Presidential elections with proportional allocation

The electoral college is getting a lot of flack lately for being why Trump won the election. It occurred to me that the EC, as it is popularly understood, has two effects. One weights smaller states more than larger ones, which was just a pragmatic political compromise from the 1780s. But the other is winner-take-all, which is a choice the state governments make. They could give their electoral votes literally any way they want, including rolling a D20 and picking people out of the jury pool.

I decided to strip out the winner-take-all and see what would have happened if all the states used proportional allocation while retaining the constitutional weighting process. The results for the last seven elections:

Clinton: 236

Bush: 197

Perot: 105

Clinton: 267

Dole: 224

Perot: 46

Nader: 1 (California)

Bush: 263

Gore: 262

Nader: 13

Bush: 280

Kerry: 258

Obama: 289

McCain: 248

Nader: 1 (California)

Obama: 276

Romney: 261

Johnson: 1 (California)

Trump: 262
Hillary: 260
Johnson: 14
Stein: 1 (California)
McMullin: 1 (Utah)

Interestingly, four of the seven end up without a majority winner, and the others ('04, '08, '12) have very close margins. This shows that the winner-take-all effect is just as important as the constitutionally-mandated weighting effect.

In 2016, Trump still comes out on top due to the weighting, but with proportional allocation it's almost a tie, and nobody has a majority with 270. The numbers are strikingly close to 2000, actually, the last time there was a popular/electoral split.

Normally that would mean the election goes to the House, but I don't think that's what actually happens in these scenarios. The third-party electors, knowing their candidates can't possibly win, would likely throw their votes to either of the leading candidates. This would likely happen after extracting concessions of some kind, like promises of legislative priorities, or even a different VP. We could end up with a Hillary/Johnson administration, or a Kaine/Pence, or literally anything the electors could compromise on. It looks very much like a parliamentary system.

Suddenly third party votes are something besides a not-vote!

At a glance, I rather like the shape of this system. I've got no problem with weighting rural areas more than urban areas. I just have a problem with making votes not matter at all. And that's not the result of electoral college as a concept, it's entirely a state-level choice.

[Also, side note, Maine and Nebraska use some bizarre hybrid system. Two EVs to the state winner, and one to the winner of each congressional district. So you could imagine proportional for the entire state, or just proportional for the at-large votes.

In 2016, Maine went 3:1 Hillary, but goes 2:2 under either proportional plan. Nebraska went 5:0 Trump, but goes 4:1 under proportional at-large, and 3:2 under straight proportional. So the gerrymandering of the districts to favor Republicans in Nebraska keeps having an effect if we still go by congressional districts. Screw gerrymandering.]

In summary, the problems with the electoral college aren't with the electoral college. Your beef is with your state legislature, as it often is.

Hysteresis voting

Our founders held this as an axiom: government should reflect the will of the people. A government which does not is a tyranny, and should be torn down and replaced. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

But our founders were also right to be concerned about the tyranny of the mob; in a direct democracy, if you can convince 50.0001% of the people to do break the system, it's broken forever. There have to be limits in place to slow things down, and ways to fix mistakes when they happen. That's why we have a representative democracy instead of a direct one. If the United States had been a direct democracy, then the 9/11 attacks might have resulted in misdirected nuclear retaliation and millions of innocent deaths. It's very possible that only our representative democracy kept that from happening.

But what if there's a terrorist attack two days before an election?

That might change the outcome, right? Perhaps Nathan Petrelli or Donald Trump wins instead of losing, and the course of the country is changed for at least the next several years. Maybe we invade Iraq again. Maybe we do something much worse, something we regret for centuries. And even as the people calm down, there's no chance for years to remove the horrible people we elected.

But if the same attack happened two days after the election? Now Nathan loses, and we go on an entirely different course for the next six years.

What's different between those scenarios? The attack happens identically. The people of the country react identically. They're still being asked the same questions on election day. The only difference is timing. Ask on the wrong day, and you set the course of the country for years to come, with no chance to undo it until the next time you ask the people what they want.

A similar thing happens in cases like Brexit. The way people vote is actually dependent on how they expect the outcome to go. Once people see the outcome of the referendum, they might change their vote (or lack of vote), but now it's too late. People are convinced their votes don't matter, so on the rare occasion they do matter, they're left wanting a second chance. The will of the people suddenly changed, but it only changed after the vote, so the government is left unable to respond to the change.

Signal processing and controls engineers, do you recognize this? It's a sampling problem! The people want the government to behave in a certain way, which changes over time. That's our setpoint we're trying to hit. The setpoint is able to change rapidly (even in response to its own sampling!) but it's only being sampled once every 2-6 years. If you tried to build an actual control system like that, you'd be fired!

Nyquist says that if you're sampling once every six years, the thing you're sampling can't change any faster than every twelve years! Does that describe the will of the people? Especially after something like 9/11? Absolutely not. To avoid getting a government stuck at the extremes, we need a higher sampling rate, to respond more quickly to the will of the people changing.

But that can't be the only change, of course. Having a government that's able to calm down with the people is good, but it also means having one able to get angry with them. Instant response to the momentary will of the people after a terrorist incident would be a disaster! Like in any engineered system, no matter how fast your sample rate is, you still have to have some filtering to slow down response to a reasonable level, or it will go unstable very quickly. The simplest way to achieve this filtering is called hysteresis.

So here's what we do: vote all the time, on everything. Polling stations are open 24/7, with the same set of proposals and candidates on them. Every month the vote totals reset, and everyone can go vote again. This has some immediate effects: any popular vote resolution can be changed at any time, and every elected official is facing a recall election, all the time. That's a recipe for chaos... but here's where the hysteresis comes in!

The catch is that you need a super-majority to affect change. Before an item is put on the ballot, you define some threshold for the change to be executed. Suppose the threshold for changing the mayor is 10%. Every month, you see how many people want a new mayor. Add up the percentage by which that position wins or loses, month by month. If that sum ever gets up to 10%, you get a new mayor.

So if there's one month that the vote is 55/45 for replacing the mayor, you do so immediately, because you got a ten percent difference. But say the outcome is 54/46; you only have eight of your ten required points. You have to wait another month, but that month you only need 51/49 to get that last two percent. This means that the more angry the people are at an elected official, the easier it is to remove them quickly.

But it also means that every month, you have some idea how much closer or further away that recall might be. If the embattled mayor's supporters happened to stay home the first month, maybe they'll come out the second month once they see he's in trouble. Perhaps that second month, the vote is 48/52, four points in favor of keeping him. Now the mayor is six points from being recalled instead of two, and his total will keep changing over succeeding months as more people show up to vote. You have continuously running polling of elected officials, giving a real-time approval rating, with actual consequences!

