Nader on Trump Rise

[KeithE]

[Haruo]

Murdoch apparently just got Australia to shoot itself in the foot, too.

[William Thornton]

Nader, still alive?

Oh, selling books.

By all means link his plan for defeating Trump next year. What election did he screw up for the Dems?

[KeithE]

[JE Pettibone]

[Haruo]

[Sandy]

[JE Pettibone]

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

[William Thornton]

File this under blah, blah, blah. Hil, the soulless candidate that set new standards of ineptness lost because of [endless list of excuses].

But hey, dems start debating each other in a month. It's gonna be rich, real, and relevant. Maybe Beto, the incredible shrinking candidate, will introduce us to ear hair. Maybe Klobuchar, personal expert in HR from Hades will shine. Then there's brave Kirsten with a long list of examples she hasn't shown yet. Sniff some hair Joe. Start with Beto.

Should be fun.

[Sandy]

[Haruo]

I think, Sandy, the second time you wrote 2016 there you meant 2018. I think it's anybody's guess for 2020. The Electoral College is the wild card. Hopefully Kim will not win it for him.

[Rvaughn]

[Sandy]

[Haruo]

That was news to me. If the 270-elector threshold is reached and the SCOTUS doesn't rule it unconstitutional, it'll be interesting to see how long it takes for it to give us a different president from the one the current system would have given us (and whether we applaud or regret the result). I had only been aware of the congressional-district-based apportionment system some states (Maine and Nebraska?) have been employing.

[Sandy]

[Rvaughn]

[Sandy]

[Rvaughn]

[Sandy]

[Rvaughn]

[Sandy]

There's too much partisan activity going on now that can influence or affect the outcome of the electoral college to keep it. Aside from the fact that it never really accomplished what it was intended to accomplish, and the fact that what its apologists say will happen without it has never happened, it is too easy to manipulate.

For example, depending on the outcome of a state's vote total, the secretaries of state can decide whether or not to count provisional ballots. In 2000, during all of the hullabaloo over recounts, the Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris quietly allowed the verification deadline on 175,000 provisional ballots pass without counting them, thus eliminating the possibility that they could have been included. Likewise in New Hampshire, a Republican secretary of state simply determined that their final ballot count would be certified without including provisional ballots, though in 1996, both states counted provisional ballots. If there were no electoral college, there wouldn't be a reason to exclude votes that can eventually be verified.

Also, the EC suppresses voter turnout. In states where the outcome can be determined well in advance of the election, people on either side of the partisan divide decide not to show up and vote as a result of that. Down ballot elections suffer from that effect because even if there is a highly contested congressional race, the turnout is less in states where there isn't going to be as much of a contest for the presidential election. If every vote nationally counts equally, there would be more incentive for voters to turn out.

Nor would abolishing the EC push campaigns to the coasts and bigger cities. The EC limits the campaigns and their strategy to a handful of "swing states" where all the campaigning goes once the primaries are over. But if the scope of the election is nationwide, the parties and candidates would have to spread out to make sure they got the kind of nationwide turnout they need. The cliches are always going to chatter but there is no way that New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and the Northeast can sway the results of an election without the help of Democrats in South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Arizona and Texas. And there's no way that Texas, Dixieland and the hinterlands of the upper midwest and far west can sway Republicans without the votes of their like minded friends in the big cities, the west coast and Northeast. Abandoning the electoral college is the best way I know to increase voter turnout.

[KeithE]