Gerrymandering and the Winner-Takes-All Rule of the EC Have To Go

Civics 101. THE STATES ELECT THE PRESIDENT NOT THE PEOPLE. That is by design. Your state doesn't even have to let you vote for the electors the STATE GOVERNMENT could select them and the party with the majority control would do the selecting.

And you will never get an amendment passed through Congress let alone the state to change that so stop

 

That's a board-game rule perhaps you can play at home or even gambling in Las Vegas.

But when it comes to the rights in a democracy, it means nothing. Voting trickery by Gerrymandering and the Electoral College are simply and purely INADMISSIBLE in any Real Democracy ...

 

So what! The "Founding Fathers" had no idea whatsoever about how to vote in a truly representative democracy - because NONE EXISTED at that time. The EC was intended purely a method to facilitate the popular-vote reaching DC. But, at the time, more selfish minds saw quickly how to manipulate the popular-vote to their own political ends.

And to this day they continue to do so. Why, at the state level of voting for the HofR, should a district in any state be carved out regardless of its population-size? Huh? Why? (Only one - such that the smaller-but-richer communities will have a "larger" say in voting!)

The above is just one way very sadly we managed to find ways in which to MANIPULATE THE POPULAR-VOTE. Now at one time in the history of the US, in its very early stages, it is possible given that the national level of education not being very high, that manipulating the vote may have been not-such-a-bad-idea in some places. Especially at a time when states were being added willy-nilly nationally as happened at the end of the 19th century.

We are now more than a century beyond that time! And still, blindly, we think "nothing is wrong the way we vote"! When (1) five times in our history the loser of the popular-vote was elected PotUS and (2) clearly the winner-takes-all rule in the EC is blatantly unfair in any political election where only the Raw&Unmanipulated Popular-vote should apply.

I, for one, do not see how we can tolerate the manipulations to our voting systems when "some people*" are afraid of what a purely honest vote might produce if not manipulated ...

*And by "some people" I clearly mean the Replicant Party which would likely start losing lots -'n-lots of elections! (The Replicants hired a "Master of the Voting System" to understand

 

HOW TO MANIPULATE AMERICA'S VOTING SYSTEM

For further reading-enjoyment on the subject of how our National Voting System is manipulated:
*List of controversial elections - Wikipedia
*The 2020 Election Is a Year Away. A Lot Could Change
*The Manipulation of Voting Systems-jstor
*America's electoral system gives the Republicans advantages

The most technical of the above is the very bottom link to an Economist report (July 10, 2018 edition), from which this:

 

Snopes "fact check"...

 

So?

You are going on RECORD and DENYING something that is 100% TRUE?

https://time.com/4780991/donald-trump-election-map-white-house/

You have my blessing to think whatever you want.

In any event, back ON-Topic, The EC is here to stay and nothing is going to be done about it.

 

Gerrymandering is inexcusable. All gerrymandering is, is our representatives choosing their voters instead of the voters choosing their representatives. Now the electoral college is different. In a direct democracy, you are probably right about the electoral college. But we live in a Democratic Republic, a representative democracy which is quite different. We are also a union of the several states, now 50 of them. As a union of the several states, each state gets a say in who will be president based on each's population. Each voter votes counts in determining which candidate their state will vote for.

As a republic, a representative democracy, we elect representatives to represent us in the grander scheme of things. Prior to the civil war many state legislatures decided which candidate their electoral votes would go to. Representative Democracy. The people elect their state legislatures, their state legislatures decide or vote on who to give their states electoral votes.

The key here is representative democracy and the union of the several states. Many people get confused between a direct democracy and a representative democracy. Granted, we as a nation are moving slowly to a direct democracy to replace our current representative democracy. This begin in my opinion with the 17th amendment dealing with senators.