Now, what about the end of a term? Well, under this system, there doesn't have to be any actual end of term! Instead, you just gradually lower the percentage required to remove someone from office. We design the system with a bias towards change over long periods. The first year, our mayor has to have 10% net disapproval to be replaced. The second year, he only needs 8% net to be replaced. After five years, 50/50 is enough. After ten years, he has to maintain 55% approval all the time to avoid replacement. So if you have someone who's actually consistently popular, they can stay in office for a very long time. But it gets harder and harder every time. You get all the advantages of term limits, without the problem of throwing out perfectly good elected officials arbitrarily.

So there you have hysteresis elections. There are a lot of possible details to be worked out, of course.


Advantages

• Poorly timed disasters and demagogues getting a temporary majority don't break everything
• A small majority of the electorate can't flip things back and forth rapidly
• Voters get warnings about changes before they happen, so more people can get out and vote for what they want
• Increase the value of votes and you increase turnout!
• Regret for voters that sit out is reduced
• It's much harder for the government to suppress voters if voting is happening all the time
• Term limits are handled much more organically

Questions

• Cost. Polling now costs at least 20x what it did previously.
• Or you do mail-in ballots or something, with all the security flaws that entails?
• Do we put less-important things on mail-in ballots, and only require in-person appearances past a certain limit?
• Who sets what's on the ballots and what the hysteresis limits are? If they mayor can set his own removal threshold, that's a problem.
• Are the proposals on the ballot and the thresholds also part of the same voting system?

Preventing primary disasters

Forget who the candidates are for a moment. Everything that can be said about them has been said. (Some things bear repeating, but I'll leave that to others.) I'd like to focus on how we got to where we are, and how we can avoid such messes in the future.

Right now the leading Republican candidate has 48% of the delegates and 37% of the votes. At this point, no matter who wins, the party nominee will be someone that two thirds of Republicans voted against.

This is bad policy from every possible perspective. On the level of principles, it's just undemocratic. On a strategic level, it depresses voter turnout in the general, because most Republican voters will feel robbed. Justifiably so!

This has nothing to do with who the candidates are; we could see the same outcome with an entirely different set of candidates. It has everything to do with the systems the state parties have put in place.

There are two problems that need to be addressed. First, how delegates are allocated.

Ohio and Florida are absolutely crucial in the general election. The Republican party winning the White House is largely contingent on voter turnout in these two states. But both primaries are winner-take-all, and in both, the state was won by someone with less than half the votes. Over half of Republican voters in Ohio and Florida have been stripped of any voice in selecting their nominee. In South Carolina, that number is closer to two thirds.

Pretend you're one of the voters whose vote was thrown out by this system. Are you more likely to show up in November? Or less?

States using semi-proportional systems also contribute to the problem. In Alabama, a candidate with 21% of the vote got 13 delegates; a candidate with 19% of the vote got one delegate. In what universe is this giving each voter anything like equal weight? Winner-take-all is a huge problem, but winner-take-more isn't the solution.

The state parties should all adopt straight proportional allocation of delegates. This would at least minimize the disparity between popular vote and delegate count, and give all Republican voters an equal voice.

But this doesn't solve the more fundamental problem: a candidate with a third of the vote would still be winning. The reason for this comes down to two words every candidacy dreads: vote splitting.

The way we cast votes in this country breaks if there are more than two candidates. We all know how this works: where one candidate running alone might win easily, if there's a similar candidate on the ballot, they split votes between them, and the least popular candidate ends up winning. That's why we have exactly two major parties, both of whom dread a strong third-party run. That's how HW Bush lost to Clinton, and how W Bush won over Gore. And that's why there have been constant calls during this primary season for candidates to drop out early.

If there are more than two candidates, everything goes to hell.

This is directly caused by the way we cast votes. There are two or three or ten candidates on the ballot; you vote for one, and by extension, against all the others. This system is sometimes called plurality voting, or first-past-the-post voting. I like to call it by a more direct name: pick-one voting. Sure, there are other methods of voting. But this is America, and that's just how we do things here, right?

Well, no.

Pick-one voting is nowhere in the US Constitution. It's nowhere in any state constitution or law I've ever seen. None of our founders ever sat down and wrote, "Out of all the possible voting systems, pick-one is best, and here's why." Nobody decided to use pick-one voting. We vote this way because we always have. Because of it, we end up selecting a standard-bearer who commands a solid minority base, but who the majority can not support.

This is no way to run any organization. But the state parties can fix it.

There are many other voting systems out there. A few cities use instant-runoff. Others will extol the virtues of the Condorcet methods, or range voting, and they have valid points. But for real-world elections, the best system by a mile is approval voting, because it's simplest to understand, and trivial to implement. No money need be spent; it requires no new voting machines, because all machines already support it. Votes can be counted exactly as they are now. It's even simpler than pick-one, hard as that may be to imagine!

The only difference with approval voting is that the voter now marks every candidate they approve of. Your vote is now a "yes" or a "no" to every candidate, instead of being forced to vote "no" on all but one. Want to cast a vote for "anybody but him/her"? You can do that! Want to vote for a non-establishment candidate, but you don't care which one? Not a problem! And since every voter gets to vote "yes" or "no" on every candidate, every voter still gets an equal voice.

This primary season has been a disaster for the Republican party. No matter who wins, the party is more divided than at any time in living memory. Think how this primary election would have gone under approval voting. We could have started with the same candidates, but instead of ending up with three that represent three disparate wings of the party, we would have ended up with one who the whole party could support.

I have no idea at all who that would have been. But this I know with all certainty: the Republican party would have come out stronger and more unified.

Open letter to the Tennessee Republican Party

Put aside the details of the candidates for a moment; the primary elections have a serious structural problem that needs to be fixed before 2020. If the Republican convention were held today, the leading candidate would have received only 34% of the votes. Put another way, two thirds of Republican voters would have voted for someone other than the winner. How can this result possibly unite any party?

This comes from a basic flaw in the most common voting system we use: there are three or five or ten candidates, and the voter picks exactly one. Essentially, the voter says “yes” to one candidate, and “no” to every other. This system only works if there are exactly two candidates. Otherwise you get vote splitting and division, exactly like the Republican party is seeing now. This is fundamentally why we have two parties and primaries to start with. But now the primaries themselves are seeing vote splitting.

