If you’re in the U.S., you’re living in a democracy. Do your duty; it’s not onerous, and do you really want the OTHER candidate to win?
Vote, dammit!
March 15, 2016 • 4:54 pm
103 thoughts on “Vote, dammit!”
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Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“If you’re in the U.S., you’re living in a democracy.”
While technically true:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy
Glad you made this point first.
There are other studies/observers coming to the same conclusion, not the least of which is former president Jimmy Carter.
I agree in principle with our esteemed professor. i believe in the principle. But my heart sinks at the more obvious reality.
And i feel like a dupe. Not a citizen.
Yes!!!
“If you’re in the U.S., you’re living in a democracy.”
Not really. My vote for President counts for nothing in Idaho. The Republicans could nominate the ghost of Adolf Hitler and he’d win the state. Local and state-wide elections are another matter.
The so-called Electoral College, and in general the Senate, is antidemocratic in the extreme. In Electoral College math, a voter in Wyoming has about 3.5 times the voting power for President than a voter in California.
from https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-most-and-least-powerful-voters/7932/#Overall%20Rank
“But before you approach the voting booth, ask yourself: How much is my vote worth? Although the U.S. is a democratic nation, ballots carry different weights based on the state in which one lives. Take California, for instance. Its estimated population is nearly 66 times greater than Wyoming’s, yet each state has two seats in the Senate. In this case, less is more: California’s votes are weakened exponentially because each of its senators must represent tens of millions more residents.”
Senators are supposed to represent the interests of the states, rather than the state residents directly, so it’s fair that each state gets an equal number of senators. The House of Representatives is the body that represents the people directly.
House representatives is seriously gerrymandered. How many actual competitive seats are there?
The Senate and the Electoral College were unholy compromises in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, designed to get the states on board, just like the infamous (now repealed) Three-fifths Compromise. I see no rational justification for why a voter in Wyoming should have 3.5 times the Presidential voting power as a voter in California, or Texas for that matter. And that applies to the Senate in general. But we’re stuck with it. The US Constitution is an anachronism.
I certainly agree about the Electoral College, and would add the primary delegates and superdelegates. It’s weird to vote for people that will go on to vote for other people… We certainly don’t need all these middlemen anymore, if we ever needed them.
As Winston Churchill once said about the British election system: It isn’t one hundred percent democratic but it works. Amen.
I would love to hear where that “interests of the states” comes from. Just for the record James Madison fought like hell to have the Senate as well as the House be represented by population (Equal). He was beaten by the small states who were afraid the big guys would role over them. So we got, as Stephen Barnard states, a very twisted and unfair system.
The Senate was not elected by the people until early 19th century and that was probably a mistake. It took an amendment to change that and they would have done much better if they had simply changed the Senate to make it representative. Either that or cancel it out all together. After all, it is known as the millionaires club. They really care about you.
That should say 19 hundreds, not century
Well, the union wasn’t as strong back then, and many states considered themselves largely independent political entities, so it’s understandable that they would demand representation too. I think it defeats the point of Senators to elect them directly. Might as well just merge them into the House of Representatives in that case, or eliminate them.
Well, believe it or not, the bicameral form of legislature applies to 49 out of 50 states. Only Nebraska has a unicameral. So, even if you don’t see it, there were and are reasons to have two separate legislative bodies and if you look at the constitution itself, you will see that they do perform some different functions.
The people back when things were not so strong as you say, were probably just as desperate for a strong national govt. as they are today. The ones who were not were called anti-federalist and they were against the constitution. They were the ones who could think no farther than their state boarder. Today we call them republicans.
Bicameral legislatures help balance various interests. For example with the US Senate/House, the 6 year term for the Senat vs. 2 year term for the House creates different priorities; House members focus on near-term interests while Senators care about more lonnger-term growth and success. The President sits in the middle, while the Supreme Court has the longest “success horizon” of all. These different time horizons help to ensure the US isn’t only focused on the near term at the expense of the long term or vice versa, but rather balances both.
I have one friend who tongue-in-cheek suggests we have a polycameral system, with several other legislative bodies in addition to house and senate. Membership in one is auctioned, another is corporate, another is voted country-wide (like the presidency), etc…. His point in suggesting this is not to say that these special interest groups deserve their own representation, but to highlight how a legislature that must balance the interests of many different groups tends to produce laws that don’t excessively favor one minority (say, rich people) over others.
And P.S. Jerry, I voted! Not today though – in the VA primaries a few weeks ago.
