The US National Popular Vote is a little bit closer

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The electoral system was designed to balance the power between heavily populated states with respect to lesser populated states.

Any evidence of that?

Why did no one else jump on this? That is certainly the effect but if it was the intent that's news.

 

[Toni]

The electoral system was designed to balance the power between heavily populated states with respect to lesser populated states.

Any evidence of that?

Why did no one else jump on this? That is certainly the effect but if it was the intent that's news.

I posted something different up thread but here’s this so no one has to think too hard or read too much:

https://www.sos.alabama.gov/sites/default/files/election-data/Electoral%20College%20FAQ.pdf

The founding fathers established the Electoral College in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election by a popular vote of the whole citizenry. It was designed to safeguard against undue influence by small groups and to ensure that states with larger populations did not overpower or overshadow states with smaller populations.

 

[Elixir]

But why does it matter if we know how much crap a cow makes? I'm not in the cow business. I'm not in the manure business. I'm not in the ecology business. I'm not a politician looking to regulate any of these industries. Why am I clueless for not knowing it?

Because
Food.
Shelter.
Clothing.
I don’t suppose there’s any good reason to understand any of it, as long as they can feed, shelter and clothe themself or pay someone else to do it for them.

 

[Toni]

Heh. I married me a city boy —from NYC, as a matter of fact. Now, after 45 years of marriage and more than 30 of those years in a small city surrounded by farmland…. He can correctly identify corn growing in the field,provided it is tall enough, sheep, cows and horses from the car as we drive past. We’re working on soybeans. I was impressed the other day when he recognized a farmer was doing an early cutting of hay. That was a first! We even talked a little about the species of hay and advantages, etc. depending on the animal it’s intended to feed. He’s coming along.

City folks may have heard of farms but they mostly have either very romantic ideas of farm life or are completely clueless as to any of the issues.

I lived on the edge of large cities for 11 years. I watched the news, listened to people talk. They had heard of farms but that’s about as far as it went. I doubt very many are aware that cows have more than one stomach or how much manure one puts out or how long it takes to get a hog or a cow to market, or a crop of anything, for that matter. Although the popularity of farmer’s markets and the eat local movement ts have improved upon that.

Few people know the details of industries other than their own. Farming is an industry.

Point?

My post was a counter to the pinion that urbanites knew anything about farming. Mostly, they don’t. A depresssing number of people never consider where their food comes from, aside from some store.

You seem to regard it as a problem that people don't have domain knowledge in an industry other than their own when the industry in question is farming.

You’re partially correct. I have a problem with people making decisions regarding issues and industries of which they have no understanding. I have a problem with people having no respect for other people’s way of life and are patronizing or contemptuous towards them.

For example: I have little knowledge or understanding of IT, but I respect that industry and the people who work in it.

The point is you're listing a bunch of things that are domain knowledge and calling city dwellers clueless for not knowing them.

No, the point is that people living ( anywhere) should not presume that they know best for people who live in a different place, a different kind of setting, a different way of life.

Urban dwellers are very fond of demeaning farmers and country dwelling people as ignorant, ill-informed and dumb Bible thumpers. Obviously ‘better educated’ city folk know best and what’s best for the city is of course best for the country folk.

It’s a pretty well established phenomenon that someone with romantic dreams of bucolic country life will buy a sweet little farmhouse…down wind of a cow pasture or a hig farm and complain about the smell, bemoan the lack of Whole Foods and good wine, etc., complain about the dust when it’s time to plow and the slow moving farm
vehicles on the roads.They often want to make the country more comfortable for themselves and assume that of course that’s what everybody wants and needs.

I simply countered: Urban dwellers are often woefully ignorant about farm life or country life and what the needs are in areas that look a lot different from their neighborhood. Yet they feel absolutely confident that whatever changes they want to make their own lives easier…are just fine with everybody.

Most people who do not live in urban areas have made a choice to not live in urban areas for reasons that they find perfectly sound and sensible. Just as urban dwellers mostly make their choices for the same reasons.

 

[zorq]

The electoral system was designed to balance the power between heavily populated states with respect to lesser populated states.

