(01-28-2020 10:39 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(01-28-2020 10:13 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(01-28-2020 09:18 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(01-28-2020 08:56 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(01-28-2020 08:41 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  To the bolded - what election, besides presidential, does not do direct, first past the poll, voting?

All US House and Senate races match that description, yet we don't have Florida x 2,000...

It's undeniable that the electoral college does create a process that helps to dilute the potential effects of ballot box stuffing, but let's not get carried away with the idea that the EC is some savior of a problem that doesn't seem to exist.

And of course, every election you describe is many orders of magnitude smaller than a national election, of which we have only one.

As has been said before on certain economic issues, things that work well in small doses often do not work well in larger doses. Communism works quite well on a farm with 30 people.

Thanks for the vote in the bolded. I particularly like the word "undeniable". Be sure to tell your buddy Fountains what you think. He might call you stupid, but you and I know you are not.

If by a problem that doesn't seem to exist you mean localized ballot stuffing affecting national elections, then thank you EC.

But the discussion started between Big and I as to whether or not the American people made their will known. through their votes. I will temper my statements by saying that whatever happened in 2016, the Democrats are afraid of it happening again, and that is why we have an impeachment.

If you notice, Fountains said that preferring the EC as a voting method BECAUSE of this fact was stupid. Not that believing that the EC helps to reduce the impact of voter fraud is stupid.

I probably fall closer to Fountains in thinking that favoring the EC for this particular reason is fairly superficial and misses the major, foundational reasons for the EC existing.

And Big still has a very valid point, which you seem to want to minimize or skirt, which is that the nation place multiple million more votes for Clinton, than Trump. So saying that the nation made their will known is a step too far. It was not a clearly landslide election in either popular vote or EC vote.

Well, the foundational reason still exist, even without me enumerating them. Somehow, an "only" has crept into this conversation, as in "Favoring the EC only for its firewall properties..."

If the voters did not elect Trump, who did?

The electoral college.

That is literally how we have a situation where the plurality of voters, in a first past the pole process, voted for the losing candidate.

And if the voters did not elect the electors, who did?

The weighted voting you guys want could easily defeat a candidate who led on the first ballot, defeating a candidate who more first place votes than anybody else. Is that fair?

There is no method that is is perfect for everybody, everywhere, in all circumstances.

But again, if you don't like the system, change it. But it is the system we have now. It is the system we had 1876. It is the system in the Constitution. Stop whining about the rules of the game. You want a little cheese with that whine?

" In 1876 the Electoral College made Hayes president in the course of one of the most contentious elections in national history. He lost the popular vote to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, but he won an intensely disputed electoral-college vote after a Congressional commission awarded him twenty contested electoral votes. There resulted the Compromise of 1877, in which the Democrats acquiesced to Hayes's election on the condition that he withdraw remaining U.S. troops protecting Republican office-holders in the South, thus officially ending the Reconstruction era."

Democrats had only 140 years after that to change the rules.