I don't believe it
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Khamul Feb 10, 2012 5:50 PM EDT |
This just doesn't fit; those East Texas juries are always ruling for the patent trolls. I wonder if some universal constant has changed suddenly, or if this jury was somehow swapped with one from a parallel universe where everything is better. I know I haven't been moved to such a parallel universe because everything else is still cr@ppy and screwed up--the politicians are all corrupt, they're still trying to push PIPA and ACTA, everyone running for President is still a buffoon, etc. |
| JaseP Feb 10, 2012 6:02 PM EDT |
Even rednecks have common sense. When they bring in the guy who "invented" the internet to say the plaintiff is full of cr@p, even a guy who bales hay for a living can figure out it is. |
| jdixon Feb 11, 2012 11:40 AM EDT |
> ...everyone running for President is still a buffoon, etc. What do you have against Roseanne Barr? |
| dinotrac Feb 11, 2012 12:30 PM EDT |
>everyone running for President is still a buffoon, etc. Well, there seems nothing but buffoons for the Republicans to choose from and the Democrats are pretty much locked into their buffoon. What's a country to do? |
| jdixon Feb 11, 2012 1:58 PM EDT |
> What's a country to do? When non-buffoons are regularly dismissed as non-electable or ignored by the mainstream press (Gary Johnson, for example), and the parties make a habit of recruiting and advancing buffoons, not much. You can vote third party, but that's about it. And many of them are just as bad, if not worse (see above). |
| Khamul Feb 11, 2012 4:06 PM EDT |
@dino: Sorry to steer off-topic here, and I hope this doesn't get deleted because I think it's an important point in this election season, but that's an incorrect statement, although it seems like every American blindly believes it for some reason. The Dems are NOT "locked into" their buffoon. The Dems have to hold primary elections just like the Reps, and there are other candidates running there. There is no reason the Dems are "locked into" their buffoon at all, it's just that for some odd reason, primary voters almost never depose a sitting President. It's only happened once in history I know of, and that's with Lyndon B. Johnson; he didn't even go entirely through the Primaries, his showing was so bad in the first state or two that he dropped out of the election. Not that it mattered that much, since whoever did win the Dem primaries that year lost to Nixon (R) in the general election. There are 4 other cases of sitting Presidents not getting their party's nomination (without quitting early like LBJ), but I'm fairly sure all those were back in the days before Primaries, when the Party officials selected their candidates directly, so those really aren't the same. Anyway, point is (I'm not saying you should vote for R or D, to be unbiased), if you're a D voter, and you don't like the incumbent, you DO have a choice. If the incumbent wins the Primaries for his party (esp. if it's not a close call), then we can only assume that the voters of that party like him, and don't think he's a buffoon. (And if you identify with that party, and you think he is a buffoon, then by extension you must also believe that your fellow voters are also buffoons or idiots.) |
| Khamul Feb 11, 2012 4:14 PM EDT |
@jdixon: The main problem I see is the voters themselves. It's not like we always have absolutely horrible candidates in every single election. We have "primaries" for the President, after all, to narrow down a field of candidates to one, to run in the general election. The voters, these days (it wasn't this way 100+ years ago), have the power to select who they think the best candidate out of their party is. IMO, they manage not to pick the best candidate of those available, and instead usually pick the worst. IMO, back in 2008, out of all the candidates running on both sides, the voters managed to pick the absolute worst candidates on both sides. I would have preferred any of the other candidates, on either side, to the two that ended up winning. The election system certainly doesn't help though. Our plurality or "first past the post" system does a very poor job picking people, especially when there's more than 2 people running (as is perfectly normal in a Primary). Instead of people being able to vote in preference, they only get one choice. What if they like person A the best, but person B is pretty good too? And other voters like person B but person A is their second choice? If not that many other people like person A, and person B is the one that everyone could agree on if they all had to discuss it, but a group of morons really like person C who's a bad candidate, person C could easily get elected even though the majority of voters don't even like him, because they "split" their votes among the other two people. |
