PoliGAF 2011: Of Weiners, Boehners, Santorum, and Teabags

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balladofwindfishes said:
Small states with the population of a square mile of the larger states probably won't go for the idea that they only have .001% say in the Presidential election

At least now they've got 3 electoral college members. If it was strictly popular vote based, there would be no point campaigning in North Dakota.
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True, but I also think the construction of the senate has overrun it's usefulness. So I guess I'm not very sympathetic to those views.
 
Jesus fuck, Brown. If you're going to make a change in how California distributes electors, why not shift to proportional representation? This subverts the will of the people every bit as much as the current system, but it explicitly subverts the will of the people you've been elected to represent. And short of big "red" states taking up the gauntlet, you've basically created a landslide for any Republican that can get one more vote than the Democrat.

That is seriously fucked up. I have to go play pinball now.
 
Suprise Twist: All states except North Dakota enact legislation to give their Electoral Votes to winner of popular vote. Campaigning in North Dakota proves more valuable.
 
Byakuya769 said:
Seems like a slow crawl to strictly a popular vote for Presidential elections. That's a good thing.
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It is actually part of a broader national movement to effectively institute a national popular vote without amending the Constitution. It is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Of course, there are doubts about its constitutional validity. Moreover, I do not think California is obligated until the compact is passed by a majority of states. But that could be incorrect. I am not thoroughly familiar with its provisions.
 
balladofwindfishes said:
Apparently voters in WI are being told by people posing as officials, they need more ID than they legally require, turning away people who are legally allowed to vote.
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I haven't been following the Wisconsin situation too closely, but how are they allowed to get away with electoral fraud on such a massive scale? Poll tests, fake candidates, sending out false ballots, it's like everything I read about the elections there could have easily taken place in Uganda.
 
I thought Brown had a brain. What happened here? Was there a push in Cali to get this bill signed, or something?





planar1280 said:
thanks. next session, they are still my friends i won't abandon them for their political ideology. I have a mix of both liberals and conservatives.
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From my experience, it's best to avoid politics, completely, if you want to remain friends with people of opposite ideology, especially with friends like yours who just regurgitate Fox News talking points. Those convos will only end in frustration.

It's a prime example why politics & religion are considered taboo convo topics.
 
SolKane said:
I haven't been following the Wisconsin situation too closely, but how are they allowed to get away with electoral fraud on such a massive scale? Poll tests, fake candidates, sending out false ballots, it's like everything I read about the elections there could have easily taken place in Uganda.
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Shit like this has been going on for a long time.
 
besada said:
Jesus fuck, Brown. If you're going to make a change in how California distributes electors, why not shift to proportional representation? This subverts the will of the people every bit as much as the current system, but it explicitly subverts the will of the people you've been elected to represent. And short of big "red" states taking up the gauntlet, you've basically created a landslide for any Republican that can get one more vote than the Democrat.

That is seriously fucked up. I have to go play pinball now.
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if it was 50.5 to 49.5 do you think anyone would give a shit what the electoral college is at? Which states have signed on? Is there enough GOP states to offset CA? Because it can basically guarantee a democrat can never pull a bush.
 
besada said:
Jesus fuck, Brown. If you're going to make a change in how California distributes electors, why not shift to proportional representation? This subverts the will of the people every bit as much as the current system, but it explicitly subverts the will of the people you've been elected to represent. And short of big "red" states taking up the gauntlet, you've basically created a landslide for any Republican that can get one more vote than the Democrat.

That is seriously fucked up. I have to go play pinball now.
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What's the story here? I've missed this entirely.
 
Too good.

HT8pi.png
 
it seems like too much of a coincidence that the wealth disparity increased with the move from a manufacturing to a service based economy... which goes from a blue collar unionized workforce to a white collar non-unionized workforce.
 
GhaleonEB said:
What's the story here? I've missed this entirely.
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See the LA Times editorial I posted above--states are trying to tie the awarding of their states electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. Doesn't go into effect until 270 electoral votes' worth of states sign up, but the system is pretty poorly designed and could result in the electoral votes of the state being awarded to someone other than the person the majority of the state's voters selected.
 
SolKane said:
I haven't been following the Wisconsin situation too closely, but how are they allowed to get away with electoral fraud on such a massive scale? Poll tests, fake candidates, sending out false ballots, it's like everything I read about the elections there could have easily taken place in Uganda.
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Don't know what you mean by poll tests but the "fake" candidate thing is pretty much a Wisconsin (and most other states with party-less voting) tradition at this point.

The fucked up ballot thing seemed to be an actual mistake since they were attempting to fix the issue by sending out new ballots before it became a story. I think organizations from both sides had sent out ballots with the incorrect return date on them. The one conservative group that had the return addresses wrong was obviously pulling bullshit.

