Gerrymandering should be outlawed and the Electoral College repealed

Please explain how this is relevant to the post, and the information found therein, linked to in my sig.

 

Your posts contain this message at the bottom: The truth about 'assault weapons' and mass shootings in the US

I am addressing that message showing how very much guns (statistically) are related to the current manslaughter happening in the US.

Quite evidently, I was not addressing your comment. Which is substantially this: The electoral college is not inherently a "winner states all" system

And, I disagree with it entirely. The winner of the popular-vote in the state, is attributed ALL THE COLLEGE'S VOTES. Which is how, in America, one can win the popular-vote and lose the election. Because the EC's voting electors are NOT in proportion to the population.

(When it should be obvious that the ONLY LEGITIMATE winner of an election is the person who has obtained the most in the popular-vote.)

Why did the southern states want this mismatch? Because it had a smaller population than the northern states ..

 

Yes. I argued apples, you argued oranges.
This is why I asked you to please explain how what you posted is relevant to the subject mentioned in my sig and the information found therein, linked to in my sig.
Feel free to do so, as I am more than happy to discuss the issue.

 

Not in every state, and not because of any inherent part of the electoral college.
Thus. the electoral college is not inherently a winner-take-all system.

All elections are state elections.
Think on that for a moment and then reconsider your statement.

 

Every vote should not count because the United States was never intended to be mob rule. The original 13 states knew this and created the electoral college so that cities like Boston (then) could not elect a President while everyone else voted for the other person. The same holds true today. Based upon mob rule, LA, New York, Seattle, and Chicago would be all that is needed to elect a president, thus ignoring the rest of America. As pointed out in post earlier on in this thread, this would result in politicians pandering to those locations and ignoring the rest of American. Making policies that favor those locations in order to effectively buy votes, while the reminder of the country suffers.

The part I don't get here is that if you look at history every major city or government that held elections and the elections were based upon a populace vote didn't last. People voted themselves all kinds of benefits and the country fell apart.

Repeating the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result is the definition of crazy.

 

The PotUS is not a state-governor who runs the local state administration. The PotUS is a national figure, so the vote is national.

It happens to be counted on a state-basis, and that should change. There is no reason whatsoever today to justify it. A National Identity card with a birth-date on could be sufficient to vote. It's number makes it "unique". Falsification will be impossible since the same number on the Identity Card used more than once to vote will be readily recognized on a computer linking all voting centers. And any voter's number that is not on the list of eligible voters "of age" will be denied the vote.

The fact that the Electoral College is not indicative of the national vote is obvious. How can a winner of the Popular-Vote not be the winner in the Electoral College?

And if so, then the latter vote is useless and unacceptable. Only the popular-vote matters in most countries, and the US remains a unique difference to that rule ...

 

Apples and oranges are both fruit - my comment in this sense was germane.

You just "didn't get it". That's not my fault ...

 

Incorrect. Every election is a state election. Every single one.

The Constitution allows for amendment.
Caveat: It only takes 13 states to stop an amendment; the 13 states most likely to vote against the removal of the electoral college represent 7% of the population.
I wish you luck.

 

Explain, in specific terms, how what you posted is relevant to the topic I discussed.

 

Hopeless.

Moving right along ...

 

Sorry that reality does not fit in with your preferences.

 

The EC is a sham. It always has been. Our president is chosen by Superdelegates, not the people. It's a joke.

If republicans are worried about winning the popular vote, they should appeal to a larger voter base, by eliminating the idiotic nonsense they pitch - evangelism, anti-choice rhetoric, and pro-corporations/pro-rich fiscal policies.

As it stands the EC is stupid. If it's soooo good, why isn't it used for other elections? The president is the only one elected this way.

It's a total joke.

 

If it is so good, why is not employed by any other country similar to the US, such as in the European Union? (Of course, some do not chose a president since the head of the majority in the Legislature is, ipso facto, the "head of government").

I do share your convictions regarding the Replicants on this forum. Not many at all with any "openness" to the world in which they live. Some of the most closed-minded people in existence - and for what?

To protect the manner in which ridiculously low Upper-income Taxation is contributing to the rip-off of Income that becomes Wealth - and produces this:


The Great American Wealth Rip-off ...

 

Im with OP on gerrymandering- its just a way to rig elections.
The electoral college protects the country as a whole from being ruled by the urban centers where the money, power and influence tends to collect. I would however support a proviso (if one doesnt already exist) that a high enough popular vote would overrule the electoral college.

 

Hillary won CA by ~4 million.
Hillary "won" the popular vote by ~3 million.
This means Hillary lost the other 49 states (+DC) by ~1 million.
Electoral college: Working as intended.

 

I also support CA's right to secede from the Union (I'll even help!!)

 

Likewise. Get 'em out of here.

 

Obviously gerrymandering should be outlawed and it will also affect democrats too because the most Gerrymandered state is democratic Maryland. Fine with me. Other developed countries don't have this ridiculous gerrymanding where politicians choose their voters when it should be the other way around.

There are good reasons for abolishing the electoral college:
1: It makes your vote matter less if you live in a larger state, and your vote matters way more if you live in a tiny state with the 3 elector minimum. Every vote should be the same.
2: It makes getting 50.01% matter the same as 65% which means politicians overdo the swing states and ignore everyone else. So if you live in a non-swing state your vote doesn't have any impact at all.
3: Electors can choose to go against the will of the people. This was a potential problem for Trump.
4: Even though the electoral college benefits Republicans recently there is no reason why in the future it can't help democrats.
5: Most of the time those who win the popular vote become president anyway, so just make it that.
6: The electoral college was made when states were like independent countries. Today they are more like lines in the sand or provinces.
7: It was also made when small states like countries didn't want to be over-powered by large states/countries. Today states don't have that same country status as said before and the current benefit to small states only barely shifts the edge to Republicans by a couple points which would have no impact in almost all elections.
8: The US constitution is a template for how other republicans work yet no other country as adopted an electoral college. Funny right?

