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Forums - Politics - Official 2020 US Presidential Election Thread

Cyran said:
haxxiy said:
Torillian said:
Ka-pi96 said:

Has anyone done the analysis on what the results would have been this time if all states split their votes similar to Maine and Nebraska (or maybe even all their rather than just those beyond the two mandatory electors)? I'm curious how much the system would still be swayed by the disproportionate electoral votes of a state like Montana compared to California. 

It would be the same or worse due to Republican gerrymandering. Popular vote is the only way out.

Electoral districts need to be abolished and replaced by proportional representation while we're at it.

I agree president should be popular vote but am a bit more mix when it comes to the house done by Electoral Districts.  In concept I like the idea of a President to represent the entire country, 2 senators to represent the entire state and a member of the house that represent the local needs of where someone lives.  The biggest problem is gerrymandering made it so that you get a house member that only really representing part of a district since the district lines are drawn so stupidly.  If there was some solution to Gerrymandering I think it would fix most my issues with how representation in the house is done.

Well, one can always hope. I've heard the Michigan and Ohio SCs flipped to the Democrats this year so maybe we'll have some progress there, as it happened in NC.



 

 

 

 

 

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Torillian said:
Ka-pi96 said:
Cobretti2 said:

Exactly to me this is wacked and broken. I also think the most votes wins is also broken because using Virginia as an example, 75% of the state voted republican but their voices are ignored because they live in hicksville and only the cities were democratic. What would work better is if every state seat was up for grabs individually for both sides (i.e. if there is 6 seats create 6 electoral regions).  One party should not have full control of a state.  Then you could end up in a situation where both parties are equal and then are forced to work with each other to benefit both side (a common middle ground) and more important all areas of the state not just the ones that voted for the winning party and rest ignored.

huh? Only 44.3% voted republican.

You're not talking about land area or something are you? Because THAT would be a stupid system. Your vote shouldn't be worth more just because nobody lives within 6 miles of you or something like that.

Creating more electoral regions would make that problem worse. That's already the problem with the electoral college. If you're in a state with more people per seat then your vote is worth less than somebody in a state with less people per seat. I believe a vote in Wyoming counts for almost 3 times what a vote in California does. That's incredibly undemocratic and splitting things up even more would make it even worse.

I do agree that parties shouldn't have full control of the state though, it shouldn't be winner takes all. They should use proportional representation instead. ie. if the state has 10 electors and the democrats get 60% of the votes they get 6 electors and the republicans with 40% get 4 electors. It wouldn't eliminate the aforementioned disparity in vote worth, but it would at least make every vote for the winning and losing party more important. Since the loser would still get something, and winning alone isn't everything. A big win would be worth a lot more than an incredibly narrow win (as it probably should be).

Has anyone done the analysis on what the results would have been this time if all states split their votes similar to Maine and Nebraska (or maybe even all their rather than just those beyond the two mandatory electors)? I'm curious how much the system would still be swayed by the disproportionate electoral votes of a state like Montana compared to California. 

I think the house elections should give you a general idea of how that would play out. In which case, the democrats would have a slight lead. However, this year a lot of congressional candidates outperformed Trump in their districts, so, if they elected president that way, Biden would probably win by a bit more than Democrats won the house.



vivster said:

Wholesome Trump

Stock markets up, vaccine inbound, Trump out of the White House, great news all around this week.

Wondering what would have happened if the vaccine news had come out a week ago. It definitely shouldn't have made a difference (I think literally anyone in office would have funded vaccine research and Pfizer actually was not a part of operation warpspeed), but people tend to give the president credit or blame for whatever happens regardless of whether it's rational. 

Either way, amazing results that will hopefully get us back to normal faster than expected. Huge debt of gratitude owed to the scientists and doctors who made this happen.



Zoombael said:
Cobretti2 said:
Pemalite said:

Congratulations to the United States, you tried someone/something different with Trump which resulted in a collapsing economy, insane levels of debt and hundreds of thousands dead and endless amounts of drama, blame shifting, narcissism, bigotry, division and hate.

And you used your democratic rights to boot him out and elect someone different and competent.
Hopefully Biden can mend some of the bridge Trump ruined with us by being disrespectful to our previous prime minister.

