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 Frazzled wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 BigWaaagh wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
The Left always says the Right is going to do something, but its always the Left doing the actual looting.

You're exalted.

"...its always the Left doing the actual looting." Bundy and the heavily armed militia occupation for the win, Alex. You want to make broad, inaccurate, sweeping comments then do so when reality can't slap your position across the face. Now myself, I would make what I think is the more accurate assessmentt that it's neither "...the Left..." or "...the Right..." engaging in these actions, but fringe anarchist elements that really don't represent anyone but themselves and their own agenda.

Bundy didn't loot. He hid in a cabin with a bunch of other men and a barrel of lube.

Hrm, they trashed the place and made use of the resources therein, running around with US Govt owned vehicles, including one guy being arrested off site with one of them, that's pretty "looty" to me, even if they didn't run off with the microwave and TV. They caused damage to property and made use of property and services that were neither owned nor purchased by them.

Govertnment property-which they should have gone to jail for. But they weren't running around trashing businesses as in Oakland right now.

Just because it's government property does that not make it looting?

I'm not trying to excuse what's going on elsewhere, and it's entirely fair to point out where those people's leanings lie, but to say the Right never engages in such things just because an incident harmed the government instead of private businesses doesn't mean it can't qualify as looting also. They just have different targets.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Well.......um............The school next to me had a walkout to protest Trump, then made a human chain to block drivers from going into the local shopping center. Apparently because they think only the rich can afford coffee and trump is gonna cater to the rich or something.
Long story short, a few Resturants got trashed. Including the place that was gonna hire me until this happened. And my Favorite Mexican resturant.

Uh... were these HS or College kids?

Looting is taking it for personal benefit. They didn't leave.

They were just "having a sit in" but with guns...and high protein snacks.

Can someone explain the "electoral college" process to me?
I live in TX and all the most populated cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & Houston) voted Blue (along while over half the 'border" counties).
Yet all the counties around those cities that are more rural and waaaaaay less populated voted Red, thus claiming TX as Red overall

Is this a sign that the electoral college system doesn't work, or am I missing something?

Edit: I just found out that Clinton technically received 200,000 more actual voted than Trump. Someone please explain how she lost then?

-

 Galef wrote:
Can someone explain the "electoral college" process to me?
I live in TX and all the most populated cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & Houston) voted Blue (along while over half the 'border" counties).
Yet all the counties around those cities that are more rural and waaaaaay less populated voted Red, thus claiming TX as Red overall
So while the majority of actual "People" voted Blue, the majority of "counties" voted Red.

Is this a sign that the electoral college system doesn't work, or am I missing something?

-

I think you mean the majority of city folk voted blue.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 BigWaaagh wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
The Left always says the Right is going to do something, but its always the Left doing the actual looting.

You're exalted.

"...its always the Left doing the actual looting." Bundy and the heavily armed militia occupation for the win, Alex. You want to make broad, inaccurate, sweeping comments then do so when reality can't slap your position across the face. Now myself, I would make what I think is the more accurate assessmentt that it's neither "...the Left..." or "...the Right..." engaging in these actions, but fringe anarchist elements that really don't represent anyone but themselves and their own agenda.

Bundy didn't loot. He hid in a cabin with a bunch of other men and a barrel of lube.

Hrm, they trashed the place and made use of the resources therein, running around with US Govt owned vehicles, including one guy being arrested off site with one of them, that's pretty "looty" to me, even if they didn't run off with the microwave and TV. They caused damage to property and made use of property and services that were neither owned nor purchased by them.

Govertnment property-which they should have gone to jail for. But they weren't running around trashing businesses as in Oakland right now.

They're just looking for lube...

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Seaward wrote:

sirlynchmob wrote:
It's a shame we'll never know how trumpers would have handled the loss.

Meanwhile, we do know that it's a shame how many Clinton supporters are handling the loss.

Define "many", and how do we know who they supported?

Look on the news.

