CDZ I am for the Electoral College

[candycorn]

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?

www.pennlive.com

 

[San Souci]

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?

Haven't found any shortages. Except TP for about 2 weeks. Other than that ,nothing. I saved over 2000 on Income Tax. My HC is just fine. Under Biden ,it would collapse.----PS--I am glad he told NATO to pay up. Why should the USA protect Europe? They are RICH. Let 'em build their own Military.

 

[San Souci]

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?

Haven't found any shortages. Except TP for about 2 weeks. Other than that ,nothing. I saved over 2000 on Income Tax. My HC is just fine. Under Biden ,it would collapse.----PS--I am glad he told NATO to pay up. Why should the USA protect Europe? They are RICH. Let 'em build their own Military.

But I digress. This is about the EC.

 

[candycorn]

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?

Haven't found any shortages. Except TP for about 2 weeks. Other than that ,nothing. I saved over 2000 on Income Tax. My HC is just fine. Under Biden ,it would collapse.----PS--I am glad he told NATO to pay up. Why should the USA protect Europe? They are RICH. Let 'em build their own Military.

Sure...LOL

 

[Andylusion]

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?

www.pennlive.com

So read your own article.

So, why the increase?​

​

As more people drink at home, they're stocking up on cans in grocery stores and tasting rooms instead of going out to bars and restaurants. Curbside and grocery sales of canned beer, hard cider and even wine have grown faster than planned.​

​

The same trend can be seen with sodas. An industry report indicates can sales were up 30% in March and April.​

Nowhere in your own article does it say anything about a raw material shortage. All of the shortages that we have had on anything... have basically not been shortages. They are not shortages. They are the results of panic buying. People buying crap, because they are freaking out, because the media told them the world was coming to an end, and if they didn't buy a 5 year supply of toilet paper, they would all die...... (I have no idea why out of everything people can buy, that toilet paper was the hot commodity).

There was no shortage of supply. There wasn't. Toilet paper factories have dramatically increased production.

By the way, it sort of cracks me up that a left-winger is complaining that we're not getting raw materials from other countries.

Is it not the left-wing that constantly says "we're looting the natural resources of other countries"? Was it not the left-wing that was claiming we went into Iraq to steal their oil? Didn't left-wingers make the movie blood diamonds? Did not the left-wing claim we were looting all these other countries?

Now here you are complaining "Trump isn't letting us loot the resources of other countries!".

Really?

 

[candycorn]

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?

www.pennlive.com

So read your own article.

So, why the increase?​

​

As more people drink at home, they're stocking up on cans in grocery stores and tasting rooms instead of going out to bars and restaurants. Curbside and grocery sales of canned beer, hard cider and even wine have grown faster than planned.​

​

The same trend can be seen with sodas. An industry report indicates can sales were up 30% in March and April.​

Nowhere in your own article does it say anything about a raw material shortage. All of the shortages that we have had on anything... have basically not been shortages. They are not shortages. They are the results of panic buying. People buying crap, because they are freaking out, because the media told them the world was coming to an end, and if they didn't buy a 5 year supply of toilet paper, they would all die...... (I have no idea why out of everything people can buy, that toilet paper was the hot commodity).

There was no shortage of supply. There wasn't. Toilet paper factories have dramatically increased production.

By the way, it sort of cracks me up that a left-winger is complaining that we're not getting raw materials from other countries.

Is it not the left-wing that constantly says "we're looting the natural resources of other countries"? Was it not the left-wing that was claiming we went into Iraq to steal their oil? Didn't left-wingers make the movie blood diamonds? Did not the left-wing claim we were looting all these other countries?

Now here you are complaining "Trump isn't letting us loot the resources of other countries!".

Really?

And in the past, before we started taxing imports and (as a result) have less of them...increased consumption didn't lead to the chronic shortages we're now seeing under the blob.

It cracks me up that you think I'm complaining....I'm pointing out that the blob's tariff's have resulted in shortages of several items. Which highlights the failures of tariffs even more if the goal was to expand domestic production. Companies have just imported less and kept warehouse inventories lower than they would otherwise; hence the empty shelves we see at the supermarkets.

Blood diamonds?

 

[Markle]

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.

Or better yet , just leave well enough alone. A system that has worked for over 200 years can't be all bad.

