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California Democrats & Independents must lead the fight vs the GOP.

American said:
We're not a democracy.
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And you're not "American". (You need at least two courses in Civics and a clear head - this latter being the hard part for you.)

See, I can trade sarcasm on a Debate Forum too ... !
 
Lafayette said:
More one-liner sarcasm from the Rabid Right.

In a "debate forum" tantamount to Borrrrrrrinnnnnngggggg ... !
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You don't have a dog in the fight.
 
Jack Hays said:
The popular vote has nothing to do with electing the President.
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Donald Dork certainly proved that!

And he's the fifth in the history of the nation to do so ...
 
Jack Hays said:
No. You do. The EC was created specifically to take the election of the President away from the popular vote.
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Yes, there was no concept of voting fairness at the beginning of the nation. In 1812, both the 12 Amendment (instituting the EC) and Gerrymandering was first employed in Massachusetts and quickly spread the other states.

And idiots without any instruction in Civics call that a fair and honest vote.

When it comes to both Voting Fairness and Income Disparity the US in one of the worst members of a Club of Developed Economies.

From here, for your edification regarding Fair Elections: THE PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS - excerpted:

DO WE NEED PRINCIPLES?

Currently there is no unified set of principles that provide a foundation for our democratic elections process in 50 states and over 9000 voting jurisdictions. Common sense principles can effectively guide the urgently needed reform of our voting systems.

Through these principles:

Public oversight will prevent partisan, special interest, and for-profit corruption.
Transparency will not be sacrificed for efficiency.
Technology will support, not undermine, security.
Laws to protect voters and ballots will be effective and enforced.
Domestic and international observers will be able to effectively witness and protect the elections process.

American elections currently do not meet the requirements of the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation, or the standards set forth by the National Commission on Federal Election Reform:

*Maintain an accurate list of citizens who are qualified to vote.
*Encourage every eligible voter to participate effectively.
*Use equipment that reliably clarifies and registers the voter’s choices.
*Handle close elections in a foreseeable and fair way.
*Operate with equal effectiveness for every citizen and every community.
*Reflect limited but responsible federal participation.

VOTING & COUNTING
The following principles and practices should guide reform for the casting and counting of votes:

PUBLIC CONTROL
According to leading election integrity experts, there are four essential ingredients of democratic elections that must be visible to the public:

Who can vote (the voters list)

Who voted (the polling place sign-in book)

Whether the ballots counted are same ones as were cast (chain of custody)

How the count was made, and how it was validated (public count)

TRANSPARENCY
All voting processes, aside from the secret casting of the ballot, should be accessible to political parties, candidates, and the public, either as witnesses or participants, without unreasonable or arbitrary barriers.

Election materials and voted ballots must be public records, accessible by public records request, at no cost.

National and international observers must be granted appropriate access without unreasonable or arbitrary barriers.

No paperless non-verifiable voting systems or privately controlled "proprietary" software should be permitted.
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The definition of Fair Voting above is actually a lot longer. It's worthwhile reading it. Because most of the voting mistakes in the US would be avoided were that the case. And it isn't ...
 
Jack Hays said:
No. You do. The EC was created specifically to take the election of the President away from the popular vote.
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You deserve a prize for consummate ignorance in the matter of voting fairness.

What planet do you live on ... ?
 
Lafayette said:
Yes, there was no concept of voting fairness at the beginning of the nation. In 1812, both the 12 Amendment (instituting the EC) and Gerrymandering was first employed in Massachusetts and quickly spread the other states.

And idiots without any instruction in Civics call that a fair and honest vote.

When it comes to both Voting Fairness and Income Disparity the US in one of the worst members of a Club of Developed Economies.

From here, for your edification regarding Fair Elections: THE PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS - excerpted:



The definition of Fair Voting above is actually a lot longer. It's worthwhile reading it. Because most of the voting mistakes in the US would be avoided were that the case. And it isn't ...
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The EC was established in the Constitution in 1787, not in 1812. And "the principles of democratic elections" are irrelevant to a discussion of the EC.
 
Lafayette said:
You deserve a prize for consummate ignorance in the matter of voting fairness.

What planet do you live on ... ?
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I do not insult other posters. The EC was created specifically to avoid direct democratic election of the President.
 
