One of the things I like to do is to start with premises that no one can reasonably dispute. I've never had to strain myself trying to defend an argument when it's based on premises that people already agree with.
One of the things I like to do is to start with premises that no one can reasonably dispute. I've never had to strain myself trying to defend an argument when it's based on premises that people already agree with.
Democracy is majority rule.
Everyone should get an equal vote.
That is my position on the electoral college.
I'm not really so sure everyone really agrees with this. It's either that or they have no idea just how skewed the numbers are. It has become EXCEEDINGLY popular on the right to defend this system. It's mostly happened because of Trump, but this also happened in 2000. So yeah, if my party was starting to be the sole one seeing the benefit of a pattern where every other Presidency the guy who gets to sit in the most powerful position on Earth is the one who got less votes (and, in both case, alot less less votes) then I would sure as shit probably be going to bat for it too. But this has happened twice in 16 years, and it has been to the benefit of the same party both times. If things continue at this rate, we might as well just hand off the Presidency to the opposite party after 8 years and go back and forth. Because that is basically what is happening.
Since 1992, we have had 6 Presidential elections. Republicans have won the popular vote ONCE in those 24 years, and that was only because of the power of incumbency. Despite losing the popular vote in 83% of the elections since that time, they have held onto the Presidency for a full 50% of it assuming Trump fills our his entire first term.
And most people who talk about this one way or another have no earthly idea how it works. I bet you couldn't get 5% of the population to explain to you in even a basic way how electors work. You probably couldn't get 20% who could explain the electoral college beyond how it is presented as what is basically a version of Risk on cable news.
I couldn't sleep last night and early this morning I went to the local cafe right when it opened at 6am for breakfast. There was a group of guys who were obvious regulars, and I couldn't help but overhear their entire conversation for over a half-hour. And I could barely keep from screaming. They were talking about things, but they had NO clue what they were discussing. They were discussing the college admission scandal from last week and were getting the facts completely wrong. They started talking about the local college men's basketball team getting into the NCAA tournament, and they were specifically talking about a game in the past that they all seemed to remember the team has WON, when I, sitting there eating my pancakes, knew for a 110% fact the team had actually LOST. Point being (and I have thought this for a long time), people in general don't really know jack-shit about anything that doesn't pertain to their job and home life. This was 5 guys in a diner in one of these low-population states. From what I could tell they had pretty varied careers and backgrounds. At least two of them would have to have college degrees based on their jobs. And they were all talking with 100% certainty about topics they knew absolutely nothing about. They might as well have been reading the National Enquirer out loud.
The state's legislation would only take effect if enough other states sign on to secure the cumulative 270 electors needed to elect a president, and Colorado's votes raise the current total to 181 electors.
Even if we stick with the Electoral College, I'd really like to end the winner-take-all allocation of electors. It should make a difference whether you win 51% or 90% of California.
The state's legislation would only take effect if enough other states sign on to secure the cumulative 270 electors needed to elect a president, and Colorado's votes raise the current total to 181 electors.
Even if we stick with the Electoral College, I'd really like to end the winner-take-all allocation of electors. It should make a difference whether you win 51% or 90% of California.
That's what the interstate compact thing is going to do.
Right now if California did that and Wyoming or Texas (or whatever) did not do that , then a lot of voters in those states would not get represented, they would see "all" their electors go to the wrong guy and California, the state with the most Americans, would get even more cheated.
National popular vote is the ONLY solution to ensure one person / one vote is fairly counted. Electors are the problem either if you send them all for one guy or if you split them up they still won't fairly represent the correct amount of Americans they are supposed to representing. No matter what it is a rigged system.
The only rational thing is national popular vote otherwise you get vote slavery , yeah I said it, like we have now with certain states getting way more than their share others only counting for fractions of votes in other states.
The US government we have now is possibly the most illegitimate it's ever been across the board.
The Senate is rigged. It gives 2 Senators to empty Wyoming and 2 Senators to California and New York and Texas. This is gives extreme power to empty lines on a map.
The rigged Senate has installed Supreme Court justices who represent a minority of Americans. Brett Kavanaugh is the Supreme Court Justice who has received the fewest votes ever. Neil Gorsuch is sitting in a stolen seat.
The House of Representatives is rigged and artificially limited by a law from over 100 years ago and does not reflect current population. The 12th, the Apportionment Amendment, has languished unratified by the states, apparently by accident. In just the past decade, archival research has suggested that Connecticut ratified the amendment in 1790 without Congress noticing, meaning it should have taken effect upon Vermont’s ratification in 1791. But the rigged Supreme Court in 2012 rejected an appeal to get the amendment recognized.
The President lost the popular vote represents a minority of Americans.
The system was working exactly as intended, there isn't any injustice to correct. Every state represents the people of that state. Those states have a vote, and the winner of the vote in that state is supposed to be who that state supports. That is the state representing you, and what you voted for.