As with all things, there is room for improvement.

What is your point? Are you just wasting space? The Supreme Court has ruled again that the Electoral College is just fine.

If you want to change a perfectly fair working system, amend our Constitution.

Go for it!

 

[Andylusion]

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?

www.pennlive.com

So read your own article.

So, why the increase?​

​

As more people drink at home, they're stocking up on cans in grocery stores and tasting rooms instead of going out to bars and restaurants. Curbside and grocery sales of canned beer, hard cider and even wine have grown faster than planned.​

​

The same trend can be seen with sodas. An industry report indicates can sales were up 30% in March and April.​

Nowhere in your own article does it say anything about a raw material shortage. All of the shortages that we have had on anything... have basically not been shortages. They are not shortages. They are the results of panic buying. People buying crap, because they are freaking out, because the media told them the world was coming to an end, and if they didn't buy a 5 year supply of toilet paper, they would all die...... (I have no idea why out of everything people can buy, that toilet paper was the hot commodity).

There was no shortage of supply. There wasn't. Toilet paper factories have dramatically increased production.

By the way, it sort of cracks me up that a left-winger is complaining that we're not getting raw materials from other countries.

Is it not the left-wing that constantly says "we're looting the natural resources of other countries"? Was it not the left-wing that was claiming we went into Iraq to steal their oil? Didn't left-wingers make the movie blood diamonds? Did not the left-wing claim we were looting all these other countries?

Now here you are complaining "Trump isn't letting us loot the resources of other countries!".

Really?

And in the past, before we started taxing imports and (as a result) have less of them...increased consumption didn't lead to the chronic shortages we're now seeing under the blob.

It cracks me up that you think I'm complaining....I'm pointing out that the blob's tariff's have resulted in shortages of several items. Which highlights the failures of tariffs even more if the goal was to expand domestic production. Companies have just imported less and kept warehouse inventories lower than they would otherwise; hence the empty shelves we see at the supermarkets.

Blood diamonds?

No, you are wrong. I've watched documentaries on factories that produce the goods. Not one said they had to reduce production because of shortage of raw material supply. Not one.

Every single one of them said they were increasing production.

You show me the factory that had a decline in production, that was due specifically to a lack of supply? And... you would also need to prove that the reduction in supply was not due to the factory workers getting sick from Covid, such as the meat packing plant.

No such example exists. I have looked.

Aluminum can producers.... increased production. The only shortage was that demand was out pacing even the increased production.

Toilet paper.... increased production. The only shortage was that demand was out pacing even the increased production.

Same is true of every single product shortage there was.

There is no example that I am aware of, where a given product had reduced production.

And your link backs my position, and refutes yours. So.... unless you are basing an argument from a demand to get rid of Trump, rather than reality and facts.... you lose this one.

By the way, just for the sake of clarity, I'm against tariffs, and against protectionism. I think the trade war is a horrible mistake.

However that is one negative, in a sea of positives for Trump, the biggest of course being it isn't a left-winger in office, which will wreck and damage the economy like Obama did.

Nevertheless, you are just flat out false on this.

 

[candycorn]

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?

www.pennlive.com

So read your own article.

So, why the increase?​

​

As more people drink at home, they're stocking up on cans in grocery stores and tasting rooms instead of going out to bars and restaurants. Curbside and grocery sales of canned beer, hard cider and even wine have grown faster than planned.​

​

The same trend can be seen with sodas. An industry report indicates can sales were up 30% in March and April.​

Nowhere in your own article does it say anything about a raw material shortage. All of the shortages that we have had on anything... have basically not been shortages. They are not shortages. They are the results of panic buying. People buying crap, because they are freaking out, because the media told them the world was coming to an end, and if they didn't buy a 5 year supply of toilet paper, they would all die...... (I have no idea why out of everything people can buy, that toilet paper was the hot commodity).

There was no shortage of supply. There wasn't. Toilet paper factories have dramatically increased production.

By the way, it sort of cracks me up that a left-winger is complaining that we're not getting raw materials from other countries.

Is it not the left-wing that constantly says "we're looting the natural resources of other countries"? Was it not the left-wing that was claiming we went into Iraq to steal their oil? Didn't left-wingers make the movie blood diamonds? Did not the left-wing claim we were looting all these other countries?