Any evidence of that?

Why did no one else jump on this? That is certainly the effect but if it was the intent that's news.

Op-Ed: Even the Founders hated the electoral college

James Madison was right. The electoral college is a shoddy piece of work that keeps coming back to haunt us.

www.latimes.com

Yeah, the issue of big states bullying small states was a big issue during the constituitonal convention and some compromises were needed to get the small states to sign on.
Plus the founders didn't trust common people with a popular vote for president because they were uneducated and too emotional.

The electoral college replicated the Great Compromise reached in July that gave the nationalists popular representation in the House, and the confederationists representation in the Senate. The disproportionate advantage that small states enjoyed in the Senate was thereby embedded in the electoral college.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The electoral system was designed to balance the power between heavily populated states with respect to lesser populated states.

Any evidence of that?

Why did no one else jump on this? That is certainly the effect but if it was the intent that's news.

I posted something different up thread but here’s this so no one has to think too hard or read too much:

https://www.sos.alabama.gov/sites/default/files/election-data/Electoral%20College%20FAQ.pdf

The founding fathers established the Electoral College in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election by a popular vote of the whole citizenry. It was designed to safeguard against undue influence by small groups and to ensure that states with larger populations did not overpower or overshadow states with smaller populations.

Thanks, Toni, but that didn't answer the question. Is there primary documentary evidence somewhere that states as much? The constitution makes no such claim.


Here is a better explanation, I think.

The reason that the Constitution calls for this extra layer, rather than just providing for the direct election of the president, is that most of the nation’s founders were actually rather afraid of democracy. James Madison worried about what he called “factions,” which he defined as groups of citizens who have a common interest in some proposal that would either violate the rights of other citizens or would harm the nation as a whole. Madison’s fear – which Alexis de Tocqueville later dubbed “the tyranny of the majority” – was that a faction could grow to encompass more than 50 percent of the population, at which point it could “sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.” Madison has a solution for tyranny of the majority: “A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.”

As Alexander Hamilton writes in “The Federalist Papers,” the Constitution is designed to ensure “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” The point of the Electoral College is to preserve “the sense of the people,” while at the same time ensuring that a president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.”

The Reason for the Electoral College

Clearly the reason for the EC is so that only real americans could decide who should be president, seems to me, and not let such an important matter fall into the hands of mere citizens. This is clearly a hangover from European monarchy and nobility classism coupled with the times slow methods of communication.

 

[Toni]

The electoral system was designed to balance the power between heavily populated states with respect to lesser populated states.

Any evidence of that?

Why did no one else jump on this? That is certainly the effect but if it was the intent that's news.

I posted something different up thread but here’s this so no one has to think too hard or read too much:

https://www.sos.alabama.gov/sites/default/files/election-data/Electoral%20College%20FAQ.pdf

The founding fathers established the Electoral College in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election by a popular vote of the whole citizenry. It was designed to safeguard against undue influence by small groups and to ensure that states with larger populations did not overpower or overshadow states with smaller populations.

Thanks, Toni, but that didn't answer the question. Is there primary documentary evidence somewhere that states as much? The constitution makes no such claim.


Here is a better explanation, I think.

The reason that the Constitution calls for this extra layer, rather than just providing for the direct election of the president, is that most of the nation’s founders were actually rather afraid of democracy. James Madison worried about what he called “factions,” which he defined as groups of citizens who have a common interest in some proposal that would either violate the rights of other citizens or would harm the nation as a whole. Madison’s fear – which Alexis de Tocqueville later dubbed “the tyranny of the majority” – was that a faction could grow to encompass more than 50 percent of the population, at which point it could “sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.” Madison has a solution for tyranny of the majority: “A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.”

As Alexander Hamilton writes in “The Federalist Papers,” the Constitution is designed to ensure “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” The point of the Electoral College is to preserve “the sense of the people,” while at the same time ensuring that a president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.”

The Reason for the Electoral College

Clearly the reason for the EC is so that only real americans could decide who should be president, seems to me, and not let such an important matter fall into the hands of mere citizens. This is clearly a hangover from European monarchy and nobility classism.

