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The Electoral College

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  • that guy in AZ
    12-01-2018 10:37:31 AM
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    We had some discussions a while ago about the Electoral College, but they have disappeared into a cloud somewhere.

    There have been 5 times in our country's history where a candidate lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote to become president. Each time it has happened, the victor was even worse than the last time it happened. We all thought George W. was a terrible president - but Trump is even worse.

    Believe it or not, there was one time when a candidate lost both the popular vote AND the electoral vote, and still managed to get elected. It happened in 1824, and was summarized on the History Channel this morning:

    http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/presidential-election-goes-to-the-house

    There have also been two times in our nation's history that a son and his father were both elected president. In both cases, the son was a much less successful president than his father.

    John Quincy Adams was not as good as his father, John Adams - and George W. Bush was not as good as his father, the late George H.W. Bush, who died yesterday at the age of 94.

    The twist in this story is that John Quincy Adams, his father, and George W. Bush only served on term , but George W. managed to get elected twice. The frustrating thing about George W.'s election in 2000 is that the fact that 101,000,000 people voted, but he got elected due to a difference of 537 votes in Florida - and he would not have won at all if the Supreme Court had not stopped the recount.

  • Dutch
    12-01-2018 10:51:59 AM
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    Guy, I've written about this many times. The Electoral College should be banned forever. Only votes should count. If the Electoral College is maintained it means that the "dumb" part of the country continues to "rule". Ask McConnell and his cronies. Sorry but this is absolutely the dumbest country in the world!!!
  • Chet Ruminski
    12-01-2018 02:10:16 PM
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    Dutch said:

    "If the Electoral College is maintained it means that the "dumb" part of the country continues to "rule"."

    To bad that the electoral college was kept such a secret that nobody but people catering to dumb people campaigned there. But wait a minute, Wisconsin ,Pennsylvania and Michigan, are rated 10th, 21st and 27th in intelligence in the 50 states. The state's that decided the election

  • that guy in AZ
    09-19-2020 09:30:18 AM
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    On September 18, 1969, the U.S. House of Representatives voted by an overwhelming 338 to 70 to send a constitutional amendment to the Senate that would have dismantled the Electoral College, the indirect system by which Americans elect the president and vice president.

    “It was the only time in American history that a chamber of Congress actually approved an amendment to abolish the Electoral College,” says Jesse Wegman, a member of the New York Times editorial board and author of Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College.

    The House vote, which came in the wake of an extraordinarily close presidential election, mirrored national sentiment about scrapping an electoral system that allowed a candidate to win the presidency even while losing the popular vote. A 1968 Gallup poll found that 80 percent of Americans believed it was time to elect the nation’s highest office by direct popular vote.

    Yet just a year later, the Senate bill that would have ended the Electoral College was dead in the water, filibustered by a cadre of Southern lawmakers intent on preserving the majority’s grip on electoral power in their states. Despite widespread bipartisan support for the amendment in both large and small states, the Senate came five votes shy of breaking the filibuster.

    https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-nearly-abolished-thurmond

  • Dutch
    09-19-2020 09:51:54 AM
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    Yes again it shows that the "backwards" southern States rule this country ask McConnell and Linsey Graham.

    As I've said a million times this is no longer 1797, so update the government to reflect 2020, because CA and other States have "grown" a lot more than Kentucky. But yeah they seem to love it to be ruled by corrupt hillbillies.

    Why the refusal to do the right thing?, because they love "McConnell" and the idiot Rand Paul? Why stick to an outdated Constitution? and a zillion lawyers who can't read? Like the "second amendment" which says nowhere that you as private citizen can own an AR 15 or a AK 47 with lots of "rounds". An absolute crazy dumb ass country for sure!!!!! And people here still think everything here is according to the law; which is half ass since 1750. Ask Boris, he's got the same problems, because British junk laws never worked ask their ex colonies. I guess people here are so stuck in their "island" ways that they never will accept what the rest of the world does.

  • Dutch
    09-22-2020 11:01:08 AM
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    No one even discussed who or what the "electoral college" on how it can be corrupted. I bet Trump made an study of it. He likely knows who is part of it and already "researched" who can be "bought". Yes America your "vote" does not count if an Trump gets involved. Get used to it America that everything here can be bought
  • that guy in AZ
    09-23-2020 08:37:43 AM
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    Frank Bruni published an interesting discussion of the Supreme Court vacancy this morning. Embedded in his column is one glaring fact - the Electoral College should be eliminated.

    "In 2018, Democrats won 22 of the 35 Senate elections, with candidates who got roughly 17 million more votes than the Republican candidates got. (And I’m not even counting, among those 22, two independents who caucus with Democrats, Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.)

    But the structure of the Senate — in which less-populous states get the same say and sway as much more populous ones — favors Republicans. As Philip Bump of The Washington Post observed this week, “The Senate has since 2014 been controlled by Republicans who cumulatively represent less than half of the country — the longest such stretch in a century.”

    Trump is in a position to make that third court appointment because of the Electoral College. As I noted, he lost the popular vote. That does not make him an illegitimate president. But it does advance the argument that we’ve drifted too far from one person, one vote, and the Electoral College should be scrapped."

    There's a reasonably good chance that the Democrats can score a trifecta in November, gaining the White House and the Senate, and retaining their majority in the House. If they do that, they need to revisit 1969 again, and eliminate the Electoral College.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/opinion/trump-supreme-court-appointment.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

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