Prediction time: Who do you think wins and electoral vote count

[Taro T]

You're assuming that fraud is inevitable. How is it any less fraudulant to have someone win because the fraudulant vote in one state resulted in a candidate winning it's electoral votes, and therefore reaching 270 in a close election?

 

And a candidate who represented the views of the less populated states (i.e. agriculture, rural values) could get support across the multiple states to offset the urban voters, which plays into the other issue of a 3rd party candidate, who could win a 3-way race with a broad cross-country alliance of rural voters.

Fraud, under the current set up, IS inevitable - on all sides. Widespread fraud isn't inevitable.

 

And it ISN'T any less fraudulent or more fraudulent to win by stealing a single state's votes rather than the entire nation's votes. But it is FAR easier to turn the election when you have a particular city or cities in your pocket and you just have to beat the other guy in sum total. There is currently little to no reason for the Republicans to inflate Dallas' totals or for the Democrats to inflate Chicago's. In a national total vote election each side has a HUGE incentive to push it's advantage in those spots.

 

You also have the issue of people with residences in multiple states voting multiple times, which you already have to an extent, but the incentive to do it isn't as great when you live in say NY and Fla when you can only influence those 2 states. There is no reason to waste your time voting a 2nd time in NY when NY is going to go by more than 2MM votes for the Democrat. There is a point to voting twice when casting that NY vote isn't strictly an exercise in poor citizenship.

 

And the sort of fraud that Acorn and others are accused of becomes that much more important when someone voting 40+ times doesn't only effect the results of one state. The rewards of committing fraud are increased under a nationwide popular election.

 

And your argument that a 3rd party candidate could do better by carrying rural voters in a nationwide popular election doesn't make sense. As it currently stands, that 3rd party candidate that is so appealing to voters to somehow compete w/ a candidate that has mass appeal to urban centers would have less chance of winning in that system. If that 3rd party candidate is that popular under the current system, he only needs to appeal to 50+% of the voters in the rural states to take their electoral votes. He'd need to take almost all their votes and a lot in rural areas of other states to offset the urban candidate's advantage in a popular vote election.

[KD in CA]

Bill in NYC and I are not exactly always on the same page, as has been well-covered on this board. We reached that conclusion about you independently (not even sure how he arrived there).

 

I'll stop piling on so as not to turn this into a campaign, but you need to take a hard look at yourself on race.

 

At least Joe is consistent in his hypocrisy. He used racism when it suited him during the primaries and later claimed otherwise, and yet his angry rebuke against 'sexist' politics at that time suddenly disappeared during the general election, as he joked about Sarah Palin's snatch.

 

What a classy guy.