Voting in US - What's the point?

[Elegiac]

I like being called irrelevant. I really do. It's why Hillary lost you know. It's not because she failed to run a serious campaign (she did). It's not because there is literal hate for her on the right (there is). It's not because she's a woman. It's because she makes comments like these, as defined by her "deplorables" moment.

It's not that you can't call someone a bigot, a racist, an asshole a mother-fucking cunt waffle in an election. You can. It's all about how you sound when you're insulting other people. Hillary sounded like you. Like an educated elitist who is trying really really hard to not insult people, but also someone who really really really wants to insult someone. I mean fuck Trump ran this election with a mouth like a salty sailor.

When you want to insult someone and then make an insult like that, you just come across sounding sad.

Good thing I'm not running for office, then.

[Gorgodeus]

The Electoral College wasn't prevented as a ward against this kind of President or that kind of President -- it was invented so that Congress would still be the template for the body that elected the President, without letting the actual Congress do it. That's it. Nothing more complicated than that. The Framers would have preferred a joint session of Congress elect the President but realized that would obviously be a major checks and balances issue, so they set up a proxy Congress that gets put together every four years for that single purpose.

You would be wrong. One of the reasons for the EC is to not allow a populist candidate from being elected that would be harmful to the country. The Founding Fathers were worried that a puppet of a foreign country might end up as President.

[Sunseeker]

He dreams of a day when his ilk rule and he need not care what the peasant thinks..... But he is a compassionate champion of social justice don'cha know?

Why do you respond to me? Seriously I don't even.

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Good thing I'm not running for office, then.

More elitism. You seem to like to complain, but you clearly don't care, why do you bother?

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I don't think volume is as remotely desirable a thing as quality.

Then again, I'm generally not in favor of the legislature having as much power as it does.

I won't disagree with you.. but think of a congressman that totally sucks, and after banning lawyers and whatnot.. not one else in that state runs.. wouldn't that be bad?

[Spectral]

I like being called irrelevant. I really do. It's why Hillary lost you know. It's not because she failed to run a serious campaign (she did). It's not because there is literal hate for her on the right (there is). It's not because she's a woman. It's because she makes comments like these, as defined by her "deplorables" moment.

It's not that you can't call someone a bigot, a racist, an asshole a mother-fucking cunt waffle in an election. You can. It's all about how you sound when you're insulting other people. Hillary sounded like you. Like an educated elitist who is trying really really hard to not insult people, but also someone who really really really wants to insult someone. I mean fuck Trump ran this election with a mouth like a salty sailor.

When you want to insult someone and then make an insult like that, you just come across sounding sad.

Another thing that I (and maybe others) found consistent with this sort of thing was that weird shimmy thing she did which apparently delighted effete leftists. I find her mannerisms and disdain for opposition utterly grating and I suspect I'm not the only one.

Turns out class and class-signaling matter quite a bit.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

At a bare minimum, the starting point of not electing so many lawyers would improve the ethics of politics - it really isn't great that politicians are mostly drawn from the least ethical profession the United States has to offer.

Truly curious how that came to pass in the first place. Used to be the "war hero" and now its lawyers...

[Elegiac]

Aside from larger model questions, it seems incredibly obvious to me that single mothers are mostly not capable of doing a very good job on their own. The results are pretty obviously disastrous the majority of the time.

I'm certainly not a proponent of the increasingly atomized societal conditions we live in though; telling everyone they can do it on their own and don't need no man is incredibly stupid. If we're going to forcefeed that stupid message, the least we could do is to recognize that extended families are more or less required if you can't be bothered to find a father that's going to stick around.

Generally I'm more in favor of adjusting public assistance to better enable single parents to function in society, but an emphasis on extended family is also something we should be pursuing. Let the nuclear family model die.

