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We are used to constant suggestions that the Electoral College be eliminated and to go with popular vote for our elections. Given that both Gore and Hillary won sizable voter majorities but failed to win the election shows the error of the system.
But while we are used to the Electoral College being under fire, we give little consideration to something else, a critically important "something else" that is as unfair, archaic, and just plain ridiculous as the Electoral College.
I speak, of course, of the US Senate.
First off, the US is the oldest democracy of the modern era, well past the antiquity of Greek democracy and Roman republic. Indeed, the US by being the oldest has been subject to remaining more a constant as the ideas of democracy and how it works evolved over the last 200+ years globally.
Our Constitution, for whatever strengths, is in so many ways outdated and non-functional. The US Senate is a product of the America of 1787 and is more geared to that era than it is to today.
Our Senate, as taught by our history books, is a legislative body that was formed as part of a compromise between larger states wishing to have a legislature based on population and the smaller states who claimed equity of states, places that were "real" in the sense that they were their own places with their own identities a mere decade before when they were colonies....with a relationship with England, not with each other.
Thus the House and the Senate are the supposed compromise that allows for each side to be happy.
In truth, the main reason we have a Senate is that the South had enough foresight to see that a region with slavery would have a much smaller growth rate than one without it and thus realized without an institution like the Senate, its needs and wishes would be overpowered by what was recognized as a much more subject to growth North.
Of course, in truth, as I stated earlier, the states of the 1780s were very much their own place and people were as apt to see themselves as New Yorkers or Pennsylvanians or Virginians than as Americans. And also obviously: the disparity between state size was minuscule compared to today.
Today, of course, there is a wide swing in state sizes between the 760,077 + 2 senators of North Dakota and the 39,560,000 + two senators of California, a statistic that makes our governmental system a true joke and not the least bit of democratic in structure (as for operation....that stopped being even remotely democratic years, eons ago).
And also obviously, our states carry less self-interests today than they did in the revolutionary era. People in our states don't all share the same needs. Do Chicago and southern IL have many common needs? NYC and upstate New York, San Francisco and the Mojave, Dallas and west Texas? Some of our states are drawn with the same consideration given to the former colonies-turned-independent-nations of Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. Colorado and Wyoming are basic rectangles.....something you would never find east of the Mississippi.
I am not sure how to truly correct the concept of the US Senate, but I would like to offer a partial "solution. It would still be less than democratic, but it would still vastly (IMHO) improve on our present Senate model.
How would it work? Take our largest state, California, and look at its population (39,560,000). Take that number and divide it by six to get 6,593,333 and divide states into six groups, organized as follows:
• state with up to 6,593,333 people get one senator
• states between 6,593,333 and 13,186,666 get two
• States between 13,186,666 and 19,779,999 get three
• States between 19,669,999 and 26,373,332 get four
• States between 26,373,332 and 32,966,665 get five
• States greater than 32,966,665 get six
Under the plan, the ratio between California to North Dakota goes from California being 52 times greater with same representation to California being 8.6 times larger than North Dakota in terms of representation. That's a huge difference going from 52x bigger down to 8.6x bigger.
Senate terms remain at 6 years with one third of the seats up at any election. Here is how state elections would run...
one senator
02: one senator elected
04: none
06: none
two senators
02: one senator elected
04: one senator elected
06: none
three senators
02: one senator elected
04: one senator elected
06: one senator elected
four senators:
02: two senators elected
04: one senator elected
06: one senator elected
five senators:
02: two senators elected
04: two senators elected
06: one senator elected
six senators:
02: two senators elected
04: two senators elected
06: two senators elected
All senate races would of course be full state. When two senatorial seats need to be filled, they would form two separate races: D-1 vs. R-1 and D-2 vs. R-2 (please...no R2D2's )
The whole thing could be seen as an interim solution, one that would satisfy the needs of state representation and a senate structured much like today's. In time, it could be replaced by a system that (like most democracies) gives both majority and minority representation in the legislature and could conceivably remove the notion of state in the upper house (akin to our state legislatures whose two houses are both based on population).
So...what do you think....good idea or bad. Comments and votes (see yourself as a state....you get one vote) are welcome.
I like your idea. It’s never seemed fair to me how smaller states have so much power despite their minuscule populations. In the populous 2 states that I’ve lived in, it’s hard for “new blood” to get in because of the campaigning cost/size of the State, encouraging the same stale leadership that we are stuck with. Constituents in Small population states receive very personal attention from their Senators (kiss their butts). Ppl in Texas or California are lucky to receive a Form Letter! As you said, needs of large state constituents are very diverse. Small state ppl get to engage in much easier campaigns. Look at Wyoming: Enzi is retiring and they ALREADY have chosen his successor ( more or less) Dick Cheney.
