
Internet-Based Political Movement Aims To Put Presidential Ticket On Ballots - olalonde
http://singularityhub.com/2011/08/08/internet-based-political-movement-aims-to-put-a-democratically-selected-presidential-ticket-on-ballots-for-the-2012-election/
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buff-a
Sample question, choose one option:

    
    
      a) we are winning the war on terror
      b) we are losing the war on terror
      c) unsure
    

This right here tells me "More of the same". How are they going to change
things if their very thoughts are constrained by the propaganda machine. Might
as well ask if we are winning the war with Eurasia [1]

How about d) _there is no war on terror. it is all made up._

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nations_of_Nineteen_Eighty-Four>

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lionhearted
I downvoted, but I shouldn't have. My apologies, this is a thoughtful comment
but I read it the wrong way at first (as a conspiracy theory).

I actually agree with you that "War on..." is conducive to terrible thinking
(poverty, drugs, terror, whatever). Something like, "Identifying members of
organizations willing to take terrorist action, and arresting or killing them,
removing their resources, and securing targets and educating people" would be
a much better way to look at it.

Obviously there are people who are comfortable destroying things at large
scale and hurting people, and it needs to be dealt with. But you can't win a
war versus an ideology. Much better if they defined it more clearly, estimated
numbers, and saw if success was increasing or decreasing. (Of course, that
doesn't make for political soundbites)

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jfruh
The idea that Americans are crying out for some kind of radical centrist is
much cherished by technocrats, but is completely false. People decry
partisanship in Washington while continuing to reward the most extreme members
of their party, because "partisanship" is generally code for "the other side
won't do what I want."

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henrikschroder
Why are they targeting the presidential elections? No matter how you change
that system, you will get a president that is from either the democrats or the
republicans.

Targeting the elections for the house of representatives should be more
rewarding, because there you could actually get candidates elected that aren't
part of the two-party system. And if you do that, then maybe you could get rid
of first past the post, which is the underlying cause of the mess.

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astrodust
This sounds like a really, really bad idea in a country with the first past
the post system.

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anonymoushn
While this is likely, it is nearly impossible to get the people who are kept
in power only by FPTP to vote against FPTP. The movement's goals seem somewhat
more achievable. Also, we would hardly do worse by electing a Republican
instead of a Democrat or a Democrat instead of a Republican.

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Sniffnoy
Rangevoting.org had the interesting idea of trying to promote a non-FPTP
system (in their case, range voting, obviously :P ) by convincing the major
parties to use it in their primaries/caucauses. The idea I think being that
using it for internal elections is something they (for now) stand to gain
from, and since those are often truly multi-way contests there's no internal
equivalents of the "major parties" who would (know that they could) benefit in
the primaries from sticking to FPTP.

I don't think they're really active anymore, but it remains the most plausible
approach I've heard.

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marze
Anyone who thinks that the position of president has power enough to make
substantial change in the way the US government operates is living in a world
of fantasy.

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anonymoushn
The ability to decline to sign budgets seems, to me, quite powerful.

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dantheman
Not really, the US hasn't passed a budget in over 800 days.

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anonymoushn
Right, thanks for reminding me. My mistake. I suppose the president can at
least command the United States Armed Forces and veto HR3808, though.

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clistctrl
I think this is one of those, great in theory but bad in practice kind of
things.

