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Forums - Politics Discussion - The US is ranked as a 'Flawed Democracy', what needs to change?

TheMisterManGuy said:

Get rid of mass Mail-in Ballots. They're slow, unreliable, and can be easily manipulated by either political party. Mail-ins should only be used in special cases like military or citizens traveling. Conservative or Liberal, nobody wants to wait days, let alone weeks to find out who won an election, regardless of who wins. The fact that several states kept their COVID-era election rules despite COVID being pretty much over is pathetic. Elections should be done in person, on one night, and the winner should be decided the same night. If other countries can do this, why can't the U.S.?

Hasn't it been proven, multiple times over, that Mail-In voting is completely fine and does not have any history of being tampered with? Like, every time I read up on it, it sounds just as reliable and safe as any voting, it just takes a bit longer to count.

And for something as important as your damn democracy, shouldn't you be willing to take the extra time to do it right? I mean, it's not like the people are taking office the SECOND the polls close, is it? 



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I keep wanting to say this.

I think a big issue with US's democracy is that there is a growing disparity between who has the advantage for elections, and who think they do.

Conservatives tend to think that they're at a disadvantage, "the elections are being stolen".

Despite the fact that a lot of districts are gerrymandered for Republicans.

Take Wisconsin 2018:

- Democrats got 9% more votes for their House Representatives, and yet 5/8ths of the Representatives went to the Republican party.

- Democrats got 8% more votes for their state legislature, and yet 2/3rds of the assembly went to Republicans.

Democrats would have needed to win by 20% in order to get control of Assembly.

This also happens at the state level. A lot of red states have disproportionately more representation than blue states. 

Red votes tend to be worth more, and yet they're convinced otherwise. 

https://wallethub.com/edu/how-much-is-your-vote-worth/7932

For Senator, a Wyoming voter has 64x as much voting power as a California voter. And yet the Wyoming voter is more likely to think that their vote was taken from them.

Runa216 said:
TheMisterManGuy said:

Get rid of mass Mail-in Ballots. They're slow, unreliable, and can be easily manipulated by either political party. Mail-ins should only be used in special cases like military or citizens traveling. Conservative or Liberal, nobody wants to wait days, let alone weeks to find out who won an election, regardless of who wins. The fact that several states kept their COVID-era election rules despite COVID being pretty much over is pathetic. Elections should be done in person, on one night, and the winner should be decided the same night. If other countries can do this, why can't the U.S.?

Hasn't it been proven, multiple times over, that Mail-In voting is completely fine and does not have any history of being tampered with? Like, every time I read up on it, it sounds just as reliable and safe as any voting, it just takes a bit longer to count.

And for something as important as your damn democracy, shouldn't you be willing to take the extra time to do it right? I mean, it's not like the people are taking office the SECOND the polls close, is it? 

I think a major issue is that people don't understand the process. How do votes get counted? How does voter verification work? 

People don't understand all these parts of the voting process. 

It's why Tom Scott keeps making videos explaining why electronic voting is a bad idea. 

And of course there are bad actors willing to push distrust into that lack of knowledge. 

Last edited by the-pi-guy - on 14 November 2022

the-pi-guy said:

Take Wisconsin 2018:

- Democrats got 9% more votes for their House Representatives, and yet 5/8ths of the Representatives went to the Republican party.

- Democrats got 8% more votes for their state legislature, and yet 2/3rds of the assembly went to Republicans.

Democrats would have needed to win by 20% in order to get control of Assembly.

I agree that gerrymandering is a problem, but it is important to also note that it is possible for there to be discrepancies between the popular vote and seat apportionment like this without too much gerrymandering and therefore a better measurement would be to compare the gerrymandered map to the average map produced in n number of random simulations when determining whether or not there is a political gerrymander. 

As an example of a sort of "natural gerrymander", the general court of Massachusetts had a state senate of 37 Democrats : 3 Republicans (7.5% GOP representation), and a HoR of 129 Democrats : 29 Republicans : 1 Independent (20% GOP representation) before this election. This is despite the fact that about a third of the state votes Republican on a consistent basis.

Unlike most states, in Massachusetts, Republicans and Democrats are pretty evenly distributed. This means that Democrats are the majority throughout most of the state so they win pretty much every seat more or less. They'd win like this even if they didn't gerrymander, which they don't seem to need to do anyway. 

With something like Mixed-Member-Proportional-representation, Republicans would probably go from having no national HoR seats from Massachusetts (and much of New England) to having something like 15%-20% of them (assuming there is no other conservative opposition pulling votes from them.) 

