[Info-vax] [Totally OT] Covid-19 / Politics

[John E. Malmberg]

On 3/16/2020 3:00 PM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> In article <r4nv0i$h9s$1 at dont-email.me>, Dave Froble
> <davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes:
> 
>> my claim about the super delegates stands.  Not picked by voters.
> 
> If you object to lack of democracy, the Electoral College itself and the
> way the popular vote in a state is converted into delegates is a much
> bigger problem.

With out the Electoral College, for all of its flaws, only a handful of 
states (Actually large cities in those states) would effectively decide 
most presidential elections.

There are a lot of serious problems that can arise from that that were 
seen when the U.S. political system was drawn up.

You can end up with a system where since the votes don't count as much, 
the less populous areas end up subsidizing the more populous areas.

An example is the city of Chicago as compared to the rest of Illinois.
The Chicago area and its suburbs are 1/2 the population of Illinois.

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/opinion/why-illinois-pols-havent-fixed-our-fiscal-crisis

So if you make promises to Chicago voters that claims to put more money 
in their pocket, you will win elections, even if the City of Chicago can 
not possibly make enough revenue to pay the bills.

Ideally a city should be more efficient than rural areas and thus should 
generate more tax revenue than it needs.  In practice we often see the 
exact opposite, that heavy subsidies and bailouts are needed.

This pretty much forces most people outside the high population zone to 
have to vote for the opposite party of those high population areas just 
to try to keep from being snow-balled over, even if they don't fully 
agree with that party.

And the U.S. has a lot of population in rural areas.  You can see this 
political trend in the just about any voting history chart.


Now right though elections all over the world are probably going to be 
decided by the people who thought hoarding toilet paper was a good idea 
for this Covid-19 crises.

That probably helps to explain our current choices in the U.S.

Be aware that when there is an incumbent president, most states allow 
voting in the opposition party primary instead, so those that support 
the current president will be casting primary votes for the candidate 
that they think is most likely to lose.

And I see a lot of cases where someone outside of this country (Or in 
Hollywood) are giving praises to what the current headlines of what one 
of the candidates is claiming to represent, with out really knowing the 
real history of the candidate.

The reforms that I would like to see are:
1. All voters can vote in every party primary.
2. No political parties listed on a general election ballot.

It is a primary election day for me, the vote is mainly symbolic, going 
by past election results.  The Chicago area votes alone will pick the 
primary winner, unless there is an unusually high turn out in the rest 
of the state.  The same will be true for the general election.

Regards,
-John