It would be vastly better for the party to use approval voting: there are three or five or ten candidates, and the voter marks as many as they find acceptable. Put another way, your vote is a “yes” or a “no” on each candidate. It’s easy to understand, all voting machines already support this process, and few if any laws need to be changed. The party could have had a much more unifying and successful primary season with this approach. I hope that by 2020 the Tennessee Republican Party will adopt approval voting.

2016 Presidential Candidates: Republicans, Part 2

Rick Perry
Rick Perry is presently the governor of Texas. Much of the below is about his record in that position, as well as statements he made during is 2012 Presidential campaign. As a point of interest, the majority of his state does not support him running for President.

• Is presently facing charges for abusing power
• Is owned by AT&T
• Much like our local rep Marsha Blackburn
• Collected $90,000 a year in retirement benefits while still working
• So we should cut government spending everywhere except on Rick Perry
• Rejected free federal money to expand Texas' Medicaid program, meaning over 300,000 Texans (including 40,000 veterans) have been without insurance so Perry could make a political point
• But it's okay, Perry thinks everyone prefers going to the ER for all their medical needs
• ...because he thinks Texas has the best health care system in the country!
• Passed a bill requiring women to have ultrasounds before having an abortion
• And then passed another one effectively shutting down almost every abortion clinic in Texas
• Regardless of your moral position on abortion (which I hold to be tragic and in many cases a moral wrong), I don't hold that it's therefore morally correct to torment women who choose to have one; nor do I hold it to be correct for Perry to pass laws that are unconstitutional. If his religious beliefs contradict the laws of the United States, he should resign, not violate his oath.
• Gutted funding for child services when 24% of children in his state live in poverty
• So make sure they're born, but after that? Screw 'em. They should get a job. A little consistency, please?
• Tried to keep a bill making homosexuality a crime on the books
• Again, it is in no way the job of a Christian to punish other people for not following our specific religious beliefs. Getting away from that crap is entirely why the original colonists came here in the first place! But Perry apparently thinks that is his job as a Christian, even if it contradicts his oath of office and the teachings of Christ. 
• ...because Satan
• Opposed the federal government bailout of state governments, then claimed credit for using that money to balance the Texas budget one year
• To counter the deficit he created, I might add, with the typical cut-taxes-to-increase-revenue lies that do not work
• More than doubled the debt owed by the state of Texas
• Why do we think he would do better as President? Not really clear
• Wants to send troops back to Iraq even though Iraq as a sovereign nation kicked us out; new decade, new invasion of Iraq!
• Dramatically cut funding to Texas firefighters, then asked for federal funds when wildfires broke out and his people couldn't handle it
• Dramatically cut funding to schools, resulting in (gasp) a failing educational system
• Has overseen huge numbers of executions, including one confirmed wrongful one, which he's specifically said doesn't bother him at all
• And yet prefers to err on the side of life...
• Blatantly lied about the number of homicides committed by illegal immigrants
• And about terrorists captured trying to cross the Mexican border
• Censored an environmental report he didn't like
• Supports decriminalization of marijuana

Marco Rubio

• Handles his personal finances terribly
• Doesn't think we can ever know the age of the earth 
• Supports the NSA spying on every American without cause
• Wants to make that spying permanent
• Doesn't understand Iran's relationship to ISIS, despite being on the Senate foreign relations committee
• Thinks gay marriage is a threat to the survival of Christianity
• How weak do these people think Christ is?
• Denies human contribution to climate change
• Thinks atheists are unamerican 
• Claims Obama is nicer to Iran than to Israel
• Missed nearly 10% of votes held during his time in office
• Thinks it should be legal to fire people for being gay
• Opposes reestablishing diplomatic ties with Cuba for reasons which make no sense
• Says the Bush administration did a 'fantastic job'
• And that the decision to invade Iraq was based on bad intelligence, when it was based on no intelligence at all
• Pledges to reopen Gitmo if it's closed 
• Supported the government shutdown over the Republicans' inability to win enough elections to repeal the ACA
• Blamed the housing crisis and recession on government regulation, rather than the more factual lack-thereof

Donald Trump

• Calls for violent revolution when his side loses an election
• Claims vaccines cause autism
• A position that has caused nine thousand deaths in the last eight years
• Tried to steal a woman's home using eminent domain
• Called for Edward Snowden to be executed
• Claims to have a plan to defeat ISIS, but won't tell anyone what it is
• Has talked about Barack Obama's birth certificate for several years, claiming a document with no legal significance should be released to prove his citizenship
• But won't release his own birth certificate! 
• Honestly, if the President is required to be a citizen by birth, he should be required to prove that. That's reasonable. Obama did, in 2008. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you.
• Told a huge number of lies during his announcement speech
• Inherited most of his fortune and has repeatedly declared bankruptcy
• Many of his businesses fail
• Said this
• And all of these things
• Wanted to leave doctors treating ebola in Africa
• And says he doesn't trust the CDC! Great property to have in a President...
• Thinks we should annex Iraqi oil fields permanently
• And yet this is somehow not theft...?
• Complains about China taking American manufacturing jobs, while selling merchandise made in China

Bobby Jindal

• His state is running tremendous deficits 
• After taking Louisiana from a $1 billion surplus to a $1.6 billion deficit, he still refuses to raise taxes in any way
• Wants to eliminate Louisiana's income tax, making the problem even worse
• Wanted to severely cut taxes on the rich and raise them on the poor and middle classes 
• Demolished Louisiana's education budget to make up for the budget deficits he created
• Eliminated hospice care for Medicaid patients
• Blocked lawsuits against oil and gas companies that devastated the Louisiana coastline
• Believes that religious freedom means the right to enforce your beliefs on others
• Thinks it's okay to teach creationism as science
• Thinks there are areas of European countries subject to sharia law 
• What is with this sharia paranoia? It's bizarre.

