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Yale Lecturer Todd Cort wants to discard the electoral college system, because it gives rural voters the voting power to challenge the dominance of the coastal elites. But in my opinion, Todd’s focus on minutiae of the electoral system misses the big picture.
The electoral college is thwarting our ability to battle global warming
Who (you might ask) is David Brearley?
Brearley plays a critical, and entirely accidental, role in climate change because of his position as the chair of the Committee on Postponed Parts within the Constitutional Convention of 1787. While drafting the U.S. Constitution, the convention left several “sticky questions” to Brearley’s Committee, such as the manner by which U.S. presidents would be elected. Brearley and the Committee were stuck between two difficult choices: election by the U.S. Congress or election by the voting public. The committee opted for a middle ground solution – an electoral college that would vote on behalf of the citizens, but which would be populated based on the number of congressional seats assigned to each State in the Union.
It is this solution, brilliant at the time, that leads us to Brearley’s legacy on climate change. Because over the course of the last 200 plus years, the electoral college, which provides for stronger voting power per person in more rural and less populated states, has elected four U.S. presidents who clearly lost the popular vote (1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016). Two of those elections have occurred during the period in which we have known about the causes and impacts of carbon dioxide emissions and climate change and in both cases, the impacts of those elections have very likely had profound impacts on our actions to address the challenge.
…
The Obama administration did not solve climate change, but it did make significant strides both domestically and in international agreements. Obama signed the Paris Climate Accord of 2015 and his EPA finalized the Clean Power Plan in the United States. Perhaps more significantly, President Obama opened the doors of politics to embrace what is a known fact in the scientific community, thereby allowing climate change to be mainstreamed for a wider swath of the country.
Which brings us to November, 2016. Once again, the electoral college system has elected a U.S. president in opposition to the popular vote in the form of Donald Trump. Hindsight in four years will tell us of the legacy of the Trump administration on climate change, but, despite a recent pledge to keep an “open mind” on the subject, the statements and commitments from the administration to date provide strong reasons for anticipating which way he’ll go.
Did the electoral college system deliver an unfair victory to Trump? The following is President-elect Donald Trump’s response to this suggestion;
If the election were based on total popular vote I would have campaigned in N.Y. Florida and California and won even bigger and more easily
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2016
Both candidates knew the rules. Nobody would have given Trump any quarter if he won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college. Trump campaigned to win, under the rules of the system as it stood. Hillary made plenty of mistakes – she reportedly derided her husband Bill Clinton, when he warned her she needed to spend more time chasing rural voters, rural voters who ultimately swung their support behind Donald Trump.
It’s a shame the Democrats have never had control of Congress AND had a willing President to help that along…
Ever.
Right?
A more pertinent aphorism is:
“Democracy should be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” (Ben Franklin?)
This concept is what keeps “mob rule” from overrunning the country. It is a very good feedback limiting system. It goes along with all of the other checks an balances we have built into our political system. When properly exercised they prevent a runaway system that keeps the country from fracturing.
A government that can give you anything you want can also take away anything you have. And seeing that governments cannot make wealth all they can do is redistribute it…after they’ve take a cut.
The Dems had Obama and both The House & The Senate for two years and what do we see for it?
The monstrosity known as Obamacare.
…And the almost $1T unnoticeable stimulus (i mean, other than as a debt increase)
The electoral college system also limits the ability of a few states to commit , how shall I say, gross irregularites in voting. Without California, and their decidedly nonrestrictive registration and voting process, HRC would not have a popular majority. Similarly, the vote in Detroit, with some precincts reporting more votes than voters or ballots, would make the 2000 Florida recount look like a love fest.
Bingo. Without the Electoral College, there would need to be Federal voting regulations to ensure the Democrats couldn’t commit mass electoral fraud.
I doubt they’d like that too much.
Wrong, there was little to no electoral fraud in this election. But keep trotting out that canard.
County records prepared at the request of The Detroit News after ballot irregularities were discovered revealed that 37 percent of Detroit precincts registered more votes than voters during the election.
https://pjmedia.com/election/2016/12/14/judge-napolitano-election-fraud-in-detroit-looks-organized-and-government-involved/
Chris, Chris, Chris. What can I say Chris? Did you stomp your feet and click your heals before writing that?
There was rampant voter fraud throughout California and we’ve all read the stories about Detroit. You can take my word for it. Now, since I’ve made unsupported claims, would you like to explain why yours are so much more believable? 🙂
There is electoral fraud in all countries that hold elections and in all elections. The questions may be asked about how significant it is, how institutionalised it is or if it favours one party more than another.
To say it does not exist is either to live is some utopic dream world or think that your party gains most from it and therefore you’d rather that no one looked any deeper into it.
“Wrong, there was little to no electoral fraud in this election”
LOL. Hey, I’ve got a nice bridge you might like to buy.
@chris
Without the ability to confirm that voters in California, and many other states, are in fact eligible to vote, how can you make that claim? If you’re an illegal alien in the voting booth, are you going to vote for the candidate who will look the other way while you smuggle in your mother, father, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, or the guy who’s going to bounce your ass out of the country? Hmmm, tough question.
DJ, you are implying that the illegal immigrants are taking the names of existing registered voters. if that was happening in any substantive numbers, you would have either double voting by the same person, or legitimate voters saying that they went to vote and their name was already crossed off. That did not happen. Or, if your claim is that illegal immigrants were stealing ballots from mailbox for voting by mail, then there would be lots of folks calling in to say they did not receive their ballots in the mail. Once again, that did not happen to any substantive degree. http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2016/12/20/election-anderson/95629820/
There can be little doubt if voter fraud has been detected in past elections, that this election has had a quantum leap in this practice. Here is the thinking:
1)Never have we had such a polarized election. The anti-Trump campaign, given wings by a media that endorsed and voted for HRC 92%, the desperation and ugly tactics, the piling on of Hollywood, high tech, all academia, the 100s of millions from elite lefty, new world order billionaires (direct and indirect), is unprecedented, and, yes, I include some of the ” swampy ” Repubs.
2) We have, over a generation or more, descended into a cynical, amoral age. Getting ‘caught’ is the sin these days. Look at the outrage of the Democrats that their ugly, behind the scenes, dishonesty and manipulation in the DNC against B. Sanders and the giving of the debate questions in advance to HRC (the real news story!) , let alone the question of how D. Brazille got them in the first place. Simply make the Russians the bad guys! This was unquestionably an inside job by an angry Bernie supporter, like the climategate email release. The sad thing is the millennials and a large percentage of their parents live in this jungle and there is little chance of finding a way to twig their consc iences. Anything goes.
3) the illegal immigration has been let flourish because it creates votes for lefty elites and there definitely has been deliberate laxity that would allow millions of such folks to vote.
Trump is absolutely correct that there has been millions of illegal votes cast. You don’t need links to support this. This is the kind of reasoning that successful business people use to advantage. I wish Democrats could see that the party they have been supporting is the one they think it is. They definitely need some time in the penalty box to renew themselves.
Welcome to California Chris…. http://ktla.com/2016/11/03/possible-voter-fraud-being-investigated-in-san-pedro-after-83-ballots-are-mysteriously-delivered-to-one-womans-apartment/
In this state we automatically register you when you get your Driver’s License…guess who can get them here…illegal immigrants. If they check the box on the registration saying they are a US citizen, no one checks that at the DMV. Voila instant voter.
I love all the refutations of my post with zero supporting links. We should believe CA had rampant voter fraud because Bartleby said so!
Jorge, your pjmedia link in turn links to the Detroit News. Oops, the Detroit News concluded there was not a voter fraud issue in the election.
Greg, you’re right, voter fraud exists – 10 proven cases out of 146M voters registered during the same period. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill – that’s making a mountain out of a grain of sand. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-finds-no-evidence-widespread-voter-fraud-n637776
Eric, I read your story. The county thinks a system error caused duplicate ballots to be mailed to one address. So the suspected cause was a software problem, nothing to do with voter fraud.
Chris, most much voter fraud occurs not on election day, but at the motor vehicle departments in states where “motor voter” laws have passed. In my former state, Colorado, the problem is compounded by two things. First that Colorado uses mail ballots now, almost exclusively, and second, that it will issue drivers licenses to people without checking their citizenship first (a policy with which I strongly disagree, btw), so long as they promise that they will pursue citizenship in the future. This opens the door to Illegal aliens registering via motor voter forms OR by way of Colorado’s online voter registration web site, which requires only that you provide a driver’s license number or the last 4 digits of a SS number. The web site warns that you are not “allowed” to register if a non-citizen, but there seems to be no mechanics that prevents it. And notice that with the drivers license, an illegal immigrant could walk right into a polling place and vote in person, with no chance of being detected as a non-citizen, even IF the state had voter ID requirements, unless the driver’s license itself carries a citizen/non-citizen designation, which Colorado’s does not.
I don’t know how many people have done this and neither do you. We can pretty much assume you that the number is non-zero. We also know that if the Democrats, led by Obama and the raging Progressives, had their ultimate way, the numbers would get much larger. Here is Obama telling a non-citizen that she is a citizen for election purposes.
Here’s to hoping Trump will drain this particular swamp.
Chris
A more accurate statement is nobody knows if or how much electoral fraud there is (or ever has been) because nobody actually goes looking for fraud. Miscounting a couple ballots is a trivial mistake, and that’s usually all that’s looked at.
Please correct me if you know better, but I am unaware of any credible systemic voting review (did only qualified & registered voters vote one and only one time, and were ballots properly counted) ever having been performed. Without such a review (which requires voter ID checking…), your statement “…there was little to no electoral fraud in this election…” is factually baseless.
Javert, you say my statement is factually baseless because of fraud that MAY have occurred but was not detected. I can say that about almost anything. 1/2 of the laptop batteries sold in the US MAY be knockoffs. 50% of fish labeled as salmon MAY not actually be salmon.
