US Election Question

[Ultima Cloud]

7 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

 

Ultimo, my Google gives me a wide variety of articles and that's how I could give you a range there. I could find pro-electoral college pieces in some of those same newspapers. And that's because I read widely. Google is not the horror imagined unless you use only Twitter for news.

Yes but I have doubts that you read your "references" since they make the point I made while you seemed to be making some argument against my statement? You should go back to see what exactly I quoted and was responding to. You stated that left/liberals all of the sudden like the electoral. I was disagreeing with that statement.

Edited November 6, 2020 by Ultimo Constantineau

[Prokofy Neva]

2 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

And literally in the short time since I wrote the first comment, talking about how cranks will come in with their agendas and how that hadn't quite happened YET, here we go. It has now happened in this thread.

Again to the OP, use your common sense and your ability to do independent Internet searches. You've actually been given a few good, election 101 sites by several people (not the long list of god knows what sites). If you don't do that, and you don't avail yourself of the resources available to everyone, well, sorry (not sorry) then you are just lazy.

I'm a Biden voter and a straight ticket Democrat voter. I'm not a "crank". I support the electoral college. Claims that it doesn't work, or that people all disagree with it are not accurate. Bye!

[Lyssa Greymoon]

2 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Yes, thank God, none of these extremists, and that includes Washpo, are going to get their way with this,

I mean the call to abolish the idiotic electoral college isn’t going away. So you can stop pretending that just because no one has written an article about it in the last fifteen minutes or so that people are suddenly just fine with it. 

[Prokofy Neva]

1 minute ago, Ultimo Constantineau said:

Yes but I have doubts that you read your "references" since they make the point I made while you seemed to be making some argument against my statement?

No, because only the Jacobin piece is 2 days ago. The others are last month before the current state of affairs. Washpo is recent, but mum the last 2 days. And my point is to show that people disagree with the electoral college on the liberal/left spectrum, but have fallen silent in the last few days. And that is the case. They were clamoring before, as I showed you. They are not now.

[Prokofy Neva]

1 minute ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

I mean the call to abolish the idiotic electoral college isn’t going away. So you can stop pretending that just because no one has written an article about it in the last fifteen minutes or so that people are suddenly just fine with it. 

It has indeed gone away from major liberal media and from Twitter. Read the room.

[Madelaine McMasters]

2 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Many people don't like it, but the Electoral College gives tiny states at least a bit of a say in things and encourages Presidential candidates to actually campaign and court the state.  If it was completely by popular vote, Nevada, which is currently running neck-and-neck, would not even matter.  They would just be too far down on the population scale.  The top 15-20 states, by population, would likely always decide the elections, which would leave much of the country out of the process entirely.  That is part of why our forefathers went with the electoral college method.

Many countries don't understand this, but other countries are not made up of a bunch of mostly independent states.  If there was a "president" (for lack of a better word) that governs all of Europe and that person was elected by the most populous European countries, it likely would not sit well with the less populated countries.

Personally, I like the system that Maine & Nebraska use. By allocating some of their electoral votes based on the Congressional districts, it seems to be allocating them more closely with what the people of the state actually want.  States have multiple Representatives, sometimes from one party and sometimes from both parties, based on what the people in the different areas think.  Why not allocate the electoral votes based on that?

On the flip side, by 2050, 70% of Americans will live in the 15 most populous states (ETA: which are largely urban and liberal), represented by only 30% of the Senators. The least populous states will be mostly rural and conservative. The President nominates and the Senate confirms Supreme Court justices. This portends a Supreme Court potentially well out of balance with the population.

Edited November 6, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters

[Seicher Rae]

How to critically read: 

Crank, "Notice that while liberals/leftists were fretting about the electoral college and the "need" to change it throughout Trump's term, but now that Biden is at 264 and Trump and 214, you hear nary a complain about the electoral college LOL."

Because it is stated "you hear nary a complain [sic]" the person expects the reader to take this as a truth because... it is stated. It pretends to have authoritative voice. "They are stealing the election because they are counting ballots after the polls closed!" zomg! How can that be! If POTUS says it, it must be true! If some crank on a forum says it, it must be true!

