On December 12, three U.S. Senators introduced SJRes 121, a proposed constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college. One of the sponsors, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Il.) is chair of the Judiciary Committee, although he won’t be chair in the new congress. Here is the Committee’s press release about the amendment.
Here is the text. The other co-sponsors are Peter Welch of Vermont and Brian Schatz of Hawaii.
In other words, corrupt communists.
Durbin should be charged with treason.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/23/politics/read-house-ethics-committees-report-on-matt-gaetz/index.html
GAETZ STUFF — BEING READ IN CIVICS CLASSES IN FLORIDA ???
UNIFORM DEFINITION OF USA VOTER AT LEAST IN ALL USA ELECTIONS —–
USA CITIZEN AT LEAST 18 YEARS OLDE ON E DAYS / BE REGISTERED BY 28 DAYS BEFORE E DAYS. — NOOO MENTAL / CRIMINAL LOOPHOLES
NONPARTISAN EXECS/JUDICS VIA APPV– PENDING CONDORCET = RCV DONE RIGHT
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ALSO —
PR
TOTSOP
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/world/2024/12/23/new-french-government-is-named-after-previous-one-collapsed-in-a-budget-fight/77177083007/
LAST 3 WORDS IN STORY –
France’s colossal debt
All three should be charged with treason, and given a fair trial after they are executed for it.
This is not really a good idea. The states are supposed to elect the President. Each state has different amounts of land and terrain and different populations. The electoral college is supposed to give the lower population states more influence than they would have otherwise. Shifting to pure popular vote for President would shift even more power to highly populated urban areas of high population states.
This country is supposed to be a constitutional republic which uses some democratic procedures. It is not supposed to be a pure democracy.
C(CP)NN is of course fake news.
This is much worse than a bad idea.
Fred, Gary, and Jelly B. Afro are correct.
The spambot is spamming cut and paste terrible ideas to take things from bad to much worse, as usual.
Andy, for centuries, the definition of a “republic” has been a country without a monarch, such as the Republics of Venice, and Switzerland, and then came the United States. Countries are simultaneously republics and democracies. The idea that the US is not a democracy was first promoted by the Jobn Birch Society in the late 1950’s, when it put up billboards saying the United States is a republic, not a democracy.
As to the concept of a “pure democracy”, a country in which the voters decide what the laws should be directly in elections, there is no such country, except Switzerland to a slight extent.
The US Constitution is in conflict with itself. The 14th amendment has been interpreted many times by the US Supreme Court to mean that each voter must be treated equally. When some voters have more power than other voters in the presidential election, that is not treating each voter equally. Once Georgia Democratic gubernatorial primaries used an “electoral college” in which each county had a certain number of “unit votes.” The U.S. Supreme Court struck it down as violating “one person, one vote”. If this were a logical country, the same ruling should apply in presidential general elections.
“The idea that the US is not a democracy was first promoted by the Jobn Birch Society in the late 1950’s, when it put up billboards saying the United States is a republic, not a democracy.”
That’s not even close to being true. The US founders wrote many things about the dangers of unrestrained democracy, which they accurately called mob rule. The idea that “democracy” is either the US form of government or something we should aspire to didn’t gain currency until the US unnecessary and harmful entry into WWI, a HHS horrible decision which was a disaster for both the US and the rest of the world.
Here’s a link from over a quarter century before the JBS was founded which points out the difference between Democracy and Republic:
https://www.1215.org/lawnotes/lawnotes/repvdem.htm
“The US Constitution is in conflict with itself. The 14th amendment has been interpreted many times by the US Supreme Court to mean that each voter must be treated equally.”
It’s not. The court just misinterpreted the improperly adopted and disastrous 14th amendment.
Here’s another link that proves Mr. Winger’s claim here is not accurate :
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/12/08/3-quotes-from-founding-fathers-remind-us-why-we-are-a-constitutional-republic-not-a-democracy/
HHS is a typo above. That federal department didn’t exist then, and I didn’t intend to imply either that it had or that it had anything to do with the wartime propaganda about “democracy.”
