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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?
Stop bitching about how unfair the electoral college is. Go through the legal process to change/eliminate it so this it doesn't happen again, if that's what the people want.
" Is it time for the Electoral College to reflect the popular vote?"
Way past time.
For months before the election, the MSM & Hillary supporters hammered about how Trump & his supporters wouldn't accept the results of the election.
Now that Hillary has lost, her supports can't accept the results. Death threats to electors. Riots in the street. Offering the pay fines for electors who break the law. MSM story after story about how the circumvent the will of the people. Jill Stein taking donations to force a recount where even she says that there was no fraudulent or illegal activity.
It seems life is not without a sense of irony.
Why is this on slashdot?
What a bunch of sore losers.
They should all move to Canada. Quickly, like they promised.
There are a lot of good arguments for the electoral college voting for Hillary. Lessig lays most of them out. There are also good arguments against (among other issues we don't know if Hillary would have won the popular vote if both she and Trump had been competing to optimize turnout). It is also utterly irrelevant: the electoral college members are primarily bog-standard Republicans, and we've seen in the last few months that most establishment Republicans hate Hillary more than they love their basic ideology and beliefs (whatever Trump stands for, it damn well isn't conservativism by any standard definition of the term). So pushing for this at this juncture is a waste of resources.
Clinton and Trump campaigned in the swing states because that is what the Electoral College encourages. The popular vote "imbalance" is a mirage. If they had been campaigning for the popular vote, if there had been no Electoral College, the campaigns and the results would have been different in ways we can't imagine.
To change the Electoral College process now, after the popular vote is over, is sour grapes.
Infuriate left and right
It's working exactly as designed, striking a balance of power between the states. It's a concept we have in the congress, population based representation in one house and equal state based representation in the other. Without the electoral college the president would effectively be chosen by only a handful of states. The college ensures that all of the states have at least some effective say in the matter.
The vote of each state.
There are many reasons why a straight popular vote is bad and the electoral college is better but the best one I can think of is what happened in the recent election. Hillary Clinton won 300 counties while Trump won 5000. If you think that the election of a nation should be swayed by a handful of cities while the rest of the nation is completely ignored, well, you're an idiot.
Sure. Genius Liberal in action here. Sending $400 million in unmarked cash to the World's Leading State Sponsor of terrorism while also trying to import endless more terrorists into the US is more likely to destroy our country than anything Trump is going to do. Having the electorate spontaneously decide to not elect who they're supposed to and instead elect Crooked Hillary, the woman who never met a Middle East dictatorship she didn't accept bribes from is not the genius idea you sore losers think it is.
I do a search on youtube every day for hillary tears. Gotta say it is satisfying to watch all those delusional morons bawling their eyes out. However, the fact that many of these idiots STILL cannot accept reality is worthy of a 55 gallon drum of popcorn. HAHAHAHAHAH
supposedly argued in IIRC The Federalist #68 that one purpose of the Electoral College was to prevent anyone who was unqualified or beholden to a foreign power from becoming President.
IMO both are applicable now, but defecting electors could set a precedent that might come back and bite us later.
I can't imagine that Republican electors would defect to Clinton. AIUI, all they have to do is prevent anyone from getting 270 EV, in which case the selection would fall to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The House Democrats might all go for Clinton, and the Republicans would be very divided, but they tend to get in line when the chips are down, so we'd surely get a Republican. Romney would be my best guess, but they might decide that the appearance of legitimacy requires choosing someone who actually ran, maybe Bush or that guy from Utah, or even Pence.
I don't expect any of that to happen, and I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but then I've been wrong about everything else concerning this election, so who knows...
As for switching from the Electoral College to the popular vote, the low-population states will be very much against this. I suspect it was designed as a deliberate attempt to keep the high-population states from dominating the low-population states, but now that we have 50 with a great deal of variety, maybe that motivation isn't relevant any more.
Also, if the EC should be replaced by proportional representation or direct popular vote, where does that leave the Senate? Should it be converted to proportional representation as well? Would it be any good to us if it was just a clone of the House of Representatives?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What happened to this place?
So my rural state will get basically no political say in picking a President?
Yeah, there's a reason things like the electoral college were set up and it was to give states good reasons for being part of the union.
If we want to keep dividing the country up into two coasts, and "flyover country", then shit, why talk about getting rid of the Electoral College? Maybe its time to get rid of the entire union.....
Besides if the country is now made up of groups that hate each others with nearly unbounded passions, an amicable breakup is possibly the best bet.
Oh and don't worry Millenials in "flyover country" the east and west coast have loads of sanctuary cities and open borders, so you're totally free to go there....
Why do republican candidates get their favor as 'consensus' picks?
It's a sneaky way for them to try and get some Republican electors to vote for someone if they won't change to Hillary, just so Trump could lose some votes.
The historical mistake cannot be corrected by em, unless they somehow cancel the whole election or elect some third party candidate.
Why the Electoral College is a good thing.
Why the Electoral College is a bad thing.
Who finds one position more compelling than the other?
It seems like you have a whole lot of lawlessness in Australia? How do the 7% get excused?
The problem isn't Trump, it is all the people who voted for Trump.
If we take the election back from Trump under the theory that the constitution is not a suicide pact, that won't address the issue of all the people who voted for Trump. In 1824, when electoral college did the same thing to Andrew Jackson (who was a similar combination of demagoguery, narcissism and ignorance) the result was counterproductive. Adams was selected by congress over Jackson. But was a very ineffective president because the circumstances of his selection negated any mandate to lead.
However the effect of "taking" the election from Jackson was to hypermotivate people who had previously been lukewarm or neutral and 4 years later Jackson won handily. He then went on to do all the terrible things people were worried about but now he had a lot of support not for his policies but as a reaction to what happened in 1824. So despite fucking up, he was still elected for a second term.
We are faced with no good choices with Trump. Just lesser evils. Nobody can see the future, but an unpopular Trump entering office today, with no honeymoon period and the press raring to hold him accountable could be a lot better than a popular Trump (or Ivanka) entering office 4 years from now.
I wish a knew for sure.
If we're going to go for the popular vote, we can just wait for California to vote and let them decide who's going to be president. Save the rest of the states the trouble of running elections.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
You mean will the electors vote as the will of their State and the laws thereof, or will they ignore it and go with the trendy feelings of Hillary voters?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Power to rural states and power to electors are intertwined concepts but they're not the same. Electors happen to typically vote for the popular vote of the state, but this is a matter of luck. What you wanted is a system where electors don't have a say, but the rural state does.
I rest my case.
Please explain how the polls continually claimed it was 50/50 between Trump and Clinton (or thereabouts), but Trump averaged around 8,000 - 10,000 people at each of his rallies, whereas Clinton averaged about 1,000, and did far fewer rallies.
The evidence is there in video and photographic form, unequivocal. Trump had and has massively more support than Clinton, yet we're supposed to believe the election itself was somehow a close run thing, and that Clinton actually got MORE votes than Trump?
So why did so few of her supporters go to her rallies? And this is in spite of HER supporters deliberately blocking roads to prevent Trump supporters from attending his rallies, and HER supporters 'protesting' outside Trump rallies- i.e. THREATENING Trump supporters, to try to put them off going to listen to him... instead of doing what people used to do - publicising their favoured candidate's policies...
Anybody got an answer?
I'm not a fan of the Electoral College, and I'd be pleased to see it go away. However. . .
The shortcomings of the Electoral College are *trivial* in comparison with the broken and dysfunctional primary system that gave us Clinton and Trump as our major-party candidates. It's utter madness. That's where we should focus our reform efforts.
That becomes the tyranny of the majority. In fact, in this election, the entire lead that Hillary has is covered by her lead in Los Angeles County. Basically a single county dictates the entire election of the President? Sucks if you live anywhere else, huh...
Instead of a popular vote, do like Nebraska and Maine. Proportional votes. Each district gets their own winner - and the overall State winner gets the two extra electoral votes. Eliminate "winner take all" - that is the TRUE discrimination. Let each district vote how it wants and cast its own elector.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I need to show various forms of ID to open a bank account or buy a beer.
Right now all I have to do to vote in my state is to simply say who I am and where I live.
I find this a bit ridiculous regardless whether it's the electoral college or popular vote.
On the one hand, Lessig relies (correctly) on the fact that the Constitution places no restrictions on how electors vote and that it was expected that they would be citizens exercising judgement.
On the other hand, he disagrees with a very fundamental feature of the Constitution -- that states, by the fact they are states, have power beyond just the mass of their population. This is directly evidenced in the Constitution as it defines how the Electoral College and Senate work. The Founders felt so strongly that each state have an equal vote in the Senate independent of the population of the state that the ONLY thing that can't be amended in the Constitution with approval of ¾ of the states (NO state can lose equal suffrage in the Senate without approval of that state).
It seems quite odd to rely on the Constitution for one argument and then completely dismiss one of its most fundamental concepts that protected the less populous states from being run roughshod over at the Federal level by the more populous states. One might go so far as to label such a viewpoint as hypocritical.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
> For months before the election, the MSM & Hillary supporters hammered about how Trump & his supporters wouldn't accept the results of the election.
For years before the election, Trump and Trump supporters hammer about how the Electoral College was the worst thing to happen to democracy. [1].
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I have a better idea. Half the country reviles Clinton. Half the country is repulsed by Trump. There is nothing in the Constitution requiring the Electors obey the political parties, since the authors wanted there to be no political parties.
The Electoral College should elect Bernie Sanders.
Think about it. The huge swing in Trump's support followed Sanders' defeat in the primary. He won because there is a huge voting bloc that really and truly wants change, a candidate that will do something radically different from the status quo. Electing Clinton kinda spits in their faces. Electing Sanders validates their votes, while also keeping neo-Nazis out of the Whitehouse.
Democrats are happy one of their primary picks gets in. Republicans are happy because the DNC stacked the deck to get Clinton in, and this is a big "fuck you" to the DNC. Trump economic populism supporters are happy because Sanders is also focused on those issues. Really the only people who lose in this scenario is the neo-Nazis, and the few people at the top of the DNC, and Russia because their millions of dollars trying to change the outcome is wasted. (And it's a huge "fuck you" to Russia for trying to manipulate our democracy.)
It's a huge win for everybody. Seriously. Elect Bernie Sanders on December 19th.
For months before the election, the MSM & Hillary supporters hammered about how Trump & his supporters wouldn't accept the results of the election.
The talk about the election was about Trump not accepting the results if he lost, and concerns about what his supporters would do in the aftermath.
Hillary is accepting the results, even though she has damn good reason to be pissed off (leading in the polls going in, won the popular vote, had the FBI director break the law to create an October surprise), she's never said or done anything to signal that she doesn't accept the results.
Now that Hillary has lost, her supports can't accept the results. Death threats to electors. Riots in the street. Offering the pay fines for electors who break the law. MSM story after story about how the circumvent the will of the people. Jill Stein taking donations to force a recount where even she says that there was no fraudulent or illegal activity.
It seems life is not without a sense of irony.
The riots are justified and not an attempt to overturn the results, they're a signal to Trump that there's strong popular resistance to his campaign pledges and the majority of the country does not want him as President.
The recount is also justified, it's unlikely but possible that Russia or some other group did compromise the election in those states. If so it means Trump didn't actually win.
As for Lessig and threats to the electors, that is unjustified. As screwed up as the EC is, it's the system that was in place and everyone else agreed to beforehand, you can't change the rules afterwards. But Clinton, the entire Democratic establishment, and the vast majority of the Democratic party, are completely against the electors changing the result.
That is why you can't hold Clinton accountable for the people asking the electors to change the result, but you can hold Trump accountable for the open Nazis and racists in his camp.
I stole this Sig
It would be one thing if he genuinely didn't get it. But he knows he is wrong and he makes the argument anyway. State laws is what obligates members of the electoral college to vote proportionately or winner-take-all. If states wanted to, they could change their laws through state legislatures. Lessig's argument is that the members of the electoral college should break the law. And, as a law professor, he knows it. As for whether or not the law should be changed, the electoral college acts as a check on corruption. If a certain locality decides to game the system by having a lot of fake votes, there is very little to stop it after the candidate takes office. Currently such a locality would only effect he votes of one state. Without electoral college, it would effect the vote count nation-wide. And, again as a law professor, Lessig knows this.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I have a solution for you.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
For years before the election, Trump and Trump supporters hammer about how the Electoral College was the worst thing to happen to democracy. [1].
