That Miserable Thief on 9/1/2021 at 18:11
Quote Posted by heywood
You guys are like atheists trying to tell an ISIS jihadi that his God isn't real.
It seems so. I shouldn't have bothered to respond to him. I've seen the prior discussions and warnings, but I was bored at work. Its back to the Thief subs for me.
Gryzemuis on 9/1/2021 at 18:47
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
Does NL vote for individual candidates, or just for parties? I couldn't see that anywhere obvious from skimming through the article you linked.
We tend to think we vote for parties, but you can vote for an individual candidate, if you want to.
Each party has a candidate-list before the election. The candidate-list has many more candidates than the party expects will be elected. Suppose a party expects to win ~10 seats in parliament. They have a candidate-list with maybe 50 candidates on it. The voter votes for a specific candidate. Most people will just vote for the number 1 of the party of their liking. But you can vote for someone else, if you want to. If a candidate get enough votes to warrant a seat, he gets the seat, even if he is too low on the candidate-list. This way voters can vote someone into parliament even if the party-leadership didn't think that candidate is one of the best ones.
Example. You are a politician. Your party expects 10 seats. They have a candidate-list of 50 people. You are on the list, at spot #20. Normally that means that if your party wins 10 seats (or even 19 seats), you will not get a seat. But now you start campaining for yourself. 17,5M people in NL, suppose 10M do vote, 150 seats total, means that you need 66k votes to earn a seat for yourself. So every candidate, regardless of the spot on the candidate-list of their party, who gets 66k votes (called "preference votes") will get a seat. So now the numbers 1-9 and the number 20 (you) get a seat. Number 10 on the list is out of luck, and won't get a seat.
Nameless Voice on 9/1/2021 at 20:18
So if someone gets less than your threshold, their votes are redistributed to the party instead, who choose candidates in order of their list?
Here in Ireland, we have constituencies of around 5 seats each, and you vote for people in order of preference - if your first choice doesn't get in, then your vote will go to your number 2, and so on.
It's not based around parties, though obviously if you are a supporter of a party, you will probably put one of their candidates as #1, another as #2, and so on.
This system allows an unusually high number of independent candidates to get into office, which is theoretically a good thing, but considering the kinds of people who get elected as independents.... probably isn't.
I think it's a good system, but those independent candidates do kind of exemplify that "regional interest" problem that you were talking about before. Still, STV does tend to weed out extremist parties, so we have no far right here (and, sadly for me, not that much on the left either.)
Renzatic on 9/1/2021 at 21:14
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
Here in Ireland, we have constituencies of around 5 seats each, and you vote for people in order of preference - if your first choice doesn't get in, then your vote will go to your number 2, and so on.
That sounds quite a bit like ranked choice voting, (
https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)) which has slowly been gaining traction here.
ZylonBane on 9/1/2021 at 21:35
Quote Posted by Starker
The new crop of the Republican party:
For extra fun, look up the "Moms for America" logo.
Nameless Voice on 9/1/2021 at 21:37
Yes, similar. I think the differences are that the constituencies are multi-seat, and so excess votes for an elected candidate (above the threshold required to be elected) get redistributed too.
I posted a video about it a few months back.
(Yes, I like to harp on about it, because hey, how many cool things can we claim to have in this small country that almost no one else has?)
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
I came across a good video recently which explains it much better than I could, while also explaining why it helps make elections fairer and less extreme.
[video=youtube;l8XOZJkozfI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI[/video]
nbohr1more on 9/1/2021 at 21:55
Quote Posted by SubJeff
Ah, so you are going with the "guilty until proven innocent" approach. The silly approach.
Has there ever been widespread election rigging in US history?
Can you prove you're not an idiot? Guilty until proven innocent, remember?
So to extend this argument, if a private investigator found a DNA sample at a crime scene and matched it to a suspect then
went to the courts and news media who summarily called this scientific analysis "debunked".
The person asking that another expert witness actually analyze the evidence is somehow enacting "guilty until proven innocent" tactics?
SubJeff on 9/1/2021 at 21:59
There needs to be crime scene first.
Where's the crime scene in this analogy?
nbohr1more on 9/1/2021 at 22:02
Quote Posted by SubJeff
There needs to be crime scene first.
Where's the crime scene in this analogy?
The crime is conspiring to manipulate voting data.
The crime scene is the Dominion Voting machines and the network connectivity between them and Germany.
SubJeff on 9/1/2021 at 22:11
In order for you to say that there was manipulation of voting data you need some evidence. Where is the evidence?
You can't just make something up and then expect people to let you go and investigate it. You need some type of probable cause and an unhappy orange man who spouts unsubstantiated nonsense based off absolutely nothing most of the time is not that.
Where is the evidence that there is something dodgy with those voting machines? Far right bs websites aren't evidence, they are just more bs.
