This again turns the whole process into a game where it's about demographics doing this and that, and votes only mattering if this or that happens. While in a democratic process, each vote counts and each voter is represented in one way or another.

We are a representative republic, not a democracy. Citizens of the US do not vote directly for executive branch offices. Our vote is only directly counted for respresentative and senate offices. When we cast our votes for who we want to see as president, we're merely giving our electors a chance to see what we'd prefer.

A direct popular vote for both executive and legislative branches would lead to the "hands out begger" crowd directly dictating every policy in the nation. Why would those who produce nothing and merely leech off the system ever be given that power? All that ever leads to is a failed state.

Duh. the entire argument for the electoral college is the protection of the minority over the will of the majority.

and in any case the number of elections where the winner has a minority of votes can be counted on one hand. its just recency bias at play.

A representative republic is a form of democracy. I'm not going to respond further than that since it's not my job to teach you things that you could look up on Wikipedia. There can always be valid reasons for making a system undemocratic, but "representative republic" is not one of them.



Which is why I'm not saying that the EC is the problem. It's merely one one of the sub-problems. The main issue is that the system works on a "first past the post" principle at multiple levels, in addition to the fact that it all leads to exactly one person being elected into far too much power.

You tell me that I don't understand because I'm European (which is a terrible ad-hominem, but let's look past that), without realizing that the USA has put itself into the very situation that Europeans would never want. The EU already is a governing body that unites the European states (and even has a president who is not elected democratically), but has far less power over the nations than the American government has over its states. I'd never want the EU to gain power over local policies, and I'm pretty sure most of my fellow Europeans are with me on that one.

Your comments make me believe that you actually agree with my opinion in the bigger picture; I haven't seen you saying anything that indicates otherwise.

This post was edited by Leevee on Sep 14 2020 01:39pm

the situation is 2 faceted, origin and outcome. in it's origin the EC was created so the federal govt couldn't have too much power over the small number of states, at the time numbering 13. this was a compromise between one side who wanted absolute power for the federal govt and another who wanted absolute power of the states. so the states were given relative power, and the federal power in a limited number of issues. mainly where 2 states were involved but later in more areas (civil rights, etc, all expounded not by the fed but by the scotus). relative to today those 13 colonies had a lot more in common than modern Vermont and Kentucky. but from origin to outcome we've been locked on a path via the constitution, so while the fed gained more and more power the EC remained as a check on that power. the states cant diminish federal power, only the SCOTUS can, but they can at least choose with whom that power resides. in modern america we have a situation the founding fathers never foresaw, they didnt plan for urban sprawl and rural decline. the system only partially took this into account, and was more aimed at more populous states in a much narrower spectrum. but sometime happy accidents work out.

i do think we disagree, although the distinction could be minor. i dont believe a person's beliefs are more important than a regions norms. the best govt is a local govt and an absolute democracy in modern america means less local and more federal governance. i like that politicians have to fly to my state, and not just pander to Cali and NYC and Chicago. i think in an attempt to maximize the individual via democracy, an ok idea in theory, means in practice the total silencing of entire sections of the US. montana or the dakotas wont even exist in representation, they'll be a minor footnote and nothing more. as time passes they'll be thought of less and less and blue coastal states will be pandered to more and more.

in any case sorry you took it as ad hom, i simply see it as reality. most europeans i meet and talk to simply cant fathom living in a country as diverse as the USA is. that's as simply as i can put it. with most of europe only recently leaving the homogenized white ivory tower and accepting "the other" mixed with being in a nation u can drive through in a day it doesnt fit their perspective to look at things the american way. and lastly the idea that the american way is tantamount to the wrong way is also all too common among some europeans, as everything from our healthcare, politics, courts, military, etc etc etc are just viewed as wrong by default. and breaking off that default isnt often easy. look at sauci, could he ever admit anything US is good or done right? literally anything? i find a vein of the wine that fills his veins runs through most europeans like a good cheese.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Sep 14 2020 02:04pm

This explains the history of how we got here pretty well, so there's not much I can say about that. It doesn't mean that the current system is optimal for the current country though.



In this, we indeed disagree. You worry about certain states becoming such small minorities that they'd be completely ignored in the grand scheme of things, and this is a very valid concern.

What nobody has yet addressed, is why this needs to be solved at state level. There are numerous minorities in the country that will never be adequately represented by any presidential candidate, simply because their minority group does not have a representative in the EC. Imagine you're a gay person living in a straight dominated state, and you vote specifically for candidates which try to improve the lives of gay people. Your vote will never lead to anything, because the system says: whoever gets 50% of the votes in the state will represent everyone in the state. The only thing you can hope for is that a candidate who is popular with straight people, will happen to campaign with a program that favors gay people as well.

Now imagine that you're a gay person, and even though you're outnumbered in your state, you know that there are millions of other people like you in other states. Despite the fact that your minority's population is big enough to populate several states, you'll never be properly represented because most of those gay people live in states where they respectively are outnumbered.