 

The so what is that we don't have to guess about things the founders were and were not uncomfortable with.
The elections of 1796 and 1800 reve4aled problems and the founders corrected them in 1804.
Having 6 members on the Supreme Court at first opened the possibility of tie votes. They corrected that in 1807.
Gerrymandering was created by a founding father in 1811, and Madison-the Father of the Constitution made him Vice President the next year.
In 1824 a loser of the popular vote won and they changed nothing. Most founding fathers were retired, but can anyone find Jefferson or John Jay complaining in a letter.
In 1829 Bushrod Washington, George's nephew, died after 31 years on the Supreme Court. Some founding fathers and most founding uncles were still alive but none thought they should limit tenures.
Term limits for Presidents wasn't high on their list either. The first 5 2-term Presidents just happened to be old after 2 terms.
Senators didn't linger because the legislatures picked them and kept changing party affiliations.
House members had not yet learned how to get rich there and had to leave every few terms to increase wealth.
So history says we shouldn't change the process, but winner-take-all is not a rule.
The suggestion that the plurality winner gets the 2 Senate EC votes still makes a narrow win lopsided.
Consider New Hampshire, with 4 ECs.
By that system a 50-49 winner gets 4. A 49-48 winning both districts gets 4. A 49-39 winner losing one district gets 3.
By my suggestion 62-38 down to 40-38 is 2-2.

 

I could not agree more. The problem remains nonetheless that the most other "Real Democracies" have learned from out mistakes made two centuries ago.

One of the oldest French restaurants in Paris (called the Le Procope) is where Both Franklin and Jefferson met with the French (who had overthrown the French King) to discuss "the evolution of politics". I am sure they shared the same enthusiasm. But, it is less obvious what either accomplished in their respective countries. Nowhere at the time (1790s) had Real Democracy existed and so there was no way to copy-cat it. The French went on and lost all sense of decent proportion and did not evolve a real-democracy until much later in the 20th century having reinstituted a regency meantime.

We Yanks did as best as we could, but made some serious mistakes, and (in a way) made mistakes from which other countries much later (more than a century later) benefit. Real Democracy, as we know it, has existed in this world only since the end of WW2. And it is nowhere perfect.

Which is no excuse for the two whopping-errors we have made as regards both national and local/state elections. From off the Internet (here):

Wow! What company!

And there is no EU-state that employs Gerrymandering to designate electoral districts ...

 

That in red above remains to be seen. The Supremes don't want to touch the matter.

But nothing in the Constitution prevents Amendment changes ... and a good many people are very tired of the patent manipulation of voting outcomes by BOTH the EC and Gerrymandering in the states ...

 

Gerrymandering is uniquely American. It ought to be outlawed, made illegal. Now it never will be. Each major party is gerrymandering as a way to gain political advantage. Sure each party will howl like a stuffed pig when gerrymandering is done to them, yet leap for joy when they can do it. Neither will hesitate one bit.

I've said this many times, to me gerrymandering is a way for Representatives to choose their voters instead of the voters choosing their Representative. Each state legislature has the power to end gerrymandering, congress also has the power. But don't hold your breath for either one to act.

Being the first to design a democracy basically from scratch, it isn't going to be perfect. Sure, we had the Romans when they had their Republic, Athens, but little else to draw from. We do have an amendment process to change things, but both major parties must want to change what needs changing. Again, as long as one or the other sees a political advantage in not changing the Constitution or the way we operate as a democracy, no changes will be made.

 

There's nothing the SCOTUS can do about the electoral college except uphold it. Article II, section 1 leaves no doubt whatsoever. It's here to stay. That is unless a constitutional amendment does away with it. Good luck on getting 2/3rds of the House and 2/3rds of the senate along with 3/4th of the states to agree to that.

Now each state legislature can change anything their little hearts desire how they award their electoral votes. You don't have to have 48 state with winner take all regardless of the size of the margin of the winner over the loser. Maine and Nebraska have the Congressional District method. But as you pointed out, gerrymandering can have an effect there. Even going by the CD method, it wouldn't changed the 2016 results. Instead of a 305-227 win for Trump, the margin would have been 292-246.

 

The electoral college is not trickery, it is in effect the States choosing the President as was intended. States are a pure democracy, they elect their leadership and representation by popular vote of their citizens, Texas doesn't chose California's State leadership or their Congressional representation or vice versa. The President represents all of us and all the States the electoral college insures that all states have a proportional voice in that choice through the electoral college.

