Do You Understand the Electoral College?

[Draggingtree]

:

Do You Understand the Electoral College?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6s7jB6-GoU

Prager University: Do you understand what the Electoral College is? Or how it works? Or why America uses it to elect its presidents instead of just using a straight popular vote? Author, lawyer and Electoral College expert Tara Ross does, and she explains that to understand the Electoral College is to understand American democracy.

 

 

**************************

With voices on the left crying for abolishing the electoral college (although that would take an amendment to the Constitution--which perhaps Mr. Holder needs a refresher on too), it is important to refresh why we have an electoral college. The system is not broken, it is working just as the Founders intended.

More @ EBL

[Draggingtree]

11/19

Why the Constitution Matters — for Dummies

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 1:32 pm /2016

 

I don’t really mean “for dummies” — that’s just a simple way of capturing the concept in a headline. What I mean to do in this post is offer a couple of simple arguments for the importance of the Constitution, that you can try out on anyone, no matter their level of sophistication.

 

I was inspired by the spirit of Andrea Ruth’s post with that eye-catching map of why the Electoral College matters. (Check it out if you haven’t already seen it on social media.) I don’t have any awesome infographics, unfortunately . . . but I do have a couple of arguments for the importance of the Constitution that I tried out on my 16-year-old daughter, and they seemed to convince her.

 

I suggest trying these two simple arguments with any reasonable and open-minded people you know who are skeptics of the importance of the Constitution:

 

1. The principles of the Founding Fathers helped eliminate slavery. My daughter, who asked me why the Constitution was important, http://patterico.com/2016/11/19/why-the-constitution-matters-for-dummies/

 

 

[Draggingtree]

[Draggingtree]

True Reform

Scott P. Richert - JANUARY 01, 2001

 

Disenfranchising the Political Parties

 

The Electoral College is an archaic institution designed by men who felt that they could not trust the people at large to choose the president—or so we are told every four years by the most ignorant members of the Fourth Estate. While it may have been true (the argument continues) that the people were relatively uninformed when the Constitution was adopted, we cannot say the same thing today. After all, we now have CNN and C-SPAN and NPR and the New York Times and the Washington Post.

 

Any objection the Founding Fathers could have had to popular election must surely vanish in the face of these organs of enlightenment. Any objection, that is, except the real one. The Framers of the Constitution, although undoubtedly skeptical of the ability of the people at large to decide on national affairs, were not opposed to popular election per se. They allowed for direct election of the House of Representatives, and they included in the Constitution certain requirements for being able to vote—not simply because they thought suffrage should be restricted (which, of course, they did), but because they wanted to ensure that states could not impose more strict suffrage requirements in national elections.

 

Why, then, did the Framers establish the Electoral College? A quick glance at James Madison's notes on the Constitutional Convention reveals the answer. In their consideration of the election of the president, as in so many other areas, the Framers were concerned with two problems: mitigating the influence of faction and preserving the sovereignty of the states.

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2001/February/25/2/magazine/article/10827185/

[Draggingtree]

Roll Over, James Madison

Clyde Wilson - JANUARY 01, 2001

 

To anyone who has spent some time with the Framers and ratifiers of the U.S. Constitution, most current talk about that document seems not about the Constitution at all but about some fanciful construct of wishful thinking, accumulated misunderstandings, and successful usurpations. This is certainly so in regard to the recent discussions of the Electoral College.

 

True, the Electoral College was, as is now complained of, in part designed to take the selection of president a remove or two from the people. The reason for this was not to thwart the people's will but to induce deliberation and mature consideration of the public good and the virtues of candidates by persons who were in a position to have some solid knowledge of the matter. This design, of course, has been rendered null by the machinations of political parties. Electors are now anonymous partyhacks whose names often do not even appear on the ballot and who would not know what you are talking about if you mentioned deliberation and judgment.

 

But an even more important consideration in the design of the Electoral College was the representation of the states. There was no possibility of a mass vote, since each state set its own qualifications for the franchise and chose the electors in its own manner—by the legislature or by districts in the beginning. States no longer set their franchise: The federal government now requires us to allow 18-year-olds to vote and to register aliens when they show up at the drivers' license bureau.

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2001/February/25/2/magazine/article/10827184/

[Draggingtree]

Electoral College Revolt Brewing?

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye - 11/23/2016 at 10:00am

 

As half the country learned two weeks ago, we do not select our president by popular vote, our president is selected by Electors in our Electoral College; a safeguard against pure democratic rule.

 

As far as modern history is concerned, Elector’s votes are typically congruent with their respective state’s popular vote.

Now, a handful of Democratic electors are threatening to vote their conscience:

 

At least a half-dozen Democratic electors have signed onto an attempt to block Donald Trump from winning an Electoral College majority, an effort designed not only to deny Trump the presidency but also to undermine the legitimacy of the institution.

http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/11/electoral-college-revolt-brewing/#more-192521

[Draggingtree]

Let's Expand the Electoral College

 

• 

0 Views

15 Comments

Tags U.S. HistoryPolitical Theory

19 hours agoRyan McMaken

Far from being outdated and past their time, the ideas behind the electoral college are greatly underutilized. The electoral college is thought by many to be somehow uniquely American, but this is not the case. Similar mechanisms — sometimes called "double-majority" systems — have been used in many different times and places in political history.

 

The current confusion about the mechanics of the electoral college appear to be largely a function of the fact that it is now widely forgotten that the United States is intended to be collection of independent states, and not a unitary political unit.

 

For an illustration of why a system like the electoral college is so essential, we can look to the European Union. Consider, for example, if the European Union were to hold a union-wide election for a single chief executive. (The EU does not hold such an election, however, because the EU is controlled by appointees, and because there is no president in the conventional sense.)

https://mises.org/blog/lets-expand-electoral-college