Electoral college is fucked

I really do sympathize, ML. The electoral college was one of several compromises that helped get the constitution approved. If you want to reform it, by amending the constitution, you'll need to offer something to convince rural and suburban voters that they won't be dominated and oppressed by the urban centers on the coasts. What would you propose to protect them?

There's already a thing for this.

Ten states (+ D.C.) have already passed a version of the bill that would throw electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. More states are needed for the laws to go into effect:

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation

OhHa. Grow up. It's done now let's look at the good things he brings to the table and pray for the best. I like the guy?  Yeah ok, but the fact it he won let's take what's good and cock block the rest... The best we can. I hope he kicks around those trade deals. I hope he gets an immigration deal in place. I hope he tightens the process to get visas. I hope he brings companies back to the states. And a big dog in the front yard stops a lot of thief's.
So may be rather than taking your Viagra to soon sit back and hope.  The difference between you and I is I see both sides... Neither are a basket of roses.

Here's something to think about.

Maybe times like these right now display another aspect of the EC that is good.

Our country has been and is extremely polarized, very divided right now. It's not hard to see that without an EC there would be successive elections favoring small geographical highly populous areas. This would cause even more division. Repeated elections like this would make succession and separate countries are very real possibility.
As it is, EC balances out the extreme polarization times until less divisive times return. I.E. the 90% of the time when Presidential elections have populous and EC votes coincide.

It is possible the EC is currently keeping us from getting too divided.

Brownski wrote

I really do sympathize, ML. The electoral college was one of several compromises that helped get the constitution approved. If you want to reform it, by amending the constitution, you'll need to offer something to convince rural and suburban voters that they won't be dominated and oppressed by the urban centers on the coasts. What would you propose to protect them?

Not sure. Maybe all primaries happen for each party on the same day. All primaries are open but you can only vote for only one party/ballot. They're also run-off. If I like Sanders and he gets my top vote, two and three are Biden and Michael Moore. If Sanders doesn't get 65%, maybe you have a second primary date with only the top choices. Or you take the aggregate and get the preferred candidate automatically.

During the general a voter could have the top pick from each of four parties, popular vote. If no one achieves 66% you do a runoff.  Hopefully this gives you more normal candidates?  Or I'd look at more parliamentary systems. I'm just thinking there has to be a better way, how do other countries handle similar stuff?

If I didn't mention it, I can see people from the interior being pissed if they were handed a candidate only from cities. Yea. But there are also so many more people in cities. Might as well be a 3/5 rule. We're all fucked now though (ex: if FL went to Hillary it's the same map basically), but maybe next time it will be somebody else's turn to be pissed. Seems like you guys are all ok with the electoral college, and I have nothing else to say about it or this election. I'm sure I'll have something to say about Trump or Obama or Syria or some other shit, but hopefully we get a breather and nothing worth talking about happens for awhile, at least in the off-topic.

We can only hope!

tjf1967 wrote

OhHa. Grow up. It's done now let's look at the good things he brings to the table and pray for the best. I like the guy?  Yeah ok, but the fact it he won let's take what's good and cock block the rest... The best we can. I hope he kicks around those trade deals. I hope he gets an immigration deal in place. I hope he tightens the process to get visas. I hope he brings companies back to the states. And a big dog in the front yard stops a lot of thief's.
So may be rather than taking your Viagra to soon sit back and hope.  The difference between you and I is I see both sides... Neither are a basket of roses.

I do think you see both sides better than me, but I can see the good in the things you mentioned. I only wish Obama got the same benefit of the doubt. When I said you would be ok with it, it wasn't because you voted for him but because you fit into his group of constituents more neatly than others, that's all.

Like I said, I'm done. I wish him luck and hope he doesn't break anything (I was kind of fond of the country as it was).

ml242 wrote

 We're all fucked now though

No no. That is not true at all. It's worked for 250 yrs. We're not f'd.  

Besides, Coachy's buying the beer !

Snowballs wrote

Gaper Rog wrote

Seems like a lot of people oppose it when it hurts their candidate but are for it when it helps their candidate.

Agreed. It's human nature.

I can def see that without something like EC, more populous but smaller regions would capitalize on the less populous but larger ones. That's also human nature. We could have 6 or 7 states that reign over the whole country. IMO, not good.

Given the stark divide in ideology today, a balancing mechanism is a good thing. Once tipped towards populous regions, it would be extremely hard to rebalance.

You could have 10 cities decide an election.  Our entire system of govt is built on checks and balances.  I doubt that states could elect to award thier votes based on national popular voting.  That would forfeit their soveignity and would be rejected by both the states highest court and the Supreme Court.