"2010 U.S. Election" forum is now "Elections"

[Ed Zotti]

The 2010 U.S. Election forum is now the Elections forum. This forum is subject to the following rules:

1. This forum is for discussion of elections and electoral politics. Discussions of electoral strategy and tactics, political parties, individual races, poll results, political news, and U.S. politicians and public figures are all appropriate for this forum.

2. We recognize the difficulty of disentangling electoral politics from larger issues of public policy, and leave it to the discretion of users whether to start political threads in Elections or Great Debates. We're not interested in making work for ourselves and except in cases of grossly inappropriate topics or (within reason) requests by the OP will not move threads. Users are free to debate which type of posts should go in what forum, but don't expect us to settle these arguments. We reserve the right to close threads or take other appropriate steps if SDMB rules are violated.

3. Political rants in the Pit are permitted as always. Please don't ask or expect us to move these threads.

[Airman Doors, USAF]

Talk about ahead of the curve. 2016?

EDIT: and so you fix it...

This should be an interesting forum, temporary or not.

[Ed Zotti]

Duh. Fixed, thanks.

[Duke]

You mean this forum was live, and I had a chance to make the first post ever in a new SDMB forum and missed it? Dang.

[cherry]

But you have the chance to make the first new thread beyond the sticky up there.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by Duke

You mean this forum was live, and I had a chance to make the first post ever in a new SDMB forum and missed it? Dang.

You may commence rueing. In any case welcome to this exercise is vanity where I will ultimately go mad with power this new forum!

[Fenris]

Originally Posted by cherry

But you have the chance to make the first new thread beyond the sticky up there.

Too late.

Nyahh-nyahh.

And thanks to Ed and Marley and the gang for creating this forum. I hope it thrives.

[robby]

What happens to this forum and the threads in it after the sunset date?

[Fenris]

Hey, no problem at all, but I thought this was going to be a GD subforum rather than it's own stand-alone forum.

Was there a change of plans or am I misremembering?

(Again, it's no big deal either way, I'm just wondering if my memory is on the fritz.)

[RTFirefly]

I'm delighted to see this forum open! The only change I would recommend is a later sunset date (e.g. 12/31/10), for two reasons:

1) Election post-mortems, which can often last more than a couple of weeks; and

2) the increasingly more common phenomenon of Congressional elections' taking more than a fortnight to resolve.

While Al Franken's 2008 Senate victory last year is the prime example of this, even that year the Alaska Senate race took until November 18 to resolve, and the Georgia runoff settling that state's Senate election was on December 2. And in 2006, the FL-13 House race between Vern Buchanan and Christine Jennings didn't get settled until sometime in 2007, and only by Jennings' concession, IIRC.

Might as well just plan for it.

[Ed Zotti]

Originally Posted by Fenris

Hey, no problem at all, but I thought this was going to be a GD subforum rather than it's own stand-alone forum.

Was there a change of plans or am I misremembering?

(Again, it's no big deal either way, I'm just wondering if my memory is on the fritz.)

Don't think we ever stated (I sure didn't); this way was simplest. We can do it some other way if that's the consensus and there are no technical or administrative issues.

[ShibbOleth]

Originally Posted by robby

What happens to this forum and the threads in it after the sunset date?

Seems like a better, broader theme would be elections and politics. This would have been a good place for the UK election discussion, for example.

[CyclopticXander]

This is amazing, thank you SDMB! I for one will be spending a lot more time around here.

I concur that some thought should be put into where this all goes after November, the idea of a broader political forum is a good one I think. But we have time to figure that out, and I'm just gonna enjoy this puppy in the moment.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by robby

What happens to this forum and the threads in it after the sunset date?

I'll check our emails, but I think the plan is to merge this forum back into Great Debates so the thread here will be readable over there.

[DoctorJ]

I would suggest that everyone label threads the way they do at Daily Kos, by starting with the election in question. "KY-SEN: Is Rand Paul crazy?". "KY-05: Hal Rogers needs to retire already". That sort of thing.

[fusoya]

Wow Cecil, you scared me for a moment. I thought that the teabaggers pushed Obama into not only resigning, but passing a new election amendment....and that THIS was the first I was hearing about it (I've been out of the loop since before Memorial Day).

[DrDeth]

Originally Posted by fusoya

Wow Cecil, you scared me for a moment. I thought that the teabaggers pushed Obama into not only resigning, but passing a new election amendment....and that THIS was the first I was hearing about it (I've been out of the loop since before Memorial Day).

Tea Party. They are the one who are supposedly immature and silly, right? Why descend to their level?

[tnetennba]

Well, gee, when I suggested a news and events forum people treated me like an insolent child for even suggesting such a thing. This isn't an aggregator! they screamed. And here we are with a completely redundant (according to that thread) and unnecessary forum for one *kind* of "news and events" that is admittedly impossible to disentangle from other news and events and is exactly what about 10000 political aggregators do.

[John DiFool]

So, is it about time to shut this puppy down? Successfull experiment or no?

[Snowboarder Bo]

Scheduled sunset is 15 November, according to the OP.