Of course. Obviously. But exactly what is a republic? A representative democracy. The only form of democracy you could even have. If ever there had been a true democracy (there wasn’t), it would have to be small enough (like a Greek city state...and even they did nir extend the right of suffrage to all). A nation of 300,000,000+ people can not be a democracy unless you could expand the footprint of the capital building to encompass Philadelphia, Richmond, and Joe Biden’s Delaware sized ego.
Democratic princple is what runs democracies. Democratic principle is what guides republics. A republic form of government is what you get when it is impossible to have a democracy.
A republic shares the core believe of a democracy: extend the voting franchise to all equally. Thus having three branches of government, having judges make decisions, having a president with power a democracy but it is most definitely is democratic
We select our leaders and we empower them to act on our interests.
And how am I acting in my own self interest. I am a liberal, I am progressive, I despise Donald Trump. Yet if in the 2020 election, Trump won the popular vote but the Democrat won the electoral, I wouldn’t be happy. To me, that is an injustice.
And sure I realize our senate structure favors Republicans as all those states with exceedingly white populations, giving the GOP an edge on the senators they get. But I would like to see all those folks in all those states get their full equal vote...just like everyone else gets.
And no condition is permanent. Demographics can change the the dynamics of voting accordingly.
So...let’s imagine your a Republican and you can count on a s**tload of electorial votes coming in from Florida and Texas. Don’t count on those votes tomorrow. Texas and Florida are majority nonwhte and they are destined, it would seem, to be blue. If you don’t believe me, look at California, the first majority minority state on the mainland, solidly Democratic due to the size of the hispanic community....and the fact this community comes out to vote in large numbers.
It would be simplistic to say the GOP has become the party of whites, the people who see themselves as the “real” Americans, the people who fear they are losing “their” country.
But it wouldn’t be wrong.
And those white folks like me who don’t give a rat’s ass about the pigmentation of my skin, do not see our nation as “ours...but the nation of all of us.
Changes are happening. And they are happening quicly. Amazingly here in 2019, the year of not the lord since we are secular, our public schools are majority nonwhite. And if that isn’t enough for you consider this: [b]in a mere 20 years, circa 2040, projections say that whites will fall from majority to plurality status. That’s right: a nation without any racial majority. To which I say hallilulah. And that mosaic of being of varying backgrounds are not going to support a system that gives some an edge over others.
And they will have the votes to pull it off
Good points, EDSG. And yes, these changes are coming, and it scares conservatives silly, to the point where they're doing their level best to contest elections ( Wisconsin for gubernatorial, and in Colorado right now), scrub voting rolls of possible Dem voters ( Georgia, North Carolina, and right now in Florida), and numerous GOP gerrymandering maps that are being found to be illegal and being ruled unconstitutional ( Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and likely others). The GOP is petrified of pure democracy, because they never win the popular vote. They remind me of the Confederacy in 1865, and the Nazis in 1945, fighting against the inevitable, knowing that eventually they're going to lose, but trying to cause as much damage as they can, even if it's to their own detriment.
Anyway, don't waste your breath on these types. I used to wander by the P+C forum years ago, and coming back here , only to find the same people, spouting the same nonsense, years later. Pretty pathetic.
Unless I am mistaken, all (or at least the vast majority) of people responding here on on the right, are conservative, are Republicans. With one glaring exception: me...on the left, progressive/liberal, and a former Democrat (a party of the center, a party tied to corporate power)
And from what I can see and read, the vast majority of you on the right think the left is the worse thing that exists, is crazy and tyranical and something to hate.
Yet me, arguably the lone person here strongly on the left has no hatred, not even a dislike of those of you on the right.
Simplified, I realize, but what appears the right hates the left a d the left hates.......what? Not you. If there is a hate (and I would be lying if I said there wasn’) it goes not to the right. Not to conservatives.
Our enemy is the oligarchs, the 1%, the corporations the power structure that holds its power to sequester the vast majority of $$$$$ for themselves...with the left and the right (neither of which they care about) to be left with the scraps
If you don’t believe me, go to a left leaning website. Take your pick: Alternet, Dailykos, Salon, Truthdig, the Guardian, Smirking Chi, the Intercept. And just puruse the type of blogs they have and you will see the right is not the source of angst, but the oligarchs are.
