Why are tax payers stuck with paying for campaign rally's

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a more perfect union, means that a union that is more perfect that the one it replaced. Similar to closer to perfect. perfect has also a meaning to completeness.

 

In spite of your post being full of personal insults, I'll take that on.

https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/electoral-college

"The original purpose of the Electoral College was to reconcile differing state and federal interests, provide a degree of popular participation in the election, give the less populous states some additional leverage in the process by providing “senatorial” electors, preserve the presidency as independent of Congress and generally insulate the election process from political manipulation."

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation...ege-and-why-efforts-to-change-it-have-stalled

"They were deciding whether slaves in Southern states should be considered property –to abscond population taxes — or people, so those states could have more representation in government.

Slaves were the economic heart and pulse of the country and the Northern states, even if they did not engage in slavery, benefited from their labor. So even though slaves were unable to vote, the Convention decided that slaves should be counted as three-fifths of a white person for the purposes of representation in Congress."

Interestingly, support for the EC by party lines depends upon who manages to get elected:

"A Gallup poll after the election showed that Republicans who favored a national popular vote dipped from 54 percent in 2011 to 19 percent in December 2016."

 

The two most recent GOP presidents lost the popular vote and were elected purely by the electoral college.

 

and?

 

Allow me.

The electoral college was added to the constitution to placate the less populated colonies that had far more slaves than qualified voters. Back then only white male property owners were allowed to vote. Those slave-heavy colonies had two agendas: they wanted an equal say with the other colonies in electing a president, and they didn't want to pay taxes on slaves as property, hence the "1 slave = 3/5ths of a person" rule.

The EC is old, archaic, and does not make sense in today's world. It gives the voters is sparsly populated states like Wyoming about a 4 to 1 advantage over states like California. 577,000 or so citizens in Wyoming get 3 EC votes, whereas 40 million citizens in California get 55 EC votes. Do the math.

The president is supposed to represent all Americans, so it should be one person, one vote.

 

So... the northerners argued that blacks were property and didn't deserve a vote.

Thank god these urban elitists didn't get their way, otherwise blacks may still not be voting.

Exactly the point. The urban centers are no more "important" than the rural agricultural areas. In fact, the rural citizens would have absolutely no problem surviving without the urban cities... the reverse can't be said for the city folk.

Without the electoral college, what we would have is essentially a Hunger Games situation. The elitist citizens of the urban areas would determine that the votes of the rural folk are as insignificant as blacks similar to previous situations. The rural areas would become serfs to the urban centers.

This is preciously and exactly what the founders wanted to avoid. The blacks are thankful.

 

The only problem is that we really don't know that. What we do know comes from federalist 68 in which Hamilton explains why we have an electoral college. He gives several reasons, none of which have anything to do with slave states.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp

It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.


It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.


It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief. The choice of SEVERAL, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of ONE who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes. And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.

 

Your first statement tells me you know little of your ow

Wow. Holy moly, Batman! Where did you go to school?

Your first statement indicates a lack of knowledge of your own country's history. Read my post again. At the time our founders created our Constitution, the only people allowed to vote were white male property owners. Blacks were considered property at that time, so of course they did not vote. Sheesh.

Slave owners did, in fact, consider blacks to be property, but didn't want to be taxed on their value. The "3/5ths of a man" quantifier kept them from having to be taxed on that, plus it allowed them to count their slaves as partial people, in order to add up to enough to give them additional EC votes.

I'm willing to bet money that you would have to look this up in order to answer:

Who got the vote first, women or black men?

City voters are not more important than rural voters. The EC makes city voters much less important than rural voters. It's part of the reason why Trump and GW Bush both won elections without winning a majority of individual votes. Why should my vote be worth less than anyone else's just because I choose to live in a city? Yet that is the way the EC works, and that is why it needs to go.

This isn't about urban elites, which is a right wing meme that never made sense. The vast majority of city dwellers are simple working people, as I was until I retired and could live wherever I want without consider what jobs were available there. They vote, but in the case of California city dwellers vs low populace rural voters in states like Wyoming, their votes count for much less. You didn't do the math, did you? One Wyoming vote is worth four California votes as far as the EC is concerned. Does that really seem fair to you?

