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[UXLZ]

Ehhh~

First point and fifth point are the only ones with a real basis in reality.

Second point is easily disproven. When was the last time you had a president that people thought was "everyone's" and wasn't a partisan mess?

Third point is a downside trying to be painted as an upside. Swing state voters are given massively disproportional influence because they're generally the only voters whose choice actually matters. The article even states they "know they're going to decide the election."

Fourth point is laughable given the third point.

[wierd]

Clearly you are not familiar with how.... bossy... certain regions in the US are.

To me, the 3rd and 4th are very important.  I live in a mostly agricultural state. I can clearly imagine a circumstance without the EC, where California and New York dictate a production yeild, to keep their local economic conditions favorable against rises in food costs, just as an example.

Or perhaps, mandating that we grow nothing but corn (Strictly for ethanol production for biofuel), even though it typically fares poorly here due to arridity.


As for the second-- look again at the total difference between popular vote between Clinton and Trump. 200k votes, out of several MILLION each.  The split is very close to 50-50, nationally. Trump is as much the president in Ca, as Hillary would be in Tx. Shoe, meet other foot.

[UXLZ]

What I'm saying is that the fourth point is hypocritical, because it's fear-mongering about giving large states too much power while painting giving swing states massively disproportionate influence as a good thing.

[wierd]

as I just pointed out, disproportionate influence *IS* important.

Think of it as the electoral version of affirmative action if you want.

In more crude terms, it is how we prevent the wolves voting to eat the sheep for dinner.

[Vilanat]

Regardless, these protests are bullshit. The president is NOT SELECTED BY POPULAR DEMAND, BECAUSE THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRACY.  Protesting who won, because it isn't the candidate you wanted, will accomplish nothing but increased division in the populace, increased negativity, and quite likely-- physical and financial harm to many innocent people.

These protests are being actively led by organizations funded by George Soros. it has nothing to do with the popular vote thing. even if trump won that by 20% they'd still protest since that's what their livelihood depends on. the majority rest are naive people being manipulated through scare tactics.

The weird thing is seeing them smash Jew shops windows as a protest. well, on one hand, it's stupid since there's a 78% chance those jews voted Dem, on the other hand, George Soros declared his happiest times in life was when he helped Nazis persecute Jews and send them to death camps, so maybe it all makes sense?

[wierd]

I know nothing about Sorros doing anything with these protests. At this point I am just about willing to accept any kakameme reasoning, because I cannot understand the rationality people have about destroying their own shit, causing violence, and harm to innocent people, out of having a temper tantrum over not getting what they wanted. 

Is it some neonazi conspiracy to kill jewish shop owners? fuck if I know. All I know is that a bunch of people chanting "Not our president!" are tearing roughshod across the damned country, acting like idiots, with the apparent perception that doing as much damage as possible will convince the election board to just hand the victory over to Hillary or something. (As I pointed out earlier, it isn't like Texas wouldn't be just as justified to do the exact same thing if Hillary had won, and you can damned sure bet that they would consider such rioting petty and pointless were that shoe on the other foot.)

Again, THAT IS NOT HOW OUR ELECTIONS WORK, AND THEY ARE DOING NOTHING BUT HARM.

[Vilanat]

Nah, i don't think there is actually such a conspiracy. a simple case of Soros investing gazillions in Clinton not willing to concede his lose. The Jews smashed windows is just a small byproduct. could be totally random, could be totally the result of some of the people Soros organizations tend to attract.

[wierd]

At this point, this is what I see:

Urist McVoter cancels being sane-- Throwing tantrum; wrong president.

[TempAcc]

Sam Harris did a pretty sober analysis of all of this in his periodic podcast, and its in line with what me, FD, Reelya, wierd and other people have been pointing out both prior to the election and now.

I feel most of you will apreciate the first half, since its everything everyone have been talking about since the start of the election, but a good deal of you won't like the second half, and thats the most important one.

[Antioch]

as I just pointed out, disproportionate influence *IS* important.

Think of it as the electoral version of affirmative action if you want.

In more crude terms, it is how we prevent the wolves voting to eat the sheep for dinner.

And it's absolute nonsense, because the way the winner takes all system is that the loser gets NO representation at all.

How is a sheep supposed to prevent itself from being eaten when it simply gets no representation?

You are just changing who the sheep is.

[Antioch]

Wha'ts even more stupid is that under proportional representation there is no "California" or "Texas" will imposed on people.

Since California itself will have it's votes be split 61% democrat and 33% republican. And Texas 52% Republican, 43% Democrat.

so there is no monolithic imposing of will. 

