Luigi's choosing of a new title for the Movies Kitchen Sink inspired me to discuss something called Instant Runoff Voting, which is occasionally proposed as a voting reform.

It ensures that the eventual winner of the election has the support of 50 percent of the electorate by essentially asking voters to rank each candidate in order of preference. When the ballots are counted for the first time, if no candidate has at least 50 percent of the first choice votes, the candidate with the lowest number of them is eliminated and his ballots are then divided among the remaining candidates(based on the second choices on his/her ballots). If still no candidate has 50 percent, the process continues until someone does. This eliminates seperate, and costly, runoff elections.

I'm not aware of any jurisdictions which use IRV, though I think some do and others are considering it.

I'll elaborate more on my views about it later.

Additionally, the state of Nevada gives its voters the option of voting for "None of These Candidates." Good idea/bad idea? Perhaps someone from Nevada could elaborate about it?

There's a new program that was shown on HBO last week and you can now watch online, at least for the moment, about the evil Repukelican-created Diebold machines. It's called Hacking Democracy and you can watch it here. You can also find it on Google Video.

I read some story about a man who smashed the electronic voting machine he was using, apparently for no reason apparent to election officials. Guess he didn't like it.

Farewell, Election Day

George Will claims that early voting, which many states are allowing, will lead to an increase in the quantity and decrease in the quality of voters.

Seems to be a pretty elitist mindset of thinking. The problem with election day being on a Tuesday is that for many working people have a hard time getting to work and the polls, epically if they live far from where they work.

One friend of mine used to work at MBNA (the credit card company) said that they could take 4 hours off with pay on election day (that's a half day.) Another worked in the corporate offices of Campbells Soup and they could do the same; notice that's the corporate office people who could do that, not the workers on the factory floor. I work in a bar and if I'm on a double shift (common for restaurant biz people) I'd have to work going to the polls in between the shifts if not for early voting. I'm sure that Wal-Mart isn't giving 4 hours off to the store employees on election day either.

Will says that making voting "too easy" will just allow apathetic voters, who don't really understand the issues, to vote. I say it's economics and class that prevents many people from voting on election day. Citizens not understanding the issues is what gave us 8 years of Bush.

Re:This thread
The IRV system seems similar to the Single Transferable Vote system of Proportional Representation (P.R for short) that's used in Northern Ireland, or the system that was used in the Greater London Authority election in May...
Incedentally, how long do polling stations remain open for in the U.S, as in the U.K, they're open from 8am to 10pm...?

About the same here. Each state makes that laws that govern their polling stations so it can vary from state to state. Back in 2004 in Ohio they had problems with precincts in largely urban & minority districts where they didn't have enough voting machines and some people were having to wait in line up to 6 hours to vote, which caused problems for some people who's jobs would not accept that as an excuse to be late or not show up to work. Strangely I didn't hear much from rich majority white districts (that went mostly for Bush) about long lines before voting. Ohio was a critical battleground state and this "electioneering" may have cost John Kerry the election.

Nevada gives its voters the option of voting for "None of These Candidates."? That is a great idea!

I assume all of those votes are counted as protest votes?

I think there should also be a dedicated "Protest Vote" section on the ballot form, which voters select after choosing the candidate they want to vote for, instead of having to protest by spoiling the ballot form. This will automatically register as a protest vote, and count towards the total votes for that candidate. Any candidate/party official attempting to get the protest votes deducted from the totals, for whatever reason, should be barred from any employment directly connected with politics for 9 years! (This would also apply to elected individuals removed from office by a recall petition - after all, if at least 10% of the electorate voted them out, they are hardly likely to want them back in the job, are they!)

Today is Super Tuesday.

Why they call it "super", I have no idea.

They call it super because of all the important state primaries and caucuses taking place on this one night, including the two biggest most influencial states, California and Texas, and because it usually makes it clear who the nominee will be when all is said and done. It elects 1,357 of the 3,979 pledged delegates, over a third of them in a single really big night.

I'm sure that Trump and the Republicans have anti-Warren and anti-Biden and anti-Bernard videos ready to release on social media.

Actually, this is the first year that CA is a Super Tuesday state. In the past, CA's primary has been in June, causing it to be "irrelevant". Given the deluge of ads this year, I kind of miss "irrelevancy".

