Revoking Transgender Civil Rights

[bimale69]

I should've said I'm different on Twitter, compared to my other social media appearances. I positively give zero fucks over there. I've currently restricted for 12 hours from posting/liking/retweeting and such for that attitude. I'm more restrained elsewhere, including here.

Welcome to the club.... I wound up in Twitter jail because I told Ann Coulter what I thought about her racism and her ties with Nazi scum like Gavin Mcinnes.... and that was after I told Trump to go **** himself countless times.

It’s still beyond me how people in the lgbt community or any minority in this country could support an avowed bigot like trump, that they could deny his bigotry even though there is evidence right out of the horse’s mouth of his admitted admiration of fascist leaders like Mussolini, Hitler, Putin, etc. even his declaration that the white supremacists at Charlottesville were “very fine people”. As far as I’m concerned anyone who salutes or carries the flag of a past or present enemy regime is guilty of sedition at the very least....and a batrayal of all those who died fighting to save Europe from the grip of a psychotic despot in WW2.

[trish]

so suddenly the electoral college is unfair after a couple of hundred plus years?

Certainly from the very start the Electoral College was counter to the notion of one-person-one-vote. Nevertheless the founders thought the Electoral College would act as a safeguard against the general rabble who might easily be duped into voting for a demagogue. This is also why each State gets two Senators regardless of the size of their population.

So are these institutions, which were undemocratic from the get go, any more undemocratic now? I would argue that the answer is yes, given how modern demographics are much more skewed today. Rural areas cover 97% of the U.S. by land but less than 20% by population. Along with the take over of family farms by large corporations and the movement of jobs to the cities, rural America is clearing out. Yet taxes are paid by citizens - not land masses. Urban citizens are vastly underrepresented in our capitol and in the power of their vote: the very issue that inspired the birth of this nation to begin with.

[giovanni_hotel]

so suddenly the electoral college is unfair after a couple of hundred plus years?

The electoral college was established to give slave states greater representation in Congress.

The electoral college is a non issue when it matches the popular vote.

When the popular vote and electoral college don't match, there's a problem.

Gore lost to Dubya in 2000 and still won the popular vote by over 500K.

That's not a democracy. The electoral college needs to be abolished, and Congress needs to pass a national holiday to vote during midterm and presidential elections to encourage more people to turn out.

There's truth in the belief that the GOP wins elections when fewer people vote.

No democracy in the world has an 'electoral college'. Think about that.

Our system is rigged for minority rule.

[Nick Danger]

When the popular vote and electoral college don't match, there's a problem.

Three things: First of all, the electoral college is not tilted in the favor of the Republican Party. Everyone knows the rules, we've been playing by the same ones for a long, long time. Hillary won the popular vote because Hillary campaigned for the popular vote. Trump won the electoral vote because his people are about 10 times smarter than Hillary's people, just as in general, Republicans are about 10 times smarter than Democrats.

Secondly, if Hillary had won in the same manner, you would not be complaining about the electoral college. I'd be complaining about the electoral college. And you'd be trying to convince me that it's a valid elective format for a democracy.

Finally, the Electoral College does have an up-side. Were it not for the electoral college, candidates would only campaign in large cities, it would make no mathematical sense for them to go elsewhere. Of course, here in the Information Age, everyone is everywhere at once, so that one up-side seems to have gone away, making the EC pretty hard to defend. If it makes you feel any better, polls taken every year since 1967 have shown that Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of abolishing it. The reason it will never be abolished? Because it preserves the two-party system and makes it virtually impossible for a 3rd-party candidate to become President. Therefore it will always be in the best interests of both the Democrats and the Republicans to keep the system in place.

[filghy2]

Three things: First of all, the electoral college is not tilted in the favor of the Republican Party.

The reason it will never be abolished? Because it preserves the two-party system and makes it virtually impossible for a 3rd-party candidate to become President. Therefore it will always be in the best interests of both the Democrats and the Republicans to keep the system in place.

That doesn't make sense. How do you suppose a third-party candidate could win under a simple majority system? Even Teddy Roosevelt only came in a distant second in 1912, and he was a popular former president.

The electoral college is clearly weighted in favour of the Republicans because it over-weights the less populous states, which are predominantly red states.

[Fitzcarraldo]

The electoral college is clearly weighted in favour of the Republicans because it over-weights the less populous states, which are predominantly red states.

They may be now, but they haven't always been, and they won't always be.

The electoral college is just another of our checks and balances, all of which are good things.

Keep in mind that Donald Trump wants to get rid of the electoral college, even though he lost the popular vote.

Switching to popular vote means majority rule on everything. If we had a history of majority rule, we'd still have slavery, no suffrage for women, and no marriage equality.

Would you like to get rid of the Senate, also? It weights small states the same as big states: two senators per state.

You may think you want the largest, most-populous states calling all the shots, but you really don't.

[filghy2]

Switching to popular vote means majority rule on everything. If we had a history of majority rule, we'd still have slavery, no suffrage for women, and no marriage equality.

Would you like to get rid of the Senate, also? It weights small states the same as big states: two senators per state.

How do you reach that conclusion? Lincoln won the popular vote in 1860 and 1864, so the outcome would on slavery have been the same. As there would have been more Democrat presidents in recent times marriage equality may well have happened earlier.

I've not proposing to get rid of the other checks and balances. I just don't see how the electoral college works as a check in any effective sense these days.

[filghy2]

That's not a democracy. The electoral college needs to be abolished, and Congress needs to pass a national holiday to vote during midterm and presidential elections to encourage more people to turn out.

Also, a proper independent electoral commission. It's an absolute travesty that the political party in control in each state gets to run elections, determine the voting rules and set the electoral boundaries.

[Fitzcarraldo]

How do you reach that conclusion? Lincoln won the popular vote in 1860 and 1864, so the outcome would on slavery have been the same. As there would have been more Democrat presidents in recent times marriage equality may well have happened earlier.

I've not proposing to get rid of the other checks and balances. I just don't see how the electoral college works as a check in any effective sense these days.

Have you seen the movie Lincoln (which really should have been titled 13th Amendment)?

[broncofan]

The greatest checks on majority rule are the bill of rights, the amendment process, and our Judiciary. The electoral college effectively means that the President is elected by states rather than the public broadly. It is not a check on majority rule since there are rarely "faithless electors" and I'm not sure we would want there to be since they would simply be supplanting their judgement for that of the citizens of each state. And there would be no criteria for them to refuse to cast their vote for the politician chosen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articl...s_Constitution