[P]Federal Court may have just handed 2020 over to Trump already with Electoral College decision.

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

Although 30 states have rules on their books that require their electorates to vote with the Popular vote, a federal court just ruled that it is unconstitutional to enforce, and they can promise to be loyal to their party instead if they so wish.

Any party that tried that sort of shit to overrule the democratic vote would almost certainly destroy themselves. It might be technically legally constitutional, but politically it would be a flat out constitutional crisis. American democracy is nothing like that degraded: can you imagine the outrage it would cause?

Isn't that what is happening already though via gerrymandering + court stacking + having electorate voting against their constituents + having people win elections while losing the popular vote?

Where is the outrage when it has already been happening? The Supreme court ruled gerrymandering was acceptable, Clinton won the popular vote by millions and lost the election, electorates that were supposed to vote for Clinton didn't and that was just ruled legal in court, and the electoral college failed to prevent an unfit person from taking office even though US DoD and intelligence STILL withhold information from our own president because they see him as a security risk? I would think we are already in a constitutional crisis. People are far too complacent to put forth the outrage needed to change this or they are running around believing conspiracy crap wearing Qanon shirts or joining militias to fight of the invasion of homeless women and children..

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

God the US's electoral systems are so stupid.
God having the supreme court appointed by the president and senate is so stupid.

Yup.. and they make it near impossible for people to do anything about it. The attempts to fix it keep getting knocked down by the stacked bench. The lifetime appointments are an issue as well. There needs to be easier means to remove bad judges from the bench.

 

[Erttheking]

...If this decides the 2020 election with people going against the popular vote...people are going to die. I'm not saying this as a boast, more a sign of weary resignation as my country slowly kills itself.

 

[Seanchaidh]

EDIT: In addition, it is also the states that are home to the "Blue dog dems" that are also republican majority states, so yes it is still an issue, as they are still often just Republicans even though they have a (D) next to their name. And good grief, the way they are buddies in the state legislatures as it is remember when they even cast votes for one another regardless of party? Yup. Voting when dead? Yup. That is the reality here.

Well, OK. That's a good point.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

...If this decides the 2020 election with people going against the popular vote...people are going to die. I'm not saying this as a boast, more a sign of weary resignation as my country slowly kills itself.

Considering we had it happen already, and this just made it legal, I honestly think the people are far too complacent to actually do much to change it. Sure, we had marches and protests and what did that actually change? Republicans still control 30 states , the Senate, the judiciary and the white house as we speak and the only people grabbin their gunz are those trying to attack desperate refugee families fleeing horrific situations.

The reality here is that reality is irrelevant at this point because people believe all sorts of nonsense instead of what is really happening or they choose to ignore that is really happening and we simply do not have enough people to care enough to actually change this. How many people are willing to uproot their families, quit their jobs and head off to the rural regions so they can flip enough districts to change it? Yea not many people can even financially do that to begin with so unlikely anything will change. The reality is we have to flip rural districts that believe all sorts of crazy nonsense. We can't do that by not being in those districts. We need more people on the ground in those districts changing minds and/or moving enough people into the regions to outvote the ignorant people causing this to happen in the first place.

That on top of having to volunteer to work the polling stations and putting a stop to the voter suppression going on as well. I can attest from being in hardcore Republican Trump territory here, it is not an easy task for Democrats to try to change anything in these districts. The word of mouth and social pressures on the local level will make it a near impossible task. Outside of building new housing development and moving in enough people to outvote them, and buying radio and television stations and removing Sinclair's deathgrip on the media, which takes a crapton of money, I am not sure how it could even be accomplished.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

So I mean, whats the popular vote even for?

Nothing. Never has been for anything in the US. Did they not teach you about the mechanics of the government in grade school? In the presidential elections citizens do not cast votes for the president, the states do. What the citizens do is cast votes to tell their state how they would like it to use its votes. The vast majority of states award all of their votes to whoever wins the popular vote in their state, no matter by what margin or how people in other states vote. The US is not a direct democracy, nor has it it ever claimed to be.

Yeah, that's exactly what I remember being taught back in school. My teacher said it was a fail-safe so that like an idiot or whatever would never get elected president...............

 

[Saelune]

So I mean, whats the popular vote even for?

Nothing. Never has been for anything in the US. Did they not teach you about the mechanics of the government in grade school? In the presidential elections citizens do not cast votes for the president, the states do. What the citizens do is cast votes to tell their state how they would like it to use its votes. The vast majority of states award all of their votes to whoever wins the popular vote in their state, no matter by what margin or how people in other states vote. The US is not a direct democracy, nor has it it ever claimed to be.

I and most Americans were taught growing up that the US was a Democracy.

That has never been the case. The Founding Fathers were against that entirely

I mean that we were taught this just as we were taught that America is the 'Land of the free and home of the brave', that it is a place that welcomes the tired, poor huddled masses who seek to be free. That it is a melting pot of diversity where we are not united by ethnicity or background, but by our hope for the future, for a land where everyone can achieve greatness, no matter where they came from. A country where we fight evil cause its the right thing to do.

That is what I was raised to believe, and it is beyond disheartening as I learned the truth. I still believe in that idealized America, that is certainly the one I aspire for, but reality has erased much of my idealistic naivety.



Also Democracy is solely 1 person, 1 vote and nothing anyone can say will change that truth. Republics are not democracy, this country is not a democracy.

 

[Trunkage]

So I mean, whats the popular vote even for?

Nothing. Never has been for anything in the US. Did they not teach you about the mechanics of the government in grade school? In the presidential elections citizens do not cast votes for the president, the states do. What the citizens do is cast votes to tell their state how they would like it to use its votes. The vast majority of states award all of their votes to whoever wins the popular vote in their state, no matter by what margin or how people in other states vote. The US is not a direct democracy, nor has it it ever claimed to be.

Yeah, that's exactly what I remember being taught back in school. My teacher said it was a fail-safe so that like an idiot or whatever would never get elected president...............

If videos were still working, this would get a Stewie 'Haha'

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

No, it was not. The case in question was about him supposed to be voting for Clinton but refusing to do so and scratching out her name and writing in john Kasich, A Republican and that helps Trump, not harms him.

The people calling for the electoral college to deem Trump unfit was a separate issue entirely and had nothing to do with this particular case.

No, you hauled off half-cocked and linked a bunch of articles that either lie by omission, or completely omit the role of the challenging electors' in the "Hamilton elector" movement in a pretty brazen case of unethical framing to press an ideology-driven narrative.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/22/he-tried-stop-trump-electoral-college-court-says-his-faithless-ballot-was-legal/

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/court-finds-in-favor-of-faithless-electors-who-attempted-to-stop-trump-from-winning-presidency

Not fond of linking WashEx, but it backs up the WashPo report while also giving something of a description of the entire plan. The plan was for electors pledged to Trump to break rank, thereby denying him 270 electoral votes. The electoral college threshold is majority rather than plurality, meaning had Trump failed to receive 270 electoral votes, even just 269, the vote would have gone to the House by default. In other words, electors pledged to Hillary voting faithlessly did not help Trump -- or even hurt Hillary -- they were votes cast in anticipation of invoking the Twelfth Amendment.

The issue is, under the Twelfth Amendment, the House vote is constrained to the three candidates who received the most electoral votes, which means electoral ballots had to be cast to a candidate who was neither Trump nor Hillary, and enough of them to ensure a Trump-alternate candidate who could serve as a compromise ended up on the ballot. In this particular case, Democrats going faithless to cast electoral ballots for Kasich was actually something of an ideal outcome, as Kasich is a moderate Republican with strong bipartisan appeal and missing Hillary's baggage, who would have made for a vastly easier compromise candidate and far less likely to trigger a full-on constitutional crisis.

 

[Trunkage]

So I mean, whats the popular vote even for?

Nothing. Never has been for anything in the US. Did they not teach you about the mechanics of the government in grade school? In the presidential elections citizens do not cast votes for the president, the states do. What the citizens do is cast votes to tell their state how they would like it to use its votes. The vast majority of states award all of their votes to whoever wins the popular vote in their state, no matter by what margin or how people in other states vote. The US is not a direct democracy, nor has it it ever claimed to be.

I and most Americans were taught growing up that the US was a Democracy.

That has never been the case. The Founding Fathers were against that entirely

The Founding Fathers were against direct/absolute democracy, like what ancient Athens had. Thankfully, that's not the only kind of democracy.

