10. As I noted in my article, a candidate getting 54% of the vote in states he wins but almost zero in the states he loses is not simply a hypothetical. It is what actually happened in 1860 to a Republican named Abe Lincoln. https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/what-the-electoral-college-saves-us-from/ …https://twitter.com/NICKinNOVA/status/1124690480158183427 …
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21. Again, bear in mind - as noted in my column - that in practical effect, the Electoral College in nearly every case goes to the winner of popular *majorities*; it comes into play mainly where neither candidate gets one.https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/what-the-electoral-college-saves-us-from/ …
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22. You: but if we eliminated winner-take-all states, what might the candidate field look like? Me: Let's consider a real-world example:pic.twitter.com/Eoc8YPFLAS
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23. As for Trump's tax returns: the norm of candidates releasing their taxes is a valuable one, & both Trump & Romney did themselves political damage by delaying/flouting it. But it's not a job requirement. Until 1916, no presidential candidate even paid income taxes.
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24. I'll circle back another day to the Electoral College's historical roots, which tend to be oversimplified by the progressive narrative. This, from a liberal historian, is a useful partial corrective https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/opinion/the-electoral-college-slavery-myth.html … https://twitter.com/goldietaylor/status/1124740681858203649 …
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25. My chief historical argument is that we've had the Electoral College in its current form since 1804. What other country's system for popular sovereignty has lasted that long? The world's longest continuous constitutional system is nothing to discard lightly.
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26. Also the Solid South from 1880 to 1944 is an important part of the history. I dealt in this thread with the example of 1888, when the Electoral College prevented the lockstep Jim Crow South from re-electing Grover Cleveland.https://twitter.com/baseballcrank/status/1114267402513072128 …
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27. Of course, the real scandal of the Solid South's role in Congress and presidential elections in those years is that Congress never enforced Section 2 of the 14th Amendment against them. But that's another day's story.
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28. All of that said, while the Electoral College resolves popular vote pluralities, we do face a realistic possibility in 2020 of facing the Electoral College's real weakness: a tie decided by the House. Which would likely go to Trump, depending how the 2020 House races go.pic.twitter.com/Pjr3Rqbm7g
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29. Sure. Lots of things would change about how elections are conducted, who runs, etc., and lots more rules would require changing. Which is why it's silly to critique the current rules with national popular vote figures https://twitter.com/JoeyTeevens/status/1124753308147691521 …
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30. I guess some folks are still doing the thing where they call a plurality a majority? The main practical effect of the Electoral College is to resolve elections where there is no majority, like 2016.https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1124844646537015296 …
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31. We should not count votes differently by race. I'm not sure why anyone in this century would argue we should. https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/1124850086398312448 …
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32. One thing I discovered in reading the responses is quite how many people on Twitter are unaware that Texas and Florida each have more people than New York.
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33. "Meaningless subgroups"? Massachusetts and Virginia have both existed more than twice as long as Germany or Italy. https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/1124851132684226560 …
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34. Actually - and again, this is covered in my piece - very few developed countries choose a head of state by national popular plurality. The German system, like ours, has a federalist structure. https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/what-the-electoral-college-saves-us-from/ … https://twitter.com/AlexMLeo/status/1124849420711936000 …
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35. Too many responses to get to everyone, but once you start adding runoffs, redrawing state boundaries, rewriting ballot & voting eligibility rules, you grasp what a radical reworking of the whole system is being proposed.https://twitter.com/yeselson/status/1124856977992179712 …
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