The Popular Vote... - Page 4 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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User avatar
By BigSteve
#15034142
Godstud wrote:You'd be better to say, dishonestly, that it's off-topic and report me for that, than pretend it's anything other than your own tender feelings that seem to be hurt by someone trying to engage you in a discussion/debate.


Um, you're the one who started getting all emotional. I bet you started crying, too.

My point was that just because the majority wants something doesn't mean it's a good thing. Period.

You have proven to be woefully ill-prepared to refute that...
User avatar
By Godstud
#15034144
BigSteve wrote:Um, you're the one who started getting all emotional. I bet you started crying, too.
:roll: Please. Stop projecting. Make an argument or admit that you are incapable of such.

BigSteve wrote:My point was that just because the majority wants something doesn't mean it's a good thing. Period.
Point made. Was this whole thread merely something to "like"? You could have said as much in TLTE, if so. Did you forget that this is a debate and discussion forum?

BigSteve wrote:You have proven to be woefully ill-prepared to refute that...
This is another of your pesky feelings getting in the way, as you have done everything but dodge and evade any sort of discussion.
User avatar
By colliric
#15034153
Godstud wrote:You are not that person, and I already posted a person of intelligence who spoke out against the electoral college being extremely undemocratic, and that very much does have to do with the popular vote(definitely a related issue), and why it's not used.


It is.... but that's the point of it!

The Electoral College is a handicap for the incumbency, going into a third election along with the term-limitations it makes it almost impossible to win....

GOOD!

IT WORKS EXACTLY AS DESIGNED!

Dukakis fucked up big when he lost in '88. Al Gore nearly won because he is a good politician, but I can't say I wasn't happy to see the Electoral College system do it's job exactly as it was designed anyway.
User avatar
By BigSteve
#15034163
Godstud wrote::roll: Please. Stop projecting. Make an argument or admit that you are incapable of such.

Point made. Was this whole thread merely something to "like"? You could have said as much in TLTE, if so. Did you forget that this is a debate and discussion forum?

This is another of your pesky feelings getting in the way, as you have done everything but dodge and evade any sort of discussion.


The whining amuses me.

Okay, so it seems as though you disagree with my point.

Fair enough.

Since you feel the unwavering need to debate, please explain how a majority of people wanting something is the only requirement in reaching a determination that something is good...
User avatar
By Godstud
#15034165
You're the one who can't stop and debate or discuss...

I never said that the majority is the only requirement in determining that something is good, so you are misrepresenting my argument, when you aren't avidly trying to distract from any argument.

I said that it's not very democratic, and that one of the reasons for America's Revolutionary War was no representation in Parliament. This is happening when a smaller state with less than 600,000 people(Wyoming) has the voting power of a state with 39 million people(California).

How is poor representation for American voters, good for Americans and their "Democracy"?
User avatar
By colliric
#15034173
Godstud wrote:I said that it's not very democratic, and that one of the reasons for America's Revolutionary War was no representation in Parliament. This is happening when a smaller state with less than 600,000 people(Wyoming) has the voting power of a state with 39 million people(California).

How is poor representation for American voters, good for Americans and their "Democracy"?


Your forefathers, the same ones you are mentioning, realised they needed to handicap the incumbency going forward so that Governments did not stay in power too long and get too much control over the population. Also they were deliberately making sure the countryside(little folk) wouldn't get fucked over by cityslickers all the time. So yeah, they were still thinking about parliamentary representation of the "little people" vs British City-Slickers-from-London when they designed it that way!

Term Limits(originally tradition till Roosevelt abused it) and the Electoral College combine to make SURE THE GOVERNMENT ONLY HAS 8 YEARS maximum.

Your forefathers didn't like the idea of Governments staying in power too long so basically cripple them in the third election, if they've won two-in-a-row. That's why Dukakis loss was such a failure and Al Gore's near win "against the odds" was amazing...

