A title eludes me...
Dec. 5th, 2019 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Five Common Misconceptions About the Electoral College
Two of the nation’s last three presidents won the presidency in the Electoral College, even though they lost the popular vote nationwide. In 2000, Al Gore outpolled George W. Bush by more than 540,000 votes but lost in the Electoral College, 271–266. Sixteen years later, Hillary Clinton tallied almost 3 million more votes than Donald Trump but lost decisively in the Electoral College, 306–232. And, as a recent New York Times poll suggested, the 2020 election could very well again deliver the presidency to the loser of the popular vote.
Despite this, defenders of the Electoral College argue that it was created to combat majority tyranny and support federalism, and that it continues to serve those purposes. For example, Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas, responding to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent criticism of the Electoral College, tweeted that “we live in a republic, which means 51% of the population doesn’t get to boss around the other 49%,” and that the Electoral College “promotes more equal regional representation and protects the interests of sparsely populated states.”
But arguments like these are flawed, misunderstanding the pertinent history. Below, I identify five common mistakes made in arguing for the preservation of the Electoral College.
Mistake Number 1: Many supporters of the Electoral College assume that the debate about presidential selection at the Constitutional Convention, like the debate today, focused on whether the president should be chosen by the Electoral College orby a nationwide popular vote.
But as tempting as it is to read history in the light of contemporary concerns, the debate at the convention focused on a different issue: Should Congress choose the president? Both the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan, the two primary alternatives at the Convention, proposed that Congress select the president. This was unsurprising because in most states at the time, the legislature chose the governor. On June 1, the convention voted 8–2 that Congress should elect the president, and the delegates would affirm that decision on three other occasions.
The frequency with which the delegates revisited the issue reveals not their confidence but their dissatisfaction. Most delegates wanted the executive to check legislative usurpations and block unjust or unwise laws, but they feared that dependence on the legislature for election—and possible reelection—would compromise the executive’s independence. Some delegates hoped to avoid this danger by limiting the president to a single term, but as Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania observed, this could deprive the nation of a highly qualified executive, eliminate the hope of continuation in office as a spur to good behavior, and encourage the executive to “make hay while the sun shines.” James Madison added that election by the legislature would “agitate and divide the legislature so much that the public interest would materially suffer” and might invite the intervention of foreign powers seeking to influence the choice.
The difficulty lay in finding an alternative to legislative selection, and the delegates considered and rejected various possibilities, including popular election. Ultimately, perhaps in desperation, they referred the issue to the Committee on Unfinished Parts. On September 4, less than two weeks before the convention ended, the committee proposed the Electoral College. Its proposal mirrored the states’ distribution of power in Congress; each state had as many electoral votes as it had members of Congress. But because the electors dispersed after voting for the president, the Electoral College did not threaten the independence of the executive. With only minor adjustments—most notably, the House replaced the Senate as the body that would select the president if a majority of electors failed to agree on a candidate—the convention endorsed the proposal.
The point of all this is, the Electoral College did not emerge because of opposition to popular election of the president.
Mistake Number 2: Another common belief is that the convention rejected popular election of the president because the delegates feared majority tyranny. People make this claim as though to say that because the Framers were skittish of a national popular election, so should we be today.
But, once again, this interpretation of history is wrong. The convention did twice reject popular election of the president. But the delegates who rejected it did not object to popular elections per se—they had no problem with popular election of the House of Representatives or state legislatures. Rather, they were skeptical of a national popular election, primarily for reasons that are no longer relevant today.
First, they feared that people would lack the information to make an informed choice as to who might be an appropriate candidate for the presidency or who might be the best choice among candidates. Thus George Mason of Virginia claimed, “It would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper candidate for chief Magistrate to the people, as it would be to refer a trial of colours to a blind man.”
