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15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

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

#131

Post by komali2 »

cybersnowflake wrote: post #100

I wonder how many people arguing for the abolishment of the EC would like it if India and China automatically had the most votes in whatever supranational government arises in the future and got to decide everything that happened across the world. The US is still supposed to be a federation. The EC was part of the deal the US made with smaller states to become part of the Union precisely because they were afraid of b…

That only matters if our international government gets an elected god emperor.

The president is one of three branches of government. Congress/Senate balances the power across states.

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

#132

Post by zaroth »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #55
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…

The counterpoint to that is that the Electoral College has transferred so much power to rural areas that we are no longer an actual representative democracy. For example, a vote in Wyoming counts 3.6 times more than a vote in California.[1] The people in California are not represented in the Presidential election; it would be more accurate to say that one-quarter of the people in California are represented. "Rural is…

Conversely, there are many issues where California can wag the dog by instituting state-specific policies which effectively drag the whole country with it.

Some people like what California does with its state-specific policies. Some people even choose to live there.

If the Executive branch was less powerful and the States retained more of what they were originally intended to oversee for themselves, I might have less of a problem with California liberals electing the Executive for the whole country.

As it is, California has 53 of 435 seats in Congress and 55 electoral votes. The disparity with Wyoming is just because the minimum is 3 per state, and Wyoming’s population is minuscule.

If you eliminate the per-state minimum I expect there would be large geographical areas of the country which would eventually become uninhabitable / unsustainable.

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

#133

Post by dwighttk »

fintechpwmMEdev wrote: post #102
flyingfences wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the explicit purpose of the Senate: each state is equal in the union. Senators weren't even supposed to represent the state's people; they represented the state itself up until the misguided Seventeenth Amendment. Representation proportional to the population is the purpose of the House - that's why our government has two chambers.

Misguided? Are you saying you want to go back to when your state's House Reps decided your state's Senators? I understand our federal politics are a complete mess but think that has more to do to equating money with freedom of speech, the great return on campaign donations, the polarization of our media and the lack of solid non-partisan research institutes that our elected leaders can rely upon. Have you ever watche…

>Are you saying you want to go back to when your state's House Reps decided your state's Senators?

I would not mind that

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

#134

Post by input_sh »

jonathankoren wrote: post #89
chuckdries wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now it's the opposite > People who want to get away from the ~big cities~ small towns and live a different kind of life with different priorities (and different legislative interests), shouldn't be totally shut out, should they? Even though I live in a ~giant urban area~ rural area, I wouldn't want to feel pressured to due so due to lack of political stake if I move elsewhere. who's to say one direction is more…

To reinforce this idea, my city has 3x the population of Wyoming. I grew up rural, but I long ago moved to an urban life. Politicians — and to be honest rural folk themselves — often try to enforce the idea that rural life is somehow more genuine. You’ll hear this as “Real America”, or how city folks don’t understand how “the Real World works”, or are some how “out of touch”. Which is fundamentally a completely bizar…

> when the majority of Americans (and I believe the world in general now) live an urban life.

I think you're underestimating the figures. 80.7% of Americans lived in urban areas according to the 2010 census. Estimates for the entire world are over 50% for over a decade now (since 2007, to be more accurate). It increases slowly but steadily, so we were at about 55.27% in 2018. It's going to be about 68% by 2050 and about 85% by 2100.

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

#135

Post by reallydude »

danaris wrote: post #111
umvi wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wh…

The plurality of the geography of NY State may be agricultural land, but that is not the same thing as saying that the majority of its people are farmers. If you cut NYC off from the rest of the state, yes, you'd have a majority-rural population, and probably a red state—but not majority farmer and farm workers. I live and work in rural NY State. For every farmer out here, there are dozens of teachers, janitors, comp…

"doesn't mean that we should give the rest of the state disproportionate power."

Is it in the best interests of all the people to have proportionate power? I believe so.

The EC is an abstraction, which philosophically and practically takes choice away from individuals. Population centers having more power than rural areas (even when they are the geographical majority, otherwise) is a proxy for land-owners having more power. While, ironically, land-owners (like farmers) often tend to be poorer than city-dwellers in absolute terms, I don't believe they should have some sort of relative power difference.

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

#136

Post by munk-a »

umvi wrote: post #67
dlbucci wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

I don't think this is a valid reason to continue with the electoral college - but it might be a good reason to slowly dissolve the concept of states and instead let local and national politics interact directly - the state level is where the needs of different localities are being erased more than the national level.

Local politicians should be concerned with their locality - national politicians should be concerned with the nation and making sure that no localities are presented with problems beyond the scope of their power... the state sorta does both - but it also serves to mask local issues within the state's representation up to the national level. It's why I'm rather fond of the house and less fond of the senate - as a former Vermonter I had intensely good representation at the national level - I had one house rep and two senators which were concerned with representing me specifically - but when I resided in MA our rep was concerned with local issues but the Senators were more focused on pushing forth agendas that the state-house was pushing out... so the representation of individual localities were lost on those senators.

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

#137

Post by javagram »

dragonwriter wrote: post #74
akulbe wrote: post #43

I could not be more opposed to the abolishment of the Electoral College. The founders had a very good rationale for putting it in. 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.

> The founders had a very good rationale for putting it in. Well, it had a reason: like the per-state represt in the Senate which was locked in against amendment, like the 3/5 compromise, like the prohibition locked against amendment protecting the slave trade for a set time period, and probably like a handful of other things I'm probably not remembering off the top of my head, it was a mechanism of politically secur…

The slave states wanted population based representation.

For instance the 3/5 compromise was because the slave states wanted 5/5 and the free states wanted 0/5.

Virginia had the most Representatives in the first US congress because they had the largest population. It was small states like New Hampshire and Rhode Island that benefited from the 2 senators per state rule.

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

#138

Post by munk-a »

reallydude wrote: post #135
danaris wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plurality of the geography of NY State may be agricultural land, but that is not the same thing as saying that the majority of its people are farmers. If you cut NYC off from the rest of the state, yes, you'd have a majority-rural population, and probably a red state—but not majority farmer and farm workers. I live and work in rural NY State. For every farmer out here, there are dozens of teachers, janitors, comp…

"doesn't mean that we should give the rest of the state disproportionate power." Is it in the best interests of all the people to have proportionate power? I believe so. The EC is an abstraction, which philosophically and practically takes choice away from individuals. Population centers having more power than rural areas (even when they are the geographical majority, otherwise) is a proxy for land-owners having more…

Can you clarify this? It appears you're both advocating for same and different power simultaneously.

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

cletus wrote: post #94

The electoral college achieves one very useful function thats ignored by everyone calling for its abolition in favour of the popular vote: it produces a clear winner and contains the contagion of litigating and delegitimizing the outcome of an election. Think about this: there are a number of elections that have a very small popular vote margin. What if this gets less than, say, 20,000? That's entirely possible. In a…

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by Mirioron »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #55
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…

The counterpoint to that is that the Electoral College has transferred so much power to rural areas that we are no longer an actual representative democracy. For example, a vote in Wyoming counts 3.6 times more than a vote in California.[1] The people in California are not represented in the Presidential election; it would be more accurate to say that one-quarter of the people in California are represented. "Rural is…

If rural issues aren't handled then you'll have even more urbanization and even more expensive housing. The odds are already attacked against rural life.

>Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas?

So instead you want even more people from Nevada and Arkansas to move to LAC, because that's where politicians will pay attention?

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