So there 'a a bunch of angry people protesting, using the slogan "Not Our President". How does that establish anything other than the fact that they're not happy with Trump being president? For all we know, this could be a bunch of Sanders fans, or primarily a bunch of people who didn't vote but doesn't like Trump. Or it could be Clinton supporters. Or, which is probably more likely, a mixture of the above. It certainly doesn't reflect well on anti-Trump people in general, but just offhandedly assuming that it's due to Clinton supporters is a simplification.

Do note that looting is still despicable and that I'm not trying to defend the donkeycaves who do it.

Well we can ascertain by brilliant deduction that its not Republicans and Libertarians.

Even assuming that there are no Republicans or Libertarians that oppose Trump, are the only three American political camps "Republicans, Libertarians, and people who supported Clinton"?

I feel like this discussion is lacking some intellectual honesty. The difficulty with Left vs Right, is that both sides tend to focus on the other side's embarrassing crazies, and then try to tar that whole side of the spectrum with the same brush. It's an example of bias confirmation, and helps them feel confident that "I'm right, and the other side are idiots".

I think it's fairly safe to assume that a fair amount of the protesters were leftists and many probably supported Hillary, but they would only be a tiny negligible fraction of all Liberals, and hardly representative. A lot of young people and activists tend to be left leaning, so it's hardly surprising to see them protesting and doing dumb stuff. That doesn't, however, mean that every person with liberal beliefs is a whiny-crybaby hypocrite. Just as it would be unfair to claim every Trump supporter is an uneducated racist hic.

 Galef wrote:
Can someone explain the "electoral college" process to me?
I live in TX and all the most populated cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & Houston) voted Blue (along while over half the 'border" counties).
Yet all the counties around those cities that are more rural and waaaaaay less populated voted Red, thus claiming TX as Red overall

Is this a sign that the electoral college system doesn't work, or am I missing something?

-

That is the point of the electoral college system.

It is to keep the power from being centralized by large population centers.

If the election was sole popular vote, there would only be two places anyone would campaign. Texas and California. The rest of the country would be completely disenfranchised at that point.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
At the same time, we have to acknowledge that Trump's campaign definitely succeeded. That is, the votes were not merely against Hillary - although that certainly played an important role.

Which mean only means that we (we as in people not in the US) weren't hearing the full story, and that the news stories we heard and social media echo chamber that just repeats the words racist, bigot, misogyny and homophobe over and over again were only part of what actual Americans were hearing.

What can you tell me about the Trump campaign that makes it seem like it wasn't someone trying not to hit themselves in the face with a baseball bat yet continuously failing at that.

I really don't understand how he won given all we heard over here. Educate me please!

Then I urge you to give this book a read. This'll shed some light as to why America reacted to the last 8 years:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0399563881/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0399563881&linkCode=as2&tag=insta0c-20&linkId=a3dcb146c8a423e6254190523b5a35cc

 djones520 wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Can someone explain the "electoral college" process to me?
I live in TX and all the most populated cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & Houston) voted Blue (along while over half the 'border" counties).
Yet all the counties around those cities that are more rural and waaaaaay less populated voted Red, thus claiming TX as Red overall

Is this a sign that the electoral college system doesn't work, or am I missing something?

-

That is the point of the electoral college system.

It is to keep the power from being centralized by large population centers.

If the election was sole popular vote, there would only be two places anyone would campaign. Texas and California. The rest of the country would be completely disenfranchised at that point.

But it shouldn't matter where a person lives (city or rural) because 200,000 more AMERICANS voted for Clinton.
I can appreciate mitigating keeping it "even", but the Popular vote is what should matter, not how counties are divided.

-

 Peregrine wrote:

Seaward wrote:
They know the glory days of manufacturing aren't coming back, but at least Trump's concerned about them.

But my point is that Trump isn't concerned about them. He's the guy who tells you all about how good a friend you are while he's sleeping with your wife and stealing all your stuff. Trump is perfectly happy to hire people like them, use their labor, and then refuse to pay them because he knows that they can't afford to fight him in court over it. They're nothing more than a tool for Trump to use for his own benefit.

