 But I wanted to talk a little bit before we had a discussion about the Electoral College, because it figured so hugely in the last election that Trump won and buy the Electoral College rules. But I want to talk about it because of its racist origins, because this is each semester we're going to try to do something in honor of Roz Payne and do a Roz Payne talk film, Something. Let me just say I was out in Richmond and I saw Sierra and I think we're the flyer, but she has bronchitis. She often has it in her head. She doesn't look good. And when we did the memorial service for Roz Payne, we did raise a little money. And so this is what we decided to do with that little money is to have a Roz Payne event about race every semester. So I like people's friends. And spend $100 on good food. And hey, we're not that competitive. We weren't supposed to pay. Well, what are we going to smoke at? Anyway, so that's free. Yeah, right. So I thought this semester because it's coming up with the election in November, that maybe we should. I don't think people much are talking about the issues of the election. Most of it centers on the rotten personality of Donald Trump. And while I agree with that, I just think there's more going on. And we should talk about other things other than how bad he is in years done, including voting rights, violations, and Germany. Yeah, we should talk about that. Tonight, maybe you could bring it up a little bit, even after we talk a little bit about the electoral cause. That is the way you got elected last time as well, right? Hi, Donald. Hi, Donald. OK, so where did I think we should talk about it in terms of where it originated? And maybe other people know this more than I think they know it. Does everybody know how it originated? The electoral college. The electoral college. Yeah. Sort of. Sort of. It is in here, but it's really a tooth. It's very obscured in here. It comes out of the constitution. Not that it matters. Was that the topic for tonight, the electoral college? Yeah. Wasn't the electoral college two weeks coming up from today? A little mixed up. OK. You want the flyer? There's me on TV. More mixed up. OK. OK. Here. I'm mixed up with the debts. I got it. Thank you. I'll take the flyer. So, I guess to preface what I'm going to say, I think this is really a brilliant document. Many people, I think on the left and radicals in particular, I think that this constitution is worthless because it has piles of contradictions in it. This contradiction really is the electoral college, but it has some real brilliance. It comes out of the Enlightenment, 1776, in which it was assumed that people could reason and that people should use their reason to make decisions and not basically religious, just accept religious authority. That's one of the reasons for the First Amendment and that the United States chose to separate church and state. It was because it was felt in the 18th century that it was about time that people could use their heads rather than have accepted truth as a lead on them. So, that's one of the whole things about the brilliance, I think, of the Bill of Rights, which I don't think any other constitution has is the Bill of Rights, which is freedom from government. The Bill of Rights says that the government can't intrude on you in certain ways. That's the first 10 amendments. The electoral college was basically the result of a compromise. OK. So, how did it arise? When the constitution was being discussed, there was a big discussion about, for instance, what was going to make up? We'll start here. We'll start with the Congress. There was a big discussion about what was going to happen with the Senate and with the Congress. And if you'll all remember, how do we elect? How is it decided how many Congressmen we have in general? It's based on population. The Senate is not based on population, but the Congress is. It was decided then that there had to be a census to determine how much each state had for Congressmen. And I'll give you an example. Of course, Vermont was not in the original... Vermont joined after the Constitution. Vermont was an independent republic from about 1776 to 1791, about that period of time. Vermont was not really there, there at that point. So it had to be decided how the Congress, the House, was going... how many people were going to be in the House. And it was determined that it should be by population. Okay? So in the state, I'll just give you an example, although Vermont wasn't involved in the time, it was... there had to be a census at that time to decide how many people were in each state and therefore how many Congressmen they were going to have. So the whole idea of the Electoral College arises out of the census around population. So there were two political positions on this question of population. And it had to do with counting the people within the United States, that people had simply the ones who had been here, that were here in the United States at that time. That became the most controversial debate of the Constitutional Convention. And they split, as most arguments at that time split, between a Northern position and a Southern position. There were not political parties at that time, remember? There were no political parties. In fact, our founding fathers, I hate to call them that. What are we going to call them? The people who were at the origination of our republic felt that parties were bad, that parties were factions, and that they should be warned against. But always there were always factions and positions. They just weren't part of the political, I guess, ambiance at that time. But there always were also geographical positions, because the North was way different than the South. Way different because of what? Because of slavery. So the question about how many people lived in the United States at that time, the founding of the republic, was based on how you would count those people. So guess what? The Northern position was what? How would you count the population in order to get congressmen? What was their argument? Those who were eligible to vote? Nobody was eligible to vote. They hadn't been decided. They hadn't been decided who was a citizen. Free people. The North argued that only free people should be counted. Okay? No, why? I'm going to ask again. Why was that so essential? Only free people. The South had a different position. What was the Southern position? Because of its plantation economy and because it had black people. Three-fifths? No. All of them all count every single person. Why? For more people. Exactly. And who then would have controlled the country? The South. Which is that's what their constant refrain was. They had to be protected against Northern majorities. The North really had the majority population within cities. Remember there were not very many big cities in the North. Whatever cities there were, the larger were in the North. So they had piles of people in the North but they were mainly white people. And slavery by this point had been abolished in many of the Northern states. Massachusetts abolished slavery right during the revolution. Vermont wasn't in the Union but slavery was very weak in the North even though it had been legitimate at times but it wasn't. The North was not a plantation economy. What was the Northern economy? Basically commercial. In some ways it was tied to slavery but it wasn't like big plantations on which hundreds of black people labored for nothing. So that was a crucial question. How are you going to count the people and therefore who would control the Congress? So the Southern position was count every person. The Northern position however was count only free people. So it sounds like the North was saying forget these black people, they don't count but in the Northern position was taken it was an anti-slave position. And they said count every person. No, they said count only free people and the South counted everybody. Which was a total contradiction in Southern terms because black people were not considered persons in the first place. But they were always, the South always had hypocritical positions. I'm not saying that the North was perfect but the South said for instance states' rights should dominate except that they favored the Fugitive Slave Act which meant that the Southern sheriff could come up to the North with an affidavit and capture and return to the South escaped slaves. So the South always had this position when they wanted federal power, that was great but when they didn't want federal power then they rely on states' rights and argue with states' rights argument. So how does that mean about the electoral college? Do we all know what the electoral... So this was crucial for representation in Congress and therefore representation in some kind of the presidency. So what is the electoral college in the first place? I put it on the blackboard. The electoral college is the sum of the two senators that each state has plus the number of congressmen. So you can see why that number is important. Vermont doesn't really count very much in the electoral college because we only have one congressman and why do we only have one congressman? We don't have a lot of people and never have, right? So Vermont has three. The only other state that has that few I believe is Wyoming, do you know what I think? I think it is Wyoming. And Wyoming really has very few people but one of the things that Wyoming did to counter that was they allowed women to vote. They were the first state to allow women to vote. No, no, no, nobody voted then. This was a decision about how to count the votes and then who would vote and who wouldn't vote. And who would get the largest number, some of the largest number of congressmen. You get it, right? So what was the result? Remember that this discussion in the Constitution in Philadelphia was very heated. 17, 17. The Constitution was passed. Here. Constitution was passed in, I think it was 1787 or not, sir. Okay, but we can see because here it is that it's signed September 25th, 17. The Bill of Rights was 1789. But that's the Bill of Rights. Here's the Constitution. And the rest of the, well anyway, so that's, then it was decided based on that, on that question about who would control the house. 