Are our elections unfair? Should we fix them? What will work? (2024)

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One sigh of relief...

In the UK, the leader of the party that secures the most seats in the House of Commons automatically becomes Prime Minister and subsequently forms the government.

If this were the case, Nancy Pelosi would be POTUS.

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I've never been in favor of the Electoral College. What's unfair is Republicans living in blue states, and Democrats living in red states. Your vote doesn't count. With the Electoral College, your presidential vote only counts if you live in a swing state, where the vote could go either way.

The popular vote is fair. Whoever gets the most votes wins. To say the smaller states have less of an advantage is absurd. Smaller states have less residents, so they SHOULD have less votes.

Proportionate voting makes more sense than Electoral College. At least you might feel your vote counts if you live in a state where you're not the majority.

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>"The popular vote is fair. Whoever gets the most votes wins."

^ Concurring...but in the 1960 presidential election, Kennedy won by a mere 100,000 votes primarily due to the tainted Chicago/Cook County returns.

On the other hand, a 100,000 vs 5,000,000 vote differential is a big difference...despite any allegations of ballot stuffing and/or a lack of expediency on the part of the USPS.

Maybe everyone should reside in a state that best reflects their political leanings...highly unrealistic but imagine the possibilities in terms of lifestyle-related & local governances.

Then the only 'divisiveness' in America would be states rights vs federal jurisdictions.

And when/if worse came to worse, the SCOTUS would settle things...in lieu of another civil war.

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Universal mail-in ballot approval if requested.

Polls open for two weeks.

No poll fees/tax (or Florida parole fees, required ID, etc..)

Public financing of elections (take the dark money out of politics.

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I'm sorry, Diana,but this whole topic is sophom*oric.

Nowadays, whenever people dislike some outcome of the Electoral-College system, they advocate its replacement, ignoring:

- It Wouldn't Change The Result!! Fantasists invariably assume that the change they advocate would affect JUST the part of current reality they don't like. Not thinking through the rest. Four years ago, people disliking T's election also called for eliminating the Electoral College. Response at the time: It wouldn't have mattered, whether or not you want to understand this. In closely contested elections under the Electoral system, campaigns target populations critical to an Electoral win. In direct popular election, campaigns would adjust accordingly (gaining -- just for example -- millions of California votes for Trump, which were suppressed by the all-or-nothing state Electoral rules). There is zero serious, impartial evidence that such a change would ever actually have altered recent presidential election outcomes.

- Won't happen anyway, for reasons you identified. Constitution. Changing requires massive ratification and consensus. End of serious discussion.

- What Lee Forest mentions (as if it were somehow news) is a straight parliamentary government, as used in many nations. The US has a modified version, adding separate election of the Executive branch -- as also in many nations. That's nothing new. Didn't you all learn it in high school?!?

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> "Universal mail-in ballot approval if requested."

^ As in a legitimate 'absentee ballot' requested by a REGISTERED voter or a 3rd Class bulk mailing of election ballots to ANYONE?

>"Polls open for two weeks."

^ Preceding or following election day?

>"No poll fees/tax (or Florida parole fees, required ID, etc..)"

^ The 24th Amendment prohibits poll taxes in regards to federal elections.

As for required IDs...anyone can request a ballot but these ballots are supposed to be VERIFIED as REGISTERED voters.

If every NON-REGISTERED Tom, Dick & Harry were allowed to vote, we would not have a democracy...just chaos.

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Some good points on the pros and cons of the Electoral College:

Web Link

Pro #1: It keeps smaller states relevant in national politics.
Pro #2: It provides a clean, widely accepted ending to the election (most of the time.....).
Pro #3: It makes it easier for candidates to campaign

Pro or Con: It keeps the two-party system strong.

Con #1: It can make people feel like their votes don't matter.
Con #2: It gives too much power to swing states.
Con #3: It can clash with the popular vote.
Con #4: There remains the possibility of "rogue" or "faithless" electors.

Bottom Line:

Will the U.S. decide to eliminate the electoral college? It's hard to say. There's a movement to encourage states to split their electors in proportion to the percentage of the state vote that each candidate gets. While that wouldn't eliminate the electoral college, it would change the winner-take-all nature of our system and the way candidates think about state campaigns. Time will tell whether that reform �" and others �" come to pass.

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Sometimes call "Tyranny by the Minority."

After the 2016 Election, the Washington Post noted the following:

Wyoming had a population of 586,107 and received three electoral votes, which means that each electoral vote had 195,360 people.

California, however, with its population of 39,144,818 received 55 electoral votes, or one electoral vote for 711,724 people.

This does not seem fair, but that is the reality right now.

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Speaking of Wyoming & to use the old Cliff Claven ('It's a little known fact') adage from Cheers...

Wyoming (a red state) was the first state in the Union to acknowledge & ratify women's voting rights...not any of the current & so-called blue states.

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Betty's comment above presents a heavily spun, tendentious picture of the Equal Rights Amandment (ERA)'s status. I remember this Amendment's history, and I supported it.

