That’s it. That’s the whole post. I just wanted to see it in really big writing. I might write more on it later, but the reality that stating this truth is so controversial is in and of itself interesting to me.
How to Improve American Presidential Elections in Four Steps
American presidential elections are plagued by four main issues:
- The first year or two of a president’s first term are spent building political power. And then right about the time that things are hitting their stride, the president has to start campaigning for reëlection, which kills that policy momentum.
- The Electoral College means that candidates can virtually ignore all but eight or nine states and still win the election. It is absurd that major population hubs like Chicago and New York and Los Angeles are ignored because the states they reside in are thought to be “locks” for one party or the other. Instead, candidates spend their time wooing New Hampshire citizens and a small group of Iowan corn farmers. The concept of a “swing state” creates bizarre campaign strategies that ignore huge swaths of American voters.
- The two-party lock forces candidates into one of two predefined buckets. And if there is essentially no difference between the parties (as there is on drug policy, foreign policy, and a bunch of other important issues), Americans effectively have no choice on these matters.
- The states all implement different voting standards. In some cases you can vote by mail. In other states, you can only vote by mail if you can prove you’ll be absent from the county on voting day. Some states have early voting, which allows people who work long hours to come vote on a weekend. Other states have no early voting. It’s a mess. It leads to long lines on election day, which leads inexorably to disenfranchisement.
Here are my solutions to these problems:
1. Change the presidency to a single six-year term
If the presidency were changed to be a single six-year term, there would be no incumbency advantage, no campaign to distract from governing, and presidents would have at least a solid four years to get some serious work done.
2. Switch to a national popular vote
The electoral college is a good idea in theory — preventing more populous states from steamrolling the smaller states. But the balance has swung too far the other way. Additionally, America has changed a lot since that system was implemented. We’re not as geographically polarized as we once were. The concerns of Californians are not that far off from those of Floridians. There is more variation within a state (county-to-county) than there is between the states. It’s time to switch to a national popular election for the presidency.
3. Implement instant runoff voting (voting preferences)
Instant runoff voting (or IRV) is the only realistic way to break (or at least challenge) the two-party lock. With IRV, you don’t cast just one vote for president: you list candidates in order of preference. For example, I might have voted “1: Johnson, 2: Obama”. Votes are counted by first running the numbers with everyone’s first preference. If there is no candidate with a majority (more than 50%), the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated, and everyone who voted for that candidate gets moved to their next choice. Then this process is repeated until there is one candidate with a majority. What is fantastic about this is that voting third-party no longer helps out a major party candidate you don’t agree with, because you can specify which major candidate you’d prefer in the case that your third-party candidate doesn’t win. No more Nader or Perot spoiler effect! Because there would be no more spoiler effect, people would be much more willing to support third party candidates. With sufficient levels of support, these candidates could not be ignored by the televised debates. Their viewpoints would be represented, and the major party candidates challenged on the issues that they ignore because both parties are in lockstep. We could have real, substantive debates instead of a bunch of superficial tweaking on taxes, spending, abortion, how much each candidate loves the military and supports a certain middle eastern religious conflict theme park.
4. Baseline standards for national elections
National elections should have national standards. Universal vote by mail (regardless of physical absence), early voting that includes at least one weekend, and perhaps some standards around the ratio of voting machines to registered voters in a precinct.
There. I just solved presidential elections. You’re welcome, America.
Why Is it Dark at Night?
Adobe Source Code Pro
Adobe just released an open source monospace font: Source Code Pro. Looks good!
The good is to live it
Ayn Rand was pro-life in the most meaningful sense of the phrase:
For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors — between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.
The world would be a much better place if people took ownership of their lives and lived them for something grander than superstition and servility to power.
Inconsolata-dz
Inconsolata-dz is a version of the wonderful Inconsolata open source font with straight quotes that are actually straight, instead of “cocky” like in stock Inconsolata. Fellow WordPress hacker Daryl Koopersmith found this during a post–WordCamp SF hacking session and we both gleefully switched to it in Sublime Text 2.
Apple forced to say Samsung didn’t copy the iPad
There’s an easy solution to Apple UK being in the awkward position of having a court order to take out “advertisements” outlining that they lost the lawsuit alleging that the Samsung Galaxy tablet was a copy of the iPad.
On further inspection of the shoddy user interface and inferior built quality of the Samsung Galaxy tablet, it became clear to us — and the courts — that no reasonable person would think that the Samsung tablet is anything approaching a copy of the iPad. The two devices aren’t remotely in the same league.
“So are you an atheist, or an agnostic?”
Both. I am an agnostic atheist.
Theism is a belief in a god (or gods). Atheism is a lack of belief in a god (or gods). Consider the question: “do you believe in any gods?” If your answer is “no”, “I don’t know”, silence, or anything except “yes”… you’re an atheist. That’s the first dimension.
Gnosticism is knowingness or certainty. Agnosticism is non-knowingness, or uncertainty. Consider the question: “Do you know for certain that a god exists or doesn’t exist?” If your answer is “no”, “I don’t know”, silence, or anything except “yes”… you’re agnostic.
You can be an agnostic theist, a gnostic theist, an agnostic atheist, or a gnostic atheist. Though, in practice, gnostic atheists tend not to exist. The sort of person who is skeptical about supernatural claims tends not to express absolute knowledge of something for which they have no evidence. Most people who say “God does not exist” or “no gods exist”, when pressed, would be shown to be technically agnostic, even if they only give an infinitesimally small bit of consideration to their uncertainty.
It’s true, I will sometimes say “God does not exist” or “there is no god”. But this is little more than a colloquial shortcut. What would you say if a child asked you if monsters hide under their bed? Would you say “I don’t know… maybe…”? I sure hope not. You’d say “no”. Even though the concept of monsters existing and being under a child’s bed is not unfathomable and you cannot say for sure that it never happens, you say “no”, because this is how we talk casually about things for which there is no evidence. It is an artifact of being asked a yes or no question to something which is neither “yes” nor “no” — it is simply unknown.
Now that I’ve made things clear, let’s complicate them. I am an agnostic atheist in general. What I mean, is, I cannot say for sure that no conceptions of “God” exist. You could always come up with a conception of a god that could never be disproven. You could make complete undetectability one of this god’s attributes. But you could also attribute very specific attributes or even interference in specific worldly events to this god. That changes the game. If you say, for example, that God exists because rain is his tears, falling from heaven, then I could say for sure that your idea of God is false, and that god doesn’t exist. I could be a gnostic atheist about that god, because the conditions of his existence are testable, and the idea of this god doesn’t past the test.
So while in general I am an agnostic atheist, with regards to specific ideas of gods that have been shown to be false, I may express more certainty about their non-existence.
Slinky on treadmill bravely continues its quest
My inspirational video of the day.
Dan Savage vs the Bible
Dan Savage takes on the hypocrisy of Christians who follow Leviticus with regards to dehumanizing homosexuals, but ignore its promotion of slavery and its issuance of capital punishment for female fornicators.
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