Out of the two US presidential candidates which one do you think is worse, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?
Strange as it may sound, the question evokes in me a conflict between my gut and my heart. My gut reaction is the country is going into a period of anarchy where the better angels of our nature are betrayed and lost from sight. In that country, I suppose someone like Donald Trump is the better president, although I’m at a loss to say why.I don’t see Trump holding the country together, unifying or building. He seems intent on doing the exact opposite. I do see his movement as a reaction to the excesses of political correctness but for all the rhetoric, that seems trivial.Hillary I see as the president if I feel the country will last another hundred years. That there will be a United States to lead the world further in the directions of the Founders and the Age of Reason. That may sound opposite or obtuse to some who’ve internalized the rhetoric of Originalists, but I feel and think it’s accurate.The conflict between these two impressions sorrows me overall.
Would America benefit from a multi-party system where the newly elected president had to form a coalition government? Could it happen in America?
Third parties just make a mess. Look at Israel. Still hobbling along using their constitutional convention to run things. 60 years plus and never a single party with a majority in place long enough to pass a real constitution. Rather, tiny parties with one member sway the entire government to do silly things to create a coalition. Its nuts. No one feels represented, everyone is frustrated.However, in America, the parties are not any part of the law as such. They have the ability to do things that the law requires by having the people on the ground in every political locality in the nation. Most of the insanely difficult aspects of the law that defend the current parties are just this requirement, to have precinct representatives in every precinct across the United States.The States are free to make their own laws regarding elections, so that California and other states have non-partisan primaries where the two top vote getter run against each other in the General Election.The two party system best creates a Dialectical system, but we live in a period of extreme outward polarization while the actual functioning party apparatus are indistinguishable up close. Generally, they collect rents by threatening their own constituencies with things that that "bad" other is planning.In Cincinnati, for the longest time, power was split by two mini parties, the those favoring a City Charter/Council form of government while others fought for a Strong Mayor form. This persisted for years, but now that a Mayor is in place, the struggle that lasted for decades has been forgotten.In Puerto Rico, there are three main parties, and a host of others. List of Puerto Rican flagsThe three main political parties of Puerto Rico are the New Progressive Party, which favors statehood and whose flag has a blue palm tree in the middle with a white background; the Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico, flag has a red image of what is supposed to resemble a Puerto Rican jíbaro (farmer) in the middle with a white background; and the Puerto Rican Independence Party, whose flag has a white cross symbolizing Christianity and purity, on a green background which symbolizes hope.[10] This leads to chaos. Highways are built so far, then you have to turn and go half a block to continue so that a the other party wouldn't get credit for the Highway. The pettiness just increases with more parties.
What way could the vote recounts in the 3 states have been handled better?
The problem is that the election process is controlled by state legislatures, who manipulate the vote through “legal” means.In Florida, for example, the Republican legislature passed a law requiring all voting districts to complete the count within 48 hours. Then they made sure that they didn’t provide enough funding to large urban districts to accomplish that. So, in Broward County, Brenda Snipes “violated the law” by continuing to count ballots after 48 hours. Disingenuous Republicans accuse her of “ballot-rigging and election corruption felonies” for trying to count all the ballots.The truth is that the same tactic was used in 2000 and gave Bush the presidency WHEREAS GORE ACTUALLY GOT MORE VOTES. But ballots weren’t counted in time in many urban areas, and thousands of votes for Gore were legally discarded according to Florida election law.In 2018, the closest race was for a seat in the US Senate, and the incumbent Republican governor was declared the victor with a margin of 10,000 votes after he filed lawsuits to block counting ballots after the 48 hours deadline. He even ordered the State Police to intervene! Among them, was a rental car full of ballot boxes found at Miami airport. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure they wouldn’t get counted in time…..In Georgia, ballots from a heavily democratic district were *destroyed* by the Republican Secretary of State after a lawsuit was filed contending that the election system had been hacked. Further, servers were wiped clean to eliminate possible evidence. Republicans claimed it was a mistake… but tens of thousands of voters had their votes trashed.I don’t know about Arizona…But could the vote count been handled better? You bet…and maybe some day we will have a HONEST count, but NOT this year, and not as long as Republicans control the election process.
What evidence is there that the outcome of the 2000 presidential election would have changed if the Supreme Court had voted to continue the recount?
Accodring to the AP and a consortium of 8 news agencies that used Florida's open records act laws to hand recount every single disputed vote (175,010 total voted)...- Had the FL SC ordered recount (a limited statewide recount) proceeded, Bush would have won, but by a narrower margin- Had Gore's campaign gotten the recount they petitioned for (disputed ballots in 4 heavily democratic counties only) Bush would have still won, but by an even more narrow margin- However, had *all* disputed ballots in the state been recounted (which neither campaign asked for), Gore would have won by a handful of votes.Now, all of this depends on the ballots having been in the same state at the official recount that they were when the news consortium examined them. Paper ballots such as these are very fragile, every time they are touched, chads can be dislodged. As such, it's virtually impossible to accurately tell what the "correct" answer would have been.
Should Americans be more paranoid about vote-counting?
Americans of all political parties should be concerned about voter fraud because it violates our right to lawfully elect those who represent us. The issue of people voting in elections when they shouldn’t be allowed to do so (illegal aliens, felons, those who cast multiple ballots in multiple precincts or states, those who aren’t registered to vote, etc.) violates not only our election laws but violates the purpose of the election process. We shouldn’t tolerate “banana republic” behaviors in our election process. Currently, voter fraud has benefitted Democrats, but would Democrats be silent about voter fraud if it was Republicans or Independents who benefitted from the practice? No, they wouldn’t be. Then there are issues of ballots being destroyed and not counted when those in charge of counting them refuse to enter ballots that are cast for a candidate not supported by those in charge of counting (such as what happened in Florida where Republicans weren’t allowed to view the counting process and it was discovered that ballots for Republican candidates were not counted, or what happened in 2000 in Bernallilo County, New Mexico where ballots from a predominately Republican precinct were disposed of uncounted in a landfill). If a person values their vote, values the precious right we have to vote, then they should be concerned about any activity that manipulates or tampers with the outcome of our elections.