pr0f3n

I'm willing to acknowledge my own bias on an issue, but I'm not going to demure when there's no call for it. Clinton set out to marginalize Obama as "the black candidate" to great effect, and if you have any evidence that Obama participated in that kerfuffle beyond asking people to settle down, I'd be glad to see it.

As for starry-eyed, ill-informed ideologues, I think there's plenty to be found of any age and occupation in either party, but don't mistake me for one. The only things coming from a Clinton nomination are a Republican victory or 8 more years of partisan bickering while our infrastructure and civil liberties erode.

I'm not convinced momentum has anything to do with either primary this year. From a strictly academic perspective, this is all about delegates, and Obama's ahead on that front. Yes, Obama was assigned by the MSM a theoretical momentum after Iowa, one he didn't acknowledge. There was no event or set of events so great in the five days that followed that would have countered that momentum, yet he lost NH, so it's questionable if it existed at all. What was clear in NH was that 20% of voters were undecided, and 40% of voters said they made up their minds within the 24 hours prior to 1/8. Regardless, Obama went from polling in the mid-20's in late December to garnering 37% of the vote. If that link I fixed works, you can see he gained 22% over the course of 2 months in Nevada.

He's absolutely doing something wrong, but it's a tightrope walk that I think he's been shying from until now. He has to respond to the Clinton's negative campaigning without abandoning his principles. He's starting to do so, and Bill Clinton's making it easier as he's getting crazier and dirtier this last week or so, but in responding not only is Barack giving the lie more life, he's giving the Clinton campaign more mud to sling. This is the true test, surviving the DLC, and if he can't get through them then this country's in more trouble than I thought. He's got a solid game plan for South Carolina, his campaign's had presence there longer than the Clintons. Should he win that primary next week, I think we'll see extremely tight races in CA, NY and some fly over states, and 2/5 will be the best popcorn and soda day of this election.

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Rekna

The super delegates are absolutely stupid in my opinion. What they say is 40% of the primary vote falls on a few select individuals. To top it off these delegates have 1 thing in common, they are part of the current establishment. So when an anti-establishment candidate like Obama comes in of course they are going to flock to the other side. I'm surprised it hasn't been more. They need to get rid of the super delegates just like the republicans did.

SecretMethod70

Agreed, except the superdelegates are about 20%, not 40% of the total.

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Rekna

Thanks for the correction. I thought I read 40% but just checked it is just under 20%.

Tully Mars

Still seems odd to me that any party would openly give more power to certain individuals. To me that goes against exactly what the US is all about, or at least should be all about. One person, one vote. But the Electoral College, IMHO, gives people in some states more in power than those of other states.

The more Bill lets loose with more bat shit crazy stuff the more he seems to suck Obama into to responding thus keeping him off his message. Really it's a brilliant, all be it slimly, move.

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SecretMethod70

The electoral college is a different story, and actually increases the value of everyone's vote. Yes, there are negligible differences between states (differences which are rooted in our republican (not the party) system), but the most important aspect of the electoral college is that it increases the likelihood that any one person's vote can impact the outcome of an election. Your vote is much more likely to "count" when it's 1 of 30 million than it is when it's 1 of 300 million.

This seems to be true.

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pr0f3n

Representative Democracies have that buffer layer of the electoral college to slow down the populist whimsy, and although the original motivation wasn't so well thought out, I think the delegate/superdelegate system has the same effect. Giving the party members a greater voice than the popular vote makes a great deal of sense in that they're the people most involved and informed, and hopefully can buffer against demagoguery and fringe groups hijacking the party.

I was think Obama did what he needed to do last night. He managed, imperfectly to be sure, to correct the distortions and still churn out a great deal of policy discussion. The Clintons aren't going to stop, but he's shown he's able to get aggressive and hold his own on multiple political fronts.

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Tully Mars

I'm no statistician but that doesn't even seem possible. If you increase the value of everyone's vote... wouldn't everyone's vote still have equal value?

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Rekna

Yes, the electoral college attempts to increase the value of the vote of people who live in rural areas. This is to counteract the power of the vote in urban areas. Urban areas always get the attention during a presidential election. This is because that is where the most votes is. The electorals attempt to countact this slightly though I don't think they do a very good job of it. Let's face it when was the last time that South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, etc mattered in a presidential race?

The only problem I see with the electorals is the all or nothing assignment of them, I really think it should be proportional across the country. In order to do this effectively though the number of electorals for each state would have to be increased by something like a factor of 10.

