I've also often thought a none of the above might be a good way to send a message to all of them. As in, "You are, as a group, doing a pretty pathetic job."

I thought a grass roots VOTE THEM ALL OUT might get results. We simply vote out all incumbents - no exceptions. When the new class gets to Washington, remind them they have a 4 or 6 year deadline in which to make significant progress or get the same treatment. If they fail, VOTE THEM ALL OUT again. Repeat this process until they get the message that representing their constituency and getting behind reasonable solutions is more important than partisan politics as usual. I would bet that after 2 times things would dramatically change.

I've done this a couple times myself, just when in and voted against every incumbent.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Congratulations, you've just turned the United States into a South American country. Which would leave a governing body full of greener than grass rookies at the mercy of an established lobbying industry fourteen thousand strong.

That is the equivalent of watching 535 NBA rookies trying to keep their noses clean while a buncha of pimps, drug dealers, and sheisters with numbers equalling a full Army Division drooled over the prospects of fleecing them for all they're worth.

That is almost scarier than a buncha entrenched no-contest career politicians.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

Understand, you're electing human beings. People completely capable of totally screwing up, and letting power go to their heads. At the same time, they're people capable of being educated that they're beliefs are wrong, and they're people capable of correcting themselves if they survive the fallout.

I wouldn't elect anyone who claims going in that they're going to be perfect at the job, because I'd know they were full of it. They're going to make mistakes, they're going to make decisions I hate, but that's life. US government is a process of trying to come up with a solution satisfactory to over 500 people who have to turn and sell it to 300,000,000 people. You think that's easy? You think you can work in that environment on the strength of decisive decision making and make everyone happy with the outcome? I wish you luck.

Representative government is often leadership through the least of evils, which means anything you do that's going to be remembered as successful is likely going to be equally disappointing to everyone. Compromise is a pain in the butt, but its how things get done. This administration is learning the hard way the consequences of ramrod leadership. This country doesn't respond well to it.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

I've come up with an idea; I call it the Single Sigma Theory of Government. It's based on the idea that in a normal distribution over 60% of the population is within one standard deviation of the mean. If candidates and policies are crafted to remain within one SD of the mean, they should win most elections. Attempts to move the electorate in one direction or the other must be crafted to keep the box around a majority of the population.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Well, thank you!

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"As truth is gathered, I rearrange,
Inside out, outside in - Perpetual change." - A British rock band

You know, I happen to like quite a few incumbents. Not all of them, naturally, but given the system, I would be a little alarmed if I did like every member of Congress. Heck, I don't expect to like every politician in my state who wins an election--west of the Cascades, the politics have a different colour than east of the Cascades. You can tell which colour is which by noting that the west is the more populous side, and that tends to swing the senatorial and gubenatorial outcomes.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I was impressed with the electronic voting machine (can't remember the brand) I used (obviously I didn't check it for hacking vulnerabilities though ), it was much better than the old mechanical lever monsters we used to use.

Of course, the best machine in the world won't help if the polling station isn't well managed. Several of my co-workers filed complaints about their polling station. Apparently there was a line to check in and a line to actually vote--but there was nothing to keep people from just walking up and joining the voting line. Worse, the line was long enough that its end was out of sight of officials. Granted that the vote tally wouldn't match the log tally so fraud would probably be detected, but it would still taint the entire batch of votes from that precinct. At least my polling station gave out cards as you checked in, and they made sure you had one when you actually got to the booth.

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Do try not to take me too seriously.

For some of the folks NOT in the United States who can't quite taste just how fed up some people are in some corners of our country, there is this...
Dead woman wins county commissioner's race
...and she trounced her opponent! Must've been one hell of a campaign!

Why can I picture this as being like something Samuel Adams and his boys might have been behind.

I say they go with a variation on Jim's idea...let her take the office and see how well it goes.

Some fallout:

edited to add: I'm not seeking commentary (don't want to break the rules), but thought it was worth noting in this thread since the timing is clearly linked to the election.

Pratchett had a take on that, with a mayor who died just after getting elected, and the city having no money for a new election so they just let him stay mayor for the next year.
End result was: no. of sex scandals 0, no. of bribes taken 0, no. of unpopular decisions made 0.
He won again the next year by a landslide.

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Well, you know, Ashcroft lost a Senatorial seat to a dead man in 2000. Of course, in that case, everyone knew his wife would be taking the seat, but Ashcroft was also pretty thoroughly beaten.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Are you talking about the USA?

I voted yesterday with pencil on paper. Not by choice, either - that's all there was.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Is South Dakota in the USA ??

Technically, yes, though sometimes I think its actually located on Hoth, and not Earth...

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

It's well into November, and it was 70 freakin' degrees out today.

Must be that global warming.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Then there's Germany with a multi-member plurality system, which is basically first-past-the-post adjusted to be proportional by "topping up" individual parties after representatives have been selected by riding. New Zealand also uses the MMP system.

Only we call it Mixed Member Proportional. It does have the advantage of breaking up the Two Party System. Currently, though there are two main parties with 80% of the seats between them, we have a total of 8 parties in parliament, The Greens (7), The Progressives (1), NZ Labour (50), United Future (3), NZ First (6), NZ National (48), ACT (2), and The Maori Party (4). The Government consists of a coalition between the Progressive Party and Labour with strong support from NZ First and United Future, and limited support from The Greens.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

It ain't anywhere near 70 where I am in Maryland, so I'm calling Pole Flip

/tinfoilbeanie

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

Phantom Wolf wrote


I don't think many of our politicians would put up with that. Just getting them saddled would be hard enough.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.