Does the media just not understand delegates?

[jschild]

Watching the news last night...the media kept on harping on how this person or that "won" that state.

Except that the majority of the races (enspecially on the democrat side) were not winner take all but district or % split.

They would harp for 30 min on this win, then mention and disregard the actual delegate vote.

You would have think they would have learned when they said Clinton "won" Nevada, but Obama actually got more delegates. Since delegates are the only thing that counts - Obama is the only person who could be called the winner.

Dumbed down media once again FTL.

[xDarkDrifterx]

Yeah its not like our votes even count anyways. . . and what's up with Delegates "giving" away their votes? For instance Ron Paul just "gave" his peoples votes to McCain (talk about stabbing your constituents in the back!). Oh we didn't win enough of a % to even matter, lets give those votes to who I think will be a good choice even though those votes came for me from people standing behind me, who voted for me and not him . . . yeah lets give him those votes. I'm not necessarily a Paul supporter - I'd feel this way no matter who the delegate was. Giving away votes to someone else is total BS.

[jschild]

Yeah, i really do not like the system, but the media should at least show how it works. Plus, neither the Dems nor the Repubs should be able to negate our or reduce the number of delegates.

Its a totally messed up system, enspecially when you consider superdelegates, which is essentially 1 person having the voting power of hundreds of thousands of people. Utter BS.

[xDarkDrifterx]

Interesting thing here:

Not a Kucinich supporter but this just goes to show . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhQ0_yPO2XM

The media at work. :wink:

[xDarkDrifterx]

Sorry to late to edit into the above post

Something else interesting to add about not voting:

Reason for Voting:

In any large election the chance of any one vote influencing the outcome is low; a single vote in a voting scheme such as the Electoral College in the United States has an even lower chance of influencing the outcome.[2] This causes a difficulty for rational choice theory, in that it seems that a rational individual should not vote. Studies using game theory, which takes into account the ability of voters to interact, have also found that the expected turnout for any large election should be zero.[3]

The basic formula for determining whether someone will vote is
PB + D > C[4]

Here, P is the probability that an individual's vote will affect the outcome of an election, and B is the perceived benefit of that person's favored political party or candidate being elected. D originally stood for democracy or civic duty, but today represents any social or personal gratification an individual gets from voting. C is the time, effort, and financial cost involved in voting. Since P is virtually zero in most elections, PB is also near zero, and D is thus the most important element in motivating people to vote. For a person to vote, these factors must outweigh C.
Riker and Ordeshook developed the modern understanding of D. They listed five major forms of gratification that people receive for voting: complying with the social obligation to vote; affirming one's allegiance to the political system; affirming a partisan preference (also known as expressive voting, or voting for a candidate to express support, not to achieve any outcome); affirming one's importance to the political system; and, for those who find politics interesting and entertaining, researching and making a decision.[5] Other political scientists have since added other motivators and questioned some of Riker and Ordeshook's assumptions. All of these concepts are inherently imprecise, making it difficult to discover exactly why people choose to vote.
Recently, several scholars have considered the possibility that B includes not only a personal interest in the outcome, but also a concern for the welfare of others in the society (or at least other members of one's favorite group or party).[6][7] In particular, experiments in which subject altruism was measured using a dictator game showed that concern for the well-being of others is a major factor in predicting turnout[8] and political participation.[9] Note that this motivation is distinct from D, because voters must think others benefit from the outcome of the election, not their act of voting in and of itself.

No president has ever been elected via the popular vote. Four times throughout our history**, most recently in 2000, the presidential candidate who received the most votes was not elected. Maybe it’s time for a change, how about a national popular vote for president (where we the people get to decide who our president is)?

**
Four presidents took office without winning the popular vote.

In other words, they did not receive a plurality in terms of the popular vote. They were elected, instead, by the electoral college or in the case of John Quincy Adams by the House of Representatives after a tie in the electoral votes.
They were:

John Quincy Adams who lost by 44,804 votes to Andrew Jackson in 1824.
Rutherford B. Hayes who lost by 264,292 votes to Samuel J. Tilden in 1876.
Benjamin Harrison who lost by 95,713 votes to Grover Cleveland in 1888.
George W. Bush who lost by 543,816 votes to Al Gore in the 2000 election.

[jschild]

I personally despise the electorial collage. At one time, i can understand why it was needed, but no more.

It is one of the many things that is totally ****ed up about our system. Money = Free Speech....sure that makes sense.