8 ms·

I don't agree with a lot of the conclusions of this article. E.g. they propose that voting "probably" works the same way in all other countries as the US. There

I don't agree with a lot of the conclusions of this article. E.g. they propose that voting "probably" works the same way in all other countries as the US. There are plenty of objections to be made against that. E.g. 1) the US being a two party state means that getting representatives which represents the great variety of voter opinions is exceedingly difficult. 2) US elections are so dominated by advertisement, expensive campaigns and donations that there is no way a politician can actually do what they tell voters because at the end of the day they have to satisfy donors otherwise they can't get money to run elections. There has been studies that show American politicians are mainly aligned with the wishes of the rich rather than people who vote on them. That is just two big points, which makes the US stand out of many other western democracies, and there are multiple others. My other objection is that Boaty McBoatface, somehow represents the will of the people. No it doesn't. It represent the will of people who bothered to vote on an issue most people likely don't give a dam about. If a choice was demanded of the whole population then Boaty McBoatface would never have won. Whenever there is an issue most people don't have a vested interest in or think is very important it is likely that whoever wants to stirr up stuff or make some fun are going to win, because nobody else has any incentive. This is of course a major issue with democracy. When you let people make decisions on things they don't really care about then they will make poor decisions. Democracy shouldn't make everything a choice, but rather be about choosing people you think will make good choices on your behalf.

