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Young male voters are flocking to Trump – but he doesn’t have their interests at heart
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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I get this way of thinking, but just to be clear: the US didn't get the leader it deserved when Trump "won" the first time, despite receiving millions of fewer votes than Hilary. And almost certainly here, even if Trump "wins," he will have gotten less votes.
That's because there is a 2-3% bias in the current presidential electoral system, the Electoral College. We're founded under a "1 person, 1 vote" ideology that our elections ignore.
So yes, I get the frustration. But we (the sane people) are all in this together, and the majority of voters in the US appear to still be sane, even if that doesn't win the election by default. Solidarity would be the better move here.
I agree with everything you're saying, except:
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, delegates debated between Congress choosing the next president vs a straight popular vote. The former risked corruption between the legislative and executive branches, and the latter gave too much power to the uneducated, sometimes-mob-esque populous. After several debates, a compromised was reached - electors. These intermediaries wouldn’t be picked by Congress or elected by the people. Instead, the states would each appoint independent electors who would cast the actual ballots for the presidency.
Overall, though some founders agreed with a "1 person, 1 vote" ideology, they were not the majority... unfortunate though that was.
In other words, like having Congress do it, but with added Federalism by giving it to the state legislatures instead of the federal one.
The "Electors as intermediaries" part was wasn't directly about reducing corruption, because having the state legislators choose would've already solved that. The only trouble was that "one state legislator, one vote" wouldn't work because different states set up their legislatures differently and with varying numbers of constituents per legislator, so they needed a sort of 'compatibility layer' to compensate for those differences and the solution was having state legislatures appoint Electors.
I think the EC is an outdated system that needs to die, but it was explicitly created because they didn't want presidential elections to be one person, one vote. There is no ignoring here, it's by design.
It was explicitly created because they wanted presidents to be chosen by state legislators, not the general public at all.
Iirc, it was a compromise between those who wanted a direct election, and those who wanted Congress to choose the POTUS. Including concessions to the southern States because they were outnumbered when it came to free people.
I could be missing something about some wanting state legislatures to choose, but I'm pretty sure the bulk was what I said above.
I agree on the history, so "founded on" was wrong on my part.
But arguably the current "one person, one vote" standard controls. The Equal Protection clauses of the 5th and the 14th amendments are incommensurably in conflict with the electoral college. As between them, since the Equal Protection clauses (at least the 14th Amendment) are more recent, those arguably supersede in case of conflict.
That's my reasoning anyway.
At this point the US has massively diverged from the original intent. The original intent was that only wealthy male land owners would vote. Further the entire US government is just a very slightly modified version of what the UK used just with a President in place of a King, and states in place of noble houses.
There is unfortunately a massive sentiment in the US to uphold the founders as some kind of perfect ideal of democracy and that anything that differs from their original intent is somehow wrong. The reality of course is that they were flying by the seat of their pants and largely making it up as they went. In addition ideas and morals have changed greatly since that time. We should be far less concerned about what a bunch of people who died centuries ago would think about some law or ruling and far more concerned about what impact it would have today.
So yes, the Electoral College was intentionally set up as an attempt to prevent direct democracy, but so what? The question should not be what did they intend, the question should be do we still need/want it?
In 2016 voters had the excuse that they didn't know how a Trump presidency would play out. They don't have that same excuse in 2024. Anyone who votes for him knows what they're doing. If he wins, even with electoral college shenanigans, it will be a symptom of a much deeper malaise than just Trump.
Yes, I agree with all of that. But "there's a bigger problem" or "Trump voters know who he is" isn't the same as "the US got what it deserves."
I'm specifically taking issue with "deserves.". "Deserves" implies Trump represents the US, which would only be true if the majority of the US (or US voters) chose Trump. We didn't. That's important because he's not just a dangerous leader, and an autocrat, he's one that does not have a mandate of the people.
He still has the support of about 80 million people. While not the majority, neither is it a neglible amount compared to the total. If about a quarter to a third of your population are basically Nazis, you do have a much bigger problem, and the "deserves" - while definitely controversial - does start to kind of figure in the equation.
The world didn't exactly simply forgive the German citizenry after WW2 either, and for good cause.
To expand upon that point: if y'all non-MAGA Americans think that the rest of the Germans had a moral obligation to revolt against the Nazis, well, you'd better have a good long think about your current situation.
I don't understand why you are getting downvoted. This was an incredibly salient point.
What we are observing is that regardless of our vast technological progression, a statistically significant percentage of the population continues to suffer from a clinical form of emotional retardation that has severely stunted their ability to think rationally, to feel empathy, or in many cases both.
At some point our species is going to have to learn how to correct for this aberration, or we will reach an untimely evolutionary dead end.