What Makes People Vote Democrat?

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They are proven guilty. Usually with these big corporations, the fines and penalties aren't nearly enough to make them close up shop. What's worse is that the pass down the cost of their legal troubles either onto the consumer or by cutting labor, or both.

Here is an interesting link detailing the billions paid out by corporations in fines and settlements from about the early 1990's on. Exxon Mobile alone has racked up about $20 billion. The list is so long that the page only lists companies from A-F. If you'd like to advance through the alphabet, you'll need to do so within the webpage.

http://www.endgame.org/corpfines1.html

Due away with the electoral college and change the system to an instant runoff and I'll vote third party. Otherwise I'm just going to vote against the candidate I'm most repulsed by.

Stop it with the straw men.

I don't understand the fascination with instant runoffs. Voters can barely figure out how to vote correctly now how can you even possibly believe it would be remotely viable to have some weird ranking system? One person one vote. Why not just a regular runoff if one of the candidates don't make 50%? Factions with in the parties would not have to be afraid to run another candidate then. That would help the third parties way more than IRV which seems more like a boon to the two party dictatorship than anything. One person one vote, that's how it works.

What they should do is get rid of party membership on the ballot so people actually have to know who they're voting for.. At the very least they shouldn't have party line voting.

I'm not completely partial to instant runoff. Really any system that allows a single voter the opportunity to give support to a non-majority candidate without risking an even less desirable result is an improvement. Instant runoff looks like the most efficient, most fraud proof method to me, but I'd really be in favor of any system that does away with the current two-party stranglehold.

The funny thing is, if President Obama keeps governing from the center-right, many of those who voted for him because they wanted real change might just vote third party. Obama hasn't really rolled back the policies of the Bush era that I most strongly disagreed with (e.g., security theater and the violations of civil liberties, the wars). Why vote for a Democrat if the policies are nearly indistinguishable from Republicans' minus some Evangelical wrapping paper?

On several issues the Obama administration policy has been more right-wing than we might get from a Republican president. Obama can't even implement Republican policies without first having to negotiate them with the far right.

IRV is actually quite simple, I mean how hard is it to put a 1, 2, 3 or 4 next to a name? Aside from that, it's one of the few truly simple fixes for the current two party mess, it would be cheap and potentially have a huge impact on politics by making 3rd parties truly viable.

Why don't we have "none of the above" as an option when voting? That would have been my choice in many elections where I had to choose between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. if the "none" option got more votes, the parties would have to field different candidates until they found some acceptable to the voters.

I know there would be added costs, and delays, but wouldn't it eventually result in our getting better elected officials?

Oh this reminds me of an original pun of mine from many years ago.
Does anyone else remember that 1960s TV show called The Flying Nun?
It could have been called Nun of the Above.
Share if you dare, but please give credit where due, or due due as the case may be.

Some Eastern European jurisdictions have the option of voting "Against All".

Lavey Satanism? LaVey admitted that he took Ayn Rand's so-called philosophy and dressed it up with Satanic ritials. To think that Atlas Shrugged is the second most influential book in the US Congress and a Bible of the Republican Right. They effectively are Satanists.

So? I'll take Satan over the alternative any day.

Yea. Lavey Satanism, Objectivism, and misogynistic religious fundamentalism are all related to a degree. They're all phallic philosophies.

Apparently pretty hard since a large portion of people can't even figure out how fill out ballots correctly now and all that involves is connecting a line to your candidate or filling in a box or whatever. An IRV ballot would be 10x more complicated and you're making a lot of assumptions of the voters. You're assuming they can count, legibly write said numbers, and that they actually even know who's on the ballot. People don't know who the hell John Q. Public for the HerpDerp Party and the John Q. Taxpayer are for the DerpHerp Party are. Most likely will only know who the democrat and republican are. This does nothing to change that.

How does that help third parties? Why is IRV preferable to a regular runoff election other that cost? Why should someone voting for a minor party be able to essentially vote twice? IRV would likely mean that actually getting on the ballot would be a lot harder so it would probably hurt third parties and independent candidates in my opinion.

Because a leftist could vote for the Green Party or Nader or whoever, and then mark the second vote for the Democrat to avoid the vote splitting that hurts the party that is closer to their beliefs, but still not fully supporting them. Similarly, a rightist could vote for, say, the Libertarian Party or the Constitution Party, and then mark their second vote for the Republicans. This allows third parties to get a chunk of the vote without people worrying that they are harming the "lesser of two evils" in the process, which would allow third parties to become a bit more mainstream and (potentially) win an office or two every now and then.


No reason other than that, and the time and logistical concerns of having two elections. It is exactly what it sounds like: instant runoff voting.


They don't. Once their preferred candidate is eliminated, that vote is basically thrown out and their support is instead transferred to someone who has a chance of winning. This avoids disenfranchisement of third party voters.


Why do you think this?

You don't see how there may be an issue of having 15 candidates that a voter must rank? They would make it tougher to get on the ballot so there wouldn't be a situation like that.

I still don't see how it really helps third parties. All it does is essentially give somebody who votes for a third party to get essentially 2 votes which would in the end be cast for the favored republican or democrat. It wouldn't get the 3rd party candidate in the debates, it wouldn't even up the money, it wouldn't make it easier to get on the ballot. It doesn't really change anything. The voters still have to vote for the "lesser of two evils". What if a voter only wants 1 person to win and wouldn't vote otherwise? You'd actually be forcing people to vote for the lesser of two evils. I think instead of the third party candidates, you'd just have more than 1 republican or democrat running for the same office.