How far can it go? [presidential race] Who knows. Until then, how about some fiction?

Well, let's shift from fiction to FACT.

Trump does not deny that he had a nearly 1 BILLION dollar loss in the mid 1990's... so much so, that he'd not have to pay Federal income tax for over 18 years.

Amazing.

Well, he Christie and Giuliani spin this as "He's so smart!"

REALLY?

Huh. Nearly 1 billion in losses is not being smart, in my book. And no wonder why Trump has REFUSED to release his tax returns and is threatening litigation against the NY Times for leaking this. Well, if he's so smart and this is so positive, why would he even bother to sue? Total conflicting action against the alleged perception. A joke!

Avoiding taxes... well, yes, he may have been able to do this legally for most of it, but it's not Trump's brilliance. It's his accountant!

Seriously, I just can't believe how idiotic the support has been for him. If this happened to Clinton, Trump and his supporters would be all over her as an "idiot" and "deceptive" and "not patriotic for avoiding taxes."

This is all so despicable.

I've been watching and following the politics here. First time voter from California. I'm pretty certain that California is firmly blue and I intend to vote for Hillary.

For me, Trump is a total disaster, a train wreck.

Although we cannot say that he cheated on his taxes in the 90's, he utilized the tax loopholes to his maximum advantage. He cooked the numbers to show very high depreciation on his properties, effectively showing nearly a billion dollar loss.

He also evaded property taxes by challenging the local tax authorities on the appraised values of his properties going for a 1/3rd of what the property was actually worth ( sometimes even going as low as 1/10th for many of his golf courses and hotels).

Although we can't call him a crook for all this, he certainly doesn't win any points with me for being a patriot or a public servant.

He's a greedy selfish manipulator who is an ill tempered narcissist.

For all of Hillary's flaws I'd pick her over him any day.

This current election cycle makes it very difficult to take the US seriously anymore. Maybe Trump does have a plan to make the US "great" again, but I think that the damage has been done and when he wins the best he can hope for is to steer it in the direction of mediocrity.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Scrawler

This current election cycle makes it very difficult to take the US seriously anymore. Maybe Trump does have a plan to make the US "great" again, but I think that the damage has been done and when he wins the best he can hope for is to steer it in the direction of mediocrity.

---

We're doomed for a terrible 4 years ahead. I cannot believe the Electoral College failed us. They're supposed to protect the country when a majority of people make a bad choice, or the Electoral Voting initially conflicts with the popular vote... and they should recast to match the will of the people. But they failed to do so. Corrupt b@stards, the lot of them.

Trump's actions since winning have proven that he's going to make a terrible mess of things. He is "SWAPPING THE SWAMP" instead of draining it. He's putting people in positions with blatant conflicts of interest. Climate change deniers in charge of the EPA. Department of Energy to be led by someone who wants to destroy it. Secretary of State with significant monetary interests, who will set policies to make himself and his cronies rich. And Trump himself, who won't divest himself of his assets that will create an immediate conflict of interest. He's going to get mighty rich off of being president. Because he never has enough money. And he could give a rat's ass about the public. But those morons still believe in him, despite all the writing on the wall. Even Trump admitted that his whole "Lock her up" threat was hollow... didn't mean it. It rallied people behind him so he could get elected and that served his purpose. Now? "I could care less." Those are his words. You ask his followers about that, and they brush it off as "oh, he's just trying to make nice, but he'll have others do the witch hunting for him." How far do you go with attributing a thief as someone who is just genuinely interested in borrowing things from you, so don't stop them -- in fact, help them carry your stuff to their truck. It's just absolute insanity. I'm disgusted to no end.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by myu

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scrawler

This current election cycle makes it very difficult to take the US seriously anymore. Maybe Trump does have a plan to make the US "great" again, but I think that the damage has been done and when he wins the best he can hope for is to steer it in the direction of mediocrity.

---

We're doomed for a terrible 4 years ahead. I cannot believe the Electoral College failed us. They're supposed to protect the country when a majority of people make a bad choice, or the Electoral Voting initially conflicts with the popular vote... and they should recast to match the will of the people. But they failed to do so. Corrupt b@stards, the lot of them.

---

The will of what people? Wyoming electors should recast their votes because the will of their people doesn't match the will of the people of Vermont?

The Electoral College reflects the will of the people, and is designed to temper the weight of the populous States.

