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Forums - Politics Discussion - What do you think would be the best outcome for the US Electoral College?

 

What result is best?

Trump maintains lead and is voted in. 99 54.40%
 
Clinton gains lead and is voted in. 37 20.33%
 
Both candidates are below... 46 25.27%
 
Total:182
fatslob-:O on 30 November 2016

So many complaints leveled against the electoral college but there's a reason for the founding fathers "great compromise" ...

The United States are made up of a bunch of smaller states such that all states are at least given 2 senators no matter the size so that means in one of the chambers of congress all states get equal representation in one part of the legislature ...

The states are unified, not monolithic and a popular vote doesn't make any sense so the founding fathers settled for the electoral college which unintentionally gave the smaller states we see today with more voting power ...



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hershel_layton on 30 November 2016
mountaindewslave said:

honor the vote. Trump should be President fair and square

at this point I would consider a recount extremely suspicious, because A) the media/elites don't want Trump in office and B) what would explain the massive descrepancy at this point? its all very ehhhh

I will say this though- the electoral college is extremely logical how it is now. If you did simply a popular vote and say, hypothetically, the majority of the country's popular lived in one state (like California), then magically California would get to dictate how the other 49 states live and operate.

The reason the electoral college operates as it does (people winning the entire state rather than just talling votes up everywhere) is so one portion or region of the country doesn't absolutely dominate all of the rest. It balances things a bit more in terms of the space vs. population debate by not strictly being a popular vote but being SLIGHTLY adjusted based on winning states totals and giving a LITTLE more value to the smaller states where fewer people live (even that is fairly reasonably distributed in terms of lower states not awarding a ton of electoral votes)

this would be disastrous though, possibly trying to take the win from Trump.

Don't like Trump and don't like Hilary, but the country would turn into an absolute nightmare if they tried to overturn his win. I'm not sure how someone could justify the logic in a miscount being that badly off considering he won in quite a few places seemingly by a lot and lost where he lost by quite a bit too. In the supposed hotly contested states I could have sworn he was up by hundreds of thousands (Florida? PA? Wisconsin? sort of forget).

 

 

Hilary should honor what she said before, in terms of accepting a loss fair and square. Something seems extremely fishy about the Green party stepping up to debate the result when it won't effect them and also for Hilary to support a recount when she claimed she was going to honor the outcome.

what concerns me is that a Trump win clearly was not something that the media/corps/elites favored and now magically a recount is garnering traction?

 

the vote should be honored at this point unless the gov wants millions of people freaking out. Honor how the electoral college plays out. THere is no way that Hilary magically has a hundreds of thousands of missing votes in the closely contested states when at this point like 99% of their vote has been submitted in.

 

Just accept the result at this point and the electoral college process. The amusing thing is if this is reversed next election you'll hear the opposite from the PC/media machine about a recount being unreasonable (for whichever party has the more streamlined corp friendly nominee then)

recounting this result is not an option. honor the process

the idea of hillary somehow becoming president would be a nightmare, and not for the reason most people would expect.

 

even if she was the perfect leader we needed, she'd be extremely behind on transitioning to the white house, she wouldn't have her cabinet yet, the republicans would go crazy, etc.

 

Personally, i think recount is a waste of time for this election. the only reason why i'd be concerned is if rigged machines becomes common in the next election. 



 

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12/22/2016- Made a bet with Ganoncrotch that the first 6 months of 2017 will be worse than 2016. A poll will be made to determine the winner. Loser has to take a picture of them imitating their profile picture.

Mr Puggsly on 30 November 2016
maxleresistant said:
"What do you think would be the best outcome for the US Electoral College?"

That they die a slow and painful death, and that the US finally have a Universal suffrage and becomes a democracy

I would agree to getting rid of the Electroal College if we split the country.

Maybe split each state, dems can have the socialist side. It would be like the cold war, I love it.



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Aura7541 on 30 November 2016
Nem said:
Aura7541 said:

Well that's a damn shame because Hillary only got a plurality.

I guess that also makes my 'tyranny of the majority' argument flawed, though not in the way you expected

There is no such thing as tyranny of the majority. It is a ridiculous concept. If theres a majority, by definition its not a tyranny. A majority is not an arbitrary use of power. It's a legitimate one. By definition that concept is contradictory.

Couldn't care less who the candidates are. i'm more shocked about how undemocratic, outdated and discriminating your system is. 

So... Proof by Assertions followed by assumption of mutual exclusiveness without further elaboration on how.  A fantastic argument and your assertion that a majority is legitimate without further elaboration is even more fantastic...

A constitutional republic adopts certain qualities of a democracy. That doesn't make it undemocratic, but hey, anything that's not a pure democracy is undemocratic in your eyes. It's rather comical that you only focused on one aspect of my initial post and ignored that part where I suggested that the electoral college needs reform. The main flaws of the electoral college is the 'winner-take-all' aspect and gerrymandering. The Founders did not envision either of those two things to happen. Perhaps fixing these two issues will help the electoral college be more effective rather than whining how the EC is 'undemocratic' without doing further contemplation.

