Enjoy a night of fear with these flicks

Carnival of Souls (1962)

Originally printed in the Batesville Daily Guard

Halloween is upon us and what better time to catch up on your horror movie watching?

Sure, you can say “I’m already watching ‘The Walking Dead,’” but that’s just a soap opera with zombies. No, what you want on Halloween is something that will make you feel uneasy, frightened or at least a little nervous … not a TV show that frustrates, angers or even bores you.

So, today I’m passing on a couple of movie suggestions for those who have a few hours to curl up in front of the TV Halloween night while the kids are out or have been put to bed. Each movie represents what I would call a different sort of fear so that the viewer gets a nice rounded experience.

“Carnival of Souls” (1962)

Ghost stories were being passed from generation to generation by humans way before Halloween was ever conceived. “Carnival of Souls” is a ghost story, but it isn’t about a haunted house or vengeance from beyond the grave. Instead it’s a movie about a protagonist, a woman who is the only survivor of a car wreck at the beginning of the film, growing more detached from, and eventually rejected by, the world and people around her. Eventually, the only ones who seem to notice her are the ghosts she sees more and more frequently.

The film never goes for outright scares. Instead, the events in the film build upon each other. The increasing isolation of the movie’s lead character from the world around her and the final confrontation with the ghosts, who appropriately gather to dance the night away at a carnival, leave the viewer with a sense of hopelessness and futility instead of fear.

“Night of the Living Dead” (1968)

If it weren’t for this movie, you wouldn’t be watching “The Walking Dead,” reading “World War Z” or playing “Resident Evil.” We’re so accustomed to cannibal zombies in media now that they’re no longer scary, but back when George Romero made “Night of the Living Dead,” they were something new.

Sure, there had been zombies in movies before, “White Zombie” jumps immediately to mind, but until “Night of the Living Dead,” they had been mostly portrayed true to their roots in African culture — a dead person brought to life to serve a single master. “Night of the Living Dead introduced much of the world to swarms of flesh-eating zombies that overwhelmed their human prey by sheer numbers. It also introduced that other zombie movie trope: You often have more to fear from your fellow man than the zombies.

“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974)

Along with “Night of the Living Dead” this is considered one of the movies that modernized horror. Before these two movies, horror movies largely followed a monster-of-the-week type pattern where the monster died in the end and the, usually male, hero got out alive, if not unscathed. “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” turned that formula totally on its head. Not only was our “monster” human, the “hero” (survivor is more appropriate) is a woman.

It follows, and pretty much established, a formula we’ve grown used to. A bunch of teenagers or 20-somethings go out in the middle of nowhere and are killed one-by-one until the lone survivor fights off the killer/monster and makes it out alive and damaged. But unlike its lesser descendants, this movie goes for unsettling over disgusting. The Sawyer family, whose interior decorating was inspired by the home of Ed Gein — the real life inspiration for Norman Bates in “Psycho” and Buffalo Bill in “Silence of the Lambs” — and their twisted abode will cause several nights of restless sleep for the first-time viewer.

“The Thing” (1982)

John Carpenter is a director whose name is synonymous with Halloween. After all, he introduced the world to Michael Myers in, well, “Halloween.” Halloween was a very influential horror movie, but it was not Carpenter’s best. His best work would be just four years later when he delivered what I, and many others consider his masterpiece: “The Thing.”

“The Thing” is a violent film, no doubt about it. The violence isn’t from slashing, bludgeoning or drilling as we are prone to see in horror moves nowadays. Instead, the violence comes from the creature being revealed, transforming its human forms into something truly horrific. The scares don’t come from the boogeyman sneaking up behind you or coming out of the dark. Instead, he hides right in front of you, within the skin of your co-worker or friend, waiting to take you when it’s only the two of you in the room. Worse yet, he can be more than one person, or animal, too. All through the film, even in its last scene, you’re left to wonder “is it one of them?”

“Session 9” (2001)

By 2001, most mainstream horror movies were trending toward jump scares and way too much self-awareness thanks to movies like “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” “Session 9” is one of the few movies to buck that trend, largely hiring actors to play characters instead of pretty faces to play victims.

“Session 9” doesn’t start with a bang. It hardly has any bangs at all. Instead, you start out having a feeling something is very, very wrong on what should just be a regular job for a group of contractors removing asbestos from Danvers State Hospital, a real-life psychiatric hospital that once stood in Massachusetts. The movie builds on that feeling, every scene removing layers beginning with the normal and pealing away to the horrific.

The sense of unease is not lifted by the end of the movie, instead you’re left to wonder about who, or what, is to really blame for what unfolded. Danvers State Hospital is almost a character itself, with its decaying walls, massive empty rooms and small hallways. Danvers State Hospital was totally demolished in 2006.

