The fairness of the Electoral College and other election processes

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  • orfeo wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    But there again he lost by a landslide in the last election.

    No, he did not. Not unless you reinvent some contest other than the one he was participating in, with a different scoring system to the one everyone knew was going to be used.

    Sorry? But yeah, he won in a gerrymandered, banana republic, rigged election.

    And you explain your own process for selecting a Prime Minister, how exactly?

    The US does indeed have a problem with gerrymandering, but not in the Presidential election. Not unless you completely redefine what gerrymandering actually is.

    Conservative – 13,941,086 votes
    Labour – 10,292,354
    Liberal Democrat – 3,675,342
    Scottish National Party – 1,242,380

    Share of 650 seats

    Conservative 43.6%
    Labour 32.2%
    Liberal Democrat 11.5%
    Scottish National Party 3.9%

    I don't know if the winning party's seats have not represented the largest popular vote. My money says not.

    I don't think we do ANY of this.

    Do you not understand how your own system works? The total figures you cited are completely irrelevant to the results. There is simply no way in which the total popular vote across the UK leads to the selection of the Prime Minister, and doing things like comparing the SNP vote in Scotland to the Conservative vote across the whole of the UK is a nonsense.

    You're hardly the first person to engage in such nonsense, but that doesn't make it any less nonsensical. The national vote in the UK is no more a meaningful statistic than it is in the US.

    Next you'll be telling me the results of tennis matches by telling me how many points each player won. It's a fundamental problem of confusing a particular statistic that doesn't determine a result with the rules of how the contest is actually determined.

    I confuse nothing at all. I merely note that there is a positive correlation between the popular vote and the seats in our FPTP system, whereas there is not in the US', where the gerrymandering and voter suppression is greater.

    But the claim is nonsensical when you compare the number of votes for the Conservative party, which stood in 635 seats, and Labour, which stood in 631, with the number of votes for the Scottish National Party which stood in 59.

    They are quite literally not engaged in the same contest. And you are pretending that they are. Why on earth would you try to assess the SNP vote by combining 59 contests where they did rather well with hundreds of contests where they got zero votes because they didn't even enter?

    I didn't.
  • chrisstileschrisstiles Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    additionally Corbyn in 2017, was 2,227 votes in total from a majority (across the right seats) in 2017, despite being 3,758,224 behind the Conservatives nationally.

    (for the Tories to have achieved a majority in that election would I think have required 400 more votes in total across the right seats nationwide).

    You are conflating two separate things; Corbyn was 2227 votes from being able to form a coalition government (in combination with the SNP, LD, Plaid, Greens etc). The Tories were 287 votes away from being able to form a working majority.

    So if the underlying claim was that the voting system favours Labour over the Tories, then this is not an argument in favour of that (it would - in fact - be incorrect anyway).
  • additionally Corbyn in 2017, was 2,227 votes in total from a majority (across the right seats) in 2017, despite being 3,758,224 behind the Conservatives nationally.

    (for the Tories to have achieved a majority in that election would I think have required 400 more votes in total across the right seats nationwide).

    You are conflating two separate things; Corbyn was 2227 votes from being able to form a coalition government (in combination with the SNP, LD, Plaid, Greens etc). The Tories were 287 votes away from being able to form a working majority.

    So if the underlying claim was that the voting system favours Labour over the Tories, then this is not an argument in favour of that (it would - in fact - be incorrect anyway).

    Thankyou for the correction on the numbers - it was entirely an error on my part.

    Your second sentence on the other hand is pure projection on your own part.

    All I thought I was doing was providing a third example (since shown to be erroneous) of where largest vote share (nearly) didn't translate into most seats. What you thought I was doing (and indeed why you should have thought it was what I was doing) is entirely lost on me? It wasn't the point I or indeed anyone else was making, and no one had suggested anything about the Labour Party being favoured or otherwise by the electoral system in the last couple of pages/days (if at all) in this thread.

    Talk about looking for enemies everywhere.

  • chrisstileschrisstiles Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    All I thought I was doing was providing a third example (since shown to be erroneous) of where largest vote share (nearly) didn't translate into most seats. What you thought I was doing (and indeed why you should have thought it was what I was doing) is entirely lost on me?

    I suspect it was because you were able to type this out without first checking whether it could be possibly true (as an even passing familiarity with the electoral system should have shown that it was a fairly incredible claim to make):
    "additionally Corbyn in 2017, was 2,227 votes in total from a majority (across the right seats) in 2017, despite being 3,758,224 behind the Conservatives nationally."

  • All I thought I was doing was providing a third example (since shown to be erroneous) of where largest vote share (nearly) didn't translate into most seats. What you thought I was doing (and indeed why you should have thought it was what I was doing) is entirely lost on me?

    I suspect it was because you were able to type this out without first checking whether it could be possibly true (as an even passing familiarity with the electoral system should have shown that it was a fairly incredible claim to make):
    "additionally Corbyn in 2017, was 2,227 votes in total from a majority (across the right seats) in 2017, despite being 3,758,224 behind the Conservatives nationally."

    Indeed, and I held my hand up pretty much by return of post when I did it and it was pointed out by you.

    But still, you do you. Imputations of bad faith are after all as cheap and quick to write as 'are you sure about thats?' I hope next time you make an unthinking error the person who points it out treats you well.

    For the second and final time since 2012, goodbye SoF.

  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    orfeo wrote: »
    But the claim is nonsensical when you compare the number of votes for the Conservative party, which stood in 635 seats, and Labour, which stood in 631, with the number of votes for the Scottish National Party which stood in 59.

    They are quite literally not engaged in the same contest. And you are pretending that they are. Why on earth would you try to assess the SNP vote by combining 59 contests where they did rather well with hundreds of contests where they got zero votes because they didn't even enter?
    That Scottish figure is even more disturbing and a very good illustration of what is wrong with FPTP.

    We're talking about the 2017 General Election, but as far as Scotland is concerned the same issue afflicts every General Election .

    If you look at Scotland on its own, it has 59 seats. The SNP won 35 of of them. That was a loss of 13 on the previous Parliament. The SNP actually received only 37% of the vote in Scotland. That, though gave it an absolute majority. Half of 59 = 29.5. The Conservatives got 29% of the vote and got 13 seats, an increase of 12. Labour got 27% and got 7 seats, an increase of 6, and the Lib Dems 7% and got 4 seats, an increase of 3. The small discrepancy is caused by rounding.

    In the previous election, the SNP got 50% of the vote, i.e. ½ of them, but got 56 seats, with the other three parties getting 1 each!!

    By no stretch of anyone's imagination can this be called either representative or democratic.

    In the 2019 Parliament likewise the relationship between votes and seats in Scotland is completely out of kilter.


