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Well, if your candidate can't win an election in this economy - better figure out a way to cheat.
I find it mildly amusing that your tagline is "Rational people can get along", and you're posting stuff like:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ringo1
Repugs are great at that.
How very rational of you.
As for the EC, the states decide for themselves how to best distribute those votes. If the people of Ohio want their system changed, they should be able to change it, without having to endure a bunch of yammering from people that don't even live there.
The electoral college should be scrapped, and the sooner, the better.
The presidency should be awarded to the candidate that has the most support from voters, period. It's how every other office at every other level is decided. There's no good argument against a national popular vote.
That is a "democratic" solution- thus, conservatives (who, by definition, are suspicious of the rabble's "right to vote" anyway) will never go for it.
I find it mildly amusing that your tagline is "Rational people can get along", and you're posting stuff like:
How very rational of you.
As for the EC, the states decide for themselves how to best distribute those votes. If the people of Ohio want their system changed, they should be able to change it, without having to endure a bunch of yammering from people that don't even live there.
I don't think the people of Ohio dreamed that, when they elected a GOP-controlled state government, those officials would use their power to monkey with the outcomes of national elections
But you may be right- unless DOJ can pursue some kind of voting rights issue here, it may all come down to swing state voters punishing the GOP power grab, by voting them out in 2014, before the system takes effect.
The presidency should be awarded to the candidate that has the most support from voters, period. It's how every other office at every other level is decided. There's no good argument against a national popular vote.
The presidency is an office leading the entire nation, there is only 1 president. There are 435 Representatives. There are 100 Senators. There are thousands of state level representatives and senators.
You can't really go by how "every other" office gets filled. Just like you wouldn't do something just because "everyone else" is doing it.
Since we decide who wins elections by how many votes get cast for that candidate, more votes is an advantage. What would you have us do, only count rural votes; give rural votes 4x the weight of urban votes; not let urban voters vote?
The point is that the person who gets the most votes should win. What we shouldn't do is apportion more E.C. votes to the person who got fewer votes than the one who got more. That's why this cockamamie GOP plan is inherently undemocratic.
Wouldn't you consider it unfair if Mr. Obama got 47% of the vote but declared the winner had Romney gotten 51%?
How many times do I have to say it before you guys get it?
ELECTIONS AREN'T JUST ABOUT WHO WINS.
The MOST important part of the ELECTION is the months before the day of the vote, it's the conversation that BOTH rural voters and urban voters need to have with those seeking to represent them. Elections aren't just about the candidates. Elections determine the issues. And rural dwellers have different issues and different perspectives on those issues than urban dwellers. Since the election is going to be decided by urban voters, if we want a truly democratic conversation to occur during the election process, we have to provide incentives for the candidates to have that conversation with rural voters as well as with urban voters.
Why don't you read some of my posts. I've been on here longer than you have. I daresay I'm more liberal than you. And I'm not a fool, either.
What I am is intellectually informed and honest.
I am informed enough to recognize the same weakness of a democracy that our Founding Fathers recognized.
I am honest enough that EVEN THOUGH IT WOULD ADVANCE MY POLITICAL AGENDA I don't support popular vote because it directly bears on the weakness of a democracy. I don't want to exclude people from the political process. And that's what the popular vote does. It excludes rural voters. I'm so pro-democracy that I want rural voters, WHOM I GENERALLY DISAGREE WITH, to still be participants in the process.
WHY DO YOU WANT TO EXCLUDE PEOPLE FROM THE POLITICAL PROCESS?
Alright, DC... For the sake of argument, I'll stipulate that "Something MUST be done to protect the rights of Wyomingites!"- evidently, you think those rights currently provided by the Constitution are inadequate.
So... What would be YOUR remedy? Surely, you don't support allocating electorates by representative districts, do you? I mean, if you are rending your tunic over the rights for people's votes to count, you CAN'T support this anti-democratic GOP initiative, right ()
So what do you propose to help the enfranchised-to-the-limit, yet, in your opinion, somehow deprived, citizens of Wyoming, to have "a voice" in presidential elections?
If there are less rural people then that's just the way it is. Why should we be worried that more votes come from the city? Does Texas have anyway of making sure conservatives don't dominate in the elections?
NO ONE worries about more votes coming from the city. Well, the Republicans worry because votes coming from the city trend Democrat, but there is a larger picture here.
Do we want rural voters to have a say, or do we want them to just shut up and do what we tell them to do?
Because it doesn't matter if they are outnumbered in the population, they are outnumbered in the electoral college, and they are outnumbered in Congress. They are outnumbered, so they lose in a democracy. The Founding Fathers put strategies into place, like the electoral college, to assure them that even if they have no expectation to win, that they still have an opportunity to voice their concerns. The judiciary exists on every level, local, county, state and federal, so rural people are represented there. They may be outnumbered in the House of Representatives, but they still are represented in the legislative branch. But where is their voice in the executive branch? It's not in the voting booth. It's in the months before we vote, in the campaign stops candidates make, in the caucuses, in the primaries. The electoral college doesn't create an imbalance in favor of rural areas, it addresses the imbalance that exists because of how democracies function. And that works for all of us who believe in democracy, because the ideal isn't one man, one vote. The ideal is that every person who wants to participate gets to participate. Take away someone's chance to voice their issues, even if it's a small chance, and you've taken away their chance to truly participate.
Alright, DC... For the sake of argument, I'll stipulate that "Something MUST be done to protect the rights of Wyomingites!"- evidently, you think those rights currently provided by the Constitution are inadequate.
So... What would be YOUR remedy? Surely, you don't support allocating electorates by representative districts, do you? I mean, if you are rending your tunic over the rights for people's votes to count, you CAN'T support this anti-democratic GOP initiative, right ()
So what do you propose to help the enfranchised-to-the-limit, yet, in your opinion, somehow deprived, citizens of Wyoming, to have "a voice" in presidential elections?
My remedies. Well, first of all, the primary system sucks. We should have regional primaries that rotate in terms of order. There is no sane reason why Iowa and New Hampshire should have the power to weed out candidates. Make primaries regional, then each region gets a turn at being first. So the first primaries are held in the SW States one year. The next election cycle, the Upper Midwest gets to be first. The next election cycle the West Coast gets to be first. Then its New England's turn.
Secondly, part of the fundamental problem is the inequity in districts. And one of the main reasons for that inequity is the cap on the number of member of the House of Representatives. I understand that there was a concern about the size of the lower house, just as a simple matter of accomodating them all. But with modern technology, there's no reason that meetings, committees, and even convening the entire House can't be done electronically. More than that, shifting people away from being required to be in DC keeps them at home in their districts, where their constituents have greater access. Increasing the number of representatives means that lobbyists and special interest groups have less leverage, and it means that the representative is burdened with fewer constituents, making representing them easier.
If we did those two things, alone, then much of the dissatisfaction with the current system would be resolved.
The EC was originally set up so that small, rural states would still have a say and elections wouldn't be entirely determined by urban areas. That made sense in the agricultural society of the late 18th century as rural and urban voters had very different needs. This seems like just an extension of that as the rural states are losing population at such a rate they are having less and less of a say. This is the 21st century though and things are very different. The difference between urban and rural is more cultural and religious than anything and due to TV and the Internet lifestyles are more similar than they have ever been. Bottom line while such an approach would make sense in an agrarian society, it doesn't in today's America. If any changes are made to the electoral college, it should be abolished in its entirety.
Wouldn't it be nice to have both candidates competing in all 50 states instead of all the money being poured into Ohio and Florida every election cycle?
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