I'm not 100 percent happy with Obama, and his recent support for women's healthcare rights and gay marriage doesn't change that -I am happy about it, don't get me wrong, but I am used to social issues being used as campaigns for Democratic presidents and little else.  Still, I am interested in his healthcare reform and at this stage want to see it go through and give it its fair chance.  Obama may not fight for what I want him to fight for, but I fear a candidate like Romney might actively fight against it. 

My biggest dilemma comes from wanting to be as informed as possible on my choices and on the issues, which as of lately I am most certainly not.  My opinions above are based on the assumptions of what a democratic versus a republican candidate would do in office for the most part, and not stringent and specific knowledge of their goals and political pasts.

Hiraku wrote:

On a personal note, since I got my citizenship only two years ago, this is gonna be my first time voting! It will be fun.

Oooh, how exciting!  Congratulations! 

It's important that you know, if you don't already, that the winner of the election is going to be either Obama or Romney.  Third-party and independent candidates do not win presidential elections in American politics; they almost never even get included in debates and are rarely presented as choices in polls.  They're lucky to even get on the ballot.*  So while we do have more than just Democrats and Republicans, most people tend to ignore candidates who aren't one or the other, and this is reasonable.  Third parties are mostly kind of a running joke.  The punchline is that, in general, third-party and independent candidates are the only ones who actually believe the things they say in their campaign speeches.

*My state, Florida, makes it easy to get on the ballot, but most states erect pretty strong barriers to third parties.  Only Obama, Romney, and possibly Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson will be on the ballot in every state, and only one other candidate, the Green Party's Jill Stein, is on enough ballots that she could mathematically win.  Both Johnson and Stein are worth looking at if you don't like Obama or Romney -- but they won't even win a single state.

Write-in votes are not even tabulated unless the candidate is a "qualified write-in candidate."  If I wrote in your name, Ragnarok, my vote would not be tabulated at all (unless you are secretly running a campaign for president that I don't know about).  Some goofs do, of course, write in Santa Claus or Jon Stewart or whatever, and their votes are also not tabulated.  Rocky Anderson is not my first choice out of all possible people -- only my (current) first choice out of all people who are actually running for president.  I guess that might count as a compromise of my Point 1, but voting for someone on the ballot at least lets me cling to the slim possibility that voting third-party can send a message to the major parties that I think they need to field better candidates.  I can't do that if my vote isn't counted.

I'm voting for Obama. While there are some things about the Obama administration that I dislike, Mitt Romney is way, way worse. In my opinion, he's even worse than Bush was. I'm a college student from a lower middle class family and I'm also a woman and I identify as being mostly gay (most of the people I find attractive are women and while I occasionally like men, I don't like them enough to consider myself bisexual). Mitt Romney sure as hell isn't looking out for my interests, in fact he's actively seeking out ways to oppress me.

Oh, and since I receive Pell Grants and subsidized loans to help me go to school, I'm one of the 47% of the people in the country who Mitt Romney says that he isn't obligated to give a crap about.

Edit: I would also like to mention that Bush left office with eight years of fuckups, so logically to me it would take about eight years to clean up that mess.

Last edited by CausalityStar (09-23-2012 01:16:27 PM)

Crap, is it too late to get my absentee stuff done? I'll actually be in the United States on election day, but I'll be in like...Idaho. Or Montana.

I'll be voting for Obama, because I'm a godless heartless pragmatist and Romney terrifies me, so I'm voting to not elect him. Sadly, my entire history as a voter has been more about voting against the candidate that scares me than it's been about voting for the one I believe in.

I'll be voting for Obama, because I'm a godless heartless pragmatist and Romney terrifies me, so I'm voting to not elect him. Sadly, my entire history as a voter has been more about voting against the candidate that scares me than it's been about voting for the one I believe in.

True believers are dangerous. Totally serious.

Voted.

