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A comment on 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete. Parent comment

Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by WarDores on Thursday August 22, 2019 @09:04AM (#20767555)
This exactly. If the issue is people feeling/being disenfranchised, changing how we elect the President isn't going to help. It just reinforces the idea that we're a monarchy and the job of the rest of the government is to do the will of the President. We can do better than this!

The Presidential horse race every 4 years is mostly for television. Federalism works because you want the decisions that affect your life the most to have the most direct accountability.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by notfromhere on Thursday August 22, 2019 @11:40AM (#20769302)
Nothing reinforces the feeling of disenfranchisement than having no direct impact on how the most powerful single government is elected.

The Electoral College is fundamentally undemocratic and the lack of democracy de-legitimizes the office.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by WarDores on Thursday August 22, 2019 @11:51AM (#20769432)
Why does direct democracy confer legitimacy? Does the Supreme Court not have legitimate authority? I don't see a correlation.
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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by notfromhere on Friday August 23, 2019 @09:47AM (#20777538)
because legitimate government is based on the consent of the governed? Supreme Court justices are picked by popularly elected Senators.

It's not even direct democracy, its a representative democracy. Except in the case of the presidency we're not even allowed to directly pick our representative in the executive branch.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by kd5bjo on Friday August 23, 2019 @11:17AM (#20778496)
> Supreme Court justices are picked by popularly elected Senators.

Not exactly; they’re selected by the President and then confirmed by the Senate, which wasn’t popularly elected until 1913.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by notfromhere on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @04:23PM (#20814067)
Senators were legitimized through popular elections since before the whole body was appointed via backroom deals with state legislatures, and have been popularly elected for over 100 years.
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