Paul LePage: We Need Electoral College or Else ‘White People Will Not Have... - Polidicks

No, everyone objectively does not benefit from direct popular vote, which is something we should immediately dismiss given the universally blue nature of the NPVIC. Hidden in that abstracted national number, thanks the uneven nature of growth under capitalism as complicated by uneven recovery from the recession, are geographic parts of the country and associated interests which will be subject to federal law yet have little say in it. In other words, hidden in your limited idea of equality is something called disparate impact. I assume that's familiar to you as it's why the left opposes flat taxes and supports a progressive tax. It's no different with the EC. Do you understand that the only real vehicle for popular, accountable government is and always will be local government, such as the state, and that you are essentially proposing some should simply rule others through the federal government because they have more people? Do you realize that these parts of the country have their own interests that would then be drowned out because they exist as permanent junior 'partners' in the union? This is why I don't take it seriously when you lecture me about the inequality and non-representative nature of the EC, you arguing the same for yourself while cloaking it in pernicious doublespeak. I've asked this many times. Why should one instance of 50+1 rule that of another if it yields for self-government for them? Absent the founding bargain we made with smaller states, it's hard to imagine why they should stay in the union. Finally, why should I describe your position as for a 'representative sample' when you are simultaneously arguing for elections determined by the heights of the country and against the idea that presidential candidates should be forced to have diverse coalitions representing more of the nation through the EC? Do you see the contradiction in how your 'representative sample' is limited to a few components of the nation, in a national election? As I said, this is neither in the spirit of federalism nor republican checks on the power of the people as a whole that are necessary so that some sections of them are not violated by others in a skewed power relationship. The latter is part of the logic of civil rights, by the way. Again, the limitations of your ideas expose the underlying logic you accuse the EC of: that for us to be equal in one sense, we must be unequal in another. The only reason you pick one form of it over the other is unprincipled and opportunistic, whereas I simply believe it's necessary to preserve the balance of power in the union and thus its integrity.

Really? Then tell me: When was the last time the EC has favored the vote of African-Americans? Of Latinos? Of handicapped people? Oh, it never did? What a surprise! It's almost like all the EC does is disenfranchise every other minority just so it can artificially prop up a single one, rural folk. Heck, it doesn't even do so consistently, a city dweller from New Hampshire has double the voting power of a farmer from Pennsylvania. It's a completely bullshit system, through and through, which doesn't even do what you claim it does. No. We simply correctly point out that inflating a single demographic's power does not balance make. Hard to wrap your head around, it seems. You mean like the UK, which has a notoriously right-wing background to the point where they went through the Thatcher era, and yet is currently sliding into irrelevance even more? Weird, it's almost like importance on the world stage has no particular correlation to the political tendencies of a country, unlike what you're trying to falsely imply here. Not even sure why you'd claim that France has declined in relevance while Germany grew, when they're essentially two sides of the same coin as the main driving forces of the EU. This shit always crack me up. Sorry that we didn't have the luxury of having a goddamn ocean between us and a bunch of hostile European powers, I guess? We didn't get to follow cowardly isolationist policies like you did, which did result in changes to our political system when forced to do so by external threats that disagreed with democratic and republican principles. But even if we consider the voluntary changes to our constitution, why are they a bad thing, exactly? Having the wisdom of fixing past mistakes and improving our political system somehow proves it is weak? A popular saying here is "only retards never change their mind" which is pretty relevant to this thread, it seems. An American implying that our constitutional reforms are ill-thought-out while fighting tooth and nails for a political system that was created due to a lack of instantaneous communication (which is what the EC was, pretty hilarious that a Frenchman would have to teach you this) and has been obsolete for over two centuries now would frankly be laughable if it weren't so pathetic. I guess you're right, cutting our own king's head and going to war with pretty much every neighboring monarchies is more radical than kicking out some occupying force. But that's what tend to happen when you're a world power that threatens the political hegemony of the rulers of adjacent countries, and not a colony that your monarch didn't give enough of a shit about to keep controlling you. It's alright though, you wouldn't have gotten to where you are now without our help, and reciprocally. Not sure why you'd oppose us so much when we both pioneered modern democracy and took heavy inspiration from one another. Now that's fucking rich, considering your "regular" right is just as if not more radical than our far-right party, and that party has had total control over your executive (and increasingly, over your judicial) branch for the past few years. Call me back when Le Pen or Melenchon's party get into power in France. Nope, what you don't get is that the alternative to the EC, ie the popular vote, doesn't operate based on states. It operates based on the overall majority, which means politicians have to cater to as many people as possible. They can't focus on a few single state, like they do under your asinine EC. Blows my mind that you seemingly can't understand this system that's much simpler than your current convoluted mess. Not gonna address the rest of your irrelevant tangents. I've wasted enough time already, and you have consistently ignored half of my arguments so far after all.

