Well, sorta- it’s 2/3’s for some things and 3/4 for others. “the Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress;…”
So it could be as little as 2/3rds. But yeah, it is mostly 3/4ths- which will never be reached, I agree- nor will even 2/3rds.
:dubious:
I want to play too. My Connecticut Gore vote was “not counted” in the sense that Gore earned 50% of the national vote, but he got 0% of the presidency. Please point out the flaw in my statement. Take care that it isn’t also a flaw in yours.
I can do this one too. The presidential election (winner take all) left the Gore supporters with no say in the vote that mattered.
I personally voted for Gore. Was my vote discounted? After all, Gore didn’t serve a single minute as POTUS, so what say did I really have? Does it matter if my state voted for Gore or Bush? Exactly how does it matter?
If nothing else, answer me this one single question: What, precisely, was the difference between my Gore vote here in Connecticut and a Gore vote in Texas? Which one was counted, and which was not? I’m going to use your logic and claim that mine was just as discounted as the Texas one, because despite the near 50/50 popular vote split, Gore never served a minute as POTUS. Where was the power in my vote?
I really think there is a fundamental logical disconnect when people complain about being discounted when in reality they simply lost. It really sounds to me like the backers of “one man one vote” are either being naively simplistic, or are against representative government. The real complaint is not about the EC, or the 2000 election, or the popular vote at all. The real complaint is the inability to reconcile the concept of a democracy with a winner take all election.
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America,
and to the ______, for which it stands,
one nation, under god, indivisible
with liberty and justice for all.
When the pro-statehood party has been in office, to seek a “mandate” to proceed in that direction (after all, election to office is legally only a mandate to administer that office), when the pro-Commonwealth party has been on, same deal for asking for a New-Improved Commonwealth; and with either party, to whip up public opinion, motivate the voters in the following elections, and distract from more mundane.
Good lord, 2sense. Here is what you said in post 33 in response to my own quote you keep bothering me with:
You did not ever suggest moving away from plurality elections, you suggested eliminating the EC and moving to a popular vote. Here is an example of a popular vote:
Candidate 1: 35%
Candidate 2: 40%
Candidate 3: 10%
Candidate 4: 5%
others: 10% Who wins the election?
As I think I’ve made clear, I don’t feel very good about equality in voting because I feel that leads to decidedly unequal outcomes. There are several ways to compensate for this. One is changing our voting system and counting method, which effectively gives a slight preference to less popular opinions. Another is the EC which effectively gives a slight preference to smaller districts. Of the those two, I would prefer a different voting system and counting method, but I’d strictly prefer either of those to a direct popular vote.
Couldn’t we just give the winner of the popular vote some ‘extra’ electoral votes?
Eg, the winner of the popular vote automatically gets 10 electoral votes, or gets the matching electoral votes of the biggest state he/she wins, or the smallest state he/she wins, or gets %5 more EV addeed to his/her total. I’m sure there would be some way we could all agree to keep the system the same except for this one little addition.
It might even change the way the candidates campaign in a close race such as this - if they could get the popular vote (and the 10 bonus EV for example) they wouldn’t necesarrily need to campaign in a swing state such as WI or IA every year. It would give more voice to the big cities.
Hi there tryout1 and welcome to the SDMB. What you say makes a lot of sense so I hope you will pony up the registration fee and join our band of merrymakers. Yes, the primary system is fucked up too. And yes, that would be another thread. If you start one I would likely drop by and offer my pet solution.
If you think so then why would you find the dishonest article convincing? It is a transparent attempt to fool people into thinking that there are no trade-offs. That we can have our EC and our equality too.
For my part, I am no absolutist. That’s why I asked JamesCarroll why we should trade away equality instead of huffing and puffing in indignation at the mere thought of doing so. I understand that sometimes there are other considerations. The problem I have with the pro-EC positions I have seen is that they can never justify the trade. We are holding an election anyways so why not give everyone an equal vote? It’s easy enough to do.
I tend to argue against the EC by comparing it to direct election because that’s how the debate is usually framed and it is convenient for illustrating the many shortcomings of the present system. But if I had my druthers we would just expand the House to 600 Representatives or so, elect them proportionally within the states, the federal district, and the insular territories, and when they show up in Washington to start every other term just lock them all in a room until they pick a president. If they don’t do so in the first couple days, stop sending in food and water. Now this proposal would sacrifice some equality, though nowhere near as much as we give up now, but it has some benefits as well. We would have a representative body that was more diverse ( and thus more representative ) yet still, at least at the begining, able to work with the president. Plus assemblies are better at producing compromise than electoral contests are.