| NoDough Feb 13, 2012 5:50 PM EDT |
@khamul, The solution is called an Instant Runoff Vote, and I've been a proponent of it for quite a while. IMHO, the party leaders don't like it because it mitigates their ability to manipulate the vote. |
| Khamul Feb 13, 2012 7:22 PM EDT |
@NoDough: Actually, back in 2008 when this topic was coming up a lot in tech circles, someone did a thorough analysis of different voting systems, including IRV. They found that IRV had serious problems in certain edge conditions which led to rather bizarre results. The study concluded that (IIRC) the Borla and Condorcet were the best systems overall. I wish I could find that article again, but a google seach failed. |
| jezuch Feb 14, 2012 2:38 AM EDT |
Oh, how I wish we had Condorcet voting in national elections! That way I could rank all the candidates lower than "none of the above" and then my dissenting voice would actually be meaningful! ;) AFAIR this isn't done yet because there is popular belief that a "typical voter" is too stupid to understand the principles of Condorcet voting. But then why are we allowing stupid people to vote anyway? (Yes, I know this is a major can of worms.) |
| mbaehrlxer Feb 14, 2012 2:49 AM EDT |
none of these voting systems address one big problem that comes from the outside: the potential for manipulation. it does not matter that a voting system can improve the odds for some candidates as long as candidates get to promote themselves with their own budget, which means, those with the best promotion get the highest chances to win the election. if we want a really fair system then this issue needs to be addressed. nominations and campaigning should prohibited. anyone within the electoral district (or a certain age) should be eligible. and those elected can not bail out (unless they are somehow unable to fulfill their duty due to eg. illness). also no party affiliations (that's a form of campaigning/promotion) to bring the topic back to linux: there is a lot of talk about meritocracy. software, solutions, contributions should be judged by their own merit. the reason why windows keeps winning every vote with a landslide is because OEMS nominate windows as the only candidate and the microsoft party does a lot of promotion. if there were no nominations then users would have to seek out their own candidate operating system. and clearly one can see that this would result in a more balanced outcome. we need the same meritocracy in the political elections. greetings, eMBee. |
| jdixon Feb 14, 2012 10:00 AM EDT |
> ...nominations and campaigning should prohibited. anyone within the electoral district (or a certain age) should be eligible. and those elected can not bail out (unless they are somehow unable to fulfill their duty due to eg. illness). also no party affiliations (that's a form of campaigning/promotion) Then why not select randomly from the qualified pool of candidates. Simply collect a list each census of people qualified for the offices and select one randomly each time an election rolls around. |
| JaseP Feb 14, 2012 11:30 AM EDT |
The problem with all politics is that it relies on the people to be intelligent and informed. The problem with politicians is that they exploit the fact that the vast majority of the people are neither. |
| NoDough Feb 14, 2012 3:24 PM EDT |
> ...Then why not select randomly from the qualified pool of candidates. Simply collect a list each census of people qualified for the offices and select one randomly each time an election rolls around. This is deeply flawed... and vastly superior to the current model. |
| hkwint Feb 15, 2012 12:23 AM EDT |
Just take a king/queen instead of president and be done with it... No more buffoon elections! |
| gus3 Feb 15, 2012 7:39 AM EDT |
You mean "no more elections." We'd still be stuck with a buffoon. |
| JaseP Feb 15, 2012 9:51 AM EDT |
@hkwint: We HAD a king in the USA,... But he let the power go to his (little) head and kept boffing the 19 year old interns and pimping them out to his executive staff... Camelot is what I think they called it... |
| ColonelPanik Feb 16, 2012 12:50 PM EDT |
Scott, wake up! The subbys are stealing this thread.
More control needed. Re: this topic, COUP, fast, efficient, cheap. Repeat as necessary. Open Source Politics Open Source Government |
| NoDough Feb 16, 2012 2:23 PM EDT |
> ...subbys... What on earth are subbys? |
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