Posted on 04/13/2016 12:18:12 PM PDT by pogo101
I used to feel that the primaries should be party only, but now I see how the Party Does not have our best interests at heart. I am ok with the long primary season, though it should be maybe three months and not six. If it were short you would know a lot less about the candidates. presidenting is brutal, so the candidates need to be under stress for some length of time.
Yes, let’s take Colorado for example.
1. I understand why there’s no primary as in many states, because the state eliminated governmental involvement in parties’ primaries to save taxpayer money.
2. But the process that the CO GOP came up with is dumb. To “be heard,” you have to go to a specified place in your precinct at a particular time. (The precincts each select a county delegate. The county delegates then get together, again at a particular place and time to choose state delegates. THEN, the state delegates pick who’s going to the RNC.)
Why can’t folks just mark a simple ballot? Why do they have to go attend a meeting of any duration? What if you have work or kids to attend to?
All I know is Cruz and Trump, working together, can thwart any GOPe meddling.
If that doesn’t happen, Kasich will start writing his concession speech to Hillary.
Yeah they’re weird. But they’ve always been weird. This is just the first time we’ve had a candidate who clearly never bothered to look up the rules and complains about it. 4 years from now they’ll still be weird.
That's irrelevant, because if no candidate earns a majority of electors, the electors have NO SAY at all after that. The decision of who becomes President goes to "faithless" Congressional delegations from each state.
The caucuses will continue, however. That's how precinct captains and the various levels of party committee members are selected.
Under regulations established in the 1980s, delegates cannot take money from corporations, labor unions, federal contractors or foreign nationals. But an individual donor is permitted to give a delegate unlimited sums to support his or her efforts to get selected to go to the convention, including money to defray the costs of travel and lodging.
That should explain everything about how "smart" Cruz's "ground game" is.
I would add make all states proportional. Get rid of the WTA contests.
As far as I know, every state has ‘caucuses’ (local meetings) where issues are raised and officers and delegates elected. It’s just that most states don’t use them for presidential preference.
Asking voters to be calm in the face of outright lies is not only misguided but is also insulting when combined with a wagging finger that they, the voters should know ‘the rules’, even though they do not make the rules. It is a situation that is designed for generating riots.
Donald Trump has called it plainly and factually on two counts. One, if the will of millions of voters is ignored, there may be riots. So any plea to remain calm has to persuade millions and millions of people who have every right to be upset. Two, Trump has rightfully pointed out that the system is rigged in both parties. This is not just an observation by Donald Trump, this is dinner time table talk to millions of voters and their familes and friends across the land.
To drive these points home, a state delegate Curly Haugland let it be known on CNBC a couple of weeks back that the idea of democratic free elections to him is a “problem with the media”, and to the rest of Americans, it is a scam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YUPB2YcFvI&nohtml5=False
For those that argue over ‘words’, our federal government is organized to be a ‘Republic’, not a Democracy but our elections are organized to be democratic. This is why people sometimes refer to our system of governance as a Democratic-Republic. We rule ourselves as a Republic meaning Rez Publica or Rule of Law. We elect ourselves as a democracy.
So the descriptor ‘democratic free’ elections means just that.
If there were no political parties, which the US Constitution does not in fact require, if there were no parties there would still be the Electoral College which is constitutionally mandated, the delegate electors of which elect the President. Two times in US history the electors have chosen a President who fell short of the popular vote, the first time in 1876 in the election of Rutherford Hayes and the second time with George W. Bush.
Party Nominee, Party, Electors, Votes
Rutherford B. Hayes, Republican, 185, 4,036,298
Samuel J. Tilden, Democratic, 184, 4,300,590
Most here know the outcome of the 2000 election between Bush and Gore. We were glad Gore lost but we never suspected there was any sort of scam behind the disparity between electoral votes and votes. It was accepted as a rare occurrence, and it was indeed a rare event. If we had been persuaded that the Electoral College cheated or changed its rules to elect G.W. Bush, many voters that value truth and integrity would have spoken up about it. But it wasn’t that way, not at the Electoral College Level. The party nomination delegate process is however, an entirely different matter.
