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15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

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

#511

Post by rayiner »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #488
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…

>Article II provides that “each state shall appoint” electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” So Minnesota could decide to have the state legislature appoint its electors, without a popular vote. Technically correct but as per the 13th (?) amendment, when a state denies any male citizen aged 18 or over and not a felon the right to vote, said states representation in the electoral college and c…

> Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

I’m not sure if this question has ever been addressed, but I’m not sure this requires a popular vote for electors, but rather if there is such a popular vote the suffrage has to include all adult males.

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

#512

Post by TenaciousValor »

kevinh wrote: post #149
akulbe wrote: post #43

I could not be more opposed to the abolishment of the Electoral College. The founders had a very good rationale for putting it in. That said... I think there's a solution for this. Hard term limits for everyone, in all the branches. It already exists for the Executive branch. I think it should be instituted for both Legislative and Judicial as well.

> The founders had a very good rationale for putting it in. Yeah, slavery. How would you have a popular vote if you're allowing slaves to count as 3/5ths of a person for vote share? They obviously wouldn't have allowed them to vote. Fortunately, we no longer have slavery as an official institution, so it may be time to revise why we're doing it.

>> The founders had a very good rationale for putting it in.

> Yeah, slavery.

No, tyranny of the majority. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

Even women couldn't vote, so it's not fair to say that slavery was the rationale. No reasonable person today would say that the 3/5 Compromise or denying universal suffrage is desirable.

Other commenters have also mentioned a necessity to ratify the Constitution. That also applies here as well.

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

#513

Post by CapricornNoble »

notJim wrote: post #288
pdonis wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Rural issues" do not deserve special protection if that protection results in a tyranny of the minority. "Tyranny of the minority" gets this issue exactly backwards. The problem the Electoral College was designed to mitigate is a tyranny of the majority . > Why are the concerns of the people living in LAC less important than the concerns of the people in Nevada or Arkansas? What is it about their geography that ma…

> Why do any of these concerns need Federal intervention to solve? Why can't LAC and Arkansas and Nevada manage their own affairs? Because issues like immigration, national defense, and environmental policy are all national issues. California voters are held hostage to the preferences of the people in Nevada, even though they vastly outnumber them. > everyone talks now as if no locality at all can survive from day to…

>>>The federal government funds a large portion of everything from infrastructure to education to healthcare,

Stuff that should be handled at the state and local level, with granularity specific to each state's unique geographic and demographic circumstances. I would limit the Federal-level influence to just establishing/recommending common standards (kinda like ISO standards) that multiple states can choice to implement.

Maybe if we didn't have Federal taxes, the states could charge more for additional services without over-burdening their populations. Federal income tax is one of many reasons why I consider Woodrow Wilson the worst American President ever.

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

#514

Post by DSMan195276 »

hyperpape wrote: post #369
maratd wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody cares about visiting. They can craft their policies to entirely exclude or screw over states that aren't worth their time. For example, favor specific industries over others that are heavy in one state vs another. They'll do that anyway, but may think twice if they need to build a coalition of smaller states vs just winning the popular vote.

This idea doesn’t seem obvious to me. The biggest states are: California Texas Florida New York Pennsylvania Ohio Illinois Georgia North Carolina Michigan Which major industry unites them? Which major industries are not represented? You have tech, finance, automakers, agriculture, tourism, and oil. Maybe not much mining and fishing? Probably something else, but these are very different states.

It's worth adding that those states aren't even close to as homogeneous as most tend to assume. Only 60% of California voted Democrat in 2016, and you have to assume the turnout for Republicans would be higher if it wasn't guaranteed that their vote (for president) was meaningless. With the current system, you can cater only to the populous parts of California and win the whole state, and that goes for most other states as well. With a popular vote, that ~30 to 40% of California is relevant again, along with significant chunks of other states.

