2018 U.S election

[Lexicus]

Dems turning out in early voting.

According to data posted by Nevada’s secretary of state, Clark County voters cast their ballots in record numbers on Saturday, the first of 14 days of early voting, with Democrats taking a significant lead. Democrats also posted early vote leads in nearby Washoe County, which has more registered Republicans. It’s a stark contrast to the last midterm election, when the party lost statewide in Nevada after a poor early vote showing.

To be fair though if Democrats don't win Clark county in Nevada then they're screeeeeeeweed. My union has a team canvassing out there as well.

 

[Arwon]

The electoral college was supposed to prevent Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston from dominating the voting for President. There are plenty of period writings to show that domination by the harbor cities was a big worry.

J

I mean it was mostly about getting more favourable maths for the slave owners, but anyway.

The correct place to balance the powers of sub-national jurisdictions of different sizes in a federation is via equal representation in the upper house of one's legislature (for example, Australian states all have 12 senators, even though Tasmania has a population of 500k and New South Wales has 8 million). The US does this - even having gone so far as creating extra states in the rectangle bits just to flesh out senate numbers.

Such balancing can't be done in the selection of a single person for a single executive job. It's one person, a "small state" does't really have "more voice" in a particular president because they're one person and they can't really have more than one voice or whatever.

All they created was a system where, in a single electorate (the country choosing the office of president is a single electorate) there's a bunch of differently weighted voting units who apportion votes by winner takes all. It's essentially a random, modestly rurally weighted, malapportionment.

I realise the people who wrote the system were pretty inexperienced back then, and someone had to have the early cracks at designing representative government and make the mistakes we all learn from. But we've learned now, and the arrangements in the US really should have been modernised beyond a first draft long ago.

 

[Lexicus]

The electoral college was supposed to prevent Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston from dominating the voting for President. There are plenty of period writings to show that domination by the harbor cities was a big worry.

No there aren't; you've completely made this up!

Here is a bit of "period writing" (in fact, the key piece of "period writing") showing the actual purpose of the electoral college, as @Arwon has already explained:

If it be a fundamental principle of free Govt. that the Legislative, Executive & Judiciary powers should be separately exercised, it is equally so that they be independently exercised. There is the same & perhaps greater reason why the Executive shd. be independent of the Legislature, than why the Judiciary should: A coalition of the two former powers would be more immediately & certainly dangerous to public liberty. It is essential then that the appointment of the Executive should either be drawn from some source, or held by some tenure, that will give him a free agency with regard to the Legislature. This could not be if he was to be appointable from time to time by the Legislature. It was not clear that an appointment in the 1st. instance even with an eligibility afterwards would not establish an improper connection between the two departments. Certain it was that the appointment would be attended with intrigues and contentions that ought not to be unnecessarily admitted. He was disposed for these reasons to refer the appointment to some other source. The people at large was in his opinion the fittest in itself. It would be as likely as any that could be devised to produce an Executive Magistrate of distinguished Character. The people generally could only know & vote for some Citizen whose merits had rendered him an object of general attention & esteem. There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Gird yourselves, the Democrats are 86.3% likely to control the House, and Republicans are 78.6% likely to control the Senate.
Trump is in for a bad 2 years if Dems get the House.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/senate/

Time to find out if the polling is off again this year like 2016.

 

[Ajidica]

One thing I've learned is never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to lose an election.

 

[Takhisis]

Lexicus, I've seen it argued on this forum (by a certain person) that the three-fifths compromise meant the slaves were represented in Congress, so I'm not sure you'll get far by simply posting facts.

 

[Zkribbler]

Time to find out if the polling is off again this year like 2016.

Nate Silver took a lot of flack for having Trump at 30%. He gave Trump a much better chance than most because of the large number of undecided. After the last poll was taken 3 days before the election, they moved en masse to support Trump.

IMHO, this election will rest on turnout, which is a hard thing to measure in polls. Therefore, I still have hope for the Senate.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I'm a really lazy American, there must be a solution.

$7.99 a month

Can I pay them to vote for me too?

**Edit**
Nope, that's 2 years in jail.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/597

 

[Gori the Grey]

Trump The country is in for a bad 2 years if Dems get the House (and 2 worse years if they don't.)

