OT: National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

[Whoey Louie]

On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 4:49:45 PM UTC-5, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:

Whoey Louie <trader4@optonline.net> wrote in
news:99c7b625-1c7c-4257-b35f-caee98aacae8@googlegroups.com:

Wrong again. I've stated here many times that I did not vote for
Trump, that he's a skunk.



You sure as fuck act like him.

The only exception is that your 41 IQ is one point higher than his.

Now would be a good time to tell everyone again that you're a Republican.
Are you proud how your party just let Trump off the hook? Only one
Republican out of 53 voted to remove Trump. Like I said, you and your
party are enabling him. I quit the GOP. If enough people did the same,
the GOP would get the message, panic and ditch Trump. The GOP is dead
to me now.

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:21:25 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 4:29:33 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 12:02:45 PM UTC-5, mpm wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 10:18:40 AM UTC-5, Whoey Louie wrote:

snip

You mean you're not in favor of free healthcare for illegals? I guess
you're not a modern Democrat.

No. He's just stupid. The main point of the health care system is preventing plagues.

ROFL

That's a good one, even for you.



It doesn't have to do it often, but when it does it's vitally important (as in Hubei Province in China at the moment).

Free health care for everybody is expensive but having a big chunk of the population killed off by a fast spreading infectious disease is a whole lot more expensive, and right-wing politicians - and you two - are too dumb to realise this.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

ROFL

Funny too that with all the libs falling over each other to promise
free healthcare, not one has ever brought up this stupid claim.

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:14:06 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 2:14:50 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 8:28:52 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:02:45 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
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.

In the same way that the Republicans keep on fiddling with the electoral rolls in the hope of excluding even more people who might vote for the Democrats?

Except that didn't happen. Republicans just believe we should protect
elections from illegal voting and it's not an undue burden to show some
freaking ID at the polls.

Republicans say they believe that they need to make special efforts to protect elections for illegal voting, end up putting an undue burden on people more likely to vote for the Democrats. Whoey Louie is too dumb to notice.

Yeah, like having to show an ID, which people need to do to get on a
plane, cash a check, buy beer, enter a nightclub that serves beer,
is a HUGE burden for the Democrats. Funny, the Democrats are even allowing
illegal aliens to get driver's licenses, even they are capable of it.
But show an ID to vote? Only there is it some heavy burden and then
only on Democrats.

ROFL

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 9:25:15 PM UTC-5, Dean Hoffman wrote:

On 2/13/20 11:27 AM, 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.

So what do you think of Nebraska's and maybe Maine's system of
allocating electoral college votes? The winner of each congressional
district gets the vote representing that individual district. The
winner of the total state's vote gets
the two votes representing the two senators.
Nebraska has five total votes. It possible for its vote to split 4
to 1 or 3 to 2.
I think vote counting issues would be limited to the state
or to an individual district.

I think that idea is a poor second choice and as far as I am aware there is no states suggesting it. So it's a non-starter unless you want to make a constitutional amendment.

Vote counting issues are never "limited". That was shown in the 2000 Presidential race. It could have decided the election and ended up in the Supreme count.

The various ideas of why the Electoral college is good are all baseless and/or fly in the face of one person/one vote.

--

Rick C.

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

 

Whoey Louie <trader4@optonline.net> wrote in
news:d9f52371-61b7-4ae9-b6eb-e0d308aba60d@googlegroups.com:

On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 4:49:45 PM UTC-5,
DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:
Whoey Louie <trader4@optonline.net> wrote in
news:99c7b625-1c7c-4257-b35f-caee98aacae8@googlegroups.com:

Wrong again. I've stated here many times that I did not vote
for Trump, that he's a skunk.



You sure as fuck act like him.

The only exception is that your 41 IQ is one point higher than
his.

Now would be a good time to tell everyone again that you're a
Republican. Are you proud how your party just let Trump off the
hook? Only one Republican out of 53 voted to remove Trump. Like
I said, you and your party are enabling him. I quit the GOP. If
enough people did the same, the GOP would get the message, panic
and ditch Trump. The GOP is dead to me now.