A more objective summary: This amendment to the Constitution passed Congress in March 1972 with a seven-year (1979) deadline for 38 state legislatures to ratify it. 35 of the required 38 states ratified it. Five of those 35 withdrew their ratification by the time of the original 1979 deadline. In 1978, before that deadline, Congress had passed a resolution "with the intent" to extend the deadline to June 1982. As of June 1982, no additional states had added ratifications; the deadline passed without ratification (and with five states having rescinded, thus leaving only 30 states with unambiguous ratification status).

The amdendment was widely considered dead by late 1982, on the grounds that its explicit ratification window had expired.

Recent revivals of interest have raised prospects of submitting such an amendement anew for fresh ratification by the required 38 states; proposing to retroactively extend the elapsed deadline; and/or challenging the (unusual) reversal of ratification by the five states that did so by 1979. All are very controversial questions of Constitutional law, regardless of who occupies the White House or of any "opinion issued by Trump's [or any other] Department of Justice." These questions have implications for future amendments also, and almost certainly would demand Supreme Court adjudication. Some people lately talk about the ERA as if all this history did not exist, or they are ignorant of it. But, however much Betty or anyone else may wishfully believe "the constitution is on our side," reviving the original ERA faces grave obstacles.

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The fact a small state with 300,000 residents is represented by two senators, the same number as a state with 40 million residents, already gives small states plenty of representation, far too much in my opinion.

Let's remember that the electoral college was brought in to convince the slave owning states to stay in the Union, so it was, and remains, an incentive for badly behaving states to continue to behave badly. The electoral college is a highly undemocratic, feudal idea no modern state should practice. it should have been done away with it back in 1864, or rather, it should never have existed in the first place.

Another great reason, a nation saving reason for doing away with it, is that if removed, the GOP will never win another presidential election.

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^ As in a legitimate 'absentee ballot' requested by a REGISTERED voter or a 3rd Class bulk mailing of election ballots to ANYONE?

The word 'obsequious' comes to mind.

Oregon sends a ballot to every registered voter.

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Interesting article: There's a plan afoot to replace the Electoral College, and your state may already be part of it.

Web Link

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“Yet the reason I was (and still am) reluctant to get entirely rid of the Electoral College is because I think a popular all-states winner can be very unfair to people in smaller states. “

I've heard this argument before, and frankly, I don't understand it. Smaller states already get ignored. But the electoral college also allows candidates to ignore the millions of people in bigger states. This has really huge consequences. When's the last time anyone bothered to campaign in California?

Worse, this last potus has treated us like a foreign enemy, including making our fellow citizens feel that way with false arguments. He brutally raised the taxes, suddenly, on millions of middle class homeowners in blue states, and if you read conservative musings about it like from the Cato Institute, it was deliberately on the theory that it would get high-earners to move into red states to help their tax bases, and to hurt the tax bases of blue states. If they cared at all about the votes of such a large fraction of the population, no way would they have done that.

Why is it fair to treat a large fraction of the population like dirt on the theory that smaller states, who get ignored anyway, would otherwise be ignored? Why should the election happen in just a few states? If we didn't have the electoral college, and our nation remained split, then candidates would have to got after votes everywhere they could get them, and campaign in all the states. Including in the larger states, which currently get ignored. The Senate is how the framers gave small states more power, but they acknowledged that people in more populous states deserved some proportional representation in the House.

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“It wouldn't take too much for these six states to cast a majority of Democratic votes “

And what's wrong with that? Our nation has suffered enough under Republicans who always put us into recession, cut services and run up huge deficits, peddle meanness and divisiveness and lying for power, favor plutocracy against democracy. We would all be so much better off if they had to actually compete honestly in the marketplace of ideas that is politics in order to do well.

We have a majority left-leaning country, but we're bullied by a rightwing minority. The Electoral College is why the Supreme Court has been majority conservative for the last 50 years without break. This has meant decision after decision in favor of the superrich and against the middle class and poor.

They lead us around by the nose on culture-wars issues like abortion �" which, as soon as it was put on their party platform, the Republicans had every incentive to divide all of us instead of coming together to solve problems, so not surprisingly, nothing has effectively changed in 50 years but they sure do like to trot it out every election. On the other hand, can you name any of the many suits that favor the wealthiest except Citizens United? I can �" Read the book Supreme Inequality.

Care about systemic racism? (From the book): “conservative Supreme Court justices, who rarely vote to reverse convictions of poor criminal defendants, have shown a clear sympathy for rich ones. The conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, one study found, voted for defendants in about 7 percent of non-white-collar criminal cases �" and 82 percent of white-collar ones." Does that not bother anyone else? We have this because the Electoral College makes it easier for Republicans to win with extreme views and through manipulations and lies.

Democrats keep winning the popular vote and not winning elections. The consequence of which is massive medical costs yet massive debt for millions of Americans since we are the only advanced nation without universal low-cost healthcare, massive college debt (ditto on the only advanced nation), crumbling infrastructure from lack of investments, massive deficits, humankind in danger of extinction and our country dithering, massive wealth inequality, etc. To me, THAT doesn't seem fair.

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One of the major reasons for the Electoral College was to be a check against incompetent despots becoming President �" well, that didn't work too well. 2016 made it clear that it's useless. If everyone casts votes prorportionally, isn't that effectively getting rid of the electoral college? The difference is that it won't happen equally across the country, which means few states are going to be willing to start.