 

As a Californian, I object to my vote being seen as less valuable that a vote from Idaho or Wyoming. We should get back to one man one vote. Also, the way it is set up now, the so called "swing states" are catered to unproportionally by politicians from both sides in every national election.

 

All elections are state elections.
As a Californian, in every election you participate in, your vote is equally valued to that of every other Californian.
As you do not vote in ID or WY, your vote does not compare to those that do.

This is exactly what you have now, except in Cook county IL.

So?

 

This country was not set up as a nation of individual citizens, but as a nation of states composed of individual citizens. You as a citizen of the United States don't have a vote on who is President. You vote for which candidate your state wants. This is all part of the Great (or Connecticut) compromise. If you don't like it, petition for a constitutional amendment to change it.

 

BIG NEWS ABOUT GERRYMANDERING FROM VOX

The Supreme Court’s big racial gerrymandering decision, explained - excerpt:

I maintain nonetheless that legislative districts should be based upon present definitions employed in contiguous city-and-county districting to maintain homogeneity*.

*Example of lack of district homogeneity by gerrymandering here:

 

Bollocks to this notion.

We are the United States of America, and for national elections there must exist homogeneity in voting practices across the nation and only the Popular Vote to be employed without voting district gerrymandering.

The states need only be responsible for collecting the vote based upon a national law detailing the procedure. This should be true for all Federal elections, both Executive and Legislative.

The states are responsible UNIQUELY for elections of state legislatures and county/local governments.

And True Democracy will not exist until the above is achieved. We should be ashamed of what the voting manipulations that have existed (since the dawn of the nation). It's time to wake up and change the process.

Period.

 

Please learn your history. The only reason that the Consitution was ever ratified is because of things like the Great Compromise. You are obviously ignorant in basic civics if you don't understand that. Please study before you spout off nonsense like the above. We are not and never were intended to be a democracy. We are a representative Republic, with our representatives chosen in a democratic fashion. As I said, if yo udon't like it, work on getting a constitutional amendment to change it. Until then, it stands as written and currently practiced.

(I didn't make any kind of statement about gerrymandering (the current implementation of which is driven by racial politics), just about the Electoral College.)

 

So which is it race has to be used in redistricting or race cannot be used in redistricting. No matter which law the Republicans attempt to adhere to the left complains. Why is race even an issue at all, there should be no racial indication of your voter registration nor in any census. Yet here the quagmire.

Voting Rights Confusion
The GOP can’t use race in redistricting but it also must use race.

State legislatures have been trying to figure out how much they can or should consider race when redrawing political districts and on Monday the Supreme Court increased the confusion. In a 5-3 decision, the four liberals plus Justice Clarence Thomas struck down North Carolina’s congressional map, ruling that the district lines were drawn in a way that disadvantaged black voters.

After the 2010 census, North Carolina Republicans drew up a congressional map that moved more black voters, who tend to vote Democratic, into two districts. Republicans said their motivation was partisan, with an eye toward improving Republican odds in other districts. Democrats challenged the law on grounds that by altering the concentration of black voters, the gerrymander violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.

In her opinion for the Court, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that race was the predominant factor in redrawing the maps and that “a State may not use race as the predominant factor in drawing district lines unless it has a compelling reason” (Cooper v. Harris).


Yet under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, state legislatures are required to take race into account when drawing district lines. When North Carolina drew its maps, it sought pre-clearance from the Obama Justice Department. In its application, the state noted that the increase of black voters in District 12 to 50.66% from 43.77% “maintains, and in fact increases, the African-American community’s ability to elect their candidate of choice in District 12.”

Democrats argue that those numbers are evidence of impermissible concentration of black voters. But the legal uncertainty has created a tightrope for state lawmakers, who must find a balance between impermissible black vote dilution and impermissible black vote concentration. If they fail to take race into account when redrawing districts, they can fall afoul of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. If they take race into account too much they fall afoul of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

In his dissent, Justice Samuel Alito notes that the problem is complicated by the fact that race and political affiliation are highly correlated, making it hard to tell why a redistricting decision was made. “If around 90% of African-American voters cast their ballots for the Democratic candidate, as they have in recent elections,” Justice Alito wrote, “a plan that packs Democratic voters will look very much like a plans [sic] that packs African-American voters.”

Justice Thomas’s vote with the liberals is an extension of his consistent and principled absolutism on issues of race. Once the state conceded it had used race, even benignly, Justice Thomas was out. “I think North Carolina’s concession that it created the district as a majority-black district is by itself sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny,” he wrote.

The opinion is also notable for the fact that it gets all the Court’s liberal justices on board with the argument that the use of race is always subject to strict scrutiny, not merely sometimes as they have argued in past cases. That could be tricky for liberals if a future case challenges Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act on grounds that it requires states to take race into account when redrawing their districts.

As Justice Thomas wrote in his magnificent 1994 opinion in Holder v. Hall, “few devices could be better designed to exacerbate racial tensions than the consciously segregated districting system currently being constructed in the name of the Voting Rights Act,” and “our drive to segregate political districts by race can only serve to deepen racial divisions by destroying any need for voters or candidates to build bridges between racial groups or to form voting coalitions.”


Meantime, the Court’s decision is most likely to guarantee more litigation by Democrats, who are happy to use the courts as a way to maximize the opportunities for Democratic candidates, and race as a sword for partisan purposes.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/voting-rights-confusion-1495494823

So which is it?