Quick note from Orange Mike: $100,000 prize for those promising to register and vote in the US election
Michael J. Lowrey
In case you haven't heard already, there's a website called VOTE or NOT
that is trying to get people to register to vote before the November
elections, and to make sure that those who are registered do vote.
The 2000 election was decided by only about 500 votes-
This year's election may be just as close, so all our votes matter,
whether you agree with me politically or not!
To get the word out about registering, VOTE or NOT is offering a
$100,000 sweepstakes. They will also give the person who referred the
winner $100,000, so if you sign up through my referral link below,
we can both win!
It's important you sign up now, since the voter registration deadlines
are coming up really soon. The US election registration deadline here
in Wisconsin, for example, is October 23, although of course we also
have at-the-poll registration.
Please post this link in your blogs, on other newsgroups where it would
not be OT, etc. and urge others to do the same.
Back to fafiation, I fear....
--
Orange Mike
who misses you all
Doug Wickstrom
<101020042226041024%ora...@execpc.com>
"Michael J. Lowrey" <ora...@execpc.com> excited the ether to
say:
>To get the word out about registering, VOTE or NOT is offering a
>$100,000 sweepstakes. They will also give the person who referred the
>winner $100,000, so if you sign up through my referral link below,
>we can both win!
Is this paying someone to vote? The legality is doubtful.
Anyway.
The Secretary of State for the State of Minnesota had 1.4 million
voter registration cards printed up this year. They ran out. At
least 70% of the eligible voters were already registered (based
on previous election turnouts), and there are only 5 million
Minnesotans.
Who the hell is using up all the voter registration cards? There
aren't that many unregistered potential voters left, and in
Minnesota, you can register at the polls on election day.
Democrats are screaming that there's a conspiracy by the
Republican Secretary of State to keep people from registering to
vote.
Jeez, Looeeze, people!
If you change the address on your driver's license or state ID
card, they hand you a voter registration form. When you go from
a provisional driver to a fully licensed driver at age 18 they
hand you a voter registration form. When I moved to Minneapolis,
the City of Minneapolis sent me a voter registration form. When
I closed on my house in New Hope they handed me a voter
registration form, and New Hope sent me another one. How the
hell can you not be registered to vote in this state except by
ducking it? I was in the Mall of America a few weeks ago, and
had to _refuse_ a voter registration form from someone who asked
if I were a Democrat before trying to stuff the form in my hand.
Half the people in the Mall of America are from out of state,
fercryinoutloud, and about one in twenty is from out of the
country!
The way I figure it, the only people in this state who aren't
registered are ineligible because they are: too young, not
residents, not citizens, currently under felony sentence, or
don't want to vote.
Where is the cause for screaming "Conspiracy!"? For that matter,
how is an unexpected shortage of influenza vaccine Bush's fault?
Did he lean on his friend Tony Blair to shut down the UK
producer? Did he offer government contracts to a flaky provider?
(Hint: the US government only buys vaccines for its own use, not
for the general public). There isn't any "$189 billion-dollar
bailout of the pharmaceutical industry," either, Mr. Senator "I'm
John Kerry and I approved this message."
G.W. Bush isn't evil. He isn't even incompetent. What he is is
inarticulate and Republican, and a number of people here dislike
him to the extent they can't resist attacking him in ways that
they wouldn't tolerate from others attacking their own
candidates. Being inarticulate and Republican are not crimes.
The latter isn't even a shortcoming, according to slightly over
one half of the American people, or how do you think the House of
Representatives became majority-Republican?
I've never seen so much hatred from people I call my friends
towards anyone. Save it for the truly evil in the world, people,
because G.W. Bush, nor any member of his cabinet, doesn't even
make the top ten million.
Yeah. I haven't taken my meds today. It lets me have a bit of
the old edge back. I'll go be a good boy, now, and go swallow
the little white pill that used to be pink.
--
Doug Wickstrom <nims...@comcast.net>
"I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury." --Groucho Marx
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:ti3km0tp1jbr917th...@4ax.com:
> G.W. Bush isn't evil. He isn't even incompetent.
I'd say that calling him "evil" is a stretch, if a slight one; theocrats
tend to give me the creeps. As for "incompetent," I truly believe that he
is.
We're just going to have to disagree on this.
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Take THAT, Daniel Lin, Mark Sadek, James Lin & Christopher Chung!
Tina Hall
> The US election registration deadline here in Wisconsin, for
> example, is October 23, although of course we also have at-the
> -poll registration.
Registration? Deadline? I don't undestand this.
--
Tina - Simple minds are easy to please.
The area is suffused with divine lightning!
You hear Xom's maniacal chuckling. (Dungeon Crawl)
David Dyer-Bennet
> On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 22:26:04 -0500, in message
> <101020042226041024%ora...@execpc.com>
> "Michael J. Lowrey" <ora...@execpc.com> excited the ether to
> say:
>
>>To get the word out about registering, VOTE or NOT is offering a
>>$100,000 sweepstakes. They will also give the person who referred the
>>winner $100,000, so if you sign up through my referral link below,
>>we can both win!
>
> Is this paying someone to vote? The legality is doubtful.
>
> Anyway.
>
> The Secretary of State for the State of Minnesota had 1.4 million
> voter registration cards printed up this year. They ran out. At
> least 70% of the eligible voters were already registered (based
> on previous election turnouts), and there are only 5 million
> Minnesotans.
>
> Who the hell is using up all the voter registration cards? There
> aren't that many unregistered potential voters left, and in
> Minnesota, you can register at the polls on election day.
30% * 5,000,000 > 1.4 million
But, realistically, there's a fairly high degree of forms
spoilage/wastage in such programs.
> Democrats are screaming that there's a conspiracy by the
> Republican Secretary of State to keep people from registering to
> vote.
>
> Jeez, Looeeze, people!
>
> If you change the address on your driver's license or state ID
> card, they hand you a voter registration form. When you go from
> a provisional driver to a fully licensed driver at age 18 they
> hand you a voter registration form. When I moved to Minneapolis,
> the City of Minneapolis sent me a voter registration form. When
> I closed on my house in New Hope they handed me a voter
> registration form, and New Hope sent me another one. How the
> hell can you not be registered to vote in this state except by
> ducking it? I was in the Mall of America a few weeks ago, and
> had to _refuse_ a voter registration form from someone who asked
> if I were a Democrat before trying to stuff the form in my hand.
> Half the people in the Mall of America are from out of state,
> fercryinoutloud, and about one in twenty is from out of the
> country!
Wow. How many people did you ask where their homes were, to
accumulate these statistics?
> G.W. Bush isn't evil. He isn't even incompetent.
I think we'll just have to disagree on this. He doesn't believe in
individual rights. He does believe in torture. Those things alone,
in my mind, qualify him as both incompetent and evil. But there's
*lots* more. Going into the Iraq war for no reasons (and lying to
congress to get them to authorize it). Going into the Iraq war with
inadequate forces. Appointing John Ashcroft to any position of
responsibility and trust. And so forth.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd...@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
Priscilla Ballou
David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> > G.W. Bush isn't evil. He isn't even incompetent.
>
> I think we'll just have to disagree on this. He doesn't believe in
> individual rights. He does believe in torture. Those things alone,
> in my mind, qualify him as both incompetent and evil. But there's
> *lots* more. Going into the Iraq war for no reasons (and lying to
> congress to get them to authorize it). Going into the Iraq war with
> inadequate forces. Appointing John Ashcroft to any position of
> responsibility and trust. And so forth.
IMO, he's either evil OR incompetant. If he were evil AND incompetant,
there'd be less bad stuff being done. If he's not evil but is
incompetant we'd have what we can see now. Same if he's evil and
competant. Well, I think it would be worse if he were evil and
competant. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's
misguided and incompetant.
Priscilla
Mark Atwood
> Doug Wickstrom <nims...@comcast.net> writes:
>> Half the people in the Mall of America are from out of state,
>> fercryinoutloud, and about one in twenty is from out of the
>> country!
>
> Wow. How many people did you ask where their homes were, to
> accumulate these statistics?
The Mall of America regularly surveys people at the doors and surveys
the licence plates in the parking lot, and their tenants regularly do
demographic analysis keyed off the ZIP code of the credit card
presented at purchase.
The MoA is very proud of their "out of state out of country" draw,
they use it both as a self-referential "see, we're a big tourist spot,
maybe you as a tourist should come here too!", and to the local taxing
authority with the pitch "look at how much sales tax we collect and
local wages we pay to locals, out of money brought in from outside the
state".
If you're going to pick nits with Doug's rant, that's a pretty fucking
small one to pick.
--
Mark Atwood | When you do things right, people won't be sure
m...@pobox.com | you've done anything at all.
http://www.pobox.com/~mra | http://www.livejournal.com/users/fallenpegasus
Jenn Ridley
>Michael J. Lowrey <ora...@execpc.com> wrote:
>
>> The US election registration deadline here in Wisconsin, for
>> example, is October 23, although of course we also have at-the
>> -poll registration.
>
>Registration? Deadline? I don't undestand this.
In order to vote in a US election, you need to live in the area you
are voting in. Registration is a way of proving that you are a
resident of the precinct you are voting in (usually it's a matter of
presenting either a state issued ID with a local address *or* a
utility bill with a local address). Different states have different
policies on how long before the election you need to register.
US federal elections are *not* just for national office (President).
Federal elections also include Senators and Representatives. Most
states also put state elections on the same ballot. (The ballot I
will see in November has, in addition to the presidental vote, votes
for Federal Congress, State Congress, County offices, and Township
offices, as well as a couple of State proposals).
jenn
--
Jenn Ridley : jri...@chartermi.net
Danny Low
<oy兀earthlink.net> wrote:
>Doug Wickstrom <nims...@comcast.net> appears to have caused the following
>letters to be typed in news:ti3km0tp1jbr917th...@4ax.com:
>
>> G.W. Bush isn't evil. He isn't even incompetent.
>
>I'd say that calling him "evil" is a stretch, if a slight one; theocrats
>tend to give me the creeps. As for "incompetent," I truly believe that he
>is.
If Bush is incompetent then what is Gore? After all he lost to Bush.
And what of Kerry? If he loses then he also lost to an incompetent and
the Democrats have twice been beaten by an incompetent. Being beaten
by an incompetent is not exactly a sign of competence.
Even if Kerry wins, then he has won over an incompetent which is not a
big accomplishment. Furthermore unless Kerry wins by a big margin, it
means he is only marginal more competent than an incompetent. That is
not exactly laudable.
So the more Bush is put down as incompetent the worst the Democrats
will look no matter what the outcome.
Danny
Don't question authority. What makes you think they
know anything? (Remove the first dot for a valid e-mail
address)
Jim Battista
news:itjlm09dstjcmh0k9...@4ax.com:
> US federal elections are *not* just for national office
> (President). Federal elections also include Senators and
> Representatives. Most states also put state elections on the same
> ballot. (The ballot I will see in November has, in addition to
> the presidental vote, votes for Federal Congress, State Congress,
> County offices, and Township offices, as well as a couple of State
> proposals).
To amplify that, most ballots will have between thirty and a hundred
offices and ballot propositions. You might have Pres & VP as a pair,
US Representative, US Senator, Governor, Lt Governor (separately
elected), state Secretary of State, state Attorney General, state
Insurance Commission members, state Agriculture Commission members,
state higher-education board members, state primary and secondary
board members, state high-court judges, state intermediate appeals
judges, from zero to a hundred state referenda and initiatives,
county District Attorney, county County Attorney, county commission,
county/district school board, maybe county zoning board members,
county judges, city mayor, city council, city judges, minor judges,
and zero to ten or so local referenda.
