How in the bloody dark suns is a vote that doesn't matter a show of support for a third party. Do you honestly wonder why the major two parties don't give a fuck when people advocate the same behavior you're advocating.

If you really believe voting for a third party in a swing state is such a waste, the proper course is not castigating a voter voting for what he wants. Said voter is in no way obliged to support the plutocrat you don't really like but prefer to the other plutocrat in that differently colored shirt. The proper course would be to fix it so that people can vote for third parties. Go advocate an end to first past the post voting and quit telling people how to vote. That's downright shameful, or it should be, and it disturbs me that so few take issue with it.
Which one? We had a couple of them fucking with everyone (or the same guy on multiple accounts, no idea).

if you want power, then you have to ask, why? do you want to save peoples lives with it? thats good. or do you want to lord over people in a high place and have authority to do whatever you want to people in lesser stations? thats bad.

or maybe, you want to be in on the action. you think politics is where its at.

And that's your choice, but begrudging someone else the same choice you made in 2000 is deplorable.

Besides, would Gore having won your state's electoral votes have pushed him to victory? If not then it wouldn't have mattered anyway.
Changing where you draw the Prohibition line will have much of the same outcome. You have to simply end Prohibition. The cost to fund clinics such as Insight (located in Vancouver, BC) in every major US city might not even add up to 1% of the cost of the war on drugs. What is more is said clinics actually have a net positive effect on the community instead of the destructive effect of the drug war.

Guys I'm Obama AMA.

I'm hoping the Republicans in Congress start coming to the negotiating table more, with the idea that they aren't in control. The Gridlock that Congress spewed out was little more than a raw waste of money, and made me wonder if we weren't wasting money on our Congresspeople.

My viewpoint about the whole thing feels incredibly naive, including the idea that the minority party should temper the ideology of the majority (although, my view is ideology only tends to go so far in actual leadership, Common Sense is still king).

And, to States-Rights...I like the idea of a balance of power between the states and the federal government, to keep either side from being too corrupt. But at the same time, I've been wondering within the past year or so, if the technology of our times, and the size of the country that has expanded since the Constitution was originally ratified, is if we're just too big physically, and too intertwined through technology and how we can travel, to make this work without deep changes in how things exist.

The House's (R) leadership didn't sound like they were interested in this on Tuesday, instead that were saying shit like "business as usual" and "we're at war".

While I agree, I don't think either party has been very willing to comprise for years. Each party has their lines in the sand, those sacred cows that they will not sacrifice. Compromise cannot occur until one or both sides give in on many of these points.

Regardless, I think the Republicans need to just give in at this point. They lost; let the Democrats have their way. If the policies fail, then the Republicans are in a prime place to say 'I told you so'. However, if the Republicans are obstructionists, then Democrats will continue to make excuses and nothing will change. This election is a case in point.

I am a staunch fiscal conservative, as you know. I am certain Democrat policies will not solve our problems; they probably will make them worse. However, I think, at this point, people must be shown that they will not work. Sometimes a step back is required to take two forward.

And, heck, I am willing to admit I might be wrong and be pleasantly surprised by the results. While I doubt it is probable, I am willing to admit the outside chance. ;)

FWIW I don't think Democratic policies will solve a lot of our problems either, as I consider them far too conservative and plutocratic, however, you're right, if the (R)s want to definitively show how right they are to the public at large, they'll have to be a lot less obstructionist than they have been. It's hard to criticize Obama for failing to close Gitmo, for example, when the Republicans were pulling the antics they were. The thing is, I'm pretty sure Obama is a died-in-the-wool plutocrat that's simply a bit more modern and progressive than the crusty goats from the other side, he probably would have wimped out on the whole Gitmo thing on his own, just look at drone strikes and the DOJ persecution of medical marijuana dispensaries. Hell look at wall street, I don't think any of the (R)s I grew up knowing could have possibly been behind that kind of thing, but Obama handed them almost everything they wanted and then put their chief fuck-ups in charge of the oversight. What a small wonder the public got shafted (with a battleship sized mast right up the ying-yang in fact!) in the whole process.

What I find disturbing is someone who seems to be very passionate about political issues not voting

I agree that we need to fix it to give third parties a better chance, but I believe that the best course of action for this is to push for more media coverage of third party candidates. Though third parties have gotten plenty of votes before, (excuse me if I got this wrong) the last time a non-republican or democrat party candidate has won the presidential election was in 1848. That to me tells me that just voting for them hasn't been working.

Look, let's go back to the Gore/Bush election (this is a very good example for my beliefs). Who do you think the Green party preferred, Bush or Gore? They could have decided, they could have changed history. Instead they voted for Nader, someone who had no chance at winning. Did they create a major change for third parties? No, third parties are still picking up whatever scraps they can get from the top two. What they did do is allow Bush to win. They hurt themselves for a little asterisk that says Nader won under 3% of the popular vote. I'm sorry, but I think they were being idiotic. Though it may not be right for me to chastise them for it, I'd rather express my thoughts rather than remain silent. There is a time and place for supporting third party candidates, the times when your vote could potential decide the entire national election are not the time to vote for them.

