Will Iowa have a Tribute/Protest vote?

[judeling]

The Iowa Democratic party has changed their rules and their reporting.

Instead of multiple rounds of realignment there will be a single round. It is this second round that counts. The party will also report three sets of numbers. The vote by candidate of the first and second rounds and the Delegate equivalent of the second round (think electoral college). It is only that delegate count that really matters.

But this actually allows supporters of former candidates even if they have since switch to have a final chance to show that support and or protest of the process. A Booker, Harris, Castro or even a Beto supporter could register that support in the first round before realigning in the second and actually have their vote count twice at least in narrative terms.

While I don't in any way think that this will be a large number, it could be enough on the margins to send an interesting message to the DNC.

[getagrip_already]

1. actually, the first round DOES count....

By example. You really want to register your spport for amy, so you stand in her corner. But by standing in amy's corner, you aren't standing with your number 2 choice, even though you want to in the second round.

But if enough people do this, your number 2 choice may also end up not viable and you are left with 2 or 3 bad choices.

So choose where you stand wisely, because any candidate who doesn't get 15-25% of the vote won't have a corner in the second round. That's what a protest vote in the first round will do.

[judeling]

3. You are making a common mistake.

You are assuming only viable candidates in the first round are eligible in the realignment.

That is not how it works. Just because a candidate is not viable in the first round does not preclude them from viability in the second.

What the new rules do is lock in the votes of viable candidates so they cannot send excess support to others to harm an opponent.

[NNadir]

2. A better question would be "Why is Iowa so damned important?"

The state went 51 to 41 for Trump.

It has the 30th highest population; 1/10th that of California, 1/4 that of New Jersey.

And yet, candidates are removed from the race based on their performance in Iowa.

I think it's crazy to place the entire future of our country in the hands of States like Iowa and New Hampshire.

[judeling]

5. Electoral College

Additionally Iowa is much closer to a swing state then you think if you look at the current polling and the 2018 results.

[NNadir]

7. I would think, given that the majority of Americans opposed putting a racist idiot in the office...

...of President of the United States, and given that a racist idiot is there rapidly destroying the country, that stating the reason for giving a part of America that is hardly representative of the country at large is to address major soul and country destroying clause in our Constitution - put there to secure human slavery and the last artifact of slavery still there - is not a very satisfying response.

The electoral college should go out the door. In fact, the structure of the US Senate should go out the door.

I personally resent that a racist traitor - Moscow Mitch - who represents a State where anything goes so long as you're a bona fide racist, wields power over more than 300,000,000 Americans.

Our constitution was a great functioning document for centuries. However, it's done. Now that the Republicans have chosen to tear it up and treat it as toilet paper, it has clearly outlived its time.

[Demsrule86]

10. We have no other way to run elections...so the EC will stay. And the constitution has been abused

before...in the end, we will beat the criminal GOP.

[NNadir]

11. I don't agree. I can think of many ways to run elections that don't involve giving people like...

...Moscow Mitch the power to ignore something like the governing document of a nation.

For primaries, for example, we could hold a national primary with a second national primary running the top five from the first.

For national elections, we could simply hold a national vote.

Why is a citizen of Alaska able to wield more concentrated power than a citizen of Texas or of California?

Federalism is a good idea, and I certainly understand why the authors of the Constitution needed to so structure it; although they were careful to preserve slavery; but the idea that Hawaiians have disproportionate power relative to New Yorkers is simply not just.

[Demsrule86]

12. You need a constitutional amendment to end the EC.

It is in the constitution...and there is no chance of that happening...as for a national primary...states are in charge of elections. While, I see issues with our system...any new system would need to make it so small states had a voice...but it really doesn't matter as we have no way to change the current system...we can move primaries around and should but short of that...nothing we can do.

[NNadir]

13. Yes I know. And there was nothing we could do about slavery either, and nothing we could do...

...about Jim Crow regulations in the South.

Sorry.

I'm not a "there's nothing we can do" sort of person.

