Split Thread Electoral College and USA democratic status discussion

Fast Eddie B

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Fast Eddie B
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NoahFence said:
Ah! We do it all the time, so it's all good.

Nice to know where you stand, comrade.
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I thought both of Cain’s arguments were particularly insipid.

The latter, you pointed out.

But suggesting the fact that Trump won with fewer votes - yet again - somehow tarnishes our “democracy” carries zero weight. First, the US is not technically a democracy. Second, there are long-standing reasons we have an Electoral College. Agree with the concept or not, as long as we do the criteria for winning is quite clearly spelled out, and both campaigns were tuned to take advantage of the rules, such as they were.

Split from this thread: All things Trump + Russia Part 3
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Fast Eddie B said:
I thought both of Cain’s arguments were particularly insipid.

The latter, you pointed out.

But suggesting the fact that Trump won with fewer votes - yet again - somehow tarnishes our “democracy” carries zero weight. First, the US is not technically a democracy.

<snip>
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At least you agree that Trump was not democratically elected.
 
phiwum said:
He was elected by the rules of our process, like it or not.
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I don’t like it, but I acknowledge it followed the rules. I also recognize it is a strong argument against the electoral college for which The time has come to do something about it.
 
Upchurch said:
I don’t like it, but I acknowledge it followed the rules. I also recognize it is a strong argument against the electoral college for which The time has come to do something about it.
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I don't have an opinion on that, but I can see why others might.
 
NoahFence said:
Ah! We do it all the time, so it's all good.
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No, it doesn't mean "it's all good," or even "good." It means our complaints are rich. It's similar to my father driving like an ******* and then complaining when someone else does to him the same exact thing he does to everybody. One way to reduce influence-peddling in elections is to stop doing it ourselves.

Fast Eddie B said:
But suggesting the fact that Trump won with fewer votes - yet again - somehow tarnishes our “democracy” carries zero weight. First, the US is not technically a democracy.
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This doesn't even rise to the level of insipid. I characterized Democrats as caterwauling about our "sacred democracy." Technically, our country is considered a "flawed democracy," and one of the barriers for achieving full-fledged democratic status is our moronic Electoral College.

Second, there are long-standing reasons we have an Electoral College. Agree with the concept or not, as long as we do the criteria for winning is quite clearly spelled out, and both campaigns were tuned to take advantage of the rules, such as they were.
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By long-standing reasons you mean naked self-interest? There were "long-standing reasons" why slaves counted as three-fifths of a person -- reasons completely lacking (normative) merit. When it came to the presidency, quite a few of the 40 or so rich, white men in Philadelphia believed in a popular vote, but in the end felt it didn't matter because one man -- His Excellency -- would undoubtedly win regardless of structure. Some naively figured the EC could be changed with an amendment. Others naively believed 19 out of 20 elections would be decided not by the EC but the House Representatives.

We've had the EC for over two hundred years. Americans have been gullible nincompoops for (at least) decades. Still, Democrats want to say that Putin's command of the Twitter Bot brigade is like the Ice King's Army of the Undead. It's just stupid.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
But suggesting the fact that Trump won with fewer votes - yet again - somehow tarnishes our “democracy” carries zero weight. First, the US is not technically a democracy.
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Pet peeve: it's a democracy, just not a direct one. Republics are subsets of democracies.

Upchurch said:
I don’t like it, but I acknowledge it followed the rules. I also recognize it is a strong argument against the electoral college for which The time has come to do something about it.
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What's a strong argument against the EC? That Trump was elected?
 
Belz... said:
What's a strong argument against the EC? That Trump was elected?
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I think the argument is that there have been 2 recent elections where the winner of the election (Drumph and the Shrub) was not the person who received a plurality of the votes.

A more general argument is that the Electoral college gives a higher importance to votes cast in places like Wyoming/Nebraska than California/Texas. Thus, it violates the concept that "all voters are treated equally".
 
Belz... said:
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What's a strong argument against the EC? That Trump was elected?
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Yes, Trump is a symptom of a more skewed democracy toward extremist views some of which are downright wacky.

Not just that, but the minority has been in power now over the majority for the last 2 decades. They are stacking the SCOTUS and other openings on the federal bench. They have been using national GOP and corporate money to stack state legislatures from which they accelerated gerrymandering.

