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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 "The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately.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: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday November 17 2016, @07:41PM
So she wants to amend the constitution with a simple bill in congress?
Even if that worked its going to change anything. Shrewd candidates on both sides tailor their campaign to the rules of the game. The outcome would VERY LIKELY have been the same if those rules were set up for popular vote, because both sides would target their efforts differently.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @08:29PM
We have a method for changing the rules. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlev [cornell.edu]
Passing a law does nothing and should get you a 0-9 from the supreme court. If it passed at all.
Anyone who thinks getting rid of the current system and just putting first past the post is a good idea has not considered it well enough. Pretty much the top 20 cities in the united states would be pandered to and the remaining cities would just be ignored. There other better systems to put in place. But the only one people want is first past the post. I would only say that is a good idea if say someone can manage 75% of the popular vote.
50/50 votes (what we usually have) is basically dont know dont care. We could literally pick two people, flip a coin 101 times and whoever comes out ahead wins and we get the same result.
The bigger story is the 80 million people who did not vote at all and are the actual majority this time around. THEY speak louder than those who did. They voted 'none of the above'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXEglx-or6k [youtube.com]
Trump spent the whole time telling everyone it was rigged and that he was going to win. Both statements are true. Both parties have failed but they only failed because we the people let them do whatever the hell they wanted. It honestly should not matter which of the two wins. We should be picking someone that is worth having there. Both parties have slanted their process for the candidates picked. One party even tries to slant what the other party did by using the media. Operation pied piper they called it. This is not the will of the people. It is mob rule and propaganda to fuck us over.
Perhaps if both sides would stop flipping each other off and acting the fools we could find some middle ground.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @08:44PM
Don't forget that one party solicited aid from foreign entities to swing the results their way.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday November 17 2016, @09:35PM
Pretty much the top 20 cities in the united states would be pandered to and the remaining cities would just be ignored.
The voters don't rely on going in-person to hear candidates talk anymore. We have these little things called the Internet, and newspapers, and radio, and TV, etc., etc. that means that political candidates can reach out to most of the entire country in a single speech. This isn't the 1800s anymore.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday November 18 2016, @01:15AM
I love this election! You guys have learned nothing!
The voters don't rely on going in-person to hear candidates talk anymore.
You say this days after Trump just got through winning by doing exactly that, filling every arena in the swing states to capacity multiple times. Overflow crowds everywhere he went of people wanting to be part of the moment, to be able to tell their kids that they were there.
We have these little things called the Internet, and newspapers, and radio, and TV, etc., etc. that means that political candidates can reach out to most of the entire country in a single speech.
The losing candidate spent about three times as much as the winner on traditional advertising. All this talk we endured for decades about elections being all about who raised more money to dump into TV ads was apparently a myth. As for the Internet, the paid ads didn't seem to do nearly as much as a few weaponized autistic folks on [48]chanand r/the_donald creating memes the rest of us could mercilessly shitpost into twitter and trigger the delicate snowflakes. YouTube putting warning labels on the Trump campaign's official ads just added to the lulz, and confirmed us in our hatred of the rigged system.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday November 18 2016, @02:51PM
You say this days after Trump just got through winning by doing exactly that, filling every arena in the swing states to capacity multiple times. Overflow crowds everywhere he went of people wanting to be part of the moment, to be able to tell their kids that they were there.
Ah, but did most of them go to the rally to find out about Trump, or did they go to the rally because they already knew about Trump and agreed with him and just wanted to be in the choir, so to speak?
And people can always do their own research on the candidates. They have websites with their platforms on them.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday November 19 2016, @06:11AM
From your link:
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution [...]
She's proposing an amendment in the Senate. In the unlikely event that 2/3 of both houses of congress approve it, it would then be up to the states to ratify it, or not.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Thursday November 17 2016, @09:33PM
I think there are no "both sides". That's an artifact of the USA first-past-the-post voting system.
