Why do we have the Electoral College?

We have had but one new constitutional amendment since 1971.

 


Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

Julie, who I known for a number of years, asked:
Do you think the US will ever get rid of the electoral college and go to something different? Why is it still done this way?

The second question is easier than the first, so let’s start with that. The original reason for the EC, like so much of the Constitution, was a compromise. As this article shows, “One idea was to have the Congress choose the president.” But that was rejected, for good reason. Even then, they didn’t trust Congress to do the right thing. Also, many felt that “arrangement would upset the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.”

Another thought was “to have the State legislatures select the president.” This idea, too, was wisely rejected out of fear that “a president so beholden to the State legislatures might permit them to erode federal authority and thus undermine the whole idea of a federation.” As you may know, the state legislatures used to pick US Senators in their states until the 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913, and there are some folks that want to return to the old system; it won’t happen.

Naturally, electing President elected by a direct popular vote was considered but ultimately rejected. It was “not because the Framers of the Constitution doubted public intelligence,” though many have suggested that. Rather, the Founders “feared that without sufficient information about candidates from outside their State, people would naturally vote for a ‘favorite son’ from their own State or region.” You may laugh, given the overwhelming information now available, but 18th century Internet was the local newspapers and pamphlets.

“At worst, no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to govern the whole country. At best, the choice of president would always be decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the smaller ones.” Four of the first five Presidents were from Virginia, one of the largest states of the day.

Finally, they came up with the College of Electors to choose the President. “The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each State to select the president based solely on merit and without regard to State of the origin or political party.” The intent has been largely altered by the law requiring electors to vote for the candidate with the most votes in their states. Read this article from the Federalist (not to be confused with Federalist Papers), titled, “The Electoral College Still Makes Sense Because We’re Not A Democracy.”

As for the problem of “Will it change?” the answer is maybe. On one hand, we have had but one new constitutional amendment since 1971, when the 26th Amendment allowed 18-year olds to vote. The 27th Amendment, which was initiated in 1789 but not ratified until 1992: “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.” So it’s difficult to change the Constitution.

The recent technological attacks against the United States have pointed out the vulnerabilities of our electoral process, with a number of states with no paper backup. I think this issue needs to be addressed very soon because, in the case of a close election, it’ll make EC reform easier to accept.

There are groups that support the popular vote initiative. National Popular Vote is keeping track of the progress of bills in the various state legislatures. Check out their YouTube videos. If you want this amendment to be in effect in 2020, you and your friends need to be bugging your members of Congress AND your state legislators. NOW.
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The election will NOT be ‘rigged’

EDIT: While it IS true we don’t need a Constitutional amendment to “fix” the Electoral College, we also didn’t NEED one to allow states to allow women to vote. States were doing this on their own. I find amendment, rather than laws that can be more easily changed more reassuring.

 

The Lydster: her favorite music

Haschak Sisters: Madison, Gracie, Sierra and Olivia

pentatonixWAY back in the JUNE Ask Roger Anything, Tom the Mayor queried:

Who is Lydia’s favorite singer? I broadened it to ask her about her favorite music.

In response to the question, she initially gave me five artists [links to most]

Beatles: I have no idea why she’d even THINK of them. Giving her that #1s CD when she was five paid off.

Help, which we’ve sung together, and which she and a classmate sang together in church
We Can Work It Out, especially the bridge
Strawberry Fields Forever, which she has danced to at church
Good Night, which I used to sing to her pretty much from when she was born until she was about six, and I put on a mixed CD for her even before she was born.

Pentatonix: her first favorite group she discovered on her own. They do mostly a capella covers of popular songs that I had never heard before.

Problem
Can’t Hold Us
Sing
Rather Be

OK Go: I’ll admit I’ve enjoyed their videos

Upside Down & Inside Out
The Writing’s On the Wall
Skyscrapers
Needing/Getting

Haschak Sisters: Madison, Gracie, Sierra, and Olivia. Their parents had a daughter every two years.

I Wanna Dance
Girls Rule The World
Sorry
Wannabe

Jon Cozart: I’ve seen him before, on Mark Evanier’s page. He sings with himself quite often.

