• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Constitutional Rights -

And you are in self-denial.

Your "say" in the electoral process is being manipulated by BigMoney (with the intent of maintaining the status-quo of unfair upper-income taxation) and all you have to write in defense are tired platitudes.

And you underestimate the force of the Popular Voice once it reaches crescendo. You have a harsh awakening ahead of you.

Wakey, wakey ...

No denial at all, I'm well acquainted with the election process in the US and only 2 positions are selected using the electoral process, all the rest I have an equal say with my neighbors. The platitudes are yours as you stomp your feet over something that WILL NEVER CHANGE IN YOUR LIFETIME, and likely no one who is currently alive. Absolutely nothing about your complaints about manipulation would change were the Electoral College disappear tomorrow.

the same reason the Electoral College was created is the same reason it won't change. A crescendo in a few states isn't enough to get it changed and you still don't acknowledge that "Uncle Sam" can't change the Electoral College--that's a fact you need to "wakey, wakey".

Why is it the country of your residence doesn't allow the people to select their head of government? Shout out the reason, shout it out proudly. Who exactly decided that is the way it is to be?
 
ELECTORAL MACHINATION



Since you do not obviously understand English, I will write slowly: The Electoral College is a miscarriage of democracy, since it allows the election of a PotUS to be "manipulated". For instance, it is unconscionable that a vote in a presidential election in California should have less weight in the electoral college than a vote in Idaho. It is also unacceptable that political boundaries should be "gerrymandered" in order to prefer voting of any particular party. Geographical voting patterns should remain "natural" - ie. systemic to the voting process and not manipulated by arcane divisions that consolidate votes uniformly across an electoral map to produce particular results!

The foundational essence of the popular-vote anywhere ELSE in the world of developed nations on earth is based upon the simple majority of the electoral popular-vote. That is, the total number of votes for any particular National Candidate as the Executive political-head within a country. (Typically known as a "President" who presides, or a "Prime Minister" head of the majority party in the Legislature.)

Just when are you (plural) going to understand these simple definitions in the English-language?

My take? Perhaps never, because you (plural) actually enjoy/prefer the results of the electoral machination perpetrated ...

America is not a democracy.
 
AliHajiSheik;1067499486AliHaji said:
No denial at all, I'm well acquainted with the election process in the US and only 2 positions are selected using the electoral process, all the rest I have an equal say with my neighbors.?

Certainly not well enough.

From its inception, the Electoral College vote was "rigged". From here (NYT, 2000):
The Electoral College, Unfair From Day One- excerpt:
... we must realize that the Electoral College is a hopelessly outdated system and that we must abolish it. Direct election would resonate far better with the American value of one person, one vote. Indeed, the college was designed at the founding of the country to help one group -- white Southern males -- and this year, it has apparently done just that.

In 1787, as the Constitution was being drafted in Philadelphia, James Wilson of Pennsylvania proposed direct election of the president. But James Madison of Virginia worried that such a system would hurt the South, which would have been outnumbered by the North in a direct election system. The creation of the Electoral College got around that: it was part of the deal that Southern states, in computing their share of electoral votes, could count slaves (albeit with a two-fifths discount), who of course were given none of the privileges of citizenship. Virginia emerged as the big winner, with more than a quarter of the electors needed to elect a president. A free state like Pennsylvania got fewer electoral votes even though it had approximately the same free population.

The Constitution's pro-Southern bias quickly became obvious. For 32 of the Constitution's first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency. Thomas Jefferson, for example, won the election of 1800 against John Adams from Massachusetts in a race where the slavery skew of the Electoral College was the decisive margin of victory.

The system's gender bias was also obvious. In a direct presidential election, any state that chose to enfranchise its women would have automatically doubled its clout. Under the Electoral College, however, a state had no special incentive to expand suffrage -- each got a fixed number of electoral votes, regardless of how many citizens were allowed to vote.

From here, The Week (Dec., 2016): Which states got screwed worst by the Electoral College in 2016? - excerpt:

Conservatives are, naturally enough, searching feverishly for any rationale to justify Donald Trump's Electoral College victory as true, righteous, and above all What the Founders Would Have Wanted. Michael Barone at the American Enterprise Institute has one candidate: to prevent an "imperial" California from imposing its will on the rest of the country.

