# Democrats are winning, the system is just screwing them **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 23, 2005, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599 "2005-06-23T22:21:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2005, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/61 "2005-06-28T19:22:41Z")
I admit that Dukakis and McGovern were trounced all over the map, not just in the south. But being that the south is a bit more conservative than the rest of the country, I don’t believe a Democrat can win any southern electoral votes without (a) being from the south or (b) having more conservative views on social issues and a “tough on defense” image. Since having more conservative views on social issues is a recipe for not getting the nomination, I think that to win the White House the Democratic nominee must get 70% of the non-southern electorate. Mind you, Kerry came close (actually in my book he did better than that), but it is still an uphill battle. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2005, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/62 "2005-06-28T19:34:28Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Democrats don’t need to change a thing. Just eliminated those evil Diebold machines, and the Dems will sweep into office like wind off the sea. **John,** it appears you still enjoy keeping your head in the sand: > [@](#): > > [Ohio Whitewash](http://www.spectrumz.com/z/fair_use/2004/11_04.html) > Touch screen voting machines in Youngstown OH were registering “George W. Bush” when people pressed “John F. Kerry” ALL DAY LONG. This was reported immediately after the polls opened, and reported over and over again throughout the day, and yet the bogus machines were inexplicably kept in use THROUGHOUT THE DAY. > [@](#): > > [2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_controversies_and_irregularities#Voting_machines_and_vendor_issues) > > The senior executives of each of the top 3 voting machine companies (ES&S, Diebold and Sequoia, accounting for over 90% of voting machines in use) have strong Republican ties. Key managers or funders of all three are significant Republican fund raisers and donors. Managers and/or affiliates of each of these have criminal records including cases of computer fraud, embezzlement and bid rigging. Two senior managers went directly from running the voting machine company to win unheard of success in politics, by means of machines sold to states by their companies. Some believe the consistency of their ties with one political party is sufficient to overturn the 2004 poll, given the small margin of victory. > [@](#): > > [Ten preliminary reasons why the Bush vote does not compute](http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1065) > By examining a very wide range of sworn testimonies from voters, polling officials and others close to the administration of the Nov. 2 election; by statistical analysis of the certified vote by mathematicians, election experts and independent research teams who have conducted detailed studies of the results in Ohio, New Mexico, Florida and elsewhere; from experts who studied the voting machines, tabulators and other electronic equipment on which a fair vote count has depended; and from a team of attorneys and others who have challenged the Ohio results; the [freepress.org](http://freepress.org) investigative team has compiled a portrait of an election whose true outcome must be investigated further by the Congress, the media and all Americans – because it was almost certainly not an honest victory for George W. Bush. > > Crucial flaws in the national vote count, most importantly in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida, indicate John Kerry was most likely the actual winner on November 2, as reported in national exit polls. At very least, the widespread tampering with how the election was conducted, and how Ohio’s votes were counted and re-counted, has compromised this nation’s historic commitment to free and fair elections. Apparently, _some_ of us believe that fair and open elections are a keystone of a democracy, while others would just rather poo-poo concerns about election fraud as “tired old canards”… ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2005, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/63 "2005-06-28T20:42:57Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > Apparently, _some_ of us believe that fair and open elections are a keystone of a democracy, while others would just rather poo-poo concerns about election fraud as “tired old canards”… And the rest simply assume, as did the OP, that any election that the Democrats lost must have been unfair. It **must** have been! All the liberal blogmeisters say so! _:shrugs:_ If you had had any credible evidence, you would have produced it already. But you haven’t, so you don’t. Keep trying, though. Maybe you will win the 2000 election yet! Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2005, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/64 "2005-06-28T21:06:21Z")
By the by, **Shodan** , have we taken the time to thank you and yours for the perfectly splendid situation we find ourselves in today. Gee, what a swell job you guys have done, supporting The Leader and all. You must be simply bursting with pride at what all you’ve accomplished! Don’t know what the heck to think about all this dark conspiracy stuff. Inclined to dismiss it out of hand simply on the grounds that dark conspiracy on that scale would be almost impossible to keep concealed. On the other hand, the very implausibility of it would help in that regard, must be lots of folks like me who take the same attitude, and that would work in the conspiracists favor. And there is that nagging question about the exit polls. Its very hard to account for, unless we want to believe that people voted for Bush but were ashamed to admit it, so lied and said they voted for Kerry. And keep it mind, had it not been for exit polls, we would never have found out about the Jews for Buchanan fiasco in Florida. So, got to come down firmly in the “Dunno!” camp. As usual. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2005, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/65 "2005-06-28T21:42:29Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > **John,** it appears you still enjoy keeping your head in the sand You keep reading those blogs, **rjung**. That’s what you’re good at. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2005, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/66 "2005-06-28T21:55:55Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > And there is that nagging question about the exit polls. Its very hard to account for, unless we want to believe that people voted for Bush but were ashamed to admit it, so lied and said they voted for Kerry. Not for anyone who took the time to read the analysis from the very [news agencies, like CBS,](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/03/eveningnews/main653562.shtml?CMP=ILC-SearchStories) that had the problems. Really, this stuff was all over the news in the days right after the election. There is no “nagging question about exit polls” unless one wants there to be one. > [@](#): > > So why are they so unreliable? > > "The first wave of data has a smaller sample size and is only interviewing people that voted that morning,’’ says Lenski. “So they’re not necessarily going to accurately reflect the entire day.” > > Election experts have warned for years that poll numbers are given too much credibility by a nation eager for quick information. This year it was Internet bloggers who learned the hard way not to consider those numbers a snapshot of voter attitude when they are really just a small part of a much larger picture. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2005, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/67 "2005-06-28T22:32:52Z")