It's terrifying some of the amendments on the Florida ballot, and how tricky their wording is to make you ultimately miss the point. I have to say being able to research as I vote is a huge advantage. This is the first time that I can honestly say each decision I made was as well informed as it should be. Even then, there were candidates on the ballot who were almost non-existent on the internet.

Ugh it took me like twenty minutes to figure out what the hell was going on with that one. Amendment 3 was also an amazing wall of text that I honestly wonder how the average American even chooses the vote on. A lot of the problem with the ballots is that most people are going in there to vote for a president. They don't know about the supreme court justices and whether they should be kept in their office. It means that even someone decently informed about the president and maybe the senatorial races is at some point on that ballot going to pick and choose, because the ballot does not tell you anything about the two obscure names three pages in.

Or the one name and then a slot for write in. Thanks for the option guys.

I almost eyerolled my optic nerve out over the amendments about religion and abortion. I know how the average voter thinks, and they're not going to read the tail part of that amendment.

And then there were amendments that I actually really liked in principle and then thought about how they'd be used. The ballot I have in the mail here, the ballot so many Americans are going to look at, is hard to read, often manipulatively worded, and frankly is above and beyond the comprehension skills of the average voter, even when I give that group a little credit for being more or less literate. I'm a decently intelligent person with excellent reading comprehension, and that ballot was maybe only two steps below the fine print on my credit cards. It's a real problem, I think, and leads to a lot of uninformed decisions.

satyreyes wrote:

I voted no on almost all the amendments, which I guess was predictable, given that the amendments are put on the ballot by Florida's Republican-dominated legislature, and I don't see eye-to-eye with Florida Republicans on most things. 

I generally vote no on amendments, but I'm curious which ones you voted in favor of. I've only just started my research (bad voter, I know), so for anyone in a similar jumping point situation, I've found Ballotpedia is a good start.



I'm with Gio, tbh, when it comes to voting defensively, as opposed to idealistically. There are things about the Obama administration I'm pleased with, and things that I'm not. There's nothing about Romey's campaign that pleases me, and plenty that horrifies me.

I wonder though, what the current administration would have been able to achieve with a less hostile Congress.

Last edited by MissMocha (10-13-2012 08:33:29 AM)

I cannot wait to vote this year.

Because Todd Akin.

One of the few times I'm glad my mother and sister are Witnesses.  They don't vote.


Oh god that was an awful thing to say. 

Election home stretch primer.

It feels like it's taken an eternity to get this far, but welcome to the last four days.  Election Day is Tuesday -- and if you're a U.S. citizen and you haven't yet voted, make sure you get your butt to the polls!

When it comes to the presidential election, as always, every vote counts, but because of the Electoral College system, not every vote counts equally.  There are really only about ten states -- and I'm being generous here -- where the outcome is still in real doubt.  Here they are, from reddest to bluest.  I've put the number of electoral votes and the probability of Obama winning each state next to its name; the probabilities come from InTrade, a political betting site, and from FiveThirtyEight, a site that predicts electoral outcomes based primarily on the polls.  InTrade comes first.  Before these ten states, Obama has 217 electoral votes and Romney has 191.  It takes 270 to win.

North Carolina (15 EV; Obama to win at 20-21%).  All the states on this list voted for Obama in 2008, but this isn't 2008.  It's almost certain that Obama won't carry Indiana again, and he will probably lose North Carolina too, a red state that has only recently taken on a purple tinge.  If Romney can't even win North Carolina, stick a fork in him.

Florida (29 EV; Obama to win at 32-45%).  Florida is the closest state according to FiveThirtyEight, and also the swing state with the most electoral votes.  In spite of that, Florida isn't all that important this year, because Obama can easily get to 270 without it, while Romney pretty much needs it.  We may not know which way Florida voted until late at night Tuesday, but that doesn't mean we won't know who will be president.