VA has an open primary so I voted in the GOP primary. Because I don’t care much whether Hilary or Bernie takes the Dem primary, but I really really didn’t/don’t want Trump or Cruz to take the GOP spot. So I basically cast a negative vote, for Kasich. Worthless in hindsight – it would’ve been more effective to vote for Rubio – but at the time, I wasn’t sure which of them was going to take the independent vote.
Yes, there were may who wanted a strong central government and many more who didn’t. That could be viewed as the central fight over the constitution.
The Senate membership, as many have noted was a compromise for the small states (RI, DE). Leaving slavery in place was a sop to keep the south with the US. Many compromises.
Here are the stats (how many people each electoral college vote represents by state, percentages show what percent of a Wyoming voter’s vote a vote from that state is worth):
[State, Electoral College Votes, persons per vote, percent]
Alabama, 9, 531082, 35%
Alaska, 3, 236744, 79%
Arizona, 11, 581092, 32%
Arkansas, 6, 485986, 39%
California, 55, 677345, 28%
Colorado, 9, 558800, 34%
Connecticut, 7, 510585, 37%
Delaware, 3, 299311, 63%
Florida, 29, 648321, 29%
Georgia, 16, 605478, 31%
Hawaii, 4, 340075, 55%
Idaho, 4, 391896, 48%
Illinois, 20, 641532, 29%
Indiana, 11, 589437, 32%
Iowa, 6, 507726, 37%
Kansas, 6, 475520, 40%
Kentucky, 8, 542421, 35%
Louisiana, 8, 566672, 33%
Maine, 4, 332090, 57%
Maryland, 10, 577355, 33%
Massachusetts, 11, 595239, 32%
Michigan, 16, 617728, 30%
Minnesota, 10, 530393, 35%
Mississippi, 6, 494550, 38%
Missouri, 10, 598893, 31%
Montana, 3, 329805, 57%
Nebraska, 5, 365268, 51%
Nevada, 6, 450092, 42%
New Hampshire, 4, 329118, 57%
New Jersey, 14, 627992, 30%
New Mexico, 5, 411836, 46%
New York, 29, 668210, 28%
North Carolina, 15, 635699, 30%
North Dakota, 3, 224197, 84%
Ohio, 18, 640917, 29%
Oklahoma, 7, 535907, 35%
Oregon, 7, 547296, 34%
Pennsylvania, 20, 635119, 30%
Rhode Island, 4, 263142, 71%
South Carolina, 9, 513929, 37%
South Dakota, 3, 271393, 69%
Tennessee, 11, 576919, 33%
Texas, 38, 661725, 28%
Utah, 6, 460648, 41%
Vermont, 3, 208580, 90%
Virginia, 13, 615463, 31%
Washington, 12, 560378, 34%
West Virginia, 5, 370599, 51%
Wisconsin, 10, 568699, 33%
Wyoming, 3, 187875, 100%
DC, 3, 200574, 94%
Arghhh. Not one single candidate is remotely acceptable by standards. Maybe some 3rd party will be better (my equivalent of saying ‘none of the above’)
But as a pedantic(?) side point, here’s a challenge, from a purely *logical* perspective, why should I vote?
If I don’t vote, the election will turn out exactly the same. The argument ‘what if everyone…’ doesn’t cut it because I’m not ‘everyone’. My vote or lack of vote does not change *anyone else’s* vote basically it’s more of an emotional argument than a logical one.
Just a fun argument.
I believe voting is a good thing and a duty, even if you know your vote is futile. If nothing else, it makes the margin closer, and it’s an affirmation that you give a damn.
I have no patience with the attitude that “They’re all the same and equally bad and corrupt, so why bother?” That’s nonsense. I also have no patience with the “My candidate didn’t get the nomination, so fuck it” attitude, which is childish.
Yeah, you can still vote for your candidate even if they don’t get the nomination! Just write their name in!
(I know that’s not what you mean. :-P)
Hear, hear!
And vote, vote! [De Drumpf, or the Tea Party, isn’t very popular outside US either. I mean that in the sense that I hear not only gun limitations but social security measures is what a majority of US voters would go for. Which incidentally would decrease US’s dysfunctionality.]
Why should we vote for someone that is unacceptable just for the ritual of casting a vote? What value exists in that.
Too many candidates count on people voting for them because ‘where else can they go’. I won’t buy into that.
The argument has been made that a non-vote is, in effect, an “abstain”, which is an acceptable parliamentary proceedure.
And it has been noted that the dominate parties (party?) are noting these “abstains” in the hope of grabbing them, as well as the fear that these non-voters are ripe for an, as yet, third party of some to form.
