Wisdom of the Electoral College

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Wisdom of the Electoral College

When people wonder why the Electoral College exists, there is no better demonstration than the image below. In the top image, you have the areas of the country that voted for Donald Trump in the majority. In the bottom image, Hillary Clinton.

Green is the low end starting at 51% and white is 100%. Most of the brown ranges from about 70% to 85%. The site says: "Maps were created using IDW (Inverse distance weighted) technique in ArcGIS."

You can see the original here:

TrumpLand and Clinton Archipelago

Numberwise, the Democrats keep saying over and over that Clinton won the popular vote by about two-and-a-half million votes. Rush Limbaugh said if you remove New York and California, Trump wins the popular vote by about three million votes. See here: They're Still Gobsmacked! Washington Never Imagined Trump Could Really Win.

But it's even worse. Look what a caller (Steve in Baldwinsville, New York) said to to Rush (from the transcript):

Quote

CALLER:  It's not New York and California.  It's New York City and LA County.  Those two by themselves gave her more than her margin of victory.  If you take those two out, she loses by almost 500,000 votes.

RUSH:  Isn't that right?  I haven't seen that anywhere.

CALLER:  There's a guy named David Leip, L-e-i-p. He has an atlas of all the elections, a great resource. So go in and add them up.

RUSH:  So if you take New York City, eight million -- take those people out and the people in LA County out -- and then Trump wins the nationwide popular vote by 500,000?

CALLER:  Almost 500,000.

RUSH:  So what...? In your mind, what is the value in knowing that and pointing it out?

CALLER:  That's the exact reason they put in the Electoral College in the first place, is to prevent high-population areas from dominating the country, and that's what that is doing.

Here's the link to David Leip's site if anyone wants to check the numbers (I didn't): Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.

Basically, if we had not had the Electoral College, Trump and Clinton would have spent most of their time campaigning in New York, especially New York City, and California, especially LA County, and a place or two like Chicago. (In fact, that's basically what she did this election while Trump busted his ass running all over.)

Those few areas would have dictated who the rest of the country had to accept as president. But look how the rest of the country voted in the TrumpLand and Clinton Archipelago maps above. 

Now let's ask the obvious question. Where do most of the poor immigrants migrate and where do most of the government handouts go? Directly into these small high-population-density areas, that's where. In other words, if we had used the popular vote system, the US President would have been elected by the people who do not sustain the US. 

So what to think about those who advocate throwing out the Electoral College? Talk about the looters and moochers wanting to rule over the producers! This could almost be out of Atlas Shrugged.

I'm not sure the Founding Fathers anticipated such a dramatic demonstration of their wisdom, but ever there was one, this election definitely was it.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Next let's x-out the fraud.

--Brant

starting in California

[Brant Gaede]

As was said--if there was no Electoral College Trump would have run a different campaign.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

The electoral college is a check on Federal power, conducive to maintaining small states as independent social units, therefore sustaining the "laboratories of democracy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratories_of_democracy

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

As was said--if there was no Electoral College Trump would have run a different campaign.

--Brant

And perhaps he would lose.

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

And perhaps he would lose.

The next election?

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, wolfdevoon said:

The electoral college is a check on Federal power, conducive to maintaining small states as independent social units, therefore sustaining the "laboratories of democracy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratories_of_democracy

Then the Tenth Amendment means taking a meat cleaver to most of the Federal non-military, not the opposite. The article is confused.

You can't have your Constitution and eat it too.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

10th Amendment has been narrowly defined as preserving the state's police power (50 different jurisdictions) but it keeps getting quashed by the Supremacy Clause or plenary power of Congress to tax, spend, and mandate state action (all 50 alike). Only a state can raise a 10th Amendment issue in Federal Court, which puts the lie to rights reserved to the people. 10th Amendment means nothing unless powers granted to U.S. are limited and enumerated, which they are not, because Madison caved and upended the doctrine of limited and enumerated powers, by ring fencing a few common law rights (speech, assembly, trial by jury) and some totally archaic ones (no billeting soldiers, no unreasonable searches). Consequently, Congress and Federal agencies can adopt any policy they please mandating compliance by states. 14th trumped 10th in gay marriage litigation.