I'm not a Trump supporter, but I do believe in the principles of the Constitution.


http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...sx6pzf7nj.jpeg

http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...sd5uosgza.jpeg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dneal

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by myu

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Scrawler

This current election cycle makes it very difficult to take the US seriously anymore. Maybe Trump does have a plan to make the US "great" again, but I think that the damage has been done and when he wins the best he can hope for is to steer it in the direction of mediocrity.

---

We're doomed for a terrible 4 years ahead. I cannot believe the Electoral College failed us. They're supposed to protect the country when a majority of people make a bad choice, or the Electoral Voting initially conflicts with the popular vote... and they should recast to match the will of the people. But they failed to do so. Corrupt b@stards, the lot of them.

---

The will of what people? Wyoming electors should recast their votes because the will of their people doesn't match the will of the people of Vermont?

The Electoral College reflects the will of the people, and is designed to temper the weight of the populous States.

I'm not a Trump supporter, but I do believe in the principles of the Constitution.


http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...sx6pzf7nj.jpeg

http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...sd5uosgza.jpeg

---

Yep. The political effects of going to a popular vote would almost certainly be profound.
I should acknowledge, though, that it feels sickening to know that some people's votes count more than others, especially when, according to a recent article in the Stanford Law Review, voting power is effectively weighted along racial lines.

See the Hildago Plateau? I call that home.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fountainpenkid

Yep. The political effects of going to a popular vote would almost certainly be profound.
I should acknowledge, though, that it feels sickening to know that some people's votes count more than others, especially when, according to a recent article in the Stanford Law Review, voting power is effectively weighted along racial lines.

---

I don't know why it would feel sickening. Does it feel sickening that California gets more electoral votes than Montana? How is that fair? What good is the more heavily weighted vote of a Hillary supporter in Wyoming compared to the diluted vote of a Trump supporter in New York?

I'm not sure what you mean with your last sentence though. African Americans have more "voting power" than Asian Americans. Is that unfair? One African American vote counts the same as one Asian American vote.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dneal

The will of what people? Wyoming electors should recast their votes because the will of their people doesn't match the will of the people of Vermont?

The Electoral College reflects the will of the people, and is designed to temper the weight of the populous States.

I'm not a Trump supporter, but I do believe in the principles of the Constitution.

---

Hey dneal,

You're about half-way there.

The "principles of the Constitution" you are supporting are some of the left-over bits that went along with some state's residents not having the vote but counting as 3/5th of a person for population purposes. The Electoral College was an important compromise in order to get the Constitution ratified two centuries ago, but it never got revisited or updated when the US decided to broaden the voting pool in subsequent years.

You're correct that in the 18th century there was a real concern by Southern agricultural states in the US that in a popular vote they would never achieve a majority and they'd see their institutions and way of life threatened, especially with regards to slave ownership. As giving the vote to slaves was a total non-starter, compromises were developed that based political institutions on population instead of voter enrollment. One of these compromises was every state getting to send two Senators, selected by the state legislature, to form the upper house of Congress. Another was counting slaves as 3/5th of a person, increasing the state population numbers for Representative seats. The Electoral College, as a sort of meta-compromise, took both of these compromises (2 Senators/state and Representatives based on population) and made selection of the President of the United States dependent on those numbers and not a straight popular vote, which at the time would be heavily weighted towards the Northeast.

Certainly, this is an effective compromise if your entering assumption is that only white men are fit to vote, but your white male population is unevenly distributed across state boundaries and you need to unify those states.

It is a bit harder to justify nowadays when all citizens get the vote. For instance:
-California has around 18,000,000 registered voters and gets 55 Electoral College electors.
-Vermont has around 300,000 registered voters and gets 3 Electoral College electors.
-In CA each elector represents over 300,000 voters but in VT each elector represents only 100,000 voters.
-Are VT voters three-times the citizen of voters in CA?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dneal

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fountainpenkid

Yep. The political effects of going to a popular vote would almost certainly be profound.
I should acknowledge, though, that it feels sickening to know that some people's votes count more than others, especially when, according to a recent article in the Stanford Law Review, voting power is effectively weighted along racial lines.

---

I don't know why it would feel sickening. Does it feel sickening that California gets more electoral votes than Montana? How is that fair? What good is the more heavily weighted vote of a Hillary supporter in Wyoming compared to the diluted vote of a Trump supporter in New York?

I'm not sure what you mean with your last sentence though. African Americans have more "voting power" than Asian Americans. Is that unfair? One African American vote counts the same as one Asian American vote.

---

Well of course in a popular vote, you wouldn't have to worry about your vote being "diluted" by your geographic location. It would count as much as any other vote.