At some point democracy is no longer working. I get it folks in rural areas don't want folks in cities to outvote them. But people in cities don't want the opposite either. Right now a red state vote is worth a lot more than a blue state vote and it's not democratic.

A correction is needed, perhaps by at least dividing CA and other heavily populated states so the Senate becomes more balanced. Another option is to outlaw states using all or none EC votes so we don't have a POTUS elected that lost by 3 million votes.
 
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Segnosaur said:
I think the argument is that there have been 2 recent elections where the winner of the election (Drumph and the Shrub) was not the person who received a plurality of the votes.

A more general argument is that the Electoral college gives a higher importance to votes cast in places like Wyoming/Nebraska than California/Texas. (snip)
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Yeah but that was the idea in the first place, so that it works as intended isn't much of an argument against it. There are other, actual arguments against this system, but that wasn't one of them.
 
Belz... said:
Yeah but that was the idea in the first place, so that it works as intended isn't much of an argument against it. There are other, actual arguments against this system, but that wasn't one of them.
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Would that become an argument against it at any point?
Suppose that in every State that Clinton took, she had taken 99-100% of the vote, and in the States she lost she had taken 49.99%. That could leave her ahead in the popular vote by tens of millions-yet still losing. Would you call it a bug, and not a feature at that point?
 
Belz... said:
Yeah but that was the idea in the first place, so that it works as intended isn't much of an argument against it. There are other, actual arguments against this system, but that wasn't one of them.
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"It's not a bug, it's a feature" is a joke for a reason. It was originally written to be even more undemocratic than its current incarnation (and was the result of eighteenth century political compromise, not some grand "intention"). They had to fix it with the 12th amendment even before the reforms tying electors to the popular votes in each State. Even if there was an "original intent" at play, that doesn't make it being undemocratic not an "actual argument" against it. Is China's government being undemocratic not an argument against it because that is the idea behind it? No, that's silly.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
"It's not a bug, it's a feature" is a joke for a reason. It was originally written to be even more undemocratic than its current incarnation (and was the result of eighteenth century political compromise, not some grand "intention"). They had to fix it with the 12th amendment even before the reforms tying electors to the popular votes in each State. Even if there was an "original intent" at play, that doesn't make it being undemocratic not an "actual argument" against it. Is China's government being undemocratic not an argument against it because that is the idea behind it? No, that's silly.
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I'm not following you. The EC was created specifically so that smaller states would have more weight in the balance. That the President was elected not on proportional voting isn't a point against it, since they wanted smaller states to have more weight in the balance.

You disagree with the balance they wanted to create, sure. But that a President you don't like got elected this time around is not an argument against the system.
 
Belz... said:
I'm not following you. The EC was created specifically so that smaller states would have more weight in the balance. That the President was elected not on proportional voting isn't a point against it, since they wanted smaller states to have more weight in the balance.

You disagree with the balance they wanted to create, sure. But that a President you don't like got elected this time around is not an argument against the system.
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Yes, the system is designed to give smaller states more weight, and the idea really is not a bad one (IMO).

I don't have time to do the math now, but I wonder what the result would have been if each state only had 1 additional delegate instead of 2. I'm not thinking it would be much of a difference at all. In fact, I suspect (perhaps wrongly) that if you removed the 2 state delegates altogether, Trump would still have won, or at least would have come extremely close.

I think the larger problem is the 'winner take all' states. winning a bare majority (in gerrymandered districts) takes the whole state. That gives even more weight to a small state victory.
 
The Greater Fool said:
Yes, the system is designed to give smaller states more weight, and the idea really is not a bad one (IMO).

I don't have time to do the math now, but I wonder what the result would have been if each state only had 1 additional delegate instead of 2. I'm not thinking it would be much of a difference at all. In fact, I suspect (perhaps wrongly) that if you removed the 2 state delegates altogether, Trump would still have won, or at least would have come extremely close.
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Not only that, but without the EC the candidates might've campaigned differently, so we don't know how that'd affect the results.

My point is simply that getting a president we don't like isn't an argument against the system that elected him. If one wants to argue against the EC, you have to find better arguments, and here's why: no matter which system you use, you'll have presidents you don't like.

