ONE DAY LEFT, so here’s an accordion army playing The Final Countdown

@LindsayIrene, that was The Indefatigable Axecalibur that wrote that, not me. +1 to you both, though. Which introduces a very odd tension. You have to stand against the wrong and the injust in order to isolate it and create social pressure against it. At the same time, it’s association and familiarity which changes minds much more than argument. Isolation and confrontation only strengthens divisive beliefs. It’s quite a tightrope to walk.

@ Scildfreja

(See if I can reply to the correct person… 🙁 🙂 )

I think it’s much more our children associating with the children of those who teach hatred which drives the social change. Not that we can’t generate changes in their attitudes, but I’ve been “talking ’till I’m blue in the face” and….

The people who are wealthy enough can send their children to private schools to isolate them, but the children of the rest are going to be exposed to diversity and to the idea that mocking and hating diversity is not acceptable. I think this is why the right-wing is so in favor of “vouchers for private school education” in the U.S., they KNOW they’re going to lose the children who go to public schools, so they want to use the public treasury to prevent that.

Frigid Virgin
Unless it’s very close, yes. If it’s close then there can be some clusterfucks with recounts and two jackasses in Washington state who are electoral college delegates saying they are willing to take the 1k fine for not voting for the candidate that won the state.

ETA: the electoral college is dumb and should be abolished. If not fully, have the potential for faithless electors eliminated.

One day and a wakeup, as Gawker put it.

So basically there are underhanded tactics he can try, but unless it’s a fairly close race, he’s still going to lose, whatever shenanigans he gets up to? Unless I misunderstood something?

It kind of ruins our economy when a candidate refuses to accept the first call of the election’s outcome. In the case of Gore, that was fully justified because the man fairly won, but we still had a massive drag until he conceded.

Also, why does the US not have a direct democracy?

Early American leaders had no confidence that ordinary people could be trusted to elect good leaders. It’s elitism, more or less. The electoral college isn’t particularly vulnerable to corruption, though, because the electors are typically rock-solid party leaders for whom the thought of losing any political influence is worse than death. It would a lot easier if we just had a direct election. However, the legacy of our early rural elitist roots lingers in more ways than this.

It’s worth noting that in 1800, 90% of the US was rural, and in 2010 that had flipped and only 10% of the US population didn’t live in a metropolitan statistical area. Much of the Constitution is intended to preserve the power of rural interests, and several influential American founders (Thomas Jefferson in particular but also others) thought that the finest manifestation of America was the gentleman farmer.

The electoral college draws its numbers from the number of people a state sends to its Congressional delegation, which is slanted in favor of rural states. Wyoming gets 2 senators, after all, the same as California. There are as many rural states as non-rural, and a Constitutional amendment has to be ratified by 3/4ths of the states, not 3/4ths of the population. The rural states are not going to vote for something that diminishes their power, so this system isn’t going anywhere.

Oh! Just for those USAnians who’ve not yet voted …

Mr. Parasol and I will be voting tomorrow morning. In other news, my MRI from Friday has been interpreted, and it’s as good as we can hope for – the bleed is resolving, with no scary stuff lurking underneath.

A few of my comments are in moderation due to me posting from mobile. Ah well.

In the interim, I’m mostly just hoping that All Goes Well.

Moggie: It’s set state by state. I don’t know when Washington decided on 1k, a number of states have no penalty at all, they just don’t expect a faithless elector to matter since they are chosen by the state party.

@ Aunt Podger

laws against “miscegenation” in the States were conscious and deliberate efforts to keep the white indentured servant/ transportee convicts and the slaves from uniting against the rich white ruling class

I think that’s partly true, although there was a lot of good ol’ fashioned bigotry in them as well…. A good source for info on that is “How the Irish Became White”, by Noel Ignatiev

Re; “Is it over when…”, I believe Trumpf has been “running” for an audience of right-wingers for his upcoming cable TV show, and (I hope I’m wrong) contesting the election, regardless of the outcome, is part of the plan. (Rigged election… did you know there were black people who voted MORE than 3/5ths of a time??? Totally rigged, big time….)

I mean, Obama and that birth certificate? That was low.

Somehow I fear that’s nothing compared to all the “email” talk we’ll hear in coming years from assorted rightwingers. Emails, voter fraud, rape coverups, assassinations, whatever wild conspiracy theories anyone can imagine from the general “corruption” theme. Endless nuisance investigations and empty legal threats.