Lawrence Lessig Calls For The Electoral College to Choose Clinton Over Trump (washingtonpost.com) 1430
Lawrence Lessig's new op-ed in the Washington Post argues against the idea "that the person who lost the popular vote this year must nonetheless become our president." (Paywalled version here, free version here.) Lessig points out that the electoral college results have already been ignored twice in U.S. history -- in 1824 and 1876.
The Constitution says nothing about "winner take all." It says nothing to suggest that electors' freedom should be constrained in any way...They were to be citizens exercising judgment, not cogs turning a wheel.
Complaining that the electoral college weights the votes in Wyoming roughly four times as heavily as the votes in Michigan, Lessig argues that the popular vote should be respected, and that the authors of the U.S. Constitution "left the electors free to choose. They should exercise that choice by leaving the election as the people decided it: in Clinton's favor."
Meanwhile, Politico is reporting that six electors, "mostly former Bernie Sanders supporters who hail from Washington state and Colorado," are already urging electors pledged to Clinton and Trump to instead coalesce around "a consensus pick like Mitt Romney or John Kasich." And the ethics lawyers for both President Obama and President Bush both told one liberal site "that if Trump continues to retain ownership over his sprawling business interests by the time the electors meet on December 19, they should reject Trump." Finally, from the original submission:
Even Donald Trump has called the Electoral College a "total sham." Is it time for the Electoral College to reflect the popular vote?
Complaining that the electoral college weights the votes in Wyoming roughly four times as heavily as the votes in Michigan, Lessig argues that the popular vote should be respected, and that the authors of the U.S. Constitution "left the electors free to choose. They should exercise that choice by leaving the election as the people decided it: in Clinton's favor."
Meanwhile, Politico is reporting that six electors, "mostly former Bernie Sanders supporters who hail from Washington state and Colorado," are already urging electors pledged to Clinton and Trump to instead coalesce around "a consensus pick like Mitt Romney or John Kasich." And the ethics lawyers for both President Obama and President Bush both told one liberal site "that if Trump continues to retain ownership over his sprawling business interests by the time the electors meet on December 19, they should reject Trump." Finally, from the original submission:
Even Donald Trump has called the Electoral College a "total sham." Is it time for the Electoral College to reflect the popular vote?
Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop bitching about how unfair the electoral college is. Go through the legal process to change/eliminate it so this it doesn't happen again, if that's what the people want.
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Chaos (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
The intent of the Electoral College at least in part was to act as a final check against an unsuitable candidate becoming President. Now we can certainly debate Trump's suitability for high office, but as to complaining about the rules, well the EC is actually somewhat vague in that regard. The chief issue I see with Electors voting for someone other than who they are pledged for is that it could, in states where being a faithless electoral, end you up in hot water.
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Informative)
What he is advocating will result in nothing less than civil war
Lessig may be delusional - but what you are suggesting is beyond retarded.
There is no army to fight such a war. It's no longer 1800s.
US military is now a highly trained tiny percent of the whole population - not a bunch of guys marching in a straight like across the field, armed with flintlocks.
The side going against the army of the US government loses even before a single civilian warrior gets his boots on.
Nor could you get anyone to sign up for such a war. Again - only a tiny percentage of US population wishes to serve at all.
And that's without the whole "Going to a war to shoot me some Americans" thing having a chance of being a bit unpopular among Americans.
Beyond. Retarded.
Re: Change the law (Score:4, Interesting)
Unprecedented in that a candidate frugally ran an election with a singular focus on the electoral vote? That he eschewed votes in deep blue areas to save funds for places that it actually counted? Can you definitively say that the popular vote counts would have been the same had the rules been different?
As for me, my nightmare was Hillary nominating Supreme Court justices. She flat out stated she intended to nominate political activists and get cases heard for the express purpose of over turning past rulings. The court is supposed to be an arbitrator between Congress and the President, not an arm of the President.
Re: Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony here is Hillary pursued the "superdelegates" so she could have an Electoral College advantage.
Now we find Trump came out ahead with the E.C. votes and lost the popular vote.
The poetic justice is that Hillary was beat at the game she originally pursued (attempting to stack the E.C. in her favor).
Ya just gotta love it.
Re: Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
Without California Hilliary wouldn't have won the popular vote. She won California by over 2 million votes, a total higher than she got for the US overall. California is so overwhelmingly liberal that I don't think Trump even bothered with it knowing that it was hopeless. This is what the electoral college was designed specifically for, to preserve the power of the smaller states so that they don't become marginalized. Worked exactly as designed.
Re: Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
California must be doing something right if the population has grown so much. People actually want to come here. Unlike the Republican South from where people are leaving in droves for Blue states. Election by popular vote would be a good way of giving feedback to idiotic state govts. People could vote with their feet by leaving the idiotically run states . Instead we have an Electoral college. Even if people leave the idiots stay behind and still get a voice in fact the idiots voice gets more valuable
Re: Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
Handouts to corporates is OK? Most Republican states depend on handouts from the federal govt because they give so much corporate welfare to their golf buddies that they cant pay for their own social services. California contributes more to the federal budget than it gets back as do most Blue states. The Red states are the ones running on handouts.
Re: Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
This. California gives on the order of $60 billion more every year to the federal government than they get back, most of which goes to prop up the red states' failing economies that are broken largely because of Republican economic mismanagement. The reason California pays so much more in taxes is that the overwhelming majority of Californians make significantly more money than the national average for their particular field. The economy is in much better shape than most other states, in part because of high tech, in part because of the music and movie industries in L.A., and in part because the varieties of produce that California grows are in high demand relative to production levels.
But more than that, California has benefitted immensely from Democratic governments throwing huge amounts of money into higher education back in the 1970s, all of which cranked up taxes, but resulted in a more educated population that was better able to weather the economic changes brought by a post-industrial world. What I don't understand is how anybody still believes that Republican economic policies work in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, both at the state level and at the federal level. The notion that high taxes stifle the economy is a fiction. If it were true, California would be bankrupt and Florida would be extremely wealthy. Instead, the tech industry has actively migrated from Florida to California over the past twenty years or so, because the higher standard of living resulting from those higher taxes more than makes up for the cost of the higher taxes.