It was called Super Tuesday because it was a mass of states that collective have a lot of convention delegates up for grabs.

Same Scott. The ads have been brutal this year. Not only are they everywhere, YouTube is especially bad with them, but the local mailers have sent the same things four times!

"Monday’s events were as much about this election — saving the Democrats from leaping into the left-wing populist abyss — as they were about setting the Democratic Party on a center-left trajectory. We will find out Tuesday night whether all of this amounts to a sea change in the primary race. One thing is certain, however: Responsible Democrats have learned from the past and have put country before personal ambition, rational reform above populist rabble-rousing. For that, the entire country should be grateful." Jennifer Rubin

Rubin is one of the excellent team of commentators at the Washington Post, in my humble opinion the best newspaper in the world, and backbone of the resistance to Trump in the American media. To those who, like Bernie Sanders, orate about evil billionaires, I'd point out that the reason the Post can afford to stand up to Trump is that it was rescued from near-insolvency by Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon and probably the richest man in the world.

Three Vietnam veterans have run for President: Al Gore, John Kerry and John McCain, all were defeated.

And, on the other hand, all those that fought on the winning side in war, also won their Presidential bids.

We have Grant (the Civil War), Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Bush 41 (World War II).

Yes, both LBJ and Ford were also WWII veterans, but I didn't include them because neither were elected into the office.

Joe Biden got out of what would have been - at most - driving a desk in Saigon - by bribing a doctor to say that Biden's childhood asthma would make a stay in the Mekong Delta perilous. Michael Bloomberg got out of Vietnam on the grounds of "flat feet"

Both of these men were happy to support the war but not to personally risk an encounter with a Punji stick

Still, it is interesting to note that every President that fought on the winning side of war got in.

If Robert E. Lee had tried to run, would he have stood a chance in you-know-what in getting elected?

Nikki Haley in four years? though Indian-Americans will be helpfully reminded that she dumped Sikhism for Christianity...

I knew this would happen. One woman has died during the siege of Trump supporters on the Capitol. Time to invoke the 25th Amendment. Now.

This is not France of 1789 or Russia of 1917. This is the U.S. of 2021.

As far as I'm concerned, those people that stormed the Capitol are criminals and terrorists and deserved to be punished as such.

And Orange should be punished too. There is no doubt he instigated it, no matter how much he denies it.

Either invoke the 25th Amendment, or wait another two weeks and, when Orange is officially out of office, arrest him.

Wait another two weeks...

That's one of the problems. Who knows how much damage Fat Ass Trump's dangerous rhetoric can do in that time. If I were Joe Biden, I'd be I fear of my life; Trump's low IQ mob may try to kidnap and do worse to him, as I'm sure their limited intelligence believes that if Joe Biden wasn't around, Trump would stay president.
Four people died in yesterday's mob rule. One woman by gunshot, three from medical ailments. Orange Face Trump sat on his fat ass in the White House the whole time, and ate it all up.

the real danger is to Comma-lah Harris. the Orangemen won't tolerate a Nigra lady that close to the presidency.

@Tim, had they been BLM protestors, they would have been shot before reaching the Capitol.

Abe Lincoln: "what's this i hear about you whippin' slaves?"

Modern Republicans: "they're just BLM's"

Anyone who thinks that ordinary people can't possibly do evil should remember that Heinrich Himmler was neither a politician nor an ideologue: he was a chicken farmer.

Heck, Hitler was a failed artist.

According to this AP article, some of the idiots who rioted and stormed the Capitol this past January 6 in support of the Orange Blunder now regret their actions. Do those goons think that a half-hearted apology will get them off the hook? Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

They're only sorry because they now have to face the consequences of their actions.

Had they gotten off scot free, I can guarantee that they would have no regrets.

Had they gotten off scot free...

I'm almost positive those idiotic goons thought they would. No doubt they felt that Fat Orange Blunder Trump would issue a blanket pardon, covering all actions and participants who did the dirty on January 6. And were probably caught off guard when the Fat Lazy Oaf didn't.

Trump doesn't reward failure.

Of course, he threw them all under the bus and never looked back.

We have an election here in Canada, on Monday.

Of course, I've already voted. I did it in the advance polls, last weekend.