I do not give a fat flying fuck what party you are with dumbfuck.
Look at what I said, you stupid twit.

You sure as fuck act like him has not a goddamned thing to do with
any party.

It has to do with how blatantly fucking stupid you are. And this
post is no exception, Dingus Con.

 

[mpm]

On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 6:18:46 AM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 5:07:13 PM UTC+11, Michael Terrell wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 10:25:47 PM UTC-5, mpm wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:57:07 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

I think if you put an actual kangaroo on the ballot, it might even get elected.

But even if it didn't get elected, would it come in last place?!
I doubt it.

It would get more votes than Sloman.

In the kind of fantasy world world where either of us would be on a ballot. Michael Terrell might even be right. He seems to be happy to live in the kind of cloud cuckoo land where this kind of question is worth thinking about.

Yeah, but it was pretty damn funny!

 

[mpm]

On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 9:29:38 AM UTC-5, Rick C wrote:

> The various ideas of why the Electoral college is good are all baseless and/or fly in the face of one person/one vote.

I just want to point out that your premise is probably incorrect.
You seem to be arguing that the President not only SHOULD be directly elected by citizens, but that the founding fathers WANTED it that way, (but it was impracticable for the times).

I just want to focus on the latter part of the statement above, because there may indeed be substantial benefits to a modern-day, direct-citizen election, and I'd rather not de-rail the thread on a tangent.

James Madison wrote: "The right of suffrage is a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions. The regulation of it is, at the same time, a task of peculiar delicacy. Allow the right [to vote] exclusively to property [owners], and the rights of persons may be oppressed... . Extend it equally to all, and the rights of property [owners] ...may be overruled by a majority without property...."

Ultimately, Article-4 leaves the election up to the States (hence, the Electoral College). But it is worth noting that at the time of Madison's words, suffrage was routinely limited by the States to include only white men with property. Women, African & Native Americans, non-English speakers, those 18-21 years of age, etc... were clearly not voting directly for a President - since they were precluded from voting at all!

So, I'm not so quick to just accept the premise that "were it not for the technology at the time", that our founding fathers would have opted for a direct-citizen election of the President.

Maybe they would have? ...but the evidence above suggests otherwise.
More likely, the technology would have enabled a direct election by white male property owners (only). ?

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, February 17, 2020 at 1:17:11 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:

On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:21:25 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 4:29:33 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 12:02:45 PM UTC-5, mpm wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 10:18:40 AM UTC-5, Whoey Louie wrote:

snip

You mean you're not in favor of free healthcare for illegals? I guess
you're not a modern Democrat.

No. He's just stupid. The main point of the health care system is preventing plagues.

ROFL

That's a good one, even for you.



It doesn't have to do it often, but when it does it's vitally important (as in Hubei Province in China at the moment).

Free health care for everybody is expensive but having a big chunk of the population killed off by a fast spreading infectious disease is a whole lot more expensive, and right-wing politicians - and you two - are too dumb to realise this.

ROFL

Funny too that with all the libs falling over each other to promise
free healthcare, not one has ever brought up this stupid claim.

It's not what health care systems spend most of their time doing, and politicians don't like reminding voters that they live in a dangerous and unpredictable world - it makes the voters feel nervous, and some of that latches onto the politicians who makes then feel nervous, but you have to be as stupid as Whoey Louie to find the point irrelevant or comical.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, February 17, 2020 at 1:14:40 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:

On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:14:06 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 2:14:50 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 8:28:52 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:02:45 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
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.

In the same way that the Republicans keep on fiddling with the electoral rolls in the hope of excluding even more people who might vote for the Democrats?

Except that didn't happen. Republicans just believe we should protect
elections from illegal voting and it's not an undue burden to show some
freaking ID at the polls.

