117 replies to this topic

[A Baoa Qu]

Umm, it was reported widely in the news around the world and in the US that Hillary won the popular vote by this kind of high margin but lost the electoral college. I'm just basing my statements on that?

And there's nothing nutjobby about realizing that a system where a relatively small number of people can override the vote of a huge number of people, is vulnerable to all sorts of shenanigans. Bribery, assassinations, conspiracies, corruption, wars and stuff are all real things(though not all of them are always real) that happen in the real world no matter how much we want to escape from it. That it doesn't necessarily ever happen to us does not mean it never happens to anyone anywhere.

Note that I still do not claim that anything nefarious has absolutely happened in the 2016 presidential vote, I can not know for certain and never will. But neither can I ever know for certain that nothing nefarious did not happen. The real world is a funny place like that, things are often of quantum nature.

http://edition.cnn.c...lection-howell/

http://www.independe...p-a7413596.html

Edited by A Baoa Qu, 16 November 2016 - 07:30 PM.

[Pugsley]

The statement you made was :

A Baoa Qu, on 16 November 2016 - 07:24 PM, said:

but an inner circle elite gang known as Electoral College used their right to ignore democracy and chose Trump instead. Their motives could be anything really, we don't know and never will. Could have been that they chose Trump simply because they rather wanted anyone else than a woman as president, could have been they wanted a less aggressive foreign policy(Trump has said he wants to let the Russians be and take what they want

which is pretty nutjobby. Again, the Electoral College hasn't even been involved yet, they don't cast their votes for another month. How can they steal an election from the people when they literally have not been involved yet?

You may have been (poorly) refrencing the anticipiated vote, which was calculated based on the popular election. which would be anything BUT "ignoring democracy".

The Electoral College was established by the Constitution, and has been in place for almost as long as the US has existed. Furthermore, your claim of it either being pointless or directly working againt democracy shows how little you know about it. It purposefully ensured that not one area or state could unduly effect a vote, either by population imbalance or fraud.

In other words, exactly what it did this election. Trump won 3,084 of 3,141 counties in the US. In a strictly popular vote, a small handfull of cities and urban areas compromising 2% of the geographical size of the US would have chosen the president. In other words, the Electoral College was created more than 200 years , for a specific purpose, and this election worked exactly as planned.

The US is not a unified country like most others. We are a coalition of seperate states that have banded together. We have gone to war over disagreements about state's rights and power. And in that scenario an Electoral College makes more sense than a popular vote. Because allowing California and New York to decide the election for 48 other states would be madness.

And that's not even touching the claim about Hilldog being the rightful president. The rules were set before the election, the nominees campaigned according to those rules. If we had a popular vote, you can bet your *** that they would jave gone about their campaigns completely diffrently, and the vote count would have been vastly diffrerent.

The claim abou lt the popular vote is the same as saying "Team A would have won the Superbowl if field goals were worth 20 points instead of 3, because they got more of them than Team B". That is an impossible claim to make, BECAUSE IF THE RULES OF THE GAME WERE DIFFERENT, THE TEAMS WOULD HAVE PLAYED DIFFERENTLY, therefore the current score is irrelevent information.

Edited by Pugsley, 17 November 2016 - 06:45 AM.

[A Baoa Qu]

Again, I was merely speculating on the motives of the electoral college, I did not claim to know those motives. Everyone's free to guess and should not be called names because of that.

http://www.independe...e-a7420971.html

http://edition.cnn.c...n-popular-vote/

http://www.billboard...on-popular-vote

It's not clear from the news and other media(the various daily/weekly talk shows for example) that Electoral College hasn't voted yet, in fact they give the exact opposite picture of that. I'm an European and indeed haven't been taught much about this system, so of course I'd form my opinions based on the news and compare the U.S. system to that of my country, which is a lot closer to true democracy than the model of managed democracy in the U.S.

And again, based on those same news I've read and watched, Trump has said that he'd be willing to let Russia have the Crimean Peninsula and that they should also be allowed to sort out the eastern Ukrainian situation as how they see fit, but of course his statements have been muddy and confusing & flip-flopping all over the place during his campaign and I have not even kept myself up to date on all of them.

