Summations Only

Right, that's why I asked:

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Isn't the point of the electoral college to prevent those densely populated islands of blue from taking charge of the huge sea of red that is out there?

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I guess I should say a point instead of the point of it, but anyways... Right, and it makes sense to me that the smaller urban areas shouldn't have total control over the larger rural areas just because they're densely populated.I was looking through the wiki page on the electoral college and I saw this:

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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 shift the disproportionate focus to large cities at the expense of rural areas.

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This was insteresting too:

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Additionally, in the Federalist No. 10, James Madison argued against "an interested and overbearing majority" and the "mischiefs of faction" in an electoral system. He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

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. I think I was getting towards this point: saying that Hillary "only lost the election because of the vagaries of the electoral college" is a little off, as that's how it works by design. Too, if you're considering how counties could be flip-flopped to change the results then looking at it one-sidedly doesn't really paint an accurate picture.Sure, a few precincts changed in the right way could have changed the result, but it goes the same both ways - change a few others and the result is the same.It was a very close race but it wasn't, like, an electoral college anomaly or something.

In response to the inaugural day protests, the Justice Department has sought to find the names of people involved in protests. There was violence at the protests, but the overwhelming number of the protestors were non-violent citizens engaged in nothing more extreme than speaking their displeasure in a loud voice.Under the cover of looking for criminals, the Justice Department sought and was granted, a warrant for the records from web hosting company DreamHost of all visitors to its customer's website, DisruptJ20.org. If you visited that website your name would end up in records held by the government regardless of whether you were involved in any criminal activities.In short, the government was seeking a list of "folks displeased enough with Trump to click on a link". Once the details of the list became public, and the government originally tried to force DreamHost to be silent about the warrant, the government insisted that the scope of the warrant had been misstated, but then agreed to modify their request.Justice Department statement in August.

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"The change in scope was made "in light of factual revelations since July"

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In its brief, the Justice Department says it simply didn't realize the depth of the information that DreamHost has, which includes" visitor data maintained by DreamHost that extends beyond the government's singular locus in this case of investigating the planning, organization, and participation in the January 20, 2017 riot."

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Yesterday, D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert Morin ruled that the government could not have the list they "accidentally requested".

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[W]hile the government has the right to execute its Warrant," D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert Morin wrote in his order, "it does not have the right to rummage through the information contained on DreamHost's website and discover the identity of, or access communications by, individuals not participating in alleged criminal activity, particularly those persons who were engaging in protected First Amendment activities.

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One thing this shows is that what president gets to pick federal judges does matter. Some dumbass (jack-booted thug?) actually granted the original warrant. Secondly, it is a further illustration of what we can expect from Session's Justice Department when loyalty to the president is more important than the rule of law (unless of course, your own neck is on the line)Thanks again to all of you folks who sent a message with your vote this past election. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Land doesn't vote. People do.Your method of representing the vote could allow a county with a single vote to count as much as a county with 1 million votes. That's bad math. From what I have read, part of the reason for the Electoral College was to prevent the election of a completely unfit President. It was thought that a college of somewhat sane people might undo the vote made by the people if need be, such as preventing the election of Napoleon or some such craziness. Since then, laws in some states require the elector to vote the same as the people, so that has lost some bite over the years.One could also argue that using the number of Senators in the equation for doling out electors is a nod to preserving state rights and not allowing more populous states from overpowering less populous states. This was the reasoning for the two houses of Congress. I just took a look at the 2012 Presidential election results, and Obama won by 5 million in the popular vote and 332 to 206 in the Electoral College. Hillary won by 3 million votes, and lost the Electoral College. That seems pretty screwed up.

