President Trump

[Ambrosia]

That is why the role of 50 equal sovereigns must also be a factor.

That may well be true. I'm from the UK so how you choose your leaders is your business, but, there must be a better way to apportion votes for the most important office in the land than the existing rules.

If the roles of 50 equal sovereign states needs to factor into the choice of the POTUS then outright abolishing the Electoral College is bad, but it's also bad to keep using a system that was setup long before the difference in population between states was so large.

 

[acbytesla]

That's the point. A lot of the manufacturing jobs that Trump wants to "Bring back" don't exist anymore.Automated out.
I think that having a stronger manufacturing base in the US is actually a good idea, but don't expect it to bring back thousands of jobs. Donald is selling them a line.
And, BTW, this is pretty much accepted by economist of all stripes,liberal and conservative.

Exactly. Trump was selling bs and the public not knowing any better ate it up.

Me, I'd like to see huge free vocational schools set up across the country where new skills are taught. I also think we have to reduce the standard work week from 40 to maybe 36 or 32. Overtime pay being mandatory for anyone working 36 or 32 hours or more. Companies would put either more money in their employee's pockets or hire more workers. Employers will scream but they screamed when the 40 hour became standard.

 

[William Parcher]

If somebody offered Trump $6 billion cash to quit the Presidency he would take that deal.

 

[acbytesla]

Like I said - no good solution I can come up with. It's equally disproportionate for those Chicago and LA folks to decide that Alaskans can't have guns because of the problems with violence in cities

Neither equal representation nor population representation is a good solution by itself.

This is true. But this has got way out of hand. Note that most densely populated area have real needs for social programs and these are inevitably blocked by some Senator from Wyoming or Nebraska.

I've always found it interesting that urban areas tend to be liberal, but if you live in the sticks they are terrified of change.

 

[newyorkguy]

[Four]times in history the winning candidate has lost the popular vote but won the presidential election. 1876, 1888, 2000, 2016. That's almost 9% of the time an election is held.

The defense of the electoral college is, it depends on how you define fair. In the four elections you mention, the winner, despite losing the overall popular vote (by a narrow margin), always won the most states. As this year, Trump won 30 states to Clinton's 20 while losing the popular vote by 0.2%.

It was the same thing in 2000. Although Gore won the popular vote by 0.5% George Bush carried 30 states. In 1888 Grover Cleveland won the popular vote by 0.8% but carried only 18 states compared to the 20 won by winner Benjamin Harrison. In 1876 Samuel Tilden won the popular vote by 1.0% but carried four fewer states.

 

[acbytesla]

That may well be true. I'm from the UK so how you choose your leaders is your business, but, there must be a better way to apportion votes for the most important office in the land than the existing rules.

If the roles of 50 equal sovereign states needs to factor into the choice of the POTUS then outright abolishing the Electoral College is bad, but it's also bad to keep using a system that was setup long before the difference in population between states was so large.

I agree with you Ambrosia. And as an American who loves England, I want to profoundly apologize for Donald Trump.

 

[shuize]

From what I have seen discussed by historians and scholars that is a pretty good answer ....

This introduction makes it sound like it is some deep academic topic beyond the ken of average Americans. It's actually basic U.S. History. Or don't we teach students about the Great Compromise anymore?

 

[newyorkguy]

...Me, I'd like to see huge free vocational schools set up across the country where new skills are taught...

That was one of the ideas Hillary Clinton had and, when I heard her talk about it, she emphasized she thought it was "doable" even in the highly partisan age we live in. That it was an idea she'd work on right away if elected.

 

[acbytesla]

This introduction makes it sound like it is some deep academic topic beyond the ken of average Americans. It's actually basic U.S. History. Or don't we teach student about the Great Compromise anymore?

Not everyone on this forum is American and studied US history in depth.

 

[Belz...]

First, each state can allocate their electoral college delegates however they wish. The simple majority rule is not required and two states do not use it.

Second, there are other important values than democracy. The UN does not use global population votes nor assign proportional representation based on population. The EU is bicameral with the council having one vote per nation. The idea that there is a circle of equals among nations is an important value in unions. The electoral college manages to reflect both values at once.

This.

 

[shuize]

That was one of the ideas Hillary Clinton had and, when I heard her talk about it, she emphasized she thought it was "doable" even in the highly partisan age we live in. That it was an idea she'd work on right away if elected.

