The Gaming Den

You can only have two parties because of your crappy first past the post electoral system. A third party merely saps votes from one of the major parties and causes it to lose.

Draco_Argentum wrote:You can only have two parties because of your crappy first past the post electoral system. A third party merely saps votes from one of the major parties and causes it to lose.

Pretty much. We can and do have more complicated and superior electoral systems for local positions, but yeah it's a lot of bullshit. We have the best electoral system of the late 18th century, and as the second oldest country on Earth we... still have an electoral system from the fucking late 18th century.

We need major structural reforms. I'm not at all convinced that just scrapping our country and starting over with a new constitution would be a bad idea. I genuinely don't see how we can move forward without doing that.

-Username17

Outlawing births, outlawing insurance companies, outlawing housing industry, and many other things to bring humanity back to the human race, rather than the religion of worshiping money.

Well, we've passed and are looking at a couple new things out here in California, Frank.

I certainly hope we pass the single-elimination primary that is being floated. And we've hinted wed go along with a majority of states if they changed their electoral college.

Next we'd need to change the Senate, but I'm not sure how to approach that. Have to do something to merge up some states or split up some of the population dense areas.

State of Jefferson, and South California, indeed.

-Crissa

The Senate has to become parliamentarized. There's really no other solution. We can't split up the populated states until they are anything close to the unpoulated states. To match the population of Montana or Wyoming, there would have to be 15 states just in the Bay Area. The "Governor of South San Francisco, Pleasanton, and Colma" has a ring to it that is frankly stupid.

I am vaguely willing to accept that California has only 1 Congressional District for every 700,000 people while Wyoming gets a whole at-large district despite having only 532,000 people. That's not fair, but that's about as good as districting is going to get when you have large mostly unpopulated areas like that. But there is absolutely no way to district up Senatorial seats in a way that is vaguely fair. Senatorial Seats cannot be based on districts at all.

People should just vote for their favorite senate faction each election, with each senate faction presenting 33 candidates in an ordered list each time. Every 3.3% of the national popular vote gets your faction 1 Senator, factions that get less than 3.3% of the vote don't get any senators, and the remaining seats go to the highest vote getting factions. Done.

And I seriously don't see something like that happening without putting guns to the head of the senate. Because they are so corrupt that they'll never vote to replace themselves with something better. And that's the problem. The problem is that the senate is the problem, and the way our constitution is set up, they are also the bottleneck for solving problems. So it's a problem our system cannot fix because the inmates are running the asylum.

-Username17

There's always the whole "Shasta" proposal, although implementing it would almost certainly result in civil war (because, as history shows, it wouldn't fly in DC).

We are already on the verge of a civil war as it is.

Draco_Argentum wrote:You can only have two parties because of your crappy first past the post electoral system. A third party merely saps votes from one of the major parties and causes it to lose.

It doesn’t have to, but you have to think outside of the box. The best way to support a “X” party system is to allow a candidate to go on more than one line in the ballot. This is done in a number of states including New York. The biggest third party parties in New York include the “Conservative” party, the “Liberal” party and the “Working Families” party. (Note WF has strong ties to ACORN)

This has two clear effects, candidates elected across multiple lines (for example both the Conservative and Republican) will tend to be loyal to the ideals of both lines they run under. When a candidate does run on the minor party and not on the major party (and that candidate is well liked) he can actually win an election. (We had a Conservative on our local town board until he had to resign for personal family reasons that required him to spend more time at home with his wife.) Even the bizarre case of the NY election is a strong example of the power of the minor parties; the Republicans put forth a RINO who was so liberal that the Democrat ran as a conservative moderate. Both the Republican and Democrat parties spent a lot on attack ads. The Republican pulled out and to the annoyance of the party, supported the Democrat. The Conservative only lost by 4% and had the few votes that went for the Republican who pulled out of the race went for the Conservative, the Conservative would have won.

Many parties on the national level are self deluded into thinking that the only election is for President of the United States. Political parties form from the bottom up and they form because a significant number of people are not happy with the existing options. Multiple lines can reduce the level of unhappiness required for such a party to form but when there is significant anger at an existing party, a new party can form that will take over where the existing party failed.

Approval voting is great for allowing many parties without sapping votes from decent compromises.

I was just saying that before we have even a chance to parliamentalize the Senate, we need to do something about the Dakotas first.

