2016 POTUS Election Thread

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townsend

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The electoral college came into being long before the civil war. In the late 1700's the country didn't have a lot of plantations except in the Deep South. Most of the population was in the Northeast and there were thousands of people living in small towns as a result of the westward push and thousands more with small farms. That was the population mix at the time of the initial beginnings of the electoral college. The population makeup you are describing wasn't a societal structure until the early 1800's so the faction you are describing were not seriously in play yet. The revolutionary war was still a vivid memory to some at the time of of the beginnings of the advent of the electoral college.
Madison, Jefferson, and Washington were all rural Virginians that owned slaves. The south pushed for the electoral college to create the southern advantage that existed until the 1800s. Now I think the federalists favored less southern influence, but since they were staunch elitists, I think they were satisfied with a compromise that kept electors as a safe guard against populism.

Hamilton once said "The people sir, are a great beast, and I do not trust them." Sort of speaks to the mindset that established the electoral college.
 

L.T. Fan

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Madison, Jefferson, and Washington were all rural Virginians that owned slaves. The south pushed for the electoral college to create the southern advantage that existed until the 1800s. Now I think the federalists favored less southern influence, but since they were staunch elitists, I think they were satisfied with a compromise that kept electors as a safe guard against populism.

Hamilton once said "The people sir, are a great beast, and I do not trust them." Sort of speaks to the mindset that established the electoral college.
Because some in the process of the creation were plantation owners doesn't mean the makeup of the nation at that time was of the same type. In fact it was far from it. Also the history of the electoral college has been a revolving process and different motivations at different times were bones of contention.

Non the less the population makeup at the inception was as I described earlier. It was dominately in the northeast and the rural areas stretched west and was inhabited by thousands of people in a vast area as opposed to the metropolitan areas of the Northwest. The South had a few metropolitan areas but was mainly rural.
 

townsend

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Because some in the process of the creation were plantation owners doesn't mean the makeup of the nation at that time was of the same type. In fact it was far from it. Also the history of the electoral college has been a revolving process and different motivations at different times were bones of contention.

Non the less the population makeup at the inception was as I described earlier. It was dominately in the northeast and the rural areas stretched west and was inhabited by thousands of people in a vast area as opposed to the metropolitan areas of the Northwest. The South had a few metropolitan areas but was mainly rural.
But it was plantation owners that wrote the rules, not the population centers. In fact I'd put it to you that the electoral college was founded on the principles of undermining popular control by those very population centers, in an effort to give more power to less populous, richer southern states. In essence to be less fair, for the sake of being less fair.
 

2233boys

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I'm guessing that if Hillary had won in the fashion that Trump did this argument wouldn't be going on.
Trump supporters would be saying the same thing about the Electoral College. Trump was preparing for the argument prior to the election. It's a dumb argument for both sides in my mind. The Electoral College is how we do it. Get over it and work to get more people involved.

I'm more concerned about tactics to suppress voting. We need more voter participation not less.

All states congressional districts need to be drawn. Many states, including my own, have negated people's voting power by gerrymandering.
All Citizens should be automatically registered when they turn 18.
National holiday for Election Day.
Ranked Ballots nationwide.

All states should also have the same voting procedures and rules. Its ridiculous you can't register same day in most states even more ridiculous in states Like New York you can't switch political parties within 8 months of the primary.
 

jeebs

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It's pretty much impossible for a republican to win that way. The only popular vote they've won since the 90s was 04.

But if the system worked as intended and favored elite whites instead of rural whites, liberals would probably be virulently defending the system.
both Clinton wins were with 40% of the vote, without Perot splitting the vote he never sniffs office
 

townsend

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I doubt that 19% of the vote was non voter or going Clinton. But I am not going to watch a video about it. Maybe i would read an article.
Bullet points:

Exit polling data found 38% of Perot voters said they would've voted for Clinton, 38% said they would have voted for Bush. 24% Said they wouldn't have voted.

Bush's approval rating was dismal by the time the election season was starting, he had about a 29%.

Clinton lead Bush strongly in every poll even in the months that Perot had Dropped out of the race.
 

Cowboysrock55

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Bullet points:

Exit polling data found 38% of Perot voters said they would've voted for Clinton, 38% said they would have voted for Bush. 24% Said they wouldn't have voted.

Bush's approval rating was dismal by the time the election season was starting, he had about a 29%.

Clinton lead Bush strongly in every poll even in the months that Perot had Dropped out of the race.
Wasn't the exit polling horribly misleading in just this past election?
 

boozeman

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:lol

The #pizzagate thing roped some dumb shit to act out.

Trump's own NS advisor fell victim to the fake bullshit and Tweeted about it.