Again with respect to the Electoral College, if the public had any inkling that the Electoral College had ‘rules’ by which they would select the President DELIBERATELY AGAINST THE WILL OF THE VOTERS, the Electoral College would be scrapped and left on the dustbin of history. One need only look at the 17th Amendment to see an analogous event.
Scrapping the Electoral College, and for that matter enacting the 17th Amendment are in the realm of emotional reactions and actually yield results that are harmful to Americans. So there is a Pavlovian response to want to quell any emotional reaction and for good reason. But are Americans to blame for having such fits of rage?
No, they are not. Human nature easily predicts violence and destruction when people have been lied to, robbed, betrayed having no recourse to correct those that commit the dirty deeds. It is as predictable as any fact of physics.
The idea of pleading to voters to ‘be calm’ in the face of a big lie that affects one of their most cherished rights makes about as much sense as asking the Earth to loosen up on its gravitational field for a few hours so that one can get from point A to point B more reasonably. It’s ludicrous to even think about.
No, Americans are not at fault to get angry and enraged. The fault lies with the persons running the scam who ignore those they’ve asked to share in the process but who have no intention of sharing anything.
To hell with the ‘rules’, it’s the lie that is the issue. If Americans had known this scam was afoot, they have every ability to form a political party that will listen to them and that will write rules that will require that those entrusted in leadership act ethically and with honor with respect to cherished rights of voters.
One should not ask voters to be calm, they won’t be and for good reason. One should instead ask those entrusted to oversee the process with respect to the will of the voters to act accordingly, else there will be hell to pay.
But it does have those rules. If no candidate gets a majority of electors (a la delegates), the electors are booted from the process and congressional delegations from the states hand-pick the President. That's why Andrew Jackson had a plurality in popular vote AND electors but "lost" to J. Q. Adams in 1824.
There are some strange primaries and caucuses, but it is representative of the people in the party. Merely because you rolled out of bed and decided to vote in your primary and you don’t get as much say as a little ol lady that’s been in the GOP for 20 years, spending her time, money, and pouring her heart into it, doesn’t mean you were cheated. Particularly in these stupid open primary states where democrats have been circumventing the process, many of which are Trump voters.
Exactly right.
The primaries were created by the media for the media cartel to have a tremendous influence on who the parties select for candidates. This year, it stopped working as the media cartel wanted it to work, because new media is reaching a critical point.
The purpose of “primaries” was to circumvent parties. It started in in the mid 1960’s when the media cartel consolidated its power.
They are one of the main mechanisms by which we have been saddled by “progressive” candidates by both parties for decades. Reagan was a rare exception.
Well, it was only recently when I came to that conclusion regarding in-party voting. This all out effort to take Trump down simmply because he wants to change things for the better, has been brutal and revealing.
Convential Conservative entities have just about destroyed themselves, and now Cruz going after the Eagle Forum makes it nearly unanimous.
Support Cruz or die.
Sometimes you have to fight dirty when you’re facing slime.
Trump is being denigrated because they know damn well he loves the U. S., and that isn’t Leftist folks.
He’s a patriot. He didn’t always see things like we did, but this trial by fire has convinced me that he is exactly who we need.
Thank God (seriously) Trump has been able to out people for who they really were all along.
The modern idea of a primary is an idea from the Progressive Movement. Even then, only a few states used primaries at all, and only one or two states used primaries to bind delegate votes. That changed with the New Progressive Era of the 1960s.
Your example is NOT comparable because the election of 1824 was a NATIONAL ELECTION, not a party nomination. It matters because the rules of the Electoral College are hardwired into the Constitution, whereas the rules of the GOP are observed now to be whatever certain persons of that party would like them to be.
You also conveniently forgot to add the rest of the story of 1824. Adams’ party went on to form the ‘Whigs’, which died.
With Congress, there is an amendment process that can be carried out by either Congress itself or by states or state conventions of voters. The voter has a say in the process.
However, according to certain GOP persons, the voter has no say in the process, yet the voter is asked to make an appearance in a charade for which they were never informed.
