why we are a republic, NOT a democracy

SmarterthanYou said:
Hillary Clinton blamed the Electoral College for her stunning defeat in the 2016 presidential election in her latest memoirs, “What Happened.”

Some have claimed that the Electoral College is one of the most dangerous institutions in American politics.

Why? They say the Electoral College system, as opposed to a simple majority vote, distorts the one-person, one-vote principle of democracy because electoral votes are not distributed according to population.

To back up their claim, they point out that the Electoral College gives, for example, Wyoming citizens disproportionate weight in a presidential election.

Put another way, Wyoming, a state with a population of about 600,000, has one member in the House of Representatives and two members in the U.S. Senate, which gives the citizens of Wyoming three electoral votes, or one electoral vote per 200,000 people.

California, our most populous state, has more than 39 million people and 55 electoral votes, or approximately one vote per 715,000 people.

Comparatively, individuals in Wyoming have nearly four times the power in the Electoral College as Californians.

Many people whine that using the Electoral College instead of the popular vote and majority rule is undemocratic. I’d say that they are absolutely right. Not deciding who will be the president by majority rule is not democracy.

But the Founding Fathers went to great lengths to ensure that we were a republic and not a democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or any other of our founding documents.

How about a few quotations expressed by the Founders about democracy?

In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wanted to prevent rule by majority faction, saying, “Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

John Adams warned in a letter, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.”

Edmund Randolph said, “That in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”

Then-Chief Justice John Marshall observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

The Founders expressed contempt for the tyranny of majority rule, and throughout our Constitution, they placed impediments to that tyranny. Two houses of Congress pose one obstacle to majority rule. That is, 51 senators can block the wishes of 435 representatives and 49 senators.

The president can veto the wishes of 535 members of Congress. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto.

To change the Constitution requires not a majority but a two-thirds vote of both houses, and if an amendment is approved, it requires ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures.

Finally, the Electoral College is yet another measure that thwarts majority rule. It makes sure that the highly populated states—today, mainly 12 on the east and west coasts, cannot run roughshod over the rest of the nation. That forces a presidential candidate to take into consideration the wishes of the other 38 states.

Those Americans obsessed with rule by popular majorities might want to get rid of the Senate, where states, regardless of population, have two senators.

Should we change representation in the House of Representatives to a system of proportional representation and eliminate the guarantee that each state gets at least one representative?

Currently, seven states with populations of 1 million or fewer have one representative, thus giving them disproportionate influence in Congress.

While we’re at it, should we make all congressional acts by majority rule? When we’re finished with establishing majority rule in Congress, should we then move to change our court system, which requires unanimity in jury decisions, to a simple majority rule?

My question is: Is it ignorance of or contempt for our Constitution that fuels the movement to abolish the Electoral College?




https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/why-we-are-republic-not-democracy
Click to expand...

I can wait until a Republican loses the same way that Hillary did, and see what tune that you're going to sing.
 
Celticguy said:
Democracy in ancient Greece sort of worked because only the well to do voted.
Mob rule never works.

To answer the question, its simple whining. They give a hundred reasons for losing none of which is their candidate ran a poor campaign.
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100 percent false.

When informed and erudite people talk about Greek democracy, they are really talking about Athenian democracy. That is where democracy was born. Much of the rest of the Greek world was characterized by oligarchy, tyranny, or timocracy.

By the time of the radical Athenian democracy of the 5th century BC, by the time of the age of Pericles, all male Athenian citizens could participate in and vote in the Ecclesia. Regardless of status, wealth, or property.

Slaves, women, and resident aliens were not extended the franchise of citizenship.

Nonetheless, every historian on the planet and the universal consensus is that Athens was a direct participatory democracy, and our system is a representative democracy. And that has always been held to be true irrespective of how broadly the vote franchise net was cast.
 
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Trumpet said:
I can wait until a Republican loses the same way that Hillary did, and see what tune that you're going to sing.
Click to expand...

it will never happen


their party cant get MORE votes


they haven't done it in decades


they do keep winning without the majority vote though


its why they cheat in elections


to get electoral votes because they cant win the peoples actual support
 
Trumpet said:
I can wait until a Republican loses the same way that Hillary did, and see what tune that you're going to sing.
Click to expand...

MY tune won't change because i'm a Libertarian. I believe in the electoral college and it's necessity. so maybe you can hold your breath while you wait.............
 
SmarterthanYou said:
Hillary Clinton blamed the Electoral College for her stunning defeat in the 2016 presidential election in her latest memoirs, “What Happened.”

Some have claimed that the Electoral College is one of the most dangerous institutions in American politics.

Why? They say the Electoral College system, as opposed to a simple majority vote, distorts the one-person, one-vote principle of democracy because electoral votes are not distributed according to population.

