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US Federal Elections 2012

It is looking like a distinct possibility that Romney wins the popular vote and Obama the electoral college. Be interesting to see what Dems and Republicans say about that if it happens as the Dems threw a huge hissy fit about how unfair it was when that happened with Gore/Bush.
 
It is looking like a distinct possibility that Romney wins the popular vote and Obama the electoral college. Be interesting to see what Dems and Republicans say about that if it happens as the Dems threw a huge hissy fit about how unfair it was when that happened with Gore/Bush.

It certainly would be unfair, and show the flaws in the system. Of course if there was a straight out vote, turnout would be higher too, which is an oft used argument.
 
It certainly would be unfair, and show the flaws in the system. Of course if there was a straight out vote, turnout would be higher too, which is an oft used argument.

Possibly, but I'm not convinced that it would solve the problem of only a few areas in the country influencing the entire election.
 
Possibly, but I'm not convinced that it would solve the problem of only a few areas in the country influencing the entire election.

The Trouble with the Electoral College - YouTube

Watch this (CGP Grey is some man, good informative stuff).

Anyway, the biggest actual city proper in the US only has a tiny percentage of the overall US population, this is a non issue and is ridiculous, I'm not sure who brought it up but it seems to be a popular concept for some reason, perhaps it is simply repeated often enough.

Transcript:
But wait! You might say, won't abolishing the electoral college and voting directly
3:21
for president cause candidates to spend all their time in big cities? That wouldn't fair
3:25
to most Americans either.
3:27
This sounds like a reasonable fear, but ignores the mathematical reality of population distribution.
3:31
There are 309 million people in the United States, only 8 million of which live in New
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York, the largest city by far. That's 2.6% of the total population. But after New York,
3:40
the size of cities drops fast.
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LA has 3.8 million and Chicago has 2.7 but you can't even make it to the tenth biggest
3:47
city, San Jose before you're under a million people.
3:50
These top ten cities added together are only 7.9% of the popular vote hardly enough to
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win an election.
3:56
And even winning the next 90 biggest cities in the United States all the way down to Spokane
4:00
is still not yet 20% of the total population.
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So unless there's a city with a few hundred million people hiding somewhere in America
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that's been left out of the census, the idea, that a candidate can just spend their campaign
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Jetting between New York, LA and Chicago while ignoring everyone else and still become president
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is mathematically ludicrous.
 
Here's the thing. There are certain areas of the country who are still solid red or solid blue. You can be sure that both parties have demographic stats on which states/counties lean which ways. The areas that are heavily slanted one way or the other will never see a candidate. A lot of these areas are areas that will never see a candidate under the current system. The areas of little populace will never see a candidate. The only areas that will see candidates are areas that have high populations of undecided voters. Those areas may be different from the swing states we have currently, but we certainly won't see candidates traveling the entire country campaigning.

Edit: Read another article where it claimed a popular vote system would lead candidates to ignore states that were up in the air and campaign heavily in states that already favor them. NY leans Democratic. Obama is certain to win there. Let's say that without campaigning there he wins it by 55%. If he does campaign heavily there he is more likely to sway voters his way. So he may win the heavily populated state with 60-65% or higher thus padding his popular vote totals. Romney could do the same in Texas which is heavily populated and leans toward the right.
 
Well it all ends tomorrow one way or the other. I will likely be unhappy either way, but such is life.
Well, the campaigning will be over at least, I'm not so sure we'll know the winner. If its as close as they think it will be, recounts and provisional ballots will come into play, not to mention the Florida ballot is reported to be a ten page clusterf*
 
Conspiracy theorists will be out no matter what. NY is a left leaning state. Obama will likely take it anyway. If we had direct popular vote there could be an argument that he would be in trouble with people not able to get to the polls though.
 
I just finished voting. There was no line at all. It took like 15 mins total. Vote for Gary Johnson for pres and fluoridation in our local water. Both of which will lose in a landslide, but oh well.
 
Saw on TV people waiting 4+ hours to vote in Florida. Why can't they learn how to run an election down there? Of course, this was in a Democratic area, so could be intentional.
CNN was reporting voting machines in Pennsylvania changing the vote to Romney when people pushed Obama. At least two different machines last I saw, and they have video of it. Said they "recalibrated" the machines and put them back in service. I wonder how many people had their vote stolen without noticing.
 
It is looking like a distinct possibility that Romney wins the popular vote and Obama the electoral college. Be interesting to see what Dems and Republicans say about that if it happens as the Dems threw a huge hissy fit about how unfair it was when that happened with Gore/Bush.

Didn't happen. Well about $6b was spent on this election and we're basically back to what was before the $6b was spent, seems like a misallocation of resources.
 
It wasn't as close as predicted, Obama won all of the swing states except two. I thought he would lose Florida, but it looks like he will take that as well. I thought Obama would win because he had an easier road in the electoral college, but I have to admit I was a little worried. I'm just glad we won't have to go through the recounts and courtrooms this time. Florida needs to learn how to run an election or there should be some kind of consequences.
 