The LIE is the GOP telling voters that they count, when in fact, they don’t count.
IF there were TRUTH IN ADVERTISING, the GOP would be forced by law to disclose that the voter does not count and this act would then compel voters to FORM THEIR OWN PARTY with rules that could not be changed except by a referendum of party voters.
But GOP voters have been led to believe that their vote counts. They trusted those in positions of responsibility who are now betraying them. There will be no ‘calming down’.
It is not the voters that are at fault here. The voters are not like employees who are required to obey the lawful rules of employers, to heed the Boss’ orders.
The voters are like partners who are to be compensated by seeing that their will is respected, analogous to seeing contractors are compensated by payment.
Respecting ‘political will’ to voters is analogous to issuing pay to contractors. The consequences of cheating one or the other lead to riots, reform or court; likely all.
To say to voters “you do not count”, that only the ‘rules’ count, is to say to partners your compensation in terms of ‘political will’ was never in writing, it was only verbal; you are not to be paid, you’re nothing more than volunteers, and if you think different, well, too bad.
Donald Trump will reach 1237+ delegates on the 1st Ballot easily. That’s not a plurality, that is a majority. And he will go on to take over leadership of the GOP. His justifiably angry supporters are going to be put into positions of responsibility within the GOP. In time, they will render payback to the corrupt liars and scammers that treated them so poorly, a payback that will blackball the scammers from any form of government employment, contracting or association of either. Such payback will be prepared following the ‘healing’ and ‘unification’ phases of the Convention and will be executed after the general election. Count on it.
“you have to register at least six months before election day;”
That amount of time would, I think, ensure only people like Jeb got the nomination. It would also ensure that no new charismatic candidate had a chance. Only party hardliners would choose and the corrupt leadership would be maintained. The party would slowly choke to death. You want attract new members and the registration rules should not discourage them
Thirty days, one month is a better number and two weeks, 15 days is probably enough provided that the address can be verified. This should be true of the general election as well.
Otherwise I think you have good suggestions
My process would look sort of like this:
1.There should not be ANY delegates that are awarded by fiat from party officials. They should all be voted on.
2. No caucus there must be a primary.
3. All primaries must be within one month of each other, preferably on the same day.
4. All primaries should use this system.
a. The winner (plurality) gets 50% of the delegates. If a winner gets 60% of the vote they get all the delegates.
b. The candidate in second place gets 20% of the delegates.
c. The candidate in third place gets 15% of the delegates
d The final 25% are awarded proportionally to ALL candidates left in the race.
e.If a candidate drops out their delegates disappear.
f. If there are less than 4 candidates running the final 25% are awarded to the remaining candidates proportionally.
g. A candidate must win 10 states to have their name placed in nomination. If they fail to reach this number they may not be nominated at the convention.
h. If a candidate is mathematically eliminated from obtaining the requisite number of delegates their name will not appear on future ballots.
This system would bring the process to a winner prevent a candidate from running to create a “brokered convention” There is not going to be any second vote
For election day
1. No same day registration
2. No early voting
3. No absentee voting or mailed ballots.
4. No picture ID no vote (put a photo on a SS card since everyone has to have one of those anyway)
5. No exist polling
6. No votes by non citizens, but ex-felons who’ve served their complete sentence are OK though not parole.
7. Raise voting age to 21 unless in the military. The age for voting in the military should be 17
8. Have the polls open 24 hours
9. All votes are turned in within 45 minutes of the close of the election.
10. Once votes have been turned in no more will be accepted or found.
11. In any recount the total number of votes must stay the same.
12. All results are reported at the same time. No trickling in of vote totals or time zones
Just my thoughts
LOL didn’t matter the mods deleted it even though Trumpsters have posted more or less the same thing daily and repeatedly for months now.
They won't change them next week to many people watching. When they set the rules of convention then watch for the dirty work.
I agree completely about Trump. If everyone had politics figured out when they were young this would be a robot world. I knew nothing about politics and didn’t live in the USA and my info came from Newsweek magazine so I voted for a young Bill Clinton once.
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