Politics

[AmpharosAndy]

In all the post-brexit madness, the boss lady who said that holding an election soon wouldn't happen has called an election (which is just over a month away now) in order to solve the mess and have a strong government to deal with the negotiations. That's the main thing that's going on. Who to vote for is the problem.

Tories are expected to win by a huge margin, despite trust issues that people have with them.
Labour have been a shambles for a while now as they can't seem to agree within their own party half of the time.
UKIP are a third party that actually does have a somewhat decent chance (unlike what I hear about american third parties).

I think that's the gist.

[mikey]

Ironically, if the UK had implemented an electoral college, brexit wouldn't have passed
But nooo, our government is terribly set up and is hanging by a thread

[Altissimo]

Ironically, if the UK had implemented an electoral college, brexit wouldn't have passed
But nooo, our government is terribly set up and is hanging by a thread

The electoral college is fucking terrible because it statistically privileges some voters over others.

Wyoming has 3 electoral votes and ~580,000 citizens. This means that each Wyoming citizen's vote counts for approximately .0005% of the overall state vote.
California has 55 electoral votes and ~39,140,000 citizens. This means that each California citizen's vote counts for approximately .0001% of the overall state vote.

A Wyoming voter's vote therefore counts about 5 times as much as a California voter's vote.

That is inherently broken and unfair and goes against the basis of democracy.

If the electoral college actually proportionally represented population so that each voter's vote counted for approximately the same amount, I would feel differently. But as it stands it is biased.

[mikey]

As far as I'm concerned California is a liberal echo chamber
And please stop bringing up Wyoming, it's a biased example because 3 is the minimum number of electors... Everything else is pretty much equal based on house of representatives
Seriously it's like some Facebook meme or something "but muh Wyoming" yeah California and New York is the UK equivalent of England, and they pretty much tyranny'd Ireland and Scotland out of having any say in brexit
"Not democratic" my foot

[Altissimo]

As far as I'm concerned California is a liberal echo chamber

So? Do you want to make their votes count less as a result? That's about as undemocratic as it is possible to get.

And please stop bringing up Wyoming, it's a biased example because 3 is the minimum number of electors...

According to a document that could not predict the population growth of the US. It is not updated to take that in mind and is outdated.
And I didn't say that Wyoming needs fewer electors. I said that they need to be equal. If that means shifting other states to keep Wyoming at its precious 3 votes then so be it.

Seriously it's like some Facebook meme or something "but muh Wyoming"

Fine, then let's use New Hampshire, which has 4 electoral votes.
The stats come to .0003%. Which is 3 times a California vote.

yeah California and New York is the UK equivalent of England, and they pretty much tyranny'd Ireland and Scotland out of having any say in brexit

Democracy works in that the majority wins. Ireland and Scotland were not the majority. That's literally all there is to it.

[Altissimo]

In all the post-brexit madness, the boss lady who said that holding an election soon wouldn't happen has called an election (which is just over a month away now) in order to solve the mess and have a strong government to deal with the negotiations. That's the main thing that's going on. Who to vote for is the problem.

Tories are expected to win by a huge margin, despite trust issues that people have with them.
Labour have been a shambles for a while now as they can't seem to agree within their own party half of the time.
UKIP are a third party that actually does have a somewhat decent chance (unlike what I hear about american third parties).

I think that's the gist.

And actually, we wanted to talk about British politics, which you immediately co-opted by going "well if England was America this wouldn't have happened".

So let's talk about Britain instead.

AmpharosAndy: What are the parties like and what are their goals and plans post-Brexit?

[mikey]

The house of representatives IS distributed based on population.  But the smaller states are largely ignored if you solely base it off population, so every state has their 2 senators in addition
Like how important do you want a single person to be?  I don't really want California and new York to dominate the elections and Texas on the other side.  And arguments that the constitution is outdated is what screwed us over in the first place.  FDR completely ignored his limits and drove the debt past the point of no return in exchange for making the us look pretty.  I think if you're not smarter than Jefferson was, you probably shouldn't be saying he was wrong.  Just my 2 cents.

