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mintskoal posted:Woke up to this one from my cousin: "We need to let everyone have a voice! Even if that means a town of 250 inbred rednecks in the middle of nowhere get more of a say proportionally than a city of 8 million!"
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Dec 1, 2016 16:03
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What kind of brain broke do you have to be to talk about a national election in terms of land area
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Dec 1, 2016 16:45
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Also, like, none of those numbers are even accurate.
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Dec 1, 2016 16:47
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mintskoal posted:Woke up to this one from my cousin: How do you use "comprised" the right way and the wrong way in consecutive sentences? 
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Dec 1, 2016 16:48
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mintskoal posted:Woke up to this one from my cousin: Solid gold Land doesn't vote Land doesn't vote Land doesn't vote Land doesn't vote Land. Doesn't. Vote!
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Dec 1, 2016 16:50
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chitoryu12 posted:"We need to let everyone have a voice! Even if that means a town of 250 inbred rednecks in the middle of nowhere get more of a say proportionally than a city of 8 million!" I'm sure it's been posted earlier up-thread, but one way to mildly empathize with them (but rhetorically wreck them) is: "Oh, interesting point. Which other minority groups deserve extra weight given to their votes?"
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Dec 1, 2016 16:52
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sweart gliwere posted:I'm sure it's been posted earlier up-thread, but one way to mildly empathize with them (but rhetorically wreck them) is: Oh poo poo I love this.
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Dec 1, 2016 16:56
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Lightning Knight posted:What aggravates me is liberals and leftists who advocate for the system when it actively harms their chances of winning. My parents both voted for Hillary, but when THEY brought up the electoral college to me during Thanksgiving both of them vehemently defended it. It was nuts. I gave them a strawman like scenario: let's pretend that 99% of a state lived in a huge city and 1% of the people lived in this huge area comprising almost all of the area of the state. Should they both get equal say in how the state is run? They both said yes.  What's even more crazy is that they complained about how crazy gerrymandering is. I just changed the subject.
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Dec 1, 2016 16:56
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Nevvy Z posted:Oh poo poo I love this. If you use it against someone they'll just laugh at you
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Dec 1, 2016 17:07
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Defenestration posted:Solid gold I love it.
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Dec 1, 2016 17:12
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Defenestration posted:Solid gold But only landowners should vote.
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Dec 1, 2016 17:19
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People that argue for the Electoral college tend to shut up when you counter their arguments of fair representation when you bring up Guam, Puerto Rico, Northern Marianna Islands, etc apperantly being American enough to vote but not American enough to have them actually count since they don't have any EC votes.
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Dec 1, 2016 17:55
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And if you have their ear well enough, CGP Grey has an excellent post-election breakdown of why that argument for he EC (that it protects the voice of rural voters) is bullshit.
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Dec 1, 2016 18:24
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Shbobdb posted:But only landowners should vote.
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Dec 1, 2016 18:26
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lancemantis posted:What kind of brain broke do you have to be to talk about a national election in terms of land area If it benefits my team it's ok. It really isn't any more complicated than that. If the situation were reversed the same people would be screaming about how much of an injustice it is.
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Dec 1, 2016 19:06
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Yeah, remember that when Trump mistakenly thought Romney won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote to Obama in 2012, he tweeted about how it was a travesty of democracy that the person who got less votes could still win the presidency. If that had actually happened, the right would definitely be talking about how the electoral college needed to be abolished. But because it favors them this time, that's why we get the "Um, it's there for a REASON" and the like.
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Dec 1, 2016 19:11
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Twelve by Pies posted:Yeah, remember that when Trump mistakenly thought Romney won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote to Obama in 2012, he tweeted about how it was a travesty of democracy that the person who got less votes could still win the presidency. If that had actually happened, the right would definitely be talking about how the electoral college needed to be abolished. But because it favors them this time, that's why we get the "Um, it's there for a REASON" and the like. What? But I thought the loser one! in 2012 
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Dec 1, 2016 22:06
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 I...It even says "half" right there! "Can you believe that the majority of the people get to decide the direction of the country over the minority of the people??? Democracy: not even once." You throw a single line of context into the mix and the whole thing is proved bullshit. It's like if one of those "Obama wants to take yer guns" had a small "but not really" tagged onto the end.