Unc: Thanks for the invite, but I’m afraid I have another engagement and can’t attend your party. Do let me know how it went, though. S PS: Y’all havin’ fun? Glad I could provide. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2005, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/68 "2005-06-28T22:39:14Z")
Everytime this thread gets bumped, I keep reading the title as I did the first time: **Democrats are whining, the system is just screwing them.** ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/69 "2005-06-29T00:09:04Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > You keep reading those blogs, **rjung**. That’s what you’re good at. Quack quack quack. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Scott\_Plaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/70 "2005-06-29T00:10:28Z")
Why didn’t that echo? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/71 "2005-06-29T00:33:38Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > Quack quack quack. 🙂 That’s the most intelligent post you’ve made in weeks. 🙂 Hey, sorry about the link to a legitimate news site in my responce to **elucidator** , but I don’t read blogs. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/72 "2005-06-29T16:07:08Z")
I’d be more sympathetic to the whole “the Dems are really winning, but the system’s screwing them” canard if Dem candidates for the House of Representatives, nationwide, had won more votes than the GOP House candidates in just one of the past few elections. One can argue over whether the Senate should have been designed the way it is, but it’s been a fact of life since the beginning of the Republic. Ditto the electoral vote formula. But the House was intended to roughly reflect the population as a whole. If the Dems were winning more votes than GOPers in House races, and were still the minority party in the House, we’d have a legitimate argument, IMHO, that we’d been screwed by GOP gerrymandering. But not until then. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/73 "2005-06-29T16:17:53Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > Unc: > > Thanks for the invite, but I’m afraid I have another engagement and can’t attend your party. Do let me know how it went, though. > > S > > PS: Y’all havin’ fun? Glad I could provide. Fucking pathetic. Engage your topic. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/74 "2005-06-29T16:41:43Z")
> [@askeptic](#): > > Lib, please explain how Libertarians must jump through hoops that other third party hopefulls do not have to jump through. I think Lib’s point is that the Democrats were complicit in gaming the system against third parties (and that the new gaming of the system against **them** is thus karma coming home to roost). The LP was cited as an example, but that doesn’t mean the issue is specific to them. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/75 "2005-06-29T17:01:59Z")
> [@MGibson](#): > > I’d say that Jones was about 218 years late in her complaint but our government was designed to be amended. Equal represenation of the states in the Senate is specifically excluded from the amendment process. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/76 "2005-06-29T17:14:47Z")
OK, here’s my 2 cents: (1) Single-member districts with first-past-the-post voting discriminate against third parties, and in favour of the party that has a plurality of the popular vote. An extreme example is last month’s election in the UK, where Blair’s party was relected with just 36% of the vote. The fact that the opposition is divided up into several smaller parties helped Blair in sdpite of the fact that Labout voters tend to be concentrated in particular areas. The same thing helped Thatcher when the Tories were outpolling Labour, but still not getting 50% of the popular vote. (2) The Democrats have always supported the basic system of electing the House, because it favours them over third parties, and sometimes favours them over Republicans. And without some major shift in party support, for pragmatic reasons I suspect they always will. (3) The system of electing the Senate favours small states over large states, and that is exactly what was intended by those drawing up the Constitution. They also made it extremely hard to change the system: so hard, that without a political revolution that overthrows the whole Constitution, it is hard to conceive of how the system could change. (4) The system of electing the President has biases towards smaller states because of the number of senators, but it also has a bias towards larger states because of the winner-take-all system. In an extreme case, if one state had about 60% of the population, I suspect that the candidates would only campaign in it, because winning that state would be all that mattered. But in practice, the candidates campaign in the states which are worth campaigning in, because of the right combination of size and closeness in the likely vote. So they spent a lot of time in Florida and Ohio, because they are large stated that were always going to be close; they spent less time in Illinois and New York, even thoughh they are larger, because they weren’t going to be close; and they spent less time in smaller states, regardless of how close they were going to be. (5) A big problem with systems like those used in the US is that some votes are worth a lot more than others, so you campaign harder for those votes than you would for voters in electorates that don’t matter so much (usually because they are safe for one party or another). In PR systems, every vote counts pretty much the same. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/77 "2005-06-29T18:17:07Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Everytime this thread gets bumped, I keep reading the title as I did the first time: > > **Democrats are whining, the system is just screwing them.** Oh, now you’ve got ME doing it. Thanks a lot! ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2005, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/78 "2005-07-01T01:24:11Z")
> [@UncleBeer](#): > > Fucking pathetic. Engage your topic. Why? Others seem to be doing fine without me, (or were, they seem kinda done) what difference does it make whether I participate further, apart from it being a peeve of yours that I don’t? Just think of me as Linda Richman…“talk amongst yourselves, here, I’ll give you a topic…Democrats are winning, the system is jsut screwing them. Discuss.” You really need to chill a little, Unc. You get much too het up about trivial stuff. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2005, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/79 "2005-07-01T02:36:31Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > Why? Others seem to be doing fine without me, Then those of us who imagine GD might have some useful purpose ask that you please forego the snarky, unproductive drivebys. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2005, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599/80 "2005-07-01T05:03:35Z")
Wow! I just read through the whole thread and I’m ecstatic. I’m an Independent who leans more right than left, but has never voted for Bush. I respect the level of discourse here on GD, so I was pleasantly surprised to see where some libs are expending their energy. As John Mace recommended, please keep focusing on the problems with the election process. It’ll be be a good '06 and an even better '08. And for now, I’m gong to sleep a very peaceful sleep thinking of all those voting machines being programmed as I rest. Goodnight. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-are-winning-the-system-is-just-screwing-them/309599.md?page=5)