Now here you are complaining "Trump isn't letting us loot the resources of other countries!".

Really?

And in the past, before we started taxing imports and (as a result) have less of them...increased consumption didn't lead to the chronic shortages we're now seeing under the blob.

It cracks me up that you think I'm complaining....I'm pointing out that the blob's tariff's have resulted in shortages of several items. Which highlights the failures of tariffs even more if the goal was to expand domestic production. Companies have just imported less and kept warehouse inventories lower than they would otherwise; hence the empty shelves we see at the supermarkets.

Blood diamonds?

No, you are wrong. I've watched documentaries on factories that produce the goods. Not one said they had to reduce production because of shortage of raw material supply. Not one.

Every single one of them said they were increasing production.

You show me the factory that had a decline in production, that was due specifically to a lack of supply? And... you would also need to prove that the reduction in supply was not due to the factory workers getting sick from Covid, such as the meat packing plant.

No such example exists. I have looked.

Aluminum can producers.... increased production. The only shortage was that demand was out pacing even the increased production.

Toilet paper.... increased production. The only shortage was that demand was out pacing even the increased production.

Same is true of every single product shortage there was.

There is no example that I am aware of, where a given product had reduced production.

And your link backs my position, and refutes yours. So.... unless you are basing an argument from a demand to get rid of Trump, rather than reality and facts.... you lose this one.

By the way, just for the sake of clarity, I'm against tariffs, and against protectionism. I think the trade war is a horrible mistake.

However that is one negative, in a sea of positives for Trump, the biggest of course being it isn't a left-winger in office, which will wreck and damage the economy like Obama did.

Nevertheless, you are just flat out false on this.

Shortages that have lasted for 5 months are due to panic.....

That makes no sense.

 

[Andylusion]

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?

www.pennlive.com

So read your own article.

So, why the increase?​

​

As more people drink at home, they're stocking up on cans in grocery stores and tasting rooms instead of going out to bars and restaurants. Curbside and grocery sales of canned beer, hard cider and even wine have grown faster than planned.​

​

The same trend can be seen with sodas. An industry report indicates can sales were up 30% in March and April.​

Nowhere in your own article does it say anything about a raw material shortage. All of the shortages that we have had on anything... have basically not been shortages. They are not shortages. They are the results of panic buying. People buying crap, because they are freaking out, because the media told them the world was coming to an end, and if they didn't buy a 5 year supply of toilet paper, they would all die...... (I have no idea why out of everything people can buy, that toilet paper was the hot commodity).

There was no shortage of supply. There wasn't. Toilet paper factories have dramatically increased production.

By the way, it sort of cracks me up that a left-winger is complaining that we're not getting raw materials from other countries.

Is it not the left-wing that constantly says "we're looting the natural resources of other countries"? Was it not the left-wing that was claiming we went into Iraq to steal their oil? Didn't left-wingers make the movie blood diamonds? Did not the left-wing claim we were looting all these other countries?

Now here you are complaining "Trump isn't letting us loot the resources of other countries!".

Really?

And in the past, before we started taxing imports and (as a result) have less of them...increased consumption didn't lead to the chronic shortages we're now seeing under the blob.

It cracks me up that you think I'm complaining....I'm pointing out that the blob's tariff's have resulted in shortages of several items. Which highlights the failures of tariffs even more if the goal was to expand domestic production. Companies have just imported less and kept warehouse inventories lower than they would otherwise; hence the empty shelves we see at the supermarkets.

Blood diamonds?

No, you are wrong. I've watched documentaries on factories that produce the goods. Not one said they had to reduce production because of shortage of raw material supply. Not one.

Every single one of them said they were increasing production.

You show me the factory that had a decline in production, that was due specifically to a lack of supply? And... you would also need to prove that the reduction in supply was not due to the factory workers getting sick from Covid, such as the meat packing plant.

No such example exists. I have looked.

Aluminum can producers.... increased production. The only shortage was that demand was out pacing even the increased production.

Toilet paper.... increased production. The only shortage was that demand was out pacing even the increased production.

Same is true of every single product shortage there was.

There is no example that I am aware of, where a given product had reduced production.

And your link backs my position, and refutes yours. So.... unless you are basing an argument from a demand to get rid of Trump, rather than reality and facts.... you lose this one.