Yes, our non-goateed, haircutted, lisping Pretty Boy called a $600,000,000 election (according to radio reports and commercials) during the fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, despite not having to do so for another TWO YEARS!
Clearly, a power grab for himself, as he resides over a bumbling minority government.
Can you tell that I, also, voted early this week?

I did the same. I always vote n the advance polls.

Well, the Big Day is here in Canada. Let's get this over with, so we can all enjoy the Autumn.

Will pretty boy get a second term?

It would actually be a third term.

Blimey he's already had two? Teach me to be a smart a$$

We don't have term limitations in this country, Rodney. We have a Parliament, just like you lot Down Under. Justin Trudeau can run as many times as he likes.

Speaking of which, he won. However, it's another minority government. So after all that money spent, all the mud slinging and other such bulls**t, we're right back to where we started. All of it was for nothing.

Trudeau, you smeghead!

The caricature in our local newspaper. The caption translates as "Minority! (again!)"

That pretty much sums it up.

There's an old saying;

"It doesn't matter who votes, what matters is who's counting the votes."

That sniveling little narcissist blew $600,000,000 for nothing more than a power-grab and ego boost.
Well, Justine, 67 percent voted AGAINST you and your cronies.
2 more years of Liberal hell.
Dam.

Amen to that.

Here in Ontario, we have two elections coming next year, Provincial and Municipal.

Ron DeSantis, who was seen by many (including me) as a credible candidate for beating Trump in the next Republican primaries, is looking more and more like an ineffectual clown. Here is a little discussion of that very subject. You just gotta laugh at the absurdity of the circus American politics have devolved into. It's gonna be an interesting election night this coming november 5th 2024.

Interesting.

Mike Lindell, the "Pillow Guy", has stated he has "lost everything". In my opinion, due to his never ending lying about the 2020 election, and his support of Trump. Which was certainly a one-way street. More here.
Question-If Lindell is so broke, and has lost everything, how can he afford time on local TV stations? Where Magic Mike presents that dumb commercial where he's inside a medicine cabinet, plugging his overpriced pillows and other junk.

The guy featured in this video:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be8IivqhzNk&ab_channel=CinematicExcrement

More nonsense from dumbass Trump supporters with too much time on their hands. And, that was made up out of whole cloth. Some conservatives, who apparently have nothing else to occupy their time or minds, are saying that the current romance between singer Taylor Swift and Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce is a plot against Donald Trump, and its aim is to give Joe Biden a second term. And as a result, this year's Super Bowl is rigged. More on that complete crock here.

Well, that explains how Orange Peel gets such support. His followers are brain dead dittoheads.

Some of them are not just brain dead, some of them are actually dangerous. For instance there was january 6th, and now there's this guy.

To be fair, this sort of dangerous idiocy exists in all walks of life, but the MAGA movement does seem to attract more than its fair share of it.

In the risk of honking off Rodney (or maybe not, since he seems to have vanished) MAGA does bring up images of what happened in Germany, ninety years ago.

I mean ow else could a corrupt relic of the 80's even get near the White House.

Guys, this is my official boycott of this thread and the Trump presidential thread.
He beat Nikki Haley in her own state for the Republican nomination and is one step closer to actually getting back in office.
I won't tolerate this, because it makes me angry and brings back my negative feelings for him, wishing he would go away...permanently.
I'm already changing the channel every time he comes on TV, I don't watch him on the news or CNN, and I will absolutely, positively, no-chance-in-effin-hell am I going to watch the campaign or the debates (if there even is one), and if he wins, I'll still change the channel for the following 4 years.
I can't believe the wretched megalomaniac support this pizz-face has, even from other Republicans that he's insulted, and from the jackasses that are going to vote for this criminal.
No more. It ends here for me.
I'll happily post on other Nitcentral threads (Star Trek, Doctor Who, the Kitchen Sink), but this one just brings out too much anger and hatred and depression for him and his supporters from me, and I don't need that in my life.
Try to keep your sanity, guys.

Rodney is right, the U.S. just is corrupt as Russia.

How can you explain that someone like Orange Peel has gotten this far. He has raped women, embezzled money, and, to top it all off, tried to seize power by force when the 2020 election went agaisnt him.

The Republicans should have expelled him long ago. But noooooo. They all just fall in line and march along.

Ninety years ago, Germany did this. They, and the whole world paid a terrible price. The U.S. will pay that same price.