Registration is there to, one, make sure you don't vote twice, and,
two, to make sure you're voting for the right mix of offices for your
precinct.
--
Jim Battista
A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
Paul Dormer
jri...@chartermi.net (Jenn Ridley) wrote:
> Tina...@kruemel.org (Tina Hall) wrote:
>
> >Michael J. Lowrey <ora...@execpc.com> wrote:
> >
> >> The US election registration deadline here in Wisconsin, for
> >> example, is October 23, although of course we also have at-the
> >> -poll registration.
> >
> >Registration? Deadline? I don't undestand this.
>
> In order to vote in a US election, you need to live in the area you
> are voting in. Registration is a way of proving that you are a
> resident of the precinct you are voting in (usually it's a matter of
> presenting either a state issued ID with a local address *or* a
> utility bill with a local address). Different states have different
> policies on how long before the election you need to register.
>
For the record, in the UK, voter registration occurs every year, usually
in October. In September, you get sent a form in which you are to record
all the people in your household who are eligible to vote i.e. anyone who
will be over eighteen in the next year. (If someone comes of age during
the year, you should enter that as well. If someone is over 70, that
should be recorded as they are no longer eligible for jury service. You
can also register for a postal or proxy vote.)
The last few years, my local council has allowed you to confirm your
registration by phonecall if nothing has changed in the last year.
Every so often at an election, someone claims that they've been sent a
voting card for their two-year old or their dog and claim this shows the
incompetence of the local council. It seems to me that these names could
only get onto the register if the people put them there.
Del Cotter
Tina Hall <Tina...@kruemel.org> said:
>Michael J. Lowrey <ora...@execpc.com> wrote:
>> The US election registration deadline here in Wisconsin, for
>> example, is October 23, although of course we also have at-the
>> -poll registration.
>
>Registration? Deadline? I don't undestand this.
In Britain, and I assume in Germany, being registered to vote is
something that happens pretty much automatically, whether or not you
feel like voting on the day. In Britain, you not only can be put on the
electoral roll without going to any effort, you must be on the roll
somewhere if eligible, on pain of £1,000 fine.
But in America, you have to go to a special effort to get registered,
and many people don't for one reason or another. As a result, American
elections are characterised by a very low turnout of the total
population eligible to vote (typically under 50% even for a presidential
election), and by a panic before a large election as the parties try to
rouse people to get on the register before it's too late.
Some states, though, like Wisconsin, allow people to turn up and
register on the day, but many people don't know about it, so they stay
at home if they didn't register.
Further, I believe all states allow you to get a provisional ballot on
the day if there is any doubt whether you are eligible to vote, as long
as you have registered. You don't have to accept it if they claim
you're on the felons list, or aren't a resident, or for any other
reason, you can demand a provisional ballot, and they have to give you
one, and count it if it later turns out you were eligible after all.
Again, not many people know about this right.
--
Del Cotter http://del_c.livejournal.com/
Send email to del2 at branta dot demon dot co dot uk
Tina Hall
> Tina...@kruemel.org (Tina Hall) wrote:
>> Michael J. Lowrey <ora...@execpc.com> wrote:
>>> The US election registration deadline here in Wisconsin, for
>>> example, is October 23, although of course we also have at-the
>>> -poll registration.
>>
>> Registration? Deadline? I don't undestand this.
> In order to vote in a US election, you need to live in the area
> you are voting in. Registration is a way of proving that you are
> a resident of the precinct you are voting in (usually it's a
> matter of presenting either a state issued ID with a local
> address *or* a utility bill with a local address). Different
> states have different policies on how long before the election
> you need to register.
Hmmm... This sounds very strange. Whenever there are votes here, I
just get a postcard-like thingy in the mail (I think I could send it
back with a reason given, if I couldn't go to the place to vote and
would like to vote by mail), that I have to take to the place
mentioned on it, on the appropriate date, to vote, with my 'Ausweis'
(translation on the thing says 'idendity card'), some thingy
supposedly forge-proof (yeah, right, just like the new DM a few
years before the euro, what a waste) in use since about 16 years ago
(I was one of the first to get that instead of a proper passport).
Of course the 'Ausweis' always has to have my proper adress, and I'm
already registered to the appropriate area of the town, anyway. If I
move, I have to notify the officials about it. They're valid for 5
or 10 years and have to be renewed; there's a lot of things you
can't do without one. (And afaik everyone is supposed to have an
'Ausweis', from the age of 16 onwards, though I used to have a
proper children's-passport before that. 'Passports' (as opposed to
these card things) being the things you need to travel to other
countries, at least some of them.)
> US federal elections are *not* just for national office
> (President). Federal elections also include Senators and
> Representatives.
Sounds much like it's here (though I don't know whether it
translates to the same positions). There's always two 'x' to make,
one for a party, and another for a person, and by some system that I
never really got, it can be sensible to chose a different party than
person. (Afaik, one might vote for a big party, and a person from a
small party, so it gets a 'seat'(?) even if their party itself
doesn't make the 5% limit they have to have to get into the
government(?).)
Unfortunately, the choices represented aren't sensible, themselves.
<g>
> Most states also put state elections on the same ballot. (The
> ballot I will see in November has, in addition to the presidental
> vote, votes for Federal Congress, State Congress, County offices,
> and Township offices, as well as a couple of State proposals).
I think they're all split here.
--
Tina - Vaguely Precise.
Xom smiles on you.
You hear a splash. (Dungeon Crawl)
CrossPoint/FreeXP v3.40 RC3. Usenet/Fidonet gateway, no internet access.
Tina Hall
> So the more Bush is put down as incompetent the worst the
> Democrats will look no matter what the outcome.
No, actually it's the voters who look ever worse.
--
Tina - Spinning gorilla on the grand piano of words.
What good is an answer when you don't understand the question?
Vogon Jeltz for President!
Karen Lofstrom
Priscilla Ballou wrote:
> IMO, he's either evil OR incompetant. If he were evil AND incompetant,
> there'd be less bad stuff being done. If he's not evil but is
> incompetant we'd have what we can see now. Same if he's evil and
> competant. Well, I think it would be worse if he were evil and
> competant. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's
> misguided and incompetant.
I recently read an article about the journalist Seymour Hirsch (sp?) who
broke the Abu Ghraib scandal. Hirsch's take on the current administration
was that the people in control were frightening because they were true
believers. He said that he would feel a lot safer if the administration
were run by the likes of Kissinger, who was cynical and conniving, but
smart. At least Kissinger was in contact with reality.
(Hirsch also told a story -- a new one to me -- about Kissinger ... that
Kissinger had a staffer one of whose duties was to keep track of what lies
K had told and to whom he'd told them, so that K could keep his stories
straight.]
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
---------------------------------------------------------------
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind--or never to have a mind.
How true that is." -- Mr. Edible Starchy Tuber Head
Irina Rempt
> Hmmm... This sounds very strange. Whenever there are votes here, I
> just get a postcard-like thingy in the mail (I think I could send it
> back with a reason given, if I couldn't go to the place to vote and
> would like to vote by mail), that I have to take to the place
> mentioned on it, on the appropriate date, to vote, with my 'Ausweis'
> (translation on the thing says 'idendity card')
We get a postcard-type thingy too; no need to prove one's identity if
one has the card (I think they're entitled to ask for ID, and I carry
it just in case, but I've never been asked). It used to be the case
that if you wanted to vote in a different polling station than where
you were registered you had to go to the town hall beforehand and get
your card converted to a voter's permit, but now you get the voter's
permit by default and you can vote anywhere in your own town.
Convenient for me, because I'm registered at the polling station in
school A but my kids go to school B where there's also a polling
station, so I just go and vote there.
If you can't go yourself, you can give someone else a mandate. I've put
in Boudewijn's vote in the past, when he had a job that made him leave
home before the polling stations opened (7:30 or 8 am) and return after
they closed (7 pm). You can only get a mandate from someone registered
in the same polling station as you (with a maximum of two per voter),
and you *must* vote where you're registered when you have a mandate.
This is rather easy to abuse; one no-good party has been known to
wangle mandates from old and infirm people and use them to vote for
their own party.
> Sounds much like it's here (though I don't know whether it
> translates to the same positions). There's always two 'x' to make,
> one for a party, and another for a person, and by some system that I
> never really got, it can be sensible to chose a different party than
> person. (Afaik, one might vote for a big party, and a person from a
> small party, so it gets a 'seat'(?) even if their party itself
> doesn't make the 5% limit they have to have to get into the
> government(?).)
I wish we had that. You vote for a person who is on the list of a party,
and the votes for the party are totalled and that determines how many
seats they get. Candidates are taken from the top, but if any one
person has enough votes to get a seat on their own, that person gets
the seat even if they're not high enough on the list to get a seat by
default. In the last general election I voted for someone who was No.7
on the list, and the party got only two seats, but because I and about
twenty thousand other people[*] all voted for her instead of any of the
numbers 2-6, she got the seat.
[*] including about half of the church choir.
I'd really *like* to vote for a party and a person, because it happens
more often than not that the person I want happens not to stand for the
party I want. In general (national) elections I tend to vote for the
party, in local elections for the person.
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Latest: 06-Oct-2004
Arwel Parry
Dormer <p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk> writes
>In article <itjlm09dstjcmh0k9...@4ax.com>,
>jri...@chartermi.net (Jenn Ridley) wrote:
>
>> Tina...@kruemel.org (Tina Hall) wrote:
>>
>> >Michael J. Lowrey <ora...@execpc.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> The US election registration deadline here in Wisconsin, for
>> >> example, is October 23, although of course we also have at-the
>> >> -poll registration.
>> >
>> >Registration? Deadline? I don't undestand this.
>>
>> In order to vote in a US election, you need to live in the area you
>> are voting in. Registration is a way of proving that you are a
>> resident of the precinct you are voting in (usually it's a matter of
>> presenting either a state issued ID with a local address *or* a
>> utility bill with a local address). Different states have different
>> policies on how long before the election you need to register.
>>
>
>For the record, in the UK, voter registration occurs every year, usually
>in October. In September, you get sent a form in which you are to record
>all the people in your household who are eligible to vote i.e. anyone who
>will be over eighteen in the next year. (If someone comes of age during
>the year, you should enter that as well. If someone is over 70, that
>should be recorded as they are no longer eligible for jury service. You
>can also register for a postal or proxy vote.)
For a few years now we've also had "rolling registration", where people
can be added to the register at any time up to about two weeks before
the election, which is useful if they've moved house since the previous
October.
>The last few years, my local council has allowed you to confirm your
>registration by phonecall if nothing has changed in the last year.
>
>Every so often at an election, someone claims that they've been sent a
>voting card for their two-year old or their dog and claim this shows the
>incompetence of the local council. It seems to me that these names could
>only get onto the register if the people put them there.
In theory the register is recompiled ab initio every year, but if a
household doesn't return their form then sometimes the registration
officer will simply carry over the previous years' registrations, which
is how we sometimes find when we're canvassing before an election that
Mrs So-and-so is Granny who died three years ago... We do sometimes get
suspicious when we find a large chunk of contiguous street addresses
which don't have any voters registered in them, and reckon either the
Post Office didn't deliver the forms or the E.R.O. has slipped up and
missed them (we get the computerised full register for canvassing
purposes, rather than the edited one which marketers can buy).