So "Trump and Trump Supporters" can now tweet on Trump's twitter?
A single tweet is now "hammering?"
You may want to rethink your argument there Sparky.
is how the media twists and contorts just about every news item lately to paint the President Elect in a negative manner. Either liberal views or an attempt to stay relevant in this day and age, either way it's just sickening.
Face the facts, the liberal opinion and political agenda doesn't work and the people have voted as such. Media as we knew it is just getting lost in the noise that is the internet. Intelligent people are able to see the difference between signal and noise no matter how much noise the liberal media produces.
Whereas our political system isn't perfect, its better than any in history and people are more intelligent than the media.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I have a solution for you.
My lily-white, tea party-loving relatives already live in a bubble. They no longer associate with me since I'm a moderate conservative, I live in Silicon Valley and I have no problem getting on a bus people from all over the world speaking different languages.
And those cities generate most of America's wealth. It would be a terrible idea to decide elections by the number of counties won. If you think the election should be decided by poor people who live in the middle of nowhere, then you're wrong.
And the breadbasket states generate most of America's food.
Which is worth more - food or wealth?
Are you saying wealth should be the deciding factor in elections?
You mean will the electors vote as the will of their State and the laws thereof, or will they ignore it and go with the trendy feelings of Hillary voters?
Yes. But no one has trendy feelings for Hillary.
If these DNC reprobates are so adamant about proportional representation, why do they not first repeal the corrupt party mafia appointed ``superdelegate'' cancer in their own party? Had they done so, Bernie Sanders would have been their rightful candidate, not ``Crooked'' Hillary Clinton. He might well have received more electoral votes than Trump, given that this was essentially, at core, and anti-establishment election.
superdelegate – noun US - plural noun: super-delegates (in the Democratic Party) an unelected delegate who is free to support any candidate for the presidential nomination at the party's national convention.
Error: NSE - No Signature Error
The point is that's not correcting the mistake, it's just moving the mistake slightly to the left.
There are two design elements in the original Constitution that were included to support the concept of a federal representative republic, rather than a democracy. The will of the people was to be in the House of Representatives, and the will of the individual states was in the Senate, where the senators were appointed by the state legislatures. The electoral college put this same balance into the election of the president.
The seventeenth amendment removed the direct state control of the senators. The electoral college still helps balance the needs of the states and the needs of the people while picking the President.
Yes, I know there were other things going on with both these issues, but in terms of influence on current events, I believe these are the important concepts.
Two quotes:
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury." Alexander Tytler 1787
"The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do." - Joseph Stalin
If faithless electors put Clinton over the top, or even if they send it to the House and Trump loses (the House gets to pick among the top 3 electoral-vote-getters), there will be marches in the streets. It will make what happened in Portland and other cities in the week after the election look like small potatoes.
I'm not singling out Trump supporters here: If the tables were turned and Trump won the popular vote by 2 million or so votes but lost the electoral votes by the same margin Clinton did, and faithless electors denied Clinton the White House, her supporters would also be marching in the streets.
Yes, we need to get rid of the electorial college or at least make major changes to it, but not before inauguration day. What America needs now is some predictability. If faithless electors do throw this into the House, I hope Clinton plays the statesman card and asks that the House vote for Trump.
--
By the way, there will also be marching in the streets no matter who takes office if the recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania wind up changing results of those states and deny Trump the 270 electoral votes he needs to have a clear majority.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The point is that's not correcting the mistake, it's just moving the mistake slightly to the left.
Alternatively, the electors could nominate Bernie Sanders. But I'm not sure if that would be kosher.
I learned that the point of the electoral college was to insure that a candidate would have to win support from a wide variety of voters, and not just a numerical large group in large cities. If there were no electoral system, candidates would campaign almost exclusively in New York, Chicago, LA, and a hand full of other large cities where large numbers of people live.
Instead we have a system where a bunch of small states have an undue influence, and as such, candidates spend all their time campaigning there. I live in a big city on the west coast, I have never even seen a presidential candidate in person.
No matter the system that you set up, there is going to be an optimal way to campaign and court interest groups, that will leave someone out in the cold. Straight popular votes benefit urban voters. Electoral systems gerrymander popular votes in favor of distributed geographical groups.
Now, consider that the the country was rural and agrarian two hundred years ago, so it might have made a lot of sense to force the politicians out of big cities and distribute influence more geographically. Now that clearly isn't the case. Perhaps going to a straight popular vote makes sense in light of the fact that more people live in cities.
And for fuck sake, knock of the partisan bitching. This is a topic that should not be about Hillary vs. Donald, but rather an honest evaluation about the system we use to choose our leaders. Election reform should transcend party, we all benefit from a system that promotes the best leaders to power.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I agree with most of what you say. I don't have a problem with recounting votes, but I'd prefer several more states be recounted. There were a lot of states with results that differed greatly from the final polls right before the election. Many of these were in the Midwest. If we want to uncover possible election fraud, there should be recounts in many more states.
As for the electoral college, it's definitely flawed. But the electors from each state were directly chosen by the people, with the intent that those electors vote for the candidate they've indicated they will support. The electors are supposed to represent the will in the voters of the state that chose them. If the electors choose to support different candidates, they're disregarding the will of the people and making the process far less democratic. It would be taking a flawed system and making it completely broken. Obviously I don't agree with electors being faithless.
It's also interesting that the Senate is another representative democracy that's far less proportional than the electoral college. Shall we also abolish the Senate if we abolish the electoral college?
Or to the right.
If you see the Clinton opinions before the campaign, she's actually quire very conservative.
Jill is in it to gather donor dollars (all leftovers go to the Green party, read the fine print).
She picked some weird states if it was just about the votes, as I discuss here.
I mean, MI has only PAPER ballots, so notions of hacking are purely delusional and you can find 538 arguing similar.
These people want to scrap the system that has been in place since the whole thing began because things didn't turn out in their favor ?
It seems that the current generation just can't handle defeat ( they've been insulated against it their entire lives ) so when things don't go
their way, the best course of action is to loudly demand that the rules be changed ? If that doesn't work, organize protests and maybe
cry on camera a bit ? Perhaps hire a celebrity to be " The voice for the unheard " or some other silly attention seeking behavior.
Welcome to reality kids. Where life is cold, uncaring, unfair and, occasionally, absolutely horrific.
By the time you become an adult, we've flat run out of consolation and / or participation prizes.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
So strap yourselves in, because it's going to be a rough ride.
For anyone who argues Trump supporters would be doing the same thing were the situation reversed, I call out your bullshit and will say
it's pure speculation on your part. Right now the only folks who are actively participating in the riots and general stupidity are those who
claim to be the " more educated, intelligent and / or informed " than those " Deplorable " Trump Supporters ( Hillary's description of them I believe ).
I don't recall any of this sort of bullshit when Obama got elected.
( Or any President in recent history for that matter. Republican or Democrat )
So, other than dealing with the most coddled, spoiled, insulated and catered-to generation of all time, what do you believe has changed to
cause such behavior issues from the very folks who own words claim intellectual superiority over everyone else, while their actions say otherwise ?
would be denigrating and talking down our democracy. That's what she said about Trump when he said he would accept the results of the election only if he won. He said several times that he thought that the process was rigged, and in most major cities it probably is. But, now that she has lost, apparently not accepting the results of the election isn't such a bad idea after all. Flip-flop?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Nobody expected yet another election where the losing candidate gets the most votes. And to add insult to injury Trump received the third worst vote margin in all of US history, yet he already acts like he has a mandate by making some very extreme announcements and decisions. Such as supporting Ryan's plan to phase out medicare.
I don't know if I'd ever call a winning margin the "third worst" of anything.
You mean will the electors vote as the will of their State and the laws thereof, or will they ignore it and go with the trendy feelings of Hillary voters?
A quick check reveals that twenty-one states have no such laws, nor would any federal law be broken if some electors from the other twenty-nine states changed their votes. The *action* of voting for someone else might break local law, but the vote itself would remain legal and valid.
The question is, do you support the electoral college system, or do you support some form of reform? The chest thumping Trump supporters thus far want to scoff at anyone who at all implies the electoral college might be a tad unfair or irrational or antiquated, but now that the topic of faithless electors has been raised I think I can sense a few tiny seeds of hypocrisy here.
If you want to change how we elect the president, you're free to join us in campaigning for a change. But we're not going to let you pretend that the EC is a perfect institution only when it leads to your favored candidate being elected.
So what's wrong with chaos. We all came from chaos. Certain kinds of chaos is bad but not all chaos. #notallchaos
So very funny. There were eight years of Obama rule during which all of these reforms could have been at least attempted. Funny how now that their favorite candidate lost everyone is coming out of the woodworks complaining about the system and asking for reforms.
Sorry guys. The proper moment to request reforms if you are really worried that the system is broken is after your favorite candidate won.
This way, it just looks like a lot of "bwuahaha, my side lost an election, that is sooo unffaaaaiiiiirrrr".
I respect Lawrence, once had a short phone conversation with him on another topic. I agree that the US political system is completely broken and needs wholesale replacement. I don't think this is the right way and the right time to do it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The popular vote is irrelevant when the rules of the election said it was irrelevant.
Right, and here is how the situation currently stands, as per those very rules: No one has been elected president yet. Electors from 21 states are free to change their votes with no penalty whatsoever, and electors from the other 29 states are free to change their votes with no federal penalities whatsoever (some state level penalties may apply for electors from these states, but the votes themselves will remain legal and valid.)
Rules are rules. If Trump supporters are allowed to handwave away concerns about the popular vote, then Hillary supporters should be able to handwave away concerns about the electors changing their votes.
Yes but they are Scantron type sheets and the machine they get fed into can be hacked.
... and stuff, make the recommendation and see if anybody wants to play.
"Before" and "after" shit don't matter.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
If you see the Clinton opinions before the campaign, she's actually quire very conservative.
That's why I consider Barack Obama to be the best moderate conservative that the Democratic Party ever nominated for POTUS.
The key difference being that Trump wasn't accepting the results before he even knew what the results were, or had any evidence that the results we unsound. So far Hillary supporters (not backed by the party, or the candidate themselves) have raised two issues with the actual results themselves: 1) Hillary won the popular vote with 4 times the margin of Gore over GW Bush in the 2000 election, where it has since been determined that if the Supreme Court had not stopped a statewide recount in Florida, the result would almost certainly have been overturned. 2) There is a possibly suspicious 7% discrepancy in districts with electronic voting vs those with paper ballots.
Personally, I'd favor an agreement between parties to honour the current result, followed by a full recount where the challengers want it, without the pressure of affecting the democratic result to avoid political interference and challenges, so we can learn what faults the system has, and fix them for future elections.
Repealing the 17th amendment would do a lot to reduce the corruption in DC. At the time, the 17th was a fix for corruption, and it worked for some time, until all the lobbyists moved to DC. I think it's time to reset that breaker, we'll again get years, maybe decades, of better governance while the lobbyists figure out how to bribe 50 state governments.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The real problem in the election was how Hillary became the candidate. The Democrats need to fix how they nominate:
1) Get rid of Super Delegates. Their only purpose is to overrule the voters.
2) Get rid of caucuses. They are too easy to rig.
3) Use the primary vote to select the candidate.
"No fraudulent or illegal activity" should never be declared until after a recount which should at the very least be made more often than it does now.
The historic mistake was nominating Hillary Clinton, a corrupt, incompetent war monger. The electoral college can't fix that.
Because they are 2 of the 50 states. You may not like that fact but it has meaning and is significant.
If Clinton had won the Electoral College but Trump had won the popular vote, would you have taken the time to write up an op-ed outlining the flaws of the Electoral College, would you have protested in the streets, would you be demanding Trump be made President? If not, then you are simply being partisan, and your support for this is out of self-interest rather than truly wishing to improve the system.
Someone truly wishing to reform the Electoral College would be for such reform regardless of who won. If you truly believe a change is for the better, you support it even when it works against your own self interests. I think Merkley made a mistake dismantling one of the checks and balances the Founding Fathers put into the system to prevent a simple majority from having too much power, but I respect him for not changing his position even though he now finds himself on the disadvantaged side of his rule change.