This kind of proposed policy of appeasement instantly brought to my mind similarities with the one that was used on National Socialist Germany during the latter half of the 1930's, especially since we now have a Putler on the eastern front with a personality cult around him and a totalitarian regime behind him.

[Pugsley]

The US is not a democracy, it's a Democratic Republic. Furthermore, all these points you were "speculating" on could have been answered with a 15 second Google search. I will never understamd why people are willing to voice their opinion on things when they aren't even willing to do the most cursory of research on said topics.

I have no idea what the (completely unbiased I'm sure) European media is claiming about Trump, but I do know what the message about European defense is in the US. And that message is that of the 28 states in Nato, only the US, Estonia, Poland, and the UK allocate the agreed upon 2% of GDP minimum to their defense budget. We are tired of bankrolloling European defense, especially when the media and goverments there constantly lambast us for our military spending and presence overseas. The European countries of NATO didn't even have enough munitions and manpower for a short campaign against Libya. And now that Russia is ramping up aggression, all of Europe immedietly turns to the US and demands to know what we are going to do to help protect them.

We are commited to NATO, but only if everyone else is. And Russia's recent actions are the perfect thing to pressure Europe into actually doing the minimal participation in NATO it agreed upon. We aren't going to risk WWIII to protect a bunch of countries that spend more money on racial diversity programs than on defense.

Edited by Pugsley, 17 November 2016 - 08:46 AM.

[Burke IV]

A Baoa Qu, on 16 November 2016 - 06:55 PM, said:

So she was elected to be the president by the people, but an inner circle elite gang known as Electoral College used their right to ignore democracy and chose Trump instead.

Clinton did all her secret emails on a computer in her basement instead of on proper secure computers. Most likely reason she did this (pulling this out teh air here ) is because if all your emails are on the official computer they can be used to impeach you, but if they are all in your basement they can disappear. Is it possible that this is why the FBI decided to shaft her? I wonder. You can see why the electoral collage woudl take a dim view.

[RedDragon]

Pugsley, on 17 November 2016 - 06:41 AM, said:

The US is not a unified country like most others. We are a coalition of seperate states that have banded together. We have gone to war over disagreements about state's rights and power. And in that scenario an Electoral College makes more sense than a popular vote. Because allowing California and New York to decide the election for 48 other states would be madness.

Why would that be madness? What you are saying is that the votes of certain people are worth less than those of others just because they live in the wrong place. If the majority of people live in a few states, why would it be unfair to let them decide the vote? The principle of majority is a fundamental pillar of a democratic state, so yes, electing a president who got fewer votes than his adversary is kind of "ignoring democracy". You are right in that the system was there before the election and that all happened according to the rules. But that doesn't make it less messed up a system.
In a democratic system every vote should count the same, no matter where you live.

[A Baoa Qu]

Burke IV, on 17 November 2016 - 10:04 AM, said:

Clinton did all her secret emails on a computer in her basement instead of on proper secure computers. Most likely reason she did this (pulling this out teh air here ) is because if all your emails are on the official computer they can be used to impeach you, but if they are all in your basement they can disappear. Is it possible that this is why the FBI decided to shaft her? I wonder. You can see why the electoral collage woudl take a dim view.

No, they haven't voted yet, I was under a big misconception in that post of mine which you quoted. Hillary got more people's votes put together, but Trump got a majority of votes in more states than her, making him win the Electoral College if they indeed choose to do the usual and obey the popular vote of their state as is customary.

They still have the option of voting for Hillary instead but we'll see what happens when we get there. In that case though they would indeed deny the democratic system that's in place in the U.S.

I was pretty much upset over nothing earlier, since I hadn't undertood the whole Electoral College system quite right. It's not been explained here in the news, who have simply reported that Hillary won the popular vote but Trump got the presidency anyways.

[Pugsley]

RedDragon, on 18 November 2016 - 02:36 AM, said:

Why would that be madness? What you are saying is that the votes of certain people are worth less than those of others just because they live in the wrong place. If the majority of people live in a few states, why would it be unfair to let them decide the vote? The principle of majority is a fundamental pillar of a democratic state, so yes, electing a president who got fewer votes than his adversary is kind of "ignoring democracy". You are right in that the system was there before the election and that all happened according to the rules. But that doesn't make it less messed up a system.
In a democratic system every vote should count the same, no matter where you live.