I think the larger problem is the 'winner take all' states.
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Absolutely. It should be proportional by state, in my opinion.
 
Belz... said:
My point is simply that getting a president we don't like isn't an argument against the system that elected him. If one wants to argue against the EC, you have to find better arguments, and here's why: no matter which system you use, you'll have presidents you don't like.
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Why do you keep pummeling that straw man? The argument is that the EC system is undemocratic.
 
WilliamSeger said:
Why do you keep pummeling that straw man? The argument is that the EC system is undemocratic.
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Bill, the argument I was responding to was this:

Upchurch said:
phiwum said:
He was elected by the rules of our process, like it or not.
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I don’t like it, but I acknowledge it followed the rules. I also recognize it is a strong argument against the electoral college for which The time has come to do something about it.
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That is emphatically NOT an argument that the EC is undemocratic, which is itself a ridiculous argument*, but an argument that the election of Trump, in and of itself, is a point against the EC. I'm sure if Hillary had one not a soul on the left side of US politics would be complaining about the EC anyway.

So as you see, not a strawman.


*: Something isn't "democratic" only if it works within a narrow view of how elections should work. Weighted elections are not undemocratic anymore than representative republics are undemocratic. It's just one way of putting power in the hands of the people (demos).
 
The Greater Fool said:
I think the larger problem is the 'winner take all' states. winning a bare majority (in gerrymandered districts) takes the whole state. That gives even more weight to a small state victory.
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This is true (except that gerrymandered districts don't affect presidential elections -- those aren't by district). This is what accounts for the very large difference in EC votes that Trump likes to brag about, despite it being a very narrow win in a few key states.
 
Belz... said:
Bill, the argument I was responding to was this:



That is emphatically NOT an argument that the EC is undemocratic, which is itself a ridiculous argument*, but an argument that the election of Trump, in and of itself, is a point against the EC. I'm sure if Hillary had one not a soul on the left side of US politics would be complaining about the EC anyway.

So as you see, not a strawman.
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Well, I'll let Upchurch answer for himself on that, but I read it as saying that the fact that Trump won despite getting fewer votes is a reason that this undemocratic system should be fixed.

*: Something isn't "democratic" only if it works within a narrow view of how elections should work. Weighted elections are not undemocratic anymore than representative republics are undemocratic. It's just one way of putting power in the hands of the people (demos).
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One man, one vote is pretty simple definition of a democratic presidential election. "Weighted" elections that give some people more influence in the decision are "just one way of putting [more] power in the hands of [some] people" and should not be "how elections should work" in a democratic representative republic.
 
WilliamSeger said:
Well, I'll let Upchurch answer for himself on that, but I read it as saying that the fact that Trump won despite getting fewer votes is a reason that this undemocratic system should be fixed.
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His intent might've been different, but I responded to what I read. As you say Upchurch can clarify if I'm wrong.

One man, one vote is pretty simple definition of a democratic presidential election.
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My point is that it's not the only possible option. "Democracy" means that the people hold the power. The word doesn't prescribe how that power is expressed. Weighted elections don't shift the power away to an aristocracy or corporations or anything like that. They just give different power to administrative regions of the country. You might not like it. I might not like it. But that doesn't make it less democratic than other options.
 
WilliamSeger said:
Well, I'll let Upchurch answer for himself on that, but I read it as saying that the fact that Trump won despite getting fewer votes is a reason that this undemocratic system should be fixed.
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My argument that if the electoral college system results in the election of someone as singularly as unqualified and damaging as Trump, it has failed to live up to it's purpose. Part of it, anyway.

I could also argue that the universality information access across the country negates the need for a representative democracy, at least for something like presidential elections. That, however, is a minor complaint that isn't worth fussing about.
 
Upchurch said:
My argument that if the electoral college system results in the election of someone as singularly as unqualified and damaging as Trump, it has failed to live up to it's purpose. Part of it, anyway.
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Well, proportional voting is not really much of a protection against such results, either.

I think the main question, outside of the winner-take-all aspect, is whether the EC "wieghting" is actually useful or if it has, on the whole, more flaws than advantages. I'm not qualified to answer that question.
 
Belz... said:
But that doesn't make it less democratic than other options.
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I completely disagree; giving some votes more weight is less democratic because it violates the principle of equal rights.

