The Glade 4.0

What do you think?

The Electoral college is one of those ideas that sounds bad on paper but is kinda needed to balance the power between states as well as urban/rural areas. Presidential Wannabes would pretty much hang out in the top 10-15 most populace cities. I think they'd care less about rural issues as well.

No one would care about Iowa or Kansas after the primary.

New Media might negate the importance of this, but I'm not sure

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I'm fine with the electoral college, but only if all of the states are required to split their electoral votes, winner takes any partials.

I want an option for "Keep the electoral college and repeal the 17'th".

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Why in the blue hell would we want a popular vote. The president doesn't represent the people, he represents the states. At least, that was the intent. Tying electoral votes to popular votes was one of the biggest diffusals of the power of the vote we've had, besides making Senators elected by popular vote.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Anyone suggesting a change to the popular vote is suggesting that New York City and Los Angeles be given control over who holds the office of presidency. Obviously, blue people would be thrilled, and red people don't like it.

Personally, I would prefer the electoral college remain, with the added proviso that if a candidate is unable to carry over 50% of the total possible popular votes, there is no president for that term.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Do you mean total population of franchised adults per. the census, total registered voters, or total voters in a given election year?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

This.

The United States can't even ensure that the votes cast are by an eligible person (ie minnesota) or that the person voting is the actual person the vote is representing.

Add reasonable safeguards (reasonable in the vein that the Brady Campagin views gun laws) and I'll consider a popular vote. I do however think that electoral votes need to be split. Pennsylvania used to be simple- win Philly and Pittsburgh and you won the state. We need to eliminate the idea of "flyover country"

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

This is a red herring. The United States doesn't have a voter fraud problem. Sure there are instances of voter fraud, there always will be, regardless of what safeguards we have. However the percentages of that are very small.

That's a false argument, you say they are small because you can't check.

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Bingo.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Total eligible voters voters, per the census.

For instance, suppose the nation has 330,000,000 people living within it. Further suppose that 200,000,000 of those are adults over the age of 18 who are eligible to vote. Let us then suppose that a Democratic presidential candidate carries 52,000,000 votes, and a Republican presidential candidate carries 48,000,000 votes. This means that there are 148,000,000 eligible voters who do not support the Democratic presidential candidate. That candidate has the support of only 26% of the population. The country has overwhelmingly rejected that candidate. Therefore, that candidate should not be permitted to take office.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

This would be awesome.

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Holy shitsnacks!

http://votingrights.news21.com/article/election-fraud/



http://www.brennancenter.org/content/re ... ter_fraud/



http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/ ... om-voting/



No, actually I say they are small because I have checked.

This would be incredibly problematic were we to be invaded.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

That's funny, because much of the praise heaped upon the U.S. soldiers of WWII was their ability to make decisions and perform their functions without direction from superior officers. Then there's the fact that of the two land borders we have, one of them shows no signs of being violated in the near future, and any country with a significant navy is unable to arrive quickly.

So, you will understand if I do not consider your attempted rebuttal with any real concern.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Seeing as how the ability of American soldiers to react tactically in the absence of direct control does not translate to the ability of the military to function without guidance from a leader that fits military strategy into overall national strategy, we can dismiss that as utter crap. Furthermore, while the CONUS is far from vulnerable to invasion, Alaska and Hawaii could be quite tempting targets. There's also the fact that we can be attacked strategically without actually being invaded.

This idea of "just don't have a President" is absolutely silly. There is absolutely no good reason why voter apathy, nor any imaginary "no" vote should be permitted any say whatsoever.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

[youtube]7wC42HgLA4k[/youtube]

But we aren't a pure democracy as founded. We are supposed to be a Republic governed by the rule of law and limited Federal powers. That's why our founders put in things like the EC and the appointment of Senators. The Fed is supposed to be beholden to the states and the states to the people.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

What Rori said.

His "22%" trick actually illustrates why. Look at the states he needed to include in order to get that. They are widely disparate, in far more ways than just prevailing political beliefs.

Furthermore, his attempt to "disprove" that the most populated cities would get all the attention is dishonest. Yes, NYC has 8 million people, but the NYC metropolitan area has 18.9 million; more than twice what he claimed. With LA it's even more dramatic; depending on if you go with LA-Orange County, the LA metropolitan area, LA-Long Beach-Santa Ana, or the Greater Los Angeles Area, it rises to somewhere between 9 and 17.75 million people; in other words around 3.5 to a bit over 7 times as much as he claims, and when a candidate visits NYC or LA, it's not as if he's not also visiting the surrounding areas. Proximal communities are tied together. His hundredth-largest community of Spokane does this as well; there's just over 200,000 people in Spokane proper, but over 600,000 in its metropolitan area.

The definition changed in 1990, but either way, 75-79% of the population lives in urban areas; a hell of a lot more than what this schmuck was claiming. He's intentionally limiting it to the populations of the largest cities themselves while intentionally ignoring their surrounding areas to distort the situation.

The purpose of the electoral college is to duplicate the function of the House and Senate - ensure that no one gets run roughshod over while still allowing more populous areas a greater say. Since the President is just one person instead of 535 people, we use the Electoral College system. Getting rid of it would render rural areas and their issues essentially irrelevant to the President - or rather, even more than they already are.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The other thing his largest city analysis overlooks is that urban areas share urban issues. It's far easier to craft policy that appeals to urban-dwellers at the expense of non-urban-dwellers that would span those different cities than it is to craft policy that cherrypicks multiple States with disproportionate electoral votes.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The electoral college the way it's set up now is my personal pet peeve, It's broken.
the winner take all needs to go away. it should be votes are cast by the districts they represent, and state wide popular vote gets the other two.
This will add more significance to more rural areas, and have a huge impact on states like New york, and Kalifornia when the vote gets split in those states.

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History of the Condom
In 1272, the Muslim Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea, by taking the intestine out of the goat first.

I could go with that system, although generally I think each state should pick it's own system. If most states want WTA.. well, that's their perogative.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Couple questions for those citing rural representation as a reason for supporting the electoral college (in some form):

1. Why do you think disproportionate representation for rural areas is a good thing in general and/or for presidential elections in particular?

2. Do you think rural issues currently get less attention than they should relative to urban issues? If so, what are some examples?