Wisconsin Recount Gets the Green Light

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ProVobis said:
Are we the only country where we take a 2.5 million popular vote winner and make it loud and clear that she really got slaughtered? Probably not. But those countries would hardly be worthy of emulation.
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I don’t want to get too off topic because this is about the Wisconsin recount, and that is ongoing, but Hillary Clinton did get slaughtered in the electoral college and that is the system that elects presidents, not a popular vote.

This article is a little old because it’s from November 19th, but it states that three fourths of Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead over Donald Trump comes from Los Angeles County: fitsnews.com/2016/11/19/clintons-popular-vote-edge-all-california/
 
LeafByNiggle said:
That’s not exactly true either. It is a mistake to treat a state like Michigan which Trump barely won as if it is speaking loud and clear for Trump. It is more like a garbled whisper. It is only the artificial rules of the electoral college that turn that squeaker into a unanimous decision. There are few states that Trump won by much more than the skin of his teeth. No reasonable person would characterize this as the states speaking loud and clear.
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No. Yet they try to.
 
Sy_Noe said:
I agree the EC is the only way that matters. But what I don’t get is people dismissing places like LA county and the rest of CA and NY and WA and OR and NV and NM and MN and MD and Northeastern states. They’re Americans, right?
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I think what the rich LA folks ought to do is to buy 2nd homes in swing states and vote there and flip the homes. 100,000 should be enough. 🙂

Might even help the infrastructure there. 🙂
 
Sy_Noe said:
I would surely hope we don’t think the candidate with 2.5 million more votes makes it loud and clear she was slaughtered. 2.5 milllion more votes is more than our only Catholic President, JFK, won by and more than Nixon won by in 1968.
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Of course, she was slaughtered in the only relevant sense: both campaigns went into this election knowing very well that the magic number is 270 electoral votes, and both campaigns aimed to win that many votes by calculating which states they needed to win over.

The Trump campaign won 306 to 232 based on those rules. The Clinton campaign, which was the overwhelming favorite, completely bombed.

The popular vote count is an interesting factoid, and it represents the dominance of the Democratic party in Los Angeles in New York City.
 
Sy_Noe said:
I agree the EC is the only way that matters. But what I don’t get is people dismissing places like LA county and the rest of CA and NY and WA and OR and NV and NM and MN and MD and Northeastern states. They’re Americans, right?
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Oops. I just realized I left out a few others. The midwestern state of IL, the Land of Lincoln. And VA and CO and DC.
 
Sy_Noe said:
I agree the EC is the only way that matters. But what I don’t get is people dismissing places like LA county and the rest of CA and NY and WA and OR and NV and NM and MN and MD and Northeastern states. They’re Americans, right?
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Of all those areas, only LA and NYC make up Clinton’s popular vote lead. The rest are balanced out by areas that Trump won majorities in.

In terms of dismissing voters: politics needs to be at least 140,000,000 times less polemical, and the problem you outline is only the tip of the iceberg.
 
Another conspiracy theory to consider: I wonder if “all this drama” is really about planting seeds to toss the Electoral College and run with the Popular Vote in future elections. I think that would be a monster mistake on the level of The Hunger Games. No kidding. Middle America would be enslaved by the Tolerant Enlightened Class.
 
RosyAnne said:
Another conspiracy theory to consider: I wonder if “all this drama” is really about planting seeds to toss the Electoral College and run with the Popular Vote in future elections. I think that would be a monster mistake on the level of The Hunger Games. No kidding. Middle America would be enslaved by the Tolerant Enlightened Class.
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The Electoral College can only be tossed by a constitutional amendment and that is quite a process. The fact is, so many people just hate our Constitution and for too long in Washington the game has been to just pass laws that are unconstitutional from the get go and the electorate is so constitutional illiterate they just go along and do nothing. Politicians who do such things should be booted out of office at the earliest opportunity.
 
ProVobis said:
Are we the only country where we take a 2.5 million popular vote winner and make it loud and clear that she really got slaughtered? Probably not. But those countries would hardly be worthy of emulation.
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But we are not a democracy. It is the states that choose the president, and within each state, the democratic principle is applied to the choice of that state’s electors. Clinton won California with overwhelming numbers, and she rightly receives their 55 electors. But California voters have no say over Texas’s choice, or Michigan’s choice.

Oh, that others would emulate our republican system.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
That’s not exactly true either. It is a mistake to treat a state like Michigan which Trump barely won as if it is speaking loud and clear for Trump. It is more like a garbled whisper. It is only the artificial rules of the electoral college that turn that squeaker into a unanimous decision. There are few states that Trump won by much more than the skin of his teeth. No reasonable person would characterize this as the states speaking loud and clear.
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306 electoral votes is not a small margin, but as I said before, we are indeed a nation divided, and divided by a small margin. But if you look at the make up of state legislatures and governors, one can see the current trend regarding my point.
That’s not to discount the popularity of progressive ideas in places like California, New York, and Oregon, etc. it’s just that they are not shared in the clear majority of the states
 
RosyAnne said:
Another conspiracy theory to consider: I wonder if “all this drama” is really about planting seeds to toss the Electoral College and run with the Popular Vote in future elections. I think that would be a monster mistake on the level of The Hunger Games. No kidding. Middle America would be enslaved by the Tolerant Enlightened Class.
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I highly doubt that the electoral college will be overturned anytime soon. First of all, the republican congress will never approve the amendment, second there are probably at least 13 state who prefer the status quo.
 