[Brant Gaede]

So, the Bill of Rights ate the Constitution--out of the box? But maybe it was the Constitution replacing the Articles of Confederation.

Alexander Hamilton--the real Father of our country?

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Even the Brits are noticing the wisdom of the Electoral College system.

From the Daily Mail:

Final tally shows Trump lost popular vote by 2.8 million – but he BEAT Clinton by 3 million votes outside of California and New York

OK. Clinton won big in two states.

Then, as the Daily Mail says,

Quote

When the dust settled, she lost the rest of the country by 3 million votes.

People may make of that what they wish, as I am sure Clinton supporters and anti-Trump folks will, but I have little doubt many people are going to be thinking about this who otherwise would not. And I don't expect sympathy for Clinton to be the result.

There's no way to cover up a three million voter gap with a story about an opposing three million voter gap--not in the age of the Internet.

Clinton doesn't need just the popular vote (and a rigging machine  ) to burn a victimization story about her in the public mind. She needs media gatekeepers to block certain information and spread favorable propaganda. But it's not that kind of world anymore. The media gatekeepers are losing--they probably have lost, even though I expect them to go down fighting in their final act on the world stage.

Michael

[syrakusos]

We had this discussion at work, and I could only repeat myself. I had no further explanations to make my point. Many states - 20, as I recall - have legal punishment for so-called "faithless" electors. My argument is that states have the right to set the method for choosing electors. The legislature could pick them. In Maine and Nebraska, they are elected by the people according to Congressional districts.  In many other states (most?) they are chosen by the two largest parties at their state conventions.  That much is all fine. However, once chosen, they can vote for whomever they want. 

My cubie neighbor said that if you are pledged to a candidate and vote for someone else, you have broken your pledge and should be punished. 

Thinking about this now, it is easier to come up with counter-examples. Politicians are elected for the promises they make. Breaking them might cost the next election (perhaps), but they are not sent to prison.  (An elector in Colorado faced that for not voting for Clinton-Kane.)

Apparently, this has been challenged in the past, but the federal courts have upheld the right of the states to punish "faithless" electors.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, syrakusos said:

We had this discussion at work, and I could only repeat myself. I had no further explanations to make my point. Many states - 20, as I recall - have legal punishment for so-called "faithless" electors. My argument is that states have the right to set the method for choosing electors. The legislature could pick them. In Maine and Nebraska, they are elected by the people according to Congressional districts.  In many other states (most?) they are chosen by the two largest parties at their state conventions.  That much is all fine. However, once chosen, they can vote for whomever they want. 

My cubie neighbor said that if you are pledged to a candidate and vote for someone else, you have broken your pledge and should be punished. 

Thinking about this now, it is easier to come up with counter-examples. Politicians are elected for the promises they make. Breaking them might cost the next election (perhaps), but they are not sent to prison.  (An elector in Colorado faced that for not voting for Clinton-Kane.)

Apparently, this has been challenged in the past, but the federal courts have upheld the right of the states to punish "faithless" electors.

 

Thirty states.  

Please see:  http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/the-electoral-college.aspx

Go down a few screen to see a list of states than have laws binding the electors.

[BaalChatzaf]

14 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Wisdom of the Electoral College

When people wonder why the Electoral College exists, there is no better demonstration than the image below. In the top image, you have the areas of the country that voted for Donald Trump in the majority. In the bottom image, Hillary Clinton.

Green is the low end starting at 51% and white is 100%. Most of the brown ranges from about 70% to 85%. The site says: "Maps were created using IDW (Inverse distance weighted) technique in ArcGIS."

You can see the original here:

TrumpLand and Clinton Archipelago

Numberwise, the Democrats keep saying over and over that Clinton won the popular vote by about two-and-a-half million votes. Rush Limbaugh said if you remove New York and California, Trump wins the popular vote by about three million votes. See here: They're Still Gobsmacked! Washington Never Imagined Trump Could Really Win.

