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And the winner of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, as reported by the major mainstream media outlets is Donald Trump. It has also been reported that Hillary Clinton called President-elect Donald Trump to concede.
Electoral vote count (so far): 279 for Donald Trump, 218 for Hillary Clinton. 270 electoral votes are needed to win.
Popular vote: 57,227,164 votes (48.0%) for Donald Trump, 56,279,305 votes (47.2%) for Hillary Clinton. Update: Now it is closer to 59,085,795 votes (47.5%) for Donald Trump and 59,236,903 votes (47.6%) for Hillary Clinton.
Yell, scream, gnash teeth... but please keep it civil.
Results at CNN, NYT, FiveThirtyEight, Wikipedia.
takyon: Republicans have retained control of the House and Senate.
Here's some market news:
Dow futures plunge nearly 750 points as investors warily eye electoral map
Asian markets plummet on likelihood of Trump victory
Bitcoin price soars as Trump pulls ahead
Opinion: How to profit from a Donald Trump victory
Ballot measure results will be covered in an upcoming story. Some initial results can be found at Ballotpedia and CNN.
[TMB Note: Stop breaking stuff, cmn32480]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday November 09 2016, @08:20AM
It was a done deal because the people in those states consistently vote their favorite party. The gerrymandering is a side effect of that.
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(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday November 09 2016, @08:29AM
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/gop-gerrymandering-creates-uphill-fight-dems-house/ [pbs.org]
As for this:
That's not exactly accurate:
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09 2016, @09:39AM
I consider a system where arbitrary specifications like the borders of voting districts can radically change an election outcome to be fundamentally broken.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 09 2016, @11:01AM
Fundamentally, for sure.
What they SHOULD DO when the census changes drastically, is to add seats to the house. If Rhode Island's population triples, just give them another seat or two. To hell with redrawing districts.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by EvilSS on Wednesday November 09 2016, @01:38PM
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 09 2016, @05:42PM
Go by county lines. I htink my state has 57 counties - to lazy to look to be sure - so if it warranted another seat, just take some counties from this district, some from that district, and make them a new district. Balance out the population overall, but stop trying to create a minority majority district and two or six majority majority districts. Counties were created for several reasons - the counties should be the unit of barter in any "redistricting" plans.
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Thursday November 10 2016, @12:00AM
I have been carefully gerrymandered into a completely separate counties district despite being within walking distance to our counties district HQ. My kids elementary and middle schools are in different districts, and the local voting place is literally 100 yards from the other district. I pass in and out of "my" district several times when going to the store.
Gerrymandering is not just a Republican thing. Both of "my" districts are controlled by Democrats.
Not only do both parties do it, they often cooperate with each other. It is a win-win for both: The republican trades the democrat leaning parts of his district for the democrats part that has more republicans. Makes both districts safer for each congress critter. They literally pick their voters.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by slinches on Wednesday November 09 2016, @06:43PM
That's not necessarily true. There is another way to go about things called proportional representation where instead of each district electing a single winner, the whole county or state elects candidates (or parties) to multiple seats.
(Score: 2) by BK on Wednesday November 09 2016, @11:24PM
I wonder why they didn't do that? I mean they could have done it back in the 1800s and saved us this hassle.
I can't speak for the whole country, but in my part of the world it is considered important to have someone local to represent interests in your area. Locals know where roads are needed, when pollution is a problem, and when their neighbors are in trouble. I suppose that you could try to do a proportional representation system that drew officers with geographic as well as idealistic proportionality, but nobody has ever made that work.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09 2016, @11:48PM
They didn't do that because the point was to elect someone that knew your local concerns. A group of 10,000 people shouting at each other won't accomplish anything. But break them down into common types (farmers, city dwellers, etc...) and have them each elect a few people, then suddenly it's only 10 people shouting at each other while maintaining the same concerns of those 10,000 people. The whole US government is structured as a pyramid on purpose.
