Senate Democrats introduce a constitutional amendment to abolish the

[FirstFiveEighth]

Claifornia is free to divide its electors by the percentage of the vote if it is soooo concerned about its farmers. That’s what states are for, serving their own citizens.

But they won’t because they realize the Electoral College gives states power with winner-takes all/ first past the post. It’s about states balancing a federal government.

 

[ProVobis]

The president is and should be elected by the states.

Actually the power lies with the Electors who seem to be slowly deviating from the wishes of their voters. Had two Bush Electors voted for Batman in 2000, the House would have selected the President and the Senate the VP.

 

[HarryStotle]

I don’t understand that at all. Could you elaborate?

Over half of Americans live in 146, mostly urban, counties. There are 3000 counties altogether. So less than 5% of areas with mostly urban interests will dictate policy to the 95% of areas (mostly rural) in the United States.

You seem to be aware that urban interests are radically different from rural interests. Most urban dwellers hardly comprehend where their food comes from or what it takes to bring it to their tables. You want urban dwelling self-absorbed liberals basically running policy determining bodies when, practically speaking they don’t have much of a clue?

 

[Peeps]

No, the red voters in the rural states will never, ever EVER have a chance of impacting an election because if you add up all the populations of farmers and small-towners and flyover small cities–it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the population of Chicago, NYC, and LA.

I pray that the electoral college remains, for the sake of the United States of America. Please God, save us.

 

[HarryStotle]

JonNC:

Sure I am. I’m just not willing to let progressives interpret the language.

You should probably leave the language interpretation to progressives if you think an amendment that gave voters more power was “suppression” lol

An amendment that would give like-minded voters more power over areas which they, in fact, know very little about.

It would amount to “suppression” in the same sense that a society make up of three wolves and two sheep would amount to suppression for the sheep, even though each member would have one vote.

If you want a society that equally regards the well-being of wolves and sheep, a raw democracy is not what you want.

That is why the Founding Fathers created the Constitution and the Republic in the way they did.

 

[JonNC]

JonNC:

Sure I am. I’m just not willing to let progressives interpret the language.

You should probably leave the language interpretation to progressives if you think an amendment that gave voters more power was “suppression” lol

Oh, we’ve seen how progressives have destroyed the language for decades. Their damage to our republic has been disastrous.
But you may be right about voter suppression. Progressives were far more practiced at it going back Jim Crow.

 

[ProVobis]

Most urban dwellers hardly comprehend where their food comes from or what it takes to bring it to their tables.

I agree. The Democrats need to appeal to the farmers more.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

The president is and should be elected by the states. The liberals, progressives, and conservatives who live their choose via an election their state’s electors. In the last election, Clinton won the popular vote in Vermont and 19 other states and DC. Trump won the popular vote in 30 states. Every voter had the same say in their state.

Since you are a teacher I’m sure you have heard of Gerrymandering. Well, the electoral college is just like Gerrymandering (but to a lesser degree). So it may be worthwhile to analyze why Gerrymandering is unfair. It works by cracking and packing. It packs the members of the opposing party into as few districts as possible, while cracking the populations of the opposing party into several districts where they are outnumbered if they cannot be packed. The result is that the opposing party wastes its vote by winning overwhelmingly in the few districts in which it has been packed, while losing just barely in the districts where it has been cracked. Now California has been packed with Democrats, because they win overwhelmingly in the Presidential election. And Michigan and Wisconsin are examples where the Democratic presence has been cracked (diluted) when Republicans win in those states, they win by much smaller margins than the Democrats when they win in California. This is the hallmark of Gerrymandering: When your party wins, it wins by “just enough”, but when the opposing party wins, it wins overwhelmingly. If you run the numbers for the 2016 election you will see that on average, the Republicans won by lower margins than the Democrats. But the electoral college system takes no account of the margin by which each state is won, if it is a winner-take-all state, as most of them are. So it is discarding a very telling bit of information that, in all fairness, ought to have some effect. But it has none. Doesn’t it seem right to you that an election that you win by 51% does not indicate the same thing as an election that you win by 98%? Of course in the end there can only be one winner. But that information about the margins should not be discarded so early in the process. That is exactly what Gerrymandering does and it is exactly what the electoral college does. Of course Congressional Gerrymandering is worse because it is done intentionally, which the inequity in the electoral college is less and unintentional.

