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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

#831

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

screye wrote: post #815
exclusiv wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is geography a factor in a democracy. Why is cross regional appeal of any value, if these region don't make up even 10% of the combined US population. If US states were divided by population it would be a different think all together. But California has 40 times as many people as Wyoming. Cross regional appeal is quoted as an obviously good thing to have, but the core assumption of equal distribution of populatio…

I don't think that was the core assumption. Recall that lack of representation in government was one of the reasons for the revolution that created the US.

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

#832

Post by kd5bjo »

greenpizza13 wrote: post #828
kd5bjo wrote: post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is cross regional appeal of any value, if these region don't make up even 10% of the combined US population. Because those people control a large fraction of the country’s food supply and it would be a disaster if they decided to stop selling it to the rest of us.

You're probably being facetious, but I have heard some version of this argument before. It's akin to saying "give us what we want or we'll hold the country hostage." In reality, free markets being a thing, this wouldn't happen. We can import from other countries and they need to sell their goods to live.

More hyperbolic than facetious. It can’t be a good thing to disenfranchise the holders of your strategic resources en masse, and farmland was the easiest to point at.

You’re right that it’s extremely unlikely to get so bad that they get forcibly nationalized. However, my understanding is that market conditions are pretty bad for farmers right now, and have been for years. Any change that makes things worse for them will likely drive some to other lines of work and reduce overall production, driving food prices up.

This particular effect is probably extremely small in practice, but I felt the need to remind HN that not all value is produced in cities.

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

#833

Post by andyv »

rootusrootus wrote: post #75
andyv wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the popular vote favored, say Trump, and if California could change the election by pulling out of the compact, they would. In a heartbeat. That's why I'm not too worried about it. If it would really change the result, it's easy for a State to hit the pause button.

> it's easy for a State to hit the pause button Is it that easy? It's a compact, not trivial to pull out of.

The US constitution says that presidential electors are chosen in a manner prescribed by the state legislature. They change the prescription, just as some have changed it now.

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

#834

Post by bskap »

hinkley wrote: post #620
exclusiv wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That assumes that "only appeals to cities" is the only type of populist that we need protection from. The electoral college does nothing to protect against things like "only appeals to white people" or "only appeals to Christians" populists, which were not a big concern for America's founders or the much whiter and more Christian rural population today.

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

#835

Post by squish78 »

greenpizza13 wrote: post #828
kd5bjo wrote: post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is cross regional appeal of any value, if these region don't make up even 10% of the combined US population. Because those people control a large fraction of the country’s food supply and it would be a disaster if they decided to stop selling it to the rest of us.

You're probably being facetious, but I have heard some version of this argument before. It's akin to saying "give us what we want or we'll hold the country hostage." In reality, free markets being a thing, this wouldn't happen. We can import from other countries and they need to sell their goods to live.

Do you want to eat unregulated Chinese mystery meat? Not that I agree with the sentiment of 'holding the urban areas hostage' but the US and the world need the agricultural production of the central US

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

#836

Post by tempestn »

Mirioron wrote: post #729
tempestn wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem any more likely to me than Californians moving to Wyoming to make their vote count today.

The difference is that while the vote of each Californian might have less impact on the outcome of elections, there are so many of them that the problems that California has to deal with become important enough that politicians won't ignore them. If you make the situation work the other way around, then Wyoming's problems become even less important than they are right now and you can pretty much just ignore them and…

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I can see how people would feel that way. Can also understand how people on the other side are frustrated when a minority of the population has disproportionate power though. So as with most things it sounds like there's no easy/perfect solution.

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

#837

Post by [deleted] »

greenpizza13 wrote: post #829
newfriend wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was an election of a majority leader. The majority of electoral votes were for Donald Trump, by a large margin. The house is elected by population, the senate by state. The electoral college is designed to be a blend of the house and senate systems.

You refuse to appreciate the context of his comment. Trump is a minority leader in the context of the popular vote. That's just by definition. The reason we're not talking about electoral votes is because the discussion revolves around how things would change if we went with the popular vote. Yes, he got more electoral votes. Many would argue this is a broken system which has fucked our country for the second time in…

[deleted]

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

#838

Post by rtkwe »

kd5bjo wrote: post #826
screye wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is geography a factor in a democracy. Why is cross regional appeal of any value, if these region don't make up even 10% of the combined US population. If US states were divided by population it would be a different think all together. But California has 40 times as many people as Wyoming. Cross regional appeal is quoted as an obviously good thing to have, but the core assumption of equal distribution of populatio…

> Why is cross regional appeal of any value, if these region don't make up even 10% of the combined US population. Because those people control a large fraction of the country’s food supply and it would be a disaster if they decided to stop selling it to the rest of us.

Why have those protections in the Presidency though who is the face of America. Low population states (more accurate than saying the EC favors small states really) already have an even more disproportional impact in the Senate where 40 Senators representing just 38.4M people can completely control the laws that get passed via filabuster (lowest 20 population states + 1 to prevent cloture). That's a little of 10% over the population that can in theory decide 100% what can get passed in the US. (Granted the 20 lowest population states do include a few democratic states, but it is largely consistently republican states)

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

#839

Post by zeveb »

zeveb wrote: post #754
hyperpape wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, at that extreme, it's big, and I probably could state my claim more precisely. Here's my claim: if you drew a curve of electoral votes per person by percentile, there would be a very small area that was significantly elevated, and the remaining portion would be moderately flat. Because Wyoming's population is so small, the absolute impact isn't that big. Go up just a few spots to Hawaii and it's more like a 2:1…

> In contrast, the Senate is thoroughly anti-democratic, unsalvagably so. Why is that bad? The Senate represents the states , the other sovereign entities in our federal republic. I think that a) we should amend the Constitution to eliminate the direct election of Senators and mandating that they be appointed by the state legislatures; b) amend the Constitution to apportion 1 representative per 40,000–60,000 people (…

Do any of the downvoters have a counterargument? I'm genuinely curious.

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

#840

Post by rtkwe »

gmoot wrote: post #645
hinkley wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It was indeed intended to prevent populism; the idea is that instead of voting for the president you vote for a group of people who you trust to then choose a president. But it has never in practice worked that way.

And in fact many states electors are not legally allowed to do that any more.

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

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