The electorial college needs to go

A Cheating Scandal Rocked Atlanta's Schools. Ten Years Later, Efforts to Help Affected Students Fall Short

Who will make up the tests and administer them? Federal or state governments? Angels or robots?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/new-ways-students-cheat-on-tests/2
Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal - Wikipedia
How students cheated in China’s imperial civil service exams
https://nypost.com/2016/02/24/nypd-probes-possible-cheating-on-lieutenants-exam/
Wasn't it James Madison who said: “If men were angels, no gov would be necessary."

I'm also skeptical that testable knowledge per se would lead to a better qualified electorate. Of the vast myriad of facts we could ask people about government and the political process, which would be the critical ones to determine their ability to cast informed votes? Would purely non-controversial facts, like how many members are in the House of Representatives or where was the Declaration of Independence signed really separate the qualified voters from the others? If we get into more meaningful knowledge, It becomes a matter of judgment, and in light of the differences over just about everything we see every day on Hip Forums, whose judgment determines what people should know? The gun lobby would want lots of questions about the Second Amendment and the characteristics of firearms. Liberals and conservatives might differ considerably about the meaning and value of the commerce clause, the Tenth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment.

When we look at the sorry records of school boards trying to politicize the selection of history and government textbooks in the U.S.and the content of placement exams, the feasibility of non-politicized literacy tests seems even more questionable. How Textbooks Can Teach Different Versions Of History In Texas, Issues like slavery, Jim Crow, the Trail of Tears, etc.,are downplayed or ignored in favor of idealized portrayals of our founding fathers, capitalism, and American triumphalism. In Colorado, Advanced Placement curriculum for U.S. history classes were required to ensure that teaching materials present positive aspects of U.S. history and its heritage "promote citizenship, patriotism ... (and) respect for authority" and not "encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law."
Denver-area students: School board censors U.S. history - CNN.com
In other words, fake facts, fake history.

 

I disagree. California, New York, Florida and Texas already have a huge say in the election, because every candidate is trying to get the electoral votes from the first three of the aforementioned states. If we switched to the popular vote, all the candidates would be trying to win those same states because they are among the most populous ones in the country. Okiefreak is correct when he says no other country uses an electoral college to elect it's leaders. It was even mentioned on NBC's "Meet the Press" that people in foreign countries don't understand why the U.S. doesn't use the popular vote to elect its president. If the popular vote is good enough to elect members of Congress and leaders of every other political subdivision in this country, then it should be good enough to elect the president.

 

Right you are man! No other democracy has such an institution. And most of them can't understand why the U.S. uses the popular vote to elect it's president. Democracy has always been based on the majority-rule concept.

 

We have mob rule in the sense it is a mob the wealthy have gerrymandered and fed complete bullshit for decades, while stripping them progressively of their constitutional rights and any meaningful vote. Americans have been voting in virtually every local and national election for whoever advertises the most, which means we could do away with both parties altogether, and simply allow people to buy their office in Vegas. Eliminating the electoral college in such a situation, would eliminate the temptation to bribe them. At a billion dollars for a single election, you could make serious money.

 

Sorry, I left out a word. I meant to say "why the U.S. *doesn't* use the popular vote to elect its president.

 

sore losers.

 

Because the popular will needs to be constrained by institutions. Moreover, in our federal system, New Hampshire and Delaware's opinions should not be an afterthought. We are different from say, the Netherlands, because we have very different nations with quite different political systems- a parliamentary vs a presidential one.

The founders of the US of A were profoundly distrustful of the popular will, and in that, I agree with them. The Constitution is on guard against its excesses; the electoral college is another.

 

I don't believe so.

What I think, if I have to be honest, is that it protects the vote of Americans who live in states with a lower population.

But with that said, I'm certainly pissy about the vote constantly going against what academics, science, and knowledge are saying. It feels rotten that voters in some cases don't care about the environment for example, or if they do, feel that it takes a backseat to the economic wellbeing of American companies. When we see someone like a Greta Thunberg it's really telling of our needs as a global society and I think that's where we need improvement when it comes to the ballot.

But yea, the electoral college is protecting voters. I guess my true hope is that people will come around before we need to do away with an electoral college and let 4 or 5 states with big cities and large populations decide what we're going to do with the other 45 or 46.

 

It's not just who advertises the most, though that is a shamefully huge factor that can't be ignored. Too often it's about the gimme.

Republicans push gimme by suggesting lower taxes, then take away key deductions like mortgage interest, which fucks the middle class the very most. Democrats promise a wide array of gimme from forgiving college loans for people who picked useless majors to Medicare (a sucky government health care system on par with the VA) for All (paid for by the middle class through a variety of new taxes, many called "temporary").

However, I think both sides have overplayed the gimme game and that's why they're going for "social" issues with such renewed fervor.

