Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Champion Of Gender Equality, Dies At 87

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

The structure of online communities tends to drive a consolidation of opinions - dissenters depart as the mob mentality rules. Result: an echo chamber.

I know you’re relatively new here, or at least your account is but I did find this statement kind of funny. Not so much because I think you’re wrong, it’s just I’m probably the last poster on here that you should be making a generalization to about people running away from threads when the majority disagrees with them.

Additional result: people think they are centrist when they are not centrist. People prefer to be surrounded by like minded individuals rather than not.

See you’re still stuck on using labels to make your points without giving any context as to what you think about the people who you’re labelling. Is centrist good or bad? How about left, right, up, down? Using these terms in substitution of actual commentary really makes it difficult to figure out what point you’re trying to make.

Example:

The centrist took a wrong right turn and then a right left turn.

In English this basically means the centrist made two turns, meanwhile in online political speak/jargon this statement could be interpreted in many different ways yet really says nothing at all since we are given no indication of the poster’s opinion on centrist, right or left.

The unfortunate thing about echo chambers, is that it is hard to identify when you are in one.

Personally I actually think it’s pretty easy to figure out when you’re in one, but I can see how what you’re saying can be true for many people. Feels like I should mention that you didn’t answer my initial question at all.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

I don't believe this would be the case.
... A vote from rural Wyoming, which is currently not contested at all, would count the same as a vote from urban New York City, which is also currently not contested at all.

You're correct in theory but wrong in practice, because it isn't worth going to Wyoming to get that vote. There aren't enough of them. 83% of the US population lives in urban areas. In a pure "national vote count" scenario, winning those votes becomes all that truly matters - it's the only reasonable way to spend your time and money if you're campaigning. Or, in other words...

Originally Posted by GGG

It would turn even more into a turn out your base concept. The cheapest way to increase votes would be to improve voter turnout in high density areas. If this is the case you would see a push to even more polarizing policy then you have now.

One option that makes sense to me at least in theory - and I'm sure someone will have an argument about why it's a bad idea, but I haven't heard it yet - is to have electors partly allocated on the state-wide basis, and then have a percentage of each state's electors be allocated based on the popular vote total in that state.

So, take Texas. It has 38 EVs. Let's say 19 go to the winner of the state and 19 go by popular vote. Then let's say Trump ends up winning that state 52-48, which doesn't seem like a crazy outcome. Trump gets 29 EVs from Texas and Biden gets 9. Suddenly if you're a Texan Democrat, your vote for President matters, but it also still matters that you're a Texan Democrat, so the Presidential candidates have to take into account the needs and desires of voters in each state when trying to win their votes.

It's a lot like the MMP proposals that gain traction every few years up here.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

You're correct in theory but wrong in practice, because it isn't worth going to Wyoming to get that vote. There aren't enough of them. 83% of the US population lives in urban areas. In a pure "national vote count" scenario, winning those votes becomes all that truly matters - it's the only reasonable way to spend your time and money if you're campaigning.

I don't expect Biden or Trump or whoever to go door knocking in rural Wyoming, but they're not doing that in urban New York either. Instead, they'd devote more of their advertising and messaging to broad national campaigns that reach a wider audience instead of hyper-focused regional campaigns that reach comparatively fewer people.

As to your point that 83% of the population live in urban areas and so they would decide the election in a "national vote count" scenario...I'm utterly failing to see the problem with that. If only one out of every six Americans lives in rural areas, why are they given so much disproportionate voting power in national elections? That's incredibly undemocratic. One person, one vote, all votes count equally is the only fair way to hold an election.

[BoLevi]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

I know you’re relatively new here, or at least your account is but I did find this statement kind of funny. Not so much because I think you’re wrong, it’s just I’m probably the last poster on here that you should be making a generalization to about people running away from threads when the majority disagrees with them.



See you’re still stuck on using labels to make your points without giving any context as to what you think about the people who you’re labelling. Is centrist good or bad? How about left, right, up, down? Using these terms in substitution of actual commentary really makes it difficult to figure out what point you’re trying to make.

Example:

The centrist took a wrong right turn and then a right left turn.

In English this basically means the centrist made two turns, meanwhile in online political speak/jargon this statement could be interpreted in many different ways yet really says nothing at all since we are given no indication of the poster’s opinion on centrist, right or left.



