Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 61 posts

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

#41

Post by talmand »

scarmig wrote: post #35
talmand wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure there is. But are we really going to say that it is the official stance of the entire Republican party to actively prevent black people from voting? Despite the fact that one of the leading Republican candidates right now is a black man? That is absolutely ridiculous and can only be the product of a childish and overactive imagination of a conspiracy theorist partisan nutjob that produces nothing of value whatsoever in a modern society. Maybe, just maybe, the problem you describe exists mostly on the local level and it's completely unfair to paint half the country as racists or bigots because of political differences?

Are there people who actively scheme to prevent people from voting and/or get their candidate to win in nefarious ways? Sure. Are some of them Republicans? Yep. But some of them are Democrats too, they just target different people in different ways. All in all, this is the voter fraud of the modern age; using laws to give your candidate the advantage.

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

#42

Post by Jach »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #26
Jach wrote: 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…

So you draw the line at "desires to vote" rather than "is capable of answering a few trivia questions". But say passing the test was a requirement to vote, wouldn't the people who want to vote naturally proceed with studying for and taking the test, while those who don't want to won't be bothered since overcoming the obstacle is even greater than overcoming the resistance of mailing in a form or going to an actual booth? (Or perhaps using an app?) Thus the test would serve as a proxy for desire, with even more potential upsides according to GP. What would the distribution look like given no filter, filtering by test passers, and filtering by people who want to vote?

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

#43

Post by hodgesmr »

ddlatham wrote: post #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.

Wow, sorry for this! I just used default colors that were in the Google Sheets chart tool. For my own education, is there a different spectrum that would do better?

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

#45

Post by drzaiusapelord »

twoodfin wrote: post #40
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #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 polit…

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

I count 13-16 low population states. Pretty much all of them are red states. Vermont and Rhode Island don't remotely make up for it. The reality is that if you live in a highly populated state, your voting influence is greatly diluted compared to the people in these states.

Hell, the city I live in has TWICE the population of North and South Dakota combined.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

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

#47

Post by Sfi81 »

hodgesmr wrote: post #46
Sfi81 wrote: post #44

Wouldn't it be simpler to just go all the way towards direct election than take a halfway step towards direct elections such as this?

This was a thought-experiment, and nothing more. Not actually advocating this change.

Ah ok!

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

#48

Post by astazangasta »

twoodfin wrote: post #39
vtlynch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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!)

Does it? I'm an American leftist, probably going to have to choose between Hillary and Trump.

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

#50

Post by Lawtonfogle »

Jach wrote: post #42
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So you draw the line at "desires to vote" rather than "is capable of answering a few trivia questions". But say passing the test was a requirement to vote, wouldn't the people who want to vote naturally proceed with studying for and taking the test, while those who don't want to won't be bothered since overcoming the obstacle is even greater than overcoming the resistance of mailing in a form or going to an actual bo…

>But say passing the test was a requirement to vote, wouldn't the people who want to vote naturally proceed with studying for and taking the test, while those who don't want to won't be bothered since overcoming the obstacle is even greater than overcoming the resistance of mailing in a form or going to an actual booth?

The problem is that any such test with answers could be inherently biased against some groups. 'Do I feel like going to vote today' is not biased in such a way as the person taking the test is the creator of the test itself.

Imagine if there was a test to vote, but every person created their own test, answered their own test, and then scored their own test (and the test didn't have to make sense to anyone, including the person who created/took/graded it).

Post reply on HN