If the state isn't taking your vote into account, and electing whomever regardless of what the voters in that state wanted, this is just straight disenfranchisement in an electoral system.
I'm not going to relitigate the merits of the Electoral system, as i've stated many times I find it a perfectly valid, arguably the best known method of representation for a large nation of many different subcultures, needs, and beliefs as this one. Anyone who wishes to debate that particular point can look at my earlier statements.
Regardless of how you feel about the electoral system, this objectively takes the Presidential voting power out of the hands of those states voters in this system. It makes their vote all but irrelevant.
If a state vote is split 60-40 and they have 10 electoral votes, wouldn't a better representation of "the will of the people" to have 6 electoral votes go to the person who won 60% and 4 go to the person who won 40% instead of winner take all?
Are those 40% votes being taken into account when the results are in?
One of the things I like to do is to start with premises that no one can reasonably dispute. I've never had to strain myself trying to defend an argument when it's based on premises that people already agree with.
Democracy is majority rule.
Everyone should get an equal vote.
That is my position on the electoral college.
I do not agree with this as regional representation does need to be taken into account. For example:
Assume the people of Toronto (2.7 million) feel like they need a new gizmo that only Torontonian can use (unless others visit) and to raise this money, they apply a new international waters shipping tax that affects places like Halifax (415,000), Quebec City (500,000) and Vancouver (610,000) but not actually Toronto. These three sets of populations would have less of a say in something that directly effects them because Toronto is almost double all their size.
To counter this Toronto should have 15 votes and Halifax, Quebec, and Vancouver should have 1 vote per 100,000 people rounded down (4,5,6 respectively). Toronto still gets to dictate the majority of what happens in the country, but they can not dictate something without another regions approval.
This of course is an overly simplified example, but I hope you see the point in it.
One of the things I like to do is to start with premises that no one can reasonably dispute. I've never had to strain myself trying to defend an argument when it's based on premises that people already agree with.
Democracy is majority rule.
Everyone should get an equal vote.
That is my position on the electoral college.
I think those statements can be reasonably disputed - that should be pretty obvious in fact as the US constitution is clearly not based on them . The statements are reasonable as long as you are referring to a homogenous situation, but as @WarChiefZeke said the US is very far from that. I'm not really supporting the current system as it does seem obviously flawed to me, but I think it's understandable in a federal system that different states have been given some protection from the 'tyranny of the majority'.
Consider the issue in the UK of Scotland and Brexit. Scotland voted heavily to remain in the EU, although the overall majority in the UK was to leave. Scotland is in some ways a much more distinct entity than US states - it's an individual country with its own legal system and devolved powers over the bulk of affairs which affect its people. However, it does not control international treaties and hence has been given no rights to stop Brexit, even though that undercuts its supposed devolved powers (there is a legal case proceeding about this, but the Scottish government isn't expected to win it). That's democracy in action, but whether it's fair can certainly be reasonably disputed.
As an alternative way of looking at things consider the issue about minority rights we've debated lots of times. Say a law were passed which banned mosques - and it seems to me that is a plausible possibility. Would the fact that it's the will of the majority make it right, or is it reasonable to say that there should be limits on democracy?
"Socrates’ point is that voting in an election is a skill, not a random intuition. Like any skill, it needs to be taught systematically to people. Letting the citizenry vote without an education is as irresponsible as putting them in charge of a trireme sailing to Samos in a storm. We have forgotten all about Socrates’ salient warnings against democracy. We have preferred to think of democracy as an unambiguous good, rather than a process that is only ever as effective as the education system that surrounds it."
One of the things I like to do is to start with premises that no one can reasonably dispute. I've never had to strain myself trying to defend an argument when it's based on premises that people already agree with.
Democracy is majority rule.
Everyone should get an equal vote.
That is my position on the electoral college.
I think those statements can be reasonably disputed - that should be pretty obvious in fact as the US constitution is clearly not based on them . The statements are reasonable as long as you are referring to a homogenous situation, but as @WarChiefZeke said the US is very far from that. I'm not really supporting the current system as it does seem obviously flawed to me, but I think it's understandable in a federal system that different states have been given some protection from the 'tyranny of the majority'.
Consider the issue in the UK of Scotland and Brexit. Scotland voted heavily to remain in the EU, although the overall majority in the UK was to leave. Scotland is in some ways a much more distinct entity than US states - it's an individual country with its own legal system and devolved powers over the bulk of affairs which affect its people. However, it does not control international treaties and hence has been given no rights to stop Brexit, even though that undercuts its supposed devolved powers (there is a legal case proceeding about this, but the Scottish government isn't expected to win it). That's democracy in action, but whether it's fair can certainly be reasonably disputed.