--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/
Arwel Parry
Tina Hall <Tina...@kruemel.org> writes
That's the difference, of course -- you're permanently registered as
being resident at your address so that applies to elections too
(presumably the authorities would know if the person registered is a
foreigner or otherwise ineligible to vote). In the UK and US there's no
such compulsory registration, so electoral registration is a separate
process. In the UK the local authorities need to know whether there's
only one or more than one adult resident in a house, because that
affects how much Council Tax they can charge every year, but they're not
very bothered by exactly who those people are.
>> US federal elections are *not* just for national office
>> (President). Federal elections also include Senators and
>> Representatives.
>
>Sounds much like it's here (though I don't know whether it
>translates to the same positions). There's always two 'x' to make,
>one for a party, and another for a person, and by some system that I
>never really got, it can be sensible to chose a different party than
>person. (Afaik, one might vote for a big party, and a person from a
>small party, so it gets a 'seat'(?) even if their party itself
>doesn't make the 5% limit they have to have to get into the
>government(?).)
>
>Unfortunately, the choices represented aren't sensible, themselves.
><g>
:)
>
>> Most states also put state elections on the same ballot. (The
>> ballot I will see in November has, in addition to the presidental
>> vote, votes for Federal Congress, State Congress, County offices,
>> and Township offices, as well as a couple of State proposals).
>
>I think they're all split here.
In the UK we don't have nearly so many elected offices as the US does -
variously I vote for: MEP on a regional list every five years, like the
rest of the EU; one MP each four or five years or so, on a random
timetable; 1 county councillor, every 4 years; 1 district councillor in
each of the three years between county council elections. Some poor
souls who live in rural areas also get to vote for a parish council,
which is a singularly powerless body but they have the ability to add
£10 or £20 a year to the Council Tax bill in their area. The county and
district elections normally are on the first Thursday in May, and we
prefer to combine elections so people don't have to vote too often --
which is why the betting is that we shall have a Parliamentary election
at the beginning of May next year; this year's district elections were
delayed by a month so that we could combine the voting with the European
Parliament election. Multiple elections mean multiple different coloured
pieces of paper here!
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:itjlm09dstjcmh0k9...@4ax.com:
> US federal elections are *not* just for national office (President).
> Federal elections also include Senators and Representatives. Most
> states also put state elections on the same ballot. (The ballot I
> will see in November has, in addition to the presidental vote, votes
> for Federal Congress, State Congress, County offices, and Township
> offices, as well as a couple of State proposals).
California famously has propositions on the ballot in just about any
statewide or national election. For the last few years, we've had lots of
them pertaining to the Indian casinos. This year is no different.
Nate Edel
> will be over eighteen in the next year. (If someone comes of age during
> the year, you should enter that as well. If someone is over 70, that
> should be recorded as they are no longer eligible for jury service. You
> can also register for a postal or proxy vote.)
Jury pools appear to be from voter registration here in California, but they
were clearly from the motor vehicle license data back when I was living in
NY.
And not very competently managed, since I got a jury summons when 16 1/2.
--
Nate Edel http://www.cubiclehermit.com/
"I do have a cause though. It is obscenity. I'm for it." - Tom Lehrer
Nate Edel
> Doug Wickstrom <nims...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > G.W. Bush isn't evil. He isn't even incompetent.
>
> I'd say that calling him "evil" is a stretch, if a slight one; theocrats
> tend to give me the creeps. As for "incompetent," I truly believe that he
> is.
Either incompetent, or actively malicious. If he's re-elected and makes the
same "mistakes" again, I guess we'll know, since nobody can be that
incompetent.
If he's re-elected, and does _different_ things that are equally stupid, I
guess we can keep giving him the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully, the
election of someone else will mean it's not necessary.
Nate Edel
Or by only 1 vote on the US Supreme Court, depending on how you look at it.
> This year's election may be just as close, so all our votes matter,
> whether you agree with me politically or not!
I absolutely agree.
> To get the word out about registering, VOTE or NOT is offering a
> $100,000 sweepstakes.
Thanks for passing this one.
> It's important you sign up now, since the voter registration deadlines
> are coming up really soon.
For values of "really soon" that are passed in some states; the 29 and 30
day deadline states are already passed, if I'm doing my math right.
See also http://www.lwv.org/voter/deadlines.cfm?pid=deadlines
Either way, if you're not registered to vote, check if you still can, and if
you still can, go register ASAP.
Nate Edel
> Danny Low <dann...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > So the more Bush is put down as incompetent the worst the
> > Democrats will look no matter what the outcome.
>
> No, actually it's the voters who look ever worse.
The majority of us voters (let alone those who didn't vote) voted against
him.
I'd say it's the archaic electoral college system that looks bad,
personally.
Doug Faunt N6TQS +1-510-655-8604
> Paul Dormer <p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk> wrote:
> > will be over eighteen in the next year. (If someone comes of age during
> > the year, you should enter that as well. If someone is over 70, that
> > should be recorded as they are no longer eligible for jury service. You
> > can also register for a postal or proxy vote.)
>
> Jury pools appear to be from voter registration here in California, but they
> were clearly from the motor vehicle license data back when I was living in
> NY.
>
That seems to be a FAQ on some of the jury duty sites. California uses
BOTH sources for juries, and if you've got a variant of your name on
one, you'll get two sets of jury summons.
73, doug
Paul Ciszek
In article <guir32x...@mail.sfchat.org>,
Nate Edel <arch...@sfchat.org> wrote:
>Matthew B. Tepper <o...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Doug Wickstrom <nims...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> > G.W. Bush isn't evil. He isn't even incompetent.
>>
>> I'd say that calling him "evil" is a stretch, if a slight one; theocrats
>> tend to give me the creeps. As for "incompetent," I truly believe that he
>> is.
>
>Either incompetent, or actively malicious. If he's re-elected and makes the
>same "mistakes" again, I guess we'll know, since nobody can be that
>incompetent.
The Napoleon-Clarke Law: Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is
indistinguishable from malice.
--
Please reply to: | "When you are dealing with secretive regimes
pciszek at panix dot com | that want to deceive, you're never going to
Autoreply is disabled | be able to be positive." -Condoleezza Rice
Danny Low
wrote:
>Danny Low <dann...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> So the more Bush is put down as incompetent the worst the
>> Democrats will look no matter what the outcome.
>
>No, actually it's the voters who look ever worse.
Really? Then we should arrest all the people who voted for Bush and
throw them in jail so they cannot vote again for anybody. Then we
should implement politically correctness tests before anyone can be
allowed to vote. Better yet we should implement a one party system
with only one candidate so people cannot make the wrong choice.
Democracy is obviously a bad system if it gets someone like Bush
elected.
Jim Battista
news:MSGID_2=3A240=2F2199.13=40fidonet...@fidonet.org:
>>> Registration? Deadline? I don't undestand this.
>
> Hmmm... This sounds very strange. Whenever there are votes here, I
> just get a postcard-like thingy in the mail
You won't get that in the US (or at least most of the US) without
registration, because the elections people don't know where you live
until you tell them.
Though it's gotten simpler lately, since you can do that form while
getting your driver's license adjusted or renewed, or at some kinds
of welfare offices.
> Of course the 'Ausweis' always has to have my proper adress, and
> I'm already registered to the appropriate area of the town,
> anyway. If I move, I have to notify the officials about it.
Not in the US.
You don't need to tell anyone when you move, except for the Dept of
Motor Vehicles if you're driving (normally within 90 days, if you
move nearby and just don't bother it's not normally a big deal -- at
worst, if you get a speeding fine, it's a small additional fine).
The DMV does not inform other agencies of your move.
The IRS, our national taxing agency, will generally figure out that
you've moved when they start seeing witholding statements from a new
company, or a new address of the same large firm, and send a package
of tax forms to your new work address.
Mark Atwood
>
>> and surveys the licence plates in the parking lot,
>
> get there by car.
IIRC, you cant get to the MoA any other way than by car. The parking lot
is so huge it actually has it's own extensive "public transit system"
to ferry you from near your parking spot to one of the main entrances.
The main selection bias would be the relatively large number of rental
cars in the parking lot.
>> and their tenants regularly do demographic analysis keyed off the
>> ZIP code of the credit card presented at purchase.
>
> There's a strong selection bias, since it misses everyone who didn't
> pay by credit card.
A *very* weak bias, if any.
I once helped audit the conduit-for-telecoms wiring infrastructure for
a medium sized mall. This was critical to the mall's guarantees to
it's tenants (said guarantees being written into the leases, and
backed with audits and penalty clauses), as that conduit carried the
wiring that carried the comms for the credit card processors. The
number I remember, and this was in the early mid 90s, was that
non-perishable-goods non-petty-goods stores in malls transact well
over 90% of the day's work via credit card, measured both in # of
sales, and in $ of sales.
Keith, you're generalizing from yourself again.
Keith F. Lynch
> Jury pools appear to be from voter registration here in California,
> but they were clearly from the motor vehicle license data back when
> I was living in NY.
Thus ensuring that in any dispute between a motorist and a bicyclist,
the jury will consist entirely of motorists.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
Mark Atwood
>
> I'd say it's the archaic electoral college system that looks bad,
> personally.
I like said "archaic electoral college system".
This is not the "United States of BosWash&SoCal", no matter how much
the residents of the Boston-Washington urban corridor, and the
residents of Southern California, might wish it was. Just as was
intended.
And there is no fucking way someone is going to get the amendment
abolishing it past 38 state legislatures. Just as was intended.
Jim Battista
news:m2hdp0o...@amsu.fallenpegasus.com:
> arch...@sfchat.org (Nate Edel) writes:
>>
>> I'd say it's the archaic electoral college system that looks bad,
>> personally.
>
> I like said "archaic electoral college system".
>
> This is not the "United States of BosWash&SoCal", no matter how
> much the residents of the Boston-Washington urban corridor, and
> the residents of Southern California, might wish it was. Just as
> was intended.
>
> And there is no fucking way someone is going to get the amendment
> abolishing it past 38 state legislatures. Just as was intended.
Though it could be defanged simply enough by increasing the size of
the House. Ramp it up to 1000 or 1500 members and the value-added of
those 2 Senate electors goes waaay down. Increase it to its
theoretical maximum of around 10000 and you'll be just about at
proportionality.
Or just require proportion dole-out of the electors.
Mark Atwood
>> I'd say it's the archaic electoral college system that looks bad,
>> personally.
>
Unless you were being humorous, I suggest you now go do some very
basic research before again expressing any opinions about US politics,
US national level politicians, US political parties, or US elections.
Tina Hall
> Tina Hall (Tina...@kruemel.org) wrote:
>> Sounds much like it's here (though I don't know whether it
>> translates to the same positions). There's always two 'x' to
>> make, one for a party, and another for a person, and by some
>> system that I never really got, it can be sensible to chose a
>> different party than person. (Afaik, one might vote for a big
>> party, and a person from a small party, so it gets a 'seat'(?)
>> even if their party itself doesn't make the 5% limit they have
>> to have to get into the government(?).)
Btw, I never really got why not to give the party-vote to the small
party, too. (If this is indeed the way one should do this. As
mentioned, I don't really understand it.)
> I wish we had that. You vote for a person who is on the list of a
> party, and the votes for the party are totalled and that
> determines how many seats they get.
That's what happens with the party-votes, too.
> Candidates are taken from the top, but if any one person has
> enough votes to get a seat on their own, that person gets the seat
> even if they're not high enough on the list to get a seat by
> default.
I don't understand this, if it's not the same as over here.
> In the last general election I voted for someone who was No.7 on
> the list, and the party got only two seats, but because I and
> about twenty thousand other people[*] all voted for her instead of
> any of the numbers 2-6, she got the seat.
