donald trump is having a meltdown on twitter

He has a point though, what a stupid archaic system we use.

That being said if mitt won electoral and Obama won popular he'd be singing a different tune.

Opie wrote:He has a point though, what a stupid archaic system we use.

That being said if mitt won electoral and Obama won popular he'd be singing a different tune.

agree on bolth points. he would have no problem if the tables were turned.

i think obama will end up winning the popular vote too when it's all counted up but that doesn't mean the electoral college isn't dumb.

trump is equally dumb.

its not over yet bros

i liek electoral college cause it makes it so i don't have to vote because it doesn't matter where i live

True, all that mattered was the swing states.
They never mentioned california once during the campaign

I am absolutely floored that Rosanne only got 7,988 votes in this redneck utopia I call home. I thought far more folks around here would be stupid enough to vote for her.

Roseanne got that many votes?

wowsers.

also, good job virgil, made a lil dent in your home state.

obama won the popular vote too

i love donald trump and i hope he dies of colon cancer because he's a fucking criminal pig

at the time of this post mitt was ahead in the popular vote hence donald was going off and hence our reactions.

regardless the system sucks. if you're a republican in California or a democrat in Oklahoma your vote means literally nothing. doesn't seem very american.

i wanted to vote for Gary Johnson but voted for the lesser imho, still lost so I'm a schmutz.

yeah, but the electoral makes the election more competitive for the minority party so no one will ever change it. also, changing the electoral system provides no advantage to whatever party would push it.

josh please explain why it is fair that if I lived 40 miles north of where I currently live my vote/influence could help notably decide the election but since I live in Massachusetts and not New Hampshire there's no point of me voting in the national election?

how about the person with the most votes wins?

(1) no one said it was fair and i don't think anyone cares if it's fair or not and (2) i'm sorry you live blue state and hate obama

here's the criticism and support. i've read both sides in the past and I just think there's more bad than good to keeping the electoral college. I think a lot of the criticism is rooted in fact while a lot of the support is based in theory.

to be fair ill give this shit another read right now and answer.

Criticism

Irrelevancy of national popular vote

This graphic demonstrates how the winner of the popular vote can still lose in a hypothetical electoral college system.
The elections of 1876, 1888, and 2000 produced an Electoral College winner who did not receive the plurality of the nationwide popular vote.[77] In 1824, there were six states in which electors were legislatively appointed, rather than popularly elected, so the true national popular vote is uncertain. When no candidate received a majority of electoral votes in 1824, the election was decided by the House of Representatives and so could be considered distinct from the latter three elections in which all of the states had popular selection of electors.[78]

Opponents of the Electoral College claim that such outcomes do not logically follow the normative concept of how a democratic system should function. One view is that the Electoral College violates the principle of political equality, since presidential elections are not decided by the one-person one-vote principle.[77] Outcomes of this sort are attributable to the federal nature of the system. From such a configuration, argue supporters of the Electoral College, candidates must build a popular base that is geographically broader and more diverse in voter interests. This feature is not a logical consequence of having intermediate elections of Presidents, but rather the winner-takes-all method of allocating each state's slate of electors. Allocation of electors in proportion to the state's popular vote could reduce this effect.

Scenarios exhibiting this outcome typically result when the winning candidate has won the requisite configuration of states (and thus their votes) by small margins, but the losing candidate captured large voter margins in the remaining states. In this case, the very large margins secured by the losing candidate in the other states would aggregate to well over 50 percent of the ballots cast nationally. In a two-candidate race, with equal voter turnout in every district and no faithless electors, a candidate could win the electoral college while winning only about 22% of the nationwide popular vote. This would require the candidate in question to win each one of the following states by just one vote: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.[79]
A result of the present functionality of the Electoral College is that the national popular vote bears no legal or factual significance on determining the outcome of the election. Since the national popular vote is irrelevant, both voters and candidates are assumed to base their campaign strategies around the existence of the Electoral College; any close race has candidates campaigning to maximize electoral votes by capturing coveted swing states, not to maximize national popular vote totals.