If California had that $60 billion per year back, we could give a free UC education to every California high school graduate. If we did that, the rest of the country would never catch up. In fifty years, even the eastern seaboard would be third world by comparison. And for our generosity in giving up that huge advantage to support our red state brethren, we get only a quarter as many electors per capita as Wyoming. The electoral college is thus fundamentally biased in favor of Republicans. The only reason Democrats ever win is because the Republicans are so incredibly bad at governing that Democrats overcome herculean odds stacked against them. Were the electoral college actually fair, no Republican would ever win a presidential election, nor (because representative count is tied to delegate count) would they ever hold the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, or even come close. Let that sink in for a moment.
Re: Change the law (Score:5, Interesting)
None of those cities have problems because of high taxes. In order:
Amusingly, California almost got into trouble the same way—by taking on too much debt without adequate stockpiles of cash to weather economic downturns. One of the better surprises in California politics was getting two fiscal conservative governors in a row—Schwarzenegger and Brown—who have pushed some useful reforms that will really help the state over the long term.
It's unfortunate that the Republican party has drummed out most of its fiscal conservatives in favor of Reaganite faux conservatives who are even more fiscally irresponsible than the worst of the Democrats. If there were a non-negligible number of actual fiscal conservatives in the Republican party, the red states wouldn't be in nearly as bad shape as they are. Both parties need more fiscal conservatives.
News Flash! (Score:5, Insightful)
Candidates not campaigning in states considered locked down is not unique to Trump, or Clinton, or Democrats, or Republicans. You're not being insightful here, Clinton didn't campaign in California either.
Furthermore, the only thing the Electoral College accomplishes is that only 7 or 8 states elect the president. Voters in Louisianian and Connecticut, Mississippi and Delaware, Kansas and Oregon, etc; they don't matter in a presidential election. All of these are smaller states and all of these are clearly marginalized. The Bible Belt, New England, the Deep South, all of the small states in these regions are 100% marginalized under the current system. Switch to popular vote, all of a sudden all of the smaller states in these regions matter in a presidential election.
I'm sorry to be rude but I feel your comment suggest a willful ignorance on how the modern presidential election works.
Re:News Flash! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're a Republican in California or a Democrat in Mississippi why should you even bother voting for the president? Those state's votes are practically decided before any campaigning takes place. Now repeat that for at least 40 of our 50 states. THAT my friend, is "utter bullshit". No one in any modern presidential election should ever be surprised how 80 percent of the electoral vote goes because it doesn't even matter what candidate is running in those states.
Please explain to me how a state almost always voting for one party or the other in a presidential election doesn't marginalize voters. Explain to me how a Democrat's vote in Mississippi matters. Explain to me how a Republican's in California matter. You've literally already pointed out the problem in California ("California is so overwhelmingly liberal that I don't think Trump even bothered with it knowing that it was hopeless."), you just refuse to accept it for the rest of the country.
Re: Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony here is Hillary pursued the "superdelegates" so she could have an Electoral College advantage.
What? There are no "superdelegates" in the Electoral College. Hillary pursued superdelegates to win the primary. Two separate things.
Re: Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest irony in all of this is that Lessig argued that money wins elections and even ran a campaign to try to end that.
And now, here he stands, trying to change the results of an election to be in favor of the person who massively outspent her opponent, even though she already lost.
Hath hell frozen over?
Re: Change the law (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me put it this way. The opposition to Hitler accepted his electoral victory in 1933 even though the Nazi party had used voter intimidation and minority baiting to win. They felt it would help democracy and they could always come back in the next election. Most of them died in gas chambers. There are some elections you should not accept else you are writing your own death warrant. Trump is not a normal politician.
First of all, while I'm not a Trump supporter by any stretch, that's a pretty low blow.
Second of all, this isn't Germany, and we don't have a history of supporting military dictators, nor do we have any kind of suppressed desire to do so. (Yes, Germany is both, even to this day.)
Third of all, if you're worried about democracy going wrong, your sights should be placed firmly on Europe. Why Europe? Well, the EU parliament has fascists -- yes, actual self proclaimed fascist politicians -- holding many political offices. A whopping 25% of the population of France and Denmark, and a slightly lower percentage of the population of about 15 other European countries are voting for their country's fascist party and electing fascist MPs.
Trump doesn't even begin to fit that description, and any US politician who exhibits even a hint of that these days typically ends up handing in their letter of resignation in very short order, and their career is basically finished at that point. This even happens if one of them makes a joke that is in some way interpreted as racist (For example, George Bush was often compared to a chimp, and yet when some politician back east made a similar comparison about Michelle Obama on facebook a week ago she ended up being forced to resign.)
Finally, how would you even know what kind of politician Trump is? Hell, he isn't even a politician yet; he is and always has been nothing more than a pundit (granted, that will most likely change as of next year.) So far he's gone back and forth on so much shit, it's anybody's guess (even his, I'll wager) what he'll actually do once in office.
And no, I'm not defending Trump, rather I'm taking an "I'll believe it when I see it" approach with regard to Trump's "make America great" promises, same as I did with Obama's "change you can believe in" promises. Speak of which, how did that turn out? I honestly don't think Trump will be any better, but I don't have a crystal ball.
Re: Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
Roe v. Wade is a past ruling affecting the lives of millions of Americans in very dramatic ways, far more so than any other ruling, you know. Clinton wasn't the one promising to overturn it.
Re:Change the law (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you don't like the system then you could change it, because the system we have at the moment allows the electors to vote their conscience.
If there's any purpose at all to the electoral college system, it's to cover for weird, exceptional cases like a winning candidate taking office with record disapproval numbers after losing the popular vote by at least 2 million.
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Informative)
All I have to say is "good luck with that." There have never been more than a few, some electors are legally bound to vote with their state, etc.
Still, surprised he'd do that given what they really think about him [wikileaks.org]
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Informative)
To clarify, I think far better of him than that, but I'm somewhat surprised he would be eager to fight for a group who treats him that way.
