At last count, Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 2.7 million votes. She won 48.2% of the popular vote to his 46.2%. This is unprecedented. Never has the loser had a lead of 2.7 million votes over the winner.
It is time to abolish the Electoral College.
When people say that the Electoral College protects sparsely populated states against domination by the big cities, I say hogwash.
Why should the vote of someone in a rural area count more than the vote of someone in a big city?
Democracy means one person, one vote. Nothing more, nothing less.
The Electoral College is a vestige of a mindset that feared democracy, that sought mechanisms to protect against the rule of “the mob.” The Electoral College was designed to protect the power of the slave-holding states. Read law professor Paul Finkelman’s essay on “The Proslavery Origins of the Electoral College.” See also this article in The Nation.
The Constitution as originally written did not permit direct election of Senators; they were selected by state legislatures. That was changed by amendment in 1913. The Constitution as originally written did not permit voting by nonwhites, women, and people who did not own property. All of that was wiped away over time as undemocratic.
Now we are left with the last remaining protection against democracy: the Electoral College.
When people write in defense of the Electoral College, I ask whether they would be okay about having their Governor elected by district representatives, rather than popular vote. It makes no sense.
It makes no sense that we elect a president who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes.
If the shoe were on the other foot, if the candidate of the other party had won, I would say exactly the same. We now have a national election and national media. Whoever is chosen by the majority of voters should be President of these United States.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As of last night, her lead is 2.85 million.
Secretary Clinton 65,746,544 (48.2%)
Donald Trump 62,904,682 (46.2%)
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When any suggestions of abandoning the electoral college are proposed — remember the following:
There are 3,141 counties in the United States.
Trump won 3,084 of them.
Clinton won 57.
There are 62 counties in New York State.
Trump won 46 of them.
Clinton won 16.
Clinton won the popular vote by approximately 2 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 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.
Large, densely populated Democrat cities (NYC, Chicago, LA, SF, etc.) do not and should not speak for the rest of our country!
Nothing changes with the one man one vote concept. You just have to consider that since we have a representative Republic the vote of each of us goes to a representative for us and is not the sum total of all of the votes as would be in a simple democracy.
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Veritas,
I thought the principle of democracy was one person=one vote, not one county=one vote.
Not one acre=one vote.
Not one cow=one vote.
Clinton currently leads Trump not by “nearly 2 million,” but by 2.7 million votes.
Democracy=one person, one vote.
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Joel, you or me on this one?
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For the founders, democracy meant mob rule. Constitutional Republic means that certain rights are enshrined and can not be taken away by mob rule. Reversion to dictatorship results when you no longer respect the constitution, and when the system no longer protects individual rights as it guarantees majority rule.
As with the senate, the design for the electoral college was intended to prevent a handful of cities from dictating and imposing their will on the rest of the vast “fly over country” as they like to call it.
Just because the passage of time and changes have taken place does not mean the founders didn’t intend to institute a republic with safeguards against tyranny.
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The Founders also believed that the mob should not elect the Senate. Senators were elected by state legislatures until 1913.
The Founders believed that only white male property owners should vote. That showed their view of the mob.
The Founders created a cockamamie system called the Electoral College to put the decision in the hands of wise men who would act independently of the voters in their states. That’s not the way it works and it is not the way it should work.
Democracy means one person, one vote.
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Did you use Snopes to fact check if that claim was true? Snopes says it is false. I often wonder why so many people don’t fact check these rumors/claims when they are being churned out on an assembly line by manipulating, twisted, sewer denizens.
It’s worth reading.
http://www.snopes.com/trump-won-3084-of-3141-counties-clinton-won-57/
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Lloyd,
Thanks for the fact checking. More fake news.
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Veritas, your data is complete baloney.
http://www.snopes.com/trump-won-3084-of-3141-counties-clinton-won-57/
In particular
Even if you count only 17 states (Breitbart’s ten and an additional seven), Clinton won 164 counties in those 17.
In any case, the fundamental problem with the electoral college is that it gives all state votes to the winning candidate even if the candidate won by just 1 vote in that state. This way, for example, 4.5 million blue votes in Florida and 4 million red votes in California got ignored at the federal vote count. What you are doing is making this problem with the electoral college even worse by picking winners and losers in even smaller areas than states.