But his reason was that “the extent of the Country renders it impossible that the people can have the requisite capacity to judge of the respective pretensions of the Candidates.” In such circumstances, he thought, voters would naturally gravitate to candidates from their own state. Delegates who favored popular election replied that “the increasing intercourse among the people of the states would render important characters less and less unknown,” and that “continental characters will multiply as we more or more coalesce,” reducing state parochialism. Today, with mass communication and interminable campaigns, lack of information is no longer a problem.
Second, some southern delegates feared that popular election of the president would disadvantage their states. James Madison noted that, given less restrictive voting laws, “the right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern states,” which would give them an advantage in a popular election. Beyond that, a popular vote would not count the disenfranchised enslaved population, reducing southern influence.
The Electoral College solved both those problems, awarding electoral votes based on a state’s population, not its electorate, and importing the three-fifths compromise into presidential elections. The effects were immediate and dramatic—in 1800 John Adams would have defeated Thomas Jefferson had only free persons been counted in awarding electoral votes. Obviously, these concerns no longer apply, although popular election would encourage states to increase their influence by expanding their electorate, while the Electoral College offers no such incentive.
Third, some small-state delegates opposed popular election because they feared that larger states, with their greater voting power, would dominate. Yet these same delegates also objected to the Electoral College, insisting it too gave excessive power to the large states. Their concerns were addressed by stipulating that should no candidate receive a majority of the electoral vote, the selection would devolve on the House of Representatives, with each state casting a single vote.
What is striking about the convention’s debate on popular election of the president is that its opponents did not claim it would encourage majority tyranny. Doubtless the delegates were aware of the danger of such a tyranny—Madison first presented his famous discussion of “majority faction” at the convention—but no delegate objected to popular election on that basis, and Madison himself supported popular election of the president.
2. Plodding my way through "Captives in the Night by Loretta Chase" - it's a romantic murder mystery, but the writer isn't really good at writing a mystery, and it was the second book she wrote, apparently...so also sort of weak in the writing. Lots of mistakes. Yet, can't stop reading it for some reason. 50% of the way through.
Also, reading the Hickman show-runned Dawn of X books. Mixed feelings. He does interesting things thematically, world-building wise, and has introduced some interesting conflicts/villains. Also retooled some old-school villains as ambiguous protagonists, while retooling old-school good guys as well ambiguous protagonists. The comics are a little less black and white and far more grey, although to be fair since approximately the 1980s, the X-men have always been a bit more grey in the morality department.
One of the new villains is Hordeculture -- a quartet of old lady botantists and bioengineers who have decided to use their knowledge to help Mother Earth eradicate the human race from the planet. (Feels a bit political to me, although timely. Also hard not to root for the old ladies to be honest.)
Hickman did however get into trouble with the X-fandom for slut-shamming Emma Frost aka the White Queen, whom he once again insisted on putting in a fanboy "sexy" costume, when she hadn't been wearing that in previous issues of the Dawn of X series. That said, the writer clearly likes the character, since she's the one who gets to save the day, not Cyclops. (Which I actually liked to be honest. I like Emma Frost -- the character has grown on me. I just wish they'd stop dressing her like a Victoria Secret model. It's annoying.)
It's also less soap operaish or into relationship drama -- more speculative sci-fi than superhero soap opera, which I've mixed feelings about. I like both. But I miss the superhero soap opera.
Anyhow, if I were to rank the issues...
1. Marauders (which I can't spell - I keep flipping the u and the a, or putting the u in front of the r.)
2. X-men
3. X-Force
4. Fallen Angels
5. New Mutants
6. Excalibur.
______
I'm in a reading slump.
3. Music that has been fitting my mood lately...
I saw them perform this in concert in Wembley Stadium (London, UK) in 1987. I think it was 1987.
5. Meditation Quote of the Day...
A thought doesn't become a problem until we think about it.
6. In the Unitarian Bible Study Group last night we read the first section of Exodus, where the Pharoah asks the midwives to kill the baby of the Israelites if the baby is a boy, if it is a girl to let it live. But the midwives feared God more than the Pharoah and didn't do it, instead they lied to him and said it was impossible.
