Yes because the majority opinion is always right for everyone. Especially minorities.

... Your logic is astounding. The majority is right for the majority. No candidate is going to be right for everyone.

I really do understand your opinion. As I said, I used to feel the same way. My last post was in reference to racial and gender issues, btw. Popular votes could have been used to continue discriminatory practices.

Look at it this way: there's four houses. One person each in three of the houses and five in the forth. A vote is scheduled for what type of fence can be allowed. The three seperate homeowners vote one way and the five in the forth house vote another way and win.

That's an overly simplistic approach and it is still debatable as to which method of voting would be better there and why.

Another concern of mine is that popular vote opens the door far bigger for corruption. At the very worst now at least the corruption is contained in that state. For example California. All of the illegal voting in that state might push that state for one candidate or another but at least the "spoils of victory" are limited to that states electoral votes and not the raw number of illegally cast votes.

Agreed




But the problem is that under the EC system as it exists today, some people'svotes really don't matter. A vote for Bush in California means nothing in the overall scheme of the election because California is vastly a democratic state. Same would go for a democratic voter in Montana. Chances are, my vote for president isn't going to mean a damn thing, and that's not right.

Do you know why the US originally went for the EC? Because the founding fathers flt that the general public asn't smart enough to select the right person for the job. Not cool, especially these days

Of course your vote still means something!

Now about the founding fathers thoughts on why there's an electoral college, I've always heard that but I wonder if anyone as any facts relating to that. Seems to me that pure logistics would have made the system necessary back then.

Wrong. 48 out of 50 states use the "all or nothing" approach, which means that if you vote democaratic in Texas. Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, (safe R states), your vote means literally nothing. Now I commend Colorado for trying to slpit their votes up according to the state's popular vote. It would be the only state I'd agree to vote in.

So... the Electoral College has what to do with Kerry raping W. ?

Fixed.

Kerry was more awesome than could be expected. I was pleasantly surprised.

Wookie: I live in Illinois. Like California, the state has consistantly gone for the Democratic candidate for president for decades. Avenger and I will not affect the election in any way. We've been disenfranchised by the electoral college.

There's an effort on my campus to get out-of-state students to vote in their home states, where they might actually matter. There's people from all over the United States who are voting in Florida because they have a summer home there and they want their vote to matter. It seems to me that the EC leads to more dubious irregularities than a strict popular vote would.

Illinois' politics are dominated by Chicago's large population. The southern two-thirds of the state is either union Democrat or Republican. If not for the electoral college, the geographical majority of the state might have some say in presidential elections.

The electoral college is also biased. People in sparsely populated states are generally Republican, and their votes are more valuable than those in densely populated blue states.

Now that logistical problems are nonexistent, I don't see any reason to continue using a jury-rigged election system.

BAH! Sorry kak, I accidentally clicked edit instead of quote. Anyways, Kak said that him being on a swiftboat shows no indication of him being a good leader for president. Kak also said that if he plays war games, that makes him a good canidate?

I don't like the Republicans, and I don't like the Democrats. I would say that, sadly, George Bush mopped the floor with Kerry.

I say we put them both in the thunderdome and let Tina Turner decide.



I fell asleep before the debate started, so my opinion is irrelevant.

I had to read the transcripts. There were numerous times both leaders failed to support themselves on questions that I felt were really important. They both just said, "I have this planned, and this"...I WANT TO KNOW HOW YOU PLAN ON INSTALLING IT. But I agree with Kerry..the war was supposed to be a last resort and we did NOT excercise all our options. I give Kerry the slight edge, and looks like the rest of a america has too....too bad that doesnt mean anything untill Nov 2nd...

I didn't watch it, but I listened to the whole thing (gotta love radio..heh).

Keep in mind that I didn't actually see any facial expressions, etc..

