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voting hacks?
#11
There were far too few votes differentiating far too many swing states; WI-MI-PA=100k, NC=150k and FL=200k. Not even half a million votes, when there was a margin of 3 million the other way nationally.

The electoral college should have done its damn job. I used to say it was a useful entity, for ensuring some demagogue didn't just pitch to the 30 biggest cities. Now I say get rid of it, it's failed in its core role of protecting the nation against an unqualified, chaos-driven bully.
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#12
gabester wrote:
The electoral college should have done its damn job. I used to say it was a useful entity, for ensuring some demagogue didn't just pitch to the 30 biggest cities. Now I say get rid of it, it's failed in its core role of protecting the nation against an unqualified, chaos-driven bully.

The political parties have been working since the mid-19th century to limit the independence of the electors, and in my view neither party is going to take up changing the situation.

Each party puts up slates of party members as electors who can be counted on to vote the party line. Toe reinforce that, most states have laws on the books imposing penalties for being an unfaithful elector. A few states now have laws that invalidate a vote by an unfaithful elector. Except for the invalidation of votes, the other penalties have not actually been imposed, but they do influence candidates for electors.

As it is, the only time unfaithful electors altered the results of an election was in 1836. The electors from Virginia refused to vote for the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate and he ended up being voted into the position by the Senate. In the last 50 years there have only been a total of 13 unfaithful electors, 7 of them in 2016. 3 more had their votes invalidated under their states' laws.
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#13
Yes, the electors are completely partisan and pledged to a candidate, which completely foils the intention of the Electoral College.

When I was frantically emailing electors all over the country, begging them to do their job, I got a number of responses telling me that they were big Trump supporters and were proud to vote for him and to leave them alone.
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