301–310 of 932 posts
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No, it kind of is the point. Democrats aren't doing this because it's more fair , they're doing it because they think they'll win more elections.
But regardless of what forces are actually pushing for it, it is more fair.
However, there's a more important issue: that's not really what the electoral college does. It gives a small edge to small states[0]. The much bigger effect is that in every given election, it favors a handful of battleground states over all the rest.
If you live in Wyoming, the electoral college does not help you, because your vote is secure. Ditto for Vermont. But if you live in Ohio or Florida, presidential candidates will spend all their time in your state, trying to get your vote.
While you can concoct a semi-coherent case for rural voters needing special protection, no one can explain why Ohio is more or less important than North Carolina, or Florida than Texas.
[0] Which, if you're paying attention, is at least correlated with being rural, but only partially--another lazy generalization that surrounds this subject.
Up next: Abolishing the World Series. Make it one big, long game and count only the total number of runs.
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…
That was the original point to electoral votes and a representative government system. It's not that the system doesn't work, it's been perverted. If we can end the gerrymandering and other political machine issues, we'd have a better system. Not perfect. But I think its steered the wrong way with political affiliation as platform rather than constituent needs.
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For some states - mostly red ones - that isn't true. Texans still identify primarily with their state. That said, it's still a stupid reason for giving fewer people more votes. There is no reasonable argument for that, no matter which way you slice it.
Eeeeh... Texan's have a lot of state pride - but try confusing a Texan for a Delawarean vs. confusing a Texan with a Canadian or Kiwi - pretty sure the Texan will be more offended with either of those later confusions if they've got that weird patriotism streak.
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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.
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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.
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> Yeah but maybe that's a good thing. Only if you start with the assumption that different individuals voters should have different amounts of political influence, which the NPV movement is explicitly rejecting. > 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 sc…
> I think the problem here is that you're portraying it as if cities or states are the agents making decisions, rather than individuals. That was exactly the point of the Electoral College - that states would elect the president. You may think that's a bad idea. That's fine. You may want to change it. But it's a really fundamental change to the architecture. If it's to be changed, it should be changed by a constituti…
Also, the framers expected that most of the time, there would be too many candidates for any to win a majority. In that case, the House would select a winner from the candidates.
A system where electors do not make their own decisions, and one candidate always wins a majority, was simply not conceived of.
https://www.constitution.org/fed/federa68.htm
This is the most easily digestible evidence, but Hamilton is obviously not the only one who thought this way. He is representing the position of most of the framers, that's why the system he describes here is what ended up in the constitution. Note that there is no mention at all of rural vs. urban, underrepresented communities, states' rights, anything like that. Those factors contributed to the creation of the Senate and the House, but not the electoral college. That was entirely due to the men writing the constitution not trusting the men they were allowing to vote.
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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