[DEBATE] Presidential Election - 2016 (closing Nov 22)

I copied that from my precinct's sample ballot then formatted it a little. Under each party the person listed is running for President and the one directly below that person is their running mate or vice-President.

Ah, okay. I've heard the term "vice-president" before, but never really in context and wouldn't know what it is.
Why do we only hear about Clinton and Trump and not Pence and Kaine?

Yeah, for the people dumb enough to vote for a third party who will never win, therefore may as well not even be voting.

His duties are to succeed the President if they die or are remove from office and to vote on ties in the Senate. They also often work as advisers, go to state functions when the President can't. A lot of them have become President after serving a term as Vice President. I think their potential for influence is overlooked and that the President's is overrated.

Are we voting for who you think will win or who you want to win? I think voting for people who do not represent you is "dumb" and senseless, especially if we are unhappy with the way things are since it will never change anything. Vote to make things better not to pile on to whatever team you think will win or against who you want to lose the complain about the result. That sort of thinking is what has gotten us into some of the messes we now have.

I'm glad that staff got involved and is now monitoring this thread. Like I called over a week ago, things were starting to get out of hand.

After November 8th, in my opinion, this thread should be locked/deleted or whatever the proper word is. (If it isn't, be prepared for so much drama...)

Democrats who wanted Bernie to win want to vote for third parties.
They decide to vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson.
Hillary loses a big percentage of her votes.
Stein and Johnson have under 50% of the votes.
Trump becomes President.

That is why you can't vote for a third party. Don't like Hillary, fine, but voting for a third party candidate is useless, especially if you don't want a Trump Presidency. If you want to vote for third parties, you're gonna have to do it when somebody decides to fix the two party system.

I've reccomended voting third party here before on the basis that the US worked like the UK with its elections - turns out, it doesn't, and voting third party really is useless.

You can vote third party in those other elections you have - I forgot what they're called and I have a headache and want to vomit at the moment so I can't be bothered googling, but not for a Presidential election. Your candidate, with things as they are now, would never win and especially this year it would be a wasted vote.

Just... for the love of God don't let Trump become President. That prospect is scary for those of us not from the US (and I'm sure for a lot within the US too) - he would gladly let Russia reclaim former Soviet territories, let Western Europe fall into ruin, 'bomb the shit' out of ISIS, and his views on race and gender and sex and everything else are sixty years in the past. America never had fascism on their soil, and this is as close as I hope it gets on your soil. His acceptance of the Republican nomination was very Orwellian.

I used to think along these lines. These days I give more weight to the subtle influences and lingering affects.

For example...

If nobody votes for 3rd party candidates it's harder to argue that reformation is needed. argument: Reformation isn't needed since voters don't support those candidates anyways.

If everyone piles on X instead of the candidate they really like, that candidate (and party) receive less support throughout the cycle. The effect of the missing votes are lasting.

So maybe, vote as much as you can for the candidates you really like, while not letting the candidate you hate win?

I think you are making some faulty assumptions.

Yes I can.

People give a whole lot more credit/blame to the President than they deserve. Congress has more to blame for the problems we have. Every election I hear how so and so's election will mean the end of the world and it never happens.

And the blame doesn't fall on the third party voters anyway. It's the people who are too stubborn to consider change
and lacking altruism who won't vote for anything but the same old parties over and over because their parents did that are keeping alternative political thinking out of the mainstream. Not the other way around.

It's never going to happen on its own and especially if we keep voting status quo. Politicians have a system that works great for them. Why would they change anything? People don't make hard changes unless they are forced to.

I have one vote out of millions, whose vote is just a guideline for the Electoral College, to elect politicians who care more for money and power than me or my situation. In the last national election year more than 12,000 lobbyists paid 3.3 billion dollars to politicians and 126 million of us voted. That's 275,000 per lobbyist and $26 per vote. Who is worth more to a politician? Things might change once both parties know we're willing to watch the house burn down around us. That $26 vote is all we've got.

I once asked a girl to dance and she said, "I don't know you.". I said, "I'm trying to change that.". It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Don't vote third party because they will never win.

This is no different than the opposite version where a Democratic President is going to take all our guns, put us in FEMA camps, make himself President for life, and force us all to have abortions. I've heard variations of the same stories for years and I don't believe that these extreme things will happen regardless of who is President. Sanders, Clinton, Trump - The most extreme policies will be rejected/moderated by other people in power and by the general populace. Then four years later we will swing the other way.

