Seth Bodnar - independent US Senate candidate

[SAJ-99]

I am not convinced that ditching the electoral collage would lead to the sure victories that many Democrats think.

With out the electoral collage there would be no swing states. Up side is a vote in CA would count just as much as one in WI or PA. Downside is now candidates would have to compete nation wide for votes. Advertising and get out the vote efforts nation wide would be exponentially more expensive than when you only have to spend effort on maybe ten swing states. People think campaigns are expensive now, just wait until you have to compete nation wide. While there are exceptions, in my lifetime it has been Republicans that have been better at raising money.
This would also give more power to the press. While traditionally Democrats have had an advantage in with the press, with the rise of the likes of Fox News, Newsmax and Elon buying Twitter, that advantage is not what it once was.
Elections are often about who turns out to vote and who stays home. The most likely to stay home are the voters who don't think their vote is going to count. Voters on the losing side of a state where the margin is not going to be close. For example, Republicans in New York or Democrats in Wyoming. There are a lot more Republicans in States like NY than there are Democrats in States like WY.
Change the rules of the game and candidates play the game differently. It is not guaranteed that Gore would have won in 2000 and Clinton would have won in 2016 if it had been a simple majority to decide who wins because both Bush and Trump would have play their hand differently. For example, Trump would have held rallies in CA to boost his turnout, would this have made up the difference in total votes. There is no way to know for sure.

Maybe. It kind of ignores some numbers but maybe. I wouldn't bet that is how it plays out, and the RNC wouldn't either, but anything is possible. I know there needs to be come radical changes in something because we are headed down a very dark path. I don't think either party, or any of the "others", have a great idea to balance out the concepts of the democracy and capitalism. You can only fool people with a sales pitch on a wonderful future for so long.

 

[antlerradar]

My thoughts are, I don't really care who it favors. Every citizen's vote should be exactly equal to any other citizen's vote. One person, one vote.

The biggest down side to this is for the one person one vote to work nation wide, all states would have to have the same rules regulating the election. Probably require a Constitutional Amendment to set the rules or states would be taking other states to court and nine people in robes would decide the rules.

 

[jimh406]

Even if you believe in total votes only, it's only happened 5 times in history that the same person didn't win both.

 

[Forkyfinder]

The electoral college would be a great topic for another thread.

Lets get back to saying how alme is a dc appointed puppet and bankhead has no chancs.

 

[406dn]

The electoral college would be a great topic for another thread.

Lets get back to saying how alme is a dc appointed puppet and bankhead has no chancs.

I guess because it's a dead horse. She has to be a head case of sorts, not to see she has a snowball's chance in hell.

 

[Forkyfinder]

She has to be a head case of sorts,

I think thats a required qualification anymore.

 

[406dn]

The biggest down side to this is for the one person one vote to work nation wide, all states would have to have the same rules regulating the election. Probably require a Constitutional Amendment to set the rules or states would be taking other states to court and nine people in robes would decide the rules.

Assuming you are correct, they could be doing this now, with our present system.

Every other office, everywhere is one person one vote. There are nuances between states. A lot of southern states have run offs, if no one get 50% on election day.

 

[406dn]

Even if you believe in total votes only, it's only happened 5 times in history that the same person didn't win both.

So, about 10% of the time, the electoral college awards the presidency to the person receiving fewer votes. It's interesting that the political right is continually looking for voter fraud, and seems ok with a system that actually installs the loser as the winner, one out of ten times, more or less.

 

[bayoublaster7527]

Are you telling me this bio at Berkeley isn’t going to win over rural Montana voters?

 

[BigHornRam]

View attachment 414332
Are you telling me this bio at Berkeley isn’t going to win over rural Montana voters?

Maybe Denver voters. She could be auditioning for a spot in the Harris-Cortez administration.

 

[Elky Welky]

Heard this interview with Bodnar on a podcast today. Not much substance but I’ll post below if anyone is curious (starts at 10:30). Biggest takeaway I got from it is how he is now spinning and saying they “always expected” a 4-way race.

I don’t believe that for a second.

 

[bayoublaster7527]

Maybe Denver voters. She could be auditioning for a spot in the Harris-Cortez administration.

I’m thinking she wants to be Secretary of Interior (being from a western state like Montana) in the Ocasio-Cortez/El Sayed administration. Gotta pick up that swing state with a VP nod.

 

[antlerradar]

Assuming you are correct, they could be doing this now, with our present system.

Every other office, everywhere is one person one vote. There are nuances between states. A lot of southern states have run offs, if no one get 50% on election day.

The difference is the only office where all states get a voice in is President. Having different rules between states when it came to the office of President would be like a state wide office where every county in the state had different rules. Wouldn't that be a can of worms. You simply can not have different rules in different places for the same office. The reason you can have different rules in different states now is the presidential election is fifty separate elections, not one big election.

 

[Just Me]

Are you inviting the other Senate candidates to do a podcast?

that would be great!

