Clinton will win the popular vote

[AUcivE09 582]

31 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Fun fact, that's where a lot of people are.

That was exactly my point. Ole Alabama is way on down the list of states with a lot of people. Part of the case for the electoral college.

[cptau 169]

Four times a candidate has won the popular vote and lost the election. Andrew Jackson in 1824 (to John Quincy Adams); Samuel Tilden in 1876 (to Rutherford B. Hayes); Grover Cleveland in 1888 (to Benjamin Harrison); Al Gore in 2000 (to George W. Bush).

The use of the electoral college is 228 years old.  It is intended to preserve some of the sovereign power of the smaller states from being over ridden by the higher population states.   It has served that purpose but it also prevents coalition governments as are seen in parliamentary governments.  It rarely fails requiring the house and senate to settle presidential elections.  

Only the presidential elections of 1800 and 1824 were decided in the House of Representatives,.  Interestingly John Adams in 1800 and his son John Q. Adams in 1824 both Federalists won.  Old Hickory really thought the system was rigged in 1824 and it was against him and the western states he represented.  

[homersapien 11,352]

7 hours ago, AUcivE09 said:

We are a Democratically elected Republic. Everyone votes to choose representatives of the public.

 

The Electoral College is serving its function. If we were a democracy - Wisconsin would not have mattered last night. Clinton would have been fine for never going there. She pulled almost 5 million extra votes out of CA and NY alone.

Gore gained about 3 million from these two and about 500,000 each from Illinois and NJ.

That is a lot of pull for so few states. 

Actually, as I understand it, part of the intended purpose for the electoral college system was for reasons that no longer exist.  A popular democracy was not practical at the time reasons associated with a widely scattered rural population with little access to information and transportation. 

But I may be wrong.

[AUcivE09 582]

10 hours ago, homersapien said:

Actually, as I understand it, part of the intended purpose for the electoral college system was for reasons that no longer exist.  A popular democracy was not practical at the time reasons associated with a widely scattered rural population with little access to information and transportation. 

But I may be wrong.

Part of the original argument for the electoral college was that in the 1700's it was difficult to transmit the information and the college made it easier. I too forget the entire story. That issue obviously no longer exist as you stated. Mob rule was also part of the argument. It serves different purposes and the only glaring one today is with the large population of major cities. Crazy is when you look at the county breakdown and see how little of NY is actually blue and then see how many votes she won by there.

I think it is also missed that we were set up so that each State is actually voting for a president. The whole federation of states making up a union thing. 

[WarDamnEagleWDE 12,737]

I feel the Bern with this news. 

[icanthearyou 4,462]

35 minutes ago, WarDamnEagleWDE said:

I feel the Bern with this news. 

Would love to have seen this election with Bernie and Trump both running as independents.  Would have been interesting watching the establishment within both parties.

See where the House has already told Trump to forget about term limits?  

[AURaptor 1,121]

 A popular democracy wasn't just unfeasible in the 1700s, it was strongly opposed by the founders. Not because of distance, or of population distribution, but because of the basic problems with mob rule. Which is what I pure democracy is. They fought Very hard to avoid that in particular.

[WarDamnEagleWDE 12,737]

10 minutes ago, icanthearyou said:

Would love to have seen this election with Bernie and Trump both running as independents.  Would have been interesting watching the establishment within both parties.

See where the House has already told Trump to forget about term limits?  

The fact that a outspoken socialist had that much traction within the democratic party is very telling and very sad. Time to make all of those people who were giving the Clinton's millions and millions of dollars pay their fair share. 

[icanthearyou 4,462]

Just now, WarDamnEagleWDE said:

The fact that a outspoken socialist had that much traction within the democratic party is very telling and very sad. Time to make all of those people who were giving the Clinton's millions and millions of dollars pay their fair share. 

That is not very intelligent.  First, Bernie is not a socialist.  Second, if Trump is able to pass his tax plan, the people who can afford to "donate" millions and millions, regardless of which party, are about to get a very nice tax break, not to mention the ability to transfer that massive wealth without paying any taxes.

IMO, it is a fundamental corruption for passive income to be taxed at the lowest rate, without employment taxes and, ultimately be transferred without an estate tax.  I can not imagine why anyone with more than $20 million would want to leave this country when they are effectively taxed at a rate lower than 15%.  It is a disgrace that a hard working entrepreneur who works 70+ hours per week ultimately pays in 60% when self employment taxes are paid.  The entrepreneur is the real "investor", the real "job creator", not someone collecting dividend checks.

