Get out and vote

Meh, I'm just happy my state didn't bring back the dude who bankrupted it the last time....

iceracer wrote: Trump wins the electoral college. Clinton wins the popular vote. Sigh

There is a reason.

Electoral College.

Toyman01 wrote:

iceracer wrote: Trump wins the electoral college. Clinton wins the popular vote. Sigh

There is a reason. Electoral College.

And it has failed the will of the people twice in 16 years.

It perhaps has failed the will of people who live in isolated pockets of dense population (cities), but followed the will of a huge majority of the country in terms of area. It is what it is. Focusing on the irrelevant popular vote is a bit silly since that's not how the whole thing works.

T.J. wrote: It perhaps has failed the will of people who live in isolated pockets of dense population (cities), but followed the will of a huge majority of the country in terms of area. It is what it is. Focusing on the irrelevant popular vote is a bit silly since that's not how the whole thing works.

Still it's a bit messed up that votes per sq. ft. of land seems to override votes per person...maybe a remnant of the 1700s law that voters had to own land?

"My vote is more important because i have 2 miles to the nearest neighbor and yours is 10 feet above your head"

Eh?

I'm not focusing on anything, i just was curious about the overall vote last night and looked it up. I think any voting system that elects the person without the most votes has failed those who it's meant to represent. Then again when i learned about the electoral college in grade school I remember thinking "wtf is up with this?" If the other candidate had won the popular vote and not the electoral college i'd still feel the same. I didn't really have a horse in the race that represented my beliefs. I am not, however, one of the 15,000 asshat millennials that wrote in a dead gorilla.

M2Pilot wrote: This year NC has provided a good example of how every vote can count. In the Governors race, there's only a 5000 vote difference. Winner won't be declared until provisional ballots are counted in a few days.

And it goes to show everybody doesn't vote straight ticket. The Senatorial and Presidential races went R. The governors race looks like it is going D. McCrory can thank HB2 for that.

As a firm proponent of state's rights, I have come to appreciate the value of the Electoral College. It ensures that each state has a proportionate voice in the selection of the President. It also helps to minimize the impact of foreign influence and moral decay so prevalent in the major cities on our East and West coasts. A quick look at "red" and "blue" states will illustrate just how pronounced the divide is in terms of geography.

http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-the-united-states-get-rid-of-the-electoral-college/the-electoral-college-serves-the-interests-of-all-people

patgizz wrote:

Toyman01 wrote:

iceracer wrote: Trump wins the electoral college. Clinton wins the popular vote. Sigh

There is a reason. Electoral College.

And it has failed the will of the people twice in 16 years.

not a flounder

I was under the impression that the electoral college was a safety valve built into the system to prevent the "unwashed masses" from electing someone utterly unfit for the job. Because the founding fathers didn't entirely trust the proletariat to make the "wise choice".

Hypothetically they can still pick Johnson at this point, it'd be an utter E36 M3show of legal challenges and probably lead to the ultimate demise of the damned EC but that is why it exists.

*not a flounder*

1988RedT2 wrote: As a firm proponent of state's rights, I have come to appreciate the value of the Electoral College. It ensures that each state has a proportionate voice in the selection of the President. It also helps to minimize the impact of foreign influence and moral decay so prevalent in the major cities on our East and West coasts. A quick look at "red" and "blue" states will illustrate just how pronounced the divide is in terms of geography. http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-the-united-states-get-rid-of-the-electoral-college/the-electoral-college-serves-the-interests-of-all-people

Sounds like you're not exactly a proponent of states' rights. You're a proponent of certain sparsely populated states' rights because you happen to disagree with the ideology of some of the more densely populated states. Technically, you're a selective states' rights supremacist.

1988RedT2 wrote: It also helps to minimize the impact of foreign influence and moral decay so prevalent in the major cities on our East and West coasts.

My eyes are at 15krpm...

GameboyRMH wrote: Sounds like you're not exactly a proponent of states' rights. You're a proponent of certain sparsely populated states' rights because you happen to disagree with the ideology of some of the more densely populated states.

