View source for Essay: winner-take-all vs. proportional representation

===The illusion of 'proportional representation' ''vs.'' 'winner-take-all'===
Under DNC rules, a clique of unelected [[Superdelegate]]s have [[veto]] power over more than 80% of popularly elected delegates.  The total number of voting delegates and the number necessary to win nomination can vary right up to the convention date when delegates are seated due to deaths, vacancies, resignations, political appointments, indictments, etc..  Since this corrupt and anti-democratic system was [[Superdelegate#Hunt_Commission|instituted in 1984]] as an 'insurance policy' against an 'insurgent candidate', such as [[George McGovern]], [[George Wallace]], or [[Bernie Sanders]] who would lead the party to disaster, a thoughtful and honest review of party rules and the numbers would lead any [[rational]] person to conclude that the Democratic party, as an institution, is anything but [[democratic]] and fair, and its boast of 'proportional representation' is not only cosmetic, but nonsensical, and down right deceptive. 

In 2016, 30 million Democrat primary voters chose about 4,000 delegates. This is a 'proportional representation' of about 1 delegate for every 7,500 primary voters nationwide; another 712 unelected delegates representing 712 people appointed by the Democratic National Committee, had a 'proportional representation' of 1 delegate to 1 appointee and made up about 15% of the total delegates.  Theoretically, 712 delegates could have overthrown a popular vote majority as high as 64% and 19 million Democrat primary voters, reducing that majority to a loosing minority of 49%, and stealing a nomination from a supermajority of voters.  By contrast, no such party rules or scheme exists, or has existed, in the Republican party. This has been one central defining difference over the past 36 years between the Republican and Democratic parties.  Loyal Democratic voters have been kept in the dark, or have willfully kept themselves in the dark, and have certainly been misled by their party leaders and a fawning media over the fundamental unfairness and duplicity toward voters and some candidates written into the by-laws of the Democratic National Committee.

Incidentally in 2016, Superdelegates were only about 15% of convention delegates, down from historic highs of 19% and 20%+, largely due to the 'shellacking' President Obama received in the [[2010 Midterm elections]]; the Democrat party still hadn't recovered by 2016.  Winning a Congressional seat and certain other state offices makes one a Superdelegate as one of the perks of the job.  You automatically have the power to overrule 7,500 primary voters without being elected as a delegate to the convention.  Ironically, the Democrat's shellacking in 2010 made the party ''more'' democratic, increasing the power of ordinary voters by lowering the contingent of state and federal office holders as Superdelegates.  Conversely, the more successful the party is in electing more state and federal office holders, the more watered down the votes of ordinary Democrat primary voters and the public become in the process of selecting a presidential nominee; that is the nature of DNC by-laws.  It is a process of transferring power from voters to bureaucrats to a point where voters become excluded from decision making.

The deck is stacked in the house's favor.  Incumbents win, insurgents lose in the Democrat party.  By contrast, the popular insurgent revolutionary Donald Trump overthrew a corrupt establishment in the more democratic Republican party, which honors and respects the popular will of the voters.  Now someone will protest, ''"What about the popular vote in 2000 and 2016?"'' Let's have that debate over the movement to abolish the Electoral College, and why 'proportional representation' is nonsensical.

The RNC's method of 'winner-take-all' is a carbon copy of the [[Electoral College]].  To abolish the Electoral College would require 38 states passing a [[Constitutional Amendment]]; but 48 states right now have statutory laws on their books mandating 'winner-take-all' in their Electoral College vote. And these laws were passed by a [[bi-partisan]] consensus to maximize the states position in relation to the other 49 states. 

Democrats formerly used winner-take-all since the founding of political parties in America, and only adopted 'proportional representation' after their electoral loss in the [[2000 presidential election]] as a cosmetic measure to oppose [[President George W. Bush]]. Relying on the abandonment of Civics education classes in [[public school]]s, and what [[John Podesta]] termed "an unaware and compliant citizenry", with 'proportional representation' a state cannibalizes itself, becomes less influential in building national party coalitions, less influential in Washington, D.C. - even when that state is in the governing majority - less valuable to a candidate for president, the candidate's time, money, and resources, and less valuable for rewards after winning. 

Under the 'proportional representation' system, which Democrats allege to be empowering of people, a state with say for example, 50 convention delegates and 10 electoral votes, but only delivers half that amount in convention delegates and electors, can't make a claim for indebtedness to the victor after forcing  the candidate to seek votes elsewhere to win.  

There are currently two states with 'proportional representation' in the Electoral College - [[Maine]] and [[Nebraska]]. These two states, by law, diminish and divide the influence of their people in presidential elections by pitting their own citizens against each other, cancelling out each other's votes. To outsiders it appears chaotic, and that these states are populated and governed by [[idiot]]s who don't understand how our federal system works.  A state which splits its vote, votes against itself.  Democratic party professional operatives, and the powers that be in the DNC, promote this willful political ignorance aimed at destroying the power of individuals and the states collectively, while allocating power to themselves within a mindless, faceless, corrupt, and non-transparent federal Washington bureaucracy.

Of course neither winner-take-all nor proportional representation matter when uneleceted Superdelegates make the final choice on a nominee.

[[Category:Essays]][[Category:United States Politics]]