 

Or is it just laziness? People here (like me) bitch and moan about the poor state of both national and state/local politics - but we do nothing about it!

Then, finally, the Dems get their act together (by winning the HofR leadership), and off we go trying to impeach Donald Dork. Wasted effort. (If you ever read the least bit about his history. Especially the bit about when his father could no longer handle him so he sent him off to a military academy - and within a month his fellow students tried to throw him out a window! And just to show how non-stoopid narcissistic behaviour can be, though a behavioural malady, there is not much that psychiatrists can do about it.)

Yes, and it's better to get off this subject - but, from here:

So, better to correct the malady at the youngest age when it become obvious - which indeed must be the hard part for any parent ...

 

Here is why, in two ways, the Electoral College is pure trickery:
*The winner-takes-all-rule actually nullifies all votes made to non-winners of the PotUS election at the state-level. Which is anti-democratic as a fault.
*The variations in Electoral Votes-to-voting-population (which should be the same for all states but is not) in certain smaller states make it possible for those votes to be aggregated into a manipulated majority-vote.
*The two measures above are wickedly effective in creating a false-majority - as seen just two years ago when Hillary Clinton with an impressive more than 2% majority (2.6 million votes) of the popular-vote still lost the election ... !

Wow! One has to be brain-dead not to see the illegitimacy of today's Electoral College. What must be done is that the EC be expected to report to Congress ONLY THE STATEWIDE NUMBER OF POPULAR-VOTES FOR EACH CANDIDATE. And that's all!*

Is that too much to expect of a Decently-Fair Democratic Nation. Methinks not ... !

*Well, not really "all". If the US had national identity-cards it could be assured that only adult state-residents were voting!

 

The pros and cons make for a meaningful debate on this important matter of national identity. I prefer not to stymie the debate (should there be one instigated) by posting just one.

So, here is just one that I selected of the numerous results of such a search on the internet ...

 

No, that assertion is incorrect. It's not easy, but amendments are NOT WRITTEN IN STONE:

I have assumed from the above emphasized in black that rewriting the amendment is not forbidden. That is, deleting and rewriting it.

However, yes, the two-thirds vote of the House and Senate means THAT THE DEMS MUST WIN THE SENATE IN THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS in order to correct a foundational aspect of our voting-procedure. That is of the democratic voting procedures to both the Executive and Legislatures of the nation hat are presently deliberately manipulative and thus unfair to the essence* of the popular-vote.

*The essence of proportional representation, from WikiPedia here: Proportional Representation - of which, this excerpt:

I rest my case ...

PS: In the Constitution of a nation, nothing can be left "in concrete" or - come the right time - it may very well cause a revolution; which is an awesome risk to take. After all, our "revolution" resulted from the tyranny of a Custom of Monarchical Predominance that had endured for centuries. Constitutions must evolve and especially those incorrectly written from their aged-beginning - to keep up with the times.
PPS: And such is not an easy evolution. I must remind readers that the French uprooted their Monarchy (1789) just after we did. Then, they bungled their first attempt at a democracy in the 1790s. The country reverted to a monarch (first Napoleon) and after him some regencies. Until a True Democracy was reinstated finally in 1870 almost a century after the original overthrow of the French Monarchy.
PPPS: As I never tire of reminiding fellow Americans, it was our revolution that prompted the French one. And a primary reason was not "Monkey-see Monkey-do". Franklin was our first Ambassador to the French King who had aided our revolution. Jefferson also visited France (and the White House is said to have been inspired by a very large house he saw in France. But, the real rabble-rousing prooking the French to revolt happened in meetings had between the revolutionaries and both Franklin and Jefferson at a restaurant that still exists today - Le Procope in the center of Paris.

 

I could not agree more. The problem remains nonetheless that the most other "Real Democracies" have learned from out mistakes made two centuries ago.

One of the oldest French restaurants in Paris (called the Le Procope) is where Both Franklin and Jefferson met with the French (who had overthrown the French King) to discuss "the evolution of politics". I am sure they shared the same enthusiasm. But, it is less obvious what either accomplished in their respective countries. Nowhere at the time (1790s) had Real Democracy existed and so there was no way to copy-cat it. The French went on and lost all sense of decent proportion and did not evolve a real-democracy until much later in the 20th century having reinstituted a regency meantime.

