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Another thing to abolish - winner-takes-all system, which prevents wider parties variety.
Would you have multiple presidents? How would you break their roles up? Which one gets the nuclear code or do they all?
That said... I think there's a solution for this. Hard term limits for everyone, in all the branches.
It already exists for the Executive branch. I think it should be instituted for both Legislative and Judicial as well.
An argument I heard recently against this is, if abolished, politicians won't have incentives to campaign in rural territories, and they won't be accountable to rural territories. That basically makes sense. The EC is the only thing that really gives rural territories any stake, as the majority population has shifted to larger urban centers. People who want to get away from the big cities and live a different kind of…
> Even though I live in a giant urban area, I wouldn't want to feel pressured to due so due to lack of political stake if I move elsewhere.
Imagine a developer in San Francisco tempted to move to Austin, but who won't because the state as a whole will always go Republican even though Austin tends to be more liberal.
An argument I heard recently against this is, if abolished, politicians won't have incentives to campaign in rural territories, and they won't be accountable to rural territories. That basically makes sense. The EC is the only thing that really gives rural territories any stake, as the majority population has shifted to larger urban centers. People who want to get away from the big cities and live a different kind of…
Electoral college is for the presidency. But the political power discrepancy between rural and urban areas is quite stark in other branches of government. For example: Right now in the US there are 2 senators from each state. California with a population of over 39 million has 2 senators, Alaska with a population around 700,000 also has 2 senators.
This is why we have the House of Representatives, which is based on population. California has 53 representatives, Alaska has one.
The original idea as I understand it, before the 17th amendment, was that the Senate was supposed to represent the interests of the states, hence two senators from each equally represented state. While the House was supposed to represent the interests of the residents of those states.
This is stupid. The entire point of the electoral college is to ensure small states have a say and the country isn’t ruled by the majority mob. Small states would have to be pretty ignorant to make themselves irrelevant like that.
https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/
We see that that backfired. :)
Another thing to abolish - winner-takes-all system, which prevents wider parties variety.
Would you have multiple presidents? How would you break their roles up? Which one gets the nuclear code or do they all?
CA has 55 electoral votes, all of which went to Hillary. If CA removed winner-take-all, Trump would have received 17 electoral votes, Hillary would only receive 34, Gary Johnson would receive 2, and Jill Stein 1.
TX has 36 electoral votes, all of which went to Trump. If TX removed winner-take-all, Trump would only have received 19, Hillary would receive 16, and Gary Johnson 1.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia...
This is stupid. The entire point of the electoral college is to ensure small states have a say and the country isn’t ruled by the majority mob. Small states would have to be pretty ignorant to make themselves irrelevant like that.
Are you thinking of the US Senate? The electoral college is not meant to give a proportionally larger weight to small states.
An argument I heard recently against this is, if abolished, politicians won't have incentives to campaign in rural territories, and they won't be accountable to rural territories. That basically makes sense. The EC is the only thing that really gives rural territories any stake, as the majority population has shifted to larger urban centers. People who want to get away from the big cities and live a different kind of…
The political implications of showing urbanites that (some) rural areas are better places to live than is currently being preached could get interesting.