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Informative)
some electors are legally bound to vote with their state, etc.
False. Some states require electors to sign a pledge agreeing to vote however the state says. They can require them to sign the pledge but they can't require them to honor the pledge.
The Electors are free to elect any eligible person to the office of the President.
Re:Change the law (Score:4, Interesting)
Requiring Electors to vote a certain way is blatantly unconstitutional. It goes against the very purpose of the Electoral College.
That hasn't been tested in the Supreme Court. All that has been tested is requiring a pledge from each of the Electors. No one has tested holding them to that pledge because it's fucking insane and obviously illegal.
However, I wouldn't put anything past the current Supreme Court, unfortunately.
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Informative)
Requiring Electors to vote a certain way is blatantly unconstitutional.
"Blatantly unconstitutional"? Please point to the relevant passage of the Constitution that prohibits it. Oh, well... actually, the Constitution doesn't address that at all. What it DOES say about the requirements for Electors is in Article II, Section 1:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
Basically, state legislatures have authority to appoint Electors however they want, under whatever constraints they wish. This wording was deliberate, since the Founders intended a compromise to allow various states to choose different methods of selecting Electors. Before the Electoral College was settled on, various proposals were put forward for who should elect the President -- some wanted Congress to do it, some wanted Governors to do it, some wanted state legislatures to have a voice, some wanted popular elections. This vague wording deliberately allowed states great leeway in determining the qualifications and methods for selecting Electors -- as long as they weren't people holding an office or employed by the government.
And for roughly 40 years after the Constitution went into effect, states did have various methods for selecting Electors [wikipedia.org]. In some states, the legislature simply appointed them, holding no popular vote at all. In fact, in some early elections, the majority of states chose not to hold a popular vote, instead just appointing Electors. (Under the Constitution, there's no requirement to hold a popular vote for President within any state.) Others had various hybrid systems.
My point is that Electors are basically appointees of the States, and there's no Constitutional proviso that says the Electors can't be put under various constraints for that appointment or required to carry out duties in a particular fashion, just as anybody else given a legal task by a state legislature might be under state law.
It goes against the very purpose of the Electoral College.
The "very purpose" of the Electoral College was rendered obsolete in 1796 after the emergence of political parties. Before political parties, the Founders assumed that there would be no national consensus on candidates, and each state would likely have a "favorite son" whom most of the Electors would vote for. (Hence the provision in the Constitution that each Elector got two votes, and at least one must be cast for a candidate who was NOT from his home state -- this was to ensure that we wouldn't just end up with 13 different candidates, each with a 10% or so of the vote. This was later tweaked with the 12th Amendment after the fiasco in 1800, which separated votes for President vs. VP, but that constraint still applies.)
Anyhow, the "free choice" of Electors basically NEVER worked according to its original purpose. For the first two elections, Washington was assumed to be the winner. After that, the vast majority of Electoral votes have always gone to candidates put forth by parties, not by a "free choice" for some random qualified person by the learned Electors acting on behalf of the people.
The theoretical idea that this COULD happen, though, continued for a few decades. But that ended more-or-less completely by the 1820s, when almost all states adopted a "general ticket" system for choosing Electors, where each party had its "slate" of electors that voters chose from. Any notion of following Hamilton's supposed free choice method from independent thinking Electors was completely done away wi
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
It is specially ironic considering how dems went after Trump after he insinuated wouldn't accept the election results.
Don't take me wrong, I'm terrified about the prospect of the orange sexist taking office as much as anyone else, but he won the elections. These talks about having the EC changing their vote, or recounts are delusional.
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Informative)
It is specially ironic considering how dems went after Trump after he insinuated wouldn't accept the election results.
Don't take me wrong, I'm terrified about the prospect of the orange sexist taking office as much as anyone else, but he won the elections. These talks about having the EC changing their vote, or recounts are delusional.
It's not ironic at all. The democrats weren't the ones that started the recount process, it was a third party candidate after reading a study that showed a marked discrepancy in votes between paper districts and e-voting districts. Regardless of the outcome of a recount, if a recount is what it takes for people to finally accept the results of the election then that's a good thing.
It's not rigged, you're just losing (part 2) (Score:4, Interesting)
Jill is in it to gather donor dollars (all leftovers go to the Green party, read the fine print).
She picked some weird states if it was just about the votes, as I discuss here [slashdot.org].
I mean, MI has only PAPER ballots, so notions of hacking are purely delusional and you can find 538 arguing similar.
Actually... you just made that up. (Score:5, Informative)
all leftovers go to the Green party, read the fine print
https://jillstein.nationbuilde... [nationbuilder.com]
If we raise more than what's needed, the surplus will also go toward election integrity efforts and to promote voting system reform.
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Informative)
The Clinton campaign announced today they're joining the recount process: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11... [cnn.com]
Clinton joining the process (Score:5, Interesting)
The Clinton campaign announced today they're joining the recount process: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11... [cnn.com]
I'm in favour of recounts in general, and for this election in particular. It tells us about the reliability of the election process, and hopefully might shed light on hacking and other skulduggery. The information will be used to fix future problems.
As to Clinton, she's joining because Jill Stein can't call for a recount. In at least one of the states (probably all of them) you can't call for a recount unless you are aggrieved, which means that you think the recount would change the outcome.
Jill Stein can't reasonably say that she might have won, so she officially can't be aggrieved.
Hillary most certainly *can* make that claim, since the margins for her loss are so slim in those states.
That's why she joined the process. For the recounts to happen, she's the one to request them.
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Interesting)
Stop bitching about how unfair the electoral college is. Go through the legal process to change/eliminate it so this it doesn't happen again, if that's what the people want.
Right! And also, it's bizarre how electors of a state, say ID, are supposed to turn against the voters of their state and vote for Hilary just b'cos CA has given Hilary a margin that erases Trump's margin in the rest of the country. If they wanna do that, increase CA's #electoral votes in future elections.
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the rest of the developed world seems to be able to do it just fine.