(And if you're one of the people who believe Merkley's rule change was necessary because the Republicans were stonewalling in the Senate, the Washington Post keeps a database of how often each Senator votes with his/her party. Here are the stats for the 108th, 109th, 110th, 111th, 112th, and 113th Senates, spanning 2002-2015 with Senate control by both parties, covering both a Republican President and Democrat President. Click on the Party column to sort it by Senators most likely to vote for their party. You'll see it's actually the Democrats who most frequently vote as a block, and the Republicans who are more willing to cross the party line. The meme that Republicans refused to compromise was fake news spread by the mainstream media without any statistical evidence to back it up.)
hmm, maybe require scans from different manufacturers (three or more would be best). Not necessarily at each precent, but all ballots to be scanned multple times at a more centralized/secure location before integration for final tally.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
I'm not sure what definition of republic you are using but one is that it is simply a representative democracy.
Heck, I am from all over the world and speak several different languages, and I wouldn't be anywhere near you. Maybe the problem is with you rather than with your relatives?
On topic: Wealth should not decide elections. I am responding to the suggestion that the relatively small number of urban counties shouldn't count as much as the many rural counties, even though they have many people and drive the economy. Our system is roughly based on population, as it should be.
Off topic: Wealth can be used to acquire or produce food, just like anything else. As a nation, we could abolish our agricultural subsidies and be better off economically.
A fair post, so I'll respond in kind.
The way I see it, the EC diminishes a large problem at the expense of introducing a small one.
We're seeing the small problem manifest more in modern times because of effective universal communication, forcing both candidates to a central position. It's like two ice cream vendors serving a beach - people will gravitate to the vendor closest to them, so each vendor maximizes it's custom by being in the exact middle of the boardwalk. (In this simile the "middle" is any political position, and the voters will vote for the person who is "closest" to their personal beliefs.)
Looking at the responses here, it's clear that the EC is doing its job. If it were abolished, it's clear even from the replies to this article that the middle states would revolt (meaning: secede from the union) rather than be ruled by the most populous states.
One reason to *not* put Clinton into office is that it would result in nation-wide rioting at a level that might bring down the government.
Roughly half the population approves of Trump(*). The Clinton protests were small because fundamentally most people realize that Trump won fairly and there's no cause for grievance.
Make Clinton president and you've suddenly got a whole lot of people who have a legitimate excuse to protest, and a fair portion of Clinton supporters would probably agree - some would join in, a sizeable proportion would probably silently agree, and almost all of them wouldn't oppose the protests.
It sucks that Clinton lost, but please consider the situation.
Beyond any political leanings people have, people fundamentally believe themselves to be fair and honest.
Switching the election would violate that feeling in a whole lot of people, more than just the ones who supported Trump.
And as further info, note that 26 states rejected Obama's executive orders on refugees. That's very close to the 33 needed to force a constitutional crisis. It seems *highly likely* that putting Clinton in the president's chair would trigger such a crisis.
Obama backed down and essentially said "let the next president deal with it", and I think the states also held off because they knew they'd have a chance to vote in someone else. But put Clinton in that chair and we're threatening the extinction of our country.
Once again, it sucks that Clinton lost, but please consider the situation.
(*) You can extend the vote results to cover the entire country because it's a large enough sample.
That may not be her intent but it is practically a dead certainty that some terrorists will sneak in with the refugees.
Maybe the problem is with you rather than with your relatives?
My relatives live in Idaho. If they want to see a Mexican, they got to the Mexican restaurant. If they want to see a Chinese, they got to laundromat. If they want to see a Black, they go to the rodeo to see him riding a horse and telling off-color jokes. Meanwhile, I see all these people when I get on the bus in Silicon Valley and the only white people I know are out of state coworkers. Which one of us is "normal" in today's America?
This op-ed reflects a profound, if not willful, lack of understanding of the Electoral College, its architecture and design.
As argued in the Federalist Papers No.10, No.39 and No.68, the purpose of the Electoral College was to avoid the tyranny of an irrational, impassioned majority (sound familiar?). It had nothing whatsoever to do w/ implementing direct popular democracy. Quite the opposite, in fact, it was a compromise between the large states and the small states to implement sovereign regional federalism.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Specifically:
[I]n the Federalist No. 10, James Madison argued against "an interested and overbearing majority" and the "mischiefs of faction" in an electoral system. He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." What was then called republican government (i.e., federalism, as opposed to direct democracy), with its varied distribution of voter rights and powers, would countervail against factions. Madison further postulated in the Federalist No. 10 that the greater the population and expanse of the Republic, the more difficulty factions would face in organizing due to such issues as sectionalism.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Moreover, the original system was devised to assign electoral votes proportional to congressional district popular votes, not winner-take-all state-wide popular votes. Each congressional district gets a single electoral vote based on its local popular vote, then two more electoral votes are allocated, one for each state's congressional Senator, presumably to be allocated per the senatorial district popular vote, but in practice both assigned per the state-wide popular vote. So, it is the current state-wide winner-take-all scheme in most states (excepting Maine & Nebraska) that is the root of the problem to which these disgruntled losers seem to object.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The original founders even proposed an amendment to force this district-based apportionment, but a handful of smaller states objected. Over time, more and more states gravitated toward winner-take-all in a misguided attempt to increase the power of their state legislatures (the ruling class) over the power of the individual voter (the citizenry). This transition was stimulated by the abolitionist movement and the Civil War era, BTW. It reflected the passions of a vocal minority which eventually became a majority through coercion. (I'm not saying that was a bad thing, just that that is how and why it evolved.)
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Note that changing each state to congressional district apportionment of electors does not require a constitutional amendment: it is up to each state legislature to determine its own method of electoral vote assignment.
If, say, California or New York or Oregon or Illinois felt so damned strongly about this, it is a simple matter of citizens compelling their state legislatures to switch back to the original congressional district proportional scheme. Of course, then they wouldn't have the bully club of their present winner-take-all big city / college town domination, as seen in the 2016 per-district election vote map.
Witness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This is how it is pr
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for sore losers. When he is losing at checkers, does he wipe all the pieces off the board with his arm ?
It is up to each state how they proportion (or not) their respective electoral votes. Most are all or nothing, maybe he should try to change that in his OWN state first, before crying like a baby to the entire nation.
Rules are rules. If Trump supporters are allowed to handwave away concerns about the popular vote, then Hillary supporters should be able to handwave away concerns about the electors changing their votes.
Rules are rules. Under the rules the popular votes doesn't count. It's like saying the winner of the World Series is the team that scored the most run, not the team that won more games.
So rioting is justified when democracy doesn't go your way?
The Clinton campaign announced today they're joining the recount process: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11...
I'm in favour of recounts in general, and for this election in particular. It tells us about the reliability of the election process, and hopefully might shed light on hacking and other skulduggery. The information will be used to fix future problems.
As to Clinton, she's joining because Jill Stein can't call for a recount. In at least one of the states (probably all of them) you can't call for a recount unless you are aggrieved, which means that you think the recount would change the outcome.
Jill Stein can't reasonably say that she might have won, so she officially can't be aggrieved.
Hillary most certainly *can* make that claim, since the margins for her loss are so slim in those states.
That's why she joined the process. For the recounts to happen, she's the one to request them.
I like LL, I get most of what he says. He's wrong here
Both candidates knew about the electoral college, both created their strategies knowing about it. Whoopdedo, HRC got 2 million more votes than Trump.
Trump got more votes that counted.
Had the electoral college not existed both candidates would have run different campaigns, and who knows who would have won.
Clinton only has a lead in the popular vote because of ONE state - California. Take California out of the mix, and Trump wins by MILLIONS when the popular vote is totaled from the other 49 states.
Arguing about the unfairness of the electoral college and the supposed inequality in relative weight of votes in regards to electoral value is completely insane when the end result would be that picking up a few extra million votes in just one populous state would negate the value of votes in the other 49.
We are NOT A DEMOCRACY. There are well documented and valid reasons for that decision. The fact that in this instance just one regional population group could have dictated the election in the proposed system - counter to the results of the other 49 states - is a perfect example of the wisdom of the existing electoral college system.
If your going by number of votes cast the when you look at the total votes, the majority of Americans voted that they did NOT want Hillary.
I didn't vote for Trump but I sure as Hell's didn't vote for Hillary.
I honestly feel I'd rather have Trump, better an incompetent idiot who will accomplish nothing because he is hated than a criminal who has already stated on record that she will violate her oath of office as soon as the takes office and will not be effectively opposed because she is popular.
I support the EC. The ONLY change I'd say would be warranted would be to adopt the Nebraska/Maine way of appointing electors: one per district, goes to the winner of the popular vote in that district. Then the two "senate" electors go to the overall State winner of the State's popular vote. That's how it should go, IMHO - much more close to the electorate, and better than the "our EVs go to the national popular vote winner" in which a State that votes 80% for one candidate could see their EVs going to the opponent.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The electoral college has two jobs:
1) To allow smaller states to override the popular vote (hence why those states get extra electoral college votes)
2) To pick a good candidate
If the electoral college is going to overrule the will of the voters in the states, then they should pick a good candidate. Hillary and Trump may have won a lot of votes, but can you honestly say either of them would make the best president? Hell no! It's a sad fact that the people best qualified to be president are not the best people qualified to run for president. The best president we could have is probably someone most of us have never heard of, and that is who the electoral college ought to make president.
* Just one example that I feel would make a better president than either Hillary or Trump, but surely there's better people that I haven't heard of.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Rules are rules. If Trump supporters are allowed to handwave away concerns about the popular vote, then Hillary supporters should be able to handwave away concerns about the electors changing their votes.
Rules are rules. Under the rules the popular votes doesn't count. It's like saying the winner of the World Series is the team that scored the most run, not the team that won more games.
You on autopilot still? Or are you an astroturfing bot?
I'm agreeing with you! And the rules are the electors could elect Hillary Clinton for president if they felt like it. That's the main topic here. If your opinion of the EC is "rules are rules" then you shouldn't have any problem with this whatsoever, right? Citizens should be able to ask the electoral college to exercise their conscience to elect Hillary President and if they do so then that's fine because the rules allow that, right?
The riots are justified
Really?
To put on peaceful and lawful demonstrations is certainly the right of Americans. But to riot? Are you serious?
Heh, the Trump-bots are out in force today, modding this flamebait and modding up all those non-sequitur cliches about "you know, if all we cared about was the popular vote then they wouldn't ever have to care about rural voters".
... is the guy who ran for President on the "Elect me and I'll resign after I fix democracy" platform.
But then he changed his mind and decided to run for the full term.
Then he quit.
So it's not really about how much he knows as much as it is about just how delusional he is about the things he thinks he knows.
Cause if we are to base our judgment on the state of his delusion regarding political and issues revolving around elections - nothing he suggested will happen.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The riots are justified
Really?
To put on peaceful and lawful demonstrations is certainly the right of Americans. But to riot? Are you serious?
My mistake for accepting the premise.
I'm aware of a lot of protests, and I'm sure there are a handful of people in those protests who are simply out to cause trouble.
But I'm not aware of anything that I'd consider riots.
I stole this Sig
Trump's base is going to be so delighted when he tries to phase out medicare.
And no, the nation obviously has not spoken, since the majority rejected him. And this will be rubbed into his face over and over again.
Why?
No one won the popular vote. All candidates were below 50%.
So sayeth the AC Trump-bot. Care to make an on-topic contribution about the ability of the electors to change their vote?
Nobody can handle these results. We're utterly terrified. If you've been paying any attention whatsoever to Trump's cabinet picks and you're not just stiggint then you too would be terrified.
Also, please double check what irony is. This sort of reaction is exactly what you'd expect from a Trump presidency. There's no irony here whatsoever.
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the electoral college was created, like our entire system of Republican Gov't (other kind, as in 'Republic') to prevent the unwashed masses/working classes (pick one) from voting themselves land and food to the detriment of the ruling class.
Trump won low population rural voters. I live in a high density city. I want the election decided (not swayed) by the majority of voters. I also want a parliament while I'm on the subject.
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you want your rural state to get proportional representation. This solves both problems.