Jaygodmedia said:
If your talking modren cities with huge population then yes surely you don't think all 50 states are created equal?
And why are there two Dakota's?
Surely you can't say all cities are created equal? I mean come on be a realest. Los Angeles is way more important to the American system then some city in the state of Dakota and why are there two Dakota's?
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You bring up a great question which our history lessons never seem to cover, why were some areas created as separate states, who drove those statehood drives, who benefited from them and why are the lines where they are today? It is pretty clear to me, not knowing a thing about why the two Dakotas exist that if you dig deep enough, someone benefited greatly from making a giant wasteland two states instead of one. This is a great example of how history shapes modern thinking. History could actually be history but it is warped in favor of power.
 
Jack Hays said:
I do not insult other posters. The EC was created specifically to avoid direct democratic election of the President.
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that is true because at the time most of the population was uneducated and the founders considered themselves and others like them to be more capable of governing then the general population. In 1791 that was true, the vast majority of Americans at the time were likely unfamiliar with the arcane nuances of running a nation. But do we still have to suffer those times now? Is a person in South Dakota more important then one in Silicon Valley?
 
Vadinho said:
that is true because at the time most of the population was uneducated and the founders considered themselves and others like them to be more capable of governing then the general population. In 1791 that was true, the vast majority of Americans at the time were likely unfamiliar with the arcane nuances of running a nation. But do we still have to suffer those times now? Is a person in South Dakota more important then one in Silicon Valley?
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The EC ensures the South Dakotan has some importance. Otherwise he'd have none.
 
It would be extra stupid for the National Democratic Party to allow rich white California Hollywood limousine liberals to set the tone of the Democratic Party for the general election. Accordingly, that probably is exactly what the Democratic Party will do. :)
 
Jack Hays said:
The EC was created specifically to avoid direct democratic election of the President.
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Read a history book, will you!

From here: The Troubling Reason the Electoral College Exists

As Americans await the quadrennial running of the presidential obstacle course now known as the Electoral College, it’s worth remembering why we have this odd political contraption in the first place. After all, state governors in all 50 states are elected by popular vote; why not do the same for the governor of all states, a.k.a. the president? The quirks of the Electoral College system were exposed this week when Donald Trump secured the presidency with an Electoral College majority, even as Hillary Clinton took a narrow lead in the popular vote.

Some claim that the founding fathers chose the Electoral College over direct election in order to balance the interests of high-population and low-population states. But the deepest political divisions in America have always run not between big and small states, but between the north and the south, and between the coasts and the interior.

One Founding-era argument for the Electoral College stemmed from the fact that ordinary Americans across a vast continent would lack sufficient information to choose directly and intelligently among leading presidential candidates.

This objection rang true in the 1780s, when life was far more local. But the early emergence of national presidential parties rendered the objection obsolete by linking presidential candidates to slates of local candidates and national platforms, which explained to voters who stood for what.

Standard civics-class accounts of the Electoral College rarely mention the real demon dooming direct national election in 1787 and 1803: slavery.

At the Philadelphia convention, the visionary Pennsylvanian James Wilson proposed direct national election of the president. But the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a system would prove unacceptable to the South: “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.” In other words, in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.
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Meaning the slaves could be counted in order to calculate the Electoral College vote but they themselves could not vote!

And you call that a fair and equitable reason for having the EC?

Bollocks! As I've said a hundred times - only America has such a destructive device manipulating the popular-vote, which in any Real Democracy is the only means for electing any representative of the people to office.

It is high-time we correct a fundamental mistake in our democracy made more than two centuries ago ... !
 
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Winning by the Electoral College requires more skill and time than winning by the popular vote. To win by the electoral college you need to campaign in more states, and seek favor in small states as well as large states. The popular vote only requires targeting a smaller percentage of states; focus on the larger.

The Popular vote only requires figuring out the most effective lies and mud slinging to reach the majority of people. The electoral college has the more difficult task of doing this, even in sparse regions, where neurosis and the needs of gossip is more diversified. This takes more skill. More skill adds up to smarter leaders, compare to leadership based on a less skill approach.

