We are so scary. Now the fact that godless Americans exist and that people actually talk to us is the subject of a political ad by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Watch this: it's got ominous music, it's got atheists saying there is no god, and Daylight Atheism gets another shout out…and that's about it. And it will effectively motivate the fundie base, I'm sure.
It also has various right wing blowhards huffing and puffing over the fact that atheists would like to remove god from the pledge of allegiance and our money. These guys have no imagination. Those are trivial, superficial issues. We want to change the culture as a whole so people make rational decisions about government and education, rather than relying on superstition and ignorant authority, and that's what ought to scare them more. We have the goal of making people think, something these trembling wahoos are ill-prepared to do.
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What a hack job! The boogey monster tone and the obvious quote-mining editing makes this ad seem to be more satire to me. Then again-- Poe's Law.
They want to ban Christmas!? There goes the 5 and under demographic...
You mean like this:
http://www.stlouisreview.com/article.php?id=16247
Where do I send my $$?
PZ -
Many people to not understand why Atheists are so 'militant'. Postings like this one show why - we are in a culture war against barbarians that deserve no quarter. By this I mean that they have the right to believe what they like, but we have the duty to call bullshit on their insanity. Or things will never change.
Could you imagine what our money would look like if we took all that god nonsense off? I mean, think a couple of months after the bills were released into circulation and looney Christians, armed with blessed Sharpies got their hands on it.
Yeah. Our bills would look like Pollack paintings.
If nobody hates you, you're not doing it right...
but what you guys face over there scares me sometimes. You'll be first against the wall, and it's not like you've ever actually done anything...
What are they doing on Fox? Don't they know they're just being used?
I would characterize the music as brooding and sad, not ominous. The effect, to put it into words, is that it is a terrible tragedy that our country has come to this, when godless Americans feel they have a chance of obtaining power.
Slimy stuff.
Well put! Superficial issues indeed. Aren't the fundies great at mis-direction? Kind of like the GOP.
PZ: While we do need to change society as a whole, part of the problem IS the little issues. What I feel we need to encourage more is for people to get out of their close little circles of friends and small towns and dogmas and learn.
:head scratch: Maybe it's just me but that commercial is almost laughable. My synopsis = "Big spooky atheists are coming to get your money and change it's language while we type!"
Hands off Christmas. We can rename it, but it was our mid winter holiday long before the church hijacked it.
What, nothing about our diet of babies and kittens?
Could this people be calmed down if you promised them to put more gods on your money bills? Mercurius is always a good choice, he could be accompanied by Kubera, the Hindu god of wealth...
Sweet! I had no idea Kay Hagan was such a heathen when I submitted my ballot voting for her earlier this month. I'm so pleased!
Not that it was hard to vote against Sen. Dole.
Convinced me to donate to Kay Hagan.
Any other godless heathens for me to support?
It's a bit of a shame that the Godless Americans woman mentioned the Mythical Jesus argument. Mythical Jesus is a fringe, crank position in the main, not accepted by the vast majority of relevant experts, be they Christian or not. We atheists rightly critcise theists when they come up with inane shit like creationism. We should be above this and not promote our own equivalent idiocies. We should be adhering to higher standards of evidence
I just LOVED the shot of Kay Hagan at a party. That was so incriminating. I tell you, I had to turn away in horror!
"Godless politician" ? That's awful, next thing you know everybody is speaking French, health care is socialized and people stop clinging to guns!
Want to contribute to Kay Hagan, who's being slimed in that ad?
https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/entity/18560
SteveF: Even IF Jesus were a real person, it has been so mythicized in the texts that we will never know anything about that person. The Jesus of the bible didn't exist, it may be based upon a spiritual leader, but the individual that is the basis for said myths is lost in the noise.
Wow! All that dramatic music, I didn't even know I was evil!
At least in the arguments I've been involved in, "Mythical Jesus" centers on how much of the biblical account can be false (even ignoring the supernatural stuff) and have it still be "Jesus".
Funny how "atheist" doesn't work for a Halloween party, rather it's religious figures that manage to be scary.
"Atheist" is more of a tribal (prejudicial) fear. So it works in churches, especially the fear that the atheist tribe might not be wrong.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." - Declaration of Independence
So...is there something not mythological about raising the dead, self-resurrection, walking on water, being born (?) by a virgin, etc.? Sounds pretty mythological to me...
Maybe the 'atheist community' needs a big sponsor, like the creos have, who can fund a marketing campaign to push some basic ideas about the basics of science, logic, statistical odds, open-mindedness and stuff like that. After all it works for product advertising and the election campaigns. If something is said often enough, people tend to start accepting it and then believing it. Maybe we should be doing our own infomercials to clarify our case and right thinking.
Sarah Palin is confident God will do "the right thing for America" on Nov. 4...
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/22/palin-god-will-do-the-r…
I actually am sort of worried about this election. There is enough built-in political bias in the Electoral College to where now relative liberals have to win huge in order to win at all. I fear at this point that McCain will win Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio by razor-thin margins, and that'll be enough... Even though Obama may get 1 million more popular votes.
Then, the loonies out there will say that's the way God wants it.
Polling numbers show Prop 8 winning in CA, by the way. Please, I implore you in CA, vote! I already have.
I want Prop 8 to go down in flames. Pun intended.
Oh Noes!
They're gonna kill Christmas! Those atheist bastards!
Video quote mining FTL!!
I don't know... I didn't think the music was ominous. Kind of pretty actually. I'm a pretty and godless American :-)
This is so great! Where do I sign up?
What shocks me the most is that this was not created by an individual fundamentalist, nor a fundamentalist lobby group, nor such a group surreptitiously created or funded by the Republican party.
It was openly and publicly created by the Republican party.
Do they think that atheists are so reviled and such a small percentage of the American population that we can be openly vilified without political cost?
Do they think that there are no freethinkers, doubters, agnostics, and atheists amongst the Republican party, and its supporters, that might reconsider their allegiance in the face of such blatant and consistent pandering to the religious right, notably at the expense of traditional Republican ideals?
Finally, are they so stupid, or think that their supporters are so stupid, to not realize that PAC is asking for nothing more than the legal separation of church and state that the American Constitution already demands?
Goddamn, o'Reilly is one smug bastard.
They sure made Ellen Johnson sound creepy.
Wait, she is a bit creepy. In fact, AA itself is a bit creepy, perhaps because the entire organization seems dead. What's with that stagnant, horribly outdated website?
Yes.
Yes.
No, they think that separation of church and state means keeping government out of religion and not the other way around.
So people shouldn't vote for Hagan because she showed up at an atheist meeting, but people should vote for Palin although she spoke at a traitorous separatist Alaskan political party convention (a party her husband belonged to). Riiiiight...
And why don't religious people hang themselves to get to heaven faster?
If only the inter-webs and technology existed to create such a video back in the 50's to bemoan the "forcing of god" into "The Pledge" and onto our currency... I mean, if a godless pledge and godless money was good enough for the founding fathers...
Wait... where have I heard that argument before...
This is why we need to redesign the very structure of our democracy. We need to move to proportional representation where the proportion of the electoral votes determine the proportion of representation in Congress. (A small number of states already practice this.) Of course proportional voting cannot apply to the Executive Branch. I am not sure if we should solely rely upon the popular vote for the Executive Branch; I am leaning in that direction. I also support term limits on every elected position including Congress and reconfirmation of Supreme Court justices.
I have no idea what will be the result of the election that is right around corner. Here is a link to some disturbing videos of crowds of republican supporters. I could not watch all of them all the way through it was too much for me.
http://thismodernworld.com/4513
Reminds me of an Edward Current quote:
"Barack Obama was wrong: these people don't cling to their guns and their God in tough times...they cling to their guns and their God all the time!"
There is a paper around that I will have to dig for that gives a pretty good explanation why a popular vote doesn't work.
Executive Summary: The Electoral College works for the same reason the World Series is the best of seven games and not the total runs scored.
Tee-hee-heee!
Snort, cackle - snort.
SteveF @18:
I guess I'm a total crank then.
Due to popularity alone, the burden of proof has been inappropriately shifted to having to prove a historical Jesus didn't exist. There is no justification for this, any more than the idea we should believe Heracles is historical until proven otherwise.
The complete lack of evidence for a historical Jesus is enough for me to tentatively agree with the Jesus-as-myth hypothesis, until such time as positive evidence for his historical existence can be presented.
I know the US has carefully kept various constitutional documents on public display (all the better for the wilfully ignorant to ignore them!) but did anyone think to keep representative samples of all issues of money in museums on public display for people to check such factual matters themselves whenever they want (ie so that those can be similarly ignored by those who'd rather believe religious lies)?
Notice how it cuts off after, "I don't think it should be a federal holiday..." I guarantee the next word was "but."
Hahaha. That's good stuff.
tsg @ #42, Is this the article you were looking for?