I agree that there are certainly instances of voter fraud that were not detected, but the question is whether those are substantive in number. Research using analytical tools indicates the occurrences are few. Yet in this thread there are many posters who have claimed voter fraud was rampant in the last election. They haven’t provided any supporting evidence – why do you accept their claims without challenging them?
All of the issues listed by Tom have been proven, using official records.
Just because you are told to ignore something, doesn’t make it not true.
Chris, that Democrats vote for those who don’t show up has been known for decades. That’s why the Democrats always fight to prevent ineligible voters from being removed from the voting roles.
But in CA, it’s even worse. CA does nothing to prevent illegal aliens from registering to vote in the first place. Once again, it’s the Democrats who fight tooth and nail to make sure that rules that might prevent illegal voting are blocked.
MarkW, a post without supporting links.
Tom Halla December 20, 2016 at 7:38 pm
Tom it has to be proven, not just alleged. Find them convict them and throw them in prison for the max time. No deporting until after they have served their time. No time off no good behavior full sentence. Make it clear that voting if you are not a U.S. Citizen is a real bad idea.
michael
I would actuallly favor prosecuting the election officials who allowed it, and a Federal civil rights case against the State as an entity, for denying the rights of citizens to vote undiluted by Los illegales and the cemetary vote.
“it has to be proven, not just alleged.”… easy but time consuming when done after the fact. Anyone who says voter verification laws are discriminatory is either naive or approves of possible voter fraud. It’s another ‘virtual signal’ claim by those who would illegally take advantage of it to discredit those who would uphold the law.
“Anyone who says voter verification laws are discriminatory…”
What could possibly be “discriminatory” about ensuring that only actual citizens vote? I’m scratching my head over that one.
Or is it that “discimination”=bigotry=racism conflation from people who don’t know that there can be more than one meaning for a word?
Paul, it’s alleged that persons who are poor and homeless can’t prove residency, and therefore are discriminated against by any registration law requiring proof of residence. In California for example, no mailing address is actually required, no verifiable ID. You can describe the area you live in. You might give a street and cross street for example, or a location like “down by the Salinas River”. This is designed to “protect the rights” of the poor, unemployed and homeless people in California, who seem to make up the vast majority of voters here.
Sorry if I sound sarcastic, I’m new to the “new” California. When I left last time there where a few honest people in charge of things.
Voting fraud means we don’t know who got more legal (1 US citizen voting 1 time) votes. Beyond this, the meme, “Hillary won the popular vote,” is fraudulent because how many rallies did Hillary hold in Californa? Zero. How many rallies did Trump hold in California? Zero. How many campaign ads did each candidate run in California? Zero. Ditto for New York. How could this be? The electoral college results were known to both candidates in advance for these states. Trump wasted no time or money trying futilely to get Cali’s 55 EC, because it was an impossible goal.
There were doubtlessly millions of Cali Republicans who didn’t vote. Their votes would not have overcome Hillary’s votes. There were TWO Senate candidates, BOTH were DEMOCRATS. In many districts there are no viable Republican House candidates. Some intelligent people rightly decided that voting on Nov. 8 was a waste of their time and gas money so they stayed home.
Had we been operating under a national plebiscite to elect the President, Trump would have held at least a half-dozen rallies, and spent millions in campaign ads and door-to-door campaigning in California this fall. Republicans who did not vote would have, because their votes would have mattered, i.e. contributing to a national popular vote win for Trump.
The rules that Trump did not invent, were better understood by his team, than by Hillary’s. Both focused their resources on 17 “swing states”. Trump just did a better job of it. He had a high unfavorability rating, as did she. But he worked his a55 off and overcame his problems, by tirelessly holding 2-3 yuuge rallies per day, 7 days per week, connecting directly with tens of thousands of voters per day, while Clinton “hid out”.
The Dems’ worst decision was not making Bernie her running mate. Tim Kaine was a zero. Team Clinton thought they could cheat Bernie out of the nomination, then dump him (with a house as gift) and get his young voters to switch to her. Wrong. Most of his millennials, disgusted, disillusioned and disheartened, stayed home. Hillary threw away 10 million? voters that Bernie had brought into the tent, as Obama had done previously.
Just to add my 2 cents, there are groups here in California that will actually instruct illegals in how to register to vote. No one checks on citizenship. Even the officials at the polling places are not allowed to ask if you are a citizen.
Without picture ID for voting, proving illegal voting is impossible.
Which is one of the reasons why Democrats fight against it so strongly.
Yup on both counts.
“Down by the Salinas River” brings forth memories. It stank to high heaven for decades due to Spreckel’s dumping sugar beat refinery waste into that poor watercourse. Even carp went belly up in that water (actual fact we used to see some big floaters.) Spreckel’s closed ca. 1970, and within a half-dozen years steelhead were being caught. The area now has some gorgeous homes.
The jumping point is that Trump was just concentrating on the Swinging States, because the people who live the most under Obama’s neglect of whole land and industries are living there. Keyword “Rust Belt”. This finding is also not difficult and a man like Trump probably even without the help of 25 intellectuals possible. For the rest, I agree with Trump’s view that a different strategy of his performances might have given him the majority of votes, but the loss of many electors. A president has a duty to look after those who need help. This has been done by Trump in the election campaign, in contrast to Hillary, the queen of the left east and west coasts movement. In addition, the anxiety of the left press has been drawn by the people living near the Mexican border. If you look closer to the elections in the individual counties, the counties close to the border with Mexico are all dyed blue. The closer the more. This also applies to California and all other states along the border. At the same time, Trump does not intend to deport or discriminate legally. He only says the fight against illegal immigration. Illegal immigration without control can not be approved by any state in the world. One sees the states in Germany and France where this leads.
The Electoral College prevents a single state from stuffing bogus ballots into the popular vote and stealing the election. You would need a number of states to work together to stuff the ballot boxes to rig the election.
Bingo. The EC is therefore a bulwark against fraud. (Especially since it is easiest to steal votes in states which are already decided, anyway.)
George Soros and his cronies have done that repeatedly.
I would love it if all states would adopt a system that awards electors by congressional district. (The two senatorial votes are still awarded to whoever wins the state.)
With the current system, whoever wins the big city in a state usually wins the whole state.
So MarkW what you are saying is that you prefer gerrymandering to what we have now?
Popular vote total outside California:
Trump: 58,474,401
Clinton: 57,064,530
And consider how many illegals certainly voted in CA “sanctuary cities” and elsewhere.
Plus: There are 3,141 counties in the United States. Trump won 3,084 of them. Clinton won 57.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2016/12/16/20161218_trump1_0.jpg
Wally stop stealing my thunder—posted the same info at 7:30 AM. If you’re going to insert something make sure not that it is not already posted.
Sixty two percent of Detroit precincts were disallowed to participate in the recount due to the polling place registered numbers not matching the machine count.
And I see that I was wrong as there were 37% of the precincts with problems, and not 62%. I thought that I had read that it was 62% somewhere.
Perhaps you reversed the numbers. if 37% have a problem, then 63% (or 62% with rounding) would not have a problem.
There are ways to have a fool-proof voting ID system. When you vote, either at a polling station Court House, or from home on your smart phone or online computer to your bank, have your finger print or eye scanned. If you are not in the system, you cannot vote…plus if you do vote you can do so only once. Everyone who has an EBT card or any sort of government interaction has an ID that will verify if you are a US citizen or not.
pyeatte, voting is controlled by the individual states. How are you going to get all 50 of them to implement your requirements?
Steve,
The federal government can set voting requirements for federal elections. Once in place, these reforms would most likely also be used for state and local elections.
You need a fingerprint reader to get into Disney World. Why not ensure fair elections, so that honest citizens are disenfranchised by crooked illegitimate voters?
The penalty for multiple or illegal voting should be ten years in fed max, followed by disenfranchisement for life. But I’m a bleeding heart liberal. My friends say death for the first infraction.
“If you are not in the system, you cannot vote”… it’s “getting in the system” that’s questionable. What “system”? Today’s voter registration is obviously either corrupted or can be and neither are acceptable. The Left claims attempts to qualify voters impacts their constituents because they are more likely incapable of following the requirements. It’s saying someone can’t prove their birth location because it’s too much trouble.
Does this argument mean that if “the Donald” backs the warmistas and shuts down coal and oil
A) they will suddenly like him?
or
B) they continue the hate program based on ……. “the Donald” is rich therefore he is EVIL Donald.
Had no great feelings either way till now. I am beginning to get a warm feeling about Donald.
It’s arguable that HRC lost the election because her party simply underestimated the number of fraudulent votes she’d need in “battleground” states. See Detroit for a sample of how that’s done, or Wisconsin in previous recent elections.
Math is hard.
…or it could be that enough voters realized how corrupt she is (with corroboration from WikiLeaks) that regardless of the voter fraud and illegals, she ended up losing anyway.
And that’s a good thing for this country if we ever want to get the economy back on track.
No wonder they didn’t want to do a recount in all the states.
Evidence of Detroit Voter Fraud, Too Many Votes in 37% of Precincts
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/12/14/report-evidence-of-detroit-voter-fraud-too-many-votes-in-37-of-precincts/
Michigan Recount Exposes Clinton Electoral Fraud: Half of Detroit Votes Show Signs of Tampering
Votes in Hillary-heavy Detroit may have been counted up to 6 times
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/12/no_author/hillarys-electoral-fraud/
Three Million Votes in Presidential Election Cast by Illegal Aliens
http://www.infowars.com/report-three-million-votes-in-presidential-election-cast-by-illegal-aliens/
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/12/02/many-illegal-aliens-can-vote-immigration-officer/
It’s not just illegal aliens voting, but the dead and bums bribed with smokes, as in WI and MO.
In Democrat strongholds like Cincinnati, it’s systemic:
In Democrat precincts, busloads of voters go from polling place to polling place.
When OR instituted vote by mail, nursing home workers filled out their senile patients’ ballots and college kids their apathetic dorm mates’. Operatives also recovered ballots from garbage cans.
As in the MN senate race, WA “governor” Gregoire “won” by Democrat officials continuing to “find” “missing” ballots until they had enough to overcome Rossi’s valid voted.