I just finished voting. There was no line at all. It took like 15 mins total. Vote for Gary Johnson for pres and fluoridation in our local water. Both of which will lose in a landslide, but oh well.
So, did you get your fluoride? We've had fluoridated water here for as long as I can remember.
 
So, did you get your fluoride? We've had fluoridated water here for as long as I can remember.

Not only did we not get fluoride 60% of the population voted against it. Two neighboring towns shot down laws that would've extended anti-discrimination laws to protect sexual orientation as well. Those laws lost by wide margins as well. I loathe my state. So ridiculously backward.
 
I'm looking forward to turning on the TV and being returned to my regularly scheduled programming. Bring on the fall TV season!

What's this? Basketball? But it's football season. What? Hockey? Oh God no!!!!! I'm back in preemption purgatory again...
 
Not only did we not get fluoride 60% of the population voted against it. Two neighboring towns shot down laws that would've extended anti-discrimination laws to protect sexual orientation as well. Those laws lost by wide margins as well. I loathe my state. So ridiculously backward.
Ah, harsh stuff man. Remember seeing a (probably wrong) statistic in a chemistry book of mine stating that for every Punt (Its an old book) spent on fluoridation, 50 Punt would be saved on dentistry costs. I don't think we were ever consulted, government wasn't gonna argue with those savings on health expenditure.

It wasn't as close as predicted, Obama won all of the swing states except two. I thought he would lose Florida, but it looks like he will take that as well. I thought Obama would win because he had an easier road in the electoral college, but I have to admit I was a little worried. I'm just glad we won't have to go through the recounts and courtrooms this time. Florida needs to learn how to run an election or there should be some kind of consequences.
Yeah the media here were making it out that it would be ridiculously close (like a few 100k votes, which it was at one stage to be fair), but its what 59.6 to 57 million now? Thats still 2% which is close enough I guess, but yeah. As for Florida, sure let them take their time. In Ireland parliamentary elections take days to count!
 
Here fluoride ended up on the ballot because local dentists and dental hygeniests circulated a petition that got over 10,000 signatures. They got enough signatures that, by law, the city council was required to either enact what was in the petition or put it on the ballot. Not a single city council member voted to enact the petition. They unanimously agreed that they needed to pass the buck. The dentists say it's a good idea. The CDC says it's a good idea. There is actually a neighboring city where fluoride occurs naturally and they have fewer cavities than we do. The argument against that was that the fluoride there is "natural" while the fluoride here would be "man-made". There was so much bad science going around it was ridiculous.
 
It wasn't as close as predicted, Obama won all of the swing states except two. I thought he would lose Florida, but it looks like he will take that as well. I thought Obama would win because he had an easier road in the electoral college, but I have to admit I was a little worried. I'm just glad we won't have to go through the recounts and courtrooms this time. Florida needs to learn how to run an election or there should be some kind of consequences.

I agree totally on all points touched. Not surprized at the states that went with Romney but surprized at a few I thought would go with Romney.

Last night started out with Romney dominating and looked rather bleak for Obama. I do admit I turned the tv off well before midway from the numbers coming in. Didnt catch up on things until aftet 1am or so.

Hopefully this four years the ladies and gentlemen of D.C. and at state levels will work together and just get things done. Leave pride at home.
 
Here fluoride ended up on the ballot because local dentists and dental hygeniests circulated a petition that got over 10,000 signatures. They got enough signatures that, by law, the city council was required to either enact what was in the petition or put it on the ballot. Not a single city council member voted to enact the petition. They unanimously agreed that they needed to pass the buck. The dentists say it's a good idea. The CDC says it's a good idea. There is actually a neighboring city where fluoride occurs naturally and they have fewer cavities than we do. The argument against that was that the fluoride there is "natural" while the fluoride here would be "man-made". There was so much bad science going around it was ridiculous.
What was the argument against it? Some kind of side effects? It's been done for so long in so many places it shouldn't even be controversial.
 
What was the argument against it? Some kind of side effects? It's been done for so long in so many places it shouldn't even be controversial.

They argued that it's a poison if you overdose on it primarily. They argue that you're adding chemicals to the water and that's just wrong and not "natural". They then threw in a large helping of "forced medication" and "trampling on rights" for good measure. Then they ran out and voted down anti-discrimination initiatives so I'm not sure how much "trampling on right" really mattered.
 
They argued that it's a poison if you overdose on it primarily. They argue that you're adding chemicals to the water and that's just wrong and not "natural". They then threw in a large helping of "forced medication" and "trampling on rights" for good measure. Then they ran out and voted down anti-discrimination initiatives so I'm not sure how much "trampling on right" really mattered.
They're pretty selective about which "rights" they want to protect lol. Don't you live in the state where they keep fighting to teach "intelligent design" in the schools?
 
They're pretty selective about which "rights" they want to protect lol. Don't you live in the state where they keep fighting to teach "intelligent design" in the schools?

Yup. Aren't we really enlightened here?

Interestingly enough the more affluent areas of town were more likely to vote for fluoride and the poorer areas voted against it.
 
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