The President is elected by the States, however - not the people. Only a little though, in the ideal world such things are dreamed up. After all, if such an elector were to vote against the people of their State, it'd still count. They'd only be breaking State law. Seems like a price worth paying to deny Napoleon or Hitler or whatever. Ideal world full of ideal people, of course. Only if the People pick the President, but they don't. The States pick the President {via the electors}, the People pick the legislature. The latter being more important but for some reason grossly overlooked.You could change it, of course. But that would require picking the right legislature.For fun this is the most unfair it could be:Wyoming
DC
Vermont
North Dakota
Alaska
South Dakota
Delaware
Montana
Rhode Island
New Hampshire
Maine
Hawaii
Idaho
Nebraska
West Virginia
New Mexico
Nevada
Utah
Kansas
Arkansas
Mississippi
Iowa
Connecticut
Oklahoma
Oregon
Kentucky
Louisiana
South Carolina
Alabama
Colorado
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Maryland
Missouri
Tennessee
Arizona
Indiana
Massachusetts
Virginia
New Jersey.Win those and those alone and you have 20-25% or so of the popular vote. That's about 20-30 million vs 90-100 million votes. So you lose by about 70 million votes. But you have enough electoral votes to win the Presidency.Losing by the popular vote has occurred about 7% of the time - it's part of the system.So the questions are - should the Presidency be decided by the States, and how should the electors be divided if so. If not and it goes to popular vote - the problem of spoilers still exists so the question should be - shouldn't there be transferable votes?

I think there is a confusion between "quality" and "popularity". By the Stile reasoning, Trump was "good enough" to win the election, which certainly should not be confused with Trump being quality.We could have a candidate that, by intelligent, knowledgeable, and rational standards, could be the ideal president. Chances are, such a person would not be a popular choice. And even if elected, that person would not be government god - S/he couldn't just execute fixes without some cooperation with the congress.And I still wonder about Jill Steins overall qualifications and abilities to function as president. Would she just be a "green Trump'?One must sometimes think pragmatism over idealism.MooseEdited by Minnemooseus, : I'm calling it a typo.

How about an alternate line of reasoning? Given the electoral climate that would give an obvious loser like Trump the chance to beat 15 other Republicans in the primary and to be a viable election candidate, together with the way the electoral college works, the Democratic candidate needed to be something pretty effing special to win. Maybe Hilary did not have what it takes.I cannot quite agree with that. I think some of those last Comey shenanigans likely cost Clinton some support that could have pushed her over the top. I am aware that such statements are far from objective.

Concerning Second Thoughts:If the election were held today, given what the public now knows about Trumps quality and effectiveness....Who would win?

The problem is deeper than the presidential general election (and the electoral college) ... it comes down to how candidates are picked and the single vote methodology used.Any time you have more than two candidates and a system with only one vote for one choice you can end up with a Trump candidate even when the majority of voters would prefer someone else -- because their votes are divided by the other candidates. With 3 candidates you can have a 40-30-30 split, where people in the 30 groups would prefer the other 30 group's choice (as 2nd choices) over the 40 groups choice.Do you prefer candidate A or candidate B ?
Do you prefer candidate B or candidate C ?
Do you prefer candidate C or candidate A ? Candidate "A" wins in this system (and even "C" beats "B"), when "B" would win by the current simple majority one vote system. A system where "B" is the winner is obviously flawed.Using this system in the primaries would (a) encourage more than 2 candidates to run and (b) provide candidates that are more of a consensus candidate for the party, the one the most people would agree with. The primaries could use this system to "winnow the chaff" candidates that get the least votes, and they could use it in the primaries to select the best consensus candidate. And the second best would be the ideal choice for veep imho. That would consolidate the party. This is also closer to what the founding fathers originally intended for POTUS and Veep.Obviously if this was also done in the general election, then there would be no such thing as "spoiler" candidates and the people who voted for Jill and Johnson would have their alternate choices counted ... at which point there would be no cause for democrats to blame Jill Stein for their loss. You also would have seen a lot more votes for Jill Stein ... and for Johnson.In addition, the perfect time and place to sort these votes out would be with the electoral college.It is not the third parties that are the problem, and it is not the electoral college that is the problem, it is the way we vote and how the votes are counted that are the problem ...... and this also gets us to the "winner take all" part of the problem -- it effectively nullifies the votes for all the other candidates in each state. This is where the electoral votes diverge from the popular votes to the extreme seen in the last election.How votes are cast and counted is not covered by the constitution, it is decided by the states and the parties (in the primaries).How votes are cast and counted is the problem.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .Edited by RAZD, : .Edited by RAZD, : ..

