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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.
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
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.
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....
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.
Sure. Nothing except the large majority of food, farms, guns, and factories. You coastals have a monopoly on Hollywood actors and expensive beachfront property. Not much else.
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.
Two things...
Even with the electoral college, the President is being chosen by a "handful of states." Specifically, the three "Swing" states which put Trump over the top. Even worse, the outcome of the entire country's future leadership is based on less than 10,000 people in one state, less that 20,000 in another, and less than 35,000 in a third--a total of far under 100,000 votes in a nation where more than 120 million votes were cast. This is, more or less... a rounding error... A number of votes that could be cast (or not cast) if it rains on election day.
And second of all, the original "Balance of power" the electoral college was created to preserve was between free and slave states. Specifically, southerners would not have adopted the constitution if they thought that higher population northern states would have been able to control the congress, and the presidency, by virtue of their greater numbers. So they came up with the 3/5 compromise (that allowed slave states to count 60% of their slaves for the purpose of calculating their congressional representation, and by proxy, their electoral college representation,) and kludged it onto the electoral college to "protect" their interests in the Presidency.
Setting aside whether or not the electoral college is, in and of itself "racist," (I don't think it is anymore, although it was conceived as such) the real issue I have with it is that it's an anachronism that isn't necessary. Because the other justification for it is that rural areas in 1797 didn't have very good communications with the outside world, and might be enticed to accidentally vote for a dangerous tyrant that they were unaware was a dangerous tyrant.
So bottom line, slavery is defunct, so we no longer need to appease slave states, and today, rural states have access to the Internet and full communications parity with the rest of the world. Which means there's no more justification for the continued existence of the Electoral College.
Who did what now?
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!
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
Sort of like some Democrats are now probably regretting Reid saying just a couple weeks before the election that Senate Democrats should exercise the nuclear option (get rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees) if Republicans interfered with confirming Clinton's (oops...) SCOTUS nominees. I, however, look forward to Reid speaking out in favor of Republicans when they exercise the nuclear option to prevent Democrats from interfering with Trump's SCOTUS nominees (unless, of course, he happens to be a hypocritical scumbag).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
And that attitude is exactly why Hillary lost. The party that preaches inclusiveness and claims to look out for the common folk, dismissed the common folk and took them for granted. The ivory tower progressive elites forgot what the Democratic party was actually built on. The further they go left and progressive, the more votes they'll lose.
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 ?
Cook up all the justifications you want about why Trump 'won' the election and why he should be president.
How about -- he won the electoral contest? You know, the one set of rules that actually counts? 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?
Democracy is a system whereby elected representatives are chosen by winning the popular vote not a gerrymandered system where you elect a group of functionaries who then vote for the runner up.
Actually, if you live in the United States, then you don't live in a pure democracy. You are in a democratically elected representative republic. This means, by design, that sometimes the majority does not get its way.
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.)
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.
The term "Democracy" is an umbrella term that represents all systems of "rule by the people", including representative democracies like ours (also known as a republic). While its true that our founding fathers tended to mean "direct democracy" when speaking of "democracy", that's no longer the case. From Wikipedia:
The Founding Fathers of the United States rarely praised and often criticised democracy, which in their time tended to specifically mean direct democracy, often without the protection of a constitution enshrining basic rights
But, as we all know, language changes over time. It's worthwhile to understand the history of these terms, but really, you're pissing against the wind if you think people are not going to continue to call our government a "democracy". According to Google:
democracy
dmäkrs/
noun
noun: democracy
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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.
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.
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
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.