SecretMethod70

Putting this very simply: In a fully democratic election your vote is one of ~300 million. That means you have a 1 in 300 million chance of your vote being the one that decides the election. Under the electoral college system, using my home state of Illinois as the example, my vote is actually only one of ~7 million (and that's being pessimistic, considering that the total population of Illinois, regardless of voting eligibility, is ~13 million). That means I have a 1 in 7 million chance of my vote deciding who Illinois' 21 electors go to. Then, using admittedly fuzzy math, there's about a 21 out of 538 (~1 in 25) chance that my determining who Illinois' electors go to will also determine who wins the presidency. That means that my vote has about a 1 in 175 million chance of determining the election, instead of a 1 in 300 million chance.

(Yes, this is fuzzy math, but it gets the point across. The Electoral College is not a new issue: MIT physicist Alan Natapoff spoke to Congress on this issue back in the 70's, and his testimony is one reason why we still have the Electoral College today. And here's a link to his 1996 article in Public Choice.)

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Tully Mars

Fuzzy, yes I agree with that. And I agree there is a statistical chance your vote maybe have more weight or have more of a chance of being the vote that tips the scales. But a statistical chance does not, IMO, equate to "increases the value of everyone's vote." If you increase the value of everyone's vote, everyone's vote is still equal. Thus everyone's vote has the same value and no one's vote has increased in value.

But that's not really what the EC does. The EC gives more weight to some votes while decreasing the value of other votes. Basically under the EC a candidate could lose every single vote in 39 states while merely winning the majority of votes in the 11 most populated states and end up in the Oval Office.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._by_population

And, as Rekna points out, you rarely see a candidate in states like South Dakota. And the reason for this is votes in those states don't have the same value as votes in other larger states.

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SecretMethod70

There's no such thing as a perfect system. The same criticisms can be given against direct democracy as well, and moreso. If the president were elected through a purely democratic vote (which isn't some new idea, it was thoroughly considered and rejected by the founders), that person could appeal strictly to, say, white voters, and completely ignore minorities and still win the election. Or, that person could campaign only in heavily populated regions (such as new england and the west coast) and ignore the needs of other regions.

Also, the idea that everyone's vote is 100% equal is not something the founder's sought: rather, they sought to prevent the tyrrany of majority, which the electoral college does rather effectively. It's impossible for a president to win an election without appealing to the area where the votes are "less important" such as California, but the electoral college makes it so that those candidates must also appeal to other, less populous states in order to win. It's the same reason Iowa and New Hampshire have their primaries before everyone else: on a national level, the interests of Iowans are generall ignored, but by giving them some weight in choosing the candidates it ensures that their opinions are heard as well.

No doubt, there are people whose views and needs are ignored right now. Like I said, no election system is perfect. But the number of people who are ignored - and the degree to which they are ignored - could be far greater were we to fall into the temptation of direct democracy. Our republic does a great deal to spread out influence and force compromise.

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Tully Mars

I agree, perfection isn't attainable. An old friend of mine used to say "the last guy that was prefect they nailed to a cross, don't want any part of that job."

But the EC doesn't insulate against candidates ignoring this state, that demographic or even a particular region. Heck the GOP currently has one candidate who's ignored, basically, every state but Florida so far. I don't think his strategy is going to work. But it could be argued he'd be less likely to even attempt this political chess move if it weren't for the EC. Could also pull out a bunch of graphs and stats and argue that the EC is the only reason he would try such a move.


Not sure about the "tyrrany of majority" or the origins of the Iowa caucus or the NH primary. But I'm also not sure I disagree with what you're saying. I would add the founding fathers were also looking to find a way to deal with the logistical problems facing a national election in a country geographically spread out over so many miles with no modern means of communicating.


Some people are ignored and some are not. No doubt about it. Currently our system seems to spread the influence to those most able to spread wealth in the right direction. Would doing away with the EC solve this or create a larger deeper wound? I honestly don't know. I do find it odd that the one election we use this type of system is when we're electing the person those going to hold the highest attainable office. Every other time we use a one person, one vote system.

Bottom line is I read your statement:

"The electoral college is a different story, and actually increases the value of everyone's vote."


And thought it sounded impossible.