From a personal perspective, because Trump wasn't my president, I did enjoy his antics as a joke/free entertainment, so hopefully that class-act continues on in some capacity but doesn't impede progress in the USA.

Honestly I can't see Biden winning a second term and not because he is old and likely to die but because he wasn't really a great candidate to begin with. If Trump handled COVID better he would have won easily, now that is a scary thought lol.

Like you it has no impact on me being in Australia. The only thing I can conclude from the last two elections is America is a bigger mess than Australia where people take their political views too far almost cult like. We sometimes complain about our politicians but I think any of ours are a better option than what America has got atm lol. 

Covid and "systemic racism". Basically Biden was elected thanks to one big fat lie. Devious schemes are nothing unusual in politics, but this is on different scale. The socially disruptive one.

Need to give Biden an actual chance first before you start complaining on apparant lies... Because the world gave Trump a chance despite him lying about:

That massive wall that never got built and Mexico never paid for it.
Hillary never got jailed.
Didn't repeal and replace obamacare.
Didn't deport all immigrants.
Didn't fix the debt problem. (It actually got worst.)
Didn't ditch Nato.
Didn't reinstate torture.
Trump didn't invest heavily on infrastructure to repair and modernize the US's antiquated airports, roads and rail.
Didn't bring American troops home and end the "endless wars".

And lets not start on Trumps downplaying and lying about COVID since the start of this year either... Jesus christ, what a mess.
No wonder he got booted out on his ass, deservedly so.




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Ka-pi96 said:
Cobretti2 said:

Exactly to me this is wacked and broken. I also think the most votes wins is also broken because using Virginia as an example, 75% of the state voted republican but their voices are ignored because they live in hicksville and only the cities were democratic. What would work better is if every state seat was up for grabs individually for both sides (i.e. if there is 6 seats create 6 electoral regions).  One party should not have full control of a state.  Then you could end up in a situation where both parties are equal and then are forced to work with each other to benefit both side (a common middle ground) and more important all areas of the state not just the ones that voted for the winning party and rest ignored.

huh? Only 44.3% voted republican.

You're not talking about land area or something are you? Because THAT would be a stupid system. Your vote shouldn't be worth more just because nobody lives within 6 miles of you or something like that.

Creating more electoral regions would make that problem worse. That's already the problem with the electoral college. If you're in a state with more people per seat then your vote is worth less than somebody in a state with less people per seat. I believe a vote in Wyoming counts for almost 3 times what a vote in California does. That's incredibly undemocratic and splitting things up even more would make it even worse.

I do agree that parties shouldn't have full control of the state though, it shouldn't be winner takes all. They should use proportional representation instead. ie. if the state has 10 electors and the democrats get 60% of the votes they get 6 electors and the republicans with 40% get 4 electors. It wouldn't eliminate the aforementioned disparity in vote worth, but it would at least make every vote for the winning and losing party more important. Since the loser would still get something, and winning alone isn't everything. A big win would be worth a lot more than an incredibly narrow win (as it probably should be).

gergroy said:
Cobretti2 said:

Exactly to me this is wacked and broken. I also think the most votes wins is also broken because using Virginia as an example, 75% of the state voted republican but their voices are ignored because they live in hicksville and only the cities were democratic. What would work better is if every state seat was up for grabs individually for both sides (i.e. if there is 6 seats create 6 electoral regions).  One party should not have full control of a state.  Then you could end up in a situation where both parties are equal and then are forced to work with each other to benefit both side (a common middle ground) and more important all areas of the state not just the ones that voted for the winning party and rest ignored.

Wait, are you arguing that the empty land in Virginia should have more say then the people that live in cities?

I am talking about the land yes because people live on it. All people deserve some sort of representation if their political views are say 100% opposite to the winning party.

However, I ain't talking about 100s of areas.  Virginia for example has 13 seats, you would have 13 areas. They don't even have to be the same size. In Australia they try to group them roughly by the same population size within that state, so the country areas may be 5x bigger than say a city area. Every now and then redraw the boundaries based on population movements and growths. 

So using Virginia's counties as an example,  On the west side maybe say 15 counties make up one seat, where the city is, it could be another seat just for the metro area.

