[ExI] The last chance to stop Trump

Dylan Distasio interzone at gmail.com
Sun Nov 13 23:07:53 UTC 2016


I would really suggest everyone suggesting throwing out the EC do some
actual reading on it from both a historical perspective and what it
represents today.  I would also point out that it cannot be gotten rid of
without a Constitutional amendment:

ARTICLE II, SECTION 1, CLAUSE 3: The Electors shall meet in their
respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least
shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they
shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes
for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to
the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President
of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the
Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the
Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes
shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of
Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority,
and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall
immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person
have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House
shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the
Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having
one Vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a Member or Members
from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be
necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President,
the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the
Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal
Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.

In the 12th Amendment the Electoral College was tweaked, a necessity made
apparent with the rise of political parties. The men of the day had four
elections under the original design, and had learned what the shortcomings
of the original design of the Electoral College were. The new additional
rules were instituted to make ties less likely (as we saw in the Election
of 1800) and provide that if there is no majority of electoral votes for
President the House of Representatives is tasked with choosing the
President.  The choice of Vice President would devolve to the Senate.  The
12th Amendment also requires the President and Vice President to be chosen
by separate votes (Vice President was awarded to the second place winner
prior to the ratification of the 12th Amendment in 1804). The remainder of
the process at that point remained unchanged. The hope was that political
collusion and party loyalties would be diminished in the election of the
President.

The US is not a pure democracy, and was never intended as one.  It is
unlikely the original Constitution would have been ratified without state
protections, and before the centralization of Federal power that has
continued to consolidate over the decades, states rights were actually
important, and you could vote with your feet if you didn't like them.

On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 4:34 PM, CryptAxe <cryptaxe at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> > The electoral college is there to stop California, Texas and New York
> > (the most populous states) telling the other 47 states how they are
> > going to be run.
> >
> > BillK
>
> That's a good point, there may be benefits to the Electoral College which
> I didn't give credit to in my last response.
>
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