Should the Electoral College be abolished?

[Pacomia]

No, mate.

The OP already knows the reasoning why the EC is shite and has put that reasoning in the OP. The arguments for the EC remain unstated and need to be specifically invited.

Tyranny by Majority is a ridiculous concept.

Go on. Explain how it works in a country with an executive separated from the legislative and both in term separate from a judiciary that has the power to strike down legislation, where there are absolutely no mechanisms that ensure these three (in practice four) institutions march in lock-step.

Even if a single party controlled both legislative houses, every single state government (from top to bottom), the presidency and SCOTUS, the fact that you have a supreme constitution means you can only have tyranny if the those laws are not followed at all. Which is not tyranny by the majority but instead just ordinary tyranny. But this would never actually happen in practice.

Tyranny by Majority also doesn't really make sense, as I explained in my earlier post here, in parliamentary democracy even in the case of non-coalition government because the executive is directly responsible to the legislature.

The laws mean whatever SCOTUS says they mean. So yes, a party who controls SCOTUS can do whatever they want within the constitution.

Not really. Our constitution is held sacred, we’re not authoritarian, the government can’t just change the constitution at will.

[Telconi]

The laws mean whatever SCOTUS says they mean. So yes, a party who controls SCOTUS can do whatever they want within the constitution.

Not really. Our constitution is held sacred, we’re not authoritarian, the government can’t just change the constitution at will.

Yes, it can.

[Pacomia]

Not really. Our constitution is held sacred, we’re not authoritarian, the government can’t just change the constitution at will.

Yes, it can.

Provide proof.

[Forsher]

No, it's not.

It's a completely arbitrary reason to support it rather than one based in the principles of your politics.

That it gives you a partisan advantage is plenty of reason to affect how you engage with the election (I have no problem with tactical voting) but if your political party's core tenet is "we should be in power" your ideology is morally and intellectually bankrupt.

Imagine a natural disaster affecting rural areas and pushing Republican voters into surrounding Republican states in sufficient numbers that a solid red state turns blue based on the (miraculously) unaffected Democratic Urban Vote.

Arbitrary.

Elections aren't a game, they have real life consequences. My political philosophy is preventing me and my family from being subject to those consequences as much as possible. If you think creating a better future for my child is morally and intellectually bankrupt, then I have no reason to put any value in your idea of what constitutes such.

Elections are a game. Games aren't defined on the basis of having no real life constitutions. Just an absurd argument.

Explain your politics and how it is an inherent part of that philosophy that you're in charge without involving a core tenet "we should be in power".

You don't, for example, support weapon rights just because they're embedded in a piece of paper, right? You've got some principled basis for that decision. For example, maybe you see gun control as an intrusion on the private sphere and government's role is in the public sphere. And your politics as a whole is based, in theory, on a set of such principles.

A principle that runs to the extent of "we should be in charge" is ideologically/intellectually bankrupt because it has nothing to do with your reasoning, merely the conclusion. It's morally bankrupt because it's a literal endorsement of tyranny and literally rejects the idea that other people have a right to have feelings. Take this statement:

My political philosophy is preventing me and my family from being subject to those consequences as much as possible.

Congratulations... you do not give a flying fuck about any other person or family and are proud of it. That is moral bankruptcy.

It's possible to want your political conclusions to win the day without creating these problems.

[Telconi]

Elections aren't a game, they have real life consequences. My political philosophy is preventing me and my family from being subject to those consequences as much as possible. If you think creating a better future for my child is morally and intellectually bankrupt, then I have no reason to put any value in your idea of what constitutes such.

Elections are a game. Games aren't defined on the basis of having no real life constitutions. Just an absurd argument.

Explain your politics and how it is an inherent part of that philosophy that you're in charge without involving a core tenet "we should be in power".

You don't, for example, support weapon rights just because they're embedded in a piece of paper, right? You've got some principled basis for that decision. For example, maybe you see gun control as an intrusion on the private sphere and government's role is in the public sphere. And your politics as a whole is based, in theory, on a set of such principles.

A principle that runs to the extent of "we should be in charge" is ideologically/intellectually bankrupt because it has nothing to do with your reasoning, merely the conclusion. It's morally bankrupt because it's a literal endorsement of tyranny and literally rejects the idea that other people have a right to have feelings. Take this statement:

My political philosophy is preventing me and my family from being subject to those consequences as much as possible.

Congratulations... you do not give a flying fuck about any other person or family and are proud of it. That is moral bankruptcy.