It's that form of Democracy, just deal with it!
#15034187
Godstud wrote:I think it's a really big diversion and dishonesty on your part, to think that we cannot. I suppose if you can't argue a point with any logic and reason, you just jump straight to the childish, "You don't live here, so you don't know!", argument, that seems so popular among Americans, these days.

Even Americans I am not the only one to think this...
Richard Dawkins: Electoral College Is Viciously, Unnecessarily Undemocratic
If you ever had any doubts about how preposterously undemocratic the electoral college is, your doubts could surely not have survived the 2000 looney-tunes show in Florida. Florida had 25 electoral college seats up for grabs. The popular vote was a dead heat. It couldn’t have fitted more snugly within the statistical margin of error if it had tried. The total vote in Florida was about 6 million, and the largest estimate of victory for either George Bush or Al Gore put the margin at a paltry few hundred. Yet the rules said that all 25 Electoral College votes must go to one candidate or the other. The final decision was effectively made by the Supreme Court halting the recount but, given such an exactly tied dead heat, they might as well have tossed a coin.
https://time.com/4354908/richard-dawkin ... l-college/


Absolutely correct to say that your system needs overhauling.

I think the best system would be a cross between several.

So, a system where you directly elect the 'cabinet' secretaries from a list of cross party candidates, and the prez and VP.

Then you add the STV system for both congressional elections (and IIRC you do have by-elections don't you?) and senate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_ ... rable_vote

Plus a system where you impose ultra strict spending limits and the authorities have legislative clout, ie the penalties for transgressors are workable & deterring for criminals.

By the way, did you ever read this topic?

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=177091

Just thought you might find it interesting. And your thoughts are appreciated.
User avatar
By colliric
#15034192
Presvias wrote:Absolutely correct to say that your system needs overhauling.


No it doesn't.

It works as it was designed. Stop the City Slickers from lording it over the countryside(taxation without representation!) + Turf the Government every 8 years on schedule (unless the people REALLY DON'T WANT Dukakis).

That's what the forefathers wanted, Godstud should learn to live with it! 8 Years Tops!

How is poor representation for American voters, good for Americans and their "Democracy"?


It's designed to force a change of Government every 8 years(average once a decade)....... Your forefathers hated over-powered corrupt Governments.... Deal with it!
Last edited by colliric on 16 Sep 2019 10:23, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
By Rugoz
#15034193
Godstud wrote:Richard Dawkins: Electoral College Is Viciously, Unnecessarily Undemocratic


Good article.

I can only think of one reason why the winnter-takes-all system in the states should not be changed, namely that it would necessarily prescribe the proportional allocation of electral votes in the constitution and take that decision away from states.
User avatar
By colliric
#15034195
Trust me, you don't want to change it.

You'll be relying on the Term Limits alone to force the frequent change of Governments your ancestors wisely wanted.
User avatar
By Rugoz
#15034196
colliric wrote:Trust me, you don't want to change it.

You'll be relying on the Term Limits alone to force the frequent change of Governments your ancestors wisely wanted.


I don't see how the winner-takes-all system is supposed to be related to the frequency of government change.

Also, the article makes it clear that the electoral college today doesn't resemble your ancestors' intention at all.
By Presvias
#15034197
colliric wrote:No it doesn't.

It works as it was designed. Stop the City Slickers from lording it over the countryside(taxation without representation!) + Turf the Government every 8 years on schedule (unless the people REALLY DON'T WANT Dukakis).


The system ain't working mate. The US is in serious danger of fracturing into civil war.

Or are you disputing that as well?

Look, the indices on the HDI; Happiness, GDP per capita and so much else are so much higher in the most Nordic and vikingy northern European countries. And they tend to rate highest on the democracy indices and lowest on corruption ones.

Your country should really try to learn a thing or two about how they do things.

And part of the problem is your completely unreliable, billionaire owned press. They've really fed you some complete hokum.


That's what the forefathers wanted, Godstud should learn to live with it! 8 Years Tops!

It's designed to force a change of Government every 8 years(average once a decade)....... Your forefathers hated over-powered corrupt Governments.... Deal with it!