That doesn't sound like a bad thing.
> I'd really *like* to vote for a party and a person, because it
> happens more often than not that the person I want happens not to
> stand for the party I want.
Why do you want the person/party, then?
> In general (national) elections I tend to vote for the party, in
> local elections for the person.
I vote subjective least evil. <g> (They're all rubbish, but some
more than others.) The problem with people who stand up to be
voted(?) is that they want the job, which doesn't necessarily
include being any good at it (indication is that those are actually
opposites).
--
Tina - " "
New favorite word: elocution.
Should be a subject in school.
Keith F. Lynch
> ... with my 'Ausweis' (translation on the thing says 'idendity
> card'), ...
> Of course the 'Ausweis' always has to have my proper adress, and I'm
> already registered to the appropriate area of the town, anyway. If
> I move, I have to notify the officials about it. They're valid for
> 5 or 10 years and have to be renewed; there's a lot of things you
> can't do without one. (And afaik everyone is supposed to have an
> 'Ausweis', from the age of 16 onwards, ...
Most American civilians, other than motorists and people who travel
overseas, have no government-issues picture ID. There has never been
any official US ID card. Nor are Americans required to inform any
government when they move. Most of us regard that as a very European
sort of thing -- the sort of thing that our ancestors fought a
revolution, or fled the Old World later, to escape.
Unfortunately airlines in the US are operating on the assumption that
every American has some kind of government-issued picture ID. Amtrak
(a long distance passenger railroad) was requiring them for trips
through New York City while the Republican convention was going on
there, but not before or since. Boston's subway system was stopping
riders at random, and asking to see ID, and to do a warrantless search
of any packages the passenger might be carrying, but they seem to have
stopped.
To put an end to this nonsense, all that is required is for a
significant minority of Americans to refuse to put up with it, rather
than going along like complacent sheep.
Jim Battista
news:ckfikc$kmd$1...@panix3.panix.com:
> Tina Hall <Tina...@kruemel.org> wrote:
>> ... with my 'Ausweis' (translation on the thing says 'idendity
>> card'), ...
>
>> Of course the 'Ausweis' always has to have my proper adress, and
>> I'm already registered to the appropriate area of the town,
>> anyway. If I move, I have to notify the officials about it.
>> They're valid for 5 or 10 years and have to be renewed; there's a
>> lot of things you can't do without one. (And afaik everyone is
>> supposed to have an 'Ausweis', from the age of 16 onwards, ...
>
> Most American civilians, other than motorists and people who
> travel overseas, have no government-issues picture ID.
That gives an inaccurate perception to foreigners, who might not
realize that 90--95% of American adults have driver's licenses, or
non-license ID's.
Yes, I know that this isn't the case among your circle of
acquaintances, who also don't subscribe to cable tv. Nonetheless,
just as with cable, the data are easy to find.
Tina Hall
[snip vague explanation of what's going on here in Germany]
> That's the difference, of course -- you're permanently registered
> as being resident at your address so that applies to elections
> too (presumably the authorities would know if the person
> registered is a foreigner or otherwise ineligible to vote).
True.
> In the UK and US there's no such compulsory registration, so
> electoral registration is a separate process. In the UK the local
> authorities need to know whether there's only one or more than
> one adult resident in a house, because that affects how much
> Council Tax they can charge every year, but they're not very
> bothered by exactly who those people are.
I know that in the UK you can find someone via their National
Insurance Number. I've even got one, does that make me British? :) I
was told there that it's irrelevant what my German 'identity card'
says, as long as I'm there I count as British/English/whatever(I
forgot). I wonder whether I could somehow use that to vote over
there.
I heard (from different sources afair) that the UK system of voting
isn't exactly fair, though. Like a village of 5k people selects
party A to rule them, and a city of 1M people selects party B to
rule them, and when it gets to national government, that counts
equally, 1 <whatever> for each (or some such).
--
Tina - What can I say, you just have to like him.
The world seems to spin as Xom's maniacal laughter rings in your ears.
Xom casts you into the Abyss! (Dungeon Crawl)
Jim Battista
> I heard (from different sources afair) that the UK system of
> voting isn't exactly fair, though. Like a village of 5k people
> selects party A to rule them, and a city of 1M people selects
> party B to rule them, and when it gets to national government,
> that counts equally, 1 <whatever> for each (or some such).
There is some malapportionment of the UK Parliament but it's much, much
milder than that.
Keith F. Lynch
> If Bush is incompetent then what is Gore? After all he lost to Bush.
Elections select for people who are competent at winning elections.
Nobody disputes that Bush is competent at *that*. Only at the stuff
that comes afterwards.
Doug Wickstrom
<ckfgss$f3a$1...@panix3.panix.com>
"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> excited the ether to say:
>arch...@sfchat.org (Nate Edel) wrote:
>> Jury pools appear to be from voter registration here in California,
>> but they were clearly from the motor vehicle license data back when
>> I was living in NY.
>
>Thus ensuring that in any dispute between a motorist and a bicyclist,
>the jury will consist entirely of motorists.
The majority of adult bicyclists are licensed drivers. You are
_not_ representative.
--
Doug Wickstrom <nims...@comcast.net>
"The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the State because he
derives special advantages from the mere existence of government. It is only
under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of valuable property
can sleep a single night in security." --Theodore Roosevelt
Tina Hall
> [...] I'm also not sure Kerry will be better either, but at least
> if he gets elected it will break the momentum - he'll do
> *different* stupid things.)
True. :) (I watched that first debate - needing something to watch
while knitting my probably only pair of self-knitted socks, I end up
watching all sorts of stuff - and was disheartened. Missed the
second one, though.)
> ObSF, of a sort: This is why there is sin and evil in the world:
> God could *make* us behave according to His will, but He thinks
> our free will is more important, no matter how much pain it
> causes us.
The biggest stunt the devil ever pulled off was making countless
people believe in him as some god or another. (If you don't believe
it, look at the world with open eyes in general and what people do
in some gods name in particular, never mind the commandments (and
similar stuff) which could be proof all on its own, if they didn't
already prove that people made them up, not some god.)
(Not that I believe an actual devil exists, it's all just unpleasant
people behind it.)
--
Tina - " "
New favorite word: elocution.
Should be a subject in school.
Jim Battista
>> I'd say it's the archaic electoral college system that looks bad,
>> personally.
>
> What's that?
Presidential voting is done by state, with each state having a
certain number of "electoral votes." Each state gets as many votes
as it has Representatives in the US House, plus 2 more. Small
states, with one or two Representatives, get 2 more. Big states,
with 25--50 Representatives, get 2 more. So small states have,
essentially, "extra" votes.
It's basically part of the deal that put together the US in 1789.
Small states wouldn't sign on without some "protection" or extra
influence in politics.
Wim Lewis
Nate Edel <arch...@sfchat.org> wrote:
>> It's important you sign up now, since the voter registration deadlines
>> are coming up really soon.
>
>For values of "really soon" that are passed in some states; the 29 and 30
>day deadline states are already passed, if I'm doing my math right.
Yes; in Washington, the deadline for registering by mail was Oct 2, about
a week ago. You can still register by going in person to the county elections
office, but the deadline for that is coming up pretty soon --- I think
it's 15 days before the election.
If you're not registered, I *think* you can still get a provisional ballot
at the poll on election day, but I'm not sure.
--
Wim Lewis <wi...@hhhh.org>, Seattle, WA, USA. PGP keyID 27F772C1
Irina Rempt
wrote:
> Irina Rempt <ir...@valdyas.org> wrote:
>> Candidates are taken from the top, but if any one person has
>> enough votes to get a seat on their own, that person gets the seat
>> even if they're not high enough on the list to get a seat by
>> default.
>
> I don't understand this, if it's not the same as over here.
Like the example I gave: the number of votes required for one seat in
the Dutch Parliament (the "electoral divisor") is currently about
18.000 IIRC. Suppose a party gets 180.000 votes: that gives it ten
seats. The great majority of those votes will be for the No.1, because
most people don't choose a candidate from the list but want to vote for
the party and vote for the first person on the list without thinking
any further. The number of votes gets progressively smaller for each
person on the list, because of voters' strategies (for instance, if I
don't have a real preference I tend to vote for the first woman on the
list of my preferred party who isn't from Amsterdam, because I think
there are too few women and too many people from Amsterdam in
Parliament and if I can make even the smallest difference I will).
Now suppose No.18 is wildly popular (doesn't have to be from politics;
some parties, especially small and 'alternative' ones, put writers and
such low on the list to 'jack it up') and gets thirty thousand
*personal* votes all by himself; that will get him into Parliament,
ousting No.10 who thought he was in.
>> I'd really *like* to vote for a party and a person, because it
>> happens more often than not that the person I want happens not to
>> stand for the party I want.
>
> Why do you want the person/party, then?
Different reasons. Last time there was someone who had said things about
software patents, and some other issues I feel strongly about, that I
agreed with completely, but I'll *never* vote for her party because I
disagree completely with the main party line.
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Latest: 06-Oct-2004
David G. Bell
<Xns958042BE79F...@216.168.3.44>
batt...@unt.edu "Jim Battista" wrote:
It's also a way of getting a workable system with the technology of the
time. Candidates couldn't campaign on a national basis, as they can
now. Here in the UK, the office of Prime Minister evolved for some of
the same reasons. Until recently, the leaders of the political parties
were picked by various in-party processed of an oligarchal nature;
perhaps a vote of the party's MPs, but not a direct vote of the general
membership.
What I think poisons the American system is the apparently extra-
constituitional requirement that the Electors from a state (who need
not be the people elected to Congress) all vote for the same candidate.
I don't think it's universal, but it means that a narrow state-wide
majority gives a candidate all the votes, even though the Congressional
representation is pretty evenly split.
I don't, myself, think the extra votes for small states are the problem
that matters. In part, they act against the tyranny of the majority.
If anything, I'd be inclined to the view that the problem is the big,
high-population, states. Can California really be the monolith that the
current EC system makes it?
--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
"History shows that the Singularity started when Sir Tim Berners-Lee
was bitten by a radioactive spider."
Paul Dormer
ar...@cartref.demon.co.uk (Arwel Parry) wrote:
> (we get the computerised full register for canvassing
> purposes, rather than the edited one which marketers can buy).
When my parents did canvassing back in the sixties, they used to get a
copy of the register printed on flimsy paper. This was not suitable for
the rigours of canvassing, so we used to cut it into strips and paste it
onto cards, an exercise we children found fun. (It's very useful to have
a copy of the electoral register around the house if you want to know
where people live, especially in those days when not everybody had a
phone.)
Robert Sneddon
<batt...@unt.edu> writes
>Tina...@kruemel.org (Tina Hall) wrote in
>news:MSGID_2=3A240=2F2199.13=40fidonet...@fidonet.org:
>
>> I heard (from different sources afair) that the UK system of
>> voting isn't exactly fair, though. Like a village of 5k people
>> selects party A to rule them, and a city of 1M people selects
>> party B to rule them, and when it gets to national government,
>> that counts equally, 1 <whatever> for each (or some such).
>
>There is some malapportionment of the UK Parliament but it's much, much
>milder than that.
The Orkney and Shetland Islands are a single constituency Parliamentary
constituency with a representative but they have a much lower population
than a normal constituency would have (typically around 100,000 people).
--
Email me via nojay (at) nojay (dot) fsnet (dot) co (dot) uk
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.
Robert Sneddon
Sea Wasp
>>and surveys the licence plates in the parking lot,
>
>
> There's a strong selection bias, since it misses everyone who didn't
> get there by car.