Chris Christie

• Abuses government resources for personal purposes 
• But paid for it after he got caught!
• Failed to report income for tax purposes
• Has been investigated for numerous potential crimes
• Much of his senior staff ordered a bridge closed as political retribution; either Christie was in on it, or he doesn't know what his staff is doing. Which is worse?
• Will try to override state laws legalizing marijuana
• So much for states' rights...
• But he also mandated treatment for drug users instead of jail time 
• Banned gay conversion therapy
• Opposes armed guards in schools
• Doesn't attack Obama at every turn 
• Isn't it sad that that's a distinguishing qualifier?
• Accepted Medicaid expansion in New Jersey
• But also wants to slash Medicaid by lowering the eligibility limit dramatically
• Endorsed the Patriot Act
• Thinks W Bush was a good President
• Cut taxes, cut social programs, and thinks cutting taxes on the rich more will fix the resulting deficit
• Doesn't support the minimum wage 
• Vetoed a small increase in the minimum wage of New Jersey
• Doesn't think income inequality is a problem, and argues this point with absurd false dichotomies 
• Thinks he knows more about ebola than the CDC
• Ruined his state's credit rating
• Handed Exxon $8 billion dollars of taxpayer money in exchange for political donations

Scott Walker

• Cut taxes, sending Wisconsin into tremendous deficits
• While simultaneously cutting funding to higher education
• Said dealing with massive protests against him prepares him to deal with ISIS
• Spent much of his political career lengthening prison sentences
• Then advocating for more private prisons to deal with the resulting overcrowding
• While taking huge contributions from the private prison industry
• Wants to functionally eliminate unions nationwide
• Wants to implement drug testing for food stamps and other programs
• Passed a law making it unconstitutionally difficult to obtain an abortion in Wisconsin
• Would attempt to unilaterally cancel the new nuclear non-proliferation deal with Iran
• Opposes increasing the minimum wage on false premises

2016 Presidential Candidates: Republicans, Part 1

The way our system is set up, electoral votes in most states are winner-take-all. That essentially disenfranchises most voters in the general election; most states' outcome is a foregone conclusion, meaning your vote doesn't matter. Tennessee's electoral votes will all go to the Republican candidate, so why bother voting for President?

The primaries are a different issue. Your vote there matters much more. The problem, of course, is that there are just so many candidates to get familiar with. The below is my attempt to summarize major public statements and headlines regarding the various declared candidates, with links to relevant news articles. Each name links to the Politifact fact-check of that candidate, and their overall record for truth or lies.

We'll start with the Republicans, because they're just so much more interesting lately. There are so many I'm going to have to break them up into multiple posts. I'm going to do the declared candidates first, in alphabetical order by last name, then cover the likely prospective candidates. I am not covering Jack Fellure or Mark Everson. There's virtually zero information about them.

Note that many of these points may seem like negatives, against the candidates. That is not by design. It is likely a consequence of most headlines about candidates in general being negative. I have, however, injected some commentary. I try to roast all candidates equally. Also note that some candidates have many more points than others. This is also not by design; some simply have fewer headlines about them to choose from.


Jeb Bush
Former governor of Florida, brother of W Bush, son of HW Bush.

• Wants to eliminate the minimum wage
• Opposes net neutrality
• Uses the man who started the Iraq War, killing thousands of Americans for no reason at all, as one of his top foreign policy advisers
• ...and has over twenty other advisers who helped craft that epic disaster
•  Claimed that al Qaeda in Iraq didn't exist when Obama took office
• Note that it most definitely did, but also most definitely did not exist when W Bush took office...
• Claimed that the Iraq War was started based on faulty intelligence, when it was not
• Supports the Patriot Act, citing non-existent evidence that it has kept us safe
• Wants to privatize Social Security
• Someone care to explain to me how that's any different than shutting it down? I've never understood that

Ben Carson

• Rejects the theory of evolution, based on the entirely false premise that evolution is opposed to Christianity
• Also thinks that Christians are persecuted in America, because America is like Nazi Germany
• Supports a flat tax that he doesn't even understand the consequences of
• Shills for companies making fraudulent medical claims
• And yet is in favor of mandatory vaccinations
• Wants to eliminate judicial review, functionally neutering the entire concept of checks and balances
• Said Obamacare is the worst thing since slavery
• Thinks Obama may call off the 2016 election
• Just like he did the 2012 election...?

Ted Cruz

• Opposes net neutrality while loudly demonstrating his ignorance on what it actually is, calling it "Obamacare for the internet"
• "It would put the government in charge of determining Internet pricing, terms of service and what types of products and services can be delivered, leading to fewer choices, fewer opportunities and higher prices." Everything about that sentence is wrong!
• Claims global warming isn't happening
• Thinks emergency care is cheaper than preventive care
• Missed 10% of votes the Senate held during his time in office
• Opposes disaster aid from federal government to the states... except his own
• Supports unlimited campaign contributions
•  Because it would make things more fair, you see!
• Shut down the government because his party lost an election, and doesn't regret it
• Oh, and led protests of the government shutdown 
• Said that the recent court decisions on gay marriage and Obamacare are "some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation's history"
•  Aside from, you know, literally thousands of others... get some perspective, man
• Wants to subject the Supreme Court to retention elections because he doesn't like their decisions 
• Don't like the way the system works? Break the system.
• Completely fails to understand how Christians can be opposed to actions of the state of Israel
• And while it's not about Cruz personally, his father has some very strange pseudo-Christian views of his son being a fulfillment of some made-up end-times prophecy...

Carly Fiorina

• Completely failed to run HP
• Opposes net neutrality
• Lies about corporate tax rates
• US corporate tax rates are nominally high, but the actual collection rate (i.e. the number that matters) are quite low because of so many loopholes

Lindsey Graham

• Is willing to raise taxes under some circumstances
• Of course, his idea of raising taxes is very limited, but it's better than the usual "revenue isn't the problem" lie
• Seems to have at least some support for environmental issues, if only to bow to political reality and not because he actually believes in them
• Wants to eliminate habeas corpus, doesn't think imprisoned people should need to be proven guilty
• Also supports suspending civil rights of domestic terror suspects...
• ...and pretty much everyone else...
• Rejects his own party's multiple reports on the Benghazi attacks
• Naturally, we need to keep running investigations until one gives the results he wants
• He said that Obama is not a Socialist, he's a good man!
• Of course, he also says he's extremely liberal, which you can only say if you have no idea what extreme liberals would actually do...
• Says you can't govern based on anger, wants to govern based on realism instead
• Has a completely awful record on foreign policy matters

Mike Huckabee

This guy was governor of Arkansas, ran for President, and now has a Fox News show. He has basically made a living speaking in public for most of my life, so he has more positions than I can possibly cover here. I summarize him thus: America is, was, and should become a Christian nation, wherein his particular version of Christian beliefs are given force of law. This version of Christian beliefs include:

• Christian education in public schools, including young-earth creationism
• Support of Israel removing Palestinians from Palestine
• Banning all non-thereputic abortions, including pregnancies from rape
• Banning gay marriage or adoption
• Amending the Constitution to these ends

He's surprisingly sane on some other issues, and kinda nuts on others. Here's a survey of some things that caught my attention, but like all the candidates, I hope you'll read more:

• Says school shootings happen because God has been removed from schools
• ...despite the fact that church shootings are far more common...
• ...and which god is he worshiping, that can be removed from schools? 'Cause mine can't be...
• Thinks only women who can't control their libido need birth control
• Thinks we're moving towards the criminalization of Christianity
• Called the Obama administration "openly hostile toward the Christian faith"
• Arranged parole for a rapist who raped and murdered again
• Also granted clemency to a man after a claimed religious conversion, who then murdered four police officers
• Rejects the principle of judicial review
• Supports a 30% federal sales tax
• Cut taxes on the rich, raise taxes on the poor...
• Says that vaccines don't cause autism! Yay reality!
• Isn't it sad that I have to point out that he's sane about this?
• Doesn't understand how the ACA handles pre-existing conditions
• Wants to vastly increase the size of the American military
• How is this to be funded? Unclear.
• But he supports peaceful options with Iran
• Told people to not enlist in the military until an overtly Christianity-enforcing President is in place
• Never mind that the last time we had one of those, our military ended up with thousands of dead and tens of thousands of wounded...

