Call for Single Term Legislators

[KeithE]

The situation we are in right now is very good evidence of why we should have single term politicians for Congress as well as Presidents.

The Republicans in the Senate are clearly compromised right now. Even if they thought Trump should be removed, they are loathed to say so (or vote to remove) since Trump t of his
would in all likelihood look to “primary” them with a candidate of Trump's choice and “smear” the incumbent with his trademark sarcasm and untruths*. Trump still has a large majority of Republicans (>80% but shrinking {I hope}).

And currently the President is spending most of his time and influence on his re-election.

*BTW, did you know that Hillary Clinton has finally been cleared of any deliberate "mishandling” of classified material.

[William Thornton]

Hill 2020? Check w Tulsi.

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

You guys are heavily infected. Get some help before it's too late. Unfortunately, the value of old friend Sandy's predictions took a nose dive in 2016. Values are still highly depressed there. And, old friend Keith just can't seem to get over the fact that the hoi polloi can't see his brilliance and vote accordingly.

On Keith's original thought to call for single term legislators, it's plain that the issue is that those doggone Repubs just will not vote the way Keith wants them too. It would be the height of absurdity to have single-term house members. Two years is plenty short. Throw those bums out and throw your bums in biennially...at the ballot box. On the senate with those six year terms, the Founding Fathers had something in mind there but the electorate can vote them out any election they want. I would have favored a single presidential term for Clinton and Obama but then that's just partisan griping.

It's a pesky thing, this business of citizens voting who aren't educated or who don't think like any of us do. That's the system we have. There's hope for you brethren: 375 days to the election. You might pray that the Dems don't screw up so badly that the incumbent is reelected. Looks like they have a good jump on doing just that.

[Sandy]

[William Thornton]

Gonna be a fun year, bro.

[Sandy]

I think so.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... reelection

[Haruo]

I'm not sure I want to use the word "fun" here.

[Tim Bonney]

While I would not be against term limits, I don't want single term legislators any more than I want all our pastors to be newbies. The lack of experience would also be harmful.

[Dave Roberts]

My personal preference would be for House members to serve a maximum of six two-year terms, Senate members to serve no more than three six-year terms, and Presidents to serve one six-year term. That would suit me well.

[Haruo]

I agree that the worst part of the current system is the reelection of a sitting President.

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

[Dave Roberts]

The electoral college was also a way of according more power to slave-holding states since they could counts slaves as 3/5 of a person for representation and for electoral purposes though no slave had any rights to take part in the "democratic processes."

[Tim Bonney]

[Dave Roberts]

In electoral college, states with very small populations get at least 3 votes while more populous states still only get two votes for their senators, meaning that an electoral vote from a large state will always represent a larger group of people than an electoral vote from a less-populous state.

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

If you ask defenders of the Electoral College why, most of them start by discounting the votes of the larger cities and states simply because there are more of them. I hear people say that Hillary only won the popular vote because of California and if you take that away, the rest of the country voted majority Trump. Aside from the fact that it doesn't work that way, why should California's votes not count? They contribute more to the economy than any other state, three times as much as the next closest one. California is a microcosm of the whole country, I trust their vote to be more representative of the way America thinks and to be more in the best interests of the country than the states south of the Mason Dixon line. The idea that their votes individually should weight less than those in North Dakota, which doesn't even have a full congressional district population, is counter to the principles stated in the constitution.

States already have a venue in which statewide votes have an effect within a federal system. It's the Senate. Every Senator is subject to a statewide vote and it is the collective result of those elections which produce the makeup of the Senate. That, combined with what's left of their way of reaching a majority, is where states rights are balanced in the federal system. Giving the election of the president to the control of the states (and subject to their election laws) means that there is no federal office that is directly accountable to the people.

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

There's no justifiable reason to continue a practice that subverts the will of the people. I doubt those who came up with the idea ever imagined the millions of votes that would be cast in a presidential election or that a candidate could pick up three million more votes than their opponent but still not win the electoral college. The fact that this has happened twice in this century is an indication that its time has long since passed and there needs to be one unified way to elect a president.

One of the biggest problems with it is state control. Every state can count ballots differently if they want to and they can decide how to allocate electoral votes on their own. Look at the Florida Fiasco of 2000, when the secretary of state certified the vote total with 90,000 provisional ballots still uncounted after the court had ordered them verified, counted and included. Right now, there is consideration being given in more than a dozen states to changing their allocation of electoral votes from the winner who carries their state to whomever gets the majority of the popular vote. That's as legal as it is to assign votes by congressional district, which is done in Nebraska and Maine. It also eliminates the growing possibility of "faithless electors," of which there were seven in the last election.

[Tim Bonney]

The other part of the electoral college I find offensive is that when I lived in a solidly red state my vote didn't count. As all electors go to the winner, anyone with the minority vote is entirely disenfranchised in many states most of the time. If a candidate gets 55 percent of the vote they should get 55 percent of the electors from a state. Not 100%.

As you have said above Sandy, our world looks very different from the founders.