>
>
>>and their tenants regularly do demographic analysis keyed off the
>>ZIP code of the credit card presented at purchase.
>
>
> There's a strong selection bias, since it misses everyone who didn't
> pay by credit card.
STRONG selection bias? Depends on their clientele. In, say,
Crossgates Mall around here, there MIGHT be a significant bias with
respect to the car survey, due to buses. Maybe. Though I don't know if
the demographic effect on the mall would be huge, given that a lot of
the bus-riders who get to the mall are just the kids of people who
drive there on other days.
But I *seriously* doubt that there's much of a bias with respect to
the cards. The vast majority of purchases are done with cards, and
even those which aren't are often being done with money withdrawn
using a credit-card enabled debit card. Checks are basically gone.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Joel Rosenberg
> Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
> > The Mall of America regularly surveys people at the doors
>
> Ok.
>
> > and surveys the licence plates in the parking lot,
>
> There's a strong selection bias, since it misses everyone who didn't
> get there by car.
Sure. What percentage of the Mall's attendees do you think get there
other ways?
--
------------------------------------------------------------
Joel Rosenberg
http://www.ellegon.com/homepage.phtml
(Reverse disclaimer: actually, everything I do or say is utterly
supported by Ellegon, Inc., my employer. Even when I'm wrong.)
Paul Dormer
(Jim Battista) wrote:
> Tina...@kruemel.org (Tina Hall) wrote in
> news:MSGID_2=3A240=2F2199.13=40fidonet...@fidonet.org:
>
> > I heard (from different sources afair) that the UK system of
> > voting isn't exactly fair, though. Like a village of 5k people
> > selects party A to rule them, and a city of 1M people selects
> > party B to rule them, and when it gets to national government,
> > that counts equally, 1 <whatever> for each (or some such).
>
> There is some malapportionment of the UK Parliament but it's much, much
> milder than that.
>
And every few years, the constituency boundaries change to reflect the
changes in population.
For instance, when I was growing up, my parents house was in the
Sedgefield constituency. Sometime in the seventies or eighties, it was in
the Bishop Auckland constituency. In the 1997 and 2001 elections, it was
back in Sedgefield (MP, Tony Blair).
As my father said, it was somewhat bizarre in the run up to the 1997
election. The party workers were all working for the Sedgefield
constituency party by then, but if the Bishop Auckland MP had dropped dead
and there had to be a by-election for the seat, it would be all change
back to the old set up.
(This didn't happen, and in 1997, Tony Blair was re-elected MP for
Sedgefield, as you may have heard. The count for the constituency was
held in the sports centre in my father's town. If you watch the BBC TV
coverage carefully, you can see the back of my father's head.)
Paul Dormer
Tina...@kruemel.org (Tina Hall) wrote:
> I heard (from different sources afair) that the UK system of voting
> isn't exactly fair, though. Like a village of 5k people selects
> party A to rule them, and a city of 1M people selects party B to
> rule them, and when it gets to national government, that counts
> equally, 1 <whatever> for each (or some such).
This is more like the situation before the great Reform bills of the early
nineteenth century. There were things called Rotten Boroughs and Pocket
Boroughs. My history teacher tried to explain this to me about forty
years ago. As I recall, Rotten Boroughs were former centres of population
where very few people now lived and Pocket Boroughs were in the pockets of
the local landowners and voted as he wanted. (A quick check in an
encyclopedia confirms this.)
I was reading recently The Last Journey of William Husskisson, about the
MP for Liverpool who was killed during the opening of the Liverpool to
Manchester railway in 1830. At that time, Liverpool returned two MPs to
parliament. Manchester and Leeds, two big industrial cities, returned
none.
Arwel Parry
<wi...@underhill.hhhh.org> writes
>If you're not registered, I *think* you can still get a provisional ballot
>at the poll on election day, but I'm not sure.
That "provisional ballot" thing is something that confuses me.
Presumably it physically looks different from a normal ballot, and
identifies the voter somehow so the validity of the vote can be
determined later. Whatever happened to the idea of a secret ballot?
(Yes, I know UK ballots can be identified to a particular voter through
the voter's number being recorded against the ballot paper counterfoil
when it's issued, but in practice they're never traced. In one council
election I was involved in we had a dead heat between our candidate and
the opposition, and our candidate lost on the toss of a coin; one of the
spoilt votes had a big "X" drawn across the paper, but the centre of the
cross was _just_ on our side of the line on the paper, and we took that
ballot all the way to the High Court in an effort to get it counted for
us (it didn't work) -- however nobody dreamed of tracing the voter and
asking him who he meant to vote for!).
--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/
Sea Wasp
>
>>I'd say it's the archaic electoral college system that looks bad,
>>personally.
>
>
> What's that?
>
In the Presidential Election, there's a system of... um... voter
proxies, so to speak, called the Electoral College. Each state has a
certain number of electoral representatives. In theory, these people
vote depending on how the vote in their state goes. Whichever
Presidential candidate gets the most votes wins the Presidential election.
This means that on some occasions the electoral vote doesn't reflect
the popular vote. In theory, all the Electoral College could decide to
vote for, oh, Angelina Jolie instead of Bush OR Kerry, and Jolie would
then be President. In practice, they tend to vote very close to the
way the popular vote goes.
In this last election things got very messy to the point that,
finally, it got to the Supreme Court to decide who won the
Presidential Election (the popular vote was exceedingly close and the
most dispute was in a state whose Electoral votes were absolutely
crucial to the decision). Bush won in court.
I dislike the Electoral system intensely, but I also admit that there
needs to be a way to counterbalance having all the super-metropolitan
areas dominate political decisions; we in New York State already have
plenty of THAT with New York City deciding all our elections for us
people upstate.
Andy Leighton
> Arwel Parry <ar...@cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> [snip vague explanation of what's going on here in Germany]
>
>> That's the difference, of course -- you're permanently registered
>> as being resident at your address so that applies to elections
>> too (presumably the authorities would know if the person
>> registered is a foreigner or otherwise ineligible to vote).
>
> True.
>
>> In the UK and US there's no such compulsory registration, so
>> electoral registration is a separate process. In the UK the local
>> authorities need to know whether there's only one or more than
>> one adult resident in a house, because that affects how much
>> Council Tax they can charge every year, but they're not very
>> bothered by exactly who those people are.
>
> I know that in the UK you can find someone via their National
> Insurance Number. I've even got one, does that make me British? :) I
> was told there that it's irrelevant what my German 'identity card'
> says, as long as I'm there I count as British/English/whatever(I
> forgot). I wonder whether I could somehow use that to vote over
> there.
You could definitely vote in some elections. You would be able
to vote in the European elections and local elections but not
in general elections. Britain has a special agreement with Ireland
which allows Irish citizens to vote in general elections if they live
in Britain.
> I heard (from different sources afair) that the UK system of voting
> isn't exactly fair, though. Like a village of 5k people selects
> party A to rule them, and a city of 1M people selects party B to
> rule them, and when it gets to national government, that counts
> equally, 1 <whatever> for each (or some such).
Well there are only 659 seats in Parliament so what they do is
group areas together. Large cities (or even modest sized cities)
will be split into two (or even more) bits (called constituencies).
Villages and rural areas are combined to form a reasonably sized
constituency. Each gets one seat.
--
Andy Leighton => an...@azaal.plus.com
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials"
- Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_
Arwel Parry
Tina Hall <Tina...@kruemel.org> writes
>I know that in the UK you can find someone via their National
>Insurance Number. I've even got one, does that make me British? :) I
>was told there that it's irrelevant what my German 'identity card'
>says, as long as I'm there I count as British/English/whatever(I
>forgot). I wonder whether I could somehow use that to vote over
>there.
If you were a German citizen resident in the UK you'd be eligible to
vote in European Parliament and local council elections, but not
Parliamentary elections.
>I heard (from different sources afair) that the UK system of voting
>isn't exactly fair, though. Like a village of 5k people selects
>party A to rule them, and a city of 1M people selects party B to
>rule them, and when it gets to national government, that counts
>equally, 1 <whatever> for each (or some such).
It doesn't quite work like that! England, Scotland, and Wales
(presumably N Ireland too) all have Boundary Commissions whose job it is
to draw up constituency boundaries with the objective of having a
roughly equal number of voters in each constituency -- each of the
countries has a set number of constituencies so the average number of
voters is a bit lower in Scotland and Wales than in England as they are
deliberately over-represented in Parliament (in Scotland's case that
arises from the deal made at the Act of Union, though the number of
Scottish constituencies is being reduced at the next general election
because they now have a parliament of their own for some purposes). One
constituency = one seat. Your village of 5K will be combined with other
nearby villages or towns until they get around the average (around
100,000 voters in England, I think), while your city of 1M will be
divided into 10 or 12 separate constituencies. The fun comes in drawing
the constituency boundaries -- the Boundary Commissions hold a review of
boundaries and population figures every 10 years or so, and all the
political parties make submissions to the commissions while trying to
get the most favourable boundaries to themselves; the commissions then
try to make a sensible compromise based on natural communities. City
constituencies may be geographically small, but I think I heard that
Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy's constituency in the Scottish
Highlands and Islands is geographically bigger than Belgium as the
population's so sparse.
Joel Rosenberg
> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
> > Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
> >> The Mall of America regularly surveys people at the doors
> >
> > Ok.
> >
> >> and surveys the licence plates in the parking lot,
> >
> > There's a strong selection bias, since it misses everyone who didn't
> > get there by car.
>
> IIRC, you cant get to the MoA any other way than by car.
It's on the commuter bus line, and there are many tourists
who visit it via tour buses. There's undoubtedly a very small
percentage who bike in.
One of the main perceived problems at the Mall is the largish number
of YoungMinnesotansWhoseNeedsMustNowBeAddressed who apparently take
the bus in and hang out, creating more trouble than value.
Dean Gahlon
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>> Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>> The Mall of America regularly surveys people at the doors
>>
>> Ok.
>>
>>> and surveys the licence plates in the parking lot,
>>
>> There's a strong selection bias, since it misses everyone who didn't
>> get there by car.
>
>is so huge it actually has it's own extensive "public transit system"
>to ferry you from near your parking spot to one of the main entrances.
I've never seen this "public transit system" in use at the MoA. (And
the parking ramps, while huge [5 levels, on both sides of the mall],
are arranged so that it's not all that distant a walk from any parking
spot to a mall entrance.
And, actually, it is possible to get to the mall by bus. Once the
light rail gets built (in December), it will be possible to get there
via the light rail as well.
>
>The main selection bias would be the relatively large number of rental
>cars in the parking lot.
>
>>> and their tenants regularly do demographic analysis keyed off the
>>> ZIP code of the credit card presented at purchase.
>>
>> There's a strong selection bias, since it misses everyone who didn't
>> pay by credit card.
>
>A *very* weak bias, if any.
>
>I once helped audit the conduit-for-telecoms wiring infrastructure for
>a medium sized mall. This was critical to the mall's guarantees to
>it's tenants (said guarantees being written into the leases, and
>backed with audits and penalty clauses), as that conduit carried the
>wiring that carried the comms for the credit card processors. The
>number I remember, and this was in the early mid 90s, was that
>non-perishable-goods non-petty-goods stores in malls transact well
>over 90% of the day's work via credit card, measured both in # of
>sales, and in $ of sales.
>
>
>Keith, you're generalizing from yourself again.
