How big of a vote gap would it take for you to drop the Electoral College?

[Dill]

(04-03-2019, 05:27 PM)fredtoast Wrote: The Civil Rights Act passed because it reflected public opinion.  In fact Kennedy did not make any moves on civil rights early in his presidency because the south was solid Democrat.  He was not forced to do anything until the photos from the nightmare in Birmingham made the national news and public opinion made him.

Two quick points here:

1. The Civil Rights Act may not be the best starting point for an argument that laws don't always reflect the will or readiness of the majority. I think a better starting point for such discussion is Truman's integration of the Armed Forces in '49 and B vs B in '54. It was the latter, especially, which led to the "nightmare in Birmingham" which, in turn, expanded sympathy for civil rights. And in '54, the number of whites who thought schools should be integrated was still under 50% nation wide.

2. I don't doubt the NORC poll reflects, more or less, the national disposition towards civil rights in '63. But for all that is not a good guide to whether whites reliably supported civil rights. Recall that the motivation for King's Letter from Birmingham jail was a letter to the local paper by 9 local pastors (one a Rabbi maybe), all of whom backed civil rights for "negroes," but "deplored" demonstrations intended to effect those rights.  They were against segregation but also against the social unrest required to dismantle it. When forced to choose between these options, they chose segregation. That is why King spends a chunk of his Letter identifying, not the rabid segregationist, but the "white moderate" as the major obstacle to lifting segregation.

In any case, the history of civil rights points, if only obliquely, to the problem of majoritarianism. If a minority is genuinely unpopular, so also may be the notion of equal rights for that minority.  Those minority rights can easily be restricted by a majority insisting on the justice of equally weighted votes; no privileges for any groups. "One man/one vote" so long as there are more of us.