And it has also been said before that a lot of people simply don't vote in states with no chance of swinging, because why bother when you already know it won't matter one bit?

[UXLZ]

as I just pointed out, disproportionate influence *IS* important.

Think of it as the electoral version of affirmative action if you want.

In more crude terms, it is how we prevent the wolves voting to eat the sheep for dinner.

You may have misunderstood. I don't mean disproportionate in terms of population, I mean disproportionate compared to the other states.

[Malus]

To use Trump's own words, winning the presidency but (maybe, the numbers won't be in until Monday!) losing the popular vote doesn't make him illegitimate or a fraud or anything like that. It makes him smart. Maybe the system is anachronistic and broken, but the popular vote is irrelevant because you don't need the popular vote to win. It's the system you have. If you don't need the popular vote to win, you don't predicate your campaign on it. If the popular vote mattered, you might've seen some Trump rallies in California! You don't optimize for something that is irrelevant to your victory.

Re: why the left is rapidly becoming just as toxic as the right: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/. Lots of good points made, but it's especially striking just how much of an echo chamber most people construct for themselves:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There are certain theories of dark matter where it barely interacts with the regular world at all, such that we could have a dark matter planet exactly co-incident with Earth and never know. Maybe dark matter people are walking all around us and through us, maybe my house is in the Times Square of a great dark matter city, maybe a few meters away from me a dark matter blogger is writing on his dark matter computer about how weird it would be if there was a light matter person he couldn’t see right next to him.

This is sort of how I feel about conservatives.

I don’t mean the sort of light-matter conservatives who go around complaining about Big Government and occasionally voting for Romney. I see those guys all the time. What I mean is – well, take creationists. According to Gallup polls, about 46% of Americans are creationists. Not just in the sense of believing God helped guide evolution. I mean they think evolution is a vile atheist lie and God created humans exactly as they exist right now. That’s half the country.

And I don’t have a single one of those people in my social circle. It’s not because I’m deliberately avoiding them; I’m pretty live-and-let-live politically, I wouldn’t ostracize someone just for some weird beliefs. And yet, even though I probably know about a hundred fifty people, I am pretty confident that not one of them is creationist. Odds of this happening by chance? 1/2^150 = 1/10^45 = approximately the chance of picking a particular atom if you are randomly selecting among all the atoms on Earth.

About forty percent of Americans want to ban gay marriage. I think if I really stretch it, maybe ten of my top hundred fifty friends might fall into this group. This is less astronomically unlikely; the odds are a mere one to one hundred quintillion against.

People like to talk about social bubbles, but that doesn’t even begin to cover one hundred quintillion. The only metaphor that seems really appropriate is the bizarre dark matter world.

I live in a Republican congressional district in a state with a Republican governor. The conservatives are definitely out there. They drive on the same roads as I do, live in the same neighborhoods. But they might as well be made of dark matter. I never meet them.

To be fair, I spend a lot of my time inside on my computer. I’m browsing sites like Reddit.

Recently, there was a thread on Reddit asking – Redditors Against Gay Marriage, What Is Your Best Supporting Argument? A Reddit user who didn’t understand how anybody could be against gay marriage honestly wanted to know how other people who were against it justified their position. He figured he might as well ask one of the largest sites on the Internet, with an estimated user base in the tens of millions.

It soon became clear that nobody there was actually against gay marriage.

There were a bunch of posts saying “I of course support gay marriage but here are some reasons some other people might be against it,” a bunch of others saying “my argument against gay marriage is the government shouldn’t be involved in the marriage business at all”, and several more saying “why would you even ask this question, there’s no possible good argument and you’re wasting your time”. About halfway through the thread someone started saying homosexuality was unnatural and I thought they were going to be the first one to actually answer the question, but at the end they added “But it’s not my place to decide what is or isn’t natural, I’m still pro-gay marriage.”

In a thread with 10,401 comments, a thread specifically asking for people against gay marriage, I was eventually able to find two people who came out and opposed it, way near the bottom. Their posts started with “I know I’m going to be downvoted to hell for this…”

[Antioch]

To use Trump's own words, winning the presidency but (maybe, the numbers won't be in until Monday!) losing the popular vote doesn't make him illegitimate or a fraud or anything like that. It makes him smart. Maybe the system is anachronistic and broken, but the popular vote is irrelevant because you don't need the popular vote to win. It's the system you have. If you don't need the popular vote to win, you don't predicate your campaign on it. If the popular vote mattered, you might've seen some Trump rallies in California! You don't optimize for something that is irrelevant to your victory.