But it's even worse. Look what a caller (Steve in Baldwinsville, New York) said to to Rush (from the transcript):

Here's the link to David Leip's site if anyone wants to check the numbers (I didn't): Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.

Basically, if we had not had the Electoral College, Trump and Clinton would have spent most of their time campaigning in New York, especially New York City, and California, especially LA County, and a place or two like Chicago. (In fact, that's basically what she did this election while Trump busted his ass running all over.)

Those few areas would have dictated who the rest of the country had to accept as president. But look how the rest of the country voted in the TrumpLand and Clinton Archipelago maps above. 

Now let's ask the obvious question. Where do most of the poor immigrants migrate and where do most of the government handouts go? Directly into these small high-population-density areas, that's where. In other words, if we had used the popular vote system, the US President would have been elected by the people who do not sustain the US. 

So what to think about those who advocate throwing out the Electoral College? Talk about the looters and moochers wanting to rule over the producers! This could almost be out of Atlas Shrugged.

I'm not sure the Founding Fathers anticipated such a dramatic demonstration of their wisdom, but ever there was one, this election definitely was it.

Michael

The Founders had their own  ant-democratic reasons for formulating the Electoral College.  I read somewhere, that the E.C.  was a compromise between two plans:  Choosing the President from Congress and Electing the President according to the popular vote.   The E.C.   addressed both the question of plurality and the sovereignty of the individual states.

It turns out that the future  distribution of the population  where most of the people live in a few  major metropolitan areas   gives the best reason for retaining the E.C.   Based on plurality voting the President and Vice President would be elected by the voters in the major metropolitan districts.  Candidates would merely "fly over"  35 states during a Presidential Election.

[anthony]

Shock. Horror. But isn't it common knowledge by now that West coast voters and East coast voters are, well - superior voters...?!

(when I was in Rhodesia the Smith UDI govt was touting a A Roll and a B Roll franchise system in its Constitution, weighted heavily to the former. Obviously those better off, higher positioned and better educated qualified for "A". No need to add what race they usually were). 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

btw - Here's a fun fact.

California and New York are two of the states that have no voter ID laws.

But... but... but... (I hear in my mind from spooky voices that sound a lot like the ruling class)... Correlation is not causality!

  

Michael

[william.scherk]

The two maps are a neat way of illustrating variable political divisions as geography (in this case, voting 'intensity' represented as height, resulting in a relief map).

I credit the person who came up with it -- it's a neat way of visualizing Two Americas. I don't believe there are two Americas that deserve to be thought of as separable and non-communicating, of course, but still.  It opens up thought on what each land is 'missing' .... that which is found in the Other land.

For example, for each 'moocher mountain' there is usually a complex urban economy in the surrounding lower lands.  On the Great Lakes coasts and on the Atlantic and Pacific, we have  major ports  of entry hived off from Trumpland. We have major industrial and agricultural sectors stranded from each other's transportation networks. That stands out for me.

It is neat but maybe ultimately a curiosity. We have here on OL already had a look at graphical representations of electoral results, in the spurious Murder Rate/Democrat connection. In that case we weren't quite sure what we were looking at in the first map appearance as meme, but then mostly agreed urbanization was an important independent variable. (and once we looked at murder 'rates', the correlation to politics fell apart).

The issue for me is geographical-functional. What is it about cities that shut out Trump from taking 'all' America?  What does urbanization entail that affects partisanship so clearly?

For those who want to look just a little bit closer, larger Jpegs:

 I note that this new map set erupted starting six days ago, and that similar maps were published by the New York Times, in an article called "The Two Americas of 2016," on November 16. The NYT writer introduced his article this way: 

For many Americans, it feels as if the 2016 election split the country in two.

To visualize this, we took the election results and created two new imaginary nations by slicing the country along the sharp divide between Republican and Democratic Americas.

Both maps sets use 'relief' conventions on the two countries, but the NYT uses shaded relief instead of colour/contour. It does not represent intensity as height.

Be that as it may, a few questions. One is 'where do most of the (poor) immigrants migrate?'  and another is 'where do most government handouts go?'

