thoughts on recent US events

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we americans, by and large, are being governed without our consent. trump lost the popular vote. more votes were cast for dem senators then repub ones, but small states have an outsized voice in the senate. the house is republican due to gerrymandering. small wonder that people are protesting!

according to a recent poll, 74% of people in 42 states want to end the electoral college. seems there is a decent number of fair-minded republicans. supposedly, the electoral college was formed to appease slave-holding states, giving them representation including the weight of 3/5 of a person for each non-voting slave. reportedly, they were worried that the more populous north would outlaw their slavery.

*agrees with every word*

The founding people of the country put in "safeguards" against the country being a democracy.

They viewed democracy as evil, as the majority can simply crush the minority.

The electoral college is specified in the Constitution.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution states:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)

Thus, each state gets electoral votes = Senators + Representatives

For example, California each state gets 2 + 53 = 55 electoral votes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... :_53_seats

This result shows us the brilliance of the electoral college. The rust belt states are hurting, they voted in unity for Trump. You propose "democracy" to let the big states overpower the little states, and remove their voice.

Yeah but California, with the largest population, gets a far greater number of votes than, say, my state so in a one on one contest, California will always win. Face it, the states are not equal no matter what!

No one seemed concerned about the electoral college when everyone thought Clinton was going to win...

the constitution has been amended before and needs to be amended again.

sorry i didn't complain about this before on WP, dox. not every injustice is on my radar all the time.

It's hardly unique to you, all the liberals suddenly seem to have discovered the evils of the electoral college this week, an interesting coincidence.

Yet, you seem to be arguing for democracy?

You don't seem to like that small states have a stronger voice than their populations ?

If the Republicans were in the same situation they would be vindicated in bringing it up after the election.

Because I live in one! At least I thought. My point is the Electoral College is pretty meaningless unless you give all states an equal number of Electors.

If the situation was reversed, the Democrats would be calling them a bunch of sore losers and crybabies, that's how this works.

bumping, hoping to rally the troops.

I just saw this. My sense is that the electoral college is an attempt to balance states rights and population. My opinions on the electoral college have not changed in the last week. Electing the president is about more than just the majority popular vote. If not, then why have states at all? As for making each state have equal electors, I think population should be a factor, but that the electoral college gives states more power than a popular vote would on its own.

FWIW, I like Canada's system, where people can vote for first choice, second choice, so that a third party candidate could possibly win.

i've seen that argument before, data, but when a policy dilutes "one person, one vote" it's maybe due for replacement.

Then we agree, in the sense that the electoral college does indeed dilute the ideal of one person, one vote, in favor of other values. It boils down to what people value more then, and what "United States" means to them.

You misunderstand our electoral system--I personally have signed petitions about electoral reform so we can get proportional representation and/or ranked voting because I wish that's what we had here, but we don't currently have that. Our current system is old-fashioned not-really-representational First Past the Post (FPTP). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-pas ... ost_voting

ETA: We do have more than 2 main political parties though, unlike America, if that's what you were referencing--so it is possible for a "third party", as you say, to win. At the federal level there are the Liberal and Conservative parties, but there are also the New Democrats (NDP), the Green Party, and the Bloc Québécois--who all receive a decent amount of votes in our federal elections. The Liberal and Conservative parties do still tend to dominate and draw the most votes, though, even in our multi-party system. We have had NDP Prime Ministers before, but more commonly the PM ends up being either a Lib or a Con and the House of Parliament ends up with a good mix of Libs, Cons, and NDP.