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[JHoNNy1OoO]

Agree, even as a Sanders supporter this is a non-issue aside from the way it was reported. I still have a huge problem with state taxpayers funding 'private' party primaries. If they want to set their own rules, they should pay for the entire fucking thing themselves.

See this is another made up issue, which I can only assume is made by someone who hasn't taken part of many elections or is just uninformed. There are other things on the ballot other than just the Democratic and Republican nominee in the majority of states. Wisconsin put the State Supreme Court on the ballot for example. I for example had to vote on whether I wanted to allow the City of Miami to lease property. I'm sure there were thousands of cities and counties who had their own issues to be voted on.

Why are we pretending like it's just some private party funded by taxpayers where its ONLY about the DEM nominee or REP nominee?

 

[balladofwindfishes]

People can blabber on and on trying to justify this type of system, taking the power out of the people's hands and into this politicians'/corporations', but we should all agree that doesn't make it right. The more these highly un-democratic instances happen, the more it damages Hillary and the Democratic party's reputation. You would think they'd change their tune in order to demonstrate they're the party of fairness, but instead all this does is diminish Hillary's support and takes chunks out of her political capital. The more this stuff happens, the closer race the GE will become.

How on earth is this Hillary's fault? If these causes are meant to rig the election for her, they're doing a pretty poor job of it, as Bernie almost always wins caucuses.

Without caucuses, Bernie would be several more delegates behind Hillary. They're actually being unfair to Hillary!

 

[Clefargle]

Oh please. Like anyone knew about the details of Wyoming caucusing until this shit. I like how googling makes people experts around here.

Exactly, it isn't hard at all. I knew the number of delegates in play, the proportional allocation methods, and the projected margins through 538. All it took was a couple of searches before the fact. If they cared they would have looked at this beforehand. Like I did.

i never said otherwise. the people are not the superdelegates. focus, guys.



this is nonsense, so is the whole we suck at math thing. it's trashcan politics.

I've been on r/politics for years. Nobody brought up Superdelegates being Undemocratic in any noticeable way until 2016. We have pages of threads on GAF with surprised sanders supporters, as if there was no way to know these rules were in place. When all they ever had to do was a Google search.

 

[Drek]

How does anything you've written change the fact that she won the popular vote.
In the end pledge delegates decide who is the winner not popular vote.

Because Obama literally didn't even run in one of the larger states in the country, and the results were originally stricken from the process for that exact fact. Michigan and Florida did not hold valid primaries in 2008 and as such the results of what they called a "primary" does not count in the primary process.

The only way pledge delegates won't match popular vote is if a candidate is exceedingly popular in caucus states and low population states that receive a disproportionate amount of delegates. Basically a successful version of what Sanders is trying. But to do it successfully he'd have to not get blown out in the high population states by 30-40%, like he did all through the south.

 

[studyguy]

See this is another made up issue, which I can only assume is made by someone who hasn't taken part of many elections or is just uninformed. There are other things on the ballot other than just the Democratic and Republican nominee in the majority of states. Wisconsin put the State Supreme Court on the ballot for example. I for example had to vote on whether I wanted to allow the City of Miami to lease property. I'm sure there were thousands of cities and counties who had their own issues to be voted on.

Why are we pretending like it's just some private party funded by taxpayers where its ONLY about the DEM nominee or REP nominee?

Not to mention the pathetic number of votes for said State Supreme Court. Man we're fucked come midterms.

 

[Orbis Tabula]

Maths? Gtfo, this is America.

 

[User 463088]

i dunno what you're going off about, it's perpendicular to the subject of hasty generalizations of poorly mathed bernie supporters.

the outrage stuff is trashcan too, yes.



i keep seeing people type this re: pragmatism and the lot, it's a nonargument.

Had nothing to do with pragmatism, and to do with, you know,actually knowing how this shit works. I've been involved in this stuff my entire life. This isn't new to me, and I surely didn't educate myself on it by Googling "How to git good at a caucus."

 

[StopMakingSense]

How does anything you've written change the fact that she won the popular vote.
In the end pledge delegates decide who is the winner not popular vote.