More:
https://www.quora.com/Did-any-of-the-Founding-Fathers-of-the-United-States-write-approvingly-of-democracy
Richard Winger frequently points out that the presidential electors are the true candidates in a presidential election. Therefore, even if none of the comments below his @ 1257 were accurate, his point wouldn’t hold.
Every voter within each state is treated equally in choosing their state’s electors, and all electors are treated equally in choosing the president.
You expect Richard Winger to post facts instead of commie bullshit propaganda?
Nationalizing the presidential election would further centralise power in the federal government versus the states, which would confound the wrong headed and counterproductive problem of the wrong direction the united States moved in since they were founded as a union of sovereign states.
They should have moved in the opposite direction, which points out a flaw in the original design. The Max/Vera/Stan plan for local autonomy is a hypothetical endpoint of taking the US founding as a starting point and supposing things had moved in the opposite direction along all of the directions in which things have gone progressively more and more wrong ever since.
Pete, I’m hoping Mr. Winger will peruse the links and address the arguments. Barring that, or in addition, I hope anyone who agrees with him will do so. And even if not, the links and arguments could still prove useful to anyone who happens to read this, now or at any future point, regardless of whether they reply or not.
Trump is against this, so am I.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner.
The purest democracy is a lynch mob
Moving in the opposite direction along the various axes the uS government has evolved since its founding wound indeed be salutary, beneficial, and long overdue.
The United States and Switzerland are the only nations in which the election laws governing national office are not written by the national government. That gives us a “patchwork”, in which some candidates are on the ballot in part of the nation but not all of it. The US Supreme Court condemned that “patchwork” in Trump v Anderson, which was unanimous on that point.
No one would advocate that a state elect its governor with a state electoral college.
No nation in the world other than the US holds a popular election for president and then has rules so that the person who comes in 2nd is considered the winner. Even a five-year-old child can see how wrong that is.
The US is also the only nation in which citizens of the capital city have no voting representation in the national legislature. We are a mess and we ought to be honest enough to face up to it.
“The United States and Switzerland are the only nations in which the election laws governing national office are not written by the national government.”
From which you infer that the other countries are better? Please provide evidence, if so. The US and Switzerland are or were better in many respects than other countries.
Furthermore, the uS was originally intended to be more of a confederation than a nation (as was Switzerland). It was originally “these united States” with the u intentionally uncapitalized and the S capitalized to emphasize that States are more important and sovereign than their union.
To the extent that changed over time, we are ever more worse off.
“The US Supreme Court condemned …”
The US Supreme Court often gets it wrong, as I’m certain you would agree in general, even though not in this case.
“No one would advocate that a state elect its governor with a state electoral college.”
I would, but even if nobody did, it would still make sense to advocate it for the federal government, given that the states were meant to retain a great deal of sovereignty for very good reason and many safeguards, including the electoral college, were intentionally built in to keep it that way.
To the extent States have lost much of their sovereignty, that just demonstrates where the original design has flaws.
“No nation in the world other than the US holds a popular election for president and then has rules so that the person who comes in 2nd is considered the winner”
We don’t have a popular election for president, nor should we. As you yourself often point out, the true candidates are presidential electors. States choose how to appoint their presidential electors, and (very unfortunately) they’ve chosen to do so by popular elections where the names of electors aren’t even on the ballot anymore and voters can’t vote separately for each elector.
All of those changes were bad.
State legislatures should choose presidential electors and Senators, and they should choose each elector separately.
Yes, that should be up to each state, but ideally no state would elect its presidential electors by popular vote or as a slate.
“Even a five-year-old child can see how wrong that is.”
Even a five year old child can understand that the team which gains the most yards doesn’t necessarily win the football game. There are many other analogies we could use here.
“The US is also the only nation in which citizens of the capital city have no voting representation in the national legislature.”
If that’s a problem, revert the populated parts of the federal district to Maryland much as the part that came from Virginia was, leaving only federal buildings in DC. DC residents shouldn’t vote in federal elections for the same reasons why foreign diplomats and embassy staff should vote in NYC, DC, or US elections.
DC was created for a reason. Any extent to which that reason no longer applies has made us worse off, and should be reversed with additional and better safeguards against it happening again.
