Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

The horror of the populist mob during the French terror influenced thought on direct democracy elections. The Directorate and the XYZ extortion affair, too

That's a great theory except for the fact that almost no instances of democracy in history used a direct popular vote for most things, preferring to elect representatives (who represented a specific set of people living in a given geographical area) who voted on things instead (ie: A Republic). That, and the fact that the US constitution was ratified in 1788, while the French Terror didn't happen until 1793. But other than that, great point!

That's kinda why I referred to the handwaving of our system (and specifically the EC) as some sort of defense against the incompetent masses as snark. It's oft repeated, but the reality is that people pretty quickly figured out that representation was a much better implementation of democratic principles, for a whole lot of reasons, and have been using that as the primary form of "democracy" for a couple thousand years or so. While yes, there certainly is the concern about the people voting directly on things at whim and while public emotions are driving things rather than cooler heads, the fact also is that there are a host of other really good reasons to do things the way we do them.


I actually find it interesting that people have such a negative opinion of how their votes are filtered through the EC process, but yet they are fine with how their votes are similarly filtered through our legislative representation process as well. The only difference is that when congress votes on things, we don't simultaneously hold a public election and count up the popular vote on the same issue. If we did that, we'd find that the popular vote wont match the legislative vote on occasion either. And that should not be a surprise, since the same sort of weighting occurs in congressional representation. While we don't send delegations to the house in a winner takes all by popular vote in each state, we do basically do that in the senate. And in that body, it's quite possible that the total votes in the senate for party A versus party B will not match the ratio of popular voters for each party nationwide. And for the exact same reason that it happens in the EC. Some states will have very high majorities of one party (essentially more than is needed to merely win the seat), while the other party may have more states that it won by more narrow majorities.

The house is actually a bit more interesting though, despite not being winner take all by state (but it is by district, which you'd think would make it closer). I'll note specifically that not one person has complained that while the popular vote favored Clinton in this election, and we can assume that Clinton voters also vote Democrat for their representative, yet the house, in which every member had to win re-election, is still firmly controlled by the GOP. Shouldn't the percentage of house representatives reflect the percentage of each party's voters in the election? Why aren't people up in arms that the house representation is skewed from the popular vote?

This means that this issue isn't just in states, but also in districts (and arguably more so). Democrats win a smaller number of districts by a larger number of votes, while the GOP wins more districts by a narrower margin. And yes, this gets us right back to the whole gerrymandering issue, but it's also related to a point I made earlier about Dem voters clustering themselves into very tightly packed high population density areas. It's just not hard for GOP controlled state legislatures to gerrymander their districts to cause this effect in their favor, while the Dems would have to gerrymander some very seriously bizarrely shaped districts in order to make things come out differently. You literally have to deliberately shape districts such that you take a small slice of your high population areas, and then stretch them over a large portion of some surrounding rural spaces in order to make house districts actually favor the Dems. And in many states there just aren't enough big cities to do this.

People complain about the EC pretty much entirely because other people tell them that's a big issue they need to care about. But when you actually step back and look at the whole picture, you see that the same effect occurs in pretty much every part of our voting process. The only exceptions are the relatively rare instances where the public directly votes on things. And that's never at the federal level. You never vote for anything federal. You always elect a representative who votes on your behalf.

Edited, Nov 17th 2016 7:56pm by gbaji

Spoiler

gbaji wrote:

Trappin wrote:

The horror of the populist mob during the French terror influenced thought on direct democracy elections. The Directorate and the XYZ extortion affair, too

That's a great theory except for the fact that almost no instances of democracy in history used a direct popular vote for most things, preferring to elect representatives (who represented a specific set of people living in a given geographical area) who voted on things instead (ie: A Republic). That, and the fact that the US constitution was ratified in 1788, while the French Terror didn't happen until 1793. But other than that, great point!

That's kinda why I referred to the handwaving of our system (and specifically the EC) as some sort of defense against the incompetent masses as snark. It's oft repeated, but the reality is that people pretty quickly figured out that representation was a much better implementation of democratic principles, for a whole lot of reasons, and have been using that as the primary form of "democracy" for a couple thousand years or so. While yes, there certainly is the concern about the people voting directly on things at whim and while public emotions are driving things rather than cooler heads, the fact also is that there are a host of other really good reasons to do things the way we do them.


I actually find it interesting that people have such a negative opinion of how their votes are filtered through the EC process, but yet they are fine with how their votes are similarly filtered through our legislative representation process as well. The only difference is that when congress votes on things, we don't simultaneously hold a public election and count up the popular vote on the same issue. If we did that, we'd find that the popular vote wont match the legislative vote on occasion either. And that should not be a surprise, since the same sort of weighting occurs in congressional representation. While we don't send delegations to the house in a winner takes all by popular vote in each state, we do basically do that in the senate. And in that body, it's quite possible that the total votes in the senate for party A versus party B will not match the ratio of popular voters for each party nationwide. And for the exact same reason that it happens in the EC. Some states will have very high majorities of one party (essentially more than is needed to merely win the seat), while the other party may have more states that it won by more narrow majorities.

