Hillary W Obama running for president

[Winchester]

Yes, stay home, because evil flourishes when good men do nothing. And while you are at it, don't help any campaigns, donate to any good candidates, or do anything to get supporters of good candidates to the polls. Also, don't write letters to editors about politics, call and ask questions that require a clear answer showing someone else is better when you listen to political talk radio. And whatever you do, do not suggest your friends vote for a better candidate! You must never lend your voice to a loud cry for change and bring others to help its echo.

​You kind of went off the OP there, didn't you?

[veritasluxmea]

[Winchester]

I know in countries like Sweden there is a limit to how much funding a campaign can have thus making it a more equal playing ground. I dont like the idea that corporations as people can donate a bazillion dollars for their candidate and then receive special favors as a result which essentially screws all us normal people who can donate even a fraction of a fraction of that magnitude. (This all considering money = vote of course)

​Campaign finance is a very small portion of the problem. Jobs after "retirement" from the political game, junkets, and other ways of funneling money to winners is a much larger problem, and you will not be able to legislate it away.

Look at it like other vices: prostitution, drugs, gambling. All those things still exist, in spite of massive amounts of money devoted to killing and caging people over the matter.

Elections don't matter. They get in and they do what they want, and you will obey or their heroic lapdogs who protect your freedom will kick your stupid teeth down your throat.

[CrossCuT]

​Campaign finance is a very small portion of the problem. Jobs after "retirement" from the political game, junkets, and other ways of funneling money to winners is a much larger problem, and you will not be able to legislate it away.
Look at it like other vices: prostitution, drugs, gambling. All those things still exist, in spite of massive amounts of money devoted to killing and caging people over the matter.

Elections don't matter. They get in and they do what they want, and you will obey or their heroic lapdogs who protect your freedom will kick your stupid teeth down your throat.

Puh leeeeessss, I know bro, I watch House of Cards.

 

[Anastasia13]

​You kind of went off the OP there, didn't you?

​That is what I was responding to.

[Winchester]

​That is what I was responding to.

The OP didn't say do nothing. It didn't say don't write, petition beg your masters, or any of the other things Mundanes typically do (and mostly aren't beaten or murdered for doing) to try to change the minds of their owners in the government.

I just said stay home. The only candidate who is beyond marginally different is Rand Paul, and he's on record supporting throwing human beings in cages over drugs. None of them are above the level of savage, all support mass murder of foreigners to advance the interests of the US political class. The abortion issue is the one area where the GOP psychopaths "differ" and that's just empty rhetoric, as evidenced by the continued legality of abortion under regime changes. 

If you want to do something good, agitate for secession. The best thing for the world would be the breakup of the most murderous country in modern times.

[Anastasia13]

The OP didn't say do nothing. It didn't say don't write, petition beg your masters, or any of the other things Mundanes typically do (and mostly aren't beaten or murdered for doing) to try to change the minds of their owners in the government.

I just said stay home. The only candidate who is beyond marginally different is Rand Paul, and he's on record supporting throwing human beings in cages over drugs. None of them are above the level of savage, all support mass murder of foreigners to advance the interests of the US political class. The abortion issue is the one area where the GOP psychopaths "differ" and that's just empty rhetoric, as evidenced by the continued legality of abortion under regime changes. 

If you want to do something good, agitate for secession. The best thing for the world would be the breakup of the most murderous country in modern times.

People fought and died for the right to have representation. Statistically speaking, the odds of a vote making a difference are small but still there. If voting is one of the only patriotic things that people do, and sometimes one of the only things people do to make a difference beyond their immediate circumstance/church, is it really the right thing to advocate giving that up? I cannot in good conscience do that. If too many give up the last of their efforts, who will gain the power from this? Most likely the wrong people. We need people getting educated and getting involved, not more people completely detached from the political processes of America. Let's point the light where it needs to be.

