• [O'Reilly Factor] Popular Vote vs. Electoral Vote

    From Ubiquitous@21:1/5 to All on Sat Nov 12 08:30:24 2016
    XPost: alt.politics.usa, alt.tv.oreilly-factor, rec.arts.tv
    XPost: alt.politics.elections

    After Hillary Clinton received more votes than Donald Trump but was
    trounced in electoral votes, some of her supporters began calling for
    the Electoral College to be abolished. The Factor examined that notion
    with constitutional professors Gary Gregg and and Akhil Amar. "I favor
    the Electoral College," Gregg declared, "because of just what we are
    seeing right now. We had a spirited election with lots of people
    involved, we have a duly elected president, and we are not re-counting
    across the country. If we just went with a straight popular vote, with
    more than 200,000 precincts in this country, we could be re-counting
    across the entire country." Amar put forth another analysis. "There are
    reasons to keep the Electoral College, but the recount nightmare is not
    the best reason. The argument for not having an Electoral College is
    that we have 50 states and they all elect governors without needing
    electoral votes. They just count the votes equally."

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  • From FPP@21:1/5 to Ubiquitous on Sat Nov 12 08:42:17 2016
    XPost: alt.politics.usa, alt.tv.oreilly-factor, rec.arts.tv
    XPost: alt.politics.elections

    On 2016-11-12 13:30:24 +0000, Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> said:

    After Hillary Clinton received more votes than Donald Trump but was
    trounced in electoral votes, some of her supporters began calling for
    the Electoral College to be abolished. The Factor examined that notion
    with constitutional professors Gary Gregg and and Akhil Amar. "I favor
    the Electoral College," Gregg declared, "because of just what we are
    seeing right now. We had a spirited election with lots of people
    involved, we have a duly elected president, and we are not re-counting
    across the country. If we just went with a straight popular vote, with
    more than 200,000 precincts in this country, we could be re-counting
    across the entire country." Amar put forth another analysis. "There are reasons to keep the Electoral College, but the recount nightmare is not
    the best reason. The argument for not having an Electoral College is
    that we have 50 states and they all elect governors without needing
    electoral votes. They just count the votes equally."

    Actually we could effectively neuter the Electoral College and go by
    the popular vote without a Constitutional Amendment, if a large enough
    portion of the country wanted to...

    We could do it by state law, and bypass the Constitution altogether.
    --
    "The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy." -Donald J. Trump
    6 Nov 2012.
    (Yeah... no shit.)

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