[Rich]

The United States' electoral system is institutionalised racist. It discriminates against Black people and people of Jewish decent. On average a white vote is worth more than a Black vote or a Jewish vote. This is true for the House of Representatives, the Senate and the Presidency. And because the supreme court is indirectly elected by the President and the Senate, Black and Jewish votes are also worth less for the Supreme Court.

The system is working as designed. The American Constitution was deliberately designed in-order to discriminate against and maintain discrimination against Black people. The Constitution was also designed to discriminate against urban concentrated groups and particularly against what Joseph Stalin liked to call rootless intellectuals, who might have liberal progressive ideas. The system was deliberately designed to favour racist reactionary rural voters.

I'm not so certain of the maths, but I suspect the electoral system also discriminates against Latinos and Asians, although it may discriminate in favour of voters of Native American descent.

[Steve_American]

I mostly agree with you.
But, the Constitution is hard to change.
However, there are things that can be done with just laws.
This is why I have made and posted here a list of laws and amendments.
A] Laws are easy if the Senate drops the filibuster rule for a while.
. . 1] The Constitution gives Congress the power to tell the states how they must elect the US House Reps.
I suggest that states that have 1 to 9 Reps. elect them from one district. In this new system each voter can easily split his vote to vote for more that one Rep..
. . . For example Colo. has 7 Reps. now. The Dems and Repuds could both run 4 candidates and the Greens could run one. Then if the Greens had 8% of the vote and they all voted for 1 guy, then he gets 8% of the final votes. If the Dems get 48% of the votes split 4 ways then they all get about 12% of the vote. If the Repuds know they have less and just run 3 guys then they get 100-48-8=44% of the vote divided 3 ways, so each of their guys gets 14.67% of the vote. So, the 3 Repuds and 4 Dems win. The greens would need 12% of the vote (which comes from the Dems mostly so the new Dem total is 44%), now the Dems all get 11% and the Repuds still get 14.67% for their 3 guys. So, now the Repuds get 3, the Greens get 1 and the Dems get one.
. . . If the Repuds run 4 guys then it is the same final outcome (The Greens get 8% and no Rep., the Dems get 48% / 4 = 12% for each of 4, and all 4 win, and the Repuds ran 3 and got 44% /3 = 14.6 each and get 3 Reps.
. . . It is impossible to gerrymander the 37 states that have just 1 district.
. . . States with 10 to 15 Reps would have 2 districts with 5 to 8 Reps each. Note the number of Reps per district must be X or X+1 Reps. States with 16 to 23 Reps have 3 districts, etc.

. . 2] In order to dilute the Electoral College power of the small states Congress can add Reps to the US House. Maybe about 100 could be added. Congress can also admit 2 new states, Washington DC (it could pick a new name other than Washington) and Puerto Rico. This adds 4 more likely Dem Senators to the Senate, which adds more Dem EC votes too.

B] Constitutional Amendments
. . 1] Bring back the filibuster in the Senate with the required vote for cloture being just 55%. NOT 60% or the old 67%. This would be especially necessary for Judges and Justices. In fact some seats on the Supreme Court should be set aside for moderate justices which require a 67% vote for cloture.

. . 2] I strongly feel that a simple majority vote for President is fine until the vote is split 5.1% other, 47.5% Dem and 47.4% Repud; which ought to require a recount in all 50 states. What a mess.
. . . I have suggested this compromise instead. Whenever the popular vote is within 1% for 2 candidates, we use the current EC system unchanged as the tie breaker.
. . . Otherwise, the candidate that wins the popular vote by more than 1% gets an additional 100 (or so) electors to dilute the power of the small states and make every single popular vote matter to some small extent, even when you know your state will vote for some other guy.
. . . An alternate compromise would be to drop the extra EC electors from 2 for the Senators to just 1, and add just 50 more for the winner of the popular vote (maybe 1 from each state).
. . . All these specific numbers are open for modification in the Amendment writing process to get it through the Congress and ratified by the states.

. . 3] Change the way the Constitution will be amended start in 10 years to make it easier for the majority to make changes. But *not* a simple majority vote like many states do. This is a terrible way to make amendments. At least require a 2nd vote 2 years later if the 1st vote is between 50% and 55%.

. . 4] Add an amendment to lock in certain functions for the US Gov.
. . . . a] It gives a grant to each state based on population raised to some power less than 1, but more than 1/2 (which would be the sq.root of the population). Small states get more/person than large states. Pres. Nixon started this but IIRC Reagan ended it.
. . . . b] Require the US Gov. provide a Soc. Sec. system for elderly citizens.
. . . . c] Require the US Gov. provide a health care system for all legal residents at no cost or co-pay.
. . . . d] Require the US Gov. provide a prison for all LEOs from all the states & Feds. who break the law so they will be safe in prison.
. . . . e] Give the US Gov. the power to try state LEOs for abuse of their power and denying civil rights to a citizen or person. And also give this right to every state Gov. over local gov. LEOs. LEOs are given special power to enforce the law. When they use this power to abuse people it is worse that when a criminal does it because the LEOs are doing it under 'color' of law or the state's power.

There are others you can add in a reply.

[blackjack21]

The United States' electoral system is institutionalised racist. It discriminates against Black people and people of Jewish decent. On average a white vote is worth more than a Black vote or a Jewish vote. This is true for the House of Representatives, the Senate and the Presidency. And because the supreme court is indirectly elected by the President and the Senate, Black and Jewish votes are also worth less for the Supreme Court.