You can fundamentally argue that the electoral college is flawed, but in practice removing it just causes more problems than it does in the first place.

You could also argue that the two party system is flawed in a similar manner as the electoral college, but the ffounding fathers were paying attention to the mistakes of history.  Tyranny doesn't work.  Socialism doesn't work.  Straight up democracy has problems too.  Like, if post WWI Germany had an electoral college, guess who wouldn't have been elected?  Yup.  Germany had like 7 parties and none of them had more than like 20% or something.  That isn't the majority.

Ninjad: sorry ye
That's just what I hated about brexit in General

[Dude]

I'd rather have a dollar than your 2 cents.

[mikey]

Good thing you're a guy then.  A girl would only get 71 cents

[Dude]

...Unless I'm discriminated by homophobic people and don't get any money at all because they wouldn't hire me.

[mikey]

I've never worked anywhere that wasn't an equal opportunity employer, how often has it happened for you?

[Dude]

Fun fact: not all states include sexual orientation in that so

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Plus I haven't gone public yet so it hasn't happened yet

...but that doesn't mean it won't

[Pianist Da Sootopolis]

Fun fact: not all states include sexual orientation in that so

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In fact, you can still be fired for being gay in 29 states.

...the government slowly taking control of businesses, making itself a monopoly by claiming to eradicate it, not learning from past mistakes...

Because that happens in the US so often.

The reality is that there are some things that simply have to be nationalized. Healthcare is one of them, just like we've decided public roads and bridges (imagine paying a toll for every road you drove on).

Socialism isn't what eats everything up. Capitalism does that. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, either, just that we need to accept that socialism (which we already have) isn't this inherently evil idea.

The house of representatives IS distributed based on population.  But the smaller states are largely ignored if you solely base it off population, so every state has their 2 senators in addition

Smaller states, perhaps. The people in them? No. It's also worth noting that, with an electoral college, the 10m+ republicans in California are also ignored.

Like how important do you want a single person to be?  I don't really want California and new York to dominate the elections and Texas on the other side.

I want a person to be more important than mostly arbitrary borders. The idea that California and New York would suddenly dominate if we abolish the electoral college is stupid; they're also home to several million republicans apiece who would be more likely to vote now that they felt their vote meant something.
 

And arguments that the constitution is outdated is what screwed us over in the first place.  FDR completely ignored his limits and drove the debt past the point of no return in exchange for making the us look pretty.  I think if you're not smarter than Jefferson was, you probably shouldn't be saying he was wrong.  Just my 2 cents.

Ah, the old chestnut of "if you aren't smarter don't critique", much like "if you can't write better than Mozart don't you dare criticize his music." No, the Constitution, while a wonderful basis for our government, is made to be amended (that's why we have a process to add to and amend it). The Founders knew that times would change; specifically, many of them wanted to abolish slavery, but knew it would never happen with how powerful Virginia was as a result of slave labor, and they therefore set up the Constitution as a document that isn't set in stone.

Lmao you really seem not to like FDR despite his pulling us out of the depression by regulating the banks and WW2. He did have a bit of an issue with the Japanese, but he got elected 3 times for a reason.

You can fundamentally argue that the electoral college is flawed, but in practice removing it just causes more problems than it does in the first place.

[citation needed]

You could also argue that the two party system is flawed in a similar manner as the electoral college, but the ffounding fathers were paying attention to the mistakes of history.

Such as? I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Tyranny doesn't work.  Socialism doesn't work.  Straight up democracy has problems too.

So does the electoral college. As the Churchill quote goes, democracy is the worst system of government except for all the others.

Like, if post WWI Germany had an electoral college, guess who wouldn't have been elected?  Yup.  Germany had like 7 parties and none of them had more than like 20% or something.  That isn't the majority.

This is pure speculation. It's impossible to know what Germany would or wouldn't have done post WW1 w/o an electoral college.

[SpartanChief17]

Hey, I don't complain about the electoral collage, because if we didn't have it, democrats would win every election.

[Altissimo]

[original post deleted]