Republicans say they believe that they need to make special efforts to protect elections for illegal voting, end up putting an undue burden on people more likely to vote for the Democrats. Whoey Louie is too dumb to notice.

Yeah, like having to show an ID, which people need to do to get on a
plane, cash a check, buy beer, enter a nightclub that serves beer,
is a HUGE burden for the Democrats. Funny, the Democrats are even allowing
illegal aliens to get driver's licenses, even they are capable of it.
But show an ID to vote? Only there is it some heavy burden and then
only on Democrats.

If you haven't got an ID and have to get one to vote. it's a burden.

As usual, Whoey Louie hasn't been paying attention to the other dirty tricks, like close voting stations in poor districts "because everybody owns a car" and "nobody walks to the place they vote".

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, February 17, 2020 at 6:52:45 AM UTC+11, mpm wrote:

On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 9:29:38 AM UTC-5, Rick C wrote:

The various ideas of why the Electoral college is good are all baseless and/or fly in the face of one person/one vote.

I just want to point out that your premise is probably incorrect.
You seem to be arguing that the President not only SHOULD be directly elected by citizens, but that the founding fathers WANTED it that way, (but it was impracticable for the times).

The founding tax evaders wanted voting confined to property owning citizens, and it was - over most of the country - for quite a few decades.

The electoral college was invented as extra bribe to the smaller states. It's worth remembering that the aim was to influence influential people in the smaller states, and since many of them could have expected to become members of the electoral college, what was being offered to them was an expenses paid trip to a high profile gig in Washington every four years, with the chance of getting bribed by one of the presidential candidates or their supporters.

Alexander Hamilton presented the idea in Federalist 68 with a healthy dose of flattery "men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation".

He doesn't mention the chance of getting bribed, but that would have lowered the tone.

I just want to focus on the latter part of the statement above, because there may indeed be substantial benefits to a modern-day, direct-citizen election, and I'd rather not de-rail the thread on a tangent.

James Madison wrote: "The right of suffrage is a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions. The regulation of it is, at the same time, a task of peculiar delicacy. Allow the right [to vote] exclusively to property [owners], and the rights of persons may be oppressed... . Extend it equally to all, and the rights of property [owners] ...may be overruled by a majority without property...."

Ultimately, Article-4 leaves the election up to the States (hence, the Electoral College). But it is worth noting that at the time of Madison's words, suffrage was routinely limited by the States to include only white men with property. Women, African & Native Americans, non-English speakers, those 18-21 years of age, etc... were clearly not voting directly for a President - since they were precluded from voting at all!

So, I'm not so quick to just accept the premise that "were it not for the technology at the time", that our founding fathers would have opted for a direct-citizen election of the President.

Maybe they would have? ...but the evidence above suggests otherwise.
More likely, the technology would have enabled a direct election by white male property owners (only)?

Property owners had the money to travel.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[whit3rd]

On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 11:52:45 AM UTC-8, mpm wrote:

> Ultimately, Article-4 leaves the election up to the States (hence, the Electoral College). But it is worth noting that at the time of Madison's words, suffrage was routinely limited by the States to include only white men with property. Women, African & Native Americans, non-English speakers, those 18-21 years of age, etc... were clearly not voting directly for a President - since they were precluded from voting at all!

So, the Pennsylvania Dutch (German speakers) who were half the population of that
state, didn't have a vote? How odd, they certainly held public office.

Formal registration wasn't always required; neither was a birth certificate, folk got born
all the time without documentation. I suspect a lot of 'em voted.

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 13 Feb 2020 15:15:25 -0800 (PST), DemonicTubes
<tlackie@gmail.com> 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.

If the Dems had won the last election, they would be making the
opposite argument to the one they make now. Power overcomes principles
most every time.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 8:24:44 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Monday, February 17, 2020 at 1:14:40 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:14:06 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 2:14:50 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 8:28:52 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:02:45 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
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.

