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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

#451

Post by IgorPartola »

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…

First, the number of House reps is no longer proportionate to the population. Second, the layer of indirection as it exists today does nothing. Electors aren’t free to choose a president. They in most cases must elect the person they pledged to elect and if they don’t they instantly get replaced by a new elector who will. What purpose does that serve? Seems to me like we should either buck up and actually allow these people to elect a president, or abolish the whole institution as it currently is a farce.

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

#452

Post by jonathankoren »

m0zg wrote: post #91
outside1234 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wyoming would still have a state legislature - I am not sure I see your point. If you are saying that each person in Wyoming would have 1 vote towards the presidency and each person in California would have 1 vote towards the presidency, then I agree.

The point is, Wyoming and many other less populated states, would then have very, very limited say in who becomes the head of the executive branch, and therefore holds the veto power over whatever the legislative branch is able to put together whenever they feel like actually doing any work. That's the whole idea: no matter how sparsely populated, each state has at least _some_ say when electing the dude (or dudette)…

That's how democracy works. If a region wants more say, they should have more people.

No one complains that Lost Springs (population 4) has a "very, very limited say in who becomes the head of the executive branch" of Wyoming. It's same really. It's just lines on a map, nothing to do with state or national identity.

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

#453

Post by wmgries »

What if Congress revoked all (or nearly all) implicitly and explicitly delegated powers to the Executive? The jockeying over who runs for President and how we elect them always seems to miss the point that the modern Executive is much too powerful.

Make the Presidency weaker, and then let's have this discussion about how we elect them.

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

#454

Post by harryh »

IgorPartola wrote: post #451
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…

First, the number of House reps is no longer proportionate to the population. Second, the layer of indirection as it exists today does nothing. Electors aren’t free to choose a president. They in most cases must elect the person they pledged to elect and if they don’t they instantly get replaced by a new elector who will. What purpose does that serve? Seems to me like we should either buck up and actually allow these…

First, the number of House reps is no longer proportionate to the population.

Yes they are. Each house district has about 750,000 people. You get a bit of deviation because states don't necessarily have a precise multiple of 750k people. Also we only redraw districts every 10 years, so things have drifted a bit since 2010.

But it's pretty close.

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

#455

Post by philliphaydon »

frankbreetz wrote: post #68

I turned 30 this year,and the Republican candidate has won the popular vote once in my life,and he was an incumbent. There has been a Republican president 14 of the 30 years of my life. Now,the first president of my life ( Bush 1) won the popular vote before I was born, but if we don't count him, no Republican has entered office with the popular vote in my life. Regardless of political beliefs does this seem right to…

If you removed only California from the popular vote then Hillary lost. The share number of people there still cause Hillary to get the popular vote. Is it fair that 1 state has a controlling share over every other state?

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

#456

Post by marcell »

WarDores wrote: post #333

It's not about division of power between rural/urban or big states/small states. The Electoral College is about buffering purely democratic power. The President doesn't represent "the people." He/she represents the interests of the states. The Legislative Branch represents the will of the people (most directly through the House of Representatives). One of the biggest problems is vesting too much power and importance…

I don't know about that, specifically this part:

> He/she represents the interests of the states

This assumes that states in America have some sort of distinct cultural/political interests, divided along state lines. This isn't really the case. For example there are no significant cultural differences between North Dakota and South Dakota. The dividing line there is pretty arbitrary.

Similarly, some places that have very significant cultural/political differences are lumped together, like the Bay Area and the Central Valley in California.

Your argument would make more sense if applied to a political arrangement like the EU. Each member of the EU has a long history as a sovereign, distinct political and cultural entity. The border between, for example, Hungary and Romania is much much more significant than that between Colorado and Arizona.

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

#457

Post by hyperpape »

smsm42 wrote: post #419
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…

> If you live in Wyoming, the electoral college does not help you, because your vote is secure. For now. But if Wyoming doesn't like what happens with Republican party, it can change. There's a huge inertia in large parties, so probably won't happen overnight, but it's not a law of nature. From what I've heard, one of the reasons 2016 election went the way it did because Democrats considered certain states (not Wyomi…

I think it was pretty systematic.

If you look at 538 (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/), they were pretty accurate predicted which states were most and least likely to vote Trump or Clinton.

It's just that in several states where they thought Clinton had a small lead, she lost. Meanwhile, there were no states they thought Trump had a small lead but he lost.

The comparative judgments (Wisconsin is easier for Clinton to win than North Carolina, which is easier than Alabama) were right. The absolute judgments (Clinton will win Wisconsin) were wrong.

If you had gone back in time and told Clinton's team "all the polls are too positive for you, you don't have a safety margin" they'd have known that Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were at risk.

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

#458

Post by coryrc »

harryh wrote: post #454
IgorPartola wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, the number of House reps is no longer proportionate to the population. Second, the layer of indirection as it exists today does nothing. Electors aren’t free to choose a president. They in most cases must elect the person they pledged to elect and if they don’t they instantly get replaced by a new elector who will. What purpose does that serve? Seems to me like we should either buck up and actually allow these…

First, the number of House reps is no longer proportionate to the population. Yes they are. Each house district has about 750,000 people. You get a bit of deviation because states don't necessarily have a precise multiple of 750k people. Also we only redraw districts every 10 years, so things have drifted a bit since 2010. But it's pretty close.

I think they mean number of citizens per House rep, which is many times higher now.

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

#459

Post by jpindar »

baddox wrote: post #122
umvi wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm all for rural representation, but people in rural areas essentially have their vote count more than people in cities, right? Yeah but maybe that's a good thing. 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 screwed over by the interests of the city folk wh…

> 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

Well yeah. There's a reason why it's called the United STATES.

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

#460

Post by harryh »

coryrc wrote: post #458
harryh wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, the number of House reps is no longer proportionate to the population. Yes they are. Each house district has about 750,000 people. You get a bit of deviation because states don't necessarily have a precise multiple of 750k people. Also we only redraw districts every 10 years, so things have drifted a bit since 2010. But it's pretty close.

I think they mean number of citizens per House rep, which is many times higher now.

Ah, OK. Yes, that is definitely true. Wikipedia has a nice graph on this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_ap...

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