>
--
Dean Gahlon | "So, you'd like to take the position that you're not a
de...@visi.com | Thick-Witted Dullard, but instead are the kind of
| razor-brain for whom the height of inspirational wit is to
| pretend to be a Thick-Witted Dullard." - Catherine Elkins
Dale
> Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote in
> news:m2hdp0o...@amsu.fallenpegasus.com:
> > arch...@sfchat.org (Nate Edel) writes:
> >>
> >> I'd say it's the archaic electoral college system that looks bad,
> >> personally.
> >
> >
> > This is not the "United States of BosWash&SoCal", no matter how
> > much the residents of the Boston-Washington urban corridor, and
> > the residents of Southern California, might wish it was. Just as
> > was intended.
> >
> > And there is no fucking way someone is going to get the amendment
> > abolishing it past 38 state legislatures. Just as was intended.
>
> Though it could be defanged simply enough by increasing the size of
> the House. Ramp it up to 1000 or 1500 members and the value-added of
> those 2 Senate electors goes waaay down.
While I would love to see more Representatives added to the House, I
doubt it is going to happen anytime in the near future. The current
house at 435 members gives disproportionate power to sparesely
populated rural districts which tend to vote Republican. If the House
increases in size, most of the new districts will be in urban centers
which tend to vote Democratic.
Increase it to its
> theoretical maximum of around 10000 and you'll be just about at
> proportionality.
>
> Or just require proportion dole-out of the electors.
Dale
>
> (No, I don't think Gore would have been materially better. I'm also
> not sure Kerry will be better either, but at least if he gets elected
> it will break the momentum - he'll do *different* stupid things.)
At the very least I think that Kerry will at least be Clintonian
enough to use pay as go plan s for spending.
The NYTimes magazine had an excellent article on the differences
between Kerry and Bush views of terrorism. The basic summary would be
that Bush and his people see it like they saw the cold war, they can
only confront nations. However Kerry sees it like fighting the an
non-governmental organization like the Mafia. Kerry does not see us in
a "war on terror" but rather like a prosecutor trying to combat
organized criminals who are masterminds of using legal loopholes and
bribs to get money and weapons.
>
> ObSF, of a sort: This is why there is sin and evil in the world: God
> could *make* us behave according to His will, but He thinks our free
> will is more important, no matter how much pain it causes us.
>
> Charlton
I would say that this is more like Obligitory Protestantism than ObSF.
You are channeling Cotton Mather and Jon Milton not Arthur C Clarke or
Ursula K. LeGuin. It also ignores and is wildely different than the
Jewish, Catholic, Islamic, and non-Western versions of good vs. evil.
Alan Braggins
>On 11 Oct 2004 22:52:12 -0400, in message
><ckfgss$f3a$1...@panix3.panix.com>
> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> excited the ether to say:
>
>>arch...@sfchat.org (Nate Edel) wrote:
>>> Jury pools appear to be from voter registration here in California,
>>> but they were clearly from the motor vehicle license data back when
>>> I was living in NY.
>>
>>Thus ensuring that in any dispute between a motorist and a bicyclist,
>>the jury will consist entirely of motorists.
>
>The majority of adult bicyclists are licensed drivers. You are
>_not_ representative.
True, but the majority of licensed drivers are not bicyclists. (Which is
why most Usenet arguments between "cyclists" and "motorists" turn out
actually to be arguments between people who are clueful about cycling
and people who are clueless about cycling.) So the jury will likely
consist entirely of motorists, a few of whom may also be cyclists.
Dave Weingart
>It also misses those who flew in, who either arrived by taxi or
Mall of America has its own airstrip?
--
73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK Loyalty oaths. Secret searches. No-fly
mailto:phyd...@liii.com lists. Detention without legal recourse.
http://www.weingart.net/ Who won the cold war, again?
ICQ 57055207 -- Politicklers
Dale
> arch...@sfchat.org (Nate Edel) writes:
> >
> > I'd say it's the archaic electoral college system that looks bad,
> > personally.
>
> I like said "archaic electoral college system".
>
> This is not the "United States of BosWash&SoCal", no matter how much
> the residents of the Boston-Washington urban corridor, and the
> residents of Southern California, might wish it was. Just as was
> intended.
And it isn't the United States of Alabama, South Carolina, and Idaho,
no matter how much residents of those sparesely populated, bible
thumping areas want it to be either. The majority of Americans live in
urban, densely populated areas. Those areas should have a majority of
the power in the federal government.
If we get rid of the electoral college for determining Presidents than
every vote counts from the Massachusetts Republican to the Kansas
Liberal. You like the electoral college simply because it gives a
natural advantage to the Republican Party. If Gore won the electoral
college vote but lost the popular vote, you would be singing a
different tune. The electoral college simply lets you nurse and nuture
your paranoid, irrational hatred of the Democratic Party.
>
> And there is no fucking way someone is going to get the amendment
> abolishing it past 38 state legislatures. Just as was intended.
The electoral college was intended to keep power away from poor people
and keep it in the hands of the property owning merchants and
landowners. You are showing your elitist, artistocrat-wannabe,
anti-Democracy side right now.
Alan Braggins
>> > The majority of us voters (let alone those who didn't vote)
>>
>> Those that don't vote don't count, and have no right to complain;
>> they got their chance to chose a lesser evil and scorned it. Now
>> they can live with that choice. The problem is those that never got
>> a chance and still are affectec.
>>
>> > voted against him.
>>
>> How did he get the job then?
>
>He got it because the archiac electoral college sytems gives more
>power to sparesely populated, rural states filled with reactionary
>yahoos because there are more of them.
That's a feature, not a bug. No doubt there would still have been
complaints if he had lost the popular vote but undoubtably won the
electoral college vote fairly, but fewer of them. But that's not
what happened.
> Bush
>able to win the electoral college vote because he had support from
>many, small rural states with one or zero major cities.
Or at least come close enough that irregularities in the vote in a
key state were enough to move the decision to the Supreme Court.
Arwel Parry
Dormer <p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk> writes
>
>(Every Christmas, when my brother and I are visiting our father, we search
>through all the Christmas cards to find the one from Tony.)
They're good at keeping track of their supporters. I get a Christmas
card every year from Gwyneth Dunwoody, and sometimes a bottle of House
of Commons Whisky.
Arwel Parry
Dormer <p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk> writes
When we started getting computerised registers we would initially print
the canvas sheets on multicopy paper using dot-matrix printers, which
was very useful for repeat canvasses and suchlike. By the last general
election we couldn't find dot-matrix printers anywhere and had to print
multiple copies on inkjet printers, which took longer than we did in the
previous election. Sometimes progress isn't a good thing...
Aaron Denney
> Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote in message news:<m2hdp0o...@amsu.fallenpegasus.com>...
>> arch...@sfchat.org (Nate Edel) writes:
>> >
>> > I'd say it's the archaic electoral college system that looks bad,
>> > personally.
>>
>> I like said "archaic electoral college system".
>>
>> This is not the "United States of BosWash&SoCal", no matter how much
>> the residents of the Boston-Washington urban corridor, and the
>> residents of Southern California, might wish it was. Just as was
>> intended.
>
> And it isn't the United States of Alabama, South Carolina, and Idaho,
> no matter how much residents of those sparesely populated, bible
> thumping areas want it to be either. The majority of Americans live in
> urban, densely populated areas. Those areas should have a majority of
> the power in the federal government.
Yes, they should. But the Federal government should have much less
power than they currently do. The situation we have now with the
Bush administration interfering with states' rights and local
determination is ridiculous. (See: War on Some Drugs/Medical Marijuana,
Oregon's Euthanasia experiment, among other things.)
--
Aaron Denney
-><-
Paul Dormer
Shado...@aol.com (Dale) wrote:
> The electoral college is possibly the hardest part of the constitution
> to explain to non-Americans especially countries that have
> parlimentary voting systems where the prime minister or head of state
> must come from the ruling political party in parliment.
Cartoon I once saw. London taxi driver with US tourist as passenger.
Caption: "OK, it's a deal. You explain the presidential election, I'll
explain the rules of cricket."
Robert Sneddon
<ar...@cartref.demon.co.uk> writes
>In message <ckfo05$ft6$1...@underhill.hhhh.org>, Wim Lewis
><wi...@underhill.hhhh.org> writes
>>If you're not registered, I *think* you can still get a provisional ballot
>>at the poll on election day, but I'm not sure.
>
>That "provisional ballot" thing is something that confuses me.
>Presumably it physically looks different from a normal ballot, and
>identifies the voter somehow so the validity of the vote can be
>determined later. Whatever happened to the idea of a secret ballot?
At a guess... If you can't prove you're eligible to vote in time for
the election you can cast a provisional ballot. That is sealed and put
into an envelope with your name on it. If you are found to be eligible
after all, the envelope with your name on it is opened and the sealed
vote goes into the "to be counted" pile as an anonymous vote. This can
happen up to and possibly for a short period after the actual balloting
day but there will be a time limit. Different States handle voting for
federal elections differently -- at least a couple dole out presidential
Electoral Votes on a proportional or regional basis but most operate a
winner-takes-all system.
>(Yes, I know UK ballots can be identified to a particular voter through
>the voter's number being recorded against the ballot paper counterfoil
>when it's issued, but in practice they're never traced.
Or so we are told by our lords and masters who would never lie to us
about something so important.
Alan Braggins
>Democracy is obviously a bad system if it gets someone like Bush
>elected.
Yep. "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except
all the others that have been tried." -- Winston Churchill
Charlton Wilbur
DB> What I think poisons the American system is the apparently
DB> extra- constituitional requirement that the Electors from a
DB> state (who need not be the people elected to Congress) all
DB> vote for the same candidate. I don't think it's universal,
DB> but it means that a narrow state-wide majority gives a
DB> candidate all the votes, even though the Congressional
DB> representation is pretty evenly split.
It is extra-Constitutional; the state can appoint its electors any way
it sees fit, and all but two (Maine I know; Nebraska is the other one,
I think) use a winner-takes-all approach. If all the states did what
Maine does -- the winner of the statewide vote gets 2 electoral votes,
and the winner of the vote in each Congressional district gets 1
electoral vote -- then the electoral college would be a lot more
representative without sacrificing its reason for existence.
Charlton
--
cwilbur at chromatico dot net
cwilbur at mac dot com
Del Cotter
Arwel Parry <ar...@cartref.demon.co.uk> said:
>That's the difference, of course -- you're permanently registered as
>being resident at your address so that applies to elections too
>(presumably the authorities would know if the person registered is a
>foreigner or otherwise ineligible to vote). In the UK and US there's no
>such compulsory registration, so electoral registration is a separate
>process.
But in Britain the electoral registration is itself compulsory, by the
Representation of the People Act; you have to be on the electoral roll
somewhere, and update the roll if you move. There's that bloodcurdling
threat of fines on the top of the page when you get your household's
reminder each time. (In practice they just tut and update you if it
turns out that you've been quietly living for the last five years in a
house they thought was occupied by Mrs. Jones the Widow)
>the local authorities need to know whether there's only one or more
>than one adult resident in a house, because that affects how much
>Council Tax they can charge every year,
Nah, they just assume more than one adult; it's up to you to claim your
discount for single occupancy. I had to do it the last two times I
moved into a new house.
--
Del Cotter http://del_c.livejournal.com/
Send email to del2 at branta dot demon dot co dot uk
David Friedman
> If we get rid of the electoral college for determining Presidents than
> every vote counts from the Massachusetts Republican to the Kansas
> Liberal.
The electoral college system has two striking advantages over a direct
majority vote system. The first is that, in a close election, you only
have recounts and controversies in a small number of states instead of
everywhere.
