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15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

nytimes.com

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Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#61

Post by rootusrootus »

outside1234 wrote: post #31
gfodor wrote: post #11

I'm really confused about this because I don't understand the incentives politicians have to adopt this in their own state. It clearly undermines their state's power in national elections. My (cynical) assumption is that this will be obeyed insofar as it helps bring about the desired outcome by those in power. It will be disregarded if it would shift the outcome in the other direction.

Does it? What if there state votes for the popular winner and that popular winner is not the winner? Remember, this will work both ways - eventually we will have a democrat that doesn't win the popular vote as well in the current system.

It will only ever tip that way for a Democrat when Democrats become the party of rural voters.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#62

Post by eunoia »

acomjean wrote: post #21
not_a_moth wrote: post #15

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.

> Alaska with a population around 700,000 also has 2 senators

As does:

1. Wyoming (Population: 572,381)

2. Vermont (Population: 627,180)

3. Alaska (Population: 735,720)

4. North Dakota (Population: 760,900)

5. South Dakota (Population: 892,631)

6. Delaware (Population: 975,033)

7. Rhode Island (Population: 1,056,738)

8. Montana (Population: 1,074,532)

9. Maine (Population: 1,342,097)

10. New Hampshire (Population: 1,363,852)

These states combined control 20% of the Senate with a roughly combined population of 10 million people. That's only 25% the population of California alone, or 3% of the total country.

Now obviously the Senate/House power balance was designed with this in mind. But the House hasn't reapportioned representation by population in a century.

Seems to me like the American democratic system has a very large bias for rural voters, especially when you consider where in the country presidential campaigns start every 4 years.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#63

Post by outside1234 »

m0zg wrote: post #51
outside1234 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if he had won the popular vote, then fine, he is the winner. All this is asking is 1 person 1 vote.

This would lead to e.g. Wyoming being run by California though. I'm sure Wyomingites would totally love that.

Wyoming would still have a state legislature - I am not sure I see your point.

If you are saying that each person in Wyoming would have 1 vote towards the presidency and each person in California would have 1 vote towards the presidency, then I agree.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#64

Post by outside1234 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #61
outside1234 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? What if there state votes for the popular winner and that popular winner is not the winner? Remember, this will work both ways - eventually we will have a democrat that doesn't win the popular vote as well in the current system.

It will only ever tip that way for a Democrat when Democrats become the party of rural voters.

Why? There are plenty of small democratic states too - Rhode Island, Hawaii, etc. etc.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#65

Post by mshirley »

not_a_moth wrote: post #15

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…

Why should people residing in any geographic group intentionally be given outsized political power when picking the president? Giving equal input to every voter is not advantaging non-rural people over rural people, it's advantaging more popular political policies over less popular ones.

While people living in rural areas may have distinct cultural values and may face real inequities when it comes to infrastructure, economic opportunity, education, health care access, etc., this seems completely unrelated to deciding the fairest way to pick a president.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#66

Post by clintonb »

sevenf0ur wrote: post #20

The democrats crucified Trump in 2016 for not accepting the outcome of the election. Today they want to amend the constitution to abolish the electoral college. Maybe it's a good thing that we can't change these things on a whim.

This campaign doesn't require changing the constitution. States can decide how to divide their electors, which is exactly what is going on here. See https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#67

Post by umvi »

dlbucci wrote: post #18
not_a_moth wrote: post #15

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…

I'm all for rural representation, but people in rural areas essentially have their vote count more than people in cities, right? Cause that's the current system for us: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_w...

> I'm all for rural representation, but people in rural areas essentially have their vote count more than people in cities, right?

Yeah but maybe that's a good thing. Otherwise you have a situation like New York where NYC gets to dictate everything since it's super high population density even though the majority of geographical NY state is farmers. So the farmers get screwed over by the interests of the city folk who have never even stepped foot out of the city. For example, city folks are more likely to vote for increases in property taxes - not that they care too much since they only have a tiny apartment - but it hits the people outside of the city with lots of land (for farming) really hard.

It's just like the "rich getting richer" conundrum. Once you have a large city, it will gain more people faster than a small town just by virtue of the properties of growth. So pretty soon you'll have a few megacities that get to dictate the government of the entire country and if you live anywhere else; too bad, the city folk are in charge now.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#68

Post by frankbreetz »

I turned 30 this year,and the Republican candidate has won the popular vote once in my life,and he was an incumbent. There has been a Republican president 14 of the 30 years of my life. Now,the first president of my life ( Bush 1) won the popular vote before I was born, but if we don't count him, no Republican has entered office with the popular vote in my life. Regardless of political beliefs does this seem right to everyone?

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#69

Post by jayd16 »

not_a_moth wrote: post #15

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 if you took the side that disproportional voting power to rural voters was a just goal, does this argument even make sense? The electoral college leads to winner take all situations such that many states are not contested and thus not catered to.

If you're a swing voter in a heavily partisan district, it doesn't matter how dense the district is, you won't be campaigned for.

Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

#70

Post by GeekyBear »

acomjean wrote: post #21
not_a_moth wrote: post #15

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.

All states get one electoral college vote for each member of Congress they have.

All states have two Senators and at least one member of the House, with additional House members based on their population.

This is why California (with it's large population) has 55 electoral college votes, while Alaska only gets the default minimum of three.

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