[Winchester]

People fought and died for the right to have representation. Statistically speaking, the odds of a vote making a difference are small but still there. If voting is one of the only patriotic things that people do, and sometimes one of the only things people do to make a difference beyond their immediate circumstance/church, is it really the right thing to advocate giving that up? I cannot in good conscience do that. If too many give up the last of their efforts, who will gain the power from this? Most likely the wrong people. We need people getting educated and getting involved, not more people completely detached from the political processes of America. Let's point the light where it needs to be.

​I don't care what they allegedly did. That's their business. The idea that political representation is truly representation is complete nonsense.

[Anastasia13]

​I don't care what they allegedly did. That's their business. The idea that political representation is truly representation is complete nonsense.

Regardless, let's not just advocate giving up something small, let's advocate for doing something that might make more of a difference.

[Winchester]

Regardless, let's not just advocate giving up something small, let's advocate for doing something that might make more of a difference.

​That's the thing. I don't see it as "small". I see it as nothing. A literally pointless activity. A waste of calories. A farcical ceremony designed to create an illusion of control so as to maintain what is essentially a cult.

I advocate not granting power to popularity contest winners. But people like the idea of a goon who beats the croutons out of people they don't like and makes other people do stuff, so I really don't see it happening any time soon.

[Anastasia13]

​That's the thing. I don't see it as "small". I see it as nothing. A literally pointless activity. A waste of calories. A farcical ceremony designed to create an illusion of control so as to maintain what is essentially a cult.

I advocate not granting power to popularity contest winners. But people like the idea of a goon who beats the croutons out of people they don't like and makes other people do stuff, so I really don't see it happening any time soon.

While you may say that it does not matter because it is insignificant, the amount that it matters depends on the election and locaton (which state, is it local or presidential) and of course how many people do turn out to vote. The value of a vote is higher in local elections.

 

 

http://www.nber.org/papers/w15220.pdf

Discussion A probability of 1 in 10 million is tiny but, as discussed by Edlin, Gelman, and Kaplan (2007), can provide a rational reason for voting; in this perspective, a vote is like a lottery ticket with a 1 in 10 million chance of winning, but the payoff is the chance to change national policy and improve (one hopes) the lives of hundreds of millions, compared to the alternative if the other                                                             12 The t distribution with 4 degrees of freedom is commonly used as a robust alternative to the normal (Lange, Little, and Taylor, 1989); we use it here to allow for the possibility of unanticipated shocks. Using the t instead of the normal has little effect on the probability of a decisive vote in close states, but it moderates the results in states farther from the national median , for example changing the estimated probability of decisiveness in the District of Columbia from 5e-85 to 2e-12, in Utah from 9e-16 to 2e-10, but changing the estimate in Ohio only from 3.4e-8 to 3.1e-8. 5 candidate were to win.13 Different voters have different opinions about which candidate is desirable, but many can feel that their preference is not only better for them personally but for millions of others.

 

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/lessons/davidwalbert7232004-02/electoralcollege.html#4

IV. Does my vote count?

Yes, your vote counts. Some people have complained since 2000 that if the winner of the popular vote doesn't become president, their vote doesn't really count, so why vote at all? But every vote does count; it just counts in a more complicated way. When you vote for president, remember that you're voting in astate election, not a national election. So your vote counts just as much as anyone else's in your state — but it may count more or less than that of someone living in another state!

What's a vote worth?

Why does the actual weight of your vote vary by state? Remember that every state gets a number of electors that is the total of all of its representatives in Congress, both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. The House of Representatives is divided approximately by population — big states have the most representatives, small states have the fewest — but every state has exactly two senators, regardless of size. That means that while big states have more electors than small states, they don't have as many more as they would based on population alone.

Consider three states: California (the state with the biggest population), North Carolina (a medium-sized state), and Alaska (with one of the smallest populations). This table shows their population and number of electoral votes in 2000. The fourth column shows the number of residents per elector (population divided by electoral votes), and the last column shows the weight of an individual vote in the given state — that is, how the number of residents per elector compares to the national average.

