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Rigged? How?
The Democratic Party is a political party. It selects a candidate to represent it. It doesn't just hold an open-casting call. No party does. Can anybody throw a hat in the ring during pre-selection battles inside the ALP or the Libs? Even if you become a member, you have little chance if you're just trying to use the party to advance your own agenda.
The Presidential election isn't limited to Republican and Democratic candidates. It is open to other candidates. Ross Perot and Ralph Nader have run in the past as third-party candidates. The Greens and Libertarians are running candidates this time even though they have no hope.
The Republicans have failed to keep the fox out of the henhouse. Trump is as much a Republican as I am. They had the stupid idea that the RNC could put the brakes on if needed but that failed badly when they needed to unite against Trump.
Remember that Sanders has only recently joined the Democrats. He has been an independent for years. It was a bit like Bob Brown wanting an open ALP selection process (one in which every Australian could vote - even Liberal Party members) in which he could take control of the ALP and run his own policies while forcing the ALP to fund his general election campaign.
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Quote:“The election is not rigged for one candidate or another. The rules ... were established in the 1970s, long before any current candidate declared for office. All candidates run under the same rules.”
It seems that it's only rigged if you support the loser.
I studied the US electoral system back when I thought I had an interest in political science and it did my head in. Not that our system is perfect.
“Why don’t you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don’t you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don’t you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?” Oddball
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06-09-2016, 03:04 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-09-2016, 03:23 AM by Mav.)
The superdelegate system was brought in after George McGovern crashed and burned and later concerns about Carter. It is a failsafe to ensure the DNC isn't forced to run an unelectable candidate or one who doesn't represent the party in any meaningful way. Without that failsafe, the DNC may well hand the Presidency to a right-wing extremist. The Party also has an interest in Congressional elections that run on the same day and a terrible candidate can hurt its candidates in those contests.
Since it was introduced, the superdelegates have never thwarted the will of the voters. The candidate who has won the most pledged delegates has always become the Democratic candidate. Bizarrely, Sanders is the one who wants the superdelegates to support him and overturn the popular vote.
The GOP is now confronted with the fact that it no longer has a party platform. Trump is now the head of the GOP and his policies are now the GOPs. And when the next presidential elections come around, policies may well be radically different. There is little continuity or heart left in the GOP.
Do you think the ALP or the LP don't ensure their candidates adhere to their party's platform? In both cases, party headquarters can override the preselection vote in the branches. And in no case can non-Branch members turn up to vote in preselection battles. Your view that everyone should be able to vote in every party preselection process and that vote should be respected without question is ridiculous. Both in the US and Australia, we have election processes that don't just apply the popular vote. In the US, they have a delegate system. In Australia, we have a representative system where a number of MPs are elected and then they select the PM. We don't even vote directly for the PM and we don't vote at all for GG. Democracy doesn't mean direct popular vote.
Good on Sanders for moving the DNC to the left. Hillary's too right-wing for mine as is the Democratic Party. Hillary is probably a lot more conservative than Turnbull. But there needs to be some continuity in a party's platform or else it doesn't really stand for anything.
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06-09-2016, 05:11 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-09-2016, 05:18 AM by Mav.)
There are, however, a couple of obvious threats to democracy in the US. Both arise because of the US obsession with leaving each State to deal with setting electoral boundaries and voting qualifications and procedures as they deem fit.
Right-wing figures and strategists including the Koch brothers came up with the Red State Strategy. What we call redistributions and Americans call redistricting occurs every 10 years and the last one was in 2010. Each State takes the census data and reorganises their congressional electoral boundaries accordingly. Some States will pick up extra seats because they're growing. Each State has its own commission to organise the redistricting. Each State is free to have an independent commission, a bipartisan commission or a totally partisan commission. The conservative strategists realised that if they pumped a lot of money and expertise into seemingly unimportant State contests rather than the Presidential or Congressional elections, they could gain control of the redistricting process in a number of states. They won a lot of Guberbatorial and state legislative contests and then set about ensuring that the redistricting bodies would deliver gerrymanders which would allow the Republicans to win an impregnable majority in the House. A perfect storm happened in 2010 as the Tea Party had just burst onto the scene and the mid-term elections resulted in a backlash against Obama.
This has resulted in a nihilistic and obstructionist House. It's even backfired on the Republicans. John Boehner lost his position as the Speaker of the House. He refused to shut down the government and compromised with Obama to pass supply bills The right-wing wingnuts were not pleased and forced him out. There are now a lot of Republican congressmen and women who have been gifted safe seats who now feel no pressure from their districts to behave like reasonable adults. Instead, they act like spoilt toddlers. Ted Cruz boasted of trying to force a government shutdown if Obama refused to repeal Obamacare.
This majority is safe until maybe 2022 or 2024. Unless the DNC can do something to negate GOP control of redistricting in 2020, it will gift the Republicans control of the House until 2034 or so. The Supreme Court fortunately ruled that redistricting couldn't result in districts having different numbers of people, so that slowed down the strategy a little bit.
Each State can also do a lot to disenfranchise voters in its State. They can make it difficult to enrol to vote by requiring photo IDs or just make it difficult to vote by ensuring long lines of voters at a small number of polling stations. Remember that the elections are held on a Tuesday and there is no holiday (which Obama thinks needs to change). Even the methods of recording votes can influence results as they did in 2000 when dodgy machines in Florida led to votes being ignored if there were "hanging chads" and Dubya won because his brother was the Governor of Florida and was therefore able to get him over the line.