At this point, given that the Supreme Court has upheld political gerrymandering, moving away from single-member districts to multi-member districts is the best option to resolve that and other problems. 



RolStoppable said:
ConservagameR said:

The question then being if the left is so aware he's mentally unstable or mentally ill, then why not point that out and leave it at that? Why also add that it's because he's clearly a crazy conservative? Because you don't let a good political opportunity go to waste, especially right before the mid terms.

Logical deduction = political deduction. Got it.

This is also why the right won't simply point out it's mental illness, because if they do, like in the past, the left will keep hammering the so called conservative connection as if it's vital. So the right also points out why it's just as likely, if not more likely, that the culprit is a liberal.

Trying to split the left and right is normal and done all the time in America. The right very rarely acknowledges the bad things the far right might do, because while the left will acknowledge far left negative happenings at times, it's always followed by but, as in it's not that big of a deal, and then when election time comes, they vote left anyway, so why would the right fight each other and split themselves when the left won't in the end no matter what. It's good strategy from the right based on how the left operates.

How often the culprit is actually right or left, if we left it up to the media, would be on the right 99% of the time, coincidentally. If that were the truth, then there's no chance that DeSantis, a conservative, could've crushed Crist as badly as he did in a purple state.

It's said that the culprit is aligned with the far-right because he is aligned with the far-right. These are the facts that played a crucial part for why he committed the crime, so why pretend that his political alignment didn't matter.

Since there isn't more to respond to this post of yours, I'll address your follow-up post as well. The reason why you lose the "likes" battle in political threads is because the far-right constitutes a minority everywhere, except on sites that are specifically tailored to the far-right. An important additional reason is that people in general don't like bullshit. I suppose you could call yourself a victim of free speech; you love the role of the victim, after all.

He's on the right because the guy on the news said he's far right. I see.. a crucial undeniable fact no doubt..

Since the left is all about diversity and inclusivity, to the point they'll enact affirmative action, you can't help but wonder why this hasn't been pushed in places of discussion on the internet. Those poor minorities on the right who just want to feel welcomed and be heard.



the-pi-guy said:
ConservagameR said:

I'm going to blanket reply to all of this, because it's all driven by the same fallacy.

Republicans/Conservatives are not a bloc, they do not all believe the same things. I'm just saying that a lot of them have different feelings. That's my point.

Liberals and left wingers and socialists are also not a bloc. They do not believe the same things. Plenty of left wingers have right wing beliefs. Plenty of right wingers have left wing beliefs.

Some conservatives loved Colbert back in the day, some hated him. 

Some conservatives hate abortion, some conservatives say they hate abortion, some will still get an abortion for themselves.

Some conservatives hate welfare, and some conservatives say they hate welfare, but have no problem getting something for themselves.

The reason why I was pointing out hypocrisy, is because I'm pointing out that those left wing positions aren't the important factor. Being pro-marijuana or pro-BLM doesn't make someone not a conservative. That's all I'm saying.

>I never said all immigrants are liberals.

You were giving a long list of things you felt disqualified someone from being conservative. I was pointing out that plenty of people are hypocritical. 

The more important point that I was making before, it doesn't matter if DePape was the most leftwing person on the planet, what matters is what drove him to do something. Which was in this case, anti-democratic/anti-leftwing propaganda. Which lots of left wingers fall for, but that propaganda is not left wing.

It doesn't even matter if he was mentally unwell, where did he get the idea to do something?

ConservagameR said:

I'm the one who initially explained the Elon tweet to Clinton. All he was doing was making a point. If she's going to jump to conclusions about the story, then so will he. If she's going to post something that's mostly a guess, then he's going to do the same. If she's going to smear the right, he's going to smear the left.

The overall point was, you can either play clean or play dirty, and if you want to play dirty, two can play at that game. Conservatives aren't playing nice anymore. That much has been clear to me for a while now. If the left can get away with it, then so can the right. Either things can go back to being more legitimate, or they can keep getting worse and it's not the right who's going to decide that. That's the stance the right is taking, that looks to be clear, and if the left doesn't like it, the right isn't going to care going forward until things change.

@underlined: Yes and I was pointing out that you're wrong. And then you ignored it. That's why I'm bringing it up again.

And no these two things are not the same. One of them is just blatant misinformation, and the other one is something that is reasonably correct, even if it doesn't tell the whole story. 

Secondly no, conservatives have been playing dirty for decades.

Fox News, Breitbart, New York Post, Washington Times, etc pretty much exist solely for some conservatives to play dirty.

