h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Y'all so cute having so few parties to vote for

But I have to admit, it seems you vote for so many other things than we do... Sherrifs, really?

Sometimes even 'Dog Catcher' (animal control officer) it is common to say 'I wouldn't even vote for "X" as dog catcher'

F S

Interesting people, you USAians
Why on earth vote for dog catchers? How many levels of public jobs do you actually elect people for?

We do have other parties. On my ballot I saw several green party candidates, a few libertarians and an independent. Suffice it to say, a green party candidate has about as much chance of winning an office against a republican as Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel.

Yes, I heard of other parties, maybe one or two, but I had forgotten that you can run as independent too...
Over here, you don't hear about much else than Democrats and Republicans though.

Who are you calling a USAia... oh, yeah

My very first vote after turning 18 was the original Common Market refererendum (did I put too many letters in that?), so it was a straight yes or no - easy peasy. The first election I voted in would only have had the three main parties - Labour, Conservative and Liberal - plus maybe one or two fringe candidates.

I remember one called the People and Agrarian Party, led by a bloke called Ben Percy-Davis. At the outset they sound quite pleasant with a name like that - perhaps a fledgling green/ecology party, and standing for the people rather than the bosses. But they were actually rather right wing. I don't remember too much about their policies other than they were against industrialisation and wanted everyone to live off the land (so far, so Diggers), but they were also against immigration. Bit of a local character was Ben. I think his daughter Vanessa was involved too. It looks like the National Records Office has some of their material but it's not digitised so you can't look at it online.

There were always a few fringe candidates like that in UK elections, plus the occasional independent, and the Monster Raving Loony Party of course And then Thatcher increased the candidate deposit from whatever low number it was at the time, to a monkey in order to deter them

But this idea of voting for so many local officials and positions and propositions all at the same time has my head spinning

Divide and rule, I calls it

Or rather, confuse and rule.

So many small posts to elect, to keep you from losing track on the important ones?
Congratulations on the Naturalisation, so to speak , by the way!

Partly, but the small posts are equally as important - grass roots and all that, in that if you can control the small you can influence (and perhaps eventually control) the large, particularly if the 'small' posts are within the school system and afford the power to control what kids learn.

Much has been made in the news leading up to this election that the Democrats usually don't fare so well in the mid-terms. Their supporters simply don't turn out for them as well as the Republican voters do. I haven't discovered yet exactly why that is yet, other than perhaps that Republican voters are generally better-educated and more well-off and therefore better-informed and more energised to participate, whereas the relatively less well-off and educated, and relatively downtrodden working class Democrat voter just can't be arsed because they feel their vote won't make a difference anyway.

How wrong they are.

Not to mention the attempts by, it has to be said, overwhelmingly Republican-controlled state legislatures to introduce voter ID laws and regulations that make it harder to vote, particularly if you're of a certain demographic. A generally Democrat one.

One thing that I've said drives votes down tremendously is the media habit of incessant reporting of poles predicting winners in the weeks leading up to the actual vote. They have completely written off the Dems chances for our state. If you were a normally unlikely voter and you keep hearing that your preferred candidate doesn't stand a chance, it must deter your likelihood to vote. This is especially true for those who feel marginalized in our society as it is, minorities and the working class and poor.

No one wants to "waste their vote". This also keeps third party candidates down as well.

I do wish they would make some major changes to our voting system. I would like to see an Alternative Vote (Instant Run-off vote) used instead of our current system. I'd also like to ditch the Electoral College. Redistricting should NOT be handled by the party in office. As Lewis Black elegantly put it, "Elected officials shouldn't get to choose who gets to choose elected officials!" (Specifically he's referring to voter suppression but gerrymandering is a bigger problem. Here's his video for anyone interested. http://www.aclu.org/voting-rights/lewis-black-says-f-voter-suppression [NSFW(ish): Language]) Something needs to be done to reform campaign financing. It absolutely intolerable that those in congress spend more of their time fund raising than legislating. And now that the SCotUS has made it clear that they only consider blatant quid pro quo to be corruption, the influence peddlers have carte blanche in Washington. I'd like to see some way to either completely end all direct contributions to candidates campaigns, or some way to mitigate them. One idea I had was that if we have to allow contributions, then take half of every contribution to a candidate and put it into a general fund for all other candidates in that race.

