WiiredShawn
Member
Um, so what? Are you saying that you have to win a certain amount more for it to be legitimate?
Get out of here with your nonsense.
Petition for Electors to elect Hillary Clinton
- Thread starter Veelk
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Um, so what? Are you saying that you have to win a certain amount more for it to be legitimate?
Get out of here with your nonsense.
ShironRedshift
Member
I don't get this. Again, there are criticisms and this obviously isn't going to happen, but faithless electors are part of the rules of the stupid electoral college system and Hillary won the popular vote fair and square. Therefore, this is valid.
There are many reasons this shouldn't happen anyway, but these aren't them.
Damerman
Member
what are you defending here? what is your argument exactly? do you not understand how numbers work? did you not learn inequalities in elementary school?
Chie Satonaka
Member
Is it true or not?
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
That was the real purpose of the EC, which was constructed before anyone like Hitler ever existed? I think not.
Not only that, but what you're saying is subjective. I doubt anyone signing this petition would be a fan of the EC overturning a Hillary win because they honestly believed she would be bad for the country.
We must operate under the principle of innocent until proven guilty or we are lost.
OuterLimits
Member
The EC still makes it EXTREMELY difficult for Republicans to win. They have a narrow path with NY and California having a ton of EC votes. Texas is the only huge Republican state that counters those two.
Even with Trump winning NC, Ohio, and Florida, Trump lost in Nevada, NH and Colorado which should have been enough in a normal election year to win it for Hillary.
However, he flipped blue states that in some cases haven't gone Red in decades. People were laughing that he was campaigning so much in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin the last few weeks, but it turned out to be a brilliant strategy.
If Trump holds Michigan, he will win with over 300 EC votes. Once I saw Trump won Ohio by 9 points, I knew things were about to go badly quickly. The amount of Obama states he was able to turn red is insane.
Also, had this been based on just a pop vote, who knows where the candidates would have campaigned. Maybe Trump would have visited California to try and get more Republicans to vote. Maybe more Dems vote in red states and Repubs vote in blue states if the election were solely based on who wins the popular vote.
It's true. It's also irrelevant. The vote is not won by simple headcount, the geographical distribution of votes matter too. As far as I know, this is to avoid giving populous states too much power.
Tal Shiar Agent
Banned
I don't think it's understood well at all, it's just a disenfranchisement tool like all obfuscative political processes.
It's stupid to have it and it's stupid to use it, so let's use it, everything shits the bed and then we can remove it because everyone including the current winner hates it.
BudokaiMR2
Member
Yeah, I never got this memo either.
What year was this on the ballot because I was under the impression that the Americans of yesteryear decided on this system, not the ones alive today.
Should have torn down the system and rebuilt it after what happened in 2000 and what the consequences of that election led to.
Chie Satonaka
Member
I'm not being an apologist either way. I've already made piece with the idea of a Trump Presidency (in addition to the potential loss of my job or being harassed by police.) I'm just trying to dispel bullshit from lamers or closet Trumpers who want to come in here and whine.
ShironRedshift
Member
Which of course is nonsense. Who cares about giving populous states too much power? How about making sure white heteronormative men don't have too much power against us minorities and people of color? That seems to be just as valid of a claim under the same logic and would actually do not only minorities but the country as a whole a buttload of good, but yet...
And yes, I know you're just explaining the history here and don't take an actual stance on if that's a good system, but just wanted to throw that out there since this got brought up.
Depends on who you asked... Probably not the people whose candidate won.
Democracy elected Hillary
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
Which begs the question: even Hillary herself refrained from pursuing stuff like this and she has conceded to Trump, and yet her fans still continued to pursue seemingly pointless path to reverse the result of a competition that she has lost.
Well, the "good guys" lost, and if many information out there were to be believed, it was due in large part because of her own incompetence and overconfidence.
We're a democratic republic. People do keep forgetting that we're not a pure democracy.
V
Vilix
Unconfirmed Member
At least it proved what Trump's been saying. "The system is rigged."
I dislike Trump as much as the next person but this isn't the way to do it. You can't want to tear down Democracy when it doesn't go your way, though admittedly, democratically Hillary won. But we don't actually count votes that way. If Roles had been opposite, then Trumpers would be saying the same and we would all laugh in their face. Want to get rid of the electorate, find out how to do that but you can't just fling it now that the other party won. Put energy into organizing.
They're not forgetting. They never knew.
Slick Butter
Member
I am not getting into any of this, but I do have to say it is very impressive, at least to me, how quickly this is getting signed.
MegaManTrigger
Banned
So fight after 2/4 years of damage has been done? When it may possibly be too late for the next president to salvage what's left?
Democracy is more than a headcount (as liberals often like to point out when it concerns civil rights, etc.). It's a system that you participate in. Changing the system to retroactively get the result you want sets a bad precedent.