George Pataki

And here we find the opposite of Huckabee. For a man who's been in the public spotlight for nearly twenty years, he has relatively few headline-making position statements on major national issues, and most of them are over a decade old. He talks the usual small-government talk, but he's at least somewhat out of step with the typical Republican positions on abortion, the environment, and gun control, which gives me hope he can think independently. I have no reason to think this man is either incompetent or insane.

• Worked to repeal the ACA
• Opposes a national sales tax (as of 2000)

Rand Paul

• Fillibuster'd the renewal of the Patriot Act
• Pledged to end the NSA's bulk surveillance of Americans
• Wants to demilitarize the police
• Recognizes injustice and problems caused by the war on drugs
• Supports medical marijuana
• Wants to end mandatory minimum sentencing
• Wants a flatter income tax
• Most plans like this are just raising taxes on the poor and cutting them on the rich; his apparently doesn't raise taxes on the poor (assuming the details he's not specifying yet don't change anything), so good on him. But there's still something like $200 billion a year in spending cuts that he's not specifying, on top of any others he might make to cover the existing deficits. Any other Republican I'd assume it's social services, but this guy is less predictable.
• Remember that tax cuts for the rich do not generally create jobs, or the first decade of this century would have gone much better economically after the Bush cuts.
• Proposed a bill to punish congresspeople who become lobbyists
• Wants to force Congress to live by its own laws
• Is fighting extrajudicial drone strikes
• Criticizes science he doesn't understand
• Occasionally spews demonstrably false GOP talking points
• Mindless lies kinda piss me off, if you haven't guessed
• Claims that vaccines can cause mental disorders
• "Parents own their children"? Nobody owns children! Children are not property, they are individuals with rights!
• Recognizes that Jesus probably wouldn't launch a preemptive war, and opposes the neocons who have been pushing for war after war for the last decade
• Opposes net neutrality
• And opposes expanding the public domain, which means even longer copyright terms
• Proposed a law ending civil forfeiture
• Tried to outlaw abortions
• By adding a rider to an irrelevant bill
• Wants to eliminate corporate welfare
• Is apparently hated by Fox News
• We report (on what we feel like), you decide (among the choices we present you)

Calibration elections

I've talked in the past about how trust in elections is critical. Right now the system simply can't be audited, by design. We have hyper-partisans building, installing, and maintaining closed systems with known flaws. There's no possibility of recount, and no way of knowing that your vote was counted correctly. As a recent example of this, in a recent UK election a candidate received no votes, despite claiming that he voted for himself. Regardless of that particular situation's outcome, it does lead to some more thoughts.

One of the biggest potential security holes in the election system is the secret ballot. Let me be clear: the secret ballot is absolutely critical to having a functioning democracy. We've all lived our lives in a world with nothing but, so maybe it's harder to see that. But consider what would happen if you could prove to anyone how you voted: your boss, your family, your religious group could threaten you into voting how they want. The only way you can be confident to cast your individual ballot by your preferences is if you can never prove to anyone how you voted.

The down-side is that you can never prove to yourself how your vote was counted. I've proposed better voting machines, based largely around maintaining secret ballots. But we still have reduced faith in elections as a whole because of this. But suppose that mixed among the actual elections we also had calibration elections. Elections not for real people, but only to make sure the system works.

A simple question would be asked. "What is your favorite pizza topping" for example; something utterly trivial and subjective. Ballots in the calibration election would be marked and counted with the exact hardware being used for the real elections. The only difference would be the ballots themselves, which would be marked with the voter's name. The voter would also receive an identical copy of the ballot to take home. All the results would be posted to the internet, for each individual to check.

You wouldn't be able to prove that your real votes were counted properly. But you would be able to at least prove that the system works. It would still be possible to cheat the system; nothing's perfect. But I, for one, would have far greater confidence in our elections if this was part of them.

Fraternal Order of Police Candidate Survey

Earlier this year I considered running for Nashville Metro Council. I took out the signature forms, but concluded I couldn't commit the time to do the job effectively, so I won't be turning them back in.

However, I have been put on all sorts of interesting mailing lists. I thought I'd share the results with you. This one is from the Fraternal Order of Police, Andrew Jackson Lodge No. 5.

• Would you support the pay study plan and increase Metro Nashville Police Officers pay above mid range?
• Would you support current employees keeping their earned pensions?
• Would you support the current pension plan and allow this plant to remain in effect for current officers?
• Would you support additional ZONE officers?
• What is your position regarding body cameras for police officers? What are your recommendations for funding such a program? How would you rationalize rules for their use, keeping in mind Tennessee privacy laws, children and use inside of homes?
• Do you support the relocation of the Police headquarters? The Metro Police Academy is in need of an indoor firing range and repairs made to the running track and runway due to multiple pot holes. Do you support allocating money for the Metro Police Academy?
• What is your assessment on the current police administration?
• Would you support a police chief being promoted from within the department?
• Would you support an ordinance changing the civil service rules to include a Police Officers' Bill of Rights?
• Will you promise not to make pledges or commitments that will limit Metro's ability to meet obligations to employees?
• Will meet with the FOP board members on a regular basis?
• Have you or will you sign a no tax pledge?

A lot of these questions make sense. They're concerned about officers' pay, pensions, and resources. I am interested in what their "right" answers are regarding body cameras, and what would be included in a Police Officers' Bill of Rights. I'm assuming it's similar to this, which all sounds perfectly reasonable. Would that civilians had some of those rights!

Now, what's the deal with a no-tax pledge? That seems to have zero to do with police work, except insofar as it makes it impossible to run a functional government, in many cases. In theory, that should mean they're against a no-tax pledge. But the Republican Party has often convinced people to vote against their own best interests; has that happened here? I can't tell.