"Well, of course WE ALL KNOW, the libtards all want to keep the EC now."  "It is obvious that now that Biden is getting the benefits that no liberal person will ever speak out against the EC until another GOP rival comes along." And so on and so forth. Classic ploy, and totally without merit. Or heck, just plain wrong. Or even more heck, just plain lies.

Ain't declarative statements grand?

/me steps aside to avoid the generic walls of text that always show up from certain posters

[Seicher Rae]

7 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I'm a Biden voter and a straight ticket Democrat voter. I'm not a "crank".

One doesn't preclude the other.

[Ultima Cloud]

2 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

On the flip side, by 2050, 70% of Americans will live in the 15 most populous states, represented by only 30% of the Senators. The least populous states will be mostly rural and conservative. The President nominates and the Senate confirms Supreme Court justices. This portends a Supreme Court potentially well out of balance with the population.

Yes the Senate is a whole other issue. With states like Montana with population of 1million have the same amount of representatives in DC as Massachusetts with a population of nearly 7 million.

[Prokofy Neva]

4 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

How to critically read: 

Crank, "Notice that while liberals/leftists were fretting about the electoral college and the "need" to change it throughout Trump's term, but now that Biden is at 264 and Trump and 214, you hear nary a complain about the electoral college LOL."

Because it is stated "you hear nary a complain [sic]" the person expects the reader to take this as a truth because... it is stated. It pretends to have authoritative voice. "They are stealing the election because they are counting ballots after the polls closed!" zomg! How can that be! If POTUS says it, it must be true! If some crank on a forum says it, it must be true!

"Well, of course WE ALL KNOW, the libtards all want to keep the EC now."  "It is obvious that now that Biden is getting the benefits that no liberal person will ever speak out against the EC until another GOP rival comes along." And so on and so forth. Classic ploy, and totally without merit. Or heck, just plain wrong. Or even more heck, just plain lies.

Ain't declarative statements grand?

/me steps aside to avoid the generic walls of text that always show up from certain posters

So I need to be done talking to anonymous erroneous strangers on the Internet, but let me point out:

How to critically read: search Twitter. Like it or not it is the assignment desk for the mainstream liberal media and leftist media.

Like it or not, most important political discussions are on there.

I have to watch it and post for work so I read more than most, and I don't dismiss it because it's influential.

So search for the term "electoral college" and you see what you get:

https://twitter.com/search?q=electoral college&src=typed_query

Only a few cranks now saying it is "fascist".

Hardly any -- none, really -- major thinker or pundit decrying it.

So my statement is backed up by what I see -- and also from Google searches.

It's not that I'm "pretending to have an authoritate voice" because it's not about me. I look at commentary; I see it has disappeared; I make a statement that is accurate.

You are not able to dispute this fact-based statement based on a good reading of Twitter and a variety of news services by quoting THEM.

Instead you have to insult ME in various elaborate fashions. So I get it about you, and it's a good reason to drop out. 

[Mollymews]

is all quite exciting in Georgia

a person from Georgia has been telling the counts on a polling booth basis on Daily Kos. Trump leads Biden by only 1775 votes with about 14,000 votes left to count

there is also about another 8500 overseas ballots to count as well, most of which are from the military

Edited November 6, 2020 by Mollymews
ia

[Ultima Cloud]

Google searches.....

"The Earth is Flat"

[Seicher Rae]

3 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

You are not able to dispute this fact-based statement based on a good reading of Twitter

LOL

 

[Rowan Amore]

The difference in this election and the main reason dems aren't complaining about the EC is Biden is winning the popular vote as well.   It was in the last election that Clinton won the popular vote but lost in the EC numbers or did we all.forget that?

Clinton received 65,844,610 votes, or 48.2% of the total vote.

Trump received 62,979,636 votes, or 46.1% of the total vote. (That's a difference of 2.86 million votes.)

[Ultima Cloud]

6 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:

The difference in this election and the main reason dems aren't complaining about the EC is Biden is winning the popular vote as well.   It was in the last election that Clinton won the popular vote but lost in the EC numbers or did we all.forget that?

Clinton received 65,844,610 votes, or 48.2% of the total vote.

Trump received 62,979,636 votes, or 46.1% of the total vote. (That's a difference of 2.86 million votes.)