Another way to look at your analysis of how you thing the EC is fair is to consider a thought experiment. Instead of giving every state the number of electoral votes equal to the sum of their house and senate members, what if we gave each state exactly two electoral votes (one for each senator). Your analysis when applied to that hypothetical arrangement would have exactly the same conclusion. That is, everyone would have the same say in their own state, and every state would have the same say in electing the President. Even you realize that would not be a fair arrangement. Yet your analysis would say it is fair. That shows your analysis is a flawed way to analyze the fairness of a voting system.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

I don’t understand that at all. Could you elaborate?

Over half of Americans live in 146, mostly urban, counties. There are 3000 counties altogether. So less than 5% of areas with mostly urban interests will dictate policy to the 95% of areas (mostly rural) in the United States.

Your mistake is to assume that square miles have some sort of inherent voting rights. They don’t. Only people have voting rights. How many square miles those people happen to occupy is of no relevance in determining voting rights.

 

[JonNC]

HarryStotle:

Most urban dwellers hardly comprehend where their food comes from or what it takes to bring it to their tables.

I agree. The Democrats need to appeal to the farmers more.

And conservatives need to do a much better job of sharing the message and possibilities offered by individual rights over statist government power.

 

[John24]

Most urban dwellers hardly comprehend where their food comes from or what it takes to bring it to their tables.

It’s actually pretty funny to accuse urban dwellers of being clueless and then post this.

No, the red voters in the rural states will never, ever EVER have a chance of impacting an election because if you add up all the populations of farmers and small-towners and flyover small cities–it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the population of Chicago, NYC, and LA.

You’re aware that many of those big, blue cities have red voters, right? There were 1.4 million votes for Trump in just the cities you mentioned, and there would be much higher Republican turnout in blue cities and states if the electoral college was abolished.

An amendment that would give like-minded voters more power over areas which they, in fact, know very little about.

How come this silly argument only ever goes one way? In fact, it’s ridiculous to give rural voters so much power over urban areas they know very little about.

If you want a society that equally regards the well-being of wolves and sheep, a raw democracy is not what you want.

Given that prey populations are by necessity much higher than predator populations, you’re aware that rural voters are the wolves in this analogy right?

That is why the Founding Fathers created the Constitution and the Republic in the way they did.

The way they created it was with slavery. Forgive me for not putting much faith in their exact form of government.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

LeafByNiggle:

I don’t understand that at all. Could you elaborate?

Over half of Americans live in 146, mostly urban, counties. There are 3000 counties altogether. So less than 5% of areas with mostly urban interests will dictate policy to the 95% of areas (mostly rural) in the United States.

Your mistake is to assume that square miles have some sort of inherent voting rights. They don’t. Only people have voting rights. How many square miles those people happen to occupy is of no relevance in determining voting rights.

Yeah, no. Territory represents resources. The individuals who live there likely know more about their home region than individuals living in urban centres concerned with very different life goals. The voting rights, as determined by sheer numbers of people, does not properly represent the assets of the nation and how those ought to be used or developed.

Given most western countries have high proportions of urban and cosmopolitan voters, they represent and favour a very isolated life style, in spite of the fact that they are a great majority in most developed countries.

To let urbanites have almost a complete say in how the nation is run is a gross error.

 

[JonNC]

HarryStotle:

LeafByNiggle:

I don’t understand that at all. Could you elaborate?

Over half of Americans live in 146, mostly urban, counties. There are 3000 counties altogether. So less than 5% of areas with mostly urban interests will dictate policy to the 95% of areas (mostly rural) in the United States.

Your mistake is to assume that square miles have some sort of inherent voting rights. They don’t. Only people have voting rights. How many square miles those people happen to occupy is of no relevance in determining voting rights.

You continue to approach the issue from the flawed approach that the election of the president should be by national plebiscite.
There is no reason for such an approach. These United States did not create a democracy for good reason.
People do exercise their voting rights, in their states, for their electors. States, on the other hand, are not mere square miles of land. They are called states for a reason. Not provinces. Not sectors. States. States joined in a federal system that they created.

 

[John24]

These United States did not create a democracy for good reason.

It’s pretty hard to call giving more power to slave states a good reason.

 

[humbleseeker]

It’s pretty hard to call giving more power to slave states a good reason.

Actually, delegates at the Constitutional Convention from states with smaller populations or limited land area such as Connecticut, New Jersey, and Maryland generally favored the Electoral College.

 

[JonNC]

JonNC:

These United States did not create a democracy for good reason.

It’s pretty hard to call giving more power to slave states a good reason.

Except that isn’t what it did. And since slavery ended over 150 years ago, it is kind of weird to claim that as a reason to end it.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

HarryStotle:

LeafByNiggle:

I don’t understand that at all. Could you elaborate?