My hope is that these non-voters are a kind of “buffer” against total submission to the corporatocracy. My fear is they are an under-informed, unorganized, dissaffected mob ripe for a dictator.
Cue Trump.
I don’t understand not voting for “the lesser of two evils” if your first choice is not on the ballot.
To me, that’s the same as saying: I don’t care whether a more evil person is in power. That makes no sense to me.
Hillary isn’t my first choice either (a 3rd Obama term could be); but I will enthusiastically cast my vote for her and against Drumpf, Cruz, or Kasich. Because I feel really strongly that none of them should be in charge of the Exec Branch of the US.
I am concerned about, among other things, the SCOTUS.
And I, about needless warmongering and military build-up abroad and at home (!) — at the expense of health care (not insurance, but actually medical care) and education for our current and next generations.
I agree. I think it’s a duty. I’d be happy if it were a requirement.
Minnesota recently changed the rules to allow “no fault” absentee and early voting, which I really appreciate. I don’t want to stand in a queue. We used to vote absentee regardless (no one really cares if you’ll really be gone on election day).
When I lived in WA, I had a permanent absentee ballot. It came in the mail, along with a voter’s guide, which was really helpful (wish MN would adopt that feature!) and you just mailed it in. Wonderful.
I always vote in general elections. I only rarely vote in primaries.
MN has caucuses and I have no interest in a scrum like that. My wife went this year and it was an absolute zoo.
Nice that someone retains hope. I don’t want any of them.
Care to name at least one you would want?
All you need to cast a principled vote is to not like one less than you don’t like all the others.
That’s not principled. It’s surrender.
It’s certainly not surrender. It’s participation. To not vote is surrender.
+1!
Yes. Vote, dammit! Unless you are not for my candidate.
I am glad I live in Oregon. we vote by mail. the ballot arrives a couple weeks before it is due back. Fill it in – research some of the more obscure elected positions – mail it back, drop in a county drop box at a convenient location.
We should have near 100% turn out – sadly still no.
Best system in the country. The rest of the states are nuts not to adopt it.
I had permanent absentee in WA, which was the same thing.
US democracy is broken as other commenters are sure to point out, but I’m still with Jerry here. Vote! Though the main reason I say that is that in my opinion, this is the only presidential election in my adult life with a candidate I actually want to win, as opposed to a lesser evil. I understand that voting seems pointless when none of the contenders represent you.
If everyone voted, Bernie Sanders would win. Unfortunately, his main demographics are the ones that don’t turn out to vote. For instance, he has about 90% support among people under 30, but most primary voters are 45 or older…
The question every thoughtful voter faces is whether to vote strategically or emotionally. Unless it’s a total lost cause, I vote strategically. That’s why I’m voting for Clinton and voting Democratic down the whole ballot.
I almost never vote strategically. The main argument is that the other candidate is so bad that we should do whatever it takes to avoid them, even if it requires voting for someone we don’t like. And while this year is truly exceptional in some ways, the argument in general seems to be false. Republicans win about half the time anyway, and it hasn’t been an irreparable disaster. Not such a big disaster that it’s worth giving up our vote and giving up our chance to build viable alternatives to the candidates we dislike.
People say that we need to continue voting for the lesser evil until a totally viable alternative (magically) appears with widespread support. That’s a recipe for never having a viable alternative and being permanently locked into lesser evil voting, since support grows over time. If we don’t support them now, they can never grow to become viable.
People also tend to defend the candidate they voted for, even if it was a lesser-evil vote. Note how Bush’s policies that inspired widespread resistance and condemnation among Democrats were quietly accepted when Obama continued or even expanded them. This normalizes bad policies.
Voting also affects the political discourse. By continually voting for candidates that are to the right of us, we push the political landscape further right over time. (Note how many Democrats today are nearly identical to Republicans from decades past.) If a significant chunk of America voted for what they really wanted, candidates would try to appeal to them and we could begin to push politics back to the left.
I consider strategic voting to be a kind of political short-termism. Of course, most of these problems would go away if only we could switch to a better voting system. Approval voting, where you can vote for multiple candidates, would be easy to understand and implement, and help smash the entrenched one/two-party system. That’s probably why it’ll never happen…
I wished I could feel as you and Jerry Coyne but just can’t think that way in modern America. If you live in a heavy, low population republican state your vote for anyone local is a waste of time. At the national level, most of the positions are bought and paid for on K street. It is called special interest and Congress works for those folks. I could give you tons of examples of this but why bother.