A more general question is 'do areas of high in-migration (either interstate or foreign) map to areas of high Democratic voting totals?'  That question is likely to be yes, but an intervening variable will be urbanization.  In which case, 'what attracts in-migration to highly urbanized areas'?  

In other words, 'what is the attraction of such places as New York and San Francisco and Boston and Norfolk and Portland and Seattle and Los Angeles?' (as well as such places as Tucson Island and Mississippi Island and Denver and Houston and Dallas Islands) 

One answer might be 'better employment prospects.'  Another answer might be 'government handouts.' I think there are more answers than these two, and that all of the answers will tend to overlap -- meaning an urbanized island economy draws in both moochers and achievers.  And students, and tech companies, and drugs and illegal immigrants and criminals and so on.

In some ways we might view this also as an index of socialism -- a moocher-type would have a better go of it in a town than in a hamlet, in a metropolis with efficient emergency services than on the farm. If he or his large immigrant family 'fall down' there is a large and elastic 'safety net' that can catch them. Handing out healthcare like candy or oxycodone, if you know what I mean.  And that doesn't leave off the job-stealers, who came from brownish places with the intent of gardening or pulling crops at a lower rate than the oxycodone people. Moochers all.  I mean, if you thought in extremes.

 

Another way of interpreting these map sets is to examine more metrics from 'high population density areas.'  One can look for 'matches' of 2merica against crime, health data, income averages, mobility, population growth, industrial activity, immigration, racial and demographic information, infrastructure and so on. We can look for 'engines' in these worlds, and we can match against international data. Would there be a  London Island? 

With the focus on the urbanization, Trumpland political geographers can figure out some scenarios for 'getting back' the lost urban-centred archipelago.

Finally, a focus on 'small'  geographies in partisan terms does a little work.  Consider the analogue in other countries -- the London, Toronto, Zurich, Tokyo, Vancouver, Sydney, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo islands. Are they engines, sinks, are they on the whole Moochfest territories? Are these islands productive 'sustainers'  -- or are they mostly problematic, drags, drains?

-- the electoral college minor drama gives pundits something to talk about.  I approach it from a federalist viewpoint. The allocation of EC votes by state is relatively equitable. It adjusts to relative population growth. If postwar California were to have received no in-coming from other states, from overseas, then it would have a smaller electoral footprint today.  The allocation by winner-take-all is a separate state matter. There will be occasional mismatches between the popular vote and EC results.  That is the way it rolls sometimes. Everyone knows the rules going in, and how the winner is ultimately decided.

People who do not 'sustain' America ... are not so easy for me to match to a geographical depiction of vote polarization. I look at a blue-leaning metropolis like Charlotte, NC.  Does Charlotte 'sustain' America?  I look at the Oxycontin counties of Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia -- do these counties 'sustain' America?

...........................................

I am trying to conjure a spirit of Ayn Rand to offer comment over my right shoulder.  I can conjure up the New York City of Atlas Shrugged, and the New York that was her favoured home. I can almost hear her whispering something about cities and men of the mind, women of utmost urbanity and accomplishment, and I can think of a skyline and what it may have represented to her.  Dynamism? Civilization? Republicanism?

These are copyrighted to the New York Times, and really shouldn't be represented here.  But they might indicate a source idea for the work of Alex Egoshin. Click through for full size.

Edited December 22, 2016 by william.scherk
Consider the analogue

[Wolf DeVoon]

I don't see any parallel with England or Australia (I've lived in both countries, so I can speak about them). Australia is uniformly egalitarian, with Chinese enclaves and other ethnic immigrants that blend economically with everyone else. England has an enormous Muslim immigrant population foolishly concentrated in small satellite cities like Bradford. I'm sure you're aware of the enormous flood of refugees and migrants that congregated in Calais, trying to cross the Channel to England.

America has always been two Americas, urban elites vs The Heartland. In 1776 it was all Heartland and no elite to speak of. Now, it's a tug of war.

