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What if states earned their Electoral College votes based on turnout?

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Re: What if states earned their Electoral College votes based on turnout?

#31
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you disagree with the core concept underlying one man, one vote. Why should a person who squeaks by with correctly answering 6/10 of the test questions be given the exact same voice as someone who gets 10/10, and someone with 5/10 gets no voice at all?

I convince people to not vote. If I can convince you not to vote with a single argument, then your input is something our country doesn't need. I do not at any time stop them from voting; I only tell them it doesn't matter and they shouldn't waste their time. Everyone gets a vote, but I'm not losing any sleep when those who don't care enough to vote don't get their say recorded. (Of course there is a problem where pe…

You should be convincing people to care, not to avoid voting.

Besides, voting isn't supposed to be the place where you disenfranchise yourself. People who really care should run for office. ("Representative government" and all that.)

Re: What if states earned their Electoral College votes based on turnout?

#32
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people do care, but that many of them are disillusioned.

"Disillusioned" is a catch-all for so many different things though. One might be upset at hearing about corrupt practices or "it's not what you know it's who you know" politics, because that's all we hear about in the news and on TV shows (because that's the salacious part of politics). One might be upset at having no effective voice because of the two-party system and the sheer size of the electorate in each state:…

Four extended disillusionment arguments.

Your lack of representation argument can be extended to "captured" demographics. Lets say 99% of teachers vote for party X, which is actually pretty accurate. Then party X has no need whatsoever to represent the needs of teachers because they're guaranteed all the votes no matter what they do in office. Likewise no teachers vote for party Y by the definition of being a captured demographic. That means party Y has no need to represent teachers because there is no reward. Or rephrased, a captured demographic will not be represented because one party has no negative consequences, and the other has no positive consequences.

Its not so much an effect of voting as it is primary nomination effect. Also voting isn't necessarily the most important support, the PACs providing election funding are the most important form of support.

Many people are members of captive demographics, meaning they are un-represented. Teachers, blacks, anti-abortion, feminists, more or less every orientation other than straight... When you cross off all of them, there's not much actual representing going on, for something calling itself a representative government.

One reason I often don't vote is the only minimal impact I can make due to extreme gerrymandering is to protest the system. Here's one non-vote proclaiming I'm not represented. I think the stats showing 4/5 of the population feel UN-represented are if anything an understatement of the facts. Probably less than 5% of the population are represented at this time, the rest of the voters are just ill informed.

Another reason not to vote that you missed, voting is kind of an opiate of the masses to let them think they can provide input, which of course they cannot. Once you understand that, its pointless. Participating in voting is like people looking for religious enlightenment in opiates, you can delude yourself but it doesn't really accomplish anything. Whats in it for me to knowingly delude myself?

The final reason not to vote is rebellion. Blind irrational faith in the election system is as close to an established state secular religion we have. Not voting is as rebellious as being the only guy without tattoos or the only guy without body piercings. Not voting is religious apostasy. I'm about as likely to start voting as I am to throw stones at known adulterers or own a Canadian as a biblical slave.

There are other reasons like pragmatically the results of voting are bad governments, but thats a long debate.

Re: What if states earned their Electoral College votes based on turnout?

#33

I'm surprised voter turnout isn't lower. Unless you live in a swing state, or Maine or Nebraska, voting for president is a waste of time. If you are in a swing state, it still might not matter unless you are in a swing district. It's a terribly broken voting system.

I find the psychology of voting fascinating. Most people are unwilling to vote for a third-party/longshot candidate, as their vote would be "wasted", despite the fact that their single vote is guaranteed not to matter. I think the driving motivation for most is the desire to be on the winning team, or if you're in the wrong county/state, to be able to say you fought the good fight for your side. In other words, despite the secret ballot, people vote more for reasons of in-group signaling than attempting to influence policy.

As you say, the 50ish percent we do get is impressive. If we really care about turnout (and disincentivizing some of the shadier techniques campaigns use to manipulate turnout), we should turn Voting Day into a national holiday and a mandatory duty (perhaps with an opt-out "I choose to abstain" for true protest votes, but the point is that you still have to show up or mail your ballot, period.)

Re: What if states earned their Electoral College votes based on turnout?

#34
Green states received a larger proportion of Electoral votes compared to their actual turnout. Red states received less.