I agree with you on most things but I disagree here. In the US, we have an electoral college, a very undemocratic system. As long as you don't live in a swing state and a solid red or blue state, voting for third party has little to no effect on the election in the grand scheme of things as the major two candidates will only lose one or two delegates if there are enough people voting third party.

I agree wholeheartedly with most of this, but at the end of the day it still means either Hillary or Trump will take office for four years. As I find neither prospect desirable, my feelings are a bit like someone standing on the bow of the Titanic, watching that iceberg loom out of the darkness. Inevitably, we are screwed by the outcome, and no matter how much I scan the icy waters, I see no way off this doomed venture.

In other words, this election year is mentally exhausting and I just want it to be over and done with. Maybe we'll get lucky and one of Obama's drone strikes will hit the campaign trail by "mistake."

I wonder how many non-US votes hillary is getting because here in the states you are more likely to find a mewtwo than a hillary supporter. trump supporters are everywhere but we all generally just walk away when they start talking. Johnson supporters are similar. Finding Jill stein supporters isn't even as rare as finding anyone that gives clintons the time of day. natural law party huh? that sounds interesting.

Edit: I don't hang out with a whole lot of sixteen year olds so I wouldn't know. they don't get to vote this time around anyways. I have seen several pictures of hillarys campaign stops... not really very impressive turn outs. Considering both parties pay people to attend them to inflate their numbers its easy to wander if anyone actually showed up that wasn't on pay roll.

Go to a place like New York, it's hard to find you Trump supporters up here

I honestly think that Hillary is not a wise move. I don't want another Clinton that will ruin our country again

Besides my issue with him going against UN approval and destroying a country and helping another I would love nothing more than to have wiped off the map, Bill did anything but ruin the United States. Hillary has a lot of political experience - probably as much as she can have without actually being the President, and won't make you even more hated by every other country in the world, unlike Trump.

Here's a list of countries who hate Trump just because lol:
The United Kingdom
Ireland
Sweden
Norway
Finland
Mexico
Germany
Basically every country in Europe besides Russia
Probably every Muslim country in the world
Turkey
It goes on and on and on. Do you really want a man hated by your country's closest allies and trading partners to represent it?

Every president in my lifetime has been "hated" by various international interests at one time or another. When Obama was elected he had very high initial approval ratings overseas but those have come back down to Earth in the intervening years.

Speaking just for myself, foreign opinion is pretty much at the bottom of my list of influencing factors when making civic decisions as an American citizen.

I assure you I do not support trump or any grimey politician or hollywood actor.

After looking into soul's claims of trumps racism, watching several of his speeches in which he is overtly degrading others based on their race and nationality I can only come to the same conclusion. Doesn't make me feel any less disdain for Hillary or Johnson though. Just more crap to tack onto trumps ever growing record of being a moron.

You sure? Obama is loved by people here. George W. Bush is a different story, but I'm pretty sure that hate is/was just post-9/11 because of the Iraq invasion. To my knowledge, no elected President has managed to piss people off this much before they've been elected - Trump has and continues to do so.

Can we also get a poll where you're only allowed to vote IF you're of voting age AND a registered voter?

bonus points if there is an IQ test before being allowed to vote in the poll

That's just it. He's loved there. Ask the same question in other regions of the world and his approval rating is in single digits. I've been on this Earth since Richard Nixon was president and every single administration during that period has had some sort of international dealing which was deeply resented for one reason or another. Were some more disliked than others? Absolutely. But being President of the United States isn't about winning a multinational popularity contest, at least it shouldn't be anyway.

Today's ally is often tomorrow's enemy. George Washington once famously asked why America should, "entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition”. I for one think the application of the same principle on a global scale remains most prudent to this day.

Too bad it's only applicable to America nowadays. Imperialistic European ambition is dead and has been for a while. We still have Empires (British Empire never fell, nor did the French Empire), yes, but they're made up of willing participants and have made no attempts to expand in just under 100 years.

Instead, it is America that now has imperial ambitions. The 2003 invasion of Iraq is a prime example of this, and they entangled Europe into it - funny how the tables have turned right?