It's possible to want your political conclusions to win the day without creating these problems.

Our concept of morality is irreconcilable then.

[Libertas Omnium Maximus]

But we already have an EC. It isn't an oligarchy. Ergo, you are mistaken.

Explain how not.

Nope. You are the one who has to explain. Don't know if you have ever debated before but I currently have the advantage of making a claim that is an accepted truth. You have to disprove it. I don't have to prove it.

[Forsher]

The laws mean whatever SCOTUS says they mean. So yes, a party who controls SCOTUS can do whatever they want within the constitution.

No, they can't.

I case you haven't noticed but the ability of SCOTUS to affect change depends entirely on (a) what's in the constitution... you can read something more or less literally but the meanings are still tied to the text in some fashion... and (b) what cases they've actually got in front of them, which is subject to procedural limits.

Not really. Our constitution is held sacred, we’re not authoritarian, the government can’t just change the constitution at will.

It doesn't make much coherent sense to talk of government in terms of the state apparatus of the US... even ignoring the federal components.

But he's broadly speaking right... SCOTUS has a lot of scope to reframe the meaning of the US Constitution. Obviously I think he overstates the case considerably but when you use supreme law and written constitutionality this is one of the features (not bugs) of your institutional arrangements.

[Libertas Omnium Maximus]

A Note to the OP of this Thread. Your poll is mistaken. The Staus Quo is that the electoral college exists. People who agree with the existence of the electoral college can, but aren't really the ones who need to explain their position. People who want to abolish it should be the ones who explain their position.

Anyway, the simple answer is No. A direct voting system creates Tyranny by Majority. Tyranny by Majority is still Tyranny.

No, mate.

The OP already knows the reasoning why the EC is shite and has put that reasoning in the OP. The arguments for the EC remain unstated and need to be specifically invited.

Tyranny by Majority is a ridiculous concept.

Go on. Explain how it works in a country with an executive separated from the legislative and both in term separate from a judiciary that has the power to strike down legislation, where there are absolutely no mechanisms that ensure these three (in practice four) institutions march in lock-step.

Even if a single party controlled both legislative houses, every single state government (from top to bottom), the presidency and SCOTUS, the fact that you have a supreme constitution means you can only have tyranny if the those laws are not followed at all. Which is not tyranny by the majority but instead just ordinary tyranny. But this would never actually happen in practice.

Tyranny by Majority also doesn't really make sense, as I explained in my earlier post here, in parliamentary democracy even in the case of non-coalition government because the executive is directly responsible to the legislature.

Tyranny by Majority. Without the EC California and New York City Elect the president. No one else has any representation at all really. (look at population if you don't believe me). That means that the majority always rules. You can't see anything wrong with the majority (who are all mostly urbanites) always picking the nation's leader?

[Hakons]

But we already have an EC. It isn't an oligarchy. Ergo, you are mistaken.

Explain how not.

The EC isn't an oligarchy because they vote how their states vote (unless they're undemocratic and self-rightious, which last election saw a handful)

[Pacomia]

Explain how not.

Nope. You are the one who has to explain. Don't know if you have ever debated before but I currently have the advantage of making a claim that is an accepted truth. You have to disprove it. I don't have to prove it.

...

...Fuck, you shut my brain down. Claim withdrawn.

[Telconi]

The laws mean whatever SCOTUS says they mean. So yes, a party who controls SCOTUS can do whatever they want within the constitution.

No, they can't.

I case you haven't noticed but the ability of SCOTUS to affect change depends entirely on (a) what's in the constitution... you can read something more or less literally but the meanings are still tied to the text in some fashion... and (b) what cases they've actually got in front of them, which is subject to procedural limits.

Not really. Our constitution is held sacred, we’re not authoritarian, the government can’t just change the constitution at will.

It doesn't make much coherent sense to talk of government in terms of the state apparatus of the US... even ignoring the federal components.

But he's broadly speaking right... SCOTUS has a lot of scope to reframe the meaning of the US Constitution. Obviously I think he overstates the case considerably but when you use supreme law and written constitutionality this is one of the features (not bugs) of your institutional arrangements.

Who checks that SCOTUS decisions are acceptably close to the meaning of the questioned constitutional power?

[Pacomia]

Explain how not.

The EC isn't an oligarchy because they vote how their states vote (unless they're undemocratic and self-rightious, which last election saw a handful)

Hey, thanks for letting me remember some of my argument! Yes, unfaithful electors are most decidedly oligarchic. Their job is to vote how to people vote. That needs to be gotten rid of.

