Undecided Voters...

Dammit. +k for embed. http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/undecided-voter/1418227

Its true most undecided voters are low information voters who don't know anything.

plus k if someone can figure out how to embed this.

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/2012-election/video-bill-maher-attacks-undecided-voters

Im undecided because I prefer to base my vote on each individual candidate and their policies/beliefs rather than vote for a candidate just because he is in my political party and therefore I must like him. I also do not necessarily agree with all the policies offered by republicans or democrats and I, and I believe most people, have different opinions on some issues that their candidate believes in; therefore, being undecided makes the most sense.

I'm undecided because I literally hate both candidates..the two party system is very broken, why would I compromise my values to vote for one of these candidates? It's called being caught between a rock and a hard place...I don't feel comfortable with giving my vote to either of these men sort of like that south park episode with the giant douche and turd sandwich

You just described being an independent, not being undecided. You only have, what? Less than a month to make a decision? Who are you leaning towards?

Test (sorry I'm on mobile):

...youre making it sound like someone's asking you to make a decision 4 years ahead of time or vote a straight party ticket. neither of those is true, the election's less than a month away, the candidates' positions are fairly clear, not knowing who you would prefer in office by now just means you havent paid enough attention

and let's be clear because this is a refrain you hear a lot from undecided voters: "i dont love either of them." of course you don't, most people don't, but if you have any political beliefs at all you can very easily see which one should get your vote. if not, do your homework, it's not hard

Oh, well look what I've found. The classic "I hate both candidates" "the party system sucks" typical douche bag who is just uninformed on the race.

well they do and it does.

what does the candidate's race have to do with anything?

+k

In the long run they aren't really in any worse a place than most of the people voting. Most people draw on their extreme ignorance to help them make a shitty choice.


In the next election we're fucked, just like usual. Doesn't really matter that a few idiots don't know anything about the candidates. Hell most of people set on voting for one probably don't even know how to spell cat.

How do you figure I'm uninformed? This semester in grad school my two classes are a poli sci and macro econ class...all semester we have talked about nothing but this election. I've heard countless number of arguments for both candidates for months on end now and I still don't feel comfortable saying I can support one candidate. I'm leaning more towards Obama right now because it's been proven that Romney's tax plan is mathematically impossible, but by no means am I ready to give Obama my vote because I disagree with a lot of his policies and things he has done his first 4 years

The reality is we're all fucked until we stop electing people like Todd Akin, John Hubbard, and Paul Broun to Congress and the Senate. Congress is just a clusterfuck of ignorance and special interest protection. Something needs to change

That's government as a whole. Well there is a small minority of legitimate people in there but for the most part it's a fucking joke.


The fact that people not only vote for them, but have signs in their yards and scream at each other about it? WUT THE FUCK.


Every time they derp a poor baby penguin gets snatched up by an antarctic skua, taken away from it's parents and feasted on alive until it dies of shock.

People are dumb, that's all I can say

I was talking today with some friends about how the political candidates must have some sort of strategy to know how to impress the uneducated and/or uninformed.

Nearly 70% of Americans over the age of 25 don't have a college degree. Not always, but many times, an uneducated person's viewpoint is much easier to sway than one with knowledge and a background on the subject.

Take Michael Moore, for example. He isn't a candidate but I feel that he has/had a strong political impact on America. There are no studies (that I'm aware of) that can confirm this, but I would be willing to bet a lot of money that the majority of his supporters are uneducated and are of the lower-middle or lower class.
His plans and thoughts are so enticing to them, but most people who are mentally capable of deeply thinking about his points realize that they are wrong and/or don't work. (I can expand on this if need be... I just wrote an essay on it for economics).

Going back to my first point, the government must know that the majority of voters don't give that much thought into their vote, as many of Moore's supporters didn't give much thought into if they support him (intentional or not). So if political candidates can have one big thing that these easy-going voters like, then they have their votes.

I'm not voting because it really doesn't make a difference. Our system is set up not to get anything done. There's beauty in tyranny if you want to get stuff done. I'm not saying there aren't many flaws with it. Checks and balance systems might sound awesome, but electing a president doesn't instil his beliefs. There's the house, senate, president and fuck, you can even go to the courts to repeal stuff. So if you want to elect the president, you also have to elect the house and senate. Then you have to hope everyone else aligns with your beliefs to get enough people to get everything done. So really, for the president to get his way, you need 218 guys in the house, 50 in the senate, the president, and the vice president to all be robot clones of each other.

As if one of them HAS to be right on each issue? My God, are you that narrow-minded?

People don't think about anything. I was watching Huckabee last night. He shows a clip of someone who works for Obama speaking about how Romney took (and according to her, is continuing to) advantage of the riots in the Middle East by criticizing how Obama handled it. That's all she said, nothing more. The show cuts back to Huckabee. He proceeds to say that she was blaming Romney for the deaths of the Americans in the Middle East during the riots because he brought attention to the matter. In no point in her speech did she come close to anything that resembles what Huckabee says she said. Now they have a live audience who just watched the same exact clip I did and the same accusations that Huckabee was throwing out. They didn't even hesitate. The second Huckabee condemned her for her statements that he had just created on the spot they cheered.

I just don't get how people could be so stupid

True, but you should still vote because they still do have somewhat of a say.

As my economics teacher said, "when a new president is elected, the entire government should be replaced, matching the political beliefs of the president. This way, everything they want to get done will get done, and then 4 years later we can see if it actually worked."

Obviously, that wouldn't work, but it has some logic behind it. We'd be able to study the history of plans the past presidents have enacted so much better and people would actually know what the presidents will do once elected.

What does liking a candidate or thinking the party system is broken have to do with the candidates being right?

"I was talking today with some friends about how the political candidates must have some sort of strategy to know how to impress the uneducated and/or uninformed."