When you and all the believers get the money out of our political system I will be glad to vote because then you might have some real people who do care and believe in representing the people. You do not have that now on either side of the aisle.
I agree. Voting on the national level is a sham. But it’s a bit depressing that the only viable presidential candidate in a long time (ever?) who really wants to fix that system – maybe he can’t, but he would give it his best – will likely be passed over, and we’ll be stuck with decades more of the same corrupt system.
The best I can say on this is – lets do what needs to be done to change things. Your president alone cannot do this. We need some amendments to the constitution to fix it. Start with public funding of all federal elections. That means absolutely no private money of any kind, not even your own. Next, fix the Senate to make it more representative of the state based on population. There are some more but just getting those two would help things a whole lot.
Well in that vein I’ll give a shout-out to Wolf PAC, which is going through the state legislatures to get such an amendment passed. They’ve gotten 5 or 6 states to call for the amendment, out of 38 needed, and they’ll soon have a couple more states. They can use some support, especially people willing to call their state legislators.
I see several problems with the Wolf PAC method, which is to actually call for a convention to write up some changes or amendments. Number one is that this has never been done before. Only once I should say and that was in 1787 in Philly. Also, even if you could get enough states to go for it the very idea of throwing open everything in convention is almost crazy. Also, the amendment they are working on does not get it done. Citizen United is just about who gets to throw in money but it does not stop money. Just a half measure. Lets stick with the method that has created 26 or 27 amendments so far – it is still extremely hard but it has been done.
Demographics change over time, and you never know for sure during a vote year if they’ve changed since the last vote year. Ten years ago, who would’ve pegged Virginia as a purple state? And would we have ever known it was actually purple of loads of liberal Northern Virginians were defeatist about it and stayed home because they thought they lived in a red state? So IMO defeatism is a poor excuse for not voting and can only result in self-fulfilling ones’ own doom and gloom prophecy. Go out, vote, and maybe you’ll be wrong about the other sides’ overwhelming statistical advantage this year. Probably not, but maybe.
As for strategic vs. preference voting, my personal choice is to vote my preference in the primaries. I’ll do my part to try and get ‘my’ candidate into the general election. But once the general election slate is decided, I’m going to vote strategically.
I’m told that Texas has far and away more Dems. They just don’t bother to go to the polls. Meanwhile, the Rebiblicans get whipped up by their megachurch pastors and do vote.
In November, 2008 many voters emotionally cast their ballots for Ralph Nader on the Green Party ticket, unquestionably swinging the election to George W. Bush over Al Gore (even though Gore won the popular vote). How did that work out?
If a lot of people voted for the Green Party every year, I believe it would be beneficial in the long term. If the Democratic party became nonviable due to persistent vote splitting, they would have to act to represent people better.
In 2000.
I rarely vote strategically (as you’ve defined it), but almost always find myself casting my vote for the lesser-evil between two unsatisfactory candidates.
I’m a registered Democrat, mainly so I can vote in primary elections. My political sentiments are, strictly speaking, more anti-Republican than strongly pro-Democrat (except for that brief, shining moment at the 1984 Democratic convention when Mario Cuomo gave his rousing keynote address).
I cast my fist vote in the 1972 presidential election, shortly after the 26th Amendment gave us 18-year-olds the right to vote. Pulled the lever for George McGovern on a fine first Tuesday in November and walked out the booth and with a clean, righteous feeling (that lasted until early that evening when Huntley & Brinkley came on the tube to say poor George had gotten clobbered by a cheap political thug name o’ Richard Nixon, who happened to be the once-and-future incumbent president of these United States.) Helluva nasty blow to the idealism of a newly-minted teenage American voter, that was.
I didn’t walk out of the booth after voting for president having the same clean-and-righteous feeling again until 2008 — a long and sometimes bitter three-and-a-half decade slog through American electoral politics, although at least my candidate won that time around.
I couldn’t agree more, though I first voted in the 1980 election. And I did not vote for Raygun.
I came of age in 1975, and I think the results (like yours with Nixon winning) were so disheartening that I’ve sublimated the memory. And, like you, I didn’t feel good about my vote until Obama won in 2008. I was hoping to feel even better, with Sanders winning, this time around. I think, to the detriment of all, our successors currently in college and on spring break, killed that promise by not staying put to vote, and it both disheartens and actually scares me, with all the implications of their nonchalance and Trump’s eventual win.
Yes, Americans who read this site, please vote so that ultimately Canada doesn’t have to deal with a stupid US President.
