You get what you vote for.

And good and hard.

Why people keep on thinking voting will change any of this nonsense is beyond me. Do you guys really think there is a pony in there?

There are plenty of countries where the elections are purely for show. Maybe democracy goes bye bye but the stuff about the state that is actually objectionable remains in all its purified glory.

It’s not the voting that makes democracy bad. It’s the enforcement. Take away all the armed thugs and their enablers and people could throw ballots around all day and nobody would get hurt. But take away the voting and the thugs will still be there – and they’ll find something to enforce. Take away the order-followers and the order-giver would just be another shouting buffoon; take away the order-giver and the order-followers will find another (or just revert to undisguised freelance banditry).

"Since a candidate needs only one vote to win and can vote for themselves, how would this work?"

So, Cliff, you think that democracy would still look like a bright, new, shiny penny if the only vote cast were by the winning candidate?

More likely, the emperor would be seen for the naked SOB he is. Bye bye democracy!!!

Second, Radley, I have a suggestion that might make some compelling blogging for you.

Recruit some willing legal help (surely there are some young lawyers in the
D.C. area reading this blog who could help out with this) and mount a full-on legal defense, and document the steps and the outcome on the site as an on-going series.

I would start with full evidentiary proceedings, and when they are ignored as they will be, do legal appellate work. They will eventually dismiss the case to get you off their back.

At this point, you should sue them for illegal operation of the racket and for violation of your constitutional rights, and make sure to sue everyone in a position of authority. Don’t sue the poor schmucks who are actually processing the paper unless they take their position of power too literally and urinate you off.

I think you can stretch this our for several years of fun and jollity if you can get the legal work done on the cuff.

I think you should have some privileges for being our surrogate raiser of hell and taker of names.

You are the worst troll ever. You’re most likely scenario is libertarians are responsible for budget cuts? If you’re dumb enough to make that statement, you’re obviously too dumb to understand why it’s idiotic. Do you just pretend that the overwelming evidence of waste and mismanagement by all government agencies just doesn’t exist?

Someone up thread suggested .gov should be using email to contact people and conduct business. They should, they should be using all that is available… but, I used to have hopes that technology would streamline government and their agencies. After working on an IT project for a state transportation agency my hopes have been nicely shattered. I can’t help but feel that mostly these projects are badly managed, badly defined, never ending, money pits. Don’t get me wrong, there are some stellar examples of govs (usually local & county level) leveraging appropriate tech for the betterment of their constituents and their operations, but it seems really really rare.

Further to shatter my hopes that technology can cure kafka moments I can’t help but think of the 2010 census as an example. During the census, they had a down-loadable example form as a PDF, they also had a generic hard copy you could pick up at local police precinct but they did not have a down-loadable generic form as a PDF?

I didn’t believe it, i just assumed I couldn’t find it, so I called asking where I could download the census form. The census worker gave me a URI to download the example form (the wrong URI) then she informed me that the census did not have the technology to provide down-loadable forms. Oh, ok, thank you.

Technology will not save the government or us until the government changes how it operates. And that, will not happen any time soon. I feel that it’s just going to get weirder and more bloated and a hell of a lot more dangerous as glitches and technology errors get blamed for everything from incompetence and laziness to corruption and cheating.

http://praxeology.net/LS-NT-6.htm

It’ll be poetic when you’re driving through Ohio and some cop ‘visualizes’ you speeding, or you’re driving through any number of towns that reduced the yellow light time on their stop lights and you get nailed by a camera for running a red light, or the new ‘tire depth’ decide your tires are a little too bald and you get nailed with a $100 fine for that… http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/24/2463.asp

We don’t know he was speeding- there’s no due process. We don’t know that the cameras were calibrated correctly. We don’t know that the speed limit was posted correctly. Radley will never know, either. He’s just the sap stuck with the bill.

Since a candidate needs only one vote to win and can vote for themselves, how would this work?

Also, JS @6 – it was either Albert Jay Nock or Lysander Spooner who first pointed out that a robber – unlike the State – simply takes your money, and doesn’t follow you along afterward insisting they are doing you a service.