The United States is the only country that elects a politically powerful president via an electoral college and the only one in which a candidate can become president without having obtained the highest number of votes in the sole or final round of popular voting.
—George C. Edwards, 2011[77]

Focus on large swing states

These maps show the amount of attention given to each state by the Bush and Kerry campaigns during the final five weeks of the 2004 election. At the top, each waving hand represents a visit from a presidential or vice-presidential candidate during the final five weeks. At the bottom, each dollar sign represents one million dollars spent on TV advertising by the campaigns during the same time period.

Most states use a winner-take-all system, in which the candidate with the most votes in that state receives all of the state's electoral votes. This arrangement is said to to provide candidates an incentive to pay the most attention to states without a clear favorite, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida in 2004 and 2008. The rationale for this is unclear, however, as recent elections have clearly indicated a trend by candidates to focus on swing states and those with the highest number of electoral votes. In spite of having the largest populations, California, Texas, and New York have in recent elections been considered safe for a particular party (Democratic for California and New York; Republican for Texas), and therefore candidates typically devote relatively few resources, in both time and money, to such states. The same is true of nearly every small state; of the 13 smallest states, six are reliably Democratic, six are reliably Republican and only New Hampshire is considered a swing state.[77] George C. Edwards wrote that candidates in the 2008 election did not campaign across the nation, but rather focused efforts on a select group of states.[77]

It is possible to win the election by winning eleven states and disregarding the rest of the country. If one ticket were to take California (55 votes), Texas (38), New York (29), Florida (29), Illinois (20), Pennsylvania (20), Ohio (18), Michigan (16), Georgia (16), North Carolina (15), and New Jersey (14) that ticket would have 270 votes, which would be enough to win. In the close elections of 2000 and 2004, these eleven states gave 111 votes to Republican candidate George W. Bush and 160 votes to Democratic candidates Al Gore and John Kerry. In 2008, the Democratic candidate Barack Obama won nine of these eleven states (for 222 electoral votes), with Republican John McCain taking a combined 49 electoral votes from Texas and Georgia.

Proponents of the Electoral College claim that adoption of the popular vote would shift the disproportionate focus to large cities at the expense of rural areas.[80] Candidates might also be inclined to campaign hardest in their base areas to maximize turnout among core supporters, and ignore more closely divided parts of the country. Proponents of a national popular vote for president dismiss such arguments, pointing out that candidates in popular vote elections for governor and U.S. Senate and for statewide allocation of electoral votes do not ignore voters in less populated areas.[81]

Discourages turnout and participation

Except in closely fought swing states, voter turnout is largely insignificant due to entrenched political party domination in most states. The Electoral College decreases the advantage a political party or campaign might gain for encouraging voters to turn out, except in those swing states.[82] If the presidential election were decided by a national popular vote, in contrast, campaigns and parties would have a strong incentive to work to increase turnout everywhere.[83] Individuals would similarly have a stronger incentive to persuade their friends and neighbors to turn out to vote. The differences in turnout between swing states and non-swing states under the current electoral college system suggest that replacing the Electoral College with direct election by popular vote would likely increase turnout and participation significantly.[82]

Allows states to disenfranchise citizens without penalty

If a state makes it harder for its citizens to vote, whether by making voting more difficult, or by legally disfranchising some citizens (such as those convicted of felonies) from voting, and turnout in the state is reduced as a result, the Electoral College insulates the state from being penalized. In fact, legal scholars Akhil Amar and Vikram Amar point out that the original compromise of the Electoral College was largely due to this very fact. Direct national election of the President (which was proposed by a delegate from Pennsylvania) would have enabled the North to outvote the South, because "the South would get no credit for its half-million slaves, none of whom, of course, would be able to vote. The electoral college system that ultimately emerged gave the South partial—three-fifths—credit for its slaves."[84] The states were thus allowed to disfranchise large numbers of citizens while maintaining the same influence in the Electoral College. Akhil and Vikram Amar note, The founders' system also encouraged the continued disfranchisement of women. In a direct national election system, any state that gave women the vote would automatically have doubled its national clout. Under the Electoral College, however, a state had no such incentive to increase the franchise; as with slaves, what mattered was how many women lived in a state, not how many were empowered.
—[84]

The Electoral College continues to insulate states from losing any influence when they disfranchise or suppress the votes of their citizens, whether through voter suppression, through making it more difficult or expensive to vote, or through actually taking away some citizens' votes by law. "Even today, a state with low voter turnout gets precisely the same number of electoral votes as if it had a high turnout. By contrast, a well-designed direct election system could spur states to get out the vote."[84]

Favors less populous states

As a consequence of giving more per capita voting power to the less populated states, the Electoral College gives extra power to voters in those states. Some critics of the Electoral College assert that the system favors the Republican Party[citation needed] by disproportionately boosting the electoral weight of the less populous states, but Democrats in fact won the majority of the 13 smallest states in five of the six presidential elections between 1992 and 2008.