Following your logic, we can pick winners and losers in the smallest possible areas: areas occupied by a single person. Then you will find that Clinton won since this method of vote counting is exactly the popular vote count.
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The Daily Beast did an interesting piece on this county comparison. For instance, Loving County, Texas with less than 82 people vs Los Angeles county in California with almost 10 million people.
I wonder if there is a college anywhere near Loving County, Texas.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/04/yes-trump-did-win-more-counties-than-any-republican-since-reagan.html
LA County has a lot of colleges so the odds are that the voters are better educated than the voters in Loving County, Texas.
http://www.californiacolleges.com/county/los-angeles.html
Here’s what I discovered about education in Loving County, Texas: “Loving County is served by the Wink-Loving Independent School District. The county’s school system was closed and consolidated into Wink’s ISD in 1972 because the enrollment had fallen to two pupils.”
Does the U.S. Constitution count individual votes or who wins the most counties?
This is one misleading spitting contest for the history book of rumors and myths>
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One person one vote is a doctrine that is applicable to the equal apportionment of legislative districts according to population and is not a rationale for the election of the President. Each legislative district must be closely equal in population to ensure the “one person one vote” principle.
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Veritas,
How is the governor elected in your state? By popular vote or by the number of counties he/she wins?
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“For the founders, democracy meant mob rule. Constitutional Republic means that certain rights are enshrined and can not be taken away by mob rule. ”
Let’s face it, the Constitution is old, and it needs constant revision. The founders were not gods, so while they came up with lots of advanced stuff, they also made mistakes. There’s nothing embarrassing about that.
Newton was possibly the greatest scientist in history, but he made outrageous mistakes. For one, he believed in and practiced alchemy. It’s also true that none of his revered physical laws turned out to be valid—they all needed amendments.
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Guess I’ll take it, Joel.
First of all, before today I didn’t realize that the translation of veritas was “nonsensical sophistry.” Everyone else commenting on this has done a fine job, so I’ll focus on the next to last paragraph, “Large, densely populated Democrat [sic] cities (NYC, Chicago, LA, SF, etc.) do not and should not speak for the rest of our country!”
I would assume, then, that you would agree that Donald Trump does not speak for the rest of the country. I would assume that you think people who live in, for example, Boise, Dallas, or the I-4 corridor are more American, especially if they vote in a way of which you approve. To make it easier for future elections, you should propose a constitutional amendment giving people from those places you deem more American be given 1 1/2 or 2 votes per person and, of course, the rest of the country can go back to 3/5, since there is a historical precedent (but we can remove the racial part this time). And please remember all those poor folks who live in those counties who vote for Democratic [not sic] candidates, or even those of other parties. But then again, they must not be real Americans either, so perhaps you can figure out a way to discount their votes completely. The New Yorker bound for the White House might like your ideas. But, according to your definition, he’s not a real American (I think we have a point of agreement here).
Now back to Joe so that we can put some more dents in our skulls as we try to wear down that wall.
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We are a constitutional republic. We are not a democracy.
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Darn, and all this time I thought we were a democracy!
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NLSedu “We are a constitutional republic. We are not a democracy.”
Why not continue the thought, as usual
It is incumbent upon us to restore our constitution as the supreme law of the land, so that our God-given rights are not revoked by democracy.
http://madisonproject.com/2013/09/we-the-people-a-constitutional-republic-not-a-democracy/
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To be more exact, we are a Constitutional republic with elements of democracy that allow us to vote at the local and state levels for elected representatives in school districts, cities, counties, states, and the U.S. Congress.
And our local, state, and national leaders are elected by the people who vote. Even the U.S. President is elected by the popular vote in each state that is then transformed into Electoral College Votes to decide who the president will be, who is also guided/limited by the U.S. Constitution.
Repeat, those who we elected are guided by the U.S. Constitution in how they do their jobs.
Then there are annual democratic elections where we the voters can get rid of anyone that isn’t doing their job and replace them if we are well informed, but too many of us voters are not well informed because of all the deplorable elements in the media and on the internet that lie and misinform to manipulate.
In other words, the people, good or bad, decide who has the responsibility to run the govenrment the U.S. Constitution guides. The people do not run the government. They just decide who does.
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Well, then, imagine the ’16 World Series still have the Cubs winning the Series, 4 games to 3, but the Indians scored more runs (They actually tied in run production, but if the Indians scored more runs in just one game, then they have a majority of runs).