What a bunch of fucking clowns.

:lol
 

boozeman

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Just hilarious to me that fake social media crap really ropes in so many people.

Get a meme going, it somehow becomes factual.

Then again, I fully understand it because most people are stupid as shit.
 

townsend

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Trump’s Threat to the Constitution
By EVAN McMULLIN
DEC. 5, 2016


WASHINGTON — On July 7, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, met privately with House Republicans near the Capitol. I was present as chief policy director of the House Republican Conference. Mr. Trump’s purpose was to persuade the representatives to unite around him, a pitch he delivered in a subdued version of his stream-of-consciousness style. A congresswoman asked him about his plans to protect Article I of the Constitution, which assigns all federal lawmaking power to Congress.

Mr. Trump interrupted her to declare his commitment to the Constitution — even to parts of it that do not exist, such as “Article XII.” Shock swept through the room as Mr. Trump confirmed one of our chief concerns about him: He lacked a basic knowledge of the Constitution.

There is still deeper cause for concern. Mr. Trump’s erroneous proclamation also suggested that he lacked even an interest in the Constitution. Worse, his campaign rhetoric had demonstrated authoritarian tendencies.

He had questioned judicial independence, threatened the freedom of the press, called for violating Muslims’ equal protection under the law, promised the use of torture and attacked Americans based on their gender, race and religion. He had also undermined critical democratic norms including peaceful debate and transitions of power, commitment to truth, freedom from foreign interference and abstention from the use of executive power for political retribution.

There is little indication that anything has changed since Election Day. Last week, Mr. Trump commented on Twitter that flag-burning should be punished by jailing and revocation of citizenship. As someone who has served this country, I carry no brief for flag-burners, but I defend their free-speech right to protest — a right guaranteed under the First Amendment. Although I suspect that Mr. Trump’s chief purpose was to provoke his opponents, his action was consistent with the authoritarian playbook he uses.

Mr. Trump also recently inflated his election performance, claiming — without evidence — that he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” This, too, is nothing new. Authoritarians often exaggerate their popular support to increase the perception of their legitimacy. But the deeper objective is to weaken the democratic institutions that limit their power. Eroding confidence in voting, elections and representative bodies gives them a freer hand to wield more power.

As a C.I.A. officer, I saw firsthand authoritarians’ use of these tactics around the world. Their profound appetite for absolute power drives their intolerance for any restraint — whether by people, organizations, the law, cultural norms, principles or even the expectation of consistency. For a despot, all of these checks on power must be ignored, undermined or destroyed so that he is all that matters.

Mr. Trump has said that he prefers to be unpredictable because it maximizes his power. During his recent interview with The New York Times, he casually abandoned his fiery calls during the campaign for torture, prosecuting Hillary Clinton and changing libel laws. Mr. Trump’s inconsistencies and provocative proposals are a strategy; they are intended to elevate his importance above all else — and to place him beyond democratic norms, beyond even the Constitution.

In our nation, power is shared, checked and balanced precisely to thwart would-be autocrats. But as we become desensitized to the notion that Mr. Trump is the ultimate authority, we may attribute less importance to the laws, norms and principles that uphold our system of government, which protects our rights. Most dangerously, we devalue our own worth and that of our fellow Americans.

We must never forget that we are born equal, with basic, natural rights, including those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those rights are inherent in us because we are humans, not because they are granted by government. Government, indeed, exists primarily to protect those natural rights; the only legitimate power it has is that which we grant to it.

We can no longer assume that all Americans understand the origins of their rights and the importance of liberal democracy. We need a new era of civic engagement that will reawaken us to the cause of liberty and equality. That engagement must extend to ensuring that our elected representatives uphold the Constitution, in deed and discourse — even if doing so puts them at odds with their party.

We cannot allow Mr. Trump to normalize the idea that he is the ultimate arbiter of our rights. Those who can will need to speak out boldly and suffer possible retaliation. Others will need to offer hands of kindness and friendship across the traditional political divide, as well as to those who may become targets because of who they are or what they believe. Those who understand the cause are called to the work, which I hope will unify and bless our nation in time.

Evan McMullin, a former C.I.A. officer, was a conservative independent presidential candidate in 2016.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
 

townsend

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Wasn't the exit polling horribly misleading in just this past election?
Exit polling is usually a little off, but Bush would have to have earned 27% more Perot votes than expected to win the popular vote. States like Florida and North Carolina were only off by 2 or 3 points. Polls being off by an order of magnitude more would point to gross errors in polling (as opposed to random or systematic) which there's no evidence of...