Well, not if you frame the question that way we can’t. But then you have misstated what constitutes a Madisonian system. Federalist #10 isn’t about just elections but about governing. As I have already pointed out, the president isn’t a dictator. We have things like a Senate and judicial review that are supposed to deal with supression of minority views. In other words, the president, however elected, has to work within the constitutional system. Since the current system is Madisonian we certainly could maintain it while at the same time giving every citizen an equal say in who will lead.
Also, Madison didn’t die in 1788. He lived on for decades and his political thought matured. He came to see the benefits of majority rule. The quote in my signature line is part of his reaction to Calhoun’s concurrent majority theory.
That certainly seems to make sense but given how infrequently it happens in debates on this topic I’d say it’s definitely not a requirement. If the pro-EC forces ever got down to brass tacks they would have to admit that either the EC should be abolished or that their beliefs were unAmerican. You see, if you believe that everyone is created equal then there is no reason to support a system that makes us otherwise. At least, there is no reason anyone could ever explain to me. I’ve been at this for some time but I don’t claim to have seen every pro-EC argument. What I do see are easily refuted arguments followed either by silence or by weaseling. I have never had anyone who was committed to the EC to tell me I had changed their mind. I haven’t given up though.
Your vote counted; the vote in Tejas did not. It doesn’t matter who won or lost the election; the same would be true even if Gore was sitting in the Oval Office right now. This isn’t about the outcome; it’s about the effect of the input. Your vote counted because Connecticut’s electoral votes went to the candidate you selected. No electoral votes from Tejas went to Gore so the other doesn’t.
Imagine you and all the other Democratic voters in Connecticut didn’t show up at the polls last election. In that case Connecticut would have given its electoral votes to Bush. The same can’t be said about Tejas. The Democratic voters might as well as stayed home because no matter what they did, it wouldn’t affect the outcome. Either way those electoral votes were going to Bush. Do you see the difference now? The power of your vote is that it affected the outcome; the Democratic vote in Tejas did not. That is why we say they were disenfanchised even though they did get to fill out a meaningless ballot.
America is a republic. It is a republic if we have the Electoral College and it is still a republic if we directly elect our president. Even if we were proposing to change to some other form of government, you would still have no point here. The existence of a status quo does not justify the status quo. Just because that’s how things are doesn’t mean that’s how things should be.
There are a sadly large number of people prepared to re-elect George Bush who think that Iraq attacked America with WMDs that have magically been spirited away. The only redemption here is that some of them live in states where the opposition is in the majority.
A direct popular vote means there is no mitigation of these morons, and we might never regain our national sanity.
The only thing offering hope here is that we still divide up the vote by individual state races, and that the influence of those races depends on population on top of a set minimum to make things as fair as they can be made.
As far as the point you make in this part of your post is concerned, if the President has a comfortable majority in another part of the nation, he has no reason whatsoever to make life good for Californians. You need to flesh out your case here. I’m not convinced.
Neither of our systems will prevent a politician from being a liar and a betrayer, so what’s your point here?
The electoral college exists because we have a “representative” government. That means we elect officials to represent our interests. Therefore, the electoral college reflects the political platform of the officials we have elected in our states.
There are so many people who only vote in major elections, like presidential elections, and ignore local government elections. If you want to change the flavor of your electoral committee, you must first change the flavor of your local officials. Our vote counts all the way down to the most piddly of political offices. Until more people realize this and take proper voting action, the problem of a state’s electoral vote conflicting with its popular vote will not change.
I guess I wasn’t very clear. The article is convincing in proving its thesis: that districting allows some voters to maximize their individual voting power. What I think is disingenous about the article is that it ignores that fact that total voting power is constant and you can only maximize one voter’s power at the expense of another’s. I didn’t include this in my post because you had already covered it earlier. I also think the article glosses over the fact that the existing state boundaries are not ideal districts using the definition of ideal districts from the article itself.
I admit that I am new to this topic and I don’t know much about the Madisonian system. Are you explaining that the goal of the Madisonian system is to balance the majority and minority views, but that the implementation of that goal need not be the EC; that it could be attained in other parts of government?
