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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

#491

Post by greggeter »

harryh wrote: post #454
IgorPartola wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, the number of House reps is no longer proportionate to the population. Second, the layer of indirection as it exists today does nothing. Electors aren’t free to choose a president. They in most cases must elect the person they pledged to elect and if they don’t they instantly get replaced by a new elector who will. What purpose does that serve? Seems to me like we should either buck up and actually allow these…

First, the number of House reps is no longer proportionate to the population. Yes they are. Each house district has about 750,000 people. You get a bit of deviation because states don't necessarily have a precise multiple of 750k people. Also we only redraw districts every 10 years, so things have drifted a bit since 2010. But it's pretty close.

We should expand the number of reps to 1 per 100k. Would help much of the problems.

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

#492

Post by travisjungroth »

zaroth wrote: post #447
devdas wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as?

I don’t want to be repetitive with my other comments, but I think a good example is environmental regulations CA passes for automobiles effectively setting standards for the country.

That’s the free market, not government. Companies choose to make vehicles CA compliant. Any other examples?

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

#494

Post by carry_bit »

baddox wrote: post #116
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…

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

Currently the effects of any illegal voting are contained to the state that the illegal voting happened in; North Dakota's electors aren't going to vote differently even if there are 6 million illegal votes in California. With an NPV that isn't the case.

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

#496

Post by frankbreetz »

philliphaydon wrote: post #455
frankbreetz wrote: post #68

I turned 30 this year,and the Republican candidate has won the popular vote once in my life,and he was an incumbent. There has been a Republican president 14 of the 30 years of my life. Now,the first president of my life ( Bush 1) won the popular vote before I was born, but if we don't count him, no Republican has entered office with the popular vote in my life. Regardless of political beliefs does this seem right to…

If you removed only California from the popular vote then Hillary lost. The share number of people there still cause Hillary to get the popular vote. Is it fair that 1 state has a controlling share over every other state?

If California was 6 different states,do they deserve more power?

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

#497

Post by reallydude »

munk-a wrote: post #138
reallydude wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"doesn't mean that we should give the rest of the state disproportionate power." Is it in the best interests of all the people to have proportionate power? I believe so. The EC is an abstraction, which philosophically and practically takes choice away from individuals. Population centers having more power than rural areas (even when they are the geographical majority, otherwise) is a proxy for land-owners having more…

Can you clarify this? It appears you're both advocating for same and different power simultaneously.

I wasn't trying to be obtuse. I'm not sure what's confusing.

Is it in the best interests of all the people to have proportionate power? I believe so.

I don't believe they (rural vs metropolitan citizens) should have some sort of relative power difference, despite their relative wealth and land-ownership differences. That's not important to me, philosophically.

Best I can do to clarify.

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

#499

Post by twblalock »

CptFribble wrote: post #421

The Electoral college exists because of slavery. The original idea going into the Constitutional Convention was to have Congress pick the president. A majority of delegates going into the Convention supported this, but discarded it after debates established it would violate the separation of powers. The popular vote wasn't an option, however, because it would mean the southern states with their large, non-voting slav…

That page you linked (http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llfr/002/0000/00610057.tif) contains that argument from Madison followed by a non-slavery based argument made by someone else.

To say that the electoral college exists "because of slavery" is an oversimplification. It ignores the misgivings about a popular vote that are mentioned in the page you linked, and it also ignores the desire of the state governments to exert control over their representation in the Federal government -- senators were not directly elected for the same reason.

If you want to point to part of the Constitution that exists purely because of slavery, the 3/5 compromise is a better example. The decision to adopt an electoral college was certainly influenced by complications introduced by slavery, but there were a lot of other arguments in favor of an electoral college that were persuasive at the time.

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

#500

Post by pasquinelli »

gthaman wrote: post #461
rayiner wrote: post #418

Debates over the electoral college tend to conflate two different things. The original purpose of the electoral college was a compromise between those who wanted the president directly elected, and those who wanted Congress to elect the president. While very small states have a modest edge as a result of using the number of members of Congress to decide the number of electors, the real purpose of the system is to add…

Let the states that will never get their way in a "fixed" elector college, secede. To mess with the electoral college in this point in time - when its basically 49% vs 51% - and at such a level of divide in the country is not exactly a testament to how empathetic the two sides are. It would be a disaster. Everyone thinks Trump himself is the problem but this awful idea to change the goalposts literally to win electio…

By your logic there can never be a suitable time for democratic reform. The current political situation can only get worse until the united states becomes more democratic or more authoritarian.
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