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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

#671

Post by nostrademons »

hannasanarion wrote: post #652
nostrademons wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume there's an excluded middle, and that tyranny of one group over another is inevitable?

The Electoral College lets the minority choose the president against the will of the Majority. That is called tyranny of the minority. I want to know why you think that's a good thing.

So, for one, I don't - I'm mildly in favor of direct popular votes combined with some form of runoff voting (either IRV, STV, or approval voting).

But I also get the arguments of people that say that without the electoral college, there is zero incentive for politicians to campaign in or pay attention to the interests of people in lightly-populated area. And I think that is a bad thing - whenever you completely disenfranchise people you get create a potential crack for revolution, secession, or other fragmentation processes to seep in. (It's also just shitty to the people involved.) I'd rather fix that by getting rid of first-past-the-post voting systems, but I also think you can't ignore that problem.

You still haven't answered why you believe there's an excluded middle. The opposite of tyranny is representation, and it's the system we have in the U.S. You can quibble about the degree of representation, but the fact that you can quibble about it means that we don't have a tyranny.

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

#672

Post by ianai »

fastball wrote: post #528
ianai wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn’t a reason for a single state to be able to hold the entire progress of the majority back.

How can a single state hold back progress in this case? Individual states can apportion their EC votes however they want. 48/50 states are all-or-nothing states (arguably the actual problem), which is decided at the state level.

Mitch McConnell

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

#673

Post by zhoujianfu »

UncleMeat wrote: post #35
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…

This cannot be true. Right now in order to win Florida you must win a popular vote in Florida. There is no internal electoral college in Florida. Winning Florida is incredibly important for presidential candidates. Where do they campaign in Florida? Everywhere . They don't just hang out in Miami. If candidates do not avoid less populated areas when aiming to win a popular vote in a state, why would they do so for the…

Exactly.. what a smart candidate does is spend their next dollar on whatever is the best bang for the buck in getting elected. So an NPV would mean figuring out where the undecided voters are, nation-wide, and figuring out the cheapest ones to go after first, and working your way up the low-hanging fruit.

If it was much cheaper to convince undecided voters in urban areas, they’d go there first... but the competition among candidates spending would start to drive up the cost per voter to an equilibrium where it started to make sense to go to rural areas, and if that started to drive prices up, maybe next is suburban. But it’s everywhere, all over the country, appealing to everybody as effectively as you can, to win. And since the president affects everybody, it only seems right they should be elected by 1 person, 1 vote, across all citizens.

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

#674

Post by surge »

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?

We already have a problem with politicians getting the majority of their donations from people out of their district and even have very low approval ratings in their district.

Something needs to be done to ensure all districts are equally represented and the representatives work for their constituents, not benefactors from out of state.

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

#675

Post by choppaface »

daleco wrote: post #636
ananonymoususer wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that the Cambridge Analytica "hack" is even an issue? The reason is because the data was used to get an "evil" republican elected. The exact same tactics were used to get Obama elected, and nobody seems to be complaining.

It’s harder to manipulate millions of people rather than 70k. You’re right, it was also used to get Obama elected. It’s still wrong.

Though Obama won the popular vote, too, by 8% and 4%, respectively. Obama would still be elected under these changes.

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

#676

Post by zhoujianfu »

ananonymoususer wrote: post #633

Obviously only the "blue" states want this change. Fortunately there are more "red" states than blue states, so the original purpose of the electoral collage, as created by the founding fathers, will be preserved. Otherwise we would be in "tyranny of the majority" mode, which we are anyway, but at least not with regard to presidential elections.

It’s really not a blue state vs red state thing as much as a swing state vs non-swing state thing. Right now it’s more blue because trump is in power, but if democrats take the White House (and especially if it’s without winning the popular vote), red states will be jumping on the bandwagon. Before 2016 red states were terrified of the electoral college “blue wall” and many were very close to joining the compact before the 2016 election made it politically infeasible.

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

#677

Post by Taniwha »

mattnewton wrote: post #347
TylerE wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the whole “visiting” thing is overblown. We have TV and the Internet. This isn’t the 19th century when the only way the average American might EVER see or hear a President would be a short speech off the back of a train car.

Visiting here is a proxy for overall campaign message initiatives, which includes physical visits, but also ad buy and even shaping the candidates message and platform to better appeal to the swing stage demographic. Arguably the last one is the biggest potential problem since it means some minority has an outside influence on candidates.

It's not just visiting, it's pork too, there's a reason why there's a net wealth transfer through taxes from those states that are not in play to those that are.

A NPV would go some way to spread the federal spending around a little more fairly

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

#678

Post by zhoujianfu »

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...

The NPVIC board actually has more Republicans than Democrats on it.

https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/about

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

#679

Post by retox »

rapind wrote: post #623
rayiner wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He got a judge.

From wiki;

As of August 14, 2019, the United States Senate has confirmed 146 Article III judges nominated by President Trump, including 2 Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, 43 judges for the United States Courts of Appeals, 99 judges for the United States District Courts, and 2 judges for the United States Court of International Trade.

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

#680

Post by zhoujianfu »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #441

I'm interested in hearing arguments from anyone who genuinely believes that California and New York are over all politically underprivileged.

Every non-swing state (including Texas and Wyoming) is when it comes to electing the president.
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