1787. Okay, 1787. But the revolution was over in 1781. So in the beginning, right after the American Revolution, well, governed this country, by the way, it wasn't this. It was the Articles of Confederation. How did they deal with that question? They didn't, I don't think. They didn't because they voted, I guess, I'm not even certain there was. Oh, was there even a President? No, under the Articles of Confederation, they gave great deal of power to each state. In fact, each state could have terrorists and borders and all that sort of stuff. And it did, of course, allow slavery because all of those questions were state questions, right? And that's how it worked. The United States had a really good idea, I think, when it founded itself because the Articles of Confederation say no President and no Capitol. And it was very decentralized and anarchists would have loved it except for the question of slavery. And that haunted every single question that came before the initial Republic. So how did this work into the Electoral College? So then the decision became how were we going to elect the President of the United States, right? And it was determined by this fancy rule and it was all to do with the population so that every big state with a lot of slaves wanted to elect the President through an Electoral College so they would control the Electoral College. So if you say Congress, the House, and the Senate equals the Electoral Vote, then it really means that the person or the states with the largest populations were going to control the Electoral College. And so the Electoral College was cooked up in a way. However, this was not, this had to have a compromise because the North argued count all free people. The South argued count all of the people if the South said if you get your way north, we're going to leave. We don't have to sign this Constitution. It hadn't been signed yet. And so they said if you go your way in Northerners, then we're going to leave and you're not going to get your damn Constitution. So there had to be a compromise which most people think was a terrible thing. But think about it if you were our first President. If the South had left, what would that have meant at that time? Remember that the biggest part of the country was the South. Where does the South begin? Where does it begin? Baltimore. Pennsylvania. Right. It's really Pennsylvania. Look at the map upside down. Florida doesn't matter about Florida. What are we going to say? Look at the map upside down. It's shocking how big the South is. Right. And the South goes all the way to Baltimore. That's where the Mason Dixon Line is. That's right. But most of the South was for the B-West then. Yeah. A lot of the South was. I know. Down to Georgia. Down to what? Georgia. Delaware. Right? Delaware was a Slater. Yeah. Delaware was a Slater. The Mason Dixon Line went all the way to Pennsylvania, Delaware, and everything below that. It was the South. Not up in the Ohio River, right? Ohio was the north, but... But Ohio was a lot of the 13 colonies. No, but as it went west. As it went west. So the cities also were mainly in the north, but they weren't very big. So the South actually had the largest population, if you count in black people. So, and the... What was the compromise? And that was... But I would just want to say about the north. That the presidents, I guess, and everybody who was in the north, really did not want the South to leave. Now, I want to ask you the consequences. If the South had left at that point, not signed the Constitution, what would have happened to the United States? This is a small, dinky, little Republic, just had one independence from the greatest empire on earth, which is the English empire at that time, the British empire. What would have happened to the United States? It was going to get taken back over by the British. So you can think in terms of real politics, or you can think of maybe they shouldn't have compromised. But if that compromise hadn't been reached, that's what people were thinking. That it would become a colony again of the British. So what was the compromise, which became the very famous compromise of the Constitution? Three-fifths. The three-fifths rule. That's when it was decided that we will count all black people as three-fifths of a person. Black men, I think. No, no, no. It had nothing to do with gender or rights. It had to do with race. It had to do with slavery. Math on that must have been really... You think about that. No, they just counted the population, a black population. It had to be decided because of a census. A census was taken right around the time that the Constitution was signed in order to determine the Congress. Yeah, the census is in the Constitution. If both the north and the south accepted the three-fifths rule, why haven't the three-fifths ruled? Why haven't the three-fifths ruled? Why haven't the three-fifths ruled? Why haven't the three-fifths ruled? Why have an electoral college? Why not just do one person one vote or one person three-fifths of a vote? How did it evolve from something fairly simple to the electoral college? I don't know that exactly, except I do know. I do know. I don't know why. Except that that was the compromise. I think initially the debate was, or the position was taken, that the President should be elected by the Congress. And if that were to go with that wanted universal, not what I was going to say, universal suffrage, that the population should vote on. The general population should vote. Except for 51%. Which are women. They don't count. Exactly, they did not count. You're right. What were you going to say about that? No, I mean, to determine that it wasn't a popular, that the popular vote was not a populist vote, it wasn't what was wanted. What? Why wasn't it? What you're saying is that that's not what, who wanted it? Who wanted it? There were people. There was a debate at the Congress. How are we going to do it? The people. Well, you've got to remember too that that was a huge debate, whether or not you're going to have an upper house. There are places in this country, I think like Nebraska, who decide, why do we need a Senate? I agree with that. Why the hell do you need a Senate? You got, basically, the house is like a house of commons. It's people. It's ordinary people. And the Senate, even in this country, smacks of aristocracy. It's not really aristocracy, because it's not determined at birth the way that the House of Lords is. But it is the upper house. They're considered wiser than we are. They are considered people who can control their passions. We can't in the House. I mean, it's the same in the state of Vermont. That's the way that I was in the House for two terms. That's the way the House was viewed. The Senate was moderate and could cool off temper and passion. And see, that's another reason also. The stated reason for the Electoral College is kind of a myth. The reason that it's often stated is that no, the founding, whatever the hell they were, founders felt that people were too passionate and were ruled by passion, and that they had to be tempered. And that was why we had the Electoral College. The Electoral College, and that's another probably reason for the Electoral College, but the real reason, the way it was created, was out of this question about slavery. And it was the biggest pop, it was the biggest, to me, the biggest hypocrisy and the biggest contradiction in what is really rather a good document. Rather, you know. And it's, nobody seems to know that. Nobody understands that. There's all this discussion nowadays with new scholarship about that. Scholars would say, nah, this Electoral College didn't have anything to do with slavery. There are people like Eric Foner, who's the most famous historian of the U.S., who says absolutely, that's the reason for the Electoral College. There's another reason, though, too, because of this Senate thing. And this is how this plays in today. Is there any reason that we, every state should only have two senators? It's not, it is not really at all based on the population of the state. And it evens out, I guess, a state like, I don't know, Vermont with a state like New York. That's the idea. There's California and Vermont, but I have the same idea. Why didn't it have to be two? Just a random... No, but why isn't it based on the population? Right. Well, it's the small states of John. Exactly. I know, that's... I don't think... Part of it is based on the population. There's a population, which is California, so we shouldn't really have the people with the votes in the same... Why? Why should they not be based on population? Because the state's... I know the state's race. But what unites a state that makes it such a strong... Right. As a power. You know, so that everyone is equal. Every state is equal. I don't know. It's based on states' rights too. It's based on the whole notion that a state has certain rights and privileges over the common people. You're going from a situation where the federal government had virtually no power and the states had almost all of the power to a situation where it was supposed to be fairly equal between the states and the federal government that's evolved since then. So in order to get the small states to join... I don't get it. Right. Right now, Vermont has two one-hundredths of the vote in the Senate. If it was by population, it would be one... five hundred and forty-five. Why would there be... Why do we have such things like Vermont? I mean, I know traditionally about that stuff, but I don't understand this idea of a state. I don't care. I mean, do you want to know a rationale? Yeah. A rationale. I mean, if you want to... I'm just arguing from the other point of view, if you think of each state as a small country... If you do, I don't. If you think of each state as a small country and in 1780 they kind of were, then you're saying, well, all these small countries are getting together and confederating and each one should have votes. But I don't understand the basis of... I mean, I'm just saying it's a way of thinking. I'm not saying it's correct. Right, I understand. It comes when the UN was formed. It comes out of the notion, I