In the same way that the Republicans keep on fiddling with the electoral rolls in the hope of excluding even more people who might vote for the Democrats?

Except that didn't happen. Republicans just believe we should protect
elections from illegal voting and it's not an undue burden to show some
freaking ID at the polls.

Republicans say they believe that they need to make special efforts to protect elections for illegal voting, end up putting an undue burden on people more likely to vote for the Democrats. Whoey Louie is too dumb to notice.

Yeah, like having to show an ID, which people need to do to get on a
plane, cash a check, buy beer, enter a nightclub that serves beer,
is a HUGE burden for the Democrats. Funny, the Democrats are even allowing
illegal aliens to get driver's licenses, even they are capable of it.
But show an ID to vote? Only there is it some heavy burden and then
only on Democrats.

If you haven't got an ID and have to get one to vote. it's a burden.

As usual, Whoey Louie hasn't been paying attention to the other dirty tricks, like close voting stations in poor districts "because everybody owns a car" and "nobody walks to the place they vote".

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

I know you don't live here and don't know wtf you're taking about. Isn't it time to feed the kangaroos? Maybe you should worry about your own elections, that gave you Morrison. Ouch! And no electoral college, go figure.

Rofl

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 5:43:50 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 13 Feb 2020 15:15:25 -0800 (PST), DemonicTubes
tlackie@gmail.com> 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. 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.

If the Dems had won the last election, they would be making the
opposite argument to the one they make now. Power overcomes principles
most every time.

Perhaps. On the other hand, minority presidents have never been much good, and the electoral college is definitely a bug in the US constitution - as opposed to a widely admired and frequently copied feature.

John Larkin is arguing from somewhat inadequate first principles in a case where there are very obvious disadvantages in the way things get done in the US at the moment.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 11:27:54 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:

On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 8:24:44 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Monday, February 17, 2020 at 1:14:40 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:14:06 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 2:14:50 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Friday, February 14, 2020 at 8:28:52 PM UTC-5, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 7:02:45 AM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:
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.

In the same way that the Republicans keep on fiddling with the electoral rolls in the hope of excluding even more people who might vote for the Democrats?

Except that didn't happen. Republicans just believe we should protect
elections from illegal voting and it's not an undue burden to show some
freaking ID at the polls.

Republicans say they believe that they need to make special efforts to protect elections for illegal voting, end up putting an undue burden on people more likely to vote for the Democrats. Whoey Louie is too dumb to notice.

Yeah, like having to show an ID, which people need to do to get on a
plane, cash a check, buy beer, enter a nightclub that serves beer,
is a HUGE burden for the Democrats. Funny, the Democrats are even allowing
illegal aliens to get driver's licenses, even they are capable of it.
But show an ID to vote? Only there is it some heavy burden and then
only on Democrats.

If you haven't got an ID and have to get one to vote. it's a burden.

As usual, Whoey Louie hasn't been paying attention to the other dirty tricks, like close voting stations in poor districts "because everybody owns a car" and "nobody walks to the place they vote".

I know you don't live here and don't know wtf you're taking about. Isn't it time to feed the kangaroos? Maybe you should worry about your own elections, that gave you Morrison. Ouch! And no electoral college, go figure.

Rofl

Kangaroos mostly feed themselves. The recent bush-fires have stripped some areas of the vegetation that the kangaroos eat, so a few are being fed to keep them going until enough new stuff has grown to let them graze. There are not a lot of kangaroos around in the centre of Sydney, so I'm not involved in that - as Whooey Louie would be aware if he knew what he was talking about.

Morrison's electoral victory was paper-thin. He got 77 seats in a 151 seat House of Representatives. What mainly seems to have won him the election was an eighty million dollar campaign by rich guy called Clive Palmer, ostensibly for his Palmer United Party. It didn't win a seat, but shifted the voting in Queensland enough that the Labour Party didn't win a couple of seats there that they had been expected to win.

