15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by gnulinux » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 10:35 PM UTC

marpstar wrote: post #145

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.

I think a lot of people forget that US = United States. That is, states that are united. The electoral college attempts to "balance" the power that each STATE has to elect a president. The election is a state-level function. In my opinion, to switch to a popular-vote-wins system is to basically say "hey everyone in other states, go ahead and decide for our actual citizens".

In that case Federal government has to regulate fewer things and needs to have less power. President's executive order will affect people in California too but somehow people in Wyoming had 2 times more power to elect this said president. I don't think this is fair at all. If you say States are given inalienable right to veto any and all law/executive order passed by the federal government, then you might as well just keep the senate (2 repr per state) and it could still be considered fair. But the current system blindly favors rural parts of the country.

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

#282

Post by lonelappde » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #248

I think this is both a dumb move and unconstitutional. Present day politics aside, allowing for pure demographic voting in this day and age is even more dangerous than it was in the early days of the republic. States and regions have different needs that need to be considered in the governance of the nation. You can already see warning signs, the Democratic Party platform has been so brain dead, they even managed to…

What is unconstitutional about a state using its constitutional authority to cast its votes for President?

Why should fictional state borders take precedence over actual humans when allocating voting blocs? If different states have difference needs, then those states residents will vote for leaders who serve them.

Your problem seems to be that that giving supreme power to an arbitrary majority is flawed. And it surely is. But giving supreme power to an arbitrary minority is surely as bad or worse.

Old people live in every state.

If you have a problem with old people exercising their sacred voting right too much, surely the solution is to enable young people to vote, not give rural state citizens extra vote weight?

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

#283

Post by chkaloon » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

> "Sanford Levinson, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, is sharply critical of the Electoral College system, but does not believe the interstate pact would solve all of the problems inherent to America’s election design."

Same argument as we can't try any gun restrictions because none of them will stop all shootings.

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

#284

Post by AnimalMuppet » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

033803throwaway wrote: post #86

If trump is re-elected it may be the last time a republican wins a presidential election in the current system, due to demographic changes in key states (FL, TX, NC, etc.) If the electoral college is abolished, it could actually end up getting another few republicans elected, since it would incentivize republican turnout in solidly democratic states like California.

I doubt it. The Republicans will just have to move their platform just enough to the left to appeal to whichever state has the 270th vote.

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

#285

Post by adamson » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

positr0n wrote: post #268

zaroth wrote: post #250

A hypothetical situation; An amendment is proposed on the floor of the House to change the formula in a bill for how funding is allocated. The amendment presents a pro-urban allocation which provides a greater share of funding for larger cities compared to a baseline per-capita allocation. Urban center representatives stand up and argue how their cities need a higher reimbursement rate because the issue at hand is co…

The thing I've never understood about this argument is why the urban/rural divide is so special that it needs special rules? There are a bajillion other types of ways to categorize people that there is a majority and a minority besides the population density of their state.

Right? As I was reading GP, all I could think is that there are a million other instances of an issue having two interested but opposed parties, one being larger than the other, and in advanced pluralistic democracies, we generally find ways to balance the two interests that don’t involve completely hosing one party. I recognize that the Electoral College was developed in a context where people were very concerned about tyranny of the majority, but it’s a drastic solution to a not altogether exceptional problem.

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

#286

Post by zaroth » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

d1zzy wrote: post #215

zaroth wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So those people in California are citizens just like you who pay the same federal taxes and have the same rights yet when it comes to voting for the President they do not have have those same rights. It might be annoying to us that they are all "liberals" or whatever you like to brand them with but they are people with equal rights and deserve equal vote. If it means that the majority of the country is made of these…

A representative democracy by definition means that each vote does not count exactly equally.

My point is that while the current setup probably dilutes CA liberals voting power the most in terms of the EC, there are other ways the system works that is particularly empowering to CA liberals.

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

#287

Post by lonelappde » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

human20190310 wrote: post #173

munk-a wrote: post #150

The Connecticut Compromise is good and all, but I think it's about time we discard it as an artifact of the days when communication was difficult and states had expectations around operating as semi-autonomous bodies. States used to be a strong identity tie than the nation but our general mindset has shifted toward identifying as Americans before Delawareans.

In a related anachronism... > In [Republican CO State Senator Sonnenberg's] view, the Electoral College was created so that “people in rural areas did not get overrun by the masses.” This can't be true since in 1790 (roughly the same time period the EC was created), "the masses" were rural; at that point only about 5% of the population was urban[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta...

The electoral college was created to protect Southern slavery. The "masses" he is speaking of were slaves, whose bodies were used to give voting power to their oppressors.

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

#288

Post by notJim » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #206

thomascgalvin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "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…

> Why do any of these concerns need Federal intervention to solve? Why can't LAC and Arkansas and Nevada manage their own affairs?

Because issues like immigration, national defense, and environmental policy are all national issues. California voters are held hostage to the preferences of the people in Nevada, even though they vastly outnumber them.

> everyone talks now as if no locality at all can survive from day to day without Federal benefits

They plainly cannot. The federal government funds a large portion of everything from infrastructure to education to healthcare, but our government structure ensures that only people in small states have a say in how those programs actually work.

Maybe your argument is going to be that they shouldn't fund those things, but the fact is that the majority of Americans disagree with you on that.

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

#289

Post by AnimalMuppet » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 10:39 PM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #181

> Jerry Sonnenberg, a Republican state senator in Colorado who opposed the bill, said he believed the change would weaken the electoral power of sparsely populated rural states like Wyoming and Utah, while strengthening states like California and New York. States. Are. Not. People.

No. But states' representatives will often work together across party lines to try to do something that benefits the state. "Political power of a state" is not a totally idiotic concept.

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

#290

Post by UncleMeat » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 10:39 PM UTC

flyingfences wrote: post #147

LargeWu wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the two chambers are not equal. The Senate is very clearly the upper chamber.

Spatial metaphors are not illustrative. Please give some examples of what you mean.

The Senate is who convicts impeached officials. They approve judges and cabinet appointments.