Obama wasn't even on the ballot in the non binding Michigan primary. Her "winning the popular vote" in 2008 requires counting this and the no binding Florida vote as legitimate.

 

[Tesseract]

Had nothing to do with pragmatism, and to do with, you know,actually knowing how this shit works. I've been involved in this stuff my entire life. This isn't new to me, and I surely didn't educate myself on it by Googling "How to git good at a caucus."

i mean, same? congrats on the self-proclaimed ethos.

 

[TheAutomator]

Using the numbers from Wyoming, can you give us an example?

4.457 + 2.229 + 1.114 = 7.8

3.543 + 1.771 + 0.886 = 6.2

There you go. Much better than Bernie losing 0.8 and Hillary gaining 0.8 from rounding off numbers.

 

[ivysaur12]

I would prefer the races to be straight proportional, but both candidates have lost a few delegates due to quirks in state rules over the election. Bernie winning pledged delegates in Wyoming 8-6 isn't going to make a difference.

 

[Gotchaye]

Using the numbers from Wyoming, can you give us an example?

I think the idea is just that you do exactly what Wyoming did except you combine the three different groups of delegates into one pot. Actually I think this is a pretty reasonable way to do it - for states that are just one congressional district it makes a lot of sense to combine the congressional district delegates with the at-large delegates. Maybe you want to do something a little different with the PLEOs since I guess part of the point is to give local party people a free trip to Cleveland.

Now, they didn't do this and it's not at all a big deal and definitely it's silly to want to retroactively change the rules, but, like, I'm not going to object if Wyoming decides it wants to do this going forward.

I would guess that what happened is that we've got a one-size-fits-all set of primary rules that the DNC suggests/requires which all the states use. Like: "Your state gets X delegates as a function of population and Obama vote share in 2012. Y% of them should be awarded proportionally according to rule 103.5 within each congressional district as a function of that district's Obama vote share in 2012. Z% of them will be set aside for PLEOs and awarded proportionally according to rule 103.5 based on the state-wide vote. The rest are at-large delegates to be awarded proportionally according to rule 103.5 based on the state-wide vote."

So then Wyoming adopts that method of splitting the delegates along with every other state. Because really who gives a shit? It's not worth anyone's time to sit around and try to think through weird corner cases that can come up in irrelevant states like Wyoming.

Or maybe the delegate split is entirely up to the state parties. In which case again it's not worth anyone's time to try to think through this and realize that you might as well make them all at-large in one-district states and I sort of doubt that the people making these decisions are able to just intuitively grasp the issue here.

 

[User 463088]

i mean, same? nonargument, congrats on the self-proclaimed ethos.

I'm not entirely sure we're having the same conversation. The only thing I was saying is that a lot of us don't see fraud everywhere because we've been around this stuff for a long time. While we may not like caucuses and the like, we also don't call fraud every time something doesn't go our candidates way.

It's not about elitism. It's not about saying we're better than anyone else. I think one big take away we should have from this election is making sure people are better informed as to how the primaries actually work.

 

[kirblar]

OP should mention that the tally includes superdelegates.

But that would result in a lack of outrage and defeat the entire purpose of the thread!

 

[andycapps]

us system is crazy. Crazy i tell you. Like someone threw a bunch of papers while taking a shit and accordingly to how they fell he based the election system.

Just have 2 nationals and count the votes. It's called democracy.

US isn't a democracy... It's a democratic republic. Also, you can't just have a total popular vote determine the winner. Lower population states would be screwed more than they already are.

I do agree that the rules favor establishment candidates and it's a system setup by the ruling elite to preserve their status as such. Where we see problems in how it's working, they see it working as intended.

 

[JHoNNy1OoO]

Not to mention the pathetic number of votes for said State Supreme Court. Man we're fucked come midterms.

We always have been as DEMs. Obama was supposed to usher more civil engagement in the process. "YES WE CAN". Yet where the fuck were the WE just two years later in 2010? At home thinking their job was done since they got Obama to the White House. Unless a ton of states have ballot initiatives in 2018 for Marijuana Legalization, we'll be screwed then too.

