Everyone votes and then Ohio and Florida decide who is President.
It’s a great system!
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My point was that a belief that the more directly representative a democracy is, the better it works. That may be true, but it’s speculative.
Yes, you are confused, because my comment wasn’t directed at anything you said. I was just offering my take on the topic at hand. No need to get offended.
I have to disagree with you on this one. The courts interpret and enforce laws. The laws are made by legislative bodies that are elected. If only land-owning white men could vote, “human rights” would largely concern landed, white men. Voting parity and minority rights are absolutely tied in a democracy, in my estimation.
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Being a reply to my post, I had thought that a reasonable assumption and pointing out the use of logical fallacy isn’t the same as being offended.
And if everyone had vote parity, by your logic, human rights would largely concern everyone… right?
Yes, and he lost in most of those areas when you look at the popular vote within those states, meanwhile losing the entire state of California while winning the entire state of Texas. That speaks to a broken system that needs reform.
In a system that wasn’t winner-take-all, every large city in every state would be a priority (since we’re a mainly urban country now). And since cities tend to go Dem, Clinton would have had to campaign in Anchorage and Wilmington along with L.A. and Miami, and since rural areas tend to go GOP her opponent would have had to spend a lot more time in Bakersfield than he did in NYC to counterbalance her.
Nope, not my logic at all.
Then explain your logic. If, as you speculate, only land owning white men were able to vote which would result in human rights largely concerning landed white men, what would be the result if everyone’s vote counted equally?
Yeah, that purpose has certainly gone out the window now.
That any 51% affinity group would steamroll over any 49% affinity group.
I think about this too. I’ve never lived anywhere where my votes for national elections could possibly influence the outcome, and yes, it affects how likely I am to show up. I’m also young enough to not have such strong ties to my town to have an opinion on local matters.
@emo_pinata @lolipop_jones I’m curous if anyone has done a study on the intersection of demographics, gerrymandering, and voter turnout? Like, maybe young adults are more likely to be in safe urban or safe rural districts, and don’t bother showing up partly for that reason?
Also, I would venture that young adults are less likely to be homeowners, and move more often, possibly too close to elections to register to vote or to have an ID that matches their current address. They may also be less likely to be able to get time off work to vote.
As in, if 51% of the people voted for Clinton and Clinton got elected instead of Trump? Yeah, sounds like one of those terrible democracy kind of situations.
this cant go on, the economic argument is too strong. At some point the money making states and cities will rebel, maybe with hold taxes? Even if it take a decade to get done it will happen.
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We have to be careful, because apportionment is based on the total number of residents, documented and undocumented, but only the documented portion can actually vote. The basic contours of the argument are still there, but you can be discounted for not being accurate…
Only a couple dozen people in those states too.
Thank you Electoral College.
Nuh uh. There’s more old people, so the total number of person-years of self-inflicted misery weighs in their favour.
Just an anecdote. Not a serious response to my assertion.
You are free to believe as deeply in democracy as you want.
Fixed that massive misstatement for you. You confused the electoral college with the 3/5 clause, I think.
I live in a state physically and economically capable of functioning as an independent country. Delaware literally subsidizes other states that get massively greater representation than we do. We joined the union first, of our own free will. Why shouldn’t we get two senators and three electors? That was the deal, in exchange for which the larger, more populous states have gotten to extract wealth from us for 200 years. And we’ve shown the ability to use our votes reasonably responsibly, which can’t be said of the Mobbe that true Democracy would empower.
I think the purposeful rejection of direct Democracy by the founding fathers came about because they were well read in history and philosophy, and most of them wanted to break Plato’s cycle, in which direct democracy inevitably leads to tyranny and dictatorship.
“Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote.” – Marvin Simkin, 1992
The people who would most profit from the USA being a true democracy are the least tolerant Christians, who would happily use their majority to institute even more Christian privilege than they’ve already got. Atheists and Muslims beware! You are targets one and two.
The USA is not a Democracy and it was never intended to be one. It is a more complex thing, a constitutional Republic founded on principles of representative democracy and extreme egalitarianism. In my opinion fixing or updating the USA’s political system would be very much preferable to continuing our slide towards imperial rule. True “one man, one vote” Democracy would almost certainly put a dictator in power in my lifetime, if history is any guide, so I’d rather try one of the other alternatives. Like reforming the electoral college instead of replacing it, or perhaps some more complex form of popular voting.
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Your assertion amounted to "the sky is blue’ of course it is. What you have forgotten to include is why that is a bad thing. I’ve heard ‘tyranny of the masses’ argument for years but have yet to see anyone provide a compelling argument that it happens and that it is a bad thing. Of course, we can conceive of situations where the majority votes in a way to harm the minority but as things are now, the minority (1%) are running things. What about the tyranny over the masses? Is that not a larger problem? Is that not what has happened to us?
Fun speculation but without evidence. As it stands, what you are warning about is happening today. I understand about direct democracy vs representative and I have addressed this twice today so far. You have conflated 1 person 1 vote with direct democracy and are now arguing your own straw man of direct democracy instead of my position of 1 person 1 vote. We can have a representative democracy and still do away with the electoral college. They are not mutually exclusive constructs.
The college of electors has already done that j/k but seriously, we both know the president does not make laws. That’s just F.U.D. raking. Tell me why direct democracy is fine for every election in the U.S. except president. Why is that the one election where the vote of the people should not be trusted but elections for our actual law makers are 1 person 1 vote. How does directly electing a president bring about more tyranny.
Again, I’ve heard the trope my whole life and still I call B.S. on it.
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I agree with you, but the problem is… it’s hard.
Any workable solution would be difficult to come up with, and if one were proposed, I’m cynical enough to think that it wouldn’t be well received by the people who would need to receive it well!
They’re not totally independent, are they?
Wasn’t the 3/5 compromise used to give the slave states a larger population for working out numbers of electors? (and how Jefferson beat Adams?)
Apologies; explain to me the differences? I did not realize we weren’t talking about the same thing! I’ll let my previous post stand unedited, unless you object.
Yeah, I know. That’s another reason for reform rather than replacement.
I can’t even get people to spend 15 minutes implementing SPF, or a week implementing DKIM & DEMARC, because they have become so committed to the idea that email is irreparably broken by design and we just have to live with spam and viruses delivered from fake addresses… a much less contentious problem than electoral reform in the USA.
Well, as you say, it was for apportionment purposes. But the electoral college was not created to empower slave states as Corey stated, the 3/5 clause was a compromise between those who wanted to disempower them and those who wanted to super-power them - in both cases based on enslaved population.
