Vote Your Conscience. If You Can.
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Two sociologists and a mathematician recently conducted an experiment that provides an intriguing window into the presidential candidate selection that begins this week. Matthew Salganik, Duncan Watts and Peter Sheridan Dodds had a large group of people rate 48 songs. Based on these ratings, the...
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During the nineties, our state saw an increase in population, due to "The Californians" (who we like to bitch about) migrating to our low tax/low smog state.  Though most of us natives like to bitch about their supposedly shallow, urban sprawl, rude soccer mom, cell phone, and shopping mall ways, they have done something useful and actually turned us backwards hillbilly, gun toting, Republican loving rednecks into a swing state. Now we have to deal with traffic on I-25 being snarled for hours whenever Dick Cheney decides to send his motorcade through rush hour.  The most important issue on the ballot in our state is Amendment 36, which would change our electoral voting from "winner takes all" to a proportional voting system.
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To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, sin is good. Or in this case, at least a little better than investing your conscience.
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Also: E-voting a 'threat' to UK democracy. Read these stories and more from around the Web on News.com Extra.
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Polls run by news sites to gauge public opinion of politicians are turning into partisan tools for political spin doctors. People voting, often repeatedly, in response to e-mails from their favored candidates can skew the results. By Louise Witt.
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Democrats are trying to have it both ways on the Iraq funding vote. It will be interesting to see if they can do that.
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Just about everybody wants to have their say in this presidential election. From evangelical preachers who claim "God is not a Republican or a Democrat" to the anti-abortion Catholics Against Kerry, political advertising by smaller groups, and individuals in some cases, is popping up across the country.
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One of my favorite philosophers, Yogi Berra, once said you can observe a lot by just watching. Between now and Election Day there is some important polling information to watch for to track how the race between
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This is getting monotonous. For the second straight night, a candidate from Boston was looking good after some exit polling, but when the last points/votes were counted, the opponent had the plurality.
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Friday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports on a controversial decision by Missouri's Secretary of State: the state of Missouri will be allowing soldiers stationed overseas to cast ballots via e-mail. Their absentee ballots will be scanned and converted to PDF files, which will be emailed to the Defense Department, printed out, and then faxed to Missouri.  I'm in favor of helping soldiers vote; this is a democracy, everyone should be able to vote. Yet I'm deeply skeptical of this proposal, for two reasons:  The plan depends on e-mailed ballots being printed out and faxed by the Defense Department but does not provide any safeguards against soldiers being sanctioned for how they have voted;  The transmission method is inherently technically insecure
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I was sitting in a bar listening to the presidential &quot;debate&quot;, thinking the same thought I always do when listening to politicians. &nbsp;Why must I choose between two people that I don't like? &nbsp;Since I live in New York, where Democrats usually win the electorate, should I even bother voting? &nbsp;Are my votes even counted? It's always easy to blame the current President for the nation's current problems, and I'll admit that I'm often tempted to blame Bush. &nbsp;But the reality is that he is not to blame. &nbsp;The blame can be placed squarely on us, the citizens, and on our unwillingness to reform an outdated voting system.
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Comment is free: Jonathan Freedland: The lessons of successive US elections are clear: voters want their leaders to appeal to the heart, not just the intellect.
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Opinion Stepping in and taking charge
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VOTER PREDICAMENT: For many people, the question this year isn't just which presidential candidate to vote for, it's when. The race is so unsettled that today's champ can be tomorrow's chump.
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Make sure you're doing the right thing with your donations.