-Crissa

FrankTrollman wrote:Pretty much. We can and do have more complicated and superior electoral systems for local positions, but yeah it's a lot of bullshit.

Yeah, I looked into it before I started spouting. Its a lot more sane in places, but not in enough or the right ones to get things running properly. Theres also this weird idea that a preferential system similar to Australia's would violate one person one vote. I really don't get that line of reasoning.

Honestly a preferential system is only a half fix. It lets the smaller parties grow. But they still get far fewer seats than the percentage of the votes would suggest. The Greens got 8.37 over all in the last state election but got no seats. So while they are a growing party they have little power at the moment.

On the other hand it does make it easier to keep fringe fuckheads out.

Crissa wrote:I was just saying that before we have even a chance to parliamentalize the Senate, we need to do something about the Dakotas first.

-Crissa

No kidding! Dakota Fanning, and Dakota Blue Richards both get on my nerves with their screaming voices in movies.

One ruined War of the Worlds, and the other ruined a movie with Nicole Kidman in it.

We really need to do something about the Dakotas!

Koumei, you are describing narcotic addiction. That's what narcotic withdrawals are like.

-Username17

More crazy if-you're-not-blood-related decisions:

Republican Governor of Rhode Island vetoes bill allowing domestic partners to make funeral arrangements.

Hospital wins case to ignore durable power of attorney and exclude woman's chosen family because they weren't married.

-Crissa

So I'm an Oakland Public Library volunteer. My supervisor (who is a Library Assistant, a job I now technically am qualified to apply for. Sadly, OPL's got a hiring freeze on until Obama waves his magic wand and makes the economy all better) has some sort of position (maybe a committee head? I wasn't paying too much attention to that part of it) with the Mayor's Toy Drive, which apparently could use some volunteers on several specific days. I say yes for tomorrow, since I wasn't doing anything important on Saturday anyways.

Saturday comes, and after a bit of transportation confusion, I show up at City Hall roughly on time. Thankfully, I don't have to stand in line with everyone waiting to apply for the program, as there is a separate entrance for volunteers, and a mention of my supervisor's name gets me in and signing my name on the volunteer registration pretty painlessly. City Hall even has food (pizza and bottled water) set out for the volunteers. After eating something, I sit down in the volunteer room and figure out what I'm supposed to be doing.

The room is a big rectangle, and you've got a big C shape made by some long tables inside of that. Volunteers sit on the inside of the C, and the public comes in from another entrance and sits on the outside until they've registered, then moves out through yet another door. When someone comes to my area of the table (I generally raise my hand when I'm not helping anyone, so the greeters by the door know to send the next English speaker my way. If I spoke Spanish or Chinese, I'd have to periodically call out that I spoke that language so that I'd get the appropriate people.), I give them a form, help them fill it out, and then give it to another volunteer, who presumably runs it back to a big pile once he gets enough to fill his box.

There's basically three parts to the form, contact info, a brief entry (name, age, gender) for each child, and confirmation (I check five boxes and sign my name) that the volunteer saw proof of address, proof of income, the parent/guardian's picture ID, proof of the children's ages, and one other piece of identification that slips my mind at the moment. Now, this is a pretty basic form. It's one page, and if you can read English, it shouldn't be difficult to fill out at all. And I am strongly incentivized not to hassle people if they seem like legitimate parents. More times than I can count, I checked off all five boxes even though the parent had only 3 or 4 of the 5 officially required pieces of evidence needed to register.

Here's where things get interesting. Pretty much all of the people who applied for the program seemed very pleasant. But some smelled strongly of cigarettes or simply smelled quite strongly. Since the requirements were very loose, and I personally didn't stand to lose or gain anything based on my performance, I felt a perverse incentive to rush the more... pungent applicants through the process, not even bothering to skim the documentation they provided before checking them off. The most pleasant people, on the other hand, I usually ended up chatting with for a bit, which slowed down the speed at which they were processed.

I think I learned something about the perspectives of people on both sides of the desk in government bureaucracies.

I get that.

I work at a local business office and was actually told by my boss that my level of helpfulness depended on the requester's politeness. If someone calls asking for information and they're particularly dickish, I am to respond that I don't have access to that information. If someone calls and they're polite, I am to respond with as much information as I can provide.

The local government offices are on my shitlist lately, though, as far as professionalism goes. And to the best of my ability to discern, it's not because of anything I actually did.