Math against tyranny. Discover, Nov 1996
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_n11_v17/ai_18762289
Perhaps a little visual opinion would be helpful, we all know some of the godly have reading issues:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5F_BRO69hg
Yeah, they're all pretty mythical as far as I'm concerned. The Jesus Myth (which is what the Godless American woman seems to be talking about) is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_myth_hypothesis
It's supported by fringe kooks like AcharyaS and basically isn't taken seriously by anyone in academia (irrespective of whether they are Christians or not). It's proponents and those who are related had to invent their own journal (Journal of Higher Criticism) so they could publish on it. What other groups can we think of who resort to such tactics? Yup, creationists.
@ SEF #45
It's not that hard to find out, really... "In God we Trust" was added, by congressional act in 1957, to all paper currency printed in the 1963 series and beyond. Although, the term has appeared on coins dating back to the early 1800's. There's a detailed history of this, interestingly, on the treasury department website.
I consider the motto on currency to be a rather trivial issue, but amusing nonetheless.
It's a convenient rallying cry for the religious loonies in their whining about "taking god out of the public square", blah, blah, blah.
But it is a good thing that they starting using the motto after the Civil War. Thank god for Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the rise of the KKK.
I mean, if we hadn't acknowledged the Big Guy Upstairs on our currency, things could have got REALLY ugly in this country.
Yes, that's is.
I have a mental block with Alan Natapoff's name. It makes the article hard to find.
Wow! We're really scary! I'm going go try and hide from myself. :P
We're in your country, changin your monies! Oh noes!
Oh I know it's true and not hard to find information on the fact of it, I just wondered about the availability of physical evidence - in front of which hordes of school-children might theoretically be dragged in order to inoculate them against that particular fundamentalist lie. As with other vaccinations, it won't be effective on all of them but it might help some individuals and even help the herd immunity a little.
The Journal of Higher Criticism is edited by Robert Price, I don't know if you've heard him talk, but he's quite knowledgeable about Biblical texts, and a former member of the Jesus Seminar. You should listen to his Bible Geek podcast, he is most certainly not a kook. I've never heard him say anything unreasonable or unsupported.
Thought experiment
Run a thematically identical ad, using the same music and editting techniques, but replace the atheists with Jews.
See what happens..
Off currency is not a huge issue for me, but out of the Pledge is pretty significant -- I have kids in third grade and kindergarten who have to hear this stuff daily. My third grader has already had to start having arguments with creationist classmates (he laid the smackdown on 'em, incidentally, and the teacher simply stayed out of the conversation).
Nice how they also brought up the "hanging" reference as if atheists wanted genocide, instead of an argument as to why everyone supposedly believes in God but for some reason is in no hurry to meet him.
Tossing up the argumentum ad populum here? Not a very good plan. Evidence, now that might sway folks. Got any extra-Biblical evidence for the existence of the fellow? Direct archaeological evidence? Even one single mention of him in contemporary* works? Anything at all? No? So why in God's name does Jesus get a free pass on historicity?
Oh, right, in God's name...
*And yes, I am thoroughly familiar with Josephus Flavius, Pliny the Younger and all the other post-hoc "chroniclers"
It makes me happy I already voted for Kay Hagan!
Mythical Jesus is a fringe, crank position in the main, not accepted by the vast majority of relevant experts, be they Christian or not.
Pretty much true. However, I've done a fair amount of reading of those very experts on the subject, and if you approach the question with an agnostic attitude about the historicity of Jesus, some interesting things pop out at you. First, most of these experts will agree, somewhat begrudgingly, that there appears to be a layer of Christ mythology (christology) from the Pauline writings on, that is, the very earliest available Jesus literature is markedly (ha!) mythical in nature. Reading these scholars "against themselves" it is possible to perceive a certain anxiety that the record doesn't preserve a more orderly or expected progression from culture hero to legendary figure to fully mythologized Christ, and furthermore, (again reading agnostically) to note that a more parsimonious explanation than the somewhat tortured efforts by the experts to resolve this seeming difficulty is simply that the myth did precede the legend and that no historical figure need be posited.
Second, when you get these experts actually talking about who they believe this historical figure was, what role he played in the society and religious life of 1st Century Judea, you get as many answers as you have experts. When every witness reports a different outfit on the Emperor, I feel justified at least considering the conclusion that he might be naked.
Third, and last for now, is Paul. Paul, Paul, Paul. (Reading the experts on Paul's theology, I have found, is one of those areas where reading against the grain most clearly brings out the fact that they are disregarding the null hypothesis out of hand --perhaps they're right to, but you'll rarely see a strong argument in the context.) Paul was a fairly pugnacius rhetoritician. We identify the rifts and anxieties of the earliest Christians largely by seeing what the crucial issues were in Paul's arguments. And if there was a historical figure known as a human man to the Twelve, with whom Paul met and had disagreements, why did they make no appeal to their own authority as earlier or more authentic witnesses than Paul, who, after all, only experienced post-Resurrection visions? That they did not is clear from Paul himself, who feels compelled to defend his authority on these grounds not at all in the Epistles. On his trips to Jerusalem 20-30 years after the supposed death of this figure, he evinces no curiosity about Golgotha, the tomb, Nazareth, Bethlehem, or any other historical detail of an earthly life of Jesus.
I could go on (like I haven't already), but I'm out of time for now.
We're here!
No fear!*
Get used to it!
*of God (absolute lack of fear is not recommended)
Maybe it's time to stop fooling around with shorts and go for a full-on movie. We could call it "The Militant Atheist" as an homage to the classic "Der ewige Jude".
Oh, right. Ben Stein already tried that, nevermind.
Well, I read that Wikipedia page and where it says that the "Jesus myth"
it sounds pretty spot on. Are you seriously arguing that all those bits about Jesus performing miracles, being the son of God, and so on are perfectly historical? Given that the identity of Jesus primarily defined by his miraculous performances, it seems perfectly legitimate to say that Jesus is non-historical construct.
Is there something I'm missing? I'm not particularly impressed when it's said "nearly everyone refutes the idea." I mean, nearly everyone refutes the idea that atheism is reasonable. So what?
Oh. My. Gawd.
We are scary. I actually peed myself just a little. I just hope I don't meet me in a dark alley. There's no telling what an atheist like me might do to me.
My hypothesis: Jesus was a real dude, but everything about him got so blown out of proportion (remember, up till a certain point the Bible was passed down VERBALLY) that ordinary acts of kindness turned into over-the-top miracles.
> The Electoral College works for the same reason the World Series is the best of seven games and not the total runs scored.
Ok, I have to take issue with the politics/sports comparison. We are in this mess largely because people treat their political parties like their favorite sports teams, and stick with them no matter what they do.
Secondly, nearly every presidential election under the EC has resulted in the same winner as the popular vote. The cases where it _wasn't_ were highly suspect and there was much outcry at the seemingly unfair result. This behavior is not an EC fluke, but is an inherent and predictable part of the whole scheme. Can you explain to me why it was good and proper in 1876, 1888, and 2000 for the popular winner to lose? Why it was best for the country that the elections turn out the way they did?
As for the abstract arguments for the EC... the usual claim is that it requires the candidate to have broader support, right? Except it doesn't. A candidate could theoretically win with 50.1% of a mere 11 states. I.e., 28% of the population. The EC means that candidates will ignore any states they are not likely to win in favor of trying hardest in populous battleground states. Nor does it discourage candidates from focusing on heavily populated areas where they can reach the greatest number of people.
I'm thumbing through the whole "pro"s list on Wiki, and I'm not seeing a single one that actually applies exclusively to the EC or is even a good thing. Encourages the two-party system? What nutcase thought that was beneficial?
OoooOOOO... vote for me or the atheists are gonna take over!!!!!
pathetic, but i bet it works :-(
"math against tyrrany" or not... the electoral college as it currently works makes people in "safe" states feel disenfranchised. I mean, when was the last time Wyoming voted democrat? was Wyoming even mentioned ONCE during the election? I wonder how many democrats stuck there and in similar states can't be bothered to vote...
People in swing states have more influence on elections; i can't see how that's fair. It also doesn't help that there's apparently a bunch of solidly republican states (at least for the last 40 years), but only D.C. votes consistently for democrats.
so mathematically it may work out that way, but psychologically it probably doesn't, and you end up with some voters being more powerful than others
Christians, of course, have a built in argument for why they don't hang themselves in a rush to meet god: it's forbidden. You kill yourself, you go to hell. You never meet god.
Of course, this wasn't always the case. In fact, one of the reasons that St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine declared suicide a mortal sin was for the very fact that christians were killing themselves off in the middle-ages to get to the bliss of heaven rather than live in the hell-on-earth that was middle-age Europe at the time. This, of course, is bad for business if you are the church. So, like anything else that's bad for business as a christian (birth control), make it a sin, evoke eternal damnation, spread the fear, and there you have it: built in business continuity.
Fair enough, but it's quite a stretch from suggesting a hypothesis to painting anyone who doesn't accept it as having "a fringe, crank position". Isn't there usually something that comes after the hypothesis stage of investigation?
no wonder they're scared: we're getting bigger!
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/02/25/us/25religion.html
i adore the trend lines in these data. can't wait to see where we'll be in ten years or so.
What is their agenda?? What is it these Godless liberals want??!!!