chrischen 11y ago
> My other objection is that Boaty McBoatface, somehow represents the will of the people. No it doesn't. It represent the will of people who bothered to vote on an issue most people likely don't give a dam about. If a choice was demanded of the whole population then Boaty McBoatface would never have won. The point is that if it does represent the will of the people and the people in power don't like it, the will of the people will still lose out. The two party system in the US is a problem, but it turns out it's natural consequence of Democracy. There's no law against other parties, it just turns out that with direct voting in a large country, over enough time, we arrive here with two parties. If you look at the Democratic party, in 1968 an unfavored candidate was nominated based on votes, and so the DNC decided to institute the concept of super-delegates from thereon out. They did this because letting normal democracy run its course didn't work because the people elected someone the party elites didn't think was the best. The super delegates composed of party loyalists and high ranking party members that could ignore DNC votes. This essentially gave the party more control over who would win and removed voting power from normal people. In the current election, Donald Trump is doing the same thing to upset the Republican party leadership. The Republicans haven't implemented anything as undemocratic as super-delegates yet, but if Trump wins they might be encouraged to (since it's the type of Democracy-giving-poor-results scenario people in power try to avoid).
- kuschku 11y ago
  > There's no law against other parties, it just turns out that with direct voting in a large country, over enough time, we arrive here with two parties. Wrong. It turns out that with First-Past-The-Post, we arrive with two parties. In many other countries, over centuries, even more parties develop, and fail again.
  - chrischen 11y ago
    At best a handful of parties, and it only works in small elections. You get to bigger and bigger elections the system always reduces the choice, which means that the bigger the system is, the less effective democracy becomes. Of course democracy was never meant to be the most efficient or effective system of government. It's simply the most compromising one.
    - BBlarat 11y ago
      Tell that to india, which has 6 National parties[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_I...
      - icebraining 11y ago
        Brazil has 25 national parties in parliament. Though nowadays their system might not sound like something to emulate :|
    - takno 11y ago
      You say "at best a handful" like there isn't a meaningful difference between "2" and "3 or 4". The US is deeply unusual in their persistent two party system. Germany probably has nearly as many voters (given higher registration and turnout rates) as the US, and certainly doesn't operate as a two party system
- Manishearth 11y ago
  > but it turns out it's natural consequence of Democracy. There's no law against other parties It's a natural consequence of the specifics of how the US does elections. The US isn't the only country with democracy and plenty of others have more than 2 significant parties.
DanBC 11y ago
> If a choice was demanded of the whole population then Boaty McBoatface would never have won. If you force British people to vote then Boaty McBoatface would probably win, because british people can be surprisingly bloody minded. And boaty mcboatface is the polite version, you'd have a number of people writing Cunty McCuntyCunt on the form.
- Doctor_Fegg 11y ago
  Exactly. It's the same bloody-mindedness that got 'Killing in the Name' - essentially the phrase "---k you I won't do what you tell me" shouted repeatedly - to No 1 at Christmas as a reaction against the X Factor manufactured idol hype. (And almost got 'Ding dong, the witch is dead' to No 1 after Thatcher's death...)
  - hartpuff 11y ago
    Or God Save The Queen to number "two" to mark Lizzy's Silver Jubilee. Mind you, that was also a decent song.
    - jeremysmyth 11y ago
      It's worth highlighting that the parent post refers to the Sex Pistols song rather than the rather more acceptable national anthem of the same name.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Or 350,000 people to declare themselves as Jedi Knights in the 2001 census.
metafunctor 11y ago
Democracy can take many forms indeed. But let's think opportunistically, for a moment. In general, I'm inclined to think that in a democracy, the people should have more direct influence to things “closer” to them (by some measure), and less for bigger, nationwide, issues, of which they presumably have less understanding. This is, in fact, how most democratic nations work in practice. The case of Boaty McBoatface, though, is unusual in that it doesn't actually much matter what the name of a research vessel is. It's just a name. Names are almost always boring. Unless… if the name becomes so popular and widely known that the very name opens up completely new opportunities for raising funds and awareness. Which, I would have thought, was kind of the point of the competition to begin with. So, why not reap the PR benefits of this name? Why would they start a contest but back out when they hit the jackpot? I do not understand.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  If spun right the PR benefits of calling the thing Boaty McBoatface are huge. You could do merchandise, books, characters, You could have Boaty McBoatface sale up to the ice caps to look at why they are melting. It's not like this is unusual we had a Childrens TV series here that was massively popular about talking trains and talking helicopters. I think they squandered a massive opportunity because they don't understand how the internet works.
  - tfm 11y ago
    It is a difficult line to toe. Obviously if their primary objective is to raise awareness of the (continuing) existence of the boat, BMcBF is a winner, and there are numerous cash-in opportunities such as those you suggest. If done right it might not even look cynical! If on the other hand giving it a silly name "dilutes their brand" (to use an HN favourite) then they're going to do the stuffy thing. Not entirely sure why folks would be surprised at a Conservative minister taking a conservative approach... Really seems that SCIENCE does a lot better in the public eye at the moment when it goes populist rather than cloistered, but here we are...
    - toyg 11y ago
s_kilk 11y ago
> My other objection is that Boaty McBoatface, somehow represents the will of the people. No it doesn't. Realistically it's the will of 4chan and Reddit, which is nowhere near as noble-sounding as "the will of the people".
- aharju 11y ago
  I plead guilty, as that particular name was so hilariously funny, that I voted while I was still laughing. And I'm a Finn, not a Brit, so I wouldn't even expect that my vote would be taken seriously.
toyg 11y ago
> When you let people make decisions on things they don't really care about then they will make poor decisions. This assumes McBoatface is a poor decision, which is a completely personal (and most likely wrong) assessment. There are no objective parameters for what a good ship name should be in generic terms. For something with military applications, probably easy spelling and brevity would factor in, but in reality a lot of military ships have long and windy names anyway. Something with a publicity element, like a research ship, could do with something memorable and fun, which Boaty McBoatface undoubtedly is; naming it as some obscure last-century researcher would make it utterly forgettable. So it looks like there is wisdom in the crowds after all; it's just that often it doesn't match the wisdom of stuffy establishment types.
maxerickson 11y ago
States could probably change the 2 party system by eliminating the preferential access that the parties have to the ballot. Imagine if the national conventions were deciding which of the many already balloted candidates to endorse, rather than a media circus driving national attention to a smaller and smaller number of candidates that are then placed on state ballots by the parties months after an independent would have had to finished submitting ballot petitions. It would still be a circus, but it wouldn't be a circus where the choices are filtered through a few thousand people. I suppose it would be necessary to again make the first loser the Vice President, but that shouldn't really hurt anything.
