"we may not know who the president is the night of the election or the day after,"
Oh the humanity! Making sure all votes are counted and properly recorded takes time. Imagine how long it took for results to be known during the first hundred years after the founding of this country. I don't remember anyone whining back then they didn't know right away.
And for those who are going to say we've progressed where this delay isn't necessary, we're still using the same system of voting wherein the person who receives the most votes may not win. How about we progress beyond that?
"And for those who are going to say we've progressed where this delay isn't necessary, we're still using the same system of voting wherein the person who receives the most votes may not win. How about we progress beyond that?"
That's a horrible idea. Our founders were incredibly smart in baking in all kinds of protections into the system. The electoral college preserves the union. Without that it's just a contest to get the most people into a state so that your state can control the election. And at that poi
I call complete BS. Representation of minority viewpoints would require replacing out winner take all system to one where a party would win a percentage of the seats instead of our winner take all arrangements. Electoral college gives out sized power to the "purple" states and further distorts representations rather than alleviating it. We get the president candidates from the early voting states for primaries, and then let a handful of purple states choose between them. Live in a solid blue/red state? Too bad, you will only get enough attention to get the low hanging donations to pump the purple states full of political ads. Funding is mostly from big donors to parties, so you have to corrupt your morals pretty completely just to get on the ballot in the first place.
You'd have to get pretty creative to come up with any more of an effed up system than we have.
It does no such thing. As the Supreme Court recently ruled, electoral voters may be bound to their party's nomination, the complete opposite of what the Founders intended. Doubt me? What was the reasoning behind the electoral college? That the people may not know of the qualifications of the candidate and so learned men (and it was men at the time) should be able to use their judgement to prevent a usurpation. To quote [factcheck.org]:
As Alexander Hamilton writes in “The Federalist Papers,” the Constitution is designed to ensure “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” The point of the Electoral College is to preserve “the sense of the people,” while at the same time ensuring that a president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.”
In other words, those in the electoral college are supposed to substitute their own judgement in determining who is qualified to hold the office. Which is exactly what happened in 2016. A few electors chose not to vote according to the majority because they determined (rightly so) the con artist was not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.
The only thing the electoral college does is game the system. As we have seen several times in our history, all one need do is collect a few specific states and they can win without holding a majority of the votes. By having a direct vote, each vote cast would be even more important than it is now and no, big states like California would not dominate. They are large enough and have a diverse enough population that their own votes would be split, unlike states such as Iowa, Montana, Utah and several others whose population effectively votes in lockstep.
And those who voted conservative in California effectively had no voice.
similar expletive not required. Discussion does not require expletives if we disagree, in fact being able to work with and talk with people who you disagree with in a calm way would be a sign of maturity.
What was the reasoning behind the electoral college?
Who cares what claims were made, or even if those claims of intent are truthful? The result is that some people's votes are worth more than others. It has no place in a system in which all men are allegedly created equal.
Question, how many votes should each nation get in the United Nations? If you agree with their 1 nation, 1 vote implementation, why? After all, it is making some people's votes worth more than others. Shouldn't votes be proportional to the number of citizens of each nation?
I would argue that they should also have a bicameral system, where an equal number of votes per nation (which can continue to be 1) is balanced by a proportional system, where votes are per unit of population.
The problem with this concept is well many but primarily you get lets say California that decides that any one can vote including illegals without ID and you have subverted the election. I am not saying that it is not subverted already but the electoral collage does a lot of things one is provide a level of protection against rouge states corrupting the system. The US is United States, if we did not have the Electoral collage it might be the DS (Divided States.) Anyway this is kind of pointless as the syste
It's kind-of-proportional. It's not one seat per x citizens. The combination of the guarantee of at least one seat to each state and the cap of 435 members instated in 1911 prevent it from actually being what you claim it to be. And the requirement for single-member districts promotes gerrymandering, to boot.
Wasn't the intention of the founders that Congress be more important than the president? Shouldn't it be the disproportionate allocation of seats in the Senate that gives small states sufficient distortion away from democracy that it's in their interests to stay in the union, rather than a distorted election of the president?