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Dec 1, 2016 22:28
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Duke Igthorn posted:"Can you believe that the majority of the people get to decide the direction of the country over the minority of the people??? Democracy: not even once." A favorite talking point on the right (when they win) is "We're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic, actual pure democracy is bad." When they lose, of course, it's "drat ELECTED OFFICIALS OVERRIDING THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE, THIS IS A DEMOCRACY."
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Dec 1, 2016 22:31
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Maybe "dirt don't vote" is a better slogan
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Dec 1, 2016 22:32
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Twelve by Pies posted:A favorite talking point on the right (when they win) is "We're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic, actual pure democracy is bad." We'd still be a republic without the Electoral College anyway.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:06
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Twelve by Pies posted:A favorite talking point on the right (when they win) is "We're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic, actual pure democracy is bad." Don't forget "activists judges", which basically means any judge with a remotely liberal ruling. Even if the ruling is just to enforce the status quo. Appoint a court to overturn Roe v. Wade? Just doing God's work!
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Dec 1, 2016 23:13
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Twelve by Pies posted:A favorite talking point on the right (when they win) is "We're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic, actual pure democracy is bad."  his actual reply to me explaining some things: quote:I know but... We do not live in a pure Democracy. If we did, the majority of your neighbors could simply "vote" to take your house, because majority rules.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:18
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I had some success talking with someone who posted that EC image by just focusing on Republican votes in deep blue states. Why should 3 million Republicans in California and 2.5 million Republicans in New York mean nothing when just 174,000 Republicans in Wyoming deserve 3 electors?
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Dec 1, 2016 23:24
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FDR, the only president to be elected 4 times, tried to destroy America. Also respect the heroes of WWII.  Want some of that East German Red Velvet Commie Cake.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:24
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mintskoal posted:
The only argument I've seen anyone make for the electoral college since the election was "We can't just use a popular vote! It'll be mob rule!" They seem to think that throwing out the electoral college also means we throw out every other form of government and law and turn the entire country into a 100% pure democracy where the whole country just votes on everything. They have no sense of scale.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:29
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mintskoal posted:his actual reply to me explaining some things: I don't think that guy knows what "getting into the weeds" means. Also, he left out the Democratic, in his "Constitutional 
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Dec 1, 2016 23:33
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chitoryu12 posted:The only argument I've seen anyone make for the electoral college since the election was "We can't just use a popular vote! It'll be mob rule!" I'm not going to say the EC has no merit. For one, in close elections it could make it much harder to determine the winner, as you'd theoretically have a nationwide recount. But those difficulties are par of why there's almost three months between election and inauguration.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:36
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Jurgan posted:I'm not going to say the EC has no merit. For one, in close elections it could make it much harder to determine the winner, as you'd theoretically have a nationwide recount. But those difficulties are par of why there's almost three months between election and inauguration. I think it's also pretty telling that of the 5 times the popular vote winner lost the electoral vote, 2 of them happened in the past 17 years and both worked to controversially put an ill-suited conservative in office. The national conditions that made the electoral college useful in the 18th century are long gone.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:41
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Someone correct me if this is wrong: The Senate was meant to give each state an equal voice regardless of population. Okay, cool. The House would give representation according to population. It grew as more states were added to the union, until they ran out of physical space to the House and stopped at 435. So we decided that from them on we'd distribute them among the states every ten years. BUT it still gives larger states less voice than smaller ones. Otherwise California (population ~39,000,000) would need 66 rather than its current 54 to make it proportional to the single representative for Wyoming's ~586,000. And that's all before you consider the effects of gerrymandering. The 538 votes of the electoral college each correspond to a state's representatives and senators plus three for the District of Colombia, so that makes it even more "undemocratic" that the pre-gerrymandering House So there's basically no place in the federal government right now were blue voters get equal voice. Dr Christmas fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Dec 1, 2016 |
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Dec 1, 2016 23:49
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Dr Christmas posted:BUT it still gives larger states less voice than smaller ones. Otherwise California (population ~39,000,000) would need 66 rather than its current 54 to make it proportional to the single representative for Wyoming's ~586,000. Why is that? Is there any reason why they aren't distributed by direct proportions? Obviously some rounding would have to take place, but it shouldn't be that far off.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:53
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Jurgan posted:Why is that? Is there any reason why they aren't distributed by direct proportions? Obviously some rounding would have to take place, but it shouldn't be that far off. If you proportioned it out equally allowing fractions, they'd get less than one. So we round up to one and it throws it all off. As an example, imagine a country with two states and 100 reps. State A has 100 people, State B has almost a million. If you split it 1:99, state A has one rep per 100 people, State B has one rep per 10,000.
