The electorial college needs to go

This and gerrymandering basically the only way Republicans have had any power for decades. It's not a 51% majority ever it's carefully drawing lines and pretending like a town of 5k in Iowa matters like New York. If we care about democracy what mattes is a majority no matter where they live in the county. So yes your entire right wing farming state that has the population of maybe LA are equal.

If you don't agree with this you do not agree with the fundamental idea of democracy because you expect some votes to mean more then others. Without the electoral system neither Bush or Trump would be elected.

What if it had gone the other way for example. Let's say Clinton and Obama somehow got under 50% of the vote yet won. Think of the tensions with Obama in particular. Don't you think a Republican congress would take steps to end the electoral system then? It feeds right into their us vs them argument that there are two Amercias. The real rural Joe Six Pack and the decadent communists who prey to Mecca.

If you can get a Trump with 51% I would have to support it but you can not. Maybe this is why these kind of voters constantly fell attacked by society. Be it who uses the bathroom or who gets asylum they never agree with what the "liberal media and Hollywood" says yet Colbert and all the other media make those who not agree with this the joke.

Maybe that is because like any good statistical business they follow the money and the customer is always right. Maybe the reality is most Americans say support socialism and gun control. You only think you are a victim since a crooked system works for you. I mean look at Hollywood 50 years ago. There is no Me too and no PC culture. No one expected it then. There was money to be made without those things.

 

I can definitely understand where you're coming from on this. It would make sense that the majority of a nation's voice should have their way. Mob rule.

Raw democracy is 2 wolves and 1 sheep voting on what's for dinner.

It's interesting that the left rails against the electoral college, as it gives the minority a voice. All this time I thought the left was totally in favor about empowering the minority by giving them a voice.... Not anymore it seems.

 

The minority should have a voice while the majority rules.

 

There have been 4 presidents elected by the electoral college. John Quincy Adams, who killed a lot of natives, George Bush who killed a bunch of Iraqi's, Trump who enough said, and Harrison, who killed a lot of natives. The fifth is questionable, since it was bargained away by Hayes to end reconstruction. So the electoral college has gotten us Jim Crow, a tax grifting idiot, and a bunch of dead Indians and Iraqis.

The electoral college was a vestige of appeasing the less populous southern states (guaranteeing we wouldn't get rid of slavery) to ratify the constitution so we could effectively thwart an English invasion. It's antiquated, and America would still be a representative democracy without it. It simply gives much more voting power to people in less populous states, and discourages voting in more populous ones.

 

The minority is favored at so many points in the system that "democracy" becomes an empty phrase. We have the electoral college, gerrymandering, federal courts that have the last word on constitutional matters, the Senate's filibuster, etc. Why assume it's the wolves who are in the majority? I see a minority of wolves carving up the sheeplike majority for dinner.

 

Which side cuts us up nicer than the other?

 

Democracy is majorly rule simple as that it is "mob rule". This not your typical angel of conservative victim hood. Without an electoral college one still has all the free speech and assembly they want. Feel free to change the system and encourage new votes.

 

It's not so much the electoral college per se that's the problem (although it's an archaic relic), but the "winner take all' rule for implementing it. That's not mandated by the Constitution. Nebraska and Maine apportion some of their electoral votes according to district. The practical effect of the electoral college is that it assures two-party rule by making it difficult for other parties to establish themselves. The "minority" it protects is a diffuse category--small, underpopulated states that tend to be more rural than the rest of the country--although not consistently, since populous states like California and Texas also do well in the system. We have the Senate to protect this constituency, and a Bill of Rights and Civil Rights acts to protect the minorities that should count. Interesting that those minorities--the ones with identity--are not the minorities Six-eyed Shaman is concerned about. If we suggested giving identity groups extra voting power, he'd be the fist to scream "identity politics!' If majority rule can be casually equated with "mob rule", what pejorative label do we pin on this system of minority tyranny.Opinion | Tyranny of the Minority

 

I agree Okie! I call it Tyranny of the rich minority. Trump is one example where the system failed the American people. Clinton had a lot more votes.

 

I'd argue the other way. We should have an electoral college in the state of California. Democrats in Bay Area and LA area are ruling the entire state.

 

To make it truly "fair" without the electoral college, we would need to break up the larger states and probably swell the number of states overall by up to 50%. It would mean redrawing current state lines so that each can come by the closest to a standard population. States unable to achieve this will be issued voting credit equal to all of the other states.

What could go wrong?

 

Bills propose eliminating Electoral College, preventing presidents from pardoning themselves - CNNPolitics

I saw this in the news, though I don't remember on which network it was featured. Here is one from CNN. The way I see it though it's just one of those things (like repealing the second amendment or electing a progressive candidate to office) that would be nice but probably isn't going to happen. Call me pessimistic...

