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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

#891

Post by crazynick4 »

vkou wrote: post #704
exclusiv wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's great about the electoral college is you need to have cross-regional appeal to win. So its less about which states are going to be battleground but that you generally can't just appeal to 1 or 2 regions and win. In a goal of preserving the union, it's better to have a system that pushes cross-regional appeal than a system based strictly on number of votes IMO.

Why do we only give disproportionate representation to people on the basis of their zip code? Why not give disproportional representation to them on the basis of their race, or religion, or sexual orientation, or on whether or not they prefer big, or little-endian notation? Surely, it would only be appropriate that politicians should have cross-demographic appeal to win? Every argument for why we should give extra in…

Not their zip code, their state. Hence, United States.

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

#892

Post by georgeecollins »

waynecochran wrote: post #862
georgeecollins wrote: post #850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if the San Jaoquin Valley became its own state conservative votes in San Jaoquin valley and San Fransico would count more if they were seperate states. Which is the whole point. It's telling that my point about economics and representation got turned into a blue / red thing. >> I don't buy that slave arguement.. And you are a historian? The slave states that were large like Virginia wanted the electoral college,…

It seems the electoral college was exploited by slave owners, but what I challenge is that is was created for that purpose. It articles see the electoral college was a vestige of slavery, but that does not seem like a reasonable conclusion. The sources you give all have a serious bias and a vested interest in seeing the electoral college disbanded.

It was supported by the largest state at the time, so the idea that it was created to "help small states" makes no sense. It served that purpose but that is not why it was made.

You provide no evidence and when I site sources you say they are biased. If you believe the sources are biased please note that they site books, experts etc. If you just reject every piece of evidence you will always be right.

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

#893

Post by wutbrodo »

bendbro wrote: post #573
wutbrodo wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a start, they get massive transfers of money from more productive states: three dollars for every one that they pay in taxes.

Agree this is a benefit, but in Louisiana's case this benefit is only 0.5% of their GDP (10 billion aid / 205 billion GDP). In a red state, where business interests more heavily control political power, I don't think federal tax benefits will influence a Brexit-tier decision too much. To put this in blunt terms: there are a ton of impoverished African Americans in these states that receive a large chunk of that feder…

> this benefit is only 0.5% of their GDP (10 billion aid / 205 billion GDP)

This is 5%, not 0.5%. On top of that, your numbers aren't correct: they receive around $20bn net, and their GDP is around $250bn, which means that which means that direct net federal spending is about 8% of their GDP (and gross federal spending is a whopping 20%). These are pretty huge numbers, and they affect the entire state economy, directly affecting the profits of the business owners that you claim wouldn't care.

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

#894

Post by justin66 »

rtkwe wrote: post #890
justin66 wrote: post #883

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question of whether faithless electors are allowed to be... faithless (ahem) is currently working itself through the courts, which is remarkable: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/22/he-tried-st...

Interesting, though this sounds like it would really hamper the idea of the national popular vote compact which I'm personally pulling for. And really calls into question the whole electoral system if the electors cannot be constrained by their states at all. Just bribe or threaten 271 people and the whole presidency is yours really since states can't invalidate faithless votes...

> though this sounds like it would really hamper the idea of the national popular vote compact which I'm personally pulling for.

I'm a supporter of NPV. I don't think it's likely to be a problem, although this feels like something that will shake out a lot further in the federal courts.

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

#895

Post by DuskStar »

justin66 wrote: post #882
DuskStar wrote: post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the electoral college was intended to work the way it does today. If I'm remembering correctly, it was originally a "Frank from town is really smart and well-informed, so I'll send him to DC to choose the president" type of institution. (This is also part of why there was such a long gap between election day and inauguration - the electors still had to get together in DC) So while the electoral college…

If this were the case you'd expect to see a lot more faithless electors in our history than we have seen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector#List_of_fait... As with so much in American history the explanation involves slavery but judging from the downvotes here, that wounds everyone's pride a bit.

> If this were the case you'd expect to see a lot more faithless electors in our history than we have seen.

...other than the large numbers in the late 1700s and early 1800s, you mean?