believe, of states' rights. I don't know why a state should have these rights. That was a southern position also. To think about the colonies. Yeah. There were colonies. There were separate, you know, Maryland's Catholic and so on. Right. They had different characteristics of so on. They should have stripped them of that when they sent them to the United States. Well, you did. A lot of ways, of course, the Congress is not based on that. The Congress is based on population. Maybe it should be just one man on vote. I don't... I think that's how we start with the Democratic states' rights thing. Yeah, I know. When you go back to the states' rights thing, again, the whole legal argument on the part of the south, forever, if you want to think about it, now, too, that they think that they have rights within this... They decide the gerrymandering, really, and they decide who votes and who doesn't vote. Right. Each state controls that. That's why the south after the Civil War was able to impose a poll tax. You have to pay a poll tax to vote. Guess who that hurt mostly? You know, black people. Black people had no money after the Civil War prior either. So, I don't under... This has always been a problem, I think, within the United States. I'm not certain I want to call it our country today. So, B, when you're... Your argument that, you know, that there's another logical argument... Right. I'm not saying that's necessarily mine. Exactly. But if you take that one, I wonder, because this was done when there were just the 13 states. Right. So, like, what happens when the North and South Dakota come along? Why are they two separate states? Yeah. You know, what distinguishes one from the other? Nothing. Maybe. Maybe boundaries. Maybe boundaries, like the Connecticut River, determine some different states. I think that's surprisingly frequent on the discovery trail of the country. The states are the conformers of some sort of geographical thing. And they were cultural. More than I would have thought. Right. And each state has its own constitution. Shouldn't be one state? I learned that the electoral college was created in order to be able to overrule the popular... Yes. Exactly. And the... That's one reason. Yeah. Yeah. So that really the elite... It's the elite. ...would be able to make it for the final decision. Correct. So that when you go to vote, when I first was voting, after we turned 21, you would go in Massachusetts and you'd get about that would say, I vote for the electors of... No, yeah. But when you go, you are voting for the electors. You are not directly voting for the candidate. And who are not obliged to vote in particular? Right. And some states, they don't have to vote the way the public goes. Right. In many states. In many states. Not... I believe in Vermont, they have to. But... Some states have to. But Florida doesn't... Florida doesn't get elected without already... What? How does the... How did Trump get elected? Okay, so he got the key, the big votes. He got the electoral votes. He didn't get the popular... He didn't win the popular vote. But if you look at a state, for instance, the one that I know, kind of exactly is Florida. Did he win Florida? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Because he won the big states with the big electoral votes. But if you go one man, one vote, Hillary Clinton won. No, no. It's what... Most states have all or nothing. Yeah. If you win Florida by 26 votes, literally... You win Florida. Right? You get... You get all 25 electoral votes. So California could go... You know, could have gone for... This was... California. Or, you know, California probably went for Gore by, you know, five million votes. But because Florida went by 26 votes, so it was determined by the Supreme Court, Bush became president. So the problem with the electoral college is that it's partially the all or nothing. Right. When it takes off. Because if you only think of it in terms of population, you know, of a popular vote, if... And every state goes by the popular vote plus two senators. That's close enough. It wouldn't be too far off. I mean, if you were just going by the popular vote. I mean, the two extra senators could turn it off one way or another if it were very close. Why would you have it in the first place? Why do you need it in the first place? Electoral college. Right? I'm just arguing. Yeah. Arithmetically, that's all. No, you don't. But you're sort of suggesting that it was by design. Yes. Yes. Two reasons. It was created out of this, this racial as racist and racial origins. However, it also has the origins, as Sally's talking about, that the other kind of reason that was given at the time was that the people couldn't be trusted to do it right. I'll say something else about the Senate. At the time of this Constitution, the Senate was not even elected by the people. It was elected from the legislatures. Each legislator met and he selected their senators. That was an amendment later on, maybe in the 20s, during the progressive era. That's going back to Wisconsin. That's where there was a huge progressive movement. And the Senate, there was an amendment to the Constitution that made the Senate directly voted for it. That would have been why there's two. Isn't there also an amendment to the Senate? Yeah. You don't have to cover it up for election constantly or two years. Right. That was for the six-year term. The Senate has six-year terms, too. Congress has two. What? It's so long. It's so long, it builds in the idea that these people are rational and stable. It builds in the whole notion of an aristocracy. Really? And could you explain that the super delegates voted the election also? Yeah, I can try to. You've got to remember that that's a party function. And the parties are nowhere in this Constitution. Parties sort of grew in the United States, but they are private organizations. They're governed a little bit by the government, but they're not part of the government. That's why they can do whatever the hell they want to do, and they do. That's why I think I'll get into that later. But anyway, so the Electoral College, I think, has two reasons. One, in its origins, is to keep black people in slavery. And the second origin is something that you okay with? Cool. But the second part of that is that it makes the elite Senate even or really in control of the decisions that the House makes. And is therefore more, it's perceived that the Senate is in temperate, that the House is in temperate. This is in the context, in a thought context. What is this in opposition to? The whole idea that we could have inherited a parliamentary government. So parliamentary government essentially says if you have 7% of the vote, you have 7% of the seats in the House. And the thing about parliamentary government is that it usually has a cutoff at 5%. But small parties who have 6% are legitimate. They are legitimate in a debate. They are legitimate to be interviewed. They are legitimate. And so the parliamentary government, you get to be able to put ideas out, which you don't, if you have 49.9%, because you're not legitimate. It's first past the post. So that's what was chosen against is the parliamentary model. And how many countries have that? England has it still, right? Yeah. Does Germany have that? Don't they all? I don't know if there's any like that. England was the only parliament in the parliament. No, the French had a tradition of a parliament too. At that time, I don't know if it was meeting. Was it? Meeting at that time? Sure. At that time? Sure. 1776, 18th century. Yeah, it was in the old regime. It was a parliament. Right. Right. It was back to the Middle Ages. Yeah, it does go back to the Middle Ages. And that was back to 1215. Right. Yeah. Well, the British parliament, you're talking about the Magna Carter? Yeah. 1215. I mean, I suppose so, but that gave kind of the idea of a constitutional monarchy that was controlled by the nobles, that Magna Carter did. What was legitimate? That's the question. Yeah. Like, we're not legitimate. There's nobody in this room that's legitimate. What are you talking about? We all should go to jail. What are you talking about? I'm going to go to the bathroom. Really? What? Legitimate. Legitimate. Meaning. Part. Who? It's the model. Let's say this consciousness in this room in Vermont or whatever, a progressive, call it radical. I mean, it has a range that that is not legitimate in this country. We're talking about Democrats versus Republicans. Right. Period. And if you have another opinion, it doesn't matter. Right. And did the parliamentary governments or countries have, the two parties is with the relatives? Yes. It was many parties. Many parties. Still the same white. Yeah. Yes. None here. Right. Not ever here. I've often wondered why they opted for bicameral system and that. Here, that's why. Because they, whatever, I don't like calling them that. They wanted the House of Lords, essentially. And they, you can't, couldn't justify it really in a republic. Because the House of Lords, remember that the basis of a republic is that all men are created evil. So you can't have, you couldn't have a House of Lords, which is based on birth. That to me is the most progressive part of the U.S. Constitution. Is that we did away with monarchy and we did away with aristocracy. We have wealthy people, no doubt about it. That's true. But people are not born to privilege in a republic. I think of, like, the Marxist Party. This was in opposition to what? The British Parliament, at that time. Could they also overturn the Prime Minister and call elections the only kind? They had elections. Let's look at, like, the virtues that are not stuck with this. Right. For now, probably eight years. I know. You're right now in the mayor of Georgia. always had some kind of a vote based on property people and that didn't get reformed. You could they change the government upon voting? Yeah, I think so. They never have a vote. Right, because we don't have any idea of a vote of non-confidence either it is. Now like in other systems the parliament can get together and decide to vote out the prime minister in a vote of non-confidence but we don't ever, I mean this is the closest, is what's