You're focusing singularly on the term limit issue when that's just one tiny portion of what's under debate here.

The system I proposed ensures that everyone gets equal representation. A minority of farmers should NOT dictate govt for the majority, nor should tyranny of the majority mean that the minority get drowned out.

Your system is tyranny of the minority.
User avatar
By Rancid
#15034210
Yea, I have to say.

I'm not so quick to jump on the idea that getting rid of the electoral college is a bad thing.

The thing that is far worse and insidious is gerrymandering. Get rid of that, and the electoral college would be fine.
#15034213
Three things have undermined dangerously the checks and balances.

As mentioned before by other PoFo members:

1.Gerrymandering. This is totally undemocratic but allowed to continue. That has to stop.

2. Lobbyists and big money influencing all politics.

3. Winner take all voting. it is just not correct.


The USA unless it rectifies those three things? won't have a democracy. Though for me it lost all right to call itself one when it decided to become imperialistic but it always has been predatory.

The experiment needs to change or it will lose power over time. No doubts I have about that.
User avatar
By BigSteve
#15034219
Presvias wrote:The US is in serious danger of fracturing into civil war.


Image
User avatar
By BigSteve
#15034221
Godstud wrote:You're the one who can't stop and debate or discuss...

I never said that the majority is the only requirement in determining that something is good, so you are misrepresenting my argument


Well, then your point didn't address my post.

My point was clear and simple. I find it fascinating that you failed to grasp it...

This is happening when a smaller state with less than 600,000 people(Wyoming) has the voting power of a state with 39 million people(California).

How is poor representation for American voters, good for Americans and their "Democracy"?


Yet you seem to believe that California having better representation than Wyoming is a good thing.

But, again, the opinions of someone living in some third world country hardly matters...
By Presvias
#15034224
BigSteve wrote:Image


At least we already know which bathroom the snowflakey right wingers would prefer to use...shame they're not allowed to.

You're welcoming civil war?

Well, let's hope you don't accidentally get shot, or your 'side' don't end up shooting themselves to death..given the fact that most gun deaths and gun incidents are accidental/suicidal or right wing nutjob mass shooters.

Yep, not a good idea really, is it.
User avatar
By colliric
#15034226
Tainari88 wrote:As mentioned before by other PoFo members:

1.Gerrymandering. This is totally undemocratic but allowed to continue. That has to stop.

2. Lobbyists and big money influencing all politics.

3. Winner take all voting. it is just not correct.


I disagree with the third one, but I agree with the top two. I would like to add that the Democrats and Republicans having pretty similar policies instead of hard differences has also undermined things in the USA. The Electoral College works best when you have two parties that hate each other's guts fundamentally and don't agree on too much. In fact that makes most two-party systems work better.

I think the main problem in US politics is the current lack of animosity between the poiticians of both parties outside of an election. They're too close together in political views now.
#15034229
colliric wrote:I disagree with the third one, but I agree with the top two. I would like to add that the Democrats and Republicans having pretty similar policies instead of hard differences has also undermined things in the USA. The Electoral College works best when you have two parties that hate each other's guts fundamentally and don't agree on too much. In fact that makes most two-party systems work better.

I think the main problem in US politics is the current lack of animosity between the poiticians of both parties outside of an election. They're too close together in political views now.


They are sellouts Colliric. Plain and simple. Total sellouts to big interests like the Koch Brothers and Banks and so on...horrific sellouts. The average voter has no recourse and they both actively undermine third parties from making gains. Even Puerto Rico has more diversity of active parties than the USA does. It is pathetic.

I have the sinking feeling that it will require the entire system becoming fascist and nasty and having mass arrests, and internment camps for dissenters and becoming oppressive in the extreme for there to be any hope in real change. I hope I am wrong but that is what it will become Colliric. They got a taste of bought off power and now they won't give it up without violence. They are not much different than any other government that is corrupted by the power elite in the end.