To back up their claim, they point out that the Electoral College gives, for example, Wyoming citizens disproportionate weight in a presidential election.

Put another way, Wyoming, a state with a population of about 600,000, has one member in the House of Representatives and two members in the U.S. Senate, which gives the citizens of Wyoming three electoral votes, or one electoral vote per 200,000 people.

California, our most populous state, has more than 39 million people and 55 electoral votes, or approximately one vote per 715,000 people.

Comparatively, individuals in Wyoming have nearly four times the power in the Electoral College as Californians.

Many people whine that using the Electoral College instead of the popular vote and majority rule is undemocratic. I’d say that they are absolutely right. Not deciding who will be the president by majority rule is not democracy.

But the Founding Fathers went to great lengths to ensure that we were a republic and not a democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or any other of our founding documents.

How about a few quotations expressed by the Founders about democracy?

In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wanted to prevent rule by majority faction, saying, “Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

John Adams warned in a letter, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.”

Edmund Randolph said, “That in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”

Then-Chief Justice John Marshall observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

The Founders expressed contempt for the tyranny of majority rule, and throughout our Constitution, they placed impediments to that tyranny. Two houses of Congress pose one obstacle to majority rule. That is, 51 senators can block the wishes of 435 representatives and 49 senators.

The president can veto the wishes of 535 members of Congress. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto.

To change the Constitution requires not a majority but a two-thirds vote of both houses, and if an amendment is approved, it requires ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures.

Finally, the Electoral College is yet another measure that thwarts majority rule. It makes sure that the highly populated states—today, mainly 12 on the east and west coasts, cannot run roughshod over the rest of the nation. That forces a presidential candidate to take into consideration the wishes of the other 38 states.

Those Americans obsessed with rule by popular majorities might want to get rid of the Senate, where states, regardless of population, have two senators.

Should we change representation in the House of Representatives to a system of proportional representation and eliminate the guarantee that each state gets at least one representative?

Currently, seven states with populations of 1 million or fewer have one representative, thus giving them disproportionate influence in Congress.

While we’re at it, should we make all congressional acts by majority rule? When we’re finished with establishing majority rule in Congress, should we then move to change our court system, which requires unanimity in jury decisions, to a simple majority rule?

My question is: Is it ignorance of or contempt for our Constitution that fuels the movement to abolish the Electoral College?

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/why-we-are-republic-not-democracy
Click to expand...

Got to love the way conservatives are always cherry picking quotes from Founding Fathers, as if those men weren't prolific writers and their views on any particular topic are conclusively revealed in one short quote

The US is a democratic republic, democratic in the way we elected our representatives and a republic in the way they govern. Democracy isn't mentioned per say in the Constitution because the Constitution is the framework for Government, it establishes the structure of authority

None of this has any bearing on the Electoral College, which from its' offset was totally political in nature. Just like the State Legislatures appointing State Senators, it is antiquated, based upon geography rather than people.

If California decided next year they wanted to break themselves up into say a dozen new States I'm sure your whole rationale for the Electoral College would change quickly
 
evince said:
but won three million more living breathing Americans votes


they only way trump won was Russian fake news and facebook manipulations




Oh and BY they way NO AMERICAN would suggest just rich people could vote


Your russo bot hole status has been confirmed
Click to expand...

Perhaps you did not realize FB casts no votes in elections here.
Similarly, this is not a democracy and this has been known for our entire history. Im cettain someone on hillary's staff had to be aware of this.
Grow up.
You lost becsuse your bitch fucked it up as badly as was possible.
And nothing can ever change that.
 
SmarterthanYou said:
because the cornerstone of our republic is the protection of individual rights, so the smaller the entity, the better the protection. its why states have districts for state legislatures, and a statewide vote for governor.........etc.
Click to expand...

A state with 10 million votes for Senator or governor is not a mob? The founders obviously thought it was since they did not provide for popular vote of Senators.
 
Celticguy said:
Perhaps you did not realize FB casts no votes in elections here.
Similarly, this is not a democracy and this has been known for our entire history. Im cettain someone on hillary's staff had to be aware of this.
Grow up.
You lost becsuse your bitch fucked it up as badly as was possible.
And nothing can ever change that.
Click to expand...



