Petition to abolish the Electoral College

[Angrboda]

Mob psychology isn't relevant.  Quit quoting propaganda and apply some reason.  Neither the EC nor the popular vote are effective brakes on a misinformed or corrupt electorate.

Mob psychology is very much relevant to voting.

Yet another topic you obviously know nothing about. Describing voters as a mob is figurative language, not literal. It's propaganda, period. Attempting to appeal to emotion instead of the truth.

[The Grand Nudger]

Spare me the emotion shit - there's nothing wrong with emotions, lol. It's a concern trolling argument when it's leveraged by people who have emotions and don't like what the other side is doing.

You don't like what the other side is doing, you think that you are the majority. You aren't....but you are joined in this apprehension by the other guys past and present, who resent any way that a minority can stymy their desires - and this is why they set to souring the ec in the first place. They knew that if they didn't control it, it could eradicate them even if they managed to completely suppress the vote and present as a (presumably false)majority.

...that's what happened to hitlery in 2016. A statistical minority convinced that the majority got it wrong went the other way with it. They've smartly taken the one thing that can do them in, and used it against the people who would rightly do them in. They do this with everything, and the left keeps stepping on it like so many rakes. They took civil rights so they could prosecute colleges for not picking up enough whites. A few years from now (and not many) the growing well of white victimization believed by the majority will have leftists, yes....leftists, asserting that we need to scrap civil rights legislation to be less racist.

[Silver]

I think this calls for an epic facepalm.

[Angrboda]

That may as well be, but since we're not proposing that the minority inflict tyranny, but rather, that they use what tools we've created to prevent it even when the majority demands it...what's the problem?

The mechanism isn't broken, it's doing exactly what it's meant to do.  The People are broken - and because of this, they're going to use anything to get what they want.  I want to point out, again, that republics and the ec are the final barrier to every moment in history...and there have been many, in which The People decide to go all in on horrid shit.

That's true whether they're the majority or the minority. People don't become wise saints by being in the minority. Quite the contrary, tyrannies of the minority have always been the worst kind. You can see this playing itself out today where a voting minority, right-wing GOP supporters, are engaged in all sorts of destructive and anti-democratic acts, not because they are the majority, but actually because they are the minority.

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Spare me the emotion shit - there's nothing wrong with emotions, lol.  It's a concern trolling argument when it's leveraged by people who have emotions and don't like what the other side is doing.

You don't like what the other side is doing, you think that you are the majority.  You aren't....but you are joined in this apprehension by the other guys past and present, who resent any way that a minority can stymy their desires - and this is why they set to souring the ec in the first place.  They knew that if they didn't control it, it could eradicate them even if they managed to completely suppress the vote and present as a (presumably false)majority.

...that's what happened to hitlery in 2016.  A statistical minority convinced that the majority got it wrong went the other way with it.  They've smartly taken the one thing that can do them in, and used it against the people who would rightly do them in.  They do this with everything, and the left keeps stepping on it like so many rakes.  They took civil rights so they could prosecute colleges for not picking up enough whites.

Spare me the bullshit. The reason we discount propaganda is because it's contrary to reason. Like the saying that if they had evidence, they wouldn't need faith, if you had reasons and justification, you wouldn't be appealing to emotion. So spare me your crack-addled views on human nature.

[The Grand Nudger]

You mistake voting trends for principle. Vast swathes of the left support the things pointed at, when it;s in the gop platform, as The Bad Stuff. They just want a better rep for it, and the democratic party is endeavoring to supply them with that in it's grand bargain to lure swing voters. To build an even greater majority.

...but...lets not argue. Let's couch this in a hypothetical. Hypothetically, imagine that the majority is in the tank for horrible ideas. Are we, then, so confident that the tyranny of the minority would be worse? Is it, truly, the contention of republics and the ec, that their proper application is to enforce the tyranny of a minority in the first place? Or are we, instead, looking at another good thing that the assholes broke, then turned to us saying "well, see, it's broke, gotta get rid of it" like so much obamacare?

You wanted to talk about propaganda. Well, okay, who's, and who's swallowing that shit?

[Silver]

Did you see those goalposts move?

[The Grand Nudger]

What are the goalposts, for clarity?

[Silver]

Aren't you excluding the attempt of a proper Democratic discussion?

[The Grand Nudger]

I have no idea what you mean. Nothing about a republic, or the ec, prevents us from having a proper attempt at a democratic discussion. It acknowledges the potential for that discussion to end on a bad note. People have...and I can't believe I'm saying this in america, as an american, to another american...democratically decided to do horrid shit. It's been the majority opinion that not all people are people. It's been the majority opinion that not all people are equal. It's been the majority opinion to go to war with adjectives, it's been the majority opinion that we need tax breaks...consider the majority opinion in deeply red states....on and on and on and on...

I like democracy, it works well for me (even when it;s working poorly for others)...but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have an inherent weakness. We're allowed to point that weakness out, it isn't undemocratic to do so, no more so than pointing out where the us could improve is unamerican.

[Pat Mustard]

Peoples sudden distaste for the electoral college is informed by a specific misuse of the electoral college.  If we burnt down everything that bad actors gamed we'd be standing on a pile of ash by now.

It's a deliberately anti-democratic mechanism designed to ensure that slavery remained legal in the United State by giving the south a preponderance of power even when it became a minority.

It, like quite a lot of the US constitution, should be burnt to the ground.