OT: National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

[Rick C]

The Old Dominion has passed House Bill 177 which if passed by the Virginia Senate and signed by the Governor will add VA to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact bringing the total electoral votes in the compact to 209 of the 270 needed for the compact to be enabled. This is encouraging to those who wish for the President to be elected by the people with one person, one vote.

One of the silly arguments for the electoral college is that it provides for more equal focus by the candidates at the state level. But that is patently not true. Candidates focus on areas where their campaigning can have an impact, the swing states. And in those states they focus on the larger ones. Here is a map showing campaign activity in 2012.

https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation

Pretty easy to see how the electoral college distorts the attention of the candidates.

Only a few more states to go.

--

Rick C.

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[DemonicTubes]

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 10:27:21 AM UTC-7, Rick C wrote:

The Old Dominion has passed House Bill 177 which if passed by the Virginia Senate and signed by the Governor will add VA to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact bringing the total electoral votes in the compact to 209 of the 270 needed for the compact to be enabled. This is encouraging to those who wish for the President to be elected by the people with one person, one vote.

One of the silly arguments for the electoral college is that it provides for more equal focus by the candidates at the state level. But that is patently not true. Candidates focus on areas where their campaigning can have an impact, the swing states. And in those states they focus on the larger ones. Here is a map showing campaign activity in 2012.

https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation

Pretty easy to see how the electoral college distorts the attention of the candidates.

Only a few more states to go.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
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But we are not a democracy, we are a constitutional republic. Further, we are not one giant centralized government but a federal coalition that consists of component states. Having no electoral college and just a popular vote would go against that.

I don't think your link adequately argues against the idea of the electoral college helping to prevent an urban-centric win. A popular vote would disproportionately move the focus to only large cities at the expense of all rural areas, how could it not?

Even Wikipedia lists 6 good arguments to keep the current system:

"Prevention of an urban-centric victory:

Proponents of the Electoral College claim that it prevents a candidate from winning the presidency by simply winning in heavily populated urban areas, and pushes candidates to make a wider geographic appeal than they would if they simply had to win the national popular vote. They believe that adoption of the popular vote would disproportionately shift the focus to large cities at the expense of rural areas.

Maintenance of the federal character of the nation:

The United States of America is a federal coalition that consists of component states. Proponents of the current system argue the collective opinion of even a small state merits attention at the federal level greater than that given to a small, though numerically equivalent, portion of a very populous state. The system also allows each state the freedom, within constitutional bounds, to design its own laws on voting and enfranchisement without an undue incentive to maximize the number of votes cast.

For many years early in the nation's history, up until the Jacksonian Era, many states appointed their electors by a vote of the state legislature, and proponents argue that, in the end, the election of the president must still come down to the decisions of each state, or the federal nature of the United States will give way to a single massive, centralized government.

In his book A More Perfect Constitution, Professor Larry Sabato elaborated on this advantage of the Electoral College, arguing to "mend it, don't end it," in part because of its usefulness in forcing candidates to pay attention to lightly populated states and reinforcing the role of the state in federalism.

Enhancement of the status of minority groups:

Instead of decreasing the power of minority groups by depressing voter turnout, proponents argue that by making the votes of a given state an all-or-nothing affair, minority groups can provide the critical edge that allows a candidate to win. This encourages candidates to court a wide variety of such minorities and advocacy groups.

Encouragement of stability through the two-party system:

Proponents of the Electoral College see its negative effect on third parties as beneficial. They argue that the two party system has provided stability because it encourages a delayed adjustment during times of rapid political and cultural change. They believe it protects the most powerful office in the country from control by what these proponents view as regional minorities until they can moderate their views to win broad, long-term support across the nation. Advocates of a national popular vote for president suggest that this effect would also be true in popular vote elections. Of 918 elections for governor between 1948 and 2009, for example, more than 90% were won by candidates securing more than 50% of the vote, and none have been won with less than 35% of the vote.

Flexibility if a presidential candidate dies:

According to this argument, the fact the Electoral College is made up of real people instead of mere numbers allows for human judgment and flexibility to make a decision, if it happens that a candidate dies or becomes legally disabled around the time of the election. Advocates of the current system argue that human electors would be in a better position to choose a suitable replacement than the general voting public. According to this view, electors could act decisively during the critical time interval between when ballot choices become fixed in state ballots until mid-December when the electors formally cast their ballots. In the election of 1872, losing Liberal Republican candidate Horace Greeley died during this time interval, which resulted in disarray for the Democratic Party, who also supported Greeley, but the Greeley electors were able to split their votes for different alternate candidates.[177][178][179] A situation in which the winning candidate died has never happened. In the election of 1912, vice president Sherman died shortly before the election when it was too late for states to remove his name from their ballots; accordingly, Sherman was listed posthumously, but the eight electoral votes that Sherman would have received were cast instead for Nicholas Murray Butler.

Isolation of election problems:

Some supporters of the Electoral College note that it isolates the impact of any election fraud, or other such problems, to the state where it occurs. It prevents instances where a party dominant in one state may dishonestly inflate the votes for a candidate and thereby affect the election outcome. For instance, recounts occur only on a state-by-state basis, not nationwide.. Results in a single state where the popular vote is very close — such as Florida in 2000 — can decide the national election."

Further reading:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2000/12/p-andrew-sandlin/why-the-electoral-college/

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2004/12/ron-paul/hands-off-the-electoral-college/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College#Support

 

[mpm]

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:07:07 PM UTC-5, Rick C wrote:
>The country was formed as a union of states and people mistakenly think this is >about the states. It isn't. It's about the people of the country electing a >President, not states. As it stands people do not all have the same voting >power for the President. People in large states have too much of the power, but >more importantly people in swing states get all the attention during an >election.

When you vote for President, you're actually voting to select the electors from your State - not necessarily the President. (You're telling your State which candidate you want to the State to vote for.)