It's not very hard to impress the masses. You agree with everybody on the small fronts, even if everything you say contradicts another point. People vote for things like strong presence, good eye contact, nice clothing choice. Pretty easy to sway the masses. You pump out this through fox news, you pump out that through cnn, and you just controlled a bunch of people.


"Nearly 70% of Americans over the age of 25 don't have a college degree. Not always, but many times, an uneducated person's viewpoint is much easier to sway than one with knowledge and a background on the subject."

Lol you just derped hard. I don't have a college degree but I'm not stupid. I just didn't want to go to college because that's what I was supposed to do. It's insane how many people go to college for that reason alone. I had plenty of people that were taking economics classes in college tell me how much of an idiot I was talking about the recession 5 or 6 years ago. They weren't my ideas, but I was following the right people, regarding the problems with fannie mae and other areas. The whole time, even getting deep into the recession, there were still economists on both sides saying that we weren't in a recession, and we weren't heading for one.

Just an example that going to college and taking some classes doesn't mean you know a lot about the world. You probably. I'm not saying you don't learn things, just that it doesn't mean that you aren't ignorant.


"
Take Michael Moore, for example. He isn't a candidate but I feel that he has/had a strong political impact on America. There are no studies (that I'm aware of) that can confirm this, but I would be willing to bet a lot of money that the majority of his supporters are uneducated and are of the lower-middle or lower class.
His plans and thoughts are so enticing to them, but most people who are mentally capable of deeply thinking about his points realize that they are wrong and/or don't work. (I can expand on this if need be... I just wrote an essay on it for economics)."

It's not really an education issue, it's more ignorance. You can go to college, read the paper, watch the news and still be ignorant about many things. It's easy for the ignorant to get swept up in the spin. I mean fuck, the spin comes from all directions these days. Pretty much every angle that can spin is being spun. Can't wait to see how they spin things in the future.


"Going back to my first point, the government must know that the majority of voters don't give that much thought into their vote, as many of Moore's supporters didn't give much thought into if they support him (intentional or not). So if political candidates can have one big thing that these easy-going voters like, then they have their votes."


Well they obviously know because they're part of the spin. Peoples main points all come from what cnn, fox, msnbc drill into them. You can make people feel anyway you want them to about different issues. It's really quite amazing if you enjoy some psychology.

The world may never know. /irony

Since this thread sorta got out of hand, knowing I will probably fail, I'm gonna make an attempt at getting it back on track.

I enjoyed that video! thanks for posting! +k

Until they reform the filibuster you need 60 votes to get anything done in the senate, at least as long as the minority wants to fuck with you.

I'm only a senior in HS so I don't have a college degree either, but we do share general intelligence, unlike many Americans. Just by talking in this thread puts us at a great advantage to a lot of people. The fact that we give two shits about politics also puts us at a great advantage. I agree I just threw that 70% stat out there, I meant for that to just summarize the people who don't involved themselves with anything about politics except for what directly affects themselves.

To your points about Fox news and CNN - that's why I like to just stay away from them. They're so damn good at impressing the masses. I feel bad for those who are swept up in the spin through biased media.

I agree with the ignorance part as well.

And I'd love to take a psychology course in college, this stuff is so interesting.

fuck, i need 2.7% more robots, not really worried about it.

haha well thank you. I kinda expected that this thread would go this way, so whatever.

I'm going to disagree. I love not having to give a shit about politics as there are other people to care for me. If I thought I needed my vote to count for some sort of actual revolution, then I'd throw it in, but until then, not going to happen.

I don't think that my vote really counts that much but I'm still going to vote and I like to stay informed. I care about politics in the sense that I want to know what's going on. You can care and not vote

Fair enough. I'm not gunna get butthurt that you aren't voting. Until recently, I couldn't have cared less about politics myself. I just thought that whatever happens happens and that's just the way it'll be. But now I'm starting to get a feel for how voting and politics actually work and it's given me two major things to do:
1. Dislike the status quo of the government.
2. Try to inform people of what is actually happening in their government and why they should vote one way or another.
I still don't love politics, and I hate history classes, but the idea of how complex the voting process really is interests me. I just feel people who purposefully hide themselves from the media should reconsider reading/watching the news because who knows if it will interest you if you don't know what it is. That's what happened in my case.

Hopefully you never complain about anything. IF you do you should look in the mirror and bitch at the dude staring at you.

i mean I would at least vote for a 3rd party candidate to show some support, maybe if 3rd party candidates start getting more votes something may change.

That being said I'm undecided because I dont know if i want to vote for a third party candidate or not.

It would take way too long to say everything I want to say right here so in short: fuck you.

You'll find me voting yes on 1 in the state of maine on the first tuesday after the first monday in november. That's the only thing i'll be voting on.

I still won't be voting for the president.

Take your time bitch.

The three most sucessful third party candates off the top of my head are ross perot, lisa murkowski, and angus king. Ross was as sucessful as the teaparty. Lisa was and still is a republican. I'm counting her write in a third party because technically she didn't represent the republican party in 2010. Angus king only went independent because he thought he'd lose his democratic primary. He was successful in his independent campaign but really was and still is a democrat.

damnit. I meant occupy wall street.

for not giving a shit about politics you certainly know alot about politics

hahahah this is so true.

To any undecided voters in this thread

I got bored so I only did half but apparently I side with Jill Stein. I don't even know who that is

I got Gary Johnson. Go libertarians!

and people wonder why democracy doesn't work

The answer is in the question itself

And then here's me not giving a fuck who the president is or will be.

if you're looking for attention, you're not going to get it, you smelly pirate hooker

I just got attention, did I not?

I know, but not the attention you were looking for. ha!

wait, what kind was I looking for?