I'm not sure about "free," but I like the idea of more training in the skilled trades. I'm not going to tell anyone not to go to university, but I think many people would be better off without the student loan debt for a B.A. in art history or other completely unmarketable degrees.

 

[Belz...]

Sorry, I don't understand what you are asking. That is the system they currently use AIUI. The number of EC votes depend on that state's number of Senators and House Reps, which I think might be ultimately dependent on population.

Are you asking me how I would change it and still have it work for 50 states?

I'm asking for A) how you would make it work and B) how would you force all 50 states to use it?

 

[shuize]

Not everyone on this forum is American and studied US history in depth.

Fair enough. But it is something that reasonably educated Americans should know from high school Civics.

 

[Belz...]

It's why we have both a house and a senate, with representation done in two different ways. There is no one-size-fits-all.

I prefer the parliamentary system we have in the commonwealth, but the US system is pretty good, too. It's just become bogged down in a number of ways, not the least of which is partisan politics, but I think having the population elect every single branch of government is a bad idea.

 

[acbytesla]

That was one of the ideas Hillary Clinton had and, when I heard her talk about it, she emphasized she thought it was "doable" even in the highly partisan age we live in. That it was an idea she'd work on right away if elected.

I know. I've been suggesting a form of that for years. I hate the for profit schools that are in it only for the money.

I don't think everyone needs to go to college but there are millions of jobs that are not filled because they need people with skills that people aren't getting training for.

I'm disgusted that Trump was elected saddened that Hillary wasn't. She was a horrible candidate but I believe she would have made a great President.

 

[Travis]

You haven't a clue, the jobs they have will always be around, the trick is getting their wages up.

Why would they always be around when workers in another country will work for much less?

That's the point. A lot of the manufacturing jobs that Trump wants to "Bring back" don't exist anymore.Automated out.
I think that having a stronger manufacturing base in the US is actually a good idea, but don't expect it to bring back thousands of jobs. Donald is selling them a line.
And, BTW, this is pretty much accepted by economist of all stripes,liberal and conservative.

We seem to accept that blue collar workers voted for the political equivalent of a homeopathic remedy.

 

[acbytesla]

Fair enough. But it is something that reasonably educated Americans should know from high school Civics.

I agree. But if you look, the people asking these questions about the electoral college are from Canada or overseas.

 

[acbytesla]

Why would they always be around when workers in another country will work for much less?

We seem to accept that blue collar workers voted for the political equivalent of a homeopathic remedy.

I'm convinced of it.

 

[Ambrosia]

I want to profoundly apologize for Donald Trump.

Don't sweat it. I watched his victory speech, and he sounded more presidential then than at any point in his campaign, so maybe there's a chance that President Trump is better than many of us fear.

I blame the voting system, people cast their votes to try to get the best outcome they can within the confines of the system, and noone can blame them for that. I do exactly the same thing when I vote.

Our election systems are flawed, the Electoral College perhaps a little, the FPTP system extremely so. Until we get a system that represents the voters more fairly we are doomed to be stuck with a 2 party system where the winning party represents a minority of the people it represents.

If Trump does no other good, perhaps his election will point to how flawed our elections are and how much they could be improved.

ETA: You might well be wondering why a non US person is so interested in the US voting system. It's because what America does tends to follow on in other countries later. (which is also why California voting to legalise recreational use of weed is such a good thing, but I digress)

If the US scrapped the FPTP voting system and replaced it with a proportional representation system like STV then it would be a lot more likely that in the UK we would do a similar thing, which can't come soon enough imo.

 

[William Parcher]

That was one of the ideas Hillary Clinton had and, when I heard her talk about it, she emphasized she thought it was "doable" even in the highly partisan age we live in. That it was an idea she'd work on right away if elected.

I wonder if there would be a downside to that if it was wildly popular. You could have hundreds or thousands of new graduates showing up at a job opening and all of them have identical degrees from the free school and no work experience.

You'd definitely need a lot of available jobs that pay well and that's a problem now.

Employers would have a dilemma choosing a person out of all the cookie-cutter identical candidates without engaging discrimination. It might force filling a job by lottery because everyone is the same and there are so many of them.

Employers might favor applicants from non-free colleges just because it turns out that they are better educated.