    The moment when I lost any faith at all in FPTP was the 1983 UK General Election,. There were three main parties and the Labour Party was in disarray under Foot. Plaid won 1 seat in North Wales and that was the only mainland constituency that didn't go to one of the three main parties. Their electoral share was Conservative 42.4%, Labour 27.6%, Alliance (the then name for what is now LibDem 25.4%. The seats, though, fell out Conservative 397, Labour 209, Alliance 23. Not only that. The Conservatives increased their seats by 58 in spite of their actual share of the vote actually DROPPING by 1½%.


    I have contempt for the system. I also regard the governments it produces as having doubtful and very limited legitimacy. To borrow a word argued about on another thread in the last few days, as an electoral system I despise it. I also despise those who either advocate or defend it. The UK Parliament has little more claim to be representative than the Supreme Soviet of one of the minor constituent republics of the late and unlamented Soviet Union.


    I don't like added members and party lists. They aren't necessary. The Irish have an excellent system where everyone represents somebody rather than nobody, but the votes are far, far more proportionate.

    Also, the quality of political life would be better if one effect of that were to force parties to co-operate more.

  • orfeo wrote: »
    As @Nick Tamen has recognised, the argument is that the Electoral College was intended to reflect the federal structure that was set up in the whole constitution.
    orfeo wrote: »
    Oh FFS. I'm not claiming the specifics of the Electoral College are some perfectly designed system. I'm simply pointing out that the fact that it works on a state-by-state basis is entirely consistent with the federal structure that the United States incontrovertibly has.

    <snip>

    My entire issue is with doing away with the federalism, not with the Electoral College, and quite frankly I'm getting to the point where I wonder whether the mischaracterisation of what I'm saying is wilful.

    You can't characterize the electoral college as an intentional bit of Constitutional design on the part of the Framers (or the authors of the Twelfth Amendment) meant to reflect some deep commitment to a specific federal structure and then say you're not actually making such a claim. Well, I guess you can, it just lacks credibility.
    stetson wrote: »
    ^ And FWIW, I don't think a prohibition on states seceding was ever formally enshrined, was it?

    Not formally, but the reasoning is that since states need approval from Congress to join the Union (Art. IV, §3, cl. 1)* they should likewise need approval from Congress to leave the Union. Unilateral secession has been tried and failed spectacularly, but secession with Congressional approval has never come up. Secession of one part of a state from another part of a state has happened twice (Maine separating from Massachusetts and West Virginia separating from r.Virginia) and both times Congress had to sign off on the move.


    * Article VII is a kludge to get around this requirement for the original states. This was necessary since, prior to the adoption of the Constitution there was no federal Congress. (The Congress of the Confederation is a separate and distinct body from the Congress specified in the U.S. Constitution.) There are other similar "start up clauses" in the U.S. Constitution, like the way anyone who's a U.S. citizen when the Constitution was ratified gets to be considered a "natural born citizen" (Art. II, §1, cl. 5), even if they were born somewhere that was never under American jurisdiction (e.g. Alexander Hamilton).
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    As @Nick Tamen has recognised, the argument is that the Electoral College was intended to reflect the federal structure that was set up in the whole constitution.
    orfeo wrote: »
    Oh FFS. I'm not claiming the specifics of the Electoral College are some perfectly designed system. I'm simply pointing out that the fact that it works on a state-by-state basis is entirely consistent with the federal structure that the United States incontrovertibly has.

    <snip>

    My entire issue is with doing away with the federalism, not with the Electoral College, and quite frankly I'm getting to the point where I wonder whether the mischaracterisation of what I'm saying is wilful.

    You can't characterize the electoral college as an intentional bit of Constitutional design on the part of the Framers (or the authors of the Twelfth Amendment) meant to reflect some deep commitment to a specific federal structure and then say you're not actually making such a claim. Well, I guess you can, it just lacks credibility.
    Did @orfeo ever claim the Electoral College was "meant to reflect some deep commitment to a specific federal structure"? If he did, I missed it.

    There's absolutely nothing mutually exclusive about the Electoral College being "a kludge put together by the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters at the Constitutional Convention" and it being a kludge that reflects the federal nature of the republic. Both can be true. The claim that the Electoral College reflects the federal nature of the republic is not per se a claim that the Electoral College is "the product of some grand, over-arching philosophy of governance."

    It is quite possible to simultaneously hold the positions the elector system was a last ditch decision, that it was a last ditch decision that reflected the federal nature of the US, that over time the problems and weaknesses in the elector system have become more and more apparent, especially as other aspects of the federal government and of elections have changed, and that it is (long past) time to change or replace the elector system.

  • Enoch wrote: »
    In the previous election, the SNP got 50% of the vote, i.e. ½ of them, but got 56 seats, with the other three parties getting 1 each!!

    By no stretch of anyone's imagination can this be called either representative or democratic.
    While no particular fan of the current system, the current system is both representative and democratic ... depending on how you look at things.

    From a constituency level, each of those 650 parallel elections returned an MP with the support of the largest proportion of the electorate within that constituency, in a very small number of cases the majority of the electorate. From that perspective the result for each constituency is both democratic and representative. The problem comes when you factor in that the result of an election isn't only to elect a local representative but also that those representatives club together in political coalitions which we call parties, and the party with the most MPs (usually) gets to form the government. That quite often (probably always) means that the resulting Parliament is composed of individuals who each have the largest level of support from their local communities but as a whole doesn't represent the voting pattern of the nation.

    The other extreme would be a full PR system, which ensures the numbers of MPs reflects the number of people who vote for that party (within the restrictions of a small number of MPs and not allowing MPs composed of body parts from different people). That has three big problems IMO; one the loss of local links that constituencies provide, two it rules out any possibility of independent MPs, and three it's almost impossible to conceive of a system for the size of the UK which doesn't use party lists. In between those extremes you have various models for multi-member constituencies (which could be small areas merging 3 or 4 current constituencies returning the same number of MPs under some form of transferable vote, or larger regions returning something like 10-15 MPs under PR) or some form of additional member composite region and constituency model.

    Smaller regions with STV-like systems can still be kept small enough to allow all candidates to be listed so that voters can choose which order to put them in (ie: no party lists - although presumably parties would still be able to state the order they'd like supporters to vote in). Though I quite like the Scottish additional member system, the party lists are a weakness ... but in most cases the voters probably don't care, if they like party A they'll vote that way and trust that Party A put the best person at the top of the list, if you don't like the top candidate for Party A are you really trusting them to represent you? The Scottish regions are, however too large for another system of voting for the additional members to work (especially as the design is such that a party can get lots of votes but very few, if any, MSPs through that route if they've done very well in the constituency votes), and again independents are not likely to do well under it.

