SecretAgentWoman: #17: I'm a liberal living in Texas

*waves* So, that's two of us.

TruTV?

Isn't that the same network that had a show with Jesse Ventura which was essentially "ZOMGCONSPIRACEEE!!!!1!!!11!one!" for a few months?

Fix gerrymandering and kill the electoral college, and everything else is tinkering around the edges.

brigid_fitch: There was no fraud--nobody cast an illegal vote. There were certainly shenanigans (Harris being Bush's FL campaign manager, FL's various attempts to scrub the voter rolls with their purge lists, a Republican poll worker filling out missing info on otherwise ineligible overseas ballots, for instance) but no out-and-out voter fraud.

So...... what do you consider voter fraud?
Or am I missing the sarcasm?

Zmog: Fix gerrymandering and kill the electoral college, and everything else is tinkering around the edges.

Good idea on paper, but good luck getting the politicians who benefit from gerrymandering to pass a law abolishing it.

And eliminating the Electoral College (or forcing all states with two or more House districts to go with the Maine/Nebraska system where each candidate gets EC votes based on which districts they actually won + 2 for the state-wide winner) would require a Constitutional Amendment.

Snapper Carr: SecretAgentWoman: #17: I'm a liberal living in Texas

*waves* So, that's two of us.

Or a Republican in California... ;^)

brigid_fitch: "Many liberals believe the 2000 election was stolen through voter fraud" I'm done. Don't have to read any more to know the article is BS. No, "liberals" don't believe voter fraud was behind the 2000 election fiasco, it was stupid old people who couldn't understand a butterfly ballot & Katherine Harris' actions during the recount. There was no fraud--nobody cast an illegal vote. There were certainly shenanigans (Harris being Bush's FL campaign manager, FL's various attempts to scrub the voter rolls with their purge lists, a Republican poll worker filling out missing info on otherwise ineligible overseas ballots, for instance) but no out-and-out voter fraud.

Bullshiat. You can't mention the 2000 election without some "liberal" throwing out vote fraud as the reason Gore lost Florida. And I also know many "conservatives" (my sister-in-laws family for one) who go on and on about how Franken "stole" the 2010 Minnesota Senate Election.

Mugato: brigid_fitch: There was no fraud--nobody cast an illegal vote

I blame the electoral college, meaning its very existence.

This.

StoneColdAtheist: Snapper Carr: SecretAgentWoman: #17: I'm a liberal living in Texas

*waves* So, that's two of us.

Or a Republican in California... ;^)

Or a black either in Ohio or Florida.

TruTV? then again I guess still more credible than NRO, American Thinker, WND, Fox News, Wall Street Journal...

Headso: TruTV? then again I guess still more credible than NRO, American Thinker, WND, Fox News, Wall Street Journal...

You forgot Huffpo and Daily Kos.

MoronLessOff: Headso: TruTV? then again I guess still more credible than NRO, American Thinker, WND, Fox News, Wall Street Journal...

You forgot Huffpo and Daily Kos.

No, he really didn't, Mr. False Equivalency.

Headso: TruTV? then again I guess still more credible than NRO, American Thinker, WND, Fox News, Wall Street Journal...

You should hear Loni Love's zinger about the Pinochet death squads on "World's Craziest Failures of Milton Friedman's Economics."

bravian: brigid_fitch: "Many liberals believe the 2000 election was stolen through voter fraud" I'm done. Don't have to read any more to know the article is BS. No, "liberals" don't believe voter fraud was behind the 2000 election fiasco, it was stupid old people who couldn't understand a butterfly ballot & Katherine Harris' actions during the recount. There was no fraud--nobody cast an illegal vote. There were certainly shenanigans (Harris being Bush's FL campaign manager, FL's various attempts to scrub the voter rolls with their purge lists, a Republican poll worker filling out missing info on otherwise ineligible overseas ballots, for instance) but no out-and-out voter fraud.

Bullshiat. You can't mention the 2000 election without some "liberal" throwing out vote fraud as the reason Gore lost Florida. And I also know many "conservatives" (my sister-in-laws family for one) who go on and on about how Franken "stole" the 2010 Minnesota Senate Election.

The reason "liberals" claim there was fraud in the 2000 election in Florida and at the Supreme Court is that there WAS fraud in the 2000 election in Florida and at the Supreme Court. It's just that the kind of fraud that happened was electoral fraud, as brigid_fitch said; not "voter fraud," which the Republicans in the WI legislature and their counterparts in a few other States claim their voter ID laws would prevent.

As for the "conservatives," like your sister-in-law's family, who cry "FRAUD!" over the fact that Franken beat Coleman in 2008, it's a bunch of butthurt over the fact that the initial count showed Coleman with a slight edge over Franken but the recount showed Franken as the winner. Coleman even said that Franken shouldn't ask for a recount and should respect the will of the voters before the recount was completed, and after it was completed he filed a lawsuit and appealed all the way to the MN Supreme Court in order to either win the election or keep Franken out of the Senate for as long as possible so as to deny the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority.

downstairs: Zmog: kill the electoral college

You want to go through the hoops of a Constitutional Ammendment to fix something that has occured 4 times in history, 3 being during the 1800's when our population spread was much different?