In one countervailing analysis about smaller states gaining an Electoral College advantage, the Banzhaf power index (BPI) model based on probability theory was used to test the hypothesis that citizens of small states accrue more election power. It was found that in 1990, individual voters in California, the largest state, had 3.3 times more individual power to choose a President than voters of Montana, the largest of the minimum 3 elector states.[85] Banzhaf's method has been criticized for treating votes like coin-flips, and more empirically based models of voting yield results which seem to favor larger states less.[86]

Disadvantage for third parties
See also: Duverger's law and Causes of a two-party system
In practice, the winner-take-all manner of allocating a state's electors generally decreases the importance of minor parties.[87] However, it has been argued that the electoral college is not a cause of the two-party system, and that it had a tendency to improve the chances of third-party candidates in some situations.[77]

Not straightforward
One view is that the electoral college is overly and unnecessarily complex:
The electoral college does not provide a straightforward process for selecting the president. Instead, it can be extraordinarily complex and has the potential to undo the people's will at many points in the long journey from the selection of electors to counting their votes in Congress.
—George Edwards, 2011[77]

Support

Prevents an urban-centric victory
Proponents of the Electoral College claim the Electoral College prevents a candidate from winning the Presidency by simply winning in heavily populated urban areas. This means that candidates must make a wider geographic appeal than they would if they simply had to win the national popular vote.[88]

Maintains the federal character of the nation
The United States of America is a federal coalition which consists of component states. Proponents of the current system argue that the collective opinion of even a small state merits attention at the federal level greater than that given to a small, though numerically equivalent, portion of a very populous state. The system also allows each state the freedom, within constitutional bounds, to design its own laws on voting and enfranchisement without an undue incentive to maximize the number of votes cast.
For many years early in the nation's history, up until the Jacksonian Era, many states appointed their electors by a vote of the state legislature, and proponents argue that, in the end, the election of the President must still come down to the decisions of each state, or the federal nature of the United States will give way to a single massive, centralized government.[89]

In his book A More Perfect Constitution, Professor Larry Sabato elaborated on this advantage of the Electoral College, arguing to "mend it, don't end it," in part because of its usefulness in forcing candidates to pay attention to lightly populated states and reinforcing the role of the state in federalism.[90]

Enhances status of minority groups
Far from decreasing the power of minority groups by depressing voter turnout, proponents argue that, by making the votes of a given state an all-or-nothing affair, minority groups can provide the critical edge that allows a candidate to win. This encourages candidates to court a wide variety of such minorities and advocacy groups.[89]
Encourages stability through the two-party system
Many proponents of the Electoral College see its negative effect on third parties as a good thing. They argue that the two party system has provided stability through its ability to change during times of rapid political and cultural change. They believe it protects the most powerful office in the country from control by what these proponents view as regional minorities until they can moderate their views to win broad, long-term support from across the entire nation. Advocates of a national popular vote for president suggest that this effect would also be true in popular vote elections. Of 918 elections for governor between 1948 and 2009, for example, more than 90% were won by candidates securing more than 50% of the vote, and none have been won with less than 35% of the vote.[91].