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SecretMethod70

Thing is, getting the nomination has nothing to do with the Electoral College, so that has no bearing on Giuliani's decision. The delegate system is similar, but not the same. Also, Giuliani is focusing on Florida as his starting point. He can't win the nomination with only Florida. What he can do, though, is not spend money in states he knows he'll lose and, instead, focus on the earliest state he can win in. After he probably wins in Florida, he'll have thrust himself even more onto the national stage than he already was, and his hope is that that win plus his already national recognition as "America's Mayor" will help him win big on Feb 5. He may be right, he may not be, but his strategy says nothing of the Electoral College or the delegate system for nominations. Once he theoretically wins the nomination, he'd end up campaigning nationally just like anyone else would.

No doubt, the technology of their time was certainly different and added to the difficulties. Still, it is preventing factions and protecting individuals from the majority that Madison and others frequently referred to when debating what eventually became our consitution. Federalist #10 is particularly relevant.

Well, first, it should be said that saying the Electoral College is not "one person, one vote" is misleading. Every one person gets one vote, it's just that what those votes do is determine who their state's electors go to. Also, there is no other national office that involves such a broad election as that of the president. Even senators, who have the next largest base of voters, are limited to campaigning in only one state.

The wealth issue is separate from the Electoral College issue and it is indeed a big problem. But changing or removing the Electoral College would, at best, do nothing to solve it. The reason money is important in elections isn't because of the Electoral College, it's because 1) there is a snowball effect: for every expensive campaign, all others need to become more expensive as well, and 2) campaigning must be done all over the US. There are lots of ideas to solve the money issue, such as 100% publicly financed campaigns, but those are a different subject (not to mention that the current opinion that money = speech prevents the government from limiting campaigns to a set public fund).

I've also been a bit negligent in this discussion, because I've failed to mention that while I don't see the Electoral College as a problem, I also don't think our voting system doesn't need changes. That's simply not the change I advocate. Rather than seeing the Electoral College as a problem in our voting, I believe it is the way we vote in and of itself that is the problem. Anyone who has heard the phrase "wasted vote" in regard to third party candidates, or anyone who is currently thinking about voting for Edwards in a primary election knows exactly what I mean. As voters in an American presidential election, we are given the option of voting for one person and one person only, but the fact is our views are typically far more complex than that. People are not single-minded: we don't advocate one candidate and dislike all the others equally. We have second choices, third choices, and so on. We need to be able to vote in a way which reflects those views. Conveniently enough, when the votes are tabulated properly, this method of voting also has the benefit of selecting the person who is preferred over all the other candidates in a head-to-head match. If we were to vote using a method that fulfilled the Condorcet Criterion, I think the electorate would generally be far more satisfied.

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Sun Tzu

Ive asked this question before, but know one seemed to have an answer. I dont want to create an entire thread to ask it so this seemed the most optimal one. If Hillary is elected will she be known as Mrs. President, Ms. President, or Mr. President? Will Bill be the First man? If both are in the same room together will they be Mr. and Mrs. President?

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SecretMethod70

Well, the most accurate answer is she'll be known as either the title she explicitly tells people to call her, or the one that sticks among the press. I think the most appropriate would probably be Ms. President. Bill would undoubtedly be called the First Man, though the idea of First Spouse seems the most appropriate, this way the title can be the same in the future regardless of sex. And, yes, I think the appropriate terminology to refer to both would be Mr. and Mrs. President.

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pr0f3n

Obviously it is up to Clinton if she's elected, but wouldn't Mrs. President be more appropriate given her marital status, in terms of etiquette? And Bill the First Gentleman?

I've always been partial to First Laddy

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Tully Mars

I don't believe any candidate or and campaign, what ever stage of the game their in, doesn't look at the big picture or the big prize. Individuals looking to become POTUS are faced with two major hurdles. One, get a major party nomination and second, win 270 EC votes. To think that Rudy's decision and strategy had nothing to do with the end game is highly unlikely.


Agreed, I don't think the communications and logistical issues were the primary origins of the EC. Merely a small factor. I should have stated that more clearly.


I'd completely agree with you if the EC members were, by law, obliged to cast their vote according to the out come of their states. They're not and on occasion have changed their votes to become to what's known as faithless electors. I think the most notable occurrence of this happened in the 1830's when something like 20 EC members from Virginia changed their votes. As long as your vote goes to someone else who can vote anyway they wish I don't believe the system amounts to one person, one vote.


Personally I feel the more we mess with the current system the more likely we end up with something that looks like the tax code. I think there are significant problems with our current system. Any "fix" that could get through the "system" might well be completely insane.


I agree with several of your points. Considering this thread started as a Clinton thread we're probably both a bit negligent in this discussion.

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