Obviously no elected president is motivated to change a system that brought him into office. Nevertheless it seems crazy that one candidate gets the most votes and another takes office. I am from Germany where 1 vote really means 1 vote. Am I missing ways that this process could be changed by? Or is this really on the president alone? What are the changes this will ever happen?
Ask HN: Will the US electoral voting system ever change?
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Re: Ask HN: Will the US electoral voting system ever change?
#2The United States is far different from Germany, each state acts internally like a separate country in many ways, and we have a House & Senate to ensure the less populous states do not get drown out by the larger states.
The electoral college was envisioned the same way, the founding fathers didn't want the uneducated masses electing the president directly, so they set up this arcane system where the governor of each state gets to appoint a certain number of electoral college voters, then they vote for president. They can generally vote how they please, to the point that a few have misspelled candidates names and not been counted as having voted for any candidate.
What this system ends up creating is an area where in many states, your individual vote literally does not matter since a vote in California is worth nearly nothing compared to a vote in Florida or Michigan. Also, the US media loves to dogpile on this and erroneously call states and guess at electoral college votes months ahead of when they'll vote. Comparatively, where the United States has set up democracies we do not do this, such as Iraq.
As to change, that is not going to happen short of people going out and taking action to fight for the future. Us americans are very depoliticized and non-participatory in our political parties, both major parties essentially lay dormant till national elections come around.
We need to get out in the streets and fight for the future we want to see, Martin Luther King didn't sit back at home and wait for a better America, nor did the readers of Silent Spring. Change in America can be had, but it takes activism, which most Americans think of as a dirty, unfamiliar thing with serious risks (due to how our media portrays it). We need to mobilize & empower Americans to fight for a better future.
Re: Ask HN: Will the US electoral voting system ever change?
#3States have gotten weaker relative to the federal government, so most people identify as being a US citizen rather than a citizen of their state. Keep in mind that Germany is smaller than California, a single US state; and Germans will send representatives rather than vote directly in the EU.
If you view yourself as a citizen of your state, then you want to avoid the problem of largely-populated states overruling everyone else. The Constitution split the House and Senate to avoid New York setting law for the whole country.
There are some bigger problems: States have a winner-take-all system to magnify their impact in the election. This encourages politicians to spend all their time on a few key battleground states.
I wouldn't mind seeing a Constitutional amendment that says, "The people voting for a member of the House also vote for a member of the electoral college, who is assigned to the same district". Then you'd see a few Republicans win in California, and a few Democrats win in Texas. And it'd be easier for 3rd-party candidates to get some visibility. There would still be a statewide vote for the electoral college members tied to the Senate.
There was also an amendment proposed along with the Bill of Rights related to the number of representatives. It was never passed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Am...
Anti-Federalists, who opposed the Constitution's ratification, noted that there was nothing in the document to guarantee that the number of seats in the House would continue to represent small constituencies as the general population of the states grew. They feared that over time, if the size remained relatively small and the districts became more expansive, that only well-known individuals with reputations spanning wide geographic areas could secure election. It was also feared that those in Congress would, as a result, have an insufficient sense of sympathy with and connectedness to ordinary people in their district.
Re: Ask HN: Will the US electoral voting system ever change?
#4We're closer than you think. Check it out: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Inters...
Hopefully more states will come on board after this election.
Re: Ask HN: Will the US electoral voting system ever change?
#5States have gotten weaker relative to the federal government, so most people identify as being a US citizen rather than a citizen of their state. Keep in mind that Germany is smaller than California, a single US state; and Germans will send representatives rather than vote directly in the EU. If you view yourself as a citizen of your state, then you want to avoid the problem of largely-populated states overruling eve…
> There are some bigger problems: States have a winner-take-all system to magnify their impact in the election. This encourages politicians to spend all their time on a few key battleground states.
That sounds like a tragedy-of-the-commons type of situation.
Anyway, so it seems that your vote means more depending on which state you happen to live in. Suppose we wish to preserve that property, why not simply weigh all votes in each state by the number of representatives that that state would have today, add everything together, and on those numbers decide which candidate becomes president?
Edit: For example, we have states A and B. State A has 3 representatives and 100 inhabitants, and state B has 2 representatives and 50 inhabitants. We have candidates X and Y. In state A, X receives 60 votes, and Y receives 40 votes. In state B, X receives 20 votes, and Y receives 30 votes. Now we calculate the winner:
X receives (3 * 60) + (2 * 20) = 220 "votes"
Y receives (3 * 40) + (2 * 30) = 200 "votes"
X wins.
Re: Ask HN: Will the US electoral voting system ever change?
#6States have gotten weaker relative to the federal government, so most people identify as being a US citizen rather than a citizen of their state. Keep in mind that Germany is smaller than California, a single US state; and Germans will send representatives rather than vote directly in the EU. If you view yourself as a citizen of your state, then you want to avoid the problem of largely-populated states overruling eve…
> There are some bigger problems: States have a winner-take-all system to magnify their impact in the election. This encourages politicians to spend all their time on a few key battleground states. That sounds like a tragedy-of-the-commons type of situation. Anyway, so it seems that your vote means more depending on which state you happen to live in. Suppose we wish to preserve that property, why not simply weigh all…
One reason I'd oppose that is because you're making the federal government choose how each state votes. You can already go to a small state and campaign for changes to the voting method. Moving it to the federal level takes that power away from your local community or state. If you forced every state to vote the same way, I predict that method would never be touched by any politician ever again.
As an example, Maine just passed Ranked Voting, as did Benton County, Oregon. That kind of incremental change would be impossible if you moved it up to the federal level.
http://www.fairvote.org/maine_voters_adopt_ranked_choice_vot...
Re: Ask HN: Will the US electoral voting system ever change?
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are some bigger problems: States have a winner-take-all system to magnify their impact in the election. This encourages politicians to spend all their time on a few key battleground states. That sounds like a tragedy-of-the-commons type of situation. Anyway, so it seems that your vote means more depending on which state you happen to live in. Suppose we wish to preserve that property, why not simply weigh all…
One reason I'd oppose that is because you're making the federal government choose how each state votes. You can already go to a small state and campaign for changes to the voting method. Moving it to the federal level takes that power away from your local community or state. If you forced every state to vote the same way, I predict that method would never be touched by any politician ever again. As an example, Maine…
I see your point, but the current system encourages states to use a winner-takes-all system because it maximizes the influence of that state, which is hardly ideal. It'd be a shame to pass up on a good system (or one that is better than the one you are using now, in my opinion) just so you can forever experiment around with individual states. "Perfect" is the enemy of "good" and all that.
Re: Ask HN: Will the US electoral voting system ever change?
#8The surprisingly realistic path to eliminating the Electoral College by 2020
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/9/1594792/-The-surpris...
Re: Ask HN: Will the US electoral voting system ever change?
#9It is meaningless which candidate won the most votes, because the election was not about winning the most votes. If it were, millions more Republicans in hopelessly blue states like California might have voted, and similarly on the other side. We do not know who would have won if it was understood that victory depended on total votes.
Re: Ask HN: Will the US electoral voting system ever change?
#10See here: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
It's getting closer.