Ultimately the US constitution pretty much says the 50 states’ legislatures are free to select their choice for US President in any way they see fit. Including asking us peons for our input. Or not.
All the rest is a creature of state constitution, state statute, and custom. Plus/minus the places the Feds have stuffed their nose into that tent. e.g. the Voting Rights act. Which frankly a lot of people argue is the Feds exceeding their original authority. This is a Good Thing® in my book, but the point *is *arguable.
What it ought to be, what makes logical sense, what makes political sense, and what it is are at least four very different things.
What I find most disturbing is that the EC is essentially a convolution agreed to in order to work around some side effects of widespread slavery in one section of the country.
How different the USA would be from end to end if it had been founded without that original sin. And how Greek the tragedy if it goes crazy in the next 10 years over echoes of that 250 year old original sin.
With the White Christian political class increasingly finding itself at a political disadvantage, it’s more likely that they will resort to mischief to maintain their grip on power. The electoral college system is a way to achieve Constitutionally sanctioned mischief.
I was thinking of counterfactuals where slavery had died out as a worldwide practice back in the 1600s, or where for whatever combination of reasons, slave importation simply had never happened in that region.
Agree completely that given the existence of slavery in the late 1700s in the region we now call the South, some accommodation to it (“the peculiar institution”) was a necessary precondition to forming the United States. At least with the original borders.
The accusation of hypocrisy is not a mere peccadillo. It’s a claim that the cherished principle that you appear to be defending as independently worthy is actually a figleaf, adopted because you favored the outcome, and if the outcome were no longer favorable you’d abandon that principle in favor of another.
From a debate perspective, this might seem to be an ad hominem attack. But it’s not – it’s an attack on the good faith of your argument.
In the above I use the pronoun ‘you’ in its indefinite sense.
[QUOTE=Article II, Section 1]
Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.
[/QUOTE]
They can select electors however they want but cannot cast votes for President or VP.
There is a distinct and bitter irony here. The first major purpose of the electoral college is to ensure that populist demagogues don’t take power. That’s the main reason it exists. And yet the first person to come out as a “faithless elector” is saying he’d rather throw the election to… the populist demagogue who lost the popular vote.
Yes, because there will never ever possibly be any case where different regions of the country are divided on political issues ever again, now that slavery is over. :rolleyes:
I agree. Once the electors are selected by whatever means the Legislature directs, those electors cannot then be removed from office for doing exactly what the Constitution allows them to do. The argument that they must honor their pledge deprives them of the power of the office.
It would be as if the law said that members of the state legislature became “ineligible to hold office” or alternatively were deemed to have “resigned from the Legislature” if they voted for a gun control bill after campaigning for Second Amendment rights, voted for a tax increase after making a “no new taxes” pledge, etc.
If electors are required to be a rubber stamp for the Legislature or to the popular vote, then that is a violation of the Constitutional scheme that a separate body elect the President.
No: the tactic is to mock the lazy-ass bullshit accusation whenever it rears its head. Seriously, did you read that attempt at accusing liberals of hypocrisy?
If a specific person is engaged in hypocrisy, then yeah, you’re showing that that specific person might not believe what they say. It still doesn’t address the strength of their argument, but whatever.
But far too often the accusation is trotted out in the way it was above: “I hear tell that some of youse liberals once said something slightly different under different circumstances. Must be a bunch hypocrites all a youse, eh?”
That sort of argument deserves not even the smidgen of respect due to the straightforward ad hominem of accusing a particular person of hypocrisy under specific circumstances.
There seems to be a petition asking the Electoral College to elect Clinton regardless of the popular vote. I don’t understand why anyone thinks this has a chance when the majority of the electors will have been selected precisely because they are Trump supporters.
