So how do you, folks, feel about the petition for the electoral college to vote for Hillary because she won the popular vote?
I very much understand the sentiment, and I don’t judge the people who are doing it, but I have my baggage, and it makes me terrified of any subversion of the democratic process no matter how noble the goal. Trump won according to the existing rules, that’s it for me. Plus, imagine the backlash if all his voters are thwarted in their legitimate win. No, I can’t support.
I can’t support this because Trump won fair and square within the existing rules; however, I think we should abolish the electoral college. Even Trump have supported this abolition.
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How about a petition for future elections? I’d go along with that.
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I understand the historical reasons behind the college but maybe it is time to let that history go.
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By historical reasons you mean slavery.
“The important division was between states that relied on slavery and those that didn’t, not between large and small states. A direct election for president did not sit well with most delegates from the slave states, which had large populations but far fewer eligible voters. They gravitated toward the electoral college as a compromise because it was based on population. The convention had agreed to count each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of calculating each state’s allotment of seats in Congress. For Virginia, which had the largest population among the original 13 states, that meant more clout in choosing the president.”
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Interesting. I never heard this explanation before.
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Not all states have rules penalizing faithless electors
This article is fascinating.
The Supreme Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of state laws punishing electors for actually casting a faithless vote.
I don’t view it as any less crooked than what happened with the 2000 election which was also in the rules. It is unlikely to succeed in the slightest, however. I don’t think enough electors would risk their safety or that of their family’s.
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there’s a few ways to look at this…
it is strikingly similar to what happened to Al Gore a little while back…
if people were serious about getting rid of the electoral college, it should have been done then…
then there is “karma.” The Democratic party really stepped on Bernie Sanders. He might’ve been able to defeat Trump.
then there is the “entitlement” issue with the Democratic party. I voted 3rd party. It’s extremely insulting when someone says it’s my fault Trump won. If the Democrats are McDonald’s and the Republicans are Burger King. If I had Chinese food instead, I DID NOT EAT at BURGER KING. If I didn’t have the option of Chinese food, well, maybe like Colin Kaepernick, I would’ve skipped lunch altogether.
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Absolute nonsense!
The electoral system is designed to spread the choice of a President over all 50 states. Abolish it, and a handful of states with huge populations (New York, California, Florida) could elect the President by absolute votes, even if all the other voters in all the other states chose otherwise.
A constitutional amendment would be required to end the electoral system, and none of the smaller state legislatures are going to be stupid enough to toss their influence on Presidential elections away.
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Two more reactions:
Я довольно долгое время считал, что Израилю сильно пошла бы на пользу президентская демократия. Когда очередная партия в три мандата начинает требовать себе бочку варенья и корзину печенья, а иначе она щас развалит коалицию – это порядочно бесит. […] Но вот смотрю я, к чему система “winner takes it all” приводит на выборах в Штатах, и думаю: нафиг-нафиг, лучше уж так.
http://cat-mucius.livejournal.com/49541.html
AND
Никакого изоляционизма не будет, не для того производители оружия финансируют Республиканскую партию. И да, уверяю, что средства контроля за мавериками у партии (у обеих партий) вполне конкретные.
…
Я пока вижу только один безусловный минус: как и при Буше, США и их президент снова станет ненавистным насильственным правителем. Будет порушено то зыбкое уважение, которым Штаты начали пользоваться в мире.
Это очень важный момент: Президент США является также, ex officio, Императором Земного шара. И в этой, второй роли, это самодержавный правитель, никем не выбираемый (или – выбираемый 5% подданных). Весь опыт абсолютистских монархий последних веков говорит, что уважение подданных и стремление его сохранить – это слабая, но все же замена демократической обратной связи. Есть такое уважение – власть оказывается одновременно эффективной и толерантной, нет- мы имеем бессмысленные бунты одних и необоснованную жестокость других.
Так вот, это достояние 8 лет Обамы будет разрушено, причем, похоже, даже с восторгом. Тут, к сожалению, консенсус Трампа, его избирателей и большей части партийной элиты.
http://taki-net.livejournal.com/2485113.html
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I’m amenable to the idea of modifying the electoral college but the time to start a movement to get rid of it was after 2000. 16 years should be more than enough time to pass such an amendment if there were broad support for such an idea.
No extra-consitutional and no retro-active legislation. Ever!