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, wolfdevoon said:

I don't see any parallel with England or Australia (I've lived in both countries, so I can speak about them). Australia is uniformly egalitarian, with Chinese enclaves and other ethnic immigrants that blend economically with everyone else. England has an enormous Muslim immigrant population foolishly concentrated in small satellite cities like Bradford. I'm sure you're aware of the enormous flood of refugees and migrants that congregated in Calais, trying to cross the Channel to England.

America has always been two Americas, urban elites vs The Heartland. In 1776 it was all Heartland and no elite to speak of. Now, it's a tug of war.

aka  The Suits  vs The Grunts

[william.scherk]

Re parallels of urbanization in the Western industrialized world, it just makes sense that you review urbanizing factors in trying to understand 'two Americas' -- and use analogues to appreciate the common 'pull' factors of urbanization itself.

I was enquiring about how to assess the 'drain' versus engine, sustainer versus mooch notions. Surely other urbanizations are going to show enough similar factors of 'pull' that we can then understand the demographic facts that may underlay an apparent 2merica.

Look at it from this angle: one can calculate the pull separately from the 'blueness.'  One looks over the larger field for similar concentrations of attraction (for the demographic changes in US cities sort out along an international scale -- ie, Toronto is 49% foreign-born, Sydney 52, New York 37, or whatever the numbers are in fact).

If one has lived in Australia, then, one will remark upon its urbanization.  To make any sort of generality about an Australian, you are talking about an urban Australian. Similarly then, with a British example,  If England can be said to have an enormous Muslim immigrant population at 5% / five times larger than America's proportion, one would expect a resultant larger urban concentration. One would expect a horizontal integration too over time, in the sense that not all Muslim incoming would settle exactly where earlier waves did.

So London would have a staggeringly large percentage of the Muslim population of England, but that would not rule out particular local patterns outside the Metropole: significant Muslim populations in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Coventry, etc.

This is what is happening in America.  The waves of Muslim immigrants have sprayed out wider on the canvas, while still concentrating further here and there.  Same with Toronto, first choice for Muslim incoming to our country, with Montreal a close second and Vancouver third. 

Bradford, Wolf's example of foolishness, is what it is.  A chunk of from-Pakistan incoming made the city their home, and now rank high on the ethnic scoreboard at 22%. While Christians still dominate the ranks at 45%, Muslims are moving on up at 24.7%.  Have the sewers ruptured, plagues been unleashed, prejudice, hatred and violence been brought to a frothing boil? No, just a lot of ethnoreligious mischief, foolishness and Midlands Englishness.

As for the Calais hopefuls, it is really shitty that France has to act as a border buffer for the sovereign UK, but hey. The questions still remain. What is pulling those hopeless riff raff and economic migrants across the channel?  More moochery, more dynamism, more freedom? Sink or engine, drain or dynamo?

3 hours ago, william.scherk said:

I don't believe there are two Americas that deserve to be thought of as separable and non-communicating

That is the other key for me -- these are not realistically or usefully separable. Overlay a mental map of railways, interstates, air-lanes, sea-lanes, your country is on the move. The demographics of a vote will change, ebb, flow in further election cycles, The archipelagos will experience growth and shrinkage, same as the motherland over time.

The comparisons to other urban successes/failures are then to provide an index of identifying common features of success/failure, thus perhaps quantifying the 'sustainers' quotient for such urban concentrations which comprise crazy Klintonlandia.

3 hours ago, william.scherk said:

Consider the analogue in other countries -- the London, Toronto, Zurich, Tokyo, Vancouver, Sydney, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo islands. Are they engines, sinks, are they on the whole Moochfest territories? Are these islands productive 'sustainers'  -- or are they mostly problematic, drags, drains?

I would next pivot to thinking about cities in the line of Jane Jacobs: prime movers, biggest foundries, forges, leaders, the lowest collectivity that can have international impact equal or larger to a sovereign state actor. Like New York, London, Zurich, Tokyo, Singapore are international finance powers not confined within a municipality.

Not all urbanizations succeed. The wave of industrial 'rationalization' carried out in the Rust Belt led sometimes to depopulation. This is apparent in Youngstown, Flint, others too numerous. Similar shakeouts happened around the 'rationalized' world.  The previous generation's ironworks and steelworks and mines and mills were shuttered, devastating a whole category of cities. There are hurting areas still among them.