As an alternative way of looking at things consider the issue about minority rights we've debated lots of times. Say a law were passed which banned mosques - and it seems to me that is a plausible possibility. Would the fact that it's the will of the majority make it right, or is it reasonable to say that there should be limits on democracy?
It's gone WELL past protecting from "tyranny of the majority" when there are at least 5 states that have literally 50-80x more proportional representation in the Senate as the largest one. That isn't protecting the minority, that is flat-out minority rule, to the level of absolute absurdity. Which, as I have pointed out, is also the body that gets to vote on the Supreme Court. The only thing separating the people who have more voting power from those that have less is lines on a map.
There isn't a single area of how we choose our government where California isn't getting screwed with their pants on. It's not only one of 14 states that GIVES more than it receives back from the federal government (as in, for every dollar they send to Washington, the get less than that back in how much the federal government spends on the state), but they can't even get equitable proportional representation in the ONE place where it should be a given, which is the House of Representatives. Shit, the population of Los Angeles County ALONE is equal to that of 12 states COMBINED, who have 24 Senators casting votes, or basically 25% of the entire body.
When the Constitution was written, the absolute largest disparity in population between the 13 original colonies was between Virginia and Delaware, in which the former was 12x larger than the later (and that number went down to only 10x when you factored in who could actually vote). That disparity in 2019 is now 80x, and the SAME rule is in place. I mean, look at the numbers when they put this together. A Senate such as we have makes all the sense in the world if THESE are the numbers, because they simply aren't that far apart (again, these are white males who could vote, which was the standard at the time):
Virginia: 110,936
Pennsylvania: 110,788
Massachusetts: 95,453
New York: 83,700
North Carolina: 69,988
Connecticut: 60,523
Maryland: 55,915
New Jersey: 45,251
New Hampshire: 36,086
South Carolina: 35,576
Maine: 24,384
Vermont: 22,435
Rhode Island: 16,019
Kentucky: 15,154
Georgia: 13,103
Delaware: 11,783
In regards to most of these populations, the differences (especially in the middle of the pack) are basically a rounding error. It isn't until you get down to the last 5 or 6 where any real difference is discernible. It isn't anything like this anymore. It's also WELL worth mentioning that of the states in the bottom half of the population totals, 4 of them are among the 7 states who had a slave population that was OVER 10% of the entire population. In the case of Georgia and South Carolina, it was basically 40%. So yes, when people say this whole system (including the Senate) was designed to placate the states that MOST relied on slavery, the numbers bear out that is entirely correct.
One of the things I like to do is to start with premises that no one can reasonably dispute. I've never had to strain myself trying to defend an argument when it's based on premises that people already agree with.
Democracy is majority rule.
Everyone should get an equal vote.
That is my position on the electoral college.
I think those statements can be reasonably disputed - that should be pretty obvious in fact as the US constitution is clearly not based on them . The statements are reasonable as long as you are referring to a homogenous situation, but as @WarChiefZeke said the US is very far from that. I'm not really supporting the current system as it does seem obviously flawed to me, but I think it's understandable in a federal system that different states have been given some protection from the 'tyranny of the majority'.
Consider the issue in the UK of Scotland and Brexit. Scotland voted heavily to remain in the EU, although the overall majority in the UK was to leave. Scotland is in some ways a much more distinct entity than US states - it's an individual country with its own legal system and devolved powers over the bulk of affairs which affect its people. However, it does not control international treaties and hence has been given no rights to stop Brexit, even though that undercuts its supposed devolved powers (there is a legal case proceeding about this, but the Scottish government isn't expected to win it). That's democracy in action, but whether it's fair can certainly be reasonably disputed.
As an alternative way of looking at things consider the issue about minority rights we've debated lots of times. Say a law were passed which banned mosques - and it seems to me that is a plausible possibility. Would the fact that it's the will of the majority make it right, or is it reasonable to say that there should be limits on democracy?
It's gone WELL past protecting from "tyranny of the majority" when there are at least 5 states that have literally 50-80x more proportional representation in the Senate as the largest one. That isn't protecting the minority, that is flat-out minority rule, to the level of absolute absurdity. Which, as I have pointed out, is also the body that gets to vote on the Supreme Court. The only thing separating the people who have more voting power from those that have less is lines on a map.
There isn't a single area of how we choose our government where California isn't getting screwed with their pants on. It's not only one of 14 states that GIVES more than it receives back from the federal government (as in, for every dollar they send to Washington, the get less than that back in how much the federal government spends on the state), but they can't even get equitable proportional representation in the ONE place where it should be a given, which is the House of Representatives. Shit, the population of Los Angeles County ALONE is equal to that of 12 states COMBINED, who have 24 Senators casting votes, or basically 25% of the entire body.