Did people really believe that Obama was going to deliver Hope and Change? "Yes we can!" meant yes we can what, exactly? Looking at our last 2 presidents it seems like the best campaign to run is one wherein the candidate doesn't present lots of detailed policy points or well researched solutions but rather one where a candidate plays well to a crowd, can hold rallies in stadiums, and most importantly provides some minimal broad goal while remaining mostly a blank slate onto which voters can project their own desires. Trump wants to "Make America great again" what exactly does that mean? Who knows, but there are plenty of people in the US that think things aren't great for them now and that making things be great for them would be awesome. Just like people want change and they want to be able to hope for a better tomorrow and they want to believe they can accomplish such a change for the better, albeit in an oversimplified lazy way like cast one vote for one person while willfully ignoring all of the long hard work that would be necessary to enact any kind of real lasting meaningful change.

Trump managed to hold together a coalition of voters whose numbers were much closer to the Republican coalition of voters from 2008 and 2012 than Hillary managed to do with the Democratic coalition of voters and the lack of any real positivity from Clinton or charisma or unifying goal other than maintaining the status quo that isn't so bad right? Maybe instead of letting the Clintons turn the DNC into their personal campaign staff the DNC should have been giving Sanders a fair shot and pushing somebody like Cory Booker to throw his hat in the ring to see if they could get some actual excitement going.

 Peregrine wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I really don't understand how he won given all we heard over here. Educate me please!

There are more deplorables and gullible people than polls and analysis anticipated. The deplorables love him for obvious reasons, the gullible people somehow thought that a billionaire who was born into wealth and privilege and has a history of screwing over middle-class workers is somehow the champion of the masses who will give them their jobs back. So it turns out that if you yell racism and zero-substance nationalism loud enough you can win an election despite having policy positions that range from "not possible" to "sheer raving lunacy".

If you can't distinguish the rural middle class workers to the tiny 4chan trolls... this is why you lose.

 Galef wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Can someone explain the "electoral college" process to me?
I live in TX and all the most populated cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & Houston) voted Blue (along while over half the 'border" counties).
Yet all the counties around those cities that are more rural and waaaaaay less populated voted Red, thus claiming TX as Red overall

Is this a sign that the electoral college system doesn't work, or am I missing something?

-

That is the point of the electoral college system.

It is to keep the power from being centralized by large population centers.

If the election was sole popular vote, there would only be two places anyone would campaign. Texas and California. The rest of the country would be completely disenfranchised at that point.

But it shouldn't matter where a person lives (city or rural) because 200,000 more AMERICANS voted for Clinton.
I can appreciate mitigating keeping it "even", but the Popular vote is what should matter, not how counties are divided.

-

Well, the framers of our nation disagreed. There are ways to change the system, feel free to pursue them.

 djones520 wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Can someone explain the "electoral college" process to me?
I live in TX and all the most populated cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & Houston) voted Blue (along while over half the 'border" counties).
Yet all the counties around those cities that are more rural and waaaaaay less populated voted Red, thus claiming TX as Red overall

Is this a sign that the electoral college system doesn't work, or am I missing something?

-

That is the point of the electoral college system.

It is to keep the power from being centralized by large population centers.

If the election was sole popular vote, there would only be two places anyone would campaign. Texas and California. The rest of the country would be completely disenfranchised at that point.

and instead shift the campaigning to 6 battleground states, that get catered to, and texas & california are disenfranchised.

 Galef wrote:
Can someone explain the "electoral college" process to me?
I live in TX and all the most populated cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & Houston) voted Blue (along while over half the 'border" counties).
Yet all the counties around those cities that are more rural and waaaaaay less populated voted Red, thus claiming TX as Red overall

Is this a sign that the electoral college system doesn't work, or am I missing something?

-

Actually, the electoral college is entirely intended to prevent politics from being determined by a few key places. It is similar to why every state gets 2, and only 2 senators. It is designed to ensure that smaller, less populated areas still get represented. The electoral college uses a weighted system. Thus, even though the smaller areas are represented, they aren't represented as well. It's why Utah only gets 4 votes vs 55 for California. It helps Utah get a say in the vote, but not so much of a say that it fully negates the larger population.