Personally I actually think it’s pretty easy to figure out when you’re in one, but I can see how what you’re saying can be true for many people. Feels like I should mention that you didn’t answer my initial question at all.

You're quite right: left and right are pretty hackneyed terms. They're also relative terms. But unless we want to get into highly detailed policy descriptions for our individual special snowflake basket of policies, we need some words to carry to conversation forward.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Instead, they'd devote more of their advertising and messaging to broad national campaigns that reach a wider audience instead of hyper-focused regional campaigns that reach comparatively fewer people.

What? No, they don't. This is completely wrong. They spend 99% of their campaign money in about a dozen battleground states. That's the entire problem with the current EC system. The only reason they spend any time or money in other states is to raise more money to spend in the battlegrounds. The campaigns are totally beholden to the issues important to people who happen to live in areas that are purple.

As to your point that 83% of the population live in urban areas and so they would decide the election in a "national vote count" scenario...I'm utterly failing to see the problem with that. If only one out of every six Americans lives in rural areas, why are they given so much disproportionate voting power in national elections?

The amount of disproportionate power is a bit overblown. Picking two states completely at random, Kansas has 3 million people and 6 EVs, New York State has 19 million people and 29. So NY gets 1.53 EVs per million people, whereas Kansas gets two. That's significant, but it's not like your vote is worth ten times more in Kansas. The real problem is that no one's vote is worth anything at all in either of those two states because the outcome in both places is a foregone conclusion before the nominees are even selected.

As for why it matters that you disenfranchise anyone who doesn't live in a city, I mean, that should be pretty obvious, shouldn't it? If you're trying to fix a system because it disenfranchises a significant segment of your population, you should try to fix it in a way that doesn't disenfranchise a different significant segment of your population. 17% is enormous. It's over 56 million people. That's more than the black population of the country. If you could fix all of the issues with the political system in the USA by denying all black people the vote again, would that be acceptable to you? It shouldn't. There needs to be another solution.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Considering this seems to be a problem of the select few, and not the problem for the countless number of posters who reasonably disagree across political, moral, and social lines in countless threads, perhaps this is not an "online community" problem here, and more a personal problem.

Have you ever asked yourself why you have so much trouble expressing what you believe to be reasonable centrist positions without negative reactions, and why many others who actually do this (even reasonable right-leaning or left-leaning positions) do not have any trouble doing so? Or is it all just "echo chambers" and "group think" to blame, with zero self-reflection required?

You will not get a reply to that. Introspection is not part of the troll playbook. This guy is following the traditional cadence of a troll. Make an inflammatory statement, then argue semantics of the response rather than the guts of the issue. As that peters out, make another inflammatory statement, then argue the semantics again. It is a call and response cadence and he follows it to a tell. As the subject starts to play out he throws out the final jab with a final insult with a "leftist" or "snowflake" call in hopes for a final response. Ignore him, stop giving him attention, and he will move on to other boards to get the endorphin rush he receives from this game.

[burn_this_city]

Would love to see someone who thinks this site is a left wing circle jerk, actually articulate exactly what the Republican party under Trump stands for.

A lot of Canadian conservatives wrongly assume the CPC is similar to the GOP.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

What? No, they don't. This is completely wrong. They spend 99% of their campaign money in about a dozen battleground states. That's the entire problem with the current EC system. The only reason they spend any time or money in other states is to raise more money to spend in the battlegrounds. The campaigns are totally beholden to the issues important to people who happen to live in areas that are purple.

Dude, re-read my post. That's literally exactly my point. We were talking about a hypothetical future scenario where a small number of swing states aren't 100% of the focus because all votes count equally, so that would no longer be the case. That's when campaigns would shift to a national strategy.

As for why it matters that you disenfranchise anyone who doesn't live in a city, I mean, that should be pretty obvious, shouldn't it? If you're trying to fix a system because it disenfranchises a significant segment of your population, you should try to fix it in a way that doesn't disenfranchise a different significant segment of your population. 17% is enormous. It's over 56 million people. That's more than the black population of the country. If you could fix all of the issues with the political system in the USA by denying all black people the vote again, would that be acceptable to you? It shouldn't. There needs to be another solution.

