I voted today!Follow

Let me clarify that I'm speaking only of federally funded programs, which serve less to provide tons of needed funding, but more to be used as as carrot to control and influence existing state funded programs. These things are decidedly outside the control of most voters, but affects them quite a bit. Via pure executive action, the department of education can decide the requirements for grants for state and locally funded schools. Now, they don't have to take the money, but that last 10% of funding does come in handy, and if it means inserting X into the curriculum, or following Y standards for testing, that's not so great a price, right? You nor I, nor pretty much anyone ever gets to vote on that stuff. It's done behind the scenes, but has a pretty large effect.

Similar deal with things like transportation. It would be one thing if our legislature simply passed laws establishing some standards for things and moved on. But no. What often happens is that interstate funding is dangled in front of the states and used to influence all sorts of things from light rail construction, to HOV lane requirements, to bike paths. The voters in the states get more or less zero say in these sorts of decisions. Which is arguably the greatest disenfranchisement of all.



Again. I'm talking about federal funding. I'm not even against regulation. But be honest and above board about it and actually pass legislation that regulates things. The process of funding a government agency, and basically just handing it the power to create rules for how states and cities can qualify for the funding dollars is pure extortion. The "rule be exception" we've seen over and over in the ACA is a classic example of this. Doubly so since in that case, it became increasingly obvious that the executive decisions had little to do with making health care "better", and everything to do with trying to gloss over the glaring flaws in the original legislation so as to limit the amount of voter outrage.



Except that if the government is putting money into the hands of the poor and working class in return for zero productive labor output, while the CEO is handing that money out via employment (which means greater productive labor output than the cost), the result over time is decreased productive labor output. Which in turn means lower GDP growth rates. Which means fewer job opportunities, and fewer advancement opportunities in your job, and general economic sluggishness. You know, kinda like what we've seen under Obama. It is demonstrably bad for the economy for the government to do this. It may be good for the poor and working class people in the short term, but it's not good for the economy at all.

You mention trying things before and having them not work out well. Wealth transfer as an alternative to productive employment falls into that category as well. And it pretty much always fails miserably. If the government hands you $30k in benefits, it cost our economy $30k to do that (those dollars had to come from somewhere, right?). If you receive $30k in salary for your work, it not only doesn't cost the economy anything, but it actually grows the economy. You provided more in labor value than you "cost". Which means more profits, more growth, and more future opportunity for the next crop of people looking for a job.

The idea that money in the hands of the rich is somehow at odds with economic prosperity for the regular folks is just plain wrong. Assuming that most people don't want to live their entire lives as working poor, relying on the government to make up the difference, then how do they accomplish that? No amount of government benefits will ever make you not be poor. Only employment can do that (either self employment or working for someone else). And for that to happen, you kinda have to have "rich" people to hire you (or have enough yourself to self invest). And successful (and even "big") businesses, with sufficient profits to expand their employee base is one of the greatest sources of that. Just as convincing people that he didn't exist was the greatest trick of the Devil, convincing working class and poor people that big business, corporations, and "the rich" are their economic enemies has been the greatest trick of the political Left.

Nothing could be more wrong.

No... you don't get it at all. I wasn't explaining how anything currently works. I was merely saying that instead of doing a winner takes all, they could split it up. But splitting it up by the "obvious" choice (districts) would make gerrymandering affect the results. So instead divide by popular result of the state (as explained after).

Whether or not it makes a difference to the overall results, isn't really the point. It was to merely make those "disenfranchised" voters have something to show for their vote.

Edited, Nov 30th 2016 12:15am by TirithRR

Maine and Nebraska both do this. Winning a Congressional district within the state gets you that district's elector. If, by some quirk of fate, only six people voted in NE-3 and four of them vote for the Democrat and every single person in the rest of the state voted Republican, the Democrat would still get one EV despite the state's popular vote being 99.995% in favor of the Republican.

Also, HI SAMIRA!

Edited, Nov 29th 2016 11:31pm by Jophiel

Uh, wrong. Are you retarded? Or, as I've cunjectured before brain damaged?

The citizens don't vote on the state's budget. The legislature does.School lunches were started because a huge amount of draftees during WWII were 4F (unfit for duty) because they were malnourished,,,like *rickets* malnourished. As I've mentioned before.


Idiot.

And pretty standard liberal mindset to argue that the absence of something you never had is the equivalent of having it taken away from you. Which I happen to think is just plain bizarre since it more or less has zero bounds. OMG! You didn't let us vote based on the number of pets we own! You're disenfranchising pet lovers! You didn't give me a free pony! You've taken my pony away, you darn pony thief!

