Liberals silent on "popular vote" - I wonder why
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- Overall popular vote doesn't win seats.
- Clearly the Republicans have won the house, as they have won the "popular vote".
Usually the vote in the midterms swing towards the party who wasn't in power, there is no conspiracy here.
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Clearly, you missed the point.
Get in your time machine and see what your side said about the popular vote.
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@raphjd A representative represents an area, a President also represents an area.
A congressional representative is elected by popular vote in the area they represent.
A President is not elected by popular vote in the area they represent.
See the difference?
The house election is based an a single winner or majoritarian system. Now, perhaps we should elect House reps by proportional representation. Perhaps Single Transferable Vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#How_the_single_transferable_vote_(STV)_works
A majoritarian would be vulnerable to Gerrymandering in a way that STV would not. California could get 52 seats, and with STV those seats would be distrubuted based on the voting preference of all the voters in the state and not just based on the electoral district popular vote.
I am all for that, however you sill have states like Wyoming that has fewer people than even 1/52 of California's population. So that means that Wyoming would still end up being over-represented in the House. So perhaps the whole house shoiuld be voted by STV which would much more accurately reflect the overall voting preference of all voters.
I bet that would drive a lot of Dems to the polls who live in states like Utah or Wyoming where their votes are really not worth anything currently because the state goes overwhelmingly towards the R side. Would be interesting to see the result of the election then and how many D voters show up in current safe "R" areas.
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Your fellow liberals say we need to go by the popular vote for who runs the country. One would assume that would include Congress.
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@raphjd You tend to mischaracterize what "liberals" say to make your point. I would actually agree with the sentiment though, a move to a national STV system would be a pretty good idea - for the Senate as well. That way California and Wyoming wouldn't both get 2 Senate seats.
They should be based on popular vote through an STV system that more accurately reflects what the whole population wants.
So do you agree with this? Seems that you do, though you spend more time trying to get some dig in against the other side. So much talk of "your side" when I don't think you know much about me at all, nor my side.
So, what would you want to change the electoral system to? Do you think a national popular vote for President would be a good thing? What about the Senate? Should the people of Vermont have 50 times the voice in the Senate than the people of Texas? That's the current system.
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@raphjd said in Liberals silent on "popular vote" - I wonder why:
Your fellow liberals say we need to go by the popular vote for who runs the country. One would assume that would include Congress.
I'm confused why you think the nationwide count matters in a mid-term election with no nationwide elections. The demographic of people going out to vote in the mid-terms is related to local circumstances.
For example, there were 20 states with Republican incumbent senators running for re-election against Democratic challengers. There were only 14 Democrat states. There were also 5 states with Republican incumbents who had retired, meaning a stronger push to get Republicans in those areas to come out and hold that seat.
Also, there's no guarantee that the election jurisdictions were spread evenly into districts with equal party affiliation. In other words, if just a few of the jurisdictions were heavy Republican districts, then the massive number of Republicans coming out for that district skews the numbers. Yes, there are more registered Democrats in America than registered Republicans, but that doesn't mean that average in applicable evenly across the election jurisdictions.
All of the above was a long-winded way of saying that your argument was based on fallacious reasoning and you're an idiot.
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I never said that the system needs to change. That was what the liberals demanded.
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I'm glad you have nothing but personal attacks, because it proves me right.
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@raphjd Ok, back to basic here.
The midterm elections are not national elections. They are not elections for national leaders. They are not elections for a single person for a single office.
Midterm elections are for specific areas for example "Arizona Senate" or "New Yorks's 1st district". The election is for a representative for that area.
To expand on that:
The election for Arizona Senator will elect a senator who represents Arizona. This is done with a popular vote within that area. This Senator would not represent Oregon. So there is no reason that a senator in Arizona would need to be elected based on a popular vote of the country.
Now, President is elected to represent the entire country. This could work the same way as the senator, or the NY-1st area. Elect the president based on the popular vote of the area they represent.
So what "liberals" are saying is that we should run the presidential election the same way as the congressional and senate, and indeed gobernatorial elections. By popular vote in the area they represent.
You seem to think you are exposing some hipocracy of the "liberals", but I really don't think you are. You are showing a popular vote for an area that is not relevant to the elections that are taking place.
