Once again you explain how it is without an explanation of why it is how it is.

The State of Maine has set the rules, Don. If you continually need the basic shit spoon-fed to you like a toddler, don't be surprised if people naturally equate your oft demonstrated ignorance with Trump-level stupidity.

When it comes to run-off elections or rank choice voting the choice for citizens that do not want either of two candidates in office is to vote for a candidate that you do not want to vote for, to not vote in the run-off or for all rounds/choices of rank choice voting and/or to not have your vote counted in the total to achieve a majority.

Yes, Don, our choices as defined by the rules of our local, state, and federal government entities are generally always limited and defined by predetermined rules. If you don't believe me, please try to name a "right" that you have bestowed by the United States Constitution or the Constitution of the state in which you reside that is an unlimited right.

What is the justification for allowing the votes to be cast and/or not counting those votes?

The predetermined rules require no "justification."

I do not claim that I know what all voters are thinking or what motivates them to vote how they vote. I do know that I usually find both CMP candidates unsuitable for office.

Yes, you do so frequently, and your incessant whining grievances assumes everyone shares your feelings. Gag.

I also know that the First Amendment guarantees my right to free speech whether anyone else agrees with me or not.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

No, Don, the First Amendment actually does not do all that. If you believe it gives you an unlimited right to "free speech" in the voting booth, then you're seemingly woefully (and likely willfully) uninformed. :)

How many times and in how many different ways do you need it explained to you that there is no such thing as a "right" that doesn't have limitations attached to that right? You have no "right" to a scintilla of the shit that you keep whining like a toddler that "somebody" owes you. None. Not CW, not the State of Maine (you don't live there anyway), and nobody on this board owes you a damn thing. Let that finally sink in.

You (nothing personal) have no "rights" that are not limited in some way or another by promulgated rules that are generally set forth in writing.

You have claimed that my right to free speech should be limited in the most important place where free speech can be exercised- the voting booth.

I'm not the State of Maine nor do I live there either, and I have done no such thing of the sort whatsoever.

In order to limit my free speech you must demonstrate that it will cause harm for me to exercise my right to free speech. So again, why should my vote not be counted?

No, Don, I mustn't demonstrate a damn thing. The voting rules are predetermined by the representatives of the State of Maine. If you don't follow those rules for casting a "qualified vote," Don, then your vote will be a "disqualified vote" and will not be counted.

Whining incessantly about the "injustice" of it all changes not a damn thing. Simple. Don't like the rules? Attempt to change them.

What have you accomplished by whining about Ralph Nader and CW having a responsibility to shill for you? What does encouraging people not to cast a qualified vote accomplish? What was accomplished by voting in numbers too big to ignore and by formulating plans to transport eligible voters to the polls? We collectively flipped TX-32 and were only 2.6% away from defeating Ted Cruz, and that is something you can build on.

Regardless the avenue you choose, please let it finally sink in that attempting to change anything via choosing to abstain from voting or by casting a disqualified vote that does not get counted is about the most ignorant path one could choose. :)

As the Wizard of Oz said (not an exact quote) the people that go to college aren't any smarter than people that don't- they just have a piece a paper that says they are.

I would wager it surprises no one that Don Harris uses a fictional fairy tale in a flailing attempt to make a point about education. Oh, irony. Don believes he has deftly illustrated a point about education when he has... in point of fact... revealed himself to be a gullible rube of the highest order. Yes, I can explain.

Don has fallen for the con at the end of the fairly tale. I can only surmise that due to Don's lack of education, it was totally lost on him that Oz was an inveterate huckster and that this fact about "The Wizard" didn't change in the least when the curtain was opened and he was exposed... quite the contrary. Like the classic "collapsed" narcissist, the "Wizard" then used the heroes' empathy to persuade them that he deserves their pity for being unable to give them what he promised. He tells the gullible Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion that they already have the qualities they seek, but this is simply more nonsensical con artistry, Don, which you would likely know if you had an education worth two shits. The "Wizard" ultimately resorts to fraud yet again via handing out placebos that do absolutely nothing to change anything except the perception of the gullible morons.