It starts with the dissoluiion of voting rights. They just passed not allowing Pueto Ricans from Puerto Rico who move to the USA to vote in the mainland without being in a state for two years first. That never happened before. It just passed. Most states allow people to register to vote within one month of living in the state or at the latest three months to six months. No one does years of voter denial for any reason. But they just did it. Trump is afraid of losing Florida to a Puerto Rican vote. So he passed a law stating that if you move from Puerto Rico you can't vote for two years and must be in a permanent address during that time. Most Puerto Ricans just left because of the hurricane. So they have trouble now with finding permanent housing. He is using that to deny voting rights. He is a fascist Colliric. And he is acting like a fucking dictator. So I think he might put up a fight to leave power and find a way of circumventing conventional rules. Nothing came from the Mueller investigation. So? He is going to sit on the presidential seat and use his backers to justify it...martial law, and mass arrests of 'threats'.

The thing is going to do go down that way.
User avatar
By Wellsy
#15034235
That the two party system doesn't reflect two essential poles but only minor differences for the illusion of opposition is only a break down of the illusion to the more substantive reality that it is but is class domination where if one thinks our politics is determined primarily by the vote, they miss the majority of politics that precedes it and makes substantive changes to the way of life of a people.
This illusion has in large part been broken by the attack on the right and ability to actually vote. But the problems of our times won't be resolved by universal suffrage limited to the political sphere already dominated by capital.
Spoiler: show
https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/e.htm#democracy
The separation of executive and legislative powers in bourgeois, parliamentary democracy means that even if workers’ representatives gain a majority in parliament, they find that in reality they control nothing.

“The highest form of the state, the democratic republic, which in our modern social conditions becomes more and more an unavoidable necessity and is the form of state in which alone the last decisive battle between proletariat and bourgeoisie can be fought out – the democratic republic no longer officially recognises differences of property. Wealth here employs its power indirectly, but all the more surely. It does this in two ways: by plain corruption of officials, of which America is the classic example, and by an alliance between the government and the stock exchange, which is effected all the more easily the higher the state debt mounts and the more the joint-stock companies concentrate in their hands not only transport but also production itself, and themselves have their own centre in the stock exchange.” [Origin of the Family, Chapter 9]

Furthermore, the state – the police-military organisation built by the bourgeoisie for the sole purpose of protecting private property – is not elected, and cannot be legislated into something else:

“Democracy means equality. The great significance of the proletariat’s struggle for equality and of equality as a slogan will be clear if we correctly interpret it as meaning the abolition of classes. But democracy means only formal equality. And as soon as equality is achieved for all members of society in relation to ownership of the means of production, that is, equality of labour and wages, humanity will inevitably be confronted with the question of advancing father, from formal equality to actual equality, i.e., to the operation of the rule “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. ...

“Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organised, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state. This, in turn, results in the fact that, at a certain stage in the development of democracy, it first welds together the class that wages a revolutionary struggle against capitalism – the proletariat, and enables it to crush, smash to atoms, wipe off the face of the earth the bourgeois, even the republican-bourgeois, state machine, the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy and to substitute for them a more democratic state machine, but a state machine nevertheless, in the shape of armed workers who proceed to form a militia involving the entire population.” [State and Revolution, Chapter 5]

Thus bourgeois democracy, which supports the interests of capitalists above all else, is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Democracy and freedom goes only so far; and as soon as the majority people decide that majority rule should apply – not only in the parliament, but also in the workplace, the factories and offices, in the army, in the schools and universities – then suddenly the capitalist state machine will without fail raise its head and say “Enough is enough!” and restore by whatever it takes the rule of the minority of wealthy capitalists over the majority of workers. Having “won the battle of democracy”, the workers must now make a revolution. The dictatorship of the working class majority replaces the dictatorship of the minority of big capitalists. The unelected police-military hierarchy of violence is dismantled to make way for genuine, unqualified, proletarian democracy.