Well, right now..I am going to take a bath, and read my book. I wonder if it is a coincidence my book is about Texan ghoul who attacks a Presbyterian College History class? (No really, it is)
Later, my agenda will probably to make myself a sandwich, lettuce tomato and cheese, with a little mayo. No meat, because I am also an evil vegetarian.
Excellent comments CW @60, and CJO @62. :o)
This has to be a new low for politcal adds. I thought the lowest was in 2004, but they finally broke that record last year. The sad part is that there are going to be five or six WORSE than this one before election day.
That isn't a flaw in the comparison, though (mostly because how many fans a team has doesn't affect whether or not they win), and a popular vote isn't going to fix that anyway.
Quite simply because the President isn't chosen by the popular vote. I'm afraid the burden is on you to show why the popular winner should have been elected.
That has never even come close to happening. Meanwhile, you're complaining about 3 occasions where the popular vote went the other way by a marginal amount (3% in 1876 and less than 1% in the other two).
False dichotomy. That you can't find anything about the EC that you like doesn't make the popular vote the de facto winner.
The mathematics of it is that a districted vote (such as the EC) gives each vote more power. Alan Natapoff's paper (linked above) explains it very well.
That's because the districts are too big, not too small. Remember that the electoral votes in safe states are determined by popular vote.
States whose voters actually think about who they are going to vote for instead of blindly voting down the party lines are not the problem. That's what is supposed to happen. Give the voters in the safe states more power and it fixes it the right way.
Fixing the districts solves this problem. Eliminating them doesn't, it just inflicts it on the entire country.
and how small would the "districts" have to be? at which level does a person no longer feel that there's no point in voting because "everyone else" votes for someone else? that seems like an absurd exercise. besides, unless all of the U.S. is divided into small blocks of equal population-size and approximately even distribution (and being constantly adjusted for both those things), it would always be inherently unfair from a psychological point-of-view. and that it props up the two party system is a massive reason against it. doesn't matter how much power you have in your vote, when the options to vote on are so very limited.
everywhere except in the executive, this is less a problem with the electoral college vs. direct voting, and more a problem with the fact that every election for every position is a win-or-lose situation... either you get 100% or 0%, so if you feel everyone else is voting against you, then it doesn't matter how small or big the group is, a single person will still feel defeated before they've even done anything. on the other hand, when you get representative voting, then every vote is equal, and every vote is powerful, because if 49% voted for Party B, then there's going to be 49% of party B.
I don't know. There is an optimum size however that can be determined.
It's only psychologically unfair because people don't understand it and have a preconception that the popular decision is necessarily the right one.
The problems of a two-party system get worse, not better, with a popular vote. If you really want to fix the two party system, you might want to look into IRV. It allows people to make a "second choice" instead of having to vote for the least objectionable of the only two that can win. The problem with the "first past the post" system is the way two similar candidates can split the vote and give the candidate fewer people chose the election. To take the 2000 election as an example, imagine what could have happened if the people who voted for Nader could have made Gore their second choice.
Because that's largely what we mean by "democracy"?
On average across all votes it may give each vote more power, but if one looks at specific voters, it gives huge amounts of influence to those voters in the highly contested states (like Iowa and Florida), and practically no power to voters in the minority party in states with solid majorities. In effect, if you're a Democrat in Idaho, your vote counts for practically nothing -- if you're a Democrat in Florida, it could literally tip the balance of the election (as it could have in 2000).
In other words, what the EC does is vastly distort the influence of an individual's vote based on their geography, giving some huge amounts of influence, and effectively disenfranchising others. And that seems to be profoundly anti-democratic, especially as those highly contested regions tend to exert undue influence in Washington and receive special attention (e.g., would the US relations with Cuba be far better if it weren't for the ex-pats in Florida?).
So, the abstract mathematical argument may be well and good, but it ignores the realities of the system.
oh yes, i can see how IRV would be an even better choice that direct, voter-take-all voting in situations where there can only be one winner.
This isn't a democracy.
A popular vote doesn't fix this, it just inflicts it on the entire country. Fix the districting in Iowa and the problem is fixed without crippling the voters in Florida. Really. All you're doing is saying "my vote doesn't count so neither should yours!"
Again, the states whose voters think about who they are going to vote for aren't the problem. Crippling them doesn't solve anything. Fix the safe states by fixing the districts.
It at least has a chance. A popular vote doesn't even attempt to address it.
While I understand the reason why the electoral college is set up the way it is, it's always made me a little uneasy, and good points are made about the disenfranchisement that some voters feel as a result of this system.
Maybe I'm over-simplifying things, but I've always thought the following would be a pretty good system for changing the executive branch electoral system:
Each state, using the same criteria that is used to assign the number of House of Representative members per state, is assigned a number. For example, California would be assigned an 18, Rhode Island a 1, New York 12, Georgia 5, etc... This number would then become a multiplier. Votes for each state are counted, and a percentage of the total vote is given to each candidate. That percentage is then multiplied by the state's assigned multiplier. The totals are then tallied for each state, and the candidate with the highest number when all states are added together wins.
OK... so I'm now actually curious of what you all think of this method and why it wouldn't work or wouldn't be properly representative.
Good discussion, by the way.
Not much would have changed.
PRESIDENT99% of precincts
CandidatesVotes Vote %States WonEV
Gore 50,996,11648 %21 266
Bush 50,456,16948 %30 271
Other 3,874,0404 % 0 0
Let us assume that all "other" votes went to Nader (which they did not).
Gore would have received a total of 54,870,156 popular votes. He already won the popular vote in terms of raw numbers but tied in terms of percentage. In the cases outlined in the article where the person "won" the popular vote but lost the electoral vote the popular "winner" did not receive a statistically significant number of popular votes. Statistically the two candidates tied. Ergo, the electoral college, in those cases, functioned as a default tie-breaker. In terms of Nader and where those popular votes would have gone, the answer is nowhere. If all of the "other" popular votes went to Gore, the electoral college votes probably would have remained the same.
I think the real problem is in terms of how the districts are drawn. This is the basis behind district gerrymandering, something the Repugnants understand very well. After all, Tom DeLay is implicated in district gerrymandering in Texas in attempts to create more Repugnant Congressional (House) seats. It is something that the Democrat incumbent mayor in my city attempted in order to "ensure" his re-election against 2 other Democrat and 1 Republican contenders.
So while the Electoral College may be mathematically sound in principle (I have not finished the 11+ page article yet and Thank You for it), the Electoral College may be in need of a tune-up in terms of how the districts are drawn determining the electoral votes. This could explain why people psychologically perceive themselves to be disenfranchised.
Sorry, but when I see Bill O'Reily, I can't hit the close button fast enough.
Mostly because it's just a mathematically complicated way of having a popular vote.
The point behind the "all or nothing" electoral votes in each state is that the candidates will have to address the issues in more areas of the country in order to win the election, rather than just a small number of issues a majority of the population are concerned with.
Yeah, sports teams do not equal political teams.
Remember, the San Francisco Giants made the World Series a few years ago, and Barry Bonds was on that team.
(Disclosure: I was a Giants fan, until I finally realized what a ripoff pro sports is; Bonds' "issues" didn't help.)
I sincerely think the framers of our Constitution did not realize how large the disparities in state populations would become over the passing decades. California and Wyoming have the same number of Senators. If they'd known that an entire state of that size would end up with fewer people than San Francisco, I don't think they'd have done it that way.
States can now stack the deck if they want. What if the population of Wymoming, through the democratic process, decides to become West Wyoming and East Wyoming? What's to stop them? That'd give them six electoral college votes instead of the three they have now. You can use this approach as often as you wish.
Second, the EC really is a holdover from the slave era. The EC should have been abolished when the 14th Amendment passed. People no longer vote on behalf of each other; white males no longer represent for the women-folk and the slaves they own.
Note that I'm not entirely sure the EC should be entirely abolished. Perhaps you strip out the Senators from the equation, so each state's EC representation is based on the number of Congressional members only; Wyoming gets 1 EC vote, and CA gets 53. That still tilts the power toward the less-populous states, but to a lesser degree.
All I know is I think we have a very good chance here to have a very large Obama victory, based on the popular vote, and watching the EC go the other way. Razor-thin wins for McCain in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada would do the trick. This could easily end up 55%-45% Obama, and McCain getting elected.
Oh well, I guess if that's what God wants, who am I to argue?
hye tsg -
I know you expressed some good ideas for crackergate.com
would you like to manage it while I get set up in NZ?
if so, you know the address.
cheers
@ tsg
Agreed, but the main argument against a popular vote is how it isn't properly weighted to be nationally representative... correct? My thought was that such a system would address that concern...
Again, though... as I said, I'm sure I'm way over-simplifying the issue.
What the Electoral College article seems to miss, as well as many commenters here, is that the EC is not just "districting", but "districting with distortion". As each state gets an extra two votes, it distorts the value of low population states, giving them extra power. If you look at the 2000 election and take away the extra two votes for each state, the totals look different (I don't remember what they are).
Even if this were remedied, there's still the factor that those of us in "safe" states have practically no decision to make. tsg, you say:
States whose voters actually think about who they are going to vote for instead of blindly voting down the party lines are not the problem.