His argument is that since California is both the largest state and leans very strongly towards one party, it's right and proper that it is partially disenfranchised by the Electoral College. Apparently restricting the vote is good so long as you do it to lots and lots of similar people who are close together. But risible analysis aside, Barone's premise isn't even correct. A careful analysis will show that California isn't even that far up the list of states treated worst by the Electoral College in 2016.

Taking voting-eligible population and turnout estimates from the United States Elections Project, I calculated the voting-eligible population per electoral vote for each state. The greater the number, the greater the disenfranchisement:
image%20%283%29_0.png

In democracies all over the world, and aside from the US, the popular-vote is the ONLY means for electing the Executive head-of-government (President or Majority Leader) ...
 
Last edited:
Certainly not well enough.

From its inception, the Electoral College vote was "rigged". From here (NYT, 2000):
The Electoral College, Unfair From Day One- excerpt:

From here, The Week (Dec., 2016): Which states got screwed worst by the Electoral College in 2016? - excerpt:

nah, nah, poo, poo, process isn't changing. Takes 38 states to ratify an amendment that hasn't even been proposed.

Do you still think Uncle Sam can change the Electoral College or are you going to keep posting overly long opinions of irrelevant. People in Florida have their votes count the same as every other citizens in Florida the same as every citizens of Wyoming has their vote count of their fellow citizens of Wyoming. That is the process and it has the advantage of having an orderly process for resolving a tie, something your process does not.

Did any of your neighbors have their say on selecting the Prime Minister of France? Keep ducking that one.
 
America is a constitutional republic.

It is also a democracy.

Evidently, you are unaware of the definition from here: a system of government in which citizens exercise power directly or elect representatives from among themselves to form a governing body, such as a congress or parliament.
 
Do you still think Uncle Sam can change the Electoral College or are you going to keep posting overly long opinions of irrelevant. People in Florida have their votes count the same as every other citizens in Florida the same as every citizens of Wyoming has their vote count of their fellow citizens of Wyoming.

Yet another Replicant who never graduated from high-school or took a Civics Course.

The fact that the Electoral College, because it avoids the rule of one-person-cone-vote, is un-democratic. It is a patent "manipulation of the popular-vote" that weights voting according to an anachronistic method which, along with gerrymandering, makes America the least "democratic" nation on earth ...
 
nah, nah, poo, poo, process isn't changing. Takes 38 states to ratify an amendment that hasn't even been proposed.

Do you still think Uncle Sam can change the Electoral College or are you going to keep posting overly long opinions of irrelevant. People in Florida have their votes count the same as every other citizens in Florida the same as every citizens of Wyoming has their vote count of their fellow citizens of Wyoming. That is the process and it has the advantage of having an orderly process for resolving a tie, something your process does not.

Did any of your neighbors have their say on selecting the Prime Minister of France? Keep ducking that one.

And Lafayette asked me if I took civics in high school. Hopefully you set him straight.
 
Yet another Replicant who never graduated from high-school or took a Civics Course.

The fact that the Electoral College, because it avoids the rule of one-person-cone-vote, is un-democratic. It is a patent "manipulation of the popular-vote" that weights voting according to an anachronistic method which, along with gerrymandering, makes America the least "democratic" nation on earth ...

More Trumpian hyperbole on your part. I learned in Civics that due to the great compromise, the House of Representatives was determined by the votes of each Congressional District, the Senate was determined by the State Legislature of each State, and that the President and Vice President were determined by the Electoral College, the method of selecting voters being determined by each state. I learned that the powers of Congress were enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and as enacted in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Which parts didn't you learn in civics class? Which parts of what you quoted of me, and did not counter, are you wrong about?

Let's see if you can actually make a counter argument where you point out disagreement in what I wrote, instead of repeating the same non-applicable arithmetic. Otherwise, you are a waste of my time and apparently others.
 
And Lafayette asked me if I took civics in high school. Hopefully you set him straight.

I have no idea if you took civics in high school, I haven't read any of your posts.
 
I have no idea if you took civics in high school, I haven't read any of your posts.

Since you and I agree that Lafayette is wrong, it must be predicated upon a mutual understanding that we learned from somewhere.
 
America is a constitutional republic.

Maybe once upon a time, but today America is a fascist oligarchy that uses military aggression frequently, with the disparity in wealth growing wider by the week.
 
It is also a democracy.

Evidently, you are unaware of the definition from here: a system of government in which citizens exercise power directly or elect representatives from among themselves to form a governing body, such as a congress or parliament.
That is a republic, NOT a democracy.