People posing as workers are turning people away if they don't have ID saying they're not allowed to vote
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Fucked up. Where are you reading that??
 
gcubed said:
it seems like too much of a coincidence that the wealth disparity increased with the move from a manufacturing to a service based economy... which goes from a blue collar unionized workforce to a white collar non-unionized workforce.
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That was a trend beginning before the wealth disparity began to really take off. I think it more properly aligns with the capital gains tax cuts of the 80's and 90's and the subsequent explosion (relative to history) of the market.
 
eznark said:
Don't know what you mean by poll tests but the "fake" candidate thing is pretty much a Wisconsin (and most other states with party-less voting) tradition at this point.

The fucked up ballot thing seemed to be an actual mistake since they were attempting to fix the issue by sending out new ballots before it became a story. I think organizations from both sides had sent out ballots with the incorrect return date on them. The one conservative group that had the return addresses wrong was obviously pulling bullshit.



Fucked up. Where are you reading that??
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not sure why we dont take election fraud seriously, other than going back to TA's consistent point of "well then it will give the party one less thing to hold as a trump card". I mean there should be some legal ramifications for voter intimidation (black panthers got off without an issue) or intentionally misleading voters (both Dem and Rep in Wisconsin)
 
GaimeGuy said:
That chart actually has probably the lowest estimate of the cost of the bush tax cuts I've seen.

Most estimates I've seen put it at around $3.5-$4T, not $1.8T. And that was before they were extended through 2012 (another $960B)
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How can they be the bush tax cuts after they were extended by Obama. They are now the Obama tax cuts
 
gcubed said:
not sure why we dont take election fraud seriously, other than going back to TA's consistent point of "well then it will give the party one less thing to hold as a trump card". I mean there should be some legal ramifications for voter intimidation (black panthers got off without an issue) or intentionally misleading voters (both Dem and Rep in Wisconsin)
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Well in Wisconsin they have beaten everyone over the head with "there is no such thing as voter fraud" so there is nothing to prosecute.

It's brazen, from both sides. Smokes for votes, disabling get out the vote vehicles, (allegedly) burning down campaign offices! It's nuts.

Wisconsin is the new Illinois.
 
A lot of people don't get that the Tea Party is a pretty significant diversion from the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party. While the Tea Party is certainly anti-Obama, it isn't Pro-GWB. Generally, I'm sort of glad that the Tea Party exists, because now fewer people criticize neoconservatives without even knowing what a neoconservative is.
 
eznark said:
Well in Wisconsin they have beaten everyone over the head with "there is no such thing as voter fraud" so there is nothing to prosecute.

It's brazen, from both sides. Smokes for votes, disabling get out the vote vehicles, (allegedly) burning down campaign offices! It's nuts.

Wisconsin is the new Illinois.
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you are too close to Chicago, they can be imported in to do the intimidation.

I think people focus on the incorrect version of voter fraud. The parties like to focus on "ACORN SIGNED FAKE NAMES WE NEED IDs!" which rarely happens (where you have fake people voting). Instead people should be focusing on "x group sent out 2 million mailers with the wrong date, or sent out absentee ballots with the wrong return address, or have people actively turning people away from polling places. The laws of having party people only having to be 100 feet (or whatever it is) away from a polling location is ridiculous. They shouldn't be allowed there at all. You can leave pamphlets with voting officials if you really want to, then each party should have a representative at the location solely to make sure things are going well inside. Nothing else
 
Hm, apparently there is a new residency requirement and people are being rejected if they cannot prove 28+ days of residency.

At some polling places in the Darling district there are three or four layers of poll watcher double checking each other supposedly.

(all anecdotal from WISN radio)


you are too close to Chicago, they can be imported in to do the intimidation.
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The smokes for votes woman drove up from Chicago to pay homeless people to vote in Wisconsin (in 2000) so that is certainly true.
 
Holy moly that Cali popular voting thing is just...out there. I mean, if you are going to double down into a strange new voting dynamic, why not something wacky and at least somewhat less disturbingly intentioned like Old Man Mike Gravel's NI4D apparatus?

Hell, if all they want to do is screw with the electoral college a bit on principle, why not push for a narrower spread between the lot of them to where there are only rather slim margins towards centering all policy/campaigning around the whims of a few states to the exclusion of the many versus the blowout numbers up to now?
 
I'm not sure how this is a strike against the tea partiers. IIRC the tea party movement was just as unhappy with Bush's spending.
 