In most European countries, there are at least the following sides, that I know of:
- The Christian Democrats: socially conservative, economically centrist or centre-right. Usually the Party of Power.
- The Social Democrats: socially centrist, economically centre-left. Usually aligned with the large labour unions; hence it's called "Labour Party" in the UK, "Partij van de Arbeid" in the Netherlands.
- The Right-wing Liberals: socially liberal, economically right to far-right. "Party of the Rich". Maybe comparable to the Democrats in the USA? Or the Libertarian party?
- The Left-wing Liberals: socially liberal, economically centre-left. Usually not a very large party. Can form coalitions with most other parties.
- The Greens: socially liberal, economically left. Strong emphasis on care for the environment. Maybe comparable to the Green party in the USA?
- The Right Fringe: socially conservative upto authoritarian, economically centre-right to far-right. Often nationalist party. Usually hate everybody who is not "one of them", but especially foreigners, muslims and other Right Fringe parties. Maybe comparable to the Tea Party or the Republicans in the USA?
- The Left Fringe: socially conservative, economically left to far left. Ex-communists, Maoists, More-Socialist-Than-Thou, you name it. Usually hate other Left Fringe parties and the Social Democrats (for sucking up to the capitalist pigs).
- Religious fringe parties: socially conservative upto authoritarian, economically centre-left to far-right. Fundamentalist Christian parties (all a little bit different), Humanist party, New Age party, Muslim party.
- Parties of the Old: if you're not 50+ then this party is not for you. Often socially conservative and economically centre-right to right. Strong emphasis on affordable health care.
- Non-religious fringe parties: Party of the Animals (not just Party Animals), Pirate party, Feminist party, other single-issue parties.
That's the broad gamut. It's possible to vote for a party that kinda mostly says they are going to do what you find important.
This leads to two effects: in the first place, coalitions (because it rarely happens that one party wins more than 50% of the votes), and also, recognition of which issues voters find important.
In the USA, this whole colour palette is smudged into: "Are you Red or are you Blue? If you're not for us, you're against us". (With 1.5% for the Greens and Libertarians, admitted, but how many representatives do they get with that in the House of Representatives? Zero instead of 1 1/2 or whatever.)
If you can't vote for (approximately) what you want, then that damages your democracy, I think.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday November 18 2016, @07:10PM
You got your mappings wrong I think. Our Republicans used to be more like your Christian Democrats, plus also the Parties of the Old. Then the Republicans joined up with the ones that are like your Right Fringe and Religious Fringe parties, and abandoned the center, so now they're just like the Right Fringe and Religious Fringe rolled together. That alliance does seem to be getting a bit shaky though, with the Right Fringe now taking over.
Our Democrats used to be much like your Social Democrats, but now they're something like your Right-wing Liberals, but not as far right, really more like your Christian Democrats but minus the social conservatism. They probably resembled your Christian Democrats very strongly back in the 90s under Clinton, when Hillary was touting the DOMA (anti-gay-marriage law), and proclaiming that marriage is between one man and one women only, and she was also saying that young black men were all "super predators". These days, they've adopted liberal social policies to a good extent (but not marijuana legalization), but they're definitely the party of the Rich, with their blatant ties to Wall Street.
The Libertarians are most like your farthest-right Right-Wing Liberals.
The Greens, I believe, are actually the same party, or very closely related to your Greens. I'm pretty sure it's a transnational party.
Anyway, you're exactly your correct in your analysis of the effects of the two-party system and the superiority of the European system of multiple parties.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday November 20 2016, @08:48PM
That's the broad gamut.
Its a bold gambit. Carefully constructed by the leading parties to make sure that the upstarts never accomplish anything and are kept solidly in their place.
Nothing new was invented. Just something subtle enough to fool the gullible into believing in choice.
Meanwhile Merkel is going to seek a 4th term.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @03:50PM
so why do anything? is that the approach?
Shrewd people will remain so. this won't eliminate that.