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US senate is the right solution for representing ALL the states.
The electoral college is not. (In any modern democratic society all votes are equal. Everywhere).
Well, we're not a purely democratic society. The Founding Fathers rejected that as tyranny of the majority.
Within the context of the electoral college, however all votes ARE equal within each state.
Depending on the individual state's rules, the winner of the majority of that state's votes wins all of the state's electoral votes, OR those electoral votes are divided up proportionately between the candidates according to the number of votes they received at the polls.
Well, we're not a purely democratic society. The Founding Fathers rejected that as tyranny of the majority.
Within the context of the electoral college, however all votes ARE equal within each state.
Depending on the individual state's rules, the winner of the majority of that state's votes wins all of the state's electoral votes, OR those electoral votes are divided up proportionately between the candidates according to the number of votes they received at the polls.
Even within the electoral system boundaries, the "winner takes all" is a serious distortion of people's will. It allows a candidate who lost the election big time be declared winner. I am not speaking from a partisan point, (I don't care about partisan politics) but from common sense while looking at the future.
As I posted above, the 2 party system no longer serves the American people and will eventually be changed. This entire system restrics good people from running.
Another change should be the introduction of referendum to resolve problems when the legislative body gets locked. Let the people decide.
Oh well then, a big F U to their tyrannical plan then.
James Madison:
It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable.
If California and New York feel so put upon by the other states, then by all means lead the way in returning more power to the states. Otherwise, choke on your own creation
The HRC People and the left were outraged when Trump said" I would review the results, before conceding". HRC in that Chris Wallace debate did not asked HRC, however it as implied HRC would accept the results.
As the election is reconciled Trump has gained popular votes while increasing his lead after all of the hubbub of Ms. Stein.
The left cannot accept the results thus is the reason many are debating against the Electoral College. Changes of power and parties is what keeps America different from the world.
Even within the electoral system boundaries, the "winner takes all" is a serious distortion of people's will.
Not really.
When a billl is passed by a 50%-plus-one majority in the House of Representatives, no one calls that "undemocratic" or "a distortion of the will of the House of Representatives."
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It allows a candidate who lost the election big time be declared winner.
But notice that the standard you are complaining about for "winner takes all" in some states -- and a simple majority vote in Congress --- is the very standard you seek to uphold when it comes to the winner of the popular vote in a presidential election.
It seems to me that you can't have it both ways.
The bottom line is that it is the states -- not the people as a whole -- that pick the president, and the states can set their own rules about how their electors vote.
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the 2 party system no longer serves the American people and will eventually be changed. This entire system restrics good people from running.
We don't have a two party system.
You can run as an independent or a member of a third party.
Americans just haven't gone for a third party candidate yet -- either in terms of financial contributions to campaigns or votes at the polls.
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Another change should be the introduction of referendum to resolve problems when the legislative body gets locked. Let the people decide.
We have that in California, and I have mixed feelings about it.
A lot of times, the people don't even know what they're deciding. They don't bother to closely study often complicated issues. In most cases, it's because they're busy and don't have time.
There is something wrong when voters have to do their elected representatives' jobs for them. But I can't say that I completely oppose the idea.
BTW, I have an alternative to the way we select candidates.
You create a database of citizens and then -- by a kind of lottery -- pick someone to fill a given office.
If that person is not qualified or interested, you pick another person and keep doing that until you do find someone who is qualified and interested. There is no campaign. It's just a citizen who is called upon by his town, city, county, state or country to serve -- like jury duty or the military draft.
I like the idea of a true citizen-legislator or executive instead of a professional politician. This way of going about it also gets money out of politics. Since there is no campaign to finance, special interests have no influence. The citizen serves one long term and that's it.
Of course, the standard for being qualified would have to be high: knowledge of U.S. history and government, no criminal record, etc.
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Originally Posted by gwynedd1
If California and New York feel so put upon by the other states, then by all means lead the way in returning more power to the states. Otherwise, choke on your own creation
US senate is the right solution for representing ALL the states.
The electoral college is not. (In any modern democratic society all votes are equal. Everywhere).