Also, be careful what you wish for. People in the cities aren't just sustaining off your hard work. Our scientists & Universities are why your land can produce enough food to feed people. We're also training the doctors that keep you alive and shipping them to your rural communities. And we made cell phones and the Internet your posting on possible.
We need you, you need us. Instead of directing your anger towards city dwellers go after the ruling class that are robbing us both blinded. In other words, Trump.
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...will it be OK for delegates currently awarded to Clinton to decide Trump is their choice?
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
Don't like it? Then you should support the reform of the electoral college. But what you can't do, and what reasonable people shouldn't allow people like you to get away with, is laud the electoral college system ("that's how it's supposed to work, we're a nation of states not a nation of individuals, blah blah oversimplified cliches blah") and handwave away the popular vote as irrelevant, and then turn around and imply that it would be breaking or rigging the system if the electors voted differently.
If the electors vote differently then they ARE rigging the system. The majority of people in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania voted for Donald Trump. And now you are proposing that the electors in those states should say to the voters "fuck off, your votes don't matter. We're giving our electoral votes to Hillary Clinton because she got more votes in California and New York."
That's called rigging an election.
I wanted to like Lessig - he seemed like an idealist who really wanted to push a single issue that was important to him: getting money out of politics. Of course, he's just a left-wing nut, so he actually doesn't want to get money out of politics - he wants to get Republican money out of politics. Anybody who actually wants money out of politics would be ashamed to support Hillary Clinton, a person who more than anybody in my lifetime has brought big money into politics. The hacked emails also show the various dark money that Democrats spend - Bernie Bros, etc. Lessig, if he were honest, would be outraged over this.
Democrats really need to get their shit together. I mean, mentally. See a psychiatrist, Lawrence. I'm serious. She lost, get over it. All of you. We're no worse off with Trump than with Clinton, but the difference is that he was elected.
Do you have ESP?
The question is, do you support the electoral college system, or do you support some form of perversion?
FTFY
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
That's called rigging an election.
So if the quirks of the electoral college mean that your candidate is elected despite receiving millions fewer votes, that's democracy. If the quirks of the electoral college mean that the person who received more votes is elected, that's rigging. Gotcha.
Do you realize how sad this sounds? Electors changing their vote is a feature, not a bug. THE SYSTEM WAS INTENTIONALLY DESIGNED TO GIVE THE ELECTORS FREE WILL. You want us to ignore the legal rights of the electors[1] that the founding fathers intentionally gave them, whilst respecting this ridiculous antiquated divide between city folk and country folk, as if a majority of the voter base in the south were still involved in agriculture or as if the slave vs. free state divide still existed. Or perhaps you have some other compelling reason why rural voters continue to be given more power than urban voters?
In actuality, both of these things were intentional parts of the EC and both are absurd anachronisms, but you want us to respect only the one that results in your candidate winning, whilst denouncing the other as "rigging".
1. That right remains *completely* untouched in at least 21 states, but even in the 29 remaining states they are, at a federal level, allowed to vote for whomever they please without prejudice, so it would be wildly inaccurate to refer to any of these electors switching as "rigging".
> Many states stop counting when a winner is clear and many states don't count the mail-in votes at all unless it's really close.
Hey guru! Please learn how to be a critical consumer of information on the internet. We need less sheeple and more thinking people, ok?
Are absentee ballots counted?
Yes, all votes are counted, whether they're cast in-person or by absentee ballot.
It is a common misconception that absentee ballots are only counted during very tight races. This misconception stems from two things: one, absentee ballots are often counted for days after the election since many are coming from abroad; two, absentee ballots are often a small percentage of all voted ballots. Many elections have a clear winner, so the absentee ballots that are still being counted after election night don't affect the results as predicted right after the polls close. As absentee voting becomes more popular, however, an increasing number of elections are decided by absentee ballots.
http://help.vote.org/article/8-are-absentee-ballots-counted
The question is, do you support the electoral college system, or do you support some form of perversion? FTFY
Elaborate?
The electors exercising their own judgment would not be a perversion. That's exactly how it was designed to operate... as a safety valve vs. hysterical mob rule and all that. I'm not particularly a fan of it in principle; I'm just looking for a little consistency from all of these smug 'electoral college fundamentalists' running around here lately.
If you make any politician your hero, you already made a grave mistake.
At any rate, Obama won the electoral college and the popular vote whereas Trump is projected to end up with three million votes less than Hillary. Apples and oranges.
Not they hammered about how Trump wouldn't state that he would accept the results. You may notice that Hillary conceded and accepted the results.
What their supporters (and opponents in the case of Stein) do is irrelevant to the argument that was being made against the statements from a candidate. Well I guess is might support it by showing that people do dumb shit when they lose and the candidates shouldn't be fanning the flames ahead of time.
This election has yet again affirmed how outdated the system is.
You can have a federation with strong state rights without making some votes count nothing.
Or to quote: "The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy."
I leave it up to you to guess who said that.
Well, your obsession with race and status, and your snobbery and arrogance, are certainly typical for Silicon Valley. Fortunately, they haven't infected the rest of the country quite as much yet, as this election shows.
By "the party", I'm referring to "the party" as an organization with a leadership, not the set of people who voted in the primaries.
Donald Trump was nominated against the express wishes of the Republican party. Hillary Clinton was successfully nominated by the Democratic party.
not by changing the rules after the election.
It's not changing the rules - it IS the rules. There IS no change of EC. It's just all in your head.
You are misunderstanding someone else misunderstanding the process.
Because you are a loony. You should really get back on them meds. Or the things in the coffee socks will get you.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Think of it as the opposite of a landslide victory.
Statistically it was pretty much a toss up and Trump managed to squeeze in.
You'd be pretty dumb not to.
Someone has to have the worst winning margin in history. Someone has to have the third worst. Someone has to have the best.
Of course popular vote is irrelevant. The guy with the 4th best winning margin in history by that dumb metric is Nixon - who is always near the top of "best president ever" lists, right? But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist as a ranking to "know".
people like to ignore how right wing large parts of the Democratic party are. Hilary was a compromise between the social liberal/economic conservative dems and the progressives. Remember, all the candidates have to pass the "Sheldon Primary" to get in. The only solution I can think of to _that_ problem is mandatory voting.
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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
Okay, Lessig is a smart, maybe even brilliant, man.
But he's still suffering from Idealogue syndrome.
Rather than take the system as it is, working within it (and the confines of law and reality), he's caught up in his vision of "The Ideal". So, breaking laws, betrayal of public trust, and forwarding of the privileged insider caste at the expense of all else (because THEY know what's best for the rest of us) in his mind. Because the means justifies the ends (oh, and incidentally, it'll give him the result he desires but never mind that self-serving little piece of useless data).
Sorry Larry, but if you happen to dislike the outcome, work harder to make sure the next time we come to a decision, it agrees with your personal, philosophical and political proclivities.
And, while you're at it, excise a mountain of presumption Your Way is The One And Only Right Way.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
Keep more alert on protests Yes, there were protests turned riot as determined by law enforcement. I am sure if I searched more I could find other examples it you would like?
Mods? The man did the legwork here...
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
Death threats are stupid and self-defeating in multiple ways. Beyond that... well, I've said elsewhere that I generally agree on the "chaos" front, but at the same time this sabre badly needs rattling so that the pro-EC peanut gallery will eat some crow and admit that it needs reforming. If such an effort accidentally succeeds and elects Hillary, oh well. I'd risk that.
The basis for them asking is that they're sore losers. Just look at the reasoning being used in support of subjugating the actual election results through an electoral college revolt. Yes, technically they can vote for whomever they want. The basis of them rejecting the vote counts in their respective states is hogwash.
Again, this betrays your ignorance or intellectual dishonesty. Hillary hasn't lost anything yet. She won the popular vote. It's up to the EC to decide whether or not she wins the presidency.
TThe basis of them rejecting the vote counts in their respective states is hogwash.
Yes, it's hogwash. But also the basis of granting citizens of Wyoming 4x more electoral representation than citizens of Michigan is hogwash. And someone winning the presidential vote by 2M people but still losing due to some slavery-era agrarian compromise bullshit is hogwash. These things are ALL hogwash, and reasonable people should not let people like the EC-apologist goons around here get away with calling only some of these things hogwash or implicitly/explicitly deny that the EC requires a reformation.
That's my entire thesis here.
Well, your obsession with race and status, and your snobbery and arrogance, are certainly typical for Silicon Valley.
I made an observation.
Fortunately, they haven't infected the rest of the country quite as much yet, as this election shows.
This election is the tip of the iceberg. My observation will become an obsession for many.
[The electoral college would be operating exactly] as it was intended: giving the electors the ability to prevent a moronic populist from ascending to the presidency is arguably precisely the entire point of the electoral college.
You misunderstand the purposes of the electoral college. They are:
1. To limit the opportunity for corruption to swing the presidential election
2. To steer a middle ground between "One Man One Vote" (which would let some single-digit number of high-population states control the presidency, leaving the rest of the states unrepresented in the executive branch) and "One State One Vote" (which would do much the same but with the high-population states and their masses of citizens as the unrepresented ones).
It still does both.
2. is the part you always hear about, and which leads to the occasional "minority president" in a close race and/or one with an urban/rural split. It's working exactly as intended, keeping New York, California, and .
1. may not be working in the WAY it was intended, but the system still accomplishes it. The electoral college serves as a firewall, limiting election fraud by a corrupt political machine (such as Tammany Hall or Daily's Chicago) to no more than their state's electors. If the presidency were determined by a popular vote, ONE corrupt machine could fake up a massive margin and swing any close election.
Remember the Florida recount in the Bush-Gore 2000 election? If the presidency were decided by the POPULAR vote you'd have to recount the WHOLE COUNTRY in such a situation.
If the use of electors, rather than straight tabulation of votes, ever reflected an elitist intent to provide an opportunity to override the will of the population, that has long since been obsoleted by the mechanism of their selection. They are chosen by the candidates' parties or the candidate himself, and the positions are usually a reward for especially faithful service. So don't hold your breath waiting for a wash of "unfaithful electors" to swing this election to Hillary.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Oh wait ..
The Republicans couldn't get past the fact that a "D" came after his name on the ballot. Never mind that he implemented much of the Republican agenda overt heir strident obstructionism.
Don't forget that those delusional morons are also violent lunatics.
See, you think what you are saying is funny. But in reality it is very, very sad. Every day you go on YouTube and look up people crying about Hillary losing? You actually have nothing better to do?
I pity you, honestly I do.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
I didn't make it up, I just saw an interview where they said differently. You see, George Martin, who sits on the Green Party's coordinating committee, said something rather different in an interview.
Or maybe they think that this qualifies as that? I'm not sure why they would send mixed messages.
He should have run as an independent after getting fucked by the DNC Hillary machine. Or started a new party Roosevelt style. Both the big 2 parties are run by corrupt as fuck sociopaths and supported by legions of get-rich morons under the pyramid scheme.
Lobbyists + Military Industrial Complex = Completely hopeless situation.
Do you know how many military people voted Trump for their pay checks and pensions? I'm guessing quite a few.
Oliver Stone has a good True American History series on either Netlfix or Amazon video forget which but I was transfixed with it all morning. He does a good job of disassembling American mythology surrounding our own past. Maybe he'll do one for the present.
If Lawrence Lessig had actually argued that the Electoral Vote was "ignored" in 1824, then he would be the stupidest Harvard law professor in history. The article reveals no such claim. The summary is FULL OF SHIT.
1824 was duly resolved by the House of Representatives casting one vote per state to select the winner, precisely as prescribed by Article II Section I of the Constitution, when none of the four candidates received a majority of the Electoral Vote.
1876 was a cluster foxtrot due to disputes in several of the state votes. It was "resolved" by an extra-Constitutional informal agreement between the parties, known as the Compromise of 1877.
The 2016 situation is that no one of any standing has proposed that sufficient state votes are in question to possibly swing the Electoral vote. Failing that, there exists no Constitutional basis whatever for anyone (Congress or anyone else) to invalidate the due process.
Mr. Lessig is absolutely correct to point out that there is no Constitutional basis for preventing any Elector from casting his vote as dictated by his conscience. Some of the states have made it mandatory that Electors must vote for their own party, but there exists no mechanism to invalidate or undo such a "faithless vote" by an Elector. The most the state could do ex post facto would be to fine or penalize the Elector. His vote would stand.
