Electoral College

This from someone that does not know that congress already has the power to remove the President.

Reply to
tom
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Only for committing a crime. Parliament can have a vote of "no confidence" and remove the prime minister at any time.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

ska

Senators are meant to represent the state. Originally they were not even di rect elected. They get that for being a state. The house of representatives is meant to be the People, and is thus apportioned by the number of people .

The founders of the country had their reasons for setting it up this was, t hough it did get changed to direct elections of senators by amendment.

The whole body of the Constitution and Bill Of Rights is to keep any person or branch of government from having too much power.

It gets complicated trying to back figure their reasoning. Even moreson whe n that figuring was done over 200 years ago.

I would support a few changes. Like electing the vice President separately, and IIRC it was like that for a while but that got changed.

But I would not like to see these assholes in government today tampering wi th the Constitution. Some believe that they should outlaw "winner take all" when it comes to the electors. Trump didn't even bother going to Californi a because of that, and many of his supporters who would have voted for him simply stayed home. Or they only voted on issues ad locals, whatever. Actua lly once you're there you might as well.

When I say elect the vice President separately I mean it that way, not that the second placer becomes vice President. If it was like that, Clinton wou ld be Trump's VP. (that would be pretty good life insurance for him I think ) I mean, there is no easy way to implement this, plus the VP has zero powe r except for what the President bestows except for tie breaking in the sena te or house.

Reply to
jurb6006

The purpose of the Senate isn't to be "fair" to all the citizens of the country. It is to make sure none of the states can be treated less fairly than the others. Think of it as the metal detector at the door where all states are treated equally.

I think there is still a place for the Senate, but that is because it is part of the balance of power where both the Senate and the House must approve legislation before it can become a law. One protects the little guys from the big guys dominating and the other protects the big guys from the little guys ganging up on them.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

Actually, I'm pretty sure it couldn't be done.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

I'm not sure why you think the rest of the government is bad. I'm only complaining about the electoral college where the vote of a few dominates the election.

If I used a noise filter on that analogy there would be no signal left.

One step at a time please.

I'm suggesting we need to make a change and offering alternatives. I believe that is the *opposite* of complaining.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

And that the current president elect has a majority in both houses of Congress.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

And that it takes 2/3rds to convict (evict).

Reply to
krw

Concepts and mentality go hand in hand.

Bill's a natural.

Jamie

Reply to
M Philbrook

ote:

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h high populations do not control the country. If Calif, New York, and Tex as and a couple of other states passed a law that made the rest of the stat es pay all the taxes would that be fair. Could be done if there was no Sen ate.

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ive, > > > so they know what's going on and can make state-specific represe ntations.

s the state as a whole happier to know that they have been made.

Dan is happy to label them ignorant. He lacks the capacity to say why they are "ignorant" partly because he doesn't know why he thinks that, and partl y because they aren't.

You can't have a concept if you haven't got some kind of mentality. Jamie h sts any number of concepts - most of them nonsense - in a rudimentary menta lity.

Not in the Shakespearean sense.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

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gress.

On the other hand, the current president-elect has already started messing around with his transitional administration. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, seems to have fired a couple of more or less main-stream Republican people with whom he seems to have had personal issues.

Michael Moore is already trying to stir up the electoral college to protect the office of the president from the least qualified candidate ever, and K ushner's antics are going to make that quest somewhat less quixotic.

Dan's grasp of political reality isn't all that fine-grained.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

For obvious reasons explained in basic civics classes.

You've convinced me that the electoral college is a *much* better idea than election by an uninformed public.

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

Where did I say that?

I pointed out that your arguments against representative government via the Electoral College apply to the other branches too. You're arguing against representative government.

You want, at bottom, to put a microphone in a room of screaming people and try divine their will--popular vote. I was suggesting a few steps of distillation through our ancient processes works better.

I was hoping you'd understand an electronic analogy better than something requiring knowledge of government(s).

Let me quote you from earlier in this same post: " I'm only complaining about the electoral college where..."

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

Lol! The decision is still made by the public, just not in a 1 person -

1 vote manner. In this election around 5 states got to decide the election.
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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

The only thing bogus is your ability to see the truth.

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Never piss off an Engineer! 

They don't get mad. 
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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

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The US government isn't all that representative - as you frequently point o ut, the US isn't a democracy. It eventually got around to adopting universa l suffrage, but that got bolted on to much less representative structure, w hich had been devised before any modern mode of communication had ever been developed - the US constitution predated the first deployment of a mechan ical telegraph, which wasn't invented until 1792.

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In politics it's called shutting out dissident voices. Wisdom isn't somethi ng that can be concentrated or purified, and when you come across reference s to it in politics, it's usually in the context of ignoring inconvenient i deas.

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Which is why everybody has copied them in subsequent constitutions?

False anologies aren't all that helpful, unless you are constructing a rhet orical straw - James Arthur does mass produced them.

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We could now. We do have the technology. The founding tax evaders didn't ha ve that option. It would keep the voters too busy to let them do anything e lse, particularly if they took the time to get informed on the stuff they w ere voting about, but even professional politicians skimp on that, and let the party caucus do most of their thinking for them.

It's kind of difficult not to complain about the electoral college. If they do their job and throw out Trump they will have justified their existence for the first time in more than 200 years, but that probably isn't going to happen.

Granting that it is a feature that no subsequent constitution has bothered to copy, it's probably better seen as a bug.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

This conversation is off the rails. Can you address what I actually say rather than what you want to hear?

No other part of government that I am aware of uses anything like the electoral college to select representatives.

You analogy makes *no* sense. Neither does the popular vote as a microphone make sense nor does thinking that an electoral college that throws the decision of who will be President to a handful of states is "distillation" in any good way.

All you have to do is explain it in simple English. Your ideas are not supported by the facts of our current system and the outcomes.

It is very simple. The electoral college has *no* benefits (even the argument of cities controlling popular vote elections is bogus) and thwarts the will of the people. It has done so many times in our nation's history and twice in the last 16 years.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

You must have been the president of your debating team in high school! It is impossible to respond to that...

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

"I've made up my mind and no facts will change it!

As was pointed out, but you're to stupid to get it, the Senate is designed the same way for exactly the same reasons. Of course "reason" isn't in the leftist vocabulary.

Reply to
krw

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The Senate, like the electoral college, over-represents the populations of the smaller states. The Senate doesn't exist to select representatives. App les and pears.

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Wisdom can't be concentrated or distilled. If it exists at all, it exists i n the minds of particular people, but the electoral college isn't selected in a way that might be expected to load it up with wise people.

"Political parties often choose Electors for the slate to recognize their s ervice and dedication to that political party. They may be state elected of ficials, state party leaders, or people in the state who have a personal or political affiliation with their party's Presidential candidate. "

Not a word about wisdom there. Party hacks aren't known for their wisdom.

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Rhetorical literalism. Complaining is the usual way of pointing out that so mething needs to be changed. It there wasn't anything to complain about, th ere wouldn't be any need for change.

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Bill Sloman,Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

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