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Gerrymandering and targeted campaigning get me heated

 

Yeah, I remember seeing his penny video a long time ago, probably a few others since as well

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Anyone who likes tacos is incapable of logic.

Anyone who likes logic is incapable of tacos.

 

PSA: SaqPrets is an Estonian Dude

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Been making more of an effort to get myself into playable form with the Bass Guitar. My parents got into a beginner band last year (Mom learning the Cello, Dad taking up Piano), and the Band Instructor was kind enough to give them the Bass part too so that I would be able to stop by and practice/learn with them a bit. Really helped me get into it to be sure, and while it's not the normal stuff a bass would play, it got me a lot more comfortable with the instrument and reading bass clef (I've played Saxaphone for years, and if I stop thinking about it I still read bass clef as treble in my head).

 

Right now I'm hammering away at Money (Pink Floyd) and Africa (Toto). Money seems to be a good beginner song, but some of the rhythm work is melting my brain. Africa is harder than it looks (for me at least). Suffice it to say that my dexterity isn't quite there yet.

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Forgive how disjointed this lost will sound, but it's both for me, really. Coming from the most densely populated state, I see the process of democracy struggle to cater to the population equally very closely.

On a local level, we have over 500 municipalities, and a few hundred unincorporated townships and villages. I grew up in what I've always considered to be an average area, 7sq miles with around 15,000 people.

Up north toward NY, the population density skyrockets, and I kid you not that there's a full municipality that is 3 square blocks (less than 1/5 of a square mile!)and has over 11,000 residents.

I mention this because in dense popuilations like this, the minority is still a huge number of people. But Guttenberg is not the only township like that. There s dozens of them in NJ alone.

And you mean to tell me that the 8 million people of NJs voice can be properly consolidated to a representation of just a handful of senators?

Part of living in a democracy is that you have to be represented by *someone*, unless you're advocating direct democracy, which has it's own set of massive flaws. Really, you're just complaining about the scale here - but one senator you agree with can represent you better than a hundred who don't. My point is, without DD, you still have some flavour of this problem.

 

 

At the end of the day, my vote from suburban NJ counts for MAYBE 3/8ths of a vote from Utah on a Federal level. And I have probably 0 common interests with a Utah voter.

And I know the electoral college is supposed to clean that flaw by giving weight by population, but often it just ends up going to the swing votes of places like Florida and Ohio.

I don't have anything in common with either of those state interests either, particularly because Florida is a notorious retirement state.

It's precisely *because* you have nothing in common with a voter from Utah that the electoral college and regional weighting is important. Whenever you have a country with so many different types of people, and many different minorities, and regions, it can't survive unless there's a legitimate way for the minorities to be included in the democratic process. The US electoral college is the american solution to the problem. It's not perfect, but most countries as large and diverse as the US have similar means of accounting for geographic differences.

 

And full disclosure, I don't think I support the idea of federal government anymore. I love FEMA, I love the Federal Post Office, and I think having a unified currency is advantageous but other than that I'm a big proponent of State's laws because someone in Florida/Georgia/Ohio/California shouldn't have as much influence on my life as they do.

That's fair enough, just realize that if you don't support the federal government's existence, you don't support the existence of the united states, period. The US could be 50 different countries, but then you'd just have fifty different federal governments. The federal government is the main reason you even have a *united* states - and this isn't specific to america either. Canada is in a similar situation - without a strong federation led centrally we could easily be 6-7 different countries.

 

As far as gerrymandering goes - yeah, that's definitely a problem, but the solution to that doesn't require blowing up the electoral college - it just involves coming up with a better formula, with real non-partisan implementation.

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"It's not a rest for me, it's a rest for the weights." - Dom Mazzetti

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The Roman Empire broke down because of its inability to both appease the masses and protect the interests of the minority. I can't help but think we're headed the same direction.

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Anyone who likes tacos is incapable of logic.

Anyone who likes logic is incapable of tacos.

 

PSA: SaqPrets is an Estonian Dude

Steam: NippleBeardTM

Origin: Brand_New_iPwn

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It often feels to me that the groups who actually are systemically oppressed in America primarily live in cities, or states that are disadvantaged by the electoral college system, for economic reasons more so than political ones. Which makes "the electoral college protects minorities!" ring a little hollow to me.