The Dinghy Harry machine in Vegas votes not only illegals but the dead and out of staters.
Fraud is rampant, running to millions in an presidential year. The proof is in the pudding. Why do Democrats opposed ballot security measures that a poor country like India requires?
From what I learned about history, we would not have a country without the compromise of the electoral college because the smaller states, like New Jersey at that time, were afraid that the more populous states would rule over them just like the King of England did. Without the current system there would not be a United States of America. Concerns would be the same today with California, New York, etc. running the country and smaller states with no say. Imagine what that would look like.
For a real-world example of NYC using its population glut to exert control over less population-dense (and more conservative) regions, look at the way the city dominates the rest of NYS.
NYS is a liberal cesspool because of NYC.
New York City dominates New York State just like Seattle dominates Washington State and Portland dominates Oregon. We need electoral colleges for state elections too!
One vote per Congressional district, with the Senate seat votes allocated to the statewide winner, would prevent candidates from ignoring states that were not in play. And it would prevent the nightmare of a nationwide recount in a close election. It would take a constitutional amendment, however, which means it might never happen.
It’s true that people in CA I’ve talked with who weren’t for Hillary didn’t bother to vote since it was a forgone conclusion CA would go blue. That would account for the “popular” vote going to HRC. Others, who were liberal conservatives (such as myself) went ahead and voted their conscience anyway with the foreknowledge they wouldn’t be taking away any support for Trump since Trump didn’t stand a chance anyway.
The entire voter registration system in CA is corrupt and that won’t change, it can’t change. How does an electorate vote to change a system that has corrupt voting regulations? There’s really no help coming for CA. Maybe the UN could be called in to monitor voting? Somehow I doubt that would be productive.
Bartleby wrote:
“The entire voter registration system in CA is corrupt and that won’t change, it can’t change.”
I try not to assert absolute assertions that include words that indicate that things cannot ever change. For one, it is very hard to support conclusively that something cannot, will not ever, change.
For a real-world example of a corrupt election system that was changed, please consult Dr. Google with a search term along the lines of “battle of athens”.
Bingo. Upstate NY is a poverty stricken dump, and downstate will do nothing to help them. In Pennsylvania, fracking has brought thousands of good jobs to rural areas. In NYS, fracking has been banned so that the liberal elites of Manhattan can preen about their “environmental consciousness” and boost the exports of their favorite third world thugocracies, like Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.
The same story can be told in California. Victor Davis Hanson is a life long resident of the Central Valley and third generation grape farmer, as well as being professor of classics and a prolific author on Classical Greece and ancient warfare. He is also a fellow of the Hoover institution. He has written eloquently on how the liberal regime in California is destroying the Central Valley. Start here: “Lessons From the Highway of Death” by Victor Davis Hanson
http://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2016/10/27/lessons-from-the-highway-of-death-n2237316
Ralph, two states, Maine and Nebraska already do it that way.
It would take a constitutional amendment to require such a voting system, but individual states are free to adopt it if they want.
Get rid of the electoral college and watch a Presidential Candidate run on a Free Food platform. Just elect Chelsey Clinton and you will get free food. Big Cities elites will turn out and vote for the free food candidate and she will win the popular vote and the farm states like Iowa, Kansas, Indiana, etc will not be able to combat those popular votes.
I’ll see your Free Food Party and raise you the Free Food, Shelter, Clothing (designer labels only), Education, Transportation and Medical Care Party.
We’ll put a 110% tax on those evil rich, ie those with jobs, to punish them for daring to have more than someone else, when it’s only because of luck and privilege that they do.
Stop wasting time on something that is designed to produce an outcome consistent with the will of the people according to the Constitution. If you don’t like it please avail yourself to living somewhere else. No whining.
Yes stop whining!
Mod, will this post be deleted before it’s even posted, all have been before and I’m not sure why?
Go Electoral College! Save us from the nut cases!
Wow. I must be getting desperate.
There are 3141 counties in this country and Trump won 3084, Clinton won 57. There are 62 counties in NY and the Donald won 46 Clinton won 16.
Clinton won the popular vote by approx. 1.5 million votes.
In the 5 counties that encompass NYC, (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Richmond & Queens) Clinton received well over 2 million more votes than Trump. (Clinton only won 4 of these counties; Trump won Richmond)
Therefore these 5 counties alone, more than accounted for Clinton winning the popular vote of the entire country.
These 5 counties comprise 319 square miles.
The United States is comprised of 3,797,000 square miles.
When you have a country that encompasses almost 4 million square miles of territory, it would be ludicrous to even suggest that the vote of those who inhabit a mere 319 square miles should dictate the outcome of a national election
Add this: https://www.amazon.com/Shirt-Stronger-Together-Large-Black/dp/B01N75XE54/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1482335137&sr=8-2-fkmr1&keywords=Trump+County+Map+Victory+T-shirt
A picture is worth a thousand words.
“The electoral college is thwarting our ability to battle global warming”
Good!
Not sure why anybody would want to battle against global warming.
Warm is good. Cold is bad.
The nut cases that view CO2 as the enemy of humanity are the ones we’re battling.
Think of it–what if suddenly water was found to be so effective as a GHG that it became illegal to traffic in it?
Oh, wait! H2O IS a more effective GHG than CO2!
So why no regulation of H2O? Perhaps because it would be difficult to sequester the entire Pacific, among other things.
See how stupid the whole charade is?
Drought is bad, so is increasing rainfall intensity. Warmer is not good in places that already reach 35C and are getting warmer, like many areas in South Asia as well as the Middle East.
You shouldn’t joke about things like that Rocky. California just passed regulations against cow farts. Guess what that’s going to do to the price of beef and milk?
Chris, see “Surprising Results From Study: Moderate Cold Kills More People Than Extreme Heat”, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/20/moderate-cold-kills/
As for “Warmer is not good in places that already reach 35C and are getting warmer”… During the Holocene we have had warmer periods that have corresponded with increased civilization development (Roman, Minoan, etc.) and colder periods that have resulted devastation (Little Ice Age).
I stand by my assertion. If you have actual evidence that counters my assertion, I would very much like to see it.
myNym, look at the countries in your study. It doesn’t even include data for the hot climate countries. Where is data for S Asia – India, Pakistan and Bangladesh? Where is data for Africa, for the Middle East?
Hmmm, where are the cold waves that killed thousands? I can easily find heat waves that did so.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267708/number-of-deaths-globally-due-to-heat-or-cold-waves/
The Little Ice Age killed millions.
So what? We are not in a Little Ice Age now, so that fact is not relevant to the climate conditions of today.
If you think CO2 is causing all or most of the warming since the LIA, and you’re wanting to reduce CO2 to pre-industrial levels, then it IS relevant.
You can cherry pick the temperatures from 1900 on if you want. It doesn’t shed much light on the longer picture.
The Medieval Warming Period, the Roman Warming Period, the Minoan Warming Period, and the twin peaks of the Holocene Optimum were all warmer than today. The Eemian inter glacial was warmer than today. Going back further, our Arctic Ocean was once a swamp. In every era, warmth was a boon to life.
We are today in a (thankfully!) rebound from the Little Ice Age. By all indications, we are nearing the end of the Holocene. You can focus on more recent history if you want. Your choice. Speaking of which, in the 1930s there were concerns that the Arctic ice cap was melting. In the late 1970s there was concern that things were getting colder, and that the Holocene was perhaps coming to an abrupt end.
Globally, looking back over 500 million years or more, the conclusion seems inescapable.
Warm is good. Cold is bad.
You seem to be in an argumentative mood. I don’t argue. Feel free to have the last word on this thread.
It’s not a matter of being argumentative. But to say warm is good, cold is bad, is incredibly simplistic and ignores factors such as impacts on rainfall and the role glaciers play in supplying water to millions. And warm is NOT good once you get above 30C. You don’t have to believe me, the impact of temperatures on productivity has been studied in depth, and the correlation is profound. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603158/hotter-days-will-drive-global-inequality/
Okay. We are not arguing. Good. Your link leads to an article with a projective word “Will”. That does not address that which we know of the Earth’s past. Fine. Again, your choice.
You say that that my post was simplistic. Of course it was. If you choose to address my original post under a more mathematically accurate reference frame, feel free to interject an “On average” as a pre-reference. I thought that might have been obvious. Apparently it wasn’t, to you.
I have no dog in this fight. I am an engineer. If my understanding is not correct, I am open to counter argument or, more complete data. So far you have not provided anything of value toward either end.
If you don’t have anything of value to add regarding my synopsis of “warm is good” encompassing the last 500 million years on this planet, then I am really over, done, and out.
If it got colder, and all those glaciers that aren’t currently advancing do start to advance, there will be even less water for those millions who supposedly rely on melting glaciers for water. Can’t imagine what people did when glaciers advanced, and receded, and advanced, and receded, ad infinitum… You apparently have very little faith in the Human ability to adapt. Like, say, moving away from a coastline when the seas are rampaging towards you at a blinding 2mm per year. Rising to where they were a couple thousand years ago, I might add.
Chris, IIRC, the temperature is not rising in the tropics. Where it’s mostly rising is in the arctic.
As for melting glaciers and drinking water:
Jeff, who is advocating for a colder world? Where did I say that? Reducing the rate of warming does not indicate a desire for a colder world. As far as moving away from coastlines, of course people can adapt. The cost will be in the 100s of billions in the US alone, and in countries in Africa, there will be large scale migration as many countries will experience warming and drought throughout. Who is going to accept those refugees?
Re: “Chris, IIRC, the temperature is not rising in the tropics. Where it’s mostly rising is in the arctic.”
(Roger Knights December 21, 2016 at 7:36 pm)
Not only does it appear that the “average” temperature is mostly rising in the Arctic, it would appear that the small uptick of the average in the Arctic is mostly due to a warming not of the highs, but of the lows. That, actually, is a dangerous signal. It shows that the Holocene may indeed be nearing its end.