 

[kirblar]

US isn't a democracy... It's a democratic republic. Also, you can't just have a total popular vote determine the winner. Lower population states would be screwed more than they already are.

Low population states being overrepresented is a big problem- land gets represented instead of people.

 

[ivysaur12]

Low population states being overrepresented is a big problem- land gets represented instead of people.

Let's not forget that Wyoming is the smallest state in the country and only 5000 people actually voted in this caucus. That totally warps even the petty amount of delegates they got.

Also -- caucuses are awful and disenfranchise voters who can't wait around for 3 hours. But that's a different problem.

 

[Valhelm]

Joe makes a good point about the hypocrisy of the voter disenfranchisement complaints.

He does, but primaries and caucuses technically aren't elections. They're just a way to add some democracy to the internal politics of two large private organizations.

 

[Chococat]

4.457 + 2.229 + 1.114 = 7.8

3.543 + 1.771 + 0.886 = 6.2

There you go. Much better than Bernie losing 0.8 and Hillary gaining 0.8 from rounding off numbers.

So you would round up and round downs, eliminating the votes just using a different system that what is in place.

Why not advocate for a) removing caucuses to the the most people possible to vote, and b) eliminate delegates all together and go by popular vote. If were going to fix the system, let fix it for the voters. That would be fair to future voters.

 

[Tesseract]

I'm not entirely sure we're having the same conversation. The only thing I was saying is that a lot of us don't see fraud everywhere because we've been around this stuff for a long time. While we may not like caucuses and the like, we also don't call fraud every time something doesn't go our candidates way.

It's not about elitism. It's not about saying we're better than anyone else. I think one big take away we should have from this election is making sure people are better informed as to how the primaries actually work.

that's fair, i just wasn't sure how we got here from the original post.

 

[damisa]

Only 5000 people bothered to vote in Wyoming, yet there were 14 delegates awarded, that 357 voters per delegate

There are over a million votes expected in New York for 291 delegates, that's 3436 voters per delegate

So 1 Wyoming voter is worth 10 New York voters, caucuses are stupid, all you people whining about undemocratic primaries are ignoring that Hillary is dominating the popular vote and Bernie is taking advantage of undemocratic caucuses

 

[Stinkles]

Media is feeding into this trash by treating every caucus "surprise " like this is a new phenomenon, which in turn is hardening the ludicrous Bernie conspiracy young voters reactions.
I guess the good news is that it might lead to dumping this arcane shit.

 

[Mael]

At least the thread title is accurate unlike the articles in the OP.
We can talk about how unfair the system is when we get rid of caucuses.
Aside from the cost issue there is literally no reason anyone could be for something so blatantly undemocratic.
It's a system that looks like it's straight from a european country circa 16xx under absolute monarchic rule.
That the Sanders campaign has the audacity of talking about the will of the people while not even blasting this sham of a system clearly shows they are more interested in winning than following the will of the people that they care as much as used toilet paper.

 

[Officerrob]

At least the thread title is accurate unlike the articles in the OP.

Thread title was changed

 

[Slayven]

Media is feeding into this trash by treating every caucus "surprise " like this is a new phenomenon, which in turn is hardening the ludicrous Bernie conspiracy young voters reactions.
I guess the good news is that it might lead to dumping this arcane shit.

Making it look like a race fills time, the race was over in SC.

Funny thing is all they talk about really is the GOP dumpster inferno

 

[Valhelm]

Only 5000 people bothered to vote in Wyoming, yet there were 14 delegates awarded, that 357 voters per delegate

There are over a million votes expected in New York for 291 delegates, that's 3436 voters per delegate

So 1 Wyoming voter is worth 10 New York voters, caucuses are stupid, all you people whining about undemocratic primaries are ignoring that Hillary is dominating the popular vote and Bernie is taking advantage of undemocratic caucuses

But does popular vote mean anything at all in a staggered election?

 

[Tesseract]

Making it look like a race fills time, the race was over in SC.

Funny thing is all they talk about really is the GOP dumpster inferno

to be fair, that dumpster's fire burns through straight to hell. it's a magnificent show.

