general Are you registered to vote in this election?

[Steve Piranha 28,748]

9 minutes ago, Kyoshi said:

Nope. This election is a total waste of time. Both candidates are worthless trash and we all know Trump is going to win again anyway, so why should I even care at this point.

Reminder: In terms of the presidential election, our votes do not matter. Unless our votes determine the electoral decision, which as far as I am aware is not the case, then our votes mean basically nothing.

There are millions who have the same right to choose their leaders as you. Your candidate losing is not a stomp on your rights

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 40,234]

2 hours ago, Steve Piranha said:

There are millions who have the same right to choose their leaders as you. Your candidate losing is not a stomp on your rights

I really don't understand what you are trying to get at here. In terms of the presidency itself, it doesn't matter who I vote for, doesn't matter who you vote for, doesn't matter who any of us vote for. The electoral college decides the victor, not us. I never mentioned anything about rights. People can do whatever they want, I'm just saying that telling us not to voice our disdain just because we don't vote in this election is pointless.

[Here No Longer 5,270]

2 hours ago, Steve Piranha said:

There are millions who have the same right to choose their leaders as you. Your candidate losing is not a stomp on your rights

So you're implying that somebody who's frustrated with the election system MUST be frustrated because their candidate of choice lost a race? Somebody's blind. Very blind I must say. It's really obvious to this point to anyone who's paying attention that our election system is a f***ing joke, since for really a lot of people the choices we do get aren't even worth choosing from anymore and it's caused more divisiveness than anything. The US is more democratic than Congo, but it still doesn't live up to being a DEMOCRATIC republic. Whatever happened to "for the people, by the people..." Just became used as a slogan like everything else. I mean it's painfully obvious, at least to me, that very few politicians in this country take that mantra seriously (And yes, Trump counts).

 

Though a visage of democracy is better than an authoritarian dictatorship, I suppose?

Edited May 20, 2020 by Dustlicious

[baba_booey 4,299]

I am, actually voted in the Democratic primary this year, although I’m probably going to vote Green for president in the general.

[Yoshi89 5,290]

I'm gonna vote even though my state will stay blue.

[Steve Piranha 28,748]

20 hours ago, Kyoshi said:

I really don't understand what you are trying to get at here. In terms of the presidency itself, it doesn't matter who I vote for, doesn't matter who you vote for, doesn't matter who any of us vote for. The electoral college decides the victor, not us. I never mentioned anything about rights. People can do whatever they want, I'm just saying that telling us not to voice our disdain just because we don't vote in this election is pointless.

The electoral college vote doesn’t come out of the blue tho

[Envy 5,996]

15 hours ago, Steve Piranha said:

The electoral college vote doesn’t come out of the blue tho

It puts more power to individual states than to the actual people. It's a (very biased) middle-man that twists around some votes to have more power than others. It specifically makes votes like mine in a state that always votes for the opposite party completely voided. If my vote had counted in the 2016 election, Donald Trump would not be president. You can see my vote in the popular vote which Trump lost soundly, but in the US people don't have the power.

[DubWolf 16,574]

5 minutes ago, Envy said:

It puts more power to individual states than to the actual people. It's a (very biased) middle-man that twists around some votes to have more power than others. It specifically makes votes like mine in a state that always votes for the opposite party completely voided. If my vote had counted in the 2016 election, Donald Trump would not be president. You can see my vote in the popular vote which Trump lost soundly, but in the US people don't have the power.

Same with the senate, and IMO gives the minority a lot of power and causes gridlock when you need as much as a supermajority to accomplish anything. I bet if you tallied up the populations of each state together, often times you don’t have a “majority” winning (just guessing as I’m too lazy to crank the numbers out).

At least the senate is immune to gerrymandering.

Edited May 21, 2020 by BBolt ⚡️

[Steve Piranha 28,748]

1 hour ago, Envy said:

It puts more power to individual states than to the actual people. It's a (very biased) middle-man that twists around some votes to have more power than others. It specifically makes votes like mine in a state that always votes for the opposite party completely voided. If my vote had counted in the 2016 election, Donald Trump would not be president. You can see my vote in the popular vote which Trump lost soundly, but in the US people don't have the power.

Or could be that the votes are counted by state because they are short of different nations altogether and different populations, which could otherwise be silent? 

[Envy 5,996]

1 hour ago, Steve Piranha said:

Or could be that the votes are counted by state because they are short of different nations altogether and different populations, which could otherwise be silent? 

We are supposed to be a singular nation. Hence why we have one president. The states may have some agency. But no way in the world should the states have their own votes that override the popular vote.

I didn't choose to live in my state. I don't represent my state. I am my own person and I am a citizen of the US, not Oklahoma, my vote should count overall.

[Steve Piranha 28,748]

12 minutes ago, Envy said:

We are supposed to be a singular nation. Hence why we have one president. The states may have some agency. But no way in the world should the states have their own votes that override the popular vote.

If that were to happen, the federal government would be far less willing to even take those farming underpopulated states under consideration, so in a way, that can benefit the country overall

14 minutes ago, Envy said:

I didn't choose to live in my state. I don't represent my state. I am my own person and I am a citizen of the US, not Oklahoma, my vote should count overall.

But you live in Oklahoma, and your vote would count the same regardless of state as long as you live in the US

[Pentium100 2,056]

2 hours ago, Envy said:

We are supposed to be a singular nation. Hence why we have one president. The states may have some agency. But no way in the world should the states have their own votes that override the popular vote.

However, the states have different laws, right? For example, one state has more strict gun laws than another, different taxes and so on? Then the different states are kind-of different countries, not just some mark on a map. In that case, the smaller ones should not be completely overruled by the bigger ones. It may look like it shouldn't matter, because the bigger states have more people, but remember that political opinion and living conditions depend on geography as well. If the vote was purely by population, then it would be much easier to just pander to the bigger states and win (State A has 20 million people, so we promise them better roads, and states B,C,D and E (10million people combined) can just be without roads, after all, who cares about them? And it is much easier to build better roads in one state than four.)

This is similar in the EU as well. Different members have different number of seats in the EP, however, the smaller countries get more seats per capita than the bigger ones. The reason is very simple - if the seats were assigned strictly by population, my country would have so little influence in the EP that, well, we might as well consider ourselves occupied. However, as it is right now, the bigger countries cannot so easily exploit the smaller ones and our voice is heard more clearly.

[Early Sunsets 2,106]

Yup. This will be the first term I'm old enough to (legally) vote.