[puzzlebox]

I found The Trouble with the Electoral College helpful in understanding the "quirks" of the US voting system - highly recommend taking a few minutes to watch it if you want to learn how it works.

If the system doesn't make sense to you, that's probably because it really is nonsensical. Basically if you live a state where most people support a different party, your vote pretty much doesn't count. To me it seems incredibly unfair. Should be one person equals one vote, and all votes carry equal weight.

Originally Posted by JedExodus

All politicians are fakes, fakes that market themselves either to voter a or voter b.

I am yet to meet a sincere politician and am very much of the mindset there is no such thing, no matter how good their intentions may have been when they stepped into the game.

I'd call former Senator Bob Brown a sincere politician, or at least as close as you can get to it (though he's probably one of a sadly small group). He's a medically trained environmentalist and openly gay. He started out as a leader of the Franklin Dam protest, a watershed (heh) case for the protection of old-growth rainforests. He spent 19 days in jail for that protest.

He's won the Australian Peace Prize, the Humanist of the Year prize, and once contributed $100,000 of his own money to help free an Australian photojournalist who was held hostage in Somalia for over a year.

At least outwardly, he spent his entire career standing up for things he believes in instead of pandering to the popular vote, and I'm proud that I come from a country where a man like Bob Brown can be a successful politician.