Politiclash
Harry Potter in 99 Seconds
Stitches
After Ever After

Then she realized she’d left off another favorite:

Weird Al Yankovic, who she discovered not from me, but from her cousins in the summer of 2015, while they were all at the home of the grandparents

Word Crimes
Handy
First World Problem
I Lost on JEOPARDY! , and she’s never going to let me live that down

Of course, she has individual songs by other artists that she’d identify as her favorite music as well

P is for 45th President of the US

I will be voting in the election for our 45th President. I ALWAYS vote.

electoral_mapAs you’ve might have heard, the American voter will be electing the 45th President of the United States on November 8. Well, sort of.

Most of the states, 48 of them (except for Nebraska and Maine), are winner-take-all contests, where one candidate or another gets all of what are called electoral votes, which Parade magazine attempts to explain, as does Wikipedia.

Basically, the number of members of the House of Representatives (based on population) plus the number of US Senators (2 per state) equals the number of electoral votes a state gets. The District of Columbia, where the nation’s capital, Washington, is (as opposed to the western state of Washington), also gets three electoral votes.

The candidate with more than 270 electoral votes (538 total electoral votes divided by two, plus one) becomes President. Getting on the ballot on each state is fairly routine for the Democratic Party (candidate is Hillary Clinton) and the Republican Party (Donald Trump). Only one other candidate is on the ballot in all 50 states, the Libertarian Party candidate, Gary Johnson. Jill Stein of the Green Party is running in over 40 states. Here’s a list of other minor party candidates.

The winner in November will be either the Democrat or the Republican. Not since 1860, when Abraham Lincoln won, running on the nascent Republican party, won the election. The Progressive Party ran former President Teddy Roosevelt against the Republican incumbent (and former TR Vice-President) William Howard Taft. Teddy came in second, and received 88 of 531 electoral votes. But Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected.

1968 was the most recent time at third party candidate won electoral votes, George Wallace of the American Independent Party, who garnered 46 of 538 electoral votes. “The last third party candidate to win more than 5.0% of the vote was Ross Perot, who ran as an independent and as the standard-bearer of the Reform Party in 1992 and 1996, respectively.” Read more about third parties here.
votingec
[Blue is Democratic; red is Republican.]

Each state has its own rules about voting. The deadlines for registering to vote vary. Some allow early voting, before November 8, while others do not. The hours the polls are open are not the same. This is is the nature of federalism, which allows the states to maintain control of certain aspects of the process.

I will be voting in the election for our 45th President. I ALWAYS vote.

That’s enough for now – I worked on this piece before and it died when my computer whacked out – but if you have questions about the process, this old poli sci major will try to answer your questions.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

Noisy neighbors

It’s 10 p.m. The Daughter and I are watching JEOPARDY! when the doorbell rings.

neighbors2You may recall an incident involving the second-floor apartment of our next-door neighbors. It’s been more fun.

OCTOBER 1 – it’s a three-day weekend for the college students on the second floor next door. The noise from the music was so loud, I went over there to ask them to turn it down around 11 p.m. It was so loud that when I was POUNDING on the door, it took about three minutes to be heard.

The music returns. The Daughter cannot sleep. I go out in front, talking to the neighbors on the front porch, warning them I would call the police if the music didn’t lessen. BTW, it wasn’t just music. It was loud and constant conversation, punctuated by occasional WOOs.

OCTOBER 2 – Redux. I call the police non-emergency number at the stroke of 11 p.m. Music diminishes, and I go to sleep. But at 12:30, music volume returns, and while I slept through it, The Wife awoke. Finally, at 1:15 a.m., she called the police. Neither of us knew that the other had called until morning.

OCTOBER 7- I’m home in the morning with a sick child. The doorbell rings. It’s a guy from the other side of the problem house. He wants to know if it was a problem for us (oh, YES), if we had called the police (yes, twice), and whether HE ought to call the police if he’s bothered by their noise (absolutely). I want it made clear that it is not just us who are inconvenienced, and TIRED.

