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There is no democracy, Hilary got more votes in 2016.
This is how our constitution works tho. He's talking about the institutions that make up our specific democracy
Call it what you will, just don't call it democracy when the will of the minority is exerted on the majority.
My dude the USA is a representative democracy.
That's the way that kind of government sometimes functions, which is why we need strong institutions.
It is not representative tho. I learned in school that a principle of democracy is the equal vote. Each vote counts the same. In the USA each vote counts for a random amount and the people actually electing the president are not even bound to the election results. With the supreme court being this openly corrupt the path to a dictatorship is not that far off.
In a direct democracy, this is true. In a representative democracy, this is not.
It isn't random, and the amount is absolutely gamed in favor of a certain party, which is, again, why we need strong institutions.
The president isn't voted on as part of the representatives, the office of the president is a separate vote and is supposed to be a direct vote. But the number of electors for each state has not kept up with each state's population, which has fucked up the power of presidential votes.
State electors are literally representatives
The electors only exist because it made it possible to hold a vote across a large nation in a time when horses were the fastest mode of communication. And each elector was supposed to carry the results of the same number of voters.
But the country has grown, with some states growing in population much faster than others. Yet the number of electors remains unchanged. Not to mention electors are now completely unnecessary as we have fast and reliable communication methods.
You can disagree with the electoral college and still recognize that electors are literally representatives.
This is basic civics.
But they aren't really, they're just vote messengers, they aren't on capital hill making laws and advocating for their constituents.
All representatives are "vote messengers." That's why we call them representatives.
I would disagree that senators and congressmen are just vote messengers. They run on active platforms, respond to changes in their constituencies (hopefully), deal with new issues as they arise.
Electors literally just ferry the states vote to Washington, that's it and job done. Representatives continually represent the will of their constituents through multiple years, or at least that's what they are supposed to do.
Yes. This is being a representative.
Yes, and how exactly do electors do that on an ongoing basis?
They do it when they're in the role.
Why are you so passionate about something so simple? This entire conversation is confusing to me, in terms of intent.
And what about the other 1200+ days they aren't in the role for each 1 they are in it?
Why are you so passionate in misusing the term representative?
Representatives are more than just vote carriers.
Indeed they often are. They are also advocates, in general.
However
Electors are chosen each cycle and are different people.
So they're just vote carriers. Unlike the actual representatives on this hill who spend most of the year actually governing for you.
Cool. Glad you cleared up that electors are useless and not really representatives.
They're still appointed representatives of the state, though. States vote in the election, per the Constitution.
I'd love to ditch the EC, but it does exist, and the electors are representatives. This isn't complicated at all, and I'm not sure why this is personal to you.
No one voted for them, they are not representatives. They are vote carriers.
Sullying the actual work representatives do by calling glorified vote carriers the same thing is an insult to the word representative.
They represent the state in the actual election of the President. "Faithless electors" are a thing, at least as a theoretical concept.
It's not insulting to use words for what they mean. I am so very confused by your underlying hostility here.
I'm so very confused why you continue to argue your bullshit side.
You have a great day man. This is going nowhere.
No shit, you could have stopped replying your incorrect side ages ago.
Normalize saying "Republicans" instead of "a certain party"
Gore got more votes in 2000. Our democracy has been a shambling corpse for a long time.
Americans all like, we brought democracy to the developing world! Y'all don't have democracy at home, chill.
Americans: We want democracy!
Mom: We have democracy at home.
Democracy at home:
Democracy just means that the power ultimately rests in the hands of the people. The fact that we vote for our representatives, meaning it's ultimately up to us, makes us a democracy. The electoral system is not contradictory to a democracy.
Voting is necessary but not sufficient for a democracy.
Please expand.
FPTP voting allows a candidate who is highly unpopular by any measure to win over a more popular candidate. Single-member districts allow a party to win a fraction of seats in a legislature that is vastly greater than the fraction of the population who voted for them. Bullshit like the Electoral College just straight up counts some votes more than others.
That's just the stuff that's above board. With gerrymandering, voter suppression, and just plain rigging the vote, anything is possible.
The fact that there are flaws in our democracy does not make it not a democracy.
There are essentially only 4 forms of government, based on the ultimate source of power:
Even in the case where there are flaws, ultimately the power resides in the people. If we all banded together and voted for someone who would get rid of gerrymandering and the FPTP voting system, and all that BS, we could make it happen. Which means we are still a democracy.
At some point a democracy is so flawed it stops being a democracy in any meaningful sense. The stuff I mentioned exists on a spectrum that includes "democracy" in Russia. They have votes but nobody thinks they have democracy. Hence my original comment.
If you define democracy as a state where people can change things if they all band together, then every country in history has been a democracy because people have always had the theoretical option to band together and overthrow their government by force.
I ultimately agree. It's not some black or white thing. And Russia is clearly not a democracy, but an autocracy. Some countries have better and stronger democracy than others. The US actually has a pretty strong democracy index, at the high end of "flawed democracy." We clearly have shit we need to improve, but still a democracy. And the fact that we have an electoral system to elect the POTUS is not one of the reasons ours is flawed.
If we are being unnecessarily pedantic, I didn't say this. I said it's a government.
The said I mentioned exists on a spectrum that includes "democracy" in Russia. They have votes but nobody thinks they have democracy. Hence my original comment.