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Democracy! Doing it properly!

Lafayette

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WHEN?

From here: These States Want To Drastically Change How A President Gets Elected In 2020

Excerpt:

Recently there has been increased pushback against America's electoral college, and calls to elect the president using the popular vote. This debate is leaving many to wonder how the electoral college will work in the 2020 presidential election. Several states have passed legislation aiming to elect the next president of the United States by popular vote.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a group of states who have pledged their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, is gaining momentum. Colorado became the latest state to join, and more states, like Maryland, are introducing national popular vote legislation. Although more states need to join the coalition for this new voting method to be enacted, the group is well on its way to making major changes in 2020.

Currently, most states give their allocated electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote in that state (with exceptions in Maine and Nebraska that allow electoral votes to be split between candidates). Some claim this system ensures that presidential candidates spend a majority of their time campaigning in swing states, according to Vox. In the 2016 presidential election, 94 percent of events took place in the 11 "battleground states" identified by Politico plus Arizona, according to National Popular Vote.

The manipulations that ensued from the law in 1803, when the US was a neophyte nation and no other nation on earth (except France) had separated itself from its royal head-of-state, were perhaps decent at the time. But they have not served well recently. Significant ameliorations must be mad to avoid manipulations of the popular-vote for the presidency. Without which the US has no good reason to be calling itself a True Democracy.

For instance:
*Why should the entire popular-vote of a nation be secondary to the Electoral-College vote that decides the presidency?
*In 1803, when the EC began "regulating" state presidential votes there was probably a need. Reporting the vote to Congress required that more than just a few-people report the results authentically to that august body in order to confirm the vote.
*Which unfortunately created crucial mistakes in the way the vote is counted. For instance, over time, the Popular-Vote has become the common means of obtaining results in truly democratic countries. But, in 1803, such was not the case because all other countries at the time were "kingdoms".
*There is no historical reason for which such a tired-law should still determine the manner in which the presidential popular-vote is taken and reported incorrectly to Congress in DC.
*Especially when the number of EC-votes of a state often has no proper alignment with the state's actual voting-population. The correction necessary is simple and patently obvious - states need only report the simple popular-vote count by candidate to Congress!
*Which then authenticates the vote-count and announces the results.

Just when is Uncle Sam going to stop with nonsensical voting-procedures* and employ the simplest means to define the winner of any political-vote in the nation.

When ... ?

*Which means also that we junk the voting-machination that was invented also in the early 19th century by a governor of Massachusetts known as "gerrymandering"
 
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A KEY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE US AND THE EU IN POLITICAL STRUCTURE

It's high-time that we stop employing misguided rules (Gerrymandering and Electoral College) that were made more than two-centuries ago and have long-since warped American democracy into the Money-Game that it has become today.

Of course, nobody will touch those two subjects that changes dramatically key political-manipulations of governmental lawmaking. That should simply not exist. After WW2, when Europe had to rethink its political system, many of its would-be politicians went to the US to see how Uncle Sam works his political electoral-system.

None of them came back to introduce either the Electoral College or Gerrymandering. In fact, most of them do not have a Senate either - but that was perhaps because neither did they have senates before the war ...

NB: European senate-countries exist, but there is no formal EU-wide Senate that sits in the EU-capital of Strasbourg and is thus comparable to the US Senate. There is nonetheless an informal Association of European Senates
 
Since there have so far been no comments from American citizens, can I take it that they are content with the present system?
 
WHY NOT?

Since there have so far been no comments from American citizens, can I take it that they are content with the present system?
I'm a Yank who lives in France. I've lived in a good number of European countries, including the UK.

The only element of Europe that fascinates me is the fact that, very early on, it made a point in its post-war reconstruction of taxing high-income. Whereas in the US we assume that billions of dollars in Wealth is a Green-badge-of-Courage.

The UK is somewhere in-between. It has much lower higher-income taxation than the rest of Europe. Which is why get-rich-quick enthusiasts abound in both countries - along with sharing the same language.

What fascinates many Europeans is the facile ability to generate Wealth in the US. Which, I suggest, is a desire that the English imbued upon the US. That changed of course at the end of the 18th century when the "Americans" released themselves from the British hegemony. But the sentiment that making a great deal of money is still in both countries.

In doing so, they created a very different and singular culture, and thus both remain captive of the same language. Linguists perhaps can tell us if language was that important a factor. To which I add this thought: The South American countries had the ability to emerge and develop in the same manner as did the US. But those countries - that speak more or less all the same language (Spanish and Portuguese) - did not do so. Neither in Europe nor in the "New World".

I think language had a highly significant influence on the evolution of North and South America. The Latin-language countries - that once belonged to a a very rich Roman empire - were unable to bring unity to South America that they historically shared under the Roman Empire. I, for one, wonder why-not?

Our northern hemisphere is just two nations, both of which speak generally the same language. That fracturing is much more significant in South America however. And it is unlikely that we will be seeing a United States of South America for some time to come.

I cannot help wondering why not? I suggest their disunity is a key-reason economically that both their economic-growth and standard of living are so much less than North America ...
 
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