By state it depends. Some do it by popular vote and then it all goes to the winner (in theory, states could go for someone other than who won the popular vote in that state), others break it up based on region and popular vote in those regions. Regardless, Trump won 52.58% of all votes in Texas vs 43.44% for Clinton. Thus, she did not win significantly more votes than Trump. In the 'give the representation equal regardless of population' she lost, as Texas is almost entirely red, so from an 'electoral' perspective she should loose Texas, and from a popular vote should be the deciding factor she still lost Texas.

So looking at the stocks, in 2 day's they've completely recovered all losses of the previous month.

I'm certainly not an expert, but to my amateur eyes, it looks like the market wasn't fearing a Trump victory.

 Galef wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Can someone explain the "electoral college" process to me?
I live in TX and all the most populated cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & Houston) voted Blue (along while over half the 'border" counties).
Yet all the counties around those cities that are more rural and waaaaaay less populated voted Red, thus claiming TX as Red overall

Is this a sign that the electoral college system doesn't work, or am I missing something?

-

That is the point of the electoral college system.

It is to keep the power from being centralized by large population centers.

If the election was sole popular vote, there would only be two places anyone would campaign. Texas and California. The rest of the country would be completely disenfranchised at that point.

But it shouldn't matter where a person lives (city or rural) because 200,000 more AMERICANS voted for Clinton.
I can appreciate mitigating keeping it "even", but the Popular vote is what should matter, not how counties are divided.

-

In the words of the immortal bard-horsegak. That means you effectively disenfranchise everyone outside of California and NYC. (at least until California secedes)
The Constitutions was structured to provide protections for small states against large states. If you don't like it change the Constitution. Oh and good luck with that.

 Galef wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Can someone explain the "electoral college" process to me?
I live in TX and all the most populated cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & Houston) voted Blue (along while over half the 'border" counties).
Yet all the counties around those cities that are more rural and waaaaaay less populated voted Red, thus claiming TX as Red overall

Is this a sign that the electoral college system doesn't work, or am I missing something?

-

That is the point of the electoral college system.

It is to keep the power from being centralized by large population centers.

If the election was sole popular vote, there would only be two places anyone would campaign. Texas and California. The rest of the country would be completely disenfranchised at that point.

But it shouldn't matter where a person lives (city or rural) because 200,000 more AMERICANS voted for Clinton.
I can appreciate mitigating keeping it "even", but the Popular vote is what should matter, not how counties are divided.

-

Texas decides how it selects and apportions its Electoral Electors if you think the system in your state is flawed your state legislature is the body that can "fix" it. The constitution establishes the Electoral College but states control how the voting is done in their state, how they choose Electors and how those Electors are allowed to or required to vote.

The Electoral College was established to help prevent a tyranny of the majority and to maintain the relevancy of all the states so all the states have equal standing in the country regardless of how many people live there. The Electoral College awards Electors to each state in accordance to the number of representatives each state has in the House in Congress. The number of representatives awarded to each state is determined by the population of each state per the US census taken every 10 years. Texas has the same Electoral representation as it does Federal representation in the House. We vote for president by state, each state has electoral electors who then vote on their state's behalf and the candidate who gets 270 or more Electoral votes wins. We don't vote for president by popular vote if we did that huge swathes of the country would be completely irrelevant which disenfranchises everyone there. If a candidate wins a state that candidate gets the Electoral votes of that state it doesn't matter what the margin of victory in the state was. If a candidate wins by 1 vote or 1 million votes the number of Electoral votes doesn't change. The Electoral votes are still weighted by population but not the degree of an actual popular vote. With the Electoral votes California has 55 which is equal to Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado. That's a big difference and makes winning CA important but candidates still need to win many other states. On a direct popular vote a candidate could win 5 states and win the election. That would be bad.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

sirlynchmob wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Can someone explain the "electoral college" process to me?
I live in TX and all the most populated cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & Houston) voted Blue (along while over half the 'border" counties).
Yet all the counties around those cities that are more rural and waaaaaay less populated voted Red, thus claiming TX as Red overall

Is this a sign that the electoral college system doesn't work, or am I missing something?