My point here is that I think it is a requirement to resolve the EC debate. That part of the reason that the debate continues on unresolved is because we don’t address the fundamental question: Should all votes be equal or not? Both sides can debate forever without resolution because they are both arguing two different, but very similar, problems. If one person feels “one man, one vote” and the other feels “the majority must consider the minority” then neither solution (EC or popular) will satisfy both. I suspect that I might be over-simplifying and missing some aspects of the debate.
For the record, I favor a direct election over the EC because I think each vote should carry equal weight.
But it has come up, time and time again. It is up right now!
Equality is where you find it. Do you want equality in voting power? Equality in outcome? If everyone prefers candidate A to candidate B, should candidate B ever be elected? If I vote by ranking multiple candidates, should I ever be able to hurt a favored candidate’s chance of winning by ranking him higher? If I can only vote for one candidate, should I compromise in order to further my goals or vote my preference exclusively without any regard to the outcome?
I could care less about voting power on an individual basis so long as the outcome represents what an overwhelming number of people find fair, or could live with without rioting and blowing shit up, etc. For me, the results of the election are what is most important, not whether my vote means more or less than someone else’s in another state. I remain open to the prospect that “one person one vote” could accomplish this feat, but in my own investigations I have not found it.
I suppose I could point out yet again that we aren’t talking about my proposals here but rather your statement about what would happen if we moved to a proportional system but I don’t see the point. If you were going to post intelligibly on this topic you would have done so by now. My patience for your weaseling has grown thin. If I go on sooner or later I’ll tell you how I really feel about your antics and those remarks aren’t fit for this forum. Instead I’ll just quit here. Good bye, person I once had respect for.
As I have already pointed out in this thread, there is nothing the “small” states can do to stop a move to a popular vote if the rest of us are for it. The Constitution leaves it up to the state legislatures to decide how to pick their electors. All we have to do is convince them to assign them based on who wins the most votes nationwide instead of just the most votes statewide. Since the eleven “largest” states control a majority of the electors they, or any other combination of states that control a majority, can simply agree to do so and the popular vote winner will win every time no matter what the “small” states decide to do with their electors.
Certainly though this would require constitutional amendment. In fact, this is the thrust of the National Bonus Plan dreamed up by Arhur Schlesinger and proposed by the Twentieth Century Fund’s Task Force on Reform of the Presidential Election Process back in 1978.
I say it certainly would be nice if everyone had an equal say in deciding even a small fraction of the election but if we are going to all the trouble why not just let us all have an equal say in all of the election?
Yes, some of us are deluded on a variety of topics. So what? The answer, it seems to me, is not to write them off but, as Thomas Jefferson would say, to inform their discretion. Personally, I hold the decidedly unAmerican view that Checks and Balances are the root rather than the solution to the problem of the political irresponsibility of the typical American. The rest of you are just kidding yourselves about Seperation of Powers and crap like that. Do I seek to disenfranchise you all? No, I try to explain a better way.
There are no guarantees, I’m afraid. Life is risk. You can always take a pessimistic view of any electoral system. Sure, the president, however elected, could be a bastard. So what? We still have to elect one. So yes, it might happen that directly elected prez would ignore the desires of all Californians. Anything could happen. A better question would be… why would they be likely to do such a thing? From that point of view the answer is simple. They wouldn’t. There are a shitload of votes in California. If they had some prejudice against the state it would operate no matter what the electoral system.
The point is that if all votes are cast at the same time a politician can’t promise the same thing to everyone. Lets say the prize is an expensive new weapons program. Under your proposal the president could dangle it in front of Cali for three years picking up electors along the way and then in the fourth year give it to Texas picking up extra votes there.
Is this an argument? If so, it’s a poor one. The existence of a status quo does not justify the status quo.
Or we might just abolish the EC and be done with it. You might notice that some of us here are advocating just that. Care to join the debate?
Why do you think this is the thesis of the article? It’s not called “Math in Favor of Hypothetical Districted Systems”. It was definitely written as a justification for the EC. That you believe it proves something other than that the EC is a good idea is just one more reason to conclude its authors are trying to mislead rather than inform.
For historical reasons I won’t get into ( See Gordon Wood’s Creation of the American Republic if you are really interested and I mean really really interested. Wood lays it out for you but the prose is pretty thick. ) it was a truism of the late 18th century that only small republics could survive because larger republics would have multiple interests and the conflict between them would soon bring them down. Madison, in justifying the Federalists’ creation of the new and extensive republic, countered that factions based on conflicting interests would appear in the states in any case and it was less likely any single one would gain control of a consolidated continent-wide republic.