If my sister lives in California and I live in Georgia and we both vote for the same candidate, which of us is blindly voting and which is thinking? There's no reason to punish those who do think about the election by lumping their vote with a bunch of like-minded people.
I don't see why a few states like Florida and Ohio get a disproportionate amount of candidate attention. A candidate can get broad support in a popular vote by appealing to voters of different types--it doesn't have to get broken down by region or state.
And I think the baseball analogy is terrible. Runs are not votes--"one person one vote" is a principle that doesn't make sense in a game series or season. If it did then the games would not be important, only the runs. (Though they would have to play each game even if the leader was up 6-0...the other team might score enough points to win in last game). A better analogy might be innings...the winner of each inning doesn't count, but the overall votes do.
My hypothesis: Jesus was a real dude, but everything about him got so blown out of proportion (remember, up till a certain point the Bible was passed down VERBALLY) that ordinary acts of kindness turned into over-the-top miracles.
At what point do you decide, when "everything...[is] blown out of proportion," that the supposed 'original' proportions are in fact later fictions, the 'legendary rehabilitation' of a myth and not a man? In short, regardless of the historicity question, the record of early Cristian theologies does not support the popular and naive notion that 'at the root' is the record of a simple healer and wisdom teacher who taught in parables, and whose dealings were later confabulated to apocalyptic myth. Eschatological Christology is there from the beginning.
I was talking in terms of the Electoral Votes. One state, Florida, essentially decided that election by about 500 votes, and Nader had 97,000; much more than enough to give the state to Gore. Even if the remaining 60,000 go to Bush, Gore wins the election. I know, there are a bunch of assumptions in this model, but I don't think it is all that unrealistic.
I completely agree. Division by state is clearly not adequate. One good thing, though, is that each state is free to define their own methods (within reason) of determining who their electoral votes go to. They can redistrict themselves along county or other lines without having to amend the Constitution to do it.
@tsg:
The point behind the "all or nothing" electoral votes in each state is that the candidates will have to address the issues in more areas of the country in order to win the election, rather than just a small number of issues a majority of the population are concerned with.
Why is this desirable? What's wrong with the issues the majority are concerned with? Why do we have to be concerned with fringe issues instead of big issues?
ProfMTH, thanks for the data, now I can finish my assessment:
Candidates Votes Vote % States Won EV
Gore 50,996,116 48 % 21 266
Bush 50,456,169 48 % 30 271
If this is accurate, let's say we removed the extra two votes that large and small states both get. That makes it this:
Candidates Votes Vote % States Won EV
Gore 50,996,116 48 % 21 224
Bush 50,456,169 48 % 30 211
So with the extra distorting votes removed, Gore wins a solid majority of electoral votes.
Unfortunately, to change the EC would require a constitutional amendment, and the small states would never give up their extra power.
To be fair, Daylight Atheism did not get a shoutout. Daylight Athiesm did.
The comments on Youtube encourage me. It seems that a good number of viewers can see right through the bullshit in this video.
It's impossible to do that under the current system since the districts are the states. There are two exceptions, of course, but making the districts smaller is a state issue, and it is hard to see why a state like Iowa or Florida would change the system on their own, since they benefit from it so heavily.
In any case, the limit of "making the districts smaller" is, of course, removing them altogether and making each voter effectively a district.
But it doesn't work this way -- instead, it works precisely the reverse, producing the effect you state it helps to avoid. It focusses the campaigns on the small number of issues that a majority of the populations in just a few swing states are concerned with (again, I give you the Cubans in Florida). Far from requiring broad cross-country appeal, a campaign can be run in just a handful of key states, knowing that there is no point to spend time, money, or attention on the "safe" states of either party. That's why you never see parties with a "50-state strategy", where they campaign and advertise and talk about issues relevant to all states. It's why one can run a "Southern strategy", and focus on getting bare majorities in key states by appealing to rather unpleasant attitudes, because those votes have far more power, and are not moderated by the other party's voters in that state or in other "safe" states. It is why one has the whole issue of "battleground" states, and the focus on what states were won in the last election.
Without the electoral college, McCain would still be campaigning in Colorado, and Obama would have reason to go to places like Montana and Utah. Without the electoral college, people in Utah (and in New York) would know their vote counted equally no matter what party they voted for.
The system is silly. It was devised for a far different era, and it does not serve the US well today.
Get with the programme! It's "There is probably no gods"!
GUT forbid people want politicians who actually represent them! What's next? That Christians must vote for Christians?
Your safe state's electoral votes are decided by popular vote.
I don't even know what you're trying to say here.
They get the attention because the attention will get the candidate their votes. If every state was up for grabs, they would all get the attention. Does it make more sense to take the power away from those who do have it or give those who don't more power?
But he can win more easily by just appealing to the biggest concerns of the majority of voters leaving the minority powerless. You've no doubt seen how some candidates can invent issues to garner votes, can you imagine what would go on if he just had to solidify a majority of the country over, say, a religious issue?
That is precisely the point behind the analogy. The winner of the World Series shouldn't be decided by the team that has one great game against one bad pitcher, but the team that can beat the other one consistently. In the same way, the person who is elected President of the United States should be the one who addresses most the issues of all the people, not the one who addresses the few issues of most of the people. The electoral college is an attempt to get the candidates to address most of the issues of all the people. The popular vote doesn't.
This is one North Carolinian who is voting for Hagan.
False dichotomy. They should be concerned with both.
tsg, you've made this claim twice now - do have any evidence for it? Isn't just as likely (or maybe even more likely) that swing states have approximately equal numbers of party line voters, compared to safe states? Having lived in Ohio (a swing state) and Minnesota (a safe state), I personally saw no evidence that voters in Ohio were more careful or deliberate with their choices.
My friends, we have made a huge leap forward.
This is where we are now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salute
This is where we will be soon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_presidential_campaign,_2008
It will happen in the lifetime of some people reading this that America voting for a man or woman to hold the highest office will not pay undue attention to their sex, the color of their skin, their racial origin, their sexuality or their ability to pretend that they talk to an invisible friend.
I pray for this every night. And see: prayer works!
Do you think it's going to be easier to get 2/3 of the states to ratify an amendment making the Presidential Election a popular vote?
Obviously. I never said that smaller was always better. Right now they're too big, but you can go too far in the other direction as well.
Because the districts are too big.
No, they would be campaigning in the most populated cities and ignoring the rest of the country.
Then make it a tyranny where every vote has pefectly identical power: none at all. Unless you are also addressing how to maximize the power of each vote you are completely ignoring half the problem.
Poke all the holes you want in the Electoral College, it doesn't support the idea that a popular vote is better.
I'm not entirely clear on what your saying here? Are you suggesting that making each vote count the same (i.e. a pure popular vote) would make all votes worthless?
It's pretty much the definition of a "swing state": one that can be "swung" from one candidate to another.
I made no claim that their choices were rational, only that the state as a whole could be influenced. Whether they are making smart decisions is an entirely different argument.
The simple fact is that safe states are ignored by both parties precisely because they are safe states (one can't win them, the other can't lose them), and the voters of those states are complaining that the states who can be won, and thus get all the attention, have so much power. If you want the candidates to pay attention to your state, he has to have a chance to win it.
Even if the swing states have 99% of the population evenly divided among blindly following party lines and the entire state is decided by the other 1%, it's the 1% who are doing it right. The entire election could be decided by one guy, and he isn't the one who's wrong. He'd be getting all the attention, and he may not be making smart decisions, but it's the other people who aren't deciding at all who are doing it wrong.
I'm saying that making each vote equal in power isn't enough, you also have to maximize the power of each vote. A popular vote doesn't do that.
I know what a swing state is, thanks.
What you said was "States whose voters actually think about who they are going to vote for instead of blindly voting down the party lines are not the problem." My point is that you have no proof that swing state voters are actually thinking more about who they vote for than safe state voters. There are other plausible explanations.
Can you explain what you mean by "maximize the power of each vote", and how you do that while also keeping everyone equally enfranchised?
I haven't figured out how to do this, but... Well, why not make it so voters in large metro areas have a greater weight attached to their vote than those in rural areas? As a voter in an urban area, I think I face more issues on a daily basis than voters in my county who live in rural areas.
Of course, I don't mean that. But this is, in effect, the exact opposite of what voters in Wyoming experience now.
I don't think what they have is fair.
I don't think what I'm proposing is fair.
Personally, I've never seen land vote. I've only seen people vote. So why is it, then, that a vote from Wyoming is worth 3 times my vote, when it comes to presidents?
(I don't mean to pick on Wyoming, by the way. I really like what I've seen of Wyoming.)
The best part is that they totally misspelled "responsible" in the tag at the end there.
Some scholars (e.g. Eisenmann) suggest that the Jesus of the Bible is a mythologized amalgam of several people.
Several points to note:
1. There is no historical contemporary evidence of Jesus. None. The closest you get is a mention of "James, brother of our Lord" in one of Paul's letters.