By the way, just for the sake of clarity, I'm against tariffs, and against protectionism. I think the trade war is a horrible mistake.

However that is one negative, in a sea of positives for Trump, the biggest of course being it isn't a left-winger in office, which will wreck and damage the economy like Obama did.

Nevertheless, you are just flat out false on this.

Shortages that have lasted for 5 months are due to panic.....

That makes no sense.

They have not lasted 5 months. In fact, they didn't even last a month here. Granted I'm in Ohio, and people here are over all, nowhere near as concerned about Covid.

I have never seen the people in the store all with masks on. Never. I've worn a mask, once, and there were so many people without, I removed it before leaving the store. That was back in April.

But the bottom line was, for about 2 weeks tops, we reduced toilet paper. By reduced, I mean that if you went to the more expensive locations, like Target and Marc's and such, they always had toilet paper. Walked into Target and they had a whole shelf full of toilet paper.

Same with meat too. First couple of weeks, no meat, except sausage. But if you went down to Gordan Foods, they had all the meat you wanted.

But after those first 2, maybe at most 3 weeks... we had all the toilet paper, all the meat, all the everything. Shelves were full. It wasn't a full month, and everything was stocked back to normal.

If your area hasn't been stocked in months now... it's because your area is full of more crazy fear and panic based left-wingers.

The rest of us, are not having that problem. There is no shortage at all in Columbus Ohio. None. In fact, the hoarders are complaining because they can't return their 20 year supply of toilet paper they bought.

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

So if you have a problem with shortages in your area... that's on you and your local government, and your community to figure out. Maybe you shouldn't let the protesters shut down the highway, huh?

 

[candycorn]

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?

www.pennlive.com

So read your own article.

So, why the increase?​

​

As more people drink at home, they're stocking up on cans in grocery stores and tasting rooms instead of going out to bars and restaurants. Curbside and grocery sales of canned beer, hard cider and even wine have grown faster than planned.​

​

The same trend can be seen with sodas. An industry report indicates can sales were up 30% in March and April.​

Nowhere in your own article does it say anything about a raw material shortage. All of the shortages that we have had on anything... have basically not been shortages. They are not shortages. They are the results of panic buying. People buying crap, because they are freaking out, because the media told them the world was coming to an end, and if they didn't buy a 5 year supply of toilet paper, they would all die...... (I have no idea why out of everything people can buy, that toilet paper was the hot commodity).

There was no shortage of supply. There wasn't. Toilet paper factories have dramatically increased production.

By the way, it sort of cracks me up that a left-winger is complaining that we're not getting raw materials from other countries.

Is it not the left-wing that constantly says "we're looting the natural resources of other countries"? Was it not the left-wing that was claiming we went into Iraq to steal their oil? Didn't left-wingers make the movie blood diamonds? Did not the left-wing claim we were looting all these other countries?

Now here you are complaining "Trump isn't letting us loot the resources of other countries!".

Really?

And in the past, before we started taxing imports and (as a result) have less of them...increased consumption didn't lead to the chronic shortages we're now seeing under the blob.

It cracks me up that you think I'm complaining....I'm pointing out that the blob's tariff's have resulted in shortages of several items. Which highlights the failures of tariffs even more if the goal was to expand domestic production. Companies have just imported less and kept warehouse inventories lower than they would otherwise; hence the empty shelves we see at the supermarkets.

Blood diamonds?

No, you are wrong. I've watched documentaries on factories that produce the goods. Not one said they had to reduce production because of shortage of raw material supply. Not one.

Every single one of them said they were increasing production.

You show me the factory that had a decline in production, that was due specifically to a lack of supply? And... you would also need to prove that the reduction in supply was not due to the factory workers getting sick from Covid, such as the meat packing plant.

No such example exists. I have looked.

Aluminum can producers.... increased production. The only shortage was that demand was out pacing even the increased production.

Toilet paper.... increased production. The only shortage was that demand was out pacing even the increased production.

Same is true of every single product shortage there was.

There is no example that I am aware of, where a given product had reduced production.

And your link backs my position, and refutes yours. So.... unless you are basing an argument from a demand to get rid of Trump, rather than reality and facts.... you lose this one.

By the way, just for the sake of clarity, I'm against tariffs, and against protectionism. I think the trade war is a horrible mistake.

