Electorial college

[Jeb21]

I do wish that Gerrymandering would become illegal. It is stupid.

 

[substratum]

The Federalist system and the Electoral College is based upon sovereign states and their delegates, not counties, so those sorts of arguments seem to be a lot of tire spinning. Great graphics, but political scientists look at this game by states.

The Founding Fathers that adopted the Electoral College and its rules were absolute prophets of Federalism. The system protects the smaller states who would always be a minority in a popular vote national election, from the tyranny of the majority in national elections. Of course, the Founding Fathers had no idea that California would exist, or that any particular state would become as loony as CA. They were more worried about Virginia and New York back in those days.

One illustrative statistic from the 2016 Presidential Election is this: If you remove the Hillary Clinton margin of victory in California, it erases the national popular vote margin of victory for Clinton in the combined 49 states/territories, and puts her down by 1M+ votes. This demonstrates that the system worked EXACTLY like it was supposed to. The brilliance of the Electoral College is that no state can influence a Presidential Election by any higher percentage than their respective representatives to the United States Congress (a number = to their Representatives + Senators) (Article II, Section 1, U.S. Constitution).

Another interesting statistic is that ONLY <2M more people voted in the Presidential Election in CA than in FL, which is largely attributable to Clinton, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz and the DNC rigging the Democrat Party Primary/Nominating process. MANY of the Bernie supporters simply didn't vote in the Presidential election.

 

[substratum]

The US is a Democratic Republic....the Democrats (majority rules) the Republicans (equal representation)...the House and the Senate, respectively. The 17th amendment changed the way senators were appointed...moving from appointment by the state's legislatures to as popular, national vote. On that day the republic took a big negative step backwards. The eletcoral college is another "representative" institution and if you value your way of life, think verrry carefully about advocating for elimination of the electoral college.

Democracy fails when the majority oppress the minority...as is sure to happen over time. California, New York and Illinois would dominate our lives....see ya AR-15's, 30 round magazines, heck...guns altogether eventually. Unfunded mandates such as Obamacare would not have passed before the 17th amendment...most states actually balance their budget and all programs must be funded before becoming law in that scenario. Our opportunity to better ourselves would evaporate before our eyes as there would be a 'ruling class' and us peasants....don't you find it interesting that some of the most horrible places on earth have elections too...but still they are crummy places to live...far worse than choosing between a career criminal in Hillary and a bombastic businessman in Trump.

As always, be careful what you wish for as you might get it!

I couldn't agree more. The original intent for U.S. Senators is that they would represent the interests of the sovereign states, which is why the state legislatures appointed/elected them. That's why they used to call the House, "The Peoples House." Now, there is no real differentiation between the two (other than how much it costs to win a seat). It truly disrupted the thinking and consequent decision-making in DC when both houses of the Congress were beholding to the people, as opposed to one beholding to the people, and the other beholding to the state.