How to Fix the Electoral College • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Fix the Electoral College

#71

Post by fsckboy » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 7:12 PM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #69

fsckboy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the electoral college was a compromise made a long time ago that has two facets: the indirect nature of voting for representatives who vote for us (that was necessitated by preindustrial communication and transportation systems) and some extra weight given to smaller states to get them to agree to come into the union. That was the deal, no takesy-backsies. It is not going to change because those states that are disad…

Wow I was pro-electoral college before reading your comment, but now I'm cemented in my view. What you're essentially saying is that the electoral college favors areas with more open minds willing to vote either direction, rather than hard core voting by party, and that is probably the greatest reason to keep it. Political parties _sometimes_ have the people or country's best interest in mind, but ultimately they are…

people who are not in the middle can have perfectly open minds, they just agree with more of their perfectly open minded neighbors. I said left-right because it was convenient, but voting does not really work that way, it's an n-dimensional space of little tugs of war.

but, since you are disappointed by what I wrote, I won't go on to cover the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics, they are far and away more disappointing, but in a like manner, the electoral college of physics shows no signs of being open to change, the small quantum states won't go along.

Re: How to Fix the Electoral College

#72

Post by elcritch » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 7:15 PM UTC

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #54

elcritch wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although the current electoral college doesn't work well, I'm not sure the Americans would prefer to remove it completely I think the electoral college is working as intended to balance out power between larger more powerful states and less powerful states. Though I also don’t believe the popular vote is necessarily ideal from the perspective of maintaining more diversity of thoughts and opinions which is useful fo…

One thing to consider is that the electoral college system also accounts for varying levels of economic density. While I often hear “land doesn’t vote”, people don’t consider that a farm will never have the same economic output as an office building with the same footprint. This includes the population that comes with all that employment. There needs to be a way to represent the less economically dense sectors of the…

Yeah good point. Its sort of hidden in my argument, but economic diversity (including density) is part of the overall diversity and it's critical to "the system as a whole".

That office building might have more economic outpiut, but at the end of the day it's the farm that feeds people and mines that provide materials to build the offices. We can do without Meta or Google, but without farms people start starving and revolting pretty quickly.

Re: How to Fix the Electoral College

#73

Post by atmavatar » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 7:21 PM UTC

Molitor5901 wrote: post #56

I still can't support changing the electoral college. A few cities deciding the election for everyone feels horribly unfair, and undemocratic. Maybe the EC isn't perfect, but it certainly forces politicians to at least care what people in Iowa, Vermont, and Nevada have to say. It works because of the state system.

Could you elaborate why it's more fair and democratic for a candidate losing the popular vote to win an election (e.g., 2000 and 2016)?

Additionally, why is it more fair for a voter in Wyoming to have 3x the electoral impact of a voter in California?

The latter is a particular problem borne from the fact that we've capped the size of the House at 435 in 1929, thus giving increasingly disproportionate power to low-population states in both the House and Electoral College as the difference in population between states continues to grow.

> but it certainly forces politicians to at least care what people in Iowa, Vermont, and Nevada have to say.

The problem is that it disincentivizes politicians to care about what people in deep blue or deep red states have to say, and there are many more of those than there are swing states. Both Democrat and Republican presidential candidates should have to campaign in all 50 states rather than a single-digit number of potential swing states.

Re: How to Fix the Electoral College

#74

Post by duxup » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 7:31 PM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #47

duxup wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the electors are restricted to what they can do to some extent, but can the individual state tell the electors to do something that conflicts with what their own voters may have overwhelmingly voted against? That seems like it would inevitably fall apart. Also present a lot of mystery about "they going to do it?" and then someone doesn't and someone else chooses something else. Talk about a mess for democracy ...

I can't find a table for this election, but for 2020, the most Republican state was Wyoming, with 27% (73k) still voting for Biden. Wyoming still got to ignore those 73k voters because the rule says the winner of the state takes it all. Similarly in the other direction: aside from DC, the most Democratic state was Vermont, which ignored its 31% of voters choosing Trump. Now consider that these are the most extreme st…

Being a winner takes all state by LAW isn't the same as just "agreeing" with the next door neighbor state that you will be a winner take all, based on a national popular vote, and tell electors to do something different ...

That's not the same thing at all.

Re: How to Fix the Electoral College

#75

Post by scoofy » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 7:44 PM UTC

litoE wrote: post #8

Another approach that is in the works is the so-called States Compact whereby each state would assign all its electors to the candidate that gets the most votes nationwide . This has the advantage that no change to the Constitution is needed. Currently, several States have agreed to this, and the Compact will be activated once enough States sign on that provide more than the 270 electoral votes required to win the el…

The problem with a popular-vote systems is that we have a decentralized system of elections. Most people don't take seriously that many states would be incentivizes to cheat or at least look the other way to boost the number of votes coming from their state.