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My skin is finally getting soft
I'll scrub until the damn thing comes off

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The Roman Empire broke down because of its inability to both appease the masses and protect the interests of the minority. I can't help but think we're headed the same direction.

 

 I'd argue it broke down more due to massive corruption and war, but that doesn't necessarily make your point less relevant when it comes to america

 

it just involves coming up with a better formula, with real non-partisan implementation.

 

This will never happen

 

there are plenty of countries which have similar geographic representation where gerrymandering isn't a big issue (see Canada for example). I wouldn't be so sure it couldn't be fixed

 

 

It often feels to me that the groups who actually are systemically oppressed in America primarily live in cities, or states that are disadvantaged by the electoral college system, for economic reasons more so than political ones. Which makes "the electoral college protects minorities!" ring a little hollow to me.

Geographic representation does protect minorities, just not in the sense we use the term in the 20th century; precisely because it's so effective that there aren't really grounds to see rural minorities as particularly oppressed! if you did away with regional representation, things wouldn't look so rosy

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"It's not a rest for me, it's a rest for the weights." - Dom Mazzetti

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I want to change my name for a few reasons... Largely because I'm named after my father and my father has been nothing in my life. Secondarily because I want to opt for a gender-neutral name.

 

I've settled on Erin Maus. Unsure about the middle name right now: thinking Eliot, after my favorite poet. "Erin Eliot Maus" sounds very nice, too.

 

...but it looks very confusing. It's been eating at me for a while but today I asked my brother and he's okay with it so I'm thinking of going ahead before the holidays. I won't tell my extended family ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

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Got my computer finally all put together. I'm pretty excited to have a nice computer to do CAD work on.

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“I had a feeling we weren’t coming back from this fight when it began.”

“Do you have any regrets?”

“I don’t. It seems surprising, I know, but I wouldn’t change a thing. This is how it was meant to be.”

“Huh, you never really notice how lovely the day is until you realize you’ll never see it again.”

“Mmmhmm.”

 

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I want to change my name for a few reasons... Largely because I'm named after my father and my father has been nothing in my life. Secondarily because I want to opt for a gender-neutral name.

 

I've settled on Erin Maus. Unsure about the middle name right now: thinking Eliot, after my favorite poet. "Erin Eliot Maus" sounds very nice, too.

 

...but it looks very confusing. It's been eating at me for a while but today I asked my brother and he's okay with it so I'm thinking of going ahead before the holidays. I won't tell my extended family ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I feel like if you're gonna go for a middle name, you should pick as weird of one as you can. Wikipedia says you're only allowed apostrophes and hyphens, so I would suggest going with " 'E-l-i-o-t' "

My skin is finally getting soft
I'll scrub until the damn thing comes off

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I want to change my name for a few reasons... Largely because I'm named after my father and my father has been nothing in my life. Secondarily because I want to opt for a gender-neutral name.

 

I've settled on Erin Maus. Unsure about the middle name right now: thinking Eliot, after my favorite poet. "Erin Eliot Maus" sounds very nice, too.

 

...but it looks very confusing. It's been eating at me for a while but today I asked my brother and he's okay with it so I'm thinking of going ahead before the holidays. I won't tell my extended family ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I feel like if you're gonna go for a middle name, you should pick as weird of one as you can. Wikipedia says you're only allowed apostrophes and hyphens, so I would suggest going with "'E-l-i-o-t'"
I guess " 'E'-'l'-'i'-'o'-'t' " is just kinda too bulky.
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The Mcgregger team was shouting racist crap the whole match, so Khabib figured he could swing at them too

 

 

Also 2 presidents that lost the popular vote ha e shoved 4 people into the current SCOTUS. Total disgrace.

Nonsense...the American electoral college is designed to have locational diversity in elections, so that the entire country is represented, not just its most populous areas. Until the voting process is changed to simple majority of votes, a president elected with sub 50% is just as legitimate as one elected with above 50%.

 

If you think popular vote is the panacea of democracy, you should advocate for a constitutional amendment, not imply presidents are illegitimate. Also, there's no such thing as "shoving" a justice onto the supreme court - pretty sure the nomination and confirmation processes are exactly the same for all presidents. Anyway, I suspect your feelings on the matter have more to do with political disagreements than legitimate issues with the processes

 

Just for the record, 60 senators down to 50 was a pretty significant change. And I'm not sure it'll be all that great when Democrats nominate equally polarizing figures next.

