Minority Rule Cannot Last in America

[OscarLevant]

The Democrats would never vote to repeal the EC.

They can't, it's in the constitution But, there are legislative workarounds to make the popular vote the winner, I should think.

 

[Rucker61]

They can't, it's in the constitution

They could try to amend it, but once they have enough states to do so they'd control the EC.

But, there are legislative workarounds to make the popular vote the winner, I should think.

NPV is one effort in that regard, but if they had enough states to sign up to make it work then they'd have enough states to control the EC.

 

[OscarLevant]

Who among the leading western democracies does do a direct vote for their country's leader?

Quite a few, but I'll list all of them, and you can pick out the 'western democracies'.

Those that do have a run off system, such as Brazil where the majority wins via a second direct ballot once the winners of the first ballot run off are established, not to mention:
Afghanistan, Argentina, Austria, Benin, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Finland, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Iran, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Lithuania, Malawi, Moldova, North Macedonia, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Togo, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay and Zimbabwe.

See:

Two-round system - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If any of the candidates on the first round receive a majority (>50% rather than a plurality), no need for a run off, but, as I understand it, that rarely happens.

 

[Rucker61]

Quite a few, but I'll list all of them, and you can pick out the 'western democracies'.

Those that do have a run off system, such as Brazil where the majority wins via a second direct ballot once the winners of the first ballot run off are established, not to mention:
Afghanistan, Argentina, Austria, Benin, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Finland, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Iran, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Lithuania, Malawi, Moldova, North Macedonia, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Togo, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay and Zimbabwe.

See:

Two-round system - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If any of the candidates on the first round receive a majority (>50% rather than a plurality), no need for a run off, but, as I understand it, that rarely happens.

Good list. I guess countries like the UK, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Norway, etc, haven't embraced the "modernity" of a direct election either. I guess it has worked wonders in Afghanistan, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Liberia, Russia, Serbia, Turkey and Zimbabwe.

I'm sold. Sign me up.

 

[Athanasius68]

Good list. I guess countries like the UK, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Norway, etc, haven't embraced the "modernity" of a direct election either. I guess it has worked wonders in Afghanistan, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Liberia, Russia, Serbia, Turkey and Zimbabwe.

I'm sold. Sign me up.

With the exception of Germany, the countries that have not embraced "modernity" are monarchies-- their heads of state are not elected.
Their heads of government are-- but never by the 'people' themselves.
And often in parliamentary democracies, the party o the head of government actually received a minority of the vote. His or her election is dependent upon coalitions fashioned after the vote. The EC creates the coalition before the vote ie its more 'democratic.'

 

[Antiwar]

If unequal voting-power is such a good system, let's change all voting to have it. Districts with the least amount of people should get four times the voting-power of the most populous district in electing state governors, senators, etc. That's the only fair way to weight votes.

 

[Antiwar]

Who among the leading western democracies does do a direct vote for their country's leader?

The better question is: Who else has such a ****ed up presidential election system (that gave extra power to slave states)?

Besides the U.S, the only other democracies that indirectly elect a leader who combines the roles of head of state and head of government (as the U.S. president does) are Botswana, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, South Africa and Suriname. (The Swiss collective presidency also is elected indirectly, by that country’s parliament.)
In more than half (65) of the world’s 125 democracies, the head of state – nearly always called a president – is directly elected by voters. Thirty other democracies are classified as constitutional monarchies, and in the remaining 30, including the U.S., the head of state is indirectly elected. (We confined our analysis to the 125 nations designated as “electoral democracies” by Freedom House, a research institute that studies issues of democracy, political freedom and human rights.)

However, only the U.S. has a system in which voters elect a body of “electors”whose sole function is to actually choose the president.

Among democracies, U.S. stands out in how it chooses its head of state

No other democratic nation selects its head of state quite the way the U.S. does, and only a handful are even similar.

www.pewresearch.org

 

[Antiwar]

The Electoral College gave slavers representation for their slaves, who obviously couldn't vote. Hell, they weren't considered citizens nor humans!

African American enslaved people made up a full 40 percent of the South’s population, and Southern delegates wanted them to be counted along with white citizens when it came to calculating how many representatives their states would receive in Congress. Northerners, on the other hand, argued that slaves were property, and didn’t require representation.


This ugly debate was resolved with the so-called “three-fifths compromise,” by which each Black person would count as three-fifths of a person when determining congressional representation for each state by population. As each state’s number of electors in the Electoral College was equal to its number of representatives in Congress, this compromise also affected how the country elected its executive branch.

The Electoral College Debate Dates Back to the Nation's Founding

Debate over the system used to choose the president and vice president of the United States is as old as the U.S. Constitution itself.

www.history.com

 

[Antiwar]

Everybody knows that Wyoming's winning voters were superior to every other states' winning voters. What makes you think your state is equal to Wyoming? You live in an inferior state! Your state sucks!