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Democrat Doug Jones won a remarkable upset victory over controversial rival Roy Moore in the diehard Republican state of Alabama on Tuesday to win election to the US Senate.
By a margin of 49.5 to 48.9 with 91% of precincts reporting, Jones dealt a major blow to Donald Trump and his efforts to pass tax reform on Capitol Hill. Jones was able to become the first Democrat in a decade to win any statewide office in Alabama by beating Moore, who had faced multiple allegations of sexual assault during a campaign which exposed Republican party faultlines.
The Democratic victory will reduce the Republican majority in the Senate to 51-49 once Jones takes his seat on Capitol Hill. This significantly reduces the margin for error as Republicans attempt to push through a major corporate tax cut.
takyon: The final count is:
Doug Jones - 671,151 votes (49.9%)
Roy Moore - 650,436 votes (48.4%)
Write-ins (total) - 22,819 votes (1.7%)
The margin for an automatic recount in Alabama is 0.5%. Roy Moore has yet to concede.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Wednesday December 13 2017, @09:37PM (6 children)
Alabama seems to suffer the same fate as most of the rest of us, the party primaries are designed to put forth the most radical of their party and then throw them against each other with the people choosing the lesser evil because they don't understand third parties.
This isn't really true in this case.
First off, as far as I can tell, Doug Jones wasn't "radical" in the least, he looks like a pretty typical centrist Democrat. It was Moore that was a radical, but from my perspective, he seems to epitomize the ideals of many Alabamans, so from their perspective he's not radical.
As for third parties, the problem here is first-past-the-post voting systems: they actively eliminate third parties. There's been plenty of research on this. Voting for a lesser party means one of the two main parties doesn't get your vote, which will actually succeed in helping elect the candidate you dislike the most. That's why people vote for the "lesser evil". The main problem is that the voters haven't demanded better voting systems, mainly because the voters are stupid AFAICT. They whine about the choices, or whine about people not voting third-party, but they never actually demand a better system.
In this case there was a democrat that supported abortion that religious folks believe will get them sent to hell if they pay taxes for
This just shows that the people of Alabama are a bunch of religious morons. If you're actually willing to vote for a candidate who will work against your best interests, and screw you over, just because the other candidate will vote (in a small way) against something your fairy-tale beliefs tell you is wrong, then you're an idiot, and you actually deserve to get screwed over.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2017, @10:22PM (1 child)
Careful with those generalisations, more than half of these voters let the religion aside.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2017, @11:29PM
Those would largely be the folks who aren't descended from slaveholders, in particular, those whose ancestors were enslaved.
...and that bunch recently got a law pushed through in Alabama which says that folks who have served their prison time are no longer disenfranchised for life.
Ex-convicts added a lot of votes to the other side of the ledger this time.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:22AM (2 children)
First past the post only applies to the Presidential Electoral College. It has nothing to do with Statewide Senate General Election. Thanks for playing though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @05:37AM
No. The term refers to being able to be declared the victor without receiving a majority of the votes cast.
Another name for first-past-the-post is "plurality rules".
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 14 2017, @04:06PM
Where's the "-1 Factually Wrong and stupid" modifier?
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday December 15 2017, @02:59AM
Don't know about down there, but up here in Canada, the people do seem to want to get rid of the first past the post system. The politicians, not so much as they'll probably never get another majority and have to compromise.
The Liberals won the last Federal election, partially based on their promise of no more first past the post elections. Didn't take long to announce they weren't going to implement election reform due to it being too decisive. Partially true as the opposition was really railing against it and insisting on referendums. (Our Constitution doesn't say much about how elections are run, just that they have to happen within 5 years)
Last Provincial election here was similar, with the 2nd place party making an agreement with the third party (the Greens) who won enough seats in a tight election to hold the balance of power and bring down and replace the government (Parliamentary system where whoever controls the legislature forms the government or there's an election). This will be a referendum only needing a simple majority. Last time the threshold was 60% and the vote was something like 59% in favour of changing the voting system. The opposition keeps going on that it should take a super majority.
Personally I love minority governments as the opposition parties can keep the government a bit more honest and stop them from bulldozing their agenda through.