I am pro- responsible choice

aka

I hate people that use abortions as a form of birth control but understand those who use it for actual reasons, like rape, incest and lack of availability of other forms of contraceptive (aka high school students who's high schools dont give you an actual sex ed class).

I don't think we've ever had a third party win in any kind of election. Or at least, I have never heard of one winning.

Meizicht; They no longer can cover Viagra and not birth control. o_o My state had that law in to effect long before Obama.

But if I get pregnant (that is a very big if), abortion would be an option because of medical conditions. But those same conditions render me virtually infertile. But it is the woman's choice.

I have to agree with you, I do believe that Romney would have been better for the economy. But making a pros and cons chart of it, there are just some things about that man I cannot accept. If he said things like perhaps ratifying the health care bill instead of doing away with it, I would not mind him as a president. But with out so many jobs right now you can not take a way crutches.

At this point it seems Obama is getting a second term.

i[m drunk and hpapy =U= haha popped a bottle of celbratory champange and MADE MIMOSAS
never had those before but theyre gooooood

this is one trisphite (lol i forgot the p first) who is happy happy really fkin releived and HAPPY and drunk woooooo

/will i regeret this tomorrow lol lets see

Pfft. That ain't gonna happen if both Repub and Democratic candidates are douches.

Mrrr...-mutters something about the economy and taxes and wasted money-

america has not been 'on top' since the 20s and it has been dying since the 80's, i just want it not to tank in the next 30 years

Well, hopefully Obama does his best for 'merica.

xD so I must say, drunk Rem is like the best Rem.

We need more drunk voters? hehe

Projections have been part of elections for years. There are some states that have always trended a certain way. Calling a swing state early is complete crap, but calling California, Utah, et cetera is usually pretty sound.

So now that Obama's got a second term and the Republicans have control of the house, get ready for 4 years of nothing ever getting done yay. D:
I don't care who's in power right now as long as they get important things done, but Obama has proven to not be able to work across party lines so now the divided congress is going to give us problems. Oh well, maybe we'll see something happen in 2 years when we have another house election.

That's not true at all, Lucid. Obama WAS able to reach across party lines to get things done during the first two years of his term. Obama is REMARKABLY centrist. (That's what I like about him. I would never have voted Democrat before 2008. And yes, I'm old enough to have voted in that absurd 2000 election.)

The problem is the Republican party. As the Democrats have been moving towards the center, the Republicans have been reacting by moving increasingly to the right and becoming increasingly radical. Once the Republicans took control of the House in 2010 that they INTENTIONALLY chose to do everything they could do to block Obama regardless of how bipartisan his measures were. This isn't speculation: there's plenty of sound bites and news reports that show that this was an explicit plan. It's politics at its worst and you can't blame the President for the opposing party conspiring to do everything possible to make him look bad.

What was so absurd about the 2000 US election? owo

For the record, my political affiliation isn't along party lines at all.

I'm fiscally conservative, that is, I believe that the federal government should be small, federal taxes should be brought down to the lowest sustainable level (but no lower!), and most programs should be administered at the state level, even though this means state taxes have to go up; as the third-largest country in the world, the US is too large to administer matters of regional concern with efficiency and fairness.

But I'm socially liberal, that is, I believe that the federal government has a responsibility to ensure that all citizens are treated fairly, to protect minorities from oppressive local majorities, and to make sure that all states conform to certain guidelines of public well-being.

There is no candidate for me. There's a party for me -- the Libertarian party nominally has the same political stance, but not only are they too weak to ever get anyone elected, they're a little bit too radical for my comfort.

So this leaves me in every election looking for leaders that are centrist enough to do what's right instead of pushing for their party's platform.

Ari: In 2000, Florida's result was decided by only 500 votes. There were unending recounts, claims of corruption, controversies over voting machines... a royal mess. And to make matters worse, Florida's electoral votes were the tiebreaker, because neither of the two candidates (Bush and Gore) would hold a majority without Florida.

oh my lord this made me chortle ~ lol thanks vader
I was p toasted =u=

Pogs - xDD thanks
You should *hear* me when i'm drunk my drawl gets even thicker I sound like somebody on Hee Haw

2000 election >__> STILL enrages and saddens me to this day
god I remember that time, I legit cried lol

We'll see what happens with the House
Frankly with so many progressive measures passing all over the country, conservative measures getting shot down and radical right tea party golden boy candidates losing flat out I would think Repub leadership would wise the fk up and start realizing the electorate has rejected what they're trying to sell, and would start actually working with the President

But that would require them being other than what they are I suppose

I'm estatic about the Senate myself (Elizabeth Warren!!)

I saw a photo post in facebook.



thoughts?