Our founders were incredibly smart in baking in all kinds of protections into the system. The electoral college preserves the union. Without that it's just a contest to get the most people into a state so that your state can control the election. And at that point there's no reason for farming states to have an interest in being part of the union.
Everything is wrong with what you said. The electoral college preserves the status quo. Without it, states don't control elections, The People do. Without the union, farming-only states would be reamed on trade. If we actually had a contest to get people into states, then the states that treat people like shit would have to stop it, or they'd lose their power. This could only be a good thing.
When the country was founded most people were illiterate and uneducated. They also didn't have access to national and global news sources. That is why they created the electoral college system. We have changed in ways the forefathers couldn't possibly plan for and any belief in the idea that they were infallible and that their design works well today are far fetched and misguided at best.
Our founding fathers never planned for advanced data analytics that has pushed the system into campaigning not for general public, but for a select targeted group.
In federal elections we don't see politicians in New York, California, or Arkansas, Alabama. Because they know for the most part how they are going to vote, but will target Florida, and Ohio and build their policies around the swing states needs and desire. These states should have say on what is going on, however todays analytics is so targete
What a load of hooey. The Electoral College might have been a good idea at the time, but after the 1800s it should have been abandoned. In case you missed it, a whole bunch of states actually seceded from the union. In other words, if we measure the EC in terms of having held the union together, it was a miserable failure. And at this point, by allowing a minority to elect a President simply because they happen to live on one side or other of a state line, it's actually doing more to tear the union apart th
Horseshit. The way it is now, tens of millions of voters in Texas, California and New York have no voice at all, since these states are dominated by one party. How does that "preserve the union"?
> we're still using the same system of voting wherein the person who receives the most votes may not win.
I get your point. Funny thing is, that's not true. Whomever gets the most votes wins.
That's true in a very simple way for almost all elected officials. What you're referring to ia, of course, onw particular office - the president, the top of the federal government (the federation).
In the early 1950s, many people in the United States forgot what country they live in. This after SCOTUS apparently forgo
I'd say that the idea that we are the united STATES ended in the 1860s, not the 1950s. Lincoln wanted to strengthen the federal government long before 1857 when he picked up on the anti-slavery movement as a cause. When the southern states tried to secede and the federal government denied them the choice, we became a country instead of a union of states.
Since you raised the topic of the Senate, my old idea was that they should be reapportioned on a monetary basis based on federal taxes paid. Another dimension of dividing power to prevent abuse. "The Senior Senator from Microsoft is recognized to speak." What could possibly go wrong? (Yeah, I know that it's unlikely that Microsoft pays 1% of the federal tax income, but it's just to illustrate the principle.)
On later reflection, these days I'm more interested in (highly theoretical) no-loser guaranteed-repre
Lincoln's actions are certainly interesting from a Constitutional standpoint.
From a legal point of view, Constitution was instituted as an amendment to the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, so one can make a reasoned argument that the treaty or agreement signed by the states is perpetual - there is no secession clause. Some treaties have a clause that a party can end the agreement with 2-year notice or whatever. The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union put "perpetual" (forever) right in the title.
From a more philosophical point of view, one might argue that: 1. States, having the right and power to choose to join, must naturally have some right and power to leave. Self-government and all. 2. The powers ceded to the union are ceded - not "but we'll threaten to leave every time we don't get our way".
If states were free to leave whenever they want, the passions of the moment might well see states leaving over different issues. Thinking about what's been going on in Portland, with people demanding that the police be totally dismantled, I could Washington or some state deciding to leave the union this summer because "black lives matter" or because Trump won an election or because Clinton did. The country would, over time, fall apart.
To balance these, I would think the parameters would need to be designed to ensure a state leaves *because the people actually don't want to be part of the US anymore*, not because of the hot issue of the month. For that reason, we'd have something like a 2-year or 3-year notice and waiting period. A cooling-off period, in which citizens of the state might change their mind. The Constitution provides no such process.
Regarding the growth of the federal government vs the states, a chart of federal vs state spending gives a rough but useful useful graphical representation of the growth of the federal government. The federal share of spending was quite low until World War 1, then it dropped right back down when the war ended. (The New Deal, before WW1, seemed like a lot at the time. It was a drop in the bucket compared to today). Same thing for WW2 - the feds did a lot during the war; when WW2 ended federal spending dropped right back down. Then a couple years after WW2 the federal share of government spending (and therefore governing) started rising quickly, and has continued to rise.