Why the votes for Charlie Brown must have been random

I wrote previously, suggesting that Charlie Brown won his primary due to people who voted for the first name on the ballot. Another writer responded in the Tennessean, suggesting that he instead won due to informed voters. I would like to explain how I concluded this was unlikely.

94,000 people voted for Brown. If 94,000 informed voters chose him, there have to be a number of similarly informed people who either didn't vote, or voted for someone else. We can reasonably say that at least 200,000 people have to have been informed about Brown's positions before the election.

So how did these people get that information? Remember, I'm not the only one wondering who this man is; he's a cypher to the newspapers too! He has no internet presence, nor any other mass media campaign. Perhaps he mailed fliers? But if he had a massive snail-mail campaign that reached a couple hundred thousand voters, he'd need to spend at least $20k. His campaign reports having no money at all.

Perhaps Brown has a couple dozen volunteers going door to door twelve hours a day for six months. But other than that, I'm just not seeing a way that most votes for Brown could possibly be informed votes. Perhaps someone who knew Brown's positions before the election, and chose to vote for him based on them, can write and tell us how? And also why out of his 94,000 informed supporters, only a hundred have joined his facebook group?

Open Letter: Tennessee Democratic Party

Right now Tennessee is a single-party state. Republicans hold both US Senate seats, the Governorship, seven of nine US House seats, and over 70% of the General Assembly. This election looks unlikely to change any of that. The Democratic party is completely shut out of power, making it almost impossible for them to get donations. Who would donate to a party who can't do anything for them in return?

So what's your party to do? You keep running joke candidates, because you can't get any viable ones to take you seriously. Candidates can't get money without the hope of winning, and in our system you can't get political power without money. You have to break that cycle. You have to appeal to someone with lots of money, and appeal to the voters in a new way as well.

There's one issue that can do that: getting money out of politics.

There are two major PACs right now dedicated to ending the influence of money in politics. Mayday PAC is raising money to unseat incumbents opposing campaign finance reform. I think there are plenty of those in our state! This PAC has eight million dollars in its pocket, plus matching donations. Clearly this is an issue that there's (ironically) some money behind. If the Democratic Party wants to regain seats in the US House, this is a great place to start.

Second, Wolf PAC is pushing for states to call a constitutional convention, to propose an amendment outlawing campaign donations. If your state-level candidates were advocating this issue, Wolf PAC could make a significant difference in whether they win or lose.

If the Democratic party wants to come back in this state, you're going to have to focus on this one issue. It's the one thing that will set you apart from Republicans, there's a lot of money behind it, and it puts you on the side the huge majority of the nation agrees with.

Oh, and it's the right thing to do.

Ballot Order

The democratic party has selected their candidate for governor. He has no public policy statements, website, or twitter feed. He has an inactive Facebook group, a picture of himself with some fish, and his own name misspelled. From all appearances, this is the entirety of his campaign. Yet he won by a 2:1 margin.

How? He was first on the ballot. This isn't the first time.

There are two groups that should learn from this.

First, voters. If you don't know who you prefer in an election, don't just pick someone on the spot! All you do is water down the opinions of the informed voters, the ones that should be making the decision. If you don't have an opinion on one office, just don't vote for that office! Your votes for all the other offices will still count!

Casting a vote, any vote, is something you should take very seriously. If you're not prepared to do that, don't vote.

Second, legislators. Ballot order is fixed, by law, in alphabetical order by last name. Ballot order clearly has a significant effect on outcome, giving some candidates advantage over others. Laws should never, ever help particular candidates. That's undemocratic and unamerican.

Each voter should be presented with the candidates in a different, randomly chosen order. The uninformed voters who just pick the first candidate on the list would cancel each other out. If we're doomed to use these stupid electronic voting machines with no paper records, we should at least use them in a way that makes elections work.

And if anyone tells you that these machines can't be made to put candidates in random order, give the machine to me. I'll fix it for you. I won't even charge. This is not a technical problem. It's a legal problem, and it has a legal solution.

August 7 2014 Election: Judicial Retention and Local Offices

So I've covered the legislative races, but there are others. Right now there's a heavily-politicized retention election for judges. A bi-partisan commission says all the judges are doing a good job. I plan to vote for retention on all judges, to avoid politicizing the judiciary.

There are also elections for several local positions, a few of which are even competitive! Frankly, I don't know enough about any of those elections, so I plan to abstain. If you have opinions on any of these races, please share!

Now, there's one thing I will comment on. Frankly, I think this school board has done a terrible job by allowing standards to fall as low as they have. When students can't be given a grade less than 50, we're not teaching any more, we're babysitting. My gut response is to thrown out the entire board and try again. But anyone with even the slightest bit of information should ignore that and act on actual data. And please share that data!

Oh, and Bob Schwartz is running for Republican Executive Committee, Senate District 20. When I met him during the 2010 campaign, he was a reasonable and thoughtful individual, not one of the usual Fox News crowd. I plan to vote for him.

August 7 2014 Elections: State Legislature

TL;DR
Puttbrese, Aljabbary, Mancini, Rawlings are the only candidates in competitive primaries that I can say seem better than their opponents. I'd recommend voting for any of them who appear on your ballot.

Long version
There are only a few competitive races in the state legislature, at least in Davidson county, which is really unfortunate. I hate people running unopposed; it makes the election meaningless. Decisions are made by the people that show up, so if you feel like you could do well holding elected office, I encourage you to consider it. If you're thinking about it, talk to me, and I'll help you think!

I'm going to list links to each of the candidates on the Davidson County sample ballot, and add whatever information I can to each one. There are few details for most of their position statements, and usually the only one that's really specific is whether they would or would not accept all the free money the federal government is trying to hand Tennesseans. But you can probably tell that by the (R) or (D) anyway.

I contacted all of them I could, to ask their position on Wolf PAC and approval voting, and their responses are noted below. Most did not respond at all, which makes then an automatic "no" in my book. If you're not willing to tell people where you stand on the issues, you shouldn't be asking to represent those people.

Also, this isn't necessarily a complete listing of candidates for the general election in November. I fully expect more candidates to show up there. This is just the primaries for the two major parties.

19th Senate District
Sterlina Inez Brady (R)
No information, at all. No webpage, no Facebook page, no Twitter feed, no contact information.

Thelma M. Harper (D)
The incumbent in this district. She did not respond to my requests for positions.

Brandon J. Puttbrese (D)
He responded to my tweet about money in politics. That alone makes me support him.