Handing the Scarecrow a piece of paper didn't give him the education he never got. If it had done that, the straw man would have easily recognized the paper he was handed was nothing more than a piece of paper and he remained uneducated... ditto the "heart" for the Tin Man who still had no heart and the medal for the sniveling cowardly lion.

Setting aside fairly tales, you can watch this "Oz" scenario play out near daily with Trump and his sycophants on a regular basis. #Sad

We have more money and more brains and better houses and apartments and nicer boats. We are smarter than they are. They say the elite. We are the elite. You are the elite. ~ Donald Trump rallying the gullible minions, June 27, 2018

i don't care about the big cake parties, and never did. if it's possible for me to say so without seeming pompous, i think you really might benefit from a university education..

Yes... exactly this! Don keeps incessantly factoring in his ridiculous belief that either every voter believes his "lesser of two evil" theory and/or that anyone who disagrees with said nonsensical notion of his is doing so because they are biased by Party. It's ridiculous on its face, particularly when the majority of voters do not belong to a Party and unequivocally do not believe a vote for one Party is a vote for Satan and a vote for the other Party is a vote for Hitler. It's laughable on its face and why Don gets it wrong. Every. Single. Time.

It is my experience that the only people who tout and/or emphasize the superiority of a lack of higher education are those who do not possess one.

If people like Don pushing a political agenda can con the uneducated masses into believing that they're "the smart ones," they can move morons to vote against their own best interests time after time; I'm talking about Don Trump, of course, and the GOP and con artists like Trump who increasingly rely on stupidity and conspiracy theory nonsense... among many other things... in order to influence voters.

As far as Don Harris is concerned, he keeps whining incessantly about everyone else's political agenda while failing to recognize his own, and that makes him no better than the Party system he vilifies for the exact same reason. Too bad he's too ignorant to recognize it... likely due to the fact that self-awareness generally comes with education and looking inward, taking responsibility for your own actions and/or inaction rather than looking outward and blaming everyone else for your own choices or lack thereof. :)

It doesn't matter if it is in a run off election or done by rank choice voting. That is not a choice.

That is blackmail. It is forcing the lesser of two evils choice on people that want to vote against both evils.

Poor Don. No matter how many times I or anyone else attempts to explain this extraordinarily simple concept to you, you seem irretrievably incapable of understanding the concept that you can't read the minds of every voter. The glaring flaw in your every post is that you are the authority on what all voters believe. You're not, Don. All voters do not believe the same ridiculous and rote utter nonsensical bullshit that you keep spewing on cue like an unaccomplished churl who genuinely seems to believe he possesses psionic powers of deduction.

Choosing to not choose a candidate in a head-to-head contest or not to choose secondary candidates in a ranked choice voting system is still your choice "not to choose" and thus allow the aggregate of "qualified votes"... you know, the opposite of "disqualified votes"... that your constituents make to elect the representative.

It's not a complicated system, Don. In the majority of states in America, in order for a write-in vote to be tabulated, a registered voter must cast a ballot for a "qualified candidate." In every state, they only count the actual votes cast by registered voters for qualified candidates, and it is genuinely the exception that write-in votes are counted and no one gives two shits about votes that aren't cast for qualified candidates because you can't count a "no vote" regardless of how many times disingenuous and uninformed people like yourself insist that you can. :)

Casting your vote should be as effortless as phoning for a pizza, if it isn't, the easily distracted gen-xers will just say, 'bugger this for a lark, let's order a pizza.'

I know I am late to the party on this subject and playing catchup, but I would just like to point out that -- in my opinion -- this would indubitably qualify as votes for pie. :)

i don't care about the big cake parties, and never did. if it's possible for me to say so without seeming pompous, i think you really might benefit from a university education..

if i'm understanding you correctly now, i'm not opposed to any part of your plan except leaving the office vacant. for all intents and purposes that matter to me, adding first plus second choices (instead of transferring second choices from losing candidates) is just as good as what's already being done. of course it first has to be tested on a smaller scale in case of unintended side-effects, but that system, which was one of those proposed by the article in the link i sent you, seems okay.

if your idea stopped there and said that if after all the back-up choices are added there's still no majority, then the biggest plurality wins, then i'd say sure, why not. however, you seem to have yet again made the perfect the enemy of the good, not to mention conflating the different dimensions of public opinion.

regarding the latter, just because the direction of most people's opinions regarding such a system may be positive, doesn't necessarily mean people care all that much about one run-off system versus the other. regarding the former, there's the additional (in my view superfluous) special elections at taxpayer expense, meanwhile leaving the public with no representation, and that situation is quite objectionable. if by some chance significant segments the public are really so stuck on their first choices that nobody wants to let anyone else be their back-up, allowing an ongoing "nobody wins" outcome is a recipe for public calamity.

