Posted on 11/08/2016 8:32:39 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
It may take as long as it did for Britain to get rid of the hereditary House of Lords, but after 2000 and this year, they aren't going to let it rest.
Obama gave them the illusion that they had a lock on the electoral college like the Republicans did in the Reagan era.
Finding out that that's not true, and that their big votes from California, New York, and Illinois don't win them the election will make them determined to change the system.
One more advantage of an electoral college: it means the winner needs to have broad support across the entire country, rather than heavy support in just one region.
The last president we had who had just regional support was Abraham Lincoln in 1860. His support, in a 4-way race, was limited to just the North. His victory precipitated a bloody civil war.
Only then, when Presidents didn't owe political debts, could they be expected to fullfil their duty to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
The Framers would recoil at the idea of limiting the practical vote of state electors to one of two nominees of outright political factions.
bump
If we did not have the Electoral College, none of the sparsely populated states would have any kind of say in who is elected president.
The Founders were brilliant.
Best country ever! :-)
What you said! LOL!
I think they would be happy with yesterday’s results. :)
Exactly!!!
People living in small, sparsely populated states, would never get a say in who is the president.
Pure genius!!!!
Thank you, Mssrs Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. You left a distinguished legacy.
Well, the founders themselves hoped that there would be no parties. Washington went on record about that.
One of two? Well practically we have an oligarchy, but would it ever be possible that a state would manage to be won by a third party? So then what happens (e.g. hypothetical Johnson electors).
I know the founders deplored “factions” (What we would call political parties.) Unfortunately its human nature to “factionalize”. Best example is the old joke about Italian Politics, put 3 Italians in a room. They will leave having formed 5 political parties. So the founders designed a system that would ultimately reduce the number of factions down to two. It doesn’t matter what they are called, Republicans or Democrats , Whigs or Free-Sailors it all comes down to the original argument that Federalist had with Anti-Federalist centralized power or dispersed power. Two parties from possibly many will always coalesce around that issue.
Idaho Trump electors report ‘barrage’ of harassing messages urging them to change votes
Spokesman ^ | Nov 14, 2016 | Betsy Z. Russell
Posted on 11/14/2016, 10:37:07 PM by KeyLargo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3494307/posts
Sorry for the oh-so-tardy reply...
My notion differs from the ‘popular vote’ by giving voice back to EACH Congressional district.
For example, In Ohio (my home state), the populations of Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus presently control the vote of the entire state’s Electoral Votes.
In a model as I propose, each Congressional district controls the EV it represents, and the population concentrations don’t carry the overwhelming impact that they do, at present. My district, here in south central Ohio, has the same voice as the district that is Columbus, which is clearly NOT the case in today’s model (winner take all).
Regarding a strict democracy model, using popular vote as the mode of casting/counting ballots, it’s the opposite. On a national scale, and given the general 55-45 types of national elections we’ve come to see as ‘normal’, the population centers of the nation would control the entire national political landscape; New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and Philadelphia would hold sway in EVERY national election.
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