So the reduction feature is working exactly as designed, except the type wasn't really meant to be one of two political parties.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 10 2016, @06:36AM
So you say the German system doesn't work?
In Germany we have exactly this: In elections for the federal parliament, everyone has two votes. One for a district representative ("direct candidate"), and one for the party in general. The second vote determines the proportion. Additional delegates from party lists are added to make the proportion right.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JNCF on Wednesday November 09 2016, @08:06PM
Needlessly ignoring slinches' perfectly valid (and much simpler) solution, we could agree on an algorithm for dividing a polygon into n roughly equal districts, and then have the computer spit out an answer that anybody could verify as having been made by the agreed upon algorithm. As long as we aren't changing the algorithm whenever a different faction takes over or the population shifts slightly, this should work just fine. If legislators do fiddle with the algorithm, they can't hide behind the excuse of neccessary redistricting. I'm just proposing that this one problem is solvable, not that American democracy is generally fixable.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Wednesday November 09 2016, @09:20PM
agreed upon algorithm
Stop right there. You might as well have it picked by unicorns if agreeing on anything is a requirement.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday November 09 2016, @10:21PM
Despite your retroactive advice, I contiued:
I'm just proposing that this one problem is solvable, not that American democracy is generally fixable.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 10 2016, @11:13AM
Non-partisan redistricting should be mandated whenever we get around to enacting the American Constitution 2.0.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by Rickter on Thursday November 10 2016, @11:31PM
Or, you know, drop districts all together. Every party (there could be dozens or more) posts that they are open for voters to join about 6-3 months before a party registration deadline and run any advertising, post position information, and try to connect with as many voters as possible. Every voter has to register (from scratch) with the party they want to affiliate with for this election. At the end of the party registration process, the total number of voters registered are totaled up, and then each party is assigned a number of representatives appropriate for their size. Then, for a week after the registration, the parties collect names of candidates from those who registered for the party. Then for 1 month after that, the candidates receive the contact information for their party's members, and the candidates must campaign nationwide to become a representative within their party (they can use direct contact through email, social media, TV ads, signs, rallies, etc).
Some parties may be so small they only get one rep (100k-500k members per rep?) Others will have dozens or more. Every party member votes for every candidate. Your party gets a team of candidates based on how the members vote, and your party gets represented directly corresponding to your percentage of the population, and since the people pick the parties, their is no gerrymandering allowed.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 11 2016, @02:13AM
So, basically, re-register to vote at every election? I'm not real sure that I would bother to vote. I've been a busy man, all of my life. I simply don't have the time nor the inclination to go through a registration process regularly.
I like my position as is. I'm a registered independent voter, and I can participate in ONE primary election (I cannot vote in both the Republican and the Democrat primary, nor could I vote in a third party primary while voting in either of the previously named party's primary) each election cycle, and I can participate in the actual election. No paperwork necessary. I know where to vote, I go there, I walk in the door, and I'm greeted, "Good morning Mr. Runaway, do you have your photo ID with you?"
This election cycle kinda sucked though. When I was greeted by those gray old women, I realized that most of them are MY AGE!! Seriously, my wife went to school with those old biddies!
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Friday November 11 2016, @03:20AM
You lucky bastard... you get asked for photo ID... some of us only dream of things like that.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 11 2016, @01:17PM
You didn't miss the funny part of that, did you? I'm addressed by name, THEN asked for my photo ID.
This year, things are "improved", or at least changed. They place your photo ID into a little scanner, which checks with the voter registration office, to verify that you are indeed registered to vote. Seems that it would be really tough to fake your identification, or to vote a second time, with this system. Of course, someone will figure a way to bypass the "added security".
(Score: 3, Informative) by DutchUncle on Wednesday November 09 2016, @02:01PM
No, the gerrymandering is a positive feedback loop to ensure that it continues. When my state lost a district after the last census, redistricting moved me into a long thin district with people from most of the way across the state. An area that had been reliably one party was cut into slivers, each connected to areas that had been reliably for the other party. It has taken three elections for our district to overturn the situation.