The southern states would have had a much stronger argument (and the north wouldn't have been as anxious to stop them from leaving) if they had left over anything besides slavery. Some things people are willing to die for, and one of those is to stop slavery.
The southern states would have had a much stronger argument (and the north wouldn't have been as anxious to stop them from leaving) if they had left over anything besides slavery. Some things people are willing to die for, and one of those is to stop slavery.
And those who would die to keep it. And the poor folk who had to fight it, well, majestic talk of state's rights got some of them, the state that they were born in got some, and, eventually, invasion got the rest.
Slavery was argued over when creating the Constitution. The only way to create the Union was the detestable "3/5's of a person" thing. Almost from the get-go, whether or not a state banned slavery was the predominant political thread until the Civil War.
Whatever the legalities, the Articles died on the vine. But it does give lawyers and other nitpickers, such as "sovereign citizens", things to argue about.
As far as leaving the Union, I believe that the method declared as the way to do it is via the Amendment process. Technically, that's correct. I have trouble seeing that actually work, though.
I can also imagine a state could pass a resolution saying they want to leave, then Congress could pass a resolution saying the United States does not object to California leaving.
A third party observer could say "that's not legal", but if California isn't trying to stay and the US isn't trying to keep them, that pretty much settles it. SCOTUS would rule it a "political question", meaning they wouldn't get involved.
In practice, that wouldn't happen only because, in the cas
Given the opportunity, I wouldn't be surprised of states separated from the US, forming blocs. Weak unions of a few states. Which then saw a new to engage in a common defense and free trade/common economy with the remaining US.
They would draw up articles of the European^h^h^h^h American Union which would say the federation would cooperate on certain things, but remain independent on everything else.
Then the central leaders in Brussels^h^h^h^h Washington would get power hungry and expand the powers of the
True, true. And most of us have seen the same thing in IT. One big, monolithic server with central repositories, wired to greenscreens that were used to display data. Then distributed computing: client/server, lots of networked hosts. Fat clients and local caches. Next, we get a "Megaframe" which can hold lots of virtual servers. Fat clients turn to thin clients, and are now used to primarily display data from the main machine. And so it goes.
We shall see about how things go with the EU and with UK. People have differing predictions.
Britain chose to join a loose partnership, mostly a trade deal. It didn't take long at all for the EU to usurp more and more power, for the countries to start losing their sovereignty. I guess everywhere, the people in power are people who want power; the EU leaders got power amd of course they wanted more and more power.
We'll see how things go. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the EU
The UK has lost far more sovereignty since it left than it ever agreed to pool with the EU. Just look at how it is being bullied on trade deals, being forced to accept terms it doesn't want.
One of the other big things is the shear amount of money wasted duplicating stuff we were getting much cheaper as part of the EU. For example we have to set up our own medical regulator now. We already spent half a billion on that bankrupt satellite company because we lost access to Galileo. The new ports and customs pos
"we may not know who the president is the night of the election or the day after,"
One of the dumbest things in TFS/A. The correct statement is, we may not know who the President Elect is... The President remains unchanged until January 20./pedantic
It's funny that you think you are being pedantic, because you are completely wrong. The (going to be come inauguration day) is implied since that is the context of the text in its entirety.
As long as those ballots don't involve mail in? I'll be fine with the vote count taking awhile since its been admitted 28 million votes have been lost [realclearpolitics.com] in the last 4 elections and with this looking like it will be a close race? Yeah I dont want the next POTUS decided by the USPS, hell they cant even deliver my packages without smashing 'em half the time.
I've worked as an election helper in Germany. Manual counting was usually done within two hours. The US ballots tend to be more complex, but if counting can't be done within a few hours, you simply need more polling places and helpers. The only real problem is the lack of political will.
It does seem like an organisational issue, doesnâ(TM)t it? Here in the UK, we also generally get the result of an election before we wake up the next day, or for those who stay up, by 3am or so. Some constituencies have turned this in to a competition to see who can report first, with chains of students passing along the ballot boxes and other optimisations to what amounts to a parallel counting problem. It makes for some good reality TV if youâ(TM)re in to politics.