It's not election changing if one state, lets say accidentally, allows people to vote twice. It could effect their local outcomes, but if everyone votes twice, it should net itself. However, a fair election of the president would be completely fucked.

Re: How to Fix the Electoral College

#76

Post by xnx » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 7:48 PM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #65

xnx wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's are good reasons to keep the system as it is, I've read some of the reasons, but none sound good to me. What do you like about the electoral college?

the electoral college was a compromise made a long time ago that has two facets: the indirect nature of voting for representatives who vote for us (that was necessitated by preindustrial communication and transportation systems) and some extra weight given to smaller states to get them to agree to come into the union. That was the deal, no takesy-backsies. It is not going to change because those states that are disad…

> our elections get fought out in a small number of places which is an economically efficient way to do it.

In theory shouldn't money spent go right up to the limit of expected return, whether there is one "swing state" or 50?

Re: How to Fix the Electoral College

#77

Post by yongjik » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 7:50 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #74

yongjik wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find a table for this election, but for 2020, the most Republican state was Wyoming, with 27% (73k) still voting for Biden. Wyoming still got to ignore those 73k voters because the rule says the winner of the state takes it all. Similarly in the other direction: aside from DC, the most Democratic state was Vermont, which ignored its 31% of voters choosing Trump. Now consider that these are the most extreme st…

Being a winner takes all state by LAW isn't the same as just "agreeing" with the next door neighbor state that you will be a winner take all, based on a national popular vote, and tell electors to do something different ... That's not the same thing at all.

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

In each of the seventeen states and DC, National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has been passed by the state legislature, and signed by the executive branch, except for Hawaii (whose governor tried to veto it but it was overriden).

The bills followed all the proper steps to be signed into respective state's laws. It's not some kind of "agreement." It's the LAW. If you don't like it, feel free to go campaign in those states to change the LAW.

Re: How to Fix the Electoral College

#78

Post by maxerickson » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 7:56 PM UTC

scoofy wrote: post #75

litoE wrote: post #8

Another approach that is in the works is the so-called States Compact whereby each state would assign all its electors to the candidate that gets the most votes nationwide . This has the advantage that no change to the Constitution is needed. Currently, several States have agreed to this, and the Compact will be activated once enough States sign on that provide more than the 270 electoral votes required to win the el…

The problem with a popular-vote systems is that we have a decentralized system of elections. Most people don't take seriously that many states would be incentivizes to cheat or at least look the other way to boost the number of votes coming from their state. It's not election changing if one state, lets say accidentally, allows people to vote twice. It could effect their local outcomes, but if everyone votes twice, i…

We already have a similar problem to what you describe.

You propose a weakness in our election system where a conspiracy of state officials that wants to influence an election can control who is allowed to vote twice. If they can do this, they can already influence the outcome in their state.

Of course we see no such thing, because the elections are only administered at a state level, they are actually done at a local level, and there's quite a lot of observation and auditing that goes into verifying that things are done correctly.

Re: How to Fix the Electoral College

#79

Post by yongjik » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 8:01 PM UTC

Molitor5901 wrote: post #56

I still can't support changing the electoral college. A few cities deciding the election for everyone feels horribly unfair, and undemocratic. Maybe the EC isn't perfect, but it certainly forces politicians to at least care what people in Iowa, Vermont, and Nevada have to say. It works because of the state system.

Vermont has been voting Democrats straight since 1992. You got it backwards - EC allows any presidential candidate to completely and comfortably ignore Vermont because nothing they do would change any outcome. (Hell, after this election, I'm not even sure if either candidate going on live TV with "Fuck Vermont!" would have changed anything.) If you are a presidential candidate and you spend an hour thinking about what Vermont needs, then you're wasting one hour of your precious time.

Ditto for, say, Oklahoma (straight R since 1968).

Re: How to Fix the Electoral College

#80

Post by maxerickson » Fri, Nov 08, 2024, 8:06 PM UTC

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #39

krunck wrote: post #6

We need to solve the problem where the system breaks when there are more than two parties: the "spoiler vote".[1] It is the single largest problem facing American democracy. Dump the electoral college system and start from scratch. Look to real democracies like Europe where they use ranked choice voting - also called instant runoff voting.[2] [1] https://fairvote.org/defining-the-spoiler-effect/ [2] https://electionl…

Despite the criticism of the two party system, I nevertheless wonder whether or not the American public actually wants to have third parties. Even in states that are solidly red or blue, third parties never manage to gain a substantial (beyond 3-5%) of the vote. I would think that in a solidly blue state, the greens (or any on-the-left third party) would see a much better showing. Same for libertarians in red states.…

For the people that are serious about gaining office, it's more effective to try to run as part of one of the larger parties, or at the very least, align strongly with them.

A lot of people also end up running with no affiliation (for instance, for very local offices). They might align with some additional party in an ideological sense, but there probably isn't even a local organization to coordinate with.