It's interesting that you see it that way. From my perspective, it's something that was originally designed with fairly good intentions, that is now being abused by the minority to impose their will upon everyone.
Let's not forget that Democrats have won the popular vote in all but one presidential election this century. And that the Senate's structure has allowed the party representing a minority of Americans to reshape the federal judiciary for years to come. (And unless a rabbit gets pulled out of a hat somewhere, they'll still have outsized control over judicial confirmations for at least the next 2 years.)
I'm all for preventing the tyranny of the majority, but these features of US government haven't resulted in moderation, they've resulted in tyranny of the minority.
* https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-ori...
* https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-...
You're also misreading it: my comment was about the Senate, not the electoral college. And I left out the part about how the Senate was explicitly anti-democratic, not just anti-majoritarian, in that it was originally elected by legislators and not the people.
The alternative is effectively disenfranchising rural areas. Remember that whole "no taxation without representation" thing a couple of centuries ago and how badly that turned out? Rural areas are where all the food, agricultural and mineral resources of the United States are produced, not to mention the source of the majority of its armed forces, so trying to disenfranchise them isn't going to end well.
And the minority isn't small either: the last time I checked, even in archetypically left-leaning California, about 1/3 of the vote went to Trump; for the other two west coast states, the tally was closer to 40%.
The answer, of course, is to focus on uniting the nation, not division, even if it means not all the changes people want happen as quickly as they would prefer. "Politics is the art of the possible" after all.
Both for the urban areas in "red" states and the rural areas in "blue" states.
Therefore it's "just" for a house, senate, and president representing a minority of Americans to raise taxes on urban Americans (70% of the economy), refuse to fund our infrastructure (HSR and the gateway project), and impose their religious beliefs on us.
These self serving arguments aren't convincing anyone. What urban America has actually heard over the last four years is that "when you have the voted, you do what you want," a lesson we have taken to heart.
Could you explain what you actually mean?
Our justice system is a sovereign power and doesn't depend on executive power, but is completely independent from it.
These are unavoidable aspects of being a supreme court judge, since you are also deciding what the law means and entails.
Consider that sanders made it a litmus test for his supreme court nominees to overrule an unpopular court decision. Most judges would avoid at a politician demanding this, as it defeats the purpose of a judiciary.
They may have very strong views on what framework a judge should use to interpret the law, but they usually will not push their own political agenda.
I can't point you to specific cases - I can only say that what has really stood out to me is that the justices do mostly seem to have well-defined interpretive frameworks, and that they work from those.
I can think of an exception, but my experience has generally been that it's the case.
And yet, the United States does not preach this model when helping to propagate democracy abroad. Tellingly, they don't include:
- first past the post elections,
- bicameral legislative branches, or
- electoral colleges.
We're operating on a model that our own State Department discourages other countries from adopting.
Do you have a source for that?
Especially the point about bicameralism? I think in a federal system, having something like the US or Australian Senate's is useful in it prevents the smaller states from being dominated by the bigger ones. Leaving smaller states feeling politically powerless can encourage separatist/independence movements and threaten the long-term viability of the country.
https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oa...
Edit: here's a reprint in case that first link (from an NYT email newsletter) doesn't work:
http://www.barcelonaradical.net/info/12380/the-democracy-ref...
Leaving smaller states feeling politically powerless can encourage separatist/independence movements and threaten the long-term viability of the country.
Do you have a source for that? Proportional representation does seem to solve for it. See also: far right parties gaining seats in Germany.
Their views get heard (if not enacted), no one secedes, and the system remains stable.
For the benefits of federal bicameralism, consider the UK – England has almost 85% of the population, and so in a purely one-person-one-vote system will always outvote the other three constituent countries. The UK does have bicameralism, but non-federal – the House of Lords does not directly represent the constituent countries, and does not provide a mechanism to block an English majority – the majority of the House of Lords is English too. And I think this is one of the major factors driving the Scottish independence movement. If the UK had a system more like Australia – with an upper house providing equal representation to each part of the country, regardless of population, and with constitutional referendums requiring a double majority to pass (both a majority of the national population, and also a majority of the population in a majority of the states) – then I don't think the Scottish independence movement would have anywhere near as much steam as it has.