I do think we need ranked choice voting, so that third party candidates and ideas have a chance. In winner-take-all, a third party only siphons votes with no chance of winning. Also, if you don't have ranked choice, then vote splitting can end up giving power to a less-popular candidate. If you have two very similar candidates, for example, say, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and one or the other fails to drop out before the first primaries, it could easily look like the third-place candidate is the most popular, especially since once that person has the nomination, all those people will vote for the party/that candidate in the general election.

The Electoral College gave disproportionate power to Southern States for much of our history, and frankly, THAT's not fair.

It's not that it can't be changed, but Demcoratic voters would have to be a lot more reliable for a much more sustained period of time, and way more active at going up against Republican scheming. (For example, Republicans have been committing “coups" at state levels in order to gerrymander, flip state legislative seats and governorships when they don't like an election outcome for years �" and they'll try to take the US Senate that way if they lose in Georgia �" it's one of the reasons they screamed so loud about “coups" that weren't really happening, it deflected from their own bad behavior in that regard. It's one of their MO's.)

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All things considered & politics being politics...who would want to be POTUS anyway as the majority of candidates are egocentric individuals who perceive themselves as being saviors of one kind or another?

Lastly & in terms of being careful of what one wishes for (as a presidential candidate)...

(1) Nixon lost a corrupted 1960 presidential race to JFK (who was later assassinated).

(2) LBJ & the Democrats painted Barry Goldwater as a warmonger in 1964 and later proceeded with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which escalated the Viet Nam War effectively ending any chance of LBJ securing re-election in 1968.

(3) Nixon staged Watergate during his 1972 re-election campaign & then had to resign in disgrace.

(4) In 2000, the 'hanging chad' ballots in Florida gave George Bush the election who promptly received 9/11 in return while Al Gore went on to win a Nobel Prize.

(5) Flash forward to 2020...Biden wins the election but if he doesn't clean up the mess that POTUS45 left for him, he too will be run out of office in 2024.

So whether one buys into it or not, winning the Electoral College can be curse of sorts.

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The right wing keeps telling us that the USA is not a democracy but a representative republic. Representative republic is one version of democracy, but still a democratic system of government. Democracy is based on the rule of the majority, therefore the electoral college was always an undemocratic venue. In 2000 and in 2016 the majority of voters who cast their votes wanted the Democratic candidate to become President, yet they received the Republican candidate who received less votes.

Just as bad, the EC awards far too much power to the southern states which still cling to some of the regressive values that made them attempt to break away from the Union and caused the civil war. How is it even possible that we allow the defeated states we considered treasonous enough to justify a bloody civil war against to weild so much power?

The EC should have been abolished right after the Confederacy was defeated. The fact it's still around is astonishingly destructive to our democracy and to the US becoming a modern progressive nation.

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Modern progressive nation probably applies to:

The fact that every other advanced nation on the planet has some form of universal low-cost healthcare. We are the only one that doesn't, i.e., we are not better than most. In fact, we spend twice per capita as the next most expensive country, even though we don't nearly cover everyone and don't have the best outcomes. We spend nearly a third of every healthcare dollar on bureaucracy costs largely because of private for-profit insurance.

The fact that higher education is cheaper or even free in most other advanced nations on the planet.

And so on.

I think the potus expressed it well when he asked why we aren't getting immigrants from countries like Sweden. Short answer: quality of life here hasn't done well for most people under laissez fair (plutocracy favoring) economics.

Diana, when I was in 6th grade, two popular kids ran for class president. The class clown threw his hat in the ring as a joke. It was close, but he ended up with the most votes. This caused everyone to gasp in amazement that he was so much more popular that the other two popular kids and no one realized it. Except that he wasn't really. The two popular kids split the 2/3 vote either of them would have gotten if they had run against the class clown on their own. No amount of pointing to this fact got anyone off the track of believing the class clown was secretly the most popular kid in school because of getting slightly more of the 1/3 vote. I hope you get what I'm referring to. In this case, the person who would have come in a distant third if either Rubio or Cruz had dropped out of the race, was instead able to capitalize on claiming to be the most popular. Knowing that all Republicans would fall in line behind whoever was the nominee, the rest was inevitable. Third parties and other ideas would stand a better chance if we had ranked choice voting.

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>"What is suppose to happen in a modern progressive nation?"

^ If run by the current Democrats...the citizens adhere to Covid-19 related mandates and recommendations while party leaders (i.e. the Speaker of the House & Governor of CA) grant themselves special privileges like going to a closed hair salon without wearing a face mask, organizing a large 'spreader' gathering/dinner for newly-elected Democratic Congress members in Washington & attending a 'spreader' gourmet dinner gathering at The French Laundry in Napa Valley.

All while either chastising the current POTUS for lack of coronavirus discretions or while mandating statewide SIP/safe distancing containment measures for everyone else to abide to.

Two sets of rules bordering on sanctimony and/or self-privilege...and perhaps why the younger progressives (i.e. the 'Squad') are taking some of the older & more 'moderate' members of the Democratic Party to task as the 'do as I say and not as I do' mindset doesn't quite cut it.