When the Constitution was written, the absolute largest disparity in population between the 13 original colonies was between Virginia and Delaware, in which the former was 12x larger than the later (and that number went down to only 10x when you factored in who could actually vote). That disparity in 2019 is now 80x, and the SAME rule is in place. I mean, look at the numbers when they put this together. A Senate such as we have makes all the sense in the world if THESE are the numbers, because they simply aren't that far apart (again, these are white males who could vote, which was the standard at the time):
Virginia: 110,936
Pennsylvania: 110,788
Massachusetts: 95,453
New York: 83,700
North Carolina: 69,988
Connecticut: 60,523
Maryland: 55,915
New Jersey: 45,251
New Hampshire: 36,086
South Carolina: 35,576
Maine: 24,384
Vermont: 22,435
Rhode Island: 16,019
Kentucky: 15,154
Georgia: 13,103
Delaware: 11,783
In regards to most of these populations, the differences (especially in the middle of the pack) are basically a rounding error. It isn't until you get down to the last 5 or 6 where any real difference is discernible. It isn't anything like this anymore. It's also WELL worth mentioning that of the states in the bottom half of the population totals, 4 of them are among the 7 states who had a slave population that was OVER 10% of the entire population. In the case of Georgia and South Carolina, it was basically 40%. So yes, when people say this whole system (including the Senate) was designed to placate the states that MOST relied on slavery, the numbers bear out that is entirely correct.
@jjstraka34 I don't disagree the system could benefit from reform and I do think that the disparity between representation of states is a problem. However, even though I'm not American, I suspect that an awful lot of Americans would not agree with you that the differences between states are just "lines on a map."
I also don't see the situation now as anything like as radically different as you do from the original intentions of the constitution. To me, if differences in representation of 10x are deemed acceptable, that's really only a change in degree, not in kind, from the current difference of 80x and I suspect that the writers of the constitution would have been happy to apply it to the current situation (though in practice I think that wouldn't have happened because the larger states would have been split up into smaller ones - which of course does remain an option today to partially address the current disparities).
What I think has really changed is not the distribution of population, but the way in which we regard voting rights more generally. When the constitution was written voting was not seen as a general right, but restricted to particular groups (essentially white land-owning men) - and what democracy meant was therefore very different. I appreciate there's an ongoing struggle about who should be able to vote even now, but there has been a huge shift over time towards the idea of "one man, one vote". In that light I think the constitution does need rethinking, but even if that happened I would still expect it to provide some form of protection for individual states.
I agree. Proportional voting has got a bad reputation in the UK for leading to unstable governments (as a result of seeing experiences in countries such as Italy). However, I don't actually think it's any more unstable as a system than first past the post (the latter causes instability when 2 main parties are closely matched, which is much less likely with proportional voting). Existing governments in both the US and UK show how poorly they deal with issues when there's too much concentration on party politics and not enough on building consensus.
Part of my problem with this issue is that it's realpolitik disguised as ideology. If we *really* cared about ensuring representation of American Cotizens in smaller states, Puerto Rico and D.C. would be states, as they each boast communities of citizens well in excess of Wyoming.
Part of my problem with this issue is that it's realpolitik disguised as ideology. If we *really* cared about ensuring representation of American Cotizens in smaller states, Puerto Rico and D.C. would be states, as they each boast communities of citizens well in excess of Wyoming.
DC has 3 electoral votes, but it is utterly devoid of any representation in either branch of Congress. In what I don't view as a fact that is even remotely coincidental, the city is also 48% African-American. What possible justification is there for saying "if you live within the parameters of this city, you don't get a House rep or Senators"?? If you live in DC, you aren't even being afforded a bare minimum of citizenship rights. They technically have a rep who is in the House, but she cannot cast any votes.
So yeah, statehood for DC and Puerto Rico yesterday. But you know why it won't happen?? Because people think 50 is a nice, even number. As soon as it would get brought up, the firestorm on the right would be "look at the liberals trying to change America and our culture, we're under attack". Nevermind the fact that both places are ALREADY part of America and have no representation whatsoever.
So anyone defending the current system who isn't also calling for the immediate enfranchisement of Puerto Rico and DC can spare me the diatribe, because if that's the case it's a completely hollow and disingenuous argument.
I love how Wyoming gets such a bad name because it's a 'gasp' RED state! What about Vermont, New Hampshire, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maine, and Hawaii? They're getting the same benefit as Wyoming and are blue states. I'd argue that it pretty much evens out. Nevada and New Mexico are also pretty close to becoming solid blue so it might even be in favor of the Democrats pretty soon. I'll bet the whining about the 'unfairness' of it will be completely forgotten then...
Edit: Also, states numbers two and three in population are also underrepresented. You know which states those are? Texas and Florida. Oh the unfairness of it all...
