Should we be allowed to vote against candidates?

I’d like to see tiered voting.

“First choice candidate A, second choice candidate B, Please Dear God Not Candidate C”

Great Idea. Yes. @Seek Your idea Is good too.

You mean negative voting? That won’t give true picture of who’s more worthy. In reality you must be doing the same by choosing the one whom you prefer to be there.

Well you could vote for this one and against that one. If you have nothing in particular against a candidate you simply don’t vote either way.

What a waste of time and effort that would be!

In some democracies there’s option provided to vote if people think none of the candidate is worthy and if these votes exceed certain percentage ( I’m assuming 50) then election is held again at that constituency.

A vote of eliminate eligibility of current candidates and run the election again would be a nice option.

@kritiper perhaps not as big a waste of time as it might appear. For one thing, I’m cynical enough to believe that given the current mood in the country, the opportunity to vote against candidates would drive voter participation beyond record levels. Pissed people will find it worth the effort to deliver that “thumbs down” .

Another plus would be the public gauge of what people REALLY think of their representatives. Take for example, Clinton winning the Presidency yet having the votes against her outnumber those in her favor. You would have election results actually reflecting the truth that it is the least smelly applicant for which we settle. Politicians NEED statistics demonstrating the extent to which their constituents believe they suck.

@Seek I would have supported your idea of ranked choice voting, until I saw it in action. The previous mayor in Oakland CA was elected because she was everybody’s second choice in an election with two very strong candidates out of a half dozen. She received only 30% of the first votes, but had campaigned hard to be #2 votes, and beat a much more popular candidate who fell just short of 50% first round votes.

She served for four years with no consensus or support.

@stanleybmanly And these pissed people would want to take the time and effort to go down to the polls instead of just staying home?? Doubtful!

Perhaps, but I believe that voter participation spikes up whenever voters are given the choice to vote an issue up or down (referendum). I see no reason why this would not hold true when applied to individuals.

How about a “None of the above” choice?

I’m voting against Hillary by voting for Dr. Jill Stein.

Seems pointless to me.

New Zealand has this but sort of slanted in a more positive way. I was there when the referendum took place. They have a system called MMP or Mixed Member Proportional. They also have a system with a parliament and an prime minister, so, I’m not sure how that might translate in the USA. Have a look: http://www.elections.org.nz/voting-system/mmp-voting-system

@cazzie from the article “For example, if a party gets 30% of the party vote it will get roughly 36 MPs in Parliament (being 30% of 120 seats). So if that party wins 20 electorate seats it will have 16 List MPs in addition to its 20 Electorate MPs.”

What are List MP’s? Are they members of the party who may or may not have actually run for office or are they members who ran but did not actually win the majority?

For instance, If the Kiwi Party gets 30% of the party vote yet in my particular area the representative of the Weka Party wins the majority of the Electorate vote is there the possibility that the position will still go to the Kiwi Party because they got a greater percentage of the party vote?

I would actually prefer a system of proportional representation. I have not been represented in Congress or even my own State government in many years.

Are you suggesting that we be given a list of candidates to review and we choose one and say ‘Not this one” but any of the others would be fine? How would you determine a winner if there were more than two candidates?

For instance:

Candidate D’hole has 10% of the electorate (the rejectorate?) against her.
Candidate C’hole has 10% of the dejectorate vote against him.
Candidate B’hole has 15% of the neglectorate vote against her.
Candidate A’hole has 65% of the expectorate vote agains him.

We know who loses, Candidate A’hole, but who wins?

And if you can reject all but one, isn’t that just really voting for that candidate but coming at it from the opposite direction?

Pure commons sense tells me that no one could possibly vote ‘for’ either candidate running here so 99% of the votes cast will technically be votes cast against the other candidate or more directly ‘for’ either political party instead but not intentionally ‘for’ the candidate of that party.

