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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

#221

Post by sgregnt »

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…

So why not let the red states quit? And resolve the union? Los angeles county can then do whatever they want.

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

#222

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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…

> Stop politicizing the election process. Like, why is the supervisor for elections an elected political position?

The alternative is that it's an appointed position. That won't be less political.

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

#223

Post by Spooky23 »

danaris wrote: post #101
peapicker wrote: post #71

Firstly, I'm an independent - I actually have a great deal of issues with both major parties. My concern with abandoning the college starts with this observation: Swing states are the states most likely to have divided government. And if divided government is good for anything, it is accountability. So with the Electoral College system, when we do wind up with a razor-thin margin in an election, it is likely to happe…

> the higher the turnout, legal or not, the more power for that state Every actual study of the matter I've seen or heard of has shown no evidence of any significant fraudulent voting, particularly not systemic fraudulent voting. While there might be a theoretical concern about incentives here, there's a lot of problems we know are happening right now with voter suppression under the system that we have.

That context for those statements is the voter ID boogeyman, which is 100% bullshit.

Machine politics and the nonsense behind it is a form of vote fraud. While southern states have a long history of denying African Americans the ability to vote, states where county politics controls voting like New York are also problematic.

More directly, there are plenty of schemes to fraudulently get votes counted, from absentee ballot fraud in nursing homes to voting irregularities in religious communities.

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

#224

Post by CPLX »

godshatter wrote: post #220
CPLX wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way of looking at it is to note that New York City is the most important city in the history of world civilization, and the global center of media, finance, culture, commerce, fashion, and art, while the rest of the state is mostly stripmalls and like a few dozen people plus a confusingly located NFL team, so maybe we should let the millions of people living in the city run things?

There are rural concerns that cities don't really care about, should they be ignored?

They should be considered proportionally to the amount of people affected.

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

#225

Post by 1v1id »

cheez wrote: post #127
baddox wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> National Popular Vote (NPV) would reward states with lax election laws - the higher the turnout, legal or not, the more power for that state. Illegal voting is already illegal, and states can already in theory do shady things in their elections (and some probably already do). The courts should absolutely go after this, and I don't see NPV really changing this. > The NPV system focus the most energy on states with a…

The reason the United States are United is because there was a uniform consideration. You'll be seeing states secede as there will be no benefit for them to remain.

States already (and I believe always have) had different numbers of electoral votes, no?

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

#226

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tedmcory77 wrote: post #175

Democratic candidates have won the popular vote 4/5 times in the most re ent elections, but only won the Presidency 2/5. That’s an issue.

Teams with the most yards lose some football games, too. Is that an issue?

Run to win the election under the rules that are in force.

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

#227

Post by [deleted] »

peapicker wrote: post #119
jonathankoren wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. 385 are redistributed , which still enforces unequal representation, as states with less population than some territories have more purchasing power in the House. For example, Wyoming get a rep for 500,000 people, but everyone else has to pay 700,000 people. To truly remedy this situation in the House, you have to bring the House up to about 930. https://time.com/5423623/house-representatives-number-seats/

Of course, if we went by the original law of 30,000 people per congressperson, we'd have over 10,000 representatives. I'm not sure adding more reps would make the system work any better - part of me thinks it would be even more expensive and chaotic.

[deleted]

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

#228

Post by atommclain »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #52
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...

In Nevada, they joke that they have "the Senator from Reno" and "the Senator from Los Vegas".

Just recently I learned that most of the land in Nevada is owned by the federal government (84.9 percent according to https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/heres-how-land-is-used-by...). It's more a federal state, than a state state in a land ownership sense.

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

#229

Post by JoeAltmaier »

CPLX wrote: post #224
godshatter wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are rural concerns that cities don't really care about, should they be ignored?

They should be considered proportionally to the amount of people affected.

But their lives are so different.

For instance: gun control. Rules for millions of people crowded into a pressure-cooker city, vs rules for folks living a mile apart with varmints, police protection an hour away, hunting, are reasonably very different. Same for zoning, licensing, inspections, on and on.

Rural residents often get saddled with metro rules that make no sense.

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

#230

Post by radicalbyte »

peapicker wrote: post #71

Firstly, I'm an independent - I actually have a great deal of issues with both major parties. My concern with abandoning the college starts with this observation: Swing states are the states most likely to have divided government. And if divided government is good for anything, it is accountability. So with the Electoral College system, when we do wind up with a razor-thin margin in an election, it is likely to happe…

  the parliamentary systems of the UK ... have the parliament elect the Prime Minister and likewise don't elect their leaders by popular vote.
This isn't totally accurate: the leader of the winning party is basically the Prime Minister. You vote for the party & leader together, you can't have one and not the other.

The system is otherwise just as broken as the US; meaning that outcomes are decided by a small number of "rural" people combined with gerrymandering.

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