I assume you know that, so let's move on...

The Electoral College was a compromise from the beginning.
But, today's technology does indeed allow (or would allow) for the direct election of a President by the people - bypassing the States and the Congress.
(Ignoring for the moment, that the "tech" didn't work too well in Iowa!)

So, the salient questions revolve around whether a direct election would be, on balance, a desirable outcome, or not.

Here's a decent write-up on the pro's and con's of the Electoral College system: https://vittana.org/5-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-electoral-college

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 6:15:31 PM UTC-5, DemonicTubes wrote:

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 10:27:21 AM UTC-7, Rick C wrote:
The Old Dominion has passed House Bill 177 which if passed by the Virginia Senate and signed by the Governor will add VA to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact bringing the total electoral votes in the compact to 209 of the 270 needed for the compact to be enabled. This is encouraging to those who wish for the President to be elected by the people with one person, one vote.

One of the silly arguments for the electoral college is that it provides for more equal focus by the candidates at the state level. But that is patently not true. Candidates focus on areas where their campaigning can have an impact, the swing states. And in those states they focus on the larger ones. Here is a map showing campaign activity in 2012.

https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation

Pretty easy to see how the electoral college distorts the attention of the candidates.

Only a few more states to go.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

But we are not a democracy, we are a constitutional republic.

I never said anything different. That is an irrelevant fact.


> Further, we are not one giant centralized government but a federal coalition that consists of component states. Having no electoral college and just a popular vote would go against that.

Not against anything. The President is not the head of the states in any way. The President is the leader of the Federal government representing the people of the entire nation, not the states. That's the problem. The country was formed as a union of states and people mistakenly think this is about the states. It isn't. It's about the people of the country electing a President, not states. As it stands people do not all have the same voting power for the President. People in large states have too much of the power, but more importantly people in swing states get all the attention during an election.


> I don't think your link adequately argues against the idea of the electoral college helping to prevent an urban-centric win. A popular vote would disproportionately move the focus to only large cities at the expense of all rural areas, how could it not?

I don't know what "urban-centric" win means. I think you mean, one person-one vote which means the people have the power. Is that right? So you think selecting a President should be biased so some people have more voting power than others?

Even Wikipedia lists 6 good arguments to keep the current system:

"Prevention of an urban-centric victory:

Proponents of the Electoral College claim that it prevents a candidate from winning the presidency by simply winning in heavily populated urban areas, and pushes candidates to make a wider geographic appeal than they would if they simply had to win the national popular vote. They believe that adoption of the popular vote would disproportionately shift the focus to large cities at the expense of rural areas.

That conclusion is not borne by the facts. Did you look at the data on where election money is spent and where the candidates campaign? That's the heavily biased election we have under the current system. Is that what you want to preserve?

Maintenance of the federal character of the nation:

The United States of America is a federal coalition that consists of component states. Proponents of the current system argue the collective opinion of even a small state merits attention at the federal level greater than that given to a small, though numerically equivalent, portion of a very populous state. The system also allows each state the freedom, within constitutional bounds, to design its own laws on voting and enfranchisement without an undue incentive to maximize the number of votes cast.

For many years early in the nation's history, up until the Jacksonian Era, many states appointed their electors by a vote of the state legislature, and proponents argue that, in the end, the election of the president must still come down to the decisions of each state, or the federal nature of the United States will give way to a single massive, centralized government.

People argue a great many things. Marie Antoinette argued that the poor should eat cake. We know how that turned out for her.

My argument is very simple and I've not yet heard an adequate criticism of it, "One person-One vote". Do you really oppose that simple premise?


> In his book A More Perfect Constitution, Professor Larry Sabato elaborated on this advantage of the Electoral College, arguing to "mend it, don't end it," in part because of its usefulness in forcing candidates to pay attention to lightly populated states and reinforcing the role of the state in federalism.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact does not "end it", rather it does "bend it" by having each state select electors according to their choice, which may well end up being governed by the nation wide popular vote.

Enhancement of the status of minority groups:

Instead of decreasing the power of minority groups by depressing voter turnout, proponents argue that by making the votes of a given state an all-or-nothing affair, minority groups can provide the critical edge that allows a candidate to win. This encourages candidates to court a wide variety of such minorities and advocacy groups.

Yes indeed, this is exactly the sort of crap that needs to end, the dominance of the election by a small group of voters. Well, it never has been minorities in the usual sense. Dominance is by a handful of states of moderate size but with a close race. You don't need me to explain this to you. No one could have viewed the previous few elections without knowing exactly how that worked out.

Encouragement of stability through the two-party system:

Proponents of the Electoral College see its negative effect on third parties as beneficial. They argue that the two party system has provided stability because it encourages a delayed adjustment during times of rapid political and cultural change. They believe it protects the most powerful office in the country from control by what these proponents view as regional minorities until they can moderate their views to win broad, long-term support across the nation. Advocates of a national popular vote for president suggest that this effect would also be true in popular vote elections. Of 918 elections for governor between 1948 and 2009, for example, more than 90% were won by candidates securing more than 50% of the vote, and none have been won with less than 35% of the vote.

Of course the two party system is good at preserving the two party system. I think it is pure crap, but this has little to do with the electoral college and is irrelevant to the issue of denying voters equal representation.

Flexibility if a presidential candidate dies:

According to this argument, the fact the Electoral College is made up of real people instead of mere numbers allows for human judgment and flexibility to make a decision, if it happens that a candidate dies or becomes legally disabled around the time of the election. Advocates of the current system argue that human electors would be in a better position to choose a suitable replacement than the general voting public. According to this view, electors could act decisively during the critical time interval between when ballot choices become fixed in state ballots until mid-December when the electors formally cast their ballots. In the election of 1872, losing Liberal Republican candidate Horace Greeley died during this time interval, which resulted in disarray for the Democratic Party, who also supported Greeley, but the Greeley electors were able to split their votes for different alternate candidates.[177][178][179] A situation in which the winning candidate died has never happened. In the election of 1912, vice president Sherman died shortly before the election when it was too late for states to remove his name from their ballots; accordingly, Sherman was listed posthumously, but the eight electoral votes that Sherman would have received were cast instead for Nicholas Murray Butler.

