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You’ve obviously not look at the last election results map. I don’t know who you think you are fooling.
You do realize that changing the electoral college would require just a tiny bit more than a majority. Right?
Except they don't. I've voted in a swing state and I've voted in sure states. And I can assure it's not the same experience.
As I already noted in this thread, across the two major campaigns there were a grand total of zero events in the eight 3-vote states in the 2016 election. That's unfortunate. But it's absurd that the three largest states in the country, covering more than a quarter of the nation's population, got virtually zero attention in the last election (2 events total, one in California and one in Texas, probably both fundraising swings). The reality is that virtually all attention and resources are devoted to a handful of swing states. And of those swing states, disproportionately the bigger ones, e.g., Ohio and Florida.
It may not be the same experience but it's the same result. Whichever candidate wins the total votes in that state gets the votes from that state.
Right....why would anyone hold an event in say...California, when we already know what way they are going to vote? It is California's own fault for being in the bag for one party and it resulting in them not getting any attention.
In one scenario one's vote can contribute to the outcome, in the other it cannot. That's a perversity in a free society's most important election.
Again, effectively weighting any prospective voter's vote at zero in a free election is absurd.
Doing so for most voters in the country should provoke a crisis of legitimacy in any rational society.
It's plenty free. States should be doing most of the governing, not the federal government. It's also the states who elect the President. I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand.
the EC failed to protect us from a dangerously unfit for office candidate like Trump. i have defended it in the past for this and for other reasons. i now support an effort to get rid of it, as it doesn't work as intended.
It saved us from the alternative candidate that might have started WW3 so I'm cool with it.
Basically, you like government when it forces people to do what you like, and complain about it when it forces upon you what you don't like.
When will people like you realize that it's the force that is wrong, and not what is being forced?
i'm not sure that i understand your argument.
If you did, I wouldn't be able to make it.
Because a state-selected group of electors makes sense. A national popular vote makes sense.
A weighted aggregation of state-level popular votes does not make sense, and is simply an unintended organic development over time that has made the EC as an institution unrecognizable (in terms of its original purpose and intended function) and an incoherent, vestigial shadow of what it once was.
The onslaught of retconned explanations for this contemporary perversity and ahistorical rationalizations for it is laughable.
The Electoral College is one of the very worst features of American democracy, a residual mechanism that effectively reduces presidential contests to a few swing states. Republicans, losers of six of the last seven popular votes, are more than happy to keep things as they are. We've had 230 years of an unfair tradition and if Democrats take the majority once again, we may soon witness the last gasps of a dying Electoral College.
It works EXACTLY as intended.
Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention.
So justify why voters in some states have three to four times the weight behind their votes than voters in other states do and why that is not a violation of the sacred principle of one person/one vote with all votes being equal?
So justify why eleven states should be able to elect a president if a candidate wins each state by a single vote even if they are not on the ballot in the other 39.
And tell us why Americans should not feel that the occupant of the White House is illegitimate when a much higher number of voters voted for a different candidate?
And then tell us what year it is on the calendar and why we should care about most of the arguments in the OP being from two or three centuries ago from an American which no longer exists?
When the EC was proposed in the Constitution, a series of articles explained to the people of the nation why they should support ratification of the document. They were collectively called the Federalist Papers. #68 was written by Alexander Hamilton, the future toast of Broadway. In it he promises how the nation will be protected from our greatest threat - a foreign power putting a creature of their own in our highest office.
The Avalon Project : Federalist No 68
This protection from the EC FAILED to happen in 2016. In fact, not only did it fail to happen, there is not one shred of evidence in any report that even a single one of the fifty state electors meetings even discussed or considered it.
The EC is a lose/lose proposition and must be abolished or we will continue to be saddled with illegitimate presidents.
Sacred principle? :roll:
No "voters" have 3 to 4 times the weight behind their votes.
Again (I have no idea what example you used to create this question since I think Trump was on the ballot in every State) taking your argument at face value, that has more to do with the "winner-take-all" method of awarding electoral votes that all but two State's (Nebraska and Maine award Elector's proportionately) use. Thus even though California had areas where Trump won Congressional districts, ALL 55 Electors were given to Hillary.
No...YOU believe a foreign power had such a major effect. There is absolutely NO EVIDENCE showing this to be true.
Yes, there were "Russian bots" on Facebook and Twitter. Yes, there appears to be (although now thanks to the FBI "insurance policy" scandal this evidence is suspect too) evidence of Russian hacking of the DNC. But no real evidence that sufficient votes were actually swayed in those "Blue Wall 'swing states'" Trump won, as opposed to the very real evidence of how his rallies helped him "bigly" in those States.
It is just assumption bias turned fanatical belief because you choose to believe in something to justify the fact your world was turned upside-down by the results.
One person/one vote is now a sacred principle of American democracy and has been so for a long time now. You trying to deny it is a denial of obvious reality.
Again, it is quite shocking that somebody pretending to intelligently discuss the EC system is not aware of basic arithmetic of the system. If a candidate wins each of the eleven largest states by a single vote in each of them - but is not even on the ballot in the other 39 states, they win the Electoral College. The system allows this.
And even if you are 100% right - which you are obviously not - it ignores the reality that when the EC met in the states to cast their votes, there was plenty of very public speculation about Russian help given to Trump in the election. The very thing Hamilton warned about in Federalist 68 and the very thing Hamilton promised the American people they would be protected from.
Stop lecturing me about your dreams. Your argument is based on what you wish to be, not the reality nor the purpose clearly explained for the Electoral College.
Already explained to you. The "system" allows the STATE's to decide how they wish to award their Electoral College votes. 48 STATE's have decided on the "winner-take-all" option that you are talking about. Two STATE's use a proportional system, i.e. the winner of the popular vote in each Representative District get that Electoral vote, and the two Senator electoral votes go to the candidate who got the most popular votes.
If you don't like your State's system, lobby your State government to choose a different method. :shrug:
Tel me one thing I have said that is not reality?
That is irrelevant to the points I have raised.
The rest of your post may mean something to you - but it utterly failed to refute anything that I said in providing the evidence from Alexander Hamilton and how not one single state did what he promised the nation the Electoral College would do. Not one.
So your musings on that are also irrelevant.
The reality is that
1 - we have a system that rewards the smallest of states with Electoral votes all out of proportion to the votes awarded to the largest states by a factor of between three and four times. And the map I provided and the math prove that. This then violates the sacred principle of one person/one vote with all votes being equal in weight.
2- we have a system which was suppose to function a certain way and has failed to function as promised and the experience of 2016 demonstrates that clearly .
3- we have a system where a candidate only needs to win in each of the eleven largest states by a single vote in each and does not even need to be on the ballot in the other 39 states.
All you talk about winner take all and proportional distribution is irrelevant to that.
6. The Presidency was always designed to represent the entire Nation, not just the most populous States. The holder of that office is supposed to consider even the least populated State when deciding whether or not to veto laws passed by Congress. If elected by purely popular vote, then States like New York and California would be the focus of all attention and decide the fate of all the other States in this Union.
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