I should add the caveat that this is simple check one box kind of ballots. Countries that use systems like alternative transferable votes based on ranking the candidates require more effort, but still, I think time in this case is still down to the level of parallelisation (organisational issue)
What a wonderful deflection from things that matter to rare events that don't affect the outcome in practice, and even strawmanning thrown into the mix. You must be proud of yourself.
In a country of 320 million people, even the things you remember from the news such as police shooting people for no good reason can actually be very rare in practice.
Please point out the widespread voter fraud in a national election that has you so scared. We'll go ahead and not wait for you to find it, because it doesn't exist.
The states have never before allowed it occur so widespread, so of course nobody can prove it happening in the past. Even then, it would be nearly impossible to prove and that is the very reasoning behind the resistance to this last minute change.
Instead, your ilk consistently opposes even the most basic forms of freely available voter identification. When has that ever been shown to been a cause of statistically significant disenfranchisement? Instead of allowing for solutions to getting id's to the vote
Please point out any post of mine, or any inference I've ever made to opposing positive identification of registered voters.
I similarly won't wait for you to find it, because it similarly doesn't exist. You seem to have a habit of manufacturing outrage, or at the very least splashing paint everywhere instead of being careful to only apply it where it should be.
And for those who are going to say we've progressed where this delay isn't necessary, we're still using the same system of voting wherein the person who receives the most votes may not win. How about we progress beyond that?
Yeah, because running up the score in California and Texas absolutely will do great things for the rest of the country.
Imagine how long it took for results to be known during the first hundred years after the founding of this country.
Which is why in the U.S. a president who loses re-election gets another two months to make trouble (and you know Trump will) until inauguration day. In every other advanced nation, when an incumbent leader loses re-election, at the instant the election is declared the loser is out and the winner is in.
"we may not know who the president is the night of the election or the day after,"
Oh the humanity! Making sure all votes are counted and properly recorded takes time. Imagine how long it took for results to be known during the first hundred years after the founding of this country. I don't remember anyone whining back then they didn't know right away.
And for those who are going to say we've progressed where this delay isn't necessary, we're still using the same system of voting wherein the person who receives the most votes may not win. How about we progress beyond that?
We already know. Now we are treading water until the official voting date arrives.
And as they say, "A new broom sweeps clean".
The horror! (Score:5, Insightful)
"we may not know who the president is the night of the election or the day after,"
Oh the humanity! Making sure all votes are counted and properly recorded takes time. Imagine how long it took for results to be known during the first hundred years after the founding of this country. I don't remember anyone whining back then they didn't know right away.
And for those who are going to say we've progressed where this delay isn't necessary, we're still using the same system of voting wherein the person who receives the most votes may not win. How about we progress beyond that?
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"And for those who are going to say we've progressed where this delay isn't necessary, we're still using the same system of voting wherein the person who receives the most votes may not win. How about we progress beyond that?"
That's a horrible idea. Our founders were incredibly smart in baking in all kinds of protections into the system. The electoral college preserves the union. Without that it's just a contest to get the most people into a state so that your state can control the election. And at that poi
Re:The horror! (Score:5, Insightful)
I call complete BS. Representation of minority viewpoints would require replacing out winner take all system to one where a party would win a percentage of the seats instead of our winner take all arrangements. Electoral college gives out sized power to the "purple" states and further distorts representations rather than alleviating it. We get the president candidates from the early voting states for primaries, and then let a handful of purple states choose between them. Live in a solid blue/red state? Too bad, you will only get enough attention to get the low hanging donations to pump the purple states full of political ads. Funding is mostly from big donors to parties, so you have to corrupt your morals pretty completely just to get on the ballot in the first place.
You'd have to get pretty creative to come up with any more of an effed up system than we have.
Re:The horror! (Score:5, Informative)
The electoral college preserves the union.
