Matthew

Who makes adjustments?

Nope. Here is the transition from most states having legislatures pick their electors to eventually all states having statewide elections for choosing electors. It look about 30 years: First election (1788) there were 11 states. 6 of them had their electors chosen by the state legislature: connecticut, georgia, new jersey, new york, new jersey, and massachusetts. Second election (1792) there were 15 states. 9 of them had electors chosen by state legislature: connecticut, deleware, georgia, new jersey, new york, north carolina, rhode island, south carolina, vermont. Third election (1796) there were 16 states. 8 states had their electors chosen by state legislatures: connecticut, deleware, georgia, new jersey, new york, rhode island, south carolina, vermont, massachusetts. Fourth election (1800). Still 16 states. 10 had their electors chosen by state legislature. Fifth election (1804). 17 states. 6 states still having state legislatures choose electors. Sixth election (1808). 17 states. 7 states had their state legislatures choose electors. Seventh election (1812). 18 states. 9 had state legislatures choose electors. Eighth election (1816). 19 states. 9 had state legislatures choose electors. Nineth election (1820). 25 states. 9 had state legislatures choose electors. Tenth election (1925). 25 states. 6 had state legislatures choose electors. Eleventh election (1928). 25 states. 2 had state legislatures choose electors: Delaware and South Carolina.

What's your point? They are in fact voting for a group of electors. The actual election is in December. Do you acknowledge the fact that electors do not proportionally represent American citizens?

It's only a matter of time. Certainly Team Trump tried to pull some major shenanigans last time and they didn't succeed. But someday a state run by a Republican Legislature and a Republican governor will oversee a presidential election in their state won by a Democrat. Instead of allowing the Democratic Party electors to go vote for them, they will pass a new law to make it so that their state legislature will assign a slate of republican electors to go instead. Constitutionally there is nothing upholding the state elections for President. When this happens the Republican voters will get behind this as obvious and reasonable and pretend that democracy was never very American after all, and that freedom is best upheld by not allowing people to vote for the president.

Herp is Derp

No, they haven't done that since the beginning. There were once states where they didn't vote for president at all. Their elected state legislators would choose. Also, as far as some things being irrelevant to what you said, I only replied to one sentence from your post. The rest was in reply to User, as indicated in the quotation boxes.

I'm shocked that Nationalist is an anti-vaxxer. I assume he also thinks the moon landing was fake. That 9/11 was an inside job, that the earth is flat, and that they sky is a digital projection, and that the government has deep underground bunkers where they extract blood from children for democrats to drink.

Yeah whether one is a Christian or an atheist, nothing about a set of ancient documents is going to prove or disprove any metaphysical claim. Christians barely agree on anything in the Bible when it comes to the specifics of doctrine. So I really doubt it's going to be super useful in a more general topic, like the existence of God.

I mean states can choose their electors however they want. They could draw random names if they wanted to. Who decides? The state legislators of course. Incorrect. About half the states initially chose their electors in the state legislatures instead of through elections. During the 1820s they switched to choosing electors via election. It can, but idoesn't have to since the people aren't voting for president. Also interesting how you quickly ditched your proportionality line of reasoning. 😄

Only if the states want it to. How the states do it is irrelevant to the electoral college vis-a-vis the Constitution. The Electoral College is the 538 voters on December 17th. And those 538 electors do not reflect the one person one vote principle by any measure. A single CA elector is worth 722,000 people (or 324,000 voters in 2020) A WY elector is worth 577,000 people (or 92k voters in 2020)

It can do that. But the vote for the presidency is technically done by electors and those electors are not equal in terms represending similar numbers of citizens. This is not a contoversial fact. The states can do that, if they want to. They have for quite a while. Trump tried to get 7 republican led states to ignore their state votes and send their own electors, which those state legislatures legally could do by statute. Most honest thing you've ever said.

Yes this is my point. It doesn't have to be because the US Constitution does not state that the EC represents the people. Therefore it has never been subjected to the one person, one vote standard. The Supreme Court defines one person one vote as meaning that each vote has the same weight. Votes for US president have very different weights. Gerrymandering today is about how the lines are drawn, not about the weighting of the vote. All districts in the US have the same population, except for small states with only one district.

The principle of one person one vote was established nationwide by the Supreme Court. All states now follow this doctrine but it has never been applied to the electoral college by any US law or US court precedent. If you disagree, just show me the law, the Supreme Court opinion, or the Constitutional clause that in any way connects the Electoral College vote to "The People" or to the one person, one vote doctrine. The Court has been very specific about applying this principle to any level of government where it applies. No, gerrymandering is not relevant to any point I'm making.

Their vote is for electors. Only electors get to actually vote for the President.

