***Florida Primary...LIVE THREAD***

[natstew]

 I don'tlike the 'winner take all' policy in Florida or any other States, in Primaries or Geneal Elections.

[JohnBrowdie]

winner take all is infinitely preferable to proportional allocation, which is guaranteed chaos.  the democrats went damn near to their convention in 2008 before they had a nominee, and it was mostly because they insist on proportional allocation -- it's more "democratic", their argument goes.  but then they had to turn right around and create these things called "super delegates" to actually settle the question in case their democratic process got TOO democratic, and something absurd (like nominating howard dead, for example) was about to happen.

elections are designed to produce a winner.  a CLEAR winner.  that's why the electoral college exists, and that's why vote splitting multi-party countries are a disaster.  SEE, france or israel.

I don'tlike the 'winner take all' policy in Florida or any other States, in Primaries or Geneal Elections.

[natstew]

 You would still have electoral votes, someone who wins by one vote just wouldn't get all the electoral votes. Or, we could go back to the way our Founding Fathers wrote it in Article 2 section 1 of our Constitution and do away with primaries and General Elections for the Presidency, and the Senate to, by the way.
 The Constitution wasn't written to accommodate political parties. Politicians amended it to accommodate them, even though George Washington warned us to beware of them.
 Political Parties should have been banned by the Constitution, a flaw by our founders, but if they could have forseen what would become of their creation they surely would have banned them.

[JohnBrowdie]

proportional allocation of electoral college votes is a sure path to chaos.  it's another one of those times where it seems more "fair", but it only seems that way.  and then it turns out to be utterly unworkable.  liberals ultimately fail many times because they choose what seems "fair" over what is proven to be functional.

it works just fine this way:  winner take all, state by state, and first across the post wins.   

[GeronL]

winner takes all makes more sense, IMO, at least in a closed primary. Open primaries are delusional.

[JohnBrowdie]

open primaries are another pet peeve of mine.  it proceeds from a plausible enough sounding desire to "vote for the man, not the party", but in many states simply forces the voters to choose from between two members of the same party, which, by definition, is not a choice at all.

once again, what seems fair is actually not only unfair, but to a large degree undemocratic.

[JohnBrowdie]

and a caucus is a mob.  it's literally anti-democratic.  people in smaller mobs are shouted at, intimidated, and verbally abused by bigger mobs to join their side of the room (or stand in a different circle, or whatever the gimmick for that state's caucus happens to be).

it's actually amazing that democracy functions in some of these states.

[natstew]

 Democracy? We're supposed to be a Constitutional Republic.

 And in spite of what you say, winner take all sucks!