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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

#601

Post by pdonis »

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…

> They plainly cannot.

If that's really true, then we as a country are screwed, because the money the federal government is spending on all this stuff comes from us. We can't pay ourselves more money than we have, and if we all get paid equally, then we're all just getting back what we paid and nothing is actually happening. So basically what you're describing is localities fighting over who gets to take money from whom. And the argument about popular vote is then just an argument that the most populous localities should be the ones taking from everyone else.

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

#602

Post by foolbiter »

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…

All the real money is already on the side of preserving the electoral college. You should examine why this is and reassess.

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

#603

Post by hannasanarion »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #360
baddox wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would be California and New York deciding the fate of all other states. You would definitely see a mass succession.

California and New York only have about 25% of Americans. Check my math, but i think that's less than a majority.

The Electoral College is apportioned by population already (with a slight bias). If California and New York had a mojority of the voters, they would already have a majority of EC votes.

California and New York also aren't monolithic. Remember: the electoral college is a lie. People in states don't actually all have the same opinions. Californians supported Trump by 40%.

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

#604

Post by tptacek »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #597
tptacek wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a 50/50 country. It would be alarming if, after one election, which will at best be decided 60/40 in their favor, a radically different (from their immediate predecessor) President was actually enable to enact their agenda. The system we have is literally designed to prevent that thing from happening. "Volunteer network" or not, Sanders isn't passing his agenda. If he was serious about doing that, he'd stay in t…

A lot of people think the changes Trump is making are radically different, and the system has turned out to be a gentleman's agreement that doesn't prevent anything.

Except that it's prevented all sorts of things, including the two biggest-ticket items in Trump's agenda --- the repeal of "Obamacare" and the construction of a wall on the southern border. I'd extend the argument by observing that the widespread belief in the Republican party that anything and everything was on the table ended up royally screwing them; it is, for instance, why they failed to repeal the ACA.

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

#605

Post by exclusiv »

delecti wrote: post #533
ShamelessC wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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've seen this pointed out, and absolutely do not see it as a problem. What's wrong with politicians paying more attention to the needs of more people? They're going to campaign somewhere , why should they pay more attention to Cleveland, Ohio (metro area population ~2m) than Los Angeles ( city population 3m, metro population over 13m)?

What's great about the electoral college is you need to have cross-regional appeal to win. So its less about which states are going to be battleground but that you generally can't just appeal to 1 or 2 regions and win. In a goal of preserving the union, it's better to have a system that pushes cross-regional appeal than a system based strictly on number of votes IMO.

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

#606

Post by hannasanarion »

drak0n1c wrote: post #374
cosmobot wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the same thing happened to the Democrats in 2000, and hadn't happened in the US at that point for over 100 years. Looked at from the perspective of the Democratic party: they have won the popular vote 4 out of the last 5 elections, but only won the presidency twice. It's not surprising the party's frustration with the Electoral College would continue to grow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite…

Interestingly in 2008 Hillary Clinton won the popular vote to be the Democratic Nominee but did not become the Nominee. The Democrats criticize the EC, but also don't mind using a form of it internally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Democratic_Party_presiden...

Both of those are untrue.

Super delegates have never decided a Democratic primary, and Obama got more votes in 2008 (the official tally excludes Washington, Michigan, and Florida, who went for Obama but didnt publish vote tallies)

The delegate system is proportional, not winner-take-all, it is utterly unlike the electoral college.

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

#608

Post by daleco »

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…

Why aren't we talking about the Cambridge Analytica scandal example? Another issue of the Electoral colleges is that a candidate could target only a few amount of people (70k according to the documentary) for changing the course of the election. Even if this has been fixed by Facebook. Shouldn't it be considered as a major flaw of the election system?

Source: "The great Hack" - Netflix doc.

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

#609

Post by danek »

carry_bit wrote: post #494
baddox wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> National Popular Vote (NPV) would reward states with lax election laws - the higher the turnout, legal or not, the more power for that state. Illegal voting is already illegal, and states can already in theory do shady things in their elections (and some probably already do). The courts should absolutely go after this, and I don't see NPV really changing this. > The NPV system focus the most energy on states with a…

> Do states currently trust that other states hold fair elections to determine how their electors vote? I don't see any change here. Currently the effects of any illegal voting are contained to the state that the illegal voting happened in; North Dakota's electors aren't going to vote differently even if there are 6 million illegal votes in California. With an NPV that isn't the case.

Illegal voting is extremely rare. A bigger problem is election fraud.

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

#610

Post by hannasanarion »

twoodfin wrote: post #544
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #93

>On Tuesday, Nevada became the latest state to pass a bill that would grant its electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote across the country, not just in Nevada. The movement is the brainchild of John Koza, a co-founder of National Popular Vote, an organization that is working to eliminate the influence of the Electoral College. I don't think this will survive constitutional challenge, because it is not the vo…

It’s a shame most of these comments are debating the merits of the Electoral College, skipping right past the much more interesting & relevant argument of whether the NPV compact is constitutional. I agree with you that it’s not. States can indeed choose electors with any constitutional method they wish, but if they hold a statewide election, it has to be a fair election or it will run afoul of the 14th Amendment.

How is NPV "unfair"? It is more in the spirit of the 14th than the winner-take-all system, where your vote means more or less depending on where you live (which was a core part of the 14th amendment logic of Gore v Bush)
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