The Senate is the body for equal representation of all states. The House of Representatives is the body for equal representation per person. The Electoral College was and is and always has been a hybrid of the two -- but with a clear comparative bias in favor of the more populous states. While the per person numbers are unequal, the 11 most populous states still dominate the electorate, holding the magic 270 votes between them. I get the complaint against the EC and part of me agrees, but opponents of the EC tend to greatly exaggerate the amount of power wielded by less populous states. If the 11 most populated states all voted for one candidate and the remaining 39 least populated states all voted for another candidate, the 11 states win.
CA can whine all they like, but at the end of the day they wield twice as much or more power in the presidential election almost every state. They have almost 20 times the power compared to states like Wyoming and Vermont. Their population isn't being ignored and it really does make them the most important by a huge margin.
As to other societies, they vary tremendously. The King/Queen of England isn't elected at all, yet Queen Elizabeth wields more power than you might think. Other monarchs rule in a long list of supposedly democratic nations -- still wielding quite a bit of power and their position is inherited rather than elected. The House of Lords in the UK is likewise not exactly democratic and not entirely powerless. There is no nation of significant size on this planet that is a pure democracy. All of them have a lot of twists and adaptations. The Electoral College is nothing unremarkable by worldwide standards and considerably more democratic than republics with monarchs.
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If states elect the president, than individual vote is unnecessary. Every state has an assembly and that body could elect the president. At only 1% of the current cost, the results could be made public in one hour.
Or we could continue doing it the way we've always done it. It's actually worked out pretty well for us. I think some tweaks are in order though.
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I believe that over time, the electoral system will be altered or modified.
Modification at the state level is always possible. California is already part of the somewhat dubious National Popular Vote Compact. I'm going to be quite interested to see how Californians react the next time a Republican wins the popular vote. California, Washington, Washington DC, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and Vermont -- with the possible future addition of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia -- will all have their voices stripped away. If their honest, the news media will have to flip them all to red on the map because all of their electors will vote for the Republican winner. So in theory, Trump could lost CA by 2 million votes in 2020 and California will still vote for him anyway. How ticked off will the people of California and the rest of those states be when that happens?
Better solution = dump the NPV and start a new movement -- one where all states agree to assign their electoral votes proportionally under roughly the same rule set. (Example: If one state wants to set a 2/3 majority threshold for going "winner take all" then all of them need to do the same thing, etc.) I think this is a far better solution as it does the very best job of forcing candidates to focus on all states and less on "battleground states" like we see now.
Irrespective of who you support, the system should factor in your margin of victory in any given state and larger margins of victory should be rewarded.
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Another necessary change is getting rid of the 2 party system. It no longer serves the current needs of America.
Here, I couldn't agree with you more. In nations with 6-10 major political movements and room for new ones on the fly, politicians from different parties are forced to work together with great regularity. It is also far more likely that one of 10 political parties will more accurately represent your own personal ideology, as opposed to just 2.
I know this has been beaten to death by the left for the past month since Trump won the election, but it doesn't surprise
me to see that the NY Times is chanting this now too. And I still ask liberals, why wasn't the electoral college a problem four and eight years ago when Obama won?
The EC has been a problem since the end of the Civil War. After all, it was set up to appease the slave states.
In case you missed it, Obama won the vote by 10 million in '08 and 5 million in '12.
Despite Obama's huge wins, the right bellowed like a gut-shot mule for years afterwards.
Look...
I realize how sensitive Trumplings are over this fluke victory brought to you by the rigged system. Your boy is wearing out the batteries in his tweet phone obsessing over it. That cloud will hang over his entire term.
They didn't think that slaves were literally 3/5 of a person. In fact, what they did benefited slaves by lessening the power of Southern states. If slaves had been counted as full persons, the South would have been entitled to more seats in the House of Representatives because slaves as full persons instead of partial persons would have increased the South's population.
Oh, and by the way, women didn't have the right to vote anywhere, slavery was common and practiced by all races in every part of the world, etc. Maybe we should also be upset that people believed in witchcraft a hundred years earlier....
I was just making the point that the writers of the constitution were not infallible, you can't just hold up one piece to the light because you like it and ignore all the other rather glaring injustices. I understand the concept behind the electoral college but it does give a vote in a less populous state more power. We have now seen 2 elections where it made a difference, maybe that's the exception.
Last edited by Goodnight; 12-22-2016 at 08:18 AM..
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