Would you say the Indians should win the Series? No, because it doesn’t work that way. “But my Indians slaughtered the Cubs in three games by an avalanche of runs. I think MLB should adopt the ‘one run, one win principle.”
The Founding Fathers wanted mechanisms that would prevent a tyranny of the majority, which all Americans should today support and understand. Of course, you see this in the different ways people would be chosen to serve in the different branches of government. But, I get it, you don’t like the rules of the game and want them changed.
If you fear Trump and the Republican controlled government with states increasingly controlled by Republican governors and legislatures, you might hope for a constitutional government which supports the principles of limited government, popular sovereignty, majority rule with individual rights, checks and balances, separation of powers, and federalism–in short, all the things that our founding fathers enshrined in our constitution.
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Veritable,
Democracy is not a baseball game.
Democracy =one man, one vote. Nothing more, nothing less.
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I thought the election was over
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It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. Lets have an indictment before January 20th .
Much better than an impeachment that leaves us with Pence . When 3 million American voters are ignored. Its time for a constitutional crises.
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Be very careful of wishing for a Pence presidency. Would be exponentially worse than THETrumpster.
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“I thought the election was over”
Is there a better time to change a ridiculous system that makes it possible to elect a president with only 20% of the popular vote?
With this year’s voting numbers this means that the winning candidate could get 28 million votes while the losing candidate could get 112 million votes.
Isn’t it better to prevent such a disaster from happening?
This is so similar to global warming and pollution….
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Of COURSE it is. It was time to abolish it when it was established. Anyone notice that when Jimmy Carter runs around the world trying to set up democratic elections the most he establishes Electoral Colleges is never?
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Amen, I agree 100%. What is so outrageous about one person one vote? The person with the most popular votes wins. What an amazing concept that works in the rest of the civilized world and in all our other elections.
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I am impressed at how people complain about the process when they don’t like what it produced.
I am a Canadian with some understanding of your electoral system. There but for the grace of God and our electoral system goes Canada. Our Harper was a bright, well organized Trump with a well defined ideology, something Trump lacks.
My advice to my fellow citizens: organize, organize and organize. Obama put together a system for 2008, retool that one with millenials and start working on the mid term elections.
Like all free advice, take it for what it’s worth.
Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoy your blog posts. I spread them around here in Canada (I am a school trustee) because I see your problesm in public education crossing the border – it has started but has to be stopped.
Cliff Boldt Courtenay, BC Canada School trustee, School District #71.
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Trump has adopted an Ideology. Built on hate and envy. Not envy of wealth but envy that a neighbor may have what you don’t . A union worker a poor person on medicaid and when the Republicans gut Social Security and Medicare for those not on it yet . It will be envy of the elderly . They will get just what they voted for. LESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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In the US this past election season, a huge coalition of millenials voted for Bernie Sanders. He might have been the Dem candidate except for two things. First, states that disallow those who register as Declines to State, or as Indepdents, did not allow votes for Bernie to count. Second, the DNC wanted Hillary and insiders like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz did egregious damage behind the scenes to make that happen. She was caught by Wikileaks and was fired…but it was too late for Bernie to have a fair vote at the Convention.
I did vote for Hillary, but voted for Bernie in the primary…as did many educators.
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I believe the electoral college is important. It prevents the large states from over powering the small state. Small state gal here. Without it there would be no reason for those of us who live in a small state to vote. We are not a democracy. We are a republic. The electoral college is one of the balance checks in our system. It is important and needs to remain in place.
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Does that mean you, as one who lives in a “small state,” are worth more, more privileged, or somehow more vulnerable than someone who lives in a big state? Which is it? Does that mean people (some would say suckers) in big states like California and New York should subsidize poorer, smaller states–which is something they have done over the entire history of the federal income tax age? You write “Without [the electoral college] there would be no reason for those of us who live in a small state to vote.” Is that not just as true for voters in large states? And just how do “large states…over power…the small state[s]? Please provide some examples. This argument is just another example of how resentment can be incorporated into our political and legislative processes. How about gerrymandering? Good or bad? Are urban citizens less American than those from rural areas? Big state-small state constitutional arguments are rooted in the history of American slavery. The electoral college perpetuates its legacy.