[Spectral]

It really shouldn't be THAT surprising that people whose career is based on the practice of law get interested in involving themselves in the creation and administration of that same system. Moving into politics is a pretty natural extension of a legal career; it doesn't happen because of bias or corruption, but simply because governance primarily involves law, which they're clearly interested and knowledgeable in.

I'm not surprised by it, I just think it's a plainly terrible outcome.

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Generally I'm more in favor of adjusting public assistance to better enable single parents to function in society, but an emphasis on extended family is also something we should be pursuing. Let the nuclear family model die.

I don't agree at all. I think single mothers mostly do a poor job raising their children and it's not just for lack of resources.

[Elegiac]

Truly curious how that came to pass in the first place. Used to be the "war hero" and now its lawyers...

There are two factors playing into this.

One is money; running for office is expensive and generally only the highest paying professions can afford to do it.

Secondly, being a lawyer is an excellent way of networking which also engenders considerable political advantage.

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I don't agree at all. I think single mothers mostly do a poor job raising their children and it's not just for lack of resources.

There's not really any evidence to support that. Single mothers that have sufficient disposable time and income do just fine.

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More elitism. You seem to like to complain, but you clearly don't care, why do you bother?

Largely because I do care, but I don't happen to believe that anything will come of it.

[Sunseeker]

Another thing that I (and maybe others) found consistent with this sort of thing was that weird shimmy thing she did which apparently delighted effete leftists. I find her mannerisms and disdain for opposition utterly grating and I suspect I'm not the only one.

Turns out class and class-signaling matter quite a bit.

Hillary ran an arrogant campaign and lost, arrogantly. Big surprise. Trump is an arrogant dickhole but he didn't run an arrogant campaign, he ran a "little guy" campaign and won big. Clinton refused to cater to the little guys on the left and she lost them.

Frankly while I'm still a little surprised Trump won, I probably would have been shocked if Hillary had won. After it was clear that Bernie was defeated, her campaign just kicked its heels up thinking it could coast to victory on "loyal party members", meanwhile Trump did the one thing Republicans have refused to do for decades: hold a fucking recruitment drive! Yeah it was a racist one, but still, that's what it was.

[Logwyn]

But it seems to me that electors isn't a good system either. Though I must admit, even after reading about it I still don't understand it.
What I keep seeing as an explanation for the Electoral College is to make it more "even" but I see nothing even about it. I don't understand how it could protect anything or make anything even when it clearly creates its own set of problems.

In The Federalist Papers, James Madison explained his views on the selection of the president and the Constitution. In Federalist No. 39, Madison argued the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the president would be elected by a mixture of the two modes.[21]

Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 68 laid out what he believed were the key advantages to the Electoral College. The electors come directly from the people and them alone for that purpose only, and for that time only. This avoided a party-run legislature, or a permanent body that could be influenced by foreign interests before each election.[22] Hamilton explained the election was to take place among all the states, so no corruption in any state could taint "the great body of the people" in their selection. The choice was to be made by a majority of the Electoral College, as majority rule is critical to the principles of republican government. Hamilton argued, electors meeting in the state capitals were able to have information unavailable to the general public. Hamilton also argued that since no federal officeholder could be an elector none of the electors would be beholden to any presidential candidate.[22]

Another consideration was the decision would be made without "tumult and disorder", as it would be a broad-based one made simultaneously in various locales where the decision-makers could deliberate reasonably, not in one place, where decision-makers could be threatened or intimidated. If the Electoral College did not achieve a decisive majority, then the House of Representatives was to choose the president from among the top five candidates,[23] ensuring selection of a presiding officer administering the laws would have both ability and good character. Hamilton was also concerned about somebody unqualified, but with a talent for "low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity", attaining high office.[22]

Additionally, in the Federalist No. 10, James Madison argued against "an interested and overbearing majority" and the "mischiefs of faction" in an electoral system. He defined a faction as "a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." What was then called republican government (i.e., federalism, as opposed to direct democracy), with its varied distribution of voter rights and powers, would countervail against factions. Madison further postulated in the Federalist No. 10 that the greater the population and expanse of the Republic, the more difficulty factions would face in organizing due to such issues as sectionalism.[24]