You’ll have to forgive me. I am traveling and do not have access to my library at home.

Try this: https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-founding-fathers-constitutional-convention

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

You’ll have to forgive me. I am traveling and do not have access to my library at home.

Try this: https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-founding-fathers-constitutional-convention

That link doesn't support your claim either but just makes obvious the reality that the EC today is something that should be eliminated. It's an anachronistic vestige of centuries past.

 

[TomC]

That link doesn't support your claim either but just makes obvious the reality that the EC today is something that should be eliminated. It's an anachronistic vestige of centuries past.

Exactly.
I don't care all that much about how 18th century slavers thought the U.S. should be governed.
That was then and this is now.

I don't see the Founding Fathers as prophets or the Constitution as Holy Writ.

Better than the European monarchy model, but we can do better than that.
Tom

 

[Rhea]

That's the point here. If we had a pure popular vote, the entire country would be dominated by just a very few locations that are highly populous.

You make three very flawed assumptions here:
1. That populous states do not have large rural portions
2. That uban areas are carbon copies of each oher
3. That urban aeas are homogenous on theiur policy desires.

In the 2020 Census, they redefined it a bit to add more to the “rural” tally. How so, you ask? By upping the necessary population to be called “uban” up to 2,500. Yeah. Two thousand five hundred people in a cluster.

For the purposes of voting tyrrany, there is NO WAY that is homogenous.

The remaining two electoral votes are the votes of the state as an entity. And in that respect, MT and CA are exactly equal - they each have 2 Senate votes.

That's how the electoral votes are designed. Each state gets one vote for each Representative, and these represent the will of the people, and they are approximately proportional to the population. Each state gets two votes for each Senator, and these represent the will of the states as independent entities.

And again, what is so Wyoming-ey about Wymoning that it needs that representation? Back when no one moved, the “states” had a “will”. But that is not true any more. Poeple talk across state lines daily and move across state lines and work across state lines. The idea that the state, as a personality, needs its own vote is no longer relevant. And it was not particularly relevant at the time, as shown by the quotes in this thread.

You understand that about half the entire country is Republican, don't you?

But they are not all extremists. I assunme we agree on that.

The votes of the people are the EC votes of the Representatives, the votes of the states are the EC votes of the Senators.

The votes of the states? Why do we need that dead artifact. It has no more meaning except in the hands of extremists.

How about you trying…some history. Each state was allocated 2 representatives, regardless of population ON PURPOSE. The founders worked very diligently to put into place checks and balances, between branches of the government but also between state and federal powers and to ensure that states were equal partners

When being a state meant something incredibly strong like supporting enslavement of human beings.

Are we back to protecting that?

Urban dwellers are very fond of demeaning farmers and country dwelling people as ignorant, ill-informed and dumb Bible thumpers. Obviously ‘better educated’ city folk know best and what’s best for the city is of course best for the country folk.

I will decry again your inaccurate rant that this is one way. “Very fond”. That’s a pretty broad accusation. Show some data.

Rural people do it, too.. They do it every day. They do it to my face, and I’m rural, too. I’m just not, in their minds, rural enough because I have a foreign car and a college degree. So they disdain my ilk as they see it.


Let me finish that for you…
Rural people are very fond of demeaning urban dwelling people as ignorant, lazy, elite and job-stealing Kitten boilers. Obviously ‘more moral’ rural folk know best and what’s best for the rural zone is of course what’s best for the city folk.


You’ve brought this up at least three times. And each time it was completely one-sided, an inaccurate, and derided the city people with no acknowledgement at all that country folk are quite capable of country-sized disdain.

 

[Toni]

Why should Wyoming be even more irrelevant than it already is?

For all your fury at small states, how did your own state go in 2016? Where is your fury at how unfair it was that Ohio got the number of electoral votes it did? You are ficussing your ire in the wrong direction.

Face it: The big states have an outsized influence over who does and does not win POTUS.

 

[lpetrich]

Face it: The big states have an outsized influence over who does and does not win POTUS.

So it should be one state one vote, right?