However that is one negative, in a sea of positives for Trump, the biggest of course being it isn't a left-winger in office, which will wreck and damage the economy like Obama did.

Nevertheless, you are just flat out false on this.

Shortages that have lasted for 5 months are due to panic.....

That makes no sense.

They have not lasted 5 months. In fact, they didn't even last a month here. Granted I'm in Ohio, and people here are over all, nowhere near as concerned about Covid.

I have never seen the people in the store all with masks on. Never. I've worn a mask, once, and there were so many people without, I removed it before leaving the store. That was back in April.

But the bottom line was, for about 2 weeks tops, we reduced toilet paper. By reduced, I mean that if you went to the more expensive locations, like Target and Marc's and such, they always had toilet paper. Walked into Target and they had a whole shelf full of toilet paper.

Same with meat too. First couple of weeks, no meat, except sausage. But if you went down to Gordan Foods, they had all the meat you wanted.

But after those first 2, maybe at most 3 weeks... we had all the toilet paper, all the meat, all the everything. Shelves were full. It wasn't a full month, and everything was stocked back to normal.

If your area hasn't been stocked in months now... it's because your area is full of more crazy fear and panic based left-wingers.

The rest of us, are not having that problem. There is no shortage at all in Columbus Ohio. None. In fact, the hoarders are complaining because they can't return their 20 year supply of toilet paper they bought.

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

So if you have a problem with shortages in your area... that's on you and your local government, and your community to figure out. Maybe you shouldn't let the protesters shut down the highway, huh?

That must be why the local grocery store still limits how much you can buy at Fry's; they don't want to sell products! You discovered a new facet of economics!!!!

 

[martybegan]

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.

The problem with throwing it to the House if the NV and the EV are split is it just gives the loser a new thing to complain about. Then there will be talk of expanding the House so each rep is actually even to avoid the states with 1 rep that are technically "over represented".

And I think election day should only be 1 day, a true 24 hour period from the night before (figure 9 PM ) to the night of (9PM). It should always be a national federal holiday and State holiday, regardless of it being a presidential election or not.

People should have to CARE ENOUGH to go and vote. Absentee ballots should be for true absentees and those physically unable to reach a polling place.

If the standard way of voting was by mail, nobody would be saying that going to the polling place is a better idea. Going, standing in line for hours at times, in late fall...on a work day. Sorry....most voting should be done by mail and on days other than election day.

As for the expansion of the House, that should be happening anyway. One rep has about 500,000-600,000 constituents

Voting by mail eliminates the concept of the private/anonymous ballot. It allows family members to pressure each other, employers/unions to pressure employees/members. It also allows people to harvest unused ballots and commit fraud. We saw a small local example of harvesting just recently in NJ.

You also ignored my point of making it a federal/State holiday, and for 24 hour voting. Sorry, but if you can't figure out how to get to a polling place in that time frame with most people being off from work then you don't deserve to vote.

The issue isn't the inflation of voters per rep, it's the inflation of the things the feds feel the need to get involved with. If the feds concerned themselves with true national issues, and not trying to make the whole US a homogeneous slate of drones the # of persons per rep wouldn't be a big deal.

Yours is a sad world.

No, it's my view on how elections in this country should work.

 

[martybegan]

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.

The problem with throwing it to the House if the NV and the EV are split is it just gives the loser a new thing to complain about. Then there will be talk of expanding the House so each rep is actually even to avoid the states with 1 rep that are technically "over represented".

And I think election day should only be 1 day, a true 24 hour period from the night before (figure 9 PM ) to the night of (9PM). It should always be a national federal holiday and State holiday, regardless of it being a presidential election or not.

People should have to CARE ENOUGH to go and vote. Absentee ballots should be for true absentees and those physically unable to reach a polling place.

If the standard way of voting was by mail, nobody would be saying that going to the polling place is a better idea. Going, standing in line for hours at times, in late fall...on a work day. Sorry....most voting should be done by mail and on days other than election day.

As for the expansion of the House, that should be happening anyway. One rep has about 500,000-600,000 constituents

Voting by mail eliminates the concept of the private/anonymous ballot. It allows family members to pressure each other, employers/unions to pressure employees/members. It also allows people to harvest unused ballots and commit fraud. We saw a small local example of harvesting just recently in NJ.