    I do like our multi-member local government wards though. But, the issue with multi-member constituencies (without significantly increasing the number of MPs) is that in a lot of locations they'll end up hopelessly mixing very different regions - in a large city, there won't currently be much difference between neighbouring constituencies so merging them will probably work quite well; but in semi-rural areas a constituency with a small town plus lots of smaller villages and towns could represent a much wider range of interests and concerns (I've frequently cited my Westminster constituency of a town of 75000 plus a selection of villages with maybe 20000 people between them - the nature of the constituency is that candidates end up speaking to the needs of the town at the expense of the rural areas). It would be quite a challenge to devise multi-member constituencies that don't simply exacerbate those problems.
    Also, the quality of political life would be better if one effect of that were to force parties to co-operate more.
    I entirely agree, a coalition of parties co-operating for the common good should be a far stronger form of government than the current UK model. Even better, get rid of the whips and let Parliamentarians vote (by secret ballot) according to how well the case for (or against) a proposal is presented taking into account views of constituents and their own political convictions, force them to be thinking human beings rather than sheep to be herded through the lobby as the small number in leadership say they should. Any form of voting reform which increases the number of parties represented (and, almost by definition reduces the chances of any single party having a large majority) would be an improvement in my book - but the mainstream media and big-two parties will label that a "weak government", so it also needs to be linked to reform of Parliamentary practice such as secret voting by MPs.

  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Did @orfeo ever claim the Electoral College was "meant to reflect some deep commitment to a specific federal structure"? If he did, I missed it.

    He claimed that "the Electoral College was intended to reflect the federal structure that was set up in the whole constitution". That's a statement that puts a lot more intentionality into the design than can be justified from the historical record. I'm deeply suspicious of arguments tendentiously based on what the Constitution's Framers "intended" since they're often used to justify some very dubious theories of Constitutional interpretation.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Did @orfeo ever claim the Electoral College was "meant to reflect some deep commitment to a specific federal structure"? If he did, I missed it.

    He claimed that "the Electoral College was intended to reflect the federal structure that was set up in the whole constitution". That's a statement that puts a lot more intentionality into the design than can be justified from the historical record.
    Perhaps so. But it is not, as I read it, a statement that says or implies that the Electoral College was "meant to reflect some deep commitment to a specific federal structure.” “Deep commitment to a specific federal structure” strikes me as heavy spin on the words “was intended.”

  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    I appreciate this is a very sprawling tangential thread, touching on criticisms of democratic processes in various Western democracies. I may split it again!

    Barnabas62
    Purgatory Host

  • Even better, get rid of the whips and let Parliamentarians vote (by secret ballot) according to how well the case for (or against) a proposal is presented taking into account views of constituents and their own political convictions, force them to be thinking human beings rather than sheep to be herded through the lobby as the small number in leadership say they should.

    Secret ballot for parliamentarians is an interesting idea. On the one side, it means that the party machine doesn't know how you voted, so can't apply pressure or discipline to force you to toe the party line.

    On the other hand, it means that the electorate can't see how you voted, so it has no idea whether you're an honest supporter of whatever issue they're concerned about, or you're a liar who is talking out of one side of your face to sound popular, but is voting according to your personal interests / prejudice / whoever paid you most.

    On balance, I suspect that that might be worse.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »
    @Nick Tamen

    Yeah, I know the US is still a federation, and at least on paper, a pretty extreme one in some regards(criminal law written by the states would seem utterly bizarre to many Canadians, even if the courts ultimately retain the right to declare them unconstitutional).

    The US (and here for that matter) is a federal system, while Canada is a confederation.

    No it is not. Just because they called the process of federating "confederation" does not mean that Canada is a confederation in the sense of classifying countries.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederation

    I don't accept the Wiki definition as the only proper usage of the term confederation. That given seems to me to be apply to a very limited set of circumstances. Canada is a confederation because the provinces are very much subordinate to the nation. That's not the position in the the US or Aust.

    That is arrant nonsense. What the Commonwealth has in practice stripped from the States, including labour relations and especially income tax, would make Quebec scream bloody blue murder, backed up by every other province, which is in part why Canadian provinces in practice enjoy far more autonomy than Australian States do.

    The High Court of Australia has been the key centralizing agent in Australia while the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the Supreme Court of Canada have been decentralist or provincial rights protectors.
  • Martin54 wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    But there again he lost by a landslide in the last election.

    No, he did not. Not unless you reinvent some contest other than the one he was participating in, with a different scoring system to the one everyone knew was going to be used.

    Sorry? But yeah, he won in a gerrymandered, banana republic, rigged election.

    And you explain your own process for selecting a Prime Minister, how exactly?

    The US does indeed have a problem with gerrymandering, but not in the Presidential election. Not unless you completely redefine what gerrymandering actually is.

    Conservative – 13,941,086 votes
    Labour – 10,292,354
    Liberal Democrat – 3,675,342
    Scottish National Party – 1,242,380

    Share of 650 seats

    Conservative 43.6%
    Labour 32.2%
    Liberal Democrat 11.5%
    Scottish National Party 3.9%

    I don't know if the winning party's seats have not represented the largest popular vote. My money says not.

    I don't think we do ANY of this.

    1951

    you don't even need to go back that far actually.

    Feb 1974: Labour under Wilson (11,646,616) turfed out the Conservatives under Heath (11,872,180)

    That's a draw.
  • Up the line a poster referred to the simple fact that no other state has introduced an electoral college into choosing its head of state. There are two others, both with extremely archaic constitutions, and only one still in operation; 1) the Holy Roman Empire, and 2) the Vatican. Since 1787 there have been over 300 constitutions written, about a fifth in federal states, and none have copied the US Electoral College (or at least I've never encountered them).
  • Up the line a poster referred to the simple fact that no other state has introduced an electoral college into choosing its head of state. There are two others, both with extremely archaic constitutions, and only one still in operation; 1) the Holy Roman Empire, and 2) the Vatican. Since 1787 there have been over 300 constitutions written, about a fifth in federal states, and none have copied the US Electoral College (or at least I've never encountered them).

    It should be noted that 1) the College of Cardinals is structurally very different than the American electoral college and 2) the papacy is a monarchy (though not an hereditary monarchy). Depending on how loosely you want to define "electoral college" (and in this case you seem to be using to denote any panel or committee that chooses a successor to a head of state), the selection of the Dalai Lama also involves an electoral college of sorts.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    Martin54 wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    But there again he lost by a landslide in the last election.

    No, he did not. Not unless you reinvent some contest other than the one he was participating in, with a different scoring system to the one everyone knew was going to be used.

    Sorry? But yeah, he won in a gerrymandered, banana republic, rigged election.

    And you explain your own process for selecting a Prime Minister, how exactly?

    The US does indeed have a problem with gerrymandering, but not in the Presidential election. Not unless you completely redefine what gerrymandering actually is.