Anyway, before I get enraged so early in the morning, I'll just note that I voted Friday (I'm sure all my choices were "wasted votes").

I've, so far, been blissfully free of any campaign visits or phone calls, the latter, thankfully, because putting your phone number on the application is optional and I don't have a landline, and I don't see any campaign ads because I don't have a television. If anyone does come knocking at my door, whichever side they're from, I shan't say whether they have my vote because I'm old-fashioned enough to remember that it's a secret ballot and want to keep it that way. So you lot know more about my voting than they will

OTOH: people who don't vote because "my vote won't count" could quite possibly be in the majority of voters and, frankly, I usually want to get my slapping hand to them.

Voting is a hard won (very very hard won) right. A responsibility. And it should be treated as such. If the polls show the Democrats trailing, anyone who supports them should be out their with their ballot paper ready to cast their vote.

I find that attitude completely and utter baffling. And more than annoying.

Unless anyone can shed any light on why they think it's ok? (that it happens isn't in dispute)

I should also note that Texas rates at the bottom of the list for voter turnout. Even during the last presidential election fewer than half of voters turned out. In 2011 with a ballot with 10 state amendments but no major offices listed, turnout was at 5.37%.

Here's more info on why Texas has such low turnouts, especially among minorities and poor communities. http://www.texasobserver.org/why-dont-texans-vote/

That's not so different to the way local council elections used to be (perhaps still are in some places) in Britain. It wasn't until Thatcher came along that I started voting for my local council officials because, before then, who ran the local council was largely a black hole of interest for most people. I couldn't have told you who any of them were in my town nor what party they represented (because being in an area with a Conservative MP doesn't always translate to automatically having Conservative council).

That all changed in the 1980s when local politics became much more interesting, at least in the big cities and particularly in London, with the rise of what was then called the loony left. The people wanted to see crazy things happening, like equality of opportunity for everyone, no matter what their circumstances. Madness. Utter madness.

That was sarcasm, btw, although with a tinge of truth. Local councils usually advertised openings in the jobs section of Time Out and City Limits (City Limits... I wish I still had some old copies of that ). It started off as "We are an equal opportunities employer", then "We are an equal opportunities employer and don't discriminate on grounds of race or gender". From that point it was off to the races, and left-leaning local authorities were falling over themselves trying to outdo each other in the list of people they didn't discriminate against - "We are an equal opportunities employer and don't discriminate on grounds of race, gender, disability, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, prison record..." You get the idea.

Any road up.

Ken Livingstone and the GLC made it even more high profile, to the point where Thatcher could only silence him and his supporters by abolishing the thing. Which is interesting, because, if I remember rightly, and I'll have to consult my 'London for Beginners' (and I wish there was a better image of it than this online http://thumbs2.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mx7zczHtsMcZRCIVb4qIVdw.jpg ) to confirm this, the forerunner of the GLC - the London County Council - was an attempted gerrymander by conservatives in the late 19th century which backfired when Londoners turned it red. So when they had they chance they attempted another gerrymander by expanding the LCC into the bluer suburbs to grab more conservative voters, and calling it the Greater London Council. Which also backfired as it very quickly turned red.

So Thatcher got rid of it by dint of her massive parliamentary majority after the Falklands conflict

And we then elected Ken as first Mayor thereby p***** them off some more.
Quite how the blond idiot got in I still don't know, but I suspect a tory gerrymander.

And what were the opening words of Ken's victory speech after becoming the first elected Mayor of London?

"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted 14 years ago..."

I've just downloaded a PDF of the ballot paper (screen) I'll see when I vote. There are 50 positions/people/propositions over four pages

Be careful before you print it out. I printed mine and it somehow grew to over 30 pages. It had like maybe two offices per page.

I don't plan to print it, just look at the names and try to figure out which ones to vote for before I go there. I must say, it's very useful being able to see it like that in advance.

Yeah, I didn't need to print mine either. I'm not a person who thinks straight ticket voting should even be an option, but I could see a use for straight ticket vote elimination. It shouldn't be too hard to guess that I voted for not a single (R). This means that I did not vote for some unopposed judges.