I'm interested in hearing arguments from anyone who genuinely believes that California and New York are over all politically underprivileged.
15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
441–450 of 932 posts
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#442Earlier 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. The point they're making is that while it was designed to prevent a tyranny of the majority, it goes too far and results in a tyranny of the minority. > Why do any of these concerns need Federal intervention to solve? Why can't LAC and Arkansas and Nevada manage their…
> No one mentioned federal benefits. Sure you did; you said LAC voters don't have their concerns addressed as well because they are part of a large, populous state whose EC votes count for less per capita. My question is, if LAC is capable of managing its own affairs, why does it care? In other words, you're assuming that the President's job is to "take care of everyone's concerns", so everyone needs an equal vote to…
> In other words, you're assuming that the President's job is to "take care of everyone's concerns", so everyone needs an equal vote to elect the President. That seems to me to be absurd.
Yeah you're probably right. Let's just disenfranchise more than half the population of the country. That'll give the federal government a ton of legitimacy!
> The President's job is to faithfully execute the laws and to make executive decisions about national needs like defense and foreign policy.
And we the people get to decide which candidate will do the better job. Or we should. But because of the electoral college, we don't.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#443Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>Wyoming would still have a state legislature - I am not sure I see your point. It means that California would have more influence at the federal level than it does now. And since federal laws apply to all states it means that indirectly California would have more influence on Wyoming.
so? California has more people - it should have influence proportional to it's population - remember that in most states (except for Wyoming) electoral college votes are dominated by house seats (which are proportional to population).
If you want the US to stay whole, that's a big problem. Technically states can secede, or form a separate union if they so desire. That's also why Senate representation is _NOT_ proportional to population. I suspect that'd be the next thing to be dismantled if whoever is pushing this actually succeeds.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#444There 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…
It also makes many votes useless. I live in California, it has gone to a Democrat every time since I've been a voter. For president, I can't affect California, and I can't affect the national election either, due to the EC. Not that I'd vote for Trump, but there's no practical reason to vote for president in that circumstance.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I thought you were saying this was the mechanism for deciding how to change the rules. At any rate, people may well feel bypassed and marginalized, but hopefully the ones outside of swing states will come around once they realize that their vote actually matters for once. And if they don’t, well, lots more people feel bypassed and marginalized now . If it’s a bad idea, what do you propose to do about it? The Cons…
> Oh, I thought you were saying this was the mechanism for deciding how to change the rules. That too. This "compact" approach bugs me partly because it's a hack to get around the appropriate way of doing this, which they know they can't get enough support to do. > The Constitution allows states to cast their votes as they see fit. That may be correct. But the Wikipedia article on this ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…
What makes it a hack, but amending the Constitution isn’t? I agree it feels like one, but it is entirely above board. I’m sure the authors of the Constitution didn’t anticipate states choosing to allocate their votes this way, but they didn’t bother to specify how they could or couldn’t do it.
From the Wikipedia article, the only question I see is whether the agreement requires Congress to approve it or not. There seems to be no question that the agreement is allowed and would work.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#446The National Popular Vote (NPV) initiatives website has a lot of good info and background on the issue, and takes on the myths around it.
- https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
Explanation - https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation
Myths - https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/answering-myths
As for the compact being a partisan issue, losing the presidency despite winning the popular vote can happen in either direction:
A shift of 59,393 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have elected John Kerry despite President Bush’s nationwide lead of over 3,000,000 votes.
Edit: C-SPAN interview with NPV co-founder John Koza from March 2019:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?458502-6/washington-journal-jo...
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I don’t want to be repetitive with my other comments, but I think a good example is environmental regulations CA passes for automobiles effectively setting standards for the country.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those aren't static numbers though. California used to have 4 electoral votes in 1850s (edit) and now they have 55 (Wyoming has always had 3, New York has 29 today down from a peak of 47 in the 1940s). The ratio of votes per capita is relatively consistent - assuming a baseline level of votes so individual states aren't totally excluded - and is more a sign of a potential problem with the distribution not the system…
> California used to have 4 electoral votes in 1950s California had 32 electoral votes in the 1950s. You may have meant the 1850s , when California did have only 4 electoral votes. That's because California was tiny back then, with a population of under 100,000 in 1850. The electoral votes per capita has always been heavily skewed in favor small states. While it's true that some formerly small states have grown into…
It's relevant because the numbers could be updated, while still giving the smaller states an entry ticket, while eliminating the only valid arguments against the whole policy (high multiples which are completely disconnected from population - not only when necessary, even among the big fast growing states like Texas).
The other stuff about battleground states would have only a small connection to the electoral college, as even the small states would (still) only have a small amounts of votes, and have more to do with regional political trends.
Of course there will be push back from who ever most benefits currently. But I'm sure the political machines will learn to adapt and adjust for their new markets. There will always be enough moderates to swing both ways. Each only has to focus on the important ones, so changing who is important shouldn't hurt the parties unless they don't like having power.
Re 1850, thanks I updated my comment, I should note that doesn't change the fact they're not static.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#449Earlier 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…
The president is the chief executive of the government, and the government is a union of state governments. The federal government itself was never intended to be all that powerful. Tyranny of the minority is not really a problem in the US because state governments can diverge so much from each other. CA, for instance, is a huge outlier already; there really is no "tyranny" at play here. Residents of CA have a state…
"Our" Federal government is currently imprisoning hundreds or thousands of children in squalid conditions. Some of these children are being held in California.
This policy was enacted by a President that lost the popular vote in California, and lost the popular vote nationwide.
That is tyranny.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
so? California has more people - it should have influence proportional to it's population - remember that in most states (except for Wyoming) electoral college votes are dominated by house seats (which are proportional to population).
If you want the US to stay whole, that's a big problem. Technically states can secede, or form a separate union if they so desire. That's also why Senate representation is _NOT_ proportional to population. I suspect that'd be the next thing to be dismantled if whoever is pushing this actually succeeds.
> Technically states can secede, mlor form a separate union if they so desire.
Technically, they can't. There is no provision for secession in the US Constitution.
Practically, well, the one notable attempt didn't work out, so not that, either.
> That's also why Senate representation is _NOT_ proportional to population. I suspect that'd be the next thing to be dismantled if whoever is pushing this actually succeeds.
Well, you can't do that through coordinated state action.
Or even a Constitutional amendment. Maybe two amendments, because the provision prohibiting amendments which alter the equal representation in the Senate isn't itself explicitly protected the same way. Of course, small states can easily block a Constitutional amendment, so that's not going to happen unless they are on board.