As you said, we don't know how the election would have turned out if it were by popular vote and the candidates campaigned to that end. Maybe Trump would have still won, in which case I would consider it a legitimate win. In fact, if you don't like the "undemocratic" argument, consider how much better things would be if candidates did need to campaign to win the popular vote. Under this stupid system, most of the people in the country live in "don't care" states.
 
WilliamSeger said:
I completely disagree; giving some votes more weight is less democratic because it violates the principle of equal rights.
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...which has nothing to do with democracy. I think the problem is that you add features to all democracies that are not necessary for something to be a democracy.
 
Most here seem to be unaware of the true purpose of the Electoral Collage, which is indeed to be an undemocratic safety measure to prevent a potentially dangerous demagogue from becoming president: if the EC only had to pass on the votes of their states, no actual electors would be needed. But in plenty of states the Electors are not bound by their states' votes and for the others the penalty for voting against their states is something like $1,000.
No, the EC truly failed in 2016 because it would have been its job not to elect Trump.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Most here seem to be unaware of the true purpose of the Electoral Collage, which is indeed to be an undemocratic safety measure to prevent a potentially dangerous demagogue from becoming president: if the EC only had to pass on the votes of their states, no actual electors would be needed. But in plenty of states the Electors are not bound by their states' votes and for the others the penalty for voting against their states is something like $1,000.
No, the EC truly failed in 2016 because it would have been its job not to elect Trump.
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Though imagine the uproar if it had done that.
 
Distracted1 said:
Belz... said:
Yeah but that was the idea in the first place, so that it works as intended isn't much of an argument against it. There are other, actual arguments against this system, but that wasn't one of them.
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Would that become an argument against it at any point?
Suppose that in every State that Clinton took, she had taken 99-100% of the vote, and in the States she lost she had taken 49.99%. That could leave her ahead in the popular vote by tens of millions-yet still losing. Would you call it a bug, and not a feature at that point?
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I don't think he's calling it either one at any point.

He is simply pointing out that it is working the way it was meant to work.

That isn't an argument, it's an observation.

Whether or not it was and/or is a good idea that it works that way can certainly be the basis for an argument, but simply noting that it does, and that is what it was meant to do isn't.
 
Belz... said:
...which has nothing to do with democracy. I think the problem is that you add features to all democracies that are not necessary for something to be a democracy.
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Well, equal rights under the law is a foundational tenet of a liberal democracy, which we supposedly are. On what grounds would you claim that some people don't have an equal right in selecting the president? And if you make that claim, who decides who gets more voting power?
 
WilliamSeger said:
Well, equal rights under the law is a foundational tenet of a liberal democracy, which we supposedly are. On what grounds would you claim that some people don't have an equal right in selecting the president? And if you make that claim, who decides who gets more voting power?
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Now you're shifting the goalposts. It's no longer undemocratic, it's not in line with the principles of classic liberal democracy. Well, maybe you're right. Still, the US was a democracy at a time when women and blacks couldn't vote. Wrong, sure, but not undemocratic.
 
Belz... said:
Now you're shifting the goalposts. It's no longer undemocratic, it's not in line with the principles of classic liberal democracy.
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Um, then what's the name for a democracy where your vote might count as a fraction of another person's vote, depending only on where you live?
 
The Greater Fool said:
Yes, the system is designed to give smaller states more weight, and the idea really is not a bad one (IMO).

I don't have time to do the math now, but I wonder what the result would have been if each state only had 1 additional delegate instead of 2. I'm not thinking it would be much of a difference at all. In fact, I suspect (perhaps wrongly) that if you removed the 2 state delegates altogether, Trump would still have won, or at least would have come extremely close.

I think the larger problem is the 'winner take all' states. winning a bare majority (in gerrymandered districts) takes the whole state. That gives even more weight to a small state victory.
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Nitpick. You don't win the whole state by winning more (gerrymandered) districts. Except for the three that use apportioned EC votes, you win the state by winning the popular vote in the state. (You win Congressional seats and state districts by winning in gerrymandered districts.)
 
Belz... said:
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You disagree with the balance they wanted to create, sure. But that a President you don't like got elected this time around is not an argument against the system.
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Yes, it is. See my previous post on this matter. Trump is one big fat red flag, the EC system is messed up.
 