Wish I could read these maps, but I'm red-green color blind (like 8% of men). Please consider using different colors or some additional indicator to show this information.

Re: What if states earned their Electoral College votes based on turnout?

#35
post #21

Will never happen. The Republican Party has almost made it its official platform to make it very hard for voters to vote. They are opposed to a holiday for elections; they come up with all sorts of excuses to take people off electoral rolls; they raise the bogey of "voter fraud" each and every election, when there's not much evidence of any.

Okay, I'm in. The Democrat Party has almost made it its official platform to make it very easy for non-citizens to vote; since they're most likely to vote Democrat. They support a holiday for elections; only because it would make it easier for a part of their base to vote, not because of any benefit to voters in general. They come up with all sorts of excuses to keep people on electoral rolls; whether they should be…

There's the teensiest difference between cynically encouraging people to vote, because nonvoters tend to be more Democratic than voters, and cynically trying to prevent black people from voting, because black voters tend to be more Democratic than nonblacks.

Re: What if states earned their Electoral College votes based on turnout?

#36

Wouldn't that favor small states, who can mount a turnout campaign with far fewer workers?

I think it would be proportional. Larger states have more workers to draw on. The question is, how are the 'get out the vote' drives funded? By the parties? The state? It has an appeal though. You have to exercise your right to vote in order to be represented. Is that impacting your liberty to not vote if you don't want to?

With all due respect to all involved I read his comment as geographic population density.

I've lived in voting districts where the election was in the basement of my dorm, in the suburban subdivision's elementary school, and in a rural area where voting was a good 10 minute highway drive. Obviously theres a big difference in "get out the vote" when one voter is pound on the dorm door and tell them to press the "B" button in the elevator, than some rural district where each voter represents like a quart of gasoline burned.

Re: What if states earned their Electoral College votes based on turnout?

#37
>Wyoming voters made up 0.193% of the total popular vote in 2012. That would earn them a total of one electoral vote. In reality Wyoming gets 3.

and they get the same amount of senators as California or NY. This is why US politics will always lean conservative. There are just too many "fly over states" with tiny conservative populations that have an undue influence on national elections.

All too often "money in politics" are blamed for the lack of liberal or progressive changes in the nation. That's a red herring for the most part, or at least, problem #2. With a system like this its very difficult to put in liberal reforms. Hell, Obamacare, which is pretty much a Reagan-era proposal, barely got passed with a Democratic majority in almost all branches of government. Even after passing, its been endlessly disputed with at least two major losses to the law via SCOTUS. Those courts? Packed with conservative leaning judges by POTUS, who has a major advantage to winning if he's a conservative. This stuff comes full circle and starts with the over-representation of lowly populated conservative areas.

Re: What if states earned their Electoral College votes based on turnout?

#38

Green states received a larger proportion of Electoral votes compared to their actual turnout. Red states received less. Wish I could read these maps, but I'm red-green color blind (like 8% of men). Please consider using different colors or some additional indicator to show this information.

While I am not colour blind, I sympathise with those that are. All programming languages should have a library along the lines of Colors.jl [1] that allows you to simulate and, more importantly, provides functionality to give you a good set of colours and colour scales to use for your graphics.

[1]: https://github.com/JuliaGraphics/Colors.jl#simulation-of-col...

Re: What if states earned their Electoral College votes based on turnout?

#39
post #24
post #4

Some reasons we have the Electoral College: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_%28United_St...

"Many proponents of the Electoral College see its negative effect on third parties as beneficial."

Yeah: It forces parties to be broad-based and adaptable if they're going to compete nationally.

It also avoids bizarre situations like France's 2002 election, wherein the Left had to choose between Chirac and Le Pen (something similar is not improbable in 2017, as well!)

Re: What if states earned their Electoral College votes based on turnout?

#40

>Wyoming voters made up 0.193% of the total popular vote in 2012. That would earn them a total of one electoral vote. In reality Wyoming gets 3. and they get the same amount of senators as California or NY. This is why US politics will always lean conservative. There are just too many "fly over states" with tiny conservative populations that have an undue influence on national elections. All too often "money in polit…

Vermont and Rhode Island get two senators apiece as well, and they're not exactly the most conservative states.
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