What a huge load of crap! There is no provision for electors voting for an alternate candidate. There is also no reason to continue to wait two months to swear in a new President.

No one cares the electoral votes for a dead candidate were not cast. Try that with an election where the winner dies!

Isolation of election problems:

Some supporters of the Electoral College note that it isolates the impact of any election fraud, or other such problems, to the state where it occurs. It prevents instances where a party dominant in one state may dishonestly inflate the votes for a candidate and thereby affect the election outcome.. For instance, recounts occur only on a state-by-state basis, not nationwide. Results in a single state where the popular vote is very close — such as Florida in 2000 — can decide the national election."

Yes, exactly!!! Because of the electoral college the selection of the President was decided in effect by the Supreme Court. In a popular vote it would have to be extreme fraud or an incredibly close election for fraud to change the outcome... unless Trump loses... or wins, but not by popular vote, in which case it has to be voter fraud.

Further reading:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2000/12/p-andrew-sandlin/why-the-electoral-college/

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2004/12/ron-paul/hands-off-the-electoral-college/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College#Support

Do any of these references discuss the concept of One person-One vote?

Won't matter if enough states grow cajones and adopt the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

--

Rick C.

+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
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[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 10:15:31 AM UTC+11, DemonicTubes wrote:

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 10:27:21 AM UTC-7, Rick C wrote:
The Old Dominion has passed House Bill 177 which if passed by the Virginia Senate and signed by the Governor will add VA to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact bringing the total electoral votes in the compact to 209 of the 270 needed for the compact to be enabled. This is encouraging to those who wish for the President to be elected by the people with one person, one vote.

One of the silly arguments for the electoral college is that it provides for more equal focus by the candidates at the state level. But that is patently not true. Candidates focus on areas where their campaigning can have an impact, the swing states. And in those states they focus on the larger ones. Here is a map showing campaign activity in 2012.

https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation

Pretty easy to see how the electoral college distorts the attention of the candidates.

Only a few more states to go.

But we are not a democracy, we are a constitutional republic.

The usual right-wing excuse for persisting with long-established mistakes.

> Further, we are not one giant centralized government but a federal coalition that consists of component states. Having no electoral college and just a popular vote would go against that.

Most countries are federations of component states. The others get by without an electoral college - a senate that over-represents the smaller states is pretty popular, but having an electoral college to elect just one president doesn't do anything useful - and as Trump and Dubbya exemplify all too well - and can lumber you with a severely defective president. It's not a feature but a bug, and nobody else has copied it.

> I don't think your link adequately argues against the idea of the electoral college helping to prevent an urban-centric win. A popular vote would disproportionately move the focus to only large cities at the expense of all rural areas, how could it not?

But it isn't a popular vote any longer.

<snipped large chunk of cut and paste from Wikipedia>

> Encouragement of stability through the two-party system:

Not a good argument. Multiparty systems and coalition governments make public a whole lot discussion that gets hidden as factional disputes within the party in power when you have two party systems and single party administartion.

> Proponents of the Electoral College see its negative effect on third parties as beneficial. They argue that the two party system has provided stability because it encourages a delayed adjustment during times of rapid political and cultural change.

Which is to say it keeps the conservative and reactionaries happy and in power while they fail to react to news and changing circumstances. This is an argument for complacency and inertia

They believe it protects the most powerful office in the country from control by what these proponents view as regional minorities until they can moderate their views to win broad, long-term support across the nation. Advocates of a national popular vote for president suggest that this effect would also be true in popular vote elections. Of 918 elections for governor between 1948 and 2009, for example, more than 90% were won by candidates securing more than 50% of the vote, and none have been won with less than 35% of the vote.

Flexibility if a presidential candidate dies:

According to this argument, the fact the Electoral College is made up of real people instead of mere numbers allows for human judgment and flexibility to make a decision, if it happens that a candidate dies or becomes legally disabled around the time of the election.

This a variant of Alexander Hamiltons' argument that electoral college could reject a candidate like Trump. It didn't, and that kills that argument.

<snipped irrelevant history>

Isolation of election problems:

Some supporters of the Electoral College note that it isolates the impact of any election fraud, or other such problems, to the state where it occurs.

Dubbya won Florida because his brother had disenfranchised lots of people of colour. The Electoral College didn't stop that.

<snipped further reading. Demonic Tubes clearly reads what appeals to him and doesn't think about what it is saying>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:28:22 PM UTC-5, mpm wrote:

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:07:07 PM UTC-5, Rick C wrote:
The country was formed as a union of states and people mistakenly think this is >about the states. It isn't. It's about the people of the country electing a >President, not states. As it stands people do not all have the same voting >power for the President. People in large states have too much of the power, but >more importantly people in swing states get all the attention during an >election.

When you vote for President, you're actually voting to select the electors from your State - not necessarily the President. (You're telling your State which candidate you want to the State to vote for.)

I assume you know that, so let's move on...

The Electoral College was a compromise from the beginning.
But, today's technology does indeed allow (or would allow) for the direct election of a President by the people - bypassing the States and the Congress.
(Ignoring for the moment, that the "tech" didn't work too well in Iowa!)

I'm a bit confused perhaps. In order to select the electors in a state the popular vote is counted. To get the national popular vote we add 51 numbers for each candidate. Are you suggesting it is hard to add 51 numbers? If the 51 numbers per candidate are themselves suspect, then why do we trust them to select the electors???

So, the salient questions revolve around whether a direct election would be, on balance, a desirable outcome, or not.

Here's a decent write-up on the pro's and con's of the Electoral College system: https://vittana.org/5-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-electoral-college

This article starts by saying, "This [the electoral college] allows every state to have an equal vote for President in the US, based on their total population size."

This is factually incorrect, depending on the meaning of "based". But the real issue is that the electoral college is about state selecting the President and not the people. That's the problem.

The article goes on to explain how biasing the voting through the electoral college is about "fairness". Again, they must have a very unique definition of "fair". They even twist reality by suggesting the popular vote would allow "2-3 very large states from overwhelming the popular vote count" which is pretty much what the electoral college does.

"It requires a distribution of popular support", exactly wrong by definition. A candidate can have support solely in the states that give them the win with literally zero support in any other state. That's the electoral college we have today.

"It gives minority interests a say in the election", again, wrong. While it is possible that a minority could swing a state, is that the goal of the electoral college to shift the power to decide an election to a minority of the voters? That's the problem I'd like to see corrected and popular voting will fix that. Select a President by majority votes. Interestingly enough a majority of voters support the idea.

"The Electoral College was designed to solve the problem of population distribution". What problem is that??? You don't like where people live so you want our Presidential election to be mucked up?

I find it insane that anyone believes it is a good idea to distort the election of our President this way. We don't elect any other representatives that way. Our Senators aren't selected by district electors. Our Congressmen aren't elected by district electors. The fallacy that the Electoral College somehow preserves power of the states is somehow better than preserving power of the voters is clear to me, but so many simply are too poor thinkers to understand.

--

Rick C.

-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[mpm]

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:53:52 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

> Dubbya won Florida because his brother had disenfranchised lots of people of colour. The Electoral College didn't stop that.

Oh, I very much doubt that.
And I don't believe disenfranchisement had anything to do with it, either.

Dubbya "won" because Florida (primarily Broward, and Miami-Dade counties) DID NOT ADEQUATELY MAINTAIN their voting booth equipment.

Let me explain - and BTW, I have seen this first hand for myself, so don't even bother trying to move me off the position which follows: What follows is an eye-witness FACT.

In those counties, the voting booth was basically a table that folded-up into something about the size and shape of a briefcase. The ballot was paper (or thin cardstock) and you cast your vote by punching out little holes into the paper ballot (i.e., these little hole punch "dots" were the famous "hanging chad").

Well -- the genius County Election officials never bothered to clean out the machines (briefcases), and most were so loaded with little punch "dots" leftover from prior elections that there simply wasn't room for more. In some cases, that leftover debris was packed in so tightly that you couldn't even poke a hole in your ballot because the channel underneath was cram-packed with all those prior election punched-out chads.

Now, not all machines were completely full -- in fact, the vast majority of machines were probably only half-full (We'll never know for sure, but my money is on very few, if any, of them were vacuumed clean before each election).

Why does this matter?
Well, remember I mentioned the voting booth folded up into a briefcase-looking thing. Well, that briefcase thing had a handle on it.

Sure enough, when you picked up the "booth" by the handle (in it's collapsed briefcase form), all the prior voting paper "chads" fell to the bottom of the interior channel (under the ballot punch area) designed to collect the chads. (Gravity is quite dependable that way!)

So, the candidate whose name appeared lowest on the ballot had the highest probability of encountering a voting machine incapable of accurately recording the vote because it had not been properly maintained (i.e., by vacuuming out the chads after each election).

Bush begins with "B", Gore begins with "G".
Guess whose name was nearest the bottom of the alphabetized ballot.
Doesn't take a genius to figure that one out.

Yes - Florida totally fucked the 2000 Election.
No, it had nothing to do with outside influence, people of color, or disenfranchisement. It was good old incompetence.

They did it by not maintaining what should have been the simplest voting contraption ever conceived. They did it by complete and utter incompetence.
(And the Supervisor of Elections makes $175,000 a year.)

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 2:21:57 PM UTC+11, mpm wrote:

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:53:52 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

Dubbya won Florida because his brother had disenfranchised lots of people of colour. The Electoral College didn't stop that.

Oh, I very much doubt that.
And I don't believe disenfranchisement had anything to do with it, either..

Of course you don't. Your guy won.

Dubbya "won" because Florida (primarily Broward, and Miami-Dade counties) DID NOT ADEQUATELY MAINTAIN their voting booth equipment.

Let me explain - and BTW, I have seen this first hand for myself, so don't even bother trying to move me off the position which follows: What follows is an eye-witness FACT.

In those counties, the voting booth was basically a table that folded-up into something about the size and shape of a briefcase. The ballot was paper (or thin cardstock) and you cast your vote by punching out little holes into the paper ballot (i.e., these little hole punch "dots" were the famous "hanging chad").

Well -- the genius County Election officials never bothered to clean out the machines (briefcases), and most were so loaded with little punch "dots" leftover from prior elections that there simply wasn't room for more. In some cases, that leftover debris was packed in so tightly that you couldn't even poke a hole in your ballot because the channel underneath was cram-packed with all those prior election punched-out chads.

Now, not all machines were completely full -- in fact, the vast majority of machines were probably only half-full (We'll never know for sure, but my money is on very few, if any, of them were vacuumed clean before each election).

Why does this matter?
Well, remember I mentioned the voting booth folded up into a briefcase-looking thing. Well, that briefcase thing had a handle on it.

Sure enough, when you picked up the "booth" by the handle (in it's collapsed briefcase form), all the prior voting paper "chads" fell to the bottom of the interior channel (under the ballot punch area) designed to collect the chads. (Gravity is quite dependable that way!)

So, the candidate whose name appeared lowest on the ballot had the highest probability of encountering a voting machine incapable of accurately recording the vote because it had not been properly maintained (i.e., by vacuuming out the chads after each election).