Better still, the union of States should be dissolved (although kicking California out would solve the biggest problems in the short term). Bigger isn’t always better, and that’s especially true for anything which has anything to do with government.
“We are a mess and we ought to be honest enough to face up to it.”
Yes, but not for the reasons you state or imply.
Do the electoral laws of all those other countries create better government policies and better living standards for their people?
As things in the US evolve in the direction you seem to believe is positive, is our standard of living improving more or less rapidly, particularly vis a vis other countries and parts of the world?
What nations are you holding out as closest to your ideal?
DC goes back to Maryland. Problem solved.
Winger hates the EC because it hurts commies. He hates Wyoming and North Dakota. Winger always votes for commies like Kamala Harris.
There should still be a federal district, but it would be fine to return the residential neighborhoods of DC to Maryland.
” for the same reasons why foreign diplomats and embassy staff should ..”
It should be obvious from context, but I mean should not.
A non political illustration of the downside of centralization and diseconomies of scale:
https://sevenstring.org/threads/how-shit-happens.55195/
How many USA States survive with direct elections of statewide officers — since 1776 ???
the 3 sens amdt FAILS to define who are voters
thus – will commie states have Russia/red china commies be voters for usa prez/vp ???
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one person-one vote got going when SCOTUS wiped out county unit election scheme for ga statewide officers in Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963).
WOULD FOLKS IN CURRENT ONE PARTY REGIMES GET ZILLION TV PREZ ATTACK ADS AS IN CURRENT ABOUT 10 *SWING* STATES ???
WOULD SPECIAL INTEREST LOOTER GANGS GO BANKRUPT — TRYING TO BRAINWASH ENTIRE NATION ???
This amendment would further monopolize the duopoly parties control of ballot censorship.
Net effect would be to shift power from swing states to the top few media markets (biggest cities) – primarily, Boston-DC corridor, west coast urban areas and great lakes urban areas.
The rest of the country could then be ignored, since we are more spread out and would require more physical travel and more different media markets to campaign to, whereas those who live more compactly could be more efficiently reached both with local media interviews/ads and campaign rallies so naturally they’d be the focus.
To take Georgia for example, right now as it stands the entire state is a swing state, but under the evil popular vote plan only the Atlanta area would matter if we would matter at all. Those of us on the Florida border certainly would not.
In political terms, the net effect would be to shift power from the center to the left. They would then consolidate power further by raising taxes, redistributing wealth, saddling business with massive amounts of new red tape, bringing in massive amounts of new immigrants legally and illegally to buy the future votes of, outlawing civilian gun ownership, etc.
The people behind this push realize that’s the goal, which is precisely why they are pushing it.
A better question would be why any libertarians would want to juice such a progressive Marxist cancer metastasis of an agenda.
What could possibly be libertarian about higher taxes, more regulations, more welfare, more welfare recipients demanding more of these things, more gun confiscation and bans, all at an increasing pace through the concentration of power in dysfunctional large urban areas?
At least the swing states represent a rural-urban-suburban mix reflective of the country as a whole, which is what makes them swing states.
Currently, they include states from the Southern East Coast ( GA and NC) , Northeast (PA), Midwest (MI and WI) and West (AZ and NV). Under the popular vote plan, those of us in “flyover country” (according to snooty urban elites) can go pound sand and can’t cling to our guns or our Bibles since they will get taken from our cold, dead hands along with every vestige of traditional American liberty.
This is a plan to turn the United States into a Unified Soviet Socialist Democracy or American Union a la European Union on its way to world government under United Nations. If they get their way here, their next push will be for a global popular vote and global regulations, taxes, wealth redistribution, etc.
In other words, they want to go from bad to worse. The correct direction would be the opposite: devolve government to the local level as well as reduce its size and scope, putting as much as possible in individual and nongovernmental institutions hands (families, churches, businesses, charities, etc).
I would think libertarians would agree with me on this. Why does Mr. Winger not see that big government is precisely the point of this push to centralize power? Does he favor global government as well? Does he think the European Union is better off than we are? Why would a libertarian believe such things?