 

[MTGamecock]

So, about 10% of the time, the electoral college awards the presidency to the person receiving fewer votes. It's interesting that the political right is continually looking for voter fraud, and seems ok with a system that actually installs the loser as the winner, one out of ten times, more or less.

The electoral college is a product of our federalist system of government in which sovereignty was envisioned to be shared between the states and a central government. It was designed so that candidates from Philadelphia, Boston, or NY couldn't win the presidency simply by running up the score in the big cities in which they live. It forced candidates to speak to the issues important to voters all over the country, not just the major metropolitan areas. Doing away with it today would mean the candidates spend 100% of their time talking about the issues important to the folks in NY, Chicago, LA, etc., many of which are completely irrelevant and/or impractical to life in the rest of the country. The electoral college at least forces them to give lip service to fly-over country once in a while.

 

[SAJ-99]

The electoral college is a product of our federalist system of government in which sovereignty was envisioned to be shared between the states and a central government. It was designed so that candidates from Philadelphia, Boston, or NY couldn't win the presidency simply by running up the score in the big cities in which they live. It forced candidates to speak to the issues important to voters all over the country, not just the major metropolitan areas. Doing away with it today would mean the candidates spend 100% of their time talking about the issues important to the folks in NY, Chicago, LA, etc., many of which are completely irrelevant and/or impractical to life in the rest of the country. The electoral college at least forces them to give lip service to fly-over country once in a while.

Agreed. But when they came up with the idea 95% of Americans were rural. Today what is that number, 20%? The result has been the minority rules the majority.

 

[Elky Welky]

NYT had an interesting article this morning pointing to the fact that though the Republicans are still more likely to win the Senate, there are a number of toss-ups that could, in theory, swing the Senate the other direction.

Notably absent from the list, however, was Montana. The pissing match between Bankhead and Bodnar has knocked all hope out of this race having any bearing on national politics.

I keep coming back to the slew of campaign info from Bankhead I keep getting on FB, outlining all of her positions and all of the things she says she would do. None of these things can or will happen without getting elected. It seems delusional to keep hammering on issues you can't make any progress on without getting elected, and there seems to be no effort to really get elected. I can't imagine she is that delusional though, which then makes me think she is simply stubborn and self-righteous. Either way, neither makes for a promising leadership trait. Same goes for Bodnar, although I will admit his campaign hasn't been blowing up on my social media the way Bankhead's has. Nor have a seen nearly as much self-righteous indignation from his supporters as I have from Bankhead's. Again, could just be my feed.

At the end of this, when Alme is sworn in, both sides are going to point the finger at each other and say "I told you so" and learn nothing from this. While the rest of us are just going to shake our heads in disgust, once more written off by those in power.

Tim Sheehy jumping out of a helicopter this weekend to kick off the Billings Airshow was pretty neat though.

 

[SAJ-99]

NYT had an interesting article this morning pointing to the fact that though the Republicans are still more likely to win the Senate, there are a number of toss-ups that could, in theory, swing the Senate the other direction.

Notably absent from the list, however, was Montana. The pissing match between Bankhead and Bodnar has knocked all hope out of this race having any bearing on national politics.

I keep coming back to the slew of campaign info from Bankhead I keep getting on FB, outlining all of her positions and all of the things she says she would do. None of these things can or will happen without getting elected. It seems delusional to keep hammering on issues you can't make any progress on without getting elected, and there seems to be no effort to really get elected. I can't imagine she is that delusional though, which then makes me think she is simply stubborn and self-righteous. Either way, neither makes for a promising leadership trait. Same goes for Bodnar, although I will admit his campaign hasn't been blowing up on my social media the way Bankhead's has. Nor have a seen nearly as much self-righteous indignation from his supporters as I have from Bankhead's. Again, could just be my feed.

At the end of this, when Alme is sworn in, both sides are going to point the finger at each other and say "I told you so" and learn nothing from this. While the rest of us are just going to shake our heads in disgust, once more written off by those in power.

Tim Sheehy jumping out of a helicopter this weekend to kick off the Billings Airshow was pretty neat though.

Half this thread is complaints about the two party system. This is what happens when a legit third party candidate jumps in. Best best is to implement a system with run offs. That way you at least get a person in office that got 50.1% of the vote at some point.

 

[Elky Welky]

Half this thread is complaints about the two party system. This is what happens when a legit third party candidate jumps in. Best best is to implement a system with run offs. That way you at least get a person in office that got 50.1% of the vote at some point.

Notwithstanding the uphill political battle to implement a run-off system, I would also wonder if the juice is worth the squeeze. So few people vote in primaries to begin with, and with a state as geographically large yet population small as MT, the logistics might be insurmountable. Not saying I disagree, just wondering how to address that angle.

 

[jimh406]

It's not that surprising that people want to change the system when they know they are going to lose. In Bodnar hindsight, Bodnar should have been in the D primary. At least then, he would have almost all of the D votes.