-

That is the point of the electoral college system.

It is to keep the power from being centralized by large population centers.

If the election was sole popular vote, there would only be two places anyone would campaign. Texas and California. The rest of the country would be completely disenfranchised at that point.

and instead shift the campaigning to 6 battleground states, that get catered to, and texas & california are disenfranchised.

The Electoral College makes both Cali and TX equal to over half a dozen other states each, how is that any kind of disenfranchisement?

Prestor Jon wrote:

The Electoral College makes both Cali and TX equal to over half a dozen other states each, how is that any kind of disenfranchisement?

How many campaign stops have candidates made in those states? As others mentioned, the candidates spend more time in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and a couple other places than they ever do a state like Texas or California. The campaigns largely ignore those states because they are "already locked"


That said, I think we'll see some significant changes in the coming years, as I suspect Texas to becoming a bit more purple, considering the overall tendency of the Hispanic vote to vote blue, and it's the largest growth demographic in the country, and especially in Texas.

 Frazzled wrote:

sirlynchmob wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
The Left always says the Right is going to do something, but its always the Left doing the actual looting.

It's not always the left, are you really going to claim all african americans are leftist liberals? Everyone in the military are leftists? in the past it's never been about politics it's been about oppressed groups that encompass both sides.

the navy riot in chicago also comes to mind. It seems all to failure, after being demonized and targeted unfairly by the police, a riot ensues.
http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1979/06/25/page/1/article/500-sailors-riot-at-great-lakes/

As unpleasant as they are, they do get results and oddly enough things usually get better afterwards.

Our founding fathers showed the way when they rioted along the docks and destroyed public property by dumping the tea into the ocean. Then things got better for america

the protest going on yesterday is just weird, yes they're hillary supports, yes there's many of them, but there's no real point to it. Unless they want to arm themselves and overthrow the government, then maybe the could get the right to join in, there's just no point to it. The right has always dreamed about an armed rebellion, but they're just not doers I guess, all talk, no action. After this nearly 2 year long emotional race I think they're just going through the 5 stages of grief, they moved past denial and are on anger right now, and today will be bargaining "yes officer, if you let me off with a warning I'll go home and knock it off"

Founders were radicals in case you didn't notice.
You're trying to compare a navy event? Wow, thats what we call reaching for a lifeline. Face it. Nonsports riots in the US have been been overwhelmingly leftwing in the last 50-100 years.

I exclude sports as I don't know how you would determine that makeup.

EDIT: Where you are correct is organized violence. Although the Ayers crowd dropped dozens of bombs, the unabomber did what a dozen himself etc. reactionaries took the cake with Oklahoma, and were experts in church bombings/burning and KKK related terrorism in the 1960s. So I should be specific and speak of riots.

why not compare the navy's riot, we are talking about rioting after all.

so you went from 'all' to 'overwhelming', just like you don't the makeup of the sport rioters, you also have no way of knowing the makeup of any other group that's rioted. You're just assuming because it fits your narrative. Why exclude sports rioters though? there are more of those. Even if we accept your narrative all that really says is the left will riot over a cause, and the right will only riot over sports if they do at all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Prestor Jon wrote:


The Electoral College makes both Cali and TX equal to over half a dozen other states each, how is that any kind of disenfranchisement?

The majority has spoken, we wanted clinton, but thanks to gerrymandering and the electoral college trump won. Rigged elections indeed.

 Galef wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Can someone explain the "electoral college" process to me?
I live in TX and all the most populated cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & Houston) voted Blue (along while over half the 'border" counties).
Yet all the counties around those cities that are more rural and waaaaaay less populated voted Red, thus claiming TX as Red overall

Is this a sign that the electoral college system doesn't work, or am I missing something?

-

That is the point of the electoral college system.

It is to keep the power from being centralized by large population centers.

