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Senate Democrats push plan to abolish Electoral College after Trump win (thehill.com)
7 points by thunderbong 4 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments



These performative "plans" will only backfire on them. Just like with the filibuster and all the idiotic process rules in both houses.


Actually, I think it makes sense from the point of view of making every vote equal. The Electoral College never made sense to me, unless we are talking about introducing subtle interference into the election process.

Chance of success is practically zero, though.


>Actually, I think it makes sense from the point of view of making every vote equal

As I understand it, they weren't supposed to represent everybody equally at the individual level, but to give representation to the 50 states, not have big states swallow small ones.


Among other rationales, the intent behind the Electoral College was to give outsized political representation to slaveowning states to keep them in the union, because otherwise a popular vote would give a demographic advantage to Northern abolitionists and free Black people.

Presumably in the Year of our Lord 2024 the preservation of slavery as an institution is no longer an issue for the South, and a simple cost benefit analysis between remaining part of the world's last superpower or Balkanizing would be sufficient to keep them in.


>Presumably in the Year of our Lord 2024 the preservation of slavery as an institution is no longer an issue for the South

The preservation of the independence of states and their say in federal level can very well still be...

One of those "among other rationales", summarily dismissed for a cherry-picked one...


what the democrats don't understand (or they do, but purposefully ignore) is that the united states is not a state, it's not a democracy. the united states are 50 independent states united under a federated government. the people in each independent state votes on who they want as president. so the "democracy" in the united states exists at the state level, not at the federated government level.


It's not "performative".

Everyone recognizes that the EC is broken and harmful. Getting rid of it would be a huge accomplishment.




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