You also ignored my point of making it a federal/State holiday, and for 24 hour voting. Sorry, but if you can't figure out how to get to a polling place in that time frame with most people being off from work then you don't deserve to vote.

The issue isn't the inflation of voters per rep, it's the inflation of the things the feds feel the need to get involved with. If the feds concerned themselves with true national issues, and not trying to make the whole US a homogeneous slate of drones the # of persons per rep wouldn't be a big deal.

Yours is a sad world.

I have never considered what he just said. I think there is some merit to his position.

A national holiday for voting is a decent enough idea. As for the intimidation factor....it's completely made up otherwise you could just as easily make the argument that you can be intimidated from voting in person since you have to physically go to the location. The fraud argument is ridiculous.

Voting in person only one person is allowed in the booth. Voting at home you are exposed to outside influences.

Is it actually illegal in places with mail in ballots to observe a person voting?

 

[Andylusion]

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?

www.pennlive.com

So read your own article.

So, why the increase?​

​

As more people drink at home, they're stocking up on cans in grocery stores and tasting rooms instead of going out to bars and restaurants. Curbside and grocery sales of canned beer, hard cider and even wine have grown faster than planned.​

​

The same trend can be seen with sodas. An industry report indicates can sales were up 30% in March and April.​

Nowhere in your own article does it say anything about a raw material shortage. All of the shortages that we have had on anything... have basically not been shortages. They are not shortages. They are the results of panic buying. People buying crap, because they are freaking out, because the media told them the world was coming to an end, and if they didn't buy a 5 year supply of toilet paper, they would all die...... (I have no idea why out of everything people can buy, that toilet paper was the hot commodity).

There was no shortage of supply. There wasn't. Toilet paper factories have dramatically increased production.

By the way, it sort of cracks me up that a left-winger is complaining that we're not getting raw materials from other countries.

Is it not the left-wing that constantly says "we're looting the natural resources of other countries"? Was it not the left-wing that was claiming we went into Iraq to steal their oil? Didn't left-wingers make the movie blood diamonds? Did not the left-wing claim we were looting all these other countries?

Now here you are complaining "Trump isn't letting us loot the resources of other countries!".

Really?

And in the past, before we started taxing imports and (as a result) have less of them...increased consumption didn't lead to the chronic shortages we're now seeing under the blob.

It cracks me up that you think I'm complaining....I'm pointing out that the blob's tariff's have resulted in shortages of several items. Which highlights the failures of tariffs even more if the goal was to expand domestic production. Companies have just imported less and kept warehouse inventories lower than they would otherwise; hence the empty shelves we see at the supermarkets.

Blood diamonds?

No, you are wrong. I've watched documentaries on factories that produce the goods. Not one said they had to reduce production because of shortage of raw material supply. Not one.

Every single one of them said they were increasing production.

You show me the factory that had a decline in production, that was due specifically to a lack of supply? And... you would also need to prove that the reduction in supply was not due to the factory workers getting sick from Covid, such as the meat packing plant.

No such example exists. I have looked.

Aluminum can producers.... increased production. The only shortage was that demand was out pacing even the increased production.

Toilet paper.... increased production. The only shortage was that demand was out pacing even the increased production.

Same is true of every single product shortage there was.

There is no example that I am aware of, where a given product had reduced production.

And your link backs my position, and refutes yours. So.... unless you are basing an argument from a demand to get rid of Trump, rather than reality and facts.... you lose this one.

By the way, just for the sake of clarity, I'm against tariffs, and against protectionism. I think the trade war is a horrible mistake.

However that is one negative, in a sea of positives for Trump, the biggest of course being it isn't a left-winger in office, which will wreck and damage the economy like Obama did.

Nevertheless, you are just flat out false on this.

Shortages that have lasted for 5 months are due to panic.....

That makes no sense.

They have not lasted 5 months. In fact, they didn't even last a month here. Granted I'm in Ohio, and people here are over all, nowhere near as concerned about Covid.

I have never seen the people in the store all with masks on. Never. I've worn a mask, once, and there were so many people without, I removed it before leaving the store. That was back in April.

But the bottom line was, for about 2 weeks tops, we reduced toilet paper. By reduced, I mean that if you went to the more expensive locations, like Target and Marc's and such, they always had toilet paper. Walked into Target and they had a whole shelf full of toilet paper.

