U.S. Election Day

[Phailhammer]

It's referring to asylum seekers, or "boat people", a rather contentious issue over here.

[Lord Chrusher]

Since Australia is surrounded by water, the way illegal immigrates arrive in Australia is by boat. Conservative politicians such the Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott (pictured, dickhead) dislike illegal immigration and vow to turn back the boats.

[Lord Hosk]

Now that Obama has a second term I hope he makes some important changes, like cutting military spending, closing guantanamo bay, and if at all possible legalizing gay marriage nationally because let's not leave a matter of constitutional rights to the states.

The problem with closing guantanamo bay, I assume you mean the prison complex within and not the entire base or blockading the harbor itself, is that (message redacted) and the (message redacted) then (message redacted) because (message redacted)

One of the Presidents major campaign points in the first campaign was that he would close the prison. When he got into office the DOJ and DOD had a meeting with him where he was given a lot more information than you get from watching the news. The president changed his mind when given all the information.

Also I just love when people say "just cut military spending" my response is where? what? who?

While the DOD does have a larger budget than it absolutely needs the issue isnt the money going in, it is how that money gets spent. 3 million people in uniform, 1 million civilian contractors, 8 million people in the defense construction and manufacturing. 4% of Americas work force works for the military, plus another 10 million in the service industries that are funded by those bases and manufactures. The Military needs to get more efficient at spending its budget, which would means more money into the economy rather than wasted on for example 180 G12 Cargo parachutes that had to be disposed of because they sat in crates for over 8 years.

[Vanguard]

Out of curiosity, boys and girls, who among you had issues with finding your polling places or getting moved around on Election Day?

I know in my neck of the woods they reconfigured all of the precincts this year, moving a lot of people around. In my old neighborhood I could walk to my polling place in less than a minute, and yet one of my former neighbors reports being moved to a new polling place across town. This same neighbor could literally walk out of his front door across the street and be at the church where they had a polling place, and yet they moved him across town.

Anyone else observe anything similar?

[AdmiralMemo]

Nope. Not here. Maryland has already been reconfigured to unrecognizable sections a long time ago to keep the status quo.

Check out Maryland District 2 and its 3 unconnected, irregularly-shaped sections to see what I mean.

[Metcarfre]

Dat gerrymandering

[AlexanderDitto]

Dat gerrymandering

If you divided up Florida into equal sized sections, most of them would be 99% swamp. The 1% are republican-voting alligators.

But yeah, seriously, gerrymandering, wtf. That was the Republicans, by the way. The lumped all the democrats into one weird-shaped district so that the Democrats could only win one seat. All the other districts are Republican (other than Miami-Dade).

[Lord Hosk]

On my side of the state this didnt happen, the goal is 1 polling place per mile in any given direction or more if the area has over 2000 voters.

On the east side of Michigan though they did a lot of redistricting but also a lot of churches which were polling places 4 years ago have closed. but the Secretary of state wasnt able to find replacement options in some areas so they simply consolidated locations which put in some cases over 5000 people going to a church that only had room for 12-15 booths. There were a number of poor planning choices in the metro Detroit area and a lot of angry people who only made a slow process worse. They didnt seem to be along party lines though, the republican areas had just as many problems as the democratic areas, although there are less republican areas in SE Michigan.

Two separate voter caused issues that workers were complaining about slowing down the whole process:

People would show up at the wrong polling place and then cause a ruckus because they had waited so long and now were being denied the right to vote. Which they weren't, they were being told to go to the correct polling station. At almost all locations, someone greeted you when you arrived with the registrar and would ask if you wanted them to insure you were at the right place but no one was bothering to check.

The second issue was that people would insist that they didnt have to show photo ID, which they dont, but then fight about having to fill out a long form ballot request, which is the alternative method. People would get very angry and yell about how unconstitutional it was to ask for personal information when all they wanted to do was vote.

These weren't the only issues but if you aren't prepared as a voter you really gum up the system.

The biggest issue that Michigan faced was a HUGE ballot.

[Lord Hosk]

Dat gerrymandering

If you divided up Florida into equal sized sections, most of them would be 99% swamp. The 1% are republican-voting alligators.