Nationalizing elections would basically cement first past the post as our permanent voting system forever since it's extremely unlikely you could convince everyone in the U.S. to change to a new one at once.
Remember that Mitch McConnell, once he had the majority, stopped processing federal judge nominees from Obama for two years.
* https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-mcconnell-and...
* https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/mitch-mcconnell-judge...
This also assume that McConnell wouldn't have just done the same. Remember that this is the same fellow that said both "no appointments in an election year" to "we're appointing with less that 30 days until the election".
McConnell is a political nihilist:
> It was already becoming clear that, in the political world of Mitch McConnell, convictions and campaign pledges were fungible things, easily tossed aside. Throughout his career, as the Republican Party veered right, and then further right, McConnell moved with it. “It’s always been about power, the political game, and it’s never been about the core values that drive political life,” John Yarmuth, Kentucky’s lone Democratic congressman, told Alec MacGillis, author of the 2014 McConnell biography The Cynic. “There has never been anything that interested him other than winning elections.”
* https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/mitc...
> “Trump is about winning the day, or even the hour. McConnell plays the long game. He’s sensitive to the political realities. His North Star is continuing as Majority Leader—it’s really the only thing for him. He’s patient, sly, and will obfuscate to make less apparent the ways he’s moving toward a goal.” The two men also have different political orientations: “Trump is a populist—he’s not just anti-élitist, he’s anti-institutionalist.” As for McConnell, “no one with a straight face would ever call him a populist—Trump came to drain the swamp, and now he’s working with the biggest swamp creature of them all.”
* https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcco...
Remember McConnell (and the GOP) were also all about austerity during Obama's terms (when economy could have used economic stimulus). Then, when Trump got in, it was all about tax cuts which caused all sorts of deficit/debt issues—when the economy did not need any help (2017).
We have entirely different goals now. We should be aiming for fair elections in which one person's vote is equal to any other's regardless of the state they reside. The electoral college is downright repulsive once you realize how unfairly it treats citizens in more populated states compared to those in less populated states.
The electoral college now has the potential of pulling the union apart. If California and New York see a few more elections in which their citizens' votes are discounted, resulting in popular vote winners losing the presidency, then it would be logical for them to secede. They can take their massive economies and accompanying tax dollars and leave this system behind, as it should've been a long time ago.
The reality is that different locations have different ways of life and culture and politics, and therefore self determination must be supported through some mechanisms (like the electoral college) for a federal union to make sense and for those peoples to feel represented. If we are undoing that we need to also give states the option to secede and go their own way, since this union would simply mean the end of their way of life.
On a straight popular vote basis, the large urban centers in a handful of states would select the president. Their interests and motivations will necessarily be different from rural areas.
The electoral college gives populous states proportionally more influence, as they have more congressional representatives and thus more electoral votes. But it serves to balance that against the interests of less populated states, which are also part of the country and should not be considered completely irrelevant in the process.
Hell it's the same way in parliamentary systems.
This is a feature of any indirect vote.
I always feel that we are highly inclined to promote a voting system which would help the side we support.
What's interesting, and in defense of the electoral college, these three actually pick the winner in very different ways, making it harder for a single party to take control, and requiring some amount of compromise. If we just used popular vote for choosing the president, they're more likely to be the same party as the one controlling the House.
E.g., South Korea has a presidential election every 5 years, congressional election every 4 years, and gubernatorial(?) election every 4 years (staggered in the middle between congressional elections). In this way, a government losing popular support quickly finds itself surrounded by elected officers from opposing parties.
Maybe that's an argument for staggering elections even more regularly, or maybe it's just one of those coincidences pundits love to talk about, I don't know. :)