Don't kid yourselves...devisiveness is alive and well EVERYWHERE and it's not going away anytime soon regardless of the American voter or the Electoral College results.

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Free Healthcare? The Affordable Care Act required that you have a insurance plan or you were penalized $2k+. There is a IRA form that shows you have paid into a plan.

Medicare is not FREE - it is a deduction from your SSN plan. Medicaid is a different issue - has some penalties included. Pointing to socialist countries does not indicate how much the individuals are paying in to get free services. There is NO FREE. Why would you think every European country wants to come here? They have very good countries of their own.

Education - we have an extensive community college system which provides low cost education to get people started on their education goals. They can then transfer into a state university.

So tell us what country is providing all of the free stuff? Why does everyone want to come here if they have a better plan where they live?

Personal note - nephew with excellent grades started at Occidental College in SOCAL where BARRY started college. Could not stand it. He is now is college in Canada and learning French. He looks like Trudeau - handsome, smart young man. Canada has some good features but they do bow to the Queen. And that is not FREE.

Now Bernie loves Russia - he spent his honeymoon in Moscow. Most people in Russia are trying to get themselves out of there.

Side Note - check out the European Union on Wikipedia - the countries that are members are under a centralized government system which controls what goes on. The D's keep forgetting the world has changed. They want to go back to 1945. We are not there. We are here now.

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>"I think the potus expressed it well when he asked why we aren't getting immigrants from countries like Sweden. Short answer: quality of life here hasn't done well for most people under laissez fair (plutocracy favoring) economics."

^ Or maybe he was inferring that America should curtail immigration from certain countries that don't measure up to his standards?

>"Why does everyone want to come here if they have a better plan where they live?"

^ Home of the brave & 'land of the FREE'...(for some individuals) at U.S. taxpayer expense?

Freedom from religious persecution is another consideration...but baffling given certain immigrant terrorist mindsets.

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>"...they think they are going to get something for FREE."

^ The official mantra (and mindset) of Bernie Sanders & Eizabeth Warren supporters.

Add 'progressive' Squad influences into the mix & you will eventually end up with the United States of Woodstock.

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No one in this history of this country has raised my taxes anywhere near as much as Donald Trump did when he attacked all the middle class homeowners in higher-cost-of-living states (blue states) with his tax "reform" that then proceeded to funnel all the money up to those who didn't need it. If the 1% were shaken down even close to the equivalent to how middle-class homeowners were in California, there would be no federal deficit suddenly and we could pay for college, healthcare, and the infrastructure, with money to spare. A lot of money to spare. It cost us our ability to pay for our kid's college. Just stop lying about Biden and taxes. Democrats have been the fiscally responsible ones my entire life, whereas Republicans just cut services, gigantically spike the deficit, put us into recessions (something like 11 of the last 12 recessions have begun under Republicans), destroy the environment, divide us, lie to us. It's the reason they're a 3rd party now in California, they always bring corruption and fiscal and environmental destruction that Democrats then have to clean up.

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Diana, if you haven't read Stuart Stevens' book It Was All a Lie, and you read nothing else this season, read that book. Stevens has worked for the campaigns of numerous Republicans over the decades, including George Bush and Mitt Romney, and has been responsible for some of the more infamous political moves we all remember. He says "Republicans have built a political ecosphere that thrives on deceit and lies. It is an industrialized sort of deceit that is unique to the Republican Part."

Until that issue is dealt with, until the various parties and factions in our politics are all once again competing public goods (as opposed to Republicans who have been lying for power and tearing down our nation from the inside), there will be no way to reform our election system. The Republicans have been in the minority for a long time, and they only get power by rigging the system (and also by screaming that it's rigged against them at the same time).

I think in this election it was too bad that pollsters do not seem to appreciate that the polls affect people's behavior. There's a reason we don't start releasing election results before the polls close on the West Coast, because it changes people's voting behavior. Telling people over and over again that there was a blue wave probably made a lot of people feel comfortable staying home on election day, especially with the spectre of rightwing violence (their screaming about looting and burning of American cities when Black Lives Matter protests were vast majority peaceful, while overlooking the rightwing extremists with guns plotting to kill everyone in a state capitol, showing up at state capitols with guns because of the potus inciting them to such lunacy, etc.)

(I heard this very powerful quote today about our political divide: “We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist." @SonofBaldwin (Robert Jones Jr)

People need to stop stepping around the Republican penchant for lying for power, and for creating ecosystems of lies that are ripping our nation, and families, apart. Call Republican lawmakers, and keep calling and writing them, ask them to put our country first and to take an honesty pledge (someone start on honesty pledge, and put together a panel of bipartisan fact checkers or reach out to a respected fact checker organization to keep people who sign the pledge honest).

Don't just keep going on as if it's business as usual. Don't just talk in 3rd person (we are polarized) without talking as much or more about WHY we are polarized and where it's coming from. Turns out much of the "Stop the Steal" was plotted by Republicans long before this election, and right now much of it is coming from Roger Stone. They're attacking our democracy, and continuing to attack the MAJORITY of people who have been voting for Democrats in this country for decades now.