 

[ivysaur12]

Only 5000 people bothered to vote in Wyoming, yet there were 14 delegates awarded, that 357 voters per delegate

There are over a million votes expected in New York for 291 delegates, that's 3436 voters per delegate

So 1 Wyoming voter is worth 10 New York voters, caucuses are stupid, all you people whining about undemocratic primaries are ignoring that Hillary is dominating the popular vote and Bernie is taking advantage of undemocratic caucuses

There's a lot of things that are undemocratic about primaries, but yeah, I'd love to see caucuses go.

 

[JHoNNy1OoO]

Only 5000 people bothered to vote in Wyoming, yet there were 14 delegates awarded, that 357 voters per delegate

There are over a million votes expected in New York for 291 delegates, that's 3436 voters per delegate

So 1 Wyoming voter is worth 10 New York voters, caucuses are stupid, all you people whining about undemocratic primaries are ignoring that Hillary is dominating the popular vote and Bernie is taking advantage of undemocratic caucuses

Bernie supporters bitched and complained nonstop about what happened in Arizona and the long ass lines. Caucuses are just organized long ass lines. There is very little difference to someone(who has already made up their mind) wanting to vote in as minimal time as possible from a 3 hour line or 3 hour caucus. In both circumstances you are wasting their time. I know that if Florida had a caucus I would not have been able to vote because I just don't have that amount of time to dedicate to that process. Luckily it took me all of 5 minutes from the time I parked to when I scanned the ballot.

It really is unreal how caucuses have survived this long.

 

[Mael]

Thread title was changed

I can imagine the the thread title...

But does popular vote mean anything at all in a staggered election?

I guess pledged delegates don't count, popular vote do not count.
What's next? primary being less fair than caucuses?

 

[Orbis Tabula]

Making it look like a race fills time, the race was over in SC.

Funny thing is all they talk about really is the GOP dumpster inferno

Dumpster fire is selling it short. It's like if someone made a sun out of old diapers, cigarette butts, and sweaty klan rags. It's full of shit, you go blind if you stare too long, and just being near it is probably giving us all cancer. But you can't look away.

 

[Toxi]

US isn't a democracy... It's a democratic republic. Also, you can't just have a total popular vote determine the winner. Lower population states would be screwed more than they already are.

Proportion of New York house representatives to Wyoming house representatives: 27 to 1

Actual proportion of New York population to Wyoming population: 33.8 to 1

Oh yeah, those small states are really screwed when they're overrepresented in the branch of government that was invented for proportional representation. /s

 

[UFO]

Democrats have always been hypocrites.

 

[Veritigo_X]

Dumpster fire is selling it short. It's like if someone made a sun out of old diapers, cigarette butts, and sweaty klan rags. It's full of shit, you go blind if you stare too long, and just being near it is probably giving us all cancer. But you can't look away.

I think Shrieking White-Hot Sphere Of Pure Rage is the best description.

 

[Fenderputty]

So let me get this straight.

The campaign that:

1) Has more delegates than it should according to the voting totals

2) Has generally won states through caucus's which are the mostly wildly undemocratic system ever created on god's earth

3) Has openly been abusing selection rules to overturn the will of voters in several states

Is complaining because *maths* is biased now?

Pretty hilarious ain't it.

 

[lenovox1]

Only 5000 people bothered to vote in Wyoming, yet there were 14 delegates awarded, that 357 voters per delegate

There are over a million votes expected in New York for 291 delegates, that's 3436 voters per delegate

So 1 Wyoming voter is worth 10 New York voters, caucuses are stupid, all you people whining about undemocratic primaries are ignoring that Hillary is dominating the popular vote and Bernie is taking advantage of undemocratic caucuses

Wait. Only 5,000 people voted and only 14 delegates could be awarded in total?

What the fuck is anyone complaining about?

 

[dramatis]

Only 5000 people bothered to vote in Wyoming, yet there were 14 delegates awarded, that 357 voters per delegate

There are over a million votes expected in New York for 291 delegates, that's 3436 voters per delegate

So 1 Wyoming voter is worth 10 New York voters, caucuses are stupid, all you people whining about undemocratic primaries are ignoring that Hillary is dominating the popular vote and Bernie is taking advantage of undemocratic caucuses

I'll correct just a little bit, NY has 247 pledged delegates, the remainder is superdelegates.