More precisely I wouldn’t be in favor of completely getting rid of it for the reasons dreidel gives. I would be more in favor of making more states more propotional rather than winner-take-all.
Thinking off the top of my head…. what if the ten (or five or seven) most populous states had proportional votes in the electoral college while the rest were winner take all. That would make smaller states votes more imporant and dilute the power of bigger states.
Someone would have to run the numbers for the elections since 1960 or so to see how the results would work out….
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There is already an exodus to a few large cities, depopulating the rest of territory. My own personal opinion is that it’s not great. The small quaint towns shouldn’t be lost because they are amazing.
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Yeah, I don’t get the idea that land masses have rights or deserve to be ‘heard’ or whatever.
No, they don’t. People do.
Are we really making pearl clutching ‘tyranny of the majority’ arguments when a person who won fewer votes in the general election is interpreting that as an overwhelming mandate and using that to fundamentally change the country for at least the next few decades?
Look at the senate too? Why does Delaware, the size of a mall, get to have the same number of senators as California, which on its own is like the 5th largest economy in the world?
This is all just a clusterfuck, and seemingly designed for perma-gridlock.
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We can futz with the procedure or we can persuade Ohio and PA. I’m for persuading. I mean, we are right. And if we are, we should be able to bring it across.
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Uri wrote about Trump (and Bibi):
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1478880004
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Do you think the following is true? If yes, why?
\ Bernie would have gotten some die-hard Berners to show up at the polls who instead stayed home. But as a Jew from Brooklyn, a.k.a. “Hymietown” as the Rev. Jesse Jackson so politically incorrectly termed it in 1984, he would have lost the black vote. I don’t know why black people hate Jews — it makes no sense, given the massive help that young Jewish intellectuals were to the civil rights movement — but they do. I taught at several black schools in two different states, and that was true in all of them.
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I find the idea that African Americans wouldn’t have turned out for Bernie because they hate Jews to be weird. They weren’t enthusiastic about him because he worked in a very white state his whole life and had no idea what their issues were.
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As many have said, African Americans on the whole don’t much like White Northern Liberals (any two can work but not all three together).
I think the anti-Jewish feelings that a lot of blacks have (more at the educational extremes than in the middle) comes from different sources but is largely connected to the white-northern-liberal axis.
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Look at the president-elect.
I think it’s safe to say that conventional wisdom was of no use this election.
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Wow. snarkypenguin is the only blogger (except you) who admits Bernie would have never won the elections. Even some of the smartest bloggers, like Technology As Nature, continue to claim Bernie would’ve won. Are other Liberals afraid to mention his Jewishness? Not PC?
\ Look. I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary, and have the photographs to prove it. But let’s face reality here […] Do you really think that any of these people who voted for Trump would have voted for a Jewish socialist, a kike, rather than for an orange dude promising to “Make America Great Again”? […] It doesn’t matter that Bernie didn’t have the decades of baggage of Hillary Clinton. He’s a Jew. And to the sorts of people who think that George Soros is leading a Jewish conspiracy against America, that means he’s just another part of the conspiracy against real Americans, white Americans, Christian Americans.
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I find the whole discussion to be escapist and useless. Bernie is not going to run in 8 years. So the discussion of woulda shoulda coulda is a waste of time. All we can do realistically is try to turn 8 years into 4. Let’s concentrate on that.
Love Bernie but he was offering the same dream as Trump through more compassionate means. It’s the same hopeless, useless, old time, antiquated dream. It’s doomed to failure. We need somebody who is too young to be fixated on the 1960s.
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While we’re talking about mickey mouse petitions to change how votes are counted, republicans are one legislature from changing the constitution.
https://twitter.com/cd_hooks/status/797480012446388225
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Having actual people go vote was the LAST balance to the election results… ‘fair and square’ isn’t until the final counts & the (physically) cast electoral votes are counted. The question is, with the way he has behaved, before and since you posted this blog, are you still able to say he is fit to be president?
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As an American, as long as there’s a chance and a venue, I’m going to voice my opinion. Less than half of the voters that voted this election evil eye at those that opted out fact is… Americans DON’T want him. And we shouldn’t have to pay for the minority of hate that represents those that truly support him (and weren’t tricked into voting for him…).
Besides that… lol at the ‘mentally deficient’… hehe. Awesome way to say it! 🙂
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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