A "stolen election" question...

desert dude

desert dude

Well-Known Member
Lefties have been crying since 2000 that the Republicans stole the presidential election from AlGore.

If Romney wins the popular vote and loses the electoral vote thereby losing the election to Obama, are you guys going to protest that Obama "stole" the 2012 election?

If anybody wants to go off on a tangent then the one I suggest is to discuss whether we should abandon the electoral college and simply use a popular vote for the presidential election starting in 2016.

<edit>I think doing away with the electoral college and instead using the popular vote is a good idea, but I admit I am not even close to being a scholar on the issue hence there might be some "really great" thing about the electoral college that I am not seeing.
 
DonPepe

DonPepe

Active Member
I do think the electoral college needs to be revised if we plan to continue using it.

I like the idea of popular vote, but am unsure about weather it would have its own set of problems.

I do think a lot of things should be put to the popular vote that are not currently. Its weird when media and commercial companies care more about what the public wants and thinks than the gov does. There was a time when it was a big undertaking to ask the public to vote on something, but in the days of the internet it can be done for even the smallest of decisions, hell i'm not even sure why we need politicians anymore even.
 
A

A.Green.Monster

Member
I agree with you that the electoral college seems like a strange concept due to the fact that it can be contrary to the popular vote, which is the voice of the nation. It is however supposed to reflect the popular vote to a degree. The college is supposed to vote based on their constituants votes. Our whole governmental system however is based on checks and balances of power designed specifically to prevent one major political party/organization from taking over. That being said, I was one of the people who were upset that Bush "beat" Gore, and will probably consider it even if Obama were to "beat" Romney the same way. On the contrary, If Romney wins that way, I will not have much faith left in the electoral college. I think that our system should actually promote more than just 2 political parties.
 
mccumcumber

mccumcumber

Well-Known Member
Democrats actually cry that Nader stole the election. Which he didn't, but the media used him as a scapegoat. Too bad, because Nader is awesome, but whatever.
 
ginwilly

ginwilly

Well-Known Member
The electoral college was designed to preserve the importance of state sovereignty. Let us at least keep up the facade.
 
Red1966

Red1966

Well-Known Member
The Electoral College was a compromise to induce the "frontier" states to join the union when we were fighting the king of England. It gave those states with small populations a greater say in how the nation was to be run. Do you want a nation where New York City and LA would have complete dominance over the rest of the nation? Rural areas would effectively be completely disenfranchised.
 
desert dude

desert dude

Well-Known Member
Red1966 said:
The Electoral College was a compromise to induce the "frontier" states to join the union when we were fighting the king of England. It gave those states with small populations a greater say in how the nation was to be run. Do you want a nation where New York City and LA would have complete dominance over the rest of the nation? Rural areas would effectively be completely disenfranchised.
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I am not an electoral college scholar, so I will yield to you about why it was formed. I think it has run its course as far as usefulness at this point, though. As things stand today, we have Ohio having complete dominance over the rest of the nation and I think that is a bad thing for America. I would prefer a simple popular vote.
 
Red1966

Red1966

Well-Known Member
Ohio isn't really dominate at all. Ohio is a state that has a moderately large electoral vote, and at the same time, can go either way. CA and NY have larger electoral votes, but are very predictable. Thus, the state of Ohio gets a lot more coverage by the media. FL is much the same. Your letting the medias coverage of the election mislead your perception. The "battleground" states don't get coverage because they have an inordinate electoral vote, but because they are where the decisions aren't already decided.
 
desert dude

desert dude

Well-Known Member
Red1966 said:
Ohio isn't really dominate at all. Ohio is a state that has a moderately large electoral vote, and at the same time, can go either way. CA and NY have larger electoral votes, but are very predictable. Thus, the state of Ohio gets a lot more coverage by the media. FL is much the same. Your letting the medias coverage of the election mislead your perception. The "battleground" states don't get coverage because they have an inordinate electoral vote, but because they are where the decisions aren't already decided.
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And without the EC system, no state would have that sort of power. For example, in my state of California, we have 55 electors, the most of any state. Those are all in the pocket of Democrats because California is about 60% Democrat. With a simple popular vote, the Democrats would still have control of California but 40% of California's electoral power would go to somebody else. That strikes me as a good thing.
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Since I cannot resist the tangent, I'll opine that in the 2000 election, the electoral vote hinged on the final count of the popular vote in Florida. And they jiggered that final count until they got the desired result. THAT was the stolen election imo. cn
 
desert dude

desert dude

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
Since I cannot resist the tangent, I'll opine that in the 2000 election, the electoral vote hinged on the final count of the popular vote in Florida. And they jiggered that final count until they got the desired result. THAT was the stolen election imo. cn
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I will follow your tangent for a bit. That election was not stolen. Bush won it fair and square by an exceedingly small margin.

