(no subject)
I've said it before, and I will say it again.. there are two things we need to put in place to have a snowball's chance in Tampa of making American Politics really work again.
1) All states lay out their voting districts via a non-partisan committee/computer program who's goal is to help the voters, not to keep the currently elected politicians in power.
2) All local, state and federal elections adopt a Ranked Choice Voting system or something similar so you can vote for who you really *Want* to win and still be able to who's you accept winning if your first choice(S) don't get enough votes.
until that happens.. compromise will continue to be harder and harder to come by..
I've got a pretty good feeling on this election so far thanks to the reassurance of Nate Silver. I like a numbers guy who's been right so far and knows when to tell you when he doesn't feel like his own numbers are solid enough yet.
But a problem I noticed in 2008 haunts me a bit. I'm regularly an election judge and as I was trying to tell people how to fill in their ballot there was more than one occasion where the person interrupted my speech to make sure if all they filled in was the presidential election and turned in their ballot it would count.
I assured them it would count for the presidential race, and held my tongue, but I really wanted to point out that if you pick a quarterback, but don't give him an offensive line that's on his side, he's not going to move the football worth a damn.
Right now with compromise being a dirty word and the few moderate Republicans (and not a few moderate Democrats) getting tossed out in primaries by further extremes, I do not see that as getting better.
1) All states lay out their voting districts via a non-partisan committee/computer program who's goal is to help the voters, not to keep the currently elected politicians in power.
2) All local, state and federal elections adopt a Ranked Choice Voting system or something similar so you can vote for who you really *Want* to win and still be able to who's you accept winning if your first choice(S) don't get enough votes.
until that happens.. compromise will continue to be harder and harder to come by..
I've got a pretty good feeling on this election so far thanks to the reassurance of Nate Silver. I like a numbers guy who's been right so far and knows when to tell you when he doesn't feel like his own numbers are solid enough yet.
But a problem I noticed in 2008 haunts me a bit. I'm regularly an election judge and as I was trying to tell people how to fill in their ballot there was more than one occasion where the person interrupted my speech to make sure if all they filled in was the presidential election and turned in their ballot it would count.
I assured them it would count for the presidential race, and held my tongue, but I really wanted to point out that if you pick a quarterback, but don't give him an offensive line that's on his side, he's not going to move the football worth a damn.
Right now with compromise being a dirty word and the few moderate Republicans (and not a few moderate Democrats) getting tossed out in primaries by further extremes, I do not see that as getting better.