Wednesday, April 26, 2006

New Voting System

I wrote a 15 page paper on political voting systems and accountability this last weekend. I didn't find one that really held incumbants to maximum level of accountability, so I'm designing my own system here.

Alright, the first step is a strait up reelect or remove vote for incumbants. If an incumbant fails to get at least 50% then they are removed from office.

Now for the interesting part. Voters choose wether or not to keep their guy in office. Then, no matter which they chose, they vote for which political party/parties they want to get the seat if the guy is kicked out. They just pick the party, not the individual candidate, they want to get the seat.

And they may pick more or one. I'm proposing giving each voter to get a small number of votes, like ten, to distribute however they wish between the parties. If they want to give them all to one party, fine. Distribute between a few, fine. Give 'em to all but one to act as a spoiler, fine. Whichever party has the highest # of votes, then their candidate gets the office.

I also wants to run the primaries at exactly the same time! Voters fill out the main ballot with all their choices, and they also get one party ballot to pick their guy.

This would have the effect of having all the candidates of a party running against the incumbant
while promiting themselves. They would'nt want to attack others running in for their party nominantion for fear of getting fewer votes.

The party of the incumbant also holds its primary, but the incumbant is excluded from running. The party will promote thier guy "just in case" the incumbant is booted.


So thats the system. I think this will make elections much more accountable against incumbants, so if they screw up everyone will point it out and run against them!




Lurker
(Politics is fun!)

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Re-editing Lord of the Rings

Finally! I've found a way to remake the Lord of the Rings trilogy more like the book version! I won't be able to put in Tom Bombadil, but i can take out alot of the fluff Peter Jackson put in!

Let me start by saying I own all three extended editions. But with me knowing little about how to capture video, I downloaded copies of the movies (which I already own) in AVI form.

But, Windows Movie Maker wouldn't recognize the codecs, and wouldn't let me down load them.

So, I searched the internet and downloaded many, many codecs. I think the key one was DivX. I'm not sure, I don't want to uninstall anything to find out.

Anyway, I'm currently working my way up the movie timeline. I'm not yet to Rivendell. I've dramatically shortened the party scene, and took out the prologue (i'm moving it to a better place, trust me). And I've already stolen a scene from TTT and used it so far. This is going to be so cool!

So all you LOTR fans and potential movie editors out there, it is possible! My goal is to trim down the whole trilogy to under 8 hours. I think it can be done and be much closer to the book version than Peter Jackson. We'll see!


HAHAHAHA!




Lurker