2. Paul's letters are the earliest Christian writings, and they do not mention a historical Jesus, even in a discussion of past events. Jesus is never described as anything but a spirit, or vision.
3. There are some historical characters (i.e. ones who are mentioned by contemporaries) such as James the Just, who would serve as a model for Jesus. Another is one Judas - see 4.
4. Roman records show Judas was persecuted by the Romans, as he had a claim to being the King of the Jews. His children were let go, since they did not seem interested in the throne, but the grandchildren were rounded up and executed. As background, Herod's second wife, Miriamme (Mary) was the heir to the Macabeean throne. Any son of hers would have been a claimant to be King of the Jews. Her two sons by Herod were executed. Earlier, Herod's brother Joseph was executed on suspicion of adultery with Mariamme. This piece of history would seem to be a possible source of the Nativity tales, added to the gospels early on, but not in the earliest version.
5. I think a possible hypothesis is that Jesus is an amalgam of mythological figures, as well as James (a righteous teacher) and Judas (rightful King).
6. If Jesus was a real person, and you wished to follow his teachings, you would need to be a devout Jew following the letter of the law to an extreme. Just look at the Sermon on the Mount; which amounts to an exhortation to control not only your deeds, but your very thoughts. Paul turned this completely around, and preached abandonment of Jewish Law, and so founded Christianity.
On noes, the secularists are coming. We don't want to take personal responsibility for our actions!
Capital Dan: Could you imagine what our money would look like if we took all that god nonsense off? I mean, think a couple of months after the bills were released into circulation and looney Christians, armed with blessed Sharpies got their hands on it.
Why shouldn't we start? It's legal for us to write on money, so why not cross out the "In God We Trust" or, like I do, cross out the "God" part and put in "Vishnu" or "Allah" or "Thor."
When I get paid on Friday, I'll be sending Kay Hagan $20.
Had Enough Religious Bullshit!
http://edkrebs.com/herb/
These guys need to realize that they're gonna totally alienate everyone by being so shrill and strident and militant towards atheists.
First off, it is arguably far more fair that the elections should be decided by the most populous areas, rather than regions with small populations exerting influence beyond their size (a side-effect of the "at least two EC votes" rule. But second, this presumes that all campaign issues are regional, which is precisely what the EC enforces. That is not necessarily the case, of course, as both people in cities and rural areas might have issues that cut across locale (such as, in this election, the wars, the economy, etc.). And in this day and age, campaigning electronically is pretty much the norm -- what going to a strict popular vote would do is wipe out the micro-targeted ads in small swing communities, and instead force the candidates to appeal to a broad range of voters, no matter where they are geographically.
Right, and this is purely a creation of the EC. In a pure popular vote system, no group of voters could be ignored, because every vote does indeed count equally. And although the "average" voting power may be lower, the equity of the system is much greater (and the canard about vote equity in a tyranny is just that, a canard).
The Alan Natapoff paper I linked to earlier in the thread explains it better than I can, but simply, the power of a vote can be measured by the chance it has in changing the outcome of the election, in other words, how many votes would have to be changed to affect the outcome. In a straight popular vote, in all but the closest of elections, that chance is extremely low.
If the 2000 Presidential Election were decided by popular vote, Gore would have won by 500,000 votes. It was one of the closest popular votes in history, and still 500,000 votes would need to change to affect the outcome. However, because it was an electoral college system, it was decided by a little more than 500 votes in Florida. Only 500 votes had to change to affect the outcome.
Now, I know some are going to complain that it was Florida that decided it and it's unfair that they had that power. But, the election was decided by 5 electoral votes, and there are 38 states that have 5 or more electoral votes. Of those states, 9 of them had less than a 5% margin (4 voted for Bush), and another 8 had less than a 10% margin (5 voted for Bush).
Missouri could have swung the election by changing 80,000 votes, Ohio by 165,000, Tennessee by 80,000, Arkansas by 50,000, Arizona by 100,000, West Virginia by 40,000, Louisiana by 130,000, Virginia by 220,000, and Colorado by 130,000. All of these are significantly less than the 500,000 that would have needed to change to affect a popular vote. Even Nebraska, which voted heavily towards Bush, could have affected the outcome by only changing 200,000 votes, and Mississippi (Bush won by 17%) would only need 270,000 to change. The voters in these states all have more power because of the electoral college.
Yes, you can complain that the voters in Texas (1.4 million in favor of Bush) and California (1.3 million in favor to Gore) don't have as much power as a voter in West Virginia, and you can solve that problem in one of two ways: by crippling the West Virginia voter with the same popular vote that is crippling California and Texas voters, or by empowering the Texas and California voters by taking advantage of the system that makes West Virginia votes so powerful. California and Texas can district themselves (without an amendment, and without the permission of the swing states who would never ratify a popular vote) to give each of their voters more power. Then California and Texas stop being safe states and get more attention from both candidates instead of from neither.
Neither Robert Price nor Bart Ehrlman, a former evangelical Christian, sound like kooks in their writings. There are none of the trappings of pseudoscience. There's just a null hypothesis and a lot of textual evidence that the details of Jesus life were added after Christianity came into existence. It seems to be a blend of Greek Cynicism and Mithraism. And. interestingly, the first known graffito mocking Christians gave the typical Christian a Greek name.
Wrong. Whole blocks of votes can be ignored if they don't constitute the majority. Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. But feel free to discount that as a "canard" as well.
Until you deal with the other half of the problem you have no argument.
Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.
You have yet to show why a simple plurality of a popular vote is necessarily the best decision for everyone. Keep in mind, neither candidate in the 2000 election had a majority of the vote. Are you seriously suggesting that a minority of people should decide for the whole country? Isn't that precisely what you are arguing against?
I can't help your dogmatic devotion to an idea you can't support. Argue against Natapoff's claims. The math is on his side.
That is why I said districting is so important and the problem of district gerrymandering is so important. The Repugnants are fully aware of this "loophole" in the EC. Why do you think Tom DeLay attempted to illegally redistrict portions of Texas? So Texas would have EVEN MORE Repugnant districts! Of course this was in the context of House seats and not the Presidency. But the two are related. The Electorates are related to the districts.
Obviously it needs fixed. But dumping districting entirely is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Texas and California are perfectly capable of solving their own problems without inflicting their misery on the rest of the country.
Ahh yes... The THINKING Obama folks...
Tax people. Spend too much money.
Borrow more from countries that produce their own wealth and have savings...
Try and control the markets with "implementations" of various hackneyed "plans"...
Yep. Change is gonna come, because we godless liberals are THOUGHTFUL...
"""As all of this unfolded, the financial crisis revealed the prescience and importance of Paul's warnings about the Federal Reserve's inflationary monetary policy. This issue, which Paul stressed repeatedly during his primary campaign--much to the eye-rolling amusement of supposedly serious journalists and pundits--has proved far more relevant in this election cycle than anyone could have guessed. It is particularly unfortunate for the country that there will not be a unified, coherent movement to give voice to this critique at a time when we need it most."""
Yes we can!
Oh brother...
tsg:
For clarification purposes: I said I was leaning towards supporting the end of the EC when applied to Executive Branch elections.
"Can you explain what you mean by "maximize the power of each vote", and how you do that while also keeping everyone equally enfranchised?"
No, but I can tell you how to empower voters.
Return the federal government to a Constitutional government as much as possible. Dismantle the IRS and get rid of the income tax. Have your state government step up and reassert itself, tossing out the Federal interlopers. Get involved in your state and local politics...
No longer will the federal government try and bully the states around, and no longer will we all be subjected to gross mismanagement elected by less than 30 % of the populace...
I don't know if I'm just seeing things or not, but I could have sworn that what that atheist guy who was being interviewed said was "I don't believe Christmas should be a federal holiday, but..."
So, in other words, the entire video was probably outright quote mining.
Why am I not surprised?
You've got to admit, calling yourselves "Godless Americans" is just asking for trouble. Unfortunately it will too easily be associated with being immoral, evil, untrustworthy, etc. It makes them an easy target for ridicule by the religious. Not the best way to win hearts and minds in my opinion, and is basically setting themselves up for easy straw-man attacks (which most people can't discern from logical arguments).
That's what I understood you to mean, and what I was talking about.
It's taking the word back like gays did.
If you spend all your time limiting what you say by how the bigots will misrepresent it, you'll end up not saying anything.
I see SoO still thinks we are listening to him. SoO, you rants were old news two months ago, and haven't changed at all. Back to kill file with other idiots.
It's amazing that SfO still posts his vapid inanity with such conviction. What's his game?
He has very small government/libertarian philosophy-or so he claims.
I suspect he is a rethuglican agent trying to keep us from voting for Obama. After all, conspiracies are everywhere. :)
What's his game?
When he feels persecuted, then he knows he's right.
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
--Carl Sagan
I get that much about him, I just don't get why he spends so much time posting here were his reception is frosty. Not a single person has come round to his way of thinking, he's just an eyesore.
In other words... "Forget the Constitution, let's just go back to the Articles of Confederacy."
Thanks tsg. I'm pretty new to this subject, and blog, and will read up some more on the Godless Americans and their strategies. Of course, that's more than 99% of the fundamentalists will be bothered to do :-)
I just thought "Godless" is a bit of a red rag to a bull. Of course, that may be the strategy - to get attention.