P.S. Though I am still arguing about it, I believe we have come to an impasse. I'd like to say I enjoyed this debate and I'd like to thank you for challenging me about this. Really, I believe debating helps me better articulate my beliefs and I'm always happy when I have to defend them.

The problem is the electoral system. With only two options it's clear that voters will favor them alternatingly. In the end, both parties wiill arrange themselves with this arrangement and there is no incentive to become better. They know that now the other guys get the well paid jobs but in four or at the latest in eight years it's their turn again with extremely high probability. For the sake of the game they do a little shadow boxing but that's not even real.

Just abolish the majority voting system and adopt a proportional voting system with some direct votes (40% of the seats could be direct seats for example, possibly some compensation seats neccessary but that's no problem). It would be much more democratic in a way that really every vote counts for something and that you really need a majority to form a government, not only being the strongest party.

Funny thing is that the people in the UK had the chance for such a change last year and they blew it. I found that deeply depressing. You cannot even trust the voters to do the right thing.

The only seat that really gets swapped back and forth a lot is the Presidency. There might be a 10% to 20% turn over in the house, or 4 or 5 seats in the Senate in a big year, but most of the seats will stay with a given party. In any event, they are all pretty well paid... :P

Alternatively, we could go back to the way the system was actually designed. Decentralize the federal government a fair bit and let each state have a greater hand in their own governance, just as our Founding Fathers envisioned. A majority vote wouldn't be as powerful at the Federal level if each of our states had a louder voice to enact reforms or policies on their own.

Just saying that there are other options than copying your system ;). On principle, I don't like systems that automatically assume that we should have a strong central government for everything. Generally, unless it involves national defense/diplomacy or interstate commerce (currency and such), I would rather the federal government kindly butt the heck out.

The USA is big and diverse; what works in European countries may not translate as well to the U.S. situation. I think our country would benefit more with a system of governance that starts locally and regionally with bottom-up policies, rather than a one-size-fits-all federal policy.

(Just as a note, because I have noticed many Europeans don't fully grok how large the continental U.S. is in actuality, I'll make a simple example. If you were to place a map of the U.S. over a map of Europe, such that Seattle, Washington lay over London, England, then Miami, Florida would be within 100km of Baghdad, Iraq. I only note this because every European that I know who has ever visited the States has remarked that it was much bigger than they had imagined.)

Edit: What I suppose I am saying is that I think it would be better if the USA were similar to the European Union, and each state here could be treated similarly to each country in the EU. I would actually rather a somewhat stronger centralized governance in the US than exists in Europe, obviously, but I do like the symmetry of the example.

Yeah. Not to mention how Mahatma Gandhi was a known misogynist, or Mother Teresa:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa

Which is utter bullshit.

The "change" offered wasn't really a change when you looked at it properly, in daylight.

FPtP : Favours One Major party over the Other Major, and all the minor parties.
AV : Favours the Other Major party over the current One Major, and all the minor parties. And could probably force even more coalition governments on us in the long run.

They refused to offer full PR, so we all said "Fuck it. If we're being forced to have one screwed system, why waste yet more money by changing to another screwed system?"

That is a very good point. My imagination is not big enough to grasp how it is to live in one country that has the size and number of people of around 20 countries here. I guess the often pronouncedly shown american patriotism is the only way of holding such a huge country together.

The balancing of local government versus global government is a very difficult things. We tried a mere trade union in Europe but otherwise fully independent countries and it didn't work. Now we want to have it more centralized but we do not have any democratic instances to go beyond the single member level (the EU parliament is voted with greatly different number of votes needed for seats of each country and anyway has no power). The main question is how much loss of independence on economic and fiscal policy EU member states are willing to accept and how much economic and fiscal solidarity we want to have between the states. Basically the northern states do not want to pay for the southern states and the southern states don't want to be controled. But we are all dependent on each other economically.

It's like an economic union but without any political union or will for any political union. Like a marriage for tax reasons but without love.

And anyway the corruption and undemocratic processes grow the more instances you have above you. So a lean EU is probably preferable to anything else.

We will see, we will see...
Okay in this case the people in the UK hadn't really a choice.

This.

Judging by popular opinion one would believe that Obama would lose. Now, this person would have (I'm working overseas and unfortunately neglected to prepare an absentee ballot) voted for Jill Stein, so it's not like my vote would have "changed the outcome." (Although Orcishgamer gives a good explanation as to why we as voters must vote for the candidate we believe is best for our nation.)

Any other thoughts as to why Obama won? Did Romney really fail to appeal to different demographics? There are other crazies in both parties (moreso among the Republicans of course), but he certainly tried to appeal to everyone. This poster was fearing that Romney would have won. Yes, better Obama but I do believe he is the 'lesser of two evils.'