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Lawrence Lessig Calls For The Electoral College to Choose Clinton Over Trump (washingtonpost.com)
Lawrence Lessig's new op-ed in the Washington Post argues against the idea "that the person who lost the popular vote this year must nonetheless become our president." (Paywalled version here, free version here.) Lessig points out that the electoral college results have already been ignored twice in U.S. history -- in 1824 and 1876.
The Constitution says nothing about "winner take all." It says nothing to suggest that electors' freedom should be constrained in any way...They were to be citizens exercising judgment, not cogs turning a wheel.
Complaining that the electoral college weights the votes in Wyoming roughly four times as heavily as the votes in Michigan, Lessig argues that the popular vote should be respected, and that the authors of the U.S. Constitution "left the electors free to choose. They should exercise that choice by leaving the election as the people decided it: in Clinton's favor."
Meanwhile, Politico is reporting that six electors, "mostly former Bernie Sanders supporters who hail from Washington state and Colorado," are already urging electors pledged to Clinton and Trump to instead coalesce around "a consensus pick like Mitt Romney or John Kasich." And the ethics lawyers for both President Obama and President Bush both told one liberal site "that if Trump continues to retain ownership over his sprawling business interests by the time the electors meet on December 19, they should reject Trump." Finally, from the original submission:
Even Donald Trump has called the Electoral College a "total sham." Is it time for the Electoral College to reflect the popular vote?
Complaining that the electoral college weights the votes in Wyoming roughly four times as heavily as the votes in Michigan, Lessig argues that the popular vote should be respected, and that the authors of the U.S. Constitution "left the electors free to choose. They should exercise that choice by leaving the election as the people decided it: in Clinton's favor."
Meanwhile, Politico is reporting that six electors, "mostly former Bernie Sanders supporters who hail from Washington state and Colorado," are already urging electors pledged to Clinton and Trump to instead coalesce around "a consensus pick like Mitt Romney or John Kasich." And the ethics lawyers for both President Obama and President Bush both told one liberal site "that if Trump continues to retain ownership over his sprawling business interests by the time the electors meet on December 19, they should reject Trump." Finally, from the original submission:
Even Donald Trump has called the Electoral College a "total sham." Is it time for the Electoral College to reflect the popular vote?
All I have to say is "good luck with that." There have never been more than a few, some electors are legally bound to vote with their state, etc.
Still, surprised he'd do that given what they really think about him
Very few countries elect their chief executive with a popular vote.
A parliamentary system is probably the most common (perhaps after dictatorships). It's similar to the Electoral College, except the MPs do the voting.
The term "Democracy" is an umbrella term that represents all systems of "rule by the people", including representative democracies like ours (also known as a republic). While its true that our founding fathers tended to mean "direct democracy" when speaking of "democracy", that's no longer the case. From Wikipedia:
The Founding Fathers of the United States rarely praised and often criticised democracy, which in their time tended to specifically mean direct democracy, often without the protection of a constitution enshrining basic rights
But, as we all know, language changes over time. It's worthwhile to understand the history of these terms, but really, you're pissing against the wind if you think people are not going to continue to call our government a "democracy". According to Google:
democracy
dmäkrs/
noun
noun: democracy
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
What he is advocating will result in nothing less than civil war
Lessig may be delusional - but what you are suggesting is beyond retarded.
There is no army to fight such a war. It's no longer 1800s.
US military is now a highly trained tiny percent of the whole population - not a bunch of guys marching in a straight like across the field, armed with flintlocks.
The side going against the army of the US government loses even before a single civilian warrior gets his boots on.
Nor could you get anyone to sign up for such a war. Again - only a tiny percentage of US population wishes to serve at all.
And that's without the whole "Going to a war to shoot me some Americans" thing having a chance of being a bit unpopular among Americans.
Beyond. Retarded.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
all leftovers go to the Green party, read the fine print
https://jillstein.nationbuilde...
If we raise more than what's needed, the surplus will also go toward election integrity efforts and to promote voting system reform.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens