America's Presidential electoral college system: a severe Achilles heel.

Difference between democracy and communism in simple English... (and more) .
America's Presidential electoral college system: a severe Achilles heel.


From the perspective of laws/ morals.

Communism is a legal / moral philosophy that promises fairness and care for poor: "from each his ability, to each his needs", but usually sold by dishonest tyrants who break their own promises and betray the poor the moment they are enthroned.

Democracy is a legal / moral philosophy premised upon responsible selection of government by responsible citizens but due to man's flaws, many people vote leaders, e.g. Donald Trump for selfish reasons resulting in greater polarisation of society and less social harmony as a result.

Both systems are not perfect and have very specific self correcting abilities. Communist governments can be challenged/ replaced such as the Tian An Men protests in China in 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall reveal respectively.

Lousy USA presidents can be voted out by citizens or impeached by democratic vote in congress to have a new president installed.

For USA to exceed China as a super power, USA has to seriously reform the electoral college system of voting the president because this system is in excess of 150 years obsolete (having seen its peak functionality as the pony express https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pony_Express of 1860 was able to carry state presidential choice information across from the furthest away state in 10 days); as it is unable to determine the most popular person for president (Hillary Clinton was the most popular choice for president in the 2016 USA presidential elections. (Senate may still be populated and operate under the electoral college system to VETO (block) presidential decrees to allow smaller populated states not to be bullied by higher populated ones.)

The strength of the democratic system is via free and fair elections using the latest vote counting technologies available but the USA method of electoral college voting is ridiculously obsolete as it remains premised on the pre telegraphic era of communication where by only single digit binary data could be transmitted (one yes or no vote for entire USA state). So until and unless the USA presidential electoral system can be reformed to be transparent and fair based in the latest telecommunication technology, USA will probably lag behind China in social, political, military etc development in so far that China is able to abide by its original communist manifesto, "from each his ability, to each his needs" and is seen by its citizens as earnestly doing so. The strength of the American system is vz free and fair elections and in so far that the vote calculation system for Presidential elections is obsolete, this will remain America's serious Achilles heel as the super powers of USA and China compete.

 

The reason that the US has an electoral college system is because the US is a federation of states, which created the federal government. States are not provinces or districts of "America." Each State has it's own election, there's nothing outdated about it.

 

The only reason it might be considered outdated is the lack of positive rights, but yeah you're right. There's nothing wrong about it our constitution. It works, the issue is how the system has been set up. But the constitution allows for this to be fixed.

 

MANIPULATIONS OF THE POPULAR-VOTE IN THE U.S.A.

You need to read-up about the Electoral College. Moreover, you don't seem to understand what Gerrymandering does to "popular elections" in states.

The Electoral College has a mechanism that manipulates the real Popular-Vote. It is called the "winner-takes-all" rule. That is, the separate values for the popular-vote election results are manipulated to allow all the EC votes to just the winner of the popular-vote. Which means the votes of all those who DID NOT VOTE FOR THE WINNER are simply ripped-up and thrown away.

Which is perfidiously contrary to the basic ethic of any democracy - one person, one vote, decides all popular-elections.

That rule of the EC has to go. And it can be easily undone. Just make the above rule illegal across all states. Then the EC will simply collect the popular-vote in the state and report it to Congress. Which will then announce the winner of the popular-vote.

List of countries that (besides the US) employ an Electoral College (from WikiPedia):

 

OUR Constitution was written two-centuries ago. What did ANYBODY at that time understand about popular-elections that existed no-where!?!.

What we do know today is that five-times in history it has elected the losing-candidate to the presidency of the nation.

That is all-wrong, all-wrong, all-wrong ... and it must be righted ...

 

The EC system was created to protect less populous states from having no say in national matters. Those states btw only joined the Union after the EC system was contractually agreed upon by ALL the states in the Union. Getting rid of the EC would represent a 'breach of contract' situation between States and FedGov, openning a precedential door to legitimized secession, which will occur if NY and CA are effectively allowed to rule the nation with their massive urban regions.

Im not saying secession and a splitting of the Union is necessarily bad... just the the EC is currently preventing it from happening. Erode it with caution.

 

THE WORST

The EC-system (passed in the 12th constitutional Amendment of 1812) was a sine-qua-non that the southern states insisted upon to remain in the newly-formed republic. Because they did not want to give the votes to the slaves, which the North was pressing them to do. That issue was not settled for another 65 years, a war and more than 620,000 deaths. (And even then, one wonders if blacks today have identically the same rights as whites.)