I believe the FountainPenKid was referring to the convoluted gerrymandering that occurs in some states. In practice you draw the district boundaries so as to place all high-population minority populations into one or as few districts as possible and then generate as many as possible other districts to capture low-population affluent white residential areas. This allows you to have high voter turnout, but ensure that minority issues never gain a majority. In practice you end up with district maps that look much like you'd expect based on geography/neighborhoods and then there will be one serpentine district snaking across the city/counties/state that twists and turns to encompass all the areas where minority populations reside. If you are curious how this works and want more detail, North Carolina has really taken gerrymandering to a new level in recent years. I'd encourage you to take a look.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chemyst

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dneal

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fountainpenkid

Yep. The political effects of going to a popular vote would almost certainly be profound.
I should acknowledge, though, that it feels sickening to know that some people's votes count more than others, especially when, according to a recent article in the Stanford Law Review, voting power is effectively weighted along racial lines.

---

I don't know why it would feel sickening. Does it feel sickening that California gets more electoral votes than Montana? How is that fair? What good is the more heavily weighted vote of a Hillary supporter in Wyoming compared to the diluted vote of a Trump supporter in New York?

I'm not sure what you mean with your last sentence though. African Americans have more "voting power" than Asian Americans. Is that unfair? One African American vote counts the same as one Asian American vote.

---

Well of course in a popular vote, you wouldn't have to worry about your vote being "diluted" by your geographic location. It would count as much as any other vote.

I believe the FountainPenKid was referring to the convoluted gerrymandering that occurs in some states. In practice you draw tsthe district boundaries so as to place all high-population minority populations into one or as few districts as possible and then generate as many as possible other districts to capture low-population affluent white residential areas. This allows you to have high voter turnout, but ensure that minority issues never gain a majority. In practice you end up with district maps that look much like you'd expect based on geography/neighborhoods and then there will be one serpentine district snaking across the city/counties/state that twists and turns to encompass all the areas where minority populations reside. If you are curious how this works and want more detail, North Carolina has really taken gerrymandering to a new level in recent years. I'd encourage you to take a look.

---

Actually the 'racial weighting' I was refering to was that caused directly by the electoral college...less populous, overrepresented states tend to be significantly more white than the most populous ones, meaning, when things are calculated out, blacks in this country, de facto, have less voting power than whites. This doesn't take into account the gerrymandering you mention, nor the voter supression laws etc. etc.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chemyst

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dneal

The will of what people? Wyoming electors should recast their votes because the will of their people doesn't match the will of the people of Vermont?

The Electoral College reflects the will of the people, and is designed to temper the weight of the populous States.

I'm not a Trump supporter, but I do believe in the principles of the Constitution.

---

Hey dneal,

You're about half-way there.

The "principles of the Constitution" you are supporting are some of the left-over bits that went along with some state's residents not having the vote but counting as 3/5th of a person for population purposes. The Electoral College was an important compromise in order to get the Constitution ratified two centuries ago, but it never got revisited or updated when the US decided to broaden the voting pool in subsequent years.

You're correct that in the 18th century there was a real concern by Southern agricultural states in the US that in a popular vote they would never achieve a majority and they'd see their institutions and way of life threatened, especially with regards to slave ownership. As giving the vote to slaves was a total non-starter, compromises were developed that based political institutions on population instead of voter enrollment. One of these compromises was every state getting to send two Senators, selected by the state legislature, to form the upper house of Congress. Another was counting slaves as 3/5th of a person, increasing the state population numbers for Representative seats. The Electoral College, as a sort of meta-compromise, took both of these compromises (2 Senators/state and Representatives based on population) and made selection of the President of the United States dependent on those numbers and not a straight popular vote, which at the time would be heavily weighted towards the Northeast.

Certainly, this is an effective compromise if your entering assumption is that only white men are fit to vote, but your white male population is unevenly distributed across state boundaries and you need to unify those states.

It is a bit harder to justify nowadays when all citizens get the vote. For instance:
-California has around 18,000,000 registered voters and gets 55 Electoral College electors.
-Vermont has around 300,000 registered voters and gets 3 Electoral College electors.
-In CA each elector represents over 300,000 voters but in VT each elector represents only 100,000 voters.
-Are VT voters three-times the citizen of voters in CA?

---

They're not "left over bits", and "it never got revisited or updated" implies that it should have been. I disagree. The point has always been that we are a union of states and those smaller states (like Delaware too) wanted a means to retain relevancy. The 3/5ths compromise was as much about taxation as it was representation.

