elections two-kay-six!

[alexr_rwx]

*waves little flags*

Okay, that'll do :) Democrats up in the house, alright. Now just get a spine and a conscience, you feckless twits!

(Florida got another republican governor, but apparently Charlie Crist is a pretty moderate guy, not completely on the party line (and not angrily homophobic probably because he is a gay himself?) and mom seems to think he was an okay dude in highschool?)

Oh. Wait, the polling's not done yet. We'll see about the Senate when the results come all the way in!

Comments

[gtv42.livejournal.com]

Virginia is going to be an interesting place for the next few days.

(then...back to normal.)

[praetorian42.livejournal.com]

I think Virginia is going to fall for Webb without too much trouble. Montana is going to be the real squeaker, though.

Makes me nervous!

But at least we've got control of the house. Even though I'm not a big Pelosi fan, "Speaker Pelosi" sure sounds a hell of a lot better than "Speaker Shitface Hastert".

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

Hey, cheerfully, CNN is reporting a veryslight Tester lead as of 9am...

So even if Montana goes to Burns, then it's 50/50 in the senate, right? Does that mean that Cheney tips the balance?

I think we need to rethink our system, such that at least a few more parties are encouraged... apparently in Germany now, there are four fairly major ones, and then a handfull of communists got elected and messed the numbers up just enough... so that the other parties had to re-shuffle their coalitions.

[laurapatt.livejournal.com]

Why America Doesn't Have More Third Parties: Apathy and Money!

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

Good enough reasons for anything :)

(also, this is pretty interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system )

[gtv42.livejournal.com]

The Green candidate in Virginia almost cost Webb his victory, but we can probably attribute Tester's win in Montana to the Libertarian guy taking away Republican votes.

[praetorian42.livejournal.com]

In America, 3rd parties play a vital role in acting as defection points for voters who don't like the candidate in the party they would normally support, but don't want to defect fully to the opposing party. In 2000, this role was served by Nader, because a lot of Democrats didn't really like Gore (myself included). In 2006, the Libertarian guy received a substantial number of Republican votes because standard Republicans couldn't stand to vote for Burns because he's an asshole, and couldn't stand to vote Democrat.

So, in short, 3rd parties in America play a vital role in elections, but not in lawmaking.

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

Yes. But should voting be just a way to lodge a complaint in a possibly-risky way "oh man, I can't stand this guy, I'ma vote for Ralph Nader" ? A lot of people don't do that, because it's risky! You might accidentally get W elected! Or would it be better to be able to vote with what you really think and get some sort of proportional representation for the minority? There's probably nowhere bigger than a neighborhood in the US where the majority of the population is Libertarian... but spread out across the country, there's probably enough where it would make sense for them to be represented by a Representative or two. And their (misguided) voices go unheard, legislatively speaking.

Of course, entrenched parties wouldn't go out of their way to help set this up. Coke and Pepsi don't want RC Cola to bring more competition to the market.

[reality-calls.livejournal.com]

What we really need is instant runoff voting (http://www.instantrunoff.com/).  That way, everyone's vote counts!  Even if they do vote for a third party.  Of course, because of this, there's no way our current politicians would allow it, but it could get pushed through anyway if enough public support was built around it, like amendment 41 (http://reality-calls.livejournal.com/65650.html) in Colorado.

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