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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

#111

Post by danaris »

umvi wrote: post #67
dlbucci wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for rural representation, but people in rural areas essentially have their vote count more than people in cities, right? Cause that's the current system for us: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_w...

> I'm all for rural representation, but people in rural areas essentially have their vote count more than people in cities, right? Yeah but maybe that's a good thing. Otherwise you have a situation like New York where NYC gets to dictate everything since it's super high population density even though the majority of geographical NY state is farmers. So the farmers get screwed over by the interests of the city folk wh…

The plurality of the geography of NY State may be agricultural land, but that is not the same thing as saying that the majority of its people are farmers. If you cut NYC off from the rest of the state, yes, you'd have a majority-rural population, and probably a red state—but not majority farmer and farm workers.

I live and work in rural NY State. For every farmer out here, there are dozens of teachers, janitors, computer programmers, hairstylists, restaurant owners & workers, and every other type of profession you have in hamlets, small towns, and non-mega-cities.

And yeah, there are a lot of people here who don't want property taxes to go up. They don't want any taxes to go up, because they're rural Republicans who have bought into the line that taxes are bad hook, line, and sinker. But as rural Republicans, they mostly don't even make much noise about wanting taxes to go down. The signs you see along the side of the road are clamoring to repeal gun control laws that prevent violent criminals and the mentally ill from purchasing guns.

Just because New York City has enough population to drown the rest of the state in doesn't mean that we should give the rest of the state disproportionate power.

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

#112

Post by jeanperrot »

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…

I like your point about incentivizing high turnout (and the resulting inter-state race for turnout). I wouldn't necessarily equate it with lax election laws though.

Oregon (where I live) is blessed with vote-by-mail -- it affords high turnout with high vote verifiability. Being able to consider & research arguments on both sides of the issues and candidates in detail before voting is fantastic.

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

#113

Post by danaris »

commandlinefan wrote: post #39
r00fus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if abolished, politicians won't have incentives to campaign in rural territories That's one take. Another take is that urban centers are being actively disenfranchised. Btw, those politicians who benefit from the EC are the ones creating policies that are destroying the rural populace at the same time.

I’ve often wondered how much knowing that the electoral college is in place drives voter turnout: how many conservatives in New York or California (or liberals in Texas) don’t bother to go to the hassle of showing up to the polls because they know their state won’t win anyway? In most presidential races, the race is called before the polls even close in Hawaii, so I’m sure an awful lot of people don’t bother to show…

It even works both ways. I know people here in NYS who don't go to the polls to vote Democrat because they know they don't have to—the state as a whole voting Democrat is a foregone conclusion, so what does their vote matter?

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

#114

Post by peapicker »

sp527 wrote: post #96
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…

Nothing you said provides an argument against equally weighting each citizen’s vote at the federal level. States have select powers over the federal government that are specifically provided by our Constitution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights . When you vote in local elections, you are in effect in control of certain outcomes within your state, as accorded by our Constitution. The federal election d…

"The electoral college system is an absolute sham that deprives a significant number of people of their Constitutionally-guaranteed right to fair representation at the federal level."

Yet the constitution defines the presidential election as being done by the representatives of the state's electoral college: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors."

The NPV interstate pact may not even itself be constitutional as it ignores the Article I, Section 10 requirement that interstate compacts receive congressional consent.

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

#115

Post by shmerl »

chrisseaton wrote: post #92
jjeaff wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Winner takes all refers to the fact that in most states, the winning candidate gets 100% of the electoral college votes. Even though the candidate may have gotten just 50% plus 1 of the votes. This is the main reason a popular vote winner can still lose. You could be the 51% winner in most states but lose by nearly 100% in the more populous states and still win. Which is why this keeps happening to Democrats. They wi…

I don't understand how you can have all electors voting for the national popular winner, and also somehow not have first-past-the-post?

"Winner takes all" problem refers to the Congress, not presidential elections.

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

#116

Post by baddox »

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…

> National Popular Vote (NPV) would reward states with lax election laws - the higher the turnout, legal or not, the more power for that state.

Illegal voting is already illegal, and states can already in theory do shady things in their elections (and some probably already do). The courts should absolutely go after this, and I don't see NPV really changing this.

> The NPV system focus the most energy on states with a high population in this condition.

Perhaps so, but the one of the main points of NPV is for state boundaries to be meaningless for campaigning. Maybe politicians should spend more time in densely populated areas because, well, there are more people there.

> What would happen when there are charges of skullduggery? Would states really trust, with no power to verify, other state’s returns?

Do states currently trust that other states hold fair elections to determine how their electors vote? I don't see any change here.

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

#117

Post by danaris »

akulbe wrote: post #43

I could not be more opposed to the abolishment of the Electoral College. The founders had a very good rationale for putting it in. That said... I think there's a solution for this. Hard term limits for everyone, in all the branches. It already exists for the Executive branch. I think it should be instituted for both Legislative and Judicial as well.

The founders could not have foreseen shifts in population demographics the like of which have occurred in the last 200 years. The urbanization of our population has been staggering during that time, and the percent of people who own or work on farms has dropped to nearly a rounding error, compared to most of the people in the world.

The idea that we must worship every aspect of the founders' thoughts on the makeup of a country, when the world has changed so drastically since their lifetimes, makes no rational sense. Sure, a lot of their ideas (checks and balances, good!) are still relevant. Others (slavery, no women's suffrage, bad), not so much.

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

#118

Post by shmerl »

joshlegs wrote: post #17
shmerl wrote: post #5

Another thing to abolish - winner-takes-all system, which prevents wider parties variety.

you could make a strong argument that the 'winner-takes-all' electoral votes in states that have winner-takes-all systems is essentially already doing what the proposal to effectively eliminate the electoral college is doing -- it's saying that individual votes dont count, only the collective whole.

I'm primarily referring to the congressional elections, not presidential. The problem is that bigger parties scoop all the votes for smaller ones.

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

#119

Post by peapicker »

jonathankoren wrote: post #103
peapicker wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But the House hasn't reapportioned representation by population in a century." Not sure where you live, but since 1914 in Colorado: 1914 - four representatives 1973 - five representatives 1983 - six representatives 2003 - seven representatives So clearly seats are added as population changes in a state. See also: https://www.insightsassociation.org/article/states-expected-...

No. 385 are redistributed , which still enforces unequal representation, as states with less population than some territories have more purchasing power in the House. For example, Wyoming get a rep for 500,000 people, but everyone else has to pay 700,000 people. To truly remedy this situation in the House, you have to bring the House up to about 930. https://time.com/5423623/house-representatives-number-seats/

Of course, if we went by the original law of 30,000 people per congressperson, we'd have over 10,000 representatives.

I'm not sure adding more reps would make the system work any better - part of me thinks it would be even more expensive and chaotic.

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

#120

Post by baddox »

not_a_moth wrote: post #15

An argument I heard recently against this is, if abolished, politicians won't have incentives to campaign in rural territories, and they won't be accountable to rural territories. That basically makes sense. The EC is the only thing that really gives rural territories any stake, as the majority population has shifted to larger urban centers. People who want to get away from the big cities and live a different kind of…

> An argument I heard recently against this is, if abolished, politicians won't have incentives to campaign in rural territories, and they won't be accountable to rural territories.

I don't see a problem with that if we confront and dismiss the notion that certain individuals (e.g. individuals who live in rural areas) should have more political influence than certain other individuals (e.g. individuals who live in urban areas).

Something as arbitrary as the amount of unpopulated land around a person's home should not affect how much political influence that person receives.

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