The second is that it results in much less vote fraud. The states where
fraud is relatively easy are the one party states--where either the
Republicans or the Democrats have a large majority and so control almost
everything worth controlling. But fraud in those states is useless under
the present system, aside from the small number of states that split
their electoral votes. With a simple majority system, both parties have
an incentive to steal every vote they can--where it's easiest to do.
--
Remove NOSPAM to email
Also remove .invalid
www.daviddfriedman.com
Tina Hall
> (Tina...@kruemel.org) wrote:
>> Irina Rempt <ir...@valdyas.org> wrote:
>>> Candidates are taken from the top, but if any one person has
>>> enough votes to get a seat on their own, that person gets the
>>> seat even if they're not high enough on the list to get a seat
>>> by default.
>>
>> I don't understand this, if it's not the same as over here.
> Like the example I gave: the number of votes required for one
> seat in the Dutch Parliament (the "electoral divisor") is
> currently about 18.000 IIRC. Suppose a party gets 180.000 votes:
> that gives it ten seats. The great majority of those votes will
> be for the No.1, [...]
Oh, now I catch up with you. Sorry. :)
Over here, the party gets the ten seats, plus the single people that
do get voted for (no idea what number/percent/majority? of votes
they need).
We've got just one person for each party that can be chosen, afaik.
There's just a long ballot with one line for each party / person
choice. Like: o SillyParty | o SillyPartyWoman - per line, one x for
each column.
> Now suppose No.18 is wildly popular (doesn't have to be from
> politics; some parties, especially small and 'alternative' ones,
> put writers and such low on the list to 'jack it up') and gets
> thirty thousand *personal* votes all by himself; that will get
> him into Parliament, ousting No.10 who thought he was in.
This bit I got. :)
>>> I'd really *like* to vote for a party and a person, because it
>>> happens more often than not that the person I want happens not
>>> to stand for the party I want.
>>
>> Why do you want the person/party, then?
> Different reasons. Last time there was someone who had said
> things about software patents, and some other issues I feel
> strongly about, that I agreed with completely, but I'll *never*
> vote for her party because I disagree completely with the main
> party line.
Won't she represent her parties' opinion, though, no matter what
else she says?
--
Tina - What can I say, you just have to like him.
The world seems to spin as Xom's maniacal laughter rings in your ears.
Xom casts you into the Abyss! (Dungeon Crawl)
CrossPoint/FreeXP v3.40 RC3. Usenet/Fidonet gateway, no internet access.
David Goldfarb
Sea Wasp <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com> wrote:
>The vast majority of purchases are done with cards, and
>even those which aren't are often being done with money withdrawn
>using a credit-card enabled debit card. Checks are basically gone.
Keith doesn't like checks either. He prefers cold, hard cash -- if
you can't scratch a window with it, he won't accept it.
^
|
(Obscure HHGTTG reference here)
--
David Goldfarb <*>|"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | uncertainty!"
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's
| Guide to the Galaxy_
Chris Malme
> The biggest stunt the devil ever pulled off was making countless
> people believe in him as some god or another. (If you don't believe
> it, look at the world with open eyes in general and what people do
> in some gods name in particular, never mind the commandments (and
> similar stuff) which could be proof all on its own, if they didn't
> already prove that people made them up, not some god.)
>
> (Not that I believe an actual devil exists, it's all just unpleasant
> people behind it.)
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he
didn't exist..."
--
Chris
Minstrel's Hall of Filk - http://www.filklore.com/
Filklore Music Store - http://www.filklore.co.uk/
To contact me, please use form at http://www.filklore.com/contact.phtml
Paul Dormer
ar...@cartref.demon.co.uk (Arwel Parry) wrote:
> In message <memo.2004101...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>, Paul
> Dormer <p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk> writes
> >
> >(Every Christmas, when my brother and I are visiting our father, we
> search
> >through all the Christmas cards to find the one from Tony.)
>
> They're good at keeping track of their supporters. I get a Christmas
> card every year from Gwyneth Dunwoody, and sometimes a bottle of House
> of Commons Whisky.
>
Indeed, it seems the norm for the local MP to send out cards to all its
supporters. I remember a bit on Yes, Minister where Jim had huge stacks
of cards to sign, each stack requiring a different form of his signature.
I think my father has a couple of bottles of Commons Whisky around, signed
by Blair. Don't think he's ever opened them. When he was working he was
always getting bottles as gifts, and he rarely drinks the stuff, leaving
it for me. (He's more a G&T man.)
Dave O'Neill
"Del Cotter" <d...@branta.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:o2G83jEC...@branta.demon.co.uk...
> On Tue, 12 Oct 2004, in rec.arts.sf.fandom,
> Wim Lewis <wi...@underhill.hhhh.org> said:
>
> >Nate Edel <arch...@sfchat.org> wrote:
> >>> It's important you sign up now, since the voter registration deadlines
> >>> are coming up really soon.
> >>
> >>For values of "really soon" that are passed in some states; the 29 and
30
> >>day deadline states are already passed, if I'm doing my math right.
>
> >If you're not registered, I *think* you can still get a provisional
ballot
> >at the poll on election day, but I'm not sure.
>
> can tell, not having being registered in time disqualifies you from
> voting. Which is to say, you can demand and fill out a provisional
> ballot if you like, but they'll never end up counting it, because when
> they look to check if you really were registered within the deadline,
> it'll turn out you weren't, and you can't vote in that election if you
> registered too late.
>
> So the only reason to ask for a provisional ballot in that case is if
> you're convinced you're registered and you think there's been a mistake.
I was cornered by Kerry supporters several times in August when I was in
Seattle. They were certainly working hard. Sadly I couldn't help them.
Dave
David Friedman
Charlton Wilbur <cwi...@mithril.chromatico.net> wrote:
There would also be a lot more vote fraud, since extra votes would be
worth something in the states where fraud is easiest to commit--the ones
dominated by a single party.
Seth Breidbart
And there's an interesting game theoretic issue that few people
realize with the electoral college.
Voters in larger states have _more_ power.
Here's the (thought) experiment:
1. Every voter decides how to vote.
2. The voters vote sequentially, in a random order.
3. When a candidate achieves a majority in some state, he immediately
gets that state's electoral votes. (If a state splits electoral
votes, they get assigned as soon as a candidate has enough votes
for the next one.)
4. When a candidate gets a majority of the electoral votes, he is
declared elected, and the voter whose vote pushed him over the
cutoff is declared "powerful".
Then the probability of a particular voter being "powerful" is greater
for a voter in a large state than in a small one.
Seth
David Friedman
Sea Wasp <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com> wrote:
> Tina Hall wrote:
>
> >
> >>I'd say it's the archaic electoral college system that looks bad,
> >>personally.
> >
> >
> > What's that?
> >
>
> In the Presidential Election, there's a system of... um... voter
> proxies, so to speak, called the Electoral College. Each state has a
> certain number of electoral representatives. In theory, these people
> vote depending on how the vote in their state goes. Whichever
> Presidential candidate gets the most votes wins the Presidential election.
>
> This means that on some occasions the electoral vote doesn't reflect
> the popular vote. In theory, all the Electoral College could decide to
> vote for, oh, Angelina Jolie instead of Bush OR Kerry, and Jolie would
> then be President. In practice, they tend to vote very close to the
> way the popular vote goes.
I don't think that's true. I believe that after a Republican elector
cast his vote for the Libertarian candidate, quite a long time back, the
rules were changed, so that the electors are required to cast the vote
for "their" candidate.
But it might be that it was only changed in the state where it
happened--I think Virginia.
A.C.
> arch...@sfchat.org (Nate Edel) writes:
> >
> > personally.
>
>
> This is not the "United States of BosWash&SoCal", no matter how much
> the residents of the Boston-Washington urban corridor, and the
> residents of Southern California, might wish it was. Just as was
> intended.
>
> abolishing it past 38 state legislatures. Just as was intended.
Too bad, it would nice to have one person, one vote.
But I guess it's so much more democratic to allocate votes based on
arbitrary geographical lines.
Del Cotter
>> Wim Lewis <wi...@underhill.hhhh.org> said:
>> >If you're not registered, I *think* you can still get a provisional
>> >at the poll on election day, but I'm not sure.
>I was cornered by Kerry supporters several times in August when I was in
>Seattle. They were certainly working hard. Sadly I couldn't help them.
You'll be there on election day, won't you? Can you spare any time to
bus voters around in your (company paid) hire car? :-)
Irina Rempt
wrote:
> Irina Rempt <ir...@valdyas.org> wrote:
>> Last time there was someone who had said
>> things about software patents, and some other issues I feel
>> strongly about, that I agreed with completely, but I'll *never*
>> vote for her party because I disagree completely with the main
>> party line.
>
> Won't she represent her parties' opinion, though, no matter what
> else she says?
Yes (except probably on the issues that she feels strongly about, that's
permitted); that's why I didn't vote for her after all. But in one of
the recently proposed systems, votes for <person> won't count as part
of the votes for <party>, but only determine *which* people from
<party> get in. In other words, if I don't mind which people from
<my_party> get in but I want Ms. X from <other_party> to get in rather
than other people from that party, I vote for <my_party> and Ms. X to
increase Ms. X's chances.
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Latest: 06-Oct-2004
Mark Atwood
> Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote in message news:<m2hdp0o...@amsu.fallenpegasus.com>...
>>
>> abolishing it past 38 state legislatures. Just as was intended.
>
> Too bad, it would nice to have one person, one vote.
Why? Democracy is a means, not an end.
--
Mark Atwood | When you do things right, people won't be sure
m...@pobox.com | you've done anything at all.
http://www.pobox.com/~mra | http://www.livejournal.com/users/fallenpegasus
Mark Atwood
>
> Indeed, it seems the norm for the local MP to send out cards to all its
> supporters. I remember a bit on Yes, Minister where Jim had huge stacks
> of cards to sign, each stack requiring a different form of his signature.
That's what an autopen is for.
Tim McDaniel
Charlton Wilbur <cwi...@mithril.chromatico.net> wrote:
>
> DB> What I think poisons the American system is the apparently
> DB> extra- constituitional requirement that the Electors from a
> DB> state (who need not be the people elected to Congress) all
> DB> vote for the same candidate. I don't think it's universal,
> DB> but it means that a narrow state-wide majority gives a
> DB> candidate all the votes, even though the Congressional
> DB> representation is pretty evenly split.
>
>It is extra-Constitutional; the state can appoint its electors any
>way it sees fit, and all but two (Maine I know; Nebraska is the other
>one, I think) use a winner-takes-all approach.
Colorado is voting (on Nov. 2, election day) on Amendment 36 to change
their state from winner-takes-all to proportional.
<http://www.cpod.ubc.ca/polls/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewItem&itemID=4561>
<http://www.makeyourvotecount.net/news.jsp>, a pro-36 group, says "as
Maine and Nebraska do: the popular vote winner would get two electoral
votes and the winner of the rest of the state's electoral votes would
be determined by who carried each congressional district", but
apparently (I still haven't found the exact text) Amendment 36 would
be strictly proportional. But it says that the amendment is likely to
fail, because it doesn't have the overwhelming support that is usual
for successful measures before the ad campaigns start.
--
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tm...@panix.com
David Friedman
se...@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) wrote:
You don't need that artificial system--the result makes sense in ours.
The argument goes as follows:
My power as a voter is defined as the probability that my vote will be
decisive in my state times the number of electoral votes my state casts.
Consider two states, A and B where B has ten times the population of A.
1.Assume the probability distribution for the percentage of the vote
going to the Republican candidate is the same in both states. On that
assumption, the probability that my vote is decisive goes inversely as
the number of voters, the number of electoral votes goes (almost)
proportionately to the number of voters, so my power is the same in A
and B.