Ditto!! Who needs four years of another president worse than bush?
Once unimaginable. Then the GOP Party became the Tea Party… :-/
Canada and the entire rest of the fucking world, who don’t get a vote but have to deal with the consequences…
cr
I second that from Taiwan. I just wish a suitable candidate could be up for election without a rigged system.
You could always build a wall.
I’ve been telling my Canadian friends to get busy with their wall!
Okay, we’ll do it. We are going to make the USA pay for it though, eh?
Did you all know that there is a swath of forest in the West that is kept clear of trees, running along the 49th parallel? It goes up cliffs and down. Crazy, never ending job to have. When you hike close to it, you get to watch the segments going over each rise come into alignment as you get closer. At each crest, there will be a survey monument. The Sumas crossing is one point where this can be seen from a car.
This Google maps link is from Boundary Rd, East of Sumas on the Canadian side. The bare area at the top of that hill is from logging activity on the US side.
If you want to read about how this happened to the GOP, read E.J. Dionne’s new book, Where the Right Went Wrong.
It’s quite good.
Thanks for the recommendation – it’s “When the Right Went Wrong” not “Where” though. I put it on my Goodreads list by searching the author.
The Republican Party has two wings: pseudo-ideological, ineffectual establishment figures whom even their base despises, and cynical, neo-fascist, theocratic authoritarians who are in the ascendancy. It’s a clear choice for me in November.
Well parsed.
I’m following the primaries very closely and I’m probably going to skip another night to watch Wolf Blitzer trying to yell louder than the CNN orchestra playing at the background. Trump needs Ohio to stay on course for a majority of delegates at the convention. However, recent polls show Kasich in the lead.
But let’s dispel for once and for all with this fiction that Marco Rubio doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He will lose Florida tonight and drop out, winning only Minnesota, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico.
Ole Marco says he’s moving on regardless of what happens in Florida. I suspect that, if Kasich prevails in Ohio, he will stay in the race and the Rethuglican establishment will rally behind him and pressure Marco to drop out if, as expected, he loses in Florida. They should have done this way back when it became obvious that their fair haired boy, ole Jebbie, was a loser, instead of trying to push the empty suit, ole Marco. It’s probably too late now.
Thank you, I did not know that about Marco Rubio. Is that good news or bad news for Donald Trump? Trump thrives in a divided field, so Kasich and Rubio staying in could only help him, right?
Kasich seems all right, for a Republican.
Befitting a politician, Rubot has broken his promise and suspended his campaign after his loss.
Rubio dropped out.
I guess if I really cared I would move to a swing state. I threw my blue vote out in defiance of the solidly red state I’m in. It’s just as frustrating when the president is a Democrat because I know I made no contribution.
Good thing is that the census is slowly throttling the (mainly GOP) reactionaries.
De Drumpf may have found that populism is the last refuge of the incompetents, but that is trauma nursing of a corpse…
Attitudes like your fuel Trump’s demagoguery and ‘appeal’ better than anything he actually says.
By “census” you mean demographics. I always find this attitude no more becoming than the racism you bemoan. Ethnic machine politics that gets socially conservative non-whites voting for nominally left political parties is no great victory for democracy as a marketplace of ideas. It’s a recipe for corruption and complacency.
This disconnect spills out increasingly in the abandonment of women’s rights and free speech by ‘left’ parties. But, right, right, its the other tribe that are the “reactionaries,” “incompetents,” etc.
I want real social democracy, not ugly identity politics.
Can’t. I’m not a citizen….yet.
I can’t vote until November because I never declared an affiliation, and the state I’m in requires you to do so before allowing you to vote in primaries.
That would seem to be discriminatory. Are independents the servants (slaves?) of the two main parties? Why shouldn’t all states have the same rules? (Because each state is the “greatest”? Considers itself “Speeeccciaall”?)
I do find it strange that in a national election, different states should have different rules or procedures. Very odd. Is this because the Prez is nominally elected by the states, or something, rather than the people directly?
cr
That’s because primaries are run by the political parties. In a primary election, the candidates are not yet running for any official government office, but rather for the right to represent the political party holding the primary in the general election for the government office.
Accordingly, the parties are free to conduct their primary elections by just about any arbitrary or arcane rules and procedures they wish to (so long as those rules and procedures don’t violate general US election law, like the laws prohibiting fraud, etc.). And, unfortunately, the political parties do.
Moreover, US political parties are organized at both the state and national level, and it is at the state level that the presidential primaries are conducted.
OK, that explains it.