I could write a book about how much worse a direct democracy would be.

Luckily other people already have!

http://www.heritage....tened-democracy

But I wouldn't worry about it, I'm sure some random dude on a stompy robot forum knows more about governance and democracy than our founding fathers.

Edited by Pugsley, 18 November 2016 - 06:48 AM.

[RedDragon]

Pugsley, on 18 November 2016 - 06:48 AM, said:

But I wouldn't worry about it, I'm sure some random dude on a stompy robot forum knows more about governance and democracy than our founding fathers.

I am pretty sure, if the founding fathers woke up from their graves today, they would soon die again either from laughing or from shame after seeing that their institutions from 250 years ago are still used to regulate democracy in times of TV, Internet and globalization
I am also pretty sure that the constitution would look a lot a lot different if written today by the same people. Do you really think they would have seen the need for electoral delegates if they could have reached the whole population with a single mouse click or a TV spot?

It may have been a thoughtful system back then, but to think that it is perfect in spite of all the changes society went through in the last 250 years, that seems kind of naive to me.

[Pugsley]

From posted article:

"The authors of the Constitution had studied the history of many failed democratic systems, and they strove to create a different form of government. Indeed, James Madison, delegate from Virginia, argued that unfettered majorities such as those found in pure democracies tend toward tyranny.Madison stated it this way:

'[In a pure democracy], [a] common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.'28

Alexander Hamilton agreed that "[t]he ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity."29 Other early Americans concurred. John Adams, who signed the Declaration of Independence and later became President, declared, "[D]emocracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."30 Another signatory to the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, stated, "A simple democracy . . . is one of the greatest of evils."31"



So no, I would have to disagree with you, as would anyone (who again, ventured to do even a modicum of research outside of binge watching MSN) that has actually read the founding fathers' veiws on the subject. The speed of information dispersal was a minor consideration at best, and more likely irrelevent. In fact, I would argue that the rise of national instant news presents an even greater risk of tyranny of the masses, which was fairly obviously their primary concern.

Lots of opinions posted here, but so few sources to back them up.....

Edited by Pugsley, 18 November 2016 - 10:38 AM.

[Rogue Jedi]

Lily from animove, on 09 November 2016 - 06:39 AM, said:

"the good old days"

In terms if britain this was ruling over colonies, and with less automation.
Look at britain,, what do they have? they are an insignificant country by any kind fo ressources, trading is their way to survive and when they brexit this will just backfire a lot.

yes, the united Kingdom of Great Britain including the nations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northan Island is insignificant, heading a commonwealth including territory 2.5 times greater in size than the United States of America, and which as part of the EU had to get EU permission to trade with other members of our commonwealth.

a reason a lot of Brits chose to vote leave ^{(I strongly dislike the term brexit but I did vote to leave the EU)} was trade, as it was we were having trouble trading with a lot of out traditional trading partners as part of the EU, we used to do a lot of trade with past and present members of the commonwealth, countries like Australia, India, Canada and many other non EU countries, but that was made a lot harder to do with EU regulations.

yes leaving the EU may make trading with other EU countries slightly harder but the trade we can have with non EU countries, many of whom are part of a commonwealth led by the UK, should more than make up for it.

and that is without mentioning the fact that UK population growth is exclusively due to migration ^{(2-3 hundred thousand people per year ether move into the UK or are born of recent immigrants, birthrates among those born in the UK would bairly maintain the population levels, which I think is a good thing, the UK is overpopulated as it is, the USA have about 40 times the land area for 5 times the population, I do not have a problem with foreigners moving to the UK in moderation but we are not building enough homes meaning house prices are out of reach of most people my age let alone those in there 20s and we are getting rid of farmland to build about half the number of extra homes we need per year to house those people driving up house prices and rent, with the UK not producing any where near enough to feed its current population)},as well as us not having control of legislation and the costs of remaining in the EU and many other reasons

it well be a decade or more before we can say for sure if leaving the EU is a good thing for the UK, and it will (probably) be years before we know if Trump turns out to be the disaster I suspect he may turn out to be

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 18 November 2016 - 01:20 PM.