But yeah, seriously, gerrymandering, wtf. That was the Republicans, by the way. The lumped all the democrats into one weird-shaped district so that the Democrats could only win one seat. All the other districts are Republican (other than Miami-Dade).

Yeah florida is a tricky situation where there are very dense population centers and then no one. but this was clearly a lot of BS.

What needs to happen is a group of people from out of the state are given a population map, and divide up the states on a north south east west grid along major road ways to get the best fit. Start with the population, divide by the number of seats then start in the North west corner of the state and expand until you hit the correct population (district 1) repeat until district 16(or whatever) is the weird district with the left over bits in the south east.

[AlexanderDitto]

Now that Obama has a second term I hope he makes some important changes, like cutting military spending, closing guantanamo bay, and if at all possible legalizing gay marriage nationally because let's not leave a matter of constitutional rights to the states.

The problem with closing guantanamo bay, I assume you mean the prison complex within and not the entire base or blockading the harbor itself, is that (message redacted) and the (message redacted) then (message redacted) because (message redacted)

One of the Presidents major campaign points in the first campaign was that he would close the prison. When he got into office the DOJ and DOD had a meeting with him where he was given a lot more information than you get from watching the news. The president changed his mind when given all the information.

While I understand the people being held in Guantanamo are being held there for a reason, and we can't try them in US courts and we don't want to release them because we believe they pose a threat... you can't just detain people indefinitely. It's against "the rules," the rules we've established for ourselves and for the world. When other people violate the rules, it's not acceptable, and we use that as justification to impose sanctions on them, or to send military strikes against them. If we don't have evidence to try them in the US, or in an international court, sorry. They have to be repatriated, even if they're dangerous.

If American soldiers get captured or held indefinitely or tortured by another country who considers them dangerous, we fuck their shit up, and rightly so. We can't have a double standard like that.

The biggest issue that Michigan faced was a HUGE ballot.

This was a huge issue in Florida too. The Republican legislature introduced 11 pages of referendums to vote on. All of them got voted down, if I'm not mistaken. But having to print 11 pages for every voter, and having every voter read 11 pages of stuff, gummed up the voting.

The Republicans were really trying to find any way to keep people from voting.

Dat gerrymandering

What needs to happen is a group of people from out of the state are given a population map, and divide up the states on a north south east west grid along major road ways to get the best fit. Start with the population, divide by the number of seats then start in the North west corner of the state and expand until you hit the correct population (district 1) repeat until district 16(or whatever) is the weird district with the left over bits in the south east.

Yeah this should really be done by an impartial computer algorithm that just computes the density of the state and divides it into rougly equal-sized areas.

Then again, the idea behind allowing people to adjust the district lines was to allow the government to group people who have similar concerns into the same district, so their representative can fight for their concerns collectively. If you mix people with wildly diverse concerns, how is your representative supposed to represent you? But of course it's being meta-gamed now (like everything is), and people are using it to gain the biggest numbers for their side.

[JackSlack]

I thought the ReDistricting Game was very well done as a piece of education, on the subject.

[Moshi]

Out of curiosity, boys and girls, who among you had issues with finding your polling places or getting moved around on Election Day?

I know in my neck of the woods they reconfigured all of the precincts this year, moving a lot of people around. In my old neighborhood I could walk to my polling place in less than a minute, and yet one of my former neighbors reports being moved to a new polling place across town. This same neighbor could literally walk out of his front door across the street and be at the church where they had a polling place, and yet they moved him across town.

Anyone else observe anything similar?

Mine was close to me, but I did notice something in the district routing. In KY you noticed 6 districts, 5 huge red districts and the tiny blue district that could... I see you tried to do there House of reps well it back fired since that County of a district gave you a democrate house rep lol

Yeah my county or as we call it here, Louisville City Metro. Was one ofthe four specks of blue in KY lol. I was amused by that.

[Volafortis]

I had to drive 15 miles, to a completely different town to vote. It was ridiculous.