The reality is any vote cast for Donald Trump is a vote for the ‘movement’ as they call it to oust the establishment from our political system. The fact that Trump won the Republican nomination is clear evidence just how strongly Republican/conservative voters feel about our establishment politicians. Also Trump didn’t as much win the nomination as the other very strong candidates lost by the mere virtue of being part of this establishment and why I am convinced Hillary will have a real struggle on her hands to win the election. If Trump wins, it will not be because he is the better person to run our country but because voters are truly sick and tired of how the establishment politicians are running our country and Hillary is the best of the worst of the establishment in Washington.

@rojo There are seats in the Parliament for just ‘List MP’s. They don’t represent a region. They simply represent the party support given that party during the election. It’s been a long time and I’m sick at home (I’ve been sick all week) and headache now… can’t think. I’m sure all the answers are online.

@Cruiser I agree that this is a vote against a particular candidate, not for. It is a shame, I too would actually like to see changes, to oust the establishment candidates and I commend the Republican party members for doing just that. Unfortunately their choice of an anti-establishment candidate leaves much to be desired in my opinion and, again in my opinion, they have chosen a cure that is worse than the disease.

Would that the namby-pamby Democratic members could have been persuaded to go against the grain for a change but I guess the unfortunates results with McGovern scared them too much. Pity, for it is a new day, and the time was ripe for change.

But then again, what have those in charge got to gain from change?

@rojo I just remind myself that the President has so little impact on actual legislation and that the hopefully brighter bulbs in Congress does the right thing for we the people. And again what has led to and given rise to Trumps candidacy is exactly what Congress has and hasn’t done the last 4 years. The establishment Dems have ram-rodded Obamas agenda through Congress with disastrous results and the Republicans promised and lied their way into a midterm rout and voters on both sides of the isle especially the conservatives are raw with distaste over the lies and broken promises and why all establishment politicians up for election re-election have bull’s-eyes on their backs.

yes… disastrous. *ahem….

@cazzie maybe I should have used a stronger adjective

Trump won the Republican nomination because too many candidates stayed in the fray for too long and splintered the vote among them, thus allowing Trump to run away with it.

@Cruiser I guess you are free to imagine your imaginary Republican President having done better. but empirical data by any other name proves it was not disastrous.

@cazzie I find your opinions on our state of affairs curious at best in light of the fact you don’t vote or even live here. It is strictly my own opinion that if you actually lived through the 2008 Presidential Campaign and heard all of Obama’s wild eyed promises, then lived through the next 4 years and then another round of wild eyed promises in 2012 on top of the 2008 promises he doubled down on and assured us he would make good on and then lived through the 3.5 years of lies and broken promises so far, I truly do not believe you would have many good things to say about his Presidency.

Obama’s Stimulus plan – Epic Failure
Obamacare – Disastrous
Syria and the Middle East – Cluster Fuck
Economy – Failed and stagnant
Job growth – pure smoke and mirrors with 49 million people out of work and over 20% of our citizens of some form of public welfare which is up from where it was when Barry took over.
Obama has failed on his promise to close GITMO
Slammed the door shut on his big promise and pledge of transparency
Broke another promise not to raise taxes on the middle-class and subsequently failed to grow the middle-class and Americans’ incomes.
His financial reform didn’t reform anything as promised
He quit on his immigration reform
The Thesaurus doesn’t contain negative adjectives strong enough to describe what he did with Libya.
Obama basically rolled out the red carpet for Putin to have his way with Ukraine and now Syria.
America used to be the strongest nation on the worlds stage and Obama has succeeded in making us nearly irrelevant.
Do I even need to mention the near 20 Trillion dollar debt we now have that was only a scant 10 Trillion when Obama took the helm…again adjectives are insufficient to characterize the level of ineptness that got us to this point.

What is more depressing about what Obama has done to our country is we now have Hillary his #3 person in his cabinet campaigning to “fix our significant problems”. Thanks but no thanks.

Um, @cazzie is an American citizen, along with her son and her whole family, and does vote in absentia.

I do vote. and I am a citizen. I’m the Democrat Abroad.