The result: your minority which makes up millions of people will lead to zero representatives in EC. Meanwhile, whichever candidate gets 50% of the votes in Alaska (in other words: whoever got about 350k votes there) will be backed by three members of the EC.

The tl;dr of this rant is: making sure that people don't end up in underrepresented minorities is a fine idea in theory but impossible to put to practice, since each individual can be part of a majority by some criteria and part of a minority by different criteria. The current system protects one type of minorities (i.e. people who live in sparsely populated states), without giving any particular reason why this is the minority that needs protecting, and does nothing to protect any other minorities.



Sure, we all grow up in our own environment, and when something works for us we will reject anything different by default. That's true, and it counts for all of us. Introduce me to a random American person, let me give him a 20 minutes monologue about which Belgian policies are at the root of our wealth, and you can be certain that this American will think I'm a nutcase.
Hell, this is even the case when a Belgian and a Dutch person try to argue politics. Most people just don't have the ability to see things from another person's perspective. If that's a point you want to make when discussing a certain country's policies, you might as well bring that up in each thread in PaRD. It's going to get pretty boring pretty quickly.

So, back to the topic of states / countries and how they are represented. What I explained in my last post is that, if you equate American states to European countries, the situation is not all that different. Just like a state in the USA, a country in Europe is relatively small in size and population, and its borders roughly define a group of people who can realistically be represented by a government and/or a president. Bundle too many countries or states together, and you'll end up with too much diversity for one government to represent adequately. This is true for both Europe and the USA, and it's why I said that I believe the big problem lies in how powerful the president is.

In your last two posts you've essentially been expressing that very same opinion in your own words, and you've made it seem like I don't agree with you and that it's because I'm European. If/when you type up another response, do me a favor and pretend you're talking to somebody whose background you are unaware of. This might help you to focus on the points that are being made instead of focusing on who is making those points.

If Democrats ever got less than 80% of the black vote, they would no longer be a political party

re: ec vs popular vote:

you can please some of the people some of the time; you cant please everyone all the time.

theres no perfect system for giving a widely varied people representation. no matter what, someone is going to lose out.

as a disclaimer i have a lot of empathy for the people who are in niche minority voting blocks on either deeply red or deeply blue states, NORCAL voters, the gays, blacks in the deep south, etc.

but the math doesnt work out in a way i find compelling, you're telling me that the small percent of voters in a state should matter more than the voting majority of their state. thousands matter more than millions. it doesnt make sense.

this is of course all philosophical, not realistic. the system being optimal or not doesnt matter, changing it is a veritable impossibility. states would never ratify a change to the constitution that would nullify their importance. its like blacks voting for Jim Crow laws, maybe a few will, almost none though. the only states pushing for this are coastal electoral giants that aren't satisfied with a massive number of votes and want even more. fat children that cry after the candy bar is gone.

this is the fundamental issue with the EU comparison, you're neither bound in such a stringent way together by a constitution like ours, nor are you subject to massive force from a federal overseer like we are. Brexit shows that, opting out is messy, but its do-able. in the USA it means civil war, quite literally.

ive always been of the mind that the presidency is too powerful, that congress is too powerful, etc. but these ideas, fundamentally libertarian/republican mainstays, are at odds with who is asking to eliminate the EC, that being democrats, who want more not less federal power and oversight.

in short you seem to be agreeing with many of the issues i see, we're just on different planets in terms of resolutions to those issues. and baked into the cake in all of my responses is the reality that elimination of the EC is off the table. i can dip my toe into hypothetical pools for only so long on that front.

edit: as to perspective and constantly addressing it couldnt disagree more on the aspect of it being a bore. we cover a wide range of topics in PARD, and perspective is as varied. sure eventually it would get robotic in some topics, but still it would be valid. i have a perspective as a white man on race issues that has worked tirelessly in the black community, as a father to a girl on to topic of misogyny, as a lifetime gun owner on the topic of guns, as a libertarian wannabe seeking more local governance on that topic, as a formerly broke person for years in that, as an engineer in automation in topics of trade and jobs. understanding both these perspectives and the counterparts of whom im speaking to is vitally important. having conversations with blank slate NPCs takes more steps to come to a common conversation, not less. its unproductive for me to set aside the ideas i think others hold, and only problematic if i refuse to accept information to the contrary when others offer it. this is the fundamental issue with posters like Ghot and Fender, when u tell them something like "i'm for progressive ideas but think a conservative approach gets more done" Fender calls you a boot licker who is lying about believing in a progressive future. Ghot is similarly distrustful of the idea that anyone who supports a democrat can be anything but an america hating commie in disguise.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Sep 15 2020 08:42am

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/opinion/bahrain-israel-trump.html

I do wonder how the Arab streets view these normalizations.