Oh. Um... Brain fart there. I was thinking of the rest, then added in the exceptions of Maine and Nebraska after writing that. Yeah. Their systems are really dorked up IMO. It's like the worst of both worlds.

If the government hands you back $5000 for having a mortgage every year it costs our economy $5000 to do that (those dollars had to come from somewhere, right?)

You're really stretching the meaning and usage of the term there though. The prefix "dis" generally means "apart", or "sundered" (as in, to remove something). Yeah, it can also be used to refer to general opposition (or lack), but I don't think that applies in this case. You're talking about people who do have a right to vote, but they vote for X, which in turn votes for Y. To say that the voters are disenfranchised because they don't vote directly on Y is, as I said, quite a stretch.

This isn't about absence of a vote at all, but how their vote affects an outcome. And again, this revolves around the difference in how a democracy works versus a republic. One could also argue that because the voters are not allowed to vote on bills in congress, that they are "disenfranchised", but you'd have to be really pedantic to try to make that argument. They don't not vote on bills in congress because their right to vote has been stripped from them (or even because they never had a right to vote), but because our system uses representation at the federal level. You vote for a member of congress, who in turn votes on the bills. In the same way, you vote for an electoral delegation, who in turn vote for the president. That's a difference in process, not disenfranchisement.


Now, you could argue (and I think a couple people have) that in states where the party vote tallies are largely skewed, the EC disenfranchises them relative to a popular vote since votes past the point of majority in a state don't count, and ones that have no chance of changing that majority are largely wasted. Again though, I wouldn't argue that's disenfranchisement, but merely the effect of having a skewed vote. One could equally argue that once a majority is reached in any vote for anything, that additional votes are not needed, and thus wasted, as were the votes cast on a failed cause (could have had zero votes, and the same outcome would result, right?). Since you are voting to determine the EC delegation, your vote "counts" just as much as it does in any other thing you've ever voted for in your life. One side just won that vote by a large margin is all.

It would only be disenfranchisement if we actually used a popular vote in this case, and for some reason chose to deny voting to a group of people. That's not the case.

Hehe. There you go. The government doesn't hand that money to the taxpayer, it takes less money from them. Once again, you prove that liberals don't grasp the difference between not having something taken away, and being given something you never had (the corollary to the difference between having something taken away and the absence of something you never had in the first place, just in case you're going there. Both rely on the same inability to grasp the concept of property). The homeowner earned that $5000. It's his. The tax laws determine how much of the money he has earned he is required to pay to the government, and have determined that he can deduct an amount equal to the interest on a mortgage for a primary dwelling. We can debate the issue of the mortgage interest deduction, but it is not remotely the same as the government giving someone money that they never earned in the first place.

Again, taking less money from me is not the same as giving me money. It's amazing to me how hard it is for liberals to grasp this incredibly simple concept.

Nice try though.

Edited, Nov 30th 2016 12:03am by gbaji

Yes, I know. When you're a conservative, civil rights is always something silly like wanting a pony or ice cream or whatever. Once again, typical conservative mindset.

The perception is important for increasing turnout. It's one of the reasons Hawaii now has their polls close earlier in the day. They were having a problem with people not bothering to vote, because the election results were being announced at like 2pm local time, and people were seeing them and not bothering to visit the polling place because the "election was already over." This trickled down into local issues, as certain measures needed a specific voter turnout along with a certain % of the vote to pass. So while every vote counting the same still may be true in a technical sense, the reality is that it isn't perceived that way.

Same thing happens with voting in a primary. If people know a certain candidate already has the votes needed to secure the nomination they're less likely to turn out to vote, not only for the primary race itself, but also for other issues that may be on the ballot. Beyond feeling disenfranchised (I mean, no one likes having an important decision made before they get to have their input) it hurts local ballot measures and the like.

I'd imagine there may be a bit, but overall I'm not worried about this. Why? Because our country generally doesn't have limits on political campaigns. By the time primary voting itself gets started people have already been campaigning for months. If 6 months of propaganda, debates, whatever isn't enough time to make a decision I'm not sure to say there. That's a lot of exposure, and in the end you can pick up 90% of the information you'd need from the voters guide in the booth anyway.

Which is to be expected of course. I'm not arguing that parties shouldn't act in their own self-interest, only how can we get those self-interests to align better with the those of the American people as a whole. Hence the goal of increasing participation in the primary elections.

Good to see you still kickin'. You just now find your bookmark after they removed the forum links from the main site and stuffed us into the cellar?