[During the last glacial advance, the Arctic was apparently warmer than today. Half of Alaska was free of ice. Meanwhile, the Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario) were being bottom dredged by about a mile of ice. The next glaciation will likely, again, flatten all of New York City. Warmistas wail and gnash their teeth about rising sea levels. That’s not the major danger facing our progeny. Warm is not the major evil facing us. Cold is.]
I’d provide links, but I’m done performing Chris’s searches for him. He pretends to be honest and intelligent. Seems to me he should start proving it.
Chris, good thing that none of those catastrophes are happening. Or going to happen.
Places that are warm are already wet, and even the IPCC says that most warming will be in places that are cold and dry.
I thought you were more familiar with your sacred texts.
Ironically all those red areas are populated by the people who hypothetically have the most to lose from global warming. They make their living off of the land and that’s the living that is supposedly most threatened by warming. But they don’t buy it, probably because they know shorter winters and longer growing seasons benefit them. But then most of the academics pushing global warming live in those densely populated little blue enclaves scattered within the vast sparsely populated red area. And it’s hot in the city. Score one for the common sense of the common man and kudos to the founders who recognized the need to give those red areas a voice in the government.
The electoral college was invented by the founding fathers as a compromise between pure democracy and pure republic. It had wisely functioned for over two centuries. And did just now against climate nutters. Which was the conceptual point centuries before the founding fathers could have imagined our contemporary lunacy. But they anticipated, and wisely prevented.
The electoral college is intended prevent the tyranny of the majority.
Again, Democracy is a form of Government. Republic is a form of State. Two very different things
“Democracy is the worst system in the world, except for all the others.”(Churchill)He be a wise man.
The Electoral College ‘invented’ by the founding fathers failed with the advent of political parties and had to be replaced with something closer to the present system. So no, it didn’t function over two centuries it only lasted until 1800. For the next 60 years it functioned with a built in bias in favor of the slave states.
“The electoral college is thwarting our ability to battle global warming”
Just what the “Founding Fathers” had in mind…do the warmists hear their own words?
This belief in MMGW is on par with the religiosity of Jim Jones et al
The city population concentrations sit on tiny geographical island pinpoints that continuously require gargantuan feeder systems of massive energy, food, raw materials from across vast expanses of the (so called rural) country in order to survive. The cities really need to show their eternal gratefulness for those external grid systems, highways that support their very existence; water supplies, railroads, road networks, feeder farmlands and on and on. They need to give their privileged heads a shake if they think they can survive on the island if they pull up the drawbridge even for week. Be thankful the system understands that without the whole show agreeing to pump the big lifeblood IV machines into the Cities’ arteries, there can be no show. Hence, the Electoral College idea. The System understands it must balance the country and by doing so, protect the cities from their own misguided sense of self importance.
Good explanation. “City folk” often think the world revolves around them when in fact living is made possible by the country folk.
Nothing that can’t be fixed by re-introducing wolves into the urban population. Idaho has been having all sorts of problems with wolves escaping the national parks. They don’t no what to do with the excess. I say ship ’em all to Seattle and San Francisco. End of problem.
“I say ship ’em all to Seattle and San Francisco. End of problem.”
Nah, they’ll just end up with a tarp, a stolen tent from REI, and heroin.
Let’s see…..
climate kook obsessed with his carbon fixation?… check
the obsessed is committed to having his way because he just happens to have his politics and the revealed truth of carbon?…….check
the obsessed finds that he can’t get quite enough people to cooperate with his revelation?….check
So of course the obsessed kook needs all of us to give up our civil rights so he can have his way?….check
And we are to take this person seriously, as if he is not just another deranged self righteous twit with delusions of grandeur?
You gotta be kidding.
This guy is a total maroon.
I thoroughly reject the idea that Hillery actually won the popular vote. First, she did not win a majority, which is what’s required in most direct election countries, otherwise a runoff. Secondly, there were an estimated 3 million illegal votes cast by illegal immigrants, which provided the edge she enjoyed. Hillery’s strategy was to win the popular vote, which was in jeopardy, while she considerd an electoral win a certainty. Trump did the opposite, but if the election were by popular vote, California (which accounted for Hillery’s edge) would have seen a lot more GOP votes, as they’re votes would then have actually mattered. Also, Trump would have campaigned in California and populous New York and certainly gotten more votes. Without the third party candidates, Trump would have gained a lot more than Hillery, as there were far more Libertarian than Socialist votes cast and most would go Trump’s way.
It is not valid to claim that had the election been based on the popuar vote, the results would have been the same. They could not have been the same.
“I thoroughly reject the idea that Hillery actually won the popular vote. First, she did not win a majority”
Good point. It’s always good to put things in proper perspective. Hillary got about 48 percent of the vote, this time around, and Trump got 46 percent. Bill Clinton won with 43 percent of the vote in 1992.
I just heard them say on Fox News that if California was not counted, Trump would have won the popular vote, too, by about 1.2 million votes.
There are studies being done now about how the vote went. We should get a good estimate of just how many illegal votes were cast in California in the near future. The current estimate is over two million, plus more nationwide.
The U.S. needs election reform. There are too many loose ends in the current way of doing things.
“There are studies being done now about how the vote went. We should get a good estimate of just how many illegal votes were cast in California in the near future.” What makes you think they will be looking for illegal voters? I would applaud such research but I believe they will be looking at all demographics except citizenship.
” What makes you think they will be looking for illegal voters? I would applaud such research but I believe they will be looking at all demographics except citizenship.”
There are people who are specifically looking at the number of illegal votes cast.
If that is fact then great! I look forward to the outcome. It will be enlightening one way or the other.
“There is no proof that 3 million votes were cast by illegal immigrants.”
No, not yet. We haven’t heard the final word on it, though. I’m patient.
There is no proof that 3 million votes were cast by illegal immigrants. And it is not true that third party candidates took away more votes for Trump than for Clinton. The Green Party, for example – that’s almost all Clinton votes.
Chris
If the system did not require valid voter ID at time of voting, how is it possible retrospectively to determine the number of illegal immigrant (or other illegal) votes?
I wonder about this as well. I don’t believe there’s a “citizen’s registry”. You can search on whether someone was born in the US but as far as I know it can only start at the state and sometimes the city/hospital is needed. Anyone know?
Javert, you can say the same thing about absentee ballots. I vote by absentee, I do not submit a copy of my DL or passport. By the way, I am in favor of national ID cards,I have no issue with that. I do have any issue with states like TX that make it extremely difficult for folks to get id cards, by having very few offices where this can be done, and extremely limited hours.
Was there anything like that scrutiny of the electoral college during the election campaign?
Were the losers in 1876 and 1888 as sore and bitchy as to-day’s delusionals, weepies, shouties shakeners?
No, snowflakes hadn’t been invented in 1888. They’d have never survived.
1876 was, I’d say, our only “stolen” election. 19 EV were disputed; IIRC, Hayes was down by 18. Rather than judging each by the merits (which would have ensured Tilden’s election), GOP congress voted to assign all 19 as a block — and then awarded the block to Hayes.
In 2012 Donald Trump said the electoral college was the wrong way to choose a President. Do you consider him to be delusional and a weepie?
I consider him an egomaniac who will say whatever it takes to get attention. Apparently it works for him.
Yes. in 1876 they were as sore. When Democrats took over the House, they had hearings on the “fraudulent election”, but inadvertently discovered that Tilden had apparently been attempting to bribe one of the electoral commissioners in the 1876 case That’s why Tilden didn’t run again in 1880.
the world is now spending $1.5 trillion a year on it – stop calling it climate change it’s obviously “climate dollars”
Nice one!
There’s a huge problem and disconnect with the “Hillary won the popular votes” meme.
1. As of January 2015, California residents who cannot establish legal presence in the United States may apply for a driver’s license if they can show eligible proof of identification and residency in the state. These driver’s licenses may not be used for identification purposes. By law, no one may discriminate against a holder of an AB-60 license, or use this license to attempt to question the holder’s citizenship or immigration status.
http://www.dmv.org/ca-california/ab-60-drivers-license.php
2. One year later, January 2016, over 600,000 illegal immigrants received their driver’s licenses. That’s at a rate of 50,000 illegal immigrants a month. By Nov 8, 2016, election time or 10 months later it is estimated some 1.1 million illegal immigrants obtained their driver’s licenses. Here’s the rub, go to #3 next below. http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/california-gave-605000-drivers-licenses-to-illegal-aliens-600000-illegal-aliens-hold-american-jobs-in-state/
3.On October 10, 2015, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a measure that would eventually allow Californians to be automatically registered to vote when they go the DMV to obtain or renew a driver’s license.
http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-gov-brown-on-motor-voter-bill-20150917-story.html
4. Chances are a sure bet that most of those illegal immigrants in California did vote for Hillary, illegally inflating her total popular votes.
5. Several other states also have similar laws and measures like California allowing illegal immigrants to vote with the help of their driver’s licenses automatically registering them into the voting system.
6. In retrospect, it is quite likely it was Trump who won both the electoral votes AND popular votes once the illegal votes taken out of the count.
7. Human-caused climate change? Meh.
I’ve read where Pew Research believes as many as 12 million voted illegally. That would put a real crimp in HRC’s claim they won the popular vote.
Links to support the statement of 12 million voting illegally?
Dr. Google search string “pew research 12 million voted illegally”
Link:
http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2012/pewupgradingvoterregistrationpdf.pdf
Quote:
“About 12 million records with
incorrect addresses, indicating that
either the voters have moved, or that
errors in the information on file make
it unlikely the Postal Service can reach
them.”
So a more accurate reference might be “up to 12 million” may have voted illegally in the past.
I found the above in under fifteen seconds. Including typing time.
Chris, what are you doing here? Are you intentionally throwing the Warmistas under the bus?
myNym, when did having an incorrect address on a voting record become equivalent to an illegal vote?
To legally vote in the US there is (should be) two requirements:
A) Prove you are a US citizen
B) Show where you live
A) should be obvious. Some fight it. If they do, they are being anti-patriotic, IMO.