JL

nobody's afraid of your ideas, but feel free to continue thinking that if it brings you comfort. of course your vote counts, but now you're getting closer. other people's votes count more than your vote, because there are more of them than there are of you. that's the main reason why people are supposed to vote in the first place, to decide who gets their way and who has to wait until next time. that's what democracy IS.

JL

1. without a government, society would cease to function, and life as we know it would likely end.

2. without an effective system for choosing members of government, there would cease to be one, and society would cease to function, ending life as we know it.

3. other systems than plurality and run-off either are very complicated, untried, unconstitutional, or all of the above, while in almost all cases still yielding the exact same results. a few new systems might be feasible given some pilot testing on a small scale, but that's not what you've suggested.

4. the system you've proposed is to hold endless re-votes until someone wins a majority, and if nobody wins a majority, have government jobs remain vacant. most people, even if they're not thrilled with the options available, would not prefer to be represented by nobody.

http://theconversation.com/beyond-instant-runoff-a-better-way-to-conduct-multi-candidate-elections-74973

don, your argument is essentially, "why are the cleveland browns not allowed to play in the super bowl, and why are browns fans forced to root for the eagles or patriots?" that's an insane argument because of course the browns are allowed to play in the super bowl, and of course their fans may cheer for them to do so. they have the same opportunity as every other team. in order to make the final, first they have to win. it's a losing team and a losing argument.

https://i.gifer.com/Cbi0.gif

Saboot-er.... Sabootage.

The vowel raising of the Titanic.

his political strategy is to solicit endlessly and lash out aimlessly at any idea that's better than his. it sounds to me like don harbors some kind of hateful grudge against pie. :D

It sounded t'me like he harbored some kinda hateful grudge against the Soggy Bottom Boys
~o brother where art thou

Still, your reaction to Instant Runoff Voting - Main Style is revealing. Your approach to politics is basically to throw your shoe into the election machinery and thus gum it up. Sabot - er.

Every vote in Maine is counted at least once. After the first count, votes are transferred according to each voter's ranking instructions. If the voter doesn't name a second rank choice, their vote is never transferred. That is the voter's tactical choice or perhaps their tactical miscalculation.

If your political strategy is entirely based on being a spoiler who drags out elections with a wave of runoffs, you are shit out o' luck.

Because a President controls a separate branch of the government, his (or her) election is necessarily national. It's a winner-take-all election, which means that, more often than not, it's a two-person choice in the end. That's what fostered the two-party system, not some plot from a National Treasure sequel.

As for ranked-choice voting, the problem there is that the only power that it provides to third parties is before the election is held, because the political value of an endorsement would diminish dramatically once all of the votes are cast. Runoffs might actually increase the value of third parties, as they can then negotiate some value for a later endorsement and/or assistance.

Historically, viable third party candidates will draw off votes from one or the other major party in national elections. Many folks believe with good reason that we have third parties to thank for Woodrow Wilson, Bill Clinton, and George Bush (Jr.).

Food for thought, but hardly paradigm altering observations. I suspect everyone here has a pile of shit they'd like to see change. Change is a knuckle dragger though, so resolve would be the first quality to assume as agents of change.

LL&P

Oh, c'mon now, when was the last time that Louie Gohmert was 'charming'? AOC charms effortlessly.

Moreover, as a freshman congresswoman she is just one of 435 voices that make up the cacophony of that august chamber - hardly a threat to anyone's agenda. Once she settles in, her policy proscriptions will become more programmatic and less radical over time - just as Bernie's did.

You need to make a mental distinction between what Bernie said on the campaign trail in 2016, and the role that he actually plays in the Senate to fully grasp this - most of the policies he advocated for at the stump were pie-in-the-sky stuff that would never see the light of day on the Senate floor, much less be enacted into law in a Congress operating under regular order. Most of the time, he votes the same as his Democratic colleagues.