Belz... said:
Well, proportional voting is not really much of a protection against such results, either.

I think the main question, outside of the winner-take-all aspect, is whether the EC "wieghting" is actually useful or if it has, on the whole, more flaws than advantages. I'm not qualified to answer that question.
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What was proportional in 1776 is overtly distorted in 2016.
 
Foolmewunz said:
Nitpick. You don't win the whole state by winning more (gerrymandered) districts. Except for the three that use apportioned EC votes, you win the state by winning the popular vote in the state. (You win Congressional seats and state districts by winning in gerrymandered districts.)
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I'd say that's true in theory, but not in practice.

You can take steps to suppress the vote in the wrong districts, and people are less likely to turn out for one election if their vote won't matter in the others held at the same time.
 
WilliamSeger said:
Um, then what's the name for a democracy where your vote might count as a fraction of another person's vote, depending only on where you live?
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A democracy. A subset of it whose name I don't know, but a democracy. Now, where does it stop being a democracy and starts being an aristocracy, I don't know. Athens had a democracy and still a minority of people had a say in government. My point is that the word is broader than you perhaps realised.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
From Rove's Playbook: Whatever they accuse you of, accuse them of the same.
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Fake News.



Skeptic Ginger said:
Yes, it is. See my previous post on this matter. Trump is one big fat red flag, the EC system is messed up.
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Ehhh... Trump is the result of a lot more failures than just the EC. The EC is problematic in its own way, certainly, but by the time Trump reached the point where it could even come into play, there were a lot of failures of various kinds that showed themselves, almost all of which were rooted in problems created by and exacerbated by the GOP. The EC has long, long stopped serving its original purpose, either way.
 
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Belz... said:
The EC was created specifically so that smaller states would have more weight in the balance.
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It wasn't just smaller states; since EC votes are based in part on population, the relative power of slave states rises.

they wanted smaller states to have more weight in the balance.
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This is a mischaracterization. Reluctantly agreeing ≠ wanted.

Madison, Washington and Hamilton went to Philadelphia with the intention of creating a nation (and the hope people would identify as "Americans" rather than Virginians, Georgians etc.). There was a lot of maneuvering and compromise behind the scenes. In cases where they could not explicitly delegate a power to the federal government, they would propose the power should reside with "the people." The Anti-Federalists charged the document was so ambiguous that it could be interpreted as the gatekeepers deemed appropriate (like a "fiddle that could could play any tune"). For some, those fears became a reality with McCulloch vs. Maryland (a decision which relied on the "elasticity" clause and clarified federal supremacy).

Madison (and others) strongly believed the presidency should be decided by a popular vote because it would erode the identity/authority of states. So, no, the EC is not necessarily what "they" wanted. It's what approximately 40 guys agreed to in secret, over two-hundred years ago. While it was a pre-democratic era, it should also be noted that most Americans[/i] people probably opposed the Constitution and would have preferred to keep the Articles of Confederation. I think the only state that subjected ratification to a popular referendum was Rhode Island, and of course the people there voted "no" (RI didn't even send a delegation to the convention).

Another note: Madison, widely regarded as the "father" of the Constitution, viewed himself as a failure when the Senate was created. The Senate is also one of two items that cannot even be changed via Constitutional amendment. It's also precisely the institution that makes the EC undemocratic (since EC votes are based on each state's Congressional delegation -- i.e., # of House Reps + # of Senators).

One of the biggest fault lines involved the large states vs. the small states, and it regularly threatened to derail the proceedings. Another major division involved slavery, and we all know how that was ultimately resolved...
 
jimbob said:
I'd say that's true in theory, but not in practice.

You can take steps to suppress the vote in the wrong districts, and people are less likely to turn out for one election if their vote won't matter in the others held at the same time.
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Well, if you suppress votes you can turn any state into a contest, e.g. Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. But it has nothing to do with gerrymandering districts since the vote count to win the EC is statewide. The shapes of the districts didn't make any difference in the Presidential election in those states. The overall suppression did.

The EC has major flaws. Gerrymandering has even worse flaws. They're not necessarily related, though. That's the point I'm making; not that there's anything good about the EC. It's an outmoded idea that should have been junked in 1960.
 
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