351–360 of 932 posts
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I think the whole “visiting” thing is overblown. We have TV and the Internet. This isn’t the 19th century when the only way the average American might EVER see or hear a President would be a short speech off the back of a train car.
That's right. Whats at stake is in which markets and demographics the ad spend goes.
If people are up in arms about the electoral college giving small states outsized influence, wait until they hear about the senate.
That's the literal point of the Senate, though, to be fair.
*and also includes Washington D.C.
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I'm not in favor of the electoral college, but wouldn't its elimination merely shift this problem to politicians only visiting the most poulated states (e.g. California) anyway?
I think the whole “visiting” thing is overblown. We have TV and the Internet. This isn’t the 19th century when the only way the average American might EVER see or hear a President would be a short speech off the back of a train car.
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…
Why should people residing in any geographic group intentionally be given outsized political power when picking the president? Giving equal input to every voter is not advantaging non-rural people over rural people, it's advantaging more popular political policies over less popular ones. While people living in rural areas may have distinct cultural values and may face real inequities when it comes to infrastructure,…
I’m not sure it’s possible to convince small states to give up power now that they have it. Although I’m sure they may want to cecede. Can you imagine the immense power that Wyoming would have as a sovereign nation? Or Delaware? They would be protected from threat by being surrounded by the US and could become havens for activities not allowed in the US. Basically become super Switzerlands.
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That's not an argument against the Electoral College per se, but rather an argument against letting states allocate all of their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote. This particular problem could be solved by forcing all states to apportion their Electoral College votes based on the distribution of the popular vote.
IIRC this behavior is per-state and some (Maine or NH maybe?) do just that.
I want to point out this article was written in May, and is a bit out of date. For example, Nevada (heavily mentioned in the article) never adopted the National Popular Vote compact because the governor vetoed the bill after the legislature passed it. FiveThirtyEight published an article last week on the current state of the compact: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-movement-to-skip-th...
> Unsurprisingly, given that almost every state government to pass the National Popular Vote compact was completely controlled by Democrats, It kinda feels like this part keeps getting glossed over when people talk about this. I don't think those signing on have really thought it through, and are just reacting to the 2016 election results. Of course the party that lost wants to change the system in a way that, that t…
And, sure, it benefits the Democrats -- but given that population trends over the last few decades have all been about migration to urban areas from rural ones, I think it's at least worth asking whether keeping the electoral college and giving ever fewer voters a disproportionately ever-greater say over the country is truly what we want.
If another national election goes the "lose popular election, win election anyway" route within the next few cycles, this is going to start getting a lot of noise around it.
There are discussions about the electoral college favoring small states. Some people think that's bad, some people think it's good. 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 electora…
Swing states shift, though. California was basically solid red from the 1950s through the 1980s. Until 2016, few people would have called Wisconsin or Michigan "swing states" judging from their voting in the past few elections. People move, demographics change.
There are discussions about the electoral college favoring small states. Some people think that's bad, some people think it's good. 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 electora…
Thus, the question is: Do you want the majority of the USA geography being controlled by the will of people least knowledgeable about it?
If you eliminate the electoral college you give political control of resources to those who have absolutely NO physical control of those resources and yet still suffer the impact of their environmental influence.
What I mean is, people in California, Texas, and New York would push all the bad things to the rural states and take all the good parts, leaving those who live in the rural areas to feel the full brunt of those decisions. Take Louisiana as an example. It's been decimated by everyone who doesn't live there.
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> 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.
No states wanted population-based representation, or all did, depending on how you look at it: that is, no one wanted to count non-assimilated Native American population, all of them wanted to count the remaining free population, and there was a dispute about how to count the people that the slave states weren't going to treat as people and, particularly, certainly weren't going to let vote.
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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.
It would be unfortunate if states felt they wanted to secede because their citizens were given the same political influence over presidential election as citizens of other states.