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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

#431

Post by Monroe13 »

hyperpape wrote: post #302

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…

The electoral college most certainly favors small states but I agree with you it also creates battleground states and I agree that is the more important effect.

It’s not a matter of whether battleground states deserve special protection, it’s a matter of whether or not the battleground states in any given election serve as a good representation of the nation as a whole? Are they a better representation than a popular vote which would consistently favor coastal urban centers?

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

#432

Post by dragonwriter »

ajmurmann wrote: post #357
WarDores wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure that's actually true. There was a great graphic a few years back that showed party allegiance by state over time. You could see how most states used to be fairly split between both parties and how they frequently swung from party to party between elections. However, in the 80s or so many states started to align more closely with one party. Given the duration for which that has been going on, I wonder if…

> You could see how most states used to be fairly split between both parties and how they frequently swung from party to party between elections.

That was a short-term artifact of political realignments starting in the 1930s (New Deal Coalition) and—before that one had fully stabilized—1960s (Civil Rights).

Those overlapping realignments settled down into s new relatively stable alignment by the late 1980s; before the realignments most states were much stronger one-party states than the solid-red or solid-blue states today, and sometimes the second state party, if it existed at all, wasn't even the other major national party (Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is a remnant of that: prior to the New Deal coalition, which it became part of and eventually joined the Democratic Party, the party competing with the dominant Republican Party in Minnesota was the Farmer-Labor Party, which was not associated with the Democrats.)

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

#433

Post by pseudalopex »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #276
rootusrootus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Bush v. Gore was decided more than a month before inauguration. Why would this take much longer?

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

#434

Post by smsm42 »

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…

> we are no longer an actual representative democracy.

Claiming that because California has 57 votes and Wyoming a whopping 3 votes, instead of California having 70 and Wyoming one (if at all), we "no longer have representative democracy" is nonsense. California still have wastly more votes. Yes, Wyoming also gets some, otherwise it why bother voting at all if everything is essentially decided by the most populous states anyway?

> protection results in a tyranny of the minority

3 votes against 57 is hardly "tyranny".

> Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas?

Why people leaving in LAC should be in virtually full control (with the current power of federal government it's very close to that) over people of Nevada and Arkansas and Wyoming? What's the point for Wyoming to sign up for such a deal to be ruled by LAC?

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

#435

Post by devdas »

zaroth wrote: post #286
d1zzy wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Such as?

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

#436

Post by jdminhbg »

input_sh wrote: post #134
jonathankoren wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To reinforce this idea, my city has 3x the population of Wyoming. I grew up rural, but I long ago moved to an urban life. Politicians — and to be honest rural folk themselves — often try to enforce the idea that rural life is somehow more genuine. You’ll hear this as “Real America”, or how city folks don’t understand how “the Real World works”, or are some how “out of touch”. Which is fundamentally a completely bizar…

> when the majority of Americans (and I believe the world in general now) live an urban life. I think you're underestimating the figures. 80.7% of Americans lived in urban areas according to the 2010 census. Estimates for the entire world are over 50% for over a decade now (since 2007, to be more accurate). It increases slowly but steadily, so we were at about 55.27% in 2018. It's going to be about 68% by 2050 and ab…

The Census's definition of "urban area" doesn't quite match what most people think of, I don't think. It's any area of over 50k people. If you reverse sort the list provided on Wikipedia[0], you'll find a lot of places that aren't top of mind when people think about "urban life:" Grand Island, NE; Hazleton, PA; Albany, OR.

Edit: I'm not disputing the larger point. I just think the number is probably a little lower than that if you adjusted for being "truly" urban.

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

#437

Post by thomascgalvin »

corodra wrote: post #304
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…

To your arguement about why do LA residents count less. I say it's not neccesarily less. Just differently. Do you want someone who has never farmed in their lives. Probably never even picked up a shovel, have a say in the rules and regs about agriculture throughout the midwest? Same goes vice versa. Country folk who hate living in concrete jungles shouldn't make rules for city dwellers. Thus an equal vote, isn't equa…

> I say it's not neccesarily less. Just differently.

So ... separate but equal?

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

#438

Post by wmgries »

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.

This isn't a spatial metaphor any more than "upperclassmen" and "underclassmen" are for high schools or "left" and "right" are for politics. We call it the "upper" chamber because it's supposed to be the higher status, more "dignified" chamber.

Words have histories of course, and probably at one point this was a spatial metaphor - maybe some bicameral legislature literally did have one of their higher status body on a different floor than their lower status body. But the words upper and lower when applied to the legislative branch have evolved since then.

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

#439

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #418

Debates over the electoral college tend to conflate two different things. The original purpose of the electoral college was a compromise between those who wanted the president directly elected, and those who wanted Congress to elect the president. While very small states have a modest edge as a result of using the number of members of Congress to decide the number of electors, the real purpose of the system is to add…

[deleted]

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

#440

Post by Fomite »

hyperpape wrote: post #302

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…

This. Living in a rural area on the border between a solid Blue and solid Red state, no one cares.
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