@swcollings I would push for a constitutional convention to reverse #citizensunited. Big money in politics is a huge problem. #tnsd19
— Brandon Puttbrese (@bjputtbrese) July 14, 2014

So if you're voting in the Republican primary in this district, you may as well not. And if you're voting Democrat, I recommend Puttbrese.

21st Senate District
A race with no incumbent!

Mwafaq Aljabbary (R)
I spoke to Mwafaq on the phone for a long time. He was interested in the issues I asked about, but didn't have a defined position, which is reasonable. Can't expect people to make up their minds immediately. He's very busy, very involved, and has been for years. He works with anyone, regardless of party or religion, and has the history to back that up. Very interested in integrating immigrant communities. Very opposed to corruption and regulatory capture, which is unusual for a Republican. He also has a masters degree in city planning (or something close to that, I didn't get the exact degree written down), so he's very interested in public transportation. Overall, I liked this candidate quite a bit.

Diana Cuellar (R)
She responded to my emails, and said she'd look into the issues. I never heard anything past that.

Quincy McKnight (R) 
I never heard anything from this candidate at all.

Mary Mancini (D)
Another candidate I spoke to on the phone. She was amenable to Wolf PAC. She's been around the political scene for a while, and previously wrote a law requiring Tennessee to use paper ballots! She's still in favor of that, and eliminating gerrymandering is also one of her issues. Another candidate I like.

Jeff Yarbro (D)
Again, no communication, at all.

If you're voting in the Republican primary in this district, I'd strongly recommend Aljabbary. If you're voting Democrat, I recommend Mancini.

50th Representative District
I never heard anything from either of these candidates, and they're both running unopposed in their primaries.

Troy Brewer (R)
Bo Mitchell (D)

51st Representative District
The only one of these candidates I heard from was Rawlings, who is on board with Wolf PAC. I can't even tell the difference among any of the Democrats from their websites.
Brian L. Mason (R)
Joshua Rawlings (R)

Bill Beck (D)
Stephen Fotopulos (D)
Jennifer Buck Wallace (D)

52nd Representative District
I never heard anything from this candidate, who is running unopposed except possibly by an independent/third party.

Mike Stewart (D)

53rd Representative District
I never heard anything from either of these candidates, and they're both running unopposed in their primaries. 

John Wang (R)
Jason Powell (D)

54th Representative District
I never heard anything from this candidate, who is running unopposed except possibly by an independent/third party.
Brenda Gilmore (D)


55th Representative District
I haven't heard anything from either of these candidates. That makes me tend to vote against the incumbent, Odom, though that's pretty shaky ground.
John Ray Clemmons (D)
Gary Odom (D)


56th Representative District
Again, both candidates running unopposed.

Beth Harwell (R)
The incumbent in this district. She did not respond to my requests for positions, despite repeated requests. Very disappointed in my representative.

Chris Moth (D)
This candidate responded to me, and described himself as "deeply concerned about the influence of money in politics". Not a commitment to do anything, but it's something. He's unopposed in the primary, but I hope to have more information about his positions before the general election.


58th Representative District
I never heard anything from this candidate, who is running unopposed except possibly by an independent/third party.
Harold M. Love (D)

59th Representative District
I never heard anything from this candidate, who is running unopposed except possibly by an independent/third party.
Sherry Jones (D)

60th Representative District
I never heard anything from either of these candidates, and they're both running unopposed in their primaries.
Jim Gotto (R)
Darren Jernigan (D)

August 7 2014 Election: US House TN-7 Candidate Impressions

TN-7 has been redistricted out of Davidson County, but enough of greater Nashville is in TN-7 that I want to comment on this race as well.

Marsha Blackburn (R)
We all know what I think of Blackburn. She opposes network neutrality, opposes municipal broadband, and spends a huge amount of time trying to repeal the ACA without proposing a viable alternative. Buying insurance across state lines, while it may be a not-terrible idea, doesn't help people with pre-existing conditions, and the cost impact will probably be minimal. It also requires a single set of federal regulations for insurance companies, overriding state regulations. It's really interesting to me that she's all for states being able to trample on municipalities when it comes to broadband, but her idea of healthcare reform is nothing but the federal government trampling on states.

By her measure, all our problems are caused by government. Yet she describes herself as a "staunch supporter of the PATRIOT act," one of the biggest expansions of government power in history. She blames Obama for failing to deport refugee children, but refuses to fund the deportation. Oh yes, and she helped cause the government shutdown last year, and otherwise contributed to this utterly dysfunctional Congress. She's the worst kind of Republican: the kind that says anything it takes to get you angry at Democrats, whether it makes sense or not. She's not a Palin, or a Bachmann. Blackburn's worse; she's informed and smart, she just doesn't work for Tennesseans. She's a hypocrite. Anything that gets her out of office is probably a win.

Jacob Brimm (R)
Brimm's policy statements are somewhat vague, but not the usual anger-fueled talking points that we usually get from Republicans. I don't see anything I can deeply object to. Unlike most candidates, he responded to my request for comment on Wolf PAC! With a thoughtful answer no less! Same for approval voting. Even without those things, though, it would be hard for him to be worse than the alternative. I'd strongly recommend voting for Brimm in this primary.

Credo Amouzouvik (D)
Credo (as he goes by for obvious reasons) has a decent list of policy statements. None are particularly surprising or detailed, but nothing objectionable catches my attention. And he also replied to my questions, saying he wants to take money out of politics, and opposes the NSA spying on citizens without probable cause.

Daniel Cramer (D)
Cramer's position on the Keystone Pipeline: "I don’t see the risks being worth the benefits but I am willing to listen to detailed arguments for or against as they are provided." That says a lot about the man. It says that he's capable of deferring judgement until more information is obtained. It says he's capable of changing his mind. It says he's willing to talk in public about things he doesn't fully understand. I love that in a candidate.

He's one of the few candidates I've seen that makes a point of saying he opposes the NSA's domestic spying abuse! He mentions H1-B visas, which is another issue that's often ignored. And he strongly opposes Citizens United.

Both Democrat candidates in this election hold positions I agree with, on the issues that matter to me. I'd be happy with either one in Congress. Cramer, though, has the advantage that he had public policy statements on those issues before I asked. Domestic spying, corporate money in politics, H1-B visas, those are issues that he thought important enough to put up on his site without prompting. That makes me lean towards him over Credo.