In this case, State's Rights are defined as powers that each State has separate from the Federal Government, not state's rights compared to other states. Heavily populated states have several inherent advantages over less populated states from funding to representation in the House of Representatives. The founding fathers wanted to ensure balance in the legislative branch and the executive branch so that industrial cities (just colonies at the time) didn't have significantly more pull vs the more rural communities. They solved this in the legislative branch by giving each state an equal number of Senators and a number of Representatives based on population. Bills must pass through the House first, which is akin to taking the popular vote, and then pass through the Senate where each state has an equal voice.

In the Executive branch, the Electoral College does essentially the same thing. Without it, the party that wins the urban areas essentially wins the election every year, and that can have tons of racial and socioeconomic influences (both when it was written, and now) that would flounder this topic in a minute so that's all I will say.

KyAllroad wrote: ***not a flounder*** I was under the impression that the electoral college was a safety valve built into the system to prevent the "unwashed masses" from electing someone utterly unfit for the job. Because the founding fathers didn't entirely trust the proletariat to make the "wise choice". Hypothetically they can still pick Johnson at this point, it'd be an utter E36 M3show of legal challenges and probably lead to the ultimate demise of the damned EC but that is why it exists. ****not a flounder****

I thought the same thing...although I'd call it an "emergency override switch" rather than a "safety valve." Now I wonder just how bad an "emergency" it's intended for...

STM317 wrote: In the Executive branch, the Electoral College does essentially the same thing. Without it, the party that wins the urban areas essentially wins the election every year, and that can have tons of racial and socioeconomic influences (both when it was written, and now) that would flounder this topic in a minute so that's all I will say.

There is some inherently political power-rebalancing intent in altering the power of a person's vote based on the amount of empty space around them...to me scaling a person's voting power based on the distance to their neighbors seems more unjust than anything that could result from making all votes equally powerful, but like I said it's inherently political.

GameboyRMH wrote:

T.J. wrote: It perhaps has failed the will of people who live in isolated pockets of dense population (cities), but followed the will of a huge majority of the country in terms of area. It is what it is. Focusing on the irrelevant popular vote is a bit silly since that's not how the whole thing works.

Still it's a bit messed up that votes per sq. ft. of land seems to override votes per person.

Except that it doesn't. Each individual North Dakota voter may have a larger say per electoral vote, but when North Dakota has 3 electoral votes and Washington state (almost exactly the same size) has 12 electoral votes, guess which state matters more.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

That's logical. I think that way too sometimes. Really though, the EC only comes into play when the popular vote is pretty close. If one candidate clearly wins the popular vote by a significant margin, the EC likely has no effect on the outcome. If you're a candidate that loses due to the EC, you didn't do enough to appeal to the masses in the popular vote.

About 2/3 of the country is fairly entrenched in their respective political views while other areas can fluctuate. That's why we have traditional "red" states, "blue" states, and "swing" states. Since the "red" states are often less populated, without the EC the only hope a "red" candidate has to win is to steal lots of the popular vote in the "blue" states AND "swing" states. It becomes an uphill battle and one party runs the show the vast majority of the time unless a transcendent candidate comes along. For cases when the popular vote is close to split, the EC often becomes the deciding factor. Yes it favors less populated states to a degree, but that's probably the better alternative to having one party rule almost all of the time. Sort of a like "tie goes to the runner", somebody has to have an advantage and the more populous states have several of those already.

Duke wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote: Still it's a bit messed up that votes per sq. ft. of land seems to override votes per person.

Except that it doesn't. Each individual North Dakota voter may have a larger say per electoral vote, but when North Dakota has 3 electoral votes and Washington state (almost exactly the same size) has 12 electoral votes, guess which state matters more.

The larger say per electoral vote is the problem I'm talking about - ND residents' votes are worth more (a bit over 2x a Washington state resident's vote by my calculations) because they have more sq. ft. per person in their state.

GameboyRMH wrote: The larger say per electoral vote is the problem I'm talking about - ND residents' votes are worth more (a bit over 2x a Washington state resident's vote by my calculations) because they have more sq. ft. per person in their state.

...which means precisely bupkiss, because the people of Washington shout 400% as loudly as South Dakotans do in the Electoral College.

Duke wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote: The larger say per electoral vote is the problem I'm talking about - ND residents' votes are worth more (a bit over 2x a Washington state resident's vote by my calculations) because they have more sq. ft. per person in their state.

