Its almost over!

[Canarr]

As long as Trump supporters continue to attack blacks/Muslims/etc., we won't stop.

Until Trump denounces those attacks, we won't stop.

Human rights or bust.

Which attacks are that? Because judging from a Google search, there seems to be a lot of noise but not much substance.

[mjr]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't people say this about every Presidential candidate? Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Barack Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush ... Not to mention Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum .. Has there ever been a Presidential candidate who somebody didn't say, "If Candidate X becomes President, I'm moving to Canada" ... ?

You're not incorrect. However, they say it quite often. Many said it when George W. Bush was elected. They're still here. The ones who said it this time will likely stay. I feel the same way about the ones who said they were going to move if President Obama got elected. They're still here, and they look foolish for saying it.

Madonna promised blowjobs to men who would vote for Hillary. I wonder if anyone's going to hold her to that.

The issue is, they look foolish every time they say it. Especially the celebrities who actually do have the means to move. Many of them are probably millionaires several times over. They can easily afford plane tickets to Canada, or Australia, or wherever.

Why would anybody ever view this as anything more than hyperbole? The only time I ever heard anybody say something like this and really mean it was when a neighbor told me, "If Sarah Palin ever becomes President, I'm moving back to Toronto."

Again, it's celebrities. Hyperbole or not, no one ever calls them on it (because of a "friendly" media, in most cases), and they always end up looking foolish.

[Greenday]

Which attacks are that? Because judging from a Google search, there seems to be a lot of noise but not much substance.

So because a few stories are made up (which is expected any time mass news stories break out), all are? The BBC has managed to verify some. And plenty of incidents were never reported to police because why bother?

[Anthony K. S.]

I find it interesting that if you type the word "why" into Google, the first search that it suggests is "why electoral college." Obviously a great deal of interest in that question at the moment.

I'll give you a hint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._10

Okay, first of all, that is not a "hint." Simply telling people that they should read up on it is not giving a hint.

Besides which, a simple Google search of "why electoral college" yields several articles that are far more useful in understanding the pros and cons of the Electoral College in the modern day than a Wikipedia entry on a document written 229 years ago.


Now, for the record, the primary reason that the Electoral College was established no longer exists :

This system was created in 1787 as a compromise with the South. The Southern states had large populations, but many of these people could not vote (because they were slaves). A direct election for President would have meant that voters in the South would be outnumbered by Northerners. The proposed Electoral College would assign each state a set number of votes, making it possible for the Southern states to have their slaves counted (each slave counting as 3/5 of a person), even though they weren't eligible to vote.

Another reason why the College was created (which also no longer exists) was that the life of the average person in the 18th century was far more localized than it is today. The relative lack of mass or long-distance communication, combined with how slow and difficult it was to travel from one town to another, meant that most people had very little knowledge of what was going on outside of their small communities.

For this reason, the framers of the Constitution were doubtful that citizens would be able to make informed choices about Presidential candidates. So they established a system in which citizens could choose learned representatives of their communities to act as "electors" on their behalf. Basically, the residents of each state would select (by vote) people they trusted, and told them, "Go pick us a good President."

Say what you will about the flaws of modern society, but a lack of mass communication of information is not one of them. (Mis-information, of course, is a different matter.) Point is, this aspect of the College has long since ceased to exist, as citizens now vote for the President directly.

So, if the original reasons for the Electoral College no longer exist, then why do we still have it?

Now, we're getting into it. This is actually a really complicated issue, and the articles I've looked through have observed many potential consequences (both good and bad) of revising or abolishing the Electoral College. Among them :

(1) Under the Electoral College, voters in small states have far greater political power than those in large states. Wyoming has three electoral votes for a population of 584,153, meaning each Wyoming elector represents 194,717 voters. By contrast, California has a population of 38,800,000 and 55 electoral votes, so each elector represents 705,454 voters. Therefore, each vote in Wyoming is worth 3.6 times as much as a vote in California. Other small states such as Rhode Island, Montana, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and Idaho also have strong political leverage. A nationwide popular vote would eliminate this disparity, so that every citizen has an equal say in who gets elected President.

(2) On the other hand, if we used a nationwide popular vote, then Presidential candidates would focus most of their attention on areas with large populations, like New York and California, at the expense of policies that would benefit, say, the Rust Belt. With the Electoral College system, every state, including the smaller, more rural ones, would get their voices heard.