B) is a requirement so as to indicate that you have a right to vote in that jurisdiction. An improper address indicates that you may not have a right to vote in that jurisdiction. That would depend on how far you might have moved. If your latest address is in Tijuana, then perhaps we would need to re-investigate A).
I’m not a spokesperson for PEW. I’ll let their opinions stand on their own data. But you seemed to be asking me for my opinion, so there it is.
Inaccurate addresses cannot be equated to illegal votes. From the paper: “In a six-month period, spanning the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010, more than 150,000 of its nearly 700,000 active registered voters—more than 20 percent— moved from the address on file with the county election office.”
Yes, so people move often in America, but that is not the same thing as voter fraud. If someone has a driver’s license and moves (which is highly likely, given that many states give 5 year licenses now), it would not be accurate to call them an illegal driver.
Sorry Chris. Voting is not equivalent to driving.
If I registered to vote in NY four years ago, and then move to NJ, I am not allowed to continue to vote in NY. That would be voter fraud.
What also is voter fraud is busing people from a non closely contested state to a closely contested state, i.e. voting under a fraudulent address:
(Under-cover video by Project Veritas shows Scott Foval admitting “we’ve been bussing people in” for “fifty years and we’re not going to stop now”.)
Verifying correct addresses is an extremely important step in fighting various forms of voter fraud. You might have known that. Or should have.
Sorry Chris. Voting is not equivalent to driving.
If I registered to vote in NY four years ago, and then move to NJ, I am not allowed to continue to vote in NY. That would be voter fraud.
What also is voter fraud is busing people from a non closely contested state to a closely contested state, i.e. voting under a fraudulent address:
[I can’t seem to get my Youtube embed working. For the video, ask Dr. Youtube about “Rigging the Election – Video II: Mass Voter Fraud”.]
(Under-cover video by Project Veritas shows Scott Foval admitting “we’ve been bussing people in” for “fifty years and we’re not going to stop now”.)
Verifying correct addresses is an extremely important step in fighting various forms of voter fraud. You might have known that. Or should have.
You don’t really need a CDL to vote in California. I think you’d be surprised by how porous the CA voter registration regs are. Basically, you have to sign your name.
I think a Federal civil rights lawsuit over voting rights could reform California. Alabama in the 1950’s seemed incurable, but forcing the politicians running California to stop diluting the votes of live citizens would have an effect. The current “primary” system in the state also seems dedicated to preserving a one-party state, and is therefore questionable.
Also, I recall that shortly before the election, Obama said if you vote, you are a citizen, or something to that effect.
Didn’t say it was. Do your own research.
How many illegal votes would you say was too many?
Sorry, above was a reply to Richard Baguley, but it ended up in the wrong place.
And Trump is absolutely right…. Had it just been the popular vote, Trump would have romped it in. He won against Hillary easily as it was. Took states off the Democrats that had been theirs for decades…. I’m pretty sure had he campaigned in California he’d have taken that state.
Trump will take California and New York next election. Mark my words. It’s over for the Democratic Party…. and probably for a very long time.
Once the truth of this Global Warming scam becomes common knowledge and once people realize that the American political class tried to usurp the American constitution in order to sell out Americans to a Euro Centric Global Government….. They are gonna be so pissed.
The Democratic Party won’t be coming back from this Treachery to the American People and their country. Not for a long time.
I don’t know for sure about NY, but CA has been taken over by illegals and their anchor baby offspring that vote ~ 90% Democrat, and it will only be much worse in 4 years. These are low-income socialists that seek redistribution of ALL wealth to themselves. Only the Dems foot the bill for them.
…and without further “footing”, what makes socialism appealing to these beneficiaries of redistribution?
Nothing.
They’ll finally have to go to work if they want the necessities of life; luxuries will be out of the question.
RockyRoad They’ll work. But these immigrants and their bountiful offspring will definitely improve their lots through a comprehensive redistribution of wealth and assets.
Basically they are in the process of taking over the state from the inside out, and their benefits will be like the spoils of war.
JH
Appreciate your enthusiasm, but you’re delusional about CA reforming anytime soon. As of a couple years ago, CA had 37% of USA welfare recipients. Just a guess, but recent illegal immigration has not reduced that number.
Slightly OT but just heard that obummer has just banned drilling for oil in certain areas and has done it in such a way that the Don can’t rescind it .
Yes but nothing “can’t be rescinded” unless it is made a law. All these last minute machinations by Obama are nothing but speed bumps. He’s trying to look good to the Soros/EcoFreaks/MarxBrothers and give them something to fight against when they’re done away with. I have the feeling that Trump won’t be PC when dumping all of Obama’s proclamations (because that’s all they really are).
I have the feeling that Trump won’t be PC when dumping all of Obama’s proclamations
=================
executive order xxxx – repeal executive orders: xxxx, xxxx, xxxx …
executive order xxxx – repeal epa directives: xxxx, xxxx, xxxx, …
done.
actually, bad law, and even bad amendments can be rescinded too
Specifics please.
The only thing I can think of is by declaring them National Parks.
Apparently more specifics can be found here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/20/obama-enacts-permanent-ban-on-arctic-oil-drilling/
I’ll withhold judgment until I understand more on the topic.
…that’s simply another lie from Obama. The guy hasn’t said much that’s truthful since being elected.
Here’s another thing Obama is trying to slip in before he goes:
http://www.wnd.com/2016/12/millions-more-for-global-climate-change-in-obamas-final-months/?cat_orig=politics
Obama sneaking in 1 final global-warming spending orgy
“The Obama administration is attempting to slip in another pricey climate-change initiative before Donald Trump takes office, potentially costing U.S. taxpayers another $90 million if it survives its unveiling – in Asia – next month. . .”
“USAID Resilient Cities Asia, as the initiative is known, would add yet another layer to the many dozens of U.S.-funded climate-related programs already under way in nearly 50 nations.”
end excerpts
Why is Obama giving U.S. taxpayer money to Asian cities? How about giving some money to Chicago, Barack? I bet you could reduce the killing of black people in Chicago substantially if you put some money into it.
Our current leadership are living in a completely different world than the rest of us. The good news is: We are getting new, real-world leadership in 31 days. 🙂
Without the Electoral College, politicians would focus on the most populous five states, and ignore visiting or addressing the needs of the smaller states and rural areas. These are the places that provide 100% of the hydro-electric power and nuclear power, 100% of the oil, natural gas and ethanol, 100% of vegan and vegetarian food ingredients, 100% of the seafood is caught outside of the populated cities as well as 100% of the beef, lamb, pork, chicken, turkey, elk, deer and buffalo. 99% of the fruit, grains and vegetables, 99% of industrial solar and wind power, 99% of the raw material (wood, metal, stone, fresh water) we make stuff out of, and where 99% of all National Forest, National Parks and National Monuments are (and the people that care for them so they can be visited). Historically, these were the places where the peasants toiled for their masters. While the peasants in the rural areas may be revolting to their betters, the peasants revolted in this election.
Actually, that is not true. Politicians spend their time in states that are close to 50/50 and have a large number of electoral votes – PA, OH, FL, etc. They don’t spend time in Alaska, Wyoming, ND, SD, etc.
Nothing to do with any bias in favour of rural areas.
You have a “winner takes all” election in most States. Each State elects a number of Electoral College voters in proportion to its HoR Representation – which is basically proportional to population – plus two – its Senate representation. So the result is reasonably proportional to population – the extra 2 per State make up 100 voters and the HoR representation make up 438.
The problem comes in that Democrat voters are piled up in California and New York. So all the 97% who voted for Clinton in NY get the 29 electors, while the 3% who voted for Trump got none. Fair enough. But in Florida, also with 29 electors, the 52% who voted for Trump got all 29 electors, while the 48% who voted for Clinton got nothing. This unbalance between the voters’ desires and the results is inherent in all single member elections. For years, in South Australia, the Liberal Party has won the electoral vote – anything up to 53%, but nowhere near a majority in the SA parliament. It has happened in the UK, and in Australia as a whole when in 1998 Howard won 49.02% of the two party preferred vote, and Beazley won 50.98%, yet Howard won 80 seats to Beazley’s 67 seats.
The only way to fix this is to ensure that the number of electoral voters is proportional to the votes received by the parties. In 1998 this would have meant that Beazley would have won in Australia, and in 2016 Clinton would have won in the USA. One may well think that we were both lucky with the results, but that is not a guaranteed outcome.
The only way to “fix” this is to leave it alone. It was done this way intentionally. It was not intended to be 1:1 proportional to population precisely to give smaller states a bit more of a voice. Your “fix” would be no different than a simple popular vote, further diluting the republican form of government that is necessary to prevent mob rule.
As far as fighting the leftist climate loons:
Wow. Basically any strong consensus for AGW at the universities is a sham and caused by the leftists having fully taken over the system. That needs to be exposed. And reversed!
Yep, needs some sort of watchdog and/or complaints commission setting up to investigate claims of politically motivated bullying in academia. Any demonstrated transgression should be cause for the offender to be immediately run out of the door with a size 12 in their over-polished trouser seat. This to override any considerations of tenure. We simply must reclaim academia from the grotesque infestation of leftists and put in place measures to ensure that can never happen again.
Both FDR and Nixon twisted some of the provisions of the Constitution like a pretzel.
However, the long term checks and balances tucked away here and there in the old
document have weathered the ebb and flow from Congressional powers to Executive
powers. States’ Rights were dominant until civil and foreign wars necessitated a move
to central government (and Presidential) initiatives.
The complex realities of being a nation with 50 separate state governments AND world
power essentially forced the United States into allowing aspects of governing to slowly
devolve to the executive bureaucracies known as “Departments”. The expertise that
had been held by Congressional Committees drifted away and the executive agencies
picked up the slack and the funding… often by default.
Again, we hear the echoes of arguments that took us from a “Confederation” of States
to the “United States”.
Individuals rights ? Those were locked into the Constitution by Amendments I – X;
forced to be set down in writing by the original States before they’d accept the main
Constitution.