And did I say you care about the candidates? Because whether you care or not does not change the fact that there is no majority in this year's election. No one got over 50% of the popular vote.



LadyJasmine on 30 November 2016

The idea that Hillary won in spirit is nonsense.

Power is not from the moral high ground of winning the popular vote which did not determine the 2016 election.

Power is frankly having the power and Hillary does not have it

As a result is going into the Dustbin of History.



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fatslob-:O on 30 November 2016
Aura7541 said:

So... Proof by Assertions followed by assumption of mutual exclusiveness without further elaboration on how.  A fantastic argument and your assertion that a majority is legitimate without further elaboration is even more fantastic...

A constitutional republic adopts certain qualities of a democracy. That doesn't make it undemocratic, but hey, anything that's not a pure democracy is undemocratic in your eyes. It's rather comical that you only focused on one aspect of my initial post and ignored that part where I suggested that the electoral college needs reform. The main flaws of the electoral college is the 'winner-take-all' aspect and gerrymandering. The Founders did not envision either of those two things to happen. Perhaps fixing these two issues will help the electoral college be more effective rather than whining how the EC is 'undemocratic' without doing further contemplation.

And did I say you care about the candidates? Because whether you care or not does not change the fact that there is no majority in this year's election. No one got over 50% of the popular vote.

Gerrymandering only affects the house of representative elections so it has no effect on the electoral college since you can't exactly redraw state boundaries like the congressional districts within them ...



ebw on 01 December 2016
outlawauron said:
sethnintendo said:
You just stated it was mainly favored by smaller states. Urban and rural have nothing to do with this. You only favor the system because it still gives republicans a chance for presidency. Each vote needs to be at least true proportional represented in the electoral college if it is to still exist. Throw out the electors and just let the states vote be divided proportionally.

That's exactly how it's setup now.......

Electoral votes are setup by population. More population = more votes.

No, that's not what proportionate representation refers to.  Instead of all the electors of one state voting for the same candidate, they would split their vote in accordance with the proportion of voters within that state.  Think about how Maine and Nebraska split some of their EC votes according to the winner of each congressional district.  The net effect is that these two states behave somewhat like five or six smaller voting bodies (each having fewer votes).  On one hand, these states have a smaller voice in the election results (because of the split voting); on the other hand, it makes it more worthwhile to campaign there as you could hope to swing a portion of the vote even if the entire state would otherwise be stuck at one color.



sethnintendo on 01 December 2016
outlawauron said:
sethnintendo said:
You just stated it was mainly favored by smaller states. Urban and rural have nothing to do with this. You only favor the system because it still gives republicans a chance for presidency. Each vote needs to be at least true proportional represented in the electoral college if it is to still exist. Throw out the electors and just let the states vote be divided proportionally.

That's exactly how it's setup now.......

Electoral votes are setup by population. More population = more votes.

I'm talking about the winner takes all the most states have.  You win the state then you win all the electoral votes for that state.  That wipes out all the other votes for anyone else but the winner.  Some states split the votes up but not many.  Most states are winner takes all.  It should be divided up based on the percentage of votes each candidate receives.



maxleresistant on 01 December 2016
Mr Puggsly said:
maxleresistant said:
"What do you think would be the best outcome for the US Electoral College?"

That they die a slow and painful death, and that the US finally have a Universal suffrage and becomes a democracy

I would agree to getting rid of the Electroal College if we split the country.

Maybe split each state, dems can have the socialist side. It would be like the cold war, I love it.

You don't have to split anything... Yes there will be some states that have more people so they willl have a bigger impact on the election, but the it's the same for the Electoral college, not every state has the same number of delegates. So the there is no balance here either.

And anyway, this is not about states, it's about the whole country, the people should elect the president.



Soundwave on 01 December 2016
Mr Puggsly said:
maxleresistant said:
"What do you think would be the best outcome for the US Electoral College?"

That they die a slow and painful death, and that the US finally have a Universal suffrage and becomes a democracy

I would agree to getting rid of the Electroal College if we split the country.

Maybe split each state, dems can have the socialist side. It would be like the cold war, I love it.

US would fall apart without California and New York, the "red states" are all swimming in debt and full of unemployed, unskilled people. The "red USA" aside from maybe Texas would get real ugly, real fast. You'd have a lot of young people trying to flee out of there. 

As to the OP's point, to be honest I don't know if it's really worth all the trouble to change it since it would probably turn into a gong show. Democrats can win both the popular vote and EC, they just need to run a better campaign than what Clinton did. The demographics are still in their favor long term because every 4 years more and more old people die off and more and more young people come into the voting sphere. 

They cannot run uncharismatic candidates though. Obama, Sanders, and Bill were likable, Hillary was not. In politics that stuff matters. Most people even if they vote on issues, get a lot more energized/enthused when they genuinely like the candidate and usually end up dragging 1-2+ more people with them to the polls, and that makes a difference.