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Informative)
Very few countries elect their chief executive with a popular vote.
A parliamentary system is probably the most common (perhaps after dictatorships). It's similar to the Electoral College, except the MPs do the voting.
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't realize that this is pretty much the gigantic fuckup we have in parts of Canada now. While we use FPTP, in Ontario for example. The political parties only need to run for the Greater Toronto Area(GTA), and if you win that and say London or Ottawa, you've won the province. Getting rid of the electoral college will basically make sure that things get worse.
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Informative)
It is the exact same thing they do with gerrymandering. They go out of their way to draw the map such that there is as few democratic districts as possible, and the democrats there win elections by very high margins, while there is as many republican districts as possible.
Right, it's always "Republicans" gerrymandering, and the poor, unblemished Democrats who are victims of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Change the law (Score:5, Insightful)
It will never happen because the Constitution specifies that the president is to be elected by the states. The only way to change that is to change the Constitution, which would require 38 states to decide they should have no say on who is President, that whatever a handful of northeastern and west coast cities decide is fine with them. Ain't gonna happen.
It's past time. (Score:3, Insightful)
Way past time.
Re:It's past time. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, each State can do what it likes with its Electors now. Including reflect the popular vote nationwide (or vote against the popular vote, for that matter).
Anything else requires a Constitutional Amendment. Good luck with that.
Re:It's past time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The farmers in the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Deleware, Maine, California, Oregon, Washington, ... would disagree with you.
That's very true. Also true: they're mostly conservative.
Look at the county-level votes. The only blue left in America is the cities.
Re:It's past time. (Score:5, Insightful)
And that attitude is exactly why Hillary lost. The party that preaches inclusiveness and claims to look out for the common folk, dismissed the common folk and took them for granted. The ivory tower progressive elites forgot what the Democratic party was actually built on. The further they go left and progressive, the more votes they'll lose.
Re:It's past time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cook up all the justifications you want about why Trump 'won' the election and why he should be president.
How about -- he won the electoral contest? You know, the one set of rules that actually counts? The one system that was perfectly okay before the election, until now that some of the losers are sore and are concocting all the justifications for a change in the outcome after-the-fact?
Democracy is a system whereby elected representatives are chosen by winning the popular vote not a gerrymandered system where you elect a group of functionaries who then vote for the runner up.
Actually, if you live in the United States, then you don't live in a pure democracy. You are in a democratically elected representative republic. This means, by design, that sometimes the majority does not get its way.
Re: It's past time. (Score:5, Informative)
The term "Democracy" is an umbrella term [wikipedia.org] that represents all systems of "rule by the people", including representative democracies like ours (also known as a republic). While its true that our founding fathers tended to mean "direct democracy" when speaking of "democracy", that's no longer the case. From Wikipedia:
The Founding Fathers of the United States rarely praised and often criticised democracy, which in their time tended to specifically mean direct democracy, often without the protection of a constitution enshrining basic rights
But, as we all know, language changes over time. It's worthwhile to understand the history of these terms, but really, you're pissing against the wind if you think people are not going to continue to call our government a "democracy". According to Google:
democracy
dmäkrs/
noun
noun: democracy
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
So now Clinton supporters can't handle the results (Score:3, Insightful)
For months before the election, the MSM & Hillary supporters hammered about how Trump & his supporters wouldn't accept the results of the election.
Now that Hillary has lost, her supports can't accept the results. Death threats to electors. Riots in the street. Offering the pay fines for electors who break the law. MSM story after story about how the circumvent the will of the people. Jill Stein taking donations to force a recount where even she says that there was no fraudulent or illegal activity.
It seems life is not without a sense of irony.
Re: (Score:3)
> For months before the election, the MSM & Hillary supporters hammered about how Trump & his supporters wouldn't accept the results of the election.
For years before the election, Trump and Trump supporters hammer about how the Electoral College was the worst thing to happen to democracy. [1] [twitter.com].
Re: (Score:3)
For years before the election, Trump and Trump supporters hammer about how the Electoral College was the worst thing to happen to democracy. [1] [twitter.com].
So "Trump and Trump Supporters" can now tweet on Trump's twitter?
A single tweet is now "hammering?"
You may want to rethink your argument there Sparky.
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is this on slashdot?
What a bunch of sore losers.
They should all move to Canada. Quickly, like they promised.
Yes, but it doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
"A waste of time," enjoys no sane definition in this election cycle context.
Re: (Score:3)
The popular vote is not accurate though. Many states stop counting when a winner is clear and many states don't count the mail-in votes at all unless it's really close. Even so, only three states continued counting giving Clinton almost 1M (1/300) edge according to Politico (not sure where the 2M+ figures come from).
The reality is that nearly all counties (communities really) in the US voted Republican even in NYS and CA, outside the cities EVERYONE wants Trump by a 80/20 margin. That's why the electoral co
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Popular Vote doesn't mean anything. At all. For it to mean anything, there would need to have been a binding Popular Vote before the campaign started. The candidates campaigned based on the Electoral Vote system, and would have campaigned differently if the vote was a popular vote. Thus the 'popular vote' numbers are the result for an election campaign that never happened.
As it stands, the 'Popular Vote' is just something journalists do to get us to buy their publications and watch their 'shows.' I
Re:Yes, but it doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
We've got eight counties in Texas with less than 1000 residents, I'm sure they all went for Trump. On the other hand, Texas has five counties with over a million residents (Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar and Travis). Of those, four of the five went for Clinton. That's in TEXAS. Measuring wins by county is crap unless you are giving the vote to cows and sagebrush. If you do want to rank votes by counties, then measured by economic output, Clinton won the counties nationwide which account for 64% of the USA's economic output (http://www.denverpost.com/2016/11/25/presidential-election-economic-split/). So the counties which are actually producing in this country went for Clinton.
Re:Yes, but it doesn't matter (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Sour grapes (Score:5, Insightful)
Clinton and Trump campaigned in the swing states because that is what the Electoral College encourages. The popular vote "imbalance" is a mirage. If they had been campaigning for the popular vote, if there had been no Electoral College, the campaigns and the results would have been different in ways we can't imagine.
To change the Electoral College process now, after the popular vote is over, is sour grapes.
Re:Sour grapes (Score:5, Insightful)
You hear that, all you people pro-electoral college people? The very core of the electoral college absolutely gives them the electors the right (barring state law requirements) and the duty to jump ship based on the needs of the country. Don't like it? Then you should support electoral college reform.
I personally think there are some fairly compelling arguments against this actually happening, but this needs to be said loudly and clearly for all of you smug pro-EC nutters who don't understand what it is what you're actually arguing for: You don't get to dismissively wave away appeals to the popular vote as irrelevant whilst simultaneously rejecting any possibility that the electors might execute their own judgment. Either you are for some form of electoral college reform, or you are completely fine with the possibility that they may yet choose to elect someone other than Donald J. Trump for President.
Re:Sour grapes (Score:4, Interesting)
It is correct to point out that the electoral college is not constitutionally bound to elect the person on the ballot. That does not mean they must elect Clinton either.
If not Clinton or Trump then who? I don't know but it would be nice to see candidates that are a bit younger and healthier for one.
I know I'm not the first to point this out but this tendency for old professional politicians to run is likely a big reason why Trump won. Trump is just as old as Clinton but he appears to be in better health and hasn't been a politician for 50 years like his Republican primary competitors and the Democrat general election competitor. People don't like professional politicians any more, assuming they were ever liked.
Re:Sour grapes (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally someone says it !
Both candidates went into the race knowing the rules. Crying baby over the "popular vote" is like saying you should've gotten the 100m dash gold medal because your running style was more beautiful. Might be true, but you knew that it's a race for speed when you started.
Re: (Score:3)
That's the thing. You cannot simply "change the Electoral College" as if it's a voter's guide. It is part of the contract between the sovereign states that make up our nation. The smaller states never would have approved of the Constitution if the leadership was all based on popular vote. That is why we have the Senate, rather than just the House of Representatives.
To do anything that modifies or eliminates the EC, you would have to get every state but the dozen most conservative ones to vote to make that c
Re:Sour grapes (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why we USED TO have a Senate. When the Senate changed to popular vote instead of appointment by the state governments it became just another House of Representatives.
You are correct on your assessment of the chances of eliminating the electoral college, it's not going to happen any time soon.
Re:Sour grapes (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea good luck with that creimer. It's near enough impossible to get this voted through, would require 2/3 of the senate to vote it through, 2/3 of the house of representatives and then 75% of the states to ratify it. So when you already have some many states over-represented in our chambers it's near enough guaranteed never to change.
Working As Intended(TM) - Authors, US Constitution
They did not want it to be easy or quick. They wanted there to be a requirement for an overwhelming majority to pass constitutional amendments. "Quick and simple majority-vote to elect leaders and amend the nation's founding documents" is how dictatorships and tyrannies arise through populists.
Straight democracy does not work in more than small and close-knit homogeneous groups of people, just like socialism or communism. It allows 51% of people to exercise tyranny over 49% of people. It would theoretically allow whites in the US to bring back Jim Crow laws if they so wished or elect the leader of the KKK as POTUS (and before you start, comparing Trump to some KKK wack-job is your own projection).
Strat
Re:Sour grapes (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, the Democrats, always trying to change the rules in the middle of the game. Didn't work in 2000, won't work now.
If you really care about the process, not the winner, change the rules at a time when your guy will lose as a result. You'll get far more support then. Or, you know, amend the constitution following the normal process right after an election (like, say, this one), so that it's all settled before the 2020 campaign begins.
Personally, I think the founders were wise. Balance states' rights against direct democracy, to avoid the historical mistakes going in either extreme have demonstrated (for many centuries in both cases).
Electoral college does reflect the popular vote (Score:5, Insightful)
The vote of each state.
There are many reasons why a straight popular vote is bad and the electoral college is better but the best one I can think of is what happened in the recent election. Hillary Clinton won 300 counties while Trump won 5000. If you think that the election of a nation should be swayed by a handful of cities while the rest of the nation is completely ignored, well, you're an idiot.
Re:Electoral college does reflect the popular vote (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two historical elements for why the electoral college was invented. One, discussed by Hamilton in Federalist 68 was to provide a final stopgap against demagogues like Trump http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp [yale.edu]. The second was to give the slave states more power http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/12/13598316/donald-trump-electoral-college-slavery-akhil-reed-amar [vox.com] and it should be clear why that shouldn't be ok. As for the argument involving counties: that's just silly. There's no reason that amount of total area won should mean anything at all. Moreover, there's no reason you can reasonably object to cities dominating simply because they happen to be dense areas. Disagreeing with a group doesn't mean you get to use essentially arbitrary criteria to decide you'd like to ignore their wishes.
There are good arguments against having the electoral college change in this case (especially given that we don't know if Hillary would have won the popular vote if both her campaign and Trump campaign had optimized voter turnout rather than focused on swing states) but trying to make an argument that relies on county number is just awful.
Re:Electoral college does reflect the popular vote (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no reason that amount of total area won should mean anything at all. Moreover, there's no reason you can reasonably object to cities dominating simply because they happen to be dense areas. Disagreeing with a group doesn't mean you get to use essentially arbitrary criteria to decide you'd like to ignore their wishes.
Social and political interests tend to have a heavy coincidence with geography. If you are on the coasts you care way more about the fishing industry than people in the heartland. If you are in a desert you care more about water conservation. If you are near oil and natural gas your livelihood or the livelihood of your neighbors probably depends on the energy industry. By virtue of being in a population dense area, you automatically have a powerful voting block on various area specific issues. What's more, the people in other areas are not your neighbors, you have much less incentive to protect their interests, and are much less likely to hear their anger and complaints when you don't. By and large people from Wisconsin are not going to be able to come and protest march down the streets of LA if California -- 8 x the population of Wisconsin -- decides corn should be taxed to subsidize making action movies.