It does no such thing. As the Supreme Court recently ruled, electoral voters may be bound to their party's nomination, the complete opposite of what the Founders intended. Doubt me? What was the reasoning behind the electoral college? That the people may not know of the qualifications of the candidate and so learned men (and it was men at the time) should be able to use their judgement to prevent a usurpation. To quote [factcheck.org]:
As Alexander Hamilton writes in “The Federalist Papers,” the Constitution is designed to ensure “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” The point of the Electoral College is to preserve “the sense of the people,” while at the same time ensuring that a president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.”
In other words, those in the electoral college are supposed to substitute their own judgement in determining who is qualified to hold the office. Which is exactly what happened in 2016. A few electors chose not to vote according to the majority because they determined (rightly so) the con artist was not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.
The only thing the electoral college does is game the system. As we have seen several times in our history, all one need do is collect a few specific states and they can win without holding a majority of the votes. By having a direct vote, each vote cast would be even more important than it is now and no, big states like California would not dominate. They are large enough and have a diverse enough population that their own votes would be split, unlike states such as Iowa, Montana, Utah and several others whose population effectively votes in lockstep.
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unlike states such as Iowa, Montana, Utah and several others whose population effectively votes in lockstep.
Worth pointing out that only 45.5% of Utah's "lockstep" votes were cast for Donald Trump.
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similar expletive not required. Discussion does not require expletives if we disagree, in fact being able to work with and talk with people who you disagree with in a calm way would be a sign of maturity.
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And the rest effectively had no voice.
Only if you don't understand the Banzhaf Power Index, or related ideas.
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What was the reasoning behind the electoral college?
Who cares what claims were made, or even if those claims of intent are truthful? The result is that some people's votes are worth more than others. It has no place in a system in which all men are allegedly created equal.
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Question, how many votes should each nation get in the United Nations? If you agree with their 1 nation, 1 vote implementation, why? After all, it is making some people's votes worth more than others. Shouldn't votes be proportional to the number of citizens of each nation?
I would argue that they should also have a bicameral system, where an equal number of votes per nation (which can continue to be 1) is balanced by a proportional system, where votes are per unit of population.
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Really?!?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? It didn't do a very good job during the Civil War.
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It's kind-of-proportional. It's not one seat per x citizens. The combination of the guarantee of at least one seat to each state and the cap of 435 members instated in 1911 prevent it from actually being what you claim it to be. And the requirement for single-member districts promotes gerrymandering, to boot.
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And the requirement for single-member districts promotes gerrymandering, to boot.
What do you mean by "single-member"? Is that a district that has a single person living in it, or a district that encompasses an entire State?
It's the number of members of the house. This is made clear in the WP article linked above.
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Wasn't the intention of the founders that Congress be more important than the president? Shouldn't it be the disproportionate allocation of seats in the Senate that gives small states sufficient distortion away from democracy that it's in their interests to stay in the union, rather than a distorted election of the president?
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Our founders were incredibly smart in baking in all kinds of protections into the system. The electoral college preserves the union. Without that it's just a contest to get the most people into a state so that your state can control the election. And at that point there's no reason for farming states to have an interest in being part of the union.
Everything is wrong with what you said. The electoral college preserves the status quo. Without it, states don't control elections, The People do. Without the union, farming-only states would be reamed on trade. If we actually had a contest to get people into states, then the states that treat people like shit would have to stop it, or they'd lose their power. This could only be a good thing.
Re: The horror! (Score:3)
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Our founding fathers never planned for advanced data analytics that has pushed the system into campaigning not for general public, but for a select targeted group.
In federal elections we don't see politicians in New York, California, or Arkansas, Alabama. Because they know for the most part how they are going to vote, but will target Florida, and Ohio and build their policies around the swing states needs and desire. These states should have say on what is going on, however todays analytics is so targete
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each State witch
I didn't know each State had an official witch.
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The way it is now, tens of millions of voters in Texas, California and
New York have no voice at all, since these states
are dominated by one party. How does that "preserve the union"?
Technically not true, but I get your point (Score:3, Insightful)
> we're still using the same system of voting wherein the person who receives the most votes may not win.
I get your point. Funny thing is, that's not true. Whomever gets the most votes wins.
That's true in a very simple way for almost all elected officials. What you're referring to ia, of course, onw particular office - the president, the top of the federal government (the federation).