[Pacomia]

The laws mean whatever SCOTUS says they mean. So yes, a party who controls SCOTUS can do whatever they want within the constitution.

No, they can't.

I case you haven't noticed but the ability of SCOTUS to affect change depends entirely on (a) what's in the constitution... you can read something more or less literally but the meanings are still tied to the text in some fashion... and (b) what cases they've actually got in front of them, which is subject to procedural limits.

Not really. Our constitution is held sacred, we’re not authoritarian, the government can’t just change the constitution at will.

It doesn't make much coherent sense to talk of government in terms of the state apparatus of the US... even ignoring the federal components.

But he's broadly speaking right... SCOTUS has a lot of scope to reframe the meaning of the US Constitution. Obviously I think he overstates the case considerably but when you use supreme law and written constitutionality this is one of the features (not bugs) of your institutional arrangements.

You need a two-thirds vote by Congress to add or remove an amendment. No single person can just change the law at will.

[Telconi]

No, they can't.

I case you haven't noticed but the ability of SCOTUS to affect change depends entirely on (a) what's in the constitution... you can read something more or less literally but the meanings are still tied to the text in some fashion... and (b) what cases they've actually got in front of them, which is subject to procedural limits.



It doesn't make much coherent sense to talk of government in terms of the state apparatus of the US... even ignoring the federal components.

But he's broadly speaking right... SCOTUS has a lot of scope to reframe the meaning of the US Constitution. Obviously I think he overstates the case considerably but when you use supreme law and written constitutionality this is one of the features (not bugs) of your institutional arrangements.

You need a two-thirds vote by Congress to add or remove an amendment. No single person can just change the law at will.

Five single people could.

[Forsher]

Our concept of morality is irreconcilable then.

Well, your moral philosophy also doesn't, you know, actually work. It's like trying to prove the square root of two is a rational number... assuming this leads to a logical contradiction so we know the square root of two is in fact irrational.

Consider, for example, your family tree. In principle it is all one family, correct?

But do you and your siblings and/or children all share the same beliefs and concerns? What about your cousins and their children?

You position the "family" as the centre of your moral philosophy but in order to do so you must either accept that your family's interests are divergent (ridiculing what you're saying) or you have to shrink the family down (making a nonsense of claiming to put family at the centre of the philosophy).

It would be logically coherent to look after number one and number one only... but most people would recognise such extreme selfishness as being morally bankrupt. It would, for example, invalidate the notion of stopping a runaway pram, just because doing so would make you lose your place in a queue.

[Libertas Omnium Maximus]

The EC isn't an oligarchy because they vote how their states vote (unless they're undemocratic and self-rightious, which last election saw a handful)

Hey, thanks for letting me remember some of my argument! Yes, unfaithful electors are most decidedly oligarchic. Their job is to vote how to people vote. That needs to be gotten rid of.

I don't disagree with you. That would be an abuse of their power (in my eyes at least) but it doesn't prove that the EC should be abolished.

[Telconi]

Our concept of morality is irreconcilable then.

Well, your moral philosophy also doesn't, you know, actually work. It's like trying to prove the square root of two is a rational number... assuming this leads to a logical contradiction so we know the square root of two is in fact irrational.

Consider, for example, your family tree. In principle it is all one family, correct?

But do you and your siblings and/or children all share the same beliefs and concerns? What about your cousins and their children?

You position the "family" as the centre of your moral philosophy but in order to do so you must either accept that your family's interests are divergent (ridiculing what you're saying) or you have to shrink the family down (making a nonsense of claiming to put family at the centre of the philosophy).

It would be logically coherent to look after number one and number one only... but most people would recognise such extreme selfishness as being morally bankrupt. It would, for example, invalidate the notion of stopping a runaway pram, just because doing so would make you lose your place in a queue.

The family I referenced refers to my immediate family, myself, my wife, our child.

[Pacomia]

Hey, thanks for letting me remember some of my argument! Yes, unfaithful electors are most decidedly oligarchic. Their job is to vote how to people vote. That needs to be gotten rid of.

I don't disagree with you. That would be an abuse of their power (in my eyes at least) but it doesn't prove that the EC should be abolished.

Fair.

Another thing is, for an actual fair and democratic system, each person should get 1 vote. With the Electoral College, people don’t get an equal amount of voting power. It shouldn’t matter whether you live in rural Nebraska or San Francisco, both people live in the United States, and the actions of the president affects them both equally, so they should be able to have equal say in who that president is.