Please kindly explain your flawed logic that people who don't live in cities would be "disenfranchised" under a national popular vote system. In a true one person/one vote election, their vote would count exactly equally as everyone else's. That is the literal opposite of disenfranchisement.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

My logic is not flawed. This isn't something I just made up. It's a widely understood challenge with electoral college reform. Their vote might technically "count" as much as anyone else's, but it wouldn't matter, because who wins the Presidency is decided by others elsewhere, and it's those peoples' issues that will be catered to. It's the same as the current situation, except instead of catering to the issues that matter only in the battleground states, the candidates would be catering to the issues that matter only in large urban areas. Which, in turn, means the rural areas are completely shut out in terms of policy priorities, which further incentivizes people to move to big cities, which only increases the rate of population concentration in urban areas.

You're pushing back on this because of your pre-existing biases and your knee-jerk reaction, but you'd really be better off doing some actual reading on this issue before forming an opinion about what to do about it, because you're acting like this is the first time you've ever heard someone talk about this problem.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

You're quite right: left and right are pretty hackneyed terms. They're also relative terms. But unless we want to get into highly detailed policy descriptions for our individual special snowflake basket of policies, we need some words to carry to conversation forward.

They can be relative terms but they can also be very subjective, like for example when someone uses them to paint an entire online community with a broad brush. There is very little benefit to the use of those terms in political discussions other than to promote division and distract people from the actual issues(which I don’t think are much of a benefit). There are lots of words available to carry a conversation forward without leaving people guessing what point you’re trying to make because they don’t keep track of which sides of the spectrum you think are good or bad and it’s typically a far more constructive approach is all I’m saying.

[BoLevi]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

Would love to see someone who thinks this site is a left wing circle jerk, actually articulate exactly what the Republican party under Trump stands for.

A lot of Canadian conservatives wrongly assume the CPC is similar to the GOP.

Most echo chambers result on an orthodoxy that reacts negatively to dissenting views. (The irony of left wing politics is that it usually countenances little diversity in thought and opinion while emphasizing diversity in other areas.)

In political discussion this orthodoxy usually results in an inability to criticize your own side of the aisle. For example, a criticism of the Democrats is viewed as the same thing as an endorsement of Trump. This is the origin of the non-argument about "both sides, many sides" that gets rolled out here often. It's the desire to shut down argument rather than engage in an honest way views that differ from your own.

In a forum or online, people are rarely going to simply concede a point and admit you have provided an alternate view that might have validity. But you can see whether that has been accomplished by the type of reaction you get to reasoned arguments - I probably don't even need to describe what those reactions are.

[PepsiFree]

...so that's a "no" to self-reflection then...

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

My logic is not flawed. This isn't something I just made up. It's a widely understood challenge with electoral college reform. Their vote might technically "count" as much as anyone else's, but it wouldn't matter, because who wins the Presidency is decided by others elsewhere, and it's those peoples' issues that will be catered to. It's the same as the current situation, except instead of catering to the issues that matter only in the battleground states, the candidates would be catering to the issues that matter only in large urban areas. Which, in turn, means the rural areas are completely shut out in terms of policy priorities, which further incentivizes people to move to big cities, which only increases the rate of population concentration in urban areas.

Rural citizens would still have their issues represented in government by their House representatives who are elected specifically to voice the concerns of their local constituents in Congress. For a truly national office like President, all votes should count equally regardless of where the voters live. You'd be crying bloody murder if anyone ever seriously proposed an election reform law that gave other minority groups, for example LGBT people or the highly-educated who possess graduate/post-graduate degrees, identical disproportionate voting power that voters in small rural states currently have in presidential elections due to the EC. And you'd be absolutely right to criticize that proposal. Yet for some completely illogical reason, you think ignoring the principle of one person/one vote is perfectly reasonable because a comparatively small percentage of the population should have their pet concerns catered to solely based on the size of the community in which they live? Please. That's blatantly anti-democratic.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

In political discussion this orthodoxy usually results in an inability to criticize your own side of the aisle.

Please provide your critique of the Republican party.

[BoLevi]

Originally Posted by SebC

Please provide your critique of the Republican party.