Only in your opinion. This phrase has a specific meaning in US law. For example, just as voters are currently unequal in the electoral college, voters were once unequal within their districts. Votes in some districts were once worth far more than voters in other districts within the same states. This was done with the exact same logic--that lightly populated rural areas needed to balance out the urban areas within state elections. The US Supreme Court went through a series of cases to combat unequal districts via Gray v. Sanders, Reynolds v. Sims, and Westberry v. Sanders by arguing that it is a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Today almost all districts are worth the same populations. They conclude that "the command of Art. I, § 2, that Representatives be chosen 'by the People of the several States' means that as nearly as is practicable one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's." (see Wesberry v Sanderes opinion, p 7). These cases establish the meaning of the "one person, one vote" principle within US law. But unlike the election to the House of Representatives, the electoral college system for President in the US Constitution does not make any claim or pretext to "representing the people" or to be voted in "by the people." The voters for president within the state contests are vastly unequal within the system. But since it's not Constitutionally set up as a vote of the people it has never been held by the Court to the One Person, One Vote doctrine. Well, the actual casting of votes for President takes place on December 17th and the American People are not welcome to that event.

Nope. It's ok that you were wrong about a simple fact that you didn't know about. It happens to the best of us. Electors represent the state, not the people. Democracy is when the people have the say. 1 person 1 vote, voters equal. That's complete gibberish. Lol what? Listen pumpkin, a few days ago you actually managed to be coherent for a change, for like a full day. Now your posts have degraded into a botched lobotomy level of drivel. You keep recycling the same sad half-baked talking points. Meanwhile you keep running away from the core argument of justfying why it's ok for the EC to make some voters count more than other voters. Your tactic so far is to downplay it and then ignore it, suggesting more lack of knowledge on your part. So if this is something you're too ill-informed, too lazy, and too wrong to defend then I guess you're done here and just going to ride it out with these worthless non-replies.

Not much of a history buff I guess.

Yes, you went and learned about faithless electors and now you know that what you originally said about them is false. More reductio ad absurdum. That's not what democracy is. Correct, and the specific function of choosing a president is not one of those. Lol You were talking about wyoming gun laws. That's rich, since you openly and proudly believe in using government power to make some people's votes count more than others in an election.

Attaboy, see you just needed to do little reading. Now that you've consulted wikipedia you can hopefully agree that electors don't necessarily vote "only at the instruction of the people of their state." They are. Either the electoral college is based on democracy or it is not. Either the people are primarily getting the say or else these abstact territorial entities called states are primarily getting the say. Democracy means rule by the people. There is no such thing as pure democracy vs impure democracy. There is a range of degrees to which a thing embodies democracy. The electoral college is from a proto-democratic period of history and the system is not by design intended to be democratic. Though the contest for electors became more democratic eventually. Still, the selection of president is not. You don't believe votes cast should be equal. There is no scenario where taking voting power away from certain citizens makes the system better or more fair. You appear to be talking about state legislation. That's not relevant to the electoral college vote for president. Plus the <500,000 people of Wyoming will certainly have laws made at the national level that they don't agree with. So what? That's how a representative government works. Making some citizen's votes worth more or less is not a reasonable fix and just creates even worse problems.

Still nothing interesting or relevant there. Sorry, here is a participation trophy: 🏆

You did not add anything to what you already said on the issue nor directly respond to anything I said. You simply reiterated a generalized claim. If you're feeling entitled to a more robust conversation then contribute something worthwhile. For example, if you have a compelling reason for why some voters must have more say than other voters at the ballot box in order for the checks and balances to function or whatever, then let's hear it. Otherwise it's not exactly relevant.

Keep telling yourself that.

You don't know about the concept of faithless electors? It's happened 165 times, 70 times for president. There were seven faithless electors in 2016. You misunderstand. I'm complaining about you trying to take both sides of the issue. On one hand pretending that the electoral college is a highly democratic and logical system in which voters are all roughly equal. Meanwhile also arguing that democracy is very bad for society and that it would be terrible for the electoral college to even be reformed toward a slightly more representative direction. So then you DO believe that all citizens votes should be equal? Or do you believe that making the voters of some states more powerful in the election is more important than voters having a fair and equal say? Perhaps i misread your previous comment on this point. If so then we agree on this. Federalism with semi-autonomous states has overall not worked well.

The needs of people wherever they are geographically are not met by making some voters worth more than others in an election. I agree with every word of this. But civil rights and liberties are protected via legislation, courts, and policies maintained by state and federal agencies. Manipulating a voting system to establish minority rule at the ballot box is not a justifiable or effective way to safeguard rights and instead simply shifts the risk of abuse onto the majority.

Like typical right wing fascists, your idea of "accounting for people's needs" is to take away their voting power as individuals. This is functionally meaningless as it relates to the electoral college. Can you cite an example of how the electoral college has helped an otherwise ignored region of the United States meet their unique needs? Nope, that's a Straw Man and has never been my point. Tyranny of the minority is when a minority of the country rules unjustly over the majority of citizens. This is what you're defending. I think you're projecting your own aimlessness and insecurity. You're arguing in support of an indefensible and immoral system, so it makes sense that you're expressing feelings of shame rather than responding to anything rationally.