Although the United States Constitution refers to "Electors" and "electors", neither the phrase "Electoral College" nor any other name is used to describe the electors collectively. It was not until the early 19th century the name "Electoral College" came into general usage as the collective designation for the electors selected to cast votes for president and vice president. The phrase was first written into federal law in 1845 and today the term appears in 3 U.S.C. § 4, in the section heading and in the text as "college of electors."[25]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electo...United_States)

[Fadeslol]

Hillary ran an arrogant campaign and lost, arrogantly. Big surprise. Trump is an arrogant dickhole but he didn't run an arrogant campaign, he ran a "little guy" campaign and won big. Clinton refused to cater to the little guys on the left and she lost them.

Frankly while I'm still a little surprised Trump won, I probably would have been shocked if Hillary had won. After it was clear that Bernie was defeated, her campaign just kicked its heels up thinking it could coast to victory on "loyal party members", meanwhile Trump did the one thing Republicans have refused to do for decades: hold a fucking recruitment drive! Yeah it was a racist one, but still, that's what it was.

Trump ran a racist campaign, are u kidding me?

[Stormdash]

The electoral college was not made as a safeguard against a popular vote as there was no anticipation of, or at least no certainty of, there even being a popular vote to guard against. The Presidency was not designed to be of immediate everyday interest to the ordinary citizen, since most of the things that would affect their affairs would be the business of their state and local governments.

I desperately want a state, any state really, to go ahead and change their law to have the state legislature choose the electors just to demonstrate the reality of the process.

[Elegiac]

The electoral college was not made as a safeguard against a popular vote as there was no anticipation of, or at least no certainty of, there even being a popular vote to guard against. The Presidency was not designed to be of immediate everyday interest to the ordinary citizen, since most of the things that would affect their affairs would be the business of their state and local governments.

Which is a fundamental admission the system is anachronistic.

[Stormdash]

Which is a fundamental admission the system is anachronistic.

Why? Because it didn't plan around latter day perversion of it?

[GodEmperor]

My candidate lost. This system sucks

[Elegiac]

Why? Because it didn't plan around latter day perversion of it?

No, because it does not fundamentally work in an environment where breaking news proliferates across the country in seconds and people are capable of watching their leaders' actions in real time. Much less one where we both expect far more of the federal government due to the general incompetence of the states (necessitating government 3.0, as Smrund said), one where we expect far more competence in government, and one where western government is trending a lot more populist and democratic.

This notion that political thought suddenly stops in the 1790s is just...well, sad. And silly, because you'll never stop the earth from turning.

[Stormdash]

People don't expect the federal government to do more because it's more competent -- that's demonstrably false anyway. They expect it to do more because, having ripped away more and more responsibility from state and local governments in facial violation of the constitutional design, they are now stuck with the expectation of not being pathetic at it. To wit; creating the US Department of Education to come up with federal standards, guidelines, and benchmarks and then watching the quality of a government education fall off a cliff steadily ever since, that's something people are looking for a federal fix to because it was federally broken.

[Elegiac]

People don't expect the federal government to do more because it's more competent -- that's demonstrably false anyway.

Despite the fact it has happened twice in American history in really big ways. Again, there's a reason we're on the 3.0 patch.

They expect it to do more because, having ripped away more and more responsibility from state and local governments in facial violation of the constitutional design, they are now stuck with the expectation of not being pathetic at it. To wit; creating the US Department of Education to come up with federal standards, guidelines, and benchmarks and then watching the quality of a government education fall off a cliff steadily ever since, that's something people are looking for a federal fix to because it was federally broken.

Implying that the state-centric standard was (and is) better.

[Paranoid Android]

My candidate lost. This system sucks

It has happened twice in the past 5 Presidential Elections. Maybe we should look at it?