TPFTFY

 

[Hrothbern]

Is there any effect expected on the elections because of Iran & Saudi Arabia ?

Iran sanctions sharp Nov 4, US elections Nov 6. Max Saudi oil needed to compensate Iran.
The moral offensive campaign of Pompeo against the evil Iran with all those human rights violations, nicely planned just before the elections....
a bit in troubles because the violations of "our good friend" Saudi Arabia dominate the newsmedia.

or is the effect small ?

 

[rah]

pretty small i would bet. Now stopping the caravan of immigrants from entering the country will play heavily with the Trump base. Expect it to be covered extensively during the next few weeks. And no matter how much the more liberal media tries to humanize the immigrants, Stopping them will still favor the right as a rallying point.

 

[Hrothbern]

pretty small i would bet. Now stopping the caravan of immigrants from entering the country will play heavily with the Trump base. Expect it to be covered extensively during the next few weeks. And no matter how much the more liberal media tries to humanize the immigrants, Stopping them will still favor the right as a rallying point.

That caravan of immigrants.... nice timing with the elections.... who's idea was that to do it now ?
And will that newsmedia attention be in favor of the democrats or the republicans ?
You guess the republicans, I find that plausible.
So who initiated that caravan ? Do we know that ?

 

[rah]

The timing is suspicious to me also but if the Dems planned it, it will probably blow up in their faces. Unless they can goad the military into killing a lot of them at the boarder. I think it favors the rep. FEAR

 

[Hrothbern]

suspicious... my old habit of why ? and why now ?
To add to that
Why is it now.... that Trump announced to withdraw from the nuclear missile treaty... the medium distance missiles ?
Why does he have planned Nov 11 a meeting with Putin, conveniently after the election, enabling to shout around without being measured on results ?

 

[rah]

By announcing it now he can pretend the meeting is to get tough for election purposes and then do his normal weasel once the election is done.

 

[Takhisis]

Nate Silver took a lot of flack for having Trump at 30%. He gave Trump a much better chance than most because of the large number of undecided. After the last poll was taken 3 days before the election, they moved en masse to support Trump.

IMHO, this election will rest on turnout, which is a hard thing to measure in polls. Therefore, I still have hope for the Senate.

I think a lot of the undecided might have been the sort of person who claim to be undecided because they cannot say with a straight face that Donald Trump's personal actions and lifestyle is the polar opposite of their worldview but they'd vote for him anyway because he annoys other people at least as much as he annoys them.

 

[Kaitzilla]

If you get banned from Facebook for hate speech, fake news, or being a Russian trying to influence the election in the next 2 weeks, it was these people.

I see you Instagram overlord 2:22!
You can't stop me from dressing up like Hillary!

 

[innonimatu]

The only recent thing I thing influenced the outcome of this election was the sorry spectacle of that supreme court nomination. Just as Hillary was a terrible candidate and gave the 2016 election to Trump, that extremely misconducted fight has given this election to the other party.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The timing is suspicious to me also but if the Dems planned it, it will probably blow up in their faces. Unless they can goad the military into killing a lot of them at the boarder. I think it favors the rep. FEAR

Pretty sure caravans like this happen annually. It's only with Trump's open pandering to racists that it became a huge deal. It doesn't help that he claims they are all ISIS sleeper cell agents and rapers of white women instead of economic and political refugees.

He's turned it into a burning race issue and the media is aiding and abetting it by giving more than equal time to his crazed rants. They cover the caravan largely along the lines that Trump projects rather than outright rejecting his false reality and reporting on who these refugees are and how a passionate nation would want to help rather than send troops.

 

[Sommerswerd]

the media is aiding and abetting it by giving more than equal time to his crazed rants.

Jeffery Toobin finally said that outright a couple days back... something along the lines of "We need to stop covering his rants and lies and distractions, it only feeds the troll."

But then you get the typical retort (from Wolf Blitzer IIRC) of "But we HAVE TO cover him don't we?! He's the POTUS! So everything he says is newsworthy by definition!" So then Toobin backed down and said something like "I guess so... I don't have the answer..."

So do they really have to cover him? Or can they just say "Nope, we're done... not covering him anymore... not letting him control the narrative or the media cycle anymore" Can they?

CAN THEY??