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Ed Justice Barrett

Upchurch said:
With those states, you can win the Presidency with only 21.91% of the popular vote. That is a touch more than "marginal", I'd say.
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But it never actually works out that way, does it? Because that scenario isn't even vaguely realistic.
 
Upchurch said:
In the era of Trump, you want to rely on historical precedent and tradition to counter an objective mathematical argument?

Bold choice.
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The objective mathematical argument you put forth indicates what is in principle possible, given the proper distribution of votes.

But objective mathematical arguments will also tell you that such an inhomogeneous distribution of votes is, shall we say, highly unlikely. That isn't a matter of precedence or tradition, but hard numbers. So, nice try, but fail.

And it's funny that you appeal to "the era of Trump". Trump's only got one election left, and the polling data is reliable enough to know that your scenario simply isn't in the cards for this election.
 
Upchurch said:
2 or 3 times or more than some states is only marginally more influence, huh?



How do you find it to be reasonably fair?



How do you think the Electoral College does this better than a direct election of the President?
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But this thread isn't about the Electoral College, it's about the illegitemate approval of a new Justice of the Supreme Court.
Wyoming population per Senator: 284,150
California population per Senator: 18, 670, 995

That's a ratio of about 65:1 for confirming a Justice.
The Holy Founding Fathers NEVER forsaw such a discrepancy.
 
marting said:
Senate just confirmed. Thomas to swear her in.
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Outside of Senate traditional reasons, that they made pretty clear they weren’t going to honor from the beginning, unlike Kavanaugh there was little reason not to.
 
bignickel said:
LOL! They didn't even BOTHER with a discharge resolution, which they could have easily have done. But instead, they just said 'eff it' and broke the rules, because... they could.

I'd say that the thing that bothers me the most is all the people going on about 'well, if the Democratic party changes the Supreme Court, then won't the Repubs do the same?!". That's very strange to me: isn't the right question "If the Repubs proceed with hypocritically installing their candidate 2 weeks before the election, won't the Democratic party respond in kind?" So bizarre. The Repubs are ploughing ahead with this, but there's just all this talk about to the Democratic party that "you better not respond, cuz we'll respond back!". Don't want a response? Then fine, don't pull this bs, and you won't get one.

Personally, I love the idea floated earlier in this thread or the RBG thread (by Joe Morgue? Can't remember), or increasing the Supreme Court to 15 seats, and have a random 9 picked for every session. Can't pack the court when you have no idea who's gonna show up for the trial.
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This is a good point. Warning of a slippery slope as you’ve already been plummeting down a cliff seems silly in retrospect.
 
Why not just fire justices? The president appoints and the senate confirms all kinds of ppl. There’s nothing I see in the constitution that says the president can’t fire justices like he can any other appointment.
 
Melania, who was reportedly still experiencing coronavirus symptoms last week, is not wearing a mask at ACB's White House swearing in ceremony
 
Just remarkable that she was nominated at an event where a dozen people got sick and they’re STILL not wearing masks.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Why not just fire justices? The president appoints and the senate confirms all kinds of ppl. There’s nothing I see in the constitution that says the president can’t fire justices like he can any other appointment.
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It's in Article III, scan to the bit about "good behavior. "

Sent from my SM-T560NU using Tapatalk
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Why not just fire justices? The president appoints and the senate confirms all kinds of ppl. There’s nothing I see in the constitution that says the president can’t fire justices like he can any other appointment.
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Appointed for life unless impeached. Judges don't work for the executive branch.
 
Ziggurat said:
True. You're wrong because millions and millions of people aren't "few", and power isn't concentrated when they have only marginally more influence with their votes.



First off, note I said "maximal fairness". Our electoral system is still reasonably fair, honestly.

Producing good outcomes is more important than maximal fairness. That's hard to engineer into a system, though, so I'll settle for something a little more practical to achieve: protecting federalist structure of our government.
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In Nov 2016, was a good outcome obtained where clearly maximal fairness was not a factor?

In other words, were maximal fairness to have been in effect then, might a better (if not good, then gooder) outcome have resulted? Would the federalist structure of government have been better protected?
 
Every time her name comes up I can't help but mentally replace it with "Sasha Baron Cohen". It doesn't help that he's got a new movie coming out.
 
Ziggurat said:
The objective mathematical argument you put forth indicates what is in principle possible, given the proper distribution of votes.

But objective mathematical arguments will also tell you that such an inhomogeneous distribution of votes is, shall we say, highly unlikely. That isn't a matter of precedence or tradition, but hard numbers. So, nice try, but fail.

And it's funny that you appeal to "the era of Trump". Trump's only got one election left, and the polling data is reliable enough to know that your scenario simply isn't in the cards for this election.
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Isn't a scheme that admits even the tiniest potential for such a skewing (where less than 1/4 of the vote count can prevail) automatically flawed, if the tiniest wisp of lip service is to be paid to the term "democracy?"

It would be bad enough for the possibility of a 45% portion prevailing.

"The system ain't bad because it's not yet got as bad as it could get" is no damned good argument.
 
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