# Thread for Furriners to comment on the US election **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 7, 2012, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thread-for-furriners-to-comment-on-the-us-election/640201 "2012-11-07T12:19:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Mona\_Lisa\_Simpson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ce7236/32.png) [@Mona\_Lisa\_Simpson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mona_Lisa_Simpson)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thread-for-furriners-to-comment-on-the-us-election/640201/41 "2012-11-09T12:43:48Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > I hate to burst your bubble but roughly half of us voted voted for the crazy-land simulator. Heh. If I lived in Canada, I could easily see myself voting for the conservative party. Universal health care. Financial regulation that avoided the derivative-backed real estate bubble. A stimulus package, followed by belt tightening. In short, solid technocratic policies. > > In the US, I’m on the far left fringe of the political spectrum. Back in the day, we used to have a fiscally conservative party, that was a bit more socially conservative than the Liberal Party of Canada, or the New Democratic Party. The Progressive Conservatives. Now we have the Conservative Party of Canada, with origins in populist, socially conservative splinter parties, that ate the PCs. It leaves people like my parents with no one to vote for, because they can’t stand Harper but are fiscally more conservative. Well, my dad is creeped out by gays, so he votes Conservative, my mother doesn’t think someone’s sexuality is anyones business, so she votes Liberal. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thread-for-furriners-to-comment-on-the-us-election/640201/42 "2012-11-09T17:50:06Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Great rebuttal. India is almost as big, has more people, and is more diverse, and has a much simpler (and quicker) electoral system despite rampant corruption. Do you really think the reason elections in the US are a mess is because no system could handle 100 million voters? India also has socialist healthcare and terrible quality of life outcomes. It just goes to show that it’s impossible to implement collectivist government programs in countries with over one hundred million people. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thread-for-furriners-to-comment-on-the-us-election/640201/43 "2012-11-09T17:51:20Z")
> [@gamerunknown](#): > > India also has socialist healthcare and terrible quality of life outcomes. It just goes to show that it’s impossible to implement collectivist government programs in countries with over one hundred million people. This is really getting tiresome. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thread-for-furriners-to-comment-on-the-us-election/640201/44 "2012-11-09T17:53:22Z")
What the hell is he on? ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thread-for-furriners-to-comment-on-the-us-election/640201/45 "2012-11-09T18:43:56Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > Oh yes, the US political spectrum - far right, and further right. 🙂 To be fair, in Canada since about 1990 both the Liberals and Conservatives have been more fiscally conservative than either the Democrats or Republicans. First Mulroney’s PC’s _actually_ lowered a tax rate and broadened its base (replacing the MST with the GST), then Chretien’s Liberals _actually_ froze spending for 4 years while inflation and the dotcom boom grew revenues to the point where the deficit was wiped out, and then Harper’s Conservatives _actually_ slowly lowered tax rates by small amounts and kept spending in check so that the budget remained balanced till the global economic crisis. But that’s not really so much right wing as just being responsible adults. That pinko commie Tommy Douglas paid down Saskatchewan’s debt while he was in office, and no one will ever call him right wing. ---
**Author:** ![Jenaroph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e8c25b/32.png) [@Jenaroph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jenaroph)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thread-for-furriners-to-comment-on-the-us-election/640201/46 "2012-11-09T19:32:16Z")
> [@Tom\_Scud](#): > > This is really getting tiresome. > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > What the hell is he on? Take a look at his profile. It explains a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thread-for-furriners-to-comment-on-the-us-election/640201/47 "2012-11-09T20:27:03Z")
I’m just glad the bloody thing’s over. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thread-for-furriners-to-comment-on-the-us-election/640201/48 "2012-11-09T21:59:03Z")
> [@Jenaroph](#): > > Take a look at his profile. It explains a lot. Oh. **Richard Parker** , you’re in trouble! ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2012, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thread-for-furriners-to-comment-on-the-us-election/640201/49 "2012-11-11T09:12:47Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > You spent untold hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising money, but apparently not a single cent on running the bleeding election! You have electronic voting machines, but lines in front of your polling stations making it necessary to vote until late at night, on a Tuesday, to boot. We over here use pens, paper, and modified trashcans, on a Sunday, and voting is a matter of two minutes. People volunteer to do the supervision and counting, and we have the first reliable trends half an hour after voting ends. > [@Enterprise](#): > > See, it seems somewhat puzzling to many of us looking in from the outside that you seem to prefer to find fault with a system that works elsewhere and _might possibly_ fail for you (though I don’t think it would) while keeping a system that constantly \*is \*failing you. It’s only failing half of us. And the other half doesn’t like social engineering. No, I don’t know what the hell they mean by that either. At any rate, [Elizabeth Drew](http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/nov/11/victory-over-suppression/) discusses those long lines: The long lines were a testament to the significance the right to vote holds in the minds of American citizens. But they were also deliberately caused by limits imposed by Republican officials on the amount of time allowed for early voting. In both Ohio and Florida, the number of days allotted for early voting was sharply reduced from 2008. In theory, early voting is supposed to provide voters opportunities to avoid long lines and cast their votes before election day, but the limits on the number of early voting days assured that early voters ended up in long lines on early voting days as well as on election day. My own selection for pin-up boy of the vote-suppressing camp of 2012 is Ohio Attorney General Jon Husted, a baby-faced forty-five-year-old who has ambitions to run for governor in 2014. Husted’s wholesome innocent demeanor makes him all the more menacing.He twisted and turned and came up with all manner of schemes to keep Democratic supporters, mainly blacks and other minorities, from voting. He tried to prevent early voting in urban (for which read black) areas but the idea was hooted down by the citizens of Ohio, hardly a radical state. He eliminated all early voting on weekends but a federal district court forced him to reinstate a final weekend. And then, in a last-gasp attempt to to prevent people from voting, at 7:00 PM on the Friday of the weekend before the election, Husted suddenly issued an order demanding that voters, rather than polling officials, to fill out the forms requesting a provisional ballot—his new form of literacy test. This was immediately seen as yet another attempt at disenfranchisement. As it happened Obama carried Ohio by a large enough margin that Husted’s final trick didn’t come into play. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thread-for-furriners-to-comment-on-the-us-election/640201.md?page=2)