Is It Time To Reconsider Voting Rights Yet?

psionl0 said:
Doing away with the winner-takes-all approach would also be a good thing.

If each state is going to appoint members to the electoral college then they should be in proportion to the vote that each party got in the election.
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That would defeat the purpose of the Electoral College, which is to represent the collective interest of the State as a sovereign member of the Union. The Electors are supposed to consider the will of the people of their State, but also the good of the State as a whole, when casting their vote. Assigning Electors proportional to the popular vote in their State effectively nullifies the Elector's role in voting the interests of the State. This may be a good thing--clearly many people think it is a good thing. But that's the thing you're really proposing.
 
Varanid said:
Were Hillary to have lost to Pence, Ryan, Cotton, whomever -- it would have likely been due to a difference in political ideology. However, this election was between an idiot and a serious politician (warts and all). Educated people simply couldn't look at Trump and think he was an appropriate choice.
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Plenty of smart, educated people thought he was the lesser evil, which is frightening in and of itself: if they can be fooled or blinded so, where's the bulwark against tyranny?
 
psionl0 said:
Doing away with the winner-takes-all approach would also be a good thing.

If each state is going to appoint members to the electoral college then they should be in proportion to the vote that each party got in the election.
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As long as you are okay with more results like the current one. Remember that the majority of state legislatures and governorships are republican. This is because the majority of the representative districts in each state lean republican with the popular vote overall being driven by the significant disparity in the population centers leaning democrat.

Even if you apportioned the electoral vote by representative district and gave the two senate votes to the state wide winner, Trump still would have won.

In fact, if I'm reading the link correctly, Romney would have won in 2012.

http://www.270towin.com/alternative-electoral-college-allocation-methods/?year=2016

Edited to add - with the way the percentages play - even a straight popular vote proportion would have led to a Trump win - in part because 3rd party candidates would have taken just enough. 267 - 265 - 6. Interesting. Seems a 2 million popular vote win overall doesn't mean a whole lot when it comes primarily from New York and California and is boiled down to 538 total votes.
 
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phiwum said:
Quite right. I'm appalled by the current situation, but the only solution is better education.
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Yeah back in the day I thought about giving people privileges based on how informed or whatever they were, until the obvious problems of this dawned on me.

There is also the issue of plainly false news stories, those that are posted by persons who know they are false or at least have no evidence. But I suppose this was a problem back then, too.
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Yes but certainly not to the scale that it is now. It's become very difficult even for us here to sift through all the nonsense in order to get to the truth of the matter. The proliferation of social media and the fact that they are often used as a source by the regular media doesn't help at all.

The greatest threat presently isn't a change in the electorate, but in the presidency.
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The system itself has been made more pliable to this sort of thing, though. The Senate, the President and the House are all elected, and answer to the same electors, where before it was only the latter.
 
dudalb said:
The problem with "Let's restrict voting for those who can be trusted to use it wisely" is that 90% of the time "people who Use it wisely" means "People who agree with me".

Robert Heinlein was a big advocate of restricted franchise, but he never really came up with a reasonable way to do this. Even he admitted that the method he uses in "Starship Trooper" ..you earn the right to vote by doing national service...might not work in real life.

Educating the public sounds good ,but problem is how do you do it in an age when people can simply change the channel or go to another website?

There is a strong temptation to go for HG Wells "Turn all power over to a scientifically educated elite and you will hae utopia" but this has a problem:Human Nature. Any elite will end up running things for their own benefit.
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Ok, then: let's turn over the government to self-sustaining artificial intelligence. Then we'll have our utopia (and by UTOPIA, I mean Universal Transferred Organic Processing Interface Architecture. [bonus points for anyone who gets that reference]).
 
There's certainly a lot of question-begging going on in this thread. How is the US worse off for having elected Trump as opposed to a "respectable" Republican candidate? Or Hillary Clinton for that matter? I can identify many ways in which it is better off. Even some which are ideologically neutral. Can any of the question beggars do the same for the opposite?
 
