dude, anywhere there is a good fight and at least one person ready to refute coda is there XD

He still sticks around.....at least stalking a bit.

Coda: It really is impossible to ensure complete satisfaction with any system, but as you said, best you can do is make it more representative of the opinion(s) of the voters. Any reform to the system is a long time off, unless there happens to be a revolution of some sort.

coda is a pokemon! XD

Coda... Coda?

Coda coda!

... coda coda coda. x.x

Seriously, though, it's not even a question of satisfying all the voters. It turns out that it's mathematically impossible to create a ranked voting system that simultaneously gives everyone equal voice (that is, making it so that no one voter has any more power than any other), makes all of the alternatives independent (that is, making it so that changing the preferences of one candidate doesn't affect the relative rankings of the others), and is fair (that is, if everyone agrees that X is better than Y, the voting system should favor X over Y as well).

Well, unfortunately, yeah......it also doesn't help that you find some groupings attempting to abuse the system though.

No, UNbiased. The voting system should make sure the results reflect the preferences of the voters. If the voters prefer X over Y, the results should reflect that -- if everyone likes X more, the results should never let Y win.

Yes, but that's beside the point. There were only (practically speaking) two candidates who could receive votes. All voting systems behave the same way when there are only two candidates.

The point here is that single-vote ballots prevent a third-party candidate from having a chance at all, which is why there WERE only two possible outcomes to this election.

Suppose instead of just Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, Joseph Schmo was also on the ballot. Mr. Schmo has the same platform as Obama with regards to social issues, but he has a unique fiscal platform that doesn't align with either of the other platforms.

Most voters who like Mr. Schmo say that if Joseph can't win, they'd rather see Obama win than Romney.

In a single-vote ballot, unless Mr. Schmo can gather enough votes to win outright, every vote for Schmo is a vote that isn't going to Obama, so the social-liberal demographic is divided among two candidates while the social-conservative demographic is unified under Romney. So if 35% of the population votes for Obama, 25% of the population votes for Schmo, and 40% of the population votes for Romney, Romney wins, despite the fact that 60% of the population would rather see Obama win than Romney.

This means that third party candidates are better off supporting one of the two major candidates and then working from outside the system (as lobbyists) to ask their preferred candidate to consider their agenda.

A ranked-preference system such as IRV or pairwise gives third-party candidates a chance.

Let's look at IRV: In the previous example, if everyone who voted Schmo ranked it as "1. Schmo, 2. Obama, 3. Romney", then Schmo would still lose (getting 25% of the vote means he would get ejected in the first round of instant runoffs), but Obama would win in the end -- there's no paradox here where a vote for your most preferred candidate ends up with your least preferred candidate winning.

But here's the thing: It means that Schmo doesn't have a reason not to run, so he can TRY.

And if those numbers were slightly different -- say 31% voted for Schmo and 29% voted for Obama -- then Schmo would win, because that's still 60% of the population that doesn't want Romney.

So now it seems my state is trying to succeed from the union once more as is majority of the south. u.u If that happens I will try my damnedest to migrate back north.

..... Most of the Southern states are not able to succeed because they signed that they would not try to succeed after the Civil War..

Holy shit at the number of people voting to let Texas Succeed from the union...

I figured but evidently there are petitions.
XD my thing is why don't they sponsor a back to Europe movement like Marcus Garveys back to Africa movement.

Not QUITE true. The Supreme Court ruled that states cannot secede unilaterally -- that is, they can't just break off and say "hey, screw you, US federal government, we're our own country now." They have to get approval from Congress to do so, but it IS possible.

That said, Congress is highly unlikely to approve it.

79 thousand signatures to let Texas Succeed fron the Union... That is the most popular at the moment.

For the record: it's "secede", not "succeed."

Obama is definitely going to have to make a response to the petition, but it's almost certainly going to be something along the lines of "I don't want to see this country break apart, and I'm here to work with the states and listen to the voice of the people."

So has any one that signed those petitions actually thought out what it means to be its own nation? If something happens to texas, they will no longer get federal funding. The state already controls most of its laws so I don't see why they want to secede from the union.

My phone is correcting it... apparently it doesn't like that word......

I just think that people need to suck it up and get over it. Obama is here for another 4 years, if we were to leave it would destroy the US due to the outstanding debt that the states left would have to support or if split would crush the newly formed countries...

XD yeah I am sure the people haven't thought about how bad Europe is doing now, considering they are all independent nations. I am sure the US would start having importation taxes and tariffs. Or how it would muck up gas prices, or how you would need a passport to travel from one state to another. Not to mention how the government would run, making its own constitution and making sure every one got rights and what not.

If, If it does happen I believe that most people who are unhappy will move to that area and then if more than one state agrees become a Union so they aren't all different countries. I would state that most of the states are in the Southern Area (Minus New York, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Utah) and they are farmed out.. we would have a problem feeding both nations...

What we're seeing is a case for a traditional conservative plank: reduce the scope of the federal government and give more power to the states, reserving the power of federal law to ensure that the states' laws meet some certain minimum criteria, such as fairness and justness.

Modern radical conservatives on the other hand no longer hold this plank as central to the concept of being conservative. Both parties want to use the power of the federal government to further their own ends; the Republicans may SAY they support states' rights but they're perfectly happy to rally for laws -- or even constitutional amendments -- that would prohibit the states from making their own decisions on such matters as marriage and drugs.

Unfortunately, this is true. However, that is why such groups as the Tea Party arose in the first place, with emphasis being more to a return on the core of what conservatism really is: limited federal government, with majority of "power" being held by the states themselves. There are individuals, be they in small number, within the Republican Party that hold onto this, but they get drowned out by the majority.

If we really started seeing secession again, it would end up in one of two ways: 1) another Civil War, 2) United States under Articles of Confederation.

Nope. JUST civil war. There's no way we're going to be able to convene a Constitutional Convention to completely rewrite the country's definition, so unless we can get some compromises going in Congress to try to satisfy the secessionist states... the federal government will have to employ military force to try to force the states to comply with federal law.

In which case the military will be divided, and the respective states National Guards will be called upon to act as a defensive force.

No the military would still be under the federal government it would be up to the states to provide local militias. Especially since it is a program the states do not fund.

Um....actually the National Guard answers to the governor of their respective state. Yes, the same oath is sworn (to defend the Constitution, etc.), but answers directly to the governor, not the President. Hence why the President can't task the National Guard, they have to go through the Governor in order to.

I was only talking about the army and I am not sure but possibly the navy. But then Texas would not have a governor if that happened it would be what ever they decided it to be so I am not sure how that would work out.

Okay....a bit confused here.

What I meant by the military "being divided" is that it will resemble what happened with the Civil War, in which case members went to both sides of the fight based on their own views. Many would likely enter into their states National Guard (Army National Guard and Air National Guard....still technically Army and Air Force....and they are state funded except in regards to the federal training) in the case of the Army or Air Force, and possibly something similar being established for the likes of the Navy.

Only difference in a scenario of states seceding in individually instead of as a group is that it will be a much more defined split instead of a mass.

Actually when the civil war started, all of the union called upon their states resources to create the armies. Most states already had state militas.

What I am referring to is this. Basically seceding means that the state would be its own country correct? If that is true then based upon the structure of the government they make that form the state may not have a governor to call upon the national guard. For all we know Texas may become communist with Romney as its leader. Then America would simply be facing another Cuban missile crisis.

If Texas forms its own country, it would change the rules of the Texas National Guard to adjust. There's not a whole lot of sense looking at the current laws to see how it'd run.