 

[lpetrich]

Perils of Presidentialism - Democracy Paradox

In 1990 Juan Linz published an influential article titled “The Perils of Presidentialism.” It’s a highly influential essay among those who debate the merits of different forms of democracy. Linz argued the separation between the legislature and executive made governance problematic. Gridlock between the executive and the legislature leads presidents to seek extraconstitutional solutions for governance. Over time the constitutional system breaks down threatening democratic governance.

Then noting that a president can try to keep himself in office: an autogolpe or self-coup. Like Alberto Fujimori of Peru in 1992 or Indira Gandhi of India in 1975 or Donald Trump of the US in 2021.

I'm posting all that to indicate that the US is very unusual in having a relatively strong democracy with a President independent of the legislature who runs all of the executive branch. It's a way of asking "Why do we need a President?"

 

[bilby]

The problem REALLY is that we don't have 350 million ponies to give everyone, nor do we have the capacity to clean up after 350 million ponies.

Horseshit.

Show

to be clear, that's me agreeing with what you said

 

[bilby]

I think everyone should have a basic understanding of what directly keeps them alive. When they don't, I think that's a problem.

I doubt many people even know where their oxygen comes from. Most people seem to think it mostly comes from trees, which is the kind of half-baked pseudo-knowledge you appear to be concerned about.

 

[Rhea]

Face it: The big states have an outsized influence over who does and does not win POTUS.

Fact is - only because of the electoral college could that even be true - and I do not believe it is.

Fact is - what on earth is wrong people picking the president instead of states picking the president?

Why should any non-human entity be created to have a say? A State? What’s a state? California is not a monolith, and it doesn’t become one until someone creates a bundle called “state” in the electoral process and counts only the winner of it.

One person. One vote. You seem to think that someone in Ornge County is going to always vote the same as someone in East LA. That someone in the Bronx will always vote the same as someone in Queens. And that this will drown out Laramie and Fargo and Peterboro.

The number of people in California and New York who don’t even bother to vote because their vote can’t change anything is a symptom of the malfunction in our process.

 

[TomC]

I think popular vote for the presidency would be a good thing overall. I just prefer the notion of tyranny of the majority to tyranny of the minority, if some group is inevitably going to be tyrannical.

Are you sure about that? It was tyranny of the majority that kept people as slaves and criminalized homosexuality.

No it wasn't.
The wealthy WASP male elite.
The majority had no vote on anything.
Tom

 

[Elixir]

I think popular vote for the presidency would be a good thing overall. I just prefer the notion of tyranny of the majority to tyranny of the minority, if some group is inevitably going to be tyrannical.

Are you sure about that? It was tyranny of the majority that kept people as slaves and criminalized homosexuality.

No it wasn't.
The wealthy WASP male elite.
The majority had no vote on anything.
Tom

Exactly right. That’s the situation that modern conservative legislation is designed to re-create. Citizens United for example, is a typically underhanded way of empowering the people who lost their exceptional status when things got tough… what with civil rights and all that annoying shit.

 

[TomC]

Wyoming has 3 EC votes and < .6M residents.
That's about 1 vote per 200K residents.

California has 55 EC votes and > 39M residents.
That's about 1 vote per 700K residents.

Get it?

I'm not talking about the House. And small states will continue to have overwhelmingly outsized power in the Senate. I don't have a problem with that, personally.

But having outsized power in both the White House and Senate also give them outsized power in SCOTUS.

And here we are. With a federal government that doesn't represent the American people. It's so far removed from The People that they got rid of abortion rights.
Now do you get it?
Tom

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I think popular vote for the presidency would be a good thing overall. I just prefer the notion of tyranny of the majority to tyranny of the minority, if some group is inevitably going to be tyrannical.

Are you sure about that? It was tyranny of the majority that kept people as slaves and criminalized homosexuality.

No it wasn't.
The wealthy WASP male elite.
The majority had no vote on anything.
Tom

That is historically accurate. No doubt the majority of U.S. citizens do not realize that to be eligible to vote in those golden years of freedom and be one of "We the People" you had to be white, have a penis, be a member of the Church of England and be a wealthy landowner. And that is precisely why we have an Electoral College today.