As AOC will. You can count on it. And we can use every vote that we can get.

It's actually a small contingent of 'moderate' congressmen that are making life for Pelosi less confortable - Tim Ryan and his gang of eight (or nine or ten, I forget), who'd promised to throw Pelosi under the bus in return for their seats, and are now trying hard now to make themselves not look like total jerks for doing so, to the point of possibly endorsing an even MORE liberal candidate for Speaker in the process. Ugh.

Remember this: Democrats fight, Republicans scheme.

Whatever grief Democrats might suffer at the hands of the progressive caucus pales in comparison to the small pointy knives that Republicans have aimed at each others' backs all the time, which were unsheathed continuously throughout the terms of Paul Ryan and Boehner. Pelosi, thank goodness, can count on a caucus both more civilized and much less bloodthirsty.

where you've written plurality i think you meant majority. also, the systems in australia and maine are identical, they just have different names.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/election-political-science/Plurality-and-majority-systems#ref416858

JL

Here's examples of what AOC has said:

“It doesn’t mean you get everything tomorrow. As much as I would love that, I would love to get inaugurated January 3rd [and] January 4th we are signing health care, we’re signing this,” she added.

So she's going to be inaugurated and will be signing bills into law.

“If we work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress — uh, rather, all three chambers of government: the presidency, the Senate, and the House.”

Perhaps you could send her a booklet, Chris, that explains the difference between chambers and branches and how many there are of each.

Apparently those of us who criticize her are jealous of her looks judging by this quote:

"Like, what do you do with young brown women who are intelligent and whose faces are symmetrical? You paint them as a narrative.”

She idolizes the Independent, Bernie Sanders (no Chris, he is emphatically NOT a Democrat - he only exploits the party name in primaries and when they're over, immediately renounces the affiliation). She said:

“I want to be Bernie Sanders"

Like him, she isn't a Democrat either. Like Sanders, she exploited the party to give herself a better chance of being elected.

Now she's been elected she should have followed him and declared herself a Sanders independent or justice revolutionary or socialist or whatever the berners are calling themselves these days.

But she didn't and I'm guessing that's because Bernie wants her in the Democratic Party. Let's see how much trouble she manages to cause. She certainly loves the spotlight - and the media adores her - so she has that advantage over all the real Democrats and it will be educational to see how, with Bernie's mentoring, she uses it.

In AOC, the Democratic Party are now lumbered with their own Louie Gohmert. Heaven help us.

We do not find it complicated. To illustrate this I have only to look at Australian voters. Australia (unfortunately) has its share of total idiots but none of them have any problem casting their votes (more's the pity) and correctly using the preferential system. I do not believe that American idiots are more stupid than their Australian counterparts.

Thankfully we do not call it "ranked choice" - that sounds like you're asking the voter to choose the rankest person on the ballot - ugh!

We don't call it instant run-off either because we don't, and never have had, run-off elections so the concept isn't in our vernacular. I don't know if calling it this is more confusing or not - certainly Don Harris is totally (and hilariously) off-track without managing to get right a single aspect of the system!

Don - even I know that a run-off race in American politics is exclusively between the top two contenders and most times that turns out to be the nominees of the two major parties. If you wanted to vote for a third party in a run-off race, you're shit out of luck because there won't be any on the ballot. If you didn't want to vote for either of the major parties then presumably you'd stay at home.

The preferential system makes not one iota difference to this. If you don't want to vote for either major party, you don't have to. You can vote for any or all of the independents and third parties on your ballot. If the winner is not a candidate you voted for then you are in the minority of voters in your electorate. The majority get someone they did vote for.

I read your blog yesterday, Chris, and yu really did make a complete dog's breakfast of your explanation of preferential voting! No wonder Don is so confused - he's all hung up because you inferred that ballots for those with the least votes are discarded. They aren't. The second preference on those ballots are then counted - i.e. they get counted a second time and sometimes a third time. But no vote is ever discarded. The ballot for those who voted for only one person are not tossed. They remain in the pile allocated for that candidate and the vote count for that person remains the same.