The electoral college helps protect various minority populations from being exploited by a tyrannous majority. And that is the main point of our republic, why it is based on constitutional rights, competing branches of government (one of which is not voted on), an electoral college, etc., and super majorities are required to enact any substantial changes. Our government is not a mechanism for enacting the will of the 51% (or even the 60%) on every issue, it is built as a balance of interests which makes the government accountable to the people while also making it fairly difficult for any one group of people to use the government as a cudgel against another group.
Re: (Score:3)
Let's start by toning down the rhetoric, ok? If you begin by saying "you're an idiot" to anyone who disagrees with you, you've pretty much promised not to listen to anyone else or learn anything. So let's approach this as sensible, rational people (I know, we aren't, if we were we wouldn't be human, but let's at least try) and have a calm, respectful discussion.
Your position seems to be based on the assumption that geographic units are more important than people. You mention three different ones: states,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Electoral college does reflect the popular vote (Score:4, Informative)
And why should Alaska and Wyoming with its over-privileged voters should decide how California runs?
Trust me, no one decides how California runs. That fucked up state is fucked up due to its own ideology.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, one dollar one vote. Well, that's pretty much the exact corrupt system the voters just rejected by flushing Hillary away with the rest of the shit.
But if we're going to do it that way, it should obviously be "one tax dollar paid, one vote", not ruled as today by the very wealthy (richest 100 families) who don't actually pay much taxes.
Constitutional crisis (Score:5, Interesting)
On topic: Wealth should not decide elections. I am responding to the suggestion that the relatively small number of urban counties shouldn't count as much as the many rural counties, even though they have many people and drive the economy. Our system is roughly based on population, as it should be.
Off topic: Wealth can be used to acquire or produce food, just like anything else. As a nation, we could abolish our agricultural subsidies and be better off economically.
A fair post, so I'll respond in kind.
The way I see it, the EC diminishes a large problem at the expense of introducing a small one.
We're seeing the small problem manifest more in modern times because of effective universal communication, forcing both candidates to a central position. It's like two ice cream vendors serving a beach - people will gravitate to the vendor closest to them, so each vendor maximizes it's custom by being in the exact middle of the boardwalk. (In this simile the "middle" is any political position, and the voters will vote for the person who is "closest" to their personal beliefs.)
Looking at the responses here, it's clear that the EC is doing its job. If it were abolished, it's clear even from the replies to this article that the middle states would revolt (meaning: secede from the union) rather than be ruled by the most populous states.
One reason to *not* put Clinton into office is that it would result in nation-wide rioting at a level that might bring down the government.
Roughly half the population approves of Trump(*). The Clinton protests were small because fundamentally most people realize that Trump won fairly and there's no cause for grievance.
Make Clinton president and you've suddenly got a whole lot of people who have a legitimate excuse to protest, and a fair portion of Clinton supporters would probably agree - some would join in, a sizeable proportion would probably silently agree, and almost all of them wouldn't oppose the protests.
It sucks that Clinton lost, but please consider the situation.
Beyond any political leanings people have, people fundamentally believe themselves to be fair and honest.
Switching the election would violate that feeling in a whole lot of people, more than just the ones who supported Trump.
And as further info, note that 26 states rejected [conservativerefocus.com] Obama's executive orders on refugees. That's very close to the 33 needed to force a constitutional crisis. It seems *highly likely* that putting Clinton in the president's chair would trigger such a crisis.
Obama backed down and essentially said "let the next president deal with it", and I think the states also held off because they knew they'd have a chance to vote in someone else. But put Clinton in that chair and we're threatening the extinction of our country.
Once again, it sucks that Clinton lost, but please consider the situation.
(*) You can extend the vote results to cover the entire country because it's a large enough sample.
Re:Electoral college does reflect the popular vote (Score:5, Funny)
Hillary Clinton won 300 counties while Trump won 5000.
I think this exemplifies just well the states have been gerrymandered. Seriously, the majority of people vote for one person but the lose by a 3:50 ratio?
The states have now been gerrymandered. Oh dear, that was funny.
Re:Electoral college does reflect the popular vote (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently you don't believe in democracy. There is no legitimacy in a count that ignores millions of people just because they happen to live in or near one or two cities.
Re:Electoral college does reflect the popular vote (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently you don't believe in democracy. There is no legitimacy in a count that ignores millions of people just because they happen to live in or near one or two cities.
They weren't ignored. Their state elected Clinton. On December 19th, their representatives will vote for Clinton. Their votes were heard loud and clear. What I think you mean to argue is that the electoral college somehow makes their vote less powerful than the vote of someone who lives in say, Iowa. And while that may be true in the executive branch, California has a lot more pull in half of the legislative branch than any other state! So it's not like there aren't balances in the system.
Alexander Hamilton (Score:3, Informative)
supposedly argued in IIRC The Federalist #68 that one purpose of the Electoral College was to prevent anyone who was unqualified or beholden to a foreign power from becoming President.
IMO both are applicable now, but defecting electors could set a precedent that might come back and bite us later.
I can't imagine that Republican electors would defect to Clinton. AIUI, all they have to do is prevent anyone from getting 270 EV, in which case the selection would fall to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The House Democrats might all go for Clinton, and the Republicans would be very divided, but they tend to get in line when the chips are down, so we'd surely get a Republican. Romney would be my best guess, but they might decide that the appearance of legitimacy requires choosing someone who actually ran, maybe Bush or that guy from Utah, or even Pence.
I don't expect any of that to happen, and I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but then I've been wrong about everything else concerning this election, so who knows...
As for switching from the Electoral College to the popular vote, the low-population states will be very much against this. I suspect it was designed as a deliberate attempt to keep the high-population states from dominating the low-population states, but now that we have 50 with a great deal of variety, maybe that motivation isn't relevant any more.
Also, if the EC should be replaced by proportional representation or direct popular vote, where does that leave the Senate? Should it be converted to proportional representation as well? Would it be any good to us if it was just a clone of the House of Representatives?