In the early 1950s, many people in the United States forgot what country they live in. This after SCOTUS apparently forgo
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Reform proposals for representative government? (Score:2)
Since you raised the topic of the Senate, my old idea was that they should be reapportioned on a monetary basis based on federal taxes paid. Another dimension of dividing power to prevent abuse. "The Senior Senator from Microsoft is recognized to speak." What could possibly go wrong? (Yeah, I know that it's unlikely that Microsoft pays 1% of the federal tax income, but it's just to illustrate the principle.)
On later reflection, these days I'm more interested in (highly theoretical) no-loser guaranteed-repre
Re:Technically not true, but I get your point (Score:5, Interesting)
Lincoln's actions are certainly interesting from a Constitutional standpoint.
From a legal point of view, Constitution was instituted as an amendment to the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, so one can make a reasoned argument that the treaty or agreement signed by the states is perpetual - there is no secession clause. Some treaties have a clause that a party can end the agreement with 2-year notice or whatever. The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union put "perpetual" (forever) right in the title.
From a more philosophical point of view, one might argue that:
1. States, having the right and power to choose to join, must naturally have some right and power to leave. Self-government and all.
2. The powers ceded to the union are ceded - not "but we'll threaten to leave every time we don't get our way".
If states were free to leave whenever they want, the passions of the moment might well see states leaving over different issues. Thinking about what's been going on in Portland, with people demanding that the police be totally dismantled, I could Washington or some state deciding to leave the union this summer because "black lives matter" or because Trump won an election or because Clinton did. The country would, over time, fall apart.
To balance these, I would think the parameters would need to be designed to ensure a state leaves *because the people actually don't want to be part of the US anymore*, not because of the hot issue of the month. For that reason, we'd have something like a 2-year or 3-year notice and waiting period. A cooling-off period, in which citizens of the state might change their mind. The Constitution provides no such process.
Regarding the growth of the federal government vs the states, a chart of federal vs state spending gives a rough but useful useful graphical representation of the growth of the federal government. The federal share of spending was quite low until World War 1, then it dropped right back down when the war ended. (The New Deal, before WW1, seemed like a lot at the time. It was a drop in the bucket compared to today). Same thing for WW2 - the feds did a lot during the war; when WW2 ended federal spending dropped right back down. Then a couple years after WW2 the federal share of government spending (and therefore governing) started rising quickly, and has continued to rise.
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The southern states would have had a much stronger argument (and the north wouldn't have been as anxious to stop them from leaving) if they had left over anything besides slavery. Some things people are willing to die for, and one of those is to stop slavery.
And those who would die to keep it. And the poor folk who had to fight it, well, majestic talk of state's rights got some of them, the state that they were born in got some, and, eventually, invasion got the rest.
Slavery was argued over when creating the Constitution. The only way to create the Union was the detestable "3/5's of a person" thing. Almost from the get-go, whether or not a state banned slavery was the predominant political thread until the Civil War.
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Whatever the legalities, the Articles died on the vine. But it does give lawyers and other nitpickers, such as "sovereign citizens", things to argue about.
As far as leaving the Union, I believe that the method declared as the way to do it is via the Amendment process. Technically, that's correct. I have trouble seeing that actually work, though.
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An amendment could certainly do it.
I can also imagine a state could pass a resolution saying they want to leave, then Congress could pass a resolution saying the United States does not object to California leaving.
A third party observer could say "that's not legal", but if California isn't trying to stay and the US isn't trying to keep them, that pretty much settles it. SCOTUS would rule it a "political question", meaning they wouldn't get involved.
In practice, that wouldn't happen only because, in the cas
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I expect that if any state is allowed to leave, the US will Balkanize. Which, I guess, is the normal progression of very large political entities.
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Given the opportunity, I wouldn't be surprised of states separated from the US, forming blocs. Weak unions of a few states. Which then saw a new to engage in a common defense and free trade/common economy with the remaining US.
They would draw up articles of the European^h^h^h^h American Union which would say the federation would cooperate on certain things, but remain independent on everything else.
Then the central leaders in Brussels^h^h^h^h Washington would get power hungry and expand the powers of the
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"Round and round we go." And so it goes*.