ConservagameR said:

Or you know, don't make any assumptions whatsoever and look at the facts.

All these conversations about this have been nothing but assumptions by everyone, so why does this only apply to me? That seems to be a trend now.

Looking at reporting is not making assumptions.

ConservagameR said:

The unfortunate truth is that the truth no longer matters in politics. The more honest you are, the more likely you're going to lose.

I wonder why I, lose so much, when it comes to likes in threads like these? Must be because I'm always completely wrong. Must be.

Because you clearly don't make an effort to try to understand what the other viewpoints are. You're just here to argue, you're just to "win". 

For example, I don't personally view these discussions as things I am losing or winning. 

I get in these conversations partly to try to understand where you're coming from, partly because I would like to share my perspective. 

And it's clear that you're not here for the same reasons. You're almost practically throwing a large part of my argument back at me, without understanding the point.

I'll blanket back.

So you say conservatives and liberals aren't all the same, and believe in many different things, some that even cross over, yet the culprit isn't on the left but is definitely on the right?

The things the culprit did, said, and was known for, aren't tied to liberals in anyway, only conservatives? How is that possible?

Both of those things can't be true at the same time. Either he's on the right because the right and left are bloc's, or we can't know his political affiliation.

Seems to me like I'm the one trying to understand, and you're the one trying to win.



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ConservagameR said:
RolStoppable said:

It's said that the culprit is aligned with the far-right because he is aligned with the far-right. These are the facts that played a crucial part for why he committed the crime, so why pretend that his political alignment didn't matter.

Since there isn't more to respond to this post of yours, I'll address your follow-up post as well. The reason why you lose the "likes" battle in political threads is because the far-right constitutes a minority everywhere, except on sites that are specifically tailored to the far-right. An important additional reason is that people in general don't like bullshit. I suppose you could call yourself a victim of free speech; you love the role of the victim, after all.

He's on the right because the guy on the news said he's far right. I see.. a crucial undeniable fact no doubt..

Since the left is all about diversity and inclusivity, to the point they'll enact affirmative action, you can't help but wonder why this hasn't been pushed in places of discussion on the internet. Those poor minorities on the right who just want to feel welcomed and be heard.

It doesn't matter what any one journalist says, because the facts are out of the open. When a guy runs a blog filled with far-right conspiracy theories and the like, and then plans an attack on a left politician, then it's pretty obvious what his political alignment is. Unless someone is like you and is so much in denial that he can't help but avoid the culprit's blog in order to push his own prejudice through.

I am pretty sure the left is not about diversity and inclusivity, because they realize that in a place of unlimited tolerance the intolerant folks would ultimately win out. That's why there is so much disdain for fascists, neo-nazis, conspiracy theorists and the like. But as usual, you are having trouble to piece things together, because your own prejudice gets in the way. The far-left folks who push for an insane level of diversity and inclusivity aren't liked by the left either, because it's blatantly obvious how hypocritical and shitty these people are; hence why nobody here would like to go to ResetEra to discuss anything political.



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ConservagameR said:

I'll blanket back.

So you say conservatives and liberals aren't all the same, and believe in many different things, some that even cross over, yet the culprit isn't on the left but is definitely on the right?

For the love of gravy dude, did you read anything I said?

I keep saying it doesn't matter what the person was. What actual positions motivated his actions?

Here this paragraph here is the most important part of what I was saying:

>The more important point that I was making before, it doesn't matter if DePape was the most leftwing person on the planet, what matters is what drove him to do something. Which was in this case, anti-democratic/anti-leftwing propaganda. Which lots of left wingers fall for, but that propaganda is not left wing.

ConservagameR said:

The things the culprit did, said, and was known for, aren't tied to liberals in anyway, only conservatives? How is that possible?

No, again. Please read my post instead of making stuff up.



Can't bad people simply be bad people? Why does a person need to be put into a political bucket? Bad people exist across all demographics.



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Chrkeller said:

Can't bad people simply be bad people? Why does a person need to be put into a political bucket? Bad people exist across all demographics.

You don't need to put bad person into a political bucket but some do this to themselves. A bad behavior or action is rarely devoid of motive, understanding those motive help take the right action. If one crime have been committed because of one party political rhetoric and repeated half veiled call for violence against actors of the opposing party than it needs to be called out.



1. Ranked Choice Voting
2. Abolishing the Electoral College
3. Ending Gerrymandering
4. Massively slashing the military budget.

Those are the big things, but there are more.



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