Wouldn't that push housing up in big cities?
15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
271–280 of 932 posts
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing you said provides an argument against equally weighting each citizen’s vote at the federal level. States have select powers over the federal government that are specifically provided by our Constitution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights . When you vote in local elections, you are in effect in control of certain outcomes within your state, as accorded by our Constitution. The federal election d…
> There is no conceivable logical reason why citizens in any particular state should have more or less say in such matters than those in any other. So should we abolish the senate too? Not being snarky just wondering what those who support NPV think.
Mitch McConnell represents 6.8M people in TN and he is the most powerful man in the Senate, and one of the most powerful people in the country.
How difficult is it to corrupt a man like Mitch McConnell? How robust is our system of representation when one senator holds so much power?
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
It even works both ways. I know people here in NYS who don't go to the polls to vote Democrat because they know they don't have to—the state as a whole voting Democrat is a foregone conclusion, so what does their vote matter?
Which is also why trying to question, say, Trump win based on popular vote is stupid: yes, he got 46% of votes vs 48% for Clinton, but if there was no Electoral College and every vote counted people would probably have voted differently. How differenlty? We'll never know until we try :)
He's also said he'd have organized his campaign visits differently, which would've altered the result even further.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#274The 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.
Patenntly false. Chairman of the Federal Reserve is largely apolitical. Judges have philosophies that tend to reflect the wishes of the President who nominated them but other than that are largely independent.
Look at how other countries handle election. In Australia the Australian Electoral Commission ("AEC") is responsible for running elections and I can tell you that none of the problems with politicized elections that exist in the US exist in Australia.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#275>On Tuesday, Nevada became the latest state to pass a bill that would grant its electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote across the country, not just in Nevada. The movement is the brainchild of John Koza, a co-founder of National Popular Vote, an organization that is working to eliminate the influence of the Electoral College. I don't think this will survive constitutional challenge, because it is not the vo…
It seems like failing a constitutional challenge is the best case.
Electors don’t actually have to vote the way state law tells them to—that would require a constitutional amendment that restructures the whole process. When they vote counter to state law, they are called “faithless electors”.
A state system which ignores the will of its constituents is going to be much more susceptible to faithless electors, who may face tremendous incentives and pressure to trade votes.
I would expect the first such election to lead to the dissolution of the republic.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the popular vote favored, say Trump, and if California could change the election by pulling out of the compact, they would. In a heartbeat. That's why I'm not too worried about it. If it would really change the result, it's easy for a State to hit the pause button.
> it's easy for a State to hit the pause button Is it that easy? It's a compact, not trivial to pull out of.
Let's see:
- Enough states pass this for it to be in force in 2020.
- Trump wins the popular vote in 2020. However, he would not have won an EC vote because of California and New York.
- California decides to renege on the compact, and votes for Biden instead.
- A bunch of red states sue California. Long before the court cases go anywhere, Biden takes the oath of office.
And what then?
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
That alternative is that the rural vote doesn’t count at all . Urban cities form extremely powerful electoral blocks in Congress which can pass huge amount of pro-urban legislation and pro-urban budgets. The rural areas have much less representation but at least enough so that they can perhaps dog-trade for policies that are important to them. Remember that laws pass on majority or super-majority rules in Congress. S…
The rural areas have much less representation Isn’t this literally not true?
Key word “areas”.
Of course it’s true. WY has 1 representative to CA’s 53.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are only eight states in America that have more people than Los Angeles county.[2] Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? What is it about their geography that makes their issues unimportant? Why would Arkansas or Nevada have joined a union of states where their votes mean essentially nothing?
That logic doesn't work. It can be applied in reverse to invalidate your point: Why would California have joined a union of states where their votes mean 1/4 of Wyoming's?
Sure, California's votes may mean less on a per capita basis, but if you're asserting that California is under-represented compared to Wyoming on a national basis, you're going to have to give some supporting evidence there. That's a pretty wild claim.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Tyranny of the minority" gets this issue exactly backwards. The problem the Electoral College was designed to mitigate is a tyranny of the majority. States have representation, done universally by popular vote within those states for their representatives in Congress. (if you know any states that are an exception, feel free to add). Most of the country, and the world, experiences elections by popular vote except f…
> Most of the country, and the world, experiences elections by popular vote Actually, as someone else remarked upthread, in most parliamentary democracies the Prime Minister is elected by the parliament, not by popular vote.
"experiences elections", like the surrounding part of my comment, was referring to how every other position that electors get to weigh in on are by popular vote only.
I specifically was not referring to positions that are not.
If we want to talk about Head of State selection processes, I am a fan of Switzerland's Federal Council which contains 7 heads of state that act together but represent the interests of the constituent parties, while one acts as a frontman for diplomatic purposes with other nations. It maintains professional tact privately and publicly - concept only rarely strained in Switzerland's Federal Council history - and more importantly maintains representation. A brief civil war between that collection of small counties and cities was needed to get those reforms and other forms of direct representation into their constitution.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Rural issues" do not deserve special protection if that protection results in a tyranny of the minority. "Tyranny of the minority" gets this issue exactly backwards. The problem the Electoral College was designed to mitigate is a tyranny of the majority . > Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? What is it about their geography that ma…
> "Tyranny of the minority" gets this issue exactly backwards. The problem the Electoral College was designed to mitigate is a tyranny of the majority. States have representation, done universally by popular vote within those states for their representatives in Congress. (if you know any states that are an exception, feel free to add). Most of the country, and the world, experiences elections by popular vote except f…
We're actually in an abberation right now with respect to how states select Senators. Originally, state legislatures selected senators, not popular votes. Direct election of senators has only happened since the 1970s, and imo the senate is functionally gridlocked unless one party has a super majority or decides to lower the threshold for getting things one to a simple majority.
I wonder if we would be in a better place if we retained the old system.