There has always been a method for changing the election to a popular vote. If it were that important to the people, and amendment would have been adopted long ago. Perhaps those smaller states still see the relevance of the constitutional principle...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chemyst

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dneal

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fountainpenkid

Yep. The political effects of going to a popular vote would almost certainly be profound.
I should acknowledge, though, that it feels sickening to know that some people's votes count more than others, especially when, according to a recent article in the Stanford Law Review, voting power is effectively weighted along racial lines.

---

I don't know why it would feel sickening. Does it feel sickening that California gets more electoral votes than Montana? How is that fair? What good is the more heavily weighted vote of a Hillary supporter in Wyoming compared to the diluted vote of a Trump supporter in New York?

I'm not sure what you mean with your last sentence though. African Americans have more "voting power" than Asian Americans. Is that unfair? One African American vote counts the same as one Asian American vote.

---

Well of course in a popular vote, you wouldn't have to worry about your vote being "diluted" by your geographic location. It would count as much as any other vote.

I believe the FountainPenKid was referring to the convoluted gerrymandering that occurs in some states. In practice you draw the district boundaries so as to place all high-population minority populations into one or as few districts as possible and then generate as many as possible other districts to capture low-population affluent white residential areas. This allows you to have high voter turnout, but ensure that minority issues never gain a majority. In practice you end up with district maps that look much like you'd expect based on geography/neighborhoods and then there will be one serpentine district snaking across the city/counties/state that twists and turns to encompass all the areas where minority populations reside. If you are curious how this works and want more detail, North Carolina has really taken gerrymandering to a new level in recent years. I'd encourage you to take a look.

---

I dislike gerrymandering, and prefer Jefferson's idea of geographic division. I don't know why you assume I don't know how this works.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fountainpenkid

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chemyst

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dneal

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fountainpenkid

Yep. The political effects of going to a popular vote would almost certainly be profound.
I should acknowledge, though, that it feels sickening to know that some people's votes count more than others, especially when, according to a recent article in the Stanford Law Review, voting power is effectively weighted along racial lines.

---

I don't know why it would feel sickening. Does it feel sickening that California gets more electoral votes than Montana? How is that fair? What good is the more heavily weighted vote of a Hillary supporter in Wyoming compared to the diluted vote of a Trump supporter in New York?

I'm not sure what you mean with your last sentence though. African Americans have more "voting power" than Asian Americans. Is that unfair? One African American vote counts the same as one Asian American vote.

---

Well of course in a popular vote, you wouldn't have to worry about your vote being "diluted" by your geographic location. It would count as much as any other vote.

I believe the FountainPenKid was referring to the convoluted gerrymandering that occurs in some states. In practice you draw tsthe district boundaries so as to place all high-population minority populations into one or as few districts as possible and then generate as many as possible other districts to capture low-population affluent white residential areas. This allows you to have high voter turnout, but ensure that minority issues never gain a majority. In practice you end up with district maps that look much like you'd expect based on geography/neighborhoods and then there will be one serpentine district snaking across the city/counties/state that twists and turns to encompass all the areas where minority populations reside. If you are curious how this works and want more detail, North Carolina has really taken gerrymandering to a new level in recent years. I'd encourage you to take a look.

---

Actually the 'racial weighting' I was refering to was that caused directly by the electoral college...less populous, overrepresented states tend to be significantly more white than the most populous ones, meaning, when things are calculated out, blacks in this country, de facto, have less voting power than whites. This doesn't take into account the gerrymandering you mention, nor the voter supression laws etc. etc.

---

Minorities will always have less "voting power" than majorities. It's math, not racism.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dneal

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fountainpenkid

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chemyst

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dneal

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fountainpenkid

Yep. The political effects of going to a popular vote would almost certainly be profound.
I should acknowledge, though, that it feels sickening to know that some people's votes count more than others, especially when, according to a recent article in the Stanford Law Review, voting power is effectively weighted along racial lines.

---

I don't know why it would feel sickening. Does it feel sickening that California gets more electoral votes than Montana? How is that fair? What good is the more heavily weighted vote of a Hillary supporter in Wyoming compared to the diluted vote of a Trump supporter in New York?

I'm not sure what you mean with your last sentence though. African Americans have more "voting power" than Asian Americans. Is that unfair? One African American vote counts the same as one Asian American vote.

---

Well of course in a popular vote, you wouldn't have to worry about your vote being "diluted" by your geographic location. It would count as much as any other vote.

