Minority rule

[*bfine32*]

(10-14-2020, 02:07 PM)fredtoast Wrote: With the current Supreme Court Justice appointment we will have a court dominated by one party thanks to the nominations of a President who lost the popular election and approval by a majority of the Senate who represent a minority of the population.  

Of all the President who were elected after losing the popular vote none lost by as many votes as Trump (almost 3 million) and the current Republican majority in the Senate only represent 42% of the population.

Obviously Republicans see no problem with the current system because it is working so well for them, but other than that I have not seen a single logical argument for why it should not be changed to allow a more democratic representation.

Some say we should not change a system that "has worked for over 200 years", but that makes no sense for a couple of reasons.  

-First of all the founding fathers came up with the electoral college for reasons that have nothing to do with modern politics.  Back then they assumed that the "common people" would not be smart enough to elect a President, plus since there were no political parties they never imagined that there would only be two people running for President.  They assumed that the electoral college votes would never supply a clear majority and therefore the House of Representatives would end up choosing the President.

-Second of all, our system has been changed constantly over the last 200 years.  For the first 125 years of our existence Senators were not elected by popular vote.  this only changed with a Constitutional amendment in 1917.  Second, almost all of the States have no passed laws that give 100% of their electoral college votes to the winner of the popular vote in their state.  Originally the delegates form one state could split their votes.

Some people complain that the smaller states have to be protected.  But this makes no sense because the smaller states do not share any common interests.  Tiny states like Rhode Island and Delaware vote much more like New York that other small states like Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota.  Again, this is a major change from when the Constitution was drafted and almost half of the population in the southern states were non-voting slaves.

So in the end the only argument they have is that the vote of people living in rural areas should count more than the vote of people living in big cities because it is working for them right now.  But that is not how a democracy is supposed to work. Each individuals vote should count the same.

We have made changes before when our system did not work properly.  I say it is time to look at changing it again.  Democracy is not supposed to produce rule by the minority.

Has the bold really changed? I don't ask this with a political bias. It's why I always side with "voter responsibility".