If the election was sole popular vote, there would only be two places anyone would campaign. Texas and California. The rest of the country would be completely disenfranchised at that point.

But it shouldn't matter where a person lives (city or rural) because 200,000 more AMERICANS voted for Clinton.
I can appreciate mitigating keeping it "even", but the Popular vote is what should matter, not how counties are divided.

-

It matters very much where people live. Environment plays a big role in shaping political beliefs and needs. As you were told already, if it was purely a popular vote most of the country (geographically) would be ignored by Presidents and Presidential candidates.

Is the population of Texas and California as big as those half-dozen states? "One person, one vote" doesn't mean much if some people's votes are more valuable than others.

 whembly wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I really don't understand how he won given all we heard over here. Educate me please!

There are more deplorables and gullible people than polls and analysis anticipated. The deplorables love him for obvious reasons, the gullible people somehow thought that a billionaire who was born into wealth and privilege and has a history of screwing over middle-class workers is somehow the champion of the masses who will give them their jobs back. So it turns out that if you yell racism and zero-substance nationalism loud enough you can win an election despite having policy positions that range from "not possible" to "sheer raving lunacy".

If you can't distinguish the rural middle class workers to the tiny 4chan trolls... this is why you lose.

Criticizing all Trump voters as deplorable and gullible...how tolerant. Cope / 10.

The truth is that Trump won the election at the point when it became impossible to tell your friends you were voting for Trump, for fear of being dogpiled in public and on social media.

This deplorable behavior got him elected. End of story. Acknowledge that you can't insult half the country, calling all males and white people privileged, women self-hating, males rapists, all whites racist, etc. and expect to win their hearts and minds. People didn't vote for Trump because they are sexist or racist - they voted for Trump because they were sick of being called privileged sexist racists.

 whembly wrote:
Then I urge you to give this book a read. This'll shed some light as to why America reacted to the last 8 years:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0399563881/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0399563881&linkCode=as2&tag=insta0c-20&linkId=a3dcb146c8a423e6254190523b5a35cc

I have to say, the description isn't exactly selling it. It seems to speak more to the writers ignorance than it does to the ignorance of "DC elites".

For example:

She (Loesch) asks commonsense questions such as: How can you be angry at Walmart if you’ve never shopped in one? How can you hate the police if you’ve never needed help from a cop? How can you attack Christians if you don’t have a single friend who goes to church?

None of these are "common sense questions". In fact, they're fairly idiotic questions. Is she really suggesting that people in LA and NY never need help from a cop? Or that you can't disagree with Walmart's political, economic, and environmental practices, unless you shop there? And the part about BLM literally made me cringe.

Does this book have some redeeming insight, that was somehow omitted from the description?

 Frazzled wrote:

 Galef wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Can someone explain the "electoral college" process to me?
I live in TX and all the most populated cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & Houston) voted Blue (along while over half the 'border" counties).
Yet all the counties around those cities that are more rural and waaaaaay less populated voted Red, thus claiming TX as Red overall

Is this a sign that the electoral college system doesn't work, or am I missing something?

-

That is the point of the electoral college system.

It is to keep the power from being centralized by large population centers.

If the election was sole popular vote, there would only be two places anyone would campaign. Texas and California. The rest of the country would be completely disenfranchised at that point.

But it shouldn't matter where a person lives (city or rural) because 200,000 more AMERICANS voted for Clinton.
I can appreciate mitigating keeping it "even", but the Popular vote is what should matter, not how counties are divided.

-

In the words of the immortal bard-horsegak. That means you effectively disenfranchise everyone outside of California and NYC. (at least until California secedes)
The Constitutions was structured to provide protections for small states against large states. If you don't like it change the Constitution. Oh and good luck with that.

If anything a straight popular vote would do the opposite. The electoral college focuses attention on a handful of swing states and a couple big states while most of the country goes ignored or taken for granted. A popular vote would make location irrelevant.

