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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

#851

Post by gizmo385 »

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.

Define region and how the electoral college requires cross-regional appeal to win. You could technically win the electoral college with the 13 biggest states in the country, so I'm not seeing how the electoral college forces any kind of broad-based appeal.

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

#852

Post by SmartJerry »

rtkwe wrote: post #838
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.

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…

Senators get elected at best about 70% to 30% in votes also so assume that only 70% of that 38.4M people actually 'control' the laws. "Completely control" is a bit of an exaggeration though, I think you mean not allow new laws to get passed. Having a small population with the ability to prevent new laws is less concerning to me than a populous majority with the ability to pass laws. New laws should have broad support and broad appeal before getting enacted. Due to the internet there is much more spread of culture and thought between states than ever before and I think we could see much more laws getting passed very soon if democrats and republicans, and the media, could stop acting like every single day is election day again and are contrarian to every single word that comes from the other party.

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

#853

Post by SmartJerry »

gizmo385 wrote: post #851
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.

Define region and how the electoral college requires cross-regional appeal to win. You could technically win the electoral college with the 13 biggest states in the country, so I'm not seeing how the electoral college forces any kind of broad-based appeal.

Not the OP, but you could technically win the popular vote with those same 13 state's voters. When there is overwhelming support for one candidate the electoral college and popular vote would always be exactly the same. It actually only matters on a closely contest election and in that case the edge goes to the person with more broad support.

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

#854

Post by your-nanny »

greenpizza13 wrote: post #830
your-nanny wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then move to Wyoming. States are entities of political significance, regardless of how many people happen to live in them. This is a union of states, and states get a say. If you don't believe that consider advocating for the replacement of states with population based administrative districts.

> Then move to Wyoming. This is such an overwhelmingly stupid statement. It's effectively "if you don't like it, then leave." Wyoming is not as desirable as California in many ways. People don't want to go there. Just because it's not as desirable doesn't mean it should get arbitrary favoritism when it comes to elections.

First off, abide by HN guidelines please.

Second its only your perception that it receives favoritism, because of your mistaken interpretive frame that sees electoral college electors as being about individual citizens instead of as a compromise between two sets of stakeholders: states and the citizens living in them. Until you recognize that states themselves have an interest in Federal elections, you will continue to misunderstand the role the EC plays.

Fairness isn't a simple concept. There can be many mutually incommensurable notions of fairness. Unfortunately, partisans pick and choose those that suit their interests best.

Just as an example from domestic life. Consider a family of 4 individuals with different caloric requirements. One notion of fairness would split a pizza pie into four equal portions, but another would split it in proportion to their caloric needs. Getting everyone to agree on the notion that should be operant is hard because each choice implies winners and losers.

If you don't think states interest in Federal elections shouldn't count for anything, say so, and then give some thought about whether you think states should just be replaced with population based administrative districts that change with the census.

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

#855

Post by TbobbyZ »

UncleMeat wrote: post #820
vturner wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We are not a democracy, seriously no one wants a democracy of 300 million plus. I do. This sounds much better than a federation of states with weird layers of indirection based on borders drawn by historical accident or anachronistic geographic boundaries like rivers.

Say you are in the 49% in the democracy that is for a policy, but 51% are against it. Do you really want that 51% to tell you what to do?

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

#856

Post by frankbreetz »

hannasanarion wrote: post #669
furgooswft13 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GWB won the popular vote in 2004.

The only time a Republican has won the support of most Americans since 1988.

And he didn't enter the White House with the popular vote

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

#857

Post by DuskStar »

bwanab wrote: post #811
DuskStar wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure that was the 3/5ths compromise, not the electoral college.

They worked hand in hand. In other words, given the 3/5s compromise, how to you implement it from a voting perspective? For example, if your state has a population that was 50/50 slave/non-slave, then each non-slave vote was theoretically worth 1 and 3/5s of a vote, but giving individual voters differing weights was deemed unacceptable. The solution was the electoral college in which the votes available to the state…

I don't think the electoral college was intended to work the way it does today. If I'm remembering correctly, it was originally a "Frank from town is really smart and well-informed, so I'll send him to DC to choose the president" type of institution. (This is also part of why there was such a long gap between election day and inauguration - the electors still had to get together in DC)

So while the electoral college might have also functioned as a way to redistribute votes within a state... I don't think that was its main purpose.

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

#858

Post by pfisch »

zhoujianfu wrote: post #667
pfisch wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This particular problem could be solved by forcing all states to apportion their Electoral College votes based on the distribution of the popular vote. That is not a realistic proposal. Political gridlock will never allow a change like this. Doing it state by state is even worse because it just creates a system where dems try to do it to only red states and the GOP tries to do it to only blue states. It would just…

This is exactly what the article is about, and 16 states with 194 votes have already done it. It will eventually pass 270 because most states (all non-swing states) have a lot to gain from it.

I'm pretty sure the poster I responded to was talking about doing this on a per state basis. Not the national popular vote.

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

#859

Post by rtkwe »

SmartJerry wrote: post #852
rtkwe wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Senators get elected at best about 70% to 30% in votes also so assume that only 70% of that 38.4M people actually 'control' the laws. "Completely control" is a bit of an exaggeration though, I think you mean not allow new laws to get passed. Having a small population with the ability to prevent new laws is less concerning to me than a populous majority with the ability to pass laws. New laws should have broad support…

True they can only block but that's a lot of power just look at the whole last 4 years (plus a stolen SC seat) when Mitch was in charge in the Senate, it's a strong position. Also there's a lot of stuff that needs to pass just day to day that you can attach force things to be attached to if you have a solid anti cloture vote and are willing to use it.

I'm not so sure it's just the 24/7 life or death coverage that makes that happen though. In solidly red or blue seats the main threat to a senators seat is a challenge from the extreme of their party, left or right, which also pulls them further towards the extremes of their parties.

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

#860

Post by big_chungus »

suby wrote: post #777
big_chungus wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let the states that will never get their way in a "fixed" elector college, secede. Why has every one abandoned the idea of federalism? The whole point was that you could have your way and I could have mine; we only had to agree on the bare minimum tasks which absolutely had to be handled at the federal level. If California wants socialized medicine and Texas does not, fine. Why can't they do it on the state level?…

It makes sense to handle the taxes for something like healthcare on the national level because people aren't going to renounce their IS citizenship to avoid their tax obligation, but they may move to a different state.

But if I want to move states and forego both the costs and benefits of socialized medicine, why would some one care? Why make some one who does not wish to work under that system do so? Again, the only reason is because you wish to force your position down some one else's throat via the tyranny of the majority.
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