The Electoral College system was designed specifically to safeguard against the pitfalls of rampant unchecked democracy.

It works.
 
That is a republic, NOT a democracy.

The Electoral College system was designed specifically to safeguard against the pitfalls of rampant unchecked democracy.

It works.

Children will play with words.

The US is both a democracy and a republic. But the EC is a pathetic inversion of American "democracy" because it is a perversion of the popular-vote.

The pure, numeric popular-vote is the ONLY truly democratic and representative electoral mechanism. Meaning what simply? S/he who gets the most votes wins the office!

That happens in most elections in the US - EXCEPT ONE!

The vote for the presidency - making the presidential vote a perversion of democracy* ...

*Which also happens to be a "republic".
Definition of "republic": a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.
 
Last edited:
More Trumpian hyperbole on your part. I learned in Civics that due to the great compromise, the House of Representatives was determined by the votes of each Congressional District, the Senate was determined by the State Legislature of each State, and that the President and Vice President were determined by the Electoral College, the method of selecting voters being determined by each state. I learned that the powers of Congress were enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and as enacted in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Which parts didn't you learn in civics class? Which parts of what you quoted of me, and did not counter, are you wrong about?

Let's see if you can actually make a counter argument where you point out disagreement in what I wrote, instead of repeating the same non-applicable arithmetic. Otherwise, you are a waste of my time and apparently others.

Great Compromise me arse.

The southern states refused to pass the Constitution if there was no preferential vote by an "Electoral College". The population of the southern states was much less than the northern-states, and they were afraid that a popular-vote would elect a PotUS who abolished slavery. (Five of the first seven presidents of the US were slave-owners. See here.)

Which did finally happen under Lincoln and started the Civil War.

Did that war change anything? Not that much - from here:
Among racial and ethnic groups, African Americans had the highest poverty rate, 27.4 percent, followed by Hispanics at 26.6 percent and whites at 9.9 percent. 45.8 percent of young black children (under age 6) live in poverty, compared to 14.5 percent of white children.

Were MLK to return from the dead today, he'd cry himself a river ...
 
Last edited:
Great Compromise me arse.

The southern states refused to pass the Constitution if there was no preferential vote by an "Electoral College". The population of the southern states was much less than the northern-states, and they were afraid that a popular-vote would elect a PotUS who abolished slavery. (Five of the first seven presidents of the US were slave-owners. See here.)

Which did finally happen under Lincoln and started the Civil War.

Did that war change anything? Not that much - from here:

Were MLK to return from the dead today, he'd cry himself a river ...

Presidents could not abolish slavery, just as Uncle Sam can't change the Electoral College. The Great Compromise wasn't about the Electoral College, it was about representation in the House and Senate. That is why Congress is described in Article #1. You should go back to your high school and slap your civics teacher.
 
False! See here from "FactCheck.org": Trump's Fanciful Iran Negotiation - excerpt:

Trump lied his way into the presidency, and an Electoral College defied the Popular-Vote and allowed a defeated candidate to win. Hillary was defeated in the Electoral College* and yet won the popular vote by one of the highest margins in history of presidential elections!

Seven months into his tenure and the country is sick, sick, sick of Donald Dork's antics. Moreover, this guy is going to lose the Right both houses of Congress next year. Mark my words ...

*The Electoral College is and always has been a sham democratic election process. It is disproportional and highly manipulable. Uncle Sam would do better to rid himself of this dangerous handicap to a pluralistic democracy ...

The problem that the Democrats face in 2018 is they have more people up for reelection than the Republicans. For example, 25 out of the 34 Senate seats up for reelection are Democrat held seats. Since the Democrats are only acting like self righteous bullies and obstructionists, and are not participating in writing laws, like a health care replacement, if we loose those 25 Democrats, we do not loose anything of functional value. This election will get rid of the dead wood. Not repealing ObamaCare means the Democrats still own that disaster, which will be on its last legs at electron time.

Trump once again out smarted the Democrats. He will be seen as doing his job and Trump will be able to help take out the dead beat Democrats. The Democrats should have allowed health care reform and let the Republicans own the short term growing pains, which the Democrats could have exploited for political reasons in 2018. Instead the Democrats bet on scamming the American people with propaganda. People see this and will vote accordingly.
 
Back
Top Bottom