- tamana 11y ago
  Why would any Democrat or Republican candidate prefer that process over the party process?
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Yes, exactly. They prefer the party process because it gives them an advantage. We should take that advantage away from them. (In many places ballot initiatives could be used to work around insider resistance to such a change)
mason240 11y ago
>2) US elections are so dominated by advertisement, expensive campaigns and donations By outspending his opponent over 2:1 and still losing by a large margin, Bernie Sanders has proved that money can't buy an election.
mseebach 11y ago
I don't really agree with the article either, but for different reasons. Voting is to democracy as is telescopes is to astronomy. Democracy is about the people being in charge, of the government existing for the benefit of the people (as opposed to a dictator/absolute monarch/aristocracy) on the broadest possible stretches. It's about replacing the people in charge peacefully every few years. It's not about every decision being made at every level of government always being in line with what a majority might vote -- and it's emphatically not about online votes for silly things. It's an abomination to suggest such votes have anything to do with democracy (or, if you're so minded, an elaborate tactic for the power cabal to create the illusion of people being in power, but that theory is rather diminished by the power cabal not following the decision). Democracy is worst form of government, except for all other others. It's not perfect, and it doesn't hold the seeds of perfection. It's at best a decent way of preventing a strong man and his cronies from grabbing too much power too fast -- it's not even a guarantee against that happening. However, the unexpected strong performances of Trump and Sanders in the US primaries is for all its weirdness a symptom of the system working, however imperfectly: It's a huge vote of non-confidence in "the system" and the perception that it has been captured by some vaguely defined instance of not-the-people (Sanders: Wall Street; Trump: Who the hell knows? Mexicans?) and that (however crudely) something should be done about it.
- basch 11y ago
  having people in charge makes it a republic. direct democracy would be voting on everything. most technically we call ourselves a Federal Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_republic
- amai 11y ago
  Voting for public offices is actually undemocratic. This was already know to the ancient greek: "It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election." (Aristotle) See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
jrcii 11y ago
> There has been studies that show American politicians are mainly aligned with the wishes of the rich rather than people who vote on them. http://i.imgur.com/e3jOsWR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/e3jOsWR.jpg
gumby 11y ago
> [Boaty McBoatface] represent the will of people who bothered to vote on an issue most people likely don't give a dam[n] about. Indeed the vote was obviously silly and did in fact achieve its desired goal: publicity for arctic research. The officials are insane if they don't go along with the choice. It's an opportunity for further publicity on arctic research for decades to come!
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
PepeGomez 11y ago
Why do some people think it's such a bad name? It sounds like a perfectly fine name for a ship.
kamjam 11y ago
> My other objection is that Boaty McBoatface, somehow represents the will of the people. No it doesn't. It represent the will of people who bothered to vote on an issue most people likely don't give a dam about. If a choice was demanded of the whole population then Boaty McBoatface would never have won. This can be said about the election in pretty much all western societies. There have been several occasions where I myself have not voted in the UK elections. Does it make those elections any less valid? Same can be said for the US as well, where even those who voted found that majority rule didn't matter in the end [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...] Maybe we should follow the Australian way where people are forced to vote or face a $100AU fine. But then democracy right, it should give you the right to not vote.
- soperj 11y ago
  I agree with the Australian way, so long as there is an option for "Nobody".
  - kamjam 11y ago
    There is not I'm afraid, you have to mark the ballot paper. So the way round it is to mark the paper outside of the boxes, thus making it an invalid vote.
- tamana 11y ago
  Plurality rule, not majority rule.
Grishnakh 11y ago
I think another huge problem with democracy is the voting systems. As far as I'm concerned, if they used a simple plurality (first past the post) voting system, then the results are invalid, and that goes for any election that uses that system. It cannot be said to represent the will of the people. I didn't participate in this election (I'm not a UKian) and didn't see exactly how it was done, but I'll bet (esp. given the statements made about the results, and how the winner got 3x the number of votes of the runner-up) they had a big list of names, and then people had the chance to vote for exactly one of those names. "Boaty McBoatface" therefore was probably not the choice of the majority of the voters, but only a small minority, with all the other votes spread across a bunch of other names. If the name was not chosen by a clear majority of people, then it's not the "choice of the people". If this had been done by some other voting system, then we would have seen very different results most likely. Approval voting might have worked well here; whichever name got the most votes of approval, if more then 50% of the voters approved it, can rightfully be said to be "the choice of the people". This is the problem with "democracy": the voting system itself is inherently rigged and unfair, and then we're told to believe in its results. How many elections actually use a voting system besides plurality? Not many.
brownbat 11y ago
> getting representatives which represents the great variety of voter opinions The parties in the US don't control the opinions and seats of their elected members, which means you get a greater variety of political positions under the same label than you do in a lot of parliamentary systems. Republicans in California can easily be left of Democrats in Georgia.[0] There are opinions held by small interest groups that are not reflected in the democratic process, to be sure. On the other hand, performing artists have their own line in the tax code, so sometimes these groups do get their way. > US elections are so dominated by advertisement, expensive campaigns and donations that there is no way a politician can actually do what they tell voters because at the end of the day they have to satisfy donors A lot of studies have debunked the influence of money on campaigns.[1] Jeb's massive war chest didn't keep him in the race. Here are the richest individuals to ever launch a bid for the presidency[2]: 1) Ross Perot 2) Steve Forbes 3) John Kerry 4) Mitt Romney 5) Al Gore The Clintons are next, but most of their money was made after Bill's Presidency. Giuliani, Edwards, and Huntsman round out the list (before this election, I'm not sure if anyone really knows how much Trump is worth). A lot of losers on that list for a system so influenced by money. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zell_Miller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zell_Miller [1] http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-spending-influence-the-election-a-freakonomics-quorum/ http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-sp... [2] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ross-perot-tops-list-wealthiest-u-s-presidential-candidates-article-1.1439270 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ross-perot-tops-lis...

