Americans Elect - A new Process, or a Failed Premise? by AnthonyT

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Americans Elect - A new Process, or a Failed Premise?

POSTED BY: ANTHONYT
UPDATED: Saturday, December 31, 2011 17:51
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Thursday, December 29, 2011 11:17 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/29/politics/americans-elect/index.html?hpt=
hp_t1

Hello,

This group offers an opportunity to elect someone who may be far off the usual two-party system. If America is looking for an alternative to the usual suspects, this may be it.

On the other hand, its leadership includes a former director of the CIA, a former National Intelligence Director, and a former U.S. Trade Rep. Is this just a sneakier way to steal the vote? The pedigree of the organization frightens me.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Thursday, December 29, 2011 11:21 AM

BYTEMITE

I am filled with a sense of despair and also the urge to face palm.

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Thursday, December 29, 2011 11:25 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

I'm suspicious just with them using "American" in the name. I did hear Christine Todd Whitman on a Charlie Rose type thing, and I thought she was brilliant, humane, & genuine. She seemed mis-partied.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Thursday, December 29, 2011 12:16 PM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Is this just a sneakier way to steal the vote? The pedigree of the organization frightens me.

As well it should. : )

Let's see what kind of candidates they offer. If they are genuine, then kudos. If they are more of the same, then I would say it is a sneakier way to make money off of disillusioned and desperate Americans. Like a political snake oil.

-----
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

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Thursday, December 29, 2011 4:43 PM

FREMDFIRMA

The process itself seems interesting, but the current folks in charge of it are people I wouldn't trust with a model train set - ergo, get involved and stage a coup on the leadership would be my suggestion.

But again that runs into the problem of HOW elections actually work, and the fact that Congress isn't bound by the results of them, which is a problem you're GOING to have to face when they refuse to seat such candidates despite said results.

And you'd damn well better have at least SOME idea of what you'll do, how far you're willing to go, before it comes to that - cause knuckling under at that point just reinforces the existing fucked up system.

This black/white yes/no all-or-nothing shit is a stupid way to run an election anyways, IRV voting is far superior and the only reason we don't use it is cause the system is effectively rigged from the get-go...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

Case in point, many potential candidates are eliminated from the pool before YOU get any say at all - tell me, people, what SENSE does it make to have YOUR decisions pre-vetted by folks in another State (Iowa) in a system where we're all supposed have an equal say ?

The whole system is rotten, is what it is, but until folk face up to and admit/acknowledge the rottenness, until the abject denial of reality falls before the harsh light of truth, no progress will be made on this front.

You can't fix a flaw you're unwilling to admit exists.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Friday, December 30, 2011 7:16 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Yeah, Anthony, I find this most interesting. It would be neat if such a thing could really happen, and only time will tell, but there are as many ways for it to go wrong as there are for it to work--maybe more.

I'm glad to see people at least TRYING to do something about our two-party-which-has-become-one-party system; it's the only way things will ever change, in my view.

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Friday, December 30, 2011 8:45 PM

FREMDFIRMA

I looked into this a bit deeper and there seems to be a critical lack of transparency at the server level - not sure if I can explain it in easy terms, but the counting isn't open, the chain of custody isn't secure, and where/when/how things are counted is very open to un-visible manipulation.

That right there convinces me this is a setup.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Friday, December 30, 2011 9:14 PM

BYTEMITE

It's the same kind of eerie feeling I get when I hear "Clean Air Act Revisions" or "National Defense Authorization Act" when I'm pretty sure the names are the political bill version of blatant lies.

The kind of warning bells that say "Ohhh crap, duck and cover."

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Saturday, December 31, 2011 6:13 AM

DREAMTROVE

This was bound to happen, which is why I suggested doing it right here a few years back. The only way to get rid of voting machines is to move the technology forward, online. It seems that TPTB have decided to do it themselves.

The downside of this is obvious.

The upside of this is that it means that internet polling will become accepted as a result, so watchdog groups will be able to set p in parallel and make a very defensible claim.