What was interesting was it wasn't clear if the word was "fear" or in "awe" of God.
The translation I had said "awe", and both are similar.
Then the question was asked why would the midwives fear God more than the Pharoah?
Me: Because the midwives spent most of the lives, every day witnessing the miracle of child-birth. And sometimes a child was born healthy, sometimes not. And when you see this miraculous thing each day in all it's bloody wonder -- you hold God in awe. The Pharoah is just some guy, who has power over you, but you can lie to him and get away. You can not hide from something that can create a miracle like childbirth.
The Minister added that at that time -- they believed that three entities created a child, the mother, the father, and God. God gave the child it's soul, spirit.
Then we were asked what we held in awe? What made us awe struck?
The Minister mentioned termites...how there is this micrograsm in termites, millions upon billions -- in order for it to digest wood. But it can't work alone, it needs something to make it work -- so it has on top of it a parasite that helps it. Isn't that amazing? She said she found more and more things to be awestruck by of late.
Such as the racing traffic, the kids, the swirling leaves, the tall buildings all working in concert with each other -- like a complex organism.
And I thought about looking up into the Sky and struck by how incredibly beautiful it was, and amazing, and ever changing. And fathomless. I believe in God because of the sky.
Another women talked about the impeachment hearings and how she was struck by the awesome complexity of how our government works, the millions of phone calls, meetings, layers and layers of effort involved and the complexity of the laws themselves.
And another related a story about a child that was born in the uterine sack, was 1.16 pounds, and in the ICU, after the mother had two miscarriages prior to this child...and the child was born within 30 weeks...yet, yet...as of today, the child was of the weight and inches it would have been if born on time, and it is healthy and doing well...and that is just amazing.
What did you see today or this week that struck you with awe? And you thought wow, this is amazing? This world is such an amazing gift, and I'm so lucky to witness this and be here?
Two of the nation’s last three presidents won the presidency in the Electoral College, even though they lost the popular vote nationwide. In 2000, Al Gore outpolled George W. Bush by more than 540,000 votes but lost in the Electoral College, 271–266. Sixteen years later, Hillary Clinton tallied almost 3 million more votes than Donald Trump but lost decisively in the Electoral College, 306–232. And, as a recent New York Times poll suggested, the 2020 election could very well again deliver the presidency to the loser of the popular vote.
Despite this, defenders of the Electoral College argue that it was created to combat majority tyranny and support federalism, and that it continues to serve those purposes. For example, Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas, responding to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent criticism of the Electoral College, tweeted that “we live in a republic, which means 51% of the population doesn’t get to boss around the other 49%,” and that the Electoral College “promotes more equal regional representation and protects the interests of sparsely populated states.”
But arguments like these are flawed, misunderstanding the pertinent history. Below, I identify five common mistakes made in arguing for the preservation of the Electoral College.
Mistake Number 1: Many supporters of the Electoral College assume that the debate about presidential selection at the Constitutional Convention, like the debate today, focused on whether the president should be chosen by the Electoral College orby a nationwide popular vote.
But as tempting as it is to read history in the light of contemporary concerns, the debate at the convention focused on a different issue: Should Congress choose the president? Both the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan, the two primary alternatives at the Convention, proposed that Congress select the president. This was unsurprising because in most states at the time, the legislature chose the governor. On June 1, the convention voted 8–2 that Congress should elect the president, and the delegates would affirm that decision on three other occasions.
The frequency with which the delegates revisited the issue reveals not their confidence but their dissatisfaction. Most delegates wanted the executive to check legislative usurpations and block unjust or unwise laws, but they feared that dependence on the legislature for election—and possible reelection—would compromise the executive’s independence. Some delegates hoped to avoid this danger by limiting the president to a single term, but as Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania observed, this could deprive the nation of a highly qualified executive, eliminate the hope of continuation in office as a spur to good behavior, and encourage the executive to “make hay while the sun shines.” James Madison added that election by the legislature would “agitate and divide the legislature so much that the public interest would materially suffer” and might invite the intervention of foreign powers seeking to influence the choice.