Beautiful.
"Atheists make lousy suicide bombers" -- bumper sticker seen recently.
There is a movement afoot to get the presidency elected on a popular vote method, and it would not require a constitutional ammendment. Essentially, the plan is for states that together control 50% +1 of the EC membership to agree to allocate their Electoral Votes according to the nationwide popular vote.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
I'll be voting for her! Despite the spin, this message just inspired me.
Daylight Atheism gets another shout out
No, they didn't.
DaylightAthiesm got a shout out. Is there something that keeps theists from being able to spell?
Dagger:
Ha! Somehow the typo in the word "responsible" really jumped out at me too...strange how that is. Kind of sums up how badly produced the ad was (I mean, beside the amateur cuts, lack of flow, and completely boring presentation). If that's the level of quality assurance that was applied to it, no wonder it made me laugh more than it upset me.
Or maybe the RNC made that mistake on purpose, so that they can claim innocence when another unbalanced religious type gets frightened by this and takes divine justice into their own hands..."You see your Honor, the video clearly states that we're only 'repsonsible', not responsible as the prosecution is claiming."
*sigh*
that's what I get for actually trying to get some work done. the conversation has completely taken off without me :-p
i've noticed this quote in the article, too. and I'm thinking if this is his starting point, he's got the premise wrong. in a tyrrany, "votes" are not all equal: one person gets to have all the say (i.e. their "vote" counts for 100%), whereas the REST doesn't have any say. it's a 100% unequal system.
in a monarchy, a small group of people around the ruler get to have some say, so within that circle, the voting is fairer, and the participants are more enfrenchised; the rest of the population still has 0%, and therefore they are still completely disenfrenchised.
in a democracy, everybody has the same percentage of a vote. in a country the size of the U.S., that amounts to 1/3Mio.th of a percentage point... it's vanishingly small. this gives groups and organizations more power, since they can, as a block, increase their influence and can get candidates to listen to them more easily. i think that's where this idea from empowering people by grouping them into districts comes from. the flaw is that to empower, the groups should be voluntary associations. with the internet, and redeye flights, geography is no issue in such organization, but can become a hindrance when you happen to be stuck living with a group of people who aren't going to agree with you if their life depended on it. since not everybody can freely choose to move to where they can find an association of likeminded people, we get a tyranny of geography.
because the only way you could turn kentucky into a swing-state is by murdering 80% of the population, which i'd rather not advocate. (note that the "blue" states swing more often than the "red" states, which in addition also get the underpopulation-bonus). being an atheist stuck in kentucky means your vote counts for shit, no matter what you do. because you won't find enough people you can possibly sway to change their mind.
on the other hand, if we had a popular vote, with people banding into voluntary, national organizations (well, local chapters and all), then every group with a large enough membership would get noticed, regardless where they are geographically. so being an atheist in kentucky would mean something, because atheists would be perfectly capable of making 10% of the vote as a whole... and maybe then they'd have to be taken seriously (as opposed to now, when they only serve as scarecrows). and activism would mean more, too, because finding people who listen is easier than finding people who listen just where you happen to be.
and i still think a popular vote, combined with IRV, so that this country could finally have more than just 2 parties that matter.
Ahh, I see 2Dman beat me to it. I wrote my comment in complete ignorance of yours, 2D, even though our phrasing was rather similar.
SfO gets off talking about shit he knows nothing about. He's the type of kid that has such an inferiority complex from being unable to play sports, or not being valedictorian, or was/is awkwardly social. He gains his confidence by spewing an ideological fallacy that grants him solace. He takes pride when others disagree, because it unequivocally lends him, and his ideology credence.
Sorry Scott, you were a piss ant then and you're a piss ant now. Go back school.
Does anyone know what the music was? It sounded vaguely like Philip Glass, but then again, I have trouble picking music in different settings.
I'm an Australian, so the idea of an Electoral College to me seems a little (actually a lot) bizarre to me, though I think I do understand how it works. Wasn't there some proposal some years ago (by California I think) that all the states would legislate to distribute electoral college votes in proportion to the popular vote in each state, getting away from the winner takes all model and moving more to a popular national vote deciding the election. What happened to that idea?
Of course, the other problem is the non-compulsory voting. The campaign seems to be just to motivate your support base to get out and vote rather than discussing the issues. In Australia, it is compulsory to attend a polling booth and have your name crossed off the roll else you will get a nasty letter and possibly a fine, so the turnout at elections is almost 100% (although with a sizeable informal vote of 2-4%). In the last state election in Western Australia the incumbent got defeated (unexpectedly according to the pundits) because he called the election a year early, tried to run a presidential style campaign, etc. I am a supporter (and member) of his party, but I wasn't disappointed at all to see him lose. The enthusiasm and interest of the electorate to the election ranged from cynicism to boredom.
oh and also, by somehow magically making your "safe" state a swing state, you also unwillingly give a voice to your opponents, thus not so much amplifying your own voice, but rather the voice of everyone you happen to be geographically stuck with. so maybe liberal Utahans(?) would prefer not to give their state a larger say in the national debate
i swear there where paragraphs in #142. i don't know what happened to them :-/
Great commercial! I'll vote for Kay Hagan! And I'm not even American!
Seriously, I would agree with some and disagree with some of what the PAC spokespeople said - it's dishonest in suggesting that all atheists want and think the same. Anyone who's sampled Pharyngula knows that's utterly false. This is actually a very nasty film: stereotyping, accusations of conspiracy, guilt by association. I'm hoping very much the people behind this are going to lose, and lose badly on November 4 - and not least, because I know what an immediate blow their victory would be to many admirable Americans I've argued with (and against) here.
Is there a "Reds under the Bed" style epithet in popular use for this sort of thing? There probably should be one if there is not. Let the coining begin.
"Atheists in the Attic" springs to mind but is kinda lame (sounds too much like 'Angels in the Attic'. Maybe that's a good thing)
Prof MTH @ # 39: We need to move to proportional representation where the proportion of the electoral votes determine the proportion of representation in Congress. (A small number of states already practice this.)
Oh? Name 'em, please!
Maine and Nebraska (per Google).
http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2008/07/except-nebraska-and-main…
bah. one of those days i'll learn to make my point more clearly and possibly even concisely
anyway, i was saying that claiming that tyranny makes all voters absolutely equal isn't true. it's actually the opposite, where one vote counts for everything, and thousands (or millions) count for nothing
and, secondly, that it doesn't matter if part of the population gets to have powerful votes, if there's still a part of the population that simply doesn't matter. and since there's places that aren't possible to turn into "swing" states withing a generation or more (short of mass murder), the EC disenfranchises those that are stuck there (and even disadvantages those that "win" because they're not really taken into consideration during elections. they're safe. they just need to be placated enough to show up and vote). hence the "tyranny of geography" comment.
With respect to the electoral college system helping to bring about moderation and avoid polarization, as Hively cites Natapoff claims, don't I recall there was some unpleasantness consequent on politcal polarization in the 1860s, which some have gone so far as to term a civil war?
cites Natapoff claims -> cites Natapoff as claiming@153.
Oh don't get into a lather about reds under the bed.
It's just my ruby slippers.
I think that "in God we trust" should be taken off US money.
With a supposed separation of church and state there is no reason why it should be there. It's irrelevant in respect to what currency is. It doesn't bother me that it's there and it shouldn't bother the religious if it was missing!
What has currency got to do with religion anyway - other than most churches worship it!
"SfO gets off talking about shit he knows nothing about. He's the type of kid that has such an inferiority complex from being unable to play sports, or not being valedictorian, or was/is awkwardly social. He gains his confidence by spewing an ideological fallacy that grants him solace. He takes pride when others disagree, because it unequivocally lends him, and his ideology credence.
Sorry Scott, you were a piss ant then and you're a piss ant now. Go back school."
Another brilliant and supremely ironic diatribe by a fuctwik with a pewter...
Name the "ideological fallacy" in my previous posts. Ideological difference, sure. Ideological fallacy? The mind boggles...
A room full of sycophantic liberal ideologues is the perfect place to remind folks just how far we've all fallen as a Constitutional government. The upcoming hard times will wake some people up. Others will continue to count anal polyps and wonder why Obama hasn't "fixed" the economy since they put so much faith in his business as usual change mantra.
As we continue to pay ten percent (and rising) of our taxes just in interest payments, and another twenty percent on top of that trying to maintain a military empire, (and China and the ME and Russia all collude and rid themselves of US dollars), the "liberal" class will have to join the lines of the Bush lickers where bread gets doled out from dirty boxes...
People tried to wake y'all up, and y'all were convinced you had safety in your huddled numbers...
Now I have to go off and giggle at the intelligence of a bunch of atheists, gathered on an atheists website to promote atheism... Teehee...
Y'all are a class act...