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“Are urban citizens less American than those from rural areas?”
Yes!!
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Just kidding, folks!
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A republic is a REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or alternately, we are a democratic republic. We are both a democracy and a republic. ALL the presidents that I have listened to over the decades have alternately described America as a democracy and as a republic, including Lincoln (I was not around to listen to Lincoln). Are we Americans first or are we Mississippians first? Alabamans first? Floridians first? The electoral college does nothing for the small states, for the large states and anything in between. This small state argument is just a fig leaf to hide the real intent of the electoral college, namely to boost the former slave states’ influence. What is so damn hard about one person, one vote? It works for all our other elections. Now I will smash my head against the wall 6 or 7 thousand times because I am so sick of this utter nonsense and balderdash.
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Please save a space on that wall for me! But everything that’s happened over the past month has probably given me chronic traumatic encephalopathy already.
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Don’t smash heads against wall by long Johns and make the million woman march on Washington massive , Help it make anti war demonstrations look like a cake walk . He has to be de legitimized from the start . You will never reach his demented mind but you may convince some of those swing state Republican Senators they are on perilous ground reversing the New Deal.
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Thanks for the laugh, Greg. Instead of the wailing wall, we will have the head smashing wall. Actually, wailing wall works just fine.
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Few things are more tiresome than the statement that the U.S. is not a democracy.
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Firstgrademonkey…you could not be more wrong. Why should California with a population of over 36,000,000 not have a greater voice for this huge group of citizens and voters, than a small state like No. Dakota with a few million citizen/voters. One person, one vote, and I hope that your first graders learn accurate civics.
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Correction. The population of South Dakota is less than 1 million. To be exact, 853,175.
California’s population is more then 45 times larger than South Dakota.
In addition, California’s GDP (Gross National Product) in 2015 was about $2.5 Trillion compared to $45.4 billion for South Dakota.
It makes since that South Dakota and/or its many Alt-Right voters would want to exclude California from the election, because 61.5 percent of voters (227,701) in South Dakota voted for Trump vs 61.5 percent of California’s voters (5.589 million) voting for H. Clinton.
http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president
The Alt-Right are obviously biased, ignorant, racists, and fascists who do not care about being fair or even legal.
But I agree with the Alt-Right. California should be excluded from the results. In fact, California should be allowed to leave Trumpland, and become its own country along with Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii, or maybe just Hawaii since a larger ratio of Hawaiians voted for HC than California did.
If succession comes up for a vote in California in 2018, I’m going to vote yes.
The United States is now the fascist, racist, Alt-Right’s Trumpland. I will not be surprised if Trump makes the name change legal during his lifetime as the first for-life president of what is still known as the United States.
Let the Rust Belt States and the Alt-Right have Trump and let the environmentally sensitive, progressive west coast become a separate nation – similar to when India split into India, Pakistan and eventually Bangladesh.
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Thanks Lloyd for elucidating about So. Dakota…I used No. Dakota but your figures are even more stark.
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Lloyd “In fact, California should be allowed to leave ”
No doubt, much of the problems in the US come from its size. But dividing it up may not be all that great. What would happen to the great National Parks, for example?
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The National Parks might be at risk under Trump. With him it is all about profits and winning. The rest is bull shit, bias, and ignorance.
Trump energy plan calls for more drilling and fewer environmental protections
https://www.adn.com/politics/2016/05/26/trump-pledges-to-back-more-oil-drilling-including-in-alaska/
What can a Donald Trump Presidency do to National parks?
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-presidency-national-parks-520514
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Imagine what might happen if Trump opens up areas in or around Yellowstone National Park to fracking and that sets off the super volcano, the caldera, in one massive volcanic blast that would destroy most of the U.S. and possibly end life on earth with our species going extinct like the dinosaurs did.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/05/yellowstone-national-parks-supervolcano-animation/
The EIA estimates that there are about 2.9 trillion barrels of recoverable kerogen deposits worldwide, and nestled tight within the Wind River, Unita, and Wasach Mountains of Wyoming and Colorado is the largest kerogen deposit in the world, with about 1.8 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil. If all of this oil were economically recoverable, we could supply U.S. energy demand for more than 250 years based on current demand.
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Oklahoma loves fracking. Sadly, the fracking has been accompanied by a dramatic rise in earthquakes. How badly we treat Mother Earth.
