Not a political post, Just curious how you research your political candidates?

[Metanis]

We should just let the machines govern us since people are so illogical and imperfect.

 

[Sky-Knight]

The Senate is a good balance for the House of Reps. This gives smaller states some political influence.

Then you also must support the Electoral College, it exists because it's the two house compromise for the Executive branch. It balances the will of the population, against the states individually. Using a purely popular vote based system to select our President is to allow New York, and California to choose who runs the Federal Government exclusively. Heck, it's even worse than that, it basically means LA and NYC get to elect the President.

Coffee's linked video is fact.

There are several things we can do to improve the system, but removing the Electoral College isn't one of them.

 

[mr m]

Then you also must support the Electoral College, it exists because it's the two house compromise for the Executive branch. It balances the will of the population, against the states individually. Using a purely popular vote based system to select our President is to allow New York, and California to choose who runs the Federal Government exclusively. Heck, it's even worse than that, it basically means LA and NYC get to elect the President.

We disagree on this. Lets leave it at that

 

[Sky-Knight]

Or could it usefully be replaced by something like the British House of Lords?

For those unfamiliar with the Mother or Parliaments, the Lords is a slowly-changing unelected group whose main purpose is to veto legislation passed by the political mayflies in the House of Commons. They're not immune to outside pressure but as they can (almost) never be removed they're not constantly concerned about looking good to their constituents and worrying about the next election. They tend to take a longer-term view and aren't as rigidly divided along party lines as their counterparts in the lower House. They're also much more dignified and polite, possibly because they expect to be working with the same people for many decades.

If US senators were elected for life you'd eventually end up with something similar - a (small-c) conservative brake on Representational and Presidential extremism and short-termism.

When the US was founded, Senators were appointed by the state governments via state define processes. Most of them were elected by the state level legislators. This political insulation, along with the 6 year term was to replicate the House of Lords. Somewhere along the line we decided to amend the Constitution and change that, which has resulted in a huge legislative nightmare. I feel that change was a massive mistake. And that mistake is the one that is really crippling the US. The person in the White House is irrelevant, our Legislature has been crippled for decades. It cannot set policy properly, and has been shifting its responsibility to the President incrementally over time. We're slowly converting into a dictatorship... Pulling the Electoral College will accelerate this trend, not reverse it. Contrary to popular belief, the "will of the people" is usually crap.

Which is why courts exist largely to slow things down, because only with time do emotions fade and reason prevail. Such is human nature.

 

[Sky-Knight]

We disagree on this. Lets leave it at that

In other words you stand on a talking point instead of actual reason, you've been called on it, and now you're running away. That's fine, but we aren't agreeing to disagree, to do that you'd have to make an argument in support of your position. There is no reasonable argument to be made that can ever justify subjecting the combined power of Head of State, and Chief Executive to a simple vote of the people.

In Canada, UK, and AU, the Head of State is the Governor-General, and the Chief Executive is the Prime Minister. These positions are both appointed positions via various processes ultimately in control of the Legislative bodies in the respective governments. If you want to eliminate the EC, and move onto something like this I can get behind it. The CEO of the US needs to be free to do what needs done free of political pressure. But, should he require the support of 2/3rds of the House and Senate to get said office... well we end up with the EC, just in the form of being able to elect who the electors are.

Of course we'd have that NOW, if the 50 states weren't idiotic and going with this winner takes all BS with the votes in question. The only President in recent history that's actually won an election via the designed and intended process was Reagan!

 

[fencepost]

I'd look first at https://votesmart.org

For judicial elections or judge retention elections, there's a good chance that the local bar association(s) have rated candidates at least on the question of qualified/not qualified. In my area, there are at least 11 bar associations that speak up on judges, and the "Alliance of Bar Associations" consolidates all of those evaluations into a single document: http://www.voteforjudges.org/wp-content/uploads/2018-Primary-Judicial-Ratings3.8.pdf

That said, it varies depending on whether you're talking about national, state, local elections and primaries vs elections. Local is a lot harder unless you still have any kind of local news organizations. For those, look out for candidate forums, etc.

 

[mr m]

In other words you stand on a talking point instead of actual reason, you've been called on it, and now you're running away.

So according to you and others, the EC creates parity for the smaller states. But only 3 or 4 battle ground states determine our elections anyway. The EC is a political anachronism that has worn out its welcome.

Kill that goofy blunder of the SCOTUS Citizens United along with the EC and maybe, just maybe we will get more than a 50% voter turnout.

I am not running away from a debate. No one here wants to read our back and forth banter and neither one of us will change each others minds so what is the point of arguing?

 

[Sky-Knight]

So according to you and others, the EC creates parity for the smaller states. But only 3 or 4 battle ground states determine our elections anyway. The EC is a political anachronism that has worn out its welcome.

Kill that goofy blunder of the SCOTUS Citizens United along with the EC and maybe, just maybe we will get more than a 50% voter turnout.

I am not running away from a debate. No one here wants to read our back and forth banter and neither one of us will change each others minds so what is the point of arguing?

Citizens United is another issue entirely and has nothing to do with the EC. The EC's problems are the 50 individual states doing this all or nothing stupidity. The next issue is the ability of the Supreme Court to choose a winner if no one gets the required EC votes. What we need to do is double down on the EC, you'll win by it or not at all, and if no one wins a new election is called. States must award the votes proportionally. With that in place, our Executive Branch shifts the entire nature of our government from a polar two party system, to a coalition based system. We get 3rd and 4th parties in the mix, and the candidate that wants to win has to get those votes to get the office. Furthermore, we can illegalize the disclosure of election results until all results are tallied.

We know how to do this, we just need to steal some solid ideas from other governments that work better. But the rich people in Washington don't want this stuff because it means they cannot purchase an election.

Eliminating the EC means Facebook manipulation chooses the next leader based on two markets, and only two markets, LA and NYC. Way too easy to buy ads in those spaces to win.

And it's not "according to me" that the EC transfers voting power to less populous states, that's WHAT IT DOES. That's its primary purpose.

Instant-Runoff Voting would help a ton here too...

 

[TechLady]

Using a purely popular vote based system to select our President is to allow New York, and California to choose who runs the Federal Government exclusively. Heck, it's even worse than that, it basically means LA and NYC get to elect the President..

Sounds GREAT.

(I'm from LA, husband is from NYC).

 

[Metanis]

If NY and LA ran the show we would all be living The Hunger Games. The Electoral College was designed on purpose to ensure that power got distributed over the entire country. Take it away and the "United" States will become 6 or 8 balkanized proto-countries because we won't be united any longer. I'm not saying that's a bad thing because it's painfully obvious there aren't a lot of shared values left here in the USA.