I live in Charlotte, NC and a funny thing has happened recently. Each time I get an ad in the mail that intends to SMEAR Kay Hagan, it simply ends up reinforcing my support for her. So far I've received (from Elizabeth Dole, the Republican incumbent) an ad that links Hagan to Godless Americans PAC, and (most recently) I got one that says Kay Hagan opposes a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
Oh, the irony, that smear ads would actually solidify my support for the person being 'smeared'.
I can't wait to vote.
Part of the smear is linking Hagan to Massachusetts, home to Unitarians, married fags, Commie Harvard perfessors & Kennedys.
Show us how to be a class act and leave. You wore out your welcome months ago.
According to the link provided by Nerd of Redhead @ # 151 (citing Wikipedia):
Quite interesting, and a small step forward, but this system is apparently applied only to presidential electors, not Congressional representation.
Which state will be first to choose its own legislature by proportional representation?
(Holds breath, turns blue, falls down.)
Thankyou Nerd.
I am so gawd damned sick of Scott stinking up my already fundy assed state that I could just pole axe him.
Shut the fuck up Scott! Shut up, shut up, shut up.
*headdesk*
It's an analogy. Like all analogies, it breaks down at some point. But it is sufficient for explaining that just having equal say isn't enough. Those thousands (or millions) are all equal with no power. A popular vote is all equal with next to no power. And even if an imperfectly districted system leads to slightly lesser equality with much greater power, it's still a good trade.
There's no reason, except possibly tradition, that districting should be required to be within states. But yeah, under any districting scheme there would always be the possibility of being a small minority, but at least it doesn't subject the entire country to it. All I can tell you is, if it happens to you, move. But changing to a tyranny of the majority not only doesn't solve this for you, but takes away the option of moving as well.
What it really comes down to is that the popular vote is a solution in search of a problem. It's only happened three times in two hundred years that the popular vote went the opposite way the electoral vote did, it was never more than a 3% difference (which I'm willing to bet is well inside the margin for error and isn't significant even if it's not), and is based on nothing but an unsupported assumption that the popular vote is what "should" happen.
other countries manage to use some form of direct, popular voting, and haven't collapsed yet.
besides, you should really read my entire post, since most of your answers are either already addressed in the rest of that post, or give an alternative to geographic organization... which always results in skewing and marginalizing, if only over time.
But if you district in the only fair fashion, with districts whose value is weighted by population, then you get precisely what you say is unfair, which is candidates concentrating their efforts on the major population centres. Indeed, the more you district to avoid the repugnance of the same states determining the election year after year, the more you approach pure popular vote.
The EC doesn't help that -- it just changes who the wolves are, and enshrines their power. (And any system where a candidate can theoretically get over 53% of the popular vote and still lose the presidency is profoundly undemocratic.)
But the current system ignores practically everyone but those tiny few in the "battleground" states. Ask folks in Utah how much they've seen Obama, and ask folks in Oregon how much they've seen McCain. How is it possibly beneficial to democracy when only certain small regions of the country regularly control the balance of power? How is it democratic that small, narrow special interests in places like Iowa, Florida, and Michigan get such huge political attention?
With a pure popular vote, a candidate could be successful by broadly appealing to voters across the country, even in places where he or she would not win a majority of votes. And in today's networked world, we regularly see that groups made of up geographically disparate individuals can nonetheless organize and and be powerful forces when the system allows it (just look at the "Atheist Bus" fundraiser). The EC eliminates the possibility of appealing to groups who may share interests but are physically dispersed, and ensures that politics is dominated by geographically defined interests. That is simply nuts in the current world.
And look, if grouping people is the key to preventing electoral tyranny, why group by geography? Why not group people by, say, age bracket (each 5-year grouping gets EC votes proportional to their population, like states do now)? Or by religious affiliation? Or by ethnicity? Why would these systems be any more arbitrary than grouping people together based on what their current addresss is? When the US constitution was written people rarely strayed far from where they were born, and so regional affiliations and concerns may have made some sense at that time, but with people so mobile now, why group on where one's domicile is, rather than on other characteristics that individuals may feel are more important?
Yes, you are the voice of reason around here but we all keep a delusion that the ideology you spew has no pragmatic value in this modern day and age. Kind of doesn't help that you ignore most economists and go on incessantly characterising opposition arguments as if Obama is going to invoke some magic to make it all better. It's like you don't even read what others write, just assume they are all leftist liberal sycophants and them proclaim the intellectual authority. Even if some of your ideas have merit, the way you present your ideology is uncompromising and polemic. You come off as a real douche to anyone who disagrees with you.
@Tulse #165
Look, it's clear you're only interested crippling the rest of the country to solve a problem that has only even presented itself three times in two hundred years and never significantly, based on an unsupported notion that the popular decision is necessarily the right one. I've explained my position and provided a source to back it up. You don't get it, you don't want to get it, and I no longer care if you do.
I was going to vote for Dole (go ahead, laugh), but those mail-outs really pissed me off. Why now the video? Is that really what Liddy Dole thinks about "North Carolina values"--that we're the kind of bigoted rednecks who would fall for that crap?
I live in the "Research Triangle" area, so I'm probably surrounded by a more highly-educated and diverse population than I would be elsewhere in the state (I'm not being elitist... look up the region on wikipedia), but I certainly hope that Dole is the one who is out of touch with North Carolinians. Coming out as an Atheist is no big deal in this area, and I'd hate to find out that other NC Atheists are not so fortunate.
You do realize that the current system encourages them to focus on a few minor issues of only few people in key states, correct?
Also, your analogy to baseball is not even close to philosophically sound. Please leave analogies to philosophers :(
Here I thought that's what the ideal of a democratic vote was.
Not to say it's the best system, hell, I'd much prefer a vote-per-IQ point system but that statement just seems absurd on its own, given we're talking about voting.
I'm talking about fixing the current system. It's not necessary to abandon it to do that.
Please leave the sanctimonious bullshit for someone who gives a damn what you think.
Another reason to vote for Obama: http://www.zombietime.com/prairie_fire/
But what about the naughty voters?
They get a spanking. Then comes the oral sex
Wait, wait, wait. Are you telling me you guys support [bleh] equal rights for all? Are you kidding me? I mean, sure, it's great being a free-thinker, devoid of dangerous delusions of end times and holy spooks watching me sleep. But to think that I can have such thoughts and still be treated as equal to the glorious saved Americans? I don't know. Are we still even human? Shouldn't we be, I don't know, crushed with stones until we cry for forgiveness or collapse from our willful ignorance of their imaginary friend? I think the video clearly shows we have no right to seek a voice in Washington. George HW Bush made it fairly clear, we are not "True Citizens" of the Holy United Christian Empire of States of Real Small Town America.
Yesterday, we learned that militant atheists were buying ads on buses. I felt chills of terror run down my spine.
As if that weren't scary enough, today, we learn the true horror of the militant atheists' evil agenda:
1. Removing two words from the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance--words that have been in the pledge since 1954, for crying out loud!;
2. Removing four words from U.S. coins, words that have been on coins since 1956! Have mercy!!!!; and
3. Totally banning Christmas by removing it as an U.S. federal holiday, meaning that no one in the U.S. could ever celebrate Christmas again, even in their own homes or churches! No more Santa. No more Christmas trees. No more wild consumer holiday spending. This simply cannot stand in the real America populated by true pro-Americans!!!!
This is terrifying stuff. What's next?!! I'm so afraid.
"Ominous music?" Meh. Couldn't compose their way out of a paper bag.
At #156 Mbee wrote:
What has currency got to do with religion anyway - other than most churches worship it!
Why, "In God we trust" reminds God that we really really do trust Him, even when we see that He works in truly strange and very mysterious (and sometimes seriously cruel and disturbing) ways.
And, in return, for this written confirmation of our trust, God keeps the US monetary system and economy strong.
No telling what awful things might befall our economy if those words were ever removed from our money. Perhaps we'd see a serious recession, the stock market tanking, banks collapsing, home foreclosures increasing, large businesses as well as small ones declaring bankruptcy.
But, so long as "In God we Trust" is on our money, God will never ever let anything happen to the American $.
But, so long as "In God we Trust" is on our money, God will never ever let anything happen to the American $.
nice.
I like this guy.
I think I'll start crossing out "God" on money and writing in "Mammon."
The Fox anchor's sneer as he says "Godless Americans" says quite a lot...
#180 mandrake
A stamp would be quicker. A few ideas tossed around previously .
FSM Money Stamp
http://www.venganza.org/2006/11/20/fsm-money-stamp/#comments
I gotta say, if it weren't for the Sad Music of Overwrought Dread, I would think, "Yeah... and?" I KNOW it's fear-mongering, but it's so bizarre to try to contemplate someone who would find this kind of video terrifying.
Does Scott from Oregon really want the U.S. of A. to be broken up into 50+ separate nations? I sometimes get that impression.
Thus, making this nation go the way of
Czechoslovakia
The Soviet Union
Yugoslavia
Czechoslovakia broke up peacefully, the SU with some civil war in its outlying republics, and Yugoslavia with an all-out civil war.
Here is an extensive list of other countries that practice proportional representation. Also from the wiki article:
A brief history of PR in the US.