Besides...how do you think you can have a real and functioning nation when you hate half the people in it??
I can't speak for the rest, but I certainly believe that the Left is "the worse thing that exists, is crazy and tyrannical". Otherwise they wouldn't be so hell bent on getting rid of the 2nd Amendment and the abolishment of Constitutional Law?
As far as hate goes, just read some Left wing blogs and comments from a variety of different sources. The Left has more than their fair share of hate to go around.
Quote:
"A spoiled child (Bush) is telling us our Social Security isn't safe anymore, so he is going to fix it for us. Well, here's your answer, you ungrateful whelp: [audio sound of 4 gunshots being fired.] Just try it, you little b*stard. [audio of gun being cocked]." -- A "humor bit" from the Randi Rhodes Show
"I want to go up to the closest white person and say: 'You can't understand this, it's a black thing' and then slap him, just for my mental health" -- New York city councilman Charles Barron
"..And then there's Rumsfeld who said of Iraq 'We have our good days and our bad days.' We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say 'This is one of our bad days' and pull the trigger." -- From a fundraising ad put out by the St. Petersburg Democratic Club
"I believe in ecoterrorism." -- James Cameron
"...In an ideal world, American consumers could be convinced to do the right thing through an appeal to logic with public service messages like the 'What Would Jesus Drive?' TV campaign, but the kind of people who would buy a car that increases the risk to other motorists in an accident can't be reasoned with. They're selfish and stupid. It's unfortunate that drivers must worry that their SUVs are being targeted by insulting stickers and Molotov cocktails, but one thing's for sure: It couldn't be happening to a more deserving group of people." -- Ted Rall winks at ecoterrorism
"F*** God D*mned Joe the God D*mned Motherf*cking plumber! I want Motherf*cking Joe the plumber dead." -- Liberal talk show host Charles Karel Bouley on the air.
"Republicans don't believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don't give a hoot about human beings, either can't or won't. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm." -- The Village Voice's Michael Feingold, in a theater review of all places.
(Rush Limbaugh)" just wants the country to fail. To me that's treason. He's not saying anything different than what Osama Bin Laden is saying. You might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker but he was just so strung out on Oxycontin he missed his flight. ... Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how about that?" -- Wanda Sykes
"You guys see Live and Let Die, the great Bond film with Yaphet Kotto as the bad guy, Mr. Big? In the end they jam a big CO2 pellet in his face and he blew up. I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But we’ll be there to watch. I think he’s Mr. Big, I think Yaphet Kotto. Are you watching, Rush?" -- Chris Matthews
"I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn't be dying needlessly tomorrow....I'm just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That's a fact." -- Bill Maher
"If I got (Condi Rice) a— on camera, I would put my Mars Air Jordans so far up her butt that the Mayo Clinic would have to remove them." -- Spike Lee
"Drudge? Aw, Drudge, somebody ought to wrap a strong Republican entrail around his neck and hoist him up about six feet in the air and watch him bounce." -- Liberal radio host, Mike Malloy
"I know how the 'tea party' people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their 'Obama Plan White Slavery' signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads." -- The Washington Post's Courtland Milloy https://townhall.com/columnists/john...uotes-n1126185
Quote:
To prove his point, he and a staffer named Austin Goss, over at Empower Texans created a definitive list of all of the recorded instances of violence or violent rhetoric coming from the left to the right since the election, then he divided them by month.
Here's just one month, selected at random: June:
1st- In a photo shoot, “comedian” Kathy Griffin takes a photo of her holding what appears to be the bloody decapitated head that looks exactly like President Donald Trump.
10th- Lisa Solomon, a protester with the terroristic AntiFa group, stabs a police horse with a nail on the end of a makeshift weapon.
13th- A production/remake of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in New York City features a Donald Trump lookalike playing the part of Julius Caesar. He’s later assassinated in the play.
14th- At a Republican practice for the annual Congressional Baseball game, a radicalized leftist shows up to the park in Arlington, Virginia and begins to shoot at the Republican’s in a politically motivated attack, wounding a congressman and several others in the process.
15th- Following the shooting at the Republican’s baseball practice, many mainstream figures in the left media attempted to justify the shooting based on the conservatism of the victim, Representative Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana). Joy Reid, host of AM Joy on MSNBC, asked “Because he is in jeopardy and everybody is pulling for him, are we required in a moral sense to put that aside in the moment?” On Twitter, a Democrat operative from New Jersey, James Devine, started the hashtag #HuntRepublicans, a trend for which he never apologized. Chelsea Gentry-Tipton, head of the Nebraska Democratic Black Caucus, tweeted that she was “laughing” about the congressional baseball shooting.Representative Claudia Tenney (R-New York) received a voicemail following the shooting that threatened “1 down, 216 to go,” a reference to the number of Republican congressmen currently.
