamut

it is far simpler if the goals of your fair system are simply to satisfy the most people rather than pick the absolute best representation

at a minimum to be truly representative to the best fit possible, you need a weighted opinion of every candidate from every person

and a hell of a lot of math

@AJHenderson I actually can't find anything on that system of voting. Wikipedia has stuff about plural voting, but that's not the same thing as your suggestion.

I'm sure it's been studied.

yeah, I realized the drawback after I thought about it a bit more just now. It has to do with the goal of the system

my system only finds the most broadly acceptable

because it is whoever the most people would be "ok" with

whatever their definition of "ok" is

but if they are really ultra conservative and there was nobody ultra-liberal, then the end result would end up being more liberal than the actual representative interest of the population

because the low vote counts limited only to the ultra conservative candidate would be effectively lost

where as other systems try to take that strong preference in to account

even if there isn't enough of a shared preference to actually give those voters what they want

> making it easier for outsiders to disrupt the status quo. It makes coalition governments more likely, which might make the govt less powerful, but also more representative of the populace.

This should be what we all want right?

@fredsbend Generally, yes. There are occasions when an unstable govt is a bad thing, of course. (See: Italy.)

On the other hand, failure to form a government doesn't necessarily have any noticeable ill-effects. (See: Belgium.)

@TRiG I'm sure my Belgian friend would disagree with that. :)

(that there are no noticeable ill effects)

@Flimzy Well, I'm not actually at all sure of the specifics there, but the trains are still running, the schools are still operating, public servants are still getting their paycheques.

The main complaint I here is that taxes are incredibly high.

I suspect Belgium faired a lot better than most countries would in that situation.

Of course most countries complain about that.

@Flimzy I wonder if the STV voting algorithm could be modified to do that. I doubt it, but it's an interesting thought.