I believe the FountainPenKid was referring to the convoluted gerrymandering that occurs in some states. In practice you draw tsthe district boundaries so as to place all high-population minority populations into one or as few districts as possible and then generate as many as possible other districts to capture low-population affluent white residential areas. This allows you to have high voter turnout, but ensure that minority issues never gain a majority. In practice you end up with district maps that look much like you'd expect based on geography/neighborhoods and then there will be one serpentine district snaking across the city/counties/state that twists and turns to encompass all the areas where minority populations reside. If you are curious how this works and want more detail, North Carolina has really taken gerrymandering to a new level in recent years. I'd encourage you to take a look.

---

Actually the 'racial weighting' I was refering to was that caused directly by the electoral college...less populous, overrepresented states tend to be significantly more white than the most populous ones, meaning, when things are calculated out, blacks in this country, de facto, have less voting power than whites. This doesn't take into account the gerrymandering you mention, nor the voter supression laws etc. etc.

---

Minorities will always have less "voting power" than majorities. It's math, not racism.

---

You are now just ignoring what I wrote.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fountainpenkid

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dneal

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fountainpenkid

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chemyst

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dneal

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fountainpenkid

Yep. The political effects of going to a popular vote would almost certainly be profound.
I should acknowledge, though, that it feels sickening to know that some people's votes count more than others, especially when, according to a recent article in the Stanford Law Review, voting power is effectively weighted along racial lines.

---

I don't know why it would feel sickening. Does it feel sickening that California gets more electoral votes than Montana? How is that fair? What good is the more heavily weighted vote of a Hillary supporter in Wyoming compared to the diluted vote of a Trump supporter in New York?

I'm not sure what you mean with your last sentence though. African Americans have more "voting power" than Asian Americans. Is that unfair? One African American vote counts the same as one Asian American vote.

---

Well of course in a popular vote, you wouldn't have to worry about your vote being "diluted" by your geographic location. It would count as much as any other vote.

I believe the FountainPenKid was referring to the convoluted gerrymandering that occurs in some states. In practice you draw tsthe district boundaries so as to place all high-population minority populations into one or as few districts as possible and then generate as many as possible other districts to capture low-population affluent white residential areas. This allows you to have high voter turnout, but ensure that minority issues never gain a majority. In practice you end up with district maps that look much like you'd expect based on geography/neighborhoods and then there will be one serpentine district snaking across the city/counties/state that twists and turns to encompass all the areas where minority populations reside. If you are curious how this works and want more detail, North Carolina has really taken gerrymandering to a new level in recent years. I'd encourage you to take a look.

---

Actually the 'racial weighting' I was refering to was that caused directly by the electoral college...less populous, overrepresented states tend to be significantly more white than the most populous ones, meaning, when things are calculated out, blacks in this country, de facto, have less voting power than whites. This doesn't take into account the gerrymandering you mention, nor the voter supression laws etc. etc.

---

Minorities will always have less "voting power" than majorities. It's math, not racism.

---

You are now just ignoring what I wrote.

---

I'm not ignoring what you wrote. You're dodging the logical conclusion.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dneal

They're not "left over bits", and "it never got revisited or updated" implies that it should have been. I disagree. The point has always been that we are a union of states and those smaller states (like Delaware too) wanted a means to retain relevancy. The 3/5ths compromise was as much about taxation as it was representation.

There has always been a method for changing the election to a popular vote. If it were that important to the people, and amendment would have been adopted long ago. Perhaps those smaller states still see the relevance of the constitutional principle...

---

Well they are left over bits if you believe that slavery should have been abolished (Amendment XIII), negating the need for the various political compromises and contortions made to accommodate it.

They are also left overs if you believe the it was correct to expand the voting pool beyond white men to encompass African-Americans (Amendment XV) and women (Amendment XIX). At that point it becomes less and less conscionable to count some citizens more than others.

Ideally any of those three amendments would have been the correct place to strike or modify the Electoral College. Even when the people decided that Senators should be directly elected (Amendment XVII), would have been a reasonable place to make the necessary modifications. Unfortunately, it was not done at those times and revising the Constitution has become progressively more challenging as time has gone on.

You are correct, there is a process to amend the Constitution and make Presidential elections a popular vote, but as the status quo had already solidified and concentrated power there is less and less interest in doing this among those profiting from the system as set up centuries ago under different conditions. Notably, this is likely to only increase as the nation becomes more diverse and white nationalists feel more and more threatened. They will have less and less interest in equal enfranchisement and the central prairie states will gain more and more importance to the white nationalism as a key veto voting bloc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dneal

Minorities will always have less "voting power" than majorities. It's math, not racism.