I love how Wyoming gets such a bad name because it's a 'gasp' RED state! What about Vermont, New Hampshire, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maine, and Hawaii? They're getting the same benefit as Wyoming and are blue states. I'd argue that it pretty much evens out. Nevada and New Mexico are also pretty close to becoming solid blue so it might even be in favor of the Democrats pretty soon. I'll bet the whining about the 'unfairness' of it will be completely forgotten then...
And I raise you Montana, Idaho, and North AND South Dakota, and Alaska. All of which, by the way, have a FAR smaller population than Puerto Rico. And the principle does not change because certain blue states are also the beneficiary of this ridiculous system. Wyoming and California are used as the barometer because it shows the difference in voting power between the most populus state and the least populus. I could run the math on all of them vs. California individually, but I have other shit to do. But I did run some quick numbers, and California, Texas, Florida, and New York are all getting screwed pretty much right on the nose equally in terms of the Electoral college, to within about 100,000-200,000 people for each elector in each case. Two of them are blue states, one is red, and one is practically the definition of a coin toss in modern politics.
But just for shits and giggles, let's take a middle of the road population state (Minnesota) and put it up against Vermont. A relatively modest population state and a low-pop one. Even in THIS case where the disparity is much less, the voters of Vermont are STILL 2.4x more powerful in voting for President. And 8x more powerful in the Senate. For this particular random example, for whatever reason, the House seats are basically how they should be.
I love how Wyoming gets such a bad name because it's a 'gasp' RED state! What about Vermont, New Hampshire, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maine, and Hawaii? They're getting the same benefit as Wyoming and are blue states. I'd argue that it pretty much evens out. Nevada and New Mexico are also pretty close to becoming solid blue so it might even be in favor of the Democrats pretty soon. I'll bet the whining about the 'unfairness' of it will be completely forgotten then...
Edit: Also, states numbers two and three in population are also underrepresented. You know which states those are? Texas and Florida. Oh the unfairness of it all...
There appear to be demonstrably more states with a smaller population which receive unfair representation which are so called "Red states".
According to the link above - there are 21 states with electoral representation below Puerto Rico on this list. 13 of them reliably vote Red, and 8 of them reliably vote Blue. Reliable is a bit of loaded term here, but even of those 21 states, the only two states to cross over since 2000 were Iowa and New Hampshire.
If you look at the two columns - Estimated Population per House Seat and Estimated population per electoral vote, I think the picture becomes REALLY clear. We attempt, albeit not perfectly, to even things out for the House of Representatives (Gerrymandering still an issue here, as is our decision to cap the total number preventing true fairness), but look at the ridiculous drop off in the electoral college vote population share. It's perfectly absurd.
Does it even matter if the electoral college benefits Democrats or Republicans? It shouldn't benefit either.
The only reason it matters to me is that if things were reversed, I'd be arguing with Republicans about not shit-canning our system and I'd be hearing crickets from the Democrats. Sorry you lost, not sorry our system is working as intended...
Trump has spent all day today essentially trying to dictate programming decisions at FOX News, spending an inordinate amount of time tweeting out who should be on the air and who should be removed from certain time slots.
This is what the leader of the free world spends his time on, on a daily basis. He watches cable news, and throws fits based on what he sees. And for someone who was elected as supposedly being a tough guy who doesn't care about "feelings", he is EASILY the biggest whiny-ass crybaby I have ever seen in my life. We'd be a hell of alot better off if this guy had been taken to a psychiatrist about 50 years ago. I've never seen such bottomless narcissism in my life. This is the kind of behavior that is usually handled with a pacifier and a nap, but the kicker is that Trump is 72 years old.
Trump has spent all day today essentially trying to dictate programming decisions at FOX News, spending an inordinate amount of time tweeting out who should be on the air and who should be removed from certain time slots.
This is what the leader of the free world spends his time on, on a daily basis. He watches cable news, and throws fits based on what he sees. And for someone who was elected as supposedly being a tough guy who doesn't care about "feelings", he is EASILY the biggest whiny-ass crybaby I have ever seen in my life. We'd be a hell of alot better off if this guy had been taken to a psychiatrist about 50 years ago. I've never seen such bottomless narcissism in my life. This is the kind of behavior that is usually handled with a pacifier and a nap, but the kicker is that Trump is 72 years old.
He needs to be retired and golfing at maralago full time and complaining about fox news. A least he wouldn't be hurting anybody important.
Trump has spent all day today essentially trying to dictate programming decisions at FOX News, spending an inordinate amount of time tweeting out who should be on the air and who should be removed from certain time slots.
This is what the leader of the free world spends his time on, on a daily basis. He watches cable news, and throws fits based on what he sees. And for someone who was elected as supposedly being a tough guy who doesn't care about "feelings", he is EASILY the biggest whiny-ass crybaby I have ever seen in my life. We'd be a hell of alot better off if this guy had been taken to a psychiatrist about 50 years ago. I've never seen such bottomless narcissism in my life. This is the kind of behavior that is usually handled with a pacifier and a nap, but the kicker is that Trump is 72 years old.
