Well what would you have them do? Allow a candidate who doesn't reflect their wishes to be elected? This is a reasonable solution. Now a fair special election can be held in which (one would hope) all the candidates would be alive. Yeah the circumstances are kinda strange, but this slightly Monty Python-esque (the Sensible Party, the Silly Party and the Dead Party) turn of events is infinitely preferable to forcing a Republican representative on a community which (for the most part) wishes to elect a Democrat.

Yes, true, I believe the website is conservative anyway. It still is funny though.

This is a must-read for all of you pro-voting nutjobs. Another excerpt:

"In the whole of California, political experts agree that a measly 10 of 153 total races for the state Senate, Assembly and the House of Representatives were close enough to even call a contest [due to extreme gerrymandering of districts].

Of 80 Assembly seats, about half a dozen saw hot races, while only one of 20 Senate seats and one of 53 House seats hosted any competition at all. Of those, most were in the Central Valley; L.A. was at a virtual standstill, with the vague exception of California State Assembly District 36."

This article doesn't mention how the 'limited government low-tax' Republicans joined with Democrats last year to make California the most heavily taxed state in the union. Our 'system' is a sham. We have a ruling class every bit as powerful and static as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, without the vague egalitarian ideals.

@C-Man: The L.A. Weekly is a big free/alternative (the ONLY big local paper in the LA area aside from The Times) weekly newspaper that if anything is a bit left of center. They do a fair deal of real hard-hitting journalism, unlike the only other rag in town (the Los Angeles Times, which just reprints government press releases). But The Weekly is most (in)famous for its extensive listings for various adult services in the classified section.

This is not the first time a dead candidate won an election in LA County. Longtime octogenarian Sheriff Sherman Block slipped in his bathtub about 10 years ago and died of a brain hemorrhage two weeks before the election. He still won in a landslide, despite the fact that there was another credible candidate on the ballot (in a non-partisan race).

You say that, but if you think about it having area's that *aren't* seriously contested often means you get a more representative house, just so long as there are the right proportion of easy seats each way

@Tolstoy - so you seem to think that voting is pointless, and no matter what you do, The Man is going to screw you. Sucks to be you, then, doesn't it?

This is absurd.

Here in the UK, if a candidate dies in the run-up to the election, the election in that constituency is simply postponed, and held at a later date once a new candidate for that party has been chosen via the proper selection process.

Why can't Long Beach just do that?

Jaime, would you *really* like me to point out some of the oddities of UK election law? ;)

Strat Strat!!
What are some of the oddities of UK election law? :P

*snarf*

From a US perspective, this is kinda wacky:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Past_the_Post_electoral_system#Effects

Of course, from a UK perspective, I'm sure the Electoral College is equally nuts

Agreed FPTP is a little questionable, but surely better than your 2-party system

Jamiet99uk, it's probably because there are popular primaries in America rather than having party leaders select the candidate. Depending on state laws it's probably not possible for a candidate to be the nominee of a party without winning a primary. There will probably be a special election at a later date to fill the vacancy, but here elections are ruled much more by the calendar than by any other considerations. That's why.

@fig - I'm not sure which would be "better". Example - do we want a Tea Party Party with 10%or 15% of the seats? Look at what happens in Israel - they had to bring in some lunatics to get a majority, and they've pretty much pissed off, well, everyone.....

Surely not the people who voted for them.

@ stratagos: "Jaime, would you *really* like me to point out some of the oddities of UK election law?"

1. My name is Jamie. Not Jaime.
2. I did not claim "the UK election system is perfect and the US system is awful" - I was only discussing this single issue.

Clearly it is ricockulous to continue an election where you are asking people to vote for two candidates, one of whom is a corpse.


@ Invictus: "Jamiet99uk, it's probably because there are popular primaries in America rather than having party leaders select the candidate. Depending on state laws it's probably not possible for a candidate to be the nominee of a party without winning a primary. There will probably be a special election at a later date to fill the vacancy, but here elections are ruled much more by the calendar than by any other considerations. That's why."