However if this is too complex to work out and because of america's history perhaps it easier to do it the other way as Ka-pi96 pointed out, maybe just split the seats based on percentage on the total vote. 



 

 

Pemalite said:
Zoombael said:

Covid and "systemic racism". Basically Biden was elected thanks to one big fat lie. Devious schemes are nothing unusual in politics, but this is on different scale. The socially disruptive one.

Need to give Biden an actual chance first before you start complaining on apparant lies... Because the world gave Trump a chance despite him lying about:

That massive wall that never got built and Mexico never paid for it.
Hillary never got jailed.
Didn't repeal and replace obamacare.
Didn't deport all immigrants.
Didn't fix the debt problem. (It actually got worst.)
Didn't ditch Nato.
Didn't reinstate torture.
Trump didn't invest heavily on infrastructure to repair and modernize the US's antiquated airports, roads and rail.
Didn't bring American troops home and end the "endless wars".

And lets not start on Trumps downplaying and lying about COVID since the start of this year either... Jesus christ, what a mess.
No wonder he got booted out on his ass, deservedly so.

Agree with you that everyone who wins should get a chance to show what they can do.

Sadly politics seems to have become more and more personal. The media is majorly to blame for that as they encourage divide y party instead of policy. Lot of people draw a line in the sand and are salty. They can no longer look at the policies objectively and make a decision.  The only real difference I see in America is the number of voters changing each election because of personal hate of someone so they want to make sure that person loses.  

Even when Trump won, lot of Democrat devotees kept trash talking him for 4 years. Now you will see the Republican devotees will do the same.

One great thing as you know that we have in Australia is they mandate us to vote. That way the only way a party changes power is if enough people decide they want change and swing their vote. Even in the last few years it is clear that most people are sick of the major parties (with their bullshit musical chairs being the biggest problem) and have been voting for greens or independents.  It forces them to both look at each other and go shit maybe we gone too far with our views and then next election they readjust to something closer what the people want.



 

 

LurkerJ said:

That Tim Pool clip sounds similar to the mainstream media back in 2016 to be honest, and people continue to watch them without questioning or skepticism despite the a proven track record of peddling FUD and inciting hate and justifying wars based on lies.

It doesn't surprise me that the new media has the same type of head-nodding gullible audiences on both sides. Skepticism will always be frowned upon unfortunately.

In regards to the polls, the media did the best they could with the data they were given. The methodologies weren't good enough, sure, but it is especially difficult, when a candidate shows up, who is so different from what has been seen before.

For sure, the media need to improve on objectivity and limit bias.

But if you want to cure bias, you don't do it with worse bias, as is the case with these social media frauds.



I honestly think, far from an underwhelming candidate, Trump was lightning in a bottle for Republicans with how many non-college-educated Whites, invisible to the polls, that he managed to turn out with his firebrand populism. Even then it wasn't enough to win the popular vote, not even close. But it was to flip the electoral college once because they are overrepresented precisely at the states he needed.



 

 

 

 

 

haxxiy said:
I honestly think, far from an underwhelming candidate, Trump was lightning in a bottle for Republicans with how many non-college-educated Whites, invisible to the polls, that he managed to turn out with his firebrand populism. Even then it wasn't enough to win the popular vote, not even close. But it was to flip the electoral college once because they are overrepresented precisely at the states he needed.

Trump was willing to pander to kinds of voters that other republicans had too much integrity to pander to. And, he was a pathological liar, so he was willing to tell them what they wanted to hear. 

Ka-pi96 said:
JWeinCom said:
vivster said:

Wholesome Trump

Stock markets up, vaccine inbound, Trump out of the White House, great news all around this week.

Wondering what would have happened if the vaccine news had come out a week ago. It definitely shouldn't have made a difference (I think literally anyone in office would have funded vaccine research and Pfizer actually was not a part of operation warpspeed), but people tend to give the president credit or blame for whatever happens regardless of whether it's rational. 

Either way, amazing results that will hopefully get us back to normal faster than expected. Huge debt of gratitude owed to the scientists and doctors who made this happen.

What news?

Not saying you can't trust the word of a habitual liar who's currently throwing his dollies out of the pram and is desperate for attention but... I wouldn't

Oh, I certainly don't, but its been reported by several other sources, including President elect Biden.