This is why we need the Electoral College

originally posted by: Bloodydagger
a reply to: SignalMal

Again, what you're saying here about "vote is a vote" pertaining to this thread and what I am saying here, is strictly a Democratic vote. The areas in blue on that map show the areas of the USA in which are dominated by the Democratic platform. So you're saying those areas votes should be the only ones counted? What are you smoking?

Trust me, I get that you've framed this picture to make a point, but I also am able to see straight through it. These "areas in blue" are absolutely not 100% democratic voters. In fact, blocking it just like this is a point AGAINST the electoral college. In reality, they are blue LEANING.

In the end, you truly have no clue what the EC is all about and what its for.

On the contrary, I know why it was started, and realize it has no place in the terrain of the 21st century.

a reply to: SignalMal

In the years prior to the revolutionary war, colonies here in America had this problem: areas of high population got to dictate everything.

Ways of life and how one lived were vastly different, both back then, and even today.

My own state of South Carolina was made up of the Low Country and the Up Country. Prior to the mid 1700s the assembly was in the Low Country along the coast, and was the high population density area. People living in the Up Country had absolutely no say in any thing and were ignored.

Enter the Regulators. A vigilante group that took maters into their own hands, rounding up people they thought were criminals and hanging them from the nearest trees.

Low Country assembly took notice then, and finally gave the Up Country the representation they needed and established the circuit court in the areas to properly deal with criminals.

See, that is what happens when a mob of people living packed into a highly dense area get to decide everything, and pretty much making sure that people in the rural areas do not get to have much of a say, ignore them, and insist that everything must be their way.

It's why the framers decided that the United STATES of America would NOT be a "democracy" but would instead be a Represenative Republic. So people from all areas of the US would have the ability to have their say, and not have their lives and government dictated by only one group of highly populated areas. Hence the EC was established, because guess what?

People do NOT get to select who the president is. The STATES of the US are who gets to decided that.

Popular Vote does not work. It is called Mob Rule for a reason. And it is the reason we do not have it: so no one highly populated groups of people can dictate to everyone, without other areas being able to have their say.

Democratic Liberals want to have someone in office? Fine. Find someone that caters to EVERYONE in the US. Not just a select group of people. We've had many presidents like that in the past, so it's not impossible.

originally posted by: SignalMal
a reply to: Bloodydagger

That's absolutely irrelevant. It's as if you want to fight against reality. A vote is a vote.

How ironic. The only thing irrelevant is your opinion. The facts are that the National popular vote is irrelevant, and that the electoral college was written into the Constitution to prevent large urban areas from dictating to the rest of the country how they will be running their affairs. The National popular vote means squat!. Now what are you, and all of those like you going to do about it? Are you going to keep acting like a bunch of babies until you end up getting spanked? Are you going to waste all your effort trying to convince 75% of the states to ratify an amendment that is against their best interests and abolish the electoral college, if it even gets that far? Or are you going to deal with reality and realize that it is in your best interests to try and understand where the other side is coming from and vow to work with them, rather than for just what you want?

a reply to: eriktheawful

So let me ask you something. WTH does this have to do with the electoratal system?

In the system, states have cities and rural areas, and their votes all go to one candidate.

How does this solve the problem you see at all?

It makes zero sense!

Seriously consider this for a second. There are complaints that a city can nullify the vote of a rural area, and yet if they share the same state then the majority will nullify the minority over an ever larger terrain.

Isn't this the exact opposite of what a solution would be?

a reply to: SignalMal

And you're calling others ignorant. Go take a look at how states voted. In Texas for example, Austin, Dallas, SA and Houston areas were blued out. Leaning? Nah, more like majority. Take a long hard look at Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is so blue it might as well be called the Atlantic Ocean. Then go look elsewhere on the map. www.theguardian.com...

Another example: Tennessee - all red except Nashville and Memphis. It's a recurrent theme. Even hardcore blue states are red away from the main cities.

It is literally always like that, in all states. Cities have massive populations, which is why they're capable of carrying a state.It comes down to some basic practicalities. They're more cosmopolitan, more diverse. They're also more in need of programmes and social checks and balances. They have higher rates of education. They have more arts, more sciences. These are bastions of liberalism.

Now, you find a lot more Democrats in cities than in rural areas. What you're talking about, as well as others, are what people like to call the "old Democrats". These folks do live in rural areas and tend to vote Republican these days.

So yeah, don't be so quick to call others here ignorant. Glasses houses and such.

a reply to: Bloodydagger

That's great! You can find examples to match your case.

Good for you.

I do realize there's many cities which will not make your point at all.

Yes, ignorant.

