[ExI] Electoral College

Thu Aug 16 20:44:10 UTC 2018

On Thu, Aug 16, 2018  Stuart LaForge <avant at sollegro.com> wrote:

> >>
>> I don't care who framed it, the Electoral College has proven itself to be
>> a disaster.
>
>

> >
> *Not if your goal is to remain 50 sovereign states united in a common
> wealth*

History calls it "the great compromise of 1797" and without it there would
be no agreement on a constitution, but never forget that's what it was, a
compromise; it was decided they would meet halfway between a good solution
and a terrible solution and we ended up with the mediocre solution we're
stuck with today. And are you really going to argue that it is logical for
one voter to be 70 times as important as another for no reason other than
geography? And knowing what you know now about George W Busch and Donald
Trump are you really going to say with a straight face that the
super-voters in Wyoming have historically displayed 70 times more wisdom
than others and thus deserves their superior voting status?

*> the constitution is not crappy software. No crappy software boasts over
> a one million well-armed and highly-trained killers waiting to defend it at
> a moment's notice.*

If your criteria for quality is nothing but the ability to grow then
computer viruses are wonderful software and so is cancer, but if  other
qualities are also important then not so much. I would argue that both Mein
Kampf and the Communist Manifesto are examples of very crappy software, and
yet millions of highly-trained people were willing to kill and die for them

> *> nobody, not even Trump, a billionaire and POTUS, can throw people
> in prison for bad-mouthing him*

Not yet but its coming, Trump has made no secret of the fact he wants to
change the libel laws so even a president can sue a newspaper if they say
something he doesn't like
.

https://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/02/donald-trump-libel-laws-219866

And to this day Trump is ordering his mob to chant about throwing his
political opponent from the last election into prison. Doesn't that bother
you?

> >>
>> A voter in Wyoming has 68.3 times more influence over what happens in the
>> US senate than a voter in California, and that's just nuts.
>
>
>
>
> >
> *No what is nuts is that 12% of the U.S. population would willingly choose
> to live asshole to elbow in a state that burns for 3 months out of the year*

Worldwide half of the humans that are on this planet live less than 200
miles from the sea and 2/3 less than 400 miles because that is where things
are more habitable; its dryer further inland and hotter in the summer and
colder in the winter and far from both the ocean superhighway and the ocean
grocery store.

*> If you envy Wyoming's senatorial influence, then move to Wyoming. *

So you think its appropriate for the federal government to discourage
people from living in California and encourage then to live in Wyoming?
And Stuart I have to say if Wyoming was the most liberal state in the union
with 95% being Bernie Sanders fans and California the most conservative
with 95% being avid Trump fans I don't think you would be defending a
Wyoming voter having 70 times the influence of a California voter quite so
vigorously.  Why anyone with even the slightest sympathy for Extropian
ideas would treat a anti-free market anti-free press anti-balanced budget
anti-marijuana anti-right to die anti-science Putin flunkey like Trump with
anything other than contempt was a mystery to me when his name first came
up on this list about 3 years ago, and its still a mystery to me today.
It's completely out of character and I just don't understand why so many
Extropians think having a dictator loving anti-intellectual telling them
what to do is appealing.

*> Both states and voters are rational beings, but they are
> emergently manifest at different scales of complexity. There might very
> well be some abstract thought-space analogous to your mind that emerges
> from the network of people within groups such as cities and states, just as
> your own mind arises from the network of neurons in your brain. Of course,
> I can't prove the state of California is conscious but I can't prove you
> are conscious either. *

Dogs are probably conscious too but they don't get to vote like we do
because they have fewer neurons within their head. If Wyoming is conscious
then California is more so because it has more people within its borders.

> *> it isn't about how much land you have, its about the sovereignty of
> that land *

Why is Wyoming sovereignty 70 times more important than
California sovereignty? We both know the answer to that, Wyoming votes
Trump's way and California does not.

*>The Electoral College and Constitution protect the sovereignty of the
individual states.*

I don't give a hoot in hell if states are treated unfairly or not, but I do
care if people are.

> >
> *There is in actuality 51 separate and independent elections for the
> POTUS, one in each state and DC. This decentralization means added security
> from voter fraud. Because of this, the election for the POTUS is hard to
> steal as opposed to election by popular vote which has but a single point
> of failure.*

First of all voter fraud is NOT a problem in the USA, and second any system
will have to count individual votes and that could still be done in 51
separate places. The idea that the additional layer of clumsy complexity
that is now placed on top of that and increases the voting power some US
citizens, the cow owning type, and decreases the voting power of other US
 citizens, the bookstore owning type, increases the security of the
election is crazy. And I keep hearing about all the hypothetical examples
of how the Electoral College might come in handy someday but can anyone
point to a real world example in the last 200 years of it actually being
helpful? No. Can anyone point to a real world example of the Electoral
College being a disaster? Yes, I only need to point to the Iraq War section
of Arlington Cemetery.

*> Diversity is a hedge against extinction and the Electoral College
> allows all 50 states to be beautiful diverse *

Because of that a few years ago we got George W Bush and the beautiful Iraq
war, and now we have the beautiful Donald Trump and the current nightmare.

*> If he loses, then there might be recounts, lawsuits, and what not but
> come January the new president will be sworn in regardless. *

Yes and then we'll have 2 presidents. I don't know what will happen then
but however its eventually resolved it won't be pretty and I doubt it will
be bloodless.

> >>
>> I don't know if Trump has the ability to make himself President For Life
>> but if he thinks he does there is not a doubt in my mind he will try for
>> it. Trump is not very smart and is known to vastly overestimate his ability
>> so he might fail, but even a failed attempt will be extremely ugly and
>> dangerous.
>
>
> *>if Trump refuses to leave, he just becomes a nut job squatting in the
> White House and will be forcibly removed by the secret service.*

The head of the secret service is Trump's man, he is appointed by the
president and does not need Senate confirmation; and if the president
doesn't like a individual agent for any reason he can remove him from
protection duty and be assigned to other things. Everyone in Trump's
immediate vicinity is a yes man.

>* When the time comes, he will have no choice but to step down. *

Of course he has a choice, he can choose not to step down and if he did
that many millions would support him. Elections were not canceled even
during the Civil War but in a recent poll 52% of Republicans would be OK
with Trump doing it in 2020. If that happens it wouldn't be the fist time a
democracy died, why do you think the USA is immune from the cancer of
totalitarianism?

*> Without the support of the military, he has no chance of staging any
> kind of coup d'etat.*

Yes but by 2020 Trump will have been promoting his own men to be Generals
for 4 years and his cabinet is already full of them.

*> The armed forces of the USA are sworn to be loyal to the Constitution *

Trump also swore to be loyal to the Constitution, but a oath means nothing
to a man like Trump.

John K Clark
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