factnotfiction wrote:
Maintaining a balanced budget, ensured by passing a Balanced Budget Amendment and changing budgeting practices, and paying down the federal debt
Campaign finance reform, including strict limits on campaign contributions and the outlawing of political action committees
Enforcement of existing immigration laws and opposition to illegal immigration
Opposition to free trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement and Central America Free Trade Agreement, and a call for withdrawal from the World Trade Organization and the USMCA
Term limits on U.S. Representatives and Senators
Direct election of the United States President by popular vote and other election system reforms
Federal elections held on weekends or Election Day (on a Tuesday) made a national holiday
Limited access by lobbyists and special interest groups
No tax exemption for any political advertising by any special interest group
Maintaining a balanced budget, ensured by passing ... (
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I could/would support all EXCEPT "direct election of the United States President by popular vote" and I would have to know what were the other "election system reforms". I strongly support the Electoral College. I have done a lot of study and research about the EC since I was first introduced to it in high school in the 1960’s. Understanding the Electoral College was a priority in schools I attended. I wrote a paper on the EC for one of my university political science courses. It is apparent to me that it is easier to support disbanding the current electoral college process then it is to support maintaining it. That is due to many misconceptions and misunderstandings which can be easily justified, defended and rationalized.
I am against direct election because the election through the electoral college prohibits small pockets of the country deciding an election. The Electoral College ensures that EVERY vote counts - whether you live in a highly-populated area or in a small rural area, requiring each Presidential candidate to consider that all areas of the country are equal to another; whether you live in an area that mainly supports one political party over another; and it preserves the two-party system. The Electoral College is a "fail-safe" process for our general election of the President.
The 2016 election is one of five presidential elections in American history in which the winner of the popular vote did not win the presidency. Trump received 304 electoral votes and Clinton 227 (two electors defected from Trump and five defected from Clinton). Clinton received 48% while Trump 46% of the popular vote, a margin of about 3 million votes. Trump won 2,626 counties while Clinton took 487 of them nationwide.
https://apnews.com/afs:Content:5265150031The 2016 election is a good example of "ensuring every vote counts" as the President is elected to work for the benefit of all the people who live in the United States, not to represent a geographic or geographical region. The legislative branch of the U.S. federal government was specifically established over 200 years ago, utilizing a bicameral (two-tiered) system in which one chamber (The House) represents states based on population, while the other chamber (The Senate) represents all states equally, regardless of population.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-clinton-counties-won/Understanding the Electoral College is an easy undertaking. Read this article, "What is the Electoral College" at
https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/about.html. Also, view these two videos 5-minute videos: the first is titled "Popular Vote vs Electoral College" at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXnjGD7j2B0 and the second is titled "Understanding the Electoral College" at
https://tinyurl.com/y4t9472z. This link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College provides a good “top to bottom” understanding/explanation of the Electoral College especially how the Three-fifths clause and the role of slavery influenced the implementation. A Youtube.com search results in a number of videos at
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=electoral+college. A google.com search returns over 70 million hits at
https://tinyurl.com/yymvgfaa.
One item I noted that came about from my recent research that I found extremely enlightening. The belief that “all areas of the country are equal to another” may not be accurate. Per
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_United_States_presidential_election candidate Kennedy's campaigning skills decisively outmatched candidate Nixon's, who wasted time and resources campaigning in all fifty states while Kennedy focused on campaigning in populous swing states. Election analytics website FiveThirtyEight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FiveThirtyEight identifies the states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin as "perennial" swing states that have regularly seen close contests over the last few presidential campaigns.