Is this "special" in the Paula Poundstone way (I believe referring to Bush II voters at some point)?

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Paula Poundstone - "These people are special. And by special I mean, could hurt themselves eating pudding with a rubber spoon."

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(I couldn't track down any source, but I think I got that quote pretty close, if not exact)During the election I pondered "How is Hillary to campaign against someone so obviously unsuitable to be President". Channel Dan Aykroyd? "Donald, you ignorant boob". Etc. WWAFD*?Moose*What Would Al Franken Do?Edited by Minnemooseus, : WWAFDEdited by Minnemooseus, : Neglected an "a" at the end of "Paul".Edited by Minnemooseus, : Change quote box type.

Sure. Since you've still got things all mixed up, I'll try again. You're repeating your original argument unchanged and ignoring the rebuttal. Repeating the rebuttal yet again, Hillary won the popular vote by nearly three million and only lost the electoral college because of unexpected shifts in votes in a small number of counties in three states. Obviously she was good enough to win the election. Your position is like saying that after a loss the Red Sox aren't good enough to beat the Yankees, even though they beat them eight times this year. Your position ignores other factors independent of whether Clinton was "good enough," such as Comey's announcement that he was reopening the email server issue one week before the election.It wouldn't be so bad that want to keep falling back on your "lost election === not good enough" false equivalency if it weren't for the fact that you insist that this is the message the Democratic party should take from election, that their candidate was inadequate. That's exactly the wrong message, because it is untrue and would cause the Democratic party to make the wrong changes. You're repeating your original argument again and ignoring the rebuttals. For instance, one of the rebuttals was that it would be irrational to vote in such a way that your worst nightmare of a candidate won. This isn't to say that Trump wasn't the 2nd choice of *some* Sanders or Stein supporters, and perhaps they had perfectly valid reasons, but we're talking about the electorate in general terms, and in general Trump would be the umpteenth last choice of any Sanders or Stein supporter.Your point comes down to, "Somewhere out there exist voters who actually had valid reasons for voting against their own best interests." Every type of person exists somewhere (doctors who smoke, fat nutritionists), so this isn't an actual argument. You make this same error with your corruption argument. When you said, "those lines are not as clear as you're hoping, and a 3rd party vote has just as much validity as a Democratic vote if one votes in an attempt to send a message along the lines of those reasons," your paragraph became a rebuttal of an argument not made. No one is arguing that if one is voting to send a message that the vote is less valid than a Democratic vote. The argument is that this was the wrong election to be using your vote to send a message, particularly in closely contested districts. Actually, your approach so far has been to ignore rebuttals and repeat your original arguments over and over again. You go on to repeat this five more times in this message. This has been the whole problem with your approach. Your response to rebuttals is to repeat your original argument yet again. Yes, obviously, as I keep saying, all you do is repeat yourself. Clearly your'e out of bullets. Now you're claiming that the rebuttals to your point have nothing to do with your point? In that case the way to show that is to address the rebuttals, not ignore them. In other words, you have no evidence of any special corruption in the Democratic party, and particularly that Democratic corruption is any worse than Republican corruption, although you might want to look into Republican gerrymandering and Tim Murphy.It's pretty reprehensible that you argued for Democratic corruption as a reason for voting 3rd party about ten times with no knowledge or evidence. It was all just a hypothetical based on the presumption that (sic) "there's corruption everywhere in politics." I think we can safely put this accusation of Democratic corruption in the category of "making things up." That's not to say there's no corruption at all, but you've admitted you have no evidence for it and that you "don't know much about it" and you don't know how it compares to Republican corruption, in other words a topic where silence was appropriate. Not that you're paying any heed to this, as you demonstrate further on. Now you're pretending that my argument is actually the thread's subtitle? Subtitle's have to be short and pithy, only a limited number of characters are allowed, that subtitle originated quite a while ago, the discussion has evolved since this subdiscussion started, and I've been pretty clear about what my arguments are. Stick to what we're discussing. The problem isn't that I think you're "trying to say something else." The problem is one you state yourself: Your response to rebuttals is to repeat your original point, as if nothing else need be said, and as if almost no attention need be paid to the rebuttals themselves. Sure, maybe there's some poor communication skills involved - which of us is writing paragraphs with garbled syntax?And then there's all the nonsense stuff, like claims of Democratic corruption based on nothing. And like, "I'm waiting on your proof that Clinton is immune to all aspects of corruption and scandal." You can't prove such things about anyone, but I'll tell you what. You prove to me that you're immune to the possibility of, say, ever stealing anything, and I'll use your response as an example of how to prove Clinton could never be vulnerable to corruption and scandal. Not that I believe that is possible of any human being, and I can't even believe you even insisted on asking that stupid question multiple times. Debate also includes responding to rebuttals, something you're doing a damn poor job of. If you entered this thread to make your point and only your point and to ignore the responses to your point, then you should not have entered this thread. Nor any thread with an attitude like that.--Percy