Whether or not the USA was a "democracy" in its first decades is a matter of debate. But it is a democracy now. So I question your statement of "that has never been the case." Just because not everything is up for a popular vote does not mean the USA is not a democracy.

"But we're a republic, not a democracy" is the common refrain I hear when explaining this. A statement similar to "That animal isn't a bird, it's red" as if those two statements are exclusive. You can have democracy without being a republic (constitutional monarchies in most of Europe), a republic without being a democracy (Italian merchant Republics, Oligarchies), neither (Absolute monarchy, which still exists), or both, like France, Portugal, and Italy. The United States is a Federal Constitutional Democratic Republic.

I mean, I was specifically talking about how only rich male landowners got a vote. Which makes it more Romanesque anyway. The Founding Fathers were more about making sure most people couldn't vote. Let alone thinking (assuming) that the small few who could vote would do it incompetently thus requiring all this shenanigans with the electoral college to make sure 'the right choice' was made

 

[Kwak]

I and most Americans were taught growing up that the US was a Democracy.

Nah that's just a myth perpetrated to keep everyone content to consume and keep the wheels of American commerce grinding. Political activism is bad for capitalism and therefore unpatriotic.

 

[Kwak]

No, it was not. The case in question was about him supposed to be voting for Clinton but refusing to do so and scratching out her name and writing in john Kasich, A Republican and that helps Trump, not harms him.

Hang on, what? That's, legal?!

 

[bluegate]

Tonight on Banana Republic News 🍌

 

[Agema]

Isn't that what is happening already though via gerrymandering + court stacking + having electorate voting against their constituents + having people win elections while losing the popular vote?

That's more "bending the rules", so to speak. At least with gerrymandering, people are still voting and having their votes count in some way, for instance. Not winning the election despite winning the overall popular vote is a known and accepted feature of systems where votes are tallied via multiple localised constituencies.

Flat out overruling a democratic vote is a whole big step up in contempt for the democratic process.

You could understand the logic of not confirming the popular vote if there had been some clear and compelling rationale - imagine that in the gap between election and confirmation it turned out that the winning candidate was a murderer, or a foreign agent, etc. But simply denying public vote for partisan politics is tantamount to cancelling democracy.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

they very well could stack their electoral college with people vowing loyalty to party rather than the popular vote thus guaranteeing those states vote for Trump regardless of election results.

If this happens, chaos will ensue. Real fuckin' chaos with blood and violence. People will be killed. And considering the fact that the chaos will be brought by Republicans trying to kill democracy, they will be on the receiving end of that violence. So they better think long and hard how they wish to proceed.

You are far too optimistic.

That would lead to massive civil strife, and I dunno if you know this but...

The right wing controls the government, the military, has the cops sympathetic to them (and the left views them with suspicion), and the maga people who would LOVE for democracy to be subverted if it gives them more Trump tend to be very aggressive, very well armed, and they seem like they're just itching to use their guns.

Unless it was a MASS uprising that outnumbered every single once of those groups put together, there's no chance it'll work out, and it would put the final nail in the coffin of democracy by introducing violence and murder into the equation. And considering a heck of a lot of people just want to be comfortable and have checked out of the democratic process as it is, I don't think that support will come. A huge chunk of the population will get upset at the subversion of democracy, but it won't go further than shaking their fist at the TV and telling their friends at the bar that "Democracy is dead, that suuucks bro".

Not to mention, whoever fires the first actual shots will be labelled forever as the bad guy and lose a shitton of the public support they'll need.

 

[Agema]

You are far too optimistic.

That would lead to massive civil strife, and I dunno if you know this but...

Yes, but the claim was not that the civil disorder would necessarily overturn the state.

There's another aspect that would be politically ruinous. This wouldn't just be a few states fixing their own results, they'd be fundamentally undermining the rights of other states too. Imagine a candidate should win 280-258, but a state worth 12 college votes moves against public direction, leading to 268-270. That's not just robbed its own population, its robbed another 268 electoral votes worth of states - both state governments and voters. It's a political crisis even if the population stays at home: those states are not going to sit by and accept that.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

There's another aspect that would be politically ruinous. This wouldn't just be a few states fixing their own results, they'd be fundamentally undermining the rights of other states too. Imagine a candidate should win 280-258, but a state worth 12 college votes moves against public direction, leading to 268-270. That's not just robbed its own population, its robbed another 268 electoral votes worth of states - both state governments and voters. It's a political crisis even if the population stays at home: those states are not going to sit by and accept that.