“Big” States vs. “Little” States ? Those issues were balanced out to no one’s total
satisfaction back then… and this issue has resurfaced in discussion of the utility of
the Electoral College.
Executive vs. Congressional vs. Judicial powers ? As before, the debate continues
with the citizens sometimes paying attention, and other times not.
This election, the citizens paid attention to a wide array of personal political and
economic concerns. They voted for a change at the top this time.
Remember, this country was founded by propertied, armed, and successful
revolutionaries. Change and limits to change are built into the very foundation of
our government.
Tom Cort of Yale is putting up some fine whines without providing any cheese… or
popcorn.
We have an electoral college for roughly the same reason we have a bicameral legislature. Those who want to dump it should go all the way and abolish the Senate. Perhaps this is what Pelosi has in mind???
The Constitution originally had Senators appointed by State legislatures with the idea being that those few people would be beholding to their states and not other interests. The 17th Amendment changed that procedure to a direct election by popular vote. That began the demise of the Senate as now Senators are beholding to their backers where ever they come from. Repealing the 17th is the best thing that could happen to reduce the power of the federal government.
+1 AMEN!! And the EG was set-up for essentially the same reason. Because its the UNITED STATES. And at this time there should be more than 50.
97% correct. There is currently some argument that the 17th did not alter the Senate from representing the individual State. All that changed was who (Legislature vs. public) elected the senator. To change the intent of Senate representation of the various states would require structural Constitutional change.
But one of the arguments and as with all arguments there must be 2 sides in order to argue – http://themonkeycage.org/2013/05/why-did-state-legislators-give-away-their-power-to-pick-senators-on-the-origins-of-the-17th-amendment/
Originally Senators were appointed by state governments with the expectation that Senators would protect “states’ rights” over Federal power. Direct election greatly dilutes this protection.
Whether or not the 17th Amendment was ratified remains an open question for many.
http://www.truth-attack.com/jml/images/stories/PDF/cryer_MEMORANDUM.pdf
http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd656.htm
It’s anthropogenic climate change… correction, catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. Because climate change is just a silly bit of prophecy spread by people with liberal assumptions… assertions of uniformity and an secular lust for capital and control.
Huh?
“The Obama administration did not solve climate change, but it did make significant strides both domestically and in international agreements.”
Seriously?
BallBounces
Well, the USA agreed to not defend Obama’s red line; we agreed not to disturb N Korea & Iran’s nuclear programs, and we agreed to let Russia take the Crimea, we also pretty much agreed to let ISIS live peacefully in Syria.
Do I need to go on?
You left out US race relations which took a very noticeable negative turn. I’m tired of hearing “hyphenated Americans”. You’re either American or not. If not you’re welcome to become one by proving you’re a good citizen first which means starting by using the official immigration process. Like my grand parents did.
The reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind including the electorial college have no control.
Indeed. They simply don’t get that the Eco-Naz!s have yet to prove a thing about CO2, much less man’s minuscule contribution thereto, driving the Earth’s temperature.
The Electoral College (EC) was well thought out by the Constitution’s authors. It’s there for the same reason that each state has two Senators: without it, the smaller states would be completely disenfranchised. With no EC, candidates wouldn’t wage a national campaign. They would concentrate only on the states with large populations, and ignore the rest.
The EC forces candidates to address the concerns of states like Rhode Island, Nebraska, Montana, New Hampshire, and Wyoming; in a popular election, their votes wouldn’t count at all.
How is that democratic?
Eliminating the EC would also concentrate more power in Washington DC, at the expense of nearly half the country’s citizens — who would still pay the same taxes, but without any say in presidential elections. Yet that is exactly what the Democrats are demanding, now that their flawed candidate has been decisively rejected. They certainly didn’t complain about the EC after the last two elections, did they? No, they bragged endlessly about their EC score.
If the Democrats want to eliminate the Electoral College, the Constitution provides a straightforward method for changing the law — and the Constitution has already been amended a couple dozen times, so if the country agrees it will be a Done Deal.
The method was designed to be difficult. But it is also very simple: three-quarters of the states must agree to eliminate the EC. But you don’t hear any of the losers in this election proposing the required Amendment. Instead, they want to disenfranchise half the states with questionable and devious end runs around the Constitution’s clear and explicit language.
One final thought: remember when President G.W. Bush was in President Obama’s current situation? Media heavyweights asked him to comment on the incoming Obama presidency. (They wanted Bush to criticize the incoming President, creating a controversy that would sell plenty of newspaper and television advertising for them.) The media folks knew there were lots of juicy things Bush could say, which would cause the newly elected President plenty of grief.
But President Bush’s only response was: “He deserves my silence.”
No matter what folks may think of GWB, that was a classy answer. Compare it to the digs, jabs, and constant undermining of the new President by this outgoing President.
President Obama should remember that by next month he will be a ‘has-been’. He can tell anyone who will listen, “When I was President…” Instead, he’s using his last days to try and rock the boat, by endlessly criticizing the victor in this election. How is that good for our country?
Mr. Obama will soon be just a citizen like the rest of us. But in the mean time, his constant undermining of the country’s clear choice for President exposes this lame duck as the lowlife he’s always been…
…IMHO, of course. YMMV.
all of the above…
Thanks DB, especially for the bit about Bush.
“With no EC, candidates wouldn’t wage a national campaign. They would concentrate only on the states with large populations, and ignore the rest.”
Except that candidates DON’T wage national campaigns now. They ignore reliable blue states like CA, WA, OR and NY, and ignore reliable red states like TX, OK, KY and KS. They spend most of their time in the states that are close to 50/50 between the parties, such as FL, VA, OH and MI.
Which is the intent. Such states tend to be a better representation of the average citizen’s belief system. They’re not only close to a 50/50 party representation, they’re (supposedly) close to 50/50 in terms of their beliefs, too, i.e., there are fewer extremes such as in CA or OK.
Mark T,
Correctomundo, compadre. There is no perfect representative voting system in this country due to the fact that it began as thirteen United States. (Although now it might more accurately be called ‘The 57 States Subservient To The Federal Government’).
The President-elect waged his winning campaign strictly according to the Constitution. As he said, if the popular vote determined the winner, he would have run a very different campaign.
We wouldn’t even be hearing these EC complaints if the Democrats’ candidate had won, so this year’s carping is just sour grapes by the losers — who were very happy to brag about their EC scores of 365 – 173 in 2008 (Obama/McCain), and 332 – 206 in 2012 (Obama/Romney). They’re acting like spoiled children now because they lost, fair and square.
dbstealey, nope, this is not a spoiled brat rant. This is simply a discussion about whether the electoral college is a sensible and fair system. That’s all.
He wasn’t calling you a spoiled brat, Chris, he said the whiners on the left were spoiled children.
“But President Bush’s only response was: “He deserves my silence.”
We can be sure Obama won’t be silent. He will be leading the demonstrations. He is going to go from being the worst president evah!, to the worst ex-president evah!
dbstealey December 20, 2016 at 9:56 pm
The Electoral College (EC) was well thought out by the Constitution’s authors.
No it wasn’t, it was completely wrecked by the advent of party politics and consequently had to be replaced in time for the 1804 election.
Phil. is just nitpicking as usual. He says the EC wasn’t well thought out. That’s his opinion; here’s mine:
The Framers were very well educated. So was the average citizen. Back then they didn’t have television, or the internet, or People magazine, or Disneyworld, or social media sites, or similar time sinks. So they discussed things, including plenty of history. Even poor dirt farmers and muleskinners were familiar with Western historical figures like Homer, Abraham, Themistocles, and they were as familiar the convoluted lineages of Greek and Roman gods as they were with contemporary kings and Enlightenment authors. (To see how our .edu system has degenerated, just ask any “_______ Studies” PhD why Actium was important.)
For at least sixty years prior to ratification of the Constitution people met in their homes and in coffee houses to discuss what form an ideal government would take. They debated representative republican government, versus direct democracy. In Federalist #68 Hamilton discussed the EC, and (IIRC) Madison wrote about republican government in Federalist #10. Representative electors had been discussed for decades before the Constitution was ratified. But not all ideas or proposals were incorporated into the original Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Yes, they made misteaks along the way, like the CC, but those were rectified. Remember that they were inventing something brand new; a form of government never seen before. The 12th Amendment put the EC into the Constitution after it became obvious that electing a President and VP from different parties didn’t work well. But representative electors was certainly not a new concept.
Next, @chris: the losers in this election just can’t MovOn. What are they crying about? Answer: democracy. Trump won fair and square; a majority of state electors was simply the goal. He used the existing rules, and as he said, if it was a popular election he would have campaigned differently. The Dems lost because they had such a flawed candidate. But they still can’t face that fact, so their weeks-long sour grapes tantrum continues with no end in sight.
For Mrs. Clinton’s part, her entire campaign strategy seemed to be based on: “Vote for me, because it’s time this country had a woman President.” She certainly had no outstanding accomplishments, did she?
So now we have a President-elect who beat the entire slate of sixteen Republicans in the primaries, spending less than 10% of what they did to win the nomination. Then with a similarly tight budget, he won the general election over someone with every imaginable advantage: plenty of money, and the media, unions, and the .edu crowd in her corner, and better name recognition, etc.
Speaking for myself, I’m very happy to have a “can-do” outsider who owes nothing to any person or any special interest. A guy who can take on the entire ossified political establishment in both parties, against all odds, and win the election is the best candidate for the job.
As usual, YMMV.
As a non-American it seems to me that Obama is demeaning both himself and his office by the way he is currently behaving.
He answers to the ‘one world government’ cabal….
Right, the one world cabal that is so secret that no one has any evidence of its existence.
POTUS Trump by himself will have a hard time countering that.
Congress + POTUS Trump …. easy peasy.
You forgot to add the SCOTUS–that’s the final clincher.
The Supremes couldn’t overturn a constitutional amendment legally adopted to make the ME/NE congressional district-based system universal.