    Conservative – 13,941,086 votes
    Labour – 10,292,354
    Liberal Democrat – 3,675,342
    Scottish National Party – 1,242,380

    Share of 650 seats

    Conservative 43.6%
    Labour 32.2%
    Liberal Democrat 11.5%
    Scottish National Party 3.9%

    I don't know if the winning party's seats have not represented the largest popular vote. My money says not.

    I don't think we do ANY of this.

    Do you not understand how your own system works? The total figures you cited are completely irrelevant to the results. There is simply no way in which the total popular vote across the UK leads to the selection of the Prime Minister, and doing things like comparing the SNP vote in Scotland to the Conservative vote across the whole of the UK is a nonsense.

    You're hardly the first person to engage in such nonsense, but that doesn't make it any less nonsensical. The national vote in the UK is no more a meaningful statistic than it is in the US.

    Next you'll be telling me the results of tennis matches by telling me how many points each player won. It's a fundamental problem of confusing a particular statistic that doesn't determine a result with the rules of how the contest is actually determined.

    I confuse nothing at all. I merely note that there is a positive correlation between the popular vote and the seats in our FPTP system, whereas there is not in the US', where the gerrymandering and voter suppression is greater.

    But the claim is nonsensical when you compare the number of votes for the Conservative party, which stood in 635 seats, and Labour, which stood in 631, with the number of votes for the Scottish National Party which stood in 59.

    They are quite literally not engaged in the same contest. And you are pretending that they are. Why on earth would you try to assess the SNP vote by combining 59 contests where they did rather well with hundreds of contests where they got zero votes because they didn't even enter?

    I didn't.

    We have nested quotes, Martin. Everyone can still see that you did.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate

    Isn't the general point is that all electoral systems contain elements of bias? Gerrymandering, which has come to include the creation of majority/minority Congressional Districts, seen as progressive in a civil
    rights context, is a particular form of bias.

    Although the biases are intended to work in particular ways by the politicians who implement them, the biases do not always work the way they were intended and have a tendency to change over time. Those changes are due to demographic shifts, the growth of parties and changes to party systems, changes in electoral preferences and political circumstances.

    The purpose, operation, and credibility of the electoral college have changed over the years. So have its biases. Setting aside questions of the franchise and ballot access, which are very important, the partisan biases in the link between the popular vote and college vote have varied. The current problem, of course, is that the bias has produced a situation where the popular vote is producing a mismatch with the verdict of the College. Trump's win in 2016, however, while it was the consequence of bias, can hardly be described as a Republican gerrymander, but an unintended consequence of decisions taken in the eighteenth century for other purposes entirely.

    A further point: the democratic credibility of an electoral system has to be seen in the context of the political system as a whole. As the case of Israel demonstrates, a 'perfect' PR system can give inordinate influence to small parties strategically placed in the party system in the legislature.
  • edited October 2020
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Up the line a poster referred to the simple fact that no other state has introduced an electoral college into choosing its head of state. There are two others, both with extremely archaic constitutions, and only one still in operation; 1) the Holy Roman Empire, and 2) the Vatican. Since 1787 there have been over 300 constitutions written, about a fifth in federal states, and none have copied the US Electoral College (or at least I've never encountered them).

    It should be noted that 1) the College of Cardinals is structurally very different than the American electoral college and 2) the papacy is a monarchy (though not an hereditary monarchy). Depending on how loosely you want to define "electoral college" (and in this case you seem to be using to denote any panel or committee that chooses a successor to a head of state), the selection of the Dalai Lama also involves an electoral college of sorts.

    For me, an electoral college is a defined group of people or delegates whose primary purpose is to select the head of state. While the cardinals have other functions, I think this definition fits them-- they are likely happy that they can be more useful than the electors, who only have 2-3 days work, and who in many cases have no agency in their choice (and electors have no snazzy outfits, if one excepts their ID lanyards). I would distinguish the electors and the cardinals from the members of those legislatures who select the head of state (e.g., Germany).

    The Pope has the trappings of a baroque monarch, but I am not certain how he is not president-for-life of a republic, but then again I am not certain how Kim Jong-un is not a monarch (Kim III), The Dalai Lama is a very interesting case in international law-- I recall sitting through a meeting years ago of two groups of Canadian officials arguing this, not quite to the point of blows (blood on the floor of meeting room 7-East-T15!!), but to the point where I began to size up the opposing teams to see how they might fare at roller derby.

  • {Tangent re comments on the pope and the Dalai Lama.}

    Hmmm...thinking of the Dalai Lama at a roller derby. ;) Male or female skaters? Or mixed, if that's a thing?

    Something I was wondering: can the College of Cardinals fire a pope? Kick him out for heresy? They're likely unhappy over his pronouncement that LBG folk should be able to make a civil partnership, on the grounds that they need family, too.

    I read that if the DL weren't the DL, he'd be considered a heretic. (Mentioned in The Jew In The Lotus by Joel Kamenetz, IIRC. Really good non-fiction book.)
  • I don't think that one could gerrymander the selection of the Dalai Lama, but it could certainly be fiddled, and there have been some reincarnate lama selections of late which some say have been manipulated by the Chinese authorities. If they had any sense, and my two direct observations of them suggests quite otherwise, they would sit down with the Dalai Lama and work out a selection protocol, and limit controversy over the result. But putting a crown on the Irish tricolour is far more likely.

    I would distinguish gerrymandering from packing, which has always been a factor with the College of Cardinals, particularly as pontiffs sense the flashing exit sign, and do their best to perpetuate their policies.

    I do not think that RC canonists admit of the possibility of a pontiff being a heretic, and there is no mechanism for impeachment or removal. There was a serious attempt on Paul VI in Manila, and S. J2P2's survival is well-known. The concern has been more on the lines of what to do with a pope disabled by senility and attendant dementia, more than by the general enfeeblement as has affected several popes.
  • Blogger Paul Campos has some thoughts on the electoral college.
    When I was a wee lad, it was taken for granted that a presidential candidate winning the election without winning even plurality of the actual vote would be a Really Bad Thing, and quite possibly even a full-blown constitutional crisis. But it hadn’t happened in modern times, and we kept getting lucky.

    <snip>

    Then of course we got 2000. Somehow, all the argument over the Florida vote seemed to obscure that W had gotten less votes nationwide, period. Not talking about that became part of the whole elite media consensus that there should be no more talk about the legitimacy of the 2000 election, especially after 9/11.

    Then in 2004 we basically had a repeat of 1976. Kerry lost the vote by three million, but reversing a few tens of thousands of ballots in the Worst State Ever would have won him the election.