happening right now in the in the house is a impeachment right which is not in my view is not going to happen anyway but but there were but this country I think the party system developed later but there were numbers of reasons that it they did develop and become really solidified. One of the main reasons was about this question of states rights versus the rights of the national government. So there was a party essentially from a lot from New England named they called themselves the anti-federalists. One of my heroes of the anti-federalist movement was Sam Adams who was part of the Adams family but the most kind of radical who argued that we should be against centralized power. To me that's totally legitimate. Franklin was on the side of the public. I think the federalist is probably right. Think you may have said something out of the time over working or something. It's a heat pump. It's a heat pump. Where's the control? Yeah, it needs to. But anyway, so that's a totally American position to be to be suspicious of centralized power. I am. I'm very suspicious of the government and and that that how we would call it a European movement maybe of anarchism. Anarchists exist of course in this country too. But that came from our because our history of a monarch. So the original founders and most of the most radical founders was a guy named Thomas Payne. We all know him, right? And he wrote Common Sense and he wrote The Age of Reason and he was a he made girls I think courses and he was a course of maker. And he wrote all these pamphlets in urging Americans to distrust centralized government because of this crazy king that was governing the country. So the Americans have a much different tradition for instance than the Canadians. They like government and they say one of their rights as a Canadian is to have good government. I don't see I don't believe there is such a thing. Except our meetings. There's a parliamentary system. Yeah, there's a parliamentary system. Yeah. But they have a slogan that all Canadians are entitled to good government. Well, maybe. But you know if once you have the government in Washington telling people like us what to do, I just think those governments have too much power. And therefore that's Thomas Payne and the anti-Federalists. That was one big discussion in the Constitutional Convention which resulted in what? What is the amendments that deal with centralized power? The Bill of Rights. It's a very difficult concept to communicate to people. Bill of Rights pertains to freedom from government. So you couldn't go and be an employee and say your boss is interfering with your freedom of speech. You don't have freedom of speech in private places. You have freedom of speech if that space is a public space. And that is freedom from government. I think that's great. But that follows the American tradition because, again, as I'm saying, that many of the anti-Federalists argue that liberty comes from fighting with the government and keeping the government out of your life. Now we hear that all the time, right? That can swing a couple of different ways. Yes, I know that. I know that. So maybe we can get a whole thing of that back. Go ahead and say so. I mean, I'm thinking about corporations and stuff. And I'm saying bring on that regulation. I mean, we're held whole countries held hostage. So I say, I believe that, I aspirationally believe that there could be a good government. As long as there were corporations. I know. I need to at least believe that. What did you say? As long as there were corporations. If you didn't have that kind of power exercising as much control as it does over daily life and the future of life. I think an example is, did anybody watch Democracy Now last night? No. Maybe all the people. Yes. It's an amazing thing on the great, this film that's coming out, the great hack. The big hack or something. Is that the one about Cambridge analytics? Yeah. About what? There's something that needs that. How can that be at all? Yeah. How? I mean, I don't think it can. I don't think all of this can be dealt with. It's about Cambridge analytics. And beyond. Cambridge analytics is now just part of a, there are many of them. Which is why they interfere with the elections or something? Yeah. And the way they do it is by profiling. And then they find people who are suggestible and who are, what do they call them? Persuadibles. Persuadibles. Yeah. And they shoot some, some, you know, some messages to them. And 36% or something. Change. Change them. I mean, isn't it our duty as citizens to kind of... I mean, you can make a case that, yes, of course. I mean, you know, everything is very murky. I'm just using that as an example to say that if, if anything might be able to put a little bit of a cock in this crazy, you know, this is now a real downward slippery slope. To me, in my mind, I think it would be the government. Not only, but... Did you ever remember the government is the, is the people that everybody seems to hate? Like Donald Trump? Well, not this guy. What about Bill Castro? But that's the same one. Yeah. The same thing with Donald Castro. A lot of people hate him too. Yeah. I know. I know. Who's part of your... Why is there guidance? Why is guidance? I don't think that you should have an authoritarian in power to wisely guide you. I think you'd make your own decisions about how to be guided. But that assumes that wisdom is distributed throughout the population. Well, I think probably... And you're assuming that the Washington Post will be the one to get the power. Not that... Never the case. I'm not assuming anything. I mean, Plato's Republic was in charge, when the people were in charge... Philosopher's games. Philosopher's games. Why? Because they had a larger sense than... Now, that is very undemocratic. Yeah. But the question remains, for instance, let's just put it, to bring it down to this, is why is Joe Biden continuing to lead... And... The polls? If you believe it, I don't believe it. Well, all right. Let's just say it's... Suthum's the case. Suthum? And then you have to ask about, where is the wisdom that creates that phenomenon? Right? Well, it's the wisdom of the people. Which people? What is wisdom? How do they know? Should we have another three-fifths rule, or a six-tenths rule, or whatever score you get on your quiz, your wisdom quiz? That's how much you re-vote. That's how much you re-vote. That's how much you re-vote. You get okay. So, if you want to take that further, it's right hand. How do you write quiz, et cetera, et cetera. But presumably, there is a level of savvy, of understanding of how the system works, which could be a decider of a proportionate vote. And they're very, very stupid people. Are you advocating for that? I am proposing it as a thought experiment. Right? Okay. That as opposed to assuming that wisdom is consistent throughout the population, and that that popular wisdom is what gets to make decisions that winds us up with Trump, or Biden, or whatever. People are seeing Biden as a state that in the middle, but the wisdom is he is most likely to be able to win over Trump. Is that wisdom? No, but is that what it's coming from? Where does it come from? I don't know. What assumptions are we on? A strategy, not wisdom. Wisdom has implications of good school to study. Who do you define wisdom? Yeah, right, exactly. You have to assume in a democracy, maybe Mark is advocating not for a democracy. I don't know. I'm advocating a thought experiment. Okay, all right. That the question, the notion of generalized wisdom which results in generalized popular vote. Yeah, okay. Where is wisdom coming from? I mean, any Democrat? What is wisdom? Well, I don't know. Right. Okay, I'm just going to redo the Declaration of Independence, a part that's the most, I think, moving. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are creating equal. The assumption of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, you can advocate that these are not true. This is not true. I think it is true. It isn't true that we better dump democracy, that all men are created equal and they are endowed by their creative with certain inalienable rights, the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All people, not just the monarch, not just the aristocracy, all of us. And that assumes reason. Well, maybe. I was just saying, as a thought experiment, does that mean all people created equally wise? They're equal. You can't shoot them. You can't bonk them on the head. Everybody can bonk everybody on the head. But is there a gradient of wisdom that is assumed or not assumed? It is assumed in the Constitution. That is the gradient of wisdom. The assumption is that all... No reason is assumed. What? Yes, you can go. No, no. The assumption of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was that all men, and it was amended to include women, are created equal and have equal rights. What is meant by creative? What is meant by equal? Period. No, nothing about wisdom. I think that that is... My belief is, and I think that the original founders came to the conclusion that to have a democracy, you have to assume that all men and women have the ability to gain wisdom because of their brain. Their brain is different than an animal's brain. Okay, but that's where the general is in the details. Why? Because I agree that I believe people are good. It's just a belief. But this is equal. Okay, but so equal and have the ability to access wisdom, but it has to be offered. It has to be made available to everyone. It is made. It is made. You can find whatever you want now. No, no, no. No, no. Oh, you mean... Yeah. But where is this... No, it isn't. It doesn't say that. It says, though, that it believes... The Constitution believes that all people are created equal. That's right. It doesn't assume that they have wisdom, but that they're equal. No, he's right. Okay. Could I intervene and say that the most democratic idea would then be to elect people by lottery, where you know... Take turns. The people in your Congress would be chosen by some process like taking it out of the hat. Why do you say that? Well, then it would be... That would be the most equal. Some institutions do that. Why