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A table just for two

Originally printed in the Batesville Daily Guard

If there’s something that has become pretty obvious this election it’s that many, many Americans are not happy with their choices.

First, you have the major parties, the Republicans and Democrats, running two of the most unpopular candidates in history. According to RealClearPolitics.com, which averages several different polls, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is averaging 52.4 percent as far as unfavorability and Republican nominee Donald Trump averages 60.8 unfavorable. 

That isn’t a good sign for the winner of this election, as the 2018 midterm elections will probably see their party lose seats in both the House and Senate.

Sure, there are options that aren’t Democrat or Republican, the most prominent being Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party. The thing with them is that winning the presidency just isn’t that realistic.

Of course, a lot of that can be blamed on our electoral system. Unlike most modern democracies, the U.S. uses the electoral college, which means we don’t directly vote for president, instead we vote for electors to cast a vote for us on behalf of the winner, who takes all the electoral points in a given state. The winner doesn’t need to have a majority of the popular vote, which is 50 percent-plus one, they just need an 269 electoral votes, which means they’ll get all of the state’s electors whether they win with 90 percent of the vote or with 43 percent of the vote.

But the lack of success of third parties can’t be blamed solely on the electoral college. Instead, they can also be partially blamed on the nature of the parties themselves.

You see, many of the third-parties are ideologically based, like the Libertarians and Greens. That means that they don’t have as much room to wiggle around and stay true to their base at the same time, unlike big-tent parties like the Republicans and Democrats, which are each made up of a variety of different stripes but remain flexible enough to target the all-important moderate voter in the general election.

This is hard to do for parties based on ideological principles instead of vote-winning. Expanding the tent can mean bringing on new members but also alienating old members who demand a certain level of purity. It’s also a challenge to reach out to moderate voters who tend to be less-focused on ideology and more concerned with issues that require a certain flexibility that many parties can’t provide.

And of course, the presidential debates, or in reality joint press conferences, also shut out other voices. You can thank the Commission on Presidential Debates for that.

The most successful third-parties in the U.S. have had the “big tent” potential, like the Bull Moose Party of the 1910s and the Reform Party of the 1990s. But those parties, which had opportunity to grow, quickly fizzled out when the strong personalities, like Theodore Roosevelt and Ross Perot, that founded them were no longer the driving force.

Now it seems more people want to support a third party more than ever. Unfortunately, you also have a polarizing election where people are willing to go the “lesser of two evils” routes because they know who they don’t want in office. It’s an election where many people are voting against someone instead of for them.

The problem is then not people desiring a choice, but often a lack of what they see as viable choices. That’s not a good way to inspire faith in our democracy.

So what’s it take for a third party to get somewhere? Probably a big tent that won’t blow over after one election. But it’s also got to have resilience to fight the establishment, whether it be the two-party system, electoral college or lack of coverage from the national media.

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Who's afraid of the popular vote?

I know that this is something all of us that pay more than a small amount of attention to presidential politics has heard complaints about at one time or another: The Electoral College.

For those of you who didn't pay attention in civics class or live outside the U.S., the Electoral College is essentially this — A body of people representing the states of the U.S., who formally cast votes for the election of the president and vice president.

See, in the U.S. we don't directly elect the president or the vice president. Sure, we have nationwide elections for the office but we are actually choosing "electors,” who usually pledge to vote for a particular candidates. Each U.S. state is given one elector for each of its U.S. Senator and Representative, so of course, larger states have more.

I, like many others over the years, would like to see it replaced by a popular vote for president.

Of course, if that were to happen we'd still have to decide one thing: Do we want to determine the president by whoever gets the most votes, or plurality, or whoever gets the majority? That's a very important difference.

You see, aside from the infamous elections of 2000, 1888, 1876 and 1826 where the candidate with the most votes lost, we've also had several presidential elections where the candidate who got the most votes won the presidency with lessthan 50 percent of the popular vote.

If you count the elections where the candidate with the most votes lost, you have 18 elections, 12 elections if you don't count the popular vote losers winning, in U.S. history where the winner had less than 50 percent of the votes. This includes both of Bill Clinton's wins, 43.01 percent in 1992 and 49.23 percent in 1996, Richard Nixon with 43.42 percent in 1968 and John Kennedy with 49.72 in 1960.

Now some people will point at that list and say “see, it works out!” But of course, that's when their guy wins.

It's not to say it hasn't worked out in some instances either. After all, I'm not writing the about “quality” of leadership, though the electoral college has a very mixed record on that — remember the George W. Bush presidency after all.

This year, it's very likely that the winner will win the popular vote but won't hit 50 percent plus one. I'm sure some people will be pleased with that and many of them are the same people who cursed the electoral college in 2000 when Bush beat Al Gore.