That's almost totally wrong. There are 56 blacks in the 116th Congress, or approximately 13% of the Congress rounding up. That's the same percentage of blacks in the general population. Jews are actually over-represented relative to their population size in both Congress and the Supreme Court.

[Rich]

That's almost totally wrong.

No what I said is correct. The worst discrimination is in the votes for the Senate. To calculate this you you add up the percentages for each racial /ethnic /or what ever other group you want to analyse, in each States and compare the weighting of the result to the weighting of the groups in the general population. Whether Blacks or Jews are over or under represented in terms of membership of these bodies doesn't effect this calculation at all. It would be nieve to believe that elected federal officials slavishly represent the views of their electorate or the people who voted for them, but it would be perverse to assume that they represented their racial groups aggregate preferences.

Of course one's direct votes are only one way one can influence the political system. Even an individual Wyoming voter's individual votes are vanishingly small in their weighting.

[Sivad]

To calculate this you you add up the percentages for each racial /ethnic /or what ever other group you want to analyse, in each States and compare the weighting of the result to the weighting of the groups in the general population.

what?

[Rich]

what?

A Wyoming vote for a Senator carries about 70 times the weight of a California vote for the Senate and infinitely times the a DC vote for the Senate as DC Senator representatives don't get to vote in the Senate. As ethnic groups are not evenly distributed across the States and territories, inequalities between States and territories in their proportionate vote weightings, lead to proportionate inequalities in the vote weighting of the ethnics groups taken in aggregate. Wyoming is 1.29% Black while California is 6.67%. Vermont the second most over represented State in the Senate is only 0.87% Black.

You can do the test for any groups, but obviously gender is likely to be fairly even distributed across States and territories.

[Sivad]

A Wyoming vote for a Senator carries about 70 times the weight of a California vote for the Senate and infinitely times the a DC vote for the Senate as DC Senator representatives don't get to vote in the Senate. As ethnic groups are not evenly distributed across the States and territories, inequalities between States and territories in their proportionate vote weightings, lead to proportionate inequalities in the vote weighting of the ethnics groups taken in aggregate. Wyoming is 1.29% Black while California is 6.67%.

So you're saying not racially weighting votes is racist?

[blackjack21]

The worst discrimination is in the votes for the Senate. To calculate this you you add up the percentages for each racial /ethnic /or what ever other group you want to analyse, in each States and compare the weighting of the result to the weighting of the groups in the general population.

Ok. Well that part is correct, but the Senate was never meant to represent people. The House is different. For the record, Asians are slightly under-represented in the House. Hispanic is a mixed bag. Some people will consider AOC to be Hispanic, but not Ted Cruz for example. Anyway, the Senate was meant to represent the interests of state governments. They weren't even democratically elected until the early 20th Century. Personally, I think democratic election of senators was a mistake, because it has led to abuse of state governments by the federal government with unfunded mandates and the like.

A Wyoming vote for a Senator carries about 70 times the weight of a California vote for the Senate and infinitely times the a DC vote for the Senate as DC Senator representatives don't get to vote in the Senate.

Again, as intended. However, the Senate is not meant to be a popular representative body at all. Senators should not even be considering the interests of the average citizen. They should be considering the interest of state governments. That people even make such arguments shows that people do not understand what the Senate is for and what a federation is about.

[Skynet]

In 10 Years are the whites a minority.

[Rich]

In some ways Jefferson very much reminds me of Leo Tolstoy, a cosmopolitan elitist who idealised the rural farmer. Then again perhaps he's more like Heinrich Himmler, a man who also idealised the rural farmer but thought his idealised rural farmer should have slaves to help him with the back breaking and monotonous work. Of course the crucial difference between Heinrich Himmler and Thomas Jefferson, was that Thomas Jefferson was a White supremacist who thought Black people should slave away to give White people a nice prosperous comfortable life, out on the wild western frontier while Heinrich Himmler wasn't a White supremacist and thought that White Polish, Ukrainian and Russian people should slave away to give German people a nice prosperous, comfortable life out on the wild eastern frontier.

I'm always suspicious of people who don't do the easy things first. It always makes me suspicious of their claimed motives or the motives claimed to them. Why didn't Himmler round up the Blacks when the Nazis conquered France? Why did Hitler and Himmler not demand that the Vichy authorities hand over their Black citizens for "Transportation to the East"? I mean its a no brainer isn't it for any genuine White supremacist really concerned with racial purity. Do the easy things first, start with the low hanging fruit, tracking down Black people is one hell of a lot easier than finding who the Jews are. I suspect even your average "dumb cop" could identify Michael Jackson's racial /biological / genetic heritage.

So I would suggest that this "doing the easy things first" test is crucial. The American electoral system discriminates against its Black American citizens. This is not an opinion, this is a fact. Its not complicated, it doesn't require a PHD in maths, to work it out. Collecting, collating and analysing crime and policing statistics for racial discrimination is an orders of magnitude more complex task. The motivation is also not really in doubt. Keeping Black people enslaved was one of the primary goals of the American Constitution. The system was designed to be racist against Black people. Republicans love this racist system, because Black people overwhelmingly vote Democrat. Republicans love the fact that a Black vote in America (on average) is worth less than a White vote. Republicans love the fact this racist hangover from America's slave owning Founders is still allowed to continue.

I would certainly support a Black votes Matter campaign in America as I would support an English votes Matter campaign in Britain and as I would have supported a British Votes Matter campaign while we were still in the EU.