Then they should stop the Long Beach election now, and immediately hold a primary process for the Democratic nomination in that seat.

Why can't they do that?

Reminds me of the referenda our Students Union held last year.
Amongst the issues were two that directly contradicted one another. So, being a bunch of difficult students we passed them both and watched the Union Council squirm!

@Jamie - reprinting the ballots would be cost prohibitive. There are a dozen ballot measures in california this year, it's not just a matter of people not going to the polls in Long Beach

Jamie,

That actually is the plan. The problem is here in the States it takes forever for an election to be put together, and they can only be run on certain sacred days (usually the first Tuesday after the first Monday in the holy months of November, June, or April here in California) after the governor and election officials run through a number of rituals. It'll likely be a six months to a year before the vacant seat is filled.

The story actually is even funnier than the LA Weekly let on - after Oropeza's death, the Secretary of State (of California - Debra Bowen, also a Democrat) sent out a letter to registered voters in the district asking them not to let Oropeza's "tragic illness" interfere with their voting decision in the race (the fact that she had died was very cautiously avoided). I doubt most people who voted in that election even knew they were electing a corpse (as expected, she won with 58% of the vote - only three percentage points less than she won with in 2006 in an election with greater than normal Republican turnout).

"Clearly it is ricockulous to continue an election where you are asking people to vote for two candidates, one of whom is a corpse."

Actually, people were asked to vote between three candidates, only one of whom was a corpse. If voters didn't want to vote for the corpse or the Republican, there was still a Libertarian on the ballot. We're told that two choices are always enough - but why wasn't it good enough in this case?

tolstoy i dont understand why you think voting is a waste of time.


is our government incredibly corrupt, inept, selfish, slow, and ineffectual?

yes. but how do you propose it could be changed other than by two options:

political campaigning, of which voting is a major component, or,

violent uprising, which is reprehensible morally.



So which is it

"@Tolstoy - so you seem to think that voting is pointless, and no matter what you do, The Man is going to screw you. Sucks to be you, then, doesn't it?"

Actually, it sucks to be all of us. Try finding a job in California that pays you enough to live off of right now. Some of us just seem better able to recognize that than others.

"You say that, but if you think about it having area's that *aren't* seriously contested often means you get a more representative house, just so long as there are the right proportion of easy seats each way"

The problem is that the gerrymandering isn't done in a 'proportional' way. The politicians are first and foremost concerned with their own interest (easy re-election), not guaranteeing a balanced legislature. Going by the way Californians vote on ballot propositions, we're a very politically moderate state. Yet the Democrats have almost a 2/3 super majority in both houses of the legislature.

If you want to see what I'm talking about, check this out:
http://www.calvoter.org/voter/maps/index.html
The 39th Congressional district I think is the most amusing. But keep in mind that a lot of gerrymandering doesn't look obvious. My State Assembly district, for instance (61) looks pretty normal. In 2000, it was very competitive - the D won by only a few percentage points, and both the Rs and Ds spent over a million dollars that year. So what the legislature did is cut out the most heavily republican city in the district (Chino Hills) and replaced it with a heavily democratic city (Pomona) in a neighboring county. Still looks pretty normal on a map, but it's now a very safe "D" seat (the Democrat won 60-40 last night)

"Actually, it sucks to be all of us. Try finding a job in California that pays you enough to live off of right now. Some of us just seem better able to recognize that than others."

And how, exactly, do you think changing the electoral system would effect your job prospects? Seriously - what combination of politicians and policies do you think would magically raise your income and employment prospects?

Why do you think I left California? The climate is nice, but the cost of living was too high. Perhaps if you were willing to give up your shiny environment you could find somewhere that you could afford to live.... oh, wait, it's someone *else's* problem that your skillset doesn't allow you to support yourself in the most expensive real estate market on the freaking planet. Silly me.