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Look at what's happening right now. We have a pandemic that has killed around a quarter of a million Americans in less than a year with absolutely no coherent national strategy from Washington (which, if we look at other nations who both brought things under control with very few deaths and no hit to their economies, was necessary), and we had an election in which, for the second time, the current occupant of the WH has millions of votes fewer than the person who won the most votes, and what do we have?

We have the occupant of the WH consumed with costly (for the American taxpayer), tenuous legal challenges, spending his time scheming to try to figure out how to overturn the results (Read "Stop the Steal's massive disinformation campaign connected to Roger Stone -- who was pardoned from jail for the 7 felonies convicted of in order to help the potus continue to thwart democracy Web Link what is that if not seditious?).

And yet the electorate have a Godlike reverence for "businessmen" -- so illogical a reverence, millions somehow keep voting for the ones who have massive mismanagement bankruptcies and inevitably mismanage their time in government -- and absolutely no appreciation for the function of our government, the skills, experience, and commitment necessary to do the work of our national government that is involved in keeping us safe and alive in ways we apparently just do not even begin to appreciate.

Another book to read, if you haven't, is The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis (The Blind Side, Moneyball, The Big Short). He decided to investigate 3 federal agencies he knew absolutely nothing at all about. What he learned surprised him, and it's frightening how prescient the book was about how this presidency would unfold. Competence in government matters, and it doesn't come from being a "businessman" -- although some executive experience (in government and competent business) does matter, public service is not the same as business. You can't just decide you don't want to serve the least among us because they don't have any money (well, if you are a Republican, you can, but it's counter to the founding principles of our nation and Christianity, for those who think that's important).

People really, really seem to have no clue as to how our foreign adversaries were viewing this incompetent administration, how the Republicans have "othered" half of the population to divide us for their advantage politically and schemed to weaken our system of governance from the inside, making us vulnerable to foreign enemies. People have no clue as to the danger we just escaped by getting this guy out of the WH, but he and his cabal and party are apparently not done putting themselves and their party's power over the good of our nation.

That can only be fixed by sustained, sustained involvement by people who care about our nation enough not to be put off by scheming to get them to think their vote doesn't count, etc. Yet in this election, people heard the polling and thought everyone else would get out and vote, and it would be enough. The balance of power in Congress is why Reconstruction ended and we got Jim Crow. People have to take the balance of power in Congress as seriously as the executive. But there, too, Republicans have schemed for decades.
Web Link
"Once reserved for targeting corrupt or inept elected officials, the recall has become part of the toolkit for Republicans seeking a do-over of election results."

And in the misusing of the tools that otherwise are there to keep our democracy and governance strong and check corruption, the Republicans have been undermining our nation by enabling corruption and showing the next would-be amoral autocrat that we have no checks on corruption.

The answer in all cases, whether it's fixing the electoral college or otherwise, is involvement by informed (rather than misinformed) citizenry.

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Also read this Berkeley blog post by John A. Powell, which is as appropriate today as when it was posted in 2016.
Web Link

Continuing to focus on principles is important, but it's next to impossible to do anything unless we can restore some honesty and semblance of shared purpose.

That's going to require bringing Republicans back to honesty and shared purpose. When is the last time you called or wrote a Republican legislator, not just in an angry accusative way, but really reaching out over important issues? I have, over the years, reached out to Republicans on the national stage, and there have been times when it sure seems like giving them good reason to reach back has had a positive impact.

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> "That's going to require bringing Republicans back to honesty and shared purpose."

^ Seriously? What about bipartisan hypocracies as well?

Scroll upwards as the Democrats are no more 'honest' than any other political party...they are all the same when it comes to BS.

The Democratic Party is well-reknowned for its 'do as I say, not as I do' platform as many of its members share certain elitist mindsets.

>"...while party leaders (i.e. the Speaker of the House & Governor of CA) grant themselves special privileges like going to a closed hair salon without wearing a face mask, organizing a large 'spreader' gathering/dinner for newly-elected Democratic Congress members in Washington & attending a 'spreader' gourmet dinner gathering at The French Laundry in Napa Valley.

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@ Lee Forrest,

Your display of "bothsiderism" is part of the problem here, and why this the "industrial lying" that Stevens (major Republican operative for the last many decades) says is "unique" to the Republican party continues.

Will Democrats ever be perfect? No. Can people who want to cherry pick to point to problems? Sure. That has nothing whatsoever to do with whether Republicans have been engaged in massive and unique lying for power, which they have. In fact, given the way the majority of bad things anyone has to say about Democrats and Democratic leaders seem just made up out of whole cloth or horrendously exaggerated, or one example falsely made equivalent to grossly more on the right, Democrats must be downright saintly.

Stop deflecting from the gross hypocrisies on the right that have led conservatives to stand behind ZERO of what they claimed to be for (like fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility, family, etc).

Right now, the parties are not all the same when it comes to "BS". Again, Stuart Stevens is responsible for getting many of the Republicans of the last decades into office.

Stevens shares a nonpartisan analysis of communications in his book: "What few because grasp--because they are outside the system and have normal lives to lead--is just how huge the machinery of deception is that the Republicans have erected and how long it has been in the making." He has sharp words for both sides (again, there is no such thing as perfection), but he also says there is no symmetry here, not equivalence.