If we had a popular vote system in 2000, Al Gore would have won the election though.
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
desert dude said:
I will follow your tangent for a bit. That election was not stolen. Bush won it fair and square by an exceedingly small margin.

If we had a popular vote system in 2000, Al Gore would have won the election though.
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The documentary I saw made a convincing story of it being unfair and nonsquare. Fwiw. cn
 
desert dude

desert dude

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
The documentary I saw made a convincing story of it being unfair and nonsquare. Fwiw. cn
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I don't expect to convince any Democrat leaning person of anything, but I am convinced Bush won it fair and square. For what it's worth, I am not a Republican.

"In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" -- ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through -- to be counted."
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan-june01/recount_4-3.html
 
Dr Kynes

Dr Kynes

Well-Known Member
desert dude said:
Lefties have been crying since 2000 that the Republicans stole the presidential election from AlGore.

If Romney wins the popular vote and loses the electoral vote thereby losing the election to Obama, are you guys going to protest that Obama "stole" the 2012 election?

If anybody wants to go off on a tangent then the one I suggest is to discuss whether we should abandon the electoral college and simply use a popular vote for the presidential election starting in 2016.

<edit>I think doing away with the electoral college and instead using the popular vote is a good idea, but I admit I am not even close to being a scholar on the issue hence there might be some "really great" thing about the electoral college that I am not seeing.
Click to expand...
the electoral college is designed to protect the smaller less populous states from the tyranny of the northeast's huge people surplus and the power that they would have in straight popular elections.

with0out the electoral college the race would be decided by new york, new jersey and massachusetts.
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
desert dude said:
I don't expect to convince any Democrat leaning person of anything, but I am convinced Bush won it fair and square. For what it's worth, I am not a Republican.

"In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" -- ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through -- to be counted."
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan-june01/recount_4-3.html
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I favor neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, but i am not a Libertarian either. I am that rarest of political beasts hereabouts ... a centrist.
But the documentary rang true to me. Was it true? I don't know. cn
 
desert dude

desert dude

Well-Known Member
Dr Kynes said:
the electoral college is designed to protect the smaller less populous states from the tyranny of the northeast's huge people surplus and the power that they would have in straight popular elections.

with0out the electoral college the race would be decided by new york, new jersey and massachusetts.
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NY, NJ, and MA are all locked up by Democratic voters just like California. If we went to a popular vote instead, some of the votes in those four states would go to non-Democrats. I'm sorry, but I don't see how the less populist states would be any worse off with a popular vote. Another large benefit of abandoning the EC would be that third parties would also get some love.
 
desert dude

desert dude

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
I favor neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, but i am not a Libertarian either. I am that rarest of political beasts hereabouts ... a centrist.
But the documentary rang true to me. Was it true? I don't know. cn
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Well, the vote was so close that I cannot argue the point with much vigor. I do NOT buy the argument that the election was "stolen", though.
 
Dr Kynes

Dr Kynes

Well-Known Member
desert dude said:
NY, NJ, and MA are all locked up by Democratic voters just like California. If we went to a popular vote instead, some of the votes in those four states would go to non-Democrats. I'm sorry, but I don't see how the less populist states would be any worse off with a popular vote. Another large benefit of abandoning the EC would be that third parties would also get some love.
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i got no answer for ya homey. the two party system is now just a devil's threeway and the people are the drunk chick gettin railed from both ends. adding in a third party in the popular vote would just leave us "Airtight". but i guess that still better than the one-party S&M games in some countries where the people are expendable gimps.

fuck i dont know. sometimes i think the US needs a new constitutional convention to wash out the turds much in the manner of a high colonic.
 
Red1966

Red1966

Well-Known Member
desert dude said:
And without the EC system, no state would have that sort of power. For example, in my state of California, we have 55 electors, the most of any state. Those are all in the pocket of Democrats because California is about 60% Democrat. With a simple popular vote, the Democrats would still have control of California but 40% of California's electoral power would go to somebody else. That strikes me as a good thing.
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Your making a common mistake. Not all state haves the "all or nothing" allocation of votes. That has nothing to do with the EC. That's internal to the individual states. The EC is concerned with how the votes as a whole for the nation are allocated. Every state gets a EC vote for each Representative or Senator. Every state gets two Senators and at least one Representative. So Wyoming gets three votes, they have one Representative and two Senators. So they end up with something like one EC vote per 250,000 citizens (numbers are only guesses), while California may only get one EC vote per 1,000,000 citizens.
 
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