New Hampshire primary results.

[Relative]

The use of the word liberal one thing I've never understood about American political language. For some odd reason its used to describe a socialist leaning position, which makes absolutely no sense. Liberal everywhere else in the world means something completely different from socialism. An emphasis on individual liberty, not some form of collectivism or social equality as its used in America.

I also hate how its used as a slur by the right wing against anything they don't like. It just shows their intolerance to any form of debate of competing ideas that may not be their own. Bigotry to simplify.

[Linus]

The topic Paul vs. Kucinich in the first few comments in this thread is subject of the latest Bob the Angry Flower comic.

[genblood]

I took time out of my busy schedule and
voted. When I was at the polls, a saw a lot
of new voters coming in to vote.

I'm hoping when the time comes to really
cast the vote for a new President ... even
more show up ...

Bottom line ... we need a major change ... IMHO ..

[Relative]

The topic Paul vs. Kucinich in the first few comments in this thread is subject of the latest Bob the Angry Flower comic.

Platitudes, lol.

[tombom]

I took time out of my busy schedule and
voted. When I was at the polls, a saw a lot
of new voters coming in to vote.

I'm hoping when the time comes to really
cast the vote for a new President ... even
more show up ...

Bottom line ... we need a major change ... IMHO ..

who did you vote for

[SwiftSpear]

I took time out of my busy schedule and
voted. When I was at the polls, a saw a lot
of new voters coming in to vote.

I'm hoping when the time comes to really
cast the vote for a new President ... even
more show up ...

Bottom line ... we need a major change ... IMHO ..

Once again. Voting is bad. I have nothing against you if you have a strong opinion that you need to express in the polls, but if you don't you have no place near a voting booth.

If it's time for a change we should see mass voting towards a third political party that is acctually fundamentally different than the mirror republicans and democrats that you currently worship. If we see more than 20% of the total population duking it out in a split decision you know that the political system of democracy is fundamentally broken in the USA.

[Zpock]

Multiple parties politics is so good damn lame boring and watered down I think. You get one party with at best 35-40% of votes and then some "support" parties bringing it up to 48% and then some lame little 4% party swinging it whichever way they want, usually the environmentalist muppets. Noone taking full responsibility for any actions if they get done at all. (this is what it's like in sweden where we have 7 parties above the minimum size currently).

[tombom]

Once again. Voting is bad. I have nothing against you if you have a strong opinion that you need to express in the polls, but if you don't you have no place near a voting booth.

If it's time for a change we should see mass voting towards a third political party that is acctually fundamentally different than the mirror republicans and democrats that you currently worship. If we see more than 20% of the total population duking it out in a split decision you know that the political system of democracy is fundamentally broken in the USA.

Who decides what a strong opinion is? I'm sure many people would have a strong opinion about who the president should be even if they were clones with identical policies.

It's not a USA thing either, communities/families tend to support certain parties for years after the original reason has gone and feel very strongly about it.

Ultimately, even if a third party somehow got into some sort of power it would be unlikely to be able to change the status quo.

[SwiftSpear]

Once again. Voting is bad. I have nothing against you if you have a strong opinion that you need to express in the polls, but if you don't you have no place near a voting booth.

If it's time for a change we should see mass voting towards a third political party that is acctually fundamentally different than the mirror republicans and democrats that you currently worship. If we see more than 20% of the total population duking it out in a split decision you know that the political system of democracy is fundamentally broken in the USA.

Who decides what a strong opinion is? I'm sure many people would have a strong opinion about who the president should be even if they were clones with identical policies.

It's not a USA thing either, communities/families tend to support certain parties for years after the original reason has gone and feel very strongly about it.

Ultimately, even if a third party somehow got into some sort of power it would be unlikely to be able to change the status quo.

If you voted because puff daddy told you to, you don't have a strong opinion...

That's the point, no one decides for you weather you have a strong opinion or not, you decide that for yourself. There will be no opinion polls you must take to prove you meet the prerequisites, there will be no blue suited men kicking people out who look disinterested. The point here is, I would like people to understand that voting for the sake of voting is not good, if anything it's bad. Comments like "it's good that I see alot of new voters!" or "It's bad that 40% of the population of our state still doesn't vote!" NO! WRONG! The whole point of democracy is that you vote for what you want, so your voice is heard, and if there is no option that communicates your voice, then why would you vote?

