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Senator Boxer Introduces Bill to Eliminate Electoral College
"This is the only office in the land where you can get more votes and still lose the presidency," Boxer said in a statement. "The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately. Every American should be guaranteed that their vote counts."
[...] "When all the ballots are counted, Hillary Clinton will have won the popular vote by a margin that could exceed two million votes, and she is on track to have received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history except Barack Obama," Boxer said.
Trump will be the fifth president in U.S. history to win the election despite losing the popular vote. George W. Bush won the most recent such election, in 2000.
Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3wLQz-LgrM
(Score: 5, Informative) by jmorris on Thursday November 17 2016, @07:40PM
I don't really need to explain why the Electoral College is a good idea when Slate.com already did it for me. Well, ok, it was in 2012 but either what they said then was true or it isn't, either doesn't reflect glory on Team Blue does it?
Defending the Electoral College [slate.com]
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday November 17 2016, @09:40PM
Yet this week on Slate [slate.com].
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday November 17 2016, @10:39PM
Yup. But of course NOTICING the flip would get you branded "Fake News" and cast out by Google and Facebook's ad networks and your Twitter account closed out.
They think they can still play these games. After just having their noses rubbed in it, their response is to lie harder, point and shriek louder, double down again and tell everyone ELSE that they are the real haters and racists. In a few months when Twitter has joined MySpace in the history books, FaceBook is bleeding users and even mighty Google is worried about the impact on their stock valuation, they will double down yet again with the entire media and celebrity world joining in the shunning. Eventually they will either learn and change tactics or be replaced with better, smarter, more effective forces of darkness. Before that happens we should gleefully roll up yardage. NO mercy. NO quarter. NO stopping. This train has no brakes.
Yes we should show mercy to defeated enemies. But only after they surrender, after they have their "Hitler in the bunker" moment and the survivors ask for mercy; and that won't happen for years. Most of them think this was just a setback, Trump will soon implode and the Arc of History will keep right on bending toward the Sunny Uplands. So any RINO cuck who counsels mercy, bipartisanship or compromise should be marked down as someone to ignore in all future decisions.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday November 18 2016, @04:23AM
Translation: we only like the Electoral College when it tilts things so OUR candidate wins.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday November 18 2016, @01:23PM
Exactly, and because the media screwed the pooch so badly in this election they're flailing about for any other kind of scapegoat they can flog, which means they're not going to shut up about it until they've bullied Google and Facebook into censors that block any kind of wrongthink they flag, purged the FBI for having tried to apply the law equally to the avatars of the Establishment, and put up abolition of the Electoral College as a constitutional amendment.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday November 18 2016, @02:31PM
I note you left Twitter out of the list of future actions... of course, there censorship is already present-reality.
And good luck getting three quarters of the Several States to pass that Constitutional amendment. Bwahahaahahaha from Flyover Country!
Hey! I'm all for abolishing the present system too. The Electoral College should get its votes from the county level, so the average man is better-represented. One county, one vote. ;)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @08:03PM
So basically a black guy does better vs some non-Trump white guy than Hillary Clinton does vs Trump, and they blame the system?
If you lose to someone like Trump, you should be ashamed of yourself and figuring out the real reason why you lost.
Getting rid of the electoral college and going for popular vote is a stupid idea unless you want many states to secede. As for direct democracy, maybe if the voters are well educated otherwise that's as stupid as having millions of mostly stupid and ignorant people vote on whether to turn the steering wheel of their country right or left on a daily basis instead of voting for a driver every few years.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Thursday November 17 2016, @09:57PM
About point 3. Swing states and point 4. Big states in that article:
What you could do, is apply a weighing factor to the proportional vote result of each state.
Something like a inverse square root(population) weight; this way, the smallest states get a disproportionally large effect on the vote, and the largest states a disproportionally small effect, but the weight of each state is still sorted according to their population.
The EU parliament seat distribution [wikipedia.org] is done similar to this way I think. Germany has the most seats and Malta the least, but each Maltese voter weighs in at something like 10x a German voter.
The important result of this would be, that if the Green party has a uniformly distributed 1.5% of the votes in each state, then they also get 1.5% of the seats in parliament. Each party, small or large, is respected (there's a cut-off threshold at the low end though).
Then sort the parties from small to large, distribute the seats of the smallest parties first amongst those states where they had the largest % vote, then the next smallest, etc.
So the voice of a non-centrist polity is heard!
Also, swing states no longer exist. *ALL* states are suddenly important. The votes of people in all states count, but the least populous states the most.
Also, the ridiculous gerrymandering no longer exists.
About the arguments that the Electoral College reduces uncertainty: You're voting for the leadership of the richest, most powerful country on Earth. You don't need to know the result straight away. A few more days bickering doesn't matter. Just buy more popcorn.
I did not understand paragraph 2 Everyone's President. You already have States; do you have Regions too? That's new to me. Just do it per Region then instead of per State.