Bush begins with "B", Gore begins with "G".
Guess whose name was nearest the bottom of the alphabetized ballot.
Doesn't take a genius to figure that one out.

That was the famous hanging chad problem. It certainly wasn't the only problem, and the fact that you could get scrubbed off the electoral roll if you lived an electoral district with a lot of voters of colour and your surname was the same as somebody who had been convicted of a felony didn't help Gore at all.

Yes - Florida totally fucked the 2000 Election.
No, it had nothing to do with outside influence, people of color, or disenfranchisement. It was good old incompetence.

This does ignore the disenfranchisment scandal which did involve quite a lot of selective incompetence - quite a few people were scrubbed from the electoral rolls when they hadn't been convicted of anything.

> They did it by not maintaining what should have been the simplest voting contraption ever conceived.

Pencil and paper is even simpler, and still works fine in Australia and in England.

I once found myself being Labour Party scrutineer at the vote counting centre for the South Cambridge electorate, back in 1992.

They did it by complete and utter incompetence.
(And the Supervisor of Elections makes $175,000 a year.)

Odd how this sort of incompetence seems to work out well for Republican candidates.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 10:21:57 PM UTC-5, mpm wrote:

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:53:52 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

Dubbya won Florida because his brother had disenfranchised lots of people of colour. The Electoral College didn't stop that.

Oh, I very much doubt that.
And I don't believe disenfranchisement had anything to do with it, either..

Dubbya "won" because Florida (primarily Broward, and Miami-Dade counties) DID NOT ADEQUATELY MAINTAIN their voting booth equipment.

Let me explain - and BTW, I have seen this first hand for myself, so don't even bother trying to move me off the position which follows: What follows is an eye-witness FACT.

In those counties, the voting booth was basically a table that folded-up into something about the size and shape of a briefcase. The ballot was paper (or thin cardstock) and you cast your vote by punching out little holes into the paper ballot (i.e., these little hole punch "dots" were the famous "hanging chad").

Well -- the genius County Election officials never bothered to clean out the machines (briefcases), and most were so loaded with little punch "dots" leftover from prior elections that there simply wasn't room for more. In some cases, that leftover debris was packed in so tightly that you couldn't even poke a hole in your ballot because the channel underneath was cram-packed with all those prior election punched-out chads.

Now, not all machines were completely full -- in fact, the vast majority of machines were probably only half-full (We'll never know for sure, but my money is on very few, if any, of them were vacuumed clean before each election).

Why does this matter?
Well, remember I mentioned the voting booth folded up into a briefcase-looking thing. Well, that briefcase thing had a handle on it.

Sure enough, when you picked up the "booth" by the handle (in it's collapsed briefcase form), all the prior voting paper "chads" fell to the bottom of the interior channel (under the ballot punch area) designed to collect the chads. (Gravity is quite dependable that way!)

So, the candidate whose name appeared lowest on the ballot had the highest probability of encountering a voting machine incapable of accurately recording the vote because it had not been properly maintained (i.e., by vacuuming out the chads after each election).

Bush begins with "B", Gore begins with "G".
Guess whose name was nearest the bottom of the alphabetized ballot.
Doesn't take a genius to figure that one out.

Yes - Florida totally fucked the 2000 Election.
No, it had nothing to do with outside influence, people of color, or disenfranchisement. It was good old incompetence.

They did it by not maintaining what should have been the simplest voting contraption ever conceived. They did it by complete and utter incompetence..
(And the Supervisor of Elections makes $175,000 a year.)

Lol. I find it amusing that your personal experience of what, one example? means that is the gospel truth! You are a trip.

--

Rick C.

-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[John Robertson]

On 2020/02/13 8:29 p.m., Bill Sloman wrote:

On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 2:21:57 PM UTC+11, mpm wrote:
On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:53:52 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

Dubbya won Florida because his brother had disenfranchised lots of people of colour. The Electoral College didn't stop that.

Oh, I very much doubt that.
And I don't believe disenfranchisement had anything to do with it, either.

Of course you don't. Your guy won.

Dubbya "won" because Florida (primarily Broward, and Miami-Dade counties) DID NOT ADEQUATELY MAINTAIN their voting booth equipment.

Let me explain - and BTW, I have seen this first hand for myself, so don't even bother trying to move me off the position which follows: What follows is an eye-witness FACT.

In those counties, the voting booth was basically a table that folded-up into something about the size and shape of a briefcase. The ballot was paper (or thin cardstock) and you cast your vote by punching out little holes into the paper ballot (i.e., these little hole punch "dots" were the famous "hanging chad").

Well -- the genius County Election officials never bothered to clean out the machines (briefcases), and most were so loaded with little punch "dots" leftover from prior elections that there simply wasn't room for more. In some cases, that leftover debris was packed in so tightly that you couldn't even poke a hole in your ballot because the channel underneath was cram-packed with all those prior election punched-out chads.

Now, not all machines were completely full -- in fact, the vast majority of machines were probably only half-full (We'll never know for sure, but my money is on very few, if any, of them were vacuumed clean before each election).

Why does this matter?
Well, remember I mentioned the voting booth folded up into a briefcase-looking thing. Well, that briefcase thing had a handle on it.

Sure enough, when you picked up the "booth" by the handle (in it's collapsed briefcase form), all the prior voting paper "chads" fell to the bottom of the interior channel (under the ballot punch area) designed to collect the chads. (Gravity is quite dependable that way!)

So, the candidate whose name appeared lowest on the ballot had the highest probability of encountering a voting machine incapable of accurately recording the vote because it had not been properly maintained (i.e., by vacuuming out the chads after each election).

Bush begins with "B", Gore begins with "G".
Guess whose name was nearest the bottom of the alphabetized ballot.
Doesn't take a genius to figure that one out.

