So before America can accomplish anything, we need to get a highly educated population that is rich enough to be able to afford the time to research complex local, statewide, and national politics.

There's a hell of a lot of symptoms between us and the goal, and the current system seems to be doing everything it can to prevent us from reaching it (defunding education, defunding healthcare, preventing efforts to get out the vote, gerrymandering).

> So before America can accomplish anything, we need to get a highly educated population that is rich enough to be able to afford the time to research complex local, statewide, and national politics.

Believe it or not, it's not a full-time job. Given that we've seen poll after poll showing that the average voter couldn't pass a 6th grade civics class, but I don't see how cutting education spending is the real problem. We spend plenty on education. If that were the root of the problem then the districts which spend the most money would have the best grades, but there's not a strong correlation there.

We spend money poorly, but we spend plenty. There are a lot of things that could improve the American education system, but one thing has been shown conclusively to not do any good on its own and that's spending more money.

Right, and the voters are happily voting for pols who defund education and healthcare.

Well, my point is, they might be trying to vote otherwise, but gerrymandering and voter suppression prevents them. For example, the American people didn't elect Donald Trump, but he became president.

Let me correct you there: the American people did elect Donald Trump and he became president. Electoral College is the way to get elected, and popular vote has zero impact. That's why nobody who wants to win runs for the popular vote.

The poster you responded to referenced gerrymandering. I believe in that person's view, the gerrymandering is a form of corruption. Surely you believe corruption would result in an unfair election result. Though I would understand if you did not believe that gerrymandering is corruption.

http://www.npr.org/2016/06/15/482150951/understanding-congre...

The electoral college is basically not gerrymandered. In all but two states, everyone in the state is voting in the same electoral college "district" - i.e., the state - and the boundaries of the states were established sufficiently long ago (1912 []) that we can assume they were not deliberately designed to produce a certain electoral outcome today.

[] Two states have been admitted since 1912 - Alaska and Hawaii - but their borders match preexisting borders (the Alaska-Canada border was last altered in 1903).

The college itself is gerrymandering. It was set up to roughly represent population but to have an educated stop gap against a populist winning. With urbanization and different population growth it is now a system of disproportionate representation.

The people who drew state lines hundreds of years ago had no idea what things were going to look like in 2017; that's just stupid. Gerrymandering is drawing district lines to get a certain outcome. The state borders were not drawn to get a certain electoral outcome, they were drawn because of various political and geographic factors that existed in the 1700s. They didn't even have political parties at the time, nor did they even have a country in the eastern seaboard "states", since those were just independent colonies of England and there was no unification whatsoever. The whole "states" thing and unified federal country didn't come around until much later (the colonies were established in the 1600s, the revolution was in 1776).

You know how 10% of counties win elections (see 2008, 2012)? The electoral college is there so that number doesn't become 2%.

First of all, I don't understand how the removal of the electoral college would cause an individual within a certain county to have more voting power, rather than less (wouldn't this be the case? Their "vote" would be equal to any of the other millions of Americans anywhere ? )

Second, I don't understand how in a "no electoral college" universe, the concept of a "county" is even relevant. With every vote being perfectly equal, one would think the balance of power would perfectly equalize across all voters.

The college produces different outcomes than a popular vote - that's true. I also don't think it's a good thing. But gerrymandering is something specific: drawing electoral districts to deliberately produce certain electoral outcomes. It presupposes a system with districts, but is not the same thing.

Thank you for pointing this out. I was not thinking about it at the time and I will remember it for next time.

The GOP senators who won new seats in the Senate disagree with you.

It wasn't voter suppression that caused this result, it was 5+M people more than in 2008 staying at home and not voting.

I believe you are incorrect. I believe in 2008 it was about 132M and in 2016 it was 139M.

http://www.electproject.org/2008g http://www.electproject.org/2016g

I will also note that the poster you're replying to references gerrymandering as one of the causes of the election results not matching the votes; neither of your statements directly refute that.

http://www.npr.org/2016/06/15/482150951/understanding-congre...

For some reason I really thought I saw figures that 5M fewer people voted than in '08. Maybe I'm comparing to '12? I'm too lazy to research this at the moment. However, your own page shows that the voter turnout was 2-3% lower between '08-'16.

As for gerrymandering, that only affects the House races, nothing else. The President isn't affected by that, only by the archaic and undemocratic Electoral College and the way state borders are drawn. The Senate is similar. The GOP swept all three.

I remember hearing the 5M number on the day of the election and maybe the day after, but not all the votes were counted at that point.

It looks like the voter turnout was pretty average. Going back to 1972, the turnout numbers are similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_St...

Thank you for the reminder about the limitations of gerrymandering!

Senate is 52-48 which doesn't seem like a sweep. This includes two independents which caucus with the Democrats. I think the Democrats actually picked up two seats, which doesn't seem like a sweep either. Also, in your previous comment, you said the GOP won some seats. Which seats were these?

Donald Trump had a victory margin in the bottom 10 of historical elections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...

Money is not interchangeable with free speech. That's a myth promoted by the moneyholders. Free speech law in the US protects content, not form.

If government can prevent people from rallying near a party convention, government can prevent people from bribing candidates for office.

> Like it or not, money and free speech are interfungible

I know what you mean (interchangeable?), and the problem is that it only goes one way. With money, you can purchase "free speech," e.g. in CA, you can pay signature gatherers a few million to put a proposition on the ballot, because signatures cost a couple bucks apiece. But you can't easily turn free speech into money: 100 million people could send nasty letters to the Koch brothers, and they'd be told to pound sand.

Fair enough, but the more money you have, the more people can hear you and you can't infringe on the ability to spend money in a campaign without infringing, to some extent, on the right to Free Speech.

I do not agree at all that campaign finance reform would be detrimental to free speech. If anything, it'd be a boom for free speech, because you wouldn't have a few ultra-rich people dominating the conversation. Limit everyone to $1000 per fiscal tax year of political donations. This can be given to candidates, or to PACs. The wealthy will still get more, because they're more likely to afford $1000, but average people won't be drowned out.