@tempcon The ideal that all men are created equal is what the founding fathers hoped to live up to. Which isn't being met by the electoral college, a system which gives too much weight to the minority of the population. This system could be reformed but you apparently want to say with the status quo because there is the "possibility" it won't be a silver bullet to solve America's ills. It's not gonna solve everything but it's a step in the right direction. It's also nonsense that the system can't be reformed. Voter reform has worked in the past, otherwise women wouldn't have the right to vote. Society decided that not allowing women the right to vote was incompatible with the notion that all men are created equal, so they changed the system.

Every tempcon post I've ever read is a mess of verbiage that always boils down to "the status quo is perfect and we should never change it"

Most of their posts are probably something you could repost on /r/iamverysmart and nobody would bat an eyelid. Learn to make your points more concise, jesus christ. You don't need to write essays to get points across if you actually know how to articulate said point.

also frequently he argues right past you he's not trying to talk with you, it's taking down some weird construction of you in his mind.

no don't improve the quality of life for Americans or the electoral system because tempcon's got a bunch of abstract gobbledygook

It also kinda didn't do its job seeing as it's exactly what ensured a tyrant got into power since Clinton won the popular vote.

Maybe that's why I said it isn't working as designed??

Yeah, I managed to gloss over the "has not been working as designed" bit because I was focused on the rest of what you said, sorry about that.

When he says 'white people', he really means that particular subset of white people that doesn't want minorities to have an equal voice. You know, the ones who deserve to get left behind anyway.

The EC 'favors' (what you actually mean is 'makes nationally relevant in the spirit of federalism'), as an extreme example, whatever state is small enough to where the ratio of the minimum electoral votes (3) to population is substantially different from a populous state. It otherwise has no inherent racial character and the winner-takes-all nature of a state's electoral votes favors conscious and organized minorities, who can tip the balance of the more split majority and must be a part of any competitive candidate's coalition in that state. The blue wall that collapsed and provoked this debate was based on exactly that. The Obama coalition successfully turned out a base that simply did not show up for Hillary, her share of the black and latino vote dropping, while Trump otherwise performed similar to Romney. This focus on the EC is a deflection from the fact the Democratic candidate was terrible, she had no national appeal and instead had an archipelago of votes that did not turn out the same numbers Obama did. You simply want to remove the shackles on a party you like that fails to reach out past a few parts of the country while trying to bullshit me that this is a) a win for all rather than a zero-sum outcome b) democratic or popular despite the fact it's doublespeak apologizing for a few components of the nation ruling it. Balancing small states with large ones inherently does in at least some sense. What you have tried to do in response is cite an abstracted will of the majority in order to turn a blind eye to the fact your proposal entails some regional/local interests, which the people are actually divided into, dominating others first in a party and second in the union. You then never answered the question of why, in that case, the 50+1 of one part of the country should rule that of another if it yields more self-government for them. I don't blame you, if you tried to you'd realize why the EC was a founding bargain and this is more complicated than you think. Yes, that is the problem since the popular vote is divided into smaller interests best captured by more local forms of government. These should have a balance in something like the EC if they are to stick together. There is no reason for a large, diverse, and complex union like ours to have candidates win based on a simple popular vote when the people are divided into smaller interest groups with differing stakes in what the federal government does Nope. It means that in order to be nationally relevant the interests of small states and their populations must bind themselves to the large core states of a party whose engagement and turnout politicians are, because of finite time and resources, then more dependent on and must cater their issues to. This reduces party diversity by rewarding the ideological bubble of a dominant party faction based in one or a few parts of the country. James Madison wrote about this when talking about the advantages of a (especially large) republic over a democracy. The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter. The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. Basically, as the country gets larger and therefore more diverse, parties are forced to adapt to many different varieties of sectionalism or particular interests. Your proposal does away with this impediment to factionalism and republican check on the power of the majority over the minority. I understand. Unlike Axel, you seem quite a bit more genuine in your concerns. I think you actually want to create a better union and you don't seem like an opportunist. The problem is we are not equal because we are not uniform. We are not uniform because we live in a complex society with many different parts, and the balance between them is complicated by the uneven nature of national growth, economic inequality between regions, the uneven nature of the recovery, and how this all affects population balances. The people are divided into a number of smaller interest groups that national parties should be ideally competing over to create a majority coalition, Axel et al seek to bypass this restriction and simply allow those interests with the most amount of people rule everyone else first in a party and second in the union. You can see why I don't give them the respect of describing their position as popular or democratic, it's transparently just them trying to compensate for a party that fails to reach out past the coasts and cities even though they want it to hold national power. This is a contradiction that will cause strife in the country. I've never actually said we should keep the status quo, what I've done is point out the self-serving ideas of people who want to reform it simply because their candidate failed to have a national appeal. So long as these people want to trade one inequality for another that conveniently benefits them while being hypocrites about it, I will continue to point out this is a zero sum game and challenge them to explain how their cure isn't worse than the disease.

