Daily Topics - Thursday October 16th, 2014

By shawnt56
Join Thom in our chatroom during the program!
Be sure to check out our new videos: CARBON & LAST HOURS
- both narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio
Hour One: Our Media Sucks - Fangate More Important than Rick Scott's crimes?
Hour Two: Let's not sacrifice one more nurse on profits over public health! Rose Ann DeMoro, National Nurses United
Hour Three: How 'Pay to Prey' puts us all at risk - Lisa Graves, Center for Media and Democracy
Comments


#2
A fan is not an electronic device, it is only electric--there are no computer components in it.
Rick Scott's tizzy over it really is silly, since it's impossible for a fan to pass information to a debator. His tactic may have worked with Alex Sink's phone, but this time it will make him look like an idiot.
Better than changing the size of districts, gerrymandering would be reduced by having multi-vote districts in which more than one candidate can get into office, with power proportional to his popular support.
Full explanation here: http://www.thomhartmann.com/users/mathboy/blog/2012/05/system-electing-legislators-part-1-case
In this system, though the districts can be any size, it's almost as if we had combined districts without eliminating the total number of votes they held in the legislature. If a district has 5 votes, then a candidate needs about 20% of the popular vote to get a vote in the legislature. But it doesn't matter where in the district those popular votes come from; they can be either scattered or concentrated. Since a candidate would draw his popular support from all across the district, gerrymandering would be far more difficult to achieve.