New book "Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point"

Indeed. However, that one has a right to a particular course doesn’t in the slightest sanction that course as virtuous.

 

What is the virtuous course ?

 

If we want to be honest here you should revisit... day by day leading up to the 2020 farce of an election. 81 million votes my azz...

 

This is current method in a few states is it not? Nebraska?

 

Not sure why that's so unbelievable, particularly given that since 1988, the Republican candidate for president has only won the popular once (2004).

 

I can easily imagine that Trump is so widely hated that 117 people voted for Biden and 81 million voted against Trump.

It was The Empire Strikes Back in real life.

 

Not exactly. They split up the vote by Congressional District in winner-take-all races within the districts for 1 vote each district (and a winner-take-all race for the 2 electoral votes tied to Senators).

 

That's one of those static that only matters in a different system of governance.

 

I know the popular vote doesn't decide presidential elections; I was just responding to your post (which referenced the popular vote). I'd also note that in 2020, the Republicans gained seats in the House. I suppose someone could argue that Democrats only cheated at the top of the ballot, but seems more plausible that Trump was simply less popular individually than Republican candidates generally.

 

I don’t think there is any question that Trump was a drag overall. That said, I can at least imagine there might have been tens and scores of thousands (certainly not millions) of votes that perhaps should have been thrown out.

 

If we value the interests of the nation over those of the political parties, I think the virtuous path is pretty clearly the proportional assignment of electors. The winner-take-all system was introduced by the Democratic Party in Virginia in 1800 in order to give their candidate, Jefferson, an advantage in the electoral college. Eventually, most of the rest of the states adopted the same approach to combat Virginia’s electoral weight. In effect, we end up with a tragedy of the commons, where each state’s dominant party feels the need to keep their system in place to keep pace with other states, which of course only maintain their system for the same reason.

 

Thanks for the clarification.

 

Nebraska and Maine

 

Thanks, you explained it better than I did

 

This argument seems besides the point as the electoral college does nothing to protect election integrity. Electoral votes from states come directly from human votes, so a large swath of fabricated votes for Biden would end up giving him the electoral votes automatically.

It even seems to me that the current electoral college structure would make it easier to steal an election, as any state flip would could come with a windfall of electoral votes. Under the current system, Biden would have needed only to falsify 186k votes in Florida to have earned an extra 29 electoral college votes. Under a proportional system, he would have had to flip even more votes (~189k) to even steal a single electoral college vote from Florida in 2020.

 

No, not if they live in a solid red state. Their vote for president is meaningless. They'd have to move to a swing state for their vote to matter. Or we'd have to get rid of the EC and go to popular vote for president.

 

Or just divide into 50 sovereign nations and let people move where they will.

 

You seem to support America de-centralizing/breaking up while at the same time seem to support Russia (already the largest country in the world) amassing even more real estate and centralized political power over a greater number of people. Is it because you see as Russia as authoritarian and therefore closer to your preference for monarchial rule?

 

I’m actually less concerned about what happens to Russia but fascinated that somebody, somewhere had the balls to stand up and say “No!” to Hegemon.

 

You don't consider Russia's effort to acquire even more land and more power to be hegemonic?