I live in the core of liberal Hollywood / Los Angeles at the moment, but a decade or so I lived in Tennessee and Iowa for about five years.

I have tried to tell the folks here that no matter how "right" they think their opinions and attitudes are, there are a LOT of people who don't think that way. You can't just take for granted that your opinions are somehow more enlightened or progressive than those of someone else, and should be automatically recognized as indisputable. That's why they're crying so much at Trump's win. Not so much that he won, but that their opinions got a punch in the arm.

Because guess what? People of different races and religions and sexual preferences don't really like each other. Not like they do on TV, where diversity is mandated. People get along because they have mutual interests, not because everybody respects everybody else's theoretical rights. Also -- there is no love lost between various minorities. I know that Hollywood loves to equate Hispanic people with black people, for instance. But my personal experience has been that black people and Hispanic people really don't like each other all that much. Just like gay men and lesbian women don't like each other. But they have common interests -- so they get along.

I also hate to break it to some people, but men and women are different. It's shocking, I know. Not that men and women should earn different money for the same job. That's completely fair. However, the hard part is figuring out exactly what is the "same job."

So a lot of people in my circle didn't listen to me when I said not to count Trump out, anywhere along the line. I could not get them to see past their own pretty smug self-satisfaction and get a look at how real people deal with each other in the real world. If they did, maybe it wouldn't have been such a shock.

originally posted by: SignalMal
a reply to: Bloodydagger

That's great! You can find examples to match your case.

Good for you.

I do realize there's many cities which will not make your point at all.

Yes, ignorant.

I guess you didn't look at the map that I provided. There are MANY (OVERWHELMING) examples that match my case. Its every single state.

Go find me some major American cities that are Red on that map.

a reply to: Arizonaguy

Dude, I don't expect it to change. People are making so many assumptions about me on this site, it's getting to be really bizarre. If I point out how something is illogical, it doesn't mean I expect it to change. If I point out that a candidate is not God's gift to the world, it doesn't mean I'm for the other.

I gotta log off for a bit, you people are way too much sometimes.

In the uk we have a system where whichever party gets the most votes wins. This system is not good because if you have more than two parties (which we have) then the party who gets the most votes may not be the choice of the majority of the population. So, in other words, say we have 100 voters, with only 3 parties to choose from. Blue party, Red party and Yellow party. The Blue party gets 35 votes, the Red party gets 33 votes and the Yellow party gets 32 votes. The Blue party wins, even though only 35 people want them in power and 65 people don't want them in power. Now if there are 6 parties, the distribution of votes is spread even thinner, one party could be in charge with only 20 votes, and 80% of the people did not vote for them. I wish there was a better system here.

a reply to: Bloodydagger

What map? The one that only shows blue? Are you off meds or something?

Do you want me to find cities that lean right within the United States.

Is that honestly what you're challenging me to do?

a reply to: SignalMal

The map that I linked above. See, you're not even reading or paying attention to what people say here. But here, i'll show it to you again: www.theguardian.com...

Again, show me some major cities and state capitals on that map that are Red. You wont find many. Major cities are dominated by blue in every single state.

I have shown you proof. The ball is in your court.

a reply to: SignalMal

Go look at that map again: not all states have huge population centers (on the order of New York, Chicago and LA).

Most of the states that voted blue, are the ones that have those mega population centers. Predictably, the vote the same party over and over and over and over again. That means those states are almost always blue during an election.

Not all states that are more rural will always vote red. Look at past electorial maps and you'll see what I mean.

If the popular vote was used all the time, it means that the mega population centers would always control an election. While that might seem fair (majority rules), the problem it creates is people who live in mega cities like that do not live the same kind of lives as those of us who do not live in huge mega cities.

Laws, regulations and leaders that cater to the big cities are not always good for those who are in rural areas (and the same goes the other way).

So how do you make it fair? Remember: we're Americans. We're suppose to be all about freedom and fair play.

It means you can't use Popular Vote, or Mob Rule, because the more sparsely populated areas will be ignored in what they have to say.

So you level the playing field by using Electors. Even with Electors, if you take a look, you'll see that certain states get many more electors than others.

California: 55
New York: 29
Alaska: 3

So technically states that have the HUGE populations due to these mega cities are still getting more votes even with the EC than those states that do not have population centers that high.

If you look at the election map, you'll see that the states that have that very, very high density, did in fact vote for Hillary. Those states that did not have mega cities like that, the majority of them voted for Trump.

Why? Why because if you break it down by county you'll see that more counties in rural areas decided to vote for Trump. Not Hillary. And because more counties decided that, it means that the electors for that state give their votes to Trump, because if a state that has 36 counties has 33 of them vote for Trump and only 3 for Hillary, then that is who the state wanted.