We are a Democratic Republic


Your argument is with every dictionary and encyclopedia in the world

NOT ME
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_republic



History[edit]
In the US, the notion that a republic was a form of democracy was common from the time of its founding, and the concepts associated with representative democracy (and hence with a democratic republic) are suggested by John Adams (writing in 1784):
No determinations are carried, it is true, in a simple representative democracy, but by consent of the majority or their representatives.[6]
 
Flash said:
A state with 10 million votes for Senator or governor is not a mob? The founders obviously thought it was since they did not provide for popular vote of Senators.
Click to expand...

they were trying to populate an empty nation

that part is now WAY outdated


we need MORE senators


every state is guaranteed two


and for every certain amount of population a state should get more senators


millions of Americans are being ROBBED of representation and nearly empty states are getting WAY TOO MUCH POWER over other Americans
 
evince said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_republic



History[edit]
In the US, the notion that a republic was a form of democracy was common from the time of its founding, and the concepts associated with representative democracy (and hence with a democratic republic) are suggested by John Adams (writing in 1784):
No determinations are carried, it is true, in a simple representative democracy, but by consent of the majority or their representatives.[6]
Click to expand...

I dare you to answer to these facts

you wont
 
evince said:
they were trying to populate an empty nation

that part is now WAY outdated


we need MORE senators


every state is guaranteed two


and for every certain amount of population a state should get more senators


millions of Americans are being ROBBED of representation and nearly empty states are getting WAY TOO MUCH POWER over other Americans
Click to expand...

The Constitution does not allow an amendment to take away the equal number of Senators for each state.

There was an amendment introduced years ago to abolish the Senate.

What does that have to do with populating the nation?
 
evince said:
but won three million more living breathing Americans votes


they only way trump won was Russian fake news and facebook manipulations




Oh and BY they way NO AMERICAN would suggest just rich people could vote


Your russo bot hole status has been confirmed
Click to expand...

Alexander Hamilton asserted that "We are now forming a Republican form of government. Real liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline too much to democracy we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of a dictatorship". Hamilton, in the last letter he ever wrote, warned that "our real disease is DEMOCRACY."

Thomas Jefferson declared: "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

Benjamin Franklin had similar concerns of a democracy when he warned that “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!” After the Constitutional Convention was concluded, in 1787, a bystander inquired of Franklin: "Well, Doctor, what have we got a Republic or a Monarchy?" Franklin replied, "A Republic, if you can keep it."

John Adams, our second president, wrote: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.”

James Madison, the father of the Constitution wrote in Federalist Paper No. 10 that pure democracies “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

:dealwithit:
 
Cypress said:
100 percent false.

When informed and erudite people talk about Greek democracy, they are really talking about Athenian democracy. That is where democracy was born. Much of the rest of the Greek world was characterized by oligarchy, tyranny, or timocracy.

By the time of the radical Athenian democracy of the 5th century BC, by the time of the age of Pericles, all male Athenian citizens could participate in and vote in the Ecclesia. Regardless of status, wealth, or property.

Slaves, women, and resident aliens were not extended the franchise of citizenship.

Nonetheless, every historian on the planet and the universal consensus is that Athens was a direct participatory democracy, and our system is a representative democracy. And that has always been held to be true irrespective of how broadly the vote franchise net was cast.
Click to expand...

Alexander Hamilton asserted that "We are now forming a Republican form of government. Real liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline too much to democracy we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of a dictatorship". Hamilton, in the last letter he ever wrote, warned that "our real disease is DEMOCRACY."

Thomas Jefferson declared: "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

Benjamin Franklin had similar concerns of a democracy when he warned that “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!” After the Constitutional Convention was concluded, in 1787, a bystander inquired of Franklin: "Well, Doctor, what have we got a Republic or a Monarchy?" Franklin replied, "A Republic, if you can keep it."

John Adams, our second president, wrote: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.”

James Madison, the father of the Constitution wrote in Federalist Paper No. 10 that pure democracies “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

:dealwithit:
 
evince said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_republic



History[edit]
In the US, the notion that a republic was a form of democracy was common from the time of its founding, and the concepts associated with representative democracy (and hence with a democratic republic) are suggested by John Adams (writing in 1784):
No determinations are carried, it is true, in a simple representative democracy, but by consent of the majority or their representatives.[6]
Click to expand...

Alexander Hamilton asserted that "We are now forming a Republican form of government. Real liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline too much to democracy we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of a dictatorship". Hamilton, in the last letter he ever wrote, warned that "our real disease is DEMOCRACY."

Thomas Jefferson declared: "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

Benjamin Franklin had similar concerns of a democracy when he warned that “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!” After the Constitutional Convention was concluded, in 1787, a bystander inquired of Franklin: "Well, Doctor, what have we got a Republic or a Monarchy?" Franklin replied, "A Republic, if you can keep it."

John Adams, our second president, wrote: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.”

James Madison, the father of the Constitution wrote in Federalist Paper No. 10 that pure democracies “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

:dealwithit:
 
evince said:
You vs John Adams and every dictionary and encyclopedia in the world



That was easy
Click to expand...

James Madison, the father of the Constitution wrote in Federalist Paper No. 10 that pure democracies “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

:dealwithit:
 
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