is rich or poor? Male, female? You all have a chance. I did that very seriously. I think that if you did that somewhere, I read recently. Do you have academic departments doing UVM? Where? Academic departments. At UVM, some of them work that way. So the chairmanship for the chair rotates among everybody in the department. You just take your turn. You have a turn for three years. And you didn't want to take your turn. Where do you want it or not? Well, I have two things I want to add to the discussion. One is, as an educated, informed, rather wise woman that I am, when I go into the polls in my ward right here and I walk into the school, and there's like six issues to vote on and different people and stuff like that, boy, if I haven't prepped for that, I am shooting in the dark here. This language doesn't make any sense on the ballot. Oh, the referendum. You know, it's like, if I haven't, and I do, I'll call up my city council before I go and I'm like, let's talk about this thing. Like, I don't know. Do they call you back? They do. They pick up the phone, actually. I've got, you know, Perry now. And then they'll say in all, or I'll call one of the ones that used to be and say, how are you going to vote on this? Tell me why. What are you doing? Because if I don't do that, I'm walking in just kind of, or not voting on that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's very confusing. And even the names on the ballot, some of them it's like, what is that position? I don't know. And I've been voting for whatever, 40 years or something. But, okay. So there was that. And then the other thing, which I wanted to insert somewhere is, where did this fucking right to veto come in? Because, The other president? Well, our governor, you know, they worked their asses off to get something ready. And then the governor says, no, we're not doing that. Security. And that pisses me off. But it can be overridden. Yeah. If you have enough people, you can't. Well, yes. And the presidential veto, all that vetoing thing, I think, when did that start? Well, because, that's the other thing though, that this constitution was different than, it was different than other constitutions. It has this president, the president in the United States has enormous executive power. Other places, they do not. Other parliamentarians. They've always had that, like, retail? Has that always been there? Yes. And the reason why is because, it's always been increasing. It's always been increasing. And particularly did, after 9-11. Exactly. More power, yeah. But guess what else increased enormously? President Lincoln. He said, you're going to stay in the union, didn't he? Yeah. And that tough shit, if you don't want it, we're going to go to war about it. You're going to stay. So on these types of, like this thing with, in Iran, what should have happened with Congress, say, legally? That's complicated. I want to get somebody who could really comment on that better than I can. Usually, and you'll see it, the enormous power of the president comes, I think, from the fact that he's Commander-in-Chief, period. He gets to order the troops around, and the armies around. Congress has the ability, though, to withhold funds to do that. And remember, that was a big debate in Vietnam. I remember Senator Fulbright saying, we should just vote against the budget. We should, but they did. I think they voted all the time to fund the war. When did the, when did the action start when the president just said, they're going to understand? Well, I think that came with the War Powers Act. But when is the last time that the Constitution was followed in regard to war? The last time World War II, 1941. In that war, because we were attacked by Pearl Harbor, Congress voted, and one woman voted against it. That was it. But that's the last time. Since then, I guess what we've had in Korea was a police action and it was supposedly authorized by the UN. And then Vietnam, there was a lie that was told. Police? I think I'll put a tongue in. What? What? Police? What? Police, they called it police action. Police action. Yes. There probably should be a constitutional amendment as to how war was declared or how acts of war can occur. Because the Constitution was written, you didn't have to worry about nuclear missiles coming over. But you had to worry about war. You had to worry about war, but there was no immediacy to it. Yeah, that's right. There wasn't something to happen that you had to react to immediately. Well, it goes back to scale, I think. You know, the topic of this discussion of the group is municipalism. Yeah. And the lower right, and saying, you know, you're saying, even in Burlington, that that's challenging to understand. And so, you know, it's just, I'm just thinking about how it is. What would it take to have a truly informed process, is that what you're saying? Yeah. I don't think you can make people be informed. They vote. But if you want to be, you're saying, Yeah, if you want to be, would there be, you know, I'll do some research, which I do before each election, but that is not easy. You have to figure it out yourself. So what if you were informed? Right. I hope that the results would be better. Why? Maybe not. I mean, if the number of people who choose to be informed is small, and the number of people who just go in there and check whatever they check, is that your information and your process of self-informing is, you know, theoretical. It's also a choice. Many people should be encouraged that if they don't know what the issue is, they shouldn't vote on it. Right. People should do what they want to do. I don't know if that's a crap happen. So what? Crap happens when people do know what they want to do. Crap happened last time when people voted for Trump, I guess. So I don't know if they're uninformed or not. I think they voted for Trump. And that is because their lives are freaking wretched. Their lives are wretched and they didn't want to support the people that they thought made their lives wretched, which is Obama. Yeah. And then his approach, Trump's approach was to say whatever he felt like saying, you just be completely out there and whack a doodle and be like, I love that. I love that guy. Oh yeah, I stood in line and got in to harass Trump when he was here at Brompton. And I was standing with people for four hours and that's what they were telling me. All these supporters like, oh, we love what he says. And I said to this woman, what do you think about how he talks about women? Oh, I don't care what he says about women. He's just so great. It's a challenge for government. Yeah. Right. That's true. Well, he got the anarchist vote. Yeah. Well, I don't know really why people... Thank you. You've got to remember something else. Eight million people voted for Obama and then they voted for Trump. Yeah. So we've got to remember that. The allies must have been pretty miserable under Obama. It's the same people. What? Hmm? It's the same people. You think voters... Yes, I know that. That's the statistic. Yeah. What did you say, Grant? I don't know. It's the... There's a time to remind them that we're voting for both sides at once this year. Senator Bernie and Trump, isn't it? Yeah. Bernie and Reagan. Hmm? When Bernie was elected mayor that year, the majority population of Burlington voted for Reagan and Bernie. Hmm? That's just it. And there were interviews with people before the last election and people were saying, oh, I'm... back and forth between Bernie and Trump. I think it's totally reasonable. I think so too, actually. I think it's totally reasonable. We're getting into the... I really don't want us to be talking about Trump too much because it's always bad. I think it always goes to bad. Yeah. But I'm thinking about, if we didn't have an electoral college, we just had one person, one vote. Right. And then, we'll start to also weave in the idea of wisdom. And to see that as... and to me, wisdom is something that's cultivated. I mean, basically, I think it's sort of cultivated and it's with help. It's either through education, through society, somehow some intervention of something. I don't think we come at all, you know, brilliant and knowing. I feel that we're... We're not idiots, but... Naturally. So there's a lot of ignorance out there, but it's like one person, one vote, mm-hmm, without wisdom. I'm just trying to... I'm trying to imagine... I want to see without wisdom. Is that what's... It's very dangerous. Well, isn't that sort of what we have around here? No, it's dangerous. We need to do wisdom things. Who's going to define that? Yeah, I know. Who's going to define it? Well, that has been a legitimate revolution. I mean, the voting age is 60. Well, it goes back to the 18th century. We'll take a photo for eight hours. And it goes back to the idea of a philosopher king. How could you have... Is that justification for a monarch? I know. Exactly. But in the Republic, the player talks very carefully about how you create a philosopher king. It isn't like, I doubt you, a philosopher king. There's a very careful education and selection system. And then, as a result of respecting that system, you say, this person knows a lot more than I know about. Who says? The subjects who have participated in the Platonic Republic. It's the subject. I'm sorry. Who have participated in the creation of the Platonic Republic. In play. I know. I'm in play. So, that's a system that we are absolutely not talking about. The creation of wisdom and the thing about the Republic education and all that is a very, very ghostly attempt at providing some level of that. But on the other hand, then we say, okay, one person, one boy. It doesn't matter what you know. And so, that's how there's a contradiction that has been at the center of people's wondering about government. That has to do with wisdom. It has to do with information. It has to do with class structure. I think everybody understands that. But what you're saying is that representative democracy doesn't work. Yeah, I mean, well, and maybe we're at this, you know, talking of municipalism. Maybe, once upon a time, when there were monarchs, people said, well, instead of a monarch, let's have represent, and you're giving all the