4 ms·

Wasn’t that part of the original intent?

by lettergram 7y ago

VectorLock 7y ago
I think we can pretty safely retire the debate on if it would serve its intended purpose, at this point.
- lettergram 7y ago
  I disagree, Trump wasn’t a president that should really trigger the failsafe of the elector college. That’d be more if we were electing someone that was a clear threat. Trump was and is not a clear threat to Americans. He’s pretty incompetent and honestly still don’t know if he’s worse than the alternative(s).
kuschku 7y ago
It's original intent requires a world in which news took weeks to travel, and communication was too slow. But that's not tge world we've got anymore.
- RyanAF7 7y ago
  A world that moves faster is absolutely the original intent of the EC which is more essential now than ever before. Rule by a demagogue is the primary weakness of a democracy and it's a pretty bad one at that.
  - kuschku 7y ago
    That's already what congress is for, the US system just gives too much power to the president, while having it a directly elected position, so it has to have this complicated system which is entirely broken. Parliamentary Democracies have fared much better in recent times.
    - RyanAF7 7y ago
      Yes, thats what congress is for in the legislative branch. In the executive branch the EC provides that function. You're forgetting that we are Constitutionally allowed 1 congress rep per 30k. Right now it's at 1 per 790k. Thats already demagogue territory. Also, forgetting the 17th Amendment and the original intent of Senators. You have a very narrow way of rationalizing the destruction of an actual bulwark against tyranny.
spamizbad 7y ago
Divining original intent is weird because it's from an era where not even adult white males had universal suffrage. Prior to the mid 19th century, nearly all states required you to be a land-owner to vote. I've always viewed the electoral college as an enlightenment-era hack to work around a scenario where one state would "liberalize" suffrage to garner outsized influence during a national election. If this was 1790, non-land owners deciding an election would be the feared "tyranny of the majority" the founders sought to prevent; and that's not even counting suffrage for women and non-whites. At least in theory (putting aside any voter suppression efforts), the US today has near universal suffrage for all adults, with the only remaining restrictions being placed on felons (of which we have many). So it really doesn't make sense: We functionally have the popular vote, but we have this weird legacy layer on top that, in 2000 and 2016, selected someone who lost the popular vote.
- ddingus 7y ago
  I think the person with the popular vote should have lost. The EC performed to spec in my opinion. Nobody, myself included, likes that outcome, but the truth is Clinton didn't do the work needed to win the election. Now, she had a number of challenges, but she was also running to sell the world on the idea of her being the leader too. No excuses. I feel strongly about that. The primary reason I feel that way is she flat out could have won. A shift in campaign strategy, something her own staff urged her to do many times as they saw the numbers, would have sealed the deal. Visit Wisconsin, do some real work in the Rust Belt, and talk about jobs, not just education, or other similar things that put the fault on those who are expected to vote, and she would have won easily. What actually happened was a run on popular vote totals. I'm told that was to increase the legitimacy of her win, and lay the foundation for a mandate type win. Ok, that's all fair, valid, reasonable, but for the fact that the basic work all that is predicated on simply was not done. The EC more or less forces that work to get done too. I'm fine with the EC as it exists today. An awful lot of the EC discussion is driven by a bad outcome, and I am just not sure that makes sense, or at least it does not make sense without a super honest, raw analysis of what actually did happen.
  - cybersnowflake 7y ago

Wasn’t that part of the original intent?

VectorLock 7y ago

I think we can pretty safely retire the debate on if it would serve its intended purpose, at this point.

lettergram 7y ago
I disagree, Trump wasn’t a president that should really trigger the failsafe of the elector college. That’d be more if we were electing someone that was a clear threat. Trump was and is not a clear threat to Americans. He’s pretty incompetent and honestly still don’t know if he’s worse than the alternative(s).

kuschku 7y ago

It's original intent requires a world in which news took weeks to travel, and communication was too slow. But that's not tge world we've got anymore.

RyanAF7 7y ago
A world that moves faster is absolutely the original intent of the EC which is more essential now than ever before. Rule by a demagogue is the primary weakness of a democracy and it's a pretty bad one at that.
- kuschku 7y ago
  That's already what congress is for, the US system just gives too much power to the president, while having it a directly elected position, so it has to have this complicated system which is entirely broken. Parliamentary Democracies have fared much better in recent times.
  - RyanAF7 7y ago
    Yes, thats what congress is for in the legislative branch. In the executive branch the EC provides that function. You're forgetting that we are Constitutionally allowed 1 congress rep per 30k. Right now it's at 1 per 790k. Thats already demagogue territory. Also, forgetting the 17th Amendment and the original intent of Senators. You have a very narrow way of rationalizing the destruction of an actual bulwark against tyranny.

spamizbad 7y ago

Divining original intent is weird because it's from an era where not even adult white males had universal suffrage. Prior to the mid 19th century, nearly all states required you to be a land-owner to vote. I've always viewed the electoral college as an enlightenment-era hack to work around a scenario where one state would "liberalize" suffrage to garner outsized influence during a national election. If this was 1790, non-land owners deciding an election would be the feared "tyranny of the majority" the founders sought to prevent; and that's not even counting suffrage for women and non-whites. At least in theory (putting aside any voter suppression efforts), the US today has near universal suffrage for all adults, with the only remaining restrictions being placed on felons (of which we have many). So it really doesn't make sense: We functionally have the popular vote, but we have this weird legacy layer on top that, in 2000 and 2016, selected someone who lost the popular vote.

ddingus 7y ago
I think the person with the popular vote should have lost. The EC performed to spec in my opinion. Nobody, myself included, likes that outcome, but the truth is Clinton didn't do the work needed to win the election. Now, she had a number of challenges, but she was also running to sell the world on the idea of her being the leader too. No excuses. I feel strongly about that. The primary reason I feel that way is she flat out could have won. A shift in campaign strategy, something her own staff urged her to do many times as they saw the numbers, would have sealed the deal. Visit Wisconsin, do some real work in the Rust Belt, and talk about jobs, not just education, or other similar things that put the fault on those who are expected to vote, and she would have won easily. What actually happened was a run on popular vote totals. I'm told that was to increase the legitimacy of her win, and lay the foundation for a mandate type win. Ok, that's all fair, valid, reasonable, but for the fact that the basic work all that is predicated on simply was not done. The EC more or less forces that work to get done too. I'm fine with the EC as it exists today. An awful lot of the EC discussion is driven by a bad outcome, and I am just not sure that makes sense, or at least it does not make sense without a super honest, raw analysis of what actually did happen.
- cybersnowflake 7y ago