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If the progressive west coast left the union, the national and state parks they have would be safer than what’s left in Trumpland.
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Now, a presidential candidate could lose while winning 78%+ of the popular vote and 39 states.
With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in only the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with less than 22% of the nation’s votes!
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The National Popular Vote bill is 61% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency in 2020 to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
Every vote, everywhere, for every candidate, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election.
No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps of predictable outcomes.
No more handful of ‘battleground’ states (where the two major political parties happen to have similar levels of support) where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 38+ predictable states that have just been ‘spectators’ and ignored after the conventions.
The bill was approved this year by a unanimous bipartisan House committee vote in both Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Missouri (10).
Since 2006, the bill has passed 34 state legislative chambers in 23 rural, small, medium, large, Democratic, Republican and purple states with 261 electoral votes, including one house in Arizona (11), Arkansas (6), Maine (4), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), New Mexico (5), North Carolina (15), and Oklahoma (7), and both houses in Colorado (9).
The bill has been enacted by 11 small, medium, and large jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the way to guaranteeing the presidency to the candidate with the most national popular votes and majority of Electoral College votes.
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Otto, I read both of your posts, but I do not understand the proposal you are advocating. Can you break it down to shorter sentences containing as few statements as possible?
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Thank you. Came here to say the same thing. Before you dismantle something put in place by our forefathers, it is a good idea to research the context and the original intent. The Constitution should not be altered for light and transient causes. Pretty sure that’s in there somewhere.
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There is nothing “light and transient” about two Dems in the last 16 years winning the popular vote by a large margin, only to be trounced by two Repubs who knew/know little about governing successfully. Bush gave the world the Iraq disaster, and Trump seems to be headed to giving the world deadly climate change and possibly nuclear war.
The Constitution must be changed ASAP.
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Hope the electors are prepared to undo what Russia has done.
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Trump and his shadows already have the public accepting his business deal with The Apprentice.
This smaller brouhaha deflects attention from his huge business ventures in Russia. This con man is expert at Three Card Monte…which, with sleight of hand asks which shell hides the bean…and is the gambling game played by other lesser NY ‘cons’ on the streets of 5th Ave., where Trump said he could shoot people and no none would challenge him. He seems to have done it all, figuratively, so far.
Putin’s pal, Tillerson, CEO of Exxon-Mobil and greed baron of the world running the wealthiest corporation which pays NO taxes in the US but gets refunds from the IRS, is Trump’s choice for the #1 spot in his Cabinet…as Sect. of State. Guess we will be bosom buddies not only with Russia, but also with Saudi Arabia which is the biggest ISIS funder/supporter and has madrassas worldwide teaching Sharia Law and a second Ottoman Empire onschlus.
If the Repubs and Dems do not directly challenge Trump over his ties to Putin, what comes next? Putin will sleep permanently in the Lincoln bedroom.
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Ellen-Your comments just made my day!
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No one I would rather make happy, dear teacher.
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That’s a good one Akademos. Spit my beer on the screen!
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The Amendment route to abolishing the archaic, anti-democratic Electoral College makes it nearly impossible to do.
A better way is the National Popular Vote
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
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From the national popular vote site: On January 13, 2008, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine today signed the National Popular Vote Bill into law. New Jersey thus joined Maryland as the second state to enact the bill. The enactment of the legislation in New Jersey came less than 23 months after National Popular Vote held its initial press conference on February 23, 2006. end quote.
Rah, rah for NJ. Corzine was not all bad and he did abolish the death penalty, too. I’m surprised that bully Christie didn’t try to repeal the National Popular Vote Bill. The NJ legislature is controlled by Ds.
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Interestingly, Abraham Lincoln earned only 39% of the popular vote in the election of 1860, but won a crushing victory in the electoral college.
Buckeye born, reared and college educated here. The economic problems of deindustrialized communities are a very real thing that neither Democrats nor Republicans have taken seriously during the half-century of globalization, automation, and capital mobility that has decimated the American working class. It’s not a new lesson for me or residents of my hometown. Sadly I think we’ll see more lip service to Rust belt states by both parties going forward as we’ve seen in the past. And it will again cost candidates in Presidential elections. The lesson doesn’t get learned.