Same with meat too. First couple of weeks, no meat, except sausage. But if you went down to Gordan Foods, they had all the meat you wanted.

But after those first 2, maybe at most 3 weeks... we had all the toilet paper, all the meat, all the everything. Shelves were full. It wasn't a full month, and everything was stocked back to normal.

If your area hasn't been stocked in months now... it's because your area is full of more crazy fear and panic based left-wingers.

The rest of us, are not having that problem. There is no shortage at all in Columbus Ohio. None. In fact, the hoarders are complaining because they can't return their 20 year supply of toilet paper they bought.

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

So if you have a problem with shortages in your area... that's on you and your local government, and your community to figure out. Maybe you shouldn't let the protesters shut down the highway, huh?

That must be why the local grocery store still limits how much you can buy at Fry's; they don't want to sell products! You discovered a new facet of economics!!!!

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?

www.pennlive.com

So read your own article.

So, why the increase?​

​

As more people drink at home, they're stocking up on cans in grocery stores and tasting rooms instead of going out to bars and restaurants. Curbside and grocery sales of canned beer, hard cider and even wine have grown faster than planned.​

​

The same trend can be seen with sodas. An industry report indicates can sales were up 30% in March and April.​

Nowhere in your own article does it say anything about a raw material shortage. All of the shortages that we have had on anything... have basically not been shortages. They are not shortages. They are the results of panic buying. People buying crap, because they are freaking out, because the media told them the world was coming to an end, and if they didn't buy a 5 year supply of toilet paper, they would all die...... (I have no idea why out of everything people can buy, that toilet paper was the hot commodity).

There was no shortage of supply. There wasn't. Toilet paper factories have dramatically increased production.

By the way, it sort of cracks me up that a left-winger is complaining that we're not getting raw materials from other countries.

Is it not the left-wing that constantly says "we're looting the natural resources of other countries"? Was it not the left-wing that was claiming we went into Iraq to steal their oil? Didn't left-wingers make the movie blood diamonds? Did not the left-wing claim we were looting all these other countries?

Now here you are complaining "Trump isn't letting us loot the resources of other countries!".

Really?

And in the past, before we started taxing imports and (as a result) have less of them...increased consumption didn't lead to the chronic shortages we're now seeing under the blob.

It cracks me up that you think I'm complaining....I'm pointing out that the blob's tariff's have resulted in shortages of several items. Which highlights the failures of tariffs even more if the goal was to expand domestic production. Companies have just imported less and kept warehouse inventories lower than they would otherwise; hence the empty shelves we see at the supermarkets.

Blood diamonds?

No, you are wrong. I've watched documentaries on factories that produce the goods. Not one said they had to reduce production because of shortage of raw material supply. Not one.

Every single one of them said they were increasing production.

You show me the factory that had a decline in production, that was due specifically to a lack of supply? And... you would also need to prove that the reduction in supply was not due to the factory workers getting sick from Covid, such as the meat packing plant.

No such example exists. I have looked.

Aluminum can producers.... increased production. The only shortage was that demand was out pacing even the increased production.

Toilet paper.... increased production. The only shortage was that demand was out pacing even the increased production.

Same is true of every single product shortage there was.

There is no example that I am aware of, where a given product had reduced production.

And your link backs my position, and refutes yours. So.... unless you are basing an argument from a demand to get rid of Trump, rather than reality and facts.... you lose this one.

By the way, just for the sake of clarity, I'm against tariffs, and against protectionism. I think the trade war is a horrible mistake.

However that is one negative, in a sea of positives for Trump, the biggest of course being it isn't a left-winger in office, which will wreck and damage the economy like Obama did.

Nevertheless, you are just flat out false on this.

Shortages that have lasted for 5 months are due to panic.....

That makes no sense.

They have not lasted 5 months. In fact, they didn't even last a month here. Granted I'm in Ohio, and people here are over all, nowhere near as concerned about Covid.

I have never seen the people in the store all with masks on. Never. I've worn a mask, once, and there were so many people without, I removed it before leaving the store. That was back in April.

But the bottom line was, for about 2 weeks tops, we reduced toilet paper. By reduced, I mean that if you went to the more expensive locations, like Target and Marc's and such, they always had toilet paper. Walked into Target and they had a whole shelf full of toilet paper.