The American Constitution is dying. I'm not sure I know what should replace it or if anyone knows how to do it. Nevertheless the alternative is to let our society and our culture die with its constitution.

You know, in 1787, powerful but flawed Americans - sequestered themselves in a relatively small room in Philadelphia, ostensibly to modify the Articles of Confederation to make them function better. I've seen the room. It's amazing how small it was.

Many of the people who emerged from that room after throwing the Articles of Confederation completely away and substituting something else for it, recognized the powerful flaws in the replacement document, flaws that tore the country apart less than a century later, almost destroying it. They questioned whether their new document would work, which was a good thing, since they were invested in rationality, despite holding some opinions we would find abhorrent today.

Those authors - and they didn't see themselves as oracular or saintly - did not anticipate instantaneous communication, mass media, the ability to travel across the globe in hours, not months or years, political parties, propaganda, or even the idea that "all humans are created equal" even though some had famously signed a document that approached that ideal. They lived in a time of rising enlightenment, not in a time of the codification and worship of fear and ignorance.

Their document worked surprisingly well - I think they'd be surprised at how well - despite their misgivings, and the flaw that lead to 600,000 Americans killed by other Americans between 1861 and 1865 - in the 18th century (briefly), the 19th century, despite the Civil War, and the 20th century.

Their document isn't working in the 21st. The people of Kansas voted to destroy their school system. Is there some reason that their voice should be as powerful as the voice of the people of Massachusetts, who didn't vote to do that and who outnumber the citizens of Kansas by a factor of 3?

Is it really true that "nothing can be done?"

This may be an "out there" idea, but lots of ideas that turn out to be "out there" actually turn out to be accurate statements of reality.

[Demsrule86]

14. Lincoln did this during the civil war and an amendment was passed after the war with only the union

states voting...small states will never approve getting rid of the EC...even if you could get it through the Senate which you won't.

[NNadir]

15. Lincoln violated the constitution on multiple occasions. He saved it by violating it.

It's a very bad example. We are fortunate that Lincoln was a man of good will and honor, and that he had thought very deeply about the rights of men and was not invested in the wrongs of men.

On several occasions he did things that bordered on dictatorial.

You are using a circular argument, which is to say that small states should have power because small states have power.

In 1860, the argument was that slave states should have power since slave states had power.

The constitution almost died in the 1860 and was saved in 1864 by extreme events. Both of these involved as precipitating events, the election of a President, Lincoln.

Actually, the United States is in danger of experiencing an extreme event involving the "election" of a "President." - an anti-Lincoln. Both men were placed in office by a minority of their country's population. One was an honorable, highly intelligent man who loved his country. The other was a corrupt, ignorant man with poor intellectual capacity with no ethics, no sense of decency who hates his country and is in fact, a traitor serving the interests of a foreign police state ruled by a dictator.

You know, although he was fascinated by science, Lincoln didn't know that atoms existed, that energy was equivalent to mass, that electromagnetic radiation existed, that people could make things like missiles, that computers were possible. The constitution he saved did not face instantaneous threats.

The constitution in his time could be saved, albeit with radical surgery. The cancer analogy holds in this case, if you regard slavery as a cancer, which I certainly do. There is still a malignancy in the constitution, an artifact of slavery. That is the electoral college.

My feeling is that the constitution is terminally ill.

[Demsrule86]

9. It is not its swing state status that makes it a bad state for the first primary, it is the lack of

diversity.

[Demsrule86]

4. The DNC is not at fault so no message needs to be sent...actually. Candidates win or lose on their

own merits.

[judeling]

6. While I agree with you

Others do not and feel the system was fair.

I think the DNC did the best job they could.

[Demsrule86]

8. Then they should educate themselves...the DNC is not in complete control of elections.

States have a big big say. Do you suppose Hillary thought it was fair that two states that she would have won and did win...delegates didn't count in 08...it was a very close primary. I don't recall her whining about it. I am sick of message voting in any race period. These folks should just stop. If they think there is unfairness than work within the party/primary to change it...a vote is not the proper vehicle to protest anything .