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pnww,
The other 1860 election candidates–John Breckinridge, John Bell, and Stephen Douglas–all won electoral votes (unlike Johnson, Stein), so I don’t see Lincoln’s 39% as noteworthy. Unlike DJT, Lincoln did not have to settle fraud lawsuits before taking office.
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“NYC released its official results. Clinton margin increases another 161k votes, with overall lead now exceeding 2% at 2.84 million votes.”
And counting
My vote may not count as much as a cow in.Nebraska but lets get the number straight.
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Nasty!
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Look at the map of election results! It’s glowing RED…you now want to silence all the states for the few blue overpopulated that lean liberal and who will then speak for the whole country?? Wow! I’m would bet my life if Hillary won we would not be having this conversation! Additionally… Voter IDs seem to be the only way going into our next election with apparent voter fraud coming to the table…The recount began to show which direction that was leaning. I have NO problem showing my ID…An ID is needed to drive a car…take out a library book…why not to vote for highest office in world!? Unless….doesn’t fit someone’s agenda? Hmmmmm?
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You do realize that many of those areas that are “glowing RED” are empty, I hope. Using your logic, an unpopulated area in Utah that is the same physical size as the Chicago metro area is equal in terms of voting power. People vote and are supposed to be represented, not tumbleweeds. And yes, if the tables were turned, we’d still be having this discussion. Now I’m going to rejoin Joe at the wall.
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Growing up we were taught that “conservative” meant to preserve the best of the past. So, why the Republican obsession with voter IDs? Haven’t elections been working without them? What’s that statistic…the chance of voter fraud is the same as one of the Trump children working in a McDonalds?
C’mon. This is a naked power grab plain and simple. The G.O.P. efforts to disenfranchise Americans are embarrassing. I’d respect Republicans a lot more if they were just honest about that fact.
Despite my unhappiness with the results on November 8, I AM glad that lots of people did get out to vote….people who typically don’t vote. ( I just wish more of them had chosen Clinton.)
The reality is that as a 12th grade Participation in Government teacher I’ve registered literally hundreds of students to vote over the years. It’s one of the parts of my job I most enjoy. Because I teach in a more conservative area of Upstate New York, my vote, my views have probably been cancelled out many, many times over. So be it. But let our citizens vote.
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“voter fraud..Trump’s children” Thank you so much for that one! If you made that up, you should have copyrighted it. It could have made you some money.
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The Party of Lincoln is not the GOP of today. Reagan changed the GOP when he successfully convinced most if not all of the racists to leave the Democratic Party and support his presidency after Kennedy and LBJ supported the Civil Rights movement. Before LBJ and Reagan the South voted Democratic. That all changed and so did the Republican Party as the white supremacists and racists change party affiliation and flooded the GOP with new thinking.
Is that the reason that Donald Trump left the Democratic Party and became a Republican? it’s obvious that Trump was confused because he has changed political parties at last five times according to the Washington Post.
And the first time he registered to vote as a Republican was in July 1987 when Reagan was president.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/16/donald-trump-changed-political-parties-at-least-fi/
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John Ogozalek
Actually Trump got the same vote Romney got. Democrats did not turn out the vote where needed. Hillary got less. The Jill Stein argument don’t count because it is negated by the Johnson vote .
The Comey and Russian leaks argument carries more water,because in several key states it only took a small percentage to shift the election. Hard to see that a small percentage was not convinced that whether they voted or not there was going to be no change.
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Good point, Joel. What I saw and heard was anecdotal…. perhaps it was atypical voters replacing the usual G.O.P. rank and file…..I don’t know? People will be studying this election long after I’ve checked into the Old Teachers Home.
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On the map, China and the US look equal. China has four times the population of the US.
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People vote.
Rows of corn don’t.
Right now the Electoral College empowers each voter in sparsely populated regions with more than one vote for each voter in heavily populated areas. For that matter, those of us in those heavily populated areas tend to send more of our tax dollars to those sparsely populated areas than we get back.
I don’t mind the tax part. The rural poor need more assistance than I do. I do mind that they get more of a vote than I do.
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Also, voter impersonation is essentially non existent. We don’t need remedies for problems that don’t exist.
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We have voter impersonation .Many of those that voted for Trump are impersonating informed voters
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womp womp
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Nasty!
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Great line, Joel.
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Let me see, glowing Red was your description . Is that quite true ?.