[Lindir The Green]

In reality, an individual vote does not count.

For democracy to work at all, there has to be a reason to vote, and since an individual vote does not matter, the reason has to be social pressure.

Hence the I Voted stickers.

I personally think that an instant run off system would be better than what we have, but the concept of everyone being obligated to vote is solid.

[SwiftSpear]

In reality, an individual vote does not count.

For democracy to work at all, there has to be a reason to vote, and since an individual vote does not matter, the reason has to be social pressure.

Hence the I Voted stickers.

I personally think that an instant run off system would be better than what we have, but the concept of everyone being obligated to vote is solid.

An individual vote counts for just as much as every other vote. Yes it counts, if it doesn't count there is no reason to vote at all. It doesn't count for much in the current 2 party system because chances are there isn't a party that represents your interests, but that only makes your vote invalid if you throw it away on one of the parties that you don't really want to win. Fundamentally the concept of "everyone being obligated to vote" is the most destructive thing you can do to a democratic sociaty. The opinions of people who have neither the time nor effort to form an educated opinion being weighted just as highly as the opinions of people who have a valid say in an issue virtually guarantees that if you don't encourage people who don't have a solid reason for interest in the election to not vote, then 100% of the time you end up with a voted result that roughly equates to "all of us is dumber than one of us". The average member of the population knows much less about politics than your average voter should.

It's a matter of simple statistical sociology. If you force people to undertake an action, you guarantee that the majority of those executing that action will do it poorly. Since the majority of voters are voting primarily because they are effectively prodded into it by popular sociaty, America is gaurenteed to mostly have badly done voting. And don't fool yourself, because voting is such a poorly executed institution in American sociaty you get stuck with all kinds of horrible political situations, like mirror party politics and 2 party systems, as well as whim based appeasement politicians. Your political institution is virtually incapable of acting intelligently in the public eye, because the average voter is, politically speaking, about as dumb as a monkey, so the most elegant and brilliant political moves will nearly always go unnoticed by the voting public.

There is something so incredibly elegant and brilliant about the democratic voting system. I only argue this point because it really pisses me off to see it being abused so heartily. I know spouting off here won't really change anything, but seriously, use your brain people, at least in this small corner of the universe think rationally about what is acctually happening and don't just accept what the media tells you.

[SpikedHelmet]

An individual vote counts for just as much as every other vote. Yes it counts, if it doesn't count there is no reason to vote at all.

By golly I think he's on to something!

If a vote doesn't count, there's no reason to vote at all...!!

Politicians shouldn't hold stances on issues. That shouldn't be their job, to provide a plate of policies and expect people to do nothing more than select which of the 2 or 3 plates looks most appealing and then bow their heads and give up all control of their lives to the owner of said plate.

It should be the people applying their wishes to politicians, not the politicians forcing the people to choose what wishes they can have.

[SwiftSpear]

An individual vote counts for just as much as every other vote. Yes it counts, if it doesn't count there is no reason to vote at all.

By golly I think he's on to something!

If a vote doesn't count, there's no reason to vote at all...!!

Politicians shouldn't hold stances on issues. That shouldn't be their job, to provide a plate of policies and expect people to do nothing more than select which of the 2 or 3 plates looks most appealing and then bow their heads and give up all control of their lives to the owner of said plate.

It should be the people applying their wishes to politicians, not the politicians forcing the people to choose what wishes they can have.

It's not that I don't agree... and ultimately what you describe is the basis of the lobby system (except for that fact that payed lobbiest are so damn sketchy), that being said, politicians will always have personal bents and agendas they care about on a personal level, and that will likely never change.

[Lindir The Green]

An individual vote counts for just as much as every other vote. Yes it counts, if it doesn't count there is no reason to vote at all.

Fundamentally the concept of "everyone being obligated to vote" is the most destructive thing you can do to a democratic sociaty.