17th- Missouri Representative Ann Wagner said she had gotten five death threats in the previous weeks, that protesters had been "vandalizing my home, showing up with masks and gravestones, and laying down on my driveway and drawing chalk outlines of dead bodies. Picketing my church at 8 and 10 o'clock Mass."
19th- The pop band Moby blows up a “Nazi Donald Trump” in their animated music video.
20th- Speaking to his supporters at a health care rally, Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) calls on his followers to act in an “unprecedented way” against the Republican health care bill. Sanders furthered asked his followers to “stand up and fight back in every way you can”
21st- Antonio Foreman, body guard to well known alt-right figure “Baked Alaska” is stabbed multiple times by two attackers, supposedly while leaving a pro-Trump event. Those associated with him claim that the attacks were politically motivated.
22nd- Johnny Depp makes a joke to a crowd about assassinating President Trump. “When was the last time an actor assassinated the President?”
22nd - An Ohio man arrested after leaving a voicemail for Rep. Steve Stivers (Ohio) which said, "We're coming to get every goddamn one of you and your families. Maybe the next one taken down will be your daughter. Huh? Or your wife. Or even you.”
22nd - Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz revealed a threatening voicemail which said, "I suggest you prepare for the battle motherf**ker, and the apocalypse. Because we are going to hunt your ass down, wrap a rope around your neck, and hang you from a lamppost."
Of course. Obviously. But exactly what is a republic? A representative democracy. The only form of democracy you could even have. If ever there had been a true democracy (there wasn’t), it would have to be small enough (like a Greek city state...and even they did nir extend the right of suffrage to all). A nation of 300,000,000+ people can not be a democracy unless you could expand the footprint of the capital building to encompass Philadelphia, Richmond, and Joe Biden’s Delaware sized ego.
We are a republic with representatives. Remember the line in the pledge:
I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands...
Quote:
Originally Posted by edsg25
Democratic princple is what runs democracies. Democratic principle is what guides republics. A republic form of government is what you get when it is impossible to have a democracy.
A republic shares the core believe of a democracy: extend the voting franchise to all equally. Thus having three branches of government, having judges make decisions, having a president with power a democracy but it is most definitely is democratic
We select our leaders and we empower them to act on our interests.
And how am I acting in my own self interest. I am a liberal, I am progressive, I despise Donald Trump. Yet if in the 2020 election, Trump won the popular vote but the Democrat won the electoral, I wouldn’t be happy. To me, that is an injustice.
I would bet the farm that the amount if indignation by Democrats over the EC in 2016 would be a fraction thereof if the shoe was on the other foot. Clinton won the EC in 1992 with 43% of the vote and I don't recall the Democrats them wanting to end the EC. In fact quite the opposite.
See the reason the constitution is hard to change or amend is exactly for reasons that you want it to change. Political advantage should not be one of them.
You are quite confused and subjective on this. The system works. Sometimes that means the person you personally want elected loses. That is part of life.
A republic, which if you read it sums up my point perfectly:
Republic, form of government in which a state is ruled by representatives of the citizen body. Modern republics are founded on the idea that sovereignty rests with the people, though who is included and excluded from the category of the people has varied across history. Because citizens do not govern the state themselves but through representatives, republics may be distinguished from direct democracy, though modern representative democracies are by and large republics. The term republic may also be applied to any form of government in which the head of state is not a hereditary monarch.
You’re an IDIOT if you advocate eliminating the electoral college unless you want to see the US break into 5+ countries and the world descend into one war after another.
When I saw "archaic as the electoral collage" I laughed. Somebody needs to be educated about why the electoral collage is a genius idea that protects small states from tyranny of the big states. Highway system breaking down in a place like Montana. It WILL get federal funds with an electoral collage system. And seriously, nobody wants democrats to rule the entire country. That would be hell.
We have a federal system with fifty states. Each state is an entity with some autonomy. While I fully embrace the idea of equal representation and understand the inequality of the system, for good or ill, this is part of the constitution and how we govern ourselves. As with term limits, this is a lazy person's solution -- we need more civic participation, an informed and educated electorate, and strict limits in campaign costs and corporate/lobby contributions.
Besides...how do you think you can have a real and functioning nation when you hate half the people in it??
I don't hate the people on the Left....I hate their hate!
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