The States do not have to be winner take all.They decide how to do it , Any state could decide to mandate that electors are proportionally elected. Or they could be by district (Nebraska and Maine). or they could be winner take all
Three states with a total of 28.5 million people had a vote difference of less than 77 thousand people that is less than a quarter of one percent of their total population. So not only are voters in the cow states worth more than voters in the States where the population lives. Voters in every state of the Union are disenfranchise by our winner take all electoral college system. Had those three states gone Blue by a total of 3 votes, would you call that glowing Blue.
By the way if those voters were proportionally elected Trump would not be President. He would be a picture on toilet paper or a door mat . I still might buy that toilet paper.
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Nasty!
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Openminded
Further even though in person voter fraud is extremely rare. Bush looked for it for five years and found almost none. I am not at all against a voter ID . You should be able to get it with out jumping through hoops. That is not the case. Not when a gun permit is an ID and a student ID is not . Not when an inner city DMV office could have a 2hr line and one in the suburbs none . .Not when you make the places it can be obtained easy for some communities and not others. That is voter suppression. You should be able to get the documentation as easily as buying a stamp and the ID equally easy. That is not what you want. You want Jim Crow.
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Voter ID laws make it more difficult for the poor and elderly as they may not drive, and the E-verify places are too expensive for them. My mother lived to 90 and never had a license, but she always voted.
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retired teacher
I am not disagreeing
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As a geography teacher, you need to learn about map analysis. The map of the United States is quite deceptive when it comes to relative sizes. Just because a state is big in area doesn’t mean that the state has a large population. In fact, in most cases (California and Texas being the exceptions), the larger states in area have smaller populations.
My 9th graders are always amazed to learn that Russia has a fairly small population, even with its huge area. But they’re 9th graders. You should have known this area vs. population dichotomy by now.
Another reason that social sciences need to have more prominence in public education.
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Getting rid of the Electoral College will be more difficult, almost impossible, now that the GOP has learned out to subvert it to their purposes and win elections by rigging the system somehow. It would be easier for the West Coast including Hawaii to leave the union and either join Canada if Canada will have them or become a separate nation.
Would that mean a 2nd Civil War?
It’s obvious that Trump knew what he was talking about when he repeatedly said the system was rigged, but he never said who rigged it, the GOP.
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You are slightly wrong on original Constitution and voting. It did not prohibit those groups from voting but it also did not guarantee. Free. Blacks voted in a majority of the original 13 states at some point well before the 15tj Amrndment. Woman voted in a. Inner of states primarily in the West before the 19th Amendment. In fact a woman had already been elected Hovernor of Wyoming. Georgia allowed 18 year olds to vote before they were guaranteed that right by Amendment.
On electoral college it would only take 14 small states with a tiny fraction of thr population to block an amendment. Instead state legislatures can move to adopt the National popular vote initiative to accommodate the same result. So far states with 160 electoral votes have already done do
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I am pro-electoral college –at least in theory. I believe there should be breaks on the ill-informed, passion-driven mob when it makes catastrophic choices, as it has just done. Just as the free market generally works well but has failures, democracy generally works well but has failures too that must be corrected for. However it seems that the EC has been neutered by states that force electors to be faithful to their candidate rather than to their own best judgment and the common good, which was the original idea.
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The original Idea was that the Masses could not be trusted to vote for President or their Senators .
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I think today’s liberals have a naive faith in the masses. I think we might acknowledge the possibility that Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison and Co. might have understood some home truths that we have blinded ourselves to. Doesn’t Trump’s election shake your faith, at least a little?
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The Founders must be rolling in their graves.
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ponderosa
No because he was not elected, he lost. Because of the Electoral college he will be president . I may agree with that if we are going to have this archaic system then let the voters vote .
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Electors vote
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He barely lost. The elites are prone to corruption and even evil, but they are better-informed and so less prone than the masses.
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The genius of the Constitution is checks and balances. The electoral college is a check on one very powerful force that is quite susceptible to grave error and even evil: the under-informed masses.
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The checks and balances did not work in 2000 or in 2016. Clinton got nearly 3 million votes more than Trump. We got a bad joke for a president, not Jefferson or Madison or Frederick Douglass.
