District 5 Debate

[StevenNick]

Opening Statement:

As all of you know, I am one of the two senators currently representing District 5 in the senate.  I was elected on a write-in campaign--the ultimate movement of democracy.

Since my election I have been an independent and effective voice in the senate.  I introduced bills to establish preferential voting and amend the constitution to allow for the election of all senators from districts.  Now I have introduced a bill in congress to lower health care costs for all Americans.

I want you all to think about my record throughout this debate and the ensuing campaign.  Are my opponents going to be more successful in pushing legislation through the senate, or less?  Will my opponents be more independent, or less?  Will my opponents be more partisan, or less?  And finally, will my opponents make more of a difference, or less?

I hope all of you listen to what I have to say, to what my opponents have to say, and make the right choice.  I hope you will come to the conclusion that a vote for my reelection is the right choice.

Thank you.

[StevenNick]

I propose that the first issue we address in this debate is the current controversy over preferential voting?

Are we all in favor or opposed to preferential voting?

[King]

Who is going to be the moderator of this Debate?

[JohnFKennedy]

Who is going to be the moderator of this Debate?

I will be if you wish although I don't see why you need one for a debate in the forum, just allow people to direct questions at you all and you can all respond to them, preferably reasonably briefly.

[King]

Who is going to be the moderator of this Debate?

I will be if you wish although I don't see why you need one for a debate in the forum, just allow people to direct questions at you all and you can all respond to them, preferably reasonably briefly.

Alright.

[JohnFKennedy]

So as Stevennick said, could all the candidates please state their opinion on preferential voting please, try to make it short, no longer than say two hundred words?

[King]

I propose that the first issue we address in this debate is the current controversy over preferential voting?

Are we all in favor or opposed to preferential voting?

I favor preferential voting, but whether I favor it or not isn't important. The current public poll shows that Atlasia is split 50-50 on this issue, because the nation is so divided on this issue, I say we give it to the Regions to decide in their Constitutions. If any Region decides to ban it then any citizen in that region cannot use preferential voting in any election even for Senate and President. That way the people in each Region get what they want.

[StevenNick]

I am, of course, very supportive of preferential voting.  That system of voting protects third party candidates.  There is no reason in a preferential voting system to refrain from voting for a "spoiler" candidate.  In addition, the instant runoff system saves a great deal of time and resources.

I must respond to King's statement on this issue.  It seems that he fails to understand the nature of the preferential voting bill that passed the senate.  Preferential voting only applies to senatorial and presidential elections.  It does not apply to regional elections.  The idea that regions should be allowed to govern the presidential election and the senatorial elections, neither of which have anything to do with regions, is laughable.  Allowing regions to determine how the vote will be counted in a presidential election will only cause confusion as some regions will keep preferential voting and others would no doubt discard it.  This would be particularly unfair considering that our presidential elections are not decided by the results from each region.  We do not have an electoral college.  Instead, our president is elected by the popular vote of the members of the forum.  Is it right, is it constitutional, to have one vote counted differently than another?

[platypeanArchcow]

I favor preferential voting because in this system, a person may vote for anyone without danger of throwing away his/her vote.  While no system is perfect, preferential voting not only prevents spoilers, but also situations like that in the last presidential election in France, where no left-wing candidate made the runoff.  Since candidates are eliminated sequentially, that ensures that two candidates with similar bases will not interfere with each others' chances.

I agree with King that the people's will should govern our decisions on issues such as these, but not in the haphazard piecewise manner that he proposes, and whose flaws StevenNick has already explained, and not until we are sure that people understand the way preferential voting works.  Also, we probably should not be tackle the issue soon after a close election, when heated passions cloud judgement.

[George W. Hobbes]

I completely support preferential voting, as I believe it to be the most democratic election system currently devised.  A democracy is not a democracy if your right-to-vote is taken from you by the possibility that endorsing the candidate of your choice may very well lead to the election of the candidate you, the voter, disagrees with most.

I believe that it is in the best interests of Atlasia for this nation to continue to give our voting citizens the freedom to vote their conscience.

[JohnFKennedy]

Thank you all for keeping it reasonably short, I believe we have heard from all potentials.

Next question, a real divider.

What is your stance on abortion? (This is mainly in relation to the third boss abortion act before the Senate right now) Please feel free to look at Boss Tweed's abortion act and state how you would vote.

[King]

Thank you all for keeping it reasonably short, I believe we have heard from all potentials.

Next question, a real divider.

What is your stance on abortion? (This is mainly in relation to the third boss abortion act before the Senate right now) Please feel free to look at Boss Tweed's abortion act and state how you would vote.

I believe that abortions should be made legal for the first trimester, unless it is in the mother's best interest after that period. I would vote Yea.

[StevenNick]

I would definately vote for the Boss Tweed Abortion Act as I have voted for the two previous installments.

However, the Boss Tweed Abortion Act in no way settles the issue for me.  The way I see it, the morality of abortion centers around the question "Is a fetus a human being."  I believe wholeheartedly that it is.  Therefore, I do not support abortion in the first trimester.  I do not support abortion in the cases of rape and incest because I believe that there is no distinction between a human life and a human being.  Making any distinctions on the value of human life based on the age of that life is necessarily arbitrary and foolish.  What is the difference between a fetus on the last day of the first trimester and the first day of the second?

In fact, the entire idea that abortion should be restricted based on the period or the trimester of the pregnancy is an idea that I find laughable.  When does a fetus become a human being?  Is there some magic day when the soul enters the body of the preborn human suddenly making that ball of embryonic goo a person?  Can that day be identified?