That was the famous hanging chad problem. It certainly wasn't the only problem, and the fact that you could get scrubbed off the electoral roll if you lived an electoral district with a lot of voters of colour and your surname was the same as somebody who had been convicted of a felony didn't help Gore at all.

Yes - Florida totally fucked the 2000 Election.
No, it had nothing to do with outside influence, people of color, or disenfranchisement. It was good old incompetence.

This does ignore the disenfranchisment scandal which did involve quite a lot of selective incompetence - quite a few people were scrubbed from the electoral rolls when they hadn't been convicted of anything.

They did it by not maintaining what should have been the simplest voting contraption ever conceived.

Pencil and paper is even simpler, and still works fine in Australia and in England.

And Canada.

I once found myself being Labour Party scrutineer at the vote counting centre for the South Cambridge electorate, back in 1992.

I've scrutineered a few elections. Here in Canada even electronic
municipal elections are done with paper and pencil, you fill in a
square. And the ballots are not destroyed until ALL the scrutineers (we
have five or more political parties in the municipalities) agree that
the vote was fair.

Federal and provincial elections are still done with paper ballots, hand
counted with scrutineers of each of the parties watching the entire
process.

They did it by complete and utter incompetence.
(And the Supervisor of Elections makes $175,000 a year.)

Odd how this sort of incompetence seems to work out well for Republican candidates.

Gerrymandering is not uncommong, even here in Canada. In our province,
BC, we once had an electoral riding called Gracie's Finger that pretty
much guaranteed the election of a particular candidate (Grace McCarthy)
until the opposition finally won and set up an electoral riding process
that was harder to corrupt and thus fairer to the electors.

John :-#)#

PS, Bill would say "still nothing about electronic design" - so: I'm
working on a replacement for the Rockwell 6530 as used in a particular
pinball game - this has the correct timer math, and a second replacement
for a 3850 based CPU and ROM/IO for a different game. Replacing 1970s
tech...

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 6:19:45 PM UTC+11, John Robertson wrote:

On 2020/02/13 8:29 p.m., Bill Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 2:21:57 PM UTC+11, mpm wrote:
On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:53:52 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

<snipped interesting stuff>

PS, Bill would say "still nothing about electronic design" - so: I'm
working on a replacement for the Rockwell 6530 as used in a particular
pinball game - this has the correct timer math, and a second replacement
for a 3850 based CPU and ROM/IO for a different game. Replacing 1970s
tech...

Actually, I wouldn't. I was merely satirising John Larkin's favourite putdown - quite why I can't actually remember.

You should be able to program relatively cheap programmable logic chips to emulate any of the old 8-bit processors. They weren't all that big or complicated.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in
news:2861827c-47af-4025-b2d2-5ebae8345a78@googlegroups.com:

On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 6:19:45 PM UTC+11, John Robertson
wrote:
On 2020/02/13 8:29 p.m., Bill Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 2:21:57 PM UTC+11, mpm wrote:
On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:53:52 PM UTC-5, Bill
Sloman wrote:

snipped interesting stuff

PS, Bill would say "still nothing about electronic design" - so:
I'm working on a replacement for the Rockwell 6530 as used in a
particular pinball game - this has the correct timer math, and a
second replacement for a 3850 based CPU and ROM/IO for a
different game. Replacing 1970s tech...

Actually, I wouldn't. I was merely satirising John Larkin's
favourite putdown - quite why I can't actually remember.

You should be able to program relatively cheap programmable logic
chips to emulate any of the old 8-bit processors. They weren't all
that big or complicated.

One example...

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2uXqTi42LI>

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 6:15:31 PM UTC-5, DemonicTubes wrote:

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 10:27:21 AM UTC-7, Rick C wrote:
The Old Dominion has passed House Bill 177 which if passed by the Virginia Senate and signed by the Governor will add VA to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact bringing the total electoral votes in the compact to 209 of the 270 needed for the compact to be enabled. This is encouraging to those who wish for the President to be elected by the people with one person, one vote.

One of the silly arguments for the electoral college is that it provides for more equal focus by the candidates at the state level. But that is patently not true. Candidates focus on areas where their campaigning can have an impact, the swing states. And in those states they focus on the larger ones. Here is a map showing campaign activity in 2012.

https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation

Pretty easy to see how the electoral college distorts the attention of the candidates.

Only a few more states to go.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

But we are not a democracy, we are a constitutional republic. Further, we are not one giant centralized government but a federal coalition that consists of component states. Having no electoral college and just a popular vote would go against that.

I don't think your link adequately argues against the idea of the electoral college helping to prevent an urban-centric win. A popular vote would disproportionately move the focus to only large cities at the expense of all rural areas, how could it not?

Even Wikipedia lists 6 good arguments to keep the current system:

"Prevention of an urban-centric victory:

Proponents of the Electoral College claim that it prevents a candidate from winning the presidency by simply winning in heavily populated urban areas, and pushes candidates to make a wider geographic appeal than they would if they simply had to win the national popular vote. They believe that adoption of the popular vote would disproportionately shift the focus to large cities at the expense of rural areas.

Maintenance of the federal character of the nation:

The United States of America is a federal coalition that consists of component states. Proponents of the current system argue the collective opinion of even a small state merits attention at the federal level greater than that given to a small, though numerically equivalent, portion of a very populous state. The system also allows each state the freedom, within constitutional bounds, to design its own laws on voting and enfranchisement without an undue incentive to maximize the number of votes cast.

For many years early in the nation's history, up until the Jacksonian Era, many states appointed their electors by a vote of the state legislature, and proponents argue that, in the end, the election of the president must still come down to the decisions of each state, or the federal nature of the United States will give way to a single massive, centralized government.

In his book A More Perfect Constitution, Professor Larry Sabato elaborated on this advantage of the Electoral College, arguing to "mend it, don't end it," in part because of its usefulness in forcing candidates to pay attention to lightly populated states and reinforcing the role of the state in federalism.

