Selwyn Duke
Petulant children whining about Electoral College shouldn't have the vote
By Selwyn Duke
There's a reason we don't let nine-year-olds vote.
But what about those overgrown children who are nine between the ears?
It wasn't long ago that Hillary Clinton condemned Donald Trump for refusing "to say he would respect the results of this election." Calling it something "no other presidential nominee has ever done," she proclaimed, "[B]y doing that, he is threatening our democracy."
Of course, that was when Clinton was sure she'd win.
Now, with liberals having rioted, issued death threats against Trump electors and basically having thrown a tantrum, it's apparent they're willing to storm the walls of the Bastille to get their way.
In a most puerile display of petulance, of unmitigated childishness, the claim Hillary didn't really lose because she "won the popular vote" has become popular liberal sentiment. Well, consider an analogy. Did you know that in tennis you can win more games than your opponent but lose the match? If I lose 6-0, 6-7, 6-7, I've won 18 games to my opponent's 14. Such outcomes do sometimes occur, yet in all my years playing competitive tennis (my former life), I never heard anyone losing such a match, anytime, anywhere, claim he really won. It never enters your mind. You know the rules. You accepted the rules going in. You played by the rules. And you lost under the rules. Period.
In fact, I've never seen even the youngest child make such a claim. But now some of the oldest Democrats are doing just that regarding the election. It's dishonorable, childish, unmanly and, frankly, utterly pathetic.
To be clear, the overgrown juveniles have every right to lobby to change the Electoral College system for future contests, misguided though such a goal is. But to claim you "didn't really lose" – after embarking upon the process knowing the rules, strategizing based upon the rules and competing under them – is taking sore- loser status to new lows.
It also reflects ignorance. Not only does the "We really won" claim ignore that not only would Trump (and Clinton) have campaigned differently had we operated based on popular vote, but voters would have behaved differently; for example, perhaps millions of blue-state Republicans stayed home Election Day, realizing their votes would be irrelevant. Again, contests are waged based on the rules in place, not on rules not in place.
We also have no idea what the popular-vote total actually is because not all the votes were counted. Some states have laws dictating that if the margin of victory is too great to be overcome by uncounted votes (e.g., absentee ballots), they need not be counted. The reason for this imprecision is that you don't have to be precise about what is not a determining factor in the outcome.
And we don't have a "popular vote."
It's much as how in tennis, while I can win more points than my opponent but lose the match, I never once knew what the points total was. It wasn't counted because it was irrelevant.
Then, since liberals claim this matter is about legitimacy, let's talk about illegitimate votes. Reporting on the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, even the liberal Washington Post told us in 2014 that more "than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples [taken by researchers] indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted." The Post further informs, "Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress."
In other words and quite laughably, liberals want to label Trump's victory illegitimate based on a popular vote that itself is known to be illegitimate. Oh, and spare me the "Vote fraud is unproven and hardly ever occurs" line. With liberals having pushed Jill Stein's recount efforts with jihadist-like zeal, this claim is more hollow than ever.
As to the real threat to our nation, the liberals illustrate it well, being the "men of intemperate minds [who] cannot be free" and whose "passions forge their fetters." For barbarity begets tyranny. Like a child losing privileges due to irresponsibility, if people prove too immature to govern themselves, they will ultimately lose the power to do so. This is why it's too bad voting rights can't be granted based on mental age – it could save our republic.
Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com
© Selwyn Duke
December 22, 2016
There's a reason we don't let nine-year-olds vote.
But what about those overgrown children who are nine between the ears?
It wasn't long ago that Hillary Clinton condemned Donald Trump for refusing "to say he would respect the results of this election." Calling it something "no other presidential nominee has ever done," she proclaimed, "[B]y doing that, he is threatening our democracy."
Of course, that was when Clinton was sure she'd win.
Now, with liberals having rioted, issued death threats against Trump electors and basically having thrown a tantrum, it's apparent they're willing to storm the walls of the Bastille to get their way.
In a most puerile display of petulance, of unmitigated childishness, the claim Hillary didn't really lose because she "won the popular vote" has become popular liberal sentiment. Well, consider an analogy. Did you know that in tennis you can win more games than your opponent but lose the match? If I lose 6-0, 6-7, 6-7, I've won 18 games to my opponent's 14. Such outcomes do sometimes occur, yet in all my years playing competitive tennis (my former life), I never heard anyone losing such a match, anytime, anywhere, claim he really won. It never enters your mind. You know the rules. You accepted the rules going in. You played by the rules. And you lost under the rules. Period.
In fact, I've never seen even the youngest child make such a claim. But now some of the oldest Democrats are doing just that regarding the election. It's dishonorable, childish, unmanly and, frankly, utterly pathetic.
To be clear, the overgrown juveniles have every right to lobby to change the Electoral College system for future contests, misguided though such a goal is. But to claim you "didn't really lose" – after embarking upon the process knowing the rules, strategizing based upon the rules and competing under them – is taking sore- loser status to new lows.
It also reflects ignorance. Not only does the "We really won" claim ignore that not only would Trump (and Clinton) have campaigned differently had we operated based on popular vote, but voters would have behaved differently; for example, perhaps millions of blue-state Republicans stayed home Election Day, realizing their votes would be irrelevant. Again, contests are waged based on the rules in place, not on rules not in place.
We also have no idea what the popular-vote total actually is because not all the votes were counted. Some states have laws dictating that if the margin of victory is too great to be overcome by uncounted votes (e.g., absentee ballots), they need not be counted. The reason for this imprecision is that you don't have to be precise about what is not a determining factor in the outcome.
And we don't have a "popular vote."
It's much as how in tennis, while I can win more points than my opponent but lose the match, I never once knew what the points total was. It wasn't counted because it was irrelevant.
Then, since liberals claim this matter is about legitimacy, let's talk about illegitimate votes. Reporting on the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, even the liberal Washington Post told us in 2014 that more "than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples [taken by researchers] indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted." The Post further informs, "Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress."
In other words and quite laughably, liberals want to label Trump's victory illegitimate based on a popular vote that itself is known to be illegitimate. Oh, and spare me the "Vote fraud is unproven and hardly ever occurs" line. With liberals having pushed Jill Stein's recount efforts with jihadist-like zeal, this claim is more hollow than ever.
As to the real threat to our nation, the liberals illustrate it well, being the "men of intemperate minds [who] cannot be free" and whose "passions forge their fetters." For barbarity begets tyranny. Like a child losing privileges due to irresponsibility, if people prove too immature to govern themselves, they will ultimately lose the power to do so. This is why it's too bad voting rights can't be granted based on mental age – it could save our republic.
Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com
© Selwyn Duke
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