I agree with gerrymandering, however. Fortunately for you guys, Prop 20 passed.

Thucy, I've tried political campaigning and found it to be completely pointless. Here in California, the districts are so large it's impossible to have any effect without raising tons of cash. I could recite story after story after story of wickedly corrupt political goings-on where I live, and it never ends - either because voters are really stupid or the voting is rigged (or possibly both).

I've given serious thought to a violent uprising. Like you say, though, there are some serious moral concerns with that approach, and to be honest I'm not sure it could ever be successful within the current social and political framework. Also on the downside is that even if successful, it's pretty unlikely I'd live to see the fruits of my labor with this approach.

I've come to the conclusion the last few years that there is a third option: the only moral and practical thing to do is withdraw from the system as much as possible. First and foremost this means starving the beast by (legally) minimizing one's tax liability as much as possible. That means moving out of the Big City (and suburbia). I have serious plans to do this - but unfortunately they are not very practical at the moment given my financial situation.

Violence in support of a cause rarely helps the cause, Tolstoy. In most cases it galvanizes the opposition and *hurts* the cause in the long run.

Draug, I agree with you, but for different reasons. The first is the moral reason: if it's morally wrong to injure, maim, or kill people, I don't think it suddenly becomes morally right to do so if certain situational circumstances are met. I realize this is a very inflexible/absolutist/pacifist argument that a lot of people here are going to disagree with, but it's one that carries some weight with me.

The second and argument is the practicality of violence in a domestic political situation. If you look at history, you will see that most domestic political violence is usually suppressed very easily and harshly. In the rare occasions when domestic political violence is successful, it almost always has some very serious unforeseen consequences - like the Reign of Terror, or the Bolsheviks taking over after you 'win'. Domestic political violence is a lot like picking a door on The Price is Right; you might get exactly what you're hoping for, but most of the time you'll get something completely unexpected. The American Revolution is one of the very few instances I can think of where political violence resulted in (more or less) exactly what the people who started it were hoping for. Even then, the cost was pretty high. An armed uprising against the government might succeed under the right circumstances, but then what? You may very well end up with Sicarius, me, the Black Panthers, the Montana Militia, the Unabomber, and the Communist Party all sitting in the Capitol trying to figure out how to get along if we can't all agree to radically decentralize the country. A situation like that probably wouldn't have a very happy ending and would likely be worse than the tyranny we deal with now.

Let me say, I agree as well on all accounts, Tolstoy. Violence begets violence and rarely gets the desired result as the results are almost always unpredictable.

But I have to say, you don't pick doors on The Prcie is Right. That's Let's Make a Deal. :-)

"The first is the moral reason: if it's morally wrong to injure, maim, or kill people, I don't think it suddenly becomes morally right to do so if certain situational circumstances are met"
How about if they're about to kill:
someone?
Two people?
50 people?
100 people?
a city?
a state?
a nation?

And I'll clarify that I do believe killing in self defense or the defense of another is acceptable, as fig points out.

"And how, exactly, do you think changing the electoral system would effect your job prospects? Seriously - what combination of politicians and policies do you think would magically raise your income and employment prospects?"

As one of the millions of refugees from the state yourself, that's a pretty fucking stupid question. Or did you move to a state with even higher taxes and worse regulations?

As for my skillset, I grossed over $160,000 in 2008. Apparently, some people rate my skill set pretty highly. My problem today has mostly to do with the fact that all of my clients are seriously cutting back, have gone out of business, and/or been bought out by other companies headquartered in more business-friendly states.

And I bought my first house - a modest one bedroom townhouse - last year at the bottom of the market in suburbia, where the cost of housing is comparable to most major metro areas in other states. My "shiny environment" is about 500 yards from really serious ghetto territory. I don't think an addiction to extravagant living is my problem.

