Thursday, September 18, 2008
Sick of it all
I am sure I am not the only one, but I am going crazy with all of the political crap being inundated on us. The sad thing is, it is only September. How did it ever get like this? You know, I am really too young to know any different, but my guess is that it was not like this 20 years ago. There were no "I approve this message" commercials, only what mattered: debates. I could be sadly mistaken, but it seems counterproductive what they do. The sad thing is, it's not! People judge their votes by commercials because we don't have the time or will to do the research. I am not criticizing this approach; I totally understand it. I for one am so sick of hearing all the politics that I really don't want to make the effort. Not to mention that I feel like my vote totally does not count. IMO, unless you live in one of those swing states, it is pretty obvious what your vote is going to do. On the other hand, if everyone felt the way I do, our electoral system would not work. So, let's all get ready to endure another 7 or so weeks of hell. Just get this dang election over so we can return to worrying about the economy, war, natural disasters, and all the other wonderful stories waiting to be reported on.
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10 comments:
I completely agree with you. All this stuff is a bunch of crap on TV. I want a candidate that will just say it like it is. "You should vote for me cause my opponent sucks, and is a real moron. I mean come on, have you seen what he is trying to do? What a idiot. I aprove this message." I would vote for that guy. But again, like you said, it's not like our vote matters. I have never believed in the electoral system how it stands today. Especially in California when I was there. I think they should count each individual vote and that's it. None of this state electoral vote junk. It's flawed and should be corrected.
Imagine for a minute that ALL Democrats, for example, that wanted Obama elected, DIDN'T vote.
Now imagine with me for a minute that they all believed their vote "didn't matter" and stayed home, all of them.
What would happen? Of course, by a landslide McCain would be our next president.
Would it have mattered that ALL those Democrats didn't vote? The simple and obvious answer to such a hypothetical question would be: Yes, it would have mattered, immensely.
In that above unlikely scenario, do you think the electoral college would then go ahead and put Obama in office otherwise? The answer to that is another simple and obvious answer: No.
My point? The electoral college is not more powerful than your collective vote, and if it mattered in that situation that the all Dems didn't vote, then it does also matter that ONE Democrat doesn't vote.
My vote is precious and remember if you don't vote you can't bitch.
Darrell Barker
"The electoral college is not more powerful than your collective vote"
Tell that to Al Gore. LOL
Cherise, the Electoral College consists of 538 popularly elected representatives who formally select the President and Vice President of the United States.[1]
The Electoral College is an example of an indirect election.
Rather than directly voting for the President and Vice President, United States citizens cast votes for electors.
Electors are technically free to vote for anyone eligible to be President, but in practice pledge to vote for specific candidates and voters cast ballots for favored Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates by voting for correspondingly pledged electors.
Al Gore, steeped in a pile of questionable chads, didn't fight to the end for reasons I couldn't possibly know, but it disappointedly came down to the electoral votes in Florida and when the US Supreme Court unathoritatively stepped in to decide the outcome, Gore accepted it as authoritative. Fool.
I still ask: If all of Obama votes were dismal and not sufficent in count, and McCain were to "win," could the Electoral College still elect Obama president?
The answer is a resounding, NO.
Your vote, Cherise, counts for something.
The last two elections were stolen.
Alright seriously, it would never happen. It would NEVER happen that all Dems would not vote. Nor would it happen that all Repubs won't vote. So no, your hypothetical doesn't really hold weight because it's not realistic. Here is another hypothetical that is based on the same theory. Can you imagine if EVERYONE in the world jumped off a high bridge. Every single person on earth. Civilization as we know it, would end. Thus, we as a society should never build bridges. Ridiculous right? Of course it is. That would NEVER happen. Same thing with all of one party never voting because they think it doesn't matter. It would never happen. I'm not positive nor claim to know exactly how the electoral system works, but I would like to know why some states get a higher amount of "votes" than others. Is it solely based on population? Is it a direct ratio of Pop vs Votes? Otherwise I think they should count each person's individual vote and do away with the electoral system.
Technically, yes Obama could still be elected by the Electoral College in your example ("Electors are technically free to vote for anyone eligible to be President, but in practice pledge to vote for specific candidates"). The electors would just vote against what their constituents voted. Really, this is beyond me arguing about it. Looking at the graphic on Wikipedia, it is sad how little focus is put on non-swing states, showing how relatively unimportant candidates see they are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2004CampaignAttention.png#file
Steve, do I know you? Let's establish who we are, K!?