I'd bet we won't see another president elected without the popular vote for 100+ years, if ever again.

I bet we see it at least once again in the next 20 years, with the beneficiary being a Republican, again.

Bush won Florida in 2000 fair and square -- by suing Gore to put the whole election in the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court kept yanking the state court's chain before finally awarding the swing state (and the election) to Bush. So if you lived in Florida in 2000, George W. Bush and SCOTUS is why your vote did not count.

bravian: brigid_fitch: "Many liberals believe the 2000 election was stolen through voter fraud" I'm done. Don't have to read any more to know the article is BS. No, "liberals" don't believe voter fraud was behind the 2000 election fiasco, it was stupid old people who couldn't understand a butterfly ballot & Katherine Harris' actions during the recount. There was no fraud--nobody cast an illegal vote. There were certainly shenanigans (Harris being Bush's FL campaign manager, FL's various attempts to scrub the voter rolls with their purge lists, a Republican poll worker filling out missing info on otherwise ineligible overseas ballots, for instance) but no out-and-out voter fraud.

Bullshiat. You can't mention the 2000 election without some "liberal" throwing out vote fraud as the reason Gore lost Florida. And I also know many "conservatives" (my sister-in-laws family for one) who go on and on about how Franken "stole" the 2010 Minnesota Senate Election.

Vote fraud, no. Election fraud, yes.

The state government disenfranchised thousands of voters with a poorly created voter purge list. The intent was to get felons off the voting rolls, but you could have your voting rights removed just for having a similar name to a felon. There was no notice until you showed up to vote.

Now, you have vote caging and insecure voting machines and people who just happen to find enough votes for their guy to win the election. That's not even mentioning the phone calls that go out with incorrect voting information or mailers that tell people to make sure they paid all their parking tickets before voting. Now, in some states, you have to get a state ID in order to vote, but they make sure that the DMVs in the highly Democratic areas are shut down. Each little thing starts to make it more and more inconvenient to vote. Any little problem and your vote gets put on a provisional ballot which will be ignored until after the election is certified and ignore thereafter since the election has already been certified.

Theoretically (as software makers have testified in Congress), electronic voting systems are extremely easy to rig, so putting 70% on the vote in one company's hand is extremely iffy. In 2000 and 2004, exit polling data vastly contradicted the reported poll numbers in swing states, Florida and Ohio, data that had been to be accurate to 1% in prior contests.

I'd never heard this bit (if it's true) and it's troubling, as is a lot of stuff you hear about electronic voting machines. Also, the electoral college long is no longer needed, reasonable or beneficial; in fact, it's now harmful.

Zmog: Fix gerrymandering and kill the electoral college, and everything else is tinkering around the edges.

+ Alternate Vote or some other preference based system so votes for Third Parties are not wasted votes.

I'm a rightish libertarian atheist in the exceedingly statist, liberal, and still religious Massachusetts. I make my vote count by bending over and voting D almost across the board!

BKITU: King Something: And eliminating the Electoral College (or forcing all states with two or more House districts to go with the Maine/Nebraska system where each candidate gets EC votes based on which districts they actually won + 2 for the state-wide winner) would require a Constitutional Amendment -- and therefore would never, ever be ratified by enough of the less-populated states that benefit greatly from the EC.

Eliminating the EC is 100% dead in the water, and that is why. A vote of "not ratified" by 12 states is enough to block any amendment, and there are 17 states with 5 or fewer electoral votes. A Presidental vote in Wyoming has 3.6x more weight than it does in California. They would be stupid to ratify an amendment that curtails their voting power.

While I agree with your point, I'd like to point out that it'll never get to the point where the States or the People even have the option to ratify such an amendment. In order for that to happen, there would need to be a bill passed in either the US House and US Senate by a 2/3rds majority in each chamber, or in 2/3rds of the States' legislatures by a simple majority, that would allow the Convention to happen.

And given how little those politicians agree with each other on anything other than giving themselves pay raises (and also passing laws which allow the police to arrest you at any time and any place because f*ck you, that's why; but that's another discussion for another thread), and the GOP's tendency to vote against anything and everything the Democrats vote for just because Democrats voted for it, I seriously doubt there's gonna be a Convention for a Constitutional Amendment any time soon.

A Dark Evil Omen: I bet we see it at least once again in the next 20 years, with the beneficiary being a Republican, again.

I doubt it, as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact will likely overtake the Electoral College in the next several years. And good riddance.

REASON #1: Listening to crap dribble like this.

Seriously, the more and more people that think this and don't vote, the easier it is for candidates to create very narrow constituencies to get in. The religious right is a big example, they're a very important voting block with a lot of power, because they come out to the polls. Yeah, individually they don't matter, but when they vote upwards of 90% their registration, suddenly that have power. The politicians favor them, because they need to to get elected. They probably make up 15-20% of the voting population, but 20-40% of the vote.

