For those who feel their vote does not matter

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

I think this is more of a problem in the first past the post/winner takes it all system vs proportional system.

If you are referring to the Electoral College, this decision is entirely up to the individual states. Each state has the right to assign its electors in a matter set by that state's law. Two of our states, Nebraska and Maine choose a modified proportional way of allocating electors. The rest of the states choose a winner take all method.

Why?

The answer may be as simple as that's the way it has always been done.

I think that if each state were to allot their electors in a strictly proportional manner it would be more representative of that state's population and give third parties more representation.

Hmm maybe that's why most of our state legislators (made up primarily of Democrats and Republicans) choose a method that favors a two party system>

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Hmm maybe that's why most of our state legislators (made up primarily of Democrats and Republicans) choose a method that favors a two party system>

Not maybe, but surely. Every monopolist bends and designs the rules so to favour his interests. And his interest is to defend his monopoly and the profits that come with it.

That so many people buy this and fall for this proves my argument that the best service voters can do to the community is - not to vote. Where voters vote, irrationality, cluelessness and incompetence become ruling paradigm. Elecitons do not push the bets of the best, th most sutiable, to higher ranks, but the most unscrupulous, the lowest characters, the uncaring chesaters, the bigm ouths, the false messiahs promising that money and honey will rain down from heaven.

I go even one step further. If people are stupoid enough to even believe and excuse these^ claims and manners, they should be forbidden to vote. They help to raise the scum to the top, to lend from a quote by Hayek.

Elections simply do not find empirical justification in the results they create. Or as Brennan says: democracy and elections in it must be judged not by their claims on what they insist to be in meaning and relevance, but by their objective results - and the results are just not good enough.

Think of it. The mere idea to let somebody who has no education and understanding whateve ron the role anbd meaning of moiney or on economic base concepts, have a however minimal influence on both money and economy, is aburd. Insane. You do not ask 80 year old aunt Mary on her opinion about the right approach of a 747 on Chicago O'Hare. But you let cast polticla influence on running the economy, something that even most claimed Nobel economy laureats do not understand...???

There are most fundamental, most profound dilemmata to be faced. I do not claim to have a solution, and maybe there even is no oridnary soltiuioon to the state of things we are in (remember, I mentioned a dilemma). But I can claim that 13 + 5 is not 5, and I can prove it. I can claim and prove that even without necessarily knwoing the correct result of 18.

Sometimes, chaotic reconstruction, sometimes destruction iof the petrified old wroing ways are part of the solution, and the solution is to see something new, unknown grow in the free space that the revolution forced open. I beleive to know only one thing for sure: Our current ways and paradigm -. and the sheer size of global population - lead into our penultimate collapse.