Re:Alexander Hamilton (Score:5, Interesting)
Sort of like some Democrats are now probably regretting Reid saying just a couple weeks before the election that Senate Democrats should exercise the nuclear option (get rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees) if Republicans interfered with confirming Clinton's (oops...) SCOTUS nominees. I, however, look forward to Reid speaking out in favor of Republicans when they exercise the nuclear option to prevent Democrats from interfering with Trump's SCOTUS nominees (unless, of course, he happens to be a hypocritical scumbag).
So (Score:4, Insightful)
So my rural state will get basically no political say in picking a President?
Yeah, there's a reason things like the electoral college were set up and it was to give states good reasons for being part of the union.
If we want to keep dividing the country up into two coasts, and "flyover country", then shit, why talk about getting rid of the Electoral College? Maybe its time to get rid of the entire union.....
Besides if the country is now made up of groups that hate each others with nearly unbounded passions, an amicable breakup is possibly the best bet.
Oh and don't worry Millenials in "flyover country" the east and west coast have loads of sanctuary cities and open borders, so you're totally free to go there....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"no political say"? No. Just a fair share.
At the moment your rural state has more say over the picking of the President than can be justified based on population, economic output, or any measure other than status quo.
Both sides presented (Score:3)
Why the Electoral College is a good thing [prageru.com].
Why the Electoral College is a bad thing [youtube.com].
Who finds one position more compelling than the other?
Andrew Jackson is Instructive (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem isn't Trump, it is all the people who voted for Trump.
If we take the election back from Trump under the theory that the constitution is not a suicide pact, that won't address the issue of all the people who voted for Trump. In 1824, when electoral college did the same thing to Andrew Jackson (who was a similar combination of demagoguery, narcissism and ignorance) the result was counterproductive. Adams was selected by congress over Jackson. But was a very ineffective president because the circumstances of his selection negated any mandate to lead.
However the effect of "taking" the election from Jackson was to hypermotivate people who had previously been lukewarm or neutral and 4 years later Jackson won handily. He then went on to do all the terrible things people were worried about but now he had a lot of support not for his policies but as a reaction to what happened in 1824. So despite fucking up, he was still elected for a second term.
We are faced with no good choices with Trump. Just lesser evils. Nobody can see the future, but an unpopular Trump entering office today, with no honeymoon period and the press raring to hold him accountable could be a lot better than a popular Trump (or Ivanka) entering office 4 years from now.
I wish a knew for sure.
Re:Andrew Jackson is Instructive (Score:4, Informative)
We are faced with no good choices with Trump. Just lesser evils.
That's just your point of view. Some of us voted for Trump.
And Trump did some very good things for the country:
He ran the Bush Dynasty out of power. They're pretty much done.
He defeated the Clinton Family and now all we have to worry about is they'll probably pull some shit in a decade or so with Chelsea.
No matter what Trump accomplishes as president, those are two good things that came out of this election.
Re:Andrew Jackson is Instructive (Score:4, Informative)
This election was not won by Trump, it was lost by HRC.
Re:Andrew Jackson is Instructive (Score:4, Informative)
Trail of Tears.
Jackson was a slaveholder - a vicious slaveholder.
As a person, he was vain and vindictive.
It would sure save us some trouble... (Score:3, Insightful)
If we're going to go for the popular vote, we can just wait for California to vote and let them decide who's going to be president. Save the rest of the states the trouble of running elections.
What about the primaries? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a fan of the Electoral College, and I'd be pleased to see it go away. However. . .
The shortcomings of the Electoral College are *trivial* in comparison with the broken and dysfunctional primary system that gave us Clinton and Trump as our major-party candidates. It's utter madness. That's where we should focus our reform efforts.
Re:What about the primaries? (Score:5, Interesting)
Agree 100% that it is utter madness. I'm a Republican and I'm aghast that the party chose Trump. Both parties chose terrible candidates, and the ones running in the primaries weren't all that great either.
However, I don't agree that there is something that can (or should) be done from outside the parties to reform them. I have to believe that sooner or later something will give. The problem is that more and more people are leaving both parties, with independent voters reaching the highest percentages ever. What that results in is the remaining members getting more and more radical, with the parties finding less and less common ground. And it doesn't appear that things will get better as the Democrats look to get more radical after the results of this election. It's going to be harder and harder for a candidate to appeal to the remaining party members to get nominated, and then appeal to the more moderate independents.
Each party needs to come back to recognizing that they need to also appeal to the independent voters. Instead the independent voters get left with a choice of two terrible candidates. It's hard to imagine the two party system breaking down, but I feel we are on that path. If the current parties keep getting more extreme I feel that there will eventually be a movement for a new more moderate party (I doubt that any of the existing third parties will fill that void). In my opinion, perhaps the "Rational Party" would be a good name. :)
NO to popular vote (Score:5, Informative)
That becomes the tyranny of the majority. In fact, in this election, the entire lead that Hillary has is covered by her lead in Los Angeles County. Basically a single county dictates the entire election of the President? Sucks if you live anywhere else, huh...
Instead of a popular vote, do like Nebraska and Maine. Proportional votes. Each district gets their own winner - and the overall State winner gets the two extra electoral votes. Eliminate "winner take all" - that is the TRUE discrimination. Let each district vote how it wants and cast its own elector.
Regardless, the issue of voter ID remains. (Score:3, Informative)
I need to show various forms of ID to open a bank account or buy a beer.
Right now all I have to do to vote in my state is to simply say who I am and where I live.
I find this a bit ridiculous regardless whether it's the electoral college or popular vote.
Consistency Alert (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand, Lessig relies (correctly) on the fact that the Constitution places no restrictions on how electors vote and that it was expected that they would be citizens exercising judgement.
On the other hand, he disagrees with a very fundamental feature of the Constitution -- that states, by the fact they are states, have power beyond just the mass of their population. This is directly evidenced in the Constitution as it defines how the Electoral College and Senate work. The Founders felt so strongly that each state have an equal vote in the Senate independent of the population of the state that the ONLY thing that can't be amended in the Constitution with approval of ¾ of the states (NO state can lose equal suffrage in the Senate without approval of that state).