Gore also won the popular vote.

[Rowan Amore]

3 minutes ago, Ultimo Constantineau said:

Gore also won the popular vote.

Yes and the first time since 1888 back when it actually might have made sense to have an EC.

[Ultima Cloud]

2 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:

Yes and the first time since 1888 back when it actually might have made sense to have an EC.

We also have a much more denser population (by far) than we had in 1888. We also had a king in 1688. I guess we should go back to that instead.

 

Edited November 6, 2020 by Ultimo Constantineau

[LittleMe Jewell]

2 hours ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

What it does is give candidates encouragement to put almost all of their effort into a dozen or so battleground states. Candidates have no reason to campaign at all in most of the country. But won’t someone think of Nevada? 

 

2 hours ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

It’s not really about the count, but rather does it make sense that there should be more campaign events in Nevada than in California, Texas, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts combined? That’s insane.

But why should 10 or 15 or 20 states, primarily on the coasts decide it all?   It's not just about Nevada, but about all of the smaller states.

 

Besides, the people in the super blue states don't want the damn conservatives coming there to campaign anyway.  And the folks in the super red states don't want the damn liberals coming to their states to campaign.   For the states that are already solid one way or the other, all they want to do is ridicule the other side.  It really is more the states that are more middle ground that need the campaigning & convincing and they usually want it.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

1 minute ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

But why should 10 or 15 or 20 states, primarily on the coasts decide it all?   It's not just about Nevada, but about all of the smaller states.

Why shouldn’t it be straight popular vote?

[LittleMe Jewell]

If everything in this country were decided only by popular vote, there is a good chance that women and minorities would have either never gotten the ability to vote, or it would have been a much longer time coming that it was.

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 minute ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

Why shouldn’t it be straight popular vote?

See my above post.

This country would be a lot different if everything was majority rule.

[Ultima Cloud]

3 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

If everything in this country were decided only by popular vote, there is a good chance that women and minorities would have either never gotten the ability to vote, or it would have been a much longer time coming that it was.

Odd point. I don't remember any of those rights going to a national vote. And considering a majority of the country is moderate to left I doubt they wouldn't have passed.

Edited November 6, 2020 by Ultimo Constantineau

[Seicher Rae]

1 minute ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

 

But why should 10 or 15 or 20 states, primarily on the coasts decide it all?   It's not just about Nevada, but about all of the smaller states.

 

Besides, the people in the super blue states don't want the damn conservatives coming there to campaign anyway.  And the folks in the super red states don't want the damn liberals coming to their states to campaign.   For the states that are already solid one way or the other, all they want to do is ridicule the other side.  It really is more the states that are more middle ground that need the campaigning & convincing and they usually want it.

We're missing the obvious solution here.

Saw off Florida and let it float away.

Create a geographically split country consisting of the Left and East Coasts (or alternatively two countries from that). The middle states can be their own thing. Special decisions would need to be made regarding the Carolinas and GA, as to whether they are actually part of the East Coast or not.

Southern CA can decide if it wants to be sawn off and float away, like Florida. It is constantly wanting to split from No. CA anyway.

Boom. Done. Then maybe some accurate representation for all involved. People can decide if they want to move rather than being the lone red voice in a sea of blue and vice versa.

 

[Ultima Cloud]

Just now, Seicher Rae said:

We're missing the obvious solution here.

Saw off Florida and let it float away.

Create a geographically split country consisting of the Left and East Coasts (or alternatively two countries from that). The middle states can be their own thing. Special decisions would need to be made regarding the Carolinas and GA, as to whether they are actually part of the East Coast or not.

Southern CA can decide if it wants to be sawn off and float away, like Florida. It is constantly wanting to split from No. CA anyway.

Boom. Done. Then maybe some accurate representation for all involved. People can decide if they want to move rather than being the lone red voice in a sea of blue and vice versa.

 

That would make sense for California. CA is the only state that has a net loss for being part of the US. The rest of the country needs eachother to survive.

[Seicher Rae]

Totally in favor of eliminating the EC. Have been since I was much further to the right than I am now and it was last century.

Totally in favor of plain old majority rule.

And voting by computer.

And getting rid of the two party system, which majority rule could help.