August 7 2014 Elections: Governor Candidate Impressions

The below are my impressions of each candidate in the upcoming August 7 primary elections for Governor of Tennessee. These impressions are not scientific, and are based solely on their websites and any knowledge I happen to have of them. The below should be weighted exactly as much as you weight my opinion on anything. Overall, what I'm trying to do is see which candidates I cannot vote for, and narrow the field. Please, nobody take anything I say as an attack or an indictment. I'm not trying to be mean; I simply have to make observations, some unflattering, to direct my vote correctly.

Republican Candidates
Mark Coonrippy Brown
(Warning: there's an auto-play video at this link. Bad etiquette on the part of the Tennessean, but there's no candidate site.)
Brown appears to be a guy running to make a specific point, not to win. I enjoy the video, actually. He seems to be a normal human being, I don't get the usual anger or superiority complex that you get from a lot of candidates, nor do I get the idea that he's trying to make emotional appeals. But without detailed position statements it's difficult to give him a good description. I'm not really convinced he'd make a good governor. "There are simple solutions for simple problems" is a nice phrase. Unfortunately, in my world, for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong. But it's difficult not to like him, for the two minutes you see of a video.

Bill Haslam
The incumbent is running on his record, which I'm not really going to judge right now. For objective information, I can say that he seems to have reasonable organizational skills, can communicate in English, and that the state hasn't utterly collapsed under his administration. He has, however, completely failed to come up with an alternative Medicaid expansion, which kinda screws a lot of Tennesseans. So there's that.

Basil Marceaux Sr.
I can only let this candidate speak for himself.

Donald Ray McFolin
(Warning: there's an auto-play video at this link. Bad etiquette on the part of the Tennessean, but there's no candidate site.) 
Another candidate running to make a specific point, this one about special needs education. Again, he seems like a normal person trying to make the world better with whatever platform he can get.

Democratic Candidates
Charles V. "Charlie" Brown
No website, no position statements, no comments from the candidate at all. Just a facebook page full of people asking what he stands for, and with the candidate's name misspelled.

Kennedy Spellman Johnson
Another candidate with no website and no detailed position statements. Well, you can go here, but there's nothing to see. I can't say anything about this candidate.

WM. H. "John" McKamey
An actual website! With positions! Only a few, and they're very vague. (Education is good. People making more money is good.) Nothing obviously objectionable, but it's like a bare-minimum campaign, only one step up from not having a site.

Ron Noonan
This candidate doesn't even have a facebook page, just a twitter feed. Another not particularly serious candidate.

TL;DR
Out of the four Republican candidates, Haslam is the only one with a chance of winning. If you don't support Haslam, either because he's Haslam or because you don't like incumbents, I'd probably go for McFolin.

Out of the four Democrat candidates, the only one that looks even remotely serious is McKamey. I don't know why I'd even consider voting for any of the others, and they're not doing anything to convince me I should.

Slim field.

August 7 2014 Election: US House TN-5 Candidate Impressions

Ah, TN-5. The office I ran for back in the day. I learned a lot from that experience, but that's for another post.

The below are my impressions of each candidate in the upcoming August 7 primary elections for US House of Representatives, Tennessee fifth district. These impressions are not scientific, and are based solely on their websites and any knowledge I happen to have of them. The below should be weighted exactly as much as you weight my opinion on anything. Overall, what I'm trying to do is see which candidates I cannot vote for, and narrow the field. Please, nobody take anything I say as an attack or an indictment. I'm not trying to be mean; I simply have to make observations, some unflattering, to direct my vote correctly.

Our incumbent Jim Cooper is running unopposed in the Democratic primary this year. There are four Republican candidates, a much smaller field than 2010. I'm sure there will be several "independent" (including third-party) candidates in the general election come November, but those don't show up on the August 7 ballot.

Chris Carter
Great quote: "Never before in my lifetime have I witnessed such a frightening distortion of Americanism and assault on personal liberty as I have witnessed in the creation and implementation of ObamaCare." Apparently the last two Presidents shredding the fourth amendment, and holding and executing Americans without trial, are absolutely nothing compared to the ACA.

Carter blames the ACA for all the evils of the healthcare world, but doesn't propose any workable solutions. Blames the deficit on Obama's "socialist programs" and waste. (For the record, the deficit reached its current absurd proportions under Bush, and has gone down every year under Obama. Don't believe me? Look up the raw numbers.) He favors a flat tax, even though that would make the deficit vastly worse and hurt the poor tremendously. And worst of all, he uses quotes to indicate emphasis!

Unfortunately this is the typical Republican candidate these days: utterly uninformed, and just repeating the Fox line whether it makes sense or not. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Ronnie Holden
I have zero information about this candidate. All he seems to have is a Facebook page, and on that page all he does is share the latest Fox meme. From that I think we could reasonably expect that he'd be another generic Republican candidate, possibly minus the communication skills.

"Big John" Smith
An interesting candidate. He's clearly very religious, but unlike much of the religious right, I don't get the usual overwhelming impression of self-righteousness from this man. My impression from his words is that he is truly humble. I don't see any specific indication that he wants to consciously impose his religious beliefs on others by declaring Christianity to have special legal status, though he clearly can't separate his policy statements from his religion.

He's also the only Republican candidate I've seen so far for any office that specifically opposes the influence of money in politics, and he seems to understand that the only way out of our deficit mess is to grow the economy. And hey, he references The Twilight Zone, which is big points in my book.

Now, it's still all Obama's fault, even though the economy collapsed two years before he became President. He totally misrepresents the Occupy movement's goals, and doesn't display much compassion for those on welfare. (No outright contempt, though, which is better than most Republican candidates.) He thinks God gave Israel all the relevant land, and opposes the existence of a Palestinian state on those grounds. And at one point he equates all of liberalism, socialism, communism, and the antichrist.

But you can't ask too much, I suppose.

Bob Ries
I'm not analyzing Bob Ries's website this time. See, I met Bob Ries in 2010, when we were both running for US House TN-5. (He lost the primary to David Hall, so we weren't directly opposed.) We spoke for some time about one thing and another, and I came to the definite conclusion that he was not someone I would want in Congress. I won't go into more details; it was four years ago, and there's just no need to pick on the man. But I can't recommend voting for Bob Ries.

Jim Cooper
If you're voting in the Democratic primary, it really doesn't matter what I say here, because you've only got one candidate! But for completeness, his website is above.

He's got a good list of issue statements, including intellectual property, wonder of wonders. (I'm not 100% convinced he's got a good policy, but at least he's aware of the issue, and claims to strive for balance.) And I appreciate the fact that he has links scattered throughout his text; a familiar style! Cooper has a 65% match rating with me on POPVOX, which is twice what either of our Senators get. If Cooper wins, I won't be terribly disappointed.