Which brings me to the larger point, that there's no evidence whatsoever that Perot helped Clinton. I grabbed a few points refuting that tired old myth, but the onus isn't on me to prove Santa Claus isn't real. Jeebs was the one who threw out that claim without anything to back it up kvetching about the accuracy of exit polls seems a little ridiculous when at least I'm bringing something to the table.
 

L.T. Fan

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I think this is incorrect. According to several news reports it was the State of Indiana who gave the tax breaks. This was primarily accomplished by the Govenor of Indiana who happens to be the Vice President elect.. if you have a source for your position I would be very interested in knowing about it.
 
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townsend

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Gen. Flynn’s Rumor-Mongering Son Has Been Active in Trump Transition
BY JOHN HUDSONDECEMBER 5, 2016 - 1:05 PMJOHN.HUDSON@JOHN_HUDSONfacebooktwittergoogle-plusredditLinkedIn email
Gen. Flynn’s Rumor-Mongering Son Has Been Active in Trump Transition
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s son, who came under fire Sunday for peddling a conspiracy theory linked to an armed incident in Washington, has been actively involved in President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team efforts, Foreign Policy has learned.Michael Flynn Jr., the son of the man Trump picked to be his national security adviser, has assisted in personnel vetting, managing his father’s schedule, and fielding transition-related emails for the general, according to a person close to the Trump transition team.

“He also accompanies his dad to a ton of meetings,” said the individual. In photographs, Flynn Jr. has been pictured joining his father to meetings at Trump Tower in New York in November and walking with Trump himself backstage. On Monday, CNN reported that Flynn has an official email account with the transition team. With his son peddling falsehoods while apparently helping set up the Trump administration, Gen. Flynn’s nomination as national security adviser could become even more controversial. Gen. Flynn has himself promoted groundless conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton, and has suggested that China orchestrated the rise of radical Islamist militants.

Flynn Jr. has for months propagated conspiracy theories, explicit content, and racially-charged materials on Twitter and Facebook. But scrutiny of his social media trail spiked on Sunday after one of the theories he propagated — ‘#pizzagate,’ a baseless rumor that a Washington, D.C. pizzeria aligned with HIllary Clinton doubles as a child sex-trafficking ring — became deadly serious.On Sunday, local police arrested a North Carolina man and charged him with assault with a deadly weapon after he walked into a Washington, D.C. restaurant with an assault rifle and fired at least one shot. The man told police he came to “self-investigate” a rumor that Clinton and her chief of staff were running a child sex ring out of the restaurant.

No one was injured in the incident, though it caused a panic and nearby businesses went into lockdown as police inundated the neighborhood. The rumor, propagated by right-wing blogs, Trump supporters and users of the websites 4chan and Reddit, has long since been debunked. But Flynn Jr. continued to propagate it on Sunday even after the dangerous incident. “Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story,” Flynn Jr. tweeted after the shooting incident.

“The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many ‘coincidences’ tied to it.” Trump spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment about Flynn Jr.’s Sunday tweet or his involvement in the transition team.For several weeks, the restaurant Comet Ping Pong and its employees have been threatened on social media after fake news stories claimed that the restaurant doubled as a human trafficking ring. In the past, even Flynn, the retired general, has shared stories on Twitter involving baseless anti-Clinton pedophilia rumors.


The stories targeting Comet Ping Pong resulted in a wave of online threats against the restaurant, forcing the owner to contact the FBI and local police in an effort to remove the Facebook posts and Twitter comments from the internet. D.C. police have repeatedly said the restaurant is not under investigation. Flynn Jr.’s remarks about ‘#pizzagate’ aren’t the first of his social media postings to raise eyebrows.

Last month, CNN reported that Flynn Jr. has also shared stories alleging that Huma Abedin, a top Clinton aide, has a connection to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sen. Marco Rubio is a closeted homosexual with a cocaine problem. In 2012, he lambasted supporters of President Barack Obama on Twitter. “Unfortunately, only reason minorities voted for BO is the color of his skin and NOT for the
issues….#Election2012,” Flynn Jr. wrote, and then later deleted.

In Facebook posts and on Twitter, he has also labeled Obama, Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Saturday Night Live as “communists,” while referring to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as socialists.On Monday afternoon, 53 left-leaning advocacy and non-profit groups demanded Trump to rescind his nomination of Flynn, calling the retired three-star general “unfit to be national security adviser.” The letter criticizes Flynn for propagating “anti-Muslim conspiracy theories” and “anti-Semitic” remarks.
 
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townsend

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I think this is incorrect. According to several news reports it was the State of Indiana who gave the tax breaks. This was primarily accomplished by the Govenor of Indians who happens to be the Vice President elect.. if you have a source for your position I would be very interested in knowing about it.
 
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