And in any case, "intent" and "actual practice" were pretty different here. But that doesn't mean that the Connecticut Compromise [0] (which split the US legislative body into the House with representation apportioned by population and the Senate with set representation per state) was solely or even primarily due to slavery. And once you had that, using the total of Senators and Representatives for your number of electors makes a good amount of sense.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise

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

#896

Post by hannasanarion »

newfriend wrote: post #844
hannasanarion wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democrats want rural Republicans in New York to have their voice heard, that's the whole point: everyone's vote should count equally and the winner should need to seek majority support. Unlike Republicans, Democrats have these things called "principles". They are ideas that you believe in whether they benefit you or not.

Republicans bad! Democrats good! Grow up.

The Democrats want Republicans in New York and California to have their votes count for President, because they believe all votes should count equally.

The Republicans want Democrats in Texas, Michigan, and North Carolina to have their votes ignored or be unable to vote, because all they believe in is winning at any cost.

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

#897

Post by hannasanarion »

twoodfin wrote: post #867
hannasanarion wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is NPV "unfair"? It is more in the spirit of the 14th than the winner-take-all system, where your vote means more or less depending on where you live (which was a core part of the 14th amendment logic of Gore v Bush)

States don’t get to hold elections for statewide officials (e.g. electors) where some votes are effectively discarded because of some fact external to that state election. Adding up votes from other states isn’t materially different in that regard than performing an augury. For the same reason, the Western states couldn’t engage in a pact to elect their governors by party slate (especially without triggering the inte…

And why not? The constitution says that the states can choose their electors for President any way they see fit. They can be named directly in the law if the legislature wanted them to: "Our Electors are Joe Bloggs, James Jameson, and Person McPersonface". There is no constitutional limit on how a state can choose its electors.

When states started switching from the original plan of "electoral districts" to "winner-take-all", Hamilton and Madison decried it as contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, but recognized that they couldn't do anything about it because the text of the constitution says "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct", and Hamilton's amendment to strike that clause and replace it with an explicit by-district electoral process failed.

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

#898

Post by hannasanarion »

briandear wrote: post #803
hannasanarion wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about the electoral college, which enables tyranny of the minority. Not only can a candidate win the electoral college while losing the popular vote, but the winner-take-all system means that only votes in closely-contested states really matter. The Electoral College allows the minority to overrule the majority.

The president isn't the president of “the people” but of the states. It says so right there on the tin: “President of the United States.” Which means the president is and should be, elected by representatives of the states. The House of Representatives should be the only federal office directly voted on by “the people.” If that were the case, especially eliminating the direct election of senators, you’d see a much le…

The office is called "President of the United States", not "President of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan".

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

#899

Post by hannasanarion »

briandear wrote: post #809
hannasanarion wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I also get the arguments of people that say that without the electoral college, there is zero incentive for politicians to campaign in or pay attention to the interests of people in lightly-populated area. This is a lie probably told to you by a high school teacher who never really thought about it, and clearly you haven't either. If the electoral college empowers lightly populated areas, how come no Presidenti…

Does the EU presidency have a popular vote? Why aren’t the various leaders of the EU all German since Germany has the most people? I love the electoral college. For those that bother to understand that America is a republic; the system was nearly perfectly designed. If we can get back to the original method of electing senators and back to the idea of “these United States” rather than “the United States,” we’d all be…

Dude, the Electoral College takes sovereignty AWAY from the states, and concentrates it in only 4-5 states where the race is close.

If the Electoral College made every state matter equally, then candidates would be campaigning for support in every state equally. It is a fact that that's not what the Electoral College does.

Also, the Electoral College in its current form was not "designed". It was a mistake. The people who designed it, Hamilton and Madison, tried to get rid of it with constitutional amendments after they saw how it was being abused with "winner-take-all" laws.

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

#900

Post by CompanionCuuube »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #684
daleco wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it’s not new to manipulate people, the low cost for high efficiency is new. Clinton had almost 3M more votes than Trump. It would be much more expensive to manipulate 3M (1% us population, 1.2% voters), rather than 70k (0.02% pop, 0.028% voters). If winning the election is about properly manipulating 0.04% of the voters, that’s very scary and not working as initially designed. Edit:math

Maybe if Clinton had bothered to campaign in the Rust Belt, she would have won. Trump's politics was aimed at industrial workers, and Clinton thought she didn't need them to win. She bet wrong.

But maybe it's better that candidates don't need the Rust Belt to win? How many voters are there, compared to places like LA and NYC?
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