[RedDragon]

Pugsley, on 18 November 2016 - 10:33 AM, said:

Lots of opinions posted here, but so few sources to back them up.....

Well I wouldn't call your link a good source to back it up either. Because points like

Quote

Such arguments, however, are a bit disingenuous. These votes were not wasted. They were simply cast on the losing side of a popular vote within the state. If the 2000 election had been conducted based on nationwide popular vote totals only, would people claim that any vote for George W. Bush was "wasted" because Al Gore won the popular vote? Of course not. The votes for Bush were cast in an effort to win. In the event of a loss, they would simply have been votes for the losing candidate -- just as in any other election (such as an election for Governor or Senator).

are also just opinions. The problem (which the article doesn't adress) is not that the election is broken down into many smaller popular votes. The problem is how it is done. If you live in a strictly republican state, your vote IS in fact wasted, whereas if you lived in a swing state instead, your vote could change the entire outcome. Add to this the fact that your vote effectively counts more if you live in a state with more electoral delegates, then it becomes quite un-democratic. This is btw most likely a reason for the low turnout of voters. When someone knows his vote won't count because he lives in a certain state, he is more likely to just don't vote at all. At the very least, the number of electoral votes should be linked to the result of the popular vote.

The article btw is pretty one-sided, takes quotes out of context and neglects other crucial facts, e.g. the question about voting rights for slaves, that played an important part in the decision against a popular vote. If you look at the greater context, many of the points that were cited as reasons for eloctoral votes are non-issues today, such as

Quote

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made 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. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

and

Quote

It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder.

Both quotes from Madison from the same document (Federalist Papers 68) that your link cites.

And I don't really see (and your link doesn't explain) how electoral votes are preventing tyranny. Sure, in theory the electors are men of great virtue and patriotism and should intervene if a majority threatens a minority. But when was the last time the delegates didn't vote as per their popular mandate? And since the electors are chosen by the parties, how does that prevent a "tyranny of the majority"? If you have a majority that votes for electors, you just install a middle man without solving the real problem. In fact it would even be perfectly possible to have a "tyranny by minority" under the current system. IIRC it could theoretically be possible for a candidate to get elected by only gathering about 25% of the popular vote if he won the right states by a small margin.

Oh, and btw, regarding that one quote from your link about democracys:

Quote

there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual

Isn't that exactly what is happening now? You have some minorities (let's say immigrants) that get thrown under the bus by a (not even) majority behind Trump. Shouldn't the electors prevent something exactly like this?

[McHoshi]

[Appogee]

I thought US politics couldn't get any more ridiculous.

But today Trump is criticising some actors and demanding they apologise for being rude.

Thank you America, I haven't laughed this hard in decades.

[naterist]

its because redneck johny in Arkansas vote is 3 times as influential as the intellectuals in the big city of los angeles. that's the electoral college in a nutshell.

[Ghostrider0067]

Actually Pugsley, we're a Constitutional Republic. There's a difference.

On a side note, even if the EC were to stray from the tried and true method and vote against their state's choice and be one a rogue electorate, Congress has the authority to overturn it. Given that said branch of government is fully Republican controlled, it's as good as over but for the sniveling and crying.

People need to just accept it and move on. I didn't vote for Obama and didn't agree with a large number of his policies or actions but I still respected the office. Same goes for Clinton when I was on active duty in the Navy. All this "not my president" stuff is just crap. We're all Americans... unless you're not and only then can someone make such a claim. This is more about sour grape than anything else. Boo boo all you want, but it's over.

Edited by Ghostrider0067, 24 November 2016 - 12:35 PM.

[Davegt27]

Quote

which is pretty nutjobby. Again, the Electoral College hasn't even been involved yet, they don't cast their votes for another month. How can they steal an election from the people when they literally have not been involved yet?

You may have been (poorly) refrencing the anticipiated vote, which was calculated based on the popular election. which would be anything BUT "ignoring democracy".

