candycorn
Diamond Member
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- #61
I am for strengthening the electoral college as to where the President-Elect must get both the plurality of the nationwide popular vote as well as the majority of the electoral votes—the famous “270” that we hear about. Save for that one aspect of strengthening, I’m quite happy with the current formation of the electoral college as opposed to the direct election of the president through the national popular vote.
Here is why;
Whatever system we have must be good for every outcome. While not perfect, the current system ensures that at least a majority of the electors select the president. A national popular vote, in the year 2020, would do the same thing. However, ours is not a static electoral landscape. Does anyone remember all of those great democratic presidents from California? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because what is a solid blue state today used to be a pretty dependable red state. Presidents Nixon and Reagan both came from there; both republicans. The brick red-south used to be called the “solid south” for another reason; they supported democrats almost exclusively. So today’s reality must not be taken as being carved in stone.
Further, the two-party system that we currently have has not always been the case. In the future there may be serval parties that emerge dividing the vote into smaller percentages. Whereas the Electoral College has remedies for no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes, the national popular vote has only a provision for the candidate who gets the most votes winning whether it be 80% of the vote, 50% of the vote, or 12% of the vote if every other candidate gets 11.9% and less. As unsettling it is to contemplate the winner having been crowned when 88% chose someone else, it’s even more unsettling to consider that the proposed remedies—a nationwide runoff—would delay a president-elect being named for weeks. There is an intriguing remedy of “rank choice voting” where you have an instant run-off. It is explained here.
I don’t care much for the idea as it would elevate a candidate who didn’t get the most “first choice” votes to office based on being more voter’s second choice. But I could see some value in the concept.
One of the most frequent complaints about the electoral college is that candidates only campaign seriously if a handful of states that are considered to be contested. This is true. Here is a graphic from the National Popular Vote website that shows the campaign stops
View attachment 360418
What isn’t addressed by the graphic is that if an NPV was instituted, the candidates would focus almost solely on high population centers as opposed to toss-up states; thus substituting one criteria-based campaign strategy for another. I’ve heard some proponents of the NPV state that this is how it “should” be—high population centers having more sway than comparatively rural areas like Nevada and Colorado. I reject that because demographics, as I mentioned earlier, do change over time.
Lastly, let me close on what I mentioned earlier. In this day and age, there is no reason to ignore the national popular vote. In a democracy, you vote should matter and it should have some effect on the outcome of the election in which you’re voting. So that is why I’m for strengthening the electoral college by having the president-elect win both the plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote majority. If they do not win both, the remedies of the 12th Amendment come into play; just as it would if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes four months from now. Given the most recent election saw the Blob win an electoral victory without winning a popular vote victory, I’m sure some will see this as me trying to throw up a hurdle to his oozing into office. I wish it were that easy. But no, I brought up the plan I had long before he won. From 2015:
Electoral College. Just why?
The remedy I proposed, in our history, would only have changed the winner (arguably) 4 times when the President didn’t get both the EC victory and the NPV victory. In the two most recent incarnations; Bush in 2000 and the Blob in 2016; in both cases the House would have almost certainly delivered the presidency to Bush and Trump since the GOP had majorities in both 2000 and 2016. So this is not me trying to re-write history.
There is plenty wrong with our system of electing Presidents. We need to make election day into an election week. We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting. We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections. We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running. But one thing that we have that works in all climates is the electoral college. I think it needs to be strengthened to make sure the President Elect is the voter’s choice. But it’s not bad the way it is.
As long as you have a requirement that the President must get a majority of the popular vote, then you are defeating the purpose, which is to have a system where the most popular states can't dictate to to states with smaller populations.
There absolutely must be a way for the president to be elected, without the need to have the majority of the public vote.
You can't have New York and California, making Wyoming and other sparsely populated states, utterly irrelevant to the government of the country. The total number of votes in the 2016 election roughly 120 Million.
The top 5 states have 120 Million people.
The populous states could turn this country into a dictatorship against the other 45 states, if we went to a popular vote required system.
We need to expand access to the ballot requiring states to offer no-cause absentee voting.
This is actually the very problem I was citing above. The whole reason this country exists, is because we setup a system where the Federal Government does not get to dictate to the states.
You don't get to dictate how other states works. Our union, is a union of separate states. One state should have no ability to dictate to the other state, how their voting system works.