Unaltered repetitions of already rebutted arguments is not an argument. It's just annoying. You're again responding to an argument not made. The issue has never been one of a vote's validity. The issue has been one of casting a vote that runs strongly against one's own best interests.--Percy

Well now you're just being misleading and dishonest. You know we don't agree on this, and you had to pull what I said out of context to make your false point. What I actually said in Message 1329 was: See where it says that the 2016 election "carried with it unique risks"? That's in the paragraph where the actual rebuttal and the clear disagreement with you lies. And it's the rebuttal, repeated many times, that you keep ignoring. And just in case you decide to repeat previous responses yet again, making up stories about Democratic corruption and demanding it be proved that Clinton could never be vulnerable to scandal and corruption, are just nonsense distractions from the topic that in no way address the objections to your oft-stated original point.Just in case you're moved to repeat your original point yet again, yet me save you the trouble and repeat it for you:

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There are valid reasons to vote 3rd party.
There were valid reasons to vote 3rd party in this past election, even if it helped Trump win.

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This is your original statement of position, not a response to anything anyone actually said about the ways in which it is wrong.--Percy

Except that that's exactly what it was. Clinton had the biggest popular vote margin of a loser in the history of the country. That type of thing, something that's never happened before, is the very definition of an anomaly.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Add quoted text.

This was a fear expressed early in Trump's administration. I think we can agree that Trump is not taking a hands-off approach. What he has done seems mostly worse than that.

And it's irrelevant, and boring, because ... she lost the election. She wasn't a noob that didn't know how the electoral college worked, so that's not a reason she lost.Let's list the reasons she lost:1. She didn't appeal enough to voters in key states to win their electoral votes.
2. Gerrymandering.
3. Voter suppression (voter ID laws, distribution of polling stations, etc).
4. Vote fixing (machine tampering etc).
5. The known vagaries of the electoral college.The way the system works, every vote for a candidate after they win the electoral votes for that state is irrelevant, wasted, and unimportant.The only one she had control over was the first.As a seasoned veteran of many elections and a manipulator of primary elections she had to be fully cognizant of the other reasons.Blaming people who voted for Jill Stein is as unreasonable, weak and pitiful as blaming voters that voted for Trump, not because they liked Trump, but because they though republicans were better than democrats. It also looks like a childlike hissy fit tantrum, rather than accepting the results and figuring out how to move forward.One thing seems pretty clear to me: winning a lot of votes above what was needed to win a state's electoral votes, while at the same time losing enough votes in key states so that you lose the election, means that the campaign energy was misplaced/misdirected/misspent. That falls clearly on the campaign management shoulders, not on the voters. Too much time in the wrong places and not enough time in the critical places.Enjoy.