(I note that in UK and New Zealand and probably most parliamentary systems, the Prime Minister is the leader of the party that got the most seats in the house, and hence the selection of the party leader is similarly a matter for each party’s own procedures).
cr
I think you’re overreacting and filling in a weird servitude/second class citizen narrative. The parties control their caucuses, and while they may not allow someone who isn’t part of the party to help decide the party candidate at least it’s not a state where I have to sign a party loyalty pledge before being allowed to vote. I probably could have registered Republican in order to cast a protest vote, but I didn’t want to be registered as Republican.
Can I be the first to say,
“Vote early and often”
😉
cr
I voted early (yesterday)…..didn’t consider the often option, probably not been living in the chicago area for long enough
“Voter fraud” is a meme developed effectively by the right wing to disenfranchise voters.
It is a scourge in my country. Laws are constrantly modified to stop it, but fraudsters find new ways. The key factor for it, that is, a population of lumpenized voters ready to sell their votes for a dime, will persist for the foreseeable future. So the only solution is to get other citizens to vote.
Here, we’re lucky to get half the registered voters to show up to actually vote once in an election, let alone worry about people voting multiple times (although we certainly have some colorful historical stories about voter fraud, like the tale of “Landslide” Lyndon Johnson and Ballot Box 13.)
There are almost no documented instances of recent voter fraud in the US. Nevertheless, the Republican party uses the bugaboo of voter fraud to try to enact laws making voting more difficult, for the cynical purpose of suppressing the turnout of legitimate registered voters — particularly minority voters, who tend to vote for Democrats.
We already caucused in Maine!
The most important consequence of living in a democracy is that sometimes you lose; and you have to have the maturity to accept that, to understand that others have a right to their differing opinion, and that making a functional society demands a certain level of comity.
I would disagree on a couple of levels. We never have had a democracy in this country and particularly back in the beginning it was not and was not intended to be. It was a Republic with some representation directly by the people voting and others not. The people did not vote for president and they did not vote for Senators. The evolution from then to now would be that we moved from a Republic to a Oligarchy today. As far as comity goes…good luck with that one. The important item missing from this countries government is that it very much required an educated electorate and I think that is strike three.
Thankfully, we don’t need “maturity” to accept losing election results; we have the rule of law ensuring compliance with the results of elections and the orderly transition of office to those duly elected.
Un-freaking-believable! Colleges and universities let out for Spring Break (a government-based school holiday no doubt created to cover the religious for Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and Easter), and the kids run to beaches and such, neglecting their patriotic duty and their responsibility as citizens!
Why, when I was a young whipper-snapper….
Oh, heck, yeah: We protested, we voted, and we tried hard to turn the tides. It didn’t get us very far, but then we didn’t have Bernie Sanders at a national political-office level.
When I was young my father told me the schedule was based on farmer’s needs. That led to more questions than answers when I was growing up in a non farming area.
Sounds like there could be a farmer’s daughter joke lurking in there somewhere. 🙂
What are defunct U.S. political parties?
I’ll stay with “Political Disasters” for $200, Alex.
Funny.
LOL!
In some places, it has been made onerous by people who don’t want other people to vote 🙁
After most of the results are in for super Tuesday voting it looks like the republicans may be going to convention without a result. Maybe very ugly. One could predict two parties coming out of this – one called the crazy party and the other called the crazier party.
Can we please change to “Instant Runoff Voting” and do away with the gerrymandering and electoral college nonsense already?
“Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
John Adams!
I’m not american so I probably don’t know what I’m talking about, but don’t you think that it’s just a matter of time for “the other candidate” to end up ruling your country (And mine; weak western democracies follow your lead like sheep)? As far as I can see the US society is wonderfully designed (intelligently or not) to produce such “other candidate” and it would be really surprising that that possibility does not became fact eventually, in the short term.
What’s this – you’ve got an election on? How come we haven’t heard anything about it?
Zzzzzzzz.
Let`s vote! I sent in my ballot last week as Democrats Abroad. And down with John Adams.
Puh.
or,Meh.
You know, the thing is, this is healthy change. The rulers of our country have been too long rested in the laps of political apparatchiks. Time they got booted out.
Change is not comfortable. Everyone seems pretty scared, because the outcome(s) is/are not predictable. Remember when the Whigs dissolved? Bet people were pretty unnerved at that time.
Anyway, I will be dead in about 20 years, and have seen this country’s moral, cultural, ethnic and intellectual identities melted away. The Frankfurt School has triumphed, but to what end? Chaos.