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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[misko27]

But that is a sane, reasonable, and feasible solution, that everyone can agree on, and therefore illegal by the standards of this thread and the internet.

[Sheb]

And by the bizarrely dysfunctional standard of the US government. I mean, you guys don't even elect your president by simply tallying all the votes and look who's got more....

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That's mostly an archaic standard from the days of pre-industrial communications. It's not our fault we adopted DEMOCRACY early.

[RedKing]

That's mostly an archaic standard from the days of pre-industrial communications. It's not our fault we adopted DEMOCRACY early.

Problem being, while we're early adopters, we're bad at patching and updating. We should be on Democracy 3.5 or better by now. But we have some folks who insist that the 1.0 release was just fine, no bugs whatsoever. Slavery and no female voting were just undocumented features.

[Nadaka]

It was also part of the 3/5th compromise. You wouldn't want to disenfranchise the poor rich southern slave owner just because his property wasn't allowed to vote.

[penguinofhonor]

They still couldn't vote. They just partially counted towards the amount of House representatives.

[Scoops Novel]

What would/will it take for reforms such as getting rid of the electoral college to occur? Could anyone summon up a study/personal experience as to how many American's are politically active/give a toss?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

They still couldn't vote. They just partially counted towards the amount of House representatives.

Yes, that was the idea. Without at least partially counting the slaves in the census, the South would have inadequate numbers to be anything but a minority in Congress, and the North turned anti-slavery fairly soon after the revolution.

A decent percentage of US history from 1790-1861 was Congress and the states trying to figure out a way to get rid of slavery without greatly upsetting anyone, and failing miserably over and over again. Some progress was made, but the big leap never happened and eventually the pressure became too great.

This is mostly the fault of the Cotton Gin, which made slavery profitable again. Before its introduction the slave population in the US was starting to shrink.

What would/will it take for reforms such as getting rid of the electoral college to occur?

As the electoral college is outlined in the Constitution, getting rid of it will require an amendment.

Could anyone summon up a study/personal experience as to how many American's are politically active/give a toss?

A majority of Americans in all age groups and major political persuasions support both the end of the electoral college and the establishment of congressional term limits.

[RedKing]

This is mostly the fault of the Cotton Gin, which made slavery profitable again. Before its introduction the slave population in the US was starting to shrink.

Eli Whitney = Epic troll inventor.

[Sheb]

MSH, the Insterstate Compact could effectively get rid of the electoral college without an amendment.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

MSH, the Insterstate Compact could effectively get rid of the electoral college without an amendment.

I'm not seeing any specifics on a thing called the Interstate Compact. I know what a interstate compact is, but as far as I can tell there is no program named that.

Whatever it is, I doubt that it could eliminate the EC. As the EC is unambiguously presented in the Constitution, any non-amendment attempts to subvert it will be cut down by the courts when pro-EC powers bring it to their attention.

[Descan]

You know what you need?

A second vote. Citizen run. Let the official one die off, get everyone to vote for who they want in the Citizen vote. And...

And somehow make it binding. I don't know.

Didn't think this through.

Basically, boycott the corporate-run vote, make a new one, protest if they don't concede.


Edit: The Interstate Compact is a compact that goes into place when the states that hold the majority of EC votes signs onto it. So you don't need 26 states, you could have 40 of them or 20 or whatever, just as long as the signers all together hold a majority.


What the compact says is that all signers must put all their electoral college votes toward the winner of the national popular vote. No matter what they're actual citizens voted, if the NATION says "The Dude" versus "That Dude", then The Dude gets the majority of electoral college votes. It's still technically in play, just defanged.

[RedKing]

Honestly we need a Second Constitutional Convention. Problem being, rewriting a country's Constitution wholesale tends to only happen after civil war/liberation/interregnum. Or if you're Iceland, a bank failure.

[Sheb]

Sorry, I remembered it as the Interstate Compact, but apparently that's just a tool. The full name is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It would bypass the EC and replace it by something sane.

[Owlbread]

Maybe you could egg on the militias and coax a rebellion. Make sure you do it during the tenure of an unpopular Bush/Cheney style government though.