Bernie is winning the nomination race and here's whyFollow

Short list of Timelord's problems:
Zoophilia
Overconfidence
Dickish tendencies
Invasive snooping
Affluenza
Cowardice

Edited, May 11th 2016 5:50pm by Kavekkk

TLW is a furry?

No, it means there is no reason to use state/county boundaries in a national election.

Well, we don't use county boundaries (except administratively) and the reason for using state boundaries is of course the electoral college.

There's also an obvious benefit to breaking it up into smaller groups like counties if you have to do a recount.

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

But District Reps aren't national offices, they're regional offices within the Federal (or state) government.

I guess I just fail to understand your issue but that's fine.

Well, lots of people don't like the EC so that's nothing weird. He has a larger point to it though that I'm not understanding.

Out of his list of badness though, caucuses are the one thing that could be easily changed by the parties without remaking the political system or passing difficult legislation.

I don't think it's about shady or nefarious in some way. I think that a caucus tends to favor those who are more time invested in their party and/or the political process in general, while primaries tend to favor the drive by voters. If you want your process more influenced by the flash in the pan of the moment, or the candidate with the better mass advertising, then you'll prefer primaries. If you want it to be more influenced by the folks who take the time to attend local party meetings, get involved in their local politics, etc, then you'll tend to prefer caucuses. I suppose it really depends on how you view the role of a party, and how that party should choose its representatives. Remember, this isn't a general election, so the concept that the public as a whole has some kind of "right" to influence the outcome is simply flawed.

Of course, there's also the cost issue, which is more often what affects this decision. To hold a state wide primary, with all the "official" election bits that entails, the state has to decide to spend money on that. And voters might not be so interested in their tax dollars going to pay for a political party's primary. If I'm one of the roughly 3/4ths of the voting eligible public who doesn't bother to vote in any party primary, I might not be so interested in paying for it. Never underestimate the laziness of most Americans when it comes to their politics.

Um... But the one bit I do find amusing is the disconnect between how these two systems are viewed depending on which party you are in. The GOP caucuses are viewed as a bastion of the establishment because they've tended to go heavily for folks like Cruz/Rubio/Kasich, and not for Trump. But the Dem caucuses are the opposite. That's where Sanders is doing well, and Clinton not as well. I think it's less about establishment versus outsider, and more about what the most grass roots activists in the party in each state are interested in. And on the Dem side, they don't like Clinton and Sanders appeals to them, while on the GOP side, they don't like Trump at all (and pretty much anyone else appeals to them for that reason). So it's not really a one size fits all issue. They are different processes, which will logically generate different results.

Edited, May 13th 2016 3:51pm by gbaji

Eh. I think occasionally, that happens. but mostly it's the same group of retirees you see gathering at city council meetings, and town hall meetings, and PTA meetings (even though they don't have kids in the school and haven't for decades), and taking your ballot at the polling place on election day.

College kids also tend to be unwilling to spend more than an hour or two doing anything before they get bored and move on. It's hard enough to get them to bother to wait in line just to vote, much less hang out for 4-5 hours. But yeah, I suppose we could drop the Paulites and SanderBros in that list if you want.



Exactly. Er... Or not. Er... Uh... what position am I supposed to have this time around based on who's benefited this time around? Yeah. That's kinda the point. People tend to support or oppose a given method of selecting <whatever> based not on whether said method is objectively better, or more fair, or whatever, but based on whether it produced results they agree with. Which I kinda see as "working as intended". At the end of the day, as long as each state's rules and methodology are clearly available for all sides, any method they use is "fair". And frankly, I kinda like that they vary from one state to the other. If for no other reason than it does give us some insight into why one candidate might do better under one method versus another. If all states used the exact same process, the same candidate type bias would be present based on the method chosen. We would just have a harder time seeing it.

So... Not really a problem IMO.

I'll believe it when I see it. If She takes both Kentucky and Oregon, going into Super Sayain Tuesday, that would be a major blow. That's especially true given that she'll probably win Puerto Rico.

I didn't even know what a caucus was in 2008, so I will say no. I agree with your first comment, but not everything is "subjective". There are some objectively bad practices, and a caucus is one of them.

And absentee ballots cover just about all the edge cases.

But Nevada showed us just how much real conservatives supported Trump.