It is a very simple system in practice. I was involved in ballot counting at our last state election and I can assure you it's child's play.

No relation to Orcas.

" You can choose from phantom fears
And kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose free will"

TP5...who cares. They, as a group, take away people's breathing rights, what's a cup of coffee to that? I'm guessing the NRA can no longer surreptitiously receive money from Russia, plus...Ollie North will want a pile of cash to heave himself, once again, on his sword for a greater GOP cause.

LL&P

It's very simple. Your own purity standard means that if there is no small money candidate on the ballot than your standard says you can't vote for anybody on the ballot. I guess you could write in some presumed small money candidate, but the practical effect of that is your write in candidate will lose and you have for practical purposes self-disenfranchised yourself. Another way to put it is you've F-ed yourself in the name of purity.

What if a small money Neo Nazi is running against a big money non Nazi? Does the pledge mean you must vote for the Neo Nazi? Or are pledge takers at least allowed to disenfranchise themseves and stay home?

Details Don. You need to address them...but not here. Get you own web site house in working order.

The best part of the Five Days of Fury article is the photo of those women protesting in front of the Big Baby "Hot Air" Balloon. Those are the most fashionably dressed and color coordinated demonstrators I have ever seen!

TAKE BIG MONEY
LOSE OUR VOTES

You seem pretty much OK with self suppression as a political tactic. As long as it's your idea.

So you are calling for the end of primary elections to thin the field of candidates now, is that it?

You confuse your desire to protest against the current election process with exercising your right to vote. You seem to believe that you should be able to make a referendum out of an election to fill an elected position, and that is NOT how it works! You do not get to vote to not fill an elected position just because the current candidates do not meet up to your standards!

Of the major parties involved in the presser ritual, the President gets the biggest benefit. All Presidents, with the possible exception of Lyndon Johnson, love the these slow pitch events. Make that T-ball events, that's the level of challenge in this game.

Here's the payoff matrix:

The public: those that bother to watch the YouTube snippets gets mild to moderate political stimulation and move on to something else.

So, Trump's bitching and moaning is just Crocodile Jeers. The amazing part to me is that he's giving holding fewer of these events as his Presidency drags on and on and on..... I guess he's just too busy doing - uh, something.

It's time to take this old ink stained news pooch out into a secluded place inside The Beltway and put it out of its misery. THAT would really piss Trump off. Be careful what you wish for, Donny Boy.

That's ridiculous, sorry. The VOTER has the choice of filling out all the rounds or not. So any "voter suppression" is self-induced. I mean, that is their right -- they can choose to vote or not -- but if they exercise it, then they have to abide by the consequences.

If a traditional runoff happened, and the voters who didn't want to vote for one of the two finalists stayed home and didn't vote, is that "voter suppression"? No, it isn't. It's a choice, made by the voter.

Just as not filling out the full RCV ballot is a choice. They themselves have taken themselves out of the process, by choice.

What you're arguing is equivalent to saying that in a traditional runoff election, we go back and count some of the votes from the first election in the runoff total. Which is why I say you're being ridiculous. Only the voters who choose to participate in a runoff (instant or traditional) get to have their votes counted. It's a fairly simple concept, really.

"If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice."
-Rush (... um... "Spirit of the Radio" maybe?)

-CW

JL

Not true, tsunamis begin as earthquakes, not ripples!

Forgot to mention in the text above, but there will be no FTP column next week, for Thanksgiving weekend. I will be watching football, instead.

:-)

-CW

Actually, it's:

Lose 1,000 seats in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 -- and then regain 300 of them in 2018.

Looking a little better, now?

:-)

-CW

Did to me too, until the real numbers came in. Tsunamis begin as ripples, you know.

I think another big loser this week was Putin, who saw his puppet-president further restrained, saw Brexit on the verge of collapse, and saw European leaders talking openly about taking more responsibility for their own collective defense.

By all accounts Macron and Merkel provided a united front against Putin's mischief this week, and it's increasingly obvious that the future of Europe rests squarely on their shoulders. Trump's bad fortune here at home have conversely improved their positions considerably, but as usual, help from Americans will come later than European Democrats would have hoped.

Sounds more like a ripple than a wave, but hey, dont get discouraged, keep on keeping on!!!