It seemed to me that Bush was willing to stand up for what he believed in, and wouldn't back down -- he defended his position, and did not blatantly attack Kerry and his record (or lack thereof) as a senator..Kerry kept saying that he'd do stuff better, but never said how -- also the 2 more divisions for the military comment...if 90% of our active duty troops are going to Iraq (or have been there), where is he going to get two more divisions??

Also, I found it somewhat amusing when Kerry stated that sactions should have been put in place with Iran. Bush said that there were sactions already in place; Kerry said that it should've been France, Germany, and Great Britian along with us (imposing the sactions), and how he would've made a coalition for it. Bush then said that it was actually the previous administration that imposed the sactions, and he wasn't even in Washington yet.


Heh..a friend of mine flew Cobras and medivac Hueys in Vietnam -- maybe he should run for president. :p

What are the rules for voting in states?

If I was born in Texas, but live in Washington, do I vote in Texas, or Washington? Or can I choose?
So could I move to some other state, vote there, and move back?

Bush had no facts. he didn't support any of his points with facts. He would just ramble on about how he visited some women from alambama about the death of her son that bush sent to war. He also took like two minutes on a thirty second answer.

Then you really must have been disappointed with Kerry who said blatantly false things over and over not to mention the innumerable times he contradicted himself. Most prominently when he said he has always been consistent on Iraq.



You vote in your state of residency. Generally that will be where you live but there can be exceptions. I vote in Washington state even though I haven't lived there since 1989 because I am in the military and that is where I enlisted.



I understand what you are saying but your vote always counts. Just because someone votes for the guy that didn't win doesn't mean you wasted your time voting. I don't mind that Colorado is considering splitting it's electoral votes but I think the courts should prevent states from doing so unless all states pass legislation to do so.

Mort-Hog: You have to establish residency in a state in order to legally vote there. Different states have different requirements, but they're all pretty lax. It doesn't matter where you're born.

Examples? Retraction?

It will take me awhile to compile them. I'll check later to see if some industrious reporter has done the work for me for a small partial list you could just refer to the several times Bush had to correct him on the facts.

This is actually what I thought was remarkable about the whole thing. Kerry is getting credit for his presentation (which is fine) when what he presented was often so factually inaccurate.

Don't lie.

Bush used plenty of facts.

Kerry did the same kind of emotional play when he mentioned two soldiers home from duty who came up to him and said, "We need you."

If you actually watched the debate, you'd know that Bush never went over the limit by more than two seconds, which happened a total of two times, and Lehrer or Kerry never even had a problem with it.

So stop lying.

Great. The liberal blogs had finished before the debates even started.

Read this. It's amazing how prescient they really were.

Here's some quotes:

After watching the debate and reading this thread, I have come to the conclusion that it wasn't really a debate as some of you have stated. It was more of a pep rally since they were reusing the same arguments that were previously used at their respective conventions. People are adamant, the "debate" probably isn't going to change anyone's opinion. I can't help, but muse how true these "promises" are though.

See, that whole spiel would be far less obnoxious if didn't start every line with FACT

In 1984, Mondale spanked Regan in the first debate, Put him over his knee and spanked him. At one point, Mondale was 17 points over Regan. Do you know what happened? Regan won every state except for Minnestoa. Historically, the debates mean very little.

Mort-Hog: Yeah, it ticked me off too. Still serves the point.

Nubs: You know, I read your paragraph and think "wow, historically the polls mean very little", followed immediately by "wait, it's a single example of ancedotal evidence that means very little".

Yes, I lied about what I perceived.

Okay, but how did this relate to our discussion? What I'm referring to are actual falsehoods he said in the debate. Like when he said resources were shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq and how the Mujahadin are in charge of the search for bin Laden. Tommy Franks, the man who was in charge of the campaigns in both areas, says that's not true.

He said the subway was closed in New York during the Republican Convention. The subway was not closed. The tunnels remained open.

He said $200 billion had been spent in Iraq when the actual figure is closer to $120 billion. Interestingly enough he is on record as saying that more needed to be spent so it's odd that he would criticize that figure anyway. Well, not really for him as we know he has a tendacy to change positions.