    I have a more than sneaking suspicion that, if that had actually happened, the absurdity of the Electoral College would have all of a sudden become a truly pressing national issue. I mean a man who lost the white vote by sixteen million ballots would have become president, even though he didn’t even win enough votes from the Others to come close to overcoming that gigantic margin! I’m pretty sure if something like that had happened we wouldn’t have been hearing too much about the Wisdom of the Framers and It’s a Republic Not a Democracy.

    But that didn’t happen, so everything was still A-OK. The next two presidential elections went by without a similar dynamic arising, so in a culture with the attention span of a fruit fly the whole topic just pretty much disappeared completely again.

    Finally . . . 2016. The combination of “electing” an impossibly corrupt imbecilic authoritarian freak show of a human being, even though he got nearly three million fewer votes than the first woman to be a major presidential candidate, was finally too much for a lot of people, even in the cesspool of reactionary centrism that has been our elite media for so many years.

    The elite consensus of my tender years — that becoming president even though you got millions of fewer votes than another candidate was actually a terrible, unacceptable thing — didn’t suddenly become the consensus again or anything, but at least it once again became a respectable point of view.

    <snip>

    And here we get to what should be a shocking fact, even though we’re inured to it by inertia and the reactionary ideology that every American is taught from birth about the magical properties of our political system.

    Donald Trump is going to lose the 2020 presidential election by millions of votes.

    This isn’t speculation: it is known. Everyone acknowledges that Trump has no chance of winning the vote. It would be a monumental surprise if he loses the vote by “only” two million voters. But if he loses by “only” two million voters — think for a moment about what two million people actually means — he is almost certain to “win” the presidency again.

    In what world is this acceptable, even if you leave aside the unique horribleness of Donald Trump himself? The answer is that it isn’t.

    It seems like one of America's two major political parties has given up on the underlying premise of democracy (convincing more people that your ideas are better than your opponent's) and have simply adopted a strategy of gaming the system. This seems to be the case at all levels, not just presidential politics. The Republican party has become the party of gerrymandering and voter suppression, and is getting more open about that fact every day.

    It seems very dangerous to the future of democracy when one of the two major parties has abandoned all pretense of supporting it. Majority rule may not be sufficient in itself for democracy, as some here have claimed, but it is necessary.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    I didn't thank Croesos for unearthing from the old Oblivion the previous thread on the electoral college. Trying to get some first principles into this current debate may be a mugs game but I laughed a lot at Tom Clune's comment from 2012
    Originally posted by Barnabas62:
    So far as the GOP is concerned, the duty of the opposition is to oppose, but not to be stupid about it.
    Being stupid about it may not be their duty, but it is their pleasure...

    --Tom Clune[/quote]

    More seriously, from Croesos's OP, I think he asked a couple of really important questions about electoral systems in general and the Electoral College in particular. Here's the quote.
    A good place to start is by explaining what it is, how it's supposed to work, how it actually works, and whether it's still a good way to pick the U.S. President a quarter-millennium after it was invented.

    Here are the general questions

    What is it supposed to do?
    How does it work in practice?

    Representative democracy in the UK (first past the post systems) is supposed to do two things.

    To elect an MP who is accountable to the electors of a specific constituency

    To elect an MP to represent the views and needs of that constituency in Parliament.

    The 650 Constituencies in the UK are of different sizes (varying from 21 thousand in the Outer Hebrides to 113 thousand in the IOW) so an MP in one may represent a lot more people than an MP in another. Opinions vary about whether this fair. The development and modification of electoral boundaries in the UK has taken a very long time (many centuries) and does not seem to me to have been governed by clear principles about what is fair overall.

    On a first principles basis I think constituency boundaries should include relatively similar size populations but I much prefer the idea of representative democracies with one representative per constituency. It is the party system with its controls which has probably damaged that notion beyond repair. I can accept the inequities of the system from the perspective of minor parties if representatives are prepared to put constituency needs ahead of party needs. That’s not the present system in practice. So, reluctantly, I have moved to prefer PR on the grounds that it leads to coalitions, thereby diluting the power of the larger parties. That leads to larger constituency boundaries and multiple constituency representation. Not ideal but it curbs the power of the party machine.

    But for Presidential elections I cannot see any reason why one citizen’s vote should count more than any other. So I really see the Electoral College as being fundamentally unfair. You are electing a President of all the people.
  • I entirely agree, a coalition of parties co-operating for the common good should be a far stronger form of government than the current UK model. Even better, get rid of the whips and let Parliamentarians vote (by secret ballot) according to how well the case for (or against) a proposal is presented taking into account views of constituents and their own political convictions, force them to be thinking human beings rather than sheep to be herded through the lobby as the small number in leadership say they should. Any form of voting reform which increases the number of parties represented (and, almost by definition reduces the chances of any single party having a large majority) would be an improvement in my book - but the mainstream media and big-two parties will label that a "weak government", so it also needs to be linked to reform of Parliamentary practice such as secret voting by MPs.
    When a candidate agrees to stand for a particular party, they usually get elected on the strength of the popularity. They also agree to accept the party whip.

    The secret ballot would only be appropriate if everyone stood as independents but even then the constituents would be entitled to know how their MP had voted on each issue.

    I am content with the current system in the UK as long as the size of constituencies are, as far as practicable, equal.

  • A candidate standing for a particular party indicates where they stand on the political spectrum, what sort of policies they'd be likely to support etc. And, as a result the electorate have something to go on to make their decision given that the vast majority will not know the candidates, not attend a hustings or read a manifesto (especially if each candidate has their own manifesto, which would be the case for an independent). Of course, it would be expected that an MP votes in accordance with the policies outlined in the manifesto they stood on - and if they don't entirely agree with their party position they should make that known.

    I'm going to withdraw my suggestion of a secret ballot. As I said, it eliminates the power of the party to sanction MPs who use their brains and vote accordingly rather than simply tow the party line. But, and this is the big thing I forgot all about, it's also important for the public to know how their representatives have voted.
  • Furtive GanderFurtive Gander Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    Alan: "I'm going to withdraw my suggestion of a secret ballot."

    I can see both sides; I agree with Telford that constiturents have a right to know how their MP voted but you're also right Alan that too much 'strong-arming' goes on and they should be able to use their knowledge or judgement. So maybe they should vote as now and at the same time have a secret ballot on the same issue. The public vote would count and the secret ballot would show the extent to which MPs were being pressured by party whips to vote against their consciences.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Majority rule may not be sufficient in itself for democracy, as some here have claimed, but it is necessary.

    So Lincoln was wrong, then.

    You seem quite unable to parse that 'majority rule' doesn't even mean anything unless you identify what it is that you require a majority of. None of the presidential elections you're complaining about lacked a majority. They just involved a majority of a different thing than the thing that you think it's somehow self-evident the majority ought to be derived from.

  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    It's not self-evident though. Why are children excluded? Why are resident non-citizens? Why are certain people who can't vote excluded, like prisoners? What about people who never enrolled, or just didn't vote?

