The electoral college has nothing to do with direct democracy. It serves no function other than to give low population states a disproportionate say on who becomes President.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
US PoliEra 2017 |OT| At least Rand Paul had a lawn to cushion the blow
- Thread starter B-Dubs
- Start date
- Status
Not even low population states. States with the perfect cocktail of both Republicans and Democrats and swing voters. It's bizarre.
I think it's hilarious how with every new president you have incumbents of the same party thinking they can somehow weather the storm by distancing themselves enough from the administration.
Might as well fully embrace them, put up a fight and go down with dignity like Perriello in 2010. Accidental driftwood Congressman in a tough district who ended up being a pretty solid party line vote, only lost by a few points while Boucher, a blue dog who'd been in office for almost 30 years and voted no on the ACA lost by double digits in a better-on-paper district.
If the Dems increase the number of Reps next time they have a trifecta . . . That's pretty much irreversible right? Like, the subsequent election would seat hundreds of additional representatives into office . . . And they wouldn't vote to remove themselves.
What I'm basically asking is why the fuck didn't Dems do this last time they had a trifecta.
What I'm basically asking is why the fuck didn't Dems do this last time they had a trifecta.
I don't think this is true. It just forces candidates to be able to win in an arbitrary collection of swing states.
To be fair, republican Governors like Charlie Baker who have actually walked the walk can probably get away with running away from Trump.
Any republican that tries to go to the House or Senate won't be able to, though.
But my point is that only one of those two things is realistically something we can drastically alter. With Regards to the Connecticut Compromise and the creation of the Senate I somewhat I agree that the Senate is outdated (although ironically it's the side of congress that is BETTER representing the Democrat/Republican congressional elections because you can't gerrymander the shape of an entire state so easily), but talking about stuff that requires constitutional amendments is not worthwhile when instead we could be talking about have the Senate better represent us by:
- Having Virginia/Maryland take a huge chunk of DC as their state, then have that chunk split off into its own separate state.
- Making Puerto Rico and/or the Virgin Islands 1 or 2 states
- Splitting California into 2 states
- Making Guam and the Mariana Islands into another State
Like why worry about whether or not the POTUS election is determined by the popular vote (a change that would require a constitutional amendment), when we can make the EC much more congruent with the popular vote with changes via congressional law. I'm talking like 99+% congruent (compared to right now where it's only 80-85% congruent).
Ok, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to make the EC a lot more congruent with the popular vote than it currently is.
Indeed. On the contrary. It discourages democracy and even bothering showing up to vote, because if you don't vote the same way the majority of your state voted (for President), you might as well have not voted at all--your vote is basically treated as if it never existed in the first place. A true popular vote fixes this, as even if you don't vote the way your state voted, it's still quite possible it will make a difference regardless precisely because it's not thrown in the trash