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She may or may not have been acting, but either way, when she sighed in New Hampshire and almost broke out in tears, and said how she feared that our country was heading from a bad place to a much worse place, she came close to expressing how many of us feel. Close but not quite there, because unlike the rest of us, she has a chance of being able to do something about it. The rest of us, Republican or Democrat, are going to have to sit by, and hope (there's Obama's word) that someone else can straighten out the mess, and really means it when they say that's what they want to do. On Twitter, a reminder from some Republican diehards from the south, of the supposed discourse we've had over the last five years about Iraq. "Cut and run" "Micromanage" It's all positioning, appealing to fear. Of course I don't want to cut and run. Nor do I want to micromanage.  Can we macromanage, or do we have to shut up and watch? Our president used the term World War III, he actually spoke the words, as an optional American-started thing. This is the horror that makes us feel like HIllary did that day in New Hampshire. In the sixties, the hardhats used to yell "America love it or leave it" to protestors. They had no clue about the country they were defending. Its strength is that you can love it, disagree with the people who run it, and not leave it. Even better, come Election Day, you can overthrow them, in a bloodless coup, and march down Pennsyvlania Avenue to celebrate. It's all right there in the Constitution. (But you don't get to hang the guy you overthrew.) Watching the Republican debate in Myrtle Beach, SC on Thurs night, the loutness of the Republicans was striking. First, the way they shouted down Ron Paul, who like HIllary, raised questions that most of us have. Why are we in Iraq? They laughed when he asked. Not only didn't any of them answer it, but none of them had the presence to realize that the majority of Americans who wonder the same thing might be offended by their laughter. I certainly was. When did dismissing an opinion you don't like become a proper response for someone seeking our vote? Any one of them could have said "I may not agree with Ron Paul, but please let him speak, and let him have our respect." Any of the others could have closed the deal in that moment. None of them had the guts to do it.  I also was struck by the gungho rhetoric about going to war with Iran. It was like one of those war movies where the young guys rush to sign up wanting to teach the Kaiser a lesson, or the Commies or whoever the demon du jour is. The movies almost always teach that war is hell, by the time the war is actually underway everyone wishes it were over. The way wars start is with spit and vinegar, vim and vigor, talk of pride and honor, but they quickly devolve to misery, futility, death, devastation. My generation learned that early-on, with Vietnam. I don't remember anyone thinking we should be there. I missed being drafted by luck. I thought for sure that my generation would never choose to go to war. I was wrong. But I didn't imagine that, after creating such a quagmire in Iraq, which we still haven't extracted ourselves from, we would be so quick to conjure up another futile war. War with Iran is a crazy, crazy idea. All evidence is that Iran has actually been trying to work with us since 9/11. Even if they weren't, as Ron Paul says, they're a third world country, no threat to us. That the Republicans would contemplate war with Iran, with such colorful gunghoisms (gates of hell, introduce them to their virgins), this is where HIllary hit the nerve. Could we be in for another four years of lunacy? Will those who object be called unpatriotic?  Could a Republican actually win this year? Who thought Bush could actually be re-elected at this time in 2004?  I heard on one of the Sunday talk shows that the reason Republicans don't like Ron Paul is they think he's anti-American. I've listened to him, if you take him at face-value, which I do, his ideas seem radical, unimplementable, but un-American? He's fervently pro-American. He says we should fix our own house, it's falling apart, instead of trying to control others (which doesn't work). How would we feel if our country were occupied by foreign troops? Would we do everything we can to expel them? (Of course.) Why should we expect any other country to be different? I've been saying the same thing since our invasion of Iraq in 2003. Ron Paul has the guts to say the madness is mad. He's the only one in either party who does that, though Obama comes close, and in her New Hampshire moment Hillary did too.  I want someone to win my vote by telling me how good I am, not how bad the other guy is. I see through it, I know the Dems don't want to micromanage, they don't wake up in the morning looking for ways to lose. I know they're not cowards. All this sloganeering has done is make us weary of ourselves. I want to get started fixing things, if not now -- when? That's the nerve that Hillary hit.
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One of the problems with the American Presidency is that it tends to eclipse the entire rest of the government in the public eye. People often seem to almost view the Presidency as if it were the government, rather than just one component of many within the government. In particular, the Presidential election is the only one it is possible to get many people to care about. Voter turnout drops precipitously for those elections where the Presidency is not on the ballot; and on those years where it is, the media coverage for the elections of other offices is almost entirely drowned out in the obsessive coverage of the Presidential campaign. But these other elections are no less important, and in many cases are more so. Despite the neglect they receive these elections are just as critical to our democratic process. By ignoring these elections, our nation is closing its eyes to the bulk of that part of government that affects us on a day to day basis. So what I would like to do is open up the floor and ask: What's happening in the local, non-presidential elections in your area this November?What are the important races (Senators, ballot referendums, etc) and what has been happening in them? What is your perspective on these? Let us know. If your familiarity with local politics is less than complete, Project Vote Smart offers a great deal of information on American elections and is a good place to get started.