Wednesday, October 01, 2008

I'm voting for giant douche.

I'm voting for giant douche.

Here is the relevant episode of South Park on the off chance you haven't seen it.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/808

I actually find it kind of amazing in a sad sort of way how it seems so many people have made decisions on who to vote for based seemingly on ads before there have been any real debates or without checking as many primary sources as possible for factual information about the candidates. A lot of "discussions" i've read and seen could be textbook cases of ad hominem attacks and all kinds of logical fallacies. It also seems to degenerate into a whole lot of petty name calling and herd mentality like a bad sports team rivalry. What's really sad is that it's usually a 51% to 49% victory.

I've read that the two party system is an inevitable consequence of the first past the post or plurality voting system that is used in the US. Other countries with working multiple political parties use other systems like approval voting or instant runoff or something else. A ranking system for candidates would seem to make much more sense.

In the original Constitution, candidates only ran for the office of President. Whomever got the most votes became President, the candidate who got the second most number of votes became Vice President.

How about something crazy like a balanced budget amendment for the Federal government?

Get rid of riders on bills. Each bill should have one and only one subject. These could actually turn out to be a win for government officials since it should get rid of the "i voted for it before i voted against it" type of junk.

A bill that gets passed unanimously is currently treated equally to a law that barely got passed with one vote. That seems stupid. It would make more sense to have the duration of the law be tied to how well it got passed. I think if a law gets passed unanimously, it can be a permanent law. Otherwise, maybe if it got passed with a supermajority it gets to be a law for 5 years before it gets reviewed. If a law barely got passed, it goes up for review in one year.

Get rid of party affiliations on ballots. If a voter can't remember or write down the candidate's full name, they shouldn't vote for them.

Gerrymandering districts so they look like some horrible modern art piece is a bunch of male bovine fecal matter. The boundaries should just follow geography, state boundaries, then be geometrically convex.

I guess this has turned into sort of a rant. I guess i would be much more impressed with "change" as the theme of this year's elections if it was a real fundamental change that wasn't tied to a person and a change in the system to really make it better.

Oh well, back to killing zombies for a while.