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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Every time there's a presidential election there are a score of articles trying to explain it to the public again. It's not rocket science, folks.
True, it's not a perfect solution, but no solution in democracy is, and I certainly prefer it to a straight popular vote.
Oh, you've explained how, with a straight popular vote, candidates would spend most of their campaigns in large cities and populous states, and less time in more sparsely populated locales. What you haven't explained is why you feel that's a bad thing.
I don't say to get rid of the electoral college because I don't understand it, I say to get rid of it because the idea is patently absurd. "Oh no, the small states will be powerless." Well too !@#$ing bad. Let's reverse the situation: We live in a system all of a sudden where the popular vote picks the president. Just, directly counting votes.
Someone says "okay, what if we used this Electoral college idea" and then someone says "oh no, the will of the majority will be subverted!" and your response is "Well too !@#$ing bad."
Seriously, this notion that making sure the states somehow have something to say instead of the actual goddamned citizenry is just absurd.
It's like how the house of representatives, popular vote wise, democrats won that election, yet in terms of actual seat count, they got TROUNCED in 2012. "Oh, well, we need to have districts that represent people" does not override the needs of a democratic system to actually be democratic.
The objections to moving to a popular vote system are vapid and absurd, and the rebuttals are basically "Nuh uh!" responses.
the rebuttal is that if the states don't have a say and are forced to follow in the path of the large states, it breeds entirely justified resentment because the needs of their people are being pushed aside for people elsewhere and fosters the idea that they'd be better off and more capable to do what their people want and need if they were separate.
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Too fucking bad eh? Won't fly. You say that because it benefits your side, not because of the reasons you give. If it were reversed, you sure as hell wouldn't be so blase.
It's this us or them mentality that makes me hate American politics and the two party system.
Redraw the borders, make them make better sense for now than for the 1800s. But fucking them over to suit your politics is dumb.
EDIT-
edited 17th Dec '15 11:27:30 AM by FFShinra
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And they would be welcome to try, but that way lies banana republic status. There is no privileged right to be insular and ignorant.
edited 17th Dec '15 11:28:30 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Removing an undeserved privilege <> fucking them over.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@Skycobra51: America's two-party system always seemed dead end-y and suffocating, to me.And this is coming from a person who's lived in a country which has been under a multi-polar yet two-party dominated system for nearly 40 years. A pretty incompetent one, too.
edited 17th Dec '15 11:31:29 AM by LogoP
It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.![]()
No, they would be exactly equal: One person, one vote.
It's what we have. It's hard to cogently argue "what ifs" in this situation. We've seen lots of electoral systems and all have their flaws; it's rather myopic to say that one is objectively superior.
edited 17th Dec '15 11:32:04 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"It's important to remember that there was a very strong meritocratic sentiment among the Founders; they generally considered the common man too ignorant and too easily swayed by prejudice and propaganda to vote intelligently. The representative system was designed to insulate the governing process from the chaos of pure democracy.
When we look at the Electoral College, we cannot forget that it was never meant to be egalitarian.
edited 17th Dec '15 11:37:16 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"If the people in the minority win, it breeds MORE resentment by definition than if the people in the majority win by definition.
This is just basic math. If it's 2 to 3, either 3 people will be pissed off they lost, or 2 people will.
Also, we already have the "give the states individual power even if they're small." It's called the damned senate, where Rhode Island has as much influence as California.
edited 17th Dec '15 11:38:21 AM by TheyCallMeTomu
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And yet you complain about gerrymandering when they want to have their votes actually mean something.
You and Tomu man, you guys and people like you are exactly the reason I can't be a democrat.
All this reasoning sounds fine, except if the shoe were on the other foot, you both would be whining.
edited 17th Dec '15 11:39:21 AM by FFShinra
I'm just calling crappy logic what it is. It's crap.
What exactly should the minority override the majority? I'm all for proportional representation where that's plausible, but if 3 people want one thing and 2 people want the opposite, there's no middle ground, and there's not any particularly good reason why you should listen to the 2 instead of the 3 (unless of course there's more merit in what the 2 say, but that's more like an advisement scenario not a democracy scenario).
Stop pretending you have a good point when you don't. Because what it boils down to is, the electoral college is-and ONLY is-the ability for the minority to win the election rather than the majority. That is the opposite of Democracy. It's Ycarcomed. I think I heard Zatanna use that one once!
And don't give me this "if the shoe were on the other foot-" bullcrap. You can argue with theoretical electoral college Tomu if you ever meet him, and he will be full of crap. You're basically using a post-modernist objection here: "There is no truth because you'd hold a different position if it were in your best interests to!"
Moreover, only once in my lifetime has the electoral college been relevant in determining the president versus the popular vote, and that was in 2000. So, I mean, it's not like I think the EC is the bane of existence, though again: it grossly skews the electoral process even ignoring the "the minority wins yay~" aspect.
edited 17th Dec '15 11:43:09 AM by TheyCallMeTomu
People who despise the Electoral College say that the President should be elected by the people, not by the states.
People who like the Electoral College say that to do so would take power away from the state's right to be an individual entity and would make smaller states weaker and give them a smaller voice than larger ones.
I realize compromise isn't always the answer, but bear with me. How about this: Abolish the Electoral College. Every election, the people of a state vote for who they want to be President. Their votes are compiled at the state level to determine who the state votes for. The President is then elected by winning a majority of states. Instead of a straight popular vote, the President must win a popular vote of popular votes.
...we may need to make a new state for that to work, given the even number we have now. That, or just let Texas secede like they keep pushing for.
edited 17th Dec '15 11:45:31 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Who cares what the !@#$ the founding fathers wanted, we're arguing what's sensible policy. An Argument From Authority is a fallacy. I place zero stock in it.
Now, if you're saying it'd be unconstitutional for the president to be determined by simple majority vote without changing the constitution, well, yeah, of course.
Why exactly should each state have the same amount of electoral power? "State autonomy" whatever. Why not make it city autonomy then? Or county autonomy? Hey, let's get as atomic as we can, and make it PERSON autonomy. OH HEY, THAT'S CALLED THE POPULAR VOTE :P
edited 17th Dec '15 11:45:29 AM by TheyCallMeTomu
Which isn't to say that there aren't low-information or rather frightening leftist movements out there. Venezuela's Socialists and the Peronists in Argentina have both been demonstrably bad for their countries and fostered a lower level of dialogue.
The truisms of the left's superiority tend to only hold in NATO countries, Australia, and New Zealand, elsewhere the situation is more complex.
Moving to a direct vote would effectively destroy any political power small states hold and give more to the larger states. There'd be no point for the President to even make an effort to deal with the will of those States, when they could just cater to the more populated regions. Rather than proportional representation, we'd get a situation where the wants and needs of the larger states completely overwrite those of the small. Tyranny of a majority.
The Founding Fathers weren't interested in "tail wagging the dog" minority rule. Rather, they thought that intelligent men would be sent to Washington who would work their will cooperatively without being bogged down by having their constituents vote on every little thing.
The idea that small states get a bigger proportional voice than big states was a compromise between slave states and industrial states intended to defuse the calls for the Balkanization of the colonies along ideological lines. It's always been something of a dog whistle along the same lines as "states' rights".
No, it would force candidates to campaign in major population centers, wherever those might be. Forget this idea that arbitrary lines on a map have any political importance.
edited 17th Dec '15 11:48:49 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I'm really beginning to question the two party system.
But as far as I'm concerned neither Left or Right is morally right or better than the other.
They're essentially the same to me. Both have fucked up royally over the years.
Look upon my privilege ye mighty and despair.