The simple fact is that the next President will only be chosen after all the electors have their meetings in their separate states in December and cast their ballots, and these ballots are all duly delivered to Congress in January, and the Congress duly tallies and certifies them. That is the reality. Deal with it.
Creimer asked When is a good time to change the Electoral College; that's what I responded to.
Yes: you view everybody around you through the lens of race.
Well, both the election and polls suggest otherwise.
Candidates not campaigning in states considered locked down is not unique to Trump, or Clinton, or Democrats, or Republicans. You're not being insightful here, Clinton didn't campaign in California either.
Furthermore, the only thing the Electoral College accomplishes is that only 7 or 8 states elect the president. Voters in Louisianian and Connecticut, Mississippi and Delaware, Kansas and Oregon, etc; they don't matter in a presidential election. All of these are smaller states and all of these are clearly marginalized. The Bible Belt, New England, the Deep South, all of the small states in these regions are 100% marginalized under the current system. Switch to popular vote, all of a sudden all of the smaller states in these regions matter in a presidential election.
I'm sorry to be rude but I feel your comment suggest a willful ignorance on how the modern presidential election works.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Yes: you view everybody around you through the lens of race.
Demographics, not race. I went back to school to learn computer programming after the dot com bust in 2001. People told me I was crazy to get into computers. But I read a demographic study that showed that skilled IT workers would be in high demand as baby boomers retire in the future. I'm enjoying my career in IT. Next set of demographic milestones is the baby boomers being retired in 2030 and America becoming a minority-majority country in 2050.
Well, both the election and polls suggest otherwise.
This election is the tip of the iceberg. Are you prepare for the changes to come?
1. Superdelegates are in primaries, not the general.
2. She pursued superdelegates in the primary for the same reason that every candidate does (including Bernie)--because she wanted to win. She would have won the primary easily even if there were no superdelegates.
And this was rated Insightful? Idiocracy was a remarkably prophetic movie.
https://www.youtube.com/playli...
https://www.youtube.com/playli...
If these masses of mental midgets get to make decisions for the rest of us there WILL be war.
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
Congress CANNOT pass a law about how the EVs are allocated - that is, per the Constitution, the domain of the States. It's entirely a States thing, nothing to do with Congress.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You can't find a more ideologically homogeneous area than the American South--can we throw their votes out?
You attack an argument with a crazy argument about how if you removed 12% of the total population of the USA from the vote by choosing an area where Clinton does well then Trump wins by a huge margin.
There are few people in support of the electoral college system including many of those who are only in support now because it helps their current position (even Trump himself!) The founders had reasons at the time and some are no longer relevant today and as for the rest, they designed the system to be modified so it may live on instead of falling into despotism early (which it has been already; it's likely beyond repair.)
Parliamentary systems are superior but we aren't smart enough to peaceably evolve. Same for instant runoff voting, mandatory voting, secure paper voting, or having a "none of the above" option (which brilliantly humbles leaders.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
It is quite likely you are a teenager in Macedonia, making stuff up just for grins. BTW, except for getting Ms. Harris' first name wrong, your English is pretty good!
A "minority-majority" is a Democratic political strategy, an attempt to divide America artificially into minorities and then foment resentment and distrust between them. It's a great way for a ruling elite to stay in power: divide and conquer. It's pretty much the same last time Democrats tried this, when they brought us Jim Crow laws, eugenics, and forced sterilizations. Hopefully, by 2050, we will look back at Democratic policies today with the same revulsion that we now look back on early 20th century progressivism.
I've lived all over the world and have had boyfriends among all the major "races" that progressive Americans are so fond of dividing people into. Does that assuage your race-obsessed little mind?
Oh, you are certainly right about that one: the fact that Hillary lost to Trump is only the tip of the iceberg.
Chaos is an understatement :P. Do we need to look at better methods as this country changes and advances, more than likely yes. Is there a better approach to fairly represent all the people while not favoring others, I would like to believe so and we should always strive to find a way to do it.
But I am going to have to still say that the Hillary solution is not answer. Sorry about that.
to prevent one LARGE state... say California from voting 80% for one candidate (almost true) and tipping the election for the nation. The electoral college is designed to give the states the proportional voice that they have in the combined congress. The fact that Obama complains about WY having a greater voice then CA is hogwash and shows how little he understands our constitution..
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
In other federal systems states are for instance represented in a separate chamber, co-equal to the parliament which goes by proportional representation.
The EC in practice makes the decision hinge on very few swing states. In practice there is virtually no campaigning in safe red or blue states, and the voters there are essentially completely disenfranchised.
The effect that the popular vote is not aligned with the EC is a recent one in modern history. I am old enough to remember when it was thought to be something hypothetical, and considered a fatal break-down of democracy (it would have given the Soviets ammunition to belittle the American system).
And contrary to what you may think at this time, chances are you will eventually understand that with an individual as uniquely unfit for president as Trump, we are all on the losing side. Any other Republican would be better. And that includes Pence, with whom I share not a yota of political beliefs. That is because Pence at least knows how to govern, and how to work within the complexities of the federal system.
Competency and mental stability matters in that line of work (also Pence is most certainly not a Russian asset, matters of national security would be much safer with him).
A "minority-majority" is a Democratic political strategy, an attempt to divide America artificially into minorities and then foment resentment and distrust between them. It's a great way for a ruling elite to stay in power: divide and conquer. It's pretty much the same last time Democrats tried this, when they brought us Jim Crow laws, eugenics, and forced sterilizations. Hopefully, by 2050, we will look back at Democratic policies today with the same revulsion that we now look back on early 20th century progressivism.
As we say in California, "What are you smoking and where can I get some?"
I've lived all over the world and have had boyfriends among all the major "races" that progressive Americans are so fond of dividing people into. Does that assuage your race-obsessed little mind?
Your statement makes no sense whatsoever.
and hence the tail wags the dog, no?
4wdloop
>> Take California out of the mix,
working on it!
4wdloop
Obama and Clintons are not going anywhere.
This team could chase a sport superpower from the Olympic Games just having a right person in the WADA. Recounting and cancelling Trump's victory is a child play for them.
Clintons are the most powerful and able people on the planet Earth. In my opinion this is a new dynasty similar to the Windsor House https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That's the most realistic solution to strengthen the role of popular vote, since it does not require unanimous adoption by every state.
>> system to temper waves of populism but still represent the will of the majority of the people
A contradiction? How purposeful ignoring "popular vote" represents the will of majority of the people?
I think this is in fact a down side of electorate system, rather a sacrifice to maintain "republic of states".
4wdloop
Rules are rules. If Trump supporters are allowed to handwave away concerns about the popular vote, then Hillary supporters should be able to handwave away concerns about the electors changing their votes.
Rules are rules. Under the rules the popular votes doesn't count. It's like saying the winner of the World Series is the team that scored the most run, not the team that won more games.
You on autopilot still? Or are you an astroturfing bot?
I'm agreeing with you! And the rules are the electors could elect Hillary Clinton for president if they felt like it. That's the main topic here. If your opinion of the EC is "rules are rules" then you shouldn't have any problem with this whatsoever, right? Citizens should be able to ask the electoral college to exercise their conscience to elect Hillary President and if they do so then that's fine because the rules allow that, right?
No, what you are trying to do is create a false equivalency between popular votes and electoral votes. They are not equal.
What you are also trying to do is say that any outcome is ethically and morally the same. You see no difference between electors breaking their oath and electing Hillary and the electors upholding their oaths and voting for Trump. Or even breaking their oath and picking one of their own as President. Or picking some random person to be President. All of those outcomes are the exact same to you.
You need to do a little better than foxnews if you want to talk to someone who hasn't already drunk your koolaid.
"It's only unfair if I lose."
If you're going to steal from me, at least learn how to punctuate correctly, Sparky.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If you like in a rural state, nobody gives a fuck about you in the general election. Look at a map of campaign visits. They don't care about you and there's two big reasons, one of which is getting worse:
1) Your state always votes republican by a big margin. I don't need to know what state you live in to be pretty confident in that, it is how it goes. Rural states always go republican with high margins, almost no matter what, FDR probably being the only notable time not. Well since a democrat can't win there, there's no need to campaign, wasted time and money. Also since a win to 10 points is the same as a win of 30 points no need for a republican to campaign there. As long as the margin is enough to be secure, nobody cares.
2) Even if you do swing, you don't carry enough electoral votes to be interesting in everything except edge cases. 3 votes doesn't usually swing it, so they'll spend time in states where there are enough votes to matter. This will only get worse as people continue to move to cities (a process that hasn't stopped, and isn't likely to). in 50 years you could very well have an electoral map where 5-6 states control a majority of votes and if only one of those is likely to swing, the'll be the only one any one cares about.
The EC with its first past the post, winner take all setup guarantees this continues. You continue to have no say, despite being told it makes you have a say. However a popular vote actually DOES give you a say. While your state individually doesn't get control over the election (which no state should and if you want that, you should evaluate your views) collectively rural states DO matter because the difference in number of voters adds up. If they vote more republican or more democrat (or more other party, a non-EC system makes that much more possible) that'll matter. The democrats shitting on them and losing by 30 points instead of 10 could be the difference between winning and losing an election.
I'm sorry now that I already posted in this thread, so I can't mod this up. And it damn well should be.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Not disagreeing that he's being a tool (sadly he's been a tool for awhile now) but you are wrong about the electoral college. The electors are free to vote for whomever they want. Even if the state has a faithless elector law, they are still free to vote the way they like, the state can just punish them afterwards (though the legality of them doing so is unclear).
The EC was designed this way. States choose electors to send, via whatever means they like, but those electors are then the ones that have the votes. If they decide to vote some other way, they can do that, it is legal and done by design. Like say back in the day, when this all took a long time, the electors show up and the candidate they pledged to vote for is dead. They don't have to just cast their vote for a dead guy, who then can't take the oath of office, they can evaluate what is going on and vote for someone else. But that also means they could just get together and all decide to elect someone because they are all friends. There is no check on that.
Seriously, have a look in to it.
About 39 million people live in California that is total people, including kids, immigrants, people not registered to vote, etc. Even if you assume that all those people could vote, and that they all voted the same way... well it still isn't enough to elect a president. In this election which had a pretty mediocre turnout, each major party candidate got more than 60 million votes (by way of comparison President Obama got almost 70 million in 2008).
But like I said, not all can or do vote. Of those 39 million people, only somewhere in the realm of 12-16 million actually do vote, numbers vary by year but are in line with the overall trend in the US of pretty low voter participation. So when you look at it California accounts for about 12% of the population in the US and what do you know, about the same percentage of the popular vote, which would seem to be the literal definition of fairness in terms of "one person, one vote".
However, even that large voting block doesn't matter since it turns out California is not unified, no state is. Maybe you get the mistaken impression it is because of the EC results, but that is only because of the "winner take all" nature of elector allocation. California likes democrats as a whole, but not universally. This year 7.2 million people there voted Clinton, 3.8 million voted Trump.
So no, it wouldn't decide an election in a popular vote, not even close.
That's a GOOD thing because otherwise what insultingly gets called "fly over country" would be ignored even more than it currently is.
HIllary wasn't President. Bill wasn't officially anything other than a private citizen.
Apples and oranges.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
even though she has damn good reason to be pissed off (leading in the polls going in, won the popular vote, had the FBI director break the law to create an October surprise)
Don't forget it was her turn, goddammit. She played the game. She stuck by her philandering husband. She even let that upstart Obama cut in line. She coughed and sputtered her way to the finish line, and all for what? To have it all taken away by a clown that she wanted to face in the general election.
I think they need to put Hillary's picture in the dictionary, next to "humiliating defeat".
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.
The US Constitution is very clear on this .. it gives each state the right to decide how popular votes will translate to electoral votes.
I know it galls some to think that they can't get their way, but it is what it is until you can get 2/3rds of the states to change it.
So stop being sore losers and move on. The 'real' United states picked Mr. Trump as President, not those self-righteous urbanites who think they need to run the country simply because a bunch of them choose to live very close to each other in shit holes like Chicago, LA and New York City instead of the beautiful rural areas this country has.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Now that Hillary has lost
I don't think you understand how your system of government works. This election is still very much on until December 19th. It can still go either way and one side is on the campaign trail to make their side win.
