Trump does seem dedicated bringing Venezuelan style prosperity and security to the US.
I think it is uninformed fantasy that this could occur or would be accepted. As horrifying as it is to see in text, Donald Trump won this election, even if he missed the popular vote by a fraction of a percent. Short of dying, displaying clear signs of criminal insanity, or literally murdering someone, he’s going to be inaugurated on January 20th. Instead of trying to imagine some bizarre scenario where the Electoral College goes into mass revolt (and they won’t; as much as the GOP leadership may not like Donald Trump, he led them to a victory that seemed highly challenging a few months ago) it is going to happen, and you are best to put your energies into figuring out how to minimize the damage and encourage a divide between the president and Congress.
Don’t forget that she only won the popular vote until we stopped counting. The absentee ballots only get counted if the election is close enough and absentee voters tend to favor republicans, military, overseas business folk, old people. Historically they break down 2/3 in favor of republicans. In fact when gore won by 500,000 votes there were 2 million absentee ballots in California alone.
The absentee ballot/vote by mail/early voting has changed in recent years. Reports are that Democratic voters were voting early in several states, including throughout the South and in California.
Oh, don’t sell it short. It also gave representation to the slave population without giving them an actual vote. Handy for getting the South to sign on.
The stories we tell to justify our Founder-worship are infuriating. To the extent they were good men with good intentions, they would not have begrudged our fixing their jerry-rigged contraption held together by pragmatism and textual vagueness.
One advantage of the Electoral College over the popular vote is seen in this election. If there was a nationwide popular vote and it came down to a hair’s breath, every single state would have to recount their ballots. With the EC, only states that are close have to recount, and it only matters if they are the tipping point.
I have to agree with the sentiment that the EC was designed to prevent demagogues from winning based on popularity alone, and that this election is exactly what was foreseen. Unfortunately, what was not foreseen was the rest of the trend in political developments that require a transition period that gets cut in half if we have to wait for mid-December to know who won. Unless enough electors come forward quickly to say that they’re not voting for Trump and are backing some other Republican who the House delegations will support for President, it’s not realistic to expect the EC to not, in general, vote for who they are “supposed to”.
Who are you asking? I’m for abolition, so Trump would have simply won the vote. This isn’t a principle tied to a single election. Some pundits predicted that Trump would win the popular and Clinton the electoral this time around. It can happen either way.
That’s because the Republicans are the ones who keep squeaking out a victory despite losing the popular vote. They know more people vote Democratic, so a real democracy would be a disaster for them.
There is nothing wrong with the Electoral College. The problem is the south and non urban centers through out US history always vote Republican party. The US has always been divided country.
The loss over the civil war did nothing but made very divided country on out to this date. They should just allowed the south to form it’s own country for the better of both.
if true, it would force the republicans to broaden their appeal instead of relying on rigged systems that subvert the will of the people. I see no downside.
Like I said, a state individually could decide to give their electors to the popular vote winner but they cannot enter into a compact without Congressional approval.
I wonder if there might be an issue with a State deciding on how their EC votes are allotted based upon how OTHER states vote / do theirs?
Doing your own thing independently is one thing. Deciding how to do you thing based upon what others or doing or the results of others feels a bit different.
I have this vague feeling that some lawyer could find some sorta issue with this.
Getting 19 or 20 electors to switch from Trump to Hillary is impossible. But what if Hillary made a statement requesting that all her electors vote for, say, Mitt Romney. How hard would it be to pick up that 19 or 20 then?