    And why is federalism completely irrelevant for the head of the federal government?

    I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of American Presidential elections where no-one actually got the majority of the population to vote for them. Clinton got less than 66 million votes in the last one, when the population of the USA is several hundred million. And voter turnout estimates are usually around 55%. So "I'm not picking either of you" won. All this stuff about "majority rule" doesn't actually mean a majority of the population, does it? No, it just means that you've picked a set of parameters and criteria without spelling them out, because you don't even realise that you've picked them.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    Might I also note, given that the thread is headed "gerrymandering", that ACTUAL gerrymandering as occurs in many other American elections involves deliberately re-engineering electoral boundaries to fulfil your criterion for majority rule, in each electoral district.

    Whereupon you'll start saying "oh no no, but I meant a different kind of majority".

    Indeed you did. But what you can't articulate properly is the reason why some majorities are okay with you and others are not.

    Here's a key difference between Presidential elections and, say, congressional elections, and the reason why I think any attempt to lump them all together is fundamentally bad: the 'gaming of the system' you're claiming is completely different. When it comes to setting district boundaries then sure, I'd accept that's gaming the system: that's one side of the contest setting the rules of the contest to favour itself.

    But for Presidential elections, what you're complaining about is the Republicans understanding the rules of the game, set LONG before the current demographic map existed, and then winning the game with rules as set. That's not gaming the system, that's playing the game within the system. It's not a Republican plot, it's the same basic rules that existed when the South was pretty well ruled by Democrats.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    Dave W wrote: »

    That was literally a different thread.
    System wrote: »
    This discussion was created from comments split from: If Trump loses by a landslide ....
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    A change of name made it no longer pointless? This thread is literally most of the comments from the previous thread cut and pasted into a thread with a different name.

    On the topic at hand - why do you think gerrymandering is "gaming the system" rather than "playing the game within the system"? The party doing the gerrymandering would argue that they're acting entirely within the rules of the game.

    And to be clear, when you say something is "gaming the system" do you mean that it is bad or wrong or at least objectionable in some way?
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    orfeo

    Do you see anything wrong with the first principles argument that the President is President of all the people and therefore each person’s vote should count equally.

    The EC system produces battleground states which I think distorts both debates and policy arguments. No previous President has been as unashamedly partisan and base-conscious as Trump and maybe the EC system has contributed to that more than an all-votes-equal-value system would?
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate

    I thoroughly agree with Orfeo. It may be that the EC is currently working in a manner that many might consider perverse, but that is not to say the result in 2016 was gerrymandered by Trump and the Republicans. It was not a gerrymander at all, but the outcome of a sensible strategy to win according electoral rules dating back in their essence to the eighteenth century. If getting a majority of the popular vote had been the object, then the Trump campaign would have been differently- to win more votes in blue states, for example.

    Gerrymandering, which relates to the configuration of Congressional and State Districting, is a live issue, and is practised by both Democratic and Republican state authorities.

    ISTM that dislike of Trump, a sentiment I share, is clouding a proper discussion of this important topic.

    Incidentally, bias in the college could shift dramatically if long-term demographic developments finally shift Texas into the Democrat camp.
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    Kwesi wrote: »
    If getting a majority of the popular vote had been the object, then the Trump campaign would have been differently- to win more votes in blue states, for example.
    Well, yes. The hope of small-d democrats is that a more democratic system would induce parties and candidates to propose and run on policies that are actually favorably viewed by popular majorities. A more equitable system doesn't mean the Republicans would be doomed to extinction; they could instead find alternatives to their current obsession with handing out tax cuts to the rich and restricting access to health insurance.
    ISTM that dislike of Trump, a sentiment I share, is clouding a proper discussion of this important topic.
    I don't think so. The present Republican advantage in the EC and the senate has nothing to do with Trump, and conservatives have a history of voter suppression that long predates him.
    Incidentally, bias in the college could shift dramatically if long-term demographic developments finally shift Texas into the Democrat camp.
    So maybe you don't thoroughly agree with Orfeo? Calling for the election of a president to be determined by a popular majority needn't be mostly due to self-interest.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Dave W: .... and conservatives have a history of voter suppression that long predates him.

    Voter suppression is not gerrymandering.
    Dave W: So maybe you don't thoroughly agree with Orfeo? Calling for the election of a president to be determined by a popular majority needn't be mostly due to self-interest.

    I must confess I hadn't picked this up. My remarks were related narrowly to the question of gerrymandering. I don't have strong opinions about EC reform. Direct election of the President raises a whole host of issues, including the introduction of a federally-controlled process of registration and voting that doesn't have a chance in hell of being adopted in the foreseeable future.
  • Barnabas62 wrote: »
    On a first principles basis I think constituency boundaries should include relatively similar size populations but I much prefer the idea of representative democracies with one representative per constituency. It is the party system with its controls which has probably damaged that notion beyond repair. I can accept the inequities of the system from the perspective of minor parties if representatives are prepared to put constituency needs ahead of party needs. That’s not the present system in practice. So, reluctantly, I have moved to prefer PR on the grounds that it leads to coalitions, thereby diluting the power of the larger parties. That leads to larger constituency boundaries and multiple constituency representation. Not ideal but it curbs the power of the party machine.

    Political parties, or "the party machine" if you prefer, are shaped by the type of electoral system in which they have to function. A single ballot, winner take all plurality system tends to favor the existence of exactly two political parties. The penalty for vote splitting tends to force non-antagonistic interest groups to consolidate their votes in order to achieve at least a plurality. A proportional representation or ranked choice or multi-representative district system would allow the practical existence of more political parties, but I'm not sure that's necessarily beneficial. It might lead to political gridlock.

    One of the things that's not very well understood is that, like a parliamentary system, American politics is about forming a coalition government. The difference is that the coalition is made before the election, in the form of political parties. For example, the Democratic Party as it's currently constituted isn't an ideologically unified entity like many parties in other countries, it's a coalition of factions. Presently the major ones are African Americans, Hispanic Americans, women's rights groups, labor unions, and liberals/progressives. There is obviously some overlap between these groups. The key to building a successful party/coalition is getting enough factions to constitute a majority (or at least a plurality) without recruiting factions that have competing agendas. (e.g. there's no obvious reason why an anti-abortion faction can't ally with either labor or big business, but there's a pretty obvious reason they can't ally with pro-choice activists.)
    orfeo wrote: »
    It's not self-evident though. Why are children excluded?

    The basic premise underlying most civil law is that children lack mental capacity. It's why they're not able to legally consent to sex, why they can't enlist in the military, why they can't sign legally binding contracts, and why they can't vote. It's very consistent.
    orfeo wrote: »
    Why are resident non-citizens?