You are just wrong to say that just because there is no such thing as perfect, that both sides are equally bad. It's simply not true, and the bad that Republicans have been practicing is a serious industrial lying that has undermined our governance, kept us from investing in our infrastructure and other needed public investments for decades, undermined our national security, and destroyed politics as competing for the public good.

This must be addressed or there can be no fixing our election system. Voters who know better must take personal responsibility to always vote, knowing that discouraging them from doing so is part of the lying and deceitful strategies on the right.

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The economy is a great example. Republicans used to be pragmatic when it came to the economy, because that was a value. Now it's just lying for power regardless of how bad it is for the economy, including apparently lying to themselves.

The facts are that when Democrats are in power -- over the last 100 years that the parties have had their respective points of view -- the rich and the poor both do well, but when Republicans are in power, the poor and middle class lose. Over any sufficiently large period of time (to avoid cherry picking) in the last 100 years, by virtually every measure, the economy does better under Democrats than Republicans, and Republicans deficit spend without making investments in our nation. They talk tough but really just roll over for the short term interests of the super rich, including stacking the Supreme Court mainly for rending judgment after judgment in favor of the wealthiest. This has consequences to democracy and to the systemic problems facing the poor and middle class.

Those who see this can make sure they show up at the ballot box in enough numbers, in a sustained way, to change things, but really at some point, the misinformation that uniquely comes from and promulgates from the right for the purposes of a few corrupt people has to be countered.

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Yes - foreign countries do have a problem with the fact that they now have to meet their financial obligations regarding their participation in the UN and other world organizations. They have a problem in that they cannot use the American taxpayer as an ATM card for their ventures. They have to fund their Paris Accord projects. They have to step up their game relative to providing education, health care, and a viable economy for their citizens.

Note that Africa is the second biggest continent on the planet and the origin of the human species. It also has the richest natural resources. It is now a combination of countries that are suppose to function like every other continent.
AS former colonies of European countries they have an infrastructure in place to manage the countries and funding from the former colonizers. The US does not need to fund these assorted countries.

The US does not need to continually provide military assistance to foreign countries. The US needs to first focus on it's obligations to the US citizens and resolve internal issues concerning climate damage - hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes. If we are doing our job here at home and the other countries are doing their jobs at home then we are all good.

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@ Resident-1

The specifics of these cherry-picked situations are meaningless in the face of our nation not only distancing itself from our global allies, who by the way, put the blood of their people on the line in a trumped-up mismanaged Republican war in Iraq because of their loyalty to us, but also the lost of respect for us around around the world. The way we spend our money globally also bought us outsized influence, which was in our interest. (Not speaking specifically to the your cherry-picked myopic examples.) Right now, it is China who is spreading money around the globe and buying a tremendous amount of influence, including economic advantage and alliances where the US used to dominate.

The choice to view the world through the lens of a perpetual grifter who has been spectularly failed at every last business venture (getting money from inheritance, being a TV personality, and stiffing banks to the tune of hundreds of millions) puts our national security at risk.

And speaking of using the American taxpayer as an ATM, I don't see you or any Republicans crying foul about the way the potus uses the American taxpayer as an ATM to enrich himself, and to wage thousands of frivolous lawsuits for ill-gotten gain. He clearly pays nothing at all to support our system of justice but expects American taxpayers to, when they themselves will never have that kind of access to the justice system.

And you paint a completely wrong picture of, for example, providing education and healthcare for all citizens. The US is the only advanced nation that doesn't have some form of universal low-cost healthcare, and it is also by far the most expensive system per capita on the planet, including that 1/3 of every healthcare dollar spent goes to pay for bureaucracy largely because of for-profit insurance. We also happen, not coincidentally, to the be only advanced nation that allows for-profit insurance as primary coverage, despite the vastly different ways other countries provide universal healthcare, all of them are on a non-profit INSURANCE basis. (Hospitals and providers can profit, but insurance cannot. The Swiss tried allowing their insurance companies to profit in healthcare and pretty quickly costs started skyrocketing and people going bankrupt of their healthcare costs -- something typically on the US has a problem with -- so they held a referendum and stopped it, and costs stopped skyrocketing like that).

The penny ante stuff you're bringing up is in no way in the balance against major public policies like universal healthcare and education, which are some of the basic investments our nation could be making across the board for our national prosperity. Having a healthcare system for all and a functioning public health system would have saved tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of lives in this pandemic and allowed us to return our economy to normal quite quickly.

On the other hand, having an administration that showed the world that we have a political party willing to weaken and hollow us out from the inside, and side with dictators over our own people, that has made us vulnerable in ways that national security people even from this administration are sounding the alarm about.

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>"The way we spend our money globally also bought us outsized influence, which was in our interest."

^ Financing a number of despotic dictatorships around the world (i.e. Cuba/Bautista, The Philippines/Marcos,
Iran/the Shah + a host of lesser known countries) did buy a certain degree of global influence at one time..but of the right kind?

>"Right now, it is China who is spreading money around the globe and buying a tremendous amount of influence, including economic advantage and alliances where the US used to dominate."