[Forsher]

Tyranny by Majority. Without the EC California and New York City Elect the president. No one else has any representation at all really. (look at population if you don't believe me). That means that the majority always rules. You can't see anything wrong with the majority (who are all mostly urbanites) always picking the nation's leader?

You have presupposed that tyranny of the majority is possible to answer a question that follows: how is tyranny of the majority possible.

Do you see how ridiculous that is?

Also, you're wrong. 20% of the US population is rural. You would, to beat 50%, therefore need more than 62.5% of the Urban Vote to win. Which, by the way, includes a lot of places with populations well under 1 million.

As you say... look at a map.

[Forsher]

Explain how not.

Nope. You are the one who has to explain. Don't know if you have ever debated before but I currently have the advantage of making a claim that is an accepted truth. You have to disprove it. I don't have to prove it.

This sounds good but it's complete bollocks.

They're saying: the US is an oligarchy.

You're saying: the US is not an oligarchy.

But you're actually saying: the US is something. And they're actually saying: the US is something. It's the same claim!

Both of you need to be able to support what you're saying and both of you are abrogating that responsibility.

This is not a turn based strategy game like the courts of law (where you're stealing this principle from... debates do not use it) but rather a simultaneous process. At no point do we work with the conceit that any particular position is correct unless we set that up at the start. Which neither of you have done.

[The Galactic Liberal Democracy]

Yes. It's an affront to democracy.

[Libertas Omnium Maximus]

Nope. You are the one who has to explain. Don't know if you have ever debated before but I currently have the advantage of making a claim that is an accepted truth. You have to disprove it. I don't have to prove it.

This sounds good but it's complete bollocks.

They're saying: the US is an oligarchy.

You're saying: the US is not an oligarchy.

But you're actually saying: the US is something. And they're actually saying: the US is something. It's the same claim!

Both of you need to be able to support what you're saying and both of you are abrogating that responsibility.

This is not a turn based strategy game like the courts of law (where you're stealing this principle from... debates do not use it) but rather a simultaneous process. At no point do we work with the conceit that any particular position is correct unless we set that up at the start. Which neither of you have done.

I am saying something is true and it is established that that is true. If I say that the sky isn't red, someone has to prove that it is red for me to be wrong. The claims aren't on equal footing and you aren't getting that. What I am saying is a fundamentally held fact.

[Hakons]

No, they can't.

I case you haven't noticed but the ability of SCOTUS to affect change depends entirely on (a) what's in the constitution... you can read something more or less literally but the meanings are still tied to the text in some fashion... and (b) what cases they've actually got in front of them, which is subject to procedural limits.



It doesn't make much coherent sense to talk of government in terms of the state apparatus of the US... even ignoring the federal components.

But he's broadly speaking right... SCOTUS has a lot of scope to reframe the meaning of the US Constitution. Obviously I think he overstates the case considerably but when you use supreme law and written constitutionality this is one of the features (not bugs) of your institutional arrangements.

You need a two-thirds vote by Congress to add or remove an amendment. No single person can just change the law at will.

Telconi is talking about the effective law. A single swing vote on a split Supreme Court can and has changed how the constitution is applied. For example, Justice Kennedy ruled with the liberal bloc in Oberfell v Hodges, and suddenly same sex marriage was constitutionally protected and mandated on the states to furnish. This wouldn't have happened by the actually democratic process of making and passing an amendment, but it did happen by the easy and quick process of Judicial Sovereignty.

[Pacomia]

To the people that are arguing that getting rid of the electoral college will give too much power to the cities:

And with the electoral college, too much power is given to the mixed urban-rural swing states. No matter what system we have, somebody’s going to get swept under the rug, it’s just a matter of who.

[Forsher]

Who checks that SCOTUS decisions are acceptably close to the meaning of the questioned constitutional power?

Is this going to be another of these "if people don't do their jobs right we'll have a tyranny of the majority" arguments? Because, yeah, again, that's just plain tyranny... not tyranny of the majority.

You know the answer is SCOTUS... and you know the answer, when it's not, is Congress (can't remember which house has the impeachment power)... and you know the answer, in the sense of checking to see if they can do the job right, is the Senate. All of which are, we assume, controlled by the same people.

But, again... if they're not doing their job properly it's not tyranny of the majority but plain ordinary tyranny. No-one is disputing that that is possible. What is disputed is the theoretical possibility of tyranny of the majority in the context of the US. (I would, assume, you accept that it's not practically possible?)