    The premise is that Americans should elect American elected officials. Allowing citizens of foreign governments is problematic not only for the obvious reasons but because it allows the current government to game the system by setting immigration policy. This was not always the case. Some American jurisdictions, mostly in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, allow foreigners to vote. Most of them didn't make a distinction between resident and non-resident foreigners largely because such a distinction didn't exist in American law at the time.
    orfeo wrote: »
    What about people who never enrolled, or just didn't vote?

    People who, of their own volition, chose not to register or chose not to vote are excluded at their own insistence. Those who have had their otherwise valid registration or vote invalidated by an outside party have been cheated.
    orfeo wrote: »
    And why is federalism completely irrelevant for the head of the federal government?

    Because the federal government represents the people. It says so right there at the beginning of the U.S. Constitution in really big letters so you can't have missed it: "We the People of the United States . . . " There is an American constitution that starts off "We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, . . . ", but it's not the Constitution of the United States of America.

    I'm getting very tired of folks trying to read a neo-Confederate understanding of American federalism into the U.S. Constitution.
    orfeo wrote: »
    I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of American Presidential elections where no-one actually got the majority of the population to vote for them.

    There are four American presidential elections where the winner of the electoral college receive did not receive even a plurality of the votes (i.e. they got fewer votes than one of their opponents): 1876 (Rutherford B. Hayes), 1884 (Benjamin Harrison), 2000 (George W. Bush), and 2016 (Donald Trump). I'm eager to hear your reasoning why Samuel Tilden, Grover Cleveland, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton would have been such disasters for the American Republic, relative to their opponents.
    orfeo wrote: »
    But for Presidential elections, what you're complaining about is the Republicans understanding the rules of the game, set LONG before the current demographic map existed, and then winning the game with rules as set. That's not gaming the system, that's playing the game within the system. It's not a Republican plot, it's the same basic rules that existed when the South was pretty well ruled by Democrats.

    I'm unconvinced by your advocacy that Jim Crow-style voter disenfranchisement is perfectly consistent with democracy. Can you flesh this out a bit? I'll grant it's very consistent with your stated belief that some votes should count for more than others, but a little more detail would be nice.
    Kwesi wrote: »
    I thoroughly agree with Orfeo. It may be that the EC is currently working in a manner that many might consider perverse, but that is not to say the result in 2016 was gerrymandered by Trump and the Republicans.

    For my part I'm perplexed as to why a discussion primarily about the electoral college was given the title "Gerrymandering" when split off from the previous thread. Seems inapt.
  • edited October 2020
    Kwesi wrote: »
    I thoroughly agree with Orfeo. It may be that the EC is currently working in a manner that many might consider perverse, but that is not to say the result in 2016 was gerrymandered by Trump and the Republicans. It was not a gerrymander at all, but the outcome of a sensible strategy to win according electoral rules dating back in their essence to the eighteenth century. If getting a majority of the popular vote had been the object, then the Trump campaign would have been differently- to win more votes in blue states, for example.
    *snip*

    I would disagree on one point; the electoral college was never intended nor structured to cope with a rigid party structure. I am quite certain that the framers assumed that political chicanery would manifest itself, but they likely envisaged gatherings in each state's capital of experienced public figures and local bigwigs who would send their votes off. This was quickly replaced in a few elections by the party slates and the 1796 and 1800 elections led to the tinkering of the 12th amendment (where separate votes would be held for the President and the Vice-President, previously the VP being the runner-up). And of course, in most states for a few years, the electors were selected by state legislatures.

    My point is that the framers' intent never really manifested itself aside from isolated examples, and the dysfunction/perversion of the electoral college has only accidentally not warped election results until quite recently, when the warping has now become so frequent as to have become a characteristic of the process. Apologies for the complicated sentence, but I think it's clear(ish).
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    Kwesi wrote: »
    Dave W: .... and conservatives have a history of voter suppression that long predates him.

    Voter suppression is not gerrymandering.
    But gerrymandering is at least a close cousin to voter suppression. And what makes you think the current dispute over gerrymandering (distinct from complaints about the EC) has anything at all to do with Donald Trump, aside perhaps from one sloppy, ill-informed post?
    Dave W: So maybe you don't thoroughly agree with Orfeo? Calling for the election of a president to be determined by a popular majority needn't be mostly due to self-interest.

    I must confess I hadn't picked this up. My remarks were related narrowly to the question of gerrymandering. I don't have strong opinions about EC reform. Direct election of the President raises a whole host of issues, including the introduction of a federally-controlled process of registration and voting that doesn't have a chance in hell of being adopted in the foreseeable future.
    I don't see why any reason why something like that should be necessary - it isn't required for elections to any other federal office.
  • I would disagree on one point; the electoral college was never intended nor structured to cope with a rigid party structure. I am quite certain that the framers assumed that political chicanery would manifest itself, but they likely envisaged gatherings in each state's capital of experienced public figures and local bigwigs who would send their votes off. This was quickly replaced in a few elections by the party slates and the 1796 and 1800 elections led to the tinkering of the 12th amendment (where separate votes would be held for the President and the Vice-President, previously the VP being the runner-up).

    I disagree here. The Twelfth Amendment (i.e. the electoral college as it currently exists) was written explicitly to handle the emergence of the First Party System. Whether or not this counts as "rigid" I'm not sure. You'd have to define that term. But in any case, the electoral college has been intended since 1804 onward to accommodate the existence political parties.
  • I fail to see how gerrymandering has anything to do with the presidential elections. The number of congressional seats of a state is based on the census and a formula agreed by federal law. Basically, as the population grows the seats are apportioned accordingly. Each state has at least one representative but if one state sees a decline in the population they may lose a seat, and if another state sees an increase in population, they may gain a seat.

    That happens at the federal level.

    Gerrymandering happens at the state level. Once the state knows how many congressional seats are allotted to it, they can then divide their apportioned seats according to population. About half the states use a nonpartisan commission to determine the congressional districts in the state. The other half do it by the legislatures which tend to divide the populations up by partisan neighborhoods. Sometimes the federal courts can get involved if someone claims they are in a class that is being discriminated against--say if a black neighborhood is divided up into two or three mostly white districts, diluting the black vote.

    The electoral college is based on the number of congressmen and senators a state has. The state automatically has two senate seats and then there is the number of congressional seats a state has. For instance, California has two senate seats and 42 congressional resulting in 44 total electoral votes. Only Nebraska and Maine will allow an electoral vote for each congressional district it has. Now I would grant I can see a time when that can make a big difference in a very close election. But that will not be this election.
    ___

    In other matters, stetson wrote:
    ie. the country with a Bill Of Rights unencumbered by a Notwithstanding Clause, federal investigators claiming jurisdiction over post-office robberies in Wyoming(*), social programs(granted, sparser than what is available in Canada) administered entirely from DC, and a federal Department Of Education which, while not the main source of funding and curriculum, has more input over schooling than anyone in Ottawa does.