[quietfan 233]

Technically the Constitution does not mandate that any of us have a vote for President, or even for the members of Electoral College.  Article 2, Sec. 1b leaves it up to the individual state legislatures to determine how Electors from that state will be selected.  Constitutionally each state legislature could simply appoint Electors itself, hold a state lottery to choose them, or simply send a group of county sheriffs or probate judges.  The only Constitutional restriction is that an Elector cannot already hold federal office or draw a federal paycheck.

Wisely, the state legislatures have all given their people the right to vote on electors.  48 of the state legislatures (Maine and Nebraska being the exceptions) have decreed that the candidate receiving the greatest number of popular votes in that state (a plurality, not necessarily a majority) gets all of the Electoral College votes from that state ("Winner-take-all").

The writers of the Constitution did not trust the masses to select a President and also feared the possible tyranny of a 51% majority running roughshod over the rights of the 49%.  The original intent of the Electoral College was that each state legislature would choose the 'wisest and best' of its state citizens to form a collective body of the nation's 'wisest and best' who would choose our President.  (Of course, the flaw in that is concluding that any one particular person is 'wisest and best'.)  But certainly a side effect of the way Electoral College votes are distributed is to help prevent a few large states from rendering the voice of smaller states mute:  Smaller states do have a proportional larger voice in selecting our President.

Remember that until 1913 with the ratification of the 17th Amendment, the Constitution also placed the selection of Senators in the hands of the state legislatures, again trusting the state legislatures rather than the masses to select that smaller, more elite, presumably more 'august' or 'wise'* branch of congress.  (*The concept of the Senate as the 'upper' or more august body is also reflected in the older age requirement and longer terms for Senators.)

 

Personally, I think the biggest change I'd make to the Electoral College is requiring all states to appoint them in proportion to that state's popular vote rather than "winner-take-all". (Although mathematically defining such proportionality among multiple candidates would be tricky.)  That would make the Electoral College more reflective of the popular vote while preserving the protections for smaller states and still providing some sense of insulation against a 'tyranny' of uninformed, emotionally driven masses.  

I'd also free Electors nationwide to vote their conscience rather than merely rubber-stamping the nominee of their party, giving independents/third parties a greater voice and protecting us if a major party nominates a candidate clearly unfit for the Presidency.  (If the Electoral College was free to vote its conscience, I'm not sure either Clinton or Trump would have gotten elected this year!)  Of course, freeing Electors in this manner might make it harder for them reach a clear majority on a single ballet, so unless we wanted the House of Representatives to decide more elections the Electoral College might have to physically meet to achieve a majority, somewhat like the enclave of cardinals deciding on a new Pope.

[AUloggerhead 2,225]

50 minutes ago, WarDamnEagleWDE said:

The fact that a outspoken socialist had that much traction within the democratic party is very telling and very sad. Time to make all of those people who were giving the Clinton's millions and millions of dollars pay their fair share. 

It will be most interesting to see just how many are willing to pony up $3-400,00 per speech for Clinton in the future.  You can include future "donations" to the Clinton foundation -- I have a feeling things are going to dry up pretty rapidly.  

[RunInRed 16,357]

Question, if you lose the popular vote, do you really have a "mandate?" ...

Quote

Quote

Clinton’s lead in the popular vote passes 1 million

Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote over President-elect Donald Trump has surpassed 1 million, according to Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

As the final vote counts continue to trickle in a week after Election Day, Wasserman’s tally found that Clinton had 61,963,234 votes to Trump’s 60,961,185 as of Tuesday afternoon.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/clinton-popular-vote-trump-2016-election-231434

 

[AURaptor 1,121]

A: yes

[homersapien 11,352]

4 hours ago, AURaptor said:

A: yes

That's totally illogical.

One cannot have a "mandate" without - at least - the majority of the vote.  By definition.

[AURaptor 1,121]

1 hour ago, homersapien said:

That's totally illogical.

One cannot have a "mandate" without - at least - the majority of the vote.  By definition.

306 > 232

A " majority " of the vote. 

Deal w/ it, snow flake. 

[Mikey 16,545]

Serious thinkers on the subject from Plato through James Madison reject the idea of a straight one man, one vote democracy as mob rule. No nation under mob rule, the "tyranny of the majority" could long survive, they say.

The EC and the U.S. Senate keep us from mob rule. This system has maintained our Democratic Republic for over 200 years now and I do not believe any objective person would recommend that we go to mob rule.