NoMoreTrolls
Banned
It's not like it takes much effort to sign a change.org petition. Maybe if more of those people had voted there wouldn't be a petition.
themagicalkitsune
Member
Appreciate your condescension, but 1% difference is not significant. The opinion is clearly divided into two almost equal fractions and who is (marginally) at the top is not relevant, as others have pointed out it's not a mere numbers game.
orthodoxy1095
Banned
Ahem. Madison's fear was given the label of "tyranny of the majority" instead of "tyranny of demagogues" by de Tocqueville for a reason.
Someone's didn't get the memo that we aren't a democracy and we have the system that we have because many of the Founders abhored the idea of simple/direct democracy.
The result America wants*
I'd rather set a bad precedent than have a bad president. If you aren't a minority though I understand not caring how dangerous this is
Tal Shiar Agent
Banned
There is no change here. As I've explained with primary sources, the Electoral College was in-part designed to be a bulwark against demagoguery.
You don't have any other options.
TheRealTalker
Banned
this is Brexit De ja vu all over again
thank goodness us Canadians have another 3 years before elections
thank goodness us Canadians have another 3 years before elections
Except for the option we have.
I know that it's dangerous, but I say we have to atleast consider it.
With this, democracy is put to question. With Trump, Democracy is put on death row.
Dixon's Jet
Banned
This is pure fantasy.
You don't need to change the system to do this though. This is something that it's literally written into the EC for 200 years. It was quite literally made for the exact situation lived today.
I'm quite aware it isn't going to happen, but if the EC was the thing it was meant to be, this would be the time to use it.
The fact that this won't happen just means America has to do away with this shitty system asap. It's useless.
backflip10019
Member
This is so stupid I can't even process it.
freenudemacusers
Member
hmm, if we could map the petition signatures to states, and designate a number of representatives per state to, say, pool them and represent the will of these petition signatures, maybe we could put pressure on the government to adjust the election outcome. why didn't us democrats have this option during election night?
Azure Dream
Member
And yet, that's what our current President-Elect advocated just four years ago.
These tweets are real. Some of them were deleted, but not all, and you can find them word-for-word by using Twitter's Advanced Search. (Unless they've been deleted since I checked last night.) Here's a link to one example: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/266038556504494082 Here's another from the above image: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/266034957875544064
Just four years ago he was telling people to march on Washington and how the Electoral College system was a disgrace to democracy, but now the hypocrite is happy to barely make his way into the Oval Office because of it. Four years ago it was trash and an abomination, and how shameful it was anyone could get elected without the popular vote, but now that he's the winner, suddenly it's a-ok. Our president-elect, just four years ago, venomously decried the very system that gave him his win this week.
(And for the record, it turned out Obama won the popular vote as well.)
This is a fundamental part of the American government that the founders, that the Republicans love to give oral blowjobs to, established for scenarios exactly like this.
The founders didn't trust the general public to not be dumbasses and they were right.
The EC is First-Past-the-Post, roundabout edition. What Madison wrote is dead letter, and no longer relevant in today's American political system. That's why Clinton didn't fight the result, and conceded, even while winning the popular vote.
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
outsider pov:
It's tempting to say that 'it's done' and 'people need to learn the hard way', but this is definitely the big test for the EC: finally a candidate has emerged that directly validates what it was meant to do. Avoiding the worst possible scenario mean be undemocratic as far as the established ruleset goes, but it may also be the most patriotic one. Whether it would prevent a repeat in 2020 or without the EC is the question.
It's a bullshit system, but getting both parties to actually agree on that might be a good place to start fixing shit for real, and not the disaster way. At least the first order of business would actually be bipartisan.
Also, it's worth noting that the GOP has held a Supreme Justice seat hostage for almost a year, do they really suddenly deserve the satisfaction of getting their way when they don't want to deal with anyone else? I don't see why the EC couldn't, or shouldn't, take that into account.
You guys saying "only when democracy my way" need to really listen to yourself when that shit was unprecedented before this year. No other time in history has a party been that unwilling to compromise and govern. What would you call that, exactly, if not "when my way" ?
It's tempting to say that 'it's done' and 'people need to learn the hard way', but this is definitely the big test for the EC: finally a candidate has emerged that directly validates what it was meant to do. Avoiding the worst possible scenario mean be undemocratic as far as the established ruleset goes, but it may also be the most patriotic one. Whether it would prevent a repeat in 2020 or without the EC is the question.
It's a bullshit system, but getting both parties to actually agree on that might be a good place to start fixing shit for real, and not the disaster way. At least the first order of business would actually be bipartisan.
Also, it's worth noting that the GOP has held a Supreme Justice seat hostage for almost a year, do they really suddenly deserve the satisfaction of getting their way when they don't want to deal with anyone else? I don't see why the EC couldn't, or shouldn't, take that into account.
You guys saying "only when democracy my way" need to really listen to yourself when that shit was unprecedented before this year. No other time in history has a party been that unwilling to compromise and govern. What would you call that, exactly, if not "when my way" ?
And yet Republicans argue the Constitution isn't a living document.
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