FStop7 said:
I'm not sure how this is a strike against the tea partiers. IIRC the tea party movement was just as unhappy with Bush's spending.
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Their first big national protests were on April 15, 2009. Convenient
 
FStop7 said:
I'm not sure how this is a strike against the tea partiers. IIRC the tea party movement was just as unhappy with Bush's spending.
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The tea party didn't exist when Bush was president. Conservatives didn't really turn on Bush until 2006.
 
FStop7 said:
I'm not sure how this is a strike against the tea partiers. IIRC the tea party movement was just as unhappy with Bush's spending.
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They only became unhappy with Bush spending when people pointed out their hypocrisy.
 
How did that graph calculate the amount which the tax cuts contributed to the deficit? I would find it very difficult to calculate how much was "Lost", since I'm not sure how they would track how those tax cuts affected everyone, especially businesses. Too many people only look at the tax cuts as "Oh, we lost out on however many billions of dollars by cutting taxes, since logically, people are paying less taxes, so less money is being made!" instead of taking into account the possible benefits of the tax cuts.

Also, I admit I'm a bit ignorant here, but doesn't the T-E-A in Tea Party stand for "Taxed-Enough-Already"? I don't think they really care about spending or the deficit, as most of the supporters, at least those I've encountered, don't care about anything other than taxes.
 
Talked to some other mods who figured it'd be best to merge in the thread "Spending under 2 presidents" into PoliGAF. Sorry for any confusion.
 
WI Clerks: Recall Turnout Steady To Near Presidential Levels
Various clerks in the recall districts reported steady turnout so far with some projecting numbers that will rival a presidential election.

In the 10th SD in western Wisconsin, River Falls City Clerk Lu Ann Hecht said today’s numbers could be as high as the 2008 Presidential election. The city issued 1,003 absentee ballots, twice as many as a regular election.

The municipality is home to both GOP Sen. Sheila Harsdorf and Dem challenger Shelly Moore.

“We expect the turnout to remain steady throughout the day,” Hecht said.

Hudson City Clerk Nancy Korson said voter turnout in Hudson, also part of the 10th, would likely not reach the levels of a presidential election. But they were comparable to the spring Supreme Court election, with over 500 absentee ballots received.

In Baraboo, Deputy Clerk Donna Munz said turnout was much higher than normal. She also said she'd received voter complaints over people at some polling places contacting them as they went into the polling places. At one, about nine people were outside and some voters said they were angry that they felt intimidated.

“We have received angry calls from voters regarding how persistent the people outside the polling places are,” Munz said.
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http://elections.wispolitics.com/2011/08/clerks-turnout-steady-to-near.html
 
Not surprising IMO in terms of voter turn out since the government clashes and the general recall had high visibility nationwide let alone in Wisconsin itself. Had to be a hot topic in the state which usually means higher vote turn out IMO when it's at the forefront of the public's minds.

I'll probably get hated on though in thinking that either way today's results in the Wisconsin recall aren't something I'd really want to key in on and extrapolate to future nationwide elections.
 
gcubed said:
Isn't it usually always? I would think but am unsure
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At the local/state level, high voter turnout is generally good for the challenger (regardless of party). Obviously in districts dominated by a single demographic such as a wealthy suburb or the inner city, the higher the turnout the better for that demographics party.
 
Brettison said:
Not surprising IMO in terms of voter turn out since the government clashes and the general recall had high visibility nationwide let alone in Wisconsin itself. Had to be a hot topic in the state which usually means higher vote turn out IMO when it's at the forefront of the public's minds.

I'll probably get hated on though in thinking that either way today's results in the Wisconsin recall aren't something I'd really want to key in on and extrapolate to future nationwide elections.
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Wisconsin is a blue state that elected a GOP governor/house members in a wave election; the economy sucked and they threw the bums out; same thing happened in my state (MI). If democrats retake the Wis house I agree it won't have national implications on 2012 overall. Politics are local, and this is a case of people realizing ideology is more important than knee jerk reactions to a bad economy.

It will send a message to Ohio though, which will have national implications on 2012. Ohio has a similarly disliked GOP governor, and while it's not a traditional blue state per se it's a manufacturing state where local union politics rule. That alone could put the state in Obama's pocket next year, regardless of the economy.
 
Loudninja said:
From New CNN Poll

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/08/from_new_cnn_poll.php?ref=fpblg
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Funny, I almost think now that if the republicans were to have gotten their wish of another debt ceiling debate right before the election, it would have been their death sentence. Unfortunate in retrospect.


I feel like Obama and democrats best friends right now are republicans. Give them the rope and let them hang themselves with the crazy. Ohio, Wisconsin, MI, the debt ceiling debate, the complete aversion to tax increases on the rich, no job bills to point too.
 
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