Could you please get rid of this Amateur?

I am sure for the OP the competency boils down to who can win the election and who can steal the election. I am sure that Jill Stein and Clinton are on the top of the list for competency of stealing the election.

 

You guys have no understanding of the other side and cling to notions that suit you best with no bearing in reality. This has nothing to do with an understanding of civics. Even with a full understanding of civics, you can still disagree with it. What do you think bloody revolutions are for?

 

In the case of peaceful democratic turnover of power revolutionaries are on the wrong side of humanity. Those that disagree with this are just bloody spoiled children.

 

Im not the one that doesn't understand why the electoral exists. Its no wonder the people who didn't vote for trump got their asses handed to them without so much as a crackerjack prize when it was over.

 

Well considering the source, we will take that as a compliment!

 

You cannot justify any system other than that it benefits you. No one argues for systems that do not benefit themselves. My argument for capitalism is that it benefits everyone, me included. If you lived in Wyoming, would you argue for a system that gave almost complete control of the political system to California?

 

Stop trying to get Pence into the presidency!



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"Could you please get rid of this Amateur?" - Amateur? Amateur? Whoa there, I'm pretty sure America would not give the nuclear codes to a person who never held even one day of political office in his entire life! They're not stupid!

 

I'm not saying it's the right thing to do now, I'm just saying it is an option in some situations that are not based simply on not understanding civics. The founding fathers did not revolt against England based upon not understanding civics - they did so based upon having a different vision for how civics should operate.

I'm not sure why I bother since you ignore most of what I say, but I do understand why it exists. I just disagree with it. I don't care that smaller or less divided states want to have a disproportionate say and would have refused to join if they had not been granted this advantage over the other states. It is wrong for them to have it and none of you have presented an argument for why it continues to need to be the case other than a disdain for people who live in California. As if it is so much better for the candidates to ignore all of the country except for closely divided battleground states. Here, maybe this will help educate you since you ignore what I say. Outside observers tend to be more objective about this kind of thing: http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37990653

Somehow, all of that sounds fair to you guys. If I were like you, I would accuse you of thinking it's fair only because your guy won.

 

If they operated purely on self-interest then somebody from Wyoming would certainly prefer to continue to have three votes per person compared to other states. It's just not fair to everybody else. California has 12% of the US population, and therefore would have 12% weight in the contest. This is not a controlling percentage.

I partially disagree that you cannot justify any system other than that it benefits you. And half of the time people don't really know what would benefit them. Economists barely understand the basics of the economy, let alone people not specialized in that field. How are they supposed to make an informed decisions on which party has better economic policies. How will they know whether the economy is good/bad now because of the last president, the current president, or completely unrelated factors. I wouldn't expect technocrats to be perfect, but they are at least more likely to make a rational decision based upon available evidence.

If people take a long-term view, including their kids, they will want the system that gives the best outcomes and whenever possible this will include win-win situations. To this end, putting the smartest people in charge of policy is more likely to give us effective policies than anything democratic provided we put constraints on that power and have a system to insulate them from benefitting from their own decisions more than the average person to the extent that is possible. Arbitrarily giving more closely divided states more power, or states with smaller populations more power, is at best neutral when it comes to making better decisions, and is likely harmful given that people in rural areas are likely to be less educated. So we're talking about giving people who are no better than average disproportionate power. This is a dysfunctional way of choosing a president, even more dysfunctional than directly democratically electing them.

 

Soon, America will be overwhelmed by the stench of stupidity as our new Trailer Trash in Chief, and the rest of the Clampetts, move into, and ruin, our White House.

 

You state you dont care about the smaller states and say they have a disproportionate say yet claim you understand the electoral. Lets test that...How about you tell us why the electoral exists. Please be specific.

 

There you go with reading comprehension again. I said I don't care about the fact that they want a disproportionate say, not that I don't care about them.

The electoral college was set up with appointed electors who were appointed in numbers proportional to the national representatives of each state (two senators plus house members). The idea behind this was two-fold. It was meant to preserve state's rights by making the unit of election the state rather than the individual. The other idea was as a safety valve in case the voters made an obviously stupid choice, and Hamilton in particular believed the electoral college could be used to override the election of a popular person who is obviously unfit. I guess we'll find out if he was right, because this is a great example of somebody unfit.

I contend that states do not deserve rights - people do. And I have strong doubts that the electoral college would fulfill the second role in any meaningful way.

Because of the fact that every state gets two senators despite population, this automatically means that the number of electors is not proportional to population. And while it might be wrong for Wisconsin to have three times the say per person as average, the bigger issue is that divided states are catered to at the expense of the people in all other states.

 

Unless of course your candidate wins...right?