On the issue of this thread, I have on numerous occasions.


https://forum.calgarypuck.com/showpo...&postcount=129

Originally Posted by BoLevi

Of course the GOP are being two faced weasels here.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Rural citizens would still have their issues represented in government by their House representatives who are elected specifically to voice the concerns of their local constituents in Congress.

That's true, but then you'd need to give Congress more power to offset the centralized authority in the executive, which has accrued more and more power to itself over time. The issue is that party policy is set either by the White House, or with a view to winning back the White House, and Congress tends to fall in line with that strategy.

You'd be crying bloody murder if anyone ever seriously proposed an election reform law that gave other minority groups, for example LGBT people or the highly-educated who possess graduate/post-graduate degrees, identical disproportionate voting power that voters in small rural states currently have in presidential elections due to the EC.

Hmmm... why did you select these two groups in particular as something you think I'd be upset about?

Yet for some completely illogical reason, you think ignoring the principle of one person/one vote is perfectly reasonable because a comparatively small percentage of the population should have their pet concerns catered to solely based on the size of the community in which they live? Please. That's blatantly anti-democratic.

Again, of the two of us, I'm pretty sure that you're not the one with a firm grip on logic, as demonstrated by the fact that you've just tried to put a whole bunch of words in my mouth that in no way follow from what I've posted. I didn't say you should "ignore the principle of one person one vote". Just the opposite. I'm a proponent of a solution that gives as many peoples' votes in as many places in the country as much practical, real-world value as possible - which is why I effectively suggested a version of the way Maine and Nebraska currently do things.

There's a reason Obama spent time in Nebraska in 2008 (which actually paid off). An ideal system would make the President responsive to the concerns of people across the country, not just in isolated, high-population areas.

[GGG]

One of the problems with today’s electoral process regardless of system is that the analytics are too strong. The dollars per electoral college seat are likely compared across a whole host of strategies. So in any system the parties will determine how to best spend and mobilize to minimize cost per vote. So the best you can do is to have a system to equalize that cost. I suspect if you tried to make the influence of each person cost the same amount of money you would end up in a very undemocratic system.

One thing I would question is the result of Hillary losing to trump with 66 million votes to 63 million votes a perversion of Democracy? If the goal of democracy is to reflect the will of the people then all of the people who for whatever reason didn’t vote aren’t being measured. (I do think that non voters likely lean blue given age based voting patterns). We don’t even know who would win if everyone voted, We just had a very large non random poll. So before we worry about EC I think mandatory voting would be the first thing to change. This at least gets everyone vote to the table to be influenced.

Another thought I have had is is having states with relatively equal numbers of republicans and democrats deciding elections actually a good thing. My thought would be that purple states have lower levels of polarization then Red or Blue states (This could be completely incorrect though). So if the purple states are less polarized then campaigns have to be less polarized as well. This is better then designing your message to maximizing turnout in California and New York.

So despite not being direct democracy it might actually work okay. In the list of problems in the US that need to be fixed for democracy I’m not sure the EC makes it very high.

Things I would fix first:
Automatic voter registration
Allow felons to vote without condition
Equitable distribution of polling areas
More independence in redistricting
Change to combined Primaries where the top 2 candidates regardless of party affiliation are put on the ballot or mandate open primaries everywhere.
The Senate actually doing it’s job to check executive power
Turing over Citizens United

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Oh #### me...it's all over everyone. Prepare to head back to the medieval period. Trump is planning to nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Someone who has only been a judge for 3 ####ing years, and is a suped-up religious zealot.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/u...gtype=Homepage

Judge Barrett and her husband, Jesse Barrett, a former federal prosecutor, are reported to be members of a small and relatively obscure Christian group called the People of Praise. The group grew out of the Catholic charismatic renewal movement that began in the late 1960s and adopted Pentecostal practices like speaking in tongues, belief in prophecy and divine healing.

[jayswin]

I mean, it was predictable, no?

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Originally Posted by jayswin

I mean, it was predictable, no?

Yes, and that's the tragedy. I was hoping for a slightly different outcome, perhaps an old school right wing judge who has years of experience and would treat cases on their merit.

Nope, instead we get ol' Hailjesus Mc####yourrights. Better get used to back alley abortions where ladies died on a regular basis. Anyone seen Vera Drake? We're going back to that archaic approach.

Fun. Times.