National appeal wasn't the problem, Hillary Clinton won the popular election by 3 million votes more than Donald Trump. Things fell apart on a local level in several areas but you can't argue she didn't have national appeal.

I'm real confused as to why the party of hard work and not blaming others needs a multi-million point handicap like nearly every time they've won the presidency in recent history. Maybe if they just tried harder to reach out to mo- oh wait it's because a vast majority of people know they're fucking cretins by now.

So, first off, I live in Florida. The idea that I'm suggesting direct popular voting or a more proportionally-accurate alternative to the EC in service to my own gains is patently ridiculous. Secondly, aside from what Lambeth said about Clinton not having national appeal being completely incorrect, it has nothing to do with one election. I just completely disagree with the idea that you can have a valid election where one person gets more votes than the other person and still loses. Why even bother going to the polls in the first place? Just have states pick electors and let them make the choice. Would save a whole lot of time and money. Would love to see a response to Axel's point about Pennsylvania btw.

Ah, so now it's not about favoring the rural vote anymore, but favoring people from some states because for some reason them having the same voting power as everyone else would make them oppressed? Disregarding the fact that you completely shifted goalposts for a moment, why exactly are small states considered a "minority" in your eyes? What difference does it make whether a given voting population is spread around multiple small states or around a big state of equivalent population and size? Why should the former be given preferential treatment over the latter, exactly? The winner-takes-all nature of EVs is yet another absurd part of your system, which makes a substantial amount of citizen's vote null and void just because 50+1% happened to vote for the other candidate. Sounds familiar? Why do you not care about making those minorities "nationally relevant" all of a sudden? Your stance is inconsistent as fuck, which is not surprising when you're trying to defend the EC using excuses that have nothing to do with the reason it was created to begin with. Hilarious, after accusing me of being an antisemite in the other thread, you now accuse me of having ulterior motives for exposing your utter lack of consistency. Could it be that you're actually wrong on those matters and people are simply pointing out your poor judgement? Nah, it's obviously a conspiracy against you. Regional/local interests is what state-level, county and municipal legislatures and governments are for. They are irrelevant when it comes to a federal election. Next. You never answered why <50% of one part of the country should rule that of another either. Your claim being obviously more absurd, you'd have to justify it first. So smaller interest groups shouldn't have an incidence on how the federal government is run... ... but smaller interest groups should have a system built for them so that they can have an incidence on how the federal government is run? Didn't expect more sensible reasoning on your part, to be honest. Not one or a few parts of a country. An absolute majority among the country. Are you unable to understand how percentages work? How many time do I have to explain you that states are irrelevant in a popular vote? Focusing on a few core states, which is what parties currently do under the EC (despite your insistent claims that it was designed to prevent exactly that, weird innit?), is significantly less rewarding (up to 50% less, in fact) in a popular voting system that does away with the whole winner-takes-all nonsense. Rather than cater to the whims of a handful of swing states, political parties need to have as broad an appeal and address the issues of as many interests, big or small, as possible, ie exactly what you falsely claim the EC does, and exactly the opposite of what you claim the popular vote does. Go figure. With how all over the place your argumentation is, I'd almost be tempted to take a page out of your book and accuse you of defending the EC solely because it props your own interests up and gives a boost to people who share your ideology. But "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" is my creed, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

The EC is the reason Trump feels compelled to do everything in his power to openly fuck over everyone in California, including the Republicans there. After all, it's already a blue state, so what would it matter if a large portion of Republicans there flipped blue? It wouldn't change anything about the results. This is why the EC is bullshit.