reasons of the problems. They said, let's have representative democracy, one person, one vote. And what we're beginning to say now is representative democracy is not working. Problematic. And what we should do is have local democracy. And maybe if people are meeting in town meetings, face-to-face, locally, like we're meeting right now, for example, and arguing with each other, then maybe the people will have enough understanding. I don't even like the word wisdom. And I want enough understanding and to be able to comprehend what is going on, and they will be sensible about what they do because they are meeting face-to-face. And maybe there's a next stage after representative democracy, which is local democracy or municipalism. And that's why this thing is called municipalism. So I'm just saying, representative democracy is not the end all of the most perfect government you can have. It's better than a monarchy, but it's just a stage. And maybe the next stage is local democracy where people can meet face-to-face and argue with each other and enhance each other's knowledge or understanding or not. Those are two basic positions. Basically, that's the argument. Should we be governed by a bunch of philosopher kings or should we be governing ourselves? Well, the in-between position is representative democracy. Which is, as Lincoln said, it's of and buying for the people versus having a king or a philosopher king determined for you what is good for society, right? That of and buying the people is not very, as Lucy is saying, it's not very of and buying. No, it isn't. There's another stage. There's another possible historic stage. Right. But I believe that the end of philosopher king-type governments is at least begins with the belief that all people are equal. And that means that depends on what you mean by equal. That they have equal rights. And that's different from people smarts. I don't question that at all. But people are capable. I mean, what we want to do in a certain sense is I mean, on the one hand, we want to celebrate singularity. We want to celebrate the singular aspects of every person. And in a certain sense that every person can contribute differently to the general well-being of everyone depending on their inclinations or what their talents or what they want to do. So on the one hand, you want singularity. But on the other hand, when it comes to making decisions and sitting and talking, if people are talking face to face, you don't have to have levels of wisdom. Right. I mean, this level of wisdom. I didn't say that. No, I mean, you're doing a mind game. You're doing a mind game. One doesn't need to have these so-called levels of philosopher games in the mind game. I mean, we can all be. I think what we do have is a critique of the assumptions of representative demands. Yes, yes. Which, in my mind, are still better than the absolute control of divine kings. So anyway, so that was one of the original discussions is how much power the centralized government was going to have over us. And there was a rebellion on the part of the anti-Federalists. They said, no, all people are capable of living their lives in liberty and without interference from the government. So that was one discussion. But then there was always the discussion also of, also this discussion came up too, because at least New England had the tradition of town meetings and direct democracy. That's direct democracy, that your town meeting is exactly what Bea is describing. I do these discussion groups in Richmond, for instance, and in Essex. And those discussion groups are so much more civil and enlightened than in Burlington, for instance, which are governed by parties. Town meetings aren't governed by parties. They're governed by people, actually, like this group. People getting to talk together. There aren't parties in town meetings. Do other New England states still have the town meetings? Yes. All the New England states have town meetings, but as they went west, as people went west, I mean, first of all, they settled on these enormous farms by themselves in the middle of nowhere. There were no towns, probably. They had no government. For a long time. But that was always a discussion between centralization and decentralization within the American psyche. That's why you have so many people, frankly, who believe that they have the right to bear arms. Because the government's not going to tell them what to do about their guns, right? And also the idea that people had to have guns to oppose the national government, which was the modern. So it comes from a really revolutionary idea that people had the right to bear arms at the second minute. It was like versus the government, right? You don't have that anywhere else in the world that I know of the right to bear arms, I don't think. Does anybody know that? Did New Zealand have it? They just revised it after the recent killing there. Did they have to report that? I don't know. I think, though, that New Zealand is a country, you know, which is pretty groovy, but they either hunt or they do something with guns. They have a good friend who grew up there. So there was always a gun aspect of that culture, and it wasn't to hurt people. Well, that's true here, too. That's true here, too. I mean, it wasn't developed in a heartbeat. It was developed to overthrow England. That's true. But anyway, then the second big discussion always was about states' rights. And that, I think, comes out of all slavery once again. Because the states, at the time of the Constitution, there was a big legal argument about the Constitution. Was this going to be a compact of states that entered into this contract with each other, that they would have this Constitution, or and could, in other words, each state withdraw when they felt like it? That was the big argument in the Civil War. Does a state who entered into the Constitution have the right to get out of the Constitution? Does it? Does it? Even not? Doesn't say. And that's what the South argued. When Lincoln was elected, they said, well, he's going to do all these awful things to us. He's not going to let us bring our slaves to the West. He's going to take you right. And he's going to let the public. He's arguing right now. And there is a second Republican movement in the state of Vermont. And what is that? Vermont should because it doesn't make sense for Vermont to be obeying the laws of governments that are trying, of a government that's trying to rule the world. And then there was a whole bunch of, there was a guy that Thomas Naylor was there. And a lot of economics was worked out. Could Vermont survive as a foreign country? And that it would have to trade with the foreign country of the United States? And it would have trade laws and it would have all kind of and should it associate, for instance, with the northeast corridor going up into Quebec and that there would be this country, a larger country, not part of the United States. How can Vermont get out of this situation where Trump is our president? Well, it existed before Trump, though. Yeah, it's who we are. We're all the people who are trying to promote American hegemony in the world with violence are our presidents. So that's what the second Vermont Republican movement was and is actually still about. Well, there was as Marcus pointed out there, it's the second republic. There was the first republic of Vermont, right? I don't know that, right? Vermont did not join the union. It's the 14th state. Yeah, eventually. It didn't, it was the 14th state. The first state after the 13th. Right, and it joined, but I remember listening to Senator one night saying why, remember when he became an independent, remember that and he said, forget it, and I can't remember what it was about, Bush, it was about George Bush, Senator Jeffords. He left the Republican party. I think it might have been an education bill. No, it was one part of that. I think it was something about Bush wars or something like that. He left and he said, he gave a whole speech at the crime in which he said Vermont did not want to be part of the original union because they did not want to be part of a slave republic. Which was the United States. So he said I learned from that history that Vermonters are fiercely independent and that means that I'm following that tradition. And also I think we all have to remember the Vermont was the first constitution, its constitution eliminated slavery way before the U.S. did. Right? It was it said all men are born free. I just read the Massachusetts had it already earlier. Is it for some stated explicitly? I know, maybe Massachusetts but Massachusetts abolished slavery right after the revolution. Right after the U.S. made the word Vermont can do it. Yes. Vermont's constitution says all men are born free and they have the right to bear or not bear arms. In other words, they don't have to go in the service. So getting back to the electoral college what it does by forming an electoral college is it's taking the power of the ordinary people to elect the president. It's taking the power away from them. And it's giving it to 2090s 100 specific people who among themselves can in a certain sense I know you're shaking your head. It's giving the power to 100 people who among themselves can decide but it's not like there's just 100 people sitting there and they're going to sit and have a power. But a state who comes very close to one or the other all their votes can go what we might say just don't bear arms. That's the corrupt variant of the philosopher king. Those are the people that have been groomed by the parties to be the philosopher kings to make those votes. Not you. But they're not philosopher kings either. No, but they are. They are the parties they are given the status. They're loyalty not because of any imagined wisdom. Robert asked an important question about the parties though. Yeah, super-delegates. With these are the two parties. What I was trying to say is the two parties developed over the split between centralization of power and non-centralization of power over slavery. The party of slavery was which one? Which party was the democratic party? And the democratic party was the party of apartheid and the party