The difficulty lay in finding an alternative to legislative selection, and the delegates considered and rejected various possibilities, including popular election. Ultimately, perhaps in desperation, they referred the issue to the Committee on Unfinished Parts. On September 4, less than two weeks before the convention ended, the committee proposed the Electoral College. Its proposal mirrored the states’ distribution of power in Congress; each state had as many electoral votes as it had members of Congress. But because the electors dispersed after voting for the president, the Electoral College did not threaten the independence of the executive. With only minor adjustments—most notably, the House replaced the Senate as the body that would select the president if a majority of electors failed to agree on a candidate—the convention endorsed the proposal.
The point of all this is, the Electoral College did not emerge because of opposition to popular election of the president.
Mistake Number 2: Another common belief is that the convention rejected popular election of the president because the delegates feared majority tyranny. People make this claim as though to say that because the Framers were skittish of a national popular election, so should we be today.
But, once again, this interpretation of history is wrong. The convention did twice reject popular election of the president. But the delegates who rejected it did not object to popular elections per se—they had no problem with popular election of the House of Representatives or state legislatures. Rather, they were skeptical of a national popular election, primarily for reasons that are no longer relevant today.
First, they feared that people would lack the information to make an informed choice as to who might be an appropriate candidate for the presidency or who might be the best choice among candidates. Thus George Mason of Virginia claimed, “It would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper candidate for chief Magistrate to the people, as it would be to refer a trial of colours to a blind man.”
But his reason was that “the extent of the Country renders it impossible that the people can have the requisite capacity to judge of the respective pretensions of the Candidates.” In such circumstances, he thought, voters would naturally gravitate to candidates from their own state. Delegates who favored popular election replied that “the increasing intercourse among the people of the states would render important characters less and less unknown,” and that “continental characters will multiply as we more or more coalesce,” reducing state parochialism. Today, with mass communication and interminable campaigns, lack of information is no longer a problem.
Second, some southern delegates feared that popular election of the president would disadvantage their states. James Madison noted that, given less restrictive voting laws, “the right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern states,” which would give them an advantage in a popular election. Beyond that, a popular vote would not count the disenfranchised enslaved population, reducing southern influence.
The Electoral College solved both those problems, awarding electoral votes based on a state’s population, not its electorate, and importing the three-fifths compromise into presidential elections. The effects were immediate and dramatic—in 1800 John Adams would have defeated Thomas Jefferson had only free persons been counted in awarding electoral votes. Obviously, these concerns no longer apply, although popular election would encourage states to increase their influence by expanding their electorate, while the Electoral College offers no such incentive.
Third, some small-state delegates opposed popular election because they feared that larger states, with their greater voting power, would dominate. Yet these same delegates also objected to the Electoral College, insisting it too gave excessive power to the large states. Their concerns were addressed by stipulating that should no candidate receive a majority of the electoral vote, the selection would devolve on the House of Representatives, with each state casting a single vote.
What is striking about the convention’s debate on popular election of the president is that its opponents did not claim it would encourage majority tyranny. Doubtless the delegates were aware of the danger of such a tyranny—Madison first presented his famous discussion of “majority faction” at the convention—but no delegate objected to popular election on that basis, and Madison himself supported popular election of the president.
2. Plodding my way through "Captives in the Night by Loretta Chase" - it's a romantic murder mystery, but the writer isn't really good at writing a mystery, and it was the second book she wrote, apparently...so also sort of weak in the writing. Lots of mistakes. Yet, can't stop reading it for some reason. 50% of the way through.