Trump has spent all day today essentially trying to dictate programming decisions at FOX News, spending an inordinate amount of time tweeting out who should be on the air and who should be removed from certain time slots.
This is what the leader of the free world spends his time on, on a daily basis. He watches cable news, and throws fits based on what he sees. And for someone who was elected as supposedly being a tough guy who doesn't care about "feelings", he is EASILY the biggest whiny-ass crybaby I have ever seen in my life. We'd be a hell of alot better off if this guy had been taken to a psychiatrist about 50 years ago. I've never seen such bottomless narcissism in my life. This is the kind of behavior that is usually handled with a pacifier and a nap, but the kicker is that Trump is 72 years old.
He needs to be retired and golfing at maralago full time and complaining about fox news. A least he wouldn't be hurting anybody important.
Im surprised he doesn't have about 20 holes-in-one. It's probably because he's too cheap to buy everybody a round at the clubhouse...
Comments
Democracy is majority rule.
Everyone should get an equal vote.
That is my position on the electoral college.
I'm not really so sure everyone really agrees with this. It's either that or they have no idea just how skewed the numbers are. It has become EXCEEDINGLY popular on the right to defend this system. It's mostly happened because of Trump, but this also happened in 2000. So yeah, if my party was starting to be the sole one seeing the benefit of a pattern where every other Presidency the guy who gets to sit in the most powerful position on Earth is the one who got less votes (and, in both case, alot less less votes) then I would sure as shit probably be going to bat for it too. But this has happened twice in 16 years, and it has been to the benefit of the same party both times. If things continue at this rate, we might as well just hand off the Presidency to the opposite party after 8 years and go back and forth. Because that is basically what is happening.
Since 1992, we have had 6 Presidential elections. Republicans have won the popular vote ONCE in those 24 years, and that was only because of the power of incumbency. Despite losing the popular vote in 83% of the elections since that time, they have held onto the Presidency for a full 50% of it assuming Trump fills our his entire first term.
And most people who talk about this one way or another have no earthly idea how it works. I bet you couldn't get 5% of the population to explain to you in even a basic way how electors work. You probably couldn't get 20% who could explain the electoral college beyond how it is presented as what is basically a version of Risk on cable news.
I couldn't sleep last night and early this morning I went to the local cafe right when it opened at 6am for breakfast. There was a group of guys who were obvious regulars, and I couldn't help but overhear their entire conversation for over a half-hour. And I could barely keep from screaming. They were talking about things, but they had NO clue what they were discussing. They were discussing the college admission scandal from last week and were getting the facts completely wrong. They started talking about the local college men's basketball team getting into the NCAA tournament, and they were specifically talking about a game in the past that they all seemed to remember the team has WON, when I, sitting there eating my pancakes, knew for a 110% fact the team had actually LOST. Point being (and I have thought this for a long time), people in general don't really know jack-shit about anything that doesn't pertain to their job and home life. This was 5 guys in a diner in one of these low-population states. From what I could tell they had pretty varied careers and backgrounds. At least two of them would have to have college degrees based on their jobs. And they were all talking with 100% certainty about topics they knew absolutely nothing about. They might as well have been reading the National Enquirer out loud.
Even if we stick with the Electoral College, I'd really like to end the winner-take-all allocation of electors. It should make a difference whether you win 51% or 90% of California.
...Right?
That's what the interstate compact thing is going to do.
Right now if California did that and Wyoming or Texas (or whatever) did not do that , then a lot of voters in those states would not get represented, they would see "all" their electors go to the wrong guy and California, the state with the most Americans, would get even more cheated.
National popular vote is the ONLY solution to ensure one person / one vote is fairly counted. Electors are the problem either if you send them all for one guy or if you split them up they still won't fairly represent the correct amount of Americans they are supposed to representing. No matter what it is a rigged system.
The only rational thing is national popular vote otherwise you get vote slavery , yeah I said it, like we have now with certain states getting way more than their share others only counting for fractions of votes in other states.
The Senate is rigged. It gives 2 Senators to empty Wyoming and 2 Senators to California and New York and Texas. This is gives extreme power to empty lines on a map.
The rigged Senate has installed Supreme Court justices who represent a minority of Americans. Brett Kavanaugh is the Supreme Court Justice who has received the fewest votes ever. Neil Gorsuch is sitting in a stolen seat.
The House of Representatives is rigged and artificially limited by a law from over 100 years ago and does not reflect current population. The 12th, the Apportionment Amendment, has languished unratified by the states, apparently by accident. In just the past decade, archival research has suggested that Connecticut ratified the amendment in 1790 without Congress noticing, meaning it should have taken effect upon Vermont’s ratification in 1791. But the rigged Supreme Court in 2012 rejected an appeal to get the amendment recognized.