And what reason do abortion advocates give to defend terminating the life of a fetus in the first trimester?  It's unconscious.  It doesn't have feelings.  It's just a collections of cells.  It can't survive outside of the mother's womb.  What, then, separates a fetus--who can't live without its mother--and a disabled adult who cannot live off of life support?  What makes Terry Schiavo more of a human being being than you and I were at the third month of our lives in utero?

More importantly, what right do we have, in all our fallability, to judge one life as more important, more significant, more valuable than another?

[platypeanArchcow]

I unequivocally support abortion in the first trimester, or later in cases such as rape, incest, or when the mother's life is in danger.  I have yet to determine, based on the evidence, when in the second trimester abortion should become mostly off-limits, but I will base this opinion on when the brain of the fetus is sufficiently developed to sense pain and have feelings.  Of course, there is a range of time when this happens, and thus any cutoff is somewhat arbitrary, but I would advocate making it early enough that most fetuses would develop these attributes later.  I would thus consider voting for the Third Boss Abortion Act.

I disagree with StevenNick that a first-trimester fetus should be equivalent under the law to an unconscious person on life support.  Such a person has a symbolic meaning, people to whom he or she is close; keeping the person alive is based not on his or her status as a human being, whatever that means (what if it was your friend the space alien? huh?) but on our feeling of continuity between his or her conscious state and the current state.  A fetus, on the other hand, is not yet a person by this definition of relation to other people, and if it is not able to sense pain, there is no reason for its rights to override those of its mother, a person in any sense of the word.

[George W. Hobbes]

My friends,

This question is a divider, and God knows that I'm going to lose some votes because of my position on the issue.  Nonetheless, when it comes to this issue my only alliegances are to my God and my coinscense.

I absolutely, unequivocally, and completely oppose abortion.  From the moment of conception, the zygote, the fetus, the unborn human being, has a seperate DNA strand from the mother.

DNA makes us different.  My DNA is different from Mr. StevenNick's, from Mr. King's, and from Mr. Archcow.  It makes me the different human being I am, my traits, my physical features...

The mother is simply the temporary home for the child, for a nine month period.  And I don't know about any of my oppoents up here on the stage, but I sure as heck don't kill my houseguests because they're costing me money or are an inconvience I don't want to have around.

That said, I would vote aye on the Third Boss Abortion Act, although I would prefer a stronger statement on the issue...that is the absolute elimination of abortions, preferably by constitutional amendment.

[StevenNick]

I disagree with StevenNick that a first-trimester fetus should be equivalent under the law to an unconscious person on life support.  Such a person has a symbolic meaning, people to whom he or she is close; keeping the person alive is based not on his or her status as a human being, whatever that means (what if it was your friend the space alien? huh?)

Symbolic meaning?  My God that's a terrible thing to say.

[platypeanArchcow]

I disagree with StevenNick that a first-trimester fetus should be equivalent under the law to an unconscious person on life support.  Such a person has a symbolic meaning, people to whom he or she is close; keeping the person alive is based not on his or her status as a human being, whatever that means (what if it was your friend the space alien? huh?)

Symbolic meaning?  My God that's a terrible thing to say.

It certainly wasn't very coherent, but I'm not sure what you mean by terrible.

[StevenNick]

I mean its terrible that you don't really recognize a person's inherent right to life, you just contend that those lives have 'symbolic value' and nothing else.

[minionofmidas]

Another question to the Candidates:

What is your position on the Abolution of the Death Penalty Act proposed by Sen. Hughento?

[StevenNick]

Another question to the Candidates:

What is your position on the Abolution of the Death Penalty Act proposed by Sen. Hughento?

I'm completely against it.

[King]

I lost the primary

[King]

That was unexpected...oh well...time to pick up the pieces and move on...*turns on the TV*.... sigh

[platypeanArchcow]

I believe that the ethics of the death penalty would only be relevant if the death penalty itself was workable.  That is, until we have a perfect criminal justice system for all intents and purposes, which I doubt will ever happen, there is no point in discussing whether the death penalty is moral for criminals because innocent people will die, and that is immoral by any standard.  While life imprisonment is also arguably a greater punishment, it is reversible, although all harm cannot be undone by releasing the wrongly convicted.  I thus support the Abolition of Death Penalty Bill.

Let me also say that I do not generally believe in lighter punishments for crime; punishments must be heavy enough to make a good deterrent.  However, the death penalty is an exception.

[platypeanArchcow]

I mean its terrible that you don't really recognize a person's inherent right to life, you just contend that those lives have 'symbolic value' and nothing else.

Inherent...in what?  The right to life is there for a reason, it doesn't just hang vacuously in space.

[StevenNick]

I believe that the ethics of the death penalty would only be relevant if the death penalty itself was workable.  That is, until we have a perfect criminal justice system for all intents and purposes, which I doubt will ever happen, there is no point in discussing whether the death penalty is moral for criminals because innocent people will die, and that is immoral by any standard.  While life imprisonment is also arguably a greater punishment, it is reversible, although all harm cannot be undone by releasing the wrongly convicted.  I thus support the Abolition of Death Penalty Bill.

Let me also say that I do not generally believe in lighter punishments for crime; punishments must be heavy enough to make a good deterrent.  However, the death penalty is an exception.

But by that logic the entire justice system is immoral because, invariably, innocent people will be punished.