Again, you don't know what you are talking about - it was a classic example of the American problem of people with lots of money using it to influence the outcome of an election.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Rick C]

On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 2:52:45 PM UTC-5, mpm wrote:

On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 9:29:38 AM UTC-5, Rick C wrote:

The various ideas of why the Electoral college is good are all baseless and/or fly in the face of one person/one vote.

I just want to point out that your premise is probably incorrect.
You seem to be arguing that the President not only SHOULD be directly elected by citizens, but that the founding fathers WANTED it that way, (but it was impracticable for the times).

No, I'm not really interested in what the founding fathers intended. That is essentially obsolete thinking and has no real purpose to a society and government 250 years later.

I'm dismissing all the clap trap reasons that people try to justify the electoral college. They all are essentially simply wrong in fact or are wrong in intent.

I just want to focus on the latter part of the statement above, because there may indeed be substantial benefits to a modern-day, direct-citizen election, and I'd rather not de-rail the thread on a tangent.

James Madison wrote: "The right of suffrage is a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions. The regulation of it is, at the same time, a task of peculiar delicacy. Allow the right [to vote] exclusively to property [owners], and the rights of persons may be oppressed... . Extend it equally to all, and the rights of property [owners] ...may be overruled by a majority without property...."

The "rights" of any minority are in theory preserved by the rights grated in the Constitution. Property owners are a class particularly important to the founding fathers as it's a class they were in. Otherwise they are no different than Catholics or short people.

Ultimately, Article-4 leaves the election up to the States (hence, the Electoral College). But it is worth noting that at the time of Madison's words, suffrage was routinely limited by the States to include only white men with property. Women, African & Native Americans, non-English speakers, those 18-21 years of age, etc... were clearly not voting directly for a President - since they were precluded from voting at all!

So, I'm not so quick to just accept the premise that "were it not for the technology at the time", that our founding fathers would have opted for a direct-citizen election of the President.

You seem to be responding to something you didn't quote. I don't recall making any "technology at the time" arguments. I may have mentioned it in passing, but my point is simply that the only truly fair and even system of electing a President is "one person-one vote".

Maybe they would have? ...but the evidence above suggests otherwise.
More likely, the technology would have enabled a direct election by white male property owners (only). ?

I don't care. Why are you talking about this? I don't see where anyone addressed this particular irrelevancy.

--

Rick C.

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

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 9:50:47 AM UTC-5, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:07:07 PM UTC-5, Rick C wrote:

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?

Since you're for one-person one-vote, would you also argue that
China should have four times as many votes as the United States
in any negotiations between the two, since China has quadruple
our population?

If not, why not?

That is irrelevant to the issue of electing the US President. No, I don't support non sequiturs.

--

Rick C.

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

 

On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:07:07 PM UTC-5, Rick C wrote:

> 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?

Since you're for one-person one-vote, would you also argue that
China should have four times as many votes as the United States
in any negotiations between the two, since China has quadruple
our population?

If not, why not?

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[DemonicTubes]

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 8:33:53 AM UTC-7, Rick C wrote:

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 9:50:47 AM UTC-5, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:07:07 PM UTC-5, Rick C wrote:

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?

Since you're for one-person one-vote, would you also argue that
China should have four times as many votes as the United States
in any negotiations between the two, since China has quadruple
our population?

If not, why not?

That is irrelevant to the issue of electing the US President. No, I don't support non sequiturs.

--

Rick C.

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

We are not one state. We are a federal coalition of component states. Idaho deserves a bite of the pie that California and New York would horde for themselves.

 

[whit3rd]

On Monday, February 17, 2020 at 10:43:50 AM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:

If the Dems had won the last election, they would be making the
opposite argument to the one they make now. Power overcomes principles
most every time.

It's dubious 'the Dems' would have any use for such an argument during
a campign.

As for 'power overcomes principles', that's on a person-by-person basis; we
know that only for you, not for the rest of 300 million Americans. We hear
that it doesn't apply to a senator from Utah.