Voters boot SOPA backers from Congress

Thanks to Tuesday's elections, Hollywood will have lost six if not more House Representatives that all formerly backed SOPA, the controversial and rejected anti-piracy act.

Three co-sponsors of the Act lost their seats while the fourth retired, says Ars. The other two had withdrawn their support.

Altogether, there were 31 co-sponsors, with 8 withdrawing their support after the backlash. Three that are to be booted from Congress were all from Southern California districts. In some places, due to a redrawing, some incumbents actually had face each other.

After details of the bills (SOPA and ACTA) came to light last year, the Internet was instrumental in their demise. Major tech companies/sites like Google, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, eBay and Wikipedia all panned the bills and began campaigns to educate their users on the perils of SOPA. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon said lawmakers collected 14 million names from citizens who wanted to protest the vote.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 8 Nov 2012 16:05

ivymike

This is what Democracy looks like.

Now if we can only legalize weed & p2p nationally....

8.11.2012 16:12 #1

Mysttic

It's starting bit by bit. Rather growing state by state. HAH I said growing.

8.11.2012 16:30 #2

KillerBug

The biggest SOPA supporter of them all is still in the White House...but on the other front, recreational marijuana was legalized in two states. Still illegal federally (I'm sure Obama will once again break his promise not to go after it), and it will still keep you from getting a job (not that you could anyway)...but at least local cops can't arrest for it anymore. G/L marriage also got a shot in the arm...overall a pretty good election other than the most powerful office...hopefully the republicans will not run a stuffy rich white guy again next time...it simply doesn't work anymore.

8.11.2012 16:47 #3

SProdigy

Originally posted by KillerBug: The biggest SOPA supporter of them all is still in the White House...but on the other front, recreational marijuana was legalized in two states. Still illegal federally (I'm sure Obama will once again break his promise not to go after it), and it will still keep you from getting a job (not that you could anyway)...but at least local cops can't arrest for it anymore. G/L marriage also got a shot in the arm...overall a pretty good election other than the most powerful office...hopefully the republicans will not run a stuffy rich white guy again next time...it simply doesn't work anymore. Precisely my thought - if only Libertarian party would gain traction, people would see there's a 3rd option that aligns with most of their ideals.

9.11.2012 09:59 #4

SoulGLOW

Originally posted by SProdigy: Originally posted by KillerBug: The biggest SOPA supporter of them all is still in the White House...but on the other front, recreational marijuana was legalized in two states. Still illegal federally (I'm sure Obama will once again break his promise not to go after it), and it will still keep you from getting a job (not that you could anyway)...but at least local cops can't arrest for it anymore. G/L marriage also got a shot in the arm...overall a pretty good election other than the most powerful office...hopefully the republicans will not run a stuffy rich white guy again next time...it simply doesn't work anymore. Precisely my thought - if only Libertarian party would gain traction, people would see there's a 3rd option that aligns with most of their ideals. Well said. I can't help but wonder how many votes were flipped on the machines to keep Gary Johnson from getting 5% of the popular vote.

9.11.2012 19:39 #5

hearme0

Originally posted by ivymike: This is what Democracy looks like.

Now if we can only legalize weed & p2p nationally.... AGREED!

On a positive note, marijuana now legal for RECREATIONAL USE in Colorado and Washington states for those over 21.........YES! Getting closer to eliminating this country's outta whack priorities.

10.11.2012 01:12 #6

KillerBug

Originally posted by SoulGLOW:
Well said. I can't help but wonder how many votes were flipped on the machines to keep Gary Johnson from getting 5% of the popular vote. The system is optimized to keep the bipartisan party in place...not just vote rigging, but the system itself.

For starters we have the electoral college...a holdover from the days before the telegraph, when the average voter knew nothing about any of the non-local candidates. The idea was that people would vote for someone semi-local that knew about the national figures, and trust that person to vote for the right person. It has been claimed that an accidental positive by-product of this is that the votes of people in less populated areas count for more...but if this is actually wanted, a popular vote could simply have modified numbers, such as an individual vote from Alaska being worth 2 individual votes from Florida. THERE IS NO REASON FOR THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE.

Then you have the state vote blocks...if 51% of the votes from a state go to a candidate, they all do. If it was a 3 party system, then it could take as little as 33.334% of votes in a state to have all the votes of the state go to one candidate. If there was only one electoral vote for a state this might make sense (ignoring that the electoral college doesn't make sense in the media age)...but no states have just one electoral vote.

The last issue that prevents a third party candidate (or even a decent candidate from the bipartisan party) from having a chance is that votes are essentially locked to one candidate. Many people vote for a person because they think that person has a better chance of winning than the candidate they want. For instance, in the last election many Ron Paul supporters voted for Romney because they didn't think Ron Paul could win, and they figured Romney was better than Obama. Ron Paul ended up with under 1% of the popular vote...if he could have setup some kind of agreement that he would give his votes to Romney if he had more votes, and Romney would give his votes to Paul if he had more votes, a lot more people would have voted for the person they wanted...in fact a lot of people who didn't bother would have voted too. It may or may not have changed the results, but at least the people would have had their votes registered the way they wanted them. Of course, this would all have to be on a pre-election agreement system...forming such pacts after election is how the Nazi party took over Germany.

So, three major hurdles to any third party or half-decent bipartisan party candidate achieving the presidency...all without the slightest bit of voter fraud.

11.11.2012 11:12 #7

laserbiz

Originally posted by KillerBug: Originally posted by SoulGLOW:
Well said. I can't help but wonder how many votes were flipped on the machines to keep Gary Johnson from getting 5% of the popular vote. "Snipped"

For starters we have the electoral college...a holdover from the days before the telegraph, when the average voter knew nothing about any of the non-local candidates. The idea was that people would vote for someone semi-local that knew about the national figures, and trust that person to vote for the right person. It has been claimed that an accidental positive by-product of this is that the votes of people in less populated areas count for more...but if this is actually wanted, a popular vote could simply have modified numbers, such as an individual vote from Alaska being worth 2 individual votes from Florida. THERE IS NO REASON FOR THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE.
"Snipped
The Electoral College protected the smaller states from having a say in the elections. (The same reason there are 2 senators from each state.)The Founding Fathers didn�t want large states to have all the power, so they set up a college of electors based on the number of each state�s senators and representatives. Although what you said is not false, it is not the only reason for the Electoral College.

16.11.2012 09:11 #8

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