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Dec 2, 2016 00:21
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it's a pretty blatantly outdated part of the constitution from when population distribution and state politics were very different but changing the constitution is really hard and the republicans will never allow a system that they currently benefit from to be changed.
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Dec 2, 2016 00:35
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I was doing some googling around on this and learned something I probably should have learned in elementary school... quote:In 1824, John Quincy Adams was elected president despite not winning either the popular vote or the electoral vote. Andrew Jackson was the winner in both categories. Jackson received 38,000 more popular votes than Adams, and beat him in the electoral vote 99 to 84. Despite his victories, Jackson didn’t reach the majority 131 votes needed in the Electoral College to be declared president. In fact, neither candidate did. The decision went to the House of Representatives, which voted Adams into the White House. Interesting
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Dec 2, 2016 00:54
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Dr.Caligari posted:I was doing some googling around on this and learned something I probably should have learned in elementary school... The founders expected this sort of thing to happen all the time. People would choose electors, the electors would vote for whoever, and since there'd be lots of people who wanted to be president there would almost never be one candidate winning a majority. After that, the House of Representatives would take the top three and choose the winner from them. The two party system pretty much killed that idea, since it meant one of the two candidates would always get a majority and there'd be no need for a runoff in the House.
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Dec 2, 2016 01:22
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In the wake of Donald Trump's tweet about wanting flag burners to either be jailed or lose their citizenship, I've seen a LOT of anti-flag burning rhetoric pop up on facebook. I could fill several pages of this thread with it. Most of it is the bog standard "The flag is too sacred", "If you hate america then just leave", or (my favorite) "Won't someone please think of the poor veterans whose feelings will be hurt by a burning flag". But interspersed through those is the occasional "If I see anyone burning a flag, I'll kick their rear end!" post. Threatening violent bodily harm against someone who has done nothing wrong is great...right? But this right here just takes the cake:  This man literally wants to murder those who burn his precious flag.
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Dec 2, 2016 02:01
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For the party that masturbates to pictures of the Founding Fathers, it's hard to argue that voting for the President is any kind of historical mandate of the people when like the first ten elections had states that had literally no popular vote at all and the whole idea was that you voted for Electors who, in turn, would make, hopefully, wise and non-partisan decisions about who would actually become President. The arguments in the Federalist Papers make sense, but really only if things worked out like they anticipated, which they obviously didn't, for better or worse. If you want to argue the EC is good, fine, but then you can't also say it's choice is a mandate of the people as if speaking of the pure democracy you hate and that we should all get behind whatever dumbass "we" "elected" President. If it's to protect the minority from the majority, now us tiny little blue areas are the minority and can cockblock whatever Trumpy wants to do. (In regard to the apportionment thing, apparently in 1990 we should have had at least 112 more representatives in the house... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment) And speaking of Trumpy, I need to watch Pod People again.
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Dec 2, 2016 02:05
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Since it came up, what's the best response to the "we're a not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic" line? It drives me loving batty but I have a hard time articulating why.
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Dec 2, 2016 02:05
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As a veteran, I'm taking this opportunity to give you all permission to burn the flag. I'm also delegating my authority to give this same permission to each of you in this thread, including the authority to delegate.
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Dec 2, 2016 02:10
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:As a veteran, I'm taking this opportunity to give you all permission to burn the flag. Thank you for your dank service bro
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Dec 2, 2016 02:24
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