Enhancement of the status of minority groups:

Instead of decreasing the power of minority groups by depressing voter turnout, proponents argue that by making the votes of a given state an all-or-nothing affair, minority groups can provide the critical edge that allows a candidate to win. This encourages candidates to court a wide variety of such minorities and advocacy groups.

Encouragement of stability through the two-party system:

Proponents of the Electoral College see its negative effect on third parties as beneficial. They argue that the two party system has provided stability because it encourages a delayed adjustment during times of rapid political and cultural change. They believe it protects the most powerful office in the country from control by what these proponents view as regional minorities until they can moderate their views to win broad, long-term support across the nation. Advocates of a national popular vote for president suggest that this effect would also be true in popular vote elections. Of 918 elections for governor between 1948 and 2009, for example, more than 90% were won by candidates securing more than 50% of the vote, and none have been won with less than 35% of the vote.

Flexibility if a presidential candidate dies:

According to this argument, the fact the Electoral College is made up of real people instead of mere numbers allows for human judgment and flexibility to make a decision, if it happens that a candidate dies or becomes legally disabled around the time of the election. Advocates of the current system argue that human electors would be in a better position to choose a suitable replacement than the general voting public. According to this view, electors could act decisively during the critical time interval between when ballot choices become fixed in state ballots until mid-December when the electors formally cast their ballots. In the election of 1872, losing Liberal Republican candidate Horace Greeley died during this time interval, which resulted in disarray for the Democratic Party, who also supported Greeley, but the Greeley electors were able to split their votes for different alternate candidates.[177][178][179] A situation in which the winning candidate died has never happened. In the election of 1912, vice president Sherman died shortly before the election when it was too late for states to remove his name from their ballots; accordingly, Sherman was listed posthumously, but the eight electoral votes that Sherman would have received were cast instead for Nicholas Murray Butler.

Isolation of election problems:

Some supporters of the Electoral College note that it isolates the impact of any election fraud, or other such problems, to the state where it occurs. It prevents instances where a party dominant in one state may dishonestly inflate the votes for a candidate and thereby affect the election outcome.. For instance, recounts occur only on a state-by-state basis, not nationwide. Results in a single state where the popular vote is very close — such as Florida in 2000 — can decide the national election."

Further reading:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2000/12/p-andrew-sandlin/why-the-electoral-college/

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2004/12/ron-paul/hands-off-the-electoral-college/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College#Support

+1

The Democrats are just sore losers, so now they want to change the system.

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:28:22 PM UTC-5, mpm wrote:

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:07:07 PM UTC-5, Rick C wrote:
The country was formed as a union of states and people mistakenly think this is >about the states. It isn't. It's about the people of the country electing a >President, not states. As it stands people do not all have the same voting >power for the President. People in large states have too much of the power, but >more importantly people in swing states get all the attention during an >election.

When you vote for President, you're actually voting to select the electors from your State - not necessarily the President. (You're telling your State which candidate you want to the State to vote for.)

I assume you know that, so let's move on...

The Electoral College was a compromise from the beginning.
But, today's technology does indeed allow (or would allow) for the direct election of a President by the people - bypassing the States and the Congress.
(Ignoring for the moment, that the "tech" didn't work too well in Iowa!)

So, the salient questions revolve around whether a direct election would be, on balance, a desirable outcome, or not.

IT would be until the Democrats lost again, then they want to change
it again to something else.

 

[Rick C]

On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 3:01:25 PM UTC-5, Whoey Louie wrote:

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 6:15:31 PM UTC-5, DemonicTubes wrote:
On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 10:27:21 AM UTC-7, Rick C wrote:
The Old Dominion has passed House Bill 177 which if passed by the Virginia Senate and signed by the Governor will add VA to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact bringing the total electoral votes in the compact to 209 of the 270 needed for the compact to be enabled. This is encouraging to those who wish for the President to be elected by the people with one person, one vote.

One of the silly arguments for the electoral college is that it provides for more equal focus by the candidates at the state level. But that is patently not true. Candidates focus on areas where their campaigning can have an impact, the swing states. And in those states they focus on the larger ones. Here is a map showing campaign activity in 2012.

https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation

Pretty easy to see how the electoral college distorts the attention of the candidates.

Only a few more states to go.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

But we are not a democracy, we are a constitutional republic. Further, we are not one giant centralized government but a federal coalition that consists of component states. Having no electoral college and just a popular vote would go against that.

I don't think your link adequately argues against the idea of the electoral college helping to prevent an urban-centric win. A popular vote would disproportionately move the focus to only large cities at the expense of all rural areas, how could it not?

Even Wikipedia lists 6 good arguments to keep the current system:

"Prevention of an urban-centric victory:

Proponents of the Electoral College claim that it prevents a candidate from winning the presidency by simply winning in heavily populated urban areas, and pushes candidates to make a wider geographic appeal than they would if they simply had to win the national popular vote. They believe that adoption of the popular vote would disproportionately shift the focus to large cities at the expense of rural areas.

Maintenance of the federal character of the nation:

The United States of America is a federal coalition that consists of component states. Proponents of the current system argue the collective opinion of even a small state merits attention at the federal level greater than that given to a small, though numerically equivalent, portion of a very populous state. The system also allows each state the freedom, within constitutional bounds, to design its own laws on voting and enfranchisement without an undue incentive to maximize the number of votes cast.

For many years early in the nation's history, up until the Jacksonian Era, many states appointed their electors by a vote of the state legislature, and proponents argue that, in the end, the election of the president must still come down to the decisions of each state, or the federal nature of the United States will give way to a single massive, centralized government.

In his book A More Perfect Constitution, Professor Larry Sabato elaborated on this advantage of the Electoral College, arguing to "mend it, don't end it," in part because of its usefulness in forcing candidates to pay attention to lightly populated states and reinforcing the role of the state in federalism.