The Democrat recipe for the popular vote is to promise everyone freebies. They will avoid any hard decisions, that are best for the country, that may be unpopular with any large block of voters. They will tell everyone what they want to hear, even if these things conflict. They want the New Green Deal, as well as a strong economy with plenty of jobs, even though the cost of the New Green Deal and how it will impact the economy, is suicide for the economy. Both cannot work at the same time. The best recipe is still to lie to everyone. This approach, although affective, guarantees shady leadership. If this is all lies, then the lobbyist will decide in the end.

Let us add up all the promises for freebies. The strong economy is for the working class blue collar vote. Free college loans is for the student age vote, free abortion is for the female vote, free medical and welfare is for the poor vote. Ley use make Social Security stronger is for the elderly vote. The Green deal is for the environmental and the anti-oil vote. A chicken in every pot is for the farmer vote. We would need to kill the goose that laid the golden egg to afford this. This will never happen, yet it will be used to con the popular vote.

I would accept the popular vote standard, in spite of ease of using the freebie angle scam, if the voter was allowed to change their vote, after the person is elected. The main reason to allow voters to change their vote, would be if feel that the politician lied to them or is not working to produce what they promised. If votes can be withdrawn, while in office, the opposition candidate can get in, if they now have the majority of the popular vote.

The left has a tendency to lie to get votes, with no mechanism to punish lying. Hillary and the DNC were for strong borders and immigration reform in 2016. Their members lied, once in office. In this check and balances, voters could go to a secure web site and recall their vote. This would be fine. Popular vote would means more than the best con job wins

In the current election cycle, the freebie and promises, made by the Democrats, add up to more than the national debt and budget combined. This is guaranteed to be scam, since it has no chance in reality. You need a vote recall mechanism, so politicians are kept honest even when on the election trail. This will also assure fewer dishonest leaders.

Trump made a lot of promises and he is working hard to make good on these. The Democrats are working to sabotage since they hate Trump. This includes doing the opposite of what they promised, since this feel some stings will help Trump make his promises. There would need to be a sabotage clause, in terms of a second layer of vote recall. The saboteurs will be also be vulnerable to a delayed vote recall, if they cannot provide solid evident for their need to sabotage. Dislike is not a valid argument.

Currently you need to wait 2-6 years to get rid of a sitting federal politician. This is too much time for con artists to do harm. The vote recall mechanism; buyers remorse, limits the damage from habitual liars and con men.

The Popularity of Trump has remained high and is now about 47-51%. His would not be subject to much in the way of a vote recall. This system can work for a good president or politician. Congress has an all time low popularity of about 21%. If you assume each member of the House had to win the popular vote close to 50%, there would be a massive vote recall, to clean up the mess.

Would proponents of the popular vote also accept a vote recall mechanism if they are found to have lied in terms of the promise they voted for?
 
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Lafayette said:
Read a history book, will you!

From here: The Troubling Reason the Electoral College Exists



Meaning the slaves could be counted in order to calculate the Electoral College vote but they themselves could not vote!

And you call that a fair and equitable reason for having the EC?

Bollocks! As I've said a hundred times - only America has such a destructive device manipulating the popular-vote, which in any Real Democracy is the only means for electing any representative of the people to office.

It is high-time we correct a fundamental mistake in our democracy made more than two centuries ago ... !
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Yours is the argument of an enthusiastic but not widely read college sophomore.

In defense of the electoral college - The Washington Post


https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/.../in-defense-of-the-electoral-college...



Nov 15, 2016 - All of which is strange because the electoral college is at the core of our ... at almost the last minute, James Madison “took out a Pen and Paper, ...

". . . The Founders who sat in the 1787 Constitutional Convention lavished an extraordinary amount of argument on the electoral college, and it was by no means one-sided. The great Pennsylvania jurist James Wilson believed that “if we are to establish a national Government,” the president should be chosen by a direct, national vote of the people. But wise old Roger Sherman of Connecticut replied that the president ought to be elected by Congress, since he feared that direct election of presidents by the people would lead to the creation of a monarchy. “An independence of the Executive [from] the supreme Legislature, was in his opinion the very essence of tyranny if there was any such thing.” Sherman was not trying to undermine the popular will, but to keep it from being distorted by a president who mistook popular election as a mandate for dictatorship.

