Half of Americans think presidential nominating system 'rigged' - poll

[Deleted]

Go ahead and specify the rules that were changed mid-run.

They changed it for Ron Paul. They made it so you needed a majority in 7 states to run.

[Pangean]

They changed it for Ron Paul. They made it so you needed a majority in 7 states to run.

Not done mid-run. Done at the convention. So we can assume that you know of no rules changed mid-run? Or would you like to try again?

[Sierra85]

first election in a long time where both front runnes from both sides look shit.

[Ifeanychukwu]

I don't know much about politics but as someone that would like to be able to understand what's going on during these elections... the election process just seems like a joke to me. Super packs, conventions, speeches, fundraisers, delegates... blah blah blah. What about the people? Why can't we sit these people down for a podcast and have them have an honest discussion for a few hours rather than these stupid game show like debates with timed responses and buzzers and all that bullshit? You're not getting a feel for who you're possibly getting to vote for. You're looking at rehearsed responses and years of conditioning and practice to be able to say just the right thing at just the right moment to attempt to win peoples favor.

It seems outdated and silly to me.

[Fugus]

Overall it is rigged in favor of those they want. It is pay to play which knocks out much stuff then the parties and the media get to spin public opinion or deny their existence as they see fit to mold public opinion of them and then if they are strong enough to overpower that, the democrats have super delegates and I am wondering if the republicans will implement something similar after Trump.

How to at least partially un-rig the system.

1) Abolish the electoral college.

2) Voting method is changed to a ranked method so that you can vote in order of whom you want from most to least with a "None" option being on the list as well. As an extension of this, there is no more primaries and all presidential candidates are elected from the popular vote using this method. That removes the power of gerrymandering and primaries/caucuses from the equation anymore while allowing people to vote for whom they want regardless of how "Unelectable" the media portrays them without it working out a vote helping another you dislike.

3) Digital voting is banned. All voting and tabulation is down by hand and on paper with the general public monitoring and recording them as the voting machines have proven to be unreliable and much more easily hacked than they like to admit and would help remove many of these accusations of tampering.

4) Parties are now banned from drawing districts and it is now done by open source software as I had mentioned in other threads and so do not wish to retype all of that here.

5) Congressional and Senate elections are now also required to use a ranked voting methods in these now impartially drawn districts.


These changes would fix a lot of the issues.

With these in place, this election would have been all the candidates running side by side regardless of democrat, republican or independent then the public would have voted for whom they wanted regardless of who people tried to tell them was electable or not.

Would have been interesting watching Sander, Clinton, Trump, Cruz, Rubio and all the others running side by side based on the will of the people and one of them not being able to effectively poach the others vote. It would also allow for the possibility of 3rd parties to form in the US.

[Deleted]

Not done mid-run. Done at the convention. So we can assume that you know of no rules changed mid-run? Or would you like to try again?

We are talking about the conventions...

[Healing Rain]

If we abolished the electoral college sheeplecrat states like California would dictate policy for the entire country.

[Pangean]

We are talking about the conventions...

Uh sunshine you said: "Hell we have seen them change rules mid run". It's ok to admit you were making up shit.

[Deleted]

You do understand that that's a pretty ridiculous statement right?

I don't think they do...

[Macaquerie]

You're honestly saying that the two groups that spend the most money on advertising, as well as having their candidates names first on the ballots, picking those candidates has nothing to do with the democratic process? C'mon now kid.

To be fair, as the primaries this time around have shown, the parties do rig the system in their favor, but their control is far from absolute. If the GOP had its way, they would've nominated some milquetoast candidate like Bush or Walker and Trump's candidacy would have been dead on arrival. The party can bend the rules to give its guy an advantage, but at the end of the day it's up to the candidate to capitalize and grab the brass ring.

This is also the reason why Clinton isn't nearly as horrible a candidate as some of her opponents try to paint her as. If she was, then all of that name recognition and donor money wouldn't have mattered and she would've gotten creamed just as badly as Jeb did.

[starlord]

this really just proves the founding fathers correct when they said the average person was too ignorant to have the power of electing the president. they didnt know or care till this election cycle.

[Fugus]

If we abolished the electoral college sheeplecrat states like California would dictate policy for the entire country.

How?

The president still would have to get his stuff through the House and Senate which is still stuff passed at state level. Removing the electoral college would actually serve to put the presidential position more into the collective will of the nation than in the hands of the people who last managed to draw the district lines to their advantage.

As a resident of one of those states, the vast majority of our state has had their voice removed due to the redistricting along with our votes in the electoral college. And it is next to impossible to fix when the ones benefiting from the process are also the same ones getting to choose how it goes.

[Zarc]

The presidential nominating system is not rigged. That's a stupid thing to say.