Enhancement of the status of minority groups:

Instead of decreasing the power of minority groups by depressing voter turnout, proponents argue that by making the votes of a given state an all-or-nothing affair, minority groups can provide the critical edge that allows a candidate to win. This encourages candidates to court a wide variety of such minorities and advocacy groups.

Encouragement of stability through the two-party system:

Proponents of the Electoral College see its negative effect on third parties as beneficial. They argue that the two party system has provided stability because it encourages a delayed adjustment during times of rapid political and cultural change. They believe it protects the most powerful office in the country from control by what these proponents view as regional minorities until they can moderate their views to win broad, long-term support across the nation. Advocates of a national popular vote for president suggest that this effect would also be true in popular vote elections. Of 918 elections for governor between 1948 and 2009, for example, more than 90% were won by candidates securing more than 50% of the vote, and none have been won with less than 35% of the vote.

Flexibility if a presidential candidate dies:

According to this argument, the fact the Electoral College is made up of real people instead of mere numbers allows for human judgment and flexibility to make a decision, if it happens that a candidate dies or becomes legally disabled around the time of the election. Advocates of the current system argue that human electors would be in a better position to choose a suitable replacement than the general voting public. According to this view, electors could act decisively during the critical time interval between when ballot choices become fixed in state ballots until mid-December when the electors formally cast their ballots. In the election of 1872, losing Liberal Republican candidate Horace Greeley died during this time interval, which resulted in disarray for the Democratic Party, who also supported Greeley, but the Greeley electors were able to split their votes for different alternate candidates.[177][178][179] A situation in which the winning candidate died has never happened. In the election of 1912, vice president Sherman died shortly before the election when it was too late for states to remove his name from their ballots; accordingly, Sherman was listed posthumously, but the eight electoral votes that Sherman would have received were cast instead for Nicholas Murray Butler.

Isolation of election problems:

Some supporters of the Electoral College note that it isolates the impact of any election fraud, or other such problems, to the state where it occurs. It prevents instances where a party dominant in one state may dishonestly inflate the votes for a candidate and thereby affect the election outcome. For instance, recounts occur only on a state-by-state basis, not nationwide. Results in a single state where the popular vote is very close — such as Florida in 2000 — can decide the national election."

Further reading:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2000/12/p-andrew-sandlin/why-the-electoral-college/

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2004/12/ron-paul/hands-off-the-electoral-college/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College#Support



+1

The Democrats are just sore losers, so now they want to change the system..

Of course some will say that, but there is nothing inherent in the Electoral College that favors one party over another long term. This is simply about resolving the fundamental inequity and getting back to "One person - one vote", such a simple statement that there really is no argument against it.... unless you somehow feel a need to use a complex, unequal system to get what you want from government.

--

Rick C.

+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[mpm]

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 11:29:18 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

> Of course you don't. Your guy won.

What?
I voted for Gore. (*)
Surprised?

(*) At least, I "think" I voted for Gore.
I live in Florida. So, who knows if my vote was even counted?!

Florida seems to have a long history of "under-the-radar" voting irregularities, sprinkled with the occasional colossal fuck-up. I would love to pin the whole 2000 debacle on (the recently "Governor-fired" and "illegal destroyer of ballots") Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes (a true IDIOT, except that she's too incompetent to be an idiot, and it would be a disservice to idiots everywhere to compare them to her). But she was installed in 2003 (by Jeb Bush), so the timeline doesn't fit.

However, her predecessor was just as incompetent. (And HIGHLY paid.)
Go figure.

 

[mpm]

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 11:29:18 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

> Pencil and paper is even simpler, and still works fine in Australia and in England.

Florida would find a way to fuck that up, too.

BTW: Thanks for the word-of-the-day "scrutineer".
Not a word we hear too often in the states.

 

mpm <mpmillard@aol.com> wrote in
news:5f8e91f2-fe2c-431e-8d34-003abcbc306f@googlegroups.com:

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 11:29:18 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman
wrote:

Pencil and paper is even simpler, and still works fine in
Australia and in England.

Florida would find a way to fuck that up, too.

BTW: Thanks for the word-of-the-day "scrutineer".
Not a word we hear too often in the states.

Bank online apps ask for two authentication steps.

We are in a big hurry to vote and count on the same day.

What we need to do is have a hard copy pencil and paper vote and
the vote sheet gets optically copied and printed and the copy given
to the voter. He or she then goes home and gets online to do a
verify of the vote and the IP addy that is tied to it. The same addy
that gets registered prior to all this.

The tally would finish the following day, but be virtually instant
news and very accurate, and fraud free.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:01:25 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 6:15:31 PM UTC-5, DemonicTubes wrote:
On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 10:27:21 AM UTC-7, Rick C wrote:

<snip>

> The Democrats are just sore losers, so now they want to change the system.

Whoey Louie likes Trump, and thinks taht the Electoral College, as opposed to the Russian intervention, is what got him his narrow victory, so he likes the Electoral College.

It's not a well-thought-out position.

The Electoral College is a uniquely American invention, and the reason that it is uniquely American is that nobody since then has been silly enough to copy it.

It is a bug, not a feature.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Rick C]

On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 7:11:34 PM UTC-5, mpm wrote:

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 11:29:18 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

Pencil and paper is even simpler, and still works fine in Australia and in England.

Florida would find a way to fuck that up, too.

BTW: Thanks for the word-of-the-day "scrutineer".
Not a word we hear too often in the states.

I just want a system that won't be gamed. I truly believe that the electoral college perverts the Presidential election. One of the things I hate about Trump is that he even claimed election fraud in Pennsylvania where he won! All so he could claim he won the popular vote! He is willing to throw anyone and everyone under the bus to get what he wants.

At least we will be able to say it was a presidency like no other!

--

Rick C.

++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209