chrischen 11y ago

> My other objection is that Boaty McBoatface, somehow represents the will of the people. No it doesn't. It represent the will of people who bothered to vote on an issue most people likely don't give a dam about. If a choice was demanded of the whole population then Boaty McBoatface would never have won. The point is that if it does represent the will of the people and the people in power don't like it, the will of the people will still lose out. The two party system in the US is a problem, but it turns out it's natural consequence of Democracy. There's no law against other parties, it just turns out that with direct voting in a large country, over enough time, we arrive here with two parties. If you look at the Democratic party, in 1968 an unfavored candidate was nominated based on votes, and so the DNC decided to institute the concept of super-delegates from thereon out. They did this because letting normal democracy run its course didn't work because the people elected someone the party elites didn't think was the best. The super delegates composed of party loyalists and high ranking party members that could ignore DNC votes. This essentially gave the party more control over who would win and removed voting power from normal people. In the current election, Donald Trump is doing the same thing to upset the Republican party leadership. The Republicans haven't implemented anything as undemocratic as super-delegates yet, but if Trump wins they might be encouraged to (since it's the type of Democracy-giving-poor-results scenario people in power try to avoid).

kuschku 11y ago
> There's no law against other parties, it just turns out that with direct voting in a large country, over enough time, we arrive here with two parties. Wrong. It turns out that with First-Past-The-Post, we arrive with two parties. In many other countries, over centuries, even more parties develop, and fail again.
- chrischen 11y ago
  At best a handful of parties, and it only works in small elections. You get to bigger and bigger elections the system always reduces the choice, which means that the bigger the system is, the less effective democracy becomes. Of course democracy was never meant to be the most efficient or effective system of government. It's simply the most compromising one.
  - BBlarat 11y ago
    Tell that to india, which has 6 National parties[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_I...
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Brazil has 25 national parties in parliament. Though nowadays their system might not sound like something to emulate :|
  - takno 11y ago
    You say "at best a handful" like there isn't a meaningful difference between "2" and "3 or 4". The US is deeply unusual in their persistent two party system. Germany probably has nearly as many voters (given higher registration and turnout rates) as the US, and certainly doesn't operate as a two party system
Manishearth 11y ago
> but it turns out it's natural consequence of Democracy. There's no law against other parties It's a natural consequence of the specifics of how the US does elections. The US isn't the only country with democracy and plenty of others have more than 2 significant parties.

DanBC 11y ago

> If a choice was demanded of the whole population then Boaty McBoatface would never have won. If you force British people to vote then Boaty McBoatface would probably win, because british people can be surprisingly bloody minded. And boaty mcboatface is the polite version, you'd have a number of people writing Cunty McCuntyCunt on the form.

Doctor_Fegg 11y ago
Exactly. It's the same bloody-mindedness that got 'Killing in the Name' - essentially the phrase "---k you I won't do what you tell me" shouted repeatedly - to No 1 at Christmas as a reaction against the X Factor manufactured idol hype. (And almost got 'Ding dong, the witch is dead' to No 1 after Thatcher's death...)
- hartpuff 11y ago
  Or God Save The Queen to number "two" to mark Lizzy's Silver Jubilee. Mind you, that was also a decent song.
  - jeremysmyth 11y ago
    It's worth highlighting that the parent post refers to the Sex Pistols song rather than the rather more acceptable national anthem of the same name.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Or 350,000 people to declare themselves as Jedi Knights in the 2001 census.

