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The Case for Dumping the Electoral College

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Re: The Case for Dumping the Electoral College

#51
I was interested to learn there's a sort of workaround to resolving the electoral college without a constitutional amendment, and it's some 70% of the way implemented:

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

Essentially, a block of states with sufficient electoral votes to determine the election legislates that they will cast their electoral votes in accordance with the national popular vote. It's interesting because it takes advantage of the large freedom states have to regulate their own electors, and substantially reduces the number of small states that have to get on board, as compared to an amendment.

Obviously somewhat more fragile though, as states could in principle leave the pact later on.

Re: The Case for Dumping the Electoral College

#52
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree with this statement. Jefferson's vision of America was the better one, where the federal is weak and the states are what people are most loyal to, and which hold the most power over people's daily lives. I want to see universal healthcare, but I think if state's taxes were higher than federal, and they were required to come up with a plan that covers everyone, however they want to do that, that it would…

Serious question - how do you think this applies to states that have historically, and recently, discriminated against race, relationships, abortion, and blurred the lines between not separating church & state (as IIRC, the way things were supposed to be)? It's not really a speculation, more of a fact, that if some higher power doesn't make them be what many see as humane/practice equality, then... they just wouldn't…

Serious answer: it is hardly a given that a "higher power" will favor your idea of "good" over your idea of "bad". Or even if it does, that it will always continue to do so and will always continue to enforce your preferences, even if your preferences someday change.

All that a higher power will enforce is uniformity, which could just as easily be (or later become) uniformly bad for you as uniformly good for you. Without the enforcement of uniformity, you might still have the option of choosing for yourself by moving elsewhere instead of having the choice imposed on you wherever you go.

Re: The Case for Dumping the Electoral College

#53

The fight against the electoral college is one of those things that misses the forest for the trees. The real problem is that too much power has been vested in the federal government (and in the executive branch specifically), and too much power has been taken from the states. People would care a lot less about how the president gets elected if he didn't have so much control over the entire country.

We've already had that constitution. It was the first one, the Articles of Confederation.

Re: The Case for Dumping the Electoral College

#54

I’ve long been in favor of rewriting the constitution. Everyone hates how the government operates—courts are politicized and at risk of being captured, the legislature is at a constant impasse, everything is hyper partisan, the executive is either way too powerful, or not powerful enough. The only things people can point to that they like about the constitution are the first amendment, and sometimes the second and fo…

(Serious question:) What, specifically, do you see that's new in the past 233 years that we can learn from? Aren't most democracies created since 1787 also extremely flawed and/or mostly copied from the American Constitution? Hand-waving that "it's been 200 years, there must be better ways to do it" without actually providing any is not something I find particularly convincing.

In any case, I think a lot of the problems you're describing are not strictly constitutional, or at least lead to contradictions if you try to fix them.

* It's very hard to keep courts from becoming politicized unless either everyone acts in good faith (ha), or you figure out a way to pick judges that doesn't ultimately get its power from elected officials. The lifetime appointment idea is about the best I can think of for that - even something like a single 20-year term has the problem of kickbacks after leaving office. For a long time, the requirement of supermajority approval was also a really good moderating idea, until McConnell realized that he could win by default by just not doing his job. Maybe a combination of large supermajorities and forced votes? But all of this runs into the problem that one party simply does not want the government to function. It's relatively easy to design a system that prevents people from doing something; it's much harder to design a system that forces them to do something when they benefit from stagnation.

* Executive power will always ebb and flow as laws are passed, unless you disallow Congress from delegating its own power, which would be silly.

* Legislature is at an impasse - I mean, if you have disagreements on the order of 40% of the population thinking that large minorities shouldn't be considered citizens, then I'm not sure how you can get past impasses. This is a symptom of hyperpartisanism, which is itself, I think, a symptom of poor education and misinformation. People disagree. You can't force them to agree unless you a priori give some of them power over others, which kind of defeats the point.

As for what's good - I think most people are also fans of the 4th and 5th amendments, and the 8th gets a reasonable number of references even in casual conversation (even if people don't know which one it is). And the 13th-15th are all pretty damn important.

The Constitutional structure as a whole is pretty good. The things I can easily think of that I /don't/ like about it, and which haven't been cleaned up in amendments, are:

1. Senate apportionment. Corn shouldn't get a vote. Admittedly, this is pretty major, but it would also be very, very hard to change in a new Constitutional convention, since even if you first agree that the Constitution should be rewritten, states won't ratify a new one if they feel like they're losing power.

2. Lack of clarity on what to do when there's a criminal in a position of power. It's tough, because any procedure can quickly become a farce if you make impeachment and removal too easy, but it would be nice if at the very least there were some minimal enforced procedures with regards to witness testimony and debate. And we could maybe strengthen the bit about the House having subpoena powers with a "yes, that means you, Donald."

3. Mandate better voting systems for Congress. As it stands, states are free to, on their own, adopt proportional representation (at least in states with sizeable delegations; Wyoming can't), ranked-choice voting, or any of the other better-than-first-past-the-post ideas that political scientists and mathematicians have come up with. This doesn't /have/ to be a Constitutional change, but it might be better if it were.

4. Mandate a formula for resizing, not just reapportioning, the House after every census. 435 is not enough to capture the variance in sizes of states without severe compression, and leaving it up to Congress to make itself more representative is a bit of an oversight.