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ponderosa
42% did not vote, of those that did, he got 46 % . 2% less than the winner. It is not hard to argue that of that fraction of the voting public that voted for him,a good portion were making a rational economic decision from any number of perspectives. Be they small business owners, farmers or wealthier individuals, typical republicans .
I love the founders but perhaps as with slavery this was more of a class issue and had little to do with altruistic visions of a new republic. .
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Diane, I agree that the Electoral College is not working as planned. That’s a good argument for abolishing it. But for me the issue does prompt a reexamination of assumptions about democracy. It seems to me there can be benign non-democratic regimes and wicked democratic regimes. Is my allegiance to democracy per se or to enlightened, just leadership? Which is the bigger evil: non-democratic leadership or ignorant leadership?
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We deride free market fundamentalism. Maybe we should deride democratic fundamentalism too.
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Democracy is usually the best means to the end –an enlightened and just regime. But perhaps it’s a mistake to view it as an end in itself.
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I don’t see how any sane person could not at least begin to question their faith in democracy after Trump’s election. Golden Age China’s system of rule by highly-educated, refined scholar-bureaucrats starts to look good. To enter this ruling clique, you had to steep yourself in Chinese poetry (among many other things). Imagine sensitive poets in the place of De Vos, Bannon, Tillerson, Flynn and the rest of the coarse, mean and vulgar band.
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Still doing my processing and wisdom-gathering on this issue but it sounds right to make a change. However, would those who feel it’s time for a change feel the same way if the exact same situation were applied but Hillary had won? This is a formula that I use to seek my own truth…
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Kindergarten,
Democracy means one person, one vote, no more, no less. Without regard to who wins or loses.
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But a republic does not.
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Yes it does. A republic still means one person, one vote. It’s just that there are then representatives that vote for bills for us. In fact, in order to help with the one person, one vote idea, Congressional and state legislative districts are redrawn every 10 years and each district in the state HAS to be equal in population.
The problem with Congressional representation comes in the fact the Congress has not grown to meet demand over the years. The number in the House of Representatives was capped at 435 in 1929, and so now there are far more people per Congressmen in states with large populations than in smaller states.
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A suggested reading list for Firstgrademonkey:
Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy, by Robert Wiebe (If you can only read one, this is it.)
The American Revolution: A History, by Gordon Wood
Understanding the Constitution, by Corwin and Peltason
The Debate on the Constitution (2 volumes), published by the Library of America
Quarrels That Have Shaped the Constitution, by John A. Garraty (ed.)
Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, by James McPherson
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan
I would also highly recommend Henry Adams’s histories of the Jefferson and Madison administrations, which are available in two volumes from the Library of America, and James Flexner’s biography of George Washington.
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It’s time for the Clintonistas to quit whining about the results of their candidate’s atrocious electioneering/campaigning. At least Jill Stein had the balls to legally challenge the outcome where she believed it needed to be challenged.
Not that I wouldn’t mind seeing the EC abolished and just go with a straight up popular vote with the winner needing 50% + 1 of the voting age population needed to win.
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Duane,
I haven’t seen any Hillary whining. I have repeatedly read sufferers of Hillary Derangement Syndrome, who continue to says she should be banished from the planet. She would have been a great president. That’s not whining. That’s my honest view. Instead we have a reactionary narcissist.
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Can’t disagree with your last sentence. Thoroughly agree. Perhaps we need to have a bit more of Gloria Gaynor’s attitude, eh!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBR2G-iI3-I
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It’s not about whining, Duane, it’s about changing a ridiculous system which makes it possible for the winning candidate to get only 20% of the popular votes, so the losing candidate would get 80% of the votes.
Can you imagine what would happen if something remotely close occurs during an election?
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Hope the electors show a repudiation of stupidity, ignorance and tragic desperation.
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Still Tweeting, knocking the news: NBC and CNN.
What a superior mind. Must be the genes.
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https://www.google.com/amp/www.mediaite.com/online/trump-attacks-nbc-cnn-on-twitter-so-biased-inaccurate-and-bad/amp/?client=safari
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Electoral College representation is the governing equivalent of high stakes testing. Only those states that count (pun intended) get any attention.
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“Now we are left with the last remaining protection against democracy: the Electoral College.”
Except for the Senate.
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How about the fact that all the cabinet members are chosen by the winning presidential candidate—even if the vote count was close to 50-50%?
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In a representative government, the list is almost endless.
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