OCTOBER 8 – It’s 10 p.m. The Daughter and I are watching JEOPARDY! when the doorbell rings; it’s the police. They had gotten a report of a loud party at OUR house, but it is instantly clear to them that this is not the case. I theorize that this may be in retaliation for our calls. The police go over to visit them.

Later, the music got a little loud, but not as bad as the other nights. It was soft enough that my white noise machine, which The Wife had purchased a couple of Christmases ago, blocked the noise.

OCTOBER 9 and 10 – The Wife and I, separately, see the absentee landlord and tell him of our woes. He told me that, as a result of my spouse’s conversation with him, he had had a chat with them.

It’s been OK since then. We have heard them talking at 4 a.m. occasionally, but not loudly enough to complain, usually when they’re in the rear of their building. The houses on both sides of us are longer (deeper) than ours, and The Wife theorizes that the noise leaves the back of the one house, bounces off the other building, and echoes even louder into ours.

Also, the midterms are approaching, and as the weather gets chillier, the windows tend to be closed more often.

Meanwhile:

OCTOBER 5 – The Wife parks in front of our house, and goes inside. The Daughter, tired from soccer practice, remains in the vehicle. The adult granddaughter of our other-side neighbors – she does not live there – is going to pull in front of our car. But she rushes, likely in response to a car barreling down our street too quickly, and clips the front corner on the driver’s side.

The Daughter runs into the house to tell her mother the car has been hit. The young woman was very apologetic, and she and the Wife discuss insurance and the like. The woman’s grandparents come out, concerned. They don’t see the damage at first -our car is white – but soon enough they do. The other car is worse for wear.

OCTOBER 6

I see the male neighbor and mention in passing that The Daughter’s OK after the accident. Very soon, the entire family’s at our door, concerned and actually angry with my spouse. Why didn’t she tell them our girl was in the car? She wasn’t hurt, and it wasn’t an issue.

The Wife dealt with at least two insurance companies, had a loaner car for three days, and as of OCTOBER 19 has her car back.

Trivia and the great person theory

A week or two later, I was busy leading my debauched life.

tonguesChris has more questions:

I just saw one of my favorite SMBC strips: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-04-15. To what extent do you feel this is accurate?

There was this move afoot to ignore the “great person” theory of history, yet I don’t see how one can totally ignore, for good or ill, a Charlemagne or Elizabeth I or Hitler. Still, it’s often nameless people who put their lives on the line to change history; you might know an ML King or a Gandhi, but they were leading movements of people, lots of anonymous folks.

Stuff does happen: earthquakes, floods, and the like. But it’s often how we RESPOND to the stuff that truly matters. In other words, it’s ALL true, plans and randomness.

Do you ever just totally forget yourself and accidentally use language or terms that are foreign to your audience? (Example: I referred to something as “Kafkaesque” to a church friend who is not college educated.)

It happens. I used KJV recently when referring to the King James Version of the Bible.

I’ve mentioned in the past how terrible it was to be in Charlotte, NC in 1977 when my use of ANY three-syllable words was subject to me being ridiculed. It might have been a word as basic as “ridiculed.”

Still, I think I do OK on this front. I TRY to be the listener.

How boss are you at Trivial Pursuit? What version do you play?

I haven’t played this century, I believe. I was quite good in the day with the traditional game, and I got another set of cards, but I have no idea which iteration.

I do know that my 21st-century popular culture is very weak. Offer me a million dollars to name one Justin Bieber song, and you’d keep the cash in your pocket. The problem with pop culture is that there’s too much of it. In the days of three TV networks and the Billboard charts counting actual physical sales, it was easy. But in the era of 257 channels (and nothing on) and downloads, it simply doesn’t stick. And I have other priorities.

I’m fascinated by watching JEOPARDY! The questions I’ll have zero ideas about involved video games and popular movies that I didn’t see. But there was a recent Final JEOPARDY: Created in 1971, this company’s logo has been likened to a wing & was supposed to connote motion. I thought this was really easy, but none of the contestants got it. (It’s Nike, of course.)

 

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