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I call him Governor Ricketts.

Not King of Siam. He isn’t chosen by Siamese.

POTUS is elected by the states. That’s a fact. If he was elected by any other means he would not be President of the United States. You would have to call him something else.

That’s before you even consider the fact if the EC went away, the United States would no longer be united. That causes another problem with the title POTUS.

 

He is not the president of the united people. He is the president of the United States. He is not elected by the people; he is elected by the States.

 

I swear, people will argue about the dumbest things. Whether the President is chosen by the electoral college or if the Constitution is amended and they're elected by a direct count of the citizens they'd still be the President of the United States. The United States would still be the United States and they'd still be the President of it no matter how they were chosen. Even if the rules were changed so that they were chosen by Ronald McDonald the title would remain the same … unless that was expressly changed also. The name of the country and the name of its chief executive aren't divinely linked in some way. They're just names.

 

Your ignorance of the federalist debates is showing.

 

The chief executive of the country has the title of "President of the United States" because some group decided that the country should be called the "United States" and some group decided that the title should be "President". It was also decided that the method for choosing this "President of the United States" would be through the process of the electoral college. If there were debates about the issues then great. The bottom line is that it was an agreement come to by some august group of people. Neither of the names is divinely inspired and locked in place nor is the method devised to choose the chief executive. The constitution could be amended to change any of them without affecting the others. Conceptually, you may not like that the United States would still be called the United States if the method of choosing the chief executive were changed, and it may bother you that the titles and names may not seem appropriate in terms of language and meaning, but that wouldn't change the fact that the United States would still be called the United States and that the title of the chief executive would still be President.

 

The president of the United States is elected by the states. The people vote for their representatives, including their electors.

 

I don't dispute that. The Constitution can be amended.

 

Oh, I get it. You're way out there? Can't blame myself for not catching that. But yeh, go with that. Impeachment is backfiring, so go for the whole constitutional amendment thing because, "the constitution can be amended".

If you choose to go that way, I predict that you will run into the same exact problem that our founders ran into. Two thirds of the States won't go for it, and that's what you'll need to amend our constitution.

 

I'm not saying that I think that the Constitution will ever be changed in this manner, nor have I said that I want it to be. I was just disputing someone saying that if the President isn't chosen using the current process then they can't/won't be called "President of the United States".

 

That's not what was written. What was written is that the reason the President of the United States is called the President of the United States and not the President of the United People is because he is elected by the State's electors and not the people directly.

 

That's exactly what was written ...

557 said that if the President was elected by any other means then you'd have to call him something else.​

 

Thi

This is just silly.

We are the United States. That doesn't change by changes in how we select the president.

He's president of the USA, even when chosen by the SCOTUS.

 

I agree. He would be called something else that reflected the fact that he was elected by the people rather than by the States.

 

It's not silly, texas was a country before it agreed to join the United states.

Texas agreed to join because of the EC

 

Just because one was born after 1959 doesn't mean we always had 50 states.

 

That's fine. Good to know your opinion, but that doesn't change the fact that unless the name of the office was changed along with the way it's filled then the chief executive of the United States would still be called the President regardless of how it was filled.

 

Hey man, it's your alternate reality. You write it the way you want it baby.

 

Again, not my reality. I'm fine with the electoral college, but saying that the President would have to be named something else if the electoral college were done away with is factually incorrect.

 

The states would succeed. If the EC was gone with, south Carolina would leave, texas would leave the union it would be a domino effect.

 

I disagree. At least thirty-eight of them would have to be fine with it for the amendment to pass in the first place. Even if it was only the thirty-eight necessary and the remaining twelve all decided to secede, they'd face even worse odds than the secessionist states faced during the first Civil War.

 

I’m sure it seems silly to some. But everything I’ve stated is factual.

 

It's really not. It's possible, however unlikely, to change the way the chief executive is selected without changing either his title or the name of the country.

 

I think people have just lost touch with why our system was set up the way it was. Federalism has died silently so nobody really thinks about things how they were intended. The title United States of America really has no meaning to many now. So it isn’t surprising my assertions are poorly understood.

 

I think that I understand your assertions and I think that I know why you make them. Just because you think that the words wouldn't be appropriate doesn't change the fact that there's no reason that a change in one would require a change in the other.

 

"Possible". Yes it's possible, but if one were to remove the most improbable of the remote possibilities, the elimination of the electoral college would be first among them.