The electoral college hyperfocuses locality. It does force attention to areas that might otherwise not get it, but its not along an urban/rural divide necessarily. Florida is important in the Electoral college, but so is New Hampshire and Ohio. Nobody gives a squat about California or Wyoming however and theyre taken for granted.

 djones520 wrote:

 Galef wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Can someone explain the "electoral college" process to me?
I live in TX and all the most populated cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & Houston) voted Blue (along while over half the 'border" counties).
Yet all the counties around those cities that are more rural and waaaaaay less populated voted Red, thus claiming TX as Red overall

Is this a sign that the electoral college system doesn't work, or am I missing something?

-

That is the point of the electoral college system.

It is to keep the power from being centralized by large population centers.

If the election was sole popular vote, there would only be two places anyone would campaign. Texas and California. The rest of the country would be completely disenfranchised at that point.

But it shouldn't matter where a person lives (city or rural) because 200,000 more AMERICANS voted for Clinton.
I can appreciate mitigating keeping it "even", but the Popular vote is what should matter, not how counties are divided.

-

Well, the framers of our nation disagreed. There are ways to change the system, feel free to pursue them.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/266038556504494082

Donald J. TrumpVerified account
‏@realDonaldTrump
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.

One should always be careful what you ask for, sometimes you get it.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

The Electoral College makes both Cali and TX equal to over half a dozen other states each, how is that any kind of disenfranchisement?

How many campaign stops have candidates made in those states? As others mentioned, the candidates spend more time in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and a couple other places than they ever do a state like Texas or California. The campaigns largely ignore those states because they are "already locked"

It would totally depend on the States to make this change, but I think a good "update" to the current Electoral College would for all states to follow the model in Nebraska and Maine: Give two electoral votes for the statewide winner, and one vote to the winner for each congressional district they win.

I think this would still maintain the original goal of the electoral college by tying the power of each state to their congressional power rather than a nationwide popular vote contest, it would more accurately reflect the different populations of the states themselves, and it wouldn't require any changes to the constitution to implement. I also think it would change where candidates focus their time.

It would be interesting to see the electoral college totals for the last few elections if a system like that was used.

 d-usa wrote:

It would totally depend on the States to make this change, but I think a good "update" to the current Electoral College would for all states to follow the model in Nebraska and Maine: Give two electoral votes for the statewide winner, and one vote to the winner for each congressional district they win.

I like that idea.

It does make gerrymandering those districts that much more important, though. Not that it wasn't already.

sirlynchmob wrote:

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Prestor Jon wrote:


The Electoral College makes both Cali and TX equal to over half a dozen other states each, how is that any kind of disenfranchisement?

The majority has spoken, we wanted clinton, but thanks to gerrymandering and the electoral college trump won. Rigged elections indeed.

The Electoral College has nothing to do with popular vote, nor gerrymandering.

The Electoral College is a reflection of the very compromise that formed our Constitution.

The large-state delegates proposed the Virginia Plan, which would apportion Congressional representation by population. Because these delegates wanted more influence.

The small-state delegates proposed the New Jersey plan, which would give each state an equal vote, because if their fear of majority rule.

The ultimate compromise was, as we all know, to have one part of the legislature (the Senate) in which each state had an equal say (2 per state), and another (the House) in which representation was apportioned by population.

The Electoral College reflects this compromise. The 100 votes of the Senate, the 435 of the House, and three extra votes for the District of Columbia make up the 538 electoral votes.

The State deterimines how the Electors are apportioned.

Here's the key distinction I want to make.

We are NOT one big homogeneous entity.

We are 50 individual states with high levels of autonomy.

The Electoral College is the system that was devised for state'sfederal representation for our Federal Presidential elections.

 Galef wrote:

But it shouldn't matter where a person lives (city or rural) because 200,000 more AMERICANS voted for Clinton.
I can appreciate mitigating keeping it "even", but the Popular vote is what should matter, not how counties are divided.

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Well, the year the Electoral College is abolished is the year I'm running for President.

I'll do it by promising to buy everyone in California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina Ferraris and mansions, and I'll pay for those Ferraris and mansions by imposing a 95% tax on the other 41 states.

That will give me 51.09% of the popular vote, and only screw over 82% of the states in the union.