You'll notice I said "counties", "cities" and "states". No where in there did I say "people". and that's because we live by a represenative government, and not Mob Rule.

originally posted by: SignalMal

originally posted by: PlasticWizard

Watch this video I posted earlier in this thread and educate yourself. You're being ridiculous. You basically want a democratic dictatorship with revolving heads.

My god, man. You really are this ignorant. People choose to live where they want, and they choose what party to affiliate with (or not at all).

Last thing I need is someone from the city telling me how to live in the rural area of the country. That's not going to work.

Well I got news for you. Demographics will continue to shift from rural to urban, and if in the US more cities lean left than right, then that is reality and not something to start a civil war over.

Grow up!

ME grow up? Luls.. I've accepted Trump as my President and I would have Clinton too. I suggest that you do the same.

With what you're suggesting, basically a candidate has to only campaign in big cities and everyone else should move to the city or f**k off. That gives half the population no voice.

You and the folks who can't accept that we are a Republic not a democracy are the ones trying to cause a civil war. The reality is half the country lives and works in these rural areas and most of us don't plan on moving to cities. We have jobs out here that quite frankly puts food on your table.

Because you obviously didn't.. Watch the video..

Serious question, are you a US citizen or from some other country because you're just not grasping why we do it the way we do.

Electoral votes represent accordingly the population of each state.

The states have the right to split those votes to reflect the citizen votes, but many choose a winner takes all. That's the state right.

There is an advantage to a winner takes all that most voters never take. Many states are always going to to the left or right and we know that in advance. The founders didn't want there to be a two party system and later rules made it so upcoming parties needed 5% of the vote from a previous election to get equal funding like the two parties.

Problem is a lot of voters are too ignorant about such an easy way to break the two party stalemate so they repeatedly throw their votes away on a losing party which has no effect.

So, here's the thing. The United States of America is not a NAME of a country, it's a TITLE. Germany, France, Russia, Delaware, Arizona, Missouri, those are names. The USA was originally conceived more along the lines of the EU - a confederation of independent states that understood they are stronger together than they are on their own.

Over time, the USA became more centralized and federalized, for better or for worse, and folks forgot that there are 50 small countries (called states) that make up the USA, and instead started thinking of the USA as a country rather than a union of countries. When you think of the USA as a union of 50 small countries, the electoral college makes absolutely perfect sense - each country votes on their own as to who will lead the union, and the candidate with the most winning states (appropriately weighed by population) wins. It's very simple, and very clear.

Thing is, people don't think of the USA like this anymore, and that's not the problem of the system, that's a problem with lack of understanding of history. Imagine if the EU voted for their leader with a popular vote that crossed country lines. There would never be anyone but a German in charge for the rest of eternity, since people tend to vote for those that represent their own kind, and Germany is by far the largest country in population in the EU. No one from Malta, or Latvia, or Ireland would ever be president of the EU because those small countries have no chance. If, instead, each country voted and the winner of each country then got one vote, that would even the playing field tremendously.

This is why the founding fathers set it up this way - Because they were far smarter than any of us.

originally posted by: Subsonic
This is why the founding fathers set it up this way - Because they were far smarter than any of us.

Well, they weren't necessarily smarter than I am now. However, they were here first and got to set things up the way they wanted. Given a clean slate, I'm not sure I would automatically go with a Republic. Depends on whether on that day I thought people were too stupid and needed a government to help them, or if they're too smart and need a government to keep them in line.

There wouldn`t even be a united states today if not for the EC.

The smaller colonies wanted noting to do with a revolution because there was nothing for them to gain by being a part of the united states.

when they were asked to join the revolution and start a new country their response was " what`s in it for us?"

They had nothing to gain by being a small part of a bigger country with no influence or say in how things would be operated.
They already had a deal like that with England,a small colony with no say in what would happen to them.
They would just be trading one master for another.

we all have to pay the same taxes and abide by the same federal laws so we all should have an equal say in how we are governed no matter where we live.

majority rule would be a disaster, the populated areas could hold a statewide referendum vote to impose a %100 tax increase on people living in rural areas and they would win the vote.

originally posted by: PlasticWizard


ME grow up? Luls.. I've accepted Trump as my President and I would have Clinton too. I suggest that you do the same.

My posting in this thread is in no way related to the outcome of the election in 2016. I didn't vote.

With what you're suggesting, basically a candidate has to only campaign in big cities and everyone else should move to the city or f**k off. That gives half the population no voice.

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Serious question, are you a US citizen or from some other country because you're just not grasping why we do it the way we do.

I'm born in this country, and I get this a hell of a lot more than you do.

With Michigan and Arizona, Trump has won the popular vote as well