The most common argument I hear for the electoral college is “well, if we didn't have it, they'd only go to the big population city/states.” That's nonsense though. Less than 10 percent of Americans live in the boundaries of the country's 10 largest cities and only 35 percent live in the 10 largest metro areas, which includes suburbs and exburbs. These cities and metros are also not concentrated in one region or state and not necessarily “liberal” or “conservative” in their voting patterns.

Of course, one can argue that the bigger states would dominate candidates' interest. After all, why bother campaigning for a few hundred thousand votes in Wyoming or Vermont when you can be campaigning for millions in California? The 10 most populous states — California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina and Georgia — have 50 percent of the U.S. population.

But so what?

Those states already have much more influence than smaller states. California has 53 members in the U.S. House of Representatives while Vermont and Wyoming have one each. Their electoral votes reflect this California has 55 electoral votes and Wyoming and Vermont each have three. So they're still minor states, nothing is going to balance it out.

What the electoral system has done is essentially carve the states into a lot of “this is our state, no need to put much effort in here” and a few “we have to fight for these states.” It has essentially turned the country into three voting blocs, Blue states that Republicans don't bother with, Red states that Democrats don't bother with and Battleground states where almost all their effort goes. If you're not in a battleground state, you're pretty much ignored and often your vote doesn't matter because the people of your state are going to vote overwhelmingly for one candidate over the other. If your vote is going to be tossed, why even bother voting?

If the Electoral College were done away with, then those Red voters in Blue states and Blue voters in Red states would see their votes actually matter in a presidential race. It wouldn't be “Candidate X won Arkansas, all the Arkansas votes for Candidate Y can be tossed.” Can anybody justify doing that to people who turn out in the rain, cold and wind to wait in lines going around the block to get to the voting booth?

Which leads us to “third party” supporters, as they are called.

Those are people who are told “you're throwing away your vote” when they vote their conscience. It's not very fair to them nor is it to their candidates who are labeled “spoilers” by some and “nobodies” by others. If a candidate is able to get on enough ballots to win, don't they deserve a level playing field too? Should their supporters' votes go in the trash as well?

That's why I believe we should not only ditch the electoral college, but also a runoff election if a candidate fails to garner 50 percent plus one of the popular vote.

There are two ways to handle this: A runoff election or instant runoff voting.

Instant runoff voting is the simplest to explain, but also the more complicated of the two. Essentially, when you vote, you get a list of all the candidates who each have a box by their name. Using these boxes, you choose your favorite candidate by giving them a “1” and then your preferred alternative a “2” and then other candidates a “3” or “4” and so on, depending how long the list of candidates you are willing to vote for is. Less complicated ballots have the candidates listed twice, with on list for your first preference and the other for your “alternate preference.”

You see, simple sounding but at the same time, pretty complicated to pull off — but you'd at least know the winner right away.

The other one, a second round of elections is also easy to explain and probably easier to put in place.

A second round of elections means that the two candidates with the most votes go head to head in a one-on-one election after the general election. This means that the other candidates who didn't get enough votes to be in the top two are out of the runoff round.

While they may be out as candidates, the losers are also given a great amount of power considering the people who voted for them may be the deciding factor in who ultimately wins. The top two would have to win over those voters and which means the top-two hopefuls may need to seek the endorsements of their former rivals to win.

How much longer would a second round draw out an election? There's nothing set in stone. France held its last run-off election two weeks after the regular election in 2002 while Peru had its second round presidential election 57 days after the general election in 2016. I would hope the U.S. would stay toward the shorter end, allowing enough time for one last debate between the candidates.

In the U.S., Donald Trump and Hillary would be vying for not only voters who probably didn't show up for the first round, but also people who voted for Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party. According to FiveThirtyEight.com's polls-plus forecast, Clinton will have 48.6 percent of the popular vote, Trump 43.7, Johnson 6.2 and other candidates, including Stein will have 1.5 percent of the popular vote.

That means that Clinton only needs 1.4 percent plus one vote to win in a hypothetical runoff election. In order to win a runoff, Trump would have to not only win all of Johnson's supporters, but also 0.1 percent of those who voted other and a plus one, which would be very difficult to achieve, especially if many of Johnson's supporters decided to stay home.

Of course, people would still be unhappy with that result, or any, but that's just a regular part of democracy.

So someone may still ask “why go to a majority popular vote if the results are largely the same?”

Why? Because it not only opens the door a little bit more for those parties that aren't the Big D or Big R, but also gives them power even if they lose. It's closer to the American ideal that we have in the modern age, where everyone gets a fair shake and an equal voice. Instead of being told “you're throwing your vote away” and “don't hand the election to ______,” they're going to be told “we need your vote” and asked “what do we need to do

for your vote?”

That my friends, are what presidential elections are supposed to be about.