Think of it this way:

If you set up a peer-based network and call it something like MyVote, and then apply the exact same methodology they are applying, and draw from the same user-base, then when you get different results than they do, it's going to be very difficult for them to deny it. (Sure, they can still deny it, but everyone will see that they are lying)

Better still, this will force them to comply if there is any danger that MyVote gets a higher voter turn out than their voting system, which would destroy their credibility as an electoral system. If they have no credibility as an electoral system, then they're just a bunch of guys with guns.

So yeah, I think it's a good thing, not because the system will be fair, it won't: It will be used as a bogus way to cheat elections. But rather it will be good because we will be able to openly compete with it on a standard that everyone will recognize.

ETA: Frem,

Good point. The way you solve this one is you set up your parallel system with IRV and any other additional improvements you might want to make (referendums, etc.) but you *also* include an exact clone of their methodology. Then you can say "Hey, look, if there had been IRV, the other guy would've won" which doesn't automatically change things, but like Bush v Gore, it's a credibility price* they have to pay in order to continue doing what they're doing.

* That credibility price in 2000 for the US was that no one else in the world was willing to buy that we were champions of democracy. That fed into the decision of having the British install their system in Iraq, at the behest of the Iraqis, with both countries agreeing that our system was fatally flawed, which at the time was a very easy argument to make. The result of that was that our candidates, Alawi and Chalabi, did not win, and instead we got Maliki and Talibani and now we are where we are wondering why we conquered the country in the first place if that was going to be the result.

ETA2: When I was at the Kansas SF workshop this guy, Norman, had an idea for getting rid of the party system, just by having everyone boycott the vote and go write in. In this system you would implement that, and in so doing you could also implement the IRV in a "pre-vote" so that people would know to change their official write in by the deadline based on the IRV data that the system was spitting out. In fact, building such a system and running it ahead of the election might have a lot of effect. I wrote an online voting system back in '04, I could rework it to include these ideas.

ETA3: On the off chance that there's anyone out there who's not sold on destroying the two party system, think about it. Okay, maybe there are folks saying "But I want to elect democrats"

I suspect you really don't. If you think that, what you're really thinking is "I want to elect *liberals* and the Democratic Party is the best way to get them.

The problem with that thinking is that the Democratic Party is a brand name, and it allows them to give you Carter or god forbid LBJ, but he was a liberal, and then use that brand name to sell you a completely different product, like Clinton (Or on the off chance that you actually did like Clinton, than to use that to sell you Obama or whoever) Here that has gotten us Cuomo, who is in no way a liberal, is very pro-corporate, anti-environment, etc. (Or it got the people of New Orleans Ray Nagin, who only became a democrat so he could be elected.)

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Saturday, December 31, 2011 6:56 AM

BYTEMITE

You could always have created an online voting system prior to the implementation of TPTB voting system. The problem of course with TPTB voting system is that it'll compete with ours, it'll have more resources, the media will support it, and they'll get all the sheep to use it.

Since it's unrelated to the success of OUR voting system, I'm hoping this one dies quickly. Then we can try ours.

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Saturday, December 31, 2011 10:20 AM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
You could always have created an online voting system prior to the implementation of TPTB voting system. The problem of course with TPTB voting system is that it'll compete with ours, it'll have more resources, the media will support it, and they'll get all the sheep to use it.

Since it's unrelated to the success of OUR voting system, I'm hoping this one dies quickly. Then we can try ours.

Byte, I already did, see above

Quote:
I wrote an online voting system back in '04, I could rework it to include these ideas.

Thing is that they'll never accept something unless they do it themselves, and they own it.

That's okay. Read my above posts and see if you get where I'm headed with this. We can't be their selection tool no matter what we do, because they would never agree to that. We can, however, indirectly force their hand, and they'll either have to cave to us, or openly don the jackboot, which is I think a generally Fremmy strategy, is it not?

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Saturday, December 31, 2011 2:18 PM

BYTEMITE

Ehh... Maybe. You'd still have to figure out how to be competitive enough with TPTB version to get a representative enough sample of the voting population. Also, TPTB one will be official, what we're proposing is more like a poll to keep them honest, because they'll probably ignore our outcomes while they have their thing.