http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/sur-sur/20100707034324/10bello.pdf
Like the American political system on which it is modeled, the genius of the Philippine democratic system, from the perspective of the elite, is the way it harnesses elections to socially conservative ends (Bello, 2003: 80-91). Running for office at any level of government is prohibitively expensive, so that only the wealthy or those backed by wealth can usually stand for elections. Thus the masses do choose their representatives but from a limited pool of people of means that may belong to different factions-those “in” and those “out” of power –but are not different in terms of their political programs. The beauty of the system in the eyes of the elite is that by periodically engaging the people in an exercise to choose among different members of the elite, elections make voters active participants in legitimizing the social and economic status quo. Thus has emerged the great Philippine paradox: an extremely lively play of electoral politics unfolding above a class structure that is one of the most immobile in Asia.

http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf
The implementation of such a genuine, substantive freedom of course would require “despotic inroads117 on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production,” something Marx already wrote earlier, in The Communist Manifesto (Manifesto of the Communist Party, MECW 6:504). It would neither be a realization of bourgeois freedom nor would it even be commensurate with, or justifiable on the basis of, bourgeois freedom and equality, even as it is bourgeois production which makes this substantive freedom first possible.

In the reformist struggles of workers under capitalism, we see a first inkling of how this genuine, substantive freedom comes into conflict with formal, bourgeois freedom.
...
In Capital, as in the Grundrisse, we see that the worker's freedom to enter into a contract and to dispose of his labor-power as he wills is only an illusory freedom, and that he was never in this transaction a totally “free agent” at all because he is not simply free to sell his labor-power or not, but rather is compelled to sell it if he wishes to live. That compulsion makes the worker susceptible to the most brutal working conditions. Thus, the first step in bringing about substantive freedom from oppressive working conditions and exploitative relations of production is for workers to combine together and push for laws that actually curtail the abstract freedom granted to them in bourgeois society. These measures on the part of workers are vehemently opposed by the bourgeoisie:

The same bourgeois mind which praises division of labour in the workshop, life-long annexation of the labourer to a partial operation, and his complete subjection to capital, as being an organisation of labour that increases its productiveness, that same bourgeois mind denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to socially control and regulate the process of production, as an inroad upon such sacred things as the rights of property, freedom and unrestricted play for the bent of the individual capitalist. (Capital, MECW 35:361)

As an illustration, Marx describes how in the French Revolution, the rights which could aid workers, such as the right of association, were subordinated in practice to the right of bourgeois property:

During the very first storms of the revolution, the French bourgeoisie dared to take away from the workers the right of association but just acquired. By a decree of June 14, 1791, they declared all coalition of the workers as “an attempt against liberty and the declaration of the rights of man,” punishable by a fine of 500 livres, together with deprivation of the rights of an active citizen for one year. This law which, by means of State compulsion, confined the struggle between capital and labour within limits comfortable for capital, has outlived revolutions and changes of dynasties. Even the Reign of Terror left it untouched. It was but quite recently struck out of the Penal Code.
Nothing is more characteristic than the pretext for this bourgeois coup d’état. “Granting,” says Chapelier, the reporter of the Select Committee on this law, “that wages ought to be a little higher than they are, ... that they ought to be high enough for him that receives them, to be free from that state of absolute dependence due to the want of the necessaries of life, and which is almost that of slavery,” yet the workers must not be allowed to come to any understanding about their own interests, nor to act in common and thereby lessen their “absolute dependence, which is almost that of slavery;” because, forsooth, in doing this they injure “the freedom of their cidevant masters, the present entrepreneurs,” and because a coalition against the despotism of the quondam masters of the corporations is – guess what! – is a restoration of the corporations abolished by the French constitution. (Capital, MECW 35:730-731)

Bourgeois opposition to the attempts of workers to exert social control on production further reveals the practical contradiction between formal bourgeois freedom and the real freedom workers struggle for within capitalism, in struggles that necessarily point beyond capitalism for just this reason. While the capitalist defends “sacred” bourgeois freedom, he is at the same time also perfectly willing to defend the real unfreedom of the worker, the “complete subjection” of the laborer to capital.
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