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@soraspeir81 So when you say "Liberals silent on 'popular vote' - I wonder why" I am trying to explain this.
Liberals are silent on the national popular vote because for an election that is not a national election, and this is not electing anyone who represents the nation as a whole.
I was trying to ask you what you actually think about any of this, but you don't seem to be interested in an actual discussion or ways of possibly improving the elections that do take place.
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@raphjd I don't think that @hubrys had ONLY personal attacks. Perhaps if you try to read the entire post and just drop off the "and you're an idiot" you can see the argument a bit clearer. The other three paragraphs do not have any personal attacks at all.
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Congress does not run their individual districts. Congress (and the President) run the entire country. Based on that, we need to go to the popular vote to keep in line with the liberal mantra.
As for @hubrys, he loves to call me names every chance he gets. When discussing the fact that graphic porn books were in elementary schools (at least 2) he called me an asshole, liar and other things, despite me being right. His excuse is that no 6yo checked out the book from the school library, so it doesn't matter. My point was that it was available to be checked out by 6yos.
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@raphjd Ah, civic's is important!
Congress as a whole runs the country. How it does that is a system called representative democracy. All of the representatives from all of the districts around the country meet in the House of Representatives where as a whole body debate and pass laws that govern the country. The body runs the country, however each individual representative is there to represent their district. Lauren Boebert was elected by the voters in Colorado's 3rd district to represent them in the House, where she could bring up issues and a point of view that represents her constituents - the members of her district.
This is done because the needs of Colorado's 3rd district are often quite different than the needs of New York's 14th district. All the member's of the house can represent the needs of the their district in discussions about how to run the whole country.
This representative democracy is common in many places. In Canada they elect members of the House of Parliament. Each member then represents the people in their area in debates and passing laws in the House of Parliament.
So, again, there is no "popular vote" for the House of Representatives as a whole. That would be quite impossible as it would defeat the point of this "representative" democracy. There are 435 individual popular votes that elect the 435 Representatives in the house.
I don't know if this is helping at all. I feel like you just want to "own the libs" and this is your attempt - and it's hard to back down from that position. This is why I was trying to ask you more questions about what you think a better system might be, perhaps one that actually does help represent the will of the people in a representative democracy a bit more - one that could help aleviate the problems of gerrymandering perhaps.
If you just want to "own the libs" then I think it's imporant to get the basics right here. So far you have demonstrated a lack of understanding of basic civics but honestly, not much else.
Here is some information about Representative Democracy, this might help you hone your arguments in the future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy
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@raphjd As far as @hubrys, well when you said "only" personal attacks, in this discussion there was one personal attack in a full, detailed post. So it really looks like you are wrong on that part. But the way you said "only personal attacks" was a nice way to deflect from the rest of the argument so you didn't have to deal with the arguments in the rest of the post. Then you could claim "because it proves me right" without actually saying anything of value in the discussion. Maybe try to actually engage with the points you ignored - if you can.
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I know how the US government works.
Clearly, you don't get my point and I can't be assed to keep trying to explain it to you.
I have no time for people like @hubrys. He's just a troll.
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"Clearly, you don't get my point and I can't be assed to keep trying to explain it to you." - This is shorthand for "I have clearly lost this discussion and since I have no relevant point to stand on I need to find an exit quickly"
You can't keep trying to explain it? Perhaps try explaining it once. You haven't yet.
You have conflated representation with "running" as in "Congress runs the entire country". That is the closest you have come here to an explaination - a complete mischaracterization of how Congress works.
If your point is so weak that a basic explaination of your point eludes you, I think you might be missing the point competely.
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@raphjd Where did I say that Congress has no say in how the US runs?
I will quote myself here:
"Congress as a whole runs the country. How it does that is a system called representative democracy. All of the representatives from all of the districts around the country meet in the House of Representatives where as a whole body debate and pass laws that govern the country."So where in that, or in anything I have said here, has given you any indication that I am saying "Congress has no say in how the US runs"?
I didn't, and you can't find that.
So now what you will say is "I can't be assed to point it out" - back to that one, am I right?
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Ah, so Congress (with the President) does run the country. Fucking WOW.
Now back to the original point.
Liberals want the country run/controlled by the popular vote, except when the popular vote is red. I know that's a difficult concept for you.
You people do have a short attention span. It was that long ago you were advocating for it.