Perhaps a good case study for those participating in the thread may be 1876. I go on at length about it on this thread on account of the interference and fraudulent behavior performed by Western Union and the AP on behalf of Hayes, and the implications this has moving into 2020 when considering the highly consolidated, incestuous nature of our mass media and its relationship to major telecoms, but the controversy of the election proper which led to the Compromise of 1877 absolutely cannot be ignored.

After all, the "Compromise" contributed directly to not just the Gilded Age and seventy years' worth of economic turmoil and hardship culminating in the Depression, but also a century of Jim Crow.

 

[Schadrach]

No, it was not. The case in question was about him supposed to be voting for Clinton but refusing to do so and scratching out her name and writing in john Kasich, A Republican and that helps Trump, not harms him.

Hang on, what? That's, legal?!

Many states have laws against that, but not all. The court case that sparked off this whole thread was a circuit court declaring that such laws are invalid. It can and will end up in the hands of the supreme court.

Those doomsaying on this just predict that the supremes will agree, and that this will cause a breakout issue with faithless electors specifically causing the results of the next presidential election to be given to the Republicans regardless of any vote in any state.

Considering we had it happen already, and this just made it legal, I honestly think the people are far too complacent to actually do much to change it.

We had an election where the results changed because of faithless electors? In 2016, there were a total of 7 faithless electors (5 Dem, 2 Rep), who instead of voting for their pledged candidate voted for assorted other people, notably Sanders and Kasich. 3 others tried to do so, but had their electoral votes invalidated. The margin was 304-227, so even if all the faithless electors had voted for Clinton it would not have impacted the result.

I mean, in 1836 the VP had to be elected by the Senate because Virginia electors (all 23 of them) refused to vote for him (but did vote as pledged for President), leaving him 1 electoral vote shy and thus invoking the Twelfth Amendment, which voted for the guy who was 1 electoral vote shy because of faithless electors.

In 1872, there were 63 faithless electors (and 3 electors whose votes were tossed but weren't faithless) because the candidate died after the general election, and Congress decided essentially that electors can't vote for a dead man. This didn't effect the results at all, as the margin was 286-66 before his death, so even if all 63 faithless electors had voted for the same president nothing would have changed.

In 1832, 32 faithless electors, no impact on the results of any office.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

We had an election where the results changed because of faithless electors?

This wasn't down to faithless electors, but it's illustrative of what I'm trying to point out...

You missed 1824, in which Andrew Jackson won the popular vote but only a plurality of the electoral vote, invoking the the 12th Amendment. Henry Clay, who came in last of four candidates and was ineligible for the contingency vote, endorsed John Quincy Adams, and with the South split between Jackson and William Crawford, Adams was elected by Congress.

And, as I said earlier, 1876. Controversial and disputed results in Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana (and a minor controversy over a single elector in Oregon) led to an electoral deadlock of 184 votes for Tilden and 165 for Hayes, invoking the 12th Amendment. Tilden had won the popular vote and was one electoral vote shy of the Presidency, but the 20 disputed electoral votes went to Hayes in the Compromise of 1877.

Point being, muck with the electoral college at your peril, especially when the alternative is a Congressional vote to elect the President.

 

[immortalfrieza]

The saddest thing is the solution is staring everybody right in the face: forget a law to MAKE electors follow the Popular vote, just remove the electors entirely. Just have each and every state have the same number of elector votes (or probably an equivalent) as they do now but have each state's votes decided entirely by the popular vote numbers of that state. If say Louisiana has it's majority of voters vote for the Republican candidate then Louisiana's electoral votes go to the Republican candidate. Boom! Just like that states with large populations don't have a significantly greater say in who the President is than everybody else which is supposed to be the whole point of the Electoral College and the Popular vote actually matters especially in swing states where it's decided by a few thousand Popular votes giving any individual vote a bit of actual value for once. So simple.

Not that I expect that to actually happen mind you, just that it's obvious enough. The whole election system has been an utter joke for decades and overturned or not this was always going to happen sooner or later, it's just a matter of when, not if our "rights" are going to be thrown out.