The US president is elected by the states by sending representatives to the Electoral College. As to how these reps are determined is entirely and exclusively up to the states. So far, nobody has questioned the legality of the winner take all rule nor the many states that make it a crime to not vote for the candidate designated in the first round of voting. It will need challenges in each state or an act by the State Congresses to change the rules. I'm in no way a fan of the incredibly undemocratic process of the US presidential election. Not only is the Electoral College an utterly outdated concept, its makeup is strangely lopsided. How come that a rep in Montana represents five times less voters than one from New York?n One might argue that this gives less populous states more say, but they already have that influence in the Senate. It is unfair and undemocratic to value the votes of some more than those of others. I suggest popular vote as deciding factor. If it needs to stay with the states and the college, split the reps based on popular vote in each state and make it so that within a small margin of difference the number of reps sent equals the number of voters. Yes, that would mean e.g. that either Montana gets less or that New York gets way more reps to send. I have my severe doubts that any of that will change. How many times did we express utter disgust about gerrymandering and other unreasonable, but legal means to disenfranchising voters? Nothing happened because no matter who gets into power, they will try to retain the status quo because it served them well. The only option I see is to systematically undermine the dominance of both the Reps and Dems and establish at least four or five other parties across the spectrum. That will end the balck/white, yes/no, with us or against us think of the de facto two party system.
Considering that it was law enforcement with 25 arrests. Hmmm, no koolaid there.
Oh here is a different flavor of koolaid that you may consider valid
Well, then I suggest you stop smoking whatever it is you're smoking and actually read up on the history of racism, segregation, and eugenics and their relationship to the Democratic party and progressivism, as well as favorite policies of the left, like gun control, minimum wage, unions, welfare, and public funding of abortions. It's not pretty.
You were asking "Are you prepare [sic] for the changes to come?" after a tirade about how out of touch your "lily-white" relatives from Idaho were and how the US would become "minority-majority" in 2050. I was explaining to you that my experience with "diversity" goes a lot further than yours and that I have absolutely no problem with diversity. Your experience with diversity seems to be limited to marveling at all those non-"lily-white" people that you find yourself next to on the bus.
I agree. People in cities should have less representation because they might vote differently from me.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Why the hell can't they see how corrupt Hillary is? Why in God's name can't they see that? I just don't fucking understand it!
I just can't understand why. What is wrong with these people? Are they that fucking brain dead? Do they even have a brain to begin with?
We've seen all of the news, all of the leaks, all of the facts, all of the details and yet... What the fuck is wrong with these people? Hillary is the most corrupt bitch in Washington. If she became the President she would have destroyed this nation. TPP would have passed, nobody would be working, there would be no jobs left, everyone would be on welfare.
I don't want welfare! I want to work damn it! Give me a job where I can feel useful to society. I don't want to simply be sitting on a couch collecting money from the government, I want to work damn it! People during the Great Depression felt taking a handout from the government was beneath them, they wanted to work. Now, I don't understand it... people don't want to work, they just want free shit. No... no... no, I don't want free shit, I want to work for my stuff.
Why the hell does the left hate this country so much? Why are they so willing to watch this nation be destroyed? I can't wrap my mind around why they hate this nation so much that they would be willing to elect such a corrupt woman to be president. She would destroy this nation and every hard working American would be left poor as dirt. The Middle Class would be instantly destroyed under her reign of terror.
You see no difference between electors breaking their oath and electing Hillary and the electors upholding their oaths and voting for Trump. Or even breaking their oath and picking one of their own as President. Or picking some random person to be President. All of those outcomes are the exact same to you.
Electors from 21 states took no such oaths. Furthermore, for the other 29, we did not agree as a nation to impose oaths or other requirements to not change votes. If specific states chose to impose requirements, that's their business. Specific states are not allowed to unilaterally change the rules for electing the president. (That's the very definition of unconstitutional.)
And the rules are this: The electoral college decides. Period. If you think that isn't good enough, you should be campaigning for EC reform.
No, what you are trying to do is create a false equivalency between popular votes and electoral votes. They are not equal.
So why are you apparently arguing that a marginal victory in the popular vote in certain states should override the federally recognized right of electors to change their minds and cast their vote freely?
"Is it time for the Electoral College to reflect the popular vote?"
No then we would have to change the name of the USA to Portland!
Rick B.
If you used some kind of real moderation it would definitely fail metamoderation. If you mod it "overrated" it just might pass, especially since that's probably a formal sign by now to the other abusive moderators that this mod should be accepted in metamod.
If you kids had an argument to make, you'd argue it, instead of trying to hide my statement with moderation. Thanks for the validation, trollmods!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's the entire point to this story. If you want to argue "the popular vote isn't relevant!" than we are perfectly free to do the same regarding the electoral pledges. None of it matters; only the EC votes do.
The one system that was perfectly okay before the election, until now that some of the losers are sore and are concocting all the justifications for a change in the outcome after-the-fact?
A lot of people were against it before the election and are against it now, but this is still a lame cop-out. Either you are for this system, in which case Donald J. Trump has not technically won *anything* yet and electors are free (at the federal level) to vote for whom they please, or you are in favor of EC reform (of some sort.) Which is it? There is no middle option.
I wonder which elector he would have vote against the candidate chosen by the will of the people in his or her own state. That's kind of the point. And this business about Wyoming voters having more than one vote kills me. By that logic they have more than one vote on everything that passes through the Senate as well.
This sig intentionally left blank.
If faithless electors were to vote for third persons (not Trump or Clinton) in sufficient numbers to bring Trump below the needed 270 then the House of Representatives would choose the President from among the top three recipients of Electoral College votes. The most realistic scenario is for a small number of Trump electors to choose some different, palatable republican candidate that the republican-controlled House can support over Trump. Perhaps some establishment moderate such as Jeb Bush could pull this off? Currently, only 21 faithless electors are needed for this scenario but the number could change depending on the Michigan and recount results.
The law is not an ass. No really.
See section 2 of the 14th Amendment. You're wrong. Apportionment is by population across the entire US, and every State gets at LEAST on Representative.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Caveat being that there most likely won't be any leftovers.
Considering that the full cost is "likely to be $6-7 million" and that they are just over the $6 million mark right now.
And that they have made that announcement about "candidate schools" before reaching their goal.
Which in worst/best case (depending how you look at it) might result in a few more Green Party candidates in those states, come next elections.
But most likely, they may even end up in debt. Them lawyers be expensive.
And people knowing where any extra money will go... if they don't want to help them out beyond that mark... it IS their choice to keep giving them money.
Or, if one wants to be a paranoid Democrat about it... worst case may be "helping them reelect Trump in 2020."
"Them" being the Green Party.
I.e. The side standing to MAYBE gain something from the process also taking on all the potential risk. Which, last I checked, was described either as "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" or "In for a penny, in for a pound".
Though, apparently such paranoia lasts less than half an hour before being rationalized away.
BoGardiner statsone
Nov 26 - 02:36:12 AM
I rationalized that it had dawned on her just how harshly history would treat Stein and the Greens for helping make Donald Trump the most powerful and dangerous man on Earth, and she was doing this to salvage their reputation.
I knew it was a gamble, but viewed it like playing the lottery: it can't hurt much, and a remotely likely payoff would be huge.
Linked article was published at 2:09 AM CEST, Saturday Nov 26, 2016, by BoGardiner.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Well, then I suggest you stop smoking whatever it is you're smoking and actually read up on the history of racism, segregation, and eugenics and their relationship to the Democratic party and progressivism, as well as favorite policies of the left, like gun control, minimum wage, unions, welfare, and public funding of abortions. It's not pretty.
You're overlooking the fact that all the racists from the Democratic Party joined the Republican Party in the 1960's and Richard Nixon used the "Southern Strategy" to convince poor whites to vote against their own interests by threatening them with the dangerous non-whites. Back then it was criminal blacks and liberated women. Today it's job stealing Mexicans and terrorist Muslims. Trump is the final beneficiary of a dying political strategy.
I was explaining to you that my experience with "diversity" goes a lot further than yours and that I have absolutely no problem with diversity.
You "diversity" as you wrote in the previous comment suggested that slept your way through the world. I fail to see why you would think I would be interested in that. As a Christian, I find life easier and less messier to keep my pants zipped up.
"William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"
(A Man For All Seasons, 1966)
-Styopa
Voting on what's for dinner. That's Democracy.
I agree with Lessig--Let the EC vote according to the constitution. However they damned well want to vote.
Next election there will be no Electoral College. Problem solved....
Unless you're one of the sheep.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Just how long do you figure it would take for all those college-educated, STEM-leaning liberals with their basements packed with 3D-printing equipment to grass roots a driverless Elon Musk roof-mounted rail gun conversion kit?
Cyber warfare street conversion kit.
There's an app for that.
"Got me a gun, no education required," is a-soon heading for ye olde retirement home.
Then we need to let those states go on their own as they feel that they no longer need the support of this nation. See Ya!!!!
No... He asked "When is a good time to change the Electoral College if not now?" with an explicit quote of "To change the Electoral College process now, after the popular vote is over, is sour grapes."
Which you then made into "changing the rules after the election"
They are talking about a completely different red herring - that anything taking place right now constitutes changing "the Electoral College process" - instead of being a built-in part of both election process and the Electoral College.
With rules and laws how to go about each step of the process.
Your red herring about "changing the rules" being more of red herring fillet of the original red herring.
Which is what happens when you stop taking your meds.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I haven't been asked to meta-moderate in about 6 years. Does it still exist?
I took it seriously and doubt I got meta-meta-moderated. Possibly, I don't post enough comments any more to qualify.
Electors from 21 states took no such oaths.
You're conflating laws with oaths. All electors take oaths.
Anyway, you're arguing idiocy. You're argument is just as valid as "the popular vote was tied", "well, her votes were close enough", "They should vote this way just because", or "They can just pick a random person."
Again, the winner of the World Series is the team that wins four games, not the team that scores the most runs total.
If you give up the slaver-appeasement Electoral College, how exactly will tyranny of the majority happen?
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-...
You were +5 at one point? Is meta-moderation broken?
Your post is factual, insightful and at worst partisan and alarmist. But definitely not trolling.
I would argue that it's not partisan and possibly not alarmist either.
What exactly does a totalitarian President look like anyway? They're unlikely to have a funny little moustache and bark like a dog. Personally, I'd have thought suggesting Muslims wear badges, attacking the media and asking for 'brown shirts' to intimidate voters gave more of an indication than Hitler gave before he got a foothold in power. So how can it be alarmist?
It's not partisan because most of the educated world agrees with you. 65% of Germans say they're literally afraid of a Trump Presidency. And a big part of their culture is making sure Hitler never happens again:
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/04...
... which is why he listed it separately.
I can see why you posted as AC.
Again, the winner of the World Series is the team that wins four games, not the team that scores the most runs total.
And again, the winner of the presidency is whomever the EC votes for. It's really amazing how you keep making my point for me, over and over.
The EC was founded specifically to give the right of the electors to vote for whomever they pleased, and there has been no effort to change this on the federal level (which is the only one that matters in terms of legitimacy of the votes.) It is thus entirely fair and playing by the rules to try to convince the electors to defect. Don't like it? Then you should be arguing for a change in the rules. Just be prepared to deal with some people who believe the EC should be reformed in other ways as well, like removing this anachronistic compromise that gave the agrarian slave states (now red states) more power than was rightfully theirs.
(Whomever they vote for assuming they get the minimum required number of electoral votes.)
Politicians could focus on California, New York, Chicago and maybe urban areas in Texas. The rest of the nation wouldn't matter.
Sorry, you're just wrong on this, and I'm saying that as a non-partisan psephologist.*
California is only a voting bloc because the Electoral College makes it one. You add up California, New York, Chicago and Texas and you only get about a third of the electorate. That's if you get every single vote in these states, which is ridiculous to begin with.
Having a directly elected President eliminates swing states. Every vote counts -- although all votes are only equal if you have preferential voting.
This isn't to say that a small bias towards smaller states is anti-democratic. The EU uses a similar system. But the US will retain that bias even if the Electoral College is scrapped.
