Slavery and Royalty. That is why we have an Electoral College.

SwimExpert

Gold Member
Nov 26, 2013
16,247
1,679
280
There is alot of nonsense that gets said about the EC, including the crap making its rounds on this board at the moment. In general these things are frequently repeated because people either are romanticizing the past without actually knowing what they're talking about, or perhaps they've heard certain arguments so many times from other people they've assumed it's true, or in some cases it's just because some people are fucking idiots who need to go eat some cyanide before they make the regrettable decision to procreate.

Be warned that if you act like a fucking idiot in this thread then I will call you a fucking idiot. Let's have a nice, mature, intelligent, and civil conversation, shall we?

Let's start by dispensing of the idea that the Framers had some kind of major aversion to democracy and that that is the reason why they created the EC. This belief is found absolutely nowhere, other than in the imaginations of people who are reciting it. At best, there are tangential facts that are not inconsistent with this imagined hypothesis, but still do not come close to giving a supporting basis from which to infer such a hypothesis as anything short of fantasy. To this end, we must recognize that it did not take very long for nearly all states to legislatively send the choosing of electors to the people to decide by democratic vote. The House of Representatives was constitutionally prescribed to be selected democratically, the legislatures and many other officers of the states were chosen democratically, and state legislatures operated democratically. Democracy was fully ingrained in the Framers so much so that was fully vested in their understanding of how a republic would operate. For the Framers, the presumption of democratic behavior within the newly designed Congress is so fundamental they don't even bother to require it within the constitution's description of that body. The constitution merely prescribes special conditions for minimum thresholds upon special circumstances, demonstrating that democratic voting within these houses of Congress is so expected it need not even be mentioned otherwise.

The Framers had been life long monarchists up until independence. They knew and understood a world of feudal inspired imperialism. And their perception of the United States was much closer to a collection of nation-states than the singular nation-state we see it as today. In its original form, the United States of the 1780s was a confederacy, which bore a closer resemblance to the modern EU than the modern US. The Framers understood the United States to be a collection of independently sovereign states. Analogously, having lived their entire lives understanding the world in terms of imperial monarchy, the Framers saw the United States as a non-monarchial equivalent of an American empire, from an organizational point of view.

In creating a new federal government the Framers attempted to match their new government with the powers and organizational schematics which were familiar and known to them. The starting point of their attempts was Madison's Virginia Plan. A President was offered to be head of state, in lieu of a king. A congress was offered to legislate, in lieu of defined nobility. And just as in elective monarchies of the past, and consistent with centuries of practice which demanded that a king cannot remain king without the support and consent of the nobles, the President was to be elected by the Congress.

However, some among the Framers noted that the Presidency would be under de facto control of Congress, eroding checks and balances. James Madison's proposed solution was direct democratic election by the people, even despite having authored the Virginia Plan's election-by-Congress model. Even though Congressional election of the President was his idea, upon examination of that plan's faults, he instantly recognized direct democratic selection by the people as the superior approach. But this is where slavery came into the picture. Slave states had far fewer eligible voters, and direct democratic election by the people was a deal breaker. They would not tolerate it because they could not maintain influence in the choosing of the President due to the substantial portion of their populations composed by non-voting slaves.

The compromise that was ultimately struck was the creation of the electoral college. This preserved the influence of southern slave states in selecting the President, despite those states being able to suppress voting rights for the majority of their citizens. The Electoral College, is in essence, another expression of the 3/5s rule. It was a compromise to convince slave states to consent to the constitution, while allowing them leeway to suppress the rights of their citizens.

So next time someone wants to argue that the purpose of the EC was to "prevent high population areas from being the only ones who choose the President" understand that what you're really arguing is that states should be able to restrict individual citizens from voting, without losing influence in the vote. You are arguing for the preservation of the last remaining slavery supporting mechanism within our government. You are arguing for state governments to be able to be paramount to the people they are supposed to serve. And you sound like a fucking idiot while doing it.
 
Odd, that you are such a douchbag, but I actually agree with this post. The electoral college was a fail safe to allow states with minority opinions to still have a say in the country. How people can still argue today that one person's vote should be worth more than someone else's is beyond me. If anything, a person's vote in a state like California that provides more value than a state like Mississippi, would make more sense... but that still wouldn't be fair when the Constitution clearly states that all citizens should be treated equal.
 
There is alot of nonsense that gets said about the EC, including the crap making its rounds on this board at the moment. In general these things are frequently repeated because people either are romanticizing the past without actually knowing what they're talking about, or perhaps they've heard certain arguments so many times from other people they've assumed it's true, or in some cases it's just because some people are fucking idiots who need to go eat some cyanide before they make the regrettable decision to procreate.

Be warned that if you act like a fucking idiot in this thread then I will call you a fucking idiot. Let's have a nice, mature, intelligent, and civil conversation, shall we?