The President lost the popular vote represents a minority of Americans.
No wonder right, why things are such a mess.
If a state vote is split 60-40 and they have 10 electoral votes, wouldn't a better representation of "the will of the people" to have 6 electoral votes go to the person who won 60% and 4 go to the person who won 40% instead of winner take all?
Are those 40% votes being taken into account when the results are in?
I do not agree with this as regional representation does need to be taken into account. For example:
Assume the people of Toronto (2.7 million) feel like they need a new gizmo that only Torontonian can use (unless others visit) and to raise this money, they apply a new international waters shipping tax that affects places like Halifax (415,000), Quebec City (500,000) and Vancouver (610,000) but not actually Toronto. These three sets of populations would have less of a say in something that directly effects them because Toronto is almost double all their size.
To counter this Toronto should have 15 votes and Halifax, Quebec, and Vancouver should have 1 vote per 100,000 people rounded down (4,5,6 respectively). Toronto still gets to dictate the majority of what happens in the country, but they can not dictate something without another regions approval.
This of course is an overly simplified example, but I hope you see the point in it.
I think those statements can be reasonably disputed - that should be pretty obvious in fact as the US constitution is clearly not based on them
Consider the issue in the UK of Scotland and Brexit. Scotland voted heavily to remain in the EU, although the overall majority in the UK was to leave. Scotland is in some ways a much more distinct entity than US states - it's an individual country with its own legal system and devolved powers over the bulk of affairs which affect its people. However, it does not control international treaties and hence has been given no rights to stop Brexit, even though that undercuts its supposed devolved powers (there is a legal case proceeding about this, but the Scottish government isn't expected to win it). That's democracy in action, but whether it's fair can certainly be reasonably disputed.
As an alternative way of looking at things consider the issue about minority rights we've debated lots of times. Say a law were passed which banned mosques - and it seems to me that is a plausible possibility. Would the fact that it's the will of the majority make it right, or is it reasonable to say that there should be limits on democracy?
"Socrates’ point is that voting in an election is a skill, not a random intuition. Like any skill, it needs to be taught systematically to people. Letting the citizenry vote without an education is as irresponsible as putting them in charge of a trireme sailing to Samos in a storm. We have forgotten all about Socrates’ salient warnings against democracy. We have preferred to think of democracy as an unambiguous good, rather than a process that is only ever as effective as the education system that surrounds it."
-Why Socrates hated Democracy.
It's gone WELL past protecting from "tyranny of the majority" when there are at least 5 states that have literally 50-80x more proportional representation in the Senate as the largest one. That isn't protecting the minority, that is flat-out minority rule, to the level of absolute absurdity. Which, as I have pointed out, is also the body that gets to vote on the Supreme Court. The only thing separating the people who have more voting power from those that have less is lines on a map.
There isn't a single area of how we choose our government where California isn't getting screwed with their pants on. It's not only one of 14 states that GIVES more than it receives back from the federal government (as in, for every dollar they send to Washington, the get less than that back in how much the federal government spends on the state), but they can't even get equitable proportional representation in the ONE place where it should be a given, which is the House of Representatives. Shit, the population of Los Angeles County ALONE is equal to that of 12 states COMBINED, who have 24 Senators casting votes, or basically 25% of the entire body.
When the Constitution was written, the absolute largest disparity in population between the 13 original colonies was between Virginia and Delaware, in which the former was 12x larger than the later (and that number went down to only 10x when you factored in who could actually vote). That disparity in 2019 is now 80x, and the SAME rule is in place. I mean, look at the numbers when they put this together. A Senate such as we have makes all the sense in the world if THESE are the numbers, because they simply aren't that far apart (again, these are white males who could vote, which was the standard at the time):
Virginia: 110,936
Pennsylvania: 110,788
Massachusetts: 95,453
New York: 83,700
North Carolina: 69,988
Connecticut: 60,523
Maryland: 55,915
New Jersey: 45,251
New Hampshire: 36,086
South Carolina: 35,576
Maine: 24,384
Vermont: 22,435
Rhode Island: 16,019
Kentucky: 15,154
Georgia: 13,103
Delaware: 11,783
In regards to most of these populations, the differences (especially in the middle of the pack) are basically a rounding error. It isn't until you get down to the last 5 or 6 where any real difference is discernible. It isn't anything like this anymore. It's also WELL worth mentioning that of the states in the bottom half of the population totals, 4 of them are among the 7 states who had a slave population that was OVER 10% of the entire population. In the case of Georgia and South Carolina, it was basically 40%. So yes, when people say this whole system (including the Senate) was designed to placate the states that MOST relied on slavery, the numbers bear out that is entirely correct.
We are well past time.