Canada gets around this stuff with much greater social mobility and what we call "equalization payments."  These are sums paid by the federales so that each province can maintain the same standard of public service and infrastructure as the next, even if they are all whacked on Oxytocin. Our own Rust Belt transition was made without an attendant hollowing out of population. Foolishly or not, individual cities made immigration ploys, to lure industry, immigrant entrepreneurs, start-ups, high-tech, biology, aeronautics, whatever they could do. 

So, we will have the equivalent of scary Bradford, a formerly white half-gutted industrial city swamped in some neighbourhoods by brownish persons. Like where I live, Surrey, a suburban city some twenty-five crow miles from Vancouver, half a million citizens, in some neighbourhoods almost completely Brownish (Sikh). Somehow the greater Vancouver community took a liking to a set of east-west ridges and made citizens of themselves there. So far no major problems besides the problems of growth. Surrey she booms along.  Vancouver has a big 'pull'  ...  It certainly has the dregs and the most scenic poverty concentration in North America, and a altruistic-socialist sucking industry of drain and sink agencies that support the fucked up and failed and failing. 

And yet, wealth generation. Something happens in the city crucible that helps power a province and nation. We lead in job growth, happiness, health, fitness, quality of life scores, education, maths, transport efficiencies ... What the hell happened to this city (which would presumably be taller than Mount Seattle)?

Giving back the peace-pipe to the other guy, no city can exist without either a trading relationship or a hinterland upon which it depends. Is it simplistic to see a city cut off from its great hinterland?  Is it simplistic to see a hinterland cut off from its markets, ports, and cities? 

To leave on a hopeful political note, I would hope that the scores go up across America's hurting hinterland. Up employment. Up labour force participation. Up investment. Up educational attainment, health metrics, opportunities for advancement. 

The great puzzle is working out the relationships between heartland, homeland, hinterland, and the islands of citification.  Best wishes to the new administration.

Edited December 23, 2016 by william.scherk
Muslim incoming ...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

To leave on a hopeful political note, I would hope that the scores go up across America's hurting hinterland. Up employment. Up labour force participation. Up investment. Up educational attainment, health metrics, opportunities for advancement. 

William,

Guess what? When the heartland goes up, the cities go up, too. The heartland feeds the cities, literally feeds them with food. And it supplies them with manufactured goods. What bonehead decided America didn't need to manufacture anymore? Information technology is not either-or for the market. There's room for all, especially when the takers also become producers.

Michael

[syrakusos]

On 12/22/2016 at 7:23 AM, BaalChatzaf said:

I read somewhere, that the E.C.  was a compromise between two plans:  Choosing the President from Congress and Electing the President according to the popular vote.   The E.C.   addressed both the question of plurality and the sovereignty of the individual states.

You can find many anthologies of "Anti-Federalist Papers" via Worldcat http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_bks&q=anti-federalist+papers&fq=dt%3Abks

I mention that because my reading of one such is that among the several proposals was that the governors of the states should choose the President. The former colonies had a lot of experience writing constitutions, starting with the Mayflower Compact.  If you goto the Avalon collection from Yale, -- http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ -- you can find very many of those documents. 

• Agreement of the Settlers at Exeter in New Hampshire, August 4, 1639
• The Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England; May 19 1643
• The Charter or Fundamental Laws, of West New Jersey, Agreed Upon - 1676
• The Concession and Agreement of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of New Caesarea, or New Jersey, to and With All and Every the Adventurers and All Such as Shall Settle or Plant There - February 10 1664
• Frame of Government of Pennsylvania - February 2, 1683
• Frame of Government of Pennsylvania - November 1, 1696
• Government of New Haven Colony; October 27-November 6, 1643
• Government of Rhode Island-March 16-19, 1641
   

...among many others in the 17th and 18th centuries...