^ All things considered, the PRC is the 'new kid in town'...further enriched by American companies opting to conduct business in China' & American consumers electing to buy ubiquitous 'made in China' manufactured goods.

In the 19th century, Britanania was the global kingpin followed by the United States during the 20th century...times change.

It will be difficult to establish whether the United States can maintain it's waning #1 ranking as a global power. At present, there is a lot of national debt to contend with + a host of social problems and the pandemic.

Colonialism is out & domestic manufacturing is being outsourced...with a cheap labor force & access to key production materials, China' appears to have all the bases covered.

Lastly & in regards to America's Great Depression...FDR's socialist 'make work' projects only took the country so far & it took World War II commerce to finally begin pulling America out of its economic woes...10 years after he was first elected in 1932.

How much time does America have at present?

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This is what it's like talking with anyone on the right. The policies destroy our country. There's the chronic lying, deflecting. Talking about unrelated things to get off track. Coming up with a couple of cherry picked examples to claim they represent everything when they don't. And then saying it's all going to hell in a handbasket so what can we do -- when their policies both made the hell and the handbasket.

So I'll say this again: nothing in life is perfect. Nitpicking at a few imperfections does not create symmetry between a really bad rotten corrupt policy on the right brought about by industrialized lying, and human citizens trying to do their best by our democracy on the left in an imperfect world.

As I recall, Republicans starting a war in Iraq didn't solve the massive deficit Bush got us into.

Speaking of WWII and influence, the Marshall plan, and our rebuilding basically all of the countries of our enemies in the war turned former enemies into strong allies. (Your examples are not even relevant to my point.)

The GI bill, which ended up basically building the state college system and sent every returning soldier to college for free -- and I remember that time, the expectation was that college was basically free for everyone, there were scholarships, etc. (Women got pushed out and it was an era of incredible sexism but that's another topic.) But educating people en masse was huge for our economic success.

Eisenhower also built the interstate highway system and balanced the budget/paid for it and the war by taxing the wealthiest at a 90% marginal tax rate. As an actual fiscal conservative, he didn't believe in running up debt and deficits like modern Republicans who live by them.

If you're going to call FDR's projects "socialist make work" then you're going to have to call Ronald Reagan a socialist too. His massive tax cuts for the wealthiest took us deep into debt and touched off a recession that he spent like a drunken Keynsian on government hiring and programs to get us out of, except unlike Eisenhower, the money wasn't pumped into investing in our nation. Instead, Reagan funded huge military programs that didn't even make stuff, they were like paper Potemkin villages. I know, I was in the industry at the time. He was a "socialist" to try to get us out of the recession, massively deficit spent, and came up with really, really great lies to explain it away. (Making the Russians spend more money to keep up? Phhht. They were proud of what they could do with brilliant minds and pencils. They didn't need us to destroy their economy, Communism and the corruption was enough, they had it all themselves.) No wonder the right needed whole organizations to try to burnish his image, get his name of things, and turn him into the golden calf everyone worships today, and why they were so furious when Bill Clinton showed (once again) that Democrats are much more fiscally savvy and better for the economy.

Trickle down economics is based on the idea that giving all the money to a few wealthy entities will create jobs. While this is true to some extent, all the money is controlled by a very small number of entities will never be as good for circulating money in the economy and creating jobs as millions upon millions of small business owners (of which there were more and they made up a far greater share of the economy in the '50s). Ordinary people need investments in their prosperity too.

Ronald Reagan got everyone used to the idea that all the many public investments that anyone superwealthy needs to succeed -- the roads, ports, airports, public works, judicial system, monetary system, first-world markets, stable government, strong military, healthcare system, education system, traffic systems, electrical grid, etc etc -- that those are just there for them to disproportionately exploit and never pay back when they succeed in their taxes. But ordinary people, the relatively small investments they need like healthcare, childcare, and education (which the rest of the first-world has realized -- from us -- pay off in spades in the economy), the Republicans couch those as undeserved welfare.

So by your standard, every Republican and Democratic administration until now has been socialist -- so we must already be a socialist country. Oh yeah, that's right, that's another thing Republicans do -- misuse the word "socialism" to try to scare people that we're headed to Stalinist Russia rather than risk our becoming beautiful, successful and free, like Sweden or Switzerland (both of which I last checked were democracies with a very high standard of living) or Germany for that matter. Or ourselves in our past during what was considered a golden age.

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I love the word "grifter". Does it make a difference if it is thrown at a private citizen or at a representative of the government who is using taxpayer dollars?

Save that word up - so useful. I have heard it associated with the President elect who has dragged his son to foreign countries where he is funneled huge amounts of money by companies that are receiving aid from US dollars. The money paid to Hunter is US dollars repurposed so they do not appear on Biden's personal tax return.

And let us not forget the Clinton Foundation which received huge amount of foreign dollars for getting favorable ROI in taxpayer funded projects.

But hey - that is now behind us. It is a new game and the scorecard will be used by both sides to keep score. Back in the day all of those financial transactions were undercover but in today's age they are now obvious and will be open to debate. So it is a new game and the Biden team is yet to be fielded. And the policies are yet to be disclosed. We are yet to be dazzled by all of the "new" government strategies
that will be implemented.