metafunctor 11y ago

Democracy can take many forms indeed. But let's think opportunistically, for a moment. In general, I'm inclined to think that in a democracy, the people should have more direct influence to things “closer” to them (by some measure), and less for bigger, nationwide, issues, of which they presumably have less understanding. This is, in fact, how most democratic nations work in practice. The case of Boaty McBoatface, though, is unusual in that it doesn't actually much matter what the name of a research vessel is. It's just a name. Names are almost always boring. Unless… if the name becomes so popular and widely known that the very name opens up completely new opportunities for raising funds and awareness. Which, I would have thought, was kind of the point of the competition to begin with. So, why not reap the PR benefits of this name? Why would they start a contest but back out when they hit the jackpot? I do not understand.

noir_lord 11y ago
If spun right the PR benefits of calling the thing Boaty McBoatface are huge. You could do merchandise, books, characters, You could have Boaty McBoatface sale up to the ice caps to look at why they are melting. It's not like this is unusual we had a Childrens TV series here that was massively popular about talking trains and talking helicopters. I think they squandered a massive opportunity because they don't understand how the internet works.
- tfm 11y ago
  It is a difficult line to toe. Obviously if their primary objective is to raise awareness of the (continuing) existence of the boat, BMcBF is a winner, and there are numerous cash-in opportunities such as those you suggest. If done right it might not even look cynical! If on the other hand giving it a silly name "dilutes their brand" (to use an HN favourite) then they're going to do the stuffy thing. Not entirely sure why folks would be surprised at a Conservative minister taking a conservative approach... Really seems that SCIENCE does a lot better in the public eye at the moment when it goes populist rather than cloistered, but here we are...
  - toyg 11y ago

s_kilk 11y ago

> My other objection is that Boaty McBoatface, somehow represents the will of the people. No it doesn't. Realistically it's the will of 4chan and Reddit, which is nowhere near as noble-sounding as "the will of the people".

aharju 11y ago
I plead guilty, as that particular name was so hilariously funny, that I voted while I was still laughing. And I'm a Finn, not a Brit, so I wouldn't even expect that my vote would be taken seriously.

toyg 11y ago

> When you let people make decisions on things they don't really care about then they will make poor decisions. This assumes McBoatface is a poor decision, which is a completely personal (and most likely wrong) assessment. There are no objective parameters for what a good ship name should be in generic terms. For something with military applications, probably easy spelling and brevity would factor in, but in reality a lot of military ships have long and windy names anyway. Something with a publicity element, like a research ship, could do with something memorable and fun, which Boaty McBoatface undoubtedly is; naming it as some obscure last-century researcher would make it utterly forgettable. So it looks like there is wisdom in the crowds after all; it's just that often it doesn't match the wisdom of stuffy establishment types.

maxerickson 11y ago

States could probably change the 2 party system by eliminating the preferential access that the parties have to the ballot. Imagine if the national conventions were deciding which of the many already balloted candidates to endorse, rather than a media circus driving national attention to a smaller and smaller number of candidates that are then placed on state ballots by the parties months after an independent would have had to finished submitting ballot petitions. It would still be a circus, but it wouldn't be a circus where the choices are filtered through a few thousand people. I suppose it would be necessary to again make the first loser the Vice President, but that shouldn't really hurt anything.

tamana 11y ago
Why would any Democrat or Republican candidate prefer that process over the party process?
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Yes, exactly. They prefer the party process because it gives them an advantage. We should take that advantage away from them. (In many places ballot initiatives could be used to work around insider resistance to such a change)

mason240 11y ago

>2) US elections are so dominated by advertisement, expensive campaigns and donations By outspending his opponent over 2:1 and still losing by a large margin, Bernie Sanders has proved that money can't buy an election.

