13 years on what are your thoughts on the U.S. presidential election of 2000?

[korn469]

I say get rid of states altogether.

I agree!

[SlowwHand]

I say get rid of states altogether.

If I lived where you lived, I'd agree. In fact, I may agree anyway. Texas not as a state but as a country does seem to be more a draw lately.

[Ben Kenobi]

Korn, it's about federalism. I totally understand why they have the electoral college.

The US is not a unitary republic, it's a federal republic. A unitary republic is France. The US has states and states to a certain extent sovereign by the US constitution, etc.

As for Sore/Loserman, if Sore won his home state he would have been president.

[Ben Kenobi]

Texas not as a state but as a country does seem to be more a draw lately.

Texas is very different from say, California. The electoral college ensures adequate representation across the nation.

[Sava]

If I lived where you lived, I'd agree. In fact, I may agree anyway. Texas not as a state but as a country does seem to be more a draw lately.

Oh please, son. Secession is just empty rhetoric even amongst the craziest Texan whites. And in a few years, if a bunch of Yosemite Sam mother****ers tried to fight the government (state or federal), they'd either get slaughtered or locked up. Personally, I'd be in favor of deportation just for the irony.

[Ben Kenobi]

Oh please, son. Secession is just empty rhetoric even amongst the craziest Texan whites. And in a few years, if a bunch of Yosemite Sam mother****ers tried to fight the government (state or federal), they'd either get slaughtered or locked up. Personally, I'd be in favor of deportation just for the irony.

Obama can't beat Afghanistan. What makes you think he could knock down Texas? I'm surprised more nations haven't ponied up for the ol' kick Obama ride.

[Sava]

Obama can't beat Afghanistan. What makes you think he could knock down Texas? I'm surprised more nations haven't ponied up for the ol' kick Obama ride.

Well... it wouldn't be "Texas". "Texas" would be fighting the crazies too. It's likely that local and state law enforcement would be doing the heavy lifting. I doubt a single American troop would be needed.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Well, it was a travesty, and for one if you recounted you would have several tn of debt less.

I have no idea how can you even think it would be remotely similar. No Bush tax cuts which would net you about 2tn less debt to date and no Iraq war about 1tn to date, not to mention future commitments... anyhow if Gore won we would not have had this.



Classic


Is is definitely worth few trillion

[Guynemer]

To say nothing of this one:

[korn469]

Korn, it's about federalism. I totally understand why they have the electoral college.

The US is not a unitary republic, it's a federal republic. A unitary republic is France. The US has states and states to a certain extent sovereign by the US constitution, etc.

As for Sore/Loserman, if Sore won his home state he would have been president.

Germany is also a federal republic, but they don't have the electoral college (to the best of my understanding, if I'm wrong, Germans please correct me). There is nothing that requires a federal republic to violate the principles of one person one vote, which the electoral college does.

There have been 57 presidential elections and the electoral college has failed in 3 or 4 of those elections (depending on how you classify the election of 1824), so it has between a 5-7% failure rate. Despite that high failure rate, the system is "working as designed." However, it was designed in the late 1700's for just a handful of states. It is time to change the design.

[Jon Miller]

Electoral college is one way to have states select the president.

In India they have an electoral college.

Germany presidents have few powers. They are also not chosen by direct vote but rather by representatives of the states/MPs. The main position is that of Chancellor which is more like Prime Minister and is selected by a majority vote of the MPs. Not something you can really compare to the US.

JM

[korn469]

I define failing, as the person who gained more votes (popular votes not electoral votes) losing the election.

EDIT:

California - population: 37,253,956 electoral votes 55 average (people divided by votes = 677,344.65)
Wyoming - population: 563,626 electoral votes 3 (people divided by votes = 187,875.33)

So someone's vote in Wyoming counts 3.6 times as much as someone's vote in California

population source: https://www.census.gov/2010census
electoral votes sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...election,_2012

John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, and George W. Bush all had fewer votes (from people) than their opponents.

[Jon Miller]

BTW, I think our current system is much more democratic than that of having the legislative body vote for the president (as they do for the Chancellor in Germany).

Due to gerry-mandering there would be a huge difference between popular vote and presidential vote in this case. Not only that, but the group that managed to gerry-mander best would control both president and congress... which would be disastrous in a democracy.

What you want is more of the French system of electing the President directly by popular vote or something. However, they are a much more central government than the US. It isn't a federal government.

JM

[Jon Miller]

I personally find the other methods to be worse than ours, and think that a couple of changes would fix things nicely.

The biggest change:
More states follow Maine/Kansas? lead in dividing the electoral votes proportional to the vote within the state.

A far bigger failure of democracy is the one that goes on every congressional election due to gerry-mandering. We should expect energy on that way way way before we expend energy on the electoral college (which as I said, I don't even think is doing things wrongly).

JM

[korn469]

I personally find the other methods to be worse than ours, and think that a couple of changes would fix things nicely.

The biggest change:
More states follow Maine/Kansas? lead in dividing the electoral votes proportional to the vote within the state.

A far bigger failure of democracy is the one that goes on every congressional election due to gerry-mandering. We should expect energy on that way way way before we expend energy on the electoral college (which as I said, I don't even think is doing things wrongly).

JM

I think that dividing electoral votes proportionally, could distort the outcome of elections even more than the electoral college currently does. Don't mend it. End it. If you make a change it should be for direct popular election of presidents.

I agree 100% on gerrymandering. Though the senate is even worse than gerrymandering.

If you are going to keep 535 people in congress, have 267 in the senate, and 268 in the house.

Have the house work like the current system, except each district has the same amount of people as any other district (so you'd need to ignore states), and they are drawn in a non-partisan way.

Have the senate be some type of proportional representation system. Like you vote for the party or whatever.