There's more but, I don't really have time to list them all now.

I'm not trying to debate the issues here. Just pointing out that Kerry certainly had his share of misleading statements in the debate.

Actually, Kerry was right about that. It wasn't covered a lot by the news, but several subway stations were in fact closed. Obviously not the entire system, but a a couple were.

Wookie, come on now. How can I take you seriously?

Bush:
Reality:

About the subways:

Also, link to a news article or something when you make claims.

Me too, but I don't care....:D

How can I take you seriously when your response to Kerry mis-statements is to post something about Bush and one of your references to subways being closed is from before the convention ever happenned. If the subway was partially shut down he should have said so and not said (or inferred) that the whole thing was.

What references do you want? As soon as I post any you'll say that they're biassed. Is there ever a negative, non opinion piece of Kerry in any of the "un-biased" mainstream media? Probably some but not many. Have you seen any negative reports of Bush's performance in the debate in the mainstream press? How about Kerry's? I ask these questions because I'm trying to find out if you're even open minded enough to recognize any of Kerry's blunders. I was commenting on Bush's blunders and Kerry's strengths during the debate but then again I hold Bush to a higher standard. You just seem to be a case of "my guy's never wrong" and that just doesn't lead to any kind of interesting discussion.

Go figure....

Wookie: Of course Kerry shouldn't have implied the entire subway system was shut down. I was just pointing out that his mistake wasn't significant, because a. part of the subway system was shut down and b. it was a distinct possibility that the entire subway system would be shut down. I'm trying to mitigate my preferred candidate's already minor errors.

The $200 billion figure includes $56 billion that the CBO estimates the war in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost next year and a $25 billion emergency appropriation. Again, it's a mistake, but it's hardly significant.

Wookie, I'll take any mainstream media that isn't an op-ed, or any biased source that uses mainstream media to back its claims. If you have a comparable article to the one I posted, that'd be great.

Hey now, I heard you can make $60,000 donating a testicle. Not a bad deal, I mean you only need one.

How is the $200 billion figure insignificant? a) he said we spent that and that the president now tell us we don't have money for [other things] (which is another lie because the president is telling us anything of the sort, in fact spending is at record levels on everything :() and b) Kerry himself said spending needed to be increased by whatever number of billions it takes to win the war (odd though that he voted against the $87 billion, after voting for it of course).

On a side note, did you hear his explanation to, who was it, Dianne Sawyer (I don't really pay attention to those shows much) about the 'voting for it before voting against it' thing. He said it was one of those mis-statements that can happen. Late in the evening during the primaries. Only thing is it was at about 1PM and after the primaries. I thought that was funny. Maybe he said it another time too!

The "voted for it before he voted against it" is because he originally supported it on the condition that it would be funded by rolling back tax cuts. When it wasn't done like that, he no longer supported it.

So he said. At least one of the times that is.

Nice insinuation. Are you going to back it up with something, or are you just unwilling to be honest?
He said that at the same time he said the "I voted before it before I voted against it" thing. He did not say it after the fact.

You know, it's not that I'm being dishonest but I'll grant you one thing. I think I was jumbling in my mind his inconsitencies with his vote (the fact that he said someone who would vote against it wouldn't be qualified for the presidency and that he thought more should be spent) with his weak and rarely told explanation of why he actually voted against it. Couple that with the recent interview I cited (where he said that he was tired, late at night during the primaries when it was actually 1PM in the afternoon after the primaries) and you can see that he has generally been inconsistent but maybe not specifically on the reasoning he gave for voting against the bill.

Some interesting links:
DNC video and RNC video offering an interesting contrast on each sides take of the debate. Discuss.

An AP story dealing with stretched facts in the debate on both sides. Pretty even handed but a little short.

Did Kerry cheat in the debate? It appears so. Read the article and watch the clip. Discuss.