Death or legally defined disability of a presidential candidate
This section does not cite any references or sources. (November 2012)
The Constitution grants each state the right to appoint electors in a manner chosen by that state. While it is common to think of the electoral votes impersonally, as mere numbers, the Electoral College is in fact made up of real people (usually party regulars of the party whose candidate wins each state) with the capacity to adapt to unusual situations. That capacity might be particularly important if, for example, a candidate were to die or become in some other way legally disabled or disqualified to serve as President or Vice President. Advocates of the current system argue that these electors could then choose a suitable replacement (who would most likely come from the same party of the candidate who won the election) more competently than could the general voting public. Furthermore, the time period during which such a death or the onset of such a legal disability or disqualification might call for such an adaptation extends, under the Electoral College system, from before Election Day (many states cannot change ballots at a late stage) until the day the electors vote (the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December).
In the election of 1872, Democratic candidate Horace Greeley did in fact die before the meeting of the Electoral College, resulting in Democratic disarray; the electors who were to have voted for Greeley split their votes across several candidates, including three votes cast for the deceased Greeley. However, President Ulysses S. Grant, the Republican incumbent, had already won an absolute majority of electors. Because it was the death of a losing candidate, there was no pressure to agree on a replacement candidate. There has never been a case of a candidate of the winning party dying.
In the election of 1912, Vice President Sherman died shortly before the election, too late for any state to remove his name from its ballot, thus causing Sherman to be listed posthumously. The 8 electoral votes that Sherman would have received were cast for Nicholas Murray Butler.

Isolation of election problems
Some supporters of the Electoral College note that it isolates the impact of any election fraud, or other such problems, to the state where it occurs. It prevents instances where a party dominant in one state may dishonestly inflate the votes for a candidate and thereby affect the election outcome. For instance, recounts occur only on a state-by-state basis, not nationwide.[92] Critics of the current system suggest that the results in a single state – such as Florida in 2000 – can decide the national election and thus not keep any problems in such a state isolated from the rest of the nation.[93]

State election systems
This section does not cite any references or sources. (November 2012)
The Electoral College allows each state to conduct elections using its choice of voting system, within certain restrictions in federal law, without those decisions affecting votes cast for president in other states. A national popular vote, by definition, requires all states to use plurality voting and could lead to stronger arguments for national election rules and standards.

Neutralizes turnout disparities between states
This section does not cite any references or sources. (November 2012)
Weather can vary greatly across a large area such as when rain or winter storms impact voter participation in affected states. In addition, when a state has another high profile contest, such as a hotly contested Senate, gubernatorial race or ballot proposition, turnout in that state can be affected. Because the allocation of electoral votes is independent of each state's turnout, the Electoral College neutralizes the effect of all such turnout disparities between states. At the same time, turnout can vary within states for similar reasons – hotly contested local races and weather affecting only one part of a state, for example – and have an impact on who wins that state and, potentially, who wins the presidency.

Maintains separation of powers
This section does not cite any references or sources. (November 2012)
The Constitution separated government into three branches that check each other to minimize threats to liberty and encourage deliberation of governmental acts. Under the original framework, only members of the House of Representatives were directly elected by the people, with members of the Senate chosen by state legislatures, the President by the Electoral College, and the judiciary by the President and the Senate. Critics of the current system suggest that popular vote elections already tie the hands of electors in states and that adoption of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would not affect any separation of powers or state powers over how to choose their electors.

huh? i voted for obama.

you're seeing black right now bro, take off your racist glasses for 10 seconds and look at the facts.

obama won the popular vote so literally your only leg to stand on (blacks have no voice cuz there is less blacks in america than whites with a popular vote) literally makes no sense.

stop looking at this as a black man and look at it as a human being pls and ty.

josh thinks a system where 11 states can control a country is good because he's butthurt about the population numbers of blacks compared to whites in a popular election. this cant be life.

not to mention you're defending a system instituted by a bunch of asshole racists who would have quite literally owned you...

this whole thing is bizarre. you're freaking me out josh.

sippysippy wrote:
i wanted to vote for Gary Johnson but voted for the lesser imho, still lost so I'm a schmutz.

don't speak yiddish anymore. you butchered the word schmutz. you're a schmuck.

Opie wrote:josh please explain why it is fair that if I lived 40 miles north of where I currently live my vote/influence could help notably decide the election but since I live in Massachusetts and not New Hampshire there's no point of me voting in the national election?

how about the person with the most votes wins?

it's not fair. it's called gerrymandering. google it.

The loser one!

lol

op, i'm gonna try to respond to the 50 things you said but they're all retarded and contradictory:

(1) the criticisms you copied for wikipedia are very appropriate. if you read what i actually said, you would see that i wasn't defending the system but explaining why it won't change in our lifetime. there's actually a difference between 'defending' the existence of something and explaining the lack of change or motivations for it.

