==============================
Hillary now leads by more than 2 million popular votes. Let's get rid of or modify the EC and end the possibility of minority rule in the future.
It was a very close run thing in the swing states. I heard some people on the left actually discouraging turnout, and I heard that sentiment approved on NPR by the cofounder of BLM. Hope they are pleased.
PaulineP Len sez: Modify the EC, but I don't want California & New York determining the outcome of all elections. I also don't think people who are here illegally should decide the electorate.
· 2 hrs
MarkJ Len, old friend, I have yet to see evidence that people are voting fraudulently, and I have seen overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I find your statement completely unfounded. People, not rocks and sticks and fields, should govern. If the EC WERE ever going to perform its original function of preventing a demagogue from taking office, now is the time. But it will not and should not do that. It serves no useful function.
· 1 hr
PaulineP Len sez: Methinks you read something into my post I didn't mean... I said nothing about fraud. The EC is based on population... including ALL population. If illegals were not counted in the EC, CA would lose 4 votes. When you said modify the EC, I was giving you one example... some may like, some may not... but it is ONE modification that can be made. Please don't misread that I am in favor or opposed to this, just being the messenger. If the vote was based on population only... one person one vote (dead or alive), I think both candidates would have adjusted their campaign. The outcome would have been the same... Hillary voters would have stayed home... again. Blue collar dems would still crossover...
· 15 mins · Edited
MarkJ They are counted in the census so you have a point. Your other point about turnout and the result being the same regardless seems to me to be quite dubious.
· 7 mins
BradO It is called a republic for a reason. If you want go ahead and change it. See if you can convince 38 states that they should be ruled by three or four cities on the coast.
· 1 · 1 hr
MarkJ I think it's unlikely to be changed, but there is a perhaps viable movement that involves states passing laws requiring their electors to vote according to the national popular vote.
I'm not interested in having the democratic republic debate again ...
· 1 hr
DeborahS The EC flies in the face of "one person -one vote". The practical effect is that a vote cast in CA is a fraction of a single vote - while a vote cast in Iowa is more than one vote.
· 2 · 1 hr
MarkJ The clear trend is for population growth along both coasts, and as this trend continues the likelihood of this phenomenon repeating increases. It is no coincidence that it has now happened twice in 16 years. Based on these facts, I have a question for supporters of the EC: at what point does the rejection of the popular vote become so intolerable that you would agree that the EC has become grossly unfair and actually acutely destabilizing? 2 million, 5 million, 10 million? Never?
· 35 mins
BradO At what point does the rejection of those who grow your food become so intolerable that they start selling their crops beyond our shores? Cities are not self sustaining.
· 24 mins
MarkJ They already sell their products beyond our shores, to China in great quantities. Where agricultural products are sold is determined by the market. Your response is irrelevant, and you are clearly ignoring what is obviously an uncomfortable question for you.
· 20 mins
BradO It is not uncomfortable. As a student of history and the constitution I understand that it is not a single race for president but 50 individual ones. That by competing in the race everyone agreed to the rules. Furthermore he may have only won 49% of the popular vote he won 100% of the presidency.
· 12 mins
MarkJ I get that you don't want to answer the question. Nice talking to you. Have a swell day.
· 6 mins
TimM As you alluded, the elite rich men who wrote the constitution did not want the President to be decided by a strictly democratic vote. As long as we are the United States and not the United Cities, I don't see any possibility of change.
· 6 mins
BradO Mark I am not playing your game of hypothetical questions. You know the rules, if you don't like the rules get them changed. Otherwise you just sound like a sore loser.
· 3 mins
RobbieC The EC was conceived when their were 13 states and the population mostly rural. These days agriculture is corporate and those remaining in small towns and cities in interior states are the residual after the smartest and most mobile fled to the big cities (aka"bright flight"). The premise of the EC - that relatively homogeneous states would determine the presidency, no longer holds. Neither does its purpose, to prevent the unqualified from holding our highest office.
· 3 mins
MarkJ Well that's one reason why they did it. They also found it impractical in that day and age to have a national popular election. The other reason was to protect slavery, and they succeeded admirably there as we can see from the predominance of slaveholding presidents in the early republic. And the problem was compounded after the Civil War when Republicans took such measures as dividing the Dakota territory to assure themselves of more electoral votes.
It ought to go. It is clearly becoming untenable and as the trend accelerates, it will become destabilizing.
No comments:
Post a Comment