Re: Tom's demons are strong today! Re: RE: Re: Higher Education Is Overrated

On 12/15/2024 9:52 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 12/14/2024 10:08 PM, John B. wrote:

>

So it is ELECTORAL votes that count now and not the "popular vote" that
Democrats are claiming was so close. Trump won by a full 25% of electoral
votes and now you're hearing the Democrats crying that we should eliminate
the electoral system and go with the "entirely Democratic" popular vote.
Remember that Adolf Hitler was elected with the popular vote which is

>
Nope, Hitler was appointed as Chancellor because his party was the
largest in the  Reichstag although not a majority.
>

EXACTLY why our founding fathers preferred the electoral system -

>
More bull shit. The U.S. was originally "designed" to be a union of
states and the Electrical system was designed to give each state
election authority, in presidential and vice presidential elections,
based on their population.

 Not quite. The electoral college was designed so residents of tiny states with small populations could still feel they had influence. That might have made sense in the early days, when former colonies still thought of themselves more as colonists than as members of a nation.
 A few weeks ago I came across an article talking about the last great effort to do away with the electoral college. The effort was led by Senator Birch Bayh. He convinced a huge majority of the citizenry that it was time to dump the anachronism. He got strong approval in the U.S. House, but got filibustered in the Senate.
 The effort continued, but according to the article, two things prevented success. One was that some Democratic groups (e.g. a Black political association in New York, I think) realized that their influence within their state would be less likely to be effective nationally; and crucially, President Richard Nixon removed his previous strong support. Why? Because he got pissed at Bayh for not looking the other way at Nixon's own corruption.
 

There are many such examples, and many more arguments were made, over our history.
But, as it stands, more dead people voted in recent elections in Los Angeles County alone that there are living souls in Wyoming (registered voter and not).
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/la-county-and-state-to-purge-15-million-inactive-voters-from-rolls/6866/
Decentralization of elections while observing the sovereignty of the various States is a feature not a bug.
--
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971