(Wyoming folks: I like your state and am not being disrespectful, it just makes for a very clear comparison.)

 

Starting a statement off like that tells me you have a weak response.

Yup. And the rural folks felt that blacks should be entitled to vote. The urban elites, mush like they always try to do, desired to suppress representation for the blacks to vote in order to give them more control and power.

That doesn't even make sense. Nobody was taxed on property value. Slave owners didn't somehow magically have a reduction in tax simply because blacks were allowed to vote at 3/5ths that of white men.

The disagreement was wholly about if blacks were property, they shouldn't be afforded a vote. The urban elites desired to surprises the rural folks by oppressing blacks simply for control.

So we agree the urban elites desired to suppress the black vote. Right?

I'm not interested in deflection. I know it's difficult for some to understand, but somebody having differing opinions than yours doesn't make them ignorant. It takes an astounding arrogance to think that.

Yes. You are attempting to utilize the popular vote to oppose the electoral college. The point of the electoral college was to divide power by demographic and geographic considerations rather than by each voter. Arguing that the electoral college doesn't make sense because it gives more power to lower populated rural areas is precisely the point of having it.

I live in the State of Illinois, and now longer in Chicago. I can tell you that everybody in Illinois despises the control Chicago has over the remainder of the state. Chicago controls everything, with everybody outside of chicago not being represented. That is because our elections are based on a popular vote. There is actually a movement to make Chicago it's own state. The founders were intelligent enough to see this issue nationally.

 

What "rural folks" at the time of the founders thought that their slaves should have the right to vote? This was 80 years or so before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. They were not considered to even be people in 1787 when the Constitution was written. Slaves don't vote, and no one at that time in our history thought blacks should vote.

As for property taxes:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/snapshot-taxes-we-paid-then-vs-now

Read item #2. Seriously, pick up a history book or two, do your homework, then get back to me.

"Urban elites" in 1787? Seriously? What urban areas did we have back then? Cities weren't all that big here at the time, and few of those city dwellers expressed opinions on whether or not blacks should be freed, much less whether they could vote.

No, I'm certainly not "attempting to utilize the popular vote to oppose the electoral college." I'm saying that the EC was a solution for 240 years ago, and doesn't work in the modern world. What part of one person, one vote do you not agree with? You say you live in Illinois. Shouldn't your vote for president count as much as someone in North Dakota? Here, I'll even do the math for you:

Pop of IL: 12.74 million
No. of EC votes: 20
People per EC vote: 637,000

Pop of ND: 760,077
No. of EC votes: 3
People per EC vote: 265,693 (rounded up)

That gives ND a 2.39 to 1 advantage over the voters of IL. Does that seem fair to you? You beef with Chicago aside, that isn't balanced for electing a president for all Americans, and excuse me, but rural residents are not more important than city dwellers.

 

No. The people of North Dakota will always be underrepresented without the electoral college. Essentially, they will have zero representation.

We divide electoral votes by arbitrary state lines because the demographic and geographic desires of people across these lines don't agree on what's best for THEM.

Ask a chicagoan or new Yorker what's important to somebody in North Dakota and they wont have any idea. But you think it's ok to give them voting rights which would render North Dakotans completely speechless?

 

How are they underrepresented? Do they not have the same number of House reps per capita as the rest of us? Do they not have two Senators representing such a small population? Nonsense. Each voter in ND will have exactly the same say in who will be president as the voters in NYC. Seriously, what part of one person, one vote don't you understand?

City dwellers live in those cities because that's where most of the jobs are. Cities are where most workers live. Are you telling me that you think working people should have less say-so on who should be president than rural farmers? I strongly disagree. Having lived in a few cities in NY and CA, I'm really tired of being disenfranchised by the EC every four years.

 

The vast majority of VOTING Americans do not know the identity of a single person who elected their president????