"Fight for what you believe in, and believe in what you're fighting for." Can games be art?

---

 

 

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My blog here if you want to check out my Times articles and other writings! I always appreciate comments/feedback.

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I think we can agree a huge part of the issue is partisan based. 2 parties simply aren't enough, especially when they seem to be in an arms race with each other as to who can come up with the bigger [wagon] every November.

Quote

 

Quote

Anyone who likes tacos is incapable of logic.

Anyone who likes logic is incapable of tacos.

 

PSA: SaqPrets is an Estonian Dude

Steam: NippleBeardTM

Origin: Brand_New_iPwn

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I think we can agree a huge part of the issue is partisan based. 2 parties simply aren't enough, especially when they seem to be in an arms race with each other as to who can come up with the bigger [wagon] every November.

There are plenty of other options, no one votes for them lol

polvCwJ.gif
"It's not a rest for me, it's a rest for the weights." - Dom Mazzetti

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I think we can agree a huge part of the issue is partisan based. 2 parties simply aren't enough, especially when they seem to be in an arms race with each other as to who can come up with the bigger [wagon] every November.

There are plenty of other options, no one votes for them lol
The nature of the first past the post voting system means that it's in your best interest to vote for one of the 2 major parties, and even a political system with many, relatively equally popular parties that adopts fptp will trend towards two relatively centrist parties. Unless America changes its voting system, we're unlikely to get more than two parties.

 

Even the most successful third party (the Progressives) managed less than a decade of relevancy before we morphed back into a 2 party system.

My skin is finally getting soft
I'll scrub until the damn thing comes off

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Can we all just pause our debates/discussion for a minute just to appreciate that Tyler changed his name? Really throwing me off every time I see the claw followed by "Tesset" instead of the usual.

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I think we can agree a huge part of the issue is partisan based. 2 parties simply aren't enough, especially when they seem to be in an arms race with each other as to who can come up with the bigger [wagon] every November.

There are plenty of other options, no one votes for them lol
The nature of the first past the post voting system means that it's in your best interest to vote for one of the 2 major parties, and even a political system with many, relatively equally popular parties that adopts fptp will trend towards two relatively centrist parties. Unless America changes its voting system, we're unlikely to get more than two parties.

 

Even the most successful third party (the Progressives) managed less than a decade of relevancy before we morphed back into a 2 party system.

Don't think it has too much to do with FPTP. Canada has FPTP, and eight different parties in Parliament... similar situation in AUS as well, for example. I don't agree that it's in anyone's best interest to vote for one of the major parties even if they disagree with them, that's exactly the attitude that leads to only two major parties. I think a much bigger issue is political ignorance than anything

polvCwJ.gif
"It's not a rest for me, it's a rest for the weights." - Dom Mazzetti

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I think we can agree a huge part of the issue is partisan based. 2 parties simply aren't enough, especially when they seem to be in an arms race with each other as to who can come up with the bigger [wagon] every November.

There are plenty of other options, no one votes for them lol
The nature of the first past the post voting system means that it's in your best interest to vote for one of the 2 major parties, and even a political system with many, relatively equally popular parties that adopts fptp will trend towards two relatively centrist parties. Unless America changes its voting system, we're unlikely to get more than two parties.

 

Even the most successful third party (the Progressives) managed less than a decade of relevancy before we morphed back into a 2 party system.

Don't think it has too much to do with FPTP. Canada has FPTP, and eight different parties in Parliament... similar situation in AUS as well, for example. I don't agree that it's in anyone's best interest to vote for one of the major parties even if they disagree with them, that's exactly the attitude that leads to only two major parties. I think a much bigger issue is political ignorance than anything

 

I think a big difference here, on some level at least, is how they elect their president and senate/congress differently. In Canada and AUS, so far as I know, we elect our area representative and then the leader of whatever majority party (most seats) becomes the Prime Minister or the leader of our country for all intents. Versus basically two very distinct elections with one for area representation and one for leader happen in the states, which I think feeds back into more of a two party system.

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