The Electoral College was established by the Constitution, and has been in place for almost as long as the US has existed. Furthermore, your claim of it either being pointless or directly working againt democracy shows how little you know about it. It purposefully ensured that not one area or state could unduly effect a vote, either by population imbalance or fraud.

In other words, exactly what it did this election. Trump won 3,084 of 3,141 counties in the US. In a strictly popular vote, a small handfull of cities and urban areas compromising 2% of the geographical size of the US would have chosen the president. In other words, the Electoral College was created more than 200 years , for a specific purpose, and this election worked exactly as planned.

The US is not a unified country like most others. We are a coalition of seperate states that have banded together. We have gone to war over disagreements about state's rights and power. And in that scenario an Electoral College makes more sense than a popular vote. Because allowing California and New York to decide the election for 48 other states would be madness.

And that's not even touching the claim about Hilldog being the rightful president. The rules were set before the election, the nominees campaigned according to those rules. If we had a popular vote, you can bet your *** that they would jave gone about their campaigns completely diffrently, and the vote count would have been vastly diffrerent.

The claim abou lt the popular vote is the same as saying "Team A would have won the Superbowl if field goals were worth 20 points instead of 3, because they got more of them than Team B". That is an impossible claim to make, BECAUSE IF THE RULES OF THE GAME WERE DIFFERENT, THE TEAMS WOULD HAVE PLAYED DIFFERENTLY, therefore the current score is irrelevent information.

well put Pugsley

the world will not come to an end because Trump got elected just have a little faith
our system has worked for over 200 years

I still think its hilarious the media had to eat crow ha ha ha

[Mister Blastman]

naterist, on 21 November 2016 - 02:14 AM, said:

its because redneck johny in Arkansas vote is 3 times as influential as the intellectuals in the big city of los angeles. that's the electoral college in a nutshell.

The people in Los Angeles and New York are in no way superior at all to humble folks living in Arkansas, Dakota, Montana, Alabama or anywhere else in the middle united states. The reason Hillary lost is because people forgot that. They forgot that the rest of the country doesn't have to nor want to act the way a few populous cities in America try to force upon everyone else.

[Hawk819]

Not trying to make this about me. . . .but I voted for the liar rather than the dumb-***. Still, the rest of the nation voted his way. So, what can you say. I will say this: Hilliar took all of Bexar County with an overwhelming majority vote of 98%. Thankfully, not all Texans are stupid.

[Yiryi-Sa]

Mister Blastman, on 25 November 2016 - 07:58 PM, said:

The people in Los Angeles and New York are in no way superior at all to humble folks living in Arkansas, Dakota, Montana, Alabama or anywhere else in the middle united states. The reason Hillary lost is because people forgot that. They forgot that the rest of the country doesn't have to nor want to act the way a few populous cities in America try to force upon everyone else.

"Humble folks?" Where are you getting this narrative that the coastal cities have manipulated the Midwest? This binary is ridiculous; many Midwestern cities are great technology developers like Minneapolis St. Paul. If you think about it, Midwest cities are mostly "liberal" and are underrepresented areas that have little pull in state legislative, judicial and executive elections.

Republican political leaders have used gerrymandering, demagoguery, and false advertisement to reinforce a narrative in which describes the Midwest as statically and chronically misunderstood (some include being the "makers" while the coastal cities are the "takers," and conveniently forget their role in trade). Voting for a group of over privileged white males to run state governments has kept "humble folks" grid locked into unethical standards of living and stymied economic progress, which serves the purposes of their career and party interests. The leaders of the RNC contribute to this. Conservative media outlets -- which own more radio stations and have greater national reach across all regions -- have passed on this narrative baton. It's spilled over to the point now where many people felt they're getting screwed over by Trump, already, due to his RNC elite and alt-right cabinet appointments.

So, HRC got "carried away" in promoting the need for more healthcare, better LGBT rights, and better civil rights which positively impacts everyone economically. Ironically, the data is showing that the working class of all regions in the country are increasingly non-white with a trend that will increase in the coming decades. The need to return to a pre-21st century era of powerhouse technology service economics is gone. It's difficult to impact cultural advancements in unison with technology development.

Edited by Yiryi-Sa, 04 December 2016 - 06:52 PM.