Also, reading the Hickman show-runned Dawn of X books. Mixed feelings. He does interesting things thematically, world-building wise, and has introduced some interesting conflicts/villains. Also retooled some old-school villains as ambiguous protagonists, while retooling old-school good guys as well ambiguous protagonists. The comics are a little less black and white and far more grey, although to be fair since approximately the 1980s, the X-men have always been a bit more grey in the morality department.
One of the new villains is Hordeculture -- a quartet of old lady botantists and bioengineers who have decided to use their knowledge to help Mother Earth eradicate the human race from the planet. (Feels a bit political to me, although timely. Also hard not to root for the old ladies to be honest.)
Hickman did however get into trouble with the X-fandom for slut-shamming Emma Frost aka the White Queen, whom he once again insisted on putting in a fanboy "sexy" costume, when she hadn't been wearing that in previous issues of the Dawn of X series. That said, the writer clearly likes the character, since she's the one who gets to save the day, not Cyclops. (Which I actually liked to be honest. I like Emma Frost -- the character has grown on me. I just wish they'd stop dressing her like a Victoria Secret model. It's annoying.)
It's also less soap operaish or into relationship drama -- more speculative sci-fi than superhero soap opera, which I've mixed feelings about. I like both. But I miss the superhero soap opera.
Anyhow, if I were to rank the issues...
1. Marauders (which I can't spell - I keep flipping the u and the a, or putting the u in front of the r.)
2. X-men
3. X-Force
4. Fallen Angels
5. New Mutants
6. Excalibur.
______
I'm in a reading slump.
3. Music that has been fitting my mood lately...
I saw them perform this in concert in Wembley Stadium (London, UK) in 1987. I think it was 1987.
5. Meditation Quote of the Day...
A thought doesn't become a problem until we think about it.
6. In the Unitarian Bible Study Group last night we read the first section of Exodus, where the Pharoah asks the midwives to kill the baby of the Israelites if the baby is a boy, if it is a girl to let it live. But the midwives feared God more than the Pharoah and didn't do it, instead they lied to him and said it was impossible.
What was interesting was it wasn't clear if the word was "fear" or in "awe" of God.
The translation I had said "awe", and both are similar.
Then the question was asked why would the midwives fear God more than the Pharoah?
Me: Because the midwives spent most of the lives, every day witnessing the miracle of child-birth. And sometimes a child was born healthy, sometimes not. And when you see this miraculous thing each day in all it's bloody wonder -- you hold God in awe. The Pharoah is just some guy, who has power over you, but you can lie to him and get away. You can not hide from something that can create a miracle like childbirth.
The Minister added that at that time -- they believed that three entities created a child, the mother, the father, and God. God gave the child it's soul, spirit.
Then we were asked what we held in awe? What made us awe struck?
The Minister mentioned termites...how there is this micrograsm in termites, millions upon billions -- in order for it to digest wood. But it can't work alone, it needs something to make it work -- so it has on top of it a parasite that helps it. Isn't that amazing? She said she found more and more things to be awestruck by of late.
Such as the racing traffic, the kids, the swirling leaves, the tall buildings all working in concert with each other -- like a complex organism.
And I thought about looking up into the Sky and struck by how incredibly beautiful it was, and amazing, and ever changing. And fathomless. I believe in God because of the sky.
Another women talked about the impeachment hearings and how she was struck by the awesome complexity of how our government works, the millions of phone calls, meetings, layers and layers of effort involved and the complexity of the laws themselves.
And another related a story about a child that was born in the uterine sack, was 1.16 pounds, and in the ICU, after the mother had two miscarriages prior to this child...and the child was born within 30 weeks...yet, yet...as of today, the child was of the weight and inches it would have been if born on time, and it is healthy and doing well...and that is just amazing.
What did you see today or this week that struck you with awe? And you thought wow, this is amazing? This world is such an amazing gift, and I'm so lucky to witness this and be here?
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Date: 2019-12-06 04:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
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