[TexasTiger 12,800]

1 hour ago, Mikey said:

Serious thinkers on the subject from Plato through James Madison reject the idea of a straight one man, one vote democracy as mob rule. No nation under mob rule, the "tyranny of the majority" could long survive, they say.

The EC and the U.S. Senate keep us from mob rule. This system has maintained our Democratic Republic for over 200 years now and I do not believe any objective person would recommend that we go to mob rule.

This is plain stupid. Every other election in America is one man, one vote democracy. Almost every other free country is one man, one vote. Every state is governed by mob rule, according to you. 

And as far as our founding fathers, they lived in a very different time:

Quote

 

Convention delegate James Madison, a slave owner, of Virginia conceded that the "the people at large" were "the fittest" to choose a president. However, he added that just "one difficulty" made a popular vote for the president impossible.

 

Madison declared that the "right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the negroes" who were denied the right to vote by law.

 

Madison favored the creation of the Electoral College because it guaranteed that nonvoting slaves could nevertheless influence the presidential election because under the already passed three-fifths clause (five slaves were equal to three white people), this increased the South's representation in Congress and thereby factored into the electoral votes of each state.

 

http://www.nhregister.com/article/NH/20120228/NEWS/302289937

 

I suspect our founding fathers would be very disappointed in how inept we have been in adapting to our times.

[Mikey 16,545]

7 hours ago, TexasTiger said:

This is plain stupid.

Tell James Madison and Plato they are stupid. All I'm doing is repeating their thoughts, and remarking that our democratic republic has survived for a long, long time. If you favor doing away with the EC, then do you also favor restructuring the U.S. Senate to reflect one man, one vote? If not, why not? The rationale for destroying the EC would be exactly the same as restructuring the Senate.

[Mims44 1,864]

8 hours ago, TexasTiger said:

I suspect our founding fathers would be very disappointed in how inept we have been in adapting to our times.

100% AGREE!

We let blacks vote! Women can vote! non-land owning white males can even vote in these backwards times!

They have to be spinning in their graves!

[icanthearyou 4,462]

I think the timing of this discussion speaks for itself.   However, had the results been the opposite, the argument would remain.  The partisans supporting, those criticizing would be reversed.

Let me think.  Has anyone ever criticized the electoral college only to later support it?  Hmmm.  Anyone?

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

45 minutes ago, Mikey said:

Tell James Madison and Plato they are stupid. All I'm doing is repeating their thoughts, and remarking that our democratic republic has survived for a long, long time. If you favor doing away with the EC, then do you also favor restructuring the U.S. Senate to reflect one man, one vote? If not, why not? The rationale for destroying the EC would be exactly the same as restructuring the Senate.

Except it really isn't the same rational.  The Presidency represents all Americans, while Senators represent their states only.  I might add that Senators are elected by popular majority in those states.  If you moved the Presidential elections to a popular vote but are concerned with mob rule or states not getting equal weight, that's exactly where the Senate comes into play and becomes even more powerful.  Also, there's already a population based side of Congress in the House, so that's already taken care of as well.

Essentially, the EC is an outdated concept that I believe people are just now starting to realize.  However, I don't think we will be removing it anytime soon as 3/4 of states would never ratify amending that part of the Constitution.  The only path anyone has now is if states equaling 270 electoral votes all pass a law saying that their votes go to the national popular vote winner, effectively rendering the EC pointless.  There's actually a group trying to do that right now and last I saw they had states equaling 165 votes already onboard.

[TexasTiger 12,800]

1 hour ago, Mikey said:

Tell James Madison and Plato they are stupid. All I'm doing is repeating their thoughts, and remarking that our democratic republic has survived for a long, long time. If you favor doing away with the EC, then do you also favor restructuring the U.S. Senate to reflect one man, one vote? If not, why not? The rationale for destroying the EC would be exactly the same as restructuring the Senate.

Well, if they were here in 2016 I wouldn't have to tell them because they'd be smart enough to see it. And Madison wouldn't have to worry about placating slave states  or the fact that different states had very different suffrage rights.

The Senate provides small states plenty of power. They can afford their fellow citizens the right of an equal vote on their President.

[AURaptor 1,121]

 @TexasTiger for mind reading the Founders views from beyond the graves. 

[TexasTiger 12,800]

2 minutes ago, AURaptor said:

 @TexasTiger for mind reading the Founders views from beyond the graves. 

I'm not the one who assumed they were incapable of processing new information. I think more highly of them than you do.

[AURaptor 1,121]

3 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

I'm not the one who assumed they were incapable of processing new information. I think more highly of them than you do.

 !!!

clearly you don't think highly of them all that much!!