[AdmiralMemo]

Say what you want about Romney, but he's efficient at closing up shop...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -LOST.html

"Other aspects of the Romney also wrapped up quickly - his aides who tried to pay for late-night cabs on Wednesday morning found their official credit cards had been disabled, according to NBC News.
Many staffers who were on secondment from other GOP officials returned to Washington to start working for their permanent bosses instead, as the campaign headquarters were largely dismantled within just one day."

[empath]

Breaking! Romney Concession speech leaked!

Both candidates prepare both winning and losing speeches.

O RLY?

Romney himself was very vocal about the fact that he had written only one speech for Tuesday night- a 1,118-word acceptance speech - and he had prepared no alternative.

Per here.

[Master Gunner]

That's the Daily Mail though, so...

[MotorWaffle]

Dat gerrymandering

If you divided up Florida into equal sized sections, most of them would be 99% swamp. The 1% are republican-voting alligators.

But yeah, seriously, gerrymandering, wtf. That was the Republicans, by the way. The lumped all the democrats into one weird-shaped district so that the Democrats could only win one seat. All the other districts are Republican (other than Miami-Dade).

We tend to get the same problem in Illinois, only in the reverse. Basically if anywhere gets close to threatening to overcome the Chicago vote we remap the districts to just swallow that area up, which why now, despite living almost an hour away from it, my district is now being represented by Jessie Jackson Jr. along with the South of Chicago.

[AlexanderDitto]

Dat gerrymandering

If you divided up Florida into equal sized sections, most of them would be 99% swamp. The 1% are republican-voting alligators.

But yeah, seriously, gerrymandering, wtf. That was the Republicans, by the way. The lumped all the democrats into one weird-shaped district so that the Democrats could only win one seat. All the other districts are Republican (other than Miami-Dade).

We tend to get the same problem in Illinois, only in the reverse. Basically if anywhere gets close to threatening to overcome the Chicago vote we remap the districts to just swallow that area up, which why now, despite living almost an hour away from it, my district is now being represented by Jessie Jackson Jr. along with the South of Chicago.

Democrats have definitely done it in the past, but this latest round is all the republicans. In 2010 the Republicans took control of Pennsylvania's governorship and legislature, and now look what it looks like:



Guess where all the people in Pennsylvania actually live? Obama won Pennsylvania by 5 points, And yet democrats only control 5 out of Pennsylvania's 18 seats. Blarg. D:<

[AdmiralMemo]

Breaking! Romney Concession speech leaked!

Both candidates prepare both winning and losing speeches.

O RLY?

Romney himself was very vocal about the fact that he had written only one speech for Tuesday night- a 1,118-word acceptance speech - and he had prepared no alternative.

Per here.

OK... Correction... Both candidates USUALLY prepare both winning and losing speeches.
I guess either Romney was super-confident in winning, or just planned on winging it if he lost.

[AlexanderDitto]

OK... Correction... Both candidates USUALLY prepare both winning and losing speeches.
I guess either Romney was super-confident in winning, or just planned on winging it if he lost.

Honestly, a Republican concession speech isn't super hard. Just wish the other person well, say it was a good contest, thank your family and running mate, and then say you're praying for the country, and praying for the people, and praying for your family, and praying that the socialist fascist doesn't drive the country off a cliff and into hell.

Which is basically exactly what Romney did.

[Rikadyn]

The biggest issue that Michigan faced was a HUGE ballot.

Was only 3 pages here in the Zoo. Unless you mean physical size, then they're always that big...

I was on the losing side of pretty much all the proposals, 'cept the bridge one.

[Lord Hosk]

According to NPR the results look more like people just voted no on all the proposals rather than actually paying attention. The overwhelming idea was "too many confusing things, they are trying to buy us, no"

[Rikadyn]

According to NPR the results look more like people just voted no on all the proposals rather than actually paying attention. The overwhelming idea was "too many confusing things, they are trying to buy us, no"

I can see that, I got mailers from people saying vote no on everything to protect the constitution, which makes some sense.A lot of what was being proposed as a constitutional amendment should of just been a normal law.

[MatParker116]

I love how America elects people to pass laws but then has to have another election to pass laws.

[Drdiggit42]

I love how America elects people to pass laws but then has to have another election to pass laws.

I'm not sure how something gets put on a ballot rather than being decided in the state legislature, but it sure seems like a flawed system.