The Democratic and Republican parties are not a function of the state. They are political parties and they operate as their members choose. Strangely enough the members of the parties have decided on a process much more open than that in most other countries, allowing non-party members to vote for who they would want leading their party in the form of being on their party's ticket for the General Election. In Sweden, having non-party members vote for who should lead a party is unheard of. And having multiple people campaigning and going against each other for the leadership of the party is also very uncommon. Usually some sort of electoral commission within the party puts forth a single candidate for a party convention to elect leader.

Political parties are just that, parties. It makes perfect sense for party members themselves to decide the rules for how to nominate someone for a position in the party or who to put on their party's Presidential ticket. Which is exactly what the members of the Democratic and Republican parties have done. If you don't like it you are free to join either party and try to change that, create your own party and make things different, or vote for some other party, like the Libertarian Party, in the real election in November.

Now as to the General Election, that is an entirely different matter. Fishy voter registration laws, convicted felons not allowed to vote, a first-past-the-post electoral system and an indirect election through an Electoral College. There's a lot of things one would want reformed for the real elections, as those, unlike a political party's internal processes, is actually supposed to be democratic, transparent and fair.

[SlayAllDay]

because it is rigged...it's funny how people think their votes really matter lol...sheeple

[Powerogue]

It's a double edged sword. We like to stand here and defend the right of people to vote, but we're equally prepared to state that giving power to the masses is dangerous, because, we all know it, a great part of that collective is stupid.

Well then, if we wanted to institute more clear democracy, that would be the first thing to fix. It's a fundamental principle to democracy that the public should be well educated enough to make decisions relating to how people should be running the country.

[Endus]

The big issue, IMO, is that they've had SCOTUS rulings that have determined that spending money is a form of speech, meaning that megacorporations and the wealthy effectively have more free speech than anyone else, and so their voices get heard.

This is an issue, but it isn't an easy one to solve. A big way Canada gets around some of this is that we've got harsher restrictions on donations, and we have the CBC, which is state-owned and -run. It isn't the ONLY media network in the country, but because it's a nationalized one, its funding is more closely watched for bias, and it provides effectively neutral ground for debates and so forth. They have no reason to focus on a particular candidate over another, and the biggest issues with that we've seen recently have been with the Green Party, who struggle to get more than one or two seats in Parliament most elections (so not really a significant party, anyway). Nothing like how the media affects stuff in the USA, by favoring a given candidate. Sure, other channels could do just that, but comparing their coverage to the CBC makes their bias pretty clear, if they do so, so they generally don't bother.

If we're talking the USA, though, I'd want to run a secondary question on this poll; not just "do you think it's rigged", but "who do you think it's rigged FOR". If there's a split, and everyone thinks it's rigged for the "other guy", then it's not REALLY rigged, and we're talking a perception bias.

[SodiumChloride]

The less people are involved with a plan, the faster it gets implemented. It's as true for cooks as it is for types of gouvernment. Actually, this is funny, because the most efficient type of Gouvernment is actually an absolute monarchy/dictatorship. It's potentially also the worst, but it's going to be the most efficient worst possibility.

On the other side of the spectrum you'd have meh, the population voting on literally everything. Either that or Anarchy. Not sure, but either one are stupid. One quickly alienates the population from wanting to vote every day on some issue they know jack shit about and the other is just pure chaos.

Doesn't congress have to vote to pass laws?

[Shadowferal]

If we abolished the electoral college sheeplecrat states like California would dictate policy for the entire country.

A bit hyperbole. But it hits the point. Without the electoral college candidates only focus on the most populated states, which combined would mean...4-5 states? With the EC it means at least 13 states.

[Slant]

Doesn't congress have to vote to pass laws?

Um, yes. Why did you quote me?

[Wildtree]

It is not rigged. That is a bunch of nonsense, and a deliberate deflection from the real problem the system has.
The real problem is the system in place itself, and not so much the money.
To have the procedure take a whooping 2 years time does not make it more democratic at all. It harms the country since those are 2 years in which next to no governing happens. Next to no decisions can be made, since the entirety of congress and the party officials down to the lowest office clerk in any given state, are busy with election nonsense.
The decision which candidate gets to run for the party in the general elections, that decision should be made by the party more or less behind closed doors, aka among it's very members. The whole thing shouldn't take more than a few weeks, and then the party should present their candidates for president and vp, along with the key positions for their administration, Secs of defense, state, finances, the usually most important positions.
The people are presented with those teams up for election and vote accordingly.
The general election procedure too should then take no more than a month or two, and the show is over.
And won't be no longer an idiotic media spectacle, like a reality tv show. Because that is factually what the Presidential elections became in the US, the most popular - in terms of exposure and air time - reality tv show..
The impact of the money is surprisingly next to non existent so far. It is still a perversion to have this out of control situation. One doesn't even wanna start to think about how much good could be done with all that money wasted on the elections..