It's not gonna be fixed in the next four years. It's going to take much longer than that -- it takes longer to build than to destroy, you know. It WILL improve, but four years isn't long enough to completely turn this mess around.

owo

Daaaang, that sucks. Did the US Government ever figure out what happened in Florida? Or have they just brushed it under the rug? =w=


I wonder what Gore would've done if he had become president instead of Bush.

Me too. I've got high hopes for this term, and I hope that the right doesn't try to sabotage him.

If people aren't satisfied with the bipartisan system we have, they need to vote independant/libertarian. Yes, it's like the votes don't matter at this point, however, if they get 5% of the popular vote, they get federal funding for the next election. At that point, then we have a 3 party system to work with and it'll feel less like "vote for the lesser of 2 crazies" and we'll have a middle ground to work with. With that, each individual vote will be worth more, as well. It'll take time for that, but I believe that the next generation will be able to enjoy a far better system.

That's not how it's going to happen.

If we break away from a two-party system, it's not going to be because of a third-party candidate. It's not going to be due to third-party campaigning. Both of the existing sides will rightfully argue NOT to vote for a third party, because of the paradoxical effect of a third party vote HURTING your position in a single-vote ballot. (That is, if you believe in A, C, and E, and the Democrats believe in A, B, and C, and the Republicans believe in D, E, and F, and your third party believes in A, C, and E, a vote for your third party will hurt the likelihood of electing a candidate that supports more of your beliefs. It's not just a wasted vote, it's a counterproductive one.)

If we ever break away from the two-party system it's going to be because one of the parties fails and new parties form around the fragments.

Coda, isn't there a flaw in your argument? If enough people believe in A, C, and E and then vote for the candidate who believes in A, C, and E, won't that candidate win? That hardly seems counterproductive, but too many people think that there's no way a third party will win so they don't vote for them no matter if they will support their beliefs the best.

I would say that if enough people were educated (maybe via informative campaigning) then maybe enough people would vote for a third party for them to win? I suppose that's silly considering how many uninformed people vote, I guess.

Just me thinking intuitively here, I might be way off.

People don't fall into neat categories so easily. You might find people who like A, B, and F, or B, C, and D. There can't be a candidate for every combination of issues.

So what you're really missing is that someone who likes A, C, and E would rather see the A, B, C candidate win than the D, E, F candidate, but every vote for the A, C, E candidate is one less vote towards their second-choice candidate.

There are other forms of voting besides single-vote ballots that solve this problem. The easiest to describe is Instant Runoff Voting, wherein you rank each candidate according to preference. Then when tallying votes, you first count everyone's first choice. Then you take out the lowest-scoring candidate, and then take everyone who voted for that candidate and count their second-choice votes. You repeat this until there are only two candidates left, and the winner is the one with more votes.

It's not a perfect system, but it's an improvement over a simple majority system.

Yeaaah "tanking" is something I am expecting.
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I've never been one to care for "being on top" it would be better if our country had our shit together. hmm...there's a lot of things i could say but I need some sleep before work and it'd just be ranting to the clouds. I'm one of those voters who ignored the other 2 candidates b/c no one would vote for them. Obama would've gotten my vote were I able to vote in this county. xp -recently moved-

Wow so me, Tiva, Poggio, and Alpha all live in the same state =O
I'm sure I knew this at some point and forgot. Interestingly Asheville was where we were me and my roomate were hoping to move at first.

Jurinjo: There are a few others I can think of, but I'll leave it up to them if they want it known or not.

Coda: That is certainly one way to do it, but another would be to replace the "winner take all" system when it comes to a state's electoral votes, and instead partition them according to the percent of the vote each candidate won.

Alpha: Those two changes are compatible. You can run IRV along with proportional electoral representation.

Indeed they are. I was merely stating a different change despite the compatibility with IRV. Presenting different solutions to a flawed system more to the point. Ironically this is something I am doing as a persuasive speech....should be interesting.

Honestly I think we SHOULD do both, although I think some sort of pairwise method might be preferable to IRV. IRV is easier to explain, but a point to note is that picking more than two representatives with IRV is difficult. (It's easy to determine what proportion of the population wanted first place, and what proportion wanted second place, but how do you determine the proportional popularity of the third-place candidate when the first two by definition add up to 100%?)

A pairwise method starts with preference ranking like IRV, but then instead of iteratively eliminating the person with the fewest votes, you take each candidate and compare him with each other candidate one-by-one, and the candidate that beats the most other candidates when considered pairwise is the winner. Think of it like a round-robin tournament format: everyone goes one-on-one with everyone else. This makes it easy to determine proportions, and it attempts to guarantee that whoever is selected is preferable to more people than whoever isn't selected. (This is actually impossible to guarantee with ANY voting system, but there are a number of tiebreaker options available.)

... that was a TERRIBLE pun. XD

Well played.