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The popular vote isn't a thing

EatTheRich

President
The states that decided this election were Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The campaigns are run in battleground states. Not the small states. The Electoral College creates "one party states"....republicans in California or New York and democrats in Texas don't count in presidential elections...so the EC discourages turnout.

We are a republic because we elect representatives to the House to vote on legislation instead of having elections to do it. The small states are protected by their senators...they get the same representation in the Senate as every other state...See how that works?

Meanwhile, the president is not the president of individual states. He is the president of the nation. That is why the NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE should and will elect him.
And the same “one person, one vote” principle is the same reason the Senate is an oligarchic relic that should also be done away with.
 

EatTheRich

President
Our country was not designed that any state should have more importance then any other, which means that the people in that are also of more importance. I want to vote in primaries, but my vote never counts because the noms are always already chosen by the time nj votes. Fair is fair right is right and wrong is wrong, nothing changes when you step over a state line.
Whether speaking of U.S. states or foreign ones.“We are for a world without borders.”-Che Guevara
 

EatTheRich

President
Rural populations historically are better off under the rule of progressive cities than under the rule of the country’s lords. They made impressive gains, for example, in Cuba or revolutionary Nicaragua, while no country was more nightmarish or more countryside-dominated than Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea. Among wealthy nations, they made huge leaps toward liberation in E. Germany while stagnating miserably under National Party government in S. Africa.
 

Nutty Cortez

Dummy (D) NY
Big states aren’t “malevolent” toward small states, they are just dragged down by their backwardness.

“Illegal aliens” don’t vote in presidential elections.

The best reason to have a democracy is to provide a check on the power of government that the current oligarchic republic doesn’t allow for.

Condescend much ?

I'm so glad Thousands of Billionaires in San Fran- right around the corner from homeless tents and sh*t covered sidewalks is SO SO advanced and progressive !!!
 

Emily

NSDAP Kanzler
Our country was not designed that any state should have more importance then any other, which means that the people in that are also of more importance. I want to vote in primaries, but my vote never counts because the noms are always already chosen by the time nj votes. Fair is fair right is right and wrong is wrong, nothing changes when you step over a state line.
Primaries are a party thing. Changing how they operate is up to the parties, not a constitutional matter. You're right that the existing primary system disenfranchises voters in much of the country. Fixing that will require putting heat on the parties at the state level. The other alternative is eliminating primaries entirely by going back to choosing the POTUS, VPOTUS, and Senators as the framers intended originally.

The "United States" is mostly autonomous ? Absurd
The USA was intended and designed to be a federation of free states that were mostly autonomous. That's not absurd; it's unarguably so. The USA has become a nation-state divided into districts with a modicum of autonomy. If that's the way one thinks it should be, fine, but the constitutional system wasn't meant for that would need to be scrapped.

The electoral college is absurd and outdated,it must go
I disagree entirely but, regardless, the constitution includes provisions for amending it. Eliminating the EC, if it's to be done, should be done by constitutional amendment. Eliminating the EC's relevance via subversion such as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact shouldn't be allowed.
 

Zam-Zam

Senator
Food for thought:

Leaving aside the fact that a deal is a deal, there are very practical reasons why we will always need the Electoral College under our current constitutional system.


The most important is that we want the presidential election to settle the question of legitimacy—who is entitled carry on the office of the president. Under the Constitution, the person who receives the most electoral votes becomes the president, even if he or she does not receive either a plurality or a majority of the popular vote.

In the election of 1992, Bill Clinton received a majority of electoral votes and was the duly elected president, despite the fact that he received only a plurality (43 percent) of the popular votes. A third party candidate, Ross Perot, received almost 19 percent. In fact, Bill Clinton did not win a majority of the popular vote in either of his elections, yet there was never any doubt—because he won an Electoral College majority—that he had the legitimacy to speak for the American people.

This points to the reason why the Electoral College should remain as an important element of our governmental structure. If we had a pure popular vote system, as many people who are disappointed with the 2016 outcome are now proposing, it would not be feasible—because of third party candidates—to ensure that any candidate would win a popular majority. Even in 2016, for example, although Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, she only received a plurality (48 percent)—not a majority; third party candidates took the rest.

If we abandoned the Electoral College, and adopted a system in which a person could win the presidency with only a plurality of the popular votes we would be swamped with candidates. Every group with an ideological or major policy interest would field a candidate, hoping that their candidate would win a plurality and become the president.


There would candidates of the pro-life and pro-choice parties; free trade and anti-trade parties; pro-immigration and anti-immigration parties; and parties favoring or opposing gun control—just to use the hot issues of today as examples.

We see this effect in parliamentary systems, where the party with the most votes after an election has to put together a coalition of many parties in order to create a governing majority in the Parliament. Unless we were to scrap the constitutional system we have today and adopt a parliamentary structure, we could easily end up with a president elected with only 20 percent-25 percent of the vote.

Of course, we could graft a run-off system onto our Constitution; the two top candidates in, say, a 10-person race, would then run against one another for the presidency. But that could easily mean that the American people would have a choice between a candidate of the pro-choice party and a candidate of the pro-gun party. If you thought the choice was bad this year, it could be far worse.

Those who complain now that it is unfair for Donald Trump to become president when he received fewer votes than Hillary Clinton have not considered either the implications of what they are proposing or the genius of the Framers.


Complete text; https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/12/06/why_we_need_the_electoral_college_132499.html


All a moot point anyway; The Electoral College is here to stay for a very long time.
 

Emily

NSDAP Kanzler
All a moot point anyway; The Electoral College is here to stay for a very long time.
Unfortunately, it's not a moot point because of current efforts to subvert the constitution. The EC would still exist but be rendered irrelevant if the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact goes into effect.
 
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kaz

Small l libertarian
Our country was not designed that any state should have more importance then any other, which means that the people in that are also of more importance. I want to vote in primaries, but my vote never counts because the noms are always already chosen by the time nj votes. Fair is fair right is right and wrong is wrong, nothing changes when you step over a state line.
You didn't know that the electoral college was created by the founders? Seriously? Actually it's in the constitution. To say that the founding fathers didn't design our country that way is ridiculous.

You are conflating party politics with the election. Primary voting is designed by the parties. It has nothing to do with the Constitutional election process at all.

But in the end, popular vote is just tyranny of the majority. It's how the left is getting socialism. First, they had to break down the Constitutional limits on Federal power, second they need to break down the election process and go to majority voting. Then you have the system we have now where simple majority vote can give us any socialist construct they want. Single payer, minimum income, whatever they want.

You're a tool of tyranny supporting that
 

kaz

Small l libertarian
The electoral college is absurd and outdated,it must go
Well, there's a well thought through and thoroughly explained and justified position.

Two simple questions.

1) Why did the founders create the electoral college? You don't know, do you? Note I didn't ask you to agree with it, just explain THEIR reasoning. You can't do it, can you? I double dog dare you

2) What changed? What is different than when they created it that makes it "outdated?"

I think their reasoning was spot on and I see nothing to have changed except the overflow of the country with socialists who want to use tyranny of the majority to bludgeon the minority. But I'll give you a chance to actually explain your position with more than that you want it, the electoral college is standing between you and free government cheese
 
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