We’d all be significantly worse off if you didn’t.
Hey, we need more people posting in the PWI forum! But I don’t blame you. You have to enjoy some sparring and that is definitely not for everyone.
For what it’s worth I agree that the electoral college is a useful system. However I do think it has been gamed (as all systems eventually are).
To me what makes the electoral college system valuable is the ability for the state legislature to check their population’s vote - the so called faithless elector. One of the original functions of the system was for states to be able to avoid giving their electoral votes to a raging wannabe dictator who had the populace all jazzed about “bread and circuses” he was going to placate them with.
In this instance the electoral college system serves a big check against potential tyranny by allowing the state legislature to decide “no, this guy is unhinged. He’s not fit for office so we are not going to vote for him”.
It allows the state to preserve independence while also allowing the people a vote. If the legislature is voted out due to their refusal to go along, the people have their say. If they stay in because the crazy candidate was exactly as bad as they though and people come to realize it, the people still have their say.
A lot is said about the checks and balances of our system, but this is actually MEANT to a check to keep gullible people voting an unfit person into office.
You can make a good argument that we do not need that function any more in the modern day - and I believe most states have passed bills over the past 100 years to essentially bind electors to the people’s vote in their district. But you can also argue the indirect system has some use.
In my mind these are two different propositions. A popular vote for president might be eventually decided on, but giving Senators based on population no. I think there are stronger reasons to potentially go to a popular vote for POTUS than for changing allocation of senators.
One of these is for a national vote, and one is to ensure that states (not their citizens) are equally represented in legislature.
I think a map of how congressional districts went during the election would be more enlightening than a county map.
Counties are different sizes, however within each state each congressional district is required to have approximately the same population. This means the population is evenly divided.
I think you are right. I’m okay with senators being 2 per state. I do think we should add some territories though to give those citizens proper representation.
Huh? You don’t think that changing your location is going to change your concerns? Location influences culture and that influence your decision making.
Tyranny of the tiny
Lol yep, let’s see what this tyranny has actually delivered.
Over the last 100 years 11 terms for Democrats and 11 for Republicans. Almost always changing with a change of prez.
4 to each in more recent history.
What an outdated idea - it’s doing almost exactly what it was designed to do - let’s replace it with something we know will break things.
Yeah, I think it’s about time to see a proposal on their statehood. As territories that have different privileges though, so it’s not necessarily all bad.
I am 100% weaker on territorial civics than domestic so I don’t usually touch that topic. I don’t have a good enough idea of how the land lies.
I absolutely love the epic rap battles of history. So many killer videos. I’d forgotten all about them until you posted.
So you think the purpose of the electoral college is to have an equal amount of people on opposing sides be elected? It wasn’t designed with political parties in mind at all. That was not it’s purpose. So it can’t be designed to do that.
The pendulum will swing either way. It always does because people will always be upset at their leaders. You can look at Congress to that. If the Dems take all three in 2020 you know what’s going to happen? They will lose either the house or senate or presidency or all three again quickly. Not because of the electoral college but because we get tired of Dems and then vote Republicans and then we get tired of them etc.
I just don’t think “the founders liked it” or it means different people get elected are strong arguments personally. They already do anyways. I should also note that I’m not a huge fan of political parties in general or even in the idea of two dominant ones like we have. But it is what it is at this point.
I have no idea how people could say “but if you do popular vote only Dems will win when the vast majority of elections are won by popular vote person anyways. Winning the popular vote and losing the electoral college is a rare occurrence.
If your individual vote was the same whether you lived in Kansas, Kentucky, California, New York, or Michigan how could that “break” things?
What the founders wanted I think is a weak argument anyways. They gave people the means to change the document for a reason. It certainly wasn’t because they thought what they created should never be altered.
Besides if this is right the whole what about rural people was something they were trying to avoid by creating it anyways.
“Another camp was dead set against letting the people elect the president by a straight popular vote. First, they thought 18th-century voters lacked the resources to be fully informed about the candidates, especially in rural outposts. “
“It wasn’t like the Founders said, ‘Hey, what a great idea! This is the preferred way to select the chief executive, period,’” says Edwards. “They were tired, impatient, frustrated. They cobbled together this plan because they couldn’t agree on anything else.”
There’s no honest discussion to be had between two progressive authoritarians and myself. You and @H_factor are completely opposed to the things I desire, and I am completely opposed to those you want. This country is divided close to 50/50 that way.
And yet honest discussions exist between people on the board with completely different viewpoints daily. But jumping into people talking and intentionally missing what they are saying isn’t an honest discussion in the least. It’s an attempt for attention.
No. “You duh racist and sexist” is not honest discussion. I’ve been posting here long enough to know who is capable of honest discussion and who is capable of
No that’s you making shit up. I didn’t call anyone racist or sexist. The person I was talking to knew that and so did everyone else. I was saying that “you’ll never have the votes to do X” has been commonly said about things that ended up happening. But you couldn’t resist a jump in of nonsense. You decided to say an argument was racist and sexist because hey look now I can disrupt discussion and put up a silly picture.