So yes, I’d say you gave a pretty accurate description. The Madisonian system encompases the entire governmental structure but the goal isn’t precisely to balance majority and minority views unless by that you mean preventing the majority from violating the rights of the minority. The majority would still get its way so long as its actions weren’t tyrannical. Madison is vague about what exactly contsitutes tyranny but he is mostly talking about property rights. Contrary to popular belief, the idea in Western thought of permanent class conflict between the haves and have-nots didn’t start with Marx. It goes back thousands of years.
BTW- You can find the complete Federalist, along with a host of other historical treasures on the web hosted by the Constitution Society.
Right. I’m saying that the pro-EC forces in general don’t want to resolve the debate because doing so would expose all of their bogus justifications. Your point about other considerations isn’t off target but they can’t sell that because most of us believe that everyone deserves an equal vote.
Me too plus I understand that the Senate already gives extra political power to precisely those people whose status the EC is supposed to enhance.
Why would you when I already addressed it. I even outlined how: change how states give their votes, and switch to a plurality winner. Voila. I understand that in your overly narrow view we should only consider the EC as it exists right this very moment today, but now that you’ve been clear that I’ve been discussing how the EC may be changed to accomodate various opinions about how a vote should be cast, I’d think you’d have picked this all up. Especially since, you know, the very topic of keeping or not keeping the EC involves possible changes. It isn’t even a stretch or a tangent. You’re not an idiot, so I am not clear on what the problem is. Perhaps it has something to do with not yet explaining how a popular vote would be better than the EC in results, which happens to include (since you like including penumbras and emanations) how politicians respond to the electorate (which, of course, is what supporters of the EC promote). Because that’s why we have elections: to elect people. That’s a result. I can even repeat the really good question which gives a hypothetical popular vote tally and asks you who wins. Because I like that one. It’s up to you. I don’t mean to force you to have a discussion.
I await your pitting. Or your answers to my questions. Or your responses to my direct answer to your question about fairness. Or the general question of why so many voting systems exist if the popular vote is so obviously “equal”. Or, heck, I suppose it it actually possible for all of them to happen.
Not really Search for “Puerto Rico Statehood” and look for my posts as well as those of Karl Grenze.
But the soundbite version of the local objections is:
(1) for close to half the electorate, they just don’t see how representation would be that much of an improvement in immediate day-to-day life; while they fear a tradeoff in more taxation, more Federal oversight, and faster cultural assimilation (if you ask me, we already have high taxes, the Fed Court sticks its nose in everything, and there’s a McDonald’s in every corner… so, Big Deal);
(2) for another 5%, separate nationhood is irrenounceable;
(3) for a large bunch of our politicians, “cultural elite”, and corporate fat cats, a decisive move either way would dangerously rock their gravy boat, so they encourage fear and immobility; and,
(4) we had some real major league losers and sleazes in our last pro-statehood cabinet and they set it back big time.
Oh, pish! I wouldn’t open an attack thread on you even if I did post in the Pit. I got frustrated and acted the drama queen. It happens to me now and again. I’m over it and it’s nothing personal. I’m sure you are a fine fellow IRL.
Well now, that’s another story. You may be a nice fellow in general but that doesn’t mean I’m going to waste any more time trying to debate you. We often seem to be interested in the same sort of threads so if I see you making errors here I’ll point them out to prevent you from spreading ignorance but I’ve given up trying to convince you of anything. Perhaps sometime in the future, if I see you engaging in some give and take with others. For now I’ve had enough of the runaround, thanks.
This is an elusive “right.” We’re not electing a state official, so I don’t care how my vote holds up against other voters in my state. At the end of the state election, we don’t end up with a result.
This is a conclusory argument that doesn’t address the issues.
The Pledge of Allegiance has no constitutional or legal authority.
Irrelevant. There is nothing in constitutional law that says “The United States is a republic, not a democracy.” There is no inherent conflict between the two terms. Furthermore, the two terms have no precise, legal definition. A wide range of practices can be arguably categorized as republican or democratic. The constitution implements a number of republican and democratic ideals. However, the assertion “a republic, not a democracy” is (1) irrelevant, (2) meaningless, and (3) without legal authority.
I could go for that – but it should be a bonus for a candidate who wins a majority of the popular vote (no majority, no bonus for anybody). That would force the major candidates to make a serious attempt to appeal to voters who would otherwise cast protest votes for third parties.
