This article is from May. Oregon has since joined, becoming the 16th state to do so.
The current number is 15. Nevada didn't join. Although passed by the Assembly and the Senate, the Governor vetoed it.
15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
141–150 of 932 posts
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#142Firstly, 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…
> the higher the turnout, legal or not, the more power for that state Every actual study of the matter I've seen or heard of has shown no evidence of any significant fraudulent voting, particularly not systemic fraudulent voting. While there might be a theoretical concern about incentives here, there's a lot of problems we know are happening right now with voter suppression under the system that we have.
Yep - illegal voting is straight up FUD.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#143Earlier 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…
Another way of looking at it is to note that New York City is the most important city in the history of world civilization, and the global center of media, finance, culture, commerce, fashion, and art, while the rest of the state is mostly stripmalls and like a few dozen people plus a confusingly located NFL team, so maybe we should let the millions of people living in the city run things?
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is the cricket approach. baseball typically plays multi-game series instead. i agree in spirit though. i have long thought it would make sense to abolish the playoffs. give the pennants to the teams with the best records. then, have them play a 21-game World Series in the fall.
That's closer to how baseball used to be, but there were also less teams at that time.
yeah, they never had 21 games, but the winningest team from each league played in the World Series until 1969. They did have a few 9 game World Series, but most were 7.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#145I'm really confused about this because I don't understand the incentives politicians have to adopt this in their own state. It clearly undermines their state's power in national elections. My (cynical) assumption is that this will be obeyed insofar as it helps bring about the desired outcome by those in power. It will be disregarded if it would shift the outcome in the other direction.
I think a lot of people forget that US = United States. That is, states that are united. The electoral college attempts to "balance" the power that each STATE has to elect a president.
The election is a state-level function. In my opinion, to switch to a popular-vote-wins system is to basically say "hey everyone in other states, go ahead and decide for our actual citizens".
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Alaska with a population around 700,000 also has 2 senators As does: 1. Wyoming (Population: 572,381) 2. Vermont (Population: 627,180) 3. Alaska (Population: 735,720) 4. North Dakota (Population: 760,900) 5. South Dakota (Population: 892,631) 6. Delaware (Population: 975,033) 7. Rhode Island (Population: 1,056,738) 8. Montana (Population: 1,074,532) 9. Maine (Population: 1,342,097) 10. New Hampshire (Population: 1,…
> But the House hasn't reapportioned representation by population in a century. The House reapportions by population after each census (10 years), with the exception of the notable failure after the 1920 Census. The House hasn't increased total size since the reapportionment after the 1910 census, which is probably what you are thinking of.
> The House hasn't increased total size since the reapportionment after the 1910 census, which is probably what you are thinking of.
Doesn't this effectively make it impossible to correctly reapportion by population though, because without a change in size a number of low population states "should" have < 1 member?
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a flawed argument, because the House isn't proportional to population, either. It's _still_ weighted towards smaller, emptier states.
Also, the two chambers are not equal. The Senate is very clearly the upper chamber.
Spatial metaphors are not illustrative. Please give some examples of what you mean.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
The counterpoint to that is that the Electoral College has transferred so much power to rural areas that we are no longer an actual representative democracy. For example, a vote in Wyoming counts 3.6 times more than a vote in California.[1] The people in California are not represented in the Presidential election; it would be more accurate to say that one-quarter of the people in California are represented. "Rural is…
Conversely, there are many issues where California can wag the dog by instituting state-specific policies which effectively drag the whole country with it. Some people like what California does with its state-specific policies. Some people even choose to live there. If the Executive branch was less powerful and the States retained more of what they were originally intended to oversee for themselves, I might have less…
Because of the EC I would argue that in most states, including California, your vote effectively doesn't matter at all.
Unless you are in a purple state you basically don't have a vote, and politicians can ignore your entire State.
So while the EC does empower some rural voters, in reality it effectively disenfranchises most of the country.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#149I 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 had a very good rationale for putting it in.
Yeah, slavery. How would you have a popular vote if you're allowing slaves to count as 3/5ths of a person for vote share? They obviously wouldn't have allowed them to vote. Fortunately, we no longer have slavery as an official institution, so it may be time to revise why we're doing it.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#150The Connecticut Compromise is good and all, but I think it's about time we discard it as an artifact of the days when communication was difficult and states had expectations around operating as semi-autonomous bodies. States used to be a strong identity tie than the nation but our general mindset has shifted toward identifying as Americans before Delawareans.