"The arcane scheme that Mr. Trump’s lawyers hatched to disrupt congressional certification of the vote and perhaps persuade Republican state legislatures to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in states like Pennsylvania was conceivable only because the Electoral College splinters presidential elections into separate contests in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia and skews the totals toward small states. In a simple system of majority rule, Mr. Biden’s thumping margin of more than seven million votes would have been the last word. For that matter, so would Hillary Clinton’s national margin of nearly three million votes in 2016: Mr. Trump would not have had a 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address in which to barricade himself in 2020.
Would Mr. Trump’s big lie about election fraud have sent the rioters to the Capitol anyway, even without his lawyers and fixers trying to overturn the results? Maybe. But there would have been no constitutional machinery to jam. And even the big lie received a huge constitutional assist. Thanks to the Electoral College, Mr. Trump could have tied Mr. Biden and forced the election into the House of Representatives by flipping just 43,000 votes in three close states, a gap narrow enough that any number of toxic fables can claim to bridge it.
At a more basic level, today’s Republican Party succeeds only because the Electoral College, the Senate and the Supreme Court all tilt in its favor. That system has handed conservatives a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, despite the fact that only one Republican has won the presidential popular vote after 1988. A party doesn’t have to persuade majorities that it has the best vision for the country. It only has to persuade a selective minority that the other side is a mortal threat. Its grasp on power may be too tenuous for the party to govern effectively, but it has offered conservatives a fine perch to weaken economic and environmental regulation, appoint conservative judges and launch attacks on the democratic system itself."
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/opinion/us-democracy-constitution.html
First, I did not go to the link, I am responding to what you felt obligated to copy/paste.
This section of the opinion piece is literally only crying that certain parts of the Constitution are the only reason that the GOP has any influence at all, and I would speculate that he would like to get rid of the Electoral College.
This country has never been majority rule.
I'm sure that Chris could give us a much better dissertation, but as I recall, there were two houses so that overwhelmingly populated states could not be in complete control simply because they had the most seats, so we get the House and the Senate. The Senate was initially supposed to represent the states, and that went away because the states were stupid, would not fill their seats as required, and then we decided to let the people vote for Senators instead, which kind of screwed up that house of Congress, in my opinion, but it is what it is at this point. The Electoral College is the same mechanism, in an attempt to make sure that the flyover states still matter come election time. The irony in the third paragraph is probably lost on you and the writer.
I am guessing that s/he was not one of the liberal writers who were begging the Electoral College to vote Hillary in anyway as some sort of conscientious objector because Trump was Trump? Honest question, since I would think taking this opinion on ridding us of something that s/he was willing to use when it could have helped their cause would greatly weaken the opinion.
From the article:
'Some of these changes probably require amending the Constitution. Hard changes have come through constitutional amendment before: Shortly before World War I, activists successfully pressed state legislatures to ratify an amendment giving up their power to choose U.S. senators. Maybe we can revive mass movements for amendments, starting with one that would make the amendment process itself more democratic. If the public supports a constitutional amendment to limit money in politics, restrict gerrymandering or enshrine a core abortion right, a committed majority should be able to say what our fundamental law is by popular vote, rather than having to go through the current, complicated process of ratifying amendments through state legislatures or dozens of constitutional conventions.
This may sound wild-eyed. But it would not always have. James Wilson, one of the most learned and thoughtful of the Constitution’s framers, believed that as a matter of principle, “the people” may change the Constitution “whenever and however they please. This is a right of which no positive institution can ever deprive them.” Even Madison conceded that if we thought of the Constitution as a national charter rather than a federal arrangement among sovereign states, “the supreme and ultimate authority” would reside with the majority, which had the power to “alter or abolish its established government.” It is hard to deny that, since 1789, the Constitution has become a national charter in the minds of most Americans.
Do we really think that establishing fundamental law is too much for us, something only revered (or reviled) ancestors could do? More likely we are afraid of one another and the decisions majorities would make. Thinkers like Madison associated democracy with majority tyranny, but history tells a different story. Even our terribly flawed legacy is rich in examples of majoritarian emancipation: New Deal programs, the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Act and Medicare. Majorities can change the world for the better, when they have the chance. Giving one another that chance, over and over, is how equals share a country.
