US Politics Thread

[ian]

ONE for Martin.
TWO for Martin.

ONE for Martin.
TWO for Martin.

[pixel]

[Stormwatch]

Big list of election shenanigans: https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/com ... egathread/
Archived, just in case: https://web.archive.org/web/20201031142 ... egathread/

That's some Venezuela-grade bullshit you got there, Murica.

[pixel]

I'd be hard to find one specific reason, it's a spectrum of shit:

1. It might be that the Federal Election Commission hasn't functioned in more than a year. The federal government has been doing a real shit job at monitoring and administering national elections. My personal conspiracy: It's easy to fudge numbers if shit's totally fucked down at the agency created to oversee elections.

2. Funding shenanigans at the United States Postal Services caused by the White House. USPS has gone through the wringer under past administrations, for seemingly dubious reasons.

3. Gerrymandering.

4. The Electoral College.

5. A general malaise among the U.S. population for its political system.

6. Poor political literacy caused by education system and social media.

[pixel]

6. Poor political literacy caused by education system and social media.

To keep riffing on this: You have people at each other's throats, thinking that the government should operate on pure ideologies. The worst is this pervasive idea that the government should be "run like a business" and that pure capitalism will solve every single problem. (Answer: It doesn't)

So for the past 10-15 years, you've had Tea Party/Trump folks trying to slash and burn the size of government without a great strategy while liberals have been playing identity politics on Twitter.

[ian]

Why do you have an electoral college?
Shouldn’t elections have graduated and gone on to do something better by now?

Like the person who has the most votes, I don’t know, being the winner...

[pixel]

Why do you have an electoral college?
Shouldn’t elections have graduated and gone on to do something better by now?

I feel like the Electoral College is a lot like an appendix: It's only becomes a problem when it gets infected.

It's a fairly "new" concept to abolish the Electoral College, the last legitimate effort was made back in late 1960s.

Long story short, the Electoral College is an exploitable mechanism for both major parties so why abolish it? Plus, you have rural voters believing the fairy tale that the Electoral College gives them more political clout on the national level.

[Bandit]

[Ocelot]

I love Snoop Dogg so much.

Also, he's a hell of a good writer.

[melancholy]

Why do you have an electoral college?
Shouldn’t elections have graduated and gone on to do something better by now?

Like the person who has the most votes, I don’t know, being the winner...

The Electoral College is a perfectly fine concept that should make our elections more fair for everyone. It hands out a weighted amount of votes to each State that helps balance out the fact that a whole shit-ton of people live in California and barely anyone lives in Wyoming. It's designed to force politicians to create policy for everyone and not just focus on where the people are. Where the entire thing went horribly wrong, however, is when our founding government allowed the States to decide on how those votes could be cast. And in 49 of our 51 States (Washington DC is not a State, but it's counted like one in the election), they have decided to do a 'winner take all' approach. This is the reason our system seem so broken.

Let me explain with a hypothetical. Imagine we have 3 States: Roofornia (population: 42069), Iandiana (population: just Ian) and New Zoidberg (population: the entire internet). New Zoidberg is horribly overpopulated, so he only gets a balanced 6 electoral votes. Next is Roofornia which gets 4 electoral votes because it makes the math easier. And finally we have Iandiana who gets 3 votes to balance his loneliness by giving two extra votes to the voices in his head. So, here's a chart:

Code: Select all

New Zoidberg:   6
Roofornia:      4
Iandiana:       3

And let's pretend we have three candidates: The staunch Red Sky-Netrump, the free-lovin Blue Pixelinton, and an independent named Mark Discordia. New Zoidberg's citizens loves Blue Pixelinton to a 5-to-1 ratio (the others are the working poor that like Red Sky-Netrump because he's rich). Iandiana's lone citizen loves Red Sky-Netrump because he's batshit crazy, so two of the three voices in his head vote for him (with the remainder going to Blue Pixelinton because that voice is sensible). Roofornia is more complicated, because 40% of the population thinks Red Sky-Netrump is going to create a Space Force and build a Death Star, 35% think that Blue Pixelinton is going to give them free college and cocaine, and 25% think Mark Discordia can teach them how to get on the Super Mario 2 leaderboards on Speedruns.com. Let's chart what that would look like if we divided the votes based on percentages:

Code: Select all

                Red  Blue   Mark
New Zoidberg:   1    5      0
Roofornia:      2    1      1
Iandiana:       2    1      0
_________________________________
Total:          5    7      1

In this scenario, Blue Pixelinton would clearly win. Iandiana's vote counted for something, New Zoidberg definitely swayed the election but was balanced so that it couldn't overwhelm the other States by sheer population alone, and Mark Discordia would have never won, but at least had some power in the Roofornia election. But these States decided they were going to go with a 'winner take all' approach, where the person who gets the most votes wins all the electoral votes. In that scenario, the chart now looks like this:

Code: Select all

                Red  Blue   Mark
New Zoidberg:   0    6      0
Roofornia:      4    0      0
Iandiana:       3    0      0
_________________________________
Total:          7    6      0

Suddenly, Red Sky-Netrump is the winner. Iandiana's sole resident countered the millions of votes in New Zoidberg. 60% of the Roofornia voted against Red, but he still got all of their electoral votes. A man that the majority of the people voted against suddenly becomes President.

And that's what has been happening in our country for several election cycles. The last 2 of 3 Presidents in the US lost the popular vote and still won because States give all their electoral votes to the winner instead of distributing them according to how the citizens voted. Just to highlight how bad this system is, someone once crunched the numbers after the 2016 election and found that (while this would never happen in real life) it's theoretically possible for someone to only get ~22% of the vote and still win the presidency simply by playing the Electoral College 'winner take all' vote numbers.

[ian]

That was a brilliant explanation and kudos on Iandiana.
When you put it like that, it actually seems WORSE than I thought it would work.

Also, Ocelot. I saw a similar thing to that on reddit. So someone’s ripping someone off.
Who did it first?

[Bandit]

[pixel]

[Bandit]

[Bandit]

[Bandit]

I wonder if Trump goes to the inauguration.

[melancholy]

I wonder if Trump goes to the inauguration.

I more wonder if he’s going to write a letter to the next President to leave on the desk in the Oval Office. That has been a tradition for decades, and even Obama left a letter to Trump.

[melancholy]

And I also wonder if he plans to immediately file to run in the 2024 election, since our country allows a person 2 terms, but says nothing about them being consecutive terms.

[Bandit]

I wonder if Trump goes to the inauguration.

I more wonder if he’s going to write a letter to the next President to leave on the desk in the Oval Office. That has been a tradition for decades, and even Obama left a letter to Trump.

Pen and paper isn't his thing. He will print out a tweet.

[Bandit]

And I also wonder if he plans to immediately file to run in the 2024 election, since our country allows a person 2 terms, but says nothing about them being consecutive terms.

He's going to start charging money for rally tickets and go on tour claiming he will, but he won't.