Re: in jokes, Paul, Cass, and Jilli.

Lee, damn. That's just. Damn.

I'm not blanket anti-war, and I'm in favor all sorts of things that taxes require, such as actual proper socialized medicine and all, but for his current party, Johnson's not too bad.

and I'm in favor all sorts of things that taxes require, such as actual proper socialized medicine and all

Roads, fire departments... Little things.

Did we know that Roseanne Barr is on the ballot for President?

I just spent five minutes looking for the hair clip I was sure I had on my shirt or skirt. It's in my hair.

Liese, I like your choices and agree with you.

Eliminating the electoral college would only change who feels like voting is pointless. Probably to "everyone west of the Mississippi."

I just realized that I left my umbrella on the bathroom floor at home, and of course, it's now raining.

I brought my umbrella to work.

Then at lunch I checked my Weather Channel app and it said 10% chance of rain for the next hour, so I didn't take my umbrella to lunch. So I got rained on on my way back.

Timelies all!

Gary's the one I have the most inside jokes with, by a large margin.(We jokingly talk about our "shared brain")

Eliminating the electoral college would only change who feels like voting is pointless. Probably to "everyone west of the Mississippi."

Yup. And selfishly, I have no desire to see NYC become the new Ohio in terms of being battered to death with campaign ads, so I'm all in favor of the current system.

Every rural/farming state would go nuts. Isn't that why they went with the Electoral College, to keep the cities and industrial states from ruling?

Eliminating the electoral college would only change who feels like voting is pointless. Probably to "everyone west of the Mississippi."

I'm in favour of some system that at least partitions voters, though I'd prefer it evenly weighted (and with boundaries drawn by a nonpartisan commission, but that's another matter). Imagine the recount furore following the 2000 election, but with the whole country in play instead of just one state.

You guys really should give preferential voting a try. However, going on the Australian experience, I'm not sure that it would challenge the two-party system. We have a handful of independents in the House at the moment, and this is something of a high point, historically. America's bigger though, so maybe you'd get the odd regional bunch that managed some success.

We do get third parties and independents turn up regularly in the Senate, where they frequently hold the balance of power; but that's because Senate elections use proportional voting (each state elects six Senators at a time).

Coalition government could be fun. It'd be amusing watching everyone jockey to get support from small parties to get things done. "We don't have the votes, we need to get those damned Green Partiers on our side!" "But they want to cut back greenhouse gasses and admit to climate change!" "I know! But do you want a raise this year?"