But ...
2. Note that, due to the law of large numbers, the probability
distribution isn't the same--it's sharper in the larger state. If we
assume the peak is very close to .50--and if it isn't my power is
essentially zero--then the probability of my being decisive in B is more
than one tenth its value in A, so if electoral votes were proportional
to population, the voter would have more power in the larger state. This
might or might not outweigh the effect of the extra two electoral votes
for being a state.
The argument would be rigorous if we assumed the peak was always at .5.
It gets more complicated if we consider peaks near .5, since making the
peak sharper might raise or lower the density at .5.
Matthew B. Tepper
following letters to be typed in
news:fenmm01pgft04bvus...@4ax.com:
> On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 06:03:08 GMT, "Matthew B. Tepper"
><oy兀earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>Doug Wickstrom <nims...@comcast.net> appears to have caused the
>>following letters to be typed in
>>news:ti3km0tp1jbr917th...@4ax.com:
>>
>>> G.W. Bush isn't evil. He isn't even incompetent.
>>
>>I'd say that calling him "evil" is a stretch, if a slight one; theocrats
>>tend to give me the creeps.
>
> So, can you tell me, in simple language, what policies Bush supports
> that qualify him as a "theocrat"?
His stand against stem-cell research is an obvious one, and currently in the
news as well.
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Take THAT, Daniel Lin, Mark Sadek, James Lin & Christopher Chung!
Dave O'Neill
> On Tue, 12 Oct 2004, in rec.arts.sf.fandom,
>
> >I heard (from different sources afair) that the UK system of voting
> >isn't exactly fair, though. Like a village of 5k people selects
> >party A to rule them, and a city of 1M people selects party B to
> >rule them, and when it gets to national government, that counts
> >equally, 1 <whatever> for each (or some such).
>
> Not for a couple of centuries now. You're thinking about the famous
> "rotten boroughs" of the pre-Reform days. Nowadays the sizes of
> electoral wards are adjusted according to the census results every ten
> years, by the Boundaries Commission, a non-partisan body that is not
> supposed to gerrymander the map to suit any particular party.
How quaint ;)
Although in reality, my mother seems certain they annoy all the parties
evenly.
> I seem to have lost the spreadsheet I had with sizes of electoral wards
> around the year 2000, but according to the message I posted on rasff
> last year:
>
> >[60,000 is] about the average and the median for the 660-odd Commons
> >seats. Outliers are the Isle of Wight with ~100,000 (why not two MPs?)
> >and The Western Isles of Scotland with ~20,000 (understandable, when
> >the alternative would be to lump them unfairly in with some part of the
> >Scottish Mainland).
Tim McDaniel
at <http://www.lawanddemocracy.org/pdffiles/COamend36.pdf>. There's
too much detail, TOO MANY CAPITAL LETTERS, and too many line numbers
to copy and paste into this article.
There's a US Constitutional question here: the US Constitution says
that electors are chosen "as the Legislature shall direct", not "as
the Constitution and Laws of the State shall direct", and this is a
voter initiative. The amendment text says that the state constitution
allows the voters to act in any legislative manner and that the voters
constitute themselves as the state legislature in this matter. In
recent years, US courts have given more suasive power to voters rather
than legislatures, so it might fly. But I think that similar attempts
to have popularly-elected senators before the appropriate amendment
were shot down, so that states had to get around it by having binding
oaths on legislators to vote for US senators according to referenda
results.
David Friedman
"Matthew B. Tepper" <oyþ@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> appears to have caused the
> following letters to be typed in
> news:fenmm01pgft04bvus...@4ax.com:
>
> > On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 06:03:08 GMT, "Matthew B. Tepper"
> ><oyþ@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> >>Doug Wickstrom <nims...@comcast.net> appears to have caused the
> >>following letters to be typed in
> >>news:ti3km0tp1jbr917th...@4ax.com:
> >>
> >>> G.W. Bush isn't evil. He isn't even incompetent.
> >>
> >>I'd say that calling him "evil" is a stretch, if a slight one; theocrats
> >>tend to give me the creeps.
> >
> > So, can you tell me, in simple language, what policies Bush supports
> > that qualify him as a "theocrat"?
>
> His stand against stem-cell research is an obvious one, and currently in the
> news as well.
Unless I missed something, Bush has never come out against people doing
stem-cell research. He has merely restricted the sorts of such research
that the Federal Government will sponsor to ones involving existing
lines, or (I think) stem cells derived from sources other than embryos.
Calling that a theocratic position is on the order of my calling you a
communist on the grounds that you are (I presume) in favor of the
governments building roads.
Do you regard opposition to the Tuskegee Experiment, or similar research
done now, as support for theocracy? If not, where do you draw the line
on taking account of moral beliefs in deciding what governments do?
David Friedman
> It is possible to win the popular
> vote and loose the electoral college vote because the electoral
> college vote reawards land mass over population density.
That's a somewhat misleading way of putting it, since it would still be
possible even if the electoral votes of each state were proportional to
its population.
Seth Breidbart
Keith F. Lynch <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>arch...@sfchat.org (Nate Edel) wrote:
>> Jury pools appear to be from voter registration here in California,
>> but they were clearly from the motor vehicle license data back when
>> I was living in NY.
>
>Thus ensuring that in any dispute between a motorist and a bicyclist,
>the jury will consist entirely of motorists.
NY also uses voter registrations and some other databases (utility
bills, etc.) for jury pools. I know that I was called long before I
had a driver's license.
Seth
Seth Breidbart
Joel Rosenberg <jo...@ellegon.com> wrote:
>Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> writes:
>> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>> > Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> >> The Mall of America regularly surveys people at the doors
>> >> and surveys the licence plates in the parking lot,
>> >
>> > There's a strong selection bias, since it misses everyone who didn't
>> > get there by car.
>>
>> IIRC, you cant get to the MoA any other way than by car.
>
>It's on the commuter bus line, and there are many tourists
>who visit it via tour buses. There's undoubtedly a very small
>percentage who bike in.
I don't know about tour buses, but having taken a regular bus, I can
state that the percentage of people who travel there that way is quite
small.
Seth
David Friedman
Irina Rempt <ir...@valdyas.org> wrote:
> On Tuesday 12 October 2004 18:26 Tina Hall (Tina...@kruemel.org)
> wrote:
>
> > Irina Rempt <ir...@valdyas.org> wrote:
>
> >> Last time there was someone who had said
> >> things about software patents, and some other issues I feel
> >> strongly about, that I agreed with completely, but I'll *never*
> >> vote for her party because I disagree completely with the main
> >> party line.
> >
> > Won't she represent her parties' opinion, though, no matter what
> > else she says?
>
> Yes (except probably on the issues that she feels strongly about, that's
> permitted); that's why I didn't vote for her after all. But in one of
> the recently proposed systems, votes for <person> won't count as part
> of the votes for <party>, but only determine *which* people from
> <party> get in. In other words, if I don't mind which people from
> <my_party> get in but I want Ms. X from <other_party> to get in rather
> than other people from that party, I vote for <my_party> and Ms. X to
> increase Ms. X's chances.
That's interesting, but it seems a bit unfair. For one thing, it makes
it possible for party X to arrange to have the nuttiest member of party
Y be one of party Y's representatives, thus making party Y look bad.
Steve Glover
<ar...@cartref.demon.co.uk> writes
>When we started getting computerised registers we would initially print
>the canvas sheets on multicopy paper using dot-matrix printers, which
>was very useful for repeat canvasses and suchlike. By the last general
>election we couldn't find dot-matrix printers anywhere and had to print
>multiple copies on inkjet printers, which took longer than we did in
>the previous election. Sometimes progress isn't a good thing...
Yeah. And you can't cut stencils with an inkjet, either.
On the other hand, you don't need ink ribbons for cutting stencils
either.
Actually, come to think of it, while we may have some sheets of banda
"carbons" suitable for hectography, I'm not sure if we know anyone with
a duplicator in Edinburgh these days.
Steve
--
Steve Glover, Fell Services Ltd.
Home: steve at fell.demon.co.uk, 0131 551 3835
Away: steve.glover at ukonline.co.uk, 07961 446 902
Danny Low
wrote:
>It's basically part of the deal that put together the US in 1789.
>Small states wouldn't sign on without some "protection" or extra
>influence in politics.
No. The protection was provided by splitting Congress into the Senate,
where representation was by states, and the House, where
representation was by population and divided the powers of Congress
between them.
The Electoral College was a technical solution to a physical problem.
In those days it took all day to travel 20 miles. It was often
impossible to do even that much travel due to snow and mud. It was
physically impossible for any presidential candidate to campaign in
all the states. Any candidate was certain to be a total unknown to
most people in most of the states.
The Electoral College allowed the locals to send a delegate to
Washington to deliberate who should be the president. As late as the
mid-19th century it was considered unseemly for a presidential
candidate to actually campaign himself. He was supposed to sit at home
and let his local advocates in the various states campaign for him and
get the local Electoral College delegates that will vote for him.
Today the physical limitations of campaigning that necessitated the
Electoral College no longer applies. The one modernization of the
College has been laws requiring the delegates to vote as the popular
vote dictates and the de facto practice of automatically accepting the
election day count as the legal result even though it is not.
The result has generally been that whoever wins the popular vote wins
the Electoral votes. The few instances where the two votes did not
align have all been very close popular votes. The result is a
decisive result despite the indecisiveness of the popular vote.
Combined with the deliberate difficulty of changing the Constitution,
the system remains the same and will in all likelihood remain the same
in our lifetime.
Danny
Don't question authority. What makes you think they
know anything? (Remove the first dot for a valid e-mail
address)
David G. Bell
<ddfr-8DBB96.1...@newsread1.mlpsca01.us.to.verio.net>
dd...@daviddfriedman.nospam.com "David Friedman" wrote:
Which is better? A system were vote fraud is pointless, or one in which
the consequence is arrest, public trial with attending derision, and
clear punishment of the guilty?
--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
"History shows that the Singularity started when Sir Tim Berners-Lee
was bitten by a radioactive spider."
David Friedman
The latter isn't, in practice, the alternative. How many members of the
Daly machine ever suffered the consequences you describe?
You are perhaps forgetting that, in a one party state, that party also
appointed (or elected) most of the judges.
David Friedman
Danny Low <dann...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 07:10:00 GMT+1, Tina...@kruemel.org (Tina Hall)
> wrote:
>
> >It's really easy to understand, too, even if you try hard to
> >misinterpret it. (Don't you feel embarrased?)
> >You vote for a lunatic psychopath, that's your choice. Live with the
> >consequences of looking like a nation with a majority of non-wits
> >who don't know what they're doing and fall for empty phrases, and
> >lunatic psychopaths like the one they voted for. That's all.
> >In plain words for you to understand: Re-electing the madman just
> >makes the USA look stupid.
>
> This is hate mongering and is a totally emotional irrational rant
> without merit or thought and only reflects back on you.
Not "only." It also reflects an attitude that seems to be orthodoxy for
a substantial part of the European population, judging at least by
online discussions.
Nate Edel
> >> And there is no fucking way someone is going to get the amendment
> >> abolishing it past 38 state legislatures. Just as was intended.
> >
> > Too bad, it would nice to have one person, one vote.
>
> Why? Democracy is a means, not an end.
There we will have to differ. "Democracy" in the broad abstract sense *is*
an end, in my book.
--
Nate Edel http://www.cubiclehermit.com/
"I do have a cause though. It is obscenity. I'm for it." - Tom Lehrer