In Amendment 12 we see the "political system" cast in concrete along with voting trickery in the states (started by a Governor by the family-name of "Gerry") at the very same time (1812). The EC insisted not only on the greatly-unfair "Winner takes all EC-votes rule", but also the number of EC-votes is not strictly related to the decennial population-count as was the original intent of the country's founders.

It is amazing how much both the presidential and state voting-mechanisms have been manipulated, and we think Uncle Sam is the greatest democracy on earth?

Wakey, wakey! Not by any plausible measure is that true. It has been riddled with political deviance since its inception! And what have we-the-sheeple as a result? The worst National Income Disparity of any developed country on this planet ...

 

Listen to the dems , lol, all week we been hearing how the must adhere to the Constitution , until they want to year it to shreds. Cant listen to one word they say.

 

The naysayers have the choice of the process of amending the constitution or a blood revolution.

 

Keep your one-liner nonsense to yourself ...

 

'southern states' like Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware?

 

You mean like the Dutch, English, the Swiss to a lesser extent had?

 

Look I'm sorry that you hate the system of government and it's procedures that have governed it's elections. But luckily for you, you don't live in the US and if lucky, will never have to return home. You should be worried more about France since you live there and seems to have a system you find more amenable.

There are different countries for a reason, so people can live in many different ways so you should exercise your option to stay far away from the US.

 

I don't vote in France. I vote in the US.

Said like a true Replicant ...

 

One-liner drivel unless you can explain further.

This is a DEBATE forum, not a message board ...

 

They all had elections prior to the U.S. Now large scale elections is another matter, but they had elections. The U.S. wasn't founded in a vacuum. Heck, the idea of checks and balances come from the Iroquois Confederacy.

 

If you're not able to make a valid argument, why even bother to reply?

We've had the electoral college for over two centuries and the reasons the the founders favored it are still valid. We've only been hearing this crybaby bitching about the electoral college since November 9, 2016. It wasn't a major issue before then, but look how many times you've posted about it? That's why you should seriously look at settling down in France permanently and stop worrying about some country across the Atlantic that you despise.

 

Actually, it has always elected the winning candidate. Just sayin.

 

Tiananmen Sq did not replace, or seriously challenge, the ruling system. Do you forget how that turned out?

 

We do exceed China today; far exceed.

 

We are not a democracy. We are a constitutional republic.

 

Have you ever been to China?

 

The system is not obsolete. This sort of decentralization of power is important in a large country.

Each state is responsible for the integrity of the elections. Because it is a winner-take-all system in each state, there is not really any incentive for suppression of votes, so no one will be calling into question the integrity of the election.

 

Evidently, you need a course in the English language. What happened 200 years ago is history. Moreover, it is the history of a colossal mistake in popular-voting which is the core-component of any Real & True Democracy.

I will repeat my central argument: The popular-vote in the US has been warped since 1812 by means of:
*Amendment 12 to the constitution that is employed for the election of the president in states by means of an Electoral College, which:
**Employs a winner-take-all rule that effectively annulled/manipulated the popular-vote outcome, which is essential to any real democracy.
**Thus permitting five-times in its past the winner who actually lost the popular-vote to be named PotUS. (Including the jerk who is presently occupying the Oval Office.)
**That employs an EC-vote by means that have little or no parallel with the actual voting-population.
*This Amendment, by an act of Congress in 1812, can and should be changed to disallow the "winner-take-all-rule" and simply report to Congress the actual popular-vote number.
*Congress then makes official the voting-tally and confirms the Truly Democratically elected PotUS.

Now, how difficult it is to understand the above argumentation? Which merits a rebuttal that is more than one-liner sarcasm!

Go for it! I'm waiting with breathless anticipation ... !!!

 

Well I understand your argument, I just don't find it relevant. The founders never intended to establish a "Real & True Democracy." In fact there are plenty of Western "democracies" that don't meet your standards. Canada just had an election in which the Conservative Party got more votes, but the Liberals got more seats in Parliament and Trudeau retained his position as Prime Minister.

The founders didn't establish a Democracy, they established a Constitutional Republic of federated states. I don't know whether you're ignorant of the nation's founding, or are just a pure democracy fanatic, but your fairly regular whining on the the US electoral system means nothing to me since you don't understand the country or it's system.