of Jim Crow. All of that were the democrats. The republicans were the radical republicans who fought the civil war against the democratic majorities in the south. There was a huge split between, for instance, it was Jefferson and his party that became the democratic party that said that slavery should be preserved and that the right to mutate slavery remained with each state and not the federal government and similar with the apartheid of Jim Crow that was the democratic view because they had that state's rights position. Each state, according to the democratic party, had the right to determine those questions because the state was kind of sovereign over the federal government. That was all destroyed during the civil war when the south was beaten and occupied for quite a while. Therefore, the central government in Washington became more powerful than each in every state. That was when that happened. Right? Anyway, so that was one split in the two party system. The democratic party was the party of the south, essentially, until when. Until when it was with Roosevelt during the depression that the democratic party became more whatever you want to call liberal about race. Okay, so that was one. Those were the how the two parties developed. It was around slavery and it was around the centralization of power. What you're asking about is when did the parties, I guess, get to be really crucial in the development of American politics and that was really over the civil war again. Those differences became really obvious. But the parties themselves are controlled by elites and so, for instance, there is a rule within, but they're private. They're not necessarily even governed that much by the government. They are private organizations. And one of the things that the democrats decided was that they were these super delegates. Like Howard Dean, like the former bosses of the government here, Howard Dean, Madeline Cunin, those guys are called super delegates and they can go to the national convention and vote for whatever candidate they want to get the nomination of the party. Bernie had got that reformed I believe, so that on the first ballot, they can't do that. But on the second ballot, then the super delegates can play the same role. And that's the plan. And the republic does the plan now. That's the plan. I'll tell you what I think the plan is now, that's interesting, is that I think that the convention is going to be locked the way it was with JFK. Y'all remember the moment JFK? And that there's not going to be enough for any of them to win on the first ballot. And I think then the delegates are going to be freed and I think that Bloomberg's going to get up. That's what I think. Another candidate. We need Trump. No. Well, I don't know who he'll be. Who's going to vote for him? Maybe he's more liberal, I suppose, on certain issues. Maybe they're Bloomberg. Bloomberg? The nice millionaire. He's not nice at all. But is the field going to get smaller? When does the convention happen? Convention usually happens maybe in July. They're really, I think it's going to be really exciting. Where is it going to be? In other words, let's say if no one wins on the first ballot let's say just Bernie and Elizabeth both have enough let's say that together they would have enough but they're not going to do that on the first ballot. No. Let's say that theoretically there's enough for Bernie to win. Right. Which will not happen on the first ballot. But then when they do the second ballot the super delegates can come and not even make it happen and have Warrens and Bernie's votes add up to majority. I think that's what they could do and that's his strategy. They could vote then for Bloomberg. Why not? Well, but if Bloomberg at that point has 10% of the delegates and then you add the super delegates it still doesn't have enough to win. Mark my words. You'll get them. $5 on that? No, you know what I think we should I would love to go. But that's hotly contested too. Getting to be a delegate is by vote of the party, I believe. I think See the party... You have to have been very involved right for you. But the super delegates come in also at the time of the election, no? I mean in other words... No, because they're only active to select the nominee. No, there's no delegates in the National Convention. I thought we voted for I mean the electoral college then convenes and people who have been elected from each state represent not necessarily. I think that the electoral college is appointed by the party I think that the party the democratic party says you're going to be in the electoral college and they do it by people who have done them favors, I would guess. And they don't. And that's the thing in the last election should they have to abide by the vote or and some of them said I will and therefore I should be part of it. I mean that's a very... For that to be confusing. Yeah, it's just a thing on a state thing. For instance in Florida if you'll remember that TV is what, three or four weeks and it was up for grabs the Florida legislature said if you guys don't get it together which meant the recount or not we're going to decide it without a recount. And they can. And they can. The Florida the Florida legislature who appoints who decides who the electors I guess are going to be they said and remember it was almost tied in other words in other words each state decides if they're going to obey the public will or not and in Florida and that usually I think in Vermont, I don't even know that but I think in Vermont that it goes by the will of the people they make that decision in Florida they didn't they didn't make that decision and they could really do what they wanted. They didn't have to do it remember but there was a recount that was called but before the recount the legislature said if you guys don't get it together we're going to just say who won without a recount and you remember in the end remember in the end what happened in that case that's because the Supreme Court didn't really the Supreme Court really didn't they said we're going to stop the count we're not going to allow a recount and therefore people are stepped out he didn't step out but Bush has a slight majority and so all of Florida's votes went all 23 then because what Barry said is accurate the victor takes all so they got all the 23 and put them over the top last night on democracy now about hacking it made me think over the last election and the mantra that Trump would say and his audience would say put her in jail lock her up lock her up and that must have been part of what the persuadables the people who were in between thought well when you asked well what did she actually do she took the emails to her home on a server but pretty mild compared to what's happening now but if that was reinforced with all sorts of messages that they were getting over Facebook telling them that she is an evil person they didn't say evil do you think you should be allowed to have a sex ring of children how about the lowly to express though that's going to come out you know what that is that's proof I mean it's even admitted that there was a who's the guy that Epstein was arrested for all these sex crimes is that the guy the guy who committed suicide what about the one who's on trial this is the is that him, is that Epstein that he had private airplanes and that Clinton flew on Bill Clinton flew on that airplane like 27 times to go to this Lolita Ranch that's true so what he didn't get a wife so if if there's movement activity to get rid of the Electoral College some what would it take difference would it be the same end result if all of the states said that the Electoral that their people in the Electoral College it wasn't all or nothing that it was all divided by maybe there is a movement there is a movement among the states that was what Robert Brack was proposing it was a way of getting around it it would be the same except for the infinitesimal time when the fact that let's say Vermont had an extra two senators compared to California you know it just wouldn't happen the two extra senators don't make it exactly proportional to the population but that wouldn't happen but there's another movement to have legislatures of states controlling the majority of the Electoral College to say we will cast our Electoral College votes will all be cast to the candidate that gets the majority of the nationwide popular vote yeah there is that movement I think Maine even does it proportionally if the Greens got 3% of the vote then they would say maybe 3% or 3% I don't have enough to believe 3% I think Maine does it more proportionally I don't know if it's going to change between now and then and never it's going to change I don't think it's ever going to change I honestly I honestly think the United States has to have a lot more fundamental change than this change which is important except that's really like a reform I don't even think that's going to happen I mean revoking citizens united would be that won't happen either that would take an overturn in the Supreme Court how often is that going to happen except for a roby way that will probably be overturned because I mean that's if Congress votes something that that takes precedent over a decision does not what's the question that Citizens United was an erroneous decision of the Supreme Court and Congress is going to say of money what is it voting for the legislature can say the legislature can say the Supreme Court misinterpreted our laws and so we're changing the law so it's the way we want it and that overrules the Supreme Court but the Supreme Court is the ultimate authority on interpretation of the Constitution and that's what Citizens United is based on the Constitution erroneously sometimes you would want the Supreme Court to have the authority for instance in a woman's right to choose it was the Supreme Court not the Congress that decided roby way not the Congress I'll sit down the Equal Rights Amendment is about to be finalized Virginia Democratic Democratic Legislature Southern Iowa I heard that you did that today you did they voted for it today I don't know if they held the vote yet but it was clear that it's going to be held and they've got