You are right, it would "NEVER" happen. I never suggested that it was possible for all Dems to "jump off a cliff," to use your analogy, but I did say in qualifying my hypo;
"In that above unlikely scenario . . ."
Steve, also, have you been seeing any of the candidates on TV shaking hands with any of the electoral college people? I haven't. Have you?
I haven't see one hand shake nor one meeting of electoral college attendees gathering to listen to either Obama or McCain.
I'm wondering, are the candidates stupid? Are they wasting their time and millions of dollars on ads and then holding rallys and stadium filled events with the wrong people? Are they that stupid that they would direct their efforts in the wrong direction with the people that couldn't possibly make a difference?
Are Obama and McCain not getting it?
If our votes didn't count, surely THEY would know this and spend their time and money schmozzing with the Electoral College people now wouldn't they.
I certainly wouldn't waste my time and I suspect you wouldn't too because you and I both know that the people's individual votes do COUNT.
I don't think we have ever met, at least not to my knowledge. I'm just one of Cherise's friends.
You are correct, you did justify your statement by saying "unlikely". All I was trying to say was that your reasoning was invalid because the situation would never exist. Same as my crazy scenario about people jumping off bridges. Both scenarios can't be used as legitimate arguments because their basis will never exist.
I will be the first to admit that I do not know exactly how the electoral college works. My questions from my last post were actually serious. I would like to know if the amount of votes a state gets is a direct ratio to the population of that state. I simply have never taken the time to look it up. If that is not the case, then I see the system as flawed. This is how I believe it works, and correct me if I'm wrong cause I might be. Each state gets a certain amount of "votes" for the presidency. Everyone in each state votes, they tally up all the votes, determine which candidate got the most votes, and then that state puts its "electoral votes" towards that candidate. Since California gets a significant number of "electoral votes" it makes me wonder how is the number of "electoral votes" determined? If it is not a direct ratio of pop, then it seems flawed. Say for numbers sake, there is 100 people in CA and CA gets 10 "electoral votes". If 49 vote R, and 51 vote D, then all of CA's 10 "electoral votes" go for Democrats. Now lets take a smaller state like Nebraska. Let's says NE has 10 people in it and it gets 2 "electoral votes". Lets say all 9 of the 10 vote R. NE's 2 "electoral votes" goes to the Republicans. Now let's tally up the totals and, look at that, the Democrats won! Surely more people voted for the Dems right? Wait the Repubs got 58 votes, and the Dems got 50, but yet the Dems still one? That seems unfair to me, but again I might not have my logic correct. If each individual vote was counted in my little mock scenario, the Repubs would have won due to more votes.
Are you really asking if the candidates are stupid? :) Yes they are wasting millions of dollars on ads. I don't know why they spend so much. It has been proven that money only accounts for maybe 1% of the candidates votes. Maybe if they didn't spend so much on pointless ads and gave that money to help try to fix our crumbling economy, we might be better off.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that yes "votes" count in general, but only in the states that might make a difference. Unless you live in one of those states, technically your 1 vote will not matter. That state will still go to whatever party it has historically gone to, and until they tell me that if only 100 or even 1,000 people would have voted the other way, the state would have flopped, I don't think it matters much.
Doing some research, Steve, the number of electoral college 538 is equal to the number of Senators (two from each state totaling 100) and representatives (it used to be in proportion to population, but then was capped at 435 in 1913) in Congress. The other three represent D.C.
These electors follow the popular vote of the state, so, states like California who have 55 end up sweeping all the votes for one candidate. They usually know which way the large states are going to go, which is why the small ones are the deal breakers.
The thing that sucks is though the Representatives from California truly represent the districts they come from (and in turn may be Republican), it doesn't really matter because the electors vote with the majority (which could be 51%) and the votes of the electors are not proportional to the actual vote of the state, which is my problem with it all. It does not seem representative at all.
Ah, so you have proven my point and my theroy, Cherise, that yes, the system is flawed. After thinking about it some more, I realized even if the votes the state got was directly proportioned to the population, that still wouldn't matter much cause then the only states that would matter would be California, Texas, and New York, cause all a candidate would need to win, would be those 3 states, or even 2 or 1 of them depending on how many votes the state got. So basically, the fact that it is "possible" that a one candidate can actually recieve more votes than the other candidate, yet the lesser voted candidate can still win, makes the system FLAWED and further proves our point that depending on where you live, your vote is not really that important. How sad.....
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