No, the Electoral College can be amended, and right out of existence if we wanted to do so and had the political muscle required to push through that process. He meant that you can't amend the assignment of two Senators to every state regardless of population. Even that is not quite true, but it would mean completely eliminating the purpose of the Senate as providing equal representation to each state in the upper house of Congress.
yes amending the electoral college procedures sounds like a lofty (but well meaning) ambition. So hop right on that, with utmost haste - you have about four years. In the meantime, deal with the fact that under the current rules Trump won, and Hillary lost. Sounds fair to me!
It is amazing that the US founders were smart enough to put in a system to ensure the western liberal states which didn't exist at the time couldn't dominate many rural states that didn't exist at the time.
You mean that Boston and New York couldn't dominate Vermont, or Rhode Island - or that Virginia couldn't take on the role of aggressor.
tafkats: The fact that it's existed for over 200 years doesn't change the fact that America votes for Democrats, and gets Republicans instead. oldfella: Maybe you should have brought this up BEFORE the election! I did. But got beaten down with the old line that We Live in a Republic, not a Democracy. Whoops, my mistake for paying attention to many decades of chest-beating propaganda about This Grate Democracy of Rs. You can have a federal system and still have the people running the place by definition those who got the most votes. Ain't rocket science. Lots of countries -- lots of federations -- do it. Especially the presidency --- that most Federal-Central of positions --- ought to be elected by popular vote. But the US constitution today amounts to a Sacred Text that will never be touched again. You can have a federation in which the constituent parts are not empowered to gerrymander the bejeeszuz out of the constituency boundaries to ensure that Their Party Wins. You can have a country that has more than two serious parties. Practically all democracies worthy of the name do. Finally -- and most importantly -- you can have a big country that holds transparent, low-tech elections, the precise results of which are known within 24 hours. And can easily be challenged if one has sufficient grounds.
If you know then why constantly bring it up? It's never mattered before in a Presidential election and it never will.
I've seen people using Hillary's win of the popular vote for a couple of reasons: 1) To argue Trump has no mandate 2) To defend the Democratic platform (it wasn't the message, it was the tactics) 3) Comfort themselves and others that a majority of Americans, or even just those that voted DIDN'T vote for a candidate that they feel represents some of the worst of America.
I dare say a difference of nearly 3 million votes is not a tie. Gore had 500k more popular votes than Bush in 2000, and Bush won by three million votes in 2004....the only time since 1988 that the GOP candidate won the majority of the popular vote.
Out of what? 120 million votes cast? one million in the context of the entire United States is not that big a number.
Pointing out that Hillary won the popular vote isn't necessarily bitching. I've listed (a couple times now) some other reasons, but have been ignored. Almost like some people can't respond, so just fall back to comfortable strawmen instead.
Yes, and that's an important point. If this were a scientific measurement, the results wouldn't even be significant. The US gets ruled by what is essentially a rounding error.
If you are thinking about popular vote, how are you certain of what the "will of the people" actually is? As someone pointed out in 2000, the popular vote totals are essentially no more than a snapshot of opinions on one particular day.
Hillary lost because the US wanted Trump for president (or didn't want Hillary). Without the EC system, the 90 million eligible voters that did not vote in 2016 might all have voted for Trump (which is as reasonable a statement as anything posited by the left in this thread, or in the more public displays of distress in the face of the reality of the election results throughout america). The left is understandably distraught, but nobody except them -in the current context of rationalizing in their minds the 2016 election results- really believes the "majority" vote means anything at all. It has no significance except to console themselves that they're not really the party voted out of power despite the clear results of the 2016 election to the contrary.
Not sure what your emoticon means. I'll assume it means I don't know about you but I ain't buyin' that load of putrified dingos' kidneys in a million years. In which case I agree.
Oh well then, might as well simply abolish elections completely. If all they are is "a snapshot of opinion on one particular day" (and who can argue?), what's the point of going to all the effin' trouble? I know! Have the pres chosen on reality TV. Christ, I'm such a genius. As for your initial question ---- How to divine the Will of the People after inviting them to the polls and measuring the resulting popular vote. A real conundrum. Yep, mighty unfathomable ....
Obviously untrue. The vast, vast majority of the US wanted neither. Of those that remain, a small majority wanted Hillary.
It's a Borg from Star Trek...most often used as a shorthand for serious business. We have a ridiculous amount of emoji smilies here, in the neighborhood of five hundred. We had a shit ton more, so much that when John cut the list down to under half of what he had, we had dozens that had never been used ever
In all seriousness, I almost sat this election out because I knew Hilary would easily take California. I found out about the prop on cannabis, which is the only reason I bother to re-register.
I get the distress and cognitive dissonance that must make watching the US uncomfortable for you. The choices were trump clinton stein johnson write-in, and the people said "Trump." It's inescapable. What if? scenarios are peachy for intellectual debate, but that's not really what this thread is about. Licking wounds is all.