	Population	Electoral votes	Residents per elector	Weight of vote
California	33,871,648	54	627,253	0.83
North Carolina	8,049,313	14	574,951	0.91
Alaska	626,932	3	208,977	2.50
United States	281,421,906	538	523,089	1.00

As you can see, Alaska, a very small state, has far fewer residents per electoral vote than the national average, so individual votes cast in Alaska count more than the national average — twice as much, in fact! A voter in California has a little less influence than the average American, about 83% as much. A voter in North Carolina has about 91% the influence of the average American. (You can calculate weight of vote in a given state by dividing the national average of residents per elector by that state's residents per elector. Since we're comparing each state to the national average, the weight of vote for the entire United States is exactly 1. Don't get it? Read more about the math.)

 

http://uspolitics.about.com/od/CampaignsElections/a/Can-One-Vote-Make-A-Difference.htm

Odds That One Vote Matters

Economists Casey B. Mulligan and Charles G. Hunter found in a 2001 study

 that only one of every 100,000 votes cast in federal elections, and one of every 15,000 votes cast in state legislative elections, “mattered in the sense that they were cast for a candidate that officially tied or won by one vote.”

Their study of 16,577 national elections from 1898 through 1992 found that only one had been decided by a single vote. It was the 1910 election in New York’s 36th Congressional District, won by a Democrat who claimed 20,685 votes to the Republican candidate’s 20,684.

Of those elections, the median margin of victory was 22 percentage points and 18,021 actual votes.

Mulligan and Hunter also analyzed 40,036 state legislative elections from 1968 through 1989 and found only seven that had been decided by a single vote. Of those elections, the median margin of victory was 25 percentage points and 3,257 actual votes.

In other words, the chance that your vote will be the decisive or pivotal one in a national election is almost zilch. The same goes for state legislative 

elections.

Chances of Presidential Race Being Decided By One Vote

Researchers Andrew Gelman, Gary King and John Boscardin estimated the chances that a single vote would decide a U.S. presidential election to be 1 in 10 million at best and less than 1 in 100 million at worst.

Their work, titled Estimating the Probability of Events That Have Never Occurred: When Is Your Vote Decisive? appeared in 1998 in the Journal of the American Statistical Association.

“Given the size of the electorate, an election where one vote is decisive (equivalent to a tie in your state and in the electoral college) will almost certainly never occur,” Gelman, King and Boscardin wrote.

Still, the odds of your one vote deciding a presidential election are still better than your odds of matching all six numbers of Powerball, which are smaller than 1 in 175 million...

 

Elections Won By One Vote

The races won by a single vote, in addition to the new 1910 Congressional election in New York, according to Mulligan and Hunter, were:

• a 1982 state House election in Maine in which the victor won 1,387 votes to the loser’s 1,386 votes
• a 1982 state Senate race in Massachusetts in which the victor won 5,352 votes to the loser’s 5,351; a subsequent recount late found wider margin
• a 1980 state House race in Utah in which the victor won 1,931 votes to the loser’s 1,930 votes
• a 1978 state Senate race in North Dakota in which the victor won 2,459 votes to the loser’s 2,458 votes; a subsequent recount found the margin to be six votes
• a 1970 state House race in Rhode Island in which the victor won 1,760 votes to the loser’s 1,759
• a 1970 state House race in Missouri in which the victor won 4,819 votes to the loser’s 4,818 votes
• and a 1968 state House race in Wisconsin in which the victor won 6,522 votes to the loser’s 6,521 votes; a subsequent recount found the margin to be two votes, not one.

•  

  A 1978 race for Rhode Island state Senate was tied at 4,110 votes, and decided by a second runoff election. So was a 1980 race for New Mexico state House, at 2,327 votes for each candidate.