Let's start by dispensing of the idea that the Framers had some kind of major aversion to democracy and that that is the reason why they created the EC. This belief is found absolutely nowhere, other than in the imaginations of people who are reciting it. At best, there are tangential facts that are not inconsistent with this imagined hypothesis, but still do not come close to giving a supporting basis from which to infer such a hypothesis as anything short of fantasy. To this end, we must recognize that it did not take very long for nearly all states to legislatively send the choosing of electors to the people to decide by democratic vote. The House of Representatives was constitutionally prescribed to be selected democratically, the legislatures and many other officers of the states were chosen democratically, and state legislatures operated democratically. Democracy was fully ingrained in the Framers so much so that was fully vested in their understanding of how a republic would operate. For the Framers, the presumption of democratic behavior within the newly designed Congress is so fundamental they don't even bother to require it within the constitution's description of that body. The constitution merely prescribes special conditions for minimum thresholds upon special circumstances, demonstrating that democratic voting within these houses of Congress is so expected it need not even be mentioned otherwise.

The Framers had been life long monarchists up until independence. They knew and understood a world of feudal inspired imperialism. And their perception of the United States was much closer to a collection of nation-states than the singular nation-state we see it as today. In its original form, the United States of the 1780s was a confederacy, which bore a closer resemblance to the modern EU than the modern US. The Framers understood the United States to be a collection of independently sovereign states. Analogously, having lived their entire lives understanding the world in terms of imperial monarchy, the Framers saw the United States as a non-monarchial equivalent of an American empire, from an organizational point of view.

In creating a new federal government the Framers attempted to match their new government with the powers and organizational schematics which were familiar and known to them. The starting point of their attempts was Madison's Virginia Plan. A President was offered to be head of state, in lieu of a king. A congress was offered to legislate, in lieu of defined nobility. And just as in elective monarchies of the past, and consistent with centuries of practice which demanded that a king cannot remain king without the support and consent of the nobles, the President was to be elected by the Congress.

However, some among the Framers noted that the Presidency would be under de facto control of Congress, eroding checks and balances. James Madison's proposed solution was direct democratic election by the people, even despite having authored the Virginia Plan's election-by-Congress model. Even though Congressional election of the President was his idea, upon examination of that plan's faults, he instantly recognized direct democratic selection by the people as the superior approach. But this is where slavery came into the picture. Slave states had far fewer eligible voters, and direct democratic election by the people was a deal breaker. They would not tolerate it because they could not maintain influence in the choosing of the President due to the substantial portion of their populations composed by non-voting slaves.

The compromise that was ultimately struck was the creation of the electoral college. This preserved the influence of southern slave states in selecting the President, despite those states being able to suppress voting rights for the majority of their citizens. The Electoral College, is in essence, another expression of the 3/5s rule. It was a compromise to convince slave states to consent to the constitution, while allowing them leeway to suppress the rights of their citizens.

So next time someone wants to argue that the purpose of the EC was to "prevent high population areas from being the only ones who choose the President" understand that what you're really arguing is that states should be able to restrict individual citizens from voting, without losing influence in the vote. You are arguing for the preservation of the last remaining slavery supporting mechanism within our government. You are arguing for state governments to be able to be paramount to the people they are supposed to serve. And you sound like a fucking idiot while doing it.

Dear SwimExpert Thanks for a well written and structured post that is easy to follow for all its content.
If you wrote this extemporaneously, I am super impressed!

I will say, that given your premise that it was to accommodate the slave populations.
We still have a similar class division between "field slaves" who depend on govt as their master
and "house slaves" who claim more independence and yet still become enslaved politically
if they don't govern themselves and also keep depending on govt.

So the same argument would still stand.

We would STILL need to ensure that populations of more independent self-governing states,
that don't rely so much on federal assistance as they generate their own jobs and economy,
are as equally represented as possible in relation to states that might depend more on federal govt because their populations aren't as developed or independent yet.

I don't think the Electoral system is making this worse, or making people more enslaved.

I find that Constitutional education on the process and principles is what is needed to liberate more
of the population, because the same principles that apply between state and federal govt
apply to people's relations with their own local and state govts.

So the more people learn to practice and enforce these laws for themselves, they become self-governing.
And they depend less and less on govt to dictate for them what they can manage on their own
by these same universal principles, which apply to all people as individuals and groups.

www.ethics-commission.net
 
Electoral votes should be apportioned, like they do in Maine...