Now if you want to support no-cause absentee voting in your state, knock yourself out. But to try and dictate how other states run their voting system, is exactly the type of tyrannical dictatorship our constitution was created to avoid.
We need to get the parties out of the business of running elections all together and let the county clerks and election officials run elections.
Funny how you say that directly after saying we need to require states operating how you dictate, and then claim you want to get political parties out of dictating how elections run.
Generally though, I support that. I don't know how you would do it, since it would require a political party, to make the changes in the system.
We need to have third, fourth, and fifth parties on the debate stage next to the Democrats and Republicans so voters can draw distinctions between the different candidates who are running.
I am not opposed to this, but generally it never happens the way you seem to think it should. In California they had multiple parties, and thus far it has always boiled down to Republicans and Democrats.
Reminds me of Ross Perot in 1992. Still ended up with Republicans and Democrats. I highly doubt that any amount of 3rd parties in the debates will ever make any real significant impact.
Additionally, the more people you have on stage at a debate, the result is fewer distinctions. The opposite of what you claim. Just saying this from personal experience, if you have 2 people on stage, they have enough time to explain why they are different from each other.
If you have 10 people on stage, they all end up with sound bites, that sound similar. The amount of time, does not magically change, simply because you have more people on stage.
So if you have a 2 hour debate, and you have 10 questions, that's 12 minutes a question, divided by 2 people. Now divide that 12 minutes by 10 people. What kind of answers do you think you are going to get in a 60 second response? They are all going to be so short, as to be uninformative. It's all going to be "What about terrorism?" "Yup bad." "Very bad" "Bad indeed".
It's all going to be crap answers. So then you say, we'll need 5 debates, so everyone can have a full 10 minutes to respond to each question, or something.
You think the American people are not going to get bored and tune out? Man, I'm getting bored just thinking about an entire week of debates from a dozen politicians on every single night. I'm not watching that.
Having more candidates from different parties on the debate stage is a bad thing?
Depends. In 1992 ,it changed History. Ross Perot took ALL the independent votes. Which gave Clinton the Election . At the time ,the Country had 43% Democrats ,39% Repubs ,and the rest non-affiliated. Look up the election results. Might be a surprise.--PS--Perot got NO EC votes.
I lived through that election. I think it was great to have more serious candidates on the stage. Do I think we should invite everyone? No. But if you can get on the ballot in X number of states, have X number of petitioners sign up and show support...why not?
As for the politics of it, I'm not sure what would be the result of having a 3rd person take votes that were "meant for" someone else. It was brought up last year that Howard Schultz was going to run for President. Folks on the left were upset that he may take votes away from the Democrat. Here is what I responded...
Lets Say Howard Schultz Runs.Then All Polls Show Dem's Never Passing 25/27%.What Will Libs Do?
Howard Schultz just may be our savior. Running as an independent will either give Trump another term, but yet, he could still win. In a three way race, a most likely scenario gives Trump 45% with Schultz and Bozo splitting the other 55%. So if the polling always keeps Trump ahead, what are the...www.usmessageboard.com
I say that if Schultz or Kanye or whomever can show they have a serious organization in place, put them on the debate stage and lets hear their ideas and compare/contrast them with Biden and Trump. If it hurts Biden...cool. If it hurts Trump...even better. If either loses votes because of someone else's candidacy...they have only themselves to blame.
Even better? Hmmmm… I have a different feed.Trump can be crude ,obnoxious ,vulgar ,and bellicose. But I go by a Presidents DEEDS. Not words. Junking and fixing NAFTA? I was for. Keystone? I was for. Crushing ISIS? I was for. TAX and regulations cuts? I was for. Getting out of that Paris accord? I was for. Getting out of the IRAN Deal? I was for. Getting out of all multi-Lateral trade deals? For. Many more things. Last but not least? I totally despise the MEDIA. I enjoy him calling them "Fake News". About time somebody called 'em out. So I have to root for him again. No matter how rude.
Yours is a sad world.
All of those trade deals he shelved is one of the reasons why we have chronic shortages on a lot of items now. Are you "for" not being able to find what you need at the supermarket?
What? Specifically what? What are we having a "chronic" shortage of? And what specific trade deal did he shelve that caused this chronic shortage?
Pulp for paper products
Aluminum for aluminum cans
A lot of vegetables are in short supply
Tariffs on imports of raw materials cause shortages.
The latest in coronavirus shortages: Aluminum cans
Will aluminum cans have the same fate as toilet paper and cleaning products due to COVID-19?
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