We Yanks did as best as we could, but made some serious mistakes, and (in a way) made mistakes from which other countries much later (more than a century later) benefit. Real Democracy, as we know it, has existed in this world only since the end of WW2. And it is nowhere perfect.

Which is no excuse for the two whopping-errors we have made as regards both national and local/state elections. From off the Internet (here):

Wow! What company!

And there is no EU-state that employs Gerrymandering to designate electoral districts ...

 

The electors are chosen by the State and their purpose is to give the States a proportional vote. States can also change the way the EC reps vote, most have chosen to commit them to whoever wins the popular vote in that State.

 

OH, poor boy that you are.

Is that all-you-got for rebuttal?

Moving right along ...

 

Thanks for showing the rocky-road along which America's democracy initially traveled to become what it is today. I was brought in the US on the pap that "America is great". Well geographically, yes!

And your rendition of history is good in the sense, "Well, they tried their best and there was no previous model upon which to build a Constitution". But, that does not mean they got it right!

And as regards the voting process, NO! They Got It Not Quite Right.

Both Gerrymandering and the Electoral College have eviscerated Uncle Sam's sense of political-decency and fair-play. And why?

The list of reasons is long, but it starts with Income Inequality. And no, that does not mean that all incomes must be equal. In economic-lingo it means this: Incomes are equitable and distributed with fairness. So?

So, yes, given human nature and a market-economy some will do much better than others, and much-much better than "some". But should the "some" be forgot? Because they are "Not Up To IT"?

BOLLOCKS! That is not in any sense Fair Play. They deserve to lead decent-lives and we have a definition of that decency. It is indecent that anyone earn less than the income delineated by the Poverty Threshold! (Which is $25K for a family of four.)

And graphically that class-delineation is what produces the "after-effect" that looks awfully like this:

Do you "get it"? Or is the factual evidence of economic data a challenge to you ... ?

PS: "Real Income" is Income minus the effect of price-inflation.

 

I’ll repeat, there is nothing the SCOTUS can do about the electoral college. That is unless you expect the SCOTUS to rule against something the Constitution explicitly states will exist and exactly how it will work. See Article II, Section 1, how can the SCOTUS rule the electoral college unconstitutional?


You have to have an amendment. Rewriting an amendment, probably not. But you can repeal an amendment, the 21st amendment repealed the 18th amendment. Article V spells out how one amends the Constitution. 2/3rds of each chamber of congress and 3/4th of the states. 280 house members, 67 senators must vote for the amendment and 3/4th of the states, 38 total must ratify it.

 

I got plenty more.You will delete and ignore it. Im here to debate. Thats not debating.

 

THE UNIMPAIRED RIGHT TO VOTE

Good post. Very interesting.

The ability to rewrite the law is key to any truly functional democracy. Times change and therefore so must laws. It would help nonetheless that sometimes Congress should call upon the voting population to support passage of any given law. (But I am not sure how that would work.)

Such a participation would weaken the current mentality of "Us" and "Them", which presently exists. Also, there must be a duration in the number of terms. If we can do that for the presidency, why not also to Congress, And, particularly, to where it is most needed - the Supremes.

There is nothing wrong (to my mind) with the states handling the election of representatives to either the nation's Executive office or Congress. But both Gerrymandering and the EC are wrongful manipulations of the popular-vote - so and they should be treated as such. Ie., into the dustbin.

It warms the cockles of me heart to see here the Replicants having conniptions in order to safeguard "their manipulations" of the most precious component of any True Democracy - the unimpaired right to vote one's representatives to political office.

I wonder, in the full history of Our Meandering Democracy, if we are not at an important crossroads ...

 

Yes, well, you are not "debating". You are prisoner of your emotions.

I have deleted nothing, but simply chosen what I will comment upon in rebuttal.

And in the past, when this sort of tuffle as existed, I find it best simply to Ignore the person concerned. And, in that manner, there is less BS on this forum being traded emotionally ...