Posted on 08/26/2016 2:51:36 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
You are right. The Constitution was originally framed without political parties in mind. Most electoral votes was President, 2nd most was Vice President. Had to be changed after the election of 1800 with the 12th amendment.
But the winner-take-all approach used by most states is not required by the Constitution. A way to better reflect the popular vote and to bring more states into play would be the system Nebraska uses. The most votes in each Congressional District gets one elector and the most votes in the entire state get two electors. That way a Republican would have a shot at at least some of California’s electors.
Paragraphs are your friend
The EC exists because otherwise population concentrations would overwhelm the interests of more rural areas it happens to be a very good way of electing presidents
The founders wanted the winner to have wide support across the country, rather than deep support in just a few states, as a way of avoiding civil war.
In the election of 1860, the anti-Lincoln vote was split among three candidates, resulting in Lincoln winning with just 39.8% of the popular vote, and all his support in the North. The Civil War followed immediately.
Buck up.
Trump will win because of the EC
Get Out The Vote
Well, you’ve hit upon the reason our system may be in the process of breaking down. The country was founded on the belief that power would rest with an electorate that was both educated enough to understand the nature of their system of governance, and would honor those principles upon which the country was founded. Our latest generation of so-called leaders certainly lack the latter, and the former has not been the case for some time now. Just look at some of those MRCTV videos taken on college campuses. Our upcoming generation of “the best and brightest” obviously isn’t that, and in most cases don’t have a clue about how our system is supposed to work and the danger inherent in having an electorate motivated by greed and material desires rather than higher principles.
I know, right? (As kids say) The Founders weren't using mathematics to determine who should be president. Arithmetic, maybe. I never thought of math as a way to shorten the word, arithmetic. Anyway it isn't about science, which is supposed to be about fact and logic, it's about politics which is a very emotional subject at times. You have to have a system which tempers the results of emotionally driven decisions because wars can start or genocides can happen or communists could take over.
The consolidated media being the instant debility IMO:
mandate ala carte cable, and remove anti-First Amendment licensing restrictions.
“Since each state is given two free electors regardless of how few people live there...”
Shows you how ignorant these people are ... 1 elector for each representative, 1 for each senator for each state. Probably a common core grad!
I appreciate.
Parties can overcome the divisions of power the Founders structured; but not properly- ie:by compromise- but by their discipline.
Those two terms of Washington secured a lot of that needed structure before parties then took over the system.
As I explained at my links, the electoral system was designed to avoid partisan representation in the chief exec. As we see today, partisan interests are deadly to republics.
Polybius characterized the problem as “...the automatic handing down of the privileges of a particular form of government to future generations without their ever having to internalize for themselves the discipline necessary to maintain those privileges.”
And showed that it destroyed any ‘simple’ (as opposed to complex- or mixed) constitution.
http://mlloyd.org/mdl-indx/polybius/polybius.htm#ChapterOne
The original intent of the Electoral College was that each Elector (member of the House of Representatives) would cast their electoral vote for the candidate that received the majority of votes in their Congressional District. That way the President would reflect the views of the people at large. There would be no such thing as winner take all on a statewide basis.
The logic of this was that large urban districts (better organized and voting as blocks) would not outweigh all others and cause all electoral votes statewide to be cast for one individual.
All Congressional Districts throughout the nation had the same number of people. Hence the original intent was that the President elected would reflect the feeling of the state’s population as a whole, rather than large urban area that could get out the vote.
Remember that Senators were appointed by the state legislators, or Governor from each state, and represented the interest of each state, rather than as present, with large money interests contributing to candidates, and hence influencing them once in office.
If the original intent had bee followed in the past, the President in each case would have reflected the same views as the House of Representatives in any election.
That is why one or two large cities, with well organized political organizations can sway an entire states outcome. With voter fraud, it becomes a nightmare.
Absolutely, hellary knows just how to rig the system and has no problem with blackmail and payoffs!
The one thing to strongly consider is that we are a Republic, not a Democracy. The Founding Fathers in no way wanted our system of government to be a Democracy, which they viewed as mob rule.
So those wanting the President to be elected by a nationwide simple majority, forget all the shenanigans that go on with the winner take all system now in place.
One political party exists today, that totally believes “the end justifies the means”. That party controls most of the media, demonizes the loudest, ignores any illegality in their candidates, intimidates and blackmails those with a faint heart, and cheats the most. Sounds a lot like Fascism.
It is not the Republican Party, nor Donald Trump, that fits this description. Quit tearing each other apart, and face the common enemy. It is an enemy that will use all weapons at its disposal to cause Conservative voters turn on each other and stay home, thus allowing another Socialist (in Democrat clothing) to be elected. They are intent upon turning our Republic into a third world dictatorship. They want a dictator, a king, a strong ruler, but will end up with chaos.
The
Maybe so, but then maybe not. The Constitution seems to have been written with the expectation that the Electoral College would not be sufficient to elect the president on a regular basis. In early decades of the U.S. it was not uncommon for three or more major party candidates to compete in a presidential election, so the potential for plurality results was much higher back then.
I agree completely, I don’t think Trump is on top of this just like the delegates. This is a problem.
Bravo my friend!
Both the author of the article and the professors mentioned, should read The Federalist Papers.
This topic is covered at length.
TWB
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