Quarrels like this flared all through the convention, until, at almost the last minute, James Madison “took out a Pen and Paper, and sketched out a mode of Electing the President” by a “college” of “Electors … chosen by those of the people in each State, who shall have the Qualifications requisite.”
The Founders also designed the operation of the electoral college with unusual care. The portion of Article 2, Section 1, describing the electoral college is longer and descends to more detail than any other single issue the Constitution addresses. More than the federal judiciary — more than the war powers — more than taxation and representation. . . .
Above all, the electoral college had nothing to do with slavery. Some historians have branded the electoral college this way because each state’s electoral votes are based on that “whole Number of Senators and Representatives” from each State, and in 1787 the number of those representatives was calculated on the basis of the infamous 3/5ths clause. But the electoral college merely reflected the numbers, not any bias about slavery (and in any case, the 3/5ths clause was not quite as proslavery a compromise as it seems, since Southern slaveholders wanted their slaves counted as 5/5ths for determining representation in Congress, and had to settle for a whittled-down fraction). As much as the abolitionists before the Civil War liked to talk about the “proslavery Constitution,” this was more of a rhetorical posture than a serious historical argument. And the simple fact remains, from the record of the Constitutional Convention’s proceedings (James Madison’s famous Notes), that the discussions of the electoral college and the method of electing a president never occur in the context of any of the convention’s two climactic debates over slavery. . . . "
 
Jack Hays said:
Yours is the argument of an enthusiastic but not widely read college sophomore.

[/FONT][/COLOR]". . . The Founders who sat in the 1787 Constitutional Convention lavished an extraordinary amount of argument on the electoral college, and it was by no means one-sided. The great Pennsylvania jurist James Wilson believed that “if we are to establish a national Government,” the president should be chosen by a direct, national vote of the people. But wise old Roger Sherman of Connecticut replied that the president ought to be elected by Congress, since he feared that direct election of presidents by the people would lead to the creation of a monarchy. “An independence of the Executive [from] the supreme Legislature, was in his opinion the very essence of tyranny if there was any such thing.” Sherman was not trying to undermine the popular will, but to keep it from being distorted by a president who mistook popular election as a mandate for dictatorship.
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Interesting counterpoint to my post. Well done!

I shall presume there were at least two reasons for promoting the EC - but I also recognize that slavery was a fundamental economic-value to the southern states. So much that they went to war to protect it. I suspect, therefore, that this was the more fundamental reason for wanting to manipulate the popular vote.

Regardless of the history of the "Big Mistake" it remains a mistake. As I never tire of saying, a democratic popular-vote is based upon the final number of the vote not biased by any manipulation whatsoever. (Which is not what we have in the US.)

The world has come a long way since the Electoral College was invented, but - funny enough - those countries who found democracy long after the US (mostly European with royalty) when choosing a form of democracy in the 20th century avoided the use of an Electoral College in favor of the direct popular-vote.

They obviously saw how the EC manipulated the presidential vote in the US - and nowhere in the European Union is gerrymandering employed for any election.

Other countries besides the US with electoral college systems include Burundi, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Myanmar, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago and Vanuatu. Not the best of company ...
 
Lafayette said:
Interesting counterpoint to my post. Well done!

I shall presume there were at least two reasons for promoting the EC - but I also recognize that slavery was a fundamental economic-value to the southern states. So much that they went to war to protect it. I suspect, therefore, that this was the more fundamental reason for wanting to manipulate the popular vote.

Regardless of the history of the "Big Mistake" it remains a mistake. As I never tire of saying, a democratic popular-vote is based upon the final number of the vote not biased by any manipulation whatsoever. (Which is not what we have in the US.)

The world has come a long way since the Electoral College was invented, but - funny enough - those countries who found democracy long after the US (mostly European with royalty) when choosing a form of democracy in the 20th century avoided the use of an Electoral College in favor of the direct popular-vote.

They obviously saw how the EC manipulated the presidential vote in the US - and nowhere in the European Union is gerrymandering employed for any election.

Other countries besides the US with electoral college systems include Burundi, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Myanmar, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago and Vanuatu. Not the best of company ...
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I believe the EC remains an important bulwark of our republic. I'm proud we have it.
 
Jack Hays said:
I believe the EC remains an important bulwark of our republic. I'm proud we have it.
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I'm not the least bit proud, and I have posted the factual-evidence why.

Try harder ...
 
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