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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

#881

Post by squish78 »

will_walker wrote: post #863
squish78 wrote: post #835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

California actually provides most of the produce (vegetables fruits and nuts) for the nation. The midwestern corn / soy / beef states are focused on producing bulk commodities for export to other countries.

Yes, you are correct. My comment implied that a healthy population needs both. The agriculture crops are equally necessary for calories and protein

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

#882

Post by justin66 »

DuskStar wrote: post #857
bwanab wrote: post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If this were the case you'd expect to see a lot more faithless electors in our history than we have seen.

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

As with so much in American history the explanation involves slavery but judging from the downvotes here, that wounds everyone's pride a bit.

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

#883

Post by justin66 »

rtkwe wrote: post #840
gmoot wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The question of whether faithless electors are allowed to be... faithless (ahem) is currently working itself through the courts, which is remarkable:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/22/he-tried-st...

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

#884

Post by justin66 »

peapicker wrote: post #71

Firstly, I'm an independent - I actually have a great deal of issues with both major parties. My concern with abandoning the college starts with this observation: Swing states are the states most likely to have divided government. And if divided government is good for anything, it is accountability. So with the Electoral College system, when we do wind up with a razor-thin margin in an election, it is likely to happe…

> Swing states are the states most likely to have divided government. And if divided government is good for anything, it is accountability.

Based on what we've seen in the midwest, what you're actually saying here is that divided government isn't good for anything.

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

#885

Post by 40four »

zhoujianfu wrote: post #655
40four wrote: post #592

I always hear people complain about the electoral college, but I've never once heard a detailed, objective argument as to why they think a popular vote would be a better system. Friends I've talked to about just seem to default to a majority system because it seems more 'fair', or its easier to understand? I dont know. In the USA, I think we are conditioned to belive in the democratic process, so I guess it feels 'na…

There’s a lot of reasons for it on the movements official site: https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation

So after looking it over, the idea is to eliminate get rid of the 'winner take all' system in the participating states. Seems fine to me. It's definitely hard to argue for winner takes all electoral votes.

I'm not really a history guy, but I wonder why states decided to move in that direction to begin with? Guess I'll have to look into it.

What I don't get is if there are this many states trying to push this idea, why do they need a bill like this to do it. Why don't those states just take it upon themselves to change their laws individually. What's stopping them right now?

Moreover, it seems one of the main points is that the current system causes candidates to only focus their campaign in a few battleground states. I'm struggling to see how the National Popular Vote system would change this. Maybe it would break up the current pattern, if so, I have a feeling another similar pattern would emerge.

The battlegrounds would just shift. For example, it might just redistribute the candidates focus to the greater metro areas where 2/3 of the population lives, and republican/ democrat distributions are more even (according to the site). If the city centers are strongly democrats, and rural strongly republican, the I imagine the same problem emerging since those areas are a 'done deal'. Why would the candidates spend any resources there is there is no chance of swaying them?

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

#886

Post by notfromhere »

WarDores wrote: post #801
notfromhere wrote: post #799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing reinforces the feeling of disenfranchisement than having no direct impact on how the most powerful single government is elected. The Electoral College is fundamentally undemocratic and the lack of democracy de-legitimizes the office.

Why does direct democracy confer legitimacy? Does the Supreme Court not have legitimate authority? I don't see a correlation.

because legitimate government is based on the consent of the governed? Supreme Court justices are picked by popularly elected Senators.

It's not even direct democracy, its a representative democracy. Except in the case of the presidency we're not even allowed to directly pick our representative in the executive branch.

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

#887

Post by justin66 »

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...

"Popular vote" is a deceptive concept here since some of the states rely on caucuses instead of primaries to choose their delegates to the convention.

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

#888

Post by hyperpape »

tekknik wrote: post #878
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…

What I find interesting is this only came up after Trump got elected. What this says is it’s not about how “broken” the electoral college is and more so trying to elect more liberal presidents, since the densely populated areas tend to hive mind. We would have essentially 2 states voting in the new president, and both of these states are very liberal. Why didn’t this come up during Obama? This is an attempt at the li…

The electoral college has been criticized for generations: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-07/electo..., though the contours of the debate have changed.

As for the charge of hypocrisy, were Republicans passionately praising the wisdom of the electoral college in the 1990s? It cuts both ways.

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

#889

Post by stevetursi »

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?

What it shifts is advertising from expensive media markets with small geographical boundaries (NY, LA) to less expensive ones that have large boundaries (Kansas City, Raleigh.) It works out that, because of the large boundaries, the cost to reach each consumer is far lower.

Moreover, I'd wager that the stumps that stump speeches occur on will go to more places with more concentrated populations - there are more butts within n square miles to put in seats, as well as the most-watched news media.

My opinion is that both outcomes are preferable to stumps AND media going to half a dozen battleground states.

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

#890

Post by rtkwe »

justin66 wrote: post #883
rtkwe wrote: post #840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in fact many states electors are not legally allowed to do that any more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector

The question of whether faithless electors are allowed to be... faithless (ahem) is currently working itself through the courts, which is remarkable: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/22/he-tried-st...

Interesting, though this sounds like it would really hamper the idea of the national popular vote compact which I'm personally pulling for. And really calls into question the whole electoral system if the electors cannot be constrained by their states at all. Just bribe or threaten 271 people and the whole presidency is yours really since states can't invalidate faithless votes...
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