If people are up in arms about the electoral college giving small states outsized influence, wait until they hear about the senate.
That's the literal point of the Senate, though, to be fair.
15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
341–350 of 932 posts
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
No, they are performing the task as outlined by the constitution, which is the “correct” method, and which the people are free to amend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_Stat...
Ok, but that's heading into a circle though. The complaint I thought is that the "correct" method does not result in proportion by population, and some people think that would be better.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#343The electoral college achieves one very useful function thats ignored by everyone calling for its abolition in favour of the popular vote: it produces a clear winner and contains the contagion of litigating and delegitimizing the outcome of an election. Think about this: there are a number of elections that have a very small popular vote margin. What if this gets less than, say, 20,000? That's entirely possible. In a…
> Stop politicizing the election process. Like, why is the supervisor for elections an elected political position? The alternative is that it's an appointed position. That won't be less political.
Or it's a random selection from a vetted pool of individuals. Or it's an elected position from a selection of random individuals.
There are other alternatives than just elected vs appointed.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
> 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 You can define “correctly reapportion” in a way that this is true, but there is no reason to think that was the Constitutional intent.
Which isn't to say I don't think there is a policy problem, I just don't think you can reduce it to incorrect apportionment.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#345There 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…
Swing states shift, though. California was basically solid red from the 1950s through the 1980s. Until 2016, few people would have called Wisconsin or Michigan "swing states" judging from their voting in the past few elections. People move, demographics change.
This is true, but I’m not sure having your vote count for a decade, then not count, then count again is all that much better. Note that going in to an election, the potential battleground states are usually known.
Some states haven’t been swing states for a long time, too.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#346Great. With no electoral college, Wyoming would have 1.44% of the weight California would have towards who was elected. The only thing keeping Wyoming in the Union would be their two senators. Maybe then Wyoming folks should have to pay 1.44% of the Federal Income Tax that Californians pay.
Campaigning for President? Just go to New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and maybe a few other cities.
Maybe city folks can start making their own food while they're at it.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I think the whole “visiting” thing is overblown. We have TV and the Internet. This isn’t the 19th century when the only way the average American might EVER see or hear a President would be a short speech off the back of a train car.
Visiting here is a proxy for overall campaign message initiatives, which includes physical visits, but also ad buy and even shaping the candidates message and platform to better appeal to the swing stage demographic. Arguably the last one is the biggest potential problem since it means some minority has an outside influence on candidates.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
Key word “areas”. Of course it’s true. WY has 1 representative to CA’s 53.
CA has 53 districts. Those districts are under representative because they each get 2/53 of a Senator and WY district gets 2. State borders are fictions.
The Senate was never intended to be representative of the population. That is specifically why we have both the House and the Senate.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#349I think this is both a dumb move and unconstitutional. Present day politics aside, allowing for pure demographic voting in this day and age is even more dangerous than it was in the early days of the republic. States and regions have different needs that need to be considered in the governance of the nation. You can already see warning signs, the Democratic Party platform has been so brain dead, they even managed to…
What is unconstitutional about a state using its constitutional authority to cast its votes for President? Why should fictional state borders take precedence over actual humans when allocating voting blocs? If different states have difference needs, then those states residents will vote for leaders who serve them. Your problem seems to be that that giving supreme power to an arbitrary majority is flawed. And it surel…
Don’t put words in my mouth.
My problem is that this is a solution looking for a problem. In fact, it’s a solution that will make the problem that some people want to solve far worse.
Re: 15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
#350Earlier 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…
To your arguement about why do LA residents count less. I say it's not neccesarily less. Just differently. Do you want someone who has never farmed in their lives. Probably never even picked up a shovel, have a say in the rules and regs about agriculture throughout the midwest? Same goes vice versa. Country folk who hate living in concrete jungles shouldn't make rules for city dwellers. Thus an equal vote, isn't equa…
This cuts both ways, why should someone who lives in an area with hardly any immigrants be making policy for people who live in places like LA which are full of them?