A particular vote only counts because all of the votes together count for everything. Mathematically, you can spread everything out and say that every vote counts because it is a part of a system that together counts, but the point is, an individual person could decide to do everything exactly the same, except not vote, and nothing at all would change from that individual person's action. If everyone does that though, and logically decides not to vote, the system collapses. You can again mathematically say that everybody was equally important for that collapse, but in reality there is no way to tell.

The point is that it doesn't matter at all if (or how) any individual person votes, and most logical people know that. The only things that prevent everyone from individually deciding to not vote are ignorance and social pressure. If we removed the social pressure to not vote, we would leave only ignorance, and only dumb people who think that their vote individually makes a difference would vote.

I've been trying to think of an analogy for this, and now I finally have one that sorta fits:

It's like a military charge (against terrorism and injustice ). Any individual person could decide not to keep running forward, and the only negative effect would be that maybe fewer enemies would die, with the benefit of saving that person's own life. Logically, everyone who values their life at all would desert and the charge would fail, but social pressures such as cultivated patriotism avert the failure.

The negative aspects of voting aren't nearly bad as death (the cost of voting is not being able to do something else at the same time), but there are no positive benefits, unless the race is decided by exactly one vote. A cost benefit analysis tells everybody not to vote, but, fortunately, people listen to social pressure and democracy lives on.

Incidentally, I'm not too keen on the idea of one person one vote; it seems really weird when you consider the population size of China and India compared to the rest of the world. Nothing logically makes sense, so I support sticking to political systems that work, and historically democracy has worked.

[Sleksa]

An individual vote counts for just as much as every other vote. Yes it counts, if it doesn't count there is no reason to vote at all.

By golly I think he's on to something!

If a vote doesn't count, there's no reason to vote at all...!!

Politicians shouldn't hold stances on issues. That shouldn't be their job, to provide a plate of policies and expect people to do nothing more than select which of the 2 or 3 plates looks most appealing and then bow their heads and give up all control of their lives to the owner of said plate.

It should be the people applying their wishes to politicians, not the politicians forcing the people to choose what wishes they can have.

omfg

10/10 and a silver star for this post

[CarRepairer]

nvm

[SwiftSpear]

An individual vote counts for just as much as every other vote. Yes it counts, if it doesn't count there is no reason to vote at all.

Fundamentally the concept of "everyone being obligated to vote" is the most destructive thing you can do to a democratic sociaty.

A particular vote only counts because all of the votes together count for everything. Mathematically, you can spread everything out and say that every vote counts because it is a part of a system that together counts, but the point is, an individual person could decide to do everything exactly the same, except not vote, and nothing at all would change from that individual person's action. If everyone does that though, and logically decides not to vote, the system collapses. You can again mathematically say that everybody was equally important for that collapse, but in reality there is no way to tell.

The point is that it doesn't matter at all if (or how) any individual person votes, and most logical people know that. The only things that prevent everyone from individually deciding to not vote are ignorance and social pressure. If we removed the social pressure to not vote, we would leave only ignorance, and only dumb people who think that their vote individually makes a difference would vote.

I've been trying to think of an analogy for this, and now I finally have one that sorta fits:

It's like a military charge (against terrorism and injustice ). Any individual person could decide not to keep running forward, and the only negative effect would be that maybe fewer enemies would die, with the benefit of saving that person's own life. Logically, everyone who values their life at all would desert and the charge would fail, but social pressures such as cultivated patriotism avert the failure.

The negative aspects of voting aren't nearly bad as death (the cost of voting is not being able to do something else at the same time), but there are no positive benefits, unless the race is decided by exactly one vote. A cost benefit analysis tells everybody not to vote, but, fortunately, people listen to social pressure and democracy lives on.

Incidentally, I'm not too keen on the idea of one person one vote; it seems really weird when you consider the population size of China and India compared to the rest of the world. Nothing logically makes sense, so I support sticking to political systems that work, and historically democracy has worked.

Ugg, read what I'm saying, you're worse than I am. "I shouldn't care about my vote because my vote doesn't count, and therefore, social pressures to vote aren't bad". You don't really understand a voting system at all, do you? If everyone votes just for the sake of voting, your voting system is broken, therefore your analogy is broken because you assume positive results if social pressure is followed, where in this case the results are only negitive.