Yale Lecturer Todd Cort and President-Elect Donald Trump have something in common, they both hate the electoral college! Since Trump won, and the electoral college confirmed his Presidency, he admits the system is now”brilliant”. What Hillary did and what Todd Cort is suggesting is to dismiss urban voters by abolishing the electoral college. If Hillary would have won by the same margin Trump did, Todd Cort would be all in favor of the electoral college and would have been praising it in his lecture! This is a political war, and in war, the truth is usually the first causality. Many scientists who promote man-made warming are making pretty good money. With Trump in office, they are going to loose some cash flow to their cause perhaps a lot! But why should taxpayers pay for research that hasn’t been truthful? We had Climategate where they were trying to hide a ten-year decline while emissions were going up, no doubt it wasn’t the first attempt nor their last attempt when the data is not agreeing with their conclusions.
This year in the World Series, the two teams each scored 27 runs. So that’s a tie.
In the 1960’s World Series, the Yankees scored 55 runs while the Pirates scored only 27.
So that’s a win for the Yankees.
This concept is not an original for me, but I’ve looked up the 1960 score.
Anyone claiming that Hillary won will likely agree with the World Series results above.
This just shows they do not understand the game (Baseball) nor the rules of US presidential elections. Thus, they ought not be allowed to vote.
What a great example John.
This is the question to ask the Hillary won the popular vote people. What determines the winner of a baseball game? Most runs scored. The team with more hits doesn’t win even though that would indicate they played better. The rules are most runs scored. The rule in Presidential elections is most electoral votes received. Nuff said.
BTW, one of the better fall outs of the electoral college is that it produces a clear winner. No need to have endless recounts in every district in every State to try to find a few extra votes here and there that might change things.
Hillary Clinton, at 48.2% of the popular vote, DID NOT WIN THE POULAR VOTE. She simply won a greater %age than Trump.
Mr H,
I understand the point you make but please, please find a way to keep that woman’s name at a greater distance from the 2016 World Series Champion Chicago Cubs.
Hey John,
Try the same analogy with soccer … let me know when you figure it out … I still don’t quite understand it.
It is my understanding that at one time a soccer match that was tied in goals scored was decided by which team had more corner kicks. That is no longer true so the number of corner kicks is just a statistic for those who like sports statistics. Number of fouls and time of possession are other useless statistics that have no bearing on who is the winner.
Thankfully Climate Change alarmism is doomed for reasons beyond Mr Trump.
Called “nature.”
What thwarts the ability to “combat climate change” is that there is no scientific evidence for AGW.
Phillip just pointed to the elephant in the room.
And it’s a HUGE sucker!
And that the East isn’t fighting.
Elections themselves are to blame. They are a significant hindrance to government in general. A world without them would be so much sweeeter.
At the same time during the 20th century governments gone amok killed way more people, than all other disasters combined. So we may be better off with pesky impediments in place after all. In fact, that’s what Constitution is about.
Dear JH. I’m sure Europe can be blamed for all sorts of things but the global warming scam is internationalist in character and I think you have just as many advocates for it as Europe and the rest of the world. It especially seems to be driven by some organisations like Greenpeace who have contrived to sell themselves as charities and taking all sorts of tax advantages while waging a war against human progress and against poor people needing improved nuitrition to avoid blindness by denying them genetically improved crops. Their behaviour shames all humanity and is suppported by general ignorance worldwide.
By the way:
2016 is the first year Wisconsin had voter ID.
Wisconsin had a low voter turnout in 2016.
2016 was the first year Wisconsin went for a Republican since 1984.
There are 27 states with no requirement for voter ID and
Hillary Clinton won 57% of the popular vote in those.
There are 29 states that do require voter ID and
Donald Trump won 54% of the popular vote in those.
Clinton won 51% of the popular vote.
Trump won 34 of the 50 states and 57% of the electoral votes.
The rules count electoral votes.
See if you can connect the dots.
Need Help?
People who used to vote five or six times can’t do that in Wisconsin anymore. And if voter ID was applied in all 50 states left-wing liberal Democrats would probably have a difficult time winning in any of them.
So how can the people of, say California, ever hope to ix the voter registration problem when the invested ruling class would never allow it?
Once upon a time the mice decided to put a bell on the cat …
The federal government could pass a law that voters in federal elections must have proof of citizenship. That would solve that part of California’s problem. And it might shame the state into adopting the rule for statewide elections too. (Or maybe the state GOP could sue in state court and win.)
Trump’s reply indicates he knew exactly what to do to get both nominated and elected.
Clinton’s choices indicated she did not. This difference will no doubt be studied for years to come. Trump marketed an opportunity to drain the swamp in political Washington. Clinton demanded on penalty of social stigmata, that everyone with a vijayjay had to vote for the candidate with a vijayjay, as Oprah would say it.
Trump appealed to legal Latinos by offering to keep out illegal Latinos. He appealed to African Americans by pointing out they are getting screwed by what academics call, ‘the new Jim Crow’. Clinton demanded their votes because her party was their natural born representative.
The climate change mania was only an issue indirectly, the result of negatives piled in the Democratic corner that offered only increased energy costs, lost jobs, higher taxes and even more onerous regulation. Clinton apparently thinks milk comes from stores.
I am surprised that Clinton is surprised that the so-called White vijayjays didn’t put out for her. It turned out that the women think with another part of their body.
And a PS: Didn’t Kennedy win with less that 50% of the popular vote? By a little bit?
Crispin in Waterloo, You are exactly correct, smart women used their brain during the elections.
Being called a ‘deplorable’ was just the last nail she drove into us so called peasants.
To tell us we are uneducated and basically unable to cast an educated vote, was a huge slap to American women.
She’s so out of touch, she thinks we ‘deplorable women’ sit at home waiting on every beckoning call, like a Stepford wife, yes sir, okay sir, can I rub your feet sir, ect.
EJ
Thanks for speaking up. Another way to put it is to hear the ‘deplorables’ argument as saying ‘the little people’ are so stupid and politically uneducated they do not deserve a vote. This argument is always at the root of a Communist putsch. The argument goes that the proletariat is so politically immature that ‘certain decisions’ must be made for them, especially about leadership. CIA putsches are no different.
Consider how different that attitude is from the elites in 1776 who acted on the basis that all men were equal! Men, of course, is a generic term for people. They took the time needed to learn philosophy and apply it to the issues of the age in which they lived. I am not saying they were perfect, I am pointing out they acted in the interests of the masses by uplifting the masses, not oppressing then ‘in their own interest’.
A great many powerful and enlightened males supported the suffragette movement, as did a large number of powerful White men oppose slavery.
Aspirant politicians who feel that laws only apply to the little people need not bother filing papers. The masses have no need for self-appointed leaders.
Crispin in Waterloo December 21, 2016 at 10:12 am
Consider how different that attitude is from the elites in 1776 who acted on the basis that all men were equal!
Well not quite equal, slaves only counted as 3/5ths of a person and ‘Indians’ who didn’t count at all.
Indulging in Nirvana Fallacy, are we?
Strange that…there doesn’t seem to be too much correlation in this chart. Perhaps Todd Cort needs to review his beliefs.
(H/T to Eric Simpson on another thread)
It is virtually impossible to make an accurate judgement of correlation by visual inspection of plots such as these. All you need to do is to compute the correlation coefficient for the two series. This value is then compared via a method akin to the t test for its probability of occurring by chance. I think that in the case you put forward you may be surprised by the result. If you’d like to provide URLs for the data series I’ll do the calculations for you!
Robin: I relied on the fact that the parasitic oscillations due to inter-stage feedbacks in the Eccles-Jordan mono-stable double-diode flip-flop were amply capable of supporting the discrepancy. No?
But hey, I guess your way would indicate enough of an error to obliterate the divergence – such that the correlation that Todd Cort sees is true. as in TRUE! Heh. No way.
Harry Passfield
Great analysis!
(That is the kind of mumbo-jumbo we hear from the left all the time to try to gloss over .. the obvious.)
The temperature data is a time series with high autocorrelation, and no trend significantly different from zero can be discerned. CO2 is also a time series, but it clearly has a positive trend.
“It is this solution, brilliant at the time…”
In my humble opinion, their solution is still brilliant at this time. I am constantly amazed at how much genius there was compacted into that location at that time in history. Those guys wrote out a system of government that is the most well laid out and provided for the most contingencies and potential pitfalls in history, and did it in just a few short pages.
Ask a bunch of intellectuals and politicians from our time to write down the principles and rules for a new government and you’ll end up with a stack of paper three stories high and it will neither work nor make sense to anyone.
But I digress: The electoral college was and is genius. It prevents a bunch of elitist, self-righteous control freaks from being able to dictate to the rest of the country how we should live our lives, while still giving voice to the will of the people.
No one should be able to be the President of 50 individual states by achieving overwhelming support in three or four of them and little to no support in the rest.
And the leftists still don’t get it. If they want us to bow to their superior wisdom and leadership, they need to convince us of that superior wisdom and leadership. I can’t speak for the rest of the rubes in flyover country, but this particular rube doesn’t respond well to being instructed as to how stupid and racist and xenophobic I am rather than being involved in a civil conversation about the best path forward.
I truly believe that most leftists are just as concerned about our society being successful and prosperous into the future as I am (or at least I hope so), but until they convince me that their path is better through evidence and logical reasoning, I think I’ll keep my own counsel and I won’t be bullied into submission by anyone. That’s just not the way I was raised out in the backward, uncultured hinterlands.
SailorCurt
I would agree with you if the electoral college were elected by the public. In order to perfect the system, the delegates should be chosen by the public, not the party. In fact there would be no need of parties at all if the delegates were chosen that way.
Sailorcurt December 21, 2016 at 4:56 am
“It is this solution, brilliant at the time…”
But I digress: The electoral college was and is genius. It prevents a bunch of elitist, self-righteous control freaks from being able to dictate to the rest of the country how we should live our lives, while still giving voice to the will of the people.