 

https://www.lodi.gov/election/html/body_your_vote_makes_a_difference.htm

 

Discussion of why local elections matter most to financial decision making in government and it's impact on quality of life: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/elections/why-local-elections-matter-more-your-personal-finance

 

Discussion of why minorities need to vote in local elections to have their political will made policy rather than letting an opposing white majority control things: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/03/24/where-does-americas-low-voter-turnout-matter-the-most-in-local-elections/

Low voter turnout in midterm elections: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/24/voter-turnout-always-drops-off-for-midterm-elections-but-why/

Because local elections have low voter turnout and more impact per vote, we should be encouraging more people to get to the polls for those.

 

http://www.fairvote.org/research-and-analysis/voter-turnout/what-affects-voter-turnout-rates/

 

Election Type:  Low turnout is most pronounced in primary elections, off-year elections for state legislators, and local elections. For example, a 2013 study of 340 mayoral elections in 144 U.S. cities from 1996-2012 found that voter turnout in those cities averaged at 25.8%. In many cities, mayors have been elected with single-digit turnout.  For example, turnout in Dallas' 1999 mayoral election was a mere 5%.

 

 

So there you have it, folks. Get voting before Hillary makes it to the Presidential general election.

Edited April 14, 2015 by Light and Truth

[superblue]

Google or Bing, or what ever, South Park, Season 8 Episode 8 and

  South Park Season 16 episode 14

 

[Winchester]

 

While you may say that it does not matter because it is insignificant, the amount that it matters depends on the election and locaton (which state, is it local or presidential) and of course how many people do turn out to vote. The value of a vote is higher in local elections.

 

 

 

https://www.lodi.gov/election/html/body_your_vote_makes_a_difference.htm

 

Discussion of why local elections matter most to financial decision making in government and it's impact on quality of life: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/elections/why-local-elections-matter-more-your-personal-finance

 

Discussion of why minorities need to vote in local elections to have their political will made policy rather than letting an opposing white majority control things: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/03/24/where-does-americas-low-voter-turnout-matter-the-most-in-local-elections/

Low voter turnout in midterm elections: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/24/voter-turnout-always-drops-off-for-midterm-elections-but-why/

Because local elections have low voter turnout and more impact per vote, we should be encouraging more people to get to the polls for those.

 

 

 

So there you have it, folks. Get voting before Hillary makes it to the Presidential general election.

​You're still not getting it.

You can vote for the next person who will participate in the murder of innocents if you like. I'm out. I'm done. You can cite all the poorly researched garbage proving the economic tautologies look better when there is this or that majority in office (correlation isn't causation, and if you don't have a workable business cycle theory, you might as well be repeatedly farting and belching in rhythm).

It. Doesn't. Matter. Who. Is. In. Office.

I don't give a croutons about your president. It's yours, whomever wins. The SOB who sits in that temple to mass murder is yours. Not mine, not ever.

 

Get it? 

[Anomaly]

​You're still not getting it.

You can vote for the next person who will participate in the murder of innocents if you like. I'm out. I'm done. You can cite all the poorly researched garbage proving the economic tautologies look better when there is this or that majority in office (correlation isn't causation, and if you don't have a workable business cycle theory, you might as well be repeatedly farting and belching in rhythm).

It. Doesn't. Matter. Who. Is. In. Office.

I don't give a croutons about your president. It's yours, whomever wins. The SOB who sits in that temple to mass murder is yours. Not mine, not ever.

 

Get it? 

Please, climb off your hyberbolic and hypocritical soapbox, stop sucking off the boogeyman's teat, and stop peeing in your own Cheerios while complaining they're too warm.   Offer something new instead of the incessant whining of what's old.  My gosh, "man", you fuss like your diaper's dirty and you're mad they keep feeding you.  

[Winchester]

Please, climb off your hyberbolic and hypocritical soapbox, stop sucking off the boogeyman's teat, and stop peeing in your own Cheerios while complaining they're too warm.   Offer something new instead of the incessant whining of what's old.  My gosh, "man", you fuss like your diaper's dirty and you're mad they keep feeding you.  

​I've never claimed piety.