Only people who have a good reason to vote should vote. If I'm an African American and my family is starving to death in the slums, and there is a politician who promises to reduce African American poverty in America, I'm going to vote, even if I ultimately beleive my vote contributes very little or nothing, simply because I truely beleive that my plight is valid enough, and I truely want that politician in power. Now if 5 emo kids vote for the other guy just out of spite because eminimen told them too... You see what's happening, social pressure is MAKING my vote worth nothing.

[Machiosabre]

I'm fairly proud of my state for getting a decently high participation percentage, compared to the national average.

Why would you be proud of that? Voting when you don't have a good reason is really really really really bad. It's the reason America is stuck in a stone age 2 party system.

I always like the idea of non voting, its better than 3rd party voting because you already have 40% of the people behind you.
It'd be awesome if someone set up a campaign against voting for the lesser of two evils, course I'm not saying theres such a thing as a perfect party, but when you're limited to two...

on the other hand, if a large group of people in the same position as you turn up to vote you could get lots of props and people kissing your ass and stuff like seniors...but thats almost buying votes anyway, so that wouldn't be very good either.

[SwiftSpear]

I'm fairly proud of my state for getting a decently high participation percentage, compared to the national average.

Why would you be proud of that? Voting when you don't have a good reason is really really really really bad. It's the reason America is stuck in a stone age 2 party system.

I always like the idea of non voting, its better than 3rd party voting because you already have 40% of the people behind you.
It'd be awesome if someone set up a campaign against voting for the lesser of two evils, course I'm not saying theres such a thing as a perfect party, but when you're limited to two...

on the other hand, if a large group of people in the same position as you turn up to vote you could get lots of props and people kissing your ass and stuff like seniors...but thats almost buying votes anyway, so that wouldn't be very good either.

It is less that a campaign for nonvoting is needed to protest the two party system, and more that if people realized that voting is acctually a heavy responsibility (in it's ideal form) a two party system would be impossible to run well. The casual vote is the thing that keeps the two party system alive. People have the impression that they need to vote against the party they have a minor dispreferance to, because if they don't every hick, yocal, and idiot will vote against them and confirm their worst fears. And it's true, they will, because some idiot up high keeps telling people that voting is good even if you have absolutely no reason to vote at all.

This isn't to say that a responsible american shouldn't try to be aware of the political situation and form opinions, but it IS to say that voting when you have no clue what you're really voting for it NOT being a responsible american, nor is it being a responsible voter. Abstain from the vote, it's the right thing to do! Now if you feel you won't do this because you really believe one or another party is really what you want in power right now, you won't find me blocking the door to the voting offices, but otherwise listen to my advice! You have to look at what the system on a whole is composed of, and if the system is composed of mostly coin flip votes there is no way that system can be running at an ideal level!

[Lindir The Green]

Ugg, read what I'm saying, you're worse than I am. "I shouldn't care about my vote because my vote doesn't count, and therefore, social pressures to vote aren't bad". You don't really understand a voting system at all, do you?

I read what you were saying, and I understand a voting system. My understanding is obviously different from your understanding, but I think your understanding is flawed somehow; I'm trying to figure out exactly how to either provide additional knowledge to improve my understanding or so that I can expose the flaw and rest assured that my understanding is correct.

If everyone votes just for the sake of voting, your voting system is broken, therefore your analogy is broken because you assume positive results if social pressure is followed, where in this case the results are only negitive.

There are two reasons to vote:

1) You think that your vote will affect something positively.

2) Voting in and of itself benefits you socially (or some other way)

An individual vote does not affect anything positively, and many people know this. The only reasons to vote then are artificially created reasons, such as social pressure.

The results of social pressure being followed are positive, because if social pressure is not followed only people who think that their individual vote changes anything will vote. The point of a democracy is that theoretically if everyone votes it will "converge" to the "right" choice. If certain segments of intelligent people who realize that an individual vote matters not then choose not to vote, the results will be skewed away from positions that those intelligent people support, because those intelligent people would have individually been too smart for the collective good.

That's what social pressure does: prevents people from individually being too smart for their collective good.