The house is actually a bit more interesting though, despite not being winner take all by state (but it is by district, which you'd think would make it closer). I'll note specifically that not one person has complained that while the popular vote favored Clinton in this election, and we can assume that Clinton voters also vote Democrat for their representative, yet the house, in which every member had to win re-election, is still firmly controlled by the GOP. Shouldn't the percentage of house representatives reflect the percentage of each party's voters in the election? Why aren't people up in arms that the house representation is skewed from the popular vote?

This means that this issue isn't just in states, but also in districts (and arguably more so). Democrats win a smaller number of districts by a larger number of votes, while the GOP wins more districts by a narrower margin. And yes, this gets us right back to the whole gerrymandering issue, but it's also related to a point I made earlier about Dem voters clustering themselves into very tightly packed high population density areas. It's just not hard for GOP controlled state legislatures to gerrymander their districts to cause this effect in their favor, while the Dems would have to gerrymander some very seriously bizarrely shaped districts in order to make things come out differently. You literally have to deliberately shape districts such that you take a small slice of your high population areas, and then stretch them over a large portion of some surrounding rural spaces in order to make house districts actually favor the Dems. And in many states there just aren't enough big cities to do this.

People complain about the EC pretty much entirely because other people tell them that's a big issue they need to care about. But when you actually step back and look at the whole picture, you see that the same effect occurs in pretty much every part of our voting process. The only exceptions are the relatively rare instances where the public directly votes on things. And that's never at the federal level. You never vote for anything federal. You always elect a representative who votes on your behalf.

Edited, Nov 17th 2016 7:56pm by gbaji

These threads should really be merged, but oh well.

Yesterday we found out that while it's not okay to register guns because of the constitution, it's okay to register religion because of Japanese Internment Camps during World War II.

I can't find the posts, but somebody here was talking about the number of votes Hilary had over Donald, was it a million, was it 200,000, they weren't all counted yet, etc.

So far, the popular vote lead for Hilary is 1.3 million votes.

I wouldn't.

If Trump wins, because in this crazy system he could still lose, then he's won. No asterisk, no technicality. Just won. The rules might be awful, but he played by them. A victory by any method within the rules of a system is a legitimate victory and as legitimate as any victory by any other method.

Well, one follows directly from the other though. Again though, the point is that it's not "the people" who elect a president. The states do. With each state's votes weighted based on population. You're literally arguing for a flaw that is only a flaw if you assume that what we're talking about is something different than what it is. You could just as easily declare the rules of football wrong because it's possible for a team with fewer fans to win more points in the game, and that's just wrong. Because, I suppose, having more fans means you should win. Um... No. That's not how it works.

The number of fans supporting a candidate for president is irrelevant. It's how many state votes are cast for that candidate. The fact that over time, we've developed the process of determining how a states votes are cast via popular vote of the people in the state does not change the basic fact that it is the states that vote for the president, not the people within the nation as a whole. There is nothing wrong with the national popular vote not matching the EC vote.



I don't think that's a flaw though. And, as I pointed out in the other thread, it's how we do every single federal level election. The people don't vote on bills in congress. Their representatives do. The people don't vote on confirmation hearings. Their representatives in the senate do. And guess what? The people don't vote on who sits in the oval office. Their representatives do. Representatives that are chosen in a manner very similar to how we choose all our other representatives who in turn vote on every single thing that's decided by vote in our federal government.

You're arguing that the absence of a special exception just in the case of the vote for president is somehow a "flaw". I completely disagree.

Link to that story? Not saying it ain't true, but that's honestly news to me.


I do recall membership in white nationalist groups skyrocketing after Obama got elected. Do you? I do recall violence and acts of terrorism against gays and people of color being significantly higher all during the Obama administration by members of these same groups. Do you?

That is a terrible comparison and defense. Really, absolutely terrible. I don't vote for a guy to decide who my House Rep is, nor do I vote for a guy to decide who my Senator is (we used to do this but we decided it was a bad idea and that we should be given that power directly). House rep or Senator isn't analogous to a guy who shows up once to make a single perfunctory vote and then slip forgotten into history. The President IS the representative we're voting for and the EC is just a layer of complexity on top of making that vote.

We don't vote on confirmation hearings because Secretary of the Interior is not an elected position. The presidency is an elected position and directly electing the president would fall right in line with directly electing House reps and Senators.

Edited, Nov 20th 2016 11:47am by Jophiel

Between 09Nov2016 and 16Nov2016 there were 206 reports of incidents involving anti-immigration, 151 anti-Black, 51 anti-Muslim, 36 anti-woman, 80 anti-lgbt, 60 swastikas and general antisemitism, and 27 anti-Trump.

First I heard of it. Probably because it's a toothless venture that will go nowhere.

An op-ed about an organization written by the founder of said organization. Mock and move on.

Though I guess I wouldn't really be too surprised if we get another four years of obstructionist politics.