Argumemnon said:
Plenty of smart, educated people thought he was the lesser evil, which is frightening in and of itself: if they can be fooled or blinded so, where's the bulwark against tyranny?
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You should consider the possibility that maybe they weren't fooled. What would it mean if he was in fact the lesser evil?
 
Ziggurat said:
You should consider the possibility that maybe they weren't fooled. What would it mean if he was in fact the lesser evil?
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Or, in fact, turned out to be a greater good? One good thing is that the mainstream media is actually doing investigative reporting of the government again. I'd rather have a watchdog than a lapdog.
 
Argumemnon said:
Oh, please don't play games. The e-mails and the accusation that she 'wanted war' with Russia. Take it to the thread where this isn't off-topic.
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The email accusations were baseless? And you're the one that raised the topic here in this thread.

Sad.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Or, in fact, turned out to be a greater good? One good thing is that the mainstream media is actually doing investigative reporting of the government again. I'd rather have a watchdog than a lapdog.
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If you want the press to examine government critically, make sure the president is a white male Republican.
 
Ziggurat said:
You say that like the scandals were the only strikes against her. I assure you, they are not.
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Your assurances are worthless without substantiation. If you agree that the scandals were fabricated or exaggerated, what else is there? Lack of charisma isn't a "strike" against her, nor is her poor campaigning strategy.
 
theprestige said:
That would defeat the purpose of the Electoral College, which is to represent the collective interest of the State as a sovereign member of the Union. The Electors are supposed to consider the will of the people of their State, but also the good of the State as a whole, when casting their vote. Assigning Electors proportional to the popular vote in their State effectively nullifies the Elector's role in voting the interests of the State. This may be a good thing--clearly many people think it is a good thing. But that's the thing you're really proposing.
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Is that bad?

Spock Jenkins said:
As long as you are okay with more results like the current one. Remember that the majority of state legislatures and governorships are republican. This is because the majority of the representative districts in each state lean republican with the popular vote overall being driven by the significant disparity in the population centers leaning democrat.

Even if you apportioned the electoral vote by representative district and gave the two senate votes to the state wide winner, Trump still would have won.

In fact, if I'm reading the link correctly, Romney would have won in 2012.

http://www.270towin.com/alternative-electoral-college-allocation-methods/?year=2016

Edited to add - with the way the percentages play - even a straight popular vote proportion would have led to a Trump win - in part because 3rd party candidates would have taken just enough. 267 - 265 - 6. Interesting. Seems a 2 million popular vote win overall doesn't mean a whole lot when it comes primarily from New York and California and is boiled down to 538 total votes.
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I'm neither proposing that the votes be by (gerrymandered) districts nor first past the post voting.
 
Argumemnon said:
It was immensely inflated. They made it sound like Clinton was regularily passing classified information through her private e-mail, which just isn't true.
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Now, had she done that, it would be an immense scandal, not only for her, but also for many folks at Foggy Bottom. But what we've seen just isn't that. Yes, classified info should not be sent to any public server - and yes, it's known that people mess up on what is classified, every now and then. But what we know now isn't a massive scandal.

and yet again, it's amusing that people want to whine about Clinton's emails, when Toupee Fiasco is using a years-old Android phone in the White House.
 
Argumemnon said:
Your assurances are worthless without substantiation. If you agree that the scandals were fabricated or exaggerated, what else is there?
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I didn't agree with that. I'm just not interested in debating it, since it's not necessary to my point.

Lack of charisma isn't a "strike" against her, nor is her poor campaigning strategy.
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The fact that she's a thoroughly establishment player is. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. And that's what I now know you haven't considered when it comes to the possibility that maybe Trump was the lesser evil. Note that I'm not even asking you to believe that he was. I'm only asking you to consider what it would mean if he was.
 
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