It's also worth noting the math really doesn't work out, the electoral college makes it easier to win the whole thing while carrying less states/votes (Which really shouldn't be surprising). With both the popular vote and the electoral college, you only have to take the 10 most populous states to win the whole thing. But the difference is that, with the current electoral college you generally only need to get 51% of the vote to win the whole state, which is significantly easier and turns states like California from a 60% to a 100%. With the popular vote, to actually win in that fashion you would have to take almost every vote in those states, which is practically impossible considering the diversity.

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

#515

Post by cecilpl2 »

ShamelessC wrote: post #320
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…

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?

Shouldn't politicians generally spend time and attention on the problems that affect the most people?

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

#516

Post by rayiner »

pasquinelli wrote: post #500
gthaman wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let the states that will never get their way in a "fixed" elector college, secede. To mess with the electoral college in this point in time - when its basically 49% vs 51% - and at such a level of divide in the country is not exactly a testament to how empathetic the two sides are. It would be a disaster. Everyone thinks Trump himself is the problem but this awful idea to change the goalposts literally to win electio…

By your logic there can never be a suitable time for democratic reform. The current political situation can only get worse until the united states becomes more democratic or more authoritarian.

That doesn’t follow. Even in recent history, most Presidents command large electoral vote majorities. In my life time, 7 of 10 elections ended in a more than 60-40 margin in the electoral college, including both Obama wins.

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

#517

Post by _bxg1 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #301
_bxg1 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But regardless of what forces are actually pushing for it, it is more fair.

Perhaps. But when I know that there are people with a partisan axe to grind pushing for it, I think arguments for "fair" should be regarded with a certain amount of skepticism...

Sure, but I think they hold up to skepticism

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

#518

Post by zw123456 »

I have often thought that part of the rationale for the electoral college was that in the 18th century they did not have the internet, TV, Radio, even newspapers were pretty scarce. So it just wasn't all that practical for a candidate to ride a horse around all 13 colonies to meet each voter. The logical solution would have been to have a parliamentary system whereby the congress would select the president for you. The problem there was that the president would be beholden to the congress and you would lose some of the checks and balance features because he would be less likely to veto something. So they developed a "shadow congress" that did not have law making responsibilities but sole purpose was to travel to Philadelphia or DC and hear the speeches and so forth and select the president for you as your representative.

Looking at it from this 18th century perspective highlights why it is completely unnecessary today. Obviously the voter has many ways of getting to know the positions of the candidates themselves and hence able to elect the president directly. There is no need for it today.

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

#519

Post by fastball »

zw123456 wrote: post #518

I have often thought that part of the rationale for the electoral college was that in the 18th century they did not have the internet, TV, Radio, even newspapers were pretty scarce. So it just wasn't all that practical for a candidate to ride a horse around all 13 colonies to meet each voter. The logical solution would have been to have a parliamentary system whereby the congress would select the president for you. T…

On the other hand, the electoral college, like congress, gives actual weight to the idea that a state is more than just the sum of its population, by automatically getting two votes for being a state.

Whether or not that is necessary is a different conversation from the information dissemination purpose of the EC.

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

#520

Post by dahart »

vturner wrote: post #379
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 wish someone with $$ would start plastering this message everywhere the absurd "get rid of the elctoral college" debate comes up. We are not a democracy, seriously no one wants a democracy of 300 million plus. We are a federation of states that is supposed to have most of the control in their region and sacrifice a little bit of control to the federal government for purposes of defense and commerce. Your "democracy…

Your argument seems confused to me, but maybe I don’t quite understand, can you elaborate? We do have state level democracy. The electoral college’s purpose is solely for presidential elections, not for local elections. Why shouldn’t we have a democracy for presidential elections? Your reasons given (local control) don’t apply to federal elections. Even with the electoral college, we’re pretty close to democratic representation for president anyway, and the discrepancy between what we have, a federal republic, and a pure democracy doesn’t serve the same purpose that it used to. So why should we keep it? Why is the proposal to get rid of the electoral college “absurd”? What do you mean about authoritarians taking away state level democracy?
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