The truth is, the less people vote, the less your individual vote matters. Because it's much easier to corral narrow constituencies to over rule the will of the moderate middle.

So, keep not voting pleb. And let the crazies and the monied class choose the best way forward.

StoneColdAtheist: A Dark Evil Omen: I bet we see it at least once again in the next 20 years, with the beneficiary being a Republican, again.

I doubt it, as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact will likely overtake the Electoral College in the next several years. And good riddance.

How many red states do you think are going to sign on to that?

King Something: BKITU: King Something: And eliminating the Electoral College (or forcing all states with two or more House districts to go with the Maine/Nebraska system where each candidate gets EC votes based on which districts they actually won + 2 for the state-wide winner) would require a Constitutional Amendment -- and therefore would never, ever be ratified by enough of the less-populated states that benefit greatly from the EC.

Eliminating the EC is 100% dead in the water, and that is why. A vote of "not ratified" by 12 states is enough to block any amendment, and there are 17 states with 5 or fewer electoral votes. A Presidental vote in Wyoming has 3.6x more weight than it does in California. They would be stupid to ratify an amendment that curtails their voting power.

While I agree with your point, I'd like to point out that it'll never get to the point where the States or the People even have the option to ratify such an amendment. In order for that to happen, there would need to be a bill passed in either the US House and US Senate by a 2/3rds majority in each chamber, or in 2/3rds of the States' legislatures by a simple majority, that would allow the Convention to happen.

And given how little those politicians agree with each other on anything other than giving themselves pay raises (and also passing laws which allow the police to arrest you at any time and any place because f*ck you, that's why; but that's another discussion for another thread), and the GOP's tendency to vote against anything and everything the Democrats vote for just because Democrats voted for it, I seriously doubt there's gonna be a Convention for a Constitutional Amendment any time soon.


Oh, and the Amendment I suggested wouldn't apply to Wyoming anyway, since they've only one district.

A Dark Evil Omen: StoneColdAtheist: A Dark Evil Omen: I bet we see it at least once again in the next 20 years, with the beneficiary being a Republican, again.

I doubt it, as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact will likely overtake the Electoral College in the next several years. And good riddance.

How many red states do you think are going to sign on to that?

It won't matter once they get the 137 votes they need.

A Dark Evil Omen: MoronLessOff: Headso: TruTV? then again I guess still more credible than NRO, American Thinker, WND, Fox News, Wall Street Journal...

You forgot Huffpo and Daily Kos.

No, he really didn't, Mr. False Equivalency.

That's right. Now I remember why I stay away from the politics tab. I forgot which way fark leans.

StoneColdAtheist: It won't matter once they get the 1378 votes they need.

FTFM

ArkAngel:
Also concerning #1, does this writer seriously believe illegal immigrants should be allowed to vote?

Did you not notice the ACORN logo? I knew this whole thing would be a lie from the start.

MoronLessOff: A Dark Evil Omen: MoronLessOff: Headso: TruTV? then again I guess still more credible than NRO, American Thinker, WND, Fox News, Wall Street Journal...

You forgot Huffpo and Daily Kos.

No, he really didn't, Mr. False Equivalency.

That's right. Now I remember why I stay away from the politics tab. I forgot which way fark leans.

Sorry reality doesn't meet with your approval.

A Dark Evil Omen: MoronLessOff: A Dark Evil Omen: MoronLessOff: Headso: TruTV? then again I guess still more credible than NRO, American Thinker, WND, Fox News, Wall Street Journal...

You forgot Huffpo and Daily Kos.

No, he really didn't, Mr. False Equivalency.

That's right. Now I remember why I stay away from the politics tab. I forgot which way fark leans.

Sorry reality doesn't meet with your approval.

No, it's ok. I'm used to it.

MoronLessOff: That's right. Now I remember why I stay away from the politics tab. I forgot which way fark leans.

I understand, seeing opposing viewpoints is very difficult for right wingers.

Headso: MoronLessOff: That's right. Now I remember why I stay away from the politics tab. I forgot which way fark leans.

I understand, seeing opposing viewpoints is very difficult for right wingers farkers.

=)

Headso: MoronLessOff: That's right. Now I remember why I stay away from the politics tab. I forgot which way fark leans.

I understand, seeing opposing viewpoints is very difficult for right wingers.

That certainly explains the uproar around here whenever an NRO link goes green.

Cataholic: Headso: MoronLessOff: That's right. Now I remember why I stay away from the politics tab. I forgot which way fark leans.

I understand, seeing opposing viewpoints is very difficult for right wingers.

That certainly explains the uproar around here whenever an NRO link goes green.

I'm sure no one would complain if they ever greened an NRO link that actually had anything to do with, like, reality and what actually exists in the real world.

In fact, if NRO ever publishes anything like that, I would really, really hope Fark greens it because I wanna see this.

EyeballKid: StoneColdAtheist: Snapper Carr: SecretAgentWoman: #17: I'm a liberal living in Texas

*waves* So, that's two of us.

Or a Republican in California... ;^)

Or a black either in Ohio or Florida.

I guess you haven't visited Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, or Dayton...