Quote

It turns out that the future  distribution of the population  where most of the people live in a few  major metropolitan areas   gives the best reason for retaining the E.C.   Based on plurality voting the President and Vice President would be elected by the voters in the major metropolitan districts.  Candidates would merely "fly over"  35 states during a Presidential Election.

As I recall, you lived in Chicago.  I grew up in Cleveland. I now live in Austin.  I just point out that merely showing up in "Chicago" or "New York" or "Los Angeles" will not get a candidate a majority of votes in those places. They are cities comprised of neighborhoods and also of special interests.  If you speak in the Bronx, you are not in Brooklyn.  If you speak to the bakers, you do not speak to the retail clerks. There is no easy win. 

 

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, syrakusos said:

I now live in Austin.  I just point out that merely showing up in "Chicago" or "New York" or "Los Angeles" will not get a candidate a majority of votes in those places. They are cities comprised of neighborhoods and also of special interests.  If you speak in the Bronx, you are not in Brooklyn.  If you speak to the bakers, you do not speak to the retail clerks. There is no easy win. 

 

Yes,  but  think of all those states in the heartland which have few electoral votes and even fewer major metropolitan areas and associated suburbs.   I think the electoral college turned out to be a Good Idea.  

Thank you for that pointer to the archives....

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Big win in the Supreme Court for the Electoral College today.

And it was unanimous.

Supreme Court rules against 'faithless' electors

Quote

Faithless electors are traditionally a rare phenomenon. But the electors brought cases in their respective jurisdictions after an uptick in objections in 2016 that were part of the "Hamilton Electors movement." The movement was a failed pressure campaign that was cobbled together as a last-ditch effort to deny Trump the presidency.

Here's another article.

Supreme Court: Electoral College Must Vote For Their State’s Popular Vote Winner

Quote

According to The Conversation, the debate was “about whether the U.S. still has elements of an elite democracy that cannot be altered by individual states, or if state legislatures can create a popular democracy within their borders by making electors simply registrars of the popular will – even though the constitutional text (and Alexander Hamilton’s plans) may suggest that electors should make their decisions freely.”

Monday’s decision means that electors are expected to vote in line with whatever candidate wins in their state. The supreme court ruling means states “will be allowed to set the future rules for how electors may vote. If enough states bind electors, then the election will proceed as the public expects,” The Conversation reported.

In the 10 cases in 2016 in which members of the Electoral College voted against the popular vote, seven votes went to other candidates besides Trump or Clinton: Colin Powell had three electoral college votes, and Faith Spotted Eagle, John Kasich, Ron Paul, and Bernie Sanders each had one vote, ProCon reported.

They played games with this in the appeals courts, but the Supreme Court Justices were having none of it.

To repeat, unanimous.

That's probably why the reporting in the fake news media about this were CYA articles that got little prominence. The Democrats can't game this rule to cheat anymore. That form of cheating, at least, is done. Over. Finished.

This is a big deal. Probably the biggest deal that happened in government on this day.

It is kinda funny, though. In one of the two cases involved in this Supreme Court decision, three members of the Electoral College were supposed to vote for Hillary Clinton, but instead voted for Colin Powell.

Whaaaaat?!!!

Yup.

Colin Fucking Powell.

 

Michael

[Jon Letendre]

Social media was alight with excited progressives mistakenly thinking this is a change away from how elections have been conducted for generations now.

Reactions make clear they think popular vote over electoral college was in some way promoted by the ruling.

I really do feel bad, because being them, it must hurt, over and over and over and 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Jon Letendre said:

I really do feel bad, because being them, it must hurt, over and over and over and 

Jon,

I don't feel bad for them and I do hope it hurts them over and over and over.

That's a quip, but it's not--not really.

I am actually being kind when I say that.

I gave up crack cocaine. Had I not done that, I would be dead right now.

The only way I managed to do that was to have people around me who did not feel bad for me when I fucked up. They listened, but they did not feel bad for me. And they let me know that it will continue to hurt over and over and over. Each time. They also said I had no one to blame but myself for allowing myself to continue. That there was a path out, but I had to be the one who took it. They couldn't take it for me. 

Those were the kindest people--to me in my life--I ever knew.

Michael