the votes and then what happens then it's put in the Constitution that you cannot discriminate on the basis of sex I mean doesn't it have to go another step to asking well somebody has to say somebody has to say big veto there somebody has to say I must say again something that will happen again after a while does it have to be reauthorized every no or does it come in the Constitution it didn't pass I'm wondering if what happened was several states when they voted favorably on it put in an expiration date and then the question would be can they there was an expiration date I think it was part of the I think it was part of the Congress then extended the the second one expired before everybody had voted so anyway it's about 7.30 so I don't know what to say about this electoral college it's here to stay and it's going to play a big part in the next election one thing that I think would be interesting would be to go back to the original 13 states and see what their what would the break up the breakdown have been between slave states and non slave states in terms of overall population and in terms of electoral college votes so the South had more population depending on how the people that's true that is correct they had more, I don't know how many more but they had more if you counted the slaves I don't know if they did they did they had huge amounts of places like in Virginia with more black people than white a lot of places at the time of the constitutional convention yes they did because it was a plantation system so you'd have these gangs of black slaves in certain areas in certain counties working picking cotton especially after the cotton gin was invented but anyway if you go how many people have ever visited the South apparently like Baltimore it's a huge black city isn't it I mean in the South you see it much more than in the North even now right just quickly I did want to mention that some of this was corrected of course within the U.S. Constitution and that's another whole discussion on the Reconstruction Amendments which reconstructed the United States after the Civil War it's the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment the 13th amendment does everybody know what the 13th is it's easy enough to see there's a brand new book on it right now by this great historian named Eric Foner the man abolished slavery everywhere in the Union that was the subject of the movie Lincoln did everybody see that movie? everywhere except prisons they said you could go to prison for debt and for debt too at that point you could be put the 14th amendment they're all important the 14th amendment is what's being discussed today because it said this has to do with the right to choose all persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States all persons so then what's a person a person is a person who is born not a fetus not a fetus and that's the argument that was used in the inn row when Sarah Weddington made her arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court she said the 14th amendment says persons born in the United States are citizens that really really should be stressed any time that we have anything to do with abortion we should really stress that when they talk about the rights of the fetus the fetus does not have rights the fetus do not have any rights they don't have any legal rights none so they don't have a right to be born right? not yet not anywhere nowhere but they haven't come to the Supreme Court but anyway I want to mention something else about that because that's the argument we should use when everything religious people are getting after you about morality we should be talking about legality the legality the legal rights of women are protected in the constitution because women are born right? I think and there are people so those are the people that are protected and have equal protection of the laws are persons who are born here and are therefore citizens why was that so important after the civil war? because the status of freed slaves was very uncertain what were they? they were three-fifths of a person so the 14th amendment has to do with the emancipation of black people there were free persons at that point so you couldn't argue that they were three-fifths of a person but I didn't say that I said the 14th amendment guaranteed that that part is missing people were walking around like three-fifths and they visualized that and the last amendment by the way so there's the 13th, 14th and the 15th which I guess is going to be corrected also which is that all black men got the right to vote women, no woman got the right to vote and the suffragists were very pistocrats are the women who have been so helpful in the abolitionist or betrayed really betrayed one of them said why should those sambos be allowed to enter the door we can't however though that woman who called black people sambos also had thought for their freedom the good reason to be pistol but it wasn't such a hot reason to blame black people about it it wasn't black men that insisted that only black men get to vote it was white men I wonder why they did that actually when you think about it why did that succeed well it succeeded because the union had succeeded and those amendments that were passed probably when the confederates states weren't in congress remember they had all left congress so it was passed without them yippee giving the black men the same rights as white men in the south it gave power to the northern position regarding the south so you would never again going to be able to have a southern legislature say we want to secede oh they could say it they could say it do we have the right to secede now I mean what would happen if we didn't bother to try to get us back in especially if we elect bernie it's how they get them right bernie is not eligible bernie is not eligible does it give the right to secede in the constitution no it doesn't doesn't mention it but guess what happened when they did when the south seceded I mean lincoln said no you're not going to do that well that was then so speaking of now though I know felons can vote in vermont but so what does that mean if they're like still seeing their parole officer they're still like can they vote once they're they've done their time they can vote in prison they can vote in prison but two states only two states allow it which is the other one okay I don't see how that can be constitution that a citizen can be robbed of their right to vote because unfortunately the state controls who votes so after the civil war as a matter of fact to prevent black men voting that's when those rules about felonists felonies, felony committers could not vote felons could not vote it was after the civil war and many northern states didn't pass that law okay but it's not mandated that there has to be a process to elicit all of the votes of people in jail I mean who goes and gets their vote I'll tell you who does a lot of people do what we should do maybe that's what we should do just to show that we're on the same side with those people in prison because vince elusing when I was in the legislature this guy that everybody hated except me I kind of liked him I liked him a lot he's a republican states attorney really a cat, really a rogue but anyway he went into the prisons and registered everybody to vote why shouldn't we do that the reason I'm supporting bernie too and one other reason that has not come out so strongly is that he thinks all prisoners should have the right to vote including the boston bomber I do too bernie and he's taking that position and if that comes out a lot I don't know how popular it's going to be everybody's got a relative in prison these days I hope they don't all vote for trouble so should we do that want to do it what should we go to the correctional centers and get people registered you don't have to be notarized anymore you know I'll do it one thing to get them to get them absentee ballots no no absentee ballots we need to be provided absentee ballots but we could get them those too can they mail them do they get posters they have to vote a person tells out an application for an absentee ballot mails it in to the town clerk the town clerk sends it to them they vote they go through the process and they send it back in the front do they have to put a stamp on it so you have stamps there's something else that came up in terms of that out of the right to vote oh I want to talk one last thing about identity this has to do with if you register to vote I just did it for a kid who has no papers to prove that he's who he is he has no identity papers I took him down to city hall and this we all should do and I registered him to vote and they don't even ask in this state anything you don't need an ID to register to vote but when you get your registration back it says at the top certificate of citizenship which means that they are certifying city hall that you are a citizen of this country you're certifying it but if it's a homeless person you can use it as a post office so they have an ID at that point sort of yes they do it is an ID, it is accepted it's always better to have a certified copy of your birth certificate but many people, especially homeless kids they don't even know I couldn't get it for that kid even though I was his lawyer and he couldn't get it because he said no I applied three freaking times to his home state which is El Paso Texas three times no, no, you have to do this you have to do that last time I was told I had to put it on professional letterhead I don't have a professional, I have nothing whatever that is it means embossed and looks fancy not that we can print it out on your computer like one of those days probably after the other attorneys they didn't define it they didn't define it but if you know some kid or adult that's wandering around homeless and doesn't have his ID but he has some kind of a residence here you can do that, you can take him down for now, for now if they hadn't been with you would they still have allowed it or did it have anything to do with you standing there? well I was there with him so I glared at them but I glared but they require there's no requirement good to know good to know ok, thank you