@jjstraka34 I don't disagree the system could benefit from reform and I do think that the disparity between representation of states is a problem. However, even though I'm not American, I suspect that an awful lot of Americans would not agree with you that the differences between states are just "lines on a map."
I also don't see the situation now as anything like as radically different as you do from the original intentions of the constitution. To me, if differences in representation of 10x are deemed acceptable, that's really only a change in degree, not in kind, from the current difference of 80x and I suspect that the writers of the constitution would have been happy to apply it to the current situation (though in practice I think that wouldn't have happened because the larger states would have been split up into smaller ones - which of course does remain an option today to partially address the current disparities).
What I think has really changed is not the distribution of population, but the way in which we regard voting rights more generally. When the constitution was written voting was not seen as a general right, but restricted to particular groups (essentially white land-owning men) - and what democracy meant was therefore very different. I appreciate there's an ongoing struggle about who should be able to vote even now, but there has been a huge shift over time towards the idea of "one man, one vote". In that light I think the constitution does need rethinking, but even if that happened I would still expect it to provide some form of protection for individual states.
DC has 3 electoral votes, but it is utterly devoid of any representation in either branch of Congress. In what I don't view as a fact that is even remotely coincidental, the city is also 48% African-American. What possible justification is there for saying "if you live within the parameters of this city, you don't get a House rep or Senators"?? If you live in DC, you aren't even being afforded a bare minimum of citizenship rights. They technically have a rep who is in the House, but she cannot cast any votes.
So yeah, statehood for DC and Puerto Rico yesterday. But you know why it won't happen?? Because people think 50 is a nice, even number. As soon as it would get brought up, the firestorm on the right would be "look at the liberals trying to change America and our culture, we're under attack". Nevermind the fact that both places are ALREADY part of America and have no representation whatsoever.
So anyone defending the current system who isn't also calling for the immediate enfranchisement of Puerto Rico and DC can spare me the diatribe, because if that's the case it's a completely hollow and disingenuous argument.
Edit: Also, states numbers two and three in population are also underrepresented. You know which states those are? Texas and Florida. Oh the unfairness of it all...
And I raise you Montana, Idaho, and North AND South Dakota, and Alaska. All of which, by the way, have a FAR smaller population than Puerto Rico. And the principle does not change because certain blue states are also the beneficiary of this ridiculous system. Wyoming and California are used as the barometer because it shows the difference in voting power between the most populus state and the least populus. I could run the math on all of them vs. California individually, but I have other shit to do. But I did run some quick numbers, and California, Texas, Florida, and New York are all getting screwed pretty much right on the nose equally in terms of the Electoral college, to within about 100,000-200,000 people for each elector in each case. Two of them are blue states, one is red, and one is practically the definition of a coin toss in modern politics.
But just for shits and giggles, let's take a middle of the road population state (Minnesota) and put it up against Vermont. A relatively modest population state and a low-pop one. Even in THIS case where the disparity is much less, the voters of Vermont are STILL 2.4x more powerful in voting for President. And 8x more powerful in the Senate. For this particular random example, for whatever reason, the House seats are basically how they should be.
Let's see if it does "Even out".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories_of_the_United_States_by_population
There appear to be demonstrably more states with a smaller population which receive unfair representation which are so called "Red states".
According to the link above - there are 21 states with electoral representation below Puerto Rico on this list. 13 of them reliably vote Red, and 8 of them reliably vote Blue. Reliable is a bit of loaded term here, but even of those 21 states, the only two states to cross over since 2000 were Iowa and New Hampshire.
If you look at the two columns - Estimated Population per House Seat and Estimated population per electoral vote, I think the picture becomes REALLY clear. We attempt, albeit not perfectly, to even things out for the House of Representatives (Gerrymandering still an issue here, as is our decision to cap the total number preventing true fairness), but look at the ridiculous drop off in the electoral college vote population share. It's perfectly absurd.
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The only reason it matters to me is that if things were reversed, I'd be arguing with Republicans about not shit-canning our system and I'd be hearing crickets from the Democrats. Sorry you lost, not sorry our system is working as intended...
This is what the leader of the free world spends his time on, on a daily basis. He watches cable news, and throws fits based on what he sees. And for someone who was elected as supposedly being a tough guy who doesn't care about "feelings", he is EASILY the biggest whiny-ass crybaby I have ever seen in my life. We'd be a hell of alot better off if this guy had been taken to a psychiatrist about 50 years ago. I've never seen such bottomless narcissism in my life. This is the kind of behavior that is usually handled with a pacifier and a nap, but the kicker is that Trump is 72 years old.
He needs to be retired and golfing at maralago full time and complaining about fox news. A least he wouldn't be hurting anybody important.
Second childhood?
Im surprised he doesn't have about 20 holes-in-one. It's probably because he's too cheap to buy everybody a round at the clubhouse...