mseebach 11y ago

I don't really agree with the article either, but for different reasons. Voting is to democracy as is telescopes is to astronomy. Democracy is about the people being in charge, of the government existing for the benefit of the people (as opposed to a dictator/absolute monarch/aristocracy) on the broadest possible stretches. It's about replacing the people in charge peacefully every few years. It's not about every decision being made at every level of government always being in line with what a majority might vote -- and it's emphatically not about online votes for silly things. It's an abomination to suggest such votes have anything to do with democracy (or, if you're so minded, an elaborate tactic for the power cabal to create the illusion of people being in power, but that theory is rather diminished by the power cabal not following the decision). Democracy is worst form of government, except for all other others. It's not perfect, and it doesn't hold the seeds of perfection. It's at best a decent way of preventing a strong man and his cronies from grabbing too much power too fast -- it's not even a guarantee against that happening. However, the unexpected strong performances of Trump and Sanders in the US primaries is for all its weirdness a symptom of the system working, however imperfectly: It's a huge vote of non-confidence in "the system" and the perception that it has been captured by some vaguely defined instance of not-the-people (Sanders: Wall Street; Trump: Who the hell knows? Mexicans?) and that (however crudely) something should be done about it.

basch 11y ago
having people in charge makes it a republic. direct democracy would be voting on everything. most technically we call ourselves a Federal Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_republic
amai 11y ago
Voting for public offices is actually undemocratic. This was already know to the ancient greek: "It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election." (Aristotle) See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

jrcii 11y ago

> There has been studies that show American politicians are mainly aligned with the wishes of the rich rather than people who vote on them. http://i.imgur.com/e3jOsWR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/e3jOsWR.jpg

gumby 11y ago

> [Boaty McBoatface] represent the will of people who bothered to vote on an issue most people likely don't give a dam[n] about. Indeed the vote was obviously silly and did in fact achieve its desired goal: publicity for arctic research. The officials are insane if they don't go along with the choice. It's an opportunity for further publicity on arctic research for decades to come!

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

PepeGomez 11y ago

Why do some people think it's such a bad name? It sounds like a perfectly fine name for a ship.

kamjam 11y ago

soperj 11y ago
I agree with the Australian way, so long as there is an option for "Nobody".
- kamjam 11y ago
  There is not I'm afraid, you have to mark the ballot paper. So the way round it is to mark the paper outside of the boxes, thus making it an invalid vote.
tamana 11y ago
Plurality rule, not majority rule.

Grishnakh 11y ago

I think another huge problem with democracy is the voting systems. As far as I'm concerned, if they used a simple plurality (first past the post) voting system, then the results are invalid, and that goes for any election that uses that system. It cannot be said to represent the will of the people. I didn't participate in this election (I'm not a UKian) and didn't see exactly how it was done, but I'll bet (esp. given the statements made about the results, and how the winner got 3x the number of votes of the runner-up) they had a big list of names, and then people had the chance to vote for exactly one of those names. "Boaty McBoatface" therefore was probably not the choice of the majority of the voters, but only a small minority, with all the other votes spread across a bunch of other names. If the name was not chosen by a clear majority of people, then it's not the "choice of the people". If this had been done by some other voting system, then we would have seen very different results most likely. Approval voting might have worked well here; whichever name got the most votes of approval, if more then 50% of the voters approved it, can rightfully be said to be "the choice of the people". This is the problem with "democracy": the voting system itself is inherently rigged and unfair, and then we're told to believe in its results. How many elections actually use a voting system besides plurality? Not many.

brownbat 11y ago

> getting representatives which represents the great variety of voter opinions The parties in the US don't control the opinions and seats of their elected members, which means you get a greater variety of political positions under the same label than you do in a lot of parliamentary systems. Republicans in California can easily be left of Democrats in Georgia.[0] There are opinions held by small interest groups that are not reflected in the democratic process, to be sure. On the other hand, performing artists have their own line in the tax code, so sometimes these groups do get their way. > US elections are so dominated by advertisement, expensive campaigns and donations that there is no way a politician can actually do what they tell voters because at the end of the day they have to satisfy donors A lot of studies have debunked the influence of money on campaigns.[1] Jeb's massive war chest didn't keep him in the race. Here are the richest individuals to ever launch a bid for the presidency[2]: 1) Ross Perot 2) Steve Forbes 3) John Kerry 4) Mitt Romney 5) Al Gore The Clintons are next, but most of their money was made after Bill's Presidency. Giuliani, Edwards, and Huntsman round out the list (before this election, I'm not sure if anyone really knows how much Trump is worth). A lot of losers on that list for a system so influenced by money. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zell_Miller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zell_Miller [1] http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-spending-influence-the-election-a-freakonomics-quorum/ http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-sp... [2] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ross-perot-tops-list-wealthiest-u-s-presidential-candidates-article-1.1439270 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ross-perot-tops-lis...