Originally posted by Robtard
I know it has its flaws, but I still kind of like the one citizen = one vote and whomever gets the most votes total, that person is President. Even if it turns out to be Chuck Norris or Deez Nutz.
Yeah, but even there the US fails, since it's state based plurality. So you could literally get tens of millions of votes less than your competitor and still win.
It's a terrible, archaic system and should be overhauled.
Originally posted by Bardock42
Yeah, but even there the US fails, since it's state based plurality. So you could literally get tens of millions of votes less than your competitor and still win.It's a terrible, archaic system and should be overhauled.
Pluralities can be manageable, but the US problem is the insistence that the Electoral college works with winner takes all states rather than constructed electoral boundaries, which is why Calafornia and Texas are crucial but the Delaware voters are worth effectively zero.
FPTP systems need equally sized constituencies.
Originally posted by Bardock42
Yeah, but even there the US fails, since it's state based plurality. So you could literally get tens of millions of votes less than your competitor and still win.It's a terrible, archaic system and should be overhauled.
No, the one citizen = one vote would do away with states and such (ie bye bye Electoral College), doesn't matter where you live, as a citizen your vote counts as one.
Originally posted by Time-Immemorial
So going back if you look at what I said, I said nothing to you or in disagreement to you. So your attacking a position for no reason and now just being overly aggressive with me for no reason.
That's a statement based on you going back and editing your previous post several minutes after I responded to it. Poor form again.
The original version- 'Some people just don't get it'- was clearly aimed at me.
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Pluralities can be manageable, but the US problem is the insistence that the Electoral college works with winner takes all [b]states rather than constructed electoral boundaries, which is why Calafornia and Texas are crucial but the Delaware voters are worth effectively zero.FPTP systems need equally sized constituencies. [/B]
They can be manageable, but they are never great. Look at the last UK election, the conservatives got only 37% of the popular vote, yet more than 50% of the seats. That means that 63% (of people who actually voted) are now ruled by a majority government they did not vote for. That's really a huge democratic failure, and mainly down to the inherent weakness of FPTP.
Originally posted by Robtard
I know it has its flaws, but I still kind of like the one citizen = one vote and whomever gets the most votes total, that person is President. Even if it turns out to be Chuck Norris or Deez Nutz.
If that were the case then the coasts would essentially be the only areas that decided elections, which would be a total fail.
Originally posted by snowdragon
If that were the case then the coasts would essentially be the only areas that decided elections, which would be a total fail.
That's not really true. The US system is already set up in a way that the most populous states get the most electoral votes. In fact in the last 100 years only once did a president not win the popular vote as well (George W. Bush) and that may have been due to fraud anyways.
Between the Romney attack and the Trump counterattack tonight's debate will be interesting to say the least. But more than likely he will just (rightfully) claim that it took the 2012 loser to be man enough to do what his opponents couldn't do for nearly a year.
Romney, Rubio, Cruz, and the rest of the GOP are now coming to the horrific realization that the past 8 years of pandering to racists to discredit Obama has, surprise of all surprises, led to the majority of the base being racist and flocking to the most racist candidate, making the GOP the official party of America's bigotry in the public eye, which of course makes them unelectable in any kind of general election.
This is why McConnell, Romney, and others have vilified Trump's racism. It isn't because they care about civil/human rights, but they know the majority of the nation does. Americans aren't going to vote Republicans into elected office if the most powerful person in the party is an unabashed fascist.
But because they don't care and are trying to act as if they do, it makes them look two faced, which is why GOP voters are ignoring their covert racism and gravitating towards Trump's overt racist message. But what this does is expose to the American public and the entire world the racism that lies in the heart of the GOP.
So this is why Romney's attacks and all other GOP attempts to stop Trump will not work. Because Trump is not succeeding because he is proselytizing racism and willful ignorance into the base, but because he is exploiting the racism and willful ignorance already shared by the majority of the base, making it the office party ideology. And that racism and ignorance exists because it was cultivated by the GOP establishment ever since Obama took office.
So now the GOP establishment is trying to clean up its own mess and convince the public that the GOP does not stand for fascist bigotry, but it falls on deaf ears because the proof is in the poll/vote numbers, which shows the true ideology of the GOP, and the establishment will have to accept the racism/fascism that now defines its party, and the humiliation it will bring, because at the end of the day, it's all their fault.