Is India a republic comprised of 50 separate states, each with its own set of statutes and procedures relating to elections, and where the constitution reserves all powers to the states except those specifically ceded to the federal government? A popular vote would be a massive cluster fuck in the US.
Is there any way to find out who did the dumping? They wouldn't even tell us who dumped airline stock right before 9/11
That's either bullshit or an admission that the US is basically a third world country that can no longer do jack. If you can put a person on the moon, I think you can handle fucking vote counting.
Everything to do with it. We avoided a person worse than Nixon for a person a shade better who has a chance to do much better than the press let on all along.
It's a statement that our government is not a simple democracy. It was intentionally founded to have the states retain ALL rights except those specifically ceded to the federal government in the Constitution. That means each state has its own set of laws regulating how elections are conducted. That's why Stein's recounts were filed in three separate states and ended up in three state court systems. Remember the Bush-Gore mess in Florida, complete with hanging chads, and how it went to the Florida Supreme Court before it went up to the US Supreme Court? Imagine a close popular vote election for president. All votes count equally across the country, but are regulated by the individual laws of each state. Multiply Bush-Gore by fifty and you get the magnitude of a mess it could become.
And yet you don't have separate armies for each state, do you? Or separate postal services (so long as they still exist), or interstates that change from asphalt to gravel at state lines, etc. etc. Presumably, with the political will, you could have a federal system of voting. The only barrier to it is those who would be hurt by it, presumably the same people who are perpetually thinking of new methods of voter suppression.
Those are examples of powers ceded to the federal government by the states. Elections aren't among those powers. There's no reason that there couldn't be a constitutional amendment to change that, of course. Check out the process to amend the constitution and get started with convincing the middle part of the country it should support being reduced to near-irrelevance in future presidential elections. Good luck with that.
It's no problem, they obviously will buy just about any damn thing. All we need to do is tell them there will be plenty of winning, so much winning, under the new system. Believe me. barfo
Actually no... California is such a lost cause, the GOP didn't waste a dime of resources for big elections like POTUS, Senate or Governor. They worked on local pockets of conservative districts for mayors and house seats, but the state is probably the bluest it's ever been
Oh the current relevance of Tennessee, Kentucky, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, the Deep South, et. al. Strikes me, given how relatively close the elections have been recently, you'd want to go to turn out your base all over. And Trump may even believe that he'd've won California if he'd've "bothered" to hold his rallies there, but I imagine his campaign managers aren't under that misapprehension. There'd be a lot more turning out the base, which, for Repubs, means flyover country. In fact, that whole "this way more states are relevant" argument is totally bogus. The way it is, only the swing states are ever relevant, so they get carpetbombed.
But the swing states cab change from election to election. At least any time a state is close, it's going to get some attention from the candidates. Under a pure popular election, there's no incentive to campaign outside of the major population centers. Regarding California, Trump couldn't have won there, but he might very well have been able to have gotten to Romney numbers if he hadn't written the state off. Attaining even that level of "success" would have given him the popular vote.
Trump and Pence are trying their hardest to push a narrative of "historic landslide" victory. This is obviously Orwellian, not just because they lost the popular vote, but because even their electoral college victory was pretty paltry by historical standards:
That's dubious at best. Granted that apparently Michigan was a swing state and Clinton didn't really realize it, but there's no way that New York or Alabama, or about 40 of the states are going to be swing states. And, as to campaigning outside "major population centers" - depends what you mean. I didn't see Trump holding any rallies in church halls in rural Wisconsin THIS time round.