So your answer is "cut taxes", correct? If memory serves, you guys have a huge budget hole - please tell me what portions of your budget you will also cut to bring spending into line with revenues.

1) Government workers' salaries, pensions, and benefits - the #1 most expensive budget item.
2) Welfare. Even just getting rid of the massive fraud/waste/abuse in many of the welfare systems would go a long way. California accounts for over 32% of the country's welfare spending, but only 12% of the population. California is the only state that has refused to implement the welfare reforms of 1995.
3) Government schools. California has one of the most expensive school systems - if not *the* most expensive - in the country. A majority of it is eaten up by education bureaucrats and consultants and never reaches the classroom.
4) Miscellaneous agencies, boards, and commissions. California has hundreds of them at the state level alone. Many of them meet once a quarter and pay their members six figures.
5) Prisons. California has the most expensive prisons in the country. It costs California something like three times as much to house an inmate as it does in Texas. A lot of this is prison guards' salaries, but much of it is corruption as well. Also, prison inmates in the state get great health benefits - better than most private sector workers have.

California state government revenues doubled between 1998 and 2008, although the overall population remained stable and official inflation was only about 3%. The big "budget hole" in the state is the product of government excess. Anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or a liar.

@ stratagos: "@Jamie - reprinting the ballots would be cost prohibitive. There are a dozen ballot measures in california this year, it's not just a matter of people not going to the polls in Long Beach"

So the cost of re-printing the ballot papers makes it legitimate, in your view, for people to elect a DEAD person to represent them democratically? Seriously?

Seriously?

Would YOU want your elected representative to be a fucking CORPSE?

I think not.


@Tolstoy: "The problem is here in the States it takes forever for an election to be put together, and they can only be run on certain sacred days (usually the first Tuesday after the first Monday in the holy months of November, June, or April here in California) after the governor and election officials run through a number of rituals. It'll likely be a six months to a year before the vacant seat is filled."

Then you guys over there need to sort that nonsense out. There is no reason why a by-election of this kind should be restricted to certain days in the manner you describe.



@Thucy: "tolstoy i dont understand why you think voting is a waste of time.

"is our government incredibly corrupt, inept, selfish, slow, and ineffectual? yes. but how do you propose it could be changed other than by two options:

"political campaigning, of which voting is a major component, or violent uprising, which is reprehensible morally."


I think reforming the system so that dead people cannot run for office would be a good place to start.

Most of me agrees with Jamie-not-Jaime on electing dead people. Of course, granting the surviving candidate (if there were just one) a guaranteed mandate could lead to more untimely deaths by candidates....

There are those that could argue that dead politicians accomplish as much as live politicians and their expense accounts would be lower.

What are the other 9 reasons for electing dead politicians to office?

<<<<Warning.....thread hijacking in progress >>>>>

@Jamiet Beats the heck out of electing a republican.

I'd rather they leave the dead person on the ballot then give people a choice between a Republican and Libertarian. At least then they have a choice even if they don't know exactly who will be representing them they can still vote for the party.

Here are some benefits to electing the dead. I couldn't get to 9, but here's a start:
1) They can't vote to raise our taxes again
2) It would be safe for our daughters work as interns in their offices
3) It would spare us a lot of hot air, which would help fight global warming
4) Attractive female lobbyists would be less likely to screw elected officials to get corporate welfare steered to their clients (yes, this happens a lot in California)
5) Eating brains would be legalized
6) We wouldn't have to hear or see their annoying voices/faces in campaign advertising any more
7) They won't be able to drive drunk and cause accidents with their state cars

@ damian:

"I'd rather they leave the dead person on the ballot then give people a choice between a Republican and Libertarian"

They shouldn't have done either of those things. They shouldn't have held the ballot at all, until a replacement Democrat candidate was nominated.

I'll grant you that as being more fair. However I think in terms of if they decided to run the ballot anyways that leaving the dead democrat on what the best move possible.

8) their expense accounts should be a little lower