@Seek my bad...@cazzie...my apologies for the mixup

Hey @Cruiser if you hate America so much, why don’t you leave? I only say that, @Cruiser, because I know you are on a pretty nice wicket. You have a good deal there. You earn yourself a decent living and seriously don’t have much to complain about.

Some people complain because it is a habit and because they are surrounded by media that complains constantly. Imagine if we didn’t do that? Imagine if we were actually just grateful.

@Cruiser, so let us look at your list of Obama “failures”:

Stimulus Plan: give us a pretty good recovery caused by corporate banking failures. It would have been better had the stimulus money gone to public works and helping individuals rather than corporate welfare than disappeared.

Obamacare: Many citizens are now covered by private heathcare policies. Yes it costs more now than it did before, but the new minimum coverage requirements help individuals avoid financial ruin due to corporate healthcare greed. It would have been better and more efficient if the single payer plan been implemented, but it was blocked by the healthcare and insurance companies.

Syria and the Middle East: Has been a cluster fuck for decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Nothing new here, though the door for Syria to collapse and ISIS to rise came from the invasion of Iraq, Bush senior knew better than to open it during Gulf War I.

Economy: Doesn’t seem to be too bad. Record levels on Wall Street, and low oil and gas prices. Sure not massive growth, but only Harvard Business School thinks large growth is sustainable.

Job Growth: See above. Also corporations seem to off-shore jobs. Politicians from both sides of the aisle have supported this for decades through tax breaks, etc.

GITMO: Yes he failed. But what solution is there? Set everyone free? Given how we have treated them, they ought to be radicalised by now.

Tax and financial reform: Maybe economics changed and those became untenable. Congress has also blocked every effort by Obama to pass these changes. They publicly made it their mission to block his reforms.

Immigration reform: See above. Blocked in every effort. Republicans can’t even present an alternate plan for discussion.

Putin: So what are you going to do when a fully armed nuclear power decides to annex a bit of their neighbour? Sanctions? He did those. Attack Russia? Let’s all sit back and watch the missiles fly. Better put on your sunscreen.

This is already way too long. Even without all of the obstacles Obama faced from the congress, he has done very well, thank you.

@cazzie Where did I say I hate America? I love America…I just hate lying politicians and the lobbyists that encourage and support them. FYI I am also smart enough to see through their lies and why I knew 8 years ago that Obama not only would not but could not do a 10th of the things he campaigned and promised and somehow got elected not once but twice. Stunning achievement. If Obama was a CEO of CFO of a corporation he would be in jail for a long long time for what he did to that company if he ran it like he did our country. Doubling our debt with zero to show for it…again nothing short of disastrous.

As far as grateful @cazzie I am very grateful. Grateful for my employees who work their asses off for this company so I can still be in business to pay the higher taxes, higher health care, costs of higher regulations that we have endured the last 7.5 years that this company didn’t have to contend with the previous 35 years. Yeah…I am very grateful….not happy about it but definitely grateful.

I’m retiring for the night. If you want to rot in your lies, it’s your bed. Sleep well.

Didn’t Trump suggest people vote with their gun? Seems like a reasonable suggestion.

I too find it difficult to fault Obama for coming into office under impossible circumstances. There isn’t a problem on Cruiser’s list that Obama didn’t inherit. And the doubling of the debt was the price for staving off economic cstastrophe. To me the 2 great mistakes in Obama’s Presidency were in his failure to quickly understand that the Republican party had become about as relevant to governance as professional wrestling is to sports. That little fact, coupled with the decision to stimulate the economy by throwing money at the banks are the 2 biggies on my list. The crucial fact regarding Obamacare is that even though it was cooked up by the insurance industry, it will provide millions more of us some coverage. And the thing that is missed in discussions on the present so called recovery from the great recession is that it is our first rise from a big downturn minus a manufacturing sector. The doldrums pretty much answer the question regarding our prospects without the reliable juggernaut that was our industrial output. Considering the snares he might have stepped in, Obama did just fine.
And I suppose we must take comfort in the realization that he marches into history well shielded from the travails defining the existence of so many of us.