...which means precisely bupkiss, because the people of Washington shout 400% as loudly as South Dakotans do in the Electoral College.

But there are 7m people in Washington State vs. 740k people. It would mean precisely bupkiss if they were shouting about 1050% as loudly, but at 400% each resident has less say.

(Edit: Yes I'm making the assumption that each state has the same eligible voter:population ratio)

In reply to nderwater:

"We are marching against violence and hatred! In order to make our point, we will violently vandalize things that don't belong to us and write/say hateful things about others!"

I should add that my intent is not to flounder, I just don't understand this methodology and find some funny hypocrisy in those photos.

GameboyRMH wrote:

STM317 wrote: In the Executive branch, the Electoral College does essentially the same thing. Without it, the party that wins the urban areas essentially wins the election every year, and that can have tons of racial and socioeconomic influences (both when it was written, and now) that would flounder this topic in a minute so that's all I will say.

There is some inherently political power-rebalancing intent in altering the power of a person's vote based on the amount of empty space around them...to me scaling a person's voting power based on the distance to their neighbors seems more unjust than anything that could result from making all votes equally powerful, but like I said it's inherently political.

If popular vote were used, only the voice of NYC, LA, DC and a few other cities would decide policy. The myopic needs of urbanites do not serve the rancher or farmer very well at all and vice versa. It does not always work as intended but the intent is to give a voice to the massive "rest of the country" that otherwise would have none.

This was a very close race - and it took a metric E36 M3 ton of those "other" votes to make the difference. That is why all the polls were wrong - they counted on the typical turnout of those demographic areas and what turned out wasn't typical.

I won't flounder this all up with what I think of who they chose as a champion of their cause - but the system worked. Their voices were heard.

Huckleberry wrote: If popular vote were used, only the voice of NYC, LA, DC and a few other cities would decide policy. The myopic needs of urbanites do not serve the rancher or farmer very well at all. It does not always work as intended but the intent is to give a voice to the massive "rest of the country" that otherwise would have none.

Understood, and here is where the inherently political power-rebalancing comes in: Someone has to choose how much more rural votes should be worth than urban votes or vice-versa when assigning a number of electoral votes to a state. Some group is going to get hosed to some degree by this system - the myopic needs of the farmer or rancher also don't serve the urbanite very well at all. If the system is particularly unbalanced some group will get hosed particularly badly. I for one am not sure the potential for hosing is worth it - many other countries with a mix of rural and urban populations seem to do OK without such a system.

Thanks for the discussion guys. But I am torn on where I stand about the Electoral College.

I do think its a problem when states decide to award ALL their electoral votes to whoever leads the popular vote. We cant split up the electoral votes proportionally? Or does that further cause an issue when you take into account densely populated areas vs rural?

I think Electoral College does a huge disservice to people in large states that skew heavily in one direction or the other, e.g. CA and TX. If your state is certain to go to one party, there is less incentive for anyone in that state to vote.

GameboyRMH wrote:

Huckleberry wrote: If popular vote were used, only the voice of NYC, LA, DC and a few other cities would decide policy. The myopic needs of urbanites do not serve the rancher or farmer very well at all. It does not always work as intended but the intent is to give a voice to the massive "rest of the country" that otherwise would have none.

Understood, and here is where the inherently political power-rebalancing comes in: Someone has to choose how much more rural votes should be worth than urban votes or vice-versa when assigning a number of electoral votes to a state. Some group is going to get hosed to some degree by this system - the myopic needs of the farmer or rancher also don't serve the urbanite very well at all. If the system is particularly unbalanced some group will get hosed particularly badly. I for one am not sure the potential for hosing is worth it - many other countries with a mix of rural and urban populations seem to do OK without such a system.

That is true - this is the classic local government / state's rights vs federalist issue in a nutshell. People in rural Wyoming are always going to have different lives than 27th floor apartment dwellers in Manhattan.

When voting on a federal level there has to be a weighted system of some sort. My point was that it took a fairly extraordinary effort for the will of the rest of the country to turn the tide like we just saw. Things usually go the way of the population density anyway. It was still pretty close so the system worked as intended. It is just that the system is inherently flawed by bias so whomever loses always rails against it and whomever wins gracefully accepts it's flaws. But, it hasn't been replaced because it's hard to come up with a perfectly fair system to assign that weight.