The Obama Effect
One of the things that seems extremely evident this year is that you cannot trust the polls. It doesn’t depend on which campaign you listen to…
- Sen. Obama’s group claims that the polls neglect cell phones and young people, and he believes it’ll be a landslide.
- Sen. McCain’s group will tell you that it’s much closer than you think and that you’re neglecting the Bradley Effect.
And then there’s Peggy Noonan, who in her recent article introduced another wrinkle she calls the Obama Effect:
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Caption Contest 2 Voting
There wasn’t that many submissions this time, so I had to add a couple!
Hopefully the new contest will be one that more people can get involved in. I wonder if I have to start offering prizes? What do you think?
In any case, you know the drill:
- Fill out the form below.
- Voting is over at the end of the week, and we’ll announce the winners!
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We’re Not a Democracy
What’s always interesting to me, every election year, is how the general assumption that we’re a democracy permeates our understanding of how government functions such that we get a lot of strange ideas in our heads. So, to help mitigate some of this confusion, I offer the following bits of information about our government in the hopes that it will be edifying to all.
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Voting on Election Day
Bert Prelutsky has an article today about voting– something I’ve been thinking around for a while. The Founders definitely wanted people with a stake in the game to be voting. Now we’ve come so far as to herd people like cattle to the polling place telling them to vote for our guy. My feeling when I hear about all this busing and other means to get people to the polling places is, if it’s important to them why aren’t they finding a way to get there?
Now, before you call me a meanie, I’m not saying that people with disabilities or the inability to travel shouldn’t have a means provided for them should they so desire– maybe an internet sign up page or something. What I am against is this– “I’m coming by to fill this bus to bring people who wouldn’t have voted otherwise to the polls because I know they know nothing but that they will vote for the guy with the D or the R next to their name.”
Here’s something I would find amusing. What if, this year, a county switched the labels on the parties people were running for? Make GW Bush the Democrat and JF Kerry the Republican. You could question them on the way out if they really knew who they were voting for, so you could correct the mistake, but I’d be curious how many people would be upset because they voted for the wrong party when they didn’t even know their party’s candidate.
Don’t like that? How about we take the names off and put in phony names. We could put in there some name like Oscar Willmington or something and see how many people complain that Bush or Kerry isn’t a listed choice. Perhaps they would get that confused with the voting for electors and that wouldn’t be good.
See what I’m getting at? How many people truly are involved– those people should vote. Not saying that anyone should not be allowed to vote, but those that are informed should be the ones making decisions. Just like you don’t want me making decisions about the ingredients for a gourmet meal because I’m not informed– or running a nuclear reactor!– I don’t think those that are uniformed should vote.
By all means– get informed, find out the issues, do the research, and then VOTE!
Taxes and Voting
Walter E. Williams has an interesting article out today.
There seems to be a lot of seen and unseen gerrymandering going on. In the first place, instead of logical voting districts, representatives are able to carve out for themselves “safe seats” that will always lean one way. This clearly benefits incumbents and doesn’t allow multiple different people access to our government– something that should be encouraged, right? I think someone should encourage a law to be passed that defined voting districts in straight grid like lines. Sure, natural topography would make some districts small, but that would allow some excitement! I don’t know– there has to be a better solution out there than the crazy districts that are the norm now.
The second has more to do with William’s article. In it he talks about how a majority of Americans pay no taxes, and these are the ones with equal votes to those that have a direct stake in how much money is taken out of their paychecks. This puts people who get money from the government directly opposed to people who lose money to the government– a guaranteed class warfare struggle. Again, I’m standing with the Fair Tax. I think that if that was implemented, we’d see some change in voting patterns too!
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