Interestingly the Electoral College system, the ‘brilliant solution’, was designed by the elites of that time to prevent the hoi polloi from effecting the choice of president! As stated in the Constitution it was not intended that the electors should be chosen by popular election: “Each State shall appoint, in such a 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;” In most states the legislators chose their electors, i.e. the elites decided who would become president.
If the winning candidate didn’t get a majority then the House of Representatives would decide between the five top vote getters. Similarly if there were a tie then the HoR would choose between the two candidates, this resulted in the situation in the 1800 election when Burr and Jefferson tied and the HoR took 36 votes to decide in favor of Jefferson. The 12th amendment was introduced to fix the problem caused by that ‘brilliant solution’ which failed to take into account the propensity of party voting to produce a tie. Also the choice of an EC had nothing to do with ‘small states vs. large states’, it was specifically designed to preserve a balance between slave states and the non-slave states.
After the 12th amendment the choice has only gone to the HoR once, in 1824, and the second place candidate was elected on the first ballot, John Quincey Adams. That was as it was intended, the elites got to choose the president. In that election only half of the states chose their slate of electors by popular vote.
Interesting to contemplate the academically credentialed musing of this CU Boulder educated Lecturer in Sustainability; a product of our unsustainable higher education system arguing in favor of an unsustainable form of government.
Thanks for the Trump tweet. He said it better than I would have said it. Trump campaigned in the existing system, not la la land.
I was reading a typical MSM blog a few weeks ago. Usual stories about how badly the transition is going, how EEEVIL Trump’s picks for cabinet were, and how the Electoral College was an out of date, racist, sexist and everythingelseist mess that needed to be eliminated. Everyone knows that the popular vote is what counts.
However…if you just scrolled down to earlier stories, same blog, you got to stories written BEFORE the election. And guess what (no peeking!). Yes, indeed, there was an article that said that the EC was very, VERY important, because Trump would probably win the popular vote because he was a populist, and his dumb voters are just going to vote for slogans, etc. Luckily the system would save democracy.
As I’ve said, the Democrats have used up all the available hypocrisy in the observable universe in the last month or so.
“As I’ve said, the Democrats have used up all the available hypocrisy in the observable universe in the last month or so.”
Oh no-no-no, Caligula. You will soon find out over the next 4 years that, like stupidity, Democrat hypocrisy is infinite.
Oh, I can’t disagree. Leftist hypocrisy will outlive the heat death of the current universe and like gravity, will survive until the next one.
I can only hope I can get a grant to study it first hand, though. My method will be to sit in a bar drinking great local brewpub product and state my case, then show them their own words to prove them wrong.
I don’t know if I can get Mrs. Jones or my doctor to sign off on my grant application, but considering someone got money to study how to make glaciology more feminist, I think I have a shot.
Infinite and without fail.
Trump is a business person who understands marketing very well, I would imagine, and so he did the marketing he had to do in the electoral system to win. That’s what successful business people do — know the market, create a marketing plan, work the plan, and profit.
If there is any “thwarting” going on, therefore, it’s coming from clueless academics, which is not to say that all academics are clueless, … just the ones who played the game to get their degrees without learning squat.
… reminds me of the PhD student I once knew who could not compose a paper at a fifth-grade level of language comprehension. How is that possible?
I once wrote a two-page executive summary of a 100+ page plus document in about an hour by simply removing all the buzzwords, weasel words and filler…
The EC is thwarting the Climatist juggernaut, throwing a monkey wrench into their ill-conceived, harmful to America, and to mankind, plans. Turns out the founding fathers were pretty smart. Who’d have thought?
This whole excitement over the popular vote is pointless.
If I (were a U.S. citizen and) lived in Kentucky, I could reasonably expect the GOP candidate to win. Whether or not I like that outcome, I might not bother voting. Different party but same idea in NY and CA.
We have no way of knowing what the popular vote would have been under a system that would actually use it.
Michael Palmer
So what?
The notion that the Electoral College system is going to be replaced by a popular vote is nonsense. It would take the cooperation of 38 states to achieve the constitutionally necessary 3/4 vote for a constitutional amendment. There more than 13 less populous states whose voters have a disproportional voice due to thhe Electoral College system. They are well aware of this and are tired of being ignored and dismissed as ‘fly-over’ states by the MSM. They are not about to allow a constitutional change.
“It would take the cooperation of 38 states”
Yes, and lost in all the “Ruskies have hacked everything” is the fact that while the Democrats put all their eggs into the HRC for Prez basket, the Republicans have made progress in state houses and governors.
Aren’t the Dems supposed to be the smart ones?
So they tell us. I’ve never seen any evidence of it.
No one has addressed low voter turn out. For this election it was almost 60%. That means roughly 30% of the people are in political control of the entire country (debatable) and no matter who wins that’s a sad state of affairs. Voter apathy ranks right up there with voter fraud IMHO. Not voting “because it won’t make a difference” is no excuse to not exercise one of our most important rights as citizens.
In deep-blue or deep-red states, it is rational to conclude that your vote will indeed not make a difference. Behaving rationally needs no excuse.
There’s more to vote for on the ballot than just president.
Fair point.
Yet another reason to ignore the popular vote. A lot of people in California, NY, et al., who would have voted for Trump didn’t vote because it would have made no difference. Had the election been decided by popular vote they would have voted because their vote would count even if they were in the minority in their state.
The UK also runs a ‘first past the post’ electoral system, just like this electoral college (but on a ‘parish’ level, rather than at the larger state level). So we too can have a winner with less votes than the loser.
The system has its pros and cons. It favours big parties, at the expense of smaller parties. This gives more stability, than the Italian form of politics, which has a myriad of small parties all getting a few percent of the vote. It also stops the absurdity of Holland’s ‘Save the Puppies’ party getting two seats in parliament, by canvassing all the slightly dotty rich divorcees and widows.
However, it does mean the ruling parties have a strangle-hold on government, and are very difficult to get rid of, if they go astray or feral.
Ralph
Here in Canada our “first past the post” system elected a drama teacher with nice hair and a famous name. He promised to “look into” changing the system that got him elected with 39% (of 68% voting) because, as he said, its 2015. Have to modernize. Keep up with the times. Move forward…
You can imagine what happened…seems that the system that elected him is just fine. Never mind. Nothing to see here..
Claim: Outbreak of Foot-In-Mouth Disease Within Scientific Community
Boy, the greenies are in full panic mode now! I have to admit that I’m entertained by their breakdowns. Reminds me of my 3 year old grandson when he doesn’t get his way.
Well, part of the point of CAGW messaging is to justify ignoring rules in order to advance a totalitarian agenda. It’s not surprising they would attempt to use it to overturn an election.
The Electoral College is working just fine. Had Trump been more Putinesque, more Electors might have gone rogue. He is not quite that Putinesque.
So since 4 EC electors for Hillary went rogue (as opposed to 2 for Trump), I guess that means Hillary is more Putinsque than Trump.
http://www.davidsahlstrom.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/NewYorkFlooding.png
h/t to Tony Heller
Now that’s a keeper! In a perfect world James Hansen would be in jail by now or least an insane asylum. SLR was faster there in the 1950’s than it is now – https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/50yr.htm?stnid=8518750
If Bill Clinton had lost in 1992 Hillary would never have become a US senator for NY and nobody would have ever known her name outside of Arkansas. So the very chance that Hillary Clinton got to run for president was obtained when the electoral college elected her husband president in 1992 … with an even SMALLER “popular mandate” than Donald Trump received BTW.
Los Angeles county and NYC are where Hillary got enough votes to surpass Donald in the popular vote so let’s just cut off off all the electricity and other forms of energy those people get from coal, crude and natural gas, let them go back in time to experience “green” city life the way it was ~120 years ago. How can they complain?
And, of course, it’s nice to remind some that in both of Bill’s wins most of the voters wanted somebody else.
I haven’t been able to read all the comments. But I have read some and some of the things in the press in defense (and condemnation) of it.
The emphasis seems to along the lines “rural vs urban” controlling the election the the President.
It wasn’t that so much.
When the Constitution was written we weren’t quite yet a nation. We were a collection of separate States (just a few years before, Colonies) that agreed to form a central government that would give the individuals in this new nation an equal voice AND all the former Colonies an equal voice. (People identified as being a “Virginian” or a “New Yorker” rather than an “American”.)
The Senate was to give equal power to the States with the method of selecting the Senators that would represent the State’s government being left up to the State. (Sadly, that has been changed giving State Governments no say.)
The House of Representatives was to give the individuals their equal voice.
The Electoral College was an attempt, and a masterful one, to blend both goals.
I wonder if the “rural vs urban” meme dominates so as not to remind people of the original intent of the Senate? And so not have to squelch any attempt to go back to it?
Here’s a better visualization of how Hillary’s popularity was EXTREMELY concentrated in urban areas – http://www.vividmaps.com/2016/12/trumpland-and-clinton-archipelago.html
😎
Those who produce vs those consume….for free.
The best presidential election reform would be to chose electors by congressional district. This would even further reduce the effect of fraud in, say, Chicago.
Maine and Nebraska assign electors by CD. So should every other state, with the statewide winner getting the two state votes. If this reform were in place, Trump would campaign in the Central Valley of CA, devastated by Progressive lunacy, as well as in the Rust Belt.
The Framers imagined voters picking electors whom they knew, trusted and respected to pick the best presidential candidate, but the rise of the party system meant that the electors became faceless hacks and ciphers.
I would likie to thank many of the contributors above for presenting a perspective of your recent election that simply does not appear in any of the UK press, much of which is parrotting the “Hillary won the popular vote” meme as if some great injustice has been perpetrated.
You’re welcome.
A comparison to what I said here that might make more sense to you.
Before Brexit, would a UK citizen consider themselves a citizen of the European Union or of the UK?
“The United States of America” was a phrase to to give a name my country that was to mean exactly what it says.
If I recall, I had to buy an EU passport when my British passport expired…and I don’t recall being asked if I wanted to do that. Unelected MEP’s at work for us.
Peter Plail
When UK media reports Hillary won the popular vote, do they bother reporting she only won 48.2% of the popular vote?