Virginia (13 EV; Obama to win at 49-67%).  Virginia is the closest state according to InTrade.  InTrade and FiveThirtyEight disagree about Virginia; the president has held a narrow lead in five straight polls, but the state has historically been part of the Republican South.  It's probably the second most important state this year after Ohio.  This is the last state where either site shows Romney ahead -- but North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia together would only take Romney to 248 electoral votes, so Romney needs to break into Obama's territory to win.  This makes Romney a modest underdog.

Colorado (9 EV; Obama to win at 53-67%).  Colorado has been getting bluer as its Hispanic population grows, but Republicans shouldn't count it out yet; Colorado has a lot of independent-minded swing voters.  (Interestingly, not all swing states have a lot of swing voters.  Some are polarized and just close; see Wisconsin.)  It's thought that Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson might hurt a major-party candidate here, but no one can agree on which one.

New Hampshire (4 EV; Obama to win at 68-80%).  New Hampshire is the lone state in New England that isn't a Democratic stronghold, but it has a definite blue lean.  Polls show Obama about two and a half points ahead here.  Even though New Hampshire is tiny, there are plenty of plausible scenarios where it provides the winning vote to a candidate, and even a couple where it causes a 269-269 tie.

Iowa (6 EV; Obama to win at 69-80%).  There are a number of Obama winning scenarios that go "Obama needs to win X, Y, and one other state."  Iowa, along with Nevada, is a leading contender for "...and one other state."  It's a well-educated state with a strong economy, which gives Obama the edge, but Romney has a natural constituency among Iowa's many social conservatives.

Ohio (18 EV; Obama to win at 67-82%).  The most important state in this election.  With Ohio, Romney would look very strong; the candidate who won Virginia would then win the election unless his opponent swept the other most competitive states.  Without Ohio, Romney would probably lose outright, because the combination of Ohio and Obama's three best states on this list is enough to put Obama over 270.  Polls consistently show Obama with a two- to four-point margin here, thanks in part to the auto bailout, which saved a lot of Ohioan jobs.

Nevada (6 EV; Obama to win at 83-88%).  Nevada used to be a red state because of its incredibly conservative rural areas, but its increasing urban, Hispanic, and black populations have increasingly outbalanced the state's traditional conservatism.  Like Iowa, Nevada is an "...and one other state" for Obama; the president polls ahead in the mid-single digits, but everything rides on turnout.

Wisconsin (10 EV; Obama to win at 77-94%).  Wisconsin is a highly polarized state with very few undecided voters; every little edge counts.  The state used to be a liberal bastion, but it has become much tighter in the past decade or so, and with Wisconsinite Paul Ryan on the GOP ticket, some people think Wisconsin will vote Republican for the first time since 1984.  The polls suggest otherwise -- Romney has not led in a poll of Wisconsin since August -- but taking the state would be a real coup for him.

Pennsylvania (20 EV; Obama to win at 83-96%).  Pennsylvania is for Obama what North Carolina is for Romney: a swing state that has to be taken for granted, because losing it would be catastrophic.  If Obama can't even win blue-collar Pennsylvania, there's not much realistic chance he'll make it to 270.  Romney has put some resources there to see if he can't pull off a come-from-behind win, but the election will probably be decided elsewhere.

The other forty states are unlikely to hold any surprises -- but if something flabbergasts me on Election Night, I would guess that it will be Arizona going blue, Oregon or New Mexico going red, or either Nebraska or Maine splitting its vote.  (Each of these states partly splits its vote by congressional district, and the second district of each state is actually sorta competitive, which could lead to -- or break -- some interesting ties.)  Needless to say, if any of those things happen, one of the candidates will probably be having a fantastic night overall, and the other will be having a very bad one, so these states will almost certainly not be decisive.

You can test your own swing state hypotheses here -- a flowchart interface that lets you see the effect of all the above states except Pennsylvania, which it assumes will vote Democratic.

InTrade has Obama's probability of winning the election at 66%.  FiveThirtyEight has him at 83%.

Last edited by satyreyes (11-03-2012 12:32:49 AM)