Same with meat too. First couple of weeks, no meat, except sausage. But if you went down to Gordan Foods, they had all the meat you wanted.

But after those first 2, maybe at most 3 weeks... we had all the toilet paper, all the meat, all the everything. Shelves were full. It wasn't a full month, and everything was stocked back to normal.

If your area hasn't been stocked in months now... it's because your area is full of more crazy fear and panic based left-wingers.

The rest of us, are not having that problem. There is no shortage at all in Columbus Ohio. None. In fact, the hoarders are complaining because they can't return their 20 year supply of toilet paper they bought.

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

So if you have a problem with shortages in your area... that's on you and your local government, and your community to figure out. Maybe you shouldn't let the protesters shut down the highway, huh?

That must be why the local grocery store still limits how much you can buy at Fry's; they don't want to sell products! You discovered a new facet of economics!!!!

I have no idea what you think that comment is supposed to be, to this discussion.

Limiting 1 per customer, doesn't magically make shortages go away. If there is a 'shortage', that means that there are more total customers, than total product.

Even limiting 1 per customer, would not stop the store from running out of product, if there is not enough product, to meet the number of customers.

Again, there is no evidence whatsoever, that there was any real shortage of supply. Only that people were engaged in panic buying, which is why when the panic was over, they tried to return thousands of dollars in toilet paper.

If there had ever been a real shortage, no one would be trying to return toilet paper... and the stores would not be refusing to take back a commodity they were in desperate need of.

The reason people are trying to return the stuff, and why the stores are refusing to take it back... is because there is no shortage.

 

[my2¢]

I'm for keeping the Electoral College but the number of electors each state receives per House seat should be replaced so that one person's vote is of near equal proportion regardless of which state they reside.
(1) instead of by the number of US House members, I'd like to see this portion of state electors determined by 1 for each 50,000
(2) Presently the 100 of the 535 electoral votes (18.7%) are determined by the total number of Senators. So that this percentage doesn't diminish as the population grows, the portion based on Senators should change as well to maintain its 18.7% weight. Current population figures would put that at 3.5 electoral votes per state.

 

[meaner gene]

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:

The problem with your plan is the 12th amendment.

and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote;

This means that to win the presidency, it only requires the support of 26 states. Even if they're the 26 smallest states with a total of 132 electoral votes.

If you thought it was a sham with a race to 270 in the EC, the 12th amendment makes it a race to 132, and less than 1/4th of the population.

 

[meaner gene]

I'm for keeping the Electoral College but the number of electors each state receives per House seat should be replaced so that one person's vote is of near equal proportion regardless of which state they reside.
(1) instead of by the number of US House members, I'd like to see this portion of state electors determined by 1 for each 50,000

The easiest way to do that is simple. Remove senators from a states electoral college count. Make it only the representatives determining EC count, since the number of representatives is based on population. It was the adding of the two senate seats to the count that skewed small states with 1 representative, getting three times the EC votes per capita, as big states.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

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.

Needless to say, and as likely already correctly noted, this will require a Constitutional amendment – perhaps several; which would be nearly impossible in today’s hyper-partisan, deeply divided America.

Indeed, the most aggressive opposition to such an amendment would come from the right, as Republican presidential candidates have benefited from the current system in two of the last five general elections.

Moreover, Republicans control most of the state houses, also rendering the needed amendment nearly impossible.

Of course, the EC became an issue only recently, since 2000; during the 20th Century the EC was an ignored anachronism, a meaningless process mentioned only briefly during a newscast, in the context of something amusing and insignificant.

The EC also became an issue the consequence of the aberration that is the Imperial Presidency.

As originally intended by the Framers, it shouldn’t matter who the president is; the president was to be nothing more than an administrator implementing the laws passed by Congress, subject to the rule of law, bound by the restraints placed upon the office by the Constitution, and checked by Congress consistent with the will of the people.

Eliminate the bane of the Imperial Presidency and the EC again becomes an ignored, insignificant anachronism – no Constitutional amendments required.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

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.

Or better yet ,just leave well enough alone. A system that has worked for over 200 years can't be all bad.

As with all things, there is room for improvement.

blart the popular vote of each state is counted and the winner gets the electoral vote of that state.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Why don't we have a national vote for senators or Representatives?