---

I believe "minorities" in this case is being used in common shorthand for "non-white".

Your statement is also very silly considering that only last month in the US, a minority of voters had more voting power than the majority of US voters based on their use of a racist system.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chemyst

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dneal

They're not "left over bits", and "it never got revisited or updated" implies that it should have been. I disagree. The point has always been that we are a union of states and those smaller states (like Delaware too) wanted a means to retain relevancy. The 3/5ths compromise was as much about taxation as it was representation.

There has always been a method for changing the election to a popular vote. If it were that important to the people, and amendment would have been adopted long ago. Perhaps those smaller states still see the relevance of the constitutional principle...

---

Well they are left over bits if you believe that slavery should have been abolished (Amendment XIII), negating the need for the various political compromises and contortions made to accommodate it.

They are also left overs if you believe the it was correct to expand the voting pool beyond white men to encompass African-Americans (Amendment XV) and women (Amendment XIX). At that point it becomes less and less conscionable to count some citizens more than others.

Ideally any of those three amendments would have been the correct place to strike or modify the Electoral College. Even when the people decided that Senators should be directly elected (Amendment XVII), would have been a reasonable place to make the necessary modifications. Unfortunately, it was not done at those times and revising the Constitution has become progressively more challenging as time has gone on.

You are correct, there is a process to amend the Constitution and make Presidential elections a popular vote, but as the status quo had already solidified and concentrated power there is less and less interest in doing this among those profiting from the system as set up centuries ago under different conditions. Notably, this is likely to only increase as the nation becomes more diverse and white nationalists feel more and more threatened. They will have less and less interest in equal enfranchisement and the central prairie states will gain more and more importance to the white nationalism as a key veto voting bloc.

---

I looks to me that you are assigning a racist motive to the electoral college, and I don't see a convincing argument for that. My reading of the federalist papers leads me to believe the electoral college has the same purpose as the make up of the congress - a means to acknowledge more influence of more populated states (the house) and balance the interests of the less populated states (the senate) in order to mitigate a "tyranny of the majority".

As I said earlier, I dislike gerrymandering from either party; and the Republicans were the party in control during the last round of districting. Where you see lines drawn by race, I see lines drawn by party. If those minority voters were more likely to vote Republican, do you think their votes would be as "diluted"? If the Democrats held power at the time, and drew lines maximizing their voter pools which also could be correlated by race, would that be racist as well?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chemyst

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dneal

Minorities will always have less "voting power" than majorities. It's math, not racism.

---

I believe "minorities" in this case is being used in common shorthand for "non-white".

Your statement is also very silly considering that only last month in the US, a minority of voters had more voting power than the majority of US voters based on their use of a racist system.

---

I think the use of the term "minority" is more clear than "voting power". An individual black, asian, hispanic, white, etc... voter in California had just as much "voting power" as any other voter in California. Each individual had one vote. Generalizing it to simply "non-white" is disingenuous, avoiding the problems that arise once you start down that path (i.e.: you can continue to classify each "minority" group and discover you have different "minorities" within the larger category of minorities).

Each California voter, regardless of race, had less "voting power" than a voter in Wyoming. Just because Wyoming is predominately white does not mean there's some racial conspiracy to dilute the vote of minorities in California (or any other state). A minority voter in Wyoming has as much voting power as a white voter in Wyoming - each is one vote. It seems to me the implication from Fountainpenkid is that it's racism for the minority votes in Wyoming to be ineffective, diluted, or having less "voting power" than whites in Wyoming. It's no more racist than a white voter in a predominately black district being a minority vote.

The "logical conclusion" I was referring to earlier is that no matter how you think you can "undilute" votes by changing or eliminating the electoral college, the fact will always remain that a minority will be exactly that and have "less voting power" in the aggregate when viewed in terms of ethnicity. That of course ignores other ethnic groupings, where I pointed out that Asians are a smaller population than blacks, and the perceived "problem" remains unsolved (e.g.: black and hispanic voters overwhelmingly opposed "gay marriage" with California propositions 22 and 8. Were the courts therefore racist in striking down those propositions?)

Let's even take the argument to the absurd to illustrate the point clearly. As an individual, I'm the epitome of the minority. My voting power is diluted in a sea of 329,999,999 others. How do we balance my vote against the rest of the population?