True, true. And most of us have seen the same thing in IT. One big, monolithic server with central repositories, wired to greenscreens that were used to display data. Then distributed computing: client/server, lots of networked hosts. Fat clients and local caches. Next, we get a "Megaframe" which can hold lots of virtual servers. Fat clients turn to thin clients, and are now used to primarily display data from the main machine. And so it goes.
And teh same thing happe
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Be very careful about leaving. The grass may look greener but as Britain found out it's a stupendously bad idea.
Better to get involved and try to fix the Union.
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That's a roger.
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We shall see about how things go with the EU and with UK.
People have differing predictions.
Britain chose to join a loose partnership, mostly a trade deal.
It didn't take long at all for the EU to usurp more and more power, for the countries to start losing their sovereignty. I guess everywhere, the people in power are people who want power; the EU leaders got power amd of course they wanted more and more power.
We'll see how things go. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the EU
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The UK has lost far more sovereignty since it left than it ever agreed to pool with the EU. Just look at how it is being bullied on trade deals, being forced to accept terms it doesn't want.
One of the other big things is the shear amount of money wasted duplicating stuff we were getting much cheaper as part of the EU. For example we have to set up our own medical regulator now. We already spent half a billion on that bankrupt satellite company because we lost access to Galileo. The new ports and customs pos
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They forgot this is the United STATES.
If the states were united, there would never have been a civil war.
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If the slave states had won the civil war, the states wouldn't be united?
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"we may not know who the president is the night of the election or the day after,"
One of the dumbest things in TFS/A. The correct statement is, we may not know who the President Elect is ... The President remains unchanged until January 20. /pedantic
Re: The horror! (Score:2)
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Re: The horror! (Score:2)
It does seem like an organisational issue, doesnâ(TM)t it? Here in the UK, we also generally get the result of an election before we wake up the next day, or for those who stay up, by 3am or so. Some constituencies have turned this in to a competition to see who can report first, with chains of students passing along the ballot boxes and other optimisations to what amounts to a parallel counting problem. It makes for some good reality TV if youâ(TM)re in to politics.
Re: The horror! (Score:2)
I should add the caveat that this is simple check one box kind of ballots. Countries that use systems like alternative transferable votes based on ranking the candidates require more effort, but still, I think time in this case is still down to the level of parallelisation (organisational issue)
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Please point out the widespread voter fraud in a national election that has you so scared. We'll go ahead and not wait for you to find it, because it doesn't exist.
Re: um, NO, just ... NO (Score:1)
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Please point out any post of mine, or any inference I've ever made to opposing positive identification of registered voters.
I similarly won't wait for you to find it, because it similarly doesn't exist. You seem to have a habit of manufacturing outrage, or at the very least splashing paint everywhere instead of being careful to only apply it where it should be.
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Making sure all votes are counted and properly recorded takes time.
Where I live, somehow we always get election results from 100% hand-counted, 100% paper ballots within 12 hours after the polling places are closed.
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And for those who are going to say we've progressed where this delay isn't necessary, we're still using the same system of voting wherein the person who receives the most votes may not win. How about we progress beyond that?
Yeah, because running up the score in California and Texas absolutely will do great things for the rest of the country.
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because running up the score in California and Texas absolutely will do great things for the rest of the country.
Better than having tens of millions of votes ignored because the voters happen to live in California or Texas.
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My prediction: we won't know who the winner is on the night of the election, but that won't stop Fox News from announcing Trump as the winner.
Remember you heard it here first.
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Imagine how long it took for results to be known during the
first hundred years after the founding of this country.
Which is why in the U.S. a president who loses re-election gets
another two months to make trouble (and you know Trump will) until inauguration day.
In every other advanced nation, when an incumbent leader loses re-election,
at the instant the election is declared the loser is out and the winner is in.
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"we may not know who the president is the night of the election or the day after,"
Oh the humanity! Making sure all votes are counted and properly recorded takes time. Imagine how long it took for results to be known during the first hundred years after the founding of this country. I don't remember anyone whining back then they didn't know right away.
And for those who are going to say we've progressed where this delay isn't necessary, we're still using the same system of voting wherein the person who receives the most votes may not win. How about we progress beyond that?
We already know. Now we are treading water until the official voting date arrives. And as they say, "A new broom sweeps clean".