    This is not quite right. Each state constitution in effect has a similar bill of rights for the state, the US constitution Bill of Rights limits what the federal government can or cannot do in relation to the states and individual freedoms. The state constitution limits what the state can do in relation to individual freedoms. If an individual in a state feels his or her rights are being violated at the state level, they first have to go through the state courts. If the state courts fail to redress their grievances, then they can go to the federal courts for further repeal--this happens in most capital cases.

    However, the president can only pardon a person over a federal crime. The state still has the right to prosecute someone if a state crime is committed. Take the Trump enterprise. While the federal government is refusing to pursue criminal indictments against Trump, New York state has every right to pursue charges against Trump under the state laws.

    The FBI does indeed get involved in post office robberies in Wyoming because the post office is a federal agency. Those crimes are against the United States. They also have jurisdiction over crimes committed on federal property. Thus, they can get involved in a crime that is committed in a national forest or even native American reservations. Otherwise, they will only get involved in an investigation if it involves a federal law violation or if invited by a local agency to participate--local agencies really want to avoid involving the feds.

    Point of fact, while the US federal government administers social security and medicare, nearly all other welfare programs are administered by the states. The federal government will set up certain expectations, but it is up to the state to determine how it will meet those minimum expectations.

    Same with the Department of Education. It dispurses federal funds to the state and the state will allot the funds to local school districts. Again the US Department of Education will set up expectations, such as the new math program, but ultimately it is the local school district will determine which materials and methods it will use to teach that program. Curiously, though, the Texas Board of Education has a bigger say than the federal government in what textbooks will be used nationwide because of their purchasing power. If a textbook is not approved by the TBE it likely will not bet published nationwide. It is a very long and complicated story.
  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    This is not quite right. Each state constitution in effect has a similar bill of rights for the state, the US constitution Bill of Rights limits what the federal government can or cannot do in relation to the states and individual freedoms. The state constitution limits what the state can do in relation to individual freedoms.

    There is also the incorporation of the federal Bill of Right to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment. The relevant text is:
    . . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; . . .

    In other words, under the Fourteenth Amendment states aren't allowed to violate their citizens' rights in ways that the federal government can't.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    A brief note on thread title. I agree it was a bit inapt. The Hostly problem that the discussion of the fairness of electoral processes included not just the EC but also comments about the fairness of other electoral processes in other countries. The sprawling tangent was initiated by a post asserting gerrymandering. So I just grabbed that as a title.

    I can split the thread again, quite happily, and will do so later today when I have more time.

    Barnabas62
    Purgatory Host
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    Meanwhile I’ve changed the title to Various Views on the fairness of election processes. That’s to cover what’s left after the EC stuff is split off.

    B62 Purg Host
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    This is not quite right. Each state constitution in effect has a similar bill of rights for the state, the US constitution Bill of Rights limits what the federal government can or cannot do in relation to the states and individual freedoms. The state constitution limits what the state can do in relation to individual freedoms.

    There is also the incorporation of the federal Bill of Right to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment. The relevant text is:
    . . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; . . .

    In other words, under the Fourteenth Amendment states aren't allowed to violate their citizens' rights in ways that the federal government can't.

    And it is on the basis of the 14th amendment that a citizen can appeal to the federal courts if the state courts do not give redress.

    Thank you for that addition.
  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    This is not quite right. Each state constitution in effect has a similar bill of rights for the state, the US constitution Bill of Rights limits what the federal government can or cannot do in relation to the states and individual freedoms. The state constitution limits what the state can do in relation to individual freedoms.

    There is also the incorporation of the federal Bill of Right to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment. The relevant text is:
    . . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; . . .

    In other words, under the Fourteenth Amendment states aren't allowed to violate their citizens' rights in ways that the federal government can't.

    And it is on the basis of the 14th amendment that a citizen can appeal to the federal courts if the state courts do not give redress.
    Or simply sue in federal courts to start with. A claim involving violations of the Fourteenth Amendment can be brought in state or federal court.

    You can’t “appeal” from state court to federal court, except for appeals from a state supreme court (by whatever name a state may call their highest court) to the US Supreme Court, which appeals are limited to questions of federal law, whether constitutional, statutory or regulatory.

  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    This is not quite right. Each state constitution in effect has a similar bill of rights for the state, the US constitution Bill of Rights limits what the federal government can or cannot do in relation to the states and individual freedoms. The state constitution limits what the state can do in relation to individual freedoms.

    There is also the incorporation of the federal Bill of Right to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment. The relevant text is:
    . . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; . . .

    In other words, under the Fourteenth Amendment states aren't allowed to violate their citizens' rights in ways that the federal government can't.

    And it is on the basis of the 14th amendment that a citizen can appeal to the federal courts if the state courts do not give redress.
    Or simply sue in federal courts to start with. A claim involving violations of the Fourteenth Amendment can be brought in state or federal court.

    You can’t “appeal” from state court to federal court, except for appeals from a state supreme court (by whatever name a state may call their highest court) to the US Supreme Court, which appeals are limited to questions of federal law, whether constitutional, statutory or regulatory.

    Point taken. I think somewhere I had made the comment that a person can appeal to the US Supreme Court if the state supreme court denies the application and then I backed off from that. Thanks for reminding me.
  • An interesting election was the contest between Hayes vs Tilden in 1876. This was the first time since the civil war that the Democrats through Tilden thought they could win back the White House. Everything was down to the wire. It even went to a commission appointed by Congress to settle the matter. The commission had 8 Representatives and 7 Democrats. Needless to say, the commission voted 8 to 7 to declare Hayes the president. The Dems objected and were ready for war, but a compromise of 1877 agreed to let Hayes become president if he would end the Reconstruction period, giving the Democrats control of the South again.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    edited October 2020
    Barnabas62 wrote: »
    A brief note on thread title. I agree it was a bit inapt. The Hostly problem that the discussion of the fairness of electoral processes included not just the EC but also comments about the fairness of other electoral processes in other countries. The sprawling tangent was initiated by a post asserting gerrymandering. So I just grabbed that as a title.

    I can split the thread again, quite happily, and will do so later today when I have more time.

    Barnabas62
    Purgatory Host

    Apologies to Croesos and others

    I began a thread separation to pull out Electoral College posts but found a significant number of cross-over posts considering both EC and other electoral practices. The split process does not allow me to duplicate posts in different threads. I think we are going to have to accept the sprawl of the posts as representative of a more general interest in the fairness of electoral processes. In short we let the tangent run too long for the split process to be effective.

    But it is true that the main focus in most of the posts is the EC. To reflect this I'll change the title again.

    Not one of my greatest Hosting achievements!

    Barnabas62
    Purgatory Host

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