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Saturday, December 31, 2011 2:31 PM

DREAMTROVE

Ah, but you'll get *more* attention because they're doing it this way, and you're the watchdog. No one is going to want to mess with you. It's like the press. They'll want to suck up to you. They no if they give you trouble your organization is going to cause trouble for them.

As for the audience, you don't rely on TPTB at all, you build your own audience with the pre-election stuff. You become the pollster, because people are already mock voting on your site. It doesn't matter how many, because it's bound to be more than the 1000 people that pollsters use on the regular polls.

Here's something you *have* to do, though: Make sure your sample is demographically balanced and weighted. Like, say, for example, you have 2800 people in South Carolina, and you and only 300 blacks. You know that there should be 784 blacks because the state is 28% black and black voter turn out is pretty similar to white, and you also know why you're not getting the black votes: blacks are less likely to be online, and the black population of SC is extraordinarily poor and so again, less likely to be online.

So, what do you do? Balance, overvalue those black votes in your predictive poll numbers. Sure, you have the raw data, so you can see "Okay, we had 2800 people, 1100 of them wanted Obama" but you also give them the balance predictive data saying the black votes are being weighted more heavily to get a more accurate read on the overall voting population, and give them what those numbers look like if you had three and a quarter times the number of black votes you have.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Saturday, December 31, 2011 2:45 PM

BYTEMITE

I dunno. Most watchdogs these days have a negative and/or extremist connotation. And although that's usually by their own doing, I also think TPTB will not allow any alternative to seem more moral than them.

It's not a bad idea, I just think we might want their thing to fail before we put out our thing.

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Saturday, December 31, 2011 3:33 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:

TPTB will not allow any alternative to seem more moral than them.

I'm absolutely counting on it.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Saturday, December 31, 2011 3:58 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

I think one of the problems with your political system would appear to be the amount of money needed to get yourself elected, either by having it or having to owe those who give you the big bucks needed to run a campaign. It means that you don't have anything like a true representation of your population.

If you could cap the amount spent on campaigns maybe it might go away to fixing things, but then you wouldn't get the rah dah dah with bells that accompanies campaigns, so maybe you wouldn't like it.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/47-of-congress-members-mi
llionaires-a-status-shared-by-only-1-of-americans/

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Saturday, December 31, 2011 4:11 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

"then you wouldn't get the rah dah dah with bells that accompanies campaigns, so maybe you wouldn't like it."

Hello,

I actually think this is the first generation where, via the internet and youtube videos and such, we can conduct a political campaign for almost no money.

But perhaps you are right, and people would miss the pomp and circumstance.

It makes me sad.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Saturday, December 31, 2011 5:51 PM

DREAMTROVE

Magon,

You had me for a minute because I thought you meant my idea, but by "your" you meant Americas. Yes, you are correct.

Anthony,

I know this may sound like it's coming from mars because this is one of those ideas. I've been working it through for a while, and something the CTS sent me, some stuff I was reading about two months ago and a theory of a friend of mine in Chicago have gone into this idea, anyway, here it is:

The running of the campaign doesn't cost all that much money because the people are largely volunteers. What costs money is Madison Avenue.

That said, it gets insanely more complex.

Madison Avenue returns results, but the results correlate to neither success or cash, they simply form the justification for the transfer of funds.

Once Madison avenue has the money, they use that money to come up with data, and to influence large media companies. Those media companies, along with other politicians, will use their influence to support the candidate who has bought into the system, provided they are a match for what policies the think tanks like.

Money then flows from Madison Avenue to media companies, and ads are run that probably deliver questionable results. This helps maintain the illusion of a functional system much in the way that democracy and capitalism maintain the illusions of self governance and a free market.

What hurts Ron Paul is that the think tanks don't like his agenda, and neither do large banks that own a majority share in media companies. That said, he does successfully buy his way into that political system, and as such, he's still a viable candidate for the GOP nomination.

That means that it's theoretically possible to gain political acceptance in the American political system while having TPTB basically universally opposed to you, which is a very good sign.

So, to your Social Media campaign strategy idea, I have to gnaw on it. I don't doubt that you could get the voter support on basically no money. My worry is that if you came in that way you would have no support of the machine at all, and they might universally oppose your victory, and that they have ways of rigging the vote.

Maybe this watchdog thing is really needed.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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