Stirling Newberry studies the evolution of the election process in America.#

An election is an elevation. The systems of elections in the US mirrors the way that power is controlled: an election is a test, a simulation, of power.

The elections of 1789, if they were held in some remote country, would not qualify as "democratic", since they reflect no moment of mandate, no particular submission of the government to a moment of popular will. Legislatures chose electors, who were manipulated by Hamilton - the first fixer to Washington's first citizen - to vote in the correct manner to produce the correct results. But these elections were a reflection of how power worked: in that day and age, the army was built of regiments. Regiments were funded by individual wealthy men - Washington had financed an army in the French and Indian wars, and again in the Revolutionary War. Hence, the will of those who could fund and gather war making apparatus, and capital formation, in the world of the commerical north, were the government, since, if push came to shove, they would have to raise the army that would defend it.

Ever since, the evolution of elections in the US, has mirrored how power was created, channelled and controlled.

Curt Siffert on other voters: "They're too stupid, they shouldn't be allowed to vote!" Or: "What? Democracy doesn't mean 'I Win'?"#

And the other one is that I did witness tonight how this damn "Iowa Bump" had such a huge difference for Kerry in all these states. I mean, that bump is huge. Depressingly huge. I didn't realize that such a large percentage of the primary-voting population were sheep. And that's really it, sheep. Where did all these Kerry supporters come from overnight? He was in the toilet four weeks ago. Dean's policies didn't change. Kerry's policies didn't change. Sure, some of Kerry's supporters were from "undecided" folks, but only a portion of them. The others were switchers. Dean didn't become a worse candidate all of a sudden or anything. The only thing they are responding to is the media. They read that Kerry won somewhere, so they switch their vote. As if they get a prize for picking the winner. It's treating a vote as a lottery. You don't get a prize for picking the winner. Your responsibility is to vote your damn preference. I don't get it.

Chip Gibbons on why it is ridiculous for women to be able to exhort their babies' fathers.#

In a free society, if there is no contract of support between consenting parties, there can be no obligation to pay support; not for the father and certianly not for the billions of others on the planet that did not have sex with the woman. To document an agreement to have a child between a man and woman, all that is necessary is a contract of support. Whether it's a marriage or some other form of written contract doesn't matter.

If a man is not willing to support his own child, he won't sign such a contract and that's all the woman needs to know about him. She needs to move on to a man who is willing to provide support, if in fact that is what she wants. Why do women want to have children by men who can't or don't want to support them anyway? If the care of her infant is her primary concern, she would get a contract of support from a willing party.

Oliver Willis presents a message from the Lieberman campaign.#

"There have been some reports that Joe Lieberman plans to drop out of the presidential race. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I speak, one billion voters are going to the polls to vote for Joe Lieberman and Allah smiles on them. Already John Kerry, John Edwards and Howard Dean are about to concede to Joe Lieberman. They fear his mighty jowls and wavering voice, they bow at the feet of his mainstream, moderate positions.

Kevin Aylward explains how Congressman and Senators answer letters. How depressing.#

The idea behind the CMS systems was that upon entering office the representative would procure an electronic list of the 300,000 or so constituents in your district, or if you were lucky get the previous representative's database. Staff member could add new constituents; merge records of duplicates, etc. Every inbound letter and call is tracked by a lookup search for the constituent's name. Once the record is found the contact history with that constituent is available for viewing and action.

Inbound letters and calls are 'issue coded'. For example, if you write a letter to your representative in which you urge the member to support gun control legislation, the staff members who open and read the mail enter a record of the correspondence and select a gun control issue code. If you address multiple topics you get multiple codes.

The staffer at that point has the option of creating a response (which as I recall they usually do) by picking one or more items from a list of issue talking points.

MNOT on presidential candidates and astrosuck.#

I'm so sick of watching presidential candidates confidently telling news anchors that they're doing well in the race, and explaining how well their ideas are going across.

Where are the ideas? Instead of telling me why I should vote for them, the current crop's strategy seems to be to convince me that everybody else is voting for them.

In advertising, this is known as singing the brief; rather than doing the hard work of convincing me that a product is appealing (for example), the ad just says "this product is appealing."

Alex Tabarrok links to Valdis Krebs on book buying models.#

This is a must read. Or at least look at the picture.

The Black Saint writes about Howard Dean's strategy.#

Gov. Dean blames the media for his fall because that's what everyone does and rivals whom he says torpedoed his candidacy using every desperate tactic they knew, like pointing out dumb things he'd said. But there were other problems — lavish spending early in the race (perhaps the solid gold statue of Gov. Dean with his foot pressing down on Pres. Bush's bloodied head was a bit premature), difficulty transferring his cult-like support into votes, and a candidate who sometimes talked without thinking of the political consequences or whether he was sober at the time.

He gained respect among the Washington crowd by raising more than $40 million last year, a Democratic record. Thousands of people, many who had never donated to a political campaign, were inspired to contribute to Dean's anti-Iraq war, anti-Washington, anti-ever reclaiming the White House candidacy.

Bob asks: "As a matter of common sense and self-defense, [we] will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed." Bush or Palpatine?#

Gary Santoro posts funny John Kerry comics.#