But are we willing to give, and take, that chance? Maybe more than fearing majority tyranny, we suspect that the country is already too divided and mistrustful to make basic choices together at all. One thing Democrats and Republicans share is the belief that, to save the country, the other side must not be allowed to win. Every election is an existential crisis. In our current political climate, any proposal to democratize the system would immediately be coded as partisan, and half the country would reject it from the start. In such an anxious and suspicious country, the current system can be seen as a kind of peace treaty. Maybe that was what Mr. Biden meant when, just after taking his oath of office two weeks after the Capitol riot, in a Washington guarded by 26,000 troops, he praised “the resilience of our Constitution.”
But the Constitution is not keeping the peace; it is fostering crises. Far from being resilient, it is adding to our brittleness.
Resilience would come from a shift to more constructive politics. Majorities should be able to choose parties and leaders to improve their everyday lives, starting with child care, family leave, health care and the dignified work that still evades many even at a time when employers are complaining of difficulty hiring workers and there is upward pressure on wages after decades of stagnation. Democracy matters not because there is something magical about 50-percent-plus-one in any given vote but because it gives people the power to decide how they will live together. If we don’t claim that power, the market, a court or a minority government will always be pleased to take it off our hands."
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I have always appreciated the need to balance a national majority vs giving smaller states a voice. But, January 6th and the efforts by GOP state legislatures to rig elections, has truly threatened our democracy on several levels, where I no longer believe the Electoral College is worth saving. Allowing each state to have two senators each (whether California or North Dakota) is plenty of "check 'n balance" against a national majority in electing our Presidents.
In regards to paragraph two, and moving the amendment process away from the states and to the population, that would require an amendment in itself as I'm sure you know. I don't see that happening anytime soon. Once you recognize that fact, the whole article becomes a piece of fan fiction.
Everything in that article is worded to cause a reaction rather than to invite thought, and it works to divide the people who read it even more. The entire third act completely ignores the fact that it does actually take majorities to move amendments forwards. Three-fourths would be a rather large majority of people to those paying attention.
I completely agree with the fourth paragraph, but partisan articles like the one written do nothing to actually change it.
I disagree with his statement about the Constitution, it is the only thing keeping the piece, and articles like this calling it into question and wanting it changed because it doesn't work the way they want it to are exactly what is undermining it and causing the brittleness that he mentions.
The last paragraph is exactly the fear-mongering goading to action that I despise about all of these opinion pieces that get produced lately. This is not news, it is one person's very obviously biased opinion.
Unfortunately I don't see the election rigging that you do. I know it is supposed to be Jim Crowe round two to ask poor minority folk like me to go get a state issued license, but I drive, and I'm licensed, so I'm good. I'll still be able to vote. I was highly disappointed in the activities that the folks who participated in 1/6. We had a lot of discussion about this due to military members being found to have participated. People brought up the oath we took, and how it was shameful, and I played devil's advocate and reminded people that if those people really thought the election was being stolen, that they would therefore also believed it was a domestic enemy, and thus they were upholding their oath. I still don't think they were right, but until you try to understand how other people think, you won't be able to talk to them in a meaningful manner.
As to your comment that having two Senators from each state is enough check and balance, I believe that could be true if it weren't for the fact that Senators now, as I discussed previously and your article reiterates, being voted on by the public. Look at Georgia, which was a hotbed for this last Senate race. You cannot look at all the red on that map and tell me that Georgia would have sent anything other than two Republican Senators if the actual state legislation was making the decision vs the public vote.
Link: Georgia Senate Runoff for Ossoff vs Purdue
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platform idea the GOP ran on in 2016 - oh and I almost forgot, get rid of the ACA and overturn Roe V Wade - Mexico to build that wall - reintroduce racism as the new political base to the GOP.
But yes, zero platform other than to tell Americans the pandemic will be over by Easter and that it is a Democrat Hoax was a smashing platform.
Whatever comes into his mind get's posted...and when it is soundly refuted, he moves on to the next outrageous claim...a pretty low-stress way for him to 'engage' with others...
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Well there are more people in CA, NY blah blah. Just because a state leans one way doesn't mean an individuals vote shouldn't count. Make politicians campaign in all of the states for the votes.
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