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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

#611

Post by smsm42 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #571
smsm42 wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thinking in terms other than people, be it states/counties/acreage is another version of putting "landowners" in charge. Again, having 3 votes against 57 does not put whoever has 3 votes "in charge" in any sensible meaning of the word. > Except they don't. Because they think LAC has already made up their minds, no matter what. And judging from voting patterns, they are correct. So whose fault is that? If more LAC v…

> Again, having 3 votes against 57 does not put whoever has 3 votes "in charge" in any sensible meaning of the word. LAC and NYC both voted very blue, yet here we are. How do you credibly claim that "LAC is by and large in charge of the direction of the federal government"?

I don't claim they are. I claim they would be, if Wyoming had 1 vote and California 70. Right Wyoming specifically has a little more influence than it would have in purely population-based system. That was by design - otherwise large urban conglomerates would totally dominate all the politics and more rural states would have no chance to influence politics at all. Now they have a larger chance, while still being very far from any dominancy, but at least they have guaranteed minimum influence of 3 votes.

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

#612

Post by saghm »

dragonwriter wrote: post #432
ajmurmann wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> 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).

To be fair, there were only four elections in the previous 70 years that resulted in a Democrat winning. I think that avoiding something that like in the future is probably worthwhile, which is a minor argument against the electoral college based on past results.

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

#613

Post by newfriend »

knolax wrote: post #471
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…

Why should 'rural' be a protected minority as opposed to any other minority? Should African Americans ger 3.6x the vote as White Americans because there are fewer of them?

'Rural' is not a protected minority. States, however, are an important part of the United States of America.

> Should African Americans ger 3.6x the vote as White Americans because there are fewer of them?

Because it's not the United Races of America.

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

#614

Post by hannasanarion »

abtinf wrote: post #275
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 seems like failing a constitutional challenge is the best case. Electors don’t actually have to vote the way state law tells them to—that would require a constitutional amendment that restructures the whole process. When they vote counter to state law, they are called “faithless electors”. A state system which ignores the will of its constituents is going to be much more susceptible to faithless electors, who may…

Please stop spouting nonsense, none of this is true.

Faithless electors are electors who vote contrary to the opinion of their state. In some states this is legal, in other states it isn't, the constitution has nothing to do with it.

The states are free to outlaw faithless electors and many of them already do.

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

#615

Post by rayiner »

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.

Trump has been able to get almost nothing done. He got a tax cut, which was billed as radical but mostly just brings our corporate taxes in line with Western Europe. And he put tariffs on China—one of the few things the President can do without the support of Congress.

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

#616

Post by hannasanarion »

rootusrootus wrote: post #61
outside1234 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? What if there state votes for the popular winner and that popular winner is not the winner? Remember, this will work both ways - eventually we will have a democrat that doesn't win the popular vote as well in the current system.

It will only ever tip that way for a Democrat when Democrats become the party of rural voters.

The urban/rural thing is a red herring. The Electoral college doesn't give more power to rural areas. It gives power to purple states, where the election is close. How many people are in the state doesn't matter.

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

#617

Post by JamesBarney »

rayiner wrote: post #615
lazyasciiart wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Trump has been able to get almost nothing done. He got a tax cut, which was billed as radical but mostly just brings our corporate taxes in line with Western Europe. And he put tariffs on China—one of the few things the President can do without the support of Congress.

Is was my understanding it moves our nominal rates in line with the rest of the world, but this reduces our effective rates to below the rest of the world.

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

#618

Post by hannasanarion »

casefields wrote: post #581
standardUser wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not confusing if you ditch the cynicism. Many people genuinely believe that a system wherein the president is elected after winning fewer voters then their opponent on a regular basis is a system that should be changed.

Let's completely take away the cynicism. If California cared about representation for minorities they would divvy up their electors proportionally so that the minority of their voters, republicans, would receive electors. But that would defeat the purpose of using their overwhelming majority of democrats to bludgeon national elections towards their preference.

It is the tragedy of the commons: an equilibrium of bad choices, where if one state does the right thing alone, then it loses all of its influence to the competition (see Maine and Nebraska).

The solution to the tragedy of the commons is coordination: if everyone does the right thing at the same time, nobody gets screwed for being first. Thus the NPVIC.

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

#619

Post by hannasanarion »

marpstar wrote: post #145
gfodor wrote: post #11

I'm really confused about this because I don't understand the incentives politicians have to adopt this in their own state. It clearly undermines their state's power in national elections. My (cynical) assumption is that this will be obeyed insofar as it helps bring about the desired outcome by those in power. It will be disregarded if it would shift the outcome in the other direction.

I think a lot of people forget that US = United States. That is, states that are united. The electoral college attempts to "balance" the power that each STATE has to elect a president. The election is a state-level function. In my opinion, to switch to a popular-vote-wins system is to basically say "hey everyone in other states, go ahead and decide for our actual citizens".

And the office is called "President of the United States", not "President of Ohio, Michigan, Florida, and Pennsylvania".

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

#620

Post by hinkley »

exclusiv wrote: post #605
delecti wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My recollection from civics was that the college is to prevent populist candidates from winning. Someone very popular only in densely populated areas may have an agenda that hurts rural ones (eg, noting that federal taxes disproportionately go to rural areas for things like maintaining highways, make it “fair” and leave rural people with shit roads and diminished services).
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