As to whether or not it was a success, I'd have to say an unqualified "aye" from this Doper. I thought it worked exactly like we all wanted: it was cool having a place to talk about election stuff without cluttering up Great Debates.

[Gukumatz]

And I thought it was neat being able to avoid it and still read GD. I'd say aye as well, but I suggest people keep weighing in with the pros and cons until the sunset date. If it's approved, it's likely this model may be used for the weightier 2012 elections as well.

[Fenris]

I'd like it to stick around until Jan--when the new congress is seated and then immediately open a 2012 one since people will start announcing their candidacies around Spring, 2011.

I also vote "unqualified success"

[Justin_Bailey]

Originally Posted by John DiFool

Successfull experiment or no?

I'd have to say no. The forum didn't really come alive until a few days before Election Day and nearly half the posts made in the forum were confined to fewer than ten threads.

Maybe it'll work better in 2012 for what will surely be a knockdown, dragout POTUS vote. But it felt unneeded in 2010.

[What the .... ?!?!]

How 'bout changing the title to "Politics" .

[twickster]

And it shall be done.

[Northern Piper]

so is this restricted to us elections, or can we post about elections in other countries as well?

[Juanito Hayburg]

Good post, Ed. During the current wave of turmoil in Egypt/Middle East, we are seeing what should be interpreted as the greatest compliment to the USA/democracy-practicing countries of the world: an orderly/organized/MANDATED BY CONSTITUTION turn over of the head-of-government. It is also a huge warning to the USA because so few people actually participate in voting. Some of the most important ballot measures are local, such as bond issues/board members for school districts. Public participation is unbelievably low, yet the complaints are exponentially high. Even many young people who just turn 18 who have completed civics class refuse to participate. I'd like to see participation in the elections to become mandatory as it is Down Under!

[Martini Enfield]

Originally Posted by Juanito Hayburg

I'd like to see participation in the elections to become mandatory as it is Down Under!

And speaking as someone who lives Down Under, I'd prefer to see voting become elective (excuse the pun) as it is in most other civilised democracies.

When everyone has to vote, it turns the whole thing into a known-numbers game for the politicians- and means that if you, the voter, live in a "Safe" electorate for a particular party, but support another party, you're completely wasting your time turning up to vote. Voluntary voting would, I think, go some way towards making politicians actually work for their votes.

In the last Federal Election, I'd never heard of- much less seen in the community- most of the major candidates (and this sentiment was shared by a lot of people; I lost count of the number of people I spoke to who more or less said "Who the fuck are these candidates?"). The parties had basically said "Well, this is a safe Silly Party Seat, so the Silly Candidate will win even if they're a stuffed Iguana, so no need to put any effort into it or anything" and the result was... well, surprise surprise, the Silly Party's candidate (fortunately not a stuffed Iguana) did indeed win.

[Hypnagogic Jerk]

Originally Posted by Martini Enfield

When everyone has to vote, it turns the whole thing into a known-numbers game for the politicians- and means that if you, the voter, live in a "Safe" electorate for a particular party, but support another party, you're completely wasting your time turning up to vote. Voluntary voting would, I think, go some way towards making politicians actually work for their votes.

I don't see in which way this is a consequence of compulsory voting. In countries with voluntary voting, you also find "fortress" constituencies where no matter what happens, the candidate of Party X will always win. This is certainly the case here in Canada. And is it not true that in elections for the US House of Representatives, you only have a small number of seats that are ever legitimately in danger of swinging?

Not to say that compulsory voting is necessarily a good idea, of course. It seems to me that it increases the chance of seeing people vote who don't know anything about the candidates, and possibly shouldn't be voting.

[gonzomax]

It seems to be a forum that requires a lot of deleting of dead threads. Most of them have a shelf life of 1 election. O'Donnell ,Angle , Steele and a few others are no longer news or post worthy.

[constanze]

Originally Posted by Ed Zotti

1. This forum is for discussion of elections and electoral politics. Discussions of electoral strategy and tactics, political parties, individual races, poll results, political news, and U.S. politicians and public figures are all appropriate for this forum.

To repeat Northern Piper's questions: what about elections, electorial politics, politicans in the non-US part of the world?

(What are we, chopped liver?)

[Steve MB]

Originally Posted by Hypnagogic Jerk

I don't see in which way this is a consequence of compulsory voting. In countries with voluntary voting, you also find "fortress" constituencies where no matter what happens, the candidate of Party X will always win. This is certainly the case here in Canada. And is it not true that in elections for the US House of Representatives, you only have a small number of seats that are ever legitimately in danger of swinging?

Mandatory voting raises the bar for throwing out incumbents. To lose, an incumbent would not merely have to disenchant his supporters to the point that they don't bother to show up; he would have to offend them to the point of voting for somebody else.

[ShibbOleth]

Why don't you just call this Forum "Politics"?

[Qin Shi Huangdi]

Originally Posted by ShibbOleth

Why don't you just call this Forum "Politics"?

Then most Great Debate topics other than those philosophical or theological will end up here then.