Re: why the left is rapidly becoming just as toxic as the right: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/. Lots of good points made, but it's especially striking just how much of an echo chamber most people construct for themselves:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There are certain theories of dark matter where it barely interacts with the regular world at all, such that we could have a dark matter planet exactly co-incident with Earth and never know. Maybe dark matter people are walking all around us and through us, maybe my house is in the Times Square of a great dark matter city, maybe a few meters away from me a dark matter blogger is writing on his dark matter computer about how weird it would be if there was a light matter person he couldn’t see right next to him.

This is sort of how I feel about conservatives.

I don’t mean the sort of light-matter conservatives who go around complaining about Big Government and occasionally voting for Romney. I see those guys all the time. What I mean is – well, take creationists. According to Gallup polls, about 46% of Americans are creationists. Not just in the sense of believing God helped guide evolution. I mean they think evolution is a vile atheist lie and God created humans exactly as they exist right now. That’s half the country.

And I don’t have a single one of those people in my social circle. It’s not because I’m deliberately avoiding them; I’m pretty live-and-let-live politically, I wouldn’t ostracize someone just for some weird beliefs. And yet, even though I probably know about a hundred fifty people, I am pretty confident that not one of them is creationist. Odds of this happening by chance? 1/2^150 = 1/10^45 = approximately the chance of picking a particular atom if you are randomly selecting among all the atoms on Earth.

About forty percent of Americans want to ban gay marriage. I think if I really stretch it, maybe ten of my top hundred fifty friends might fall into this group. This is less astronomically unlikely; the odds are a mere one to one hundred quintillion against.

People like to talk about social bubbles, but that doesn’t even begin to cover one hundred quintillion. The only metaphor that seems really appropriate is the bizarre dark matter world.

I live in a Republican congressional district in a state with a Republican governor. The conservatives are definitely out there. They drive on the same roads as I do, live in the same neighborhoods. But they might as well be made of dark matter. I never meet them.

To be fair, I spend a lot of my time inside on my computer. I’m browsing sites like Reddit.

Recently, there was a thread on Reddit asking – Redditors Against Gay Marriage, What Is Your Best Supporting Argument? A Reddit user who didn’t understand how anybody could be against gay marriage honestly wanted to know how other people who were against it justified their position. He figured he might as well ask one of the largest sites on the Internet, with an estimated user base in the tens of millions.

It soon became clear that nobody there was actually against gay marriage.

There were a bunch of posts saying “I of course support gay marriage but here are some reasons some other people might be against it,” a bunch of others saying “my argument against gay marriage is the government shouldn’t be involved in the marriage business at all”, and several more saying “why would you even ask this question, there’s no possible good argument and you’re wasting your time”. About halfway through the thread someone started saying homosexuality was unnatural and I thought they were going to be the first one to actually answer the question, but at the end they added “But it’s not my place to decide what is or isn’t natural, I’m still pro-gay marriage.”

In a thread with 10,401 comments, a thread specifically asking for people against gay marriage, I was eventually able to find two people who came out and opposed it, way near the bottom. Their posts started with “I know I’m going to be downvoted to hell for this…”

True, but that does not make the electoral college any less horrible as a system.

[wierd]

the only people who complain about it every 4 years, are the losers.

for the past 8, it was the gop.

this time, it fell the other way.

It is NOT direct democracy, it does not claim to be, and never has. The claim that the US is a democracy is a filthy lie promulgated by people who have never had a civics lesson in their lives, and are not qualified to comment about the government they criticize.

You assert that the imbalance in power is bad, and make assertions about this. Say it is patently false-- Yet you are forgetting how the US was formed, and why it is the way it is.  It was formed much the way the EU did-- each state was its own unique territory, a small nation, unto itself, more or less. Each had its own laws, customs, culture-- No state wanted any other to be able to just take the reigns of power and run with them.  That negative sentiment the EU feels about Belgum and Germany being little dictators? Yeah, we didnt want that.

When we initially formed our government, the framers of our government had nothing to look at really except the British parliamentary system. But there is a problem-- We DONT have a monarch, We DONT have nobles.  How the hell do we do the Magna Carta, and the House of Lords without a king, and without nobles?!  The answer, is elected representatives, of which the president is the prime representative. But how do we get the president to not always come from the same damned state all the time representing the same increasingly influential people?  We divide the power, and we make it very hard to consolidate that power.

Yes, the electoral college is "unfair", in that it denies the majority the power of being tyrants.

That is a GOOD thing.