(3) Then again, the Electoral College system already creates a situation where many states get ignored or taken for granted. Presidential candidates tend to focus primarily on a small number of "battleground" states instead of the entire country. There is little incentive for candidates to campaign extensively for the voters of base states that they are already certain to win, or certain to lose ...

(4) ... which is not necessarily a bad thing. If Presidential candidates felt an obligation to blanket the entire country with visits, events, and advertising, then the candidates would be desperately scrambling for even more campaign money from their donors. This would leave Presidents even more beholden to special interests than they already are. It may actually be more beneficial to the country as a whole for some of the states to be considered "locked up" for the candidates quickly.

(5) As it stands now, only two states (Maine and Nebraska) divide up their electoral votes (by Congressional district). The rest of the states use a "winner takes all" approach, meaning that it doesn't matter if a candidate wins the popular vote in a state 95%-5% or 52%-48% ... Either way, the candidate gets all of the state's electoral votes. This is what yields the "undemocratic" result of one candidate winning the electoral vote and becoming President despite losing the popular vote.

It has been suggested that other states follow Maine and Nebraska's example and divide up their electoral votes, either by district within the state or proportionally, based on how much of the popular vote that each candidate obtained. While this might make the election results less lopsided, it could also have potentially serious consequences.

If all of the states divided up their electoral votes proportionally, then any third-party or independent candidate running could easily prevent any of the candidates from obtaining a majority in the Electoral College. This could potentially render the entire Presidential election a pointless and tremendous waste of time and money, and just have the House of Representatives choosing every President from here on out.

(6) If a nationwide popular vote yielded a result that was close enough for a recount to be needed, it would have to be a nationwide recount, which could make the Florida fiasco of 2000 look like a pleasant memory.


And that's just for starters, folks. There seem to be a lot of arguments for and against any given option - keeping the Electoral College as it is, replacing it with a nationwide popular vote, keeping the College in place but switching to proportional votes instead of "winner takes all" ... It is, as I said, a very complicated issue. If any of you are really interested in taking a position on it, I strongly suggest doing some reading up on it. There's plenty of commentary out there.

Personally, I'm still forming my opinion.

[Gravekeeper]

Personally, I'm still forming my opinion.

Burn it all down and use a Parliamentary system like the rest of the world? >.>

[Kheldarson]

Burn it all down and use a Parliamentary system like the rest of the world? >.>

I like this option for our Congress, honestly.

[Canarr]

Hadn't seen this guy before, but he does a very good job at explaining the reasons for Trump's victory in the election. Short video, well worth watching.

[Gravekeeper]

Hadn't seen this guy before, but he does a very good job at explaining the reasons for Trump's victory in the election. Short video, well worth watching.

Ehhh yeah no. I mean I get what he's trying to say but I seriously hate this whole "Its your fault I voted this way" argument I see creeping up around now blaming the left for the way the right is behaving. No, its your fault you voted your way. You voted for this monster. You looked at the horrible things he has said and done and went "I'm fine with that. Its not a deal breaker".

Take responsibility for your decision. No one made you do it. Could Hillary have been a better candidate? Sure. Was she as awful a candidate as she was painted? God no. Was she a terrible choice next to Donald Fucking Trump? Jesus fucking double plus no.

Don't take a dump on your country's rug then blame everyone else for not putting a toilet there.

[Canarr]

Erm.... I'm not American. I don't get to vote in their elections. Unless you meant it as a general "you", in which case, never mind.

But I still think the guy has a lot of good points. Sure, it's hyperbolic; but hell, he's a comedian, it's what they do. And yes, he doesn't mention the Republicans, and the fact that their obstructionism the last eight years blocked any real change Obama might have achieved, and increased the US public's irritation with their politicians a hundredfold.

But the point remains that Clinton was a shitty candidate. Remember: Trump achieved less votes than Romney did in 2012 when he lost against Obama. It's not that he brought out tons of disgruntled people to vote for him - it's that Clinton lost a ton more. Five million less than Obama in 2012, I believe? And 10 million less than Obama in 2008?

That's a lot of people who were willing to elect the country's first black President, so probably not bigoted or narrow-minded, but still didn't want anything to do with Clinton.