 

has this been discussed? I haven't heard anything about how medicare for all would be paid for aside from the tax the rich idea, which I don't care for.

 

The middle class is the nation's cash cow. Taxing the rich never bumps the economy as much as adding another 5% to the middle class tax load. And the middle class is virtually enslaved as it is, completely defenseless from the financial meddling of the enlightened elite of Washington. Rich people, like Trump, can hide a lot of their money from this invasive demonetizing of our personal fortunes, but the rest of us take it up the ass.

What keeps it all running is the weird need humans have for owning stuff. I heard once that "home is where you keep your stuff, while you're out getting more stuff". None of it lasts beyond our lifetime, so what's the point? Better to rent!

 

No, it is literally about who advertises the most, which just usually happens to be who gets the most contributions for advertising. They are racing for the bottom, and its illegal to vote for Mickey Mouse because their politicians got desperate and started making up ridiculous campaign promises for tax cuts. They were scraping the bottom of the barrel, and knew there was no way they could pass anymore tax cuts.

 

Error

 

Soul, you and I may not be in full agreement, but at least we look at the situation from similar perspectives.

I'm glad to see you recognize the significance of the individual states under our system, something of which those who "worship at the altar of the popular vote" seem to have no appreciation. I for one think the federal government is far too powerful (I might note that I live in the DC area and have for over half my adult life).

But you point to a inherent problem of close observance of the popular will as it expresses itself at any given point in time. That will is inherently at odds in many respects with "what academics, science, and knowledge are saying." I think you overstated it by saying it's always at odds, but it certainly has been that way, oh, the last three years, ahem. Still, I find myself sympathetic of the words of the late great William F. Buckley who opined that he would rather be governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston phonebook than by the 2000 members of the Harvard faculty.

We have an enormous challenge reconciling the current generation's economic well-being with that of longer term environmental concerns. But I don't see that as product so much of I don't know what the answer ought to be, but I'm pretty sure that mining more coal is not a part of the solution. However, I don't see that so much a product of "American companies" or capitalism so much as the state of technology and a human population that has exploded in the past two centuries. Under a theory of strict liability, such as I endorse, companies could be held accountable for all kinds of damage their operations cause- government's role is to define the rules of the road. So of the worst ecological disasters have been from state directed economies whereby the state was freed from such constraints (e.g. Chernobyl .... atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons some years back, particularly in remote areas of the Pacific, where "nobody important" lived.

Anyway, I enjoy reading your comments.

 

Its smaller government and lower taxes, by electing whichever idiot is more crooked. These assholes will sell everything but the kitchen sink, and bankrupt entire states. In Virginia, they withheld their pension funds for twenty years, offering to settle for half out of court, when the state didn't even need the money. That's a direct attack on the same democrats that hold their fucking government together. They either get everything they want, or there are no limits to how low they will go. They're a lynch mob, not a cooperative government. Sadly, if politicians actually let the public do exactly what they want with their government, it would be chaos.

 

Maybe the working class and the poor can foot the bill for medicare for all, and the rich can continue paying less than the rest of us. That seems fair.

 

The idea that my generation (I am over 60 now) can just expect- even demand- that younger people en masse provide for their medical needs has always struck me as wrong. Given the effective but rather expensive medical system we have in the USA, one way or other, the availability of medical care is going to be rationed. I think the USA spends far too much on the final two or three years of a person's life. Sorry to say, but children's prospects should not be held hostage to taking care of grandma (I use that as a figure of speech because I am a grandmother), and with spiraling deficits, that is exactly what we are doing.

Let me say one other thing about voting. You've expressed concern that expert opinion is disregarded in our system. I agree that is a concern, and the current administration is ground-zero in that regard. I think our democracy is flawed by giving the votes thoughtless voters equal weight with informed voters. I don't know how to constrain the voting franchise, and, frankly, I don't think there is one "right" way. I'd be happy, though, with a test that required a high school level knowledge of our system of government and the values it upholds- some form of "literacy test", if you will. Maybe if that were implemented, I would be more receptive to popular vote determining the presidential sweepstakes.

 

I disagree. The founding fathers may have been distrustful of the popular vote, but if you polled most Americans today and asked them if the president election should be based on who gets the most popular votes or determined by the Electoral College, most would choose the popular vote. If the popular vote is a sound basis for bond elections, city council and county commissioner elections, school board elections, congressional elections, governors and state legislatures, etc., then it's good enough to elect the president. The fact that different countries have different political systems from ours is irrelevant, in my opinion. A one-man, one-vote system is the simplest way to elect any office.

 

I believe the founding fathers truly just wanted a country where people could get along and the little guy wouldn't be treated like absolute worthless shit. We're far out to pasture these days. Just give us something, anything that works, where we won't all be a bunch of divided, hostile, schmucks, and that's what they would have wanted.

 

judging by most of the people who get into those offices, i'm not convinced the popular vote is a sound basis either.