How Did Trump Win Election While Losing Popular Vote?
November 11, 2016 | WASHINGTON — Four years ago, Donald Trump declared that the U.S. Electoral College system of picking presidents "is a disaster for a democracy;" now he is headed to the White House because of it.
As the Republican president-elect late this week began assembling a cabinet and administration to take office in early January, he still trailed Democrat Hillary Clinton in the national vote by more than 233,000 votes, roughly 59.9 million to 59.7 million. Clinton's edge could become even larger because votes are still being counted in states she won. But in the Electoral College -- the only count that matters in U.S. presidential elections – the blunt-spoken real estate mogul is ahead, 290 to 228 with the winner still to be determined in two states. The final result could favor Trump by as much as 306-232 edge. Trump's election as the country's 45th president won't change no matter how far ahead Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state, might pull in the popular vote because of the Electoral College, the system the country's founding fathers devised more than two centuries ago to elect presidents.

In essence, U.S. presidential elections are contested separately in each of the 50 states with the winner in each state getting all of that state’s Electoral College votes. Those, in turn, are apportioned roughly according to the population of each state, giving the most populous states a huge say in who becomes president. California, for example, has 55 electoral votes, while seven small states and the national capital – which is not part of any state – have just three votes apiece. With each state-by-state winner claiming all of its electoral votes, the difference between the Electoral College result and the popular vote can quickly become skewed, as occurred in the Trump-Clinton contest.

In Tuesday’s election, Trump won the Electoral College by achieving narrow wins in several large states that had previously voted for President Obama, including Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Clinton ran ahead of him in the popular vote by running up much larger margins in states like New York and California. It is only the fourth time in U.S. history that a candidate has been elected as president without winning the popular vote, and only the second time since 1888. President George W. Bush, also a Republican, won the Electoral College in 2000 even though Vice President Al Gore received some 539,000 more votes. This year, as in 2000, the outcome has angered members of the losing party and sparked demands for the system to be changed. One petition to that effect has received more than 240,000 signatures since the result of Tuesday’s election became known.

Even Trump, the beneficiary of the system this year, protested vociferously in 2012 when early returns made it appear – incorrectly – that losing Republican candidate Mitt Romney had lost the Electoral College while amassing more votes than President Barack Obama. “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy,” Trump said in one tweet. In another, he said, “We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!” To change the system, however, would require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a slow and difficult process requiring large majorities in Congress and among the individual states. In any event, Republicans, who now control both the White House and Congress, have no incentive to seek a change.

Has Electoral College outlived usefulness?
 
  • Thread starter
  • Banned
  • #6
Electoral votes should be apportioned, like they do in Maine...

How Did Trump Win Election While Losing Popular Vote?
November 11, 2016 | WASHINGTON — Four years ago, Donald Trump declared that the U.S. Electoral College system of picking presidents "is a disaster for a democracy;" now he is headed to the White House because of it.
As the Republican president-elect late this week began assembling a cabinet and administration to take office in early January, he still trailed Democrat Hillary Clinton in the national vote by more than 233,000 votes, roughly 59.9 million to 59.7 million. Clinton's edge could become even larger because votes are still being counted in states she won. But in the Electoral College -- the only count that matters in U.S. presidential elections – the blunt-spoken real estate mogul is ahead, 290 to 228 with the winner still to be determined in two states. The final result could favor Trump by as much as 306-232 edge. Trump's election as the country's 45th president won't change no matter how far ahead Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state, might pull in the popular vote because of the Electoral College, the system the country's founding fathers devised more than two centuries ago to elect presidents.

In essence, U.S. presidential elections are contested separately in each of the 50 states with the winner in each state getting all of that state’s Electoral College votes. Those, in turn, are apportioned roughly according to the population of each state, giving the most populous states a huge say in who becomes president. California, for example, has 55 electoral votes, while seven small states and the national capital – which is not part of any state – have just three votes apiece. With each state-by-state winner claiming all of its electoral votes, the difference between the Electoral College result and the popular vote can quickly become skewed, as occurred in the Trump-Clinton contest.

In Tuesday’s election, Trump won the Electoral College by achieving narrow wins in several large states that had previously voted for President Obama, including Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Clinton ran ahead of him in the popular vote by running up much larger margins in states like New York and California. It is only the fourth time in U.S. history that a candidate has been elected as president without winning the popular vote, and only the second time since 1888. President George W. Bush, also a Republican, won the Electoral College in 2000 even though Vice President Al Gore received some 539,000 more votes. This year, as in 2000, the outcome has angered members of the losing party and sparked demands for the system to be changed. One petition to that effect has received more than 240,000 signatures since the result of Tuesday’s election became known.

Even Trump, the beneficiary of the system this year, protested vociferously in 2012 when early returns made it appear – incorrectly – that losing Republican candidate Mitt Romney had lost the Electoral College while amassing more votes than President Barack Obama. “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy,” Trump said in one tweet. In another, he said, “We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!” To change the system, however, would require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a slow and difficult process requiring large majorities in Congress and among the individual states. In any event, Republicans, who now control both the White House and Congress, have no incentive to seek a change.

Has Electoral College outlived usefulness?

That's about as good as saying that slavery wasn't a problem, it just needed to be changed to some other state's better version of slavery.
 

New Topics

Forum List

Back
Top