She and her husband exemplify the US political establishment, and everything that's wrong with it. Even if you disregard everything about the emails, and Benghazi, and whatever: they are still a couple of career politicians who made millions from their supposed service to their country. They are everything that's been wrong in their country for decades - and comments like, "Pokemon GO to the polls!" and, "Tell us how your student loan debts make you feel, in three emojis or less!" also kinda show that she's painfully out of touch with average human beings.

Add to that the fact that calling your opponent's supporters a "basket of deplorables" is not just disrespectful, but also fairly stupid. But "Jonathan Pie" already went over that in the video. Still, if the left/liberals/Democrats continue to just insult Trump's supporters, they'll just dig in even more. Let's hope they get smarter over the next four years. On both sides of the trenches.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Burn it all down and use a Parliamentary system like the rest of the world? >.>

GK, I'll be honest. There are times you make me irate, and this is one of them. As a non-American, its cool that you have no particular affinity, but some of us actually do. Its not like Parliamentary systems prevented Brexit. If anything does, it will be the same separation of powers that's getting exposed in the US.

Without really getting into a fight over it, I may be crazy but I'm ok that I don't win 100% of elections. The US needs to address systemic problems with its procedures that were exposed by technology that just wasn't fathomable by the architects at the time of creation. Even things like blogs or delivered to your door firearms to some extent tend to break fundamental assumptions made by the founders . But frankly, a lot of those flaws are noticeable in just about every democracy right now.

Right now I don't think the issue is the Electoral college. It's actually working as designed - it prevents small, populous regions from running roughshot over everyone else. Yea, she won the popular vote but not by much AND she really lost because people flat out didn't show up for her. Liberals didn't show up and lost. I warned people as much as I could, but everyone is such a genius that... well, whatever. This was earned. It's a footnote that she lost because of the electoral college.

But I think there is an issue in that urbanization was not a force the founders really had a clear scope of. So it's not just the danger of losing an election now I care about, the danger is we're getting to the point there are so many depopulated red states that there is a clear and present danger of Republican states getting really close to being able to pass Constitutional Amendments on their lonesome. While I'm sure there are some Republicans that like that idea, that was never envisioned by the Federalist papers because mega-cities and Agro economy was a thing when the created them. It would represent a "worst fears realized" scenario for the founders who explicitly (for those who have read the papers) are intentionally trying to build firewall after firewall to prevent political minority rule (within their conception anyway - table their thoughts on non-white/non-male/non-propertied.) IF we get to that point, there will be bloodshed because ultimately at that point liberals will be completely beholden to a minority due to an archaic system. But as long as Republicans continue to run the "for the home team playbook", I can't see it getting fixed eventhough ultimately that would end in war.

But again, I'm angry I lost the election but those bitching about the electoral college can shut up. It exists to do exactly what it did.

[Kheldarson]

GK, I'll be honest. There are times you make me irate, and this is one of them. As a non-American, its cool that you have no particular affinity, but some of us actually do. Its not like Parliamentary systems prevented Brexit. If anything does, it will be the same separation of powers that's getting exposed in the US.

No, but a Parliamentary system could break up the little stranglehold our two party system has over ways of thought. Without the typical shoving down of a dying second party.

[HYHYBT]

The worst of the options would be splitting electoral votes by congressional district. The current system is, at least, immune to gerrymandering.

The best EASY fix would be that interstate compact where, once enough states sign on, all their votes go to the winner of the popular vote. But not enough states are interested.

Oh: to whoever said the electoral college sometimes helps and sometimes hurts: that's really only true if you're switching sides. Every time the EC makes a difference in who wins vs. a straight popular vote, it's in the Republicans' favor.

[CaptainJaneway]

I signed the petition. Not sure if it will do any good but one could hope. There are 4 electors who may flip their votes.

Hillary could win the election on December 19th.

https://www.change.org/p/electoral-c...edium=copylink

[Hanzoku]

Honestly, I don't see that happening. Can you imagine the shitstorm that would occur if the electoral collage didn't cast their votes as their home states did?

[mjr]

I signed the petition. Not sure if it will do any good but one could hope. There are 4 electors who may flip their votes.

Hillary could win the election on December 19th.

https://www.change.org/p/electoral-c...edium=copylink

Not really, no. Four electors isn't going to make a difference. Aside from that, the electors sent to vote are generally electors from the same party that won the state/Congressional district.

We're stuck with Trump for four years...whether we like it or not.