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1. The 2016 U.S. Presidential election—who won, who lost?

   Much ink has been spilled trying to explain the surprise election of President-elect Donald Trump. This post isn’t meant to make any comment or provide analysis regarding the pros or cons of the election but rather to empirically clarify ...

2. William Watson: Trimming the rigging on the American ship of state

   President-elect Donald Trump was right. The election was rigged. The candidate that got the most votes lost. As of this writing, the Associated Press reports that with 99 per cent of the vote counted Hillary Clinton has 59,814,018 votes ...

3. Trump victory checked by constraints of modern constitutional republics

   Norman Rockwell’s 1943 painting “ Freedom of Speech ” is a visual encomium to the wonders of the democratic process. At the town meeting, everyone gets a chance to speak his or her mind. The blue-collar worker who has risen to say what ...

4. Authority and legitimacy in Westeros, Essos and Washington, D.C.

   In the presidential election cycle in the U.S., it turns out that the ultimate choice of the Democratic Party is Hillary Clinton and the ultimate choice of the Republican Party is Donald Trump. (The ultimate choice of the Libertarian ...

5. William Watson: The case against compulsory voting—why conscript the uninformed?

   I’ve been a fan of U.S. politics since 1965 or 1966 when, shortly after it came out in paperback, my father gave me Ted Sorensen’s JFK biography, Kennedy, for Christmas or my birthday. (That was the complete title: Books didn’t have ...