Over half of Americans live in 146, mostly urban, counties. There are 3000 counties altogether. So less than 5% of areas with mostly urban interests will dictate policy to the 95% of areas (mostly rural) in the United States.

Your mistake is to assume that square miles have some sort of inherent voting rights. They don’t. Only people have voting rights. How many square miles those people happen to occupy is of no relevance in determining voting rights.

Yeah, no. Territory represents resources. The individuals who live there likely know more about their home region than individuals living in urban centres concerned with very different life goals. The voting rights, as determined by sheer numbers of people, does not properly represent the assets of the nation and how those ought to be used or developed.

I know that at one time our nation granted the right to vote only to white men who owned property. A white man who did not own property did not have any right to vote. This tends to support your view that votes should represent resources. But that ethic has been replaced by an ethic that says the vote is a right to men without property or resources, and even women without resources. A person who has 1000 acres of land or who owns a billion dollar company has exactly as many votes as a 25 year old girl who has no job or land or money. One person, one vote. We as a society have made the person as the one and only focus of voting power - not square miles, not cattle, not gold mines, not any resources. Now maybe you would like to return to the ethic of the founding fathers where the dignity of the human person was not the primary focus. But I am not ashamed to say I support the changes to universal suffrage that have occurred over 100 years ago.

To let urbanites have almost a complete say in how the nation is run is a gross error.

If the urbanites almost completely represent the people, then I don’t think it is a gross error. There are limits to minority rights.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

You continue to approach the issue from the flawed approach that the election of the president should be by national plebiscite.

I did not assume that as a premise. I proved it from principles we both agree with.

These United States did not create a democracy for good reason.

There are many possible reasons why these United States did not create a pure democracy. One is that a pure democracy is impractical to administer in anything larger than a small city-state. Another is that the founders did not trust that all people were adequately and equally educated and informed to make good decisions on every issue that comes up. I think these two are the most likely reasons. Whatever their reasons, I do not think we need to be forever bound to them, especially since the founders had the humility to realize their reasons for all the decisions they made might not stand the test of time. And so they included provisions for amending the Constitution so that future generations could correct for these deficiencies. Saying that the electoral college was instituted by the founders is not much more of a justification for it than it is a justification for limiting the vote to land-owning men.

People do exercise their voting rights, in their states, for their electors. States, on the other hand, are not mere square miles of land. They are called states for a reason. Not provinces. Not sectors. States. States joined in a federal system that they created.

Actually, if you look at how the electoral college is set up, there is already a tacit acknowledgement of the fact that population matters. 81% of the electoral count is based on the count in the House, which in turn is determined by the most recent census. So 81% of it is already allocated based on population and only 19% of it is based on the count in the Senate (which is two per state). But this is not the biggest problem with the electoral college.

We could vastly improve the fairness of the electoral college by making a very small change in it. Keep the electoral college just the way it is, along with the method of assigning the number of votes to each state, but make this one small change: Outlaw “winner-take all” in individual states. Make it so that if 92% of the people in California vote for the Democrat, then California would cast only 92% (not the current 100%) of its electoral votes to the Democrat. You would like that, right? But that also means that when Trump wins Michigan by a 47.6% to 46.3% margin, that he would only get slightly more than half of Michigan’s 16 electoral votes, say 9 to 7. That alone would fix 99% of the problems with the electoral college, and still leave in place the special recognition of small states with their slightly disproportionate number of electors.

 

[JonNC]

I did not assume that as a premise. I proved it from principles we both agree with.

There is absolutely no circumstance under which I agree on a national plebiscite. It is contrary to the basic principles of governance upon which the republic was founded and has developed.

There are many possible reasons why these United States did not create a pure democracy. One is that a pure democracy is impractical to administer in anything larger than a small city-state. Another is that the founders did not trust that all people were adequately and equally educated and informed to make good decisions on every issue that comes up.

You can speculate if you wish, but the framers are quite expressive in their opposition to democracy. They repeat their warnings about the inherent dangers to individual rights in democracy.
Their warnings are played out regularly around the world on a regular basis. As Madison said, “Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrant. “
It isn’t that I question education levels. I question human nature. Power corrupts. We see that corruption played out more and more as the general government usurps more and more power. We see corruption played out by politicians offering “free” This and “free” that, which is, effectively, trading liberty for security.

The call for a national plebiscite is simply statism.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

I did not assume that as a premise. I proved it from principles we both agree with.

There is absolutely no circumstance under which I agree on a national plebiscite.

That is not the principle that meant. I meant the principle of one person one vote. Do you agree with that principle or not?

Also I would like to know what you think of eliminating winner-take-all in the electors for each state.