JonNC said:
But we are not a democracy. It is the states that choose the president, and within each state, the democratic principle is applied to the choice of that state’s electors. Clinton won California with overwhelming numbers, and she rightly receives their 55 electors. But California voters have no say over Texas’s choice, or Michigan’s choice.

Oh, that others would emulate our republican system.
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Maybe, but reread my post 215, where I showed part of the flaw in this “republican” system. And if you think it’s far-fetched, consider that Florida already has a lot of “snowbird” addresses. I know this for a fact.

The Electoral College was drawn up I’m sure before people started voting from second homes, absentee ballots, and the like.
 
stinkcat_14 said:
I highly doubt that the electoral college will be overturned anytime soon. First of all, the republican congress will never approve the amendment, second there are probably at least 13 state who prefer the status quo.
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All is would take is for 2/3rds of the states to set a constitutional convention to draw up an amendment, then have 3/4 of the states to ratify it. They can set up the time limit. Congress need not get involved. It won’t be easy, for sure, but it’s possible.
 
stinkcat_14 said:
I highly doubt that the electoral college will be overturned anytime soon. First of all, the republican congress will never approve the amendment, second there are probably at least 13 state who prefer the status quo.
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Not all that long ago, there was talk in conservative circles here in Wisconsin about moving to an allocated approach similar to Maine and Nebraska where the state would no longer be winner take all. Wisconsin, being a very geographically divided state would likely always be split evenly (4 reliably conservative districts, 3 reliably liberal districts, and 1 swing district - with the 2 statewide electors being swing as well). After all, Democrats had won every Presidential election here since 1984 here and conservatives were getting frustrated that they were losing all these close contests. However, at the end of the day, rational minds prevailed and the realization set in that diluting the elelctoral vote by splitting them by district would reduce the importance of Wisconsin as neither major Presidential candidate would need to woo them and therefore not need to address the concerns of Wisconsin voters.
 
LiamQ said:
Of all those areas, only LA and NYC make up Clinton’s popular vote lead.
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Actually her lead is an accumulation of votes from all metropolitan areas. (She almost has as many votes as Obama in 2012.) Plus what appears to be from a lot of absentee voters currently residing or visiting other countries. This has really got nothing to do with states unless you’re talking representation in Congress, for example, the Dakotas getting 6 electoral votes instead of 3 or 4 simply because they are split into two states. But these seem to benefit the Republicans.
 
JonNC said:
306 electoral votes is not a small margin, but as I said before, we are indeed a nation divided, and divided by a small margin. But if you look at the make up of state legislatures and governors, one can see the current trend regarding my point.
That’s not to discount the popularity of progressive ideas in places like California, New York, and Oregon, etc. it’s just that they are not shared in the clear majority of the states
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Maybe but in this day and age people tend to migrate more and more. I’m sending out Christmas cards to many who have left the Chicagoland area, in favor of better weather or opportunities elsewhere.
 
JonNC said:
306 electoral votes is not a small margin.
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As electoral votes go, it is not a small margin. But that is relevant for only one thing - determining the legal winner. There is no dispute about that. The dispute comes when someone claims that this election shows the people speaking loud and clear through this election. As you said, this is a nation divided. If the Trump supporters spoke loud and clear, the Clinton supporters also spoke loud and clear. All the more reason for the winners to take seriously the view of the losers going forward and look for common ground, rather than force a one-sided agenda under the mantle of a “mandate”.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
As electoral votes go, it is not a small margin. But that is relevant for only one thing - determining the legal winner. There is no dispute about that. The dispute comes when someone claims that this election shows the people speaking loud and clear through this election. As you said, this is a nation divided. If the Trump supporters spoke loud and clear, the Clinton supporters also spoke loud and clear. All the more reason for the winners to take seriously the view of the losers going forward and look for common ground, rather than force a one-sided agenda under the mantle of a “mandate”.
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An interesting note is that Clinton won the popular vote by more than 4 million people combining the 3 largest cities/counties of New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago/Cook. The voting margin between the democrats and republicans is huge.

For my own interest, I am comparing welfare in those cities to the state less those cities.
My feeling is that those areas are a glimpse of what a socialist state would be.

So far it seems to confirm that once a person has the government taking care of their employment/health care/food/housing that there is no turning back.

The voting in Cook County/Chicago for example cannot be overcome by the rest of the state. The electoral vote goes Democrat by over 800,000 votes with Cook County, it would be Republican by over 400,000 votes without Cook County.

I would love to see Illinois split in their electoral vote, but Chicago would never let that happen.
 
Dwyer said:
Maybe if Ms. Stein hadn’t run for President as a Green Party candidate, Hillary Clinton would have received more votes. :rolleyes:
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Maybe, but I think it is more likely that those who voted for Stein would not have voted at all, at least not for the presidential position. As it is, about 47% of the electorate did not vote for any presidential candidate, and I cannot blame them this election cycle.
 
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