(2) i thought your complaint about voting district was about how you hated obama (cause you say racist stuff sometimes) and not because you wanted to contribute to a more close election in new hampshire.

(3) i never said anything about blacks having less of a voice or whatever? where the fuck did you get that?

(4) pointing out that the electoral college is a system created by racist assholes COMPLETELY IGNORES the fact that the entire framework of our government was set up by racist assholes and that every corner of our nation was erected by racist assholes and that our country is still full of racist assholes. limiting it to the electoral college is hilarious. the law, the economic system, all of it was set up by racist assholes and i still have to function within it.

so thanks for pointing out that it sucks to be black in the usa

oh ok.

looks like we were on the same side and i was confused. yes it does suck and i'm sorry for that. our whole framework is definitely racist and archaic and i wish we didn't use it, didn't mean to ignore the rest of the constitution i thought you were just supporting this part which was obv baffling to me. i wrote my whole senior thesis on the war on drugs, racism in america and how that racism molded our drug laws and regulations in (this was 2003) and how the war on drugs was ultimately, racist. so trust me, I'm well versed in our system and how it came to be. (or at least this aspect) I've read from the trials how they scared people into outlawing cocaine by claiming "niggers were raping white women" and how all those laws still stand.

i got the blacks less voice thing because that's the only reasonable reason i could give myself for you defending the electoral college even though I didn't agree with the reason. obviously i misunderstood your point.

glad we squared that up.

also fuck gary johnson

btw i know sometimes i say some controversial things but i'm just speaking my mind. if in private you'd ever like to know my background/volunteer work i've done and continue to do please let me know. i won't lie that if i see a group of black guys in baggy clothes on a corner in a bad neighborhood and they're looking at my car i lock my doors and don't feel safe, so maybe I am racist but I think I have a solid outlook on things. I don't believe in stereotypes and of course there are expections to every rule but i don't stick my head in the ground regarding them because I think that's just as dumb.

i know in the past you've said you don't think i'm racist but my view may be skewed from living in ATL and this may be true. i've also done more than most people (probably not more than you but most people) for those less fortunate than me of every color. i sleep sound at night. i have no inner demons.

I ended up jumping off the gary johnson train at the last minute.

I did vote for a republican named Scott Brown in Mass along with Obama because he's extremely bipartisan and Elizabeth Warren is an extreme left wing nutjob but Scott Brown lost. oh well.

stereotypes are a natural result of the way we understand information. it's easier to compartmentalize experiences into mental shortcuts than it is to reason and explain every single experience you have. it's a survival strategy and doesn't require that you do or don't believe in them.

don't develop a complex about being or not being a racist.

gary johnson dumb. libertarianism is the only ideology i actually hate.

is it racist that i sic my dog on any and aLL blacks who venture near my property lines?

i certainly don't have a complex about it irl. on the internet i push the envelope sometimes so I just wanted to clear the air a bit.

ps.

this is definitely racist.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=4490382031891

is it racist that i sic my dog on any and aLL blacks who venture near my property lines?


there's no black people in toronto so i say no.

edit: there are (208,555) black people in toronto according to my sources which accounts for 8.6 percent of the cities population.

did wonk(bbb) just slam me on a jewish error itt? Back to the hebrew board with you bennet, this aint you papa's ughh.

them african/weird french carribean black people

not regular black people

yeah i believe that was an attempted yiddish pwn.

while harry and jason are our two highest ranking jewish members I don't believe BBB has his grammatical/acronym privileges back (even yiddish ones).

i think a lot of them are jamaican

josh can i get a ruling on that facebook video?

it's definitely racist but it's also funny so does that negate the racism? can it be both? pls advise.

ruling in t-minus 5 hours

(cause i'm in class)

like when cam'ron got a phonecall from a man who was upset about his poompoom going astray, i thought, "boy, killa kam does not like torontonian blacks"

josh please explain your hatred for libertarianism. Ideally it appeals to me though I know it is not completely enforceable. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Ima circle this back for a sec and say that roseanne is trill as fuck