States that currently use the Congressional District Method
As I have already noted, all of the EC is susceptible to gerrymandering and I acknowledge that the CDM is potentially even more susceptible. What trade-offs are we willing to accept and which costs are more controllable?
Prof MTH @ # 185: ... all of the EC is susceptible to gerrymandering ...
Eh? Not unless somebody starts redrawing state lines (something last seen when West Virginia seceded from Just Plain Virginia circa 1861) - and not even Karl Rove has tried to pull that one off so far. (I hope he and his henchpersons are not reading this thread.)
Or, to put it another way, in over 5% of the elections for who is now the most powerful leader on the planet.
It's pretty much how elections are run in every other case except president. If pure democracy has so many risks, why do we do it in all other cases?
Yes, you've explained your position, and I've provided objections which you haven't really answered. (And I've read the source, and provided objections.) If you don't want to continue the discussion, that's cool -- these kind of debates can indeed drag out, and after a while neither side is likely to be further convinced...
....especially when the discussion devolves into insults.
A popular vote is all equal with next to no power. And even if an imperfectly districted system leads to slightly lesser equality with much greater power, it's still a good trade.
Possibly so. But:
1) The current system in the US (and all other geographically-based indirect election systems I know of) in practice give extreme inequalities in power - in the US, in most states the chance of your vote changing the state's votes in the electoral college is incalculably small, while in swing states, while still very small, it is still surely orders of magnitude greater. What is more, it is clear such inequalities tend to be self-reinforcing: the swing states will be in the best position to get federal benefits and avoid federal costs of all kinds.
2) There is a fundamental flaw in Natapoff's analysis: the initial claim that voter power can be measured by a single number, their probability of changing the overall result by their own vote. Nonsense. Elections do not take place in a vacuum: voters may exercise influence by volunteering, donating, arguing with friends, scrawling graffiti on adverts, joining parties, pressure groups, unions etc. They vote, by and large, not because they calculate the chances their vote will tip the balance, but as an act of commitment to their favoured side, or of habit, or imitation. Different systems also give the voters different ranges of choice: the "vote for one candidate" election gives fewer choices than a single transferable vote, for example. Results like Natapoff's (and Arrow's, for example) can be useful, but they do not take into account the complexities of real-world politics.
As an alternative to geographical grouping, modern technology would allow for voters to have a choice about what intermediate community they allocate their voting power to. In the simplest case, the individual could be allowed to choose whether to vote as a resident of a particular state, or a member of an age cohort, or a pressure group, or a political party, or church; these intermediate bodies (IBs) would get votes in the electoral college proportional to the number of people who allocated their vote to that IB.
Isn't that the point of equality, though? The only way to can maximize the power of a vote would be to maximize the power of some people's votes, while reducing the power of other people's votes. That hardly seems fair.
As to the question of whether or not swing state voters are more deliberative, the small amount of relevant information I can find suggests that they are not. All states have roughly equal numbers of party affiliated voters (66%) and unaffiliated voters. The difference between a swing state and a safe state is not how many of it's voters are truly undecided, but how many of it's decided voters are Republicans and how many are Democrats. In swing states, they are roughly equal, meaning that those undecided voters are much more important. In safe states, one party has far more affiliated voters than the other, making the votes of the undecided, and presumably more deliberative, much less important. So it seems to me that your assertion that swing state voters think more about their choice than safe state voters is unfounded.
(See http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=750 from the Pew Center, under the section "Red, Blue and Swing States")
Indeed -- as was pointed out earlier, what is important is not just the average power of the vote, but the variance or disparity in that power. In a pure democratic system, the average voting power (as Natapoff defines it) may be lower than EC, but everyone has the same power. In the EC system, only those who live in very constrained geographic areas have any power at all -- the average power may be higher, but the disparity is far greater. Natapoff says that "under a tyranny, everyone's power is equal to zero", but that of course isn't true -- the tyrant's "vote" has maximal power, and such as system has maximal disparity. The EC just dilutes that tyranny, but it is still tyrannical.
In the end, any system will be a tradeoff between individual voter power (how likely one voter will change the election) and equity (how similar is the likelihood for each voter that they can change the election). In my view, the value we should be maximizing in a democracy is equity, and not power.
Why don't you guys arguing about the best form of a presidential election do what the rest of the civilised world does and do without a president at all.
Or if you MUST have one do it by a least common denominator election (as far as I know my invention or more probably rediscovery).
Everybody gets to tick yes or no against every candidate (if they wish). The biggest (positive) difference between yes(es) and no(es) wins it.
I think is what Australia should use to resolve their problems about deciding how to decide who gets to be a figurehead president (because this sort of election is ideal for a figurehead - it chooses the least devisive candidate rather than the most popular).
@ mvXfer
Let me assure you that, outside the technological center of the state, things are not as friendly. I've got the scarlet "A" on my car, and a humanist logo, but I probably only still have a rear windshield through virtue of ignorance of what they mean.
"Does Scott from Oregon really want the U.S. of A. to be broken up into 50+ separate nations? I sometimes get that impression."
You really should read the Constitution. The "Commerce Clause" has been woefully used to remove power from the states. Time and an ignorant Congress has added to this woeful state of affairs...
I am talking about "jurisdiction", not separate countries.
Silly person...
As for the election aegument, once again, y'all demonstrate why the Federal government's usurpation of power has eroded the individual's rights AND ability to get governance that suits...
When you take all the power and put it in one place, you can only get one ideology in charge. You dilute the choices down to crap and crappy...
The closer your governance is to your front door, the more say you have in your own governance...
"""At the constitutional convention Hamilton proposed a permanent president who would appoint all the governors of the states and would have veto power over all state legislation. His opponents correctly interpreted this as advocating a monarchy and, worse yet, a monarchy based on mercantilism. The reason for consolidating all political power first in the central government, and then in the hands of one man, the permanent president, was so that an American mercantilist empire could be centrally planned and controlled without any dissenters, such as tax protestors or free traders who resided in the various states. Hamilton (and his political heirs) understood that forced national uniformity is the only way in which such a central-planning scheme could work. The socialists of the 20th century understood this as well.
$26
Hamiltonian mercantilism is essentially the economic and political system that Americans have lived under for several generations now: a king-like president who rules through "executive orders" and disregards any and all constitutional constraints on his powers; state governments that are mere puppets of the central government; corporate welfare run amok, especially in light of the most recent outrage, the Wall Street Plutocrat Bailout Bill; a $10 trillion national debt ($70 trillion if one counts the government's unfunded liabilities); a perpetual boom-and-bust cycle caused by the Wizard of Oz-like central planners at the Fed; constant military aggression around the world that only seems to benefit defense contractors and other beneficiaries of the warfare state; and more than half of the population bribed with subsidies of every kind imaginable to support the never-ending growth of the state. This is Hamilton's curse on America -- a curse that must be exorcized if there is to be any hope of resurrecting American freedom and prosperity."""
Let's see, They worship an invisible sky fairy that tortured his own son and turned him into a zombie. They pray to, and admire the greatest mass murderer in history, (if their deity is proven true) They believe in talking snakes and all kinds of goofy shit, and We're the scary ones?
Thanx PZ - again.
I just took the time to watch this. I donated $150. Thank you for the info.
Alex
http://calvinists4conservatism.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/help-elizabeth-…
Yikes. This website scares me.
Poe, surely?
Scary website? If you want to scare people this Halloween, if you want to be crazy scary, dress up as a fundamentalist.
The jesus ,superstition has no place in an educated free society.Also the teaching of lies can be attributed to ignorance and simplisty of non-thinkers.There should be a tax of at the least 80% on all gross funds raised by these superstition schools.Yes all reference to god ,superstition and myth should be removed from our government and schools.If we do not get control of the witches and coruptors that teach these lies, we will wind up in the same exact position as the middle east or worse.That is the only thing GW Bush said that I agree with, (he said if religion gets a toe hold in a country ,there is no way to stop it.)
There seems to be a small faction of people in the USA that are greedy ( tax cuts ) possesive,( want to tell others how to live ), Want to make a profit at the exspence of others ( by taking advantage of the government and the people. Coldwar for forty years and Iraq ), People who believe they are smarter than everyone else, so they believe they are privilaged( I got mine and to hell with you ) and most of these people are members of the religion faiths of the world.Their prinsible purpose is to take advantage of the less informed people.Their goal is to relieve you of your wealth.
There seems to be a small faction of people in the USA that are greedy ( tax cuts ) possesive,( want to tell others how to live ), Want to make a profit at the exspence of others ( by taking advantage of the government and the people. Coldwar for forty years and Iraq ), People who believe they are smarter than everyone else, so they believe they are privilaged( I got mine and to hell with you ) and most of these people are members of the religion faiths of the world.Their prinsible purpose is to take advantage of the less informed people.Their goal is to relieve you of your wealth.
Most of these people belong to the republican party and will lie about abortions, terror attacks and taxes to scare people into supporting their agenda. John McCain is one of the worst of these people.
Ugh, Barry Goldwater and I want our party back. It's been hijacked by lunatics. Once it was social liberals and fiscal conservatives. Now they pretend Yeshua bin Yosef is the party chairman.