 

I agree the electoral college needs to go. I seem to recall reading somewhere that it was created because early American leaders did NOT want everyone to be able to vote, only those who owned land. And of course, women weren't allowed to vote back then either. Every other election in this country is decided based on the winner of the popular vote. It should be that way with presidential elections as well. A while back, I saw Chuck Todd, moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press" say on the program that when he traveled to foreign countries, people there couldn't believe that our presidential elections weren't decided on the basis of the popular vote and were instead based on the electoral college. They said that made no sense at all. Here's a story that USA Today ran after Trump won the 2016 election that provides more info on the electoral college: Could electors change their vote? Electoral College explained

 

The US Constitution includes a clause requiring interstate compacts to have congressional approval. So these efforts to circumvent the electoral college with national/state-level "popular vote" clearing house are not likely to escape congressional scrutiny. This would bring us back to the whole question of getting an Article V amendment.

Good luck with that.

 

The Libertarian party should be declared a terrorist group and enemy of democracy, but if wishes were fishes we'd all cast nets. The democratic party can barely get it together to spend other people's money. They don't even have to compete against the republicans anymore, because the whole voting system is totally bogus now, and they could nominate a dog catcher for our next president and win against Donald Duck.

All the republican candidates are serious losers, with Donald Duck at least being different, so he was elected against the wishes of his own party leaders. Unless democrats oppose their own party, nothing will change.

 

Because they knew he wasn't a real republican. Trump is an independent who bought his way into the GOP because he could defeat them easier than the democrats.

 

A genuine republican is a contradiction in terms, because you can just throw money at them and they will be whatever you want. They used to espouse Christian values and family values, then even their own conservative institutions confirmed that they have the worst rates of abortion, child abuse, divorce, etc. in the entire developed world. They still attempt to espouse capitalism, but the news has also broken that capitalism is a euphemism for "I point my guns at you and we "negotiate" in good faith. Now they are as aimless as a ship without a rudder, and the idiots did not want Donald Duck, because they knew exactly how insane he was all along, being all too familiar with their own televangelists and professional wrestling.

They created their own Frankenstein monster, and he is costing them dearly. They can attempt to disown him all they want, and their mindless lynch mob will disown them, right along with all of their corporate donations. They have no choice but to watch their own party destroy itself. Once they lose all credibility, nobody but die-hard republicans will vote for another of their presidential candidates, and they will be left right where they've been all along, wishing they could destroy the government altogether, and still keep all their money.

 

The gerrymandering problem is the biggest issue I have. By letting the politicians draw congressional district lines however they wish we are letting them decide how our one vote per person will be counted, and they're always going to make that decision based on how they think their party will perform in the next election, not on what is good for the country. Another issue that I never hear brought up is our paltry number of representatives in The House. 435 assholes to represent a country of 300 million assholes. One result is that Montana's single congressional district has 994,416 people while the average number of residents per district for the state of Rhode Island is 527,624. That's a 46.9% difference and is clearly not what the Founders intended.

I would be all for the elimination of the Electoral College except for one concern: what do we replace it with? I don't want to live in a so called "Democratic" America simply because the majority of the people are just as self interested, greedy, ignorant and unconcerned with justice as the minority are. I don't trust them. If the majority had had their way the last presidential election we would now have president Hillary. Is that the best that the majority can come up with? If so then fuck them, they deserve Trump. So let the Electoral College stay until we can come up with a better way to find a POS...I mean POTUS.

 

Yeah.

 

They gerrymandered the vote, and the supreme court decided anyone can spend as much as they want on advertising. You might as well ask an honest politician to compete against the Mafia. There's a damned good reason there are no good politicians anymore, and it started with the public school teachers encouraging them all to argue batshit, and be good employees, rather than think for themselves. Donald Duck stomped the republican party leaders into the dirt, because they are total idiots who were taught to shoot themselves in the foot for money.

Assuming Donald Duck is found guilty of treason, he will be assassinated if possible, for being a loser who exposed just exactly how corrupt our system has become, by his greed exceeding his grasp. They want him forgotten, as soon as possible, or the republican party will become an albatross around their own constituents necks. Obama wasn't reelected because he's a nice guy, but because republicans can't even stand themselves, and knew their own candidates would possibly crash the economy again. Sure enough, we get Donald Duck, the republican incarnation of the lesser of many evils, namely, Adolf Hitler.

Blame the first Bush president, who actually had a real brain, and used it to whip congress into preparing to destroy our government. The asshole was too smart for his own good, and never realized he will go down in history as destroying democracy in America.