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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

#901

Post by CompanionCuuube »

zeveb wrote: post #839
zeveb wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The downvotes are probably from those who see your proposal as still maintaining the powers of the states. The core dogma behind abolishing the Senate is the removal of the power of the state and placing it all in the population centers.

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

#902

Post by CompanionCuuube »

gnulinux wrote: post #216
felipemnoa wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>For example: Right now in the US there are 2 senators from each state. California with a population of over 39 million has 2 senators, Alaska with a population around 700,000 also has 2 senators. This was all by design. The smaller states would not have joined the union if it mean that the bigger states would monopolize all the power.

Yes but maybe we can reform the system to make US more democratic. This question is about why this has been this way, rather it's about whether it's worth to change it even it was originally justified. Are people in Wyoming willing to leave the union if their votes are exactly equal to Californians?

And the other question: Are people in California willing to leave the union if their votes are not exactly equal to Wyoming's?

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

#903

Post by CompanionCuuube »

eropple wrote: post #331
pdonis wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one mentioned federal benefits. Sure you did; you said LAC voters don't have their concerns addressed as well because they are part of a large, populous state whose EC votes count for less per capita. My question is, if LAC is capable of managing its own affairs, why does it care? In other words, you're assuming that the President's job is to "take care of everyone's concerns", so everyone needs an equal vote to…

Even when you take for granted--and we shouldn't, but just for funsies we will--that the whole point of the thing is to make executive decisions about national needs... why the heck should Nevada get a bigger say than Los Angeles County? It has become evident that the federalist experiment has failed; because an integrated modern society cuts across state lines, while land can't vote and people matter more than land.…

> why the heck should Nevada get a bigger say than Los Angeles County?

To start with, states are the compositional unit of the United States. If Los Angeles County wants to become its own state, there is a process to do that.

But to answer the correct question: Nevada has the same say as California, both being states.

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

#904

Post by mvkel »

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…

Doesn't that speak more to how divided we are as a country, not some fundamental flaw in the system?

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

#905

Post by squirrelicus »

koboll wrote: post #876
squirrelicus wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly am conservative but the things I said are not false. The USA government is not merely a representative democracy, it's more formally a republic. Consider this: the purpose behind the bicameral legislature is that in order for the federal government to act, it requires the consent of both the majority of the population and the majority of the states subject to it. If the population and the states can't agr…

>Consider this: the purpose behind the bicameral legislature is that in order for the federal government to act, it requires the consent of both the majority of the population and the majority of the states subject to it. The idea that this is a virtue that outweighs the effective disenfranchisement of hundreds of millions of people rests on the presupposition that it is virtuous that certain states should have an ou…

It is not possible to create a non arbitrary system. You may attempt to create what appears to you to be a more parsimonious system, but know, at least, that in doing so you will change the fundamental power dynamic.

Thank God we need the consent of a supermajority of Congress and 3/4ths of the states to change the electoral college. It's not going to happen, just give it up.

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

#906

Post by squirrelicus »

hannasanarion wrote: post #646
squirrelicus wrote: post #305

The electoral college was created to strike a balance between valuing a diversity of perspectives and popularity of perspectives. The probability that a geographically restricted monoculture gets it right is very close to zero.

That's not what the electoral college does. It's a post-hoc justification your high school teacher probably came up with on the fly, and you clearly haven't thought about it critically since. The only thing the electoral college does is give the voting power of local minorities to local majorities. 3 million people in the state vote for A 4 million people in the state vote for B B gets 7 million people's worth of ele…

Woo there buddy, slow down there a gorsh durned second.

The nature of our republic and bicameral system is a recognition that both the elites (in the form of states, in this case) and the population have important things to contribute. If your fundamental theory of politics is that the elite don't have anything extraordinary to contribute, then how about you start by cleaning your own house and getting rid of superdelegates before you go on trying to change the entire country to match your pet political power distribution

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

#907

Post by UncleMeat »

TbobbyZ wrote: post #855
UncleMeat wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

That is preferable to having only the people in a handful of swing states pick the president (who, by executive orders, tells me what to do).

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

#908

Post by koboll »

squirrelicus wrote: post #905
koboll wrote: post #876

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Consider this: the purpose behind the bicameral legislature is that in order for the federal government to act, it requires the consent of both the majority of the population and the majority of the states subject to it. The idea that this is a virtue that outweighs the effective disenfranchisement of hundreds of millions of people rests on the presupposition that it is virtuous that certain states should have an ou…

It is not possible to create a non arbitrary system. You may attempt to create what appears to you to be a more parsimonious system, but know, at least, that in doing so you will change the fundamental power dynamic. Thank God we need the consent of a supermajority of Congress and 3/4ths of the states to change the electoral college. It's not going to happen, just give it up.

Once enough states join the National Popular Vote compact to clear 270 electors, the electoral college will be nullified in practice. It may take a couple more decades, but it'll happen eventually.

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

#909

Post by bendbro »

wutbrodo wrote: post #893
bendbro wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree this is a benefit, but in Louisiana's case this benefit is only 0.5% of their GDP (10 billion aid / 205 billion GDP). In a red state, where business interests more heavily control political power, I don't think federal tax benefits will influence a Brexit-tier decision too much. To put this in blunt terms: there are a ton of impoverished African Americans in these states that receive a large chunk of that feder…

> this benefit is only 0.5% of their GDP (10 billion aid / 205 billion GDP) This is 5%, not 0.5%. On top of that, your numbers aren't correct: they receive around $20bn net, and their GDP is around $250bn, which means that which means that direct net federal spending is about 8% of their GDP (and gross federal spending is a whopping 20%). These are pretty huge numbers, and they affect the entire state economy, direct…

Doh, what a stupid error. 8% seems significantly more meaningful, but I would still be curious exactly how that positive 20b is spent.

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

#910

Post by notSupplied »

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.

It has not produced that result. Instead it shifts the power from "most populated" (which at lease resembles SOME democratic values) to "most swing", which is totally arbitrary.
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