So buckle up because we are now focused on the next two years when we have another critical election. Then there will be a consensus on how the Biden Team is doing and who is in charge of the legislator. We still have the state of CA in limbo regarding who goes to DC. Focus on where we are going - not where we have been.

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>"As I recall, Republicans starting a war in Iraq didn't solve the massive deficit Bush got us into."

^ The 'massive deficit' was incurred by the Bush administration borrowing money from China to finance the war in Iraq.

>"If you're going to call FDR's projects "socialist make work" then you're going to have to call Ronald Reagan a socialist too."

^ To a certain extent yes...from the standpoint that Reagan supported the NEA which brought us such national treasures as 'performance art' & the questionable Robert Maplethorpe exhibit during the George H.W. Bush administration...all at taxpayer expense.

>"...the President elect who has dragged his son to foreign countries where he is funneled huge amounts of money by companies that are receiving aid from US dollars. The money paid to Hunter is US dollars repurposed so they do not appear on Biden's personal tax return."

^ Hunter Biden = Jared Kushner...akin to discerning different brands of ketchup.

>"And let us not forget the Clinton Foundation which received huge amount of foreign dollars for getting favorable ROI in taxpayer funded projects."

^ To quote a passage from Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac..." Behind every great fortune lies a crime."

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Big difference between Kushner and Hunter. Jared is a successful business person on his own. He has made his fortune on his own. He is a good family man. He has the ability to run projects to successful completion.

Hunter is a "bad boy" type continually in trouble who has not established any credibility as a business person on his own.

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>"Hunter is a "bad boy" type continually in trouble who has not established any credibility as a business person on his own."

^ What else can one say about a 43-year old 'Ensign' who was discharged from the USN Reserves for cocaine abuse?

POTUS-elect 46 certainly tends to distance himself from his second son & perhaps rightfully so.

On the other hand, not totally sold on Mr. Kushner either...too many loose ends.

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>"Hunter is a "bad boy" type continually in trouble who has not established any credibility as a business person on his own."

^ What else can one say about a 43-year old 'Ensign' who was discharged from the USN Reserves for cocaine abuse?

POTUS-elect 46 certainly tends to distance himself from his second son & perhaps rightfully so.

On the other hand, not totally sold on Mr. Kushner either...too many loose ends.

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Jared Kushner provided great assistance in the movement of the US position in Israel. That has been a goal for a number of administrations. That whole world region has been a torch for centuries. The current administration is busy putting out the torch and trying to move that global location into a more productive and livable economy. That world region may not be everyone's focus based on where you all grew up and family history but it has consumed taxpayer dollars at the top level attempting to reconcile differences.

World organizations have wasted everyone's dollars trying to find peaceful reconciliation.

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>"The current administration is busy putting out the torch and trying to move that global location into a more productive and livable economy."

^ An effort worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize? To date POTUS-45 has received 3 nominations for coordinating the Arab-Israeli Peace accord.

POTUS-44 received the Nobel Prize in 2009 after only two months on the job...and then he arranged that fateful & costly agreement with Iran.

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I am viewing a congressional investigation in to FB, Twitter, Google on Fox News. What we are finding out is the the three organizations coordinate behind the scenes on what information will be allowed to be presented on their platforms, and what information will be excluded. You all have had the experience where you post something and then it is removed.

The companies make decisions on the information available on their platforms. Control of information is in process. If someone tells you that they have not seen any info on a specific topic it may be because it was disallowed on the platforms. Your attention is limited to what is allowed.

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>"What we are finding out is the the three organizations coordinate behind the scenes on what information will be allowed to be presented on their platforms, and what information will be excluded."

>"Control of information is in process...Your attention is limited to what is allowed.

^ If an editorial format...no problem.

If actual news or censored reportage...a potential problem.

The PRC has been controlling the dissemination of both for decades

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"Are our elections unfair?

"The way the host is, that is how he trusts his guests."
"A man is known by the company he keeps."

Both historical sayings:

Since Donald Trump continues to state the election is stolen, I now wonder what happened with the election in 2016. With a win of more than three million electoral votes for Hillary Clinton, did Donald steal the election in 2016?

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Mauricio - Has FB convinced you about Russian Interference? Has Google told you about Russian Interference? One of the original Googles is Russian - born there. And some of the other top level Yahoo, 23, are Russian by Heritage. So we can agree on Russian Interference. You can check their bios in Wikipedia. The Mom is head of the Journalism School at PAHS.

However HRC lost because of her personal positions are not shared by a majority of the voters. They simply DO NOT LIKE HER. Please address the reason she lost instead of pumping up some weird, unsupported arguments which are actually 180 degrees opposite. She is the classic grifter, turning every opportunity to talk to a foreign power into a donation to the Clinton Foundation for ROI taxpayer funded projects in THEIR countries.

Does this sound familiar? Seems to be the JOB of people in government service to figure out how to both milk the foreign countries and funnel taxpayer dollars into their heritage countries. Like Ukraine? The famous Lt in that case is Ukrainian by birth. The State Department lady is Eastern European by heritage. That is why they are there - they speak the language.
So Mauricio - what is it in your background that is pumping all of this IRE? You have some hand in this game - yet to be revealed.

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