The governed people are ALWAYS the ones who call the shots in the end, because if their governing entity won't do its job, that government can be ripped down and rebuilt.
It's clear you feel very strongly about this.
Here's a question, then. If everyone professes the sort of universal disgust and hatred of their government that every single person in the US has done for some time now, why is it still there? I share your opinions on the power of the people, but in my opinion, you take it entirely too far. You speak like 19th century revolutionary: as if the will of the people was some epic unstoppable wave; a
force of nature which topples governments that dare stand in its way. My understanding of people power in the 21st century is different: the people are
complicit in the system and the acts of their government because they have some power to prevent it, but the degree of that power is dependent on other factors. Unless you are actually discussing violent rebellion, you have a problem.
Where is that problem? Quite simple, really. You are ignoring governmental process. You take it for granted that B follows A, as if it were logical, inexorable, and impossible to be any other way. And yet this is as far from the truth as possible. Government
matters. You cannot merely
want something so hard that it happens. That's what is wrong with this country today in the first place! That is why Trump was elected! People just
want things: they want change and anyone who will claim to give it to them is elected. But the will of the people is not and has never had a direct correlation with
anything in a representative democracy. Ever. By definition, their choices are limited. Are there things they can do to stop that? Sure, but the things they can do (such as active participation in the system, voting in primaries and local races, etc) is
not what
anyone does.
But now I digress. My point is actually quite simple. There are three parts: three arguments and a logical conclusion, and if you cannot address either without resorting to a magical belief in the power of the people to overcome all than this conversation is at an end.
A: As long as there exists enough support - and enough support means even a minority of support in a minority of states, just as long as its big enough to filibuster - in certain key positions in certain key state, the law
must stay in place because of the law of this country. This is the Law of Passage.
B: A.K.A the Law of the Gerrymander : The will of the people can be both unanimous and quite strong in most of the country, and it can still be not enough. As long as there exists a small minority in a small minority of states that are either opposed or merely uninsured, more support can
never change the system. It does matter if one hundred percent of everyone in NY, California, and every liberal state speaks with one voice, as long as a plurality of voters in Florida and Texas
don't care. In fact, barely even a plurality: even if a solid 40% of Florida supports it, as long as 41% doesn't care it doesn't matter. No wait, it gets even worse! If you gerrymander that, a straight minority of voters can create a Florida legislature that is opposed.
C: Not only is it true that it could
possibly block the law, but it
does. Which is to say it isn't a hypothetical: Florida and Ohio do, in fact, oppose appeal. And their support is enough to block it indefinitely.
Thus
D: Also known as the Ronald Reagan Theorem. If A is true, B is true, and C is true, thus the support of the people has no one-to-one ratio with the repeal of the Electoral college. This is because
amount of support is not as important as the
shape of that support. Consider: Ronald Reagan won 58% of the vote. That's all. Only 58%. How many Electoral College votes did he get? 525 out of 538. He won every state but Minnesota and DC. His opponent won 40% of
every single voter in this country and it amounted to a grand total of 13 votes. Think about that.
Also please don't be rude. I joked and called you a grammar nazi, but saying that I'm ignoring reality is a little much.
Plus, that's a shitty way if your goal is to protect rural voters. There are also small urban states. Here, have a graph I made with census data.
Here's an argument I want most of you to answer because this discussion is always
about this topic in some fashion, but it rarely ever
addresses it, at least directly. One of the advantages of the system is that it gives more power to voters who generally are ignored; and one weakness is that the opinion of New Yorker is less than that of the opinion of the Ohio Man. Now this isn't true in a literal sense (NY has more electoral votes), but one of the most common methods of determining how much power a vote has is to think "How likely is it that my vote will tip the scales in one direction or another?" Now that way of thinking has its flaws, but a major point is that
candidates tend to think that way as well.
Think about this: Candidates still have limited supplies of money. Even beyond that, they personally have limited time and energy: they cannot be everywhere at once. So what can they do? They can put it to the best bang for their buck, which means trying to move voters that are most likely to give them more electors. Currently that means that candidates mold themselves to appeal to the swing-state. Now this is fine if the swing-state represents the country, but what if it doesn't? What if the issues of Florida and Ohio and Virginia are qualitatively different from the issues of NY, California, or Texas? Then you have a problem, but the solution isn't as obvious as it seems. What if we just get rid of the system so every vote counts? An issue is that candidates still have limited money and even more limited time. Candidates are then rewarded for spamming different things entirely: specifically cities become more important (because of the media market), and places that are hard to campaign in become ignored. It doesn't
solve the issue where candidates ignore many people, it merely
shifts onto other people.
Yes, I'm sure
certain rural voters are aided under the current system. But it's not
because they are rural that they benefit: the people in the cities of Ohio and Florida also gain, don't they? And the rural areas of New York are especially fucked, aren't they? I mean hey, it's rough for me in NYC knowing I can't help the election; imagine being a farm-owner upstate who literally cannot ever impact the election. At least NYC is important during the primaries, but the upstate people
never have meaningful votes, so candidates
never care about Upstate NY, and that's a real problem because they are quite clearly in need of some serious fucking help. Neither proposed system provides any benefit, because even though the rural voter in upstate gets more power, it doesn't translate into actually being
listened to.
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Topic: Should California become its own nation? (Read 14841 times)