@stanleybmanly I don’t disagree with you one bit about Obama inheriting the things on my list. The distinction I make and will continue to make is Obama got elected because he promised and pitched “Hope and Change”. He may indeed have inherited many of these things but again the difference is he wanted them…all of them and he promised he will fix it.

The main reason many here and everywhere fail to make the connection over the stalled do nothing Congress is because of the reality and fact that his solutions made zero sense fiscally and why the House continually failed to fund fully or even partially many of his original proposals. The blank checkbook spending and printing of money and raising the debt ceiling especially in wake of his own promise to reel in out of control spending was suddenly OK to do now that he was elected President. This is my number one bone to pick with Obama and the Dems as they spend spend spend to appear to keep their promises and in return produce nothing in terms of new jobs better pay better economy. This is the way it has been for 7.5 years and how anyone can feel good or even just mildly bad about where we are today is astonishing to me.

I also am quite taken aback at how unconcerned many people are about the middle east. Thanks to Obama’s pullout of Iraq which for the record was all his own idea…we have literally handed the keys of the Middle East to Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia who together will preserve and bank roll ISIS just to fuck with the USA. Add in Iran now having full nuclear production capability again thanks to Obama, we won’t have to worry about a Trump having the nuclear codes because Iran will beat him too it.

This question and this election is truly depressing.

It’s ironic when you think about it, but fracking has rendered the Middle East no longer our hot potato. It really is too bad that the process wasn’t brought into swing 10 years earlier, thereby eliminating the incentive for the greatest strategic blunder in our history. I take the opposite view on Obama’s conduct in the Middle East. His conduct in the region and beyond makes perfect sense. Allowing the Chinese to puff up in the South China sea, permitting Putin to workover Ukraine, backing away from the stupid “line in the sand” pledge on Syria—all of it simply sends the correct message that you can no longer depend on the United States to shoulder the world’s burdens. The tragic fact that we are 100% responsible for the unraveling in the Middle East does not compensate for the reality that it would be not only stupid to remain entangled in massive infantry commitments to the region of interminable strife, there is the additional fact that the army and marine corps have been worn down to tatters from 12 years of incessant and wasted effort. I have said since the day the stupidity of invading Iraq was announced that the magnitude of the mistake would only escalate with time and those chickens are only in the early stages TODAY of coming home to roost. Commitment to full fledged military operations in the Middle East is not only problematic for our worn down and understrength “volunteer” infantry components (thank you Vietnam), but the mere hint of any intention to move in the direction of committing such forces would amount to political suicide on the part of the fool responsible. Nope, Obama may have underestimated the obstacles facing him domestically and arrived at the White House blinded by optimism, but he has learned well the lessons of involvement in the cauldron of the Middle East.

@Cruiser “Thanks to Obama’s pullout of Iraq which for the record was all his own idea”

For the record, the above statement is a falsehood.

” Allowing the Chinese to puff up in the South China sea, permitting Putin to workover Ukraine, backing away from the stupid “line in the sand” pledge on Syria—all of it simply sends the correct message that you can no longer depend on the United States to shoulder the world’s burdens” Which, I would like to point out, is a main tenet of Trumps foreign “No Pay, No Play” policy. You can expect to see much more of the same should we end up with a Trump administration.

A transferable vote system with a “none of the above” option would really take care of all your problems. The transferable vote means you can’t accidentally help a candidate you hate by voting for the one you like best. And if you hate them all, the “none of the above” option lets you express that in a way that is more meaningful than not voting because if “none of the above” wins, you hold another election and none of the previous candidates are eligible.

@Cruiser GA for expressing gratitude to your employees. @rojo “D’hole… expectorate” etc. Clever.

Me and the rest of the world are glad that most of American foreign policy isn’t based on information from FOX ‘news’.

I haven’t read all 44 entries above because I don’t have time, but off hand, I would think this would open elections to an even more sinister type of gaming. I could only imagine what a person like Karl Rove could do with this.