PS it's notable that I don't know of any place that has a directly-elected President via preferential voting. France does it via run-off but it's dumb plurality in the first round -- which means tactical voting is encouraged.
*I'm the British chair of a major pro-democracy group. Don't wish to disclose my identity though because Britain has just introduced the most invasive surveillance seen in a 'democracy'.
The problem here is authoritarianism, not partisan name calling. If the federal government couldn't run your life for you, you wouldn't have to worry about that in the first place. But let's look at the list in detail, shall we? I'll come back to it at the end, but this is a good summary about why this is 'crying wolf' that sums up a lot of what I'm trying to point out here.
> The cult of tradition
It's not clear how this makes anyone bad. Is it wrong to enjoy Thanksgiving with your family? Or just because we label anything we dislike as a "cult." Usually the problem with cults is that they go out and, say, cause violence or such, which we'll discuss below.
> The rejection of modernism
Luddism is a problem, but declaring "this is new, it must be better" isn't exactly logical and is funny to contrast with "action for action's sake." If you want Luddites, just look at the email between Hillary & Colin Powell and their rejection of operational security.
> The cult of action for action’s sake
This is really weak. For one, Trump's actions were purposeful--he won by spending far less than Hillary did. For another, we're calling people fascist for what? Working too hard? It's true that Trump held a lot of political rallies and Hillary held very few, but she might not have done so badly if she hadn't assumed the "blue firewall" would magically hold and had actually cared what those people wanted.
This is also fluff. You could apply it to lots of politicians (businesses, etc.) that most people wouldn't label as "fascist."
> Disagreement is treason
Finally we get somewhere! Sure, that's bad. Two minute hates? We've seen plenty about Donald (every other Slashdot story on Trump?). So long as we declare someone the bad guy, though, it's okay, right? I mean, just look at all that violence at the rallies! Oh, wait, the Democrats staged that. Maybe the intolerance of gays? Err, wait, it's the Advocate that decided Peter Thiel wasn't really gay any more because he backed Trump. And Trump was up there holding the gay pride flag. But it was upside-down! Because the most important thing about the gay flag is its orientation, right? :)
Oh! He complained about the media too!
You know, the CNN that told us it was illegal to read wikileaks (a lie from a CNN lawyer who should know better) so we wouldn't find out that they rigged the debates as we can establish from DKIM-authenticated emails that cover the body & body hash. And we have Google's signature on it as well as Hillary's email server. Or how they sold donors access to the Washington Post's party while appearing to go behind their own lawyers' backs?
So, uhh, remind me why it's fascist to complain about people rigging debates again? Or why 2 minute hates are bad... unless the press holds them? :)
> Fear of difference
That's odd to hear given how many sites like Reddit are all for censoring the opinions they don't like. It's their site, of course, but I'm allowed to criticize them for it. And I'm far more afraid of these people who would attack someone for voting the wrong way. Feel free to check that on Snopes. They'll say the truth is "mixed" because they feel it very important to know that there was a fender bender just prior to the g
What the leftists want is a system that is rigged so that they always win.
Before the election, both dems and repubs wanted the electoral college.
Why wasn't this professor making an issue of the electoral college *before* the election?
Might as well give a quick lesson about DKIM to anyone who wants it. It's far more relevant than all this political nonsense anyhow :)
To find the Google key that signed the message, just click the message and then 'view source' which will show you this DKIM header:
:content-type;
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
d=gmail.com; s=20120113;
h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to
bh=08N7TAGRcCUnWsH1b+s0pSHDjHMlUZ7FyGhNbvfAvoE=;
b=ZwBMDZQD7udVLR8S0lQfgJIuEyK1pt9iZs7g8efiCz/1Fxerox/kgyfAnRM4x1kfdm
T72+p5NL4rd6CAKj0PRIeL5//6rgF0vMI2Wl8zsKcQgibPICvz3mbYgAddCmUiFmZkiJ
jac24XjA/oCGdt1zHiJa9ovgXNFeTSr1Puk+CNaGXtz/hKriSQxI07qvd4RgGeBeBkXw
lsvqZsTjoUcfTVcrNt1HkxyDrXvOIcnT2AfwvqVubJiRH/eu+DPg2xLUydvXE4ahd+Xj
igfUe71VMbGIJejk8SplVhjnrjTXEnNHx4t3wiel4AskrDs4Bs9GP+WRPfNPqwRcXjEo
uW+g==
Now use any online DKIM key checker you want to look up the key using gmail.com as the domain and 20120113 as the selector, as you can see in the signature above: d=gmail.com; s=20120113;
That gives this result, which I might as well archive for posterity. I mean, Google could take down that DNS record someday, leaving people unable to authenticate the message. Here's the PEM version of the relevant key as dumped by the tool I linked above.
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEA1Kd87/UeJjenpabgbFwh
+eBCsSTrqmwIYYvywlbhbqoo2DymndFkbjOVIPIldNs/m40KF+yzMn1skyoxcTUG
CQs8g3FgD2Ap3ZB5DekAo5wMmk4wimDO+U8QzI3SD07y2+07wlNWwIt8svnxgdxG
kVbbhzY8i+RQ9DpSVpPbF7ykQxtKXkv/ahW3KjViiAH+ghvvIhkx4xYSIc9oSwVm
Al5OctMEeWUwg8Istjqz8BZeTWbf41fbNhte7Y+YqZOwq1Sd0DbvYAD9NOZK9vlf
uac0598HY+vtSBczUiKERHv1yRbcaQtZFh5wtiRrN04BLUTD21MycBX5jYchHjPY
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
It occurs to me that certain weasel types might someday get rid of the DKIM keys, so here's an archive of some relevant to another important email as dumped by the same tool I linked above:
d=hillaryclinton.com; s=google;
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4G NADCBiQKBgQCJdAYdE2z61YpUMFqFTFJqlFom
m7C4Kk97nzJmR4YZuJ8SUy9CF35UV PQzh3EMLhP+yOqEl29Ax2hA/h7vayr/f/a1
9x2jrFCwxVry+nACH1FVmIwV3b5FCN EkNeAIqjbY8K9PeTmpqNhWDbvXeKgFbIDw
hWq0HP2PbySkOe4tTQIDAQAB
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
And now the lameness filter hates me. What's the best way to deal with that? This being Slashdot, we know that you just have to write a long, unfocused rant about nonsense and copy paste it a few times. Apologies for the spam, but Slashdot thinks the DKIM keys above are someone posting ASCII art or whatever. Go figure? Also I had to add a few spaces inside the keys. Sorry, just remove those please.
d=1e100.net; s=20130820;
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCA Q8AMIIBCgKCAQEAnOv6+Txyz+SEc7mT719Q
QtOj6g2MjpErYUGVrRGGc7f5rmE1cR P1lhwx8PVoHOiuRzyok7IqjvAub9kk9fBo
E9uXJB1QaRdMnKz7W/UhWemK5TE UgW1xT5qtBfUIpFRL34h6FbHbeysb4szi7aTg
erxI15o73cP5BoPVkQj4BQKkfTQYGN H03J5Db9uMqW/NNJ8fKCLKWO5C1e+NQ1lD
6uwFCjJ6PWFmAIeUu9+LfYW89Tz1N nwtSkFC96Oky1cmnlBf4dhZ/Up/FMZmB9l7
TA6gLEu6JijlDrNmx1o50WADPjjN4rG ELLt3VuXn09y2piBPlZPU2SIiDQC0qX0J
WQIDAQAB
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
Uhm... perhaps I wasn't clear. (Or, maybe you're just trolling me for kicks. ;-) Either way, I'm happy to clarify.
Superdelegates in the Democrat party primary/caucus system are awarded per state not based on the popular vote in each state's primary/caucus. They are awarded as part of each state's overall delegation of electors in the national party convention at the end of the primary/caucus season, but they are party loyalists who vote for the state party officials' choice of candidate (in each state party convention), not the popular vote winner of the primary/caucus. So the cronies of each state party choose the superdelegates in a private closed-door smoke-filled star chamber meeting totally independent of the expressed will of the voting public at large (whether their state primary/caucus is open or closed to those not registered as Democrat voters, which is a separate issue decide per state by the party officials, not the voters at large).
Note that superdelegates are only delegates in the national party convention where the party candidate is chosen. They hold no role per se in the electoral college vote for the eventual president (well, unless some superdelegate is also later chosen by their state to be an electoral college elector as well... which I'm sure probably happens often since they are, after all, party loyalists appointed by the state party establishment).
So this superdelegate objection I raise has nothing to do w/ city -v- country: it's all about party establishment -v- party outsider. The (Republican) RNC has no such system. That's why a party ``outsider'' like Trump could eventually secure the party nomination, while the DNC superdelegate scheme prevented the Democrat outsider Bernie Sanders from securing his party's nomination.
My broader point was that Bernie might well have defeated Trump had he been his party's candidate--- since then both candidate would have been anti-establishment party outsiders--- but the DNC superdelegate boondoggle essentially guaranteed Hillary would be their candidate despite the popular vote w/in their per-state party conventions.
Hence, the Democrats lost the presidency.
Error: NSE - No Signature Error
It's also a misleading factoid to site, since D.C., Vermont, Delaware and Rhode Island get a similar super-boost in relative weight, and they all are solid Democrat states. So too is Maryland, which is likewise tiny in area but large in population, courtesy of Baltimore. So why single out Wyoming for abuse?
See, for example, this insightful graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Error: NSE - No Signature Error
It's an example just like all those others and not misleading in any way. That you think people in Wyoming shouldn't have weighted representation so that they can be heard despite a low population and that people in Delaware are somehow better is your problem.
One example should be enough to show the weighting trend and it is not abuse.
Uhm... perhaps I wasn't clear. (Or, maybe you're just trolling me for kicks. ;-) Either way, I'm happy to clarify.
I was suspecting the latter from you...
Superdelegates in the Democrat party primary/caucus system are ...
I'm pretty sure you were talking about the electoral college in the previous post. That's got precious little to do with the primary/caucus system.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Many states make it a crime for electors to vote for a candidate that they were not designated for. I doubt that the parties put anyone on the lists who do have not a strong attachment to the parties candidate.
he does effectively have a mandate.
you know what his mandate is? fuck washington.
he ran against both the republican establishment, and the democratic one. and he was elected.
he doesn't have a traditional "majority" mandate, but the way this election has gone, to say he doesn't have a mandate is disingenuous.
his mandate, from literally half the country that elected him, without major party support, was "a pox on both your houses"
i'm not sure how i feel about trump, i could call him crazy, but he's not, he's slightly distasteful... all said and done... as they say, you need to take him seriously, not literally. nobody expects him to set up a wall, but they do expect him to do something about immigration. he's not going to round up all the muslims, but he's going to look into terrorism etc.etc. he talks a big game. but i don't think he made any campaign promises that anyone thinks are serious.
i'd protest if that happened. they were playing by the same rules, they were playing by the same rules. everybody knew what was at stake, and they were playing by the same rules. if you want to change it, you need to change it before the next election not during this election after the votes have been counted. because electors electing a president, contrary to how the rules are laid out, how the game is played, that, is a violation of our rights.
the electors were put in place in a time when they literally selected the president, and the popular votes weren't even counted, the popular vote was a suggestion. now the electors are a formality. we've progressed to that point.
wow, you are an idiot.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
You are right that he was elected as a big hearty "Fuck You!" to the establishment. And if he is good for anything then for delivering that message.
Unfortunately, I strongly believe that this is as far as his qualifications go. I see him as a very unstable, volatile individual, not really a bad guy (albeit slightly racist) but mentally on the level of a toddler. The fact that he will have his fingers on the nuclear codes is quite worrisome. One almost has to hope that Trump is a Russian asset, Putin is many things but not irrational.
But even if you subscribe to the "Fuck You!" motivation of his voters, it still does not make for a mandate if more voters support the existing order, and that is what the popular vote shows.
It's amazing how clueless fools like yourself don't understand the Constitution at all. Why do you think they have human electors in the first place, instead of just automatically giving votes according to the candidate who won that state's popular vote? The whole point of having human electors is as a safety check, so the electors can override the will of the people.