That means the number of voters per delegate in NY is actually higher

 

[balladofwindfishes]

Democrats have always been hypocrites.

Math is such a hypocrite!

 

[NIGHT-]

Good. Anything to stop him from jacking my taxes

More of that " I already got mine" attitude. We need more of that in this country!

 

[Mael]

Democrats have always been hypocrites.

Technically correct although massively misleading.

More of that " I already got mine" attitude. We need more of that in this country!

Well if it can stop populist policies...

 

[Slayven]

Dumpster fire is selling it short. It's like if someone made a sun out of old diapers, cigarette butts, and sweaty klan rags. It's full of shit, you go blind if you stare too long, and just being near it is probably giving us all cancer. But you can't look away.

Preview of RNC convention in Cleveland

https://youtu.be/lhEa54nRvcg?t=51

 

[mclem]

I propose they can combine three polls into one (which means polls only contribute to the end result) and then calculate the numbers of delegates each is entitled to at the end.



No. They can keep their polls but it would just contribute to the end result. Each district will have their delegates but all the polls will be calculated simultaneously.

I propose they can combine three polls into one (which means polls only contribute to the end result) and then calculate the numbers of delegates each is entitled to at the end.

At that point, they aren't separate polls - that's mathematically identical to a single poll. Which defeats the entire point of giving each congressional district the scope to have their say over a specific portion of the statewide total.

Congressional District A has 98 delegates. Candidate X gets 50,000 votes, Candidate Y gets 0 votes.
Congressional District B has 2 delegates. Candidate X gets 0 votes, Candidate Y gets 50 votes.

Under the current system: Candidate X gets 98 delegates. Candidate Y gets 2 delegates.

Under your system: Candidate X gets 100 delegates.

It's not that one system or the other is unfair; there are arguments both ways. It's that the current system has goals that are simply not catered for by the second system.

What you are asking for is still represented in the primary system - the at-large delegates are specifically assigned for exactly the goal you want, a measure of the statewide vote results. They're just not the only way delegates are allocated, because it's been felt to be beneficial to also elevate regional differences of opinion.

 

[mclem]

I've been on r/politics for years. Nobody brought up Superdelegates being Undemocratic in any noticeable way until 2016. We have pages of threads on GAF with surprised sanders supporters, as if there was no way to know these rules were in place. When all they ever had to do was a Google search.

I do remember discussions of that nature in 2008 in a few places... although I'm not sure what Reddit even was like back then.

 

[dramatis]

Preview of RNC convention in Cleveland

https://youtu.be/lhEa54nRvcg?t=51

I was thinking it would look more like Taiwan parliament fights, but bigger

 

[noshten]

Has Wisconsin's Democratic Party leader flip-flopped on how she'll cast her superdelegate vote?

In November 2015, Laning said she would cast her superdelegate vote at the Democratic National Convention for the presidential candidate who wins the Wisconsin primary.

But after the primary, which was won by Sanders, she reversed that position. She now says she will back whoever is the party’s presumptive nominee -- which at this stage is Clinton.

We rate that a Full Flop.

Everyone knows that Clinton super delegates don't flip flop they evolve

 

[Blader]

This is a good breakdown.

My point is including them in the overall count during the process. It makes voters feel like the race is tilted way more than it is.

Thinking Hillary has the race in the bag has been much more of a hindrance to her than Sanders though. :lol

 

[NimbusD]

Man Bernie supporters have been showing their lack of knowledge like it's a badge of honor lately.

Not agreeing with how the system works is not knowing how the system works?

 

[BudokaiMR2]

Preview of RNC convention in Cleveland

https://youtu.be/lhEa54nRvcg?t=51

I clicked on this hoping it was that clip of dubyah dodging that shoe thrown at him.

I hope someone throws a shoe at Trump.

 

[ivysaur12]

Not agreeing with how the system works is not knowing how the system works?

Certainly the OP is an example of misunderstanding both.