Re: The Case for Dumping the Electoral College

#55
This reads more like a case to end the United States of America. The fundamental problem is that ditching the electoral college will subject many people of varied opinions, backgrounds, lifestyles, and cultures to a tyranny of the majority (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority). This is already a problem even within states, where a few cities end up with enormous political power and can basically subject everyone else to their whims. The urban-rural divide is incredibly unhealthy (https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/26/across-cou...) and makes those subject to the tyranny of the majority lose belief in democracy because they feel unrepresented. The solution is not less electoral college but more, so people can live their own lives. And governments that are broader in geographical scope (state and federal) should have incredibly narrow political/legal scope, with the majority of power seated at more local levels. That is how everyone can feel represented, retains locality of culture, retain faith in the system, and coexist without eventual civil war.

Re: The Case for Dumping the Electoral College

#56

I’ve long been in favor of rewriting the constitution. Everyone hates how the government operates—courts are politicized and at risk of being captured, the legislature is at a constant impasse, everything is hyper partisan, the executive is either way too powerful, or not powerful enough. The only things people can point to that they like about the constitution are the first amendment, and sometimes the second and fo…

I think we should split the executive into three. Have one person responsible for economic matter, one person for international affairs and the military, and one person for all other domestic policy. Have 6 year terms and stagger elections (like the Senate). That way, power is more divided and elections can be focused on policy. Each position would be less susceptible to a “cult of personality,” and it would be relat…

>Have one person responsible for economic matter, one person for international affairs and the military, and one person for all other domestic policy.

This is an incredibly unrealistic idea for the same reason the Commerce Clause can be used to justify anything. How do you govern international affairs without the power to oversee implementation of treaties? How do you do anything in "other domestic policy" without affecting the economy? All of those things are intrinsically linked to each other, and trying to split them apart and consider them in isolation would be catastrophic, except for the fact that it's impossible.

Re: The Case for Dumping the Electoral College

#57
post #51

I was interested to learn there's a sort of workaround to resolving the electoral college without a constitutional amendment, and it's some 70% of the way implemented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta... Essentially, a block of states with sufficient electoral votes to determine the election legislates that they will cast their electoral votes in accordance with the national popular vote.…

There's also the issue with SCOTUS potentially declaring it an interstate compact (as defined by the Constitution's compact clause) and striking down its legality - although IIRC the point of that was preventing secession and it hasn't been used for anything else. I would think that other sorts of interstate compacts like the shared peach pass(GA)/sun pass(FL)/quick pass(NC) would be illegal if someone were to challenge the constitutionality of them under that clause.

Re: The Case for Dumping the Electoral College

#58

I’ve long been in favor of rewriting the constitution. Everyone hates how the government operates—courts are politicized and at risk of being captured, the legislature is at a constant impasse, everything is hyper partisan, the executive is either way too powerful, or not powerful enough. The only things people can point to that they like about the constitution are the first amendment, and sometimes the second and fo…

(Serious question:) What, specifically, do you see that's new in the past 233 years that we can learn from? Aren't most democracies created since 1787 also extremely flawed and/or mostly copied from the American Constitution? Hand-waving that "it's been 200 years, there must be better ways to do it" without actually providing any is not something I find particularly convincing. In any case, I think a lot of the probl…

Senate apportionment could be handled gradually by a new amendment: 5 years after each census, the largest state is divided into 2 new states.

Re: The Case for Dumping the Electoral College

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right about the outrage that the electoral college gets, but not its actual faults. To be sure, it's silly to oppose the electoral college due to personal political leanings. But arguably, the president wouldn't wield so much power were she more representatively elected. I guess my objection is just that there's a clear feedback loop in power structures, and better representation is one of many avenues…

It's not obvious that deleting the electoral college would cause US presidential elections to have more representative results. Firstly, US presidential election results are largely determined by turnout and switching from an electoral college to a single, winner-take-all bloc wouldn't change that underlying reality. Secondly, even if you accept that "most votes wins" produces representative election results, it turn…

"More representationally elected" does NOT equate to any of the absolute garbage you are assuming are my views.

Please respond to actual comments rather than your vivid imagination.

I mean, seriously, try to find evidence of your response in my comment. Please, try your best. This is why there is no more "good faith."

Re: The Case for Dumping the Electoral College

#60

For people that complain a party won without the popular vote under the current rules, if you changed the rules for what defines winning, then that party would have campaigned in a completely different way E.g. under the old rules, maybe the winning party purposely didn't campaign in a state they knew they couldn't win (a logical use of campaign funds), dragging down their countrywide vote. If the countrywide vote wa…

It amazes me the sheer number of people that just don't get this.

I personally believe that this influence Republicans to move a bit more center. but who knows?

A good example of what could happen to close the national voting gap: Republicans would actually campaign in California and a few of the big blue states. Right now, someone voting for a republican in California has very little incentive to show up to vote. Republicans start campaigning there and the voters now have a reason to show up. Maybe not enough to close the gap completely, but it could close it a lot with no policy changes, just campaigning and a reason for people to show.

The same could happen the other way, but the big population blue states are more abandoned by Republicans than the big red states are by dems (it seems).

Anyhow, if you change the rules, the players are going to change their game.

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