So no, electors voting differently is NOT "rigging the system". That is an utterly moronic statement. Electors voting differently is the system working as designed by the Founders.
1. This is mainly an in-principle argument with people who are trying to have it both ways, insisting that the EC is perfect whilst denying one of its fundamental properties.
2. The states can criminalize whatever they want (note that 21 have done nothing whatsoever), but they cannot unilaterally change the validity of electors' votes. If you want to fundamentally change the system, it needs to be done at the federal level. Frankly, I think states interested in seeing EC reform should go the other way and past amnesty laws for rebel electors from other states and take other steps to encourage free-thinking electors. This isn't a bug of the system; it's a feature. I am for reform; I simply think the best way to get it, at this point, is to fully utilize the quirks of the system and not let anyone get away with the hypocrisy of claiming that they're for the EC whilst condemning the very core of the EC.
3. Electors have voted for other candidates in the past, just not in sufficient numbers to make a difference. (Note they don't necessarily have to raise another candidate's total high enough; simply decreasing someone's total below 270 would be sufficient to nullify the vote and kick the matter to congress, as I recall.)
the electors were put in place in a time when they literally selected the president, and the popular votes weren't even counted, the popular vote was a suggestion. now the electors are a formality. we've progressed to that point.
No we haven't "progressed" anywhere. Some states have passed laws in an attempt to unilaterally change the rules, but no federal level changes have been made, and only federal level changes could affect the validity of votes cast.
how the game is played, that, is a violation of our rights.
This is not a violation of your rights. The game has always, explicitly granted the electors free will. Don't like it? Then you should be in favor of electoral college reform at the federal level as I am.
This entire tangent of mine has been about pointing out hypocrisy and your post illustrates this very, very, nicely. You want us to say "rules are rules" as long as your candidate is elected, even if the other candidate got two million more votes, but you stick your head in the sand and scream about rights being violated if I point out that the electors are free to elect whomever they wish. And always have been.
The Electors are free to vote for whatever candidate they like. Any state laws that require them to vote for the popular vote winner is their state would most likely be found unconstitutional.
The intention of Electoral College has always been a check on the popular vote. So far EC has never exersized this power, but in theory it could happen
...richie - It is a good day to code.
An ambassador to a foreign nation is also a person. But he represents the views of the head of state. He can't, for example, elect to declare a war because he believes that's the right course of action. He can only convey the message. The job of an elector entails certain responsibilities and imposes certain boundaries on behavior.... just as every other job. If a state defines that job to be a very narrow representative of the wishes of the voters of the state, then that's the job.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
If we used the 2016 House District results as a surrogate for a stratified sample we would conclude that were everyone required to vote (as is the case in several countries), Trump would have won both the Electoral College and the popular vote. So the fact that Clinton won popular vote and Trump the electoral college is more of an artifact of the fact that we do not make voting mandatory than it is an indictment of the Electoral College.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
I used to have a project manager who would wait until after we submitted a project to review the project, and try to argue against changes in the building code and the subsequent revisions we had to do. He did make good arguments; a lot of the code changes were unnecessary and sometimes counter-intuitive even though the building code said it had to apply to our project. But my answer was always the same: that's nice, but why did you wait until it was too late to rail against the system?
No beer and no TV make Homer something something
> Can you remind me where the definition of fascism includes "it's not fascism if someone else does it too"?
The point is that if you take some harmless trait like "fascists made the trains run on time" that might be true and yet which a lot of normal people might fit, your definition isn't very useful for the purpose of identifying them. Nor have you established that a lot of those traits that could fit anyone are even bad things in general. You're simply hiding your assumption--that such things as liking traditions (like, oh, say, Thanksgiving) somehow is a fascist trait and defending that by saying Umberto Eco said so. That aside, the "evidence" given for many of these items is so laughable that one doesn't have to disagree with the list at all.
Never mind that someone else (David Futrelle, as best I can tell) actually made a list of poorly-fitting claims matched to Eco's list, so if you want to appeal to his authority, you should at least give us a source where he says the same and actually work to establish his authority. Your post isn't a defense of the idea at all, but a mere rhetorical dodge, smuggling this all under Eco's name as you have displayed no ability to explain whatever logic is behind the ideas well enough to defend them on your own. By all means, feel free to display that in reply.
I note that you didn't address things like the fact that their idea of "permanent warfare" includes 3 AM tweets and that other bad traits like "disagreement is treason" don't account for where the actual violence is coming from, nor does any of it fit at all when you compare this to actual Nazi events like Kristallnacht. Not that I haven't seen comparisons to the Reichstag fire here on Slashdot, but the only violence we have evidence of anyone staging appears to have been by Democratic operatives and I've discussed that quite extensively in past comments here.
All you're doing in posting things like this is to help give people like the violent people in that video moral cover to attack people who have different political opinions. Which is something actual Nazis did, and is far more in keeping with the evils of fascism than any actions you can actually point to in that list. This is why I can point to a host of violent criminals and staged violence against Trump's supporters for daring to have the wrong opinions among the people on your side.
Which is, as we all know, one of the really evil parts of actual fascism. Isn't that why people hate fascists? Not because they loved silly traditions, but because they used violence to attack their political enemies?
Funny how that actual violence might weigh a bit more with most people than the "permanent warfare" somehow inherent in 3 AM tweets.
Lessig seems ignorant of the Constitution, particularly the bit that says the states shall decide how electors are chosen.
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.
The Constitution says nothing about many things. It says this or that shall or shall not be allowed. In this case, the states have done precisely what the Constitution requires them to do, determine how electors are selected.
I'm a conservative, a liberal, a socialist and many other things. Maybe if you weren't subject to the black-and-white painting you accuse others of, your view of the world would be more wide?
I'm pro-Trump because Hillary would have been a terrible danger to the rest of the world, Trump at least is only dangerous to America. I'm a liberal when it comes to personal freedom and liberties (in fact, I held the european EFF domain for a time), and a socialist when it comes to economic policies (big fan of Bernie for that reason).
The world isn't simple. But some questions are simple. Did you bang your secretary is a yes or no question and any answer more complicated than that is a cover-up attempt. Did you steal that candy? Do you love your wife? Is that child yours or not? Is the pope a catholic? Some things are black-or-white, yes-or-no. Doesn't mean everything is. The mistake of stupid people everywhere and the most common trick of demagogues everywhere is to start with straightforward examples and assume that all the world is so clear-cut. The mistake of wanna-be-smartasses and pseudo-philosophers everywhere is to start with complicated examples and assume that all the world is difficult and nuanced.
Smug enough for you?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Donald Trump is the most popular Republican candidate in history bringing in over 62.4 million votes during the 2016 presidential election. He also secured victories in at least 83 percent of the counties in the United States. Trump is also ranked the third most popular presidential candidate in history. However, there is one huge difference in Trump’s popular vote win and that of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Trump is the only popular vote candidate in the top three to receive success in more than 25 percent of the county-level vote, a victory that has all but been overlooked in the media due to the popular vote margin and recount initiatives.
NBC News notes that Barack Obama won with less than a 25 percent victory rate across all of the U.S. counties, scrapping in with a county victory rate of just 22 percent. Should Hillary Clinton have won the race based on popular vote alone, she would have beat Obama’s record of an all-time low with just a 15-17 percent success rate of the county-level vote.
However, the situation was very different for the Republican party’s most successful candidate, Donald Trump. The president-elect accomplished something unprecedented by ranking in the top three most popular candidates while maintaining a drastic county-level lead over Clinton. Trump received his popular vote count while earning a victory in 83-85 percent of the counties within the United States. In fact, the Atlantic notes that Trump’s lead in 3,000 of the 3,100 counties was so significant it would have resulted in a landslide victory for the businessman. If the top 100 most populous counties are removed and the remaining 3,000 counties were only counted, Trump won the 3,000 counties’ popular vote by 11.5 million votes.
“Clinton has won only about 420 counties total—far fewer than any popular vote winner over the past century. In the roughly 3000 counties beyond the 100 largest, Trump trounced Clinton by about 11.5 million votes.”
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/37483...
Perhaps you should try reading stories from BOTH sides rather than getting all your news from the Huffing and Puffing Post.
Murphy was an optimist
i didn't vote, don't have a candidate. in texas, so the question was moot anyway. fundamentally objected to clinton's email issues. trump is, troubling, but not overly so.
regardless. my objection is not with the electoral college as its purpose has been reinterpreted to be. to balance the concerns of the less populated states with the more populated states. my concern is with the propriety of further removing the election from the vote. right now, as it stands, the popular vote in a state, with the local concerns at that discrete level, determine the winner of that state. that's fine.
if a candidate could wait until the eleventh hour to strictly court the individual electors, then you've untied elections completely from the vote at all. how we have it now, works to make sure that the rural areas of the country aren't dominated by urban concerns. which is acceptable to me. urban centers already have a certain amount of focus and need to be addressed to a certain amount regardless.
I might have an idealized vision of small-town america, i'll admit that, but i don't think that's a way of life that we should abandon. those areas, the places between urban centers, are the repository of "americana" and giving them a political voice has value.
this election was clinton's to lose. her team didn't play the game right and they neglected a demographic that voted for obama twice.
i'd say you have to take the context into consideration when looking at things like this. you have a political candidate this unsuited for office, and still winning. essentially you've got an undercurrent of resentment that effects a whole bunch of people, but a whole bunch of those people couldn't even hold their nose and vote for trump. i'd say there were people on the left that couldn't vote for hillary either, but i think those are fewer than those on the right that couldn't vote for trump. but still wanted to 'throw the bums out'.
you have to appreciate, be cognizant of the fact, that trump didn't have a platform. he was only really running on "fuck you" and half the country agreed.
people weren't voting for him on the abortion issue, the tax issue, foreign policy, etc. etc. there was a singular reason for the majority of trump voters i think. it was, 'washington needs to change'.
normally i'd say a mandate needs a majority, even a plurality makes for a weak mandate. but in this case, i think he has a mandate because his was a single issue campaign.
While I agree with your analysis. "Fuck you!" is not a program nor an issue and can never amount to a mandate.
Calling someone racist is how you concede a political argument, much like saying "uncle" used to be in schoolyard fights, tapping out in judo, and so on.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You've tripled down on the derp.
Yes, yes, I get it that when I got down in the dirt fight with the pig, the pig would like it, but you will still lose.
state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct
This part of the 12th Amendment is what makes the job of appointing the electors a state (rather than federal) matter.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
This text of the 10th Amendment is what makes it states' prerogative to define the job of electors as the states see fit. They are not prohibited from narrowing the electors' job, so it is the states' reserved right to define the job of the electors when they are appointed. The verb is "appoint" not "apportion". So, as with all other government appointments, the legislature gets to not only name the people who are to have the job, but also to define the responsibilities and limitations of the job. Oh, and since you decided to come the defense of the fellow tool (Lessig), I should inform you that I no longer think he is just a tool. He is an imbecile recklessly risking peaceful transition of power and should not only be fired from any teaching position, but should never appear in front of any court without handcuffs. Since you don't understand what that means, I am saying he should be disbarred.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
:), it's a mandate to fuck washington up, fuck up their structure and all their backroom dealings.
essentially wipe it clean with purging fire, burn it all to the ground.
didn't say it was a great program or issue, but he essentially has a mandate to wipe washington clean.
> Is it time for the Electoral College to reflect the popular vote?
NO.
More importantly, do states rights still matter?
The Electoral College should vote the way the voters have indicated that they should. To do otherwise would betray the trust of the people that voted for them. Ideally we would do away with the Electoral College proxy voting nonsense and have a direct vote. But the Electoral vote allocation should stay the way it is.
A vote that reflects the statistically insignificant difference in the popular vote would send the message that states rights are indeed dead, and that heavily populated states like California and New York are now allowed to dictate policy for everyone else. Yes, Clinton did get a few more votes. But Trump got more states.
Does no one remember "tyranny of the majority" from civics class? Does no one remember why we have two houses in the Congress, one with equal representation per state (Senate) and one with population based representation (House of Representatives)? Do you think it is a coincidence that the Electoral votes per state is the sum of these two numbers?
Exactly what law did Comey break? He received new evidence in an important case and looked into it as he is required. Would you rather the FBI ignore evidence in a possible multiple felony case?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?