It seems quite odd to rely on the Constitution for one argument and then completely dismiss one of its most fundamental concepts that protected the less populous states from being run roughshod over at the Federal level by the more populous states. One might go so far as to label such a viewpoint as hypocritical.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Lessig is such a tool (Score:4, Insightful)
The real sham (Score:4, Interesting)
is how the media twists and contorts just about every news item lately to paint the President Elect in a negative manner. Either liberal views or an attempt to stay relevant in this day and age, either way it's just sickening.
Face the facts, the liberal opinion and political agenda doesn't work and the people have voted as such. Media as we knew it is just getting lost in the noise that is the internet. Intelligent people are able to see the difference between signal and noise no matter how much noise the liberal media produces.
Whereas our political system isn't perfect, its better than any in history and people are more intelligent than the media.
So let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
These people want to scrap the system that has been in place since the whole thing began because things didn't turn out in their favor ?
It seems that the current generation just can't handle defeat ( they've been insulated against it their entire lives ) so when things don't go
their way, the best course of action is to loudly demand that the rules be changed ? If that doesn't work, organize protests and maybe
cry on camera a bit ? Perhaps hire a celebrity to be " The voice for the unheard " or some other silly attention seeking behavior.
Welcome to reality kids. Where life is cold, uncaring, unfair and, occasionally, absolutely horrific.
By the time you become an adult, we've flat run out of consolation and / or participation prizes.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
So strap yourselves in, because it's going to be a rough ride.
For anyone who argues Trump supporters would be doing the same thing were the situation reversed, I call out your bullshit and will say
it's pure speculation on your part. Right now the only folks who are actively participating in the riots and general stupidity are those who
claim to be the " more educated, intelligent and / or informed " than those " Deplorable " Trump Supporters ( Hillary's description of them I believe ).
I don't recall any of this sort of bullshit when Obama got elected.
( Or any President in recent history for that matter. Republican or Democrat )
So, other than dealing with the most coddled, spoiled, insulated and catered-to generation of all time, what do you believe has changed to
cause such behavior issues from the very folks who own words claim intellectual superiority over everyone else, while their actions say otherwise ?
funny... (Score:3)
So very funny. There were eight years of Obama rule during which all of these reforms could have been at least attempted. Funny how now that their favorite candidate lost everyone is coming out of the woodworks complaining about the system and asking for reforms.
Sorry guys. The proper moment to request reforms if you are really worried that the system is broken is after your favorite candidate won.
This way, it just looks like a lot of "bwuahaha, my side lost an election, that is sooo unffaaaaiiiiirrrr".
I respect Lawrence, once had a short phone conversation with him on another topic. I agree that the US political system is completely broken and needs wholesale replacement. I don't think this is the right way and the right time to do it.
Simple way to test if you truly believe in this (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone truly wishing to reform the Electoral College would be for such reform regardless of who won. If you truly believe a change is for the better, you support it even when it works against your own self interests [cnn.com]. I think Merkley made a mistake dismantling one of the checks and balances the Founding Fathers put into the system to prevent a simple majority from having too much power, but I respect him for not changing his position even though he now finds himself on the disadvantaged side of his rule change.
(And if you're one of the people who believe Merkley's rule change was necessary because the Republicans were stonewalling in the Senate, the Washington Post keeps a database of how often each Senator votes with his/her party. Here are the stats for the 108th [washingtonpost.com], 109th [washingtonpost.com], 110th [washingtonpost.com], 111th [washingtonpost.com], 112th [washingtonpost.com], and 113th [washingtonpost.com] Senates, spanning 2002-2015 with Senate control by both parties, covering both a Republican President and Democrat President. Click on the Party column to sort it by Senators most likely to vote for their party. You'll see it's actually the Democrats who most frequently vote as a block, and the Republicans who are more willing to cross the party line. The meme that Republicans refused to compromise was fake news spread by the mainstream media without any statistical evidence to back it up.)
Not fair to change rules after the game is over (Score:4, Insightful)
What the leftists want is a system that is rigged so that they always win.
Before the election, both dems and repubs wanted the electoral college.
Why wasn't this professor making an issue of the electoral college *before* the election?
Re:Pass the popcorn... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pass the popcorn... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, your obsession with race and status, and your snobbery and arrogance, are certainly typical for Silicon Valley. Fortunately, they haven't infected the rest of the country quite as much yet, as this election shows.
Re:Working as designed (Score:5, Insightful)
It's working exactly as designed, striking a balance of power between the states. It's a concept we have in the congress, population based representation in one house and equal state based representation in the other. Without the electoral college the president would effectively be chosen by only a handful of states. The college ensures that all of the states have at least some effective say in the matter.
Two things...
Even with the electoral college, the President is being chosen by a "handful of states." Specifically, the three "Swing" states which put Trump over the top. Even worse, the outcome of the entire country's future leadership is based on less than 10,000 people in one state, less that 20,000 in another, and less than 35,000 in a third--a total of far under 100,000 votes in a nation where more than 120 million votes were cast. This is, more or less... a rounding error... A number of votes that could be cast (or not cast) if it rains on election day.
And second of all, the original "Balance of power" the electoral college was created to preserve was between free and slave states. Specifically, southerners would not have adopted the constitution if they thought that higher population northern states would have been able to control the congress, and the presidency, by virtue of their greater numbers. So they came up with the 3/5 compromise (that allowed slave states to count 60% of their slaves for the purpose of calculating their congressional representation, and by proxy, their electoral college representation,) and kludged it onto the electoral college to "protect" their interests in the Presidency.
Setting aside whether or not the electoral college is, in and of itself "racist," (I don't think it is anymore, although it was conceived as such) the real issue I have with it is that it's an anachronism that isn't necessary. Because the other justification for it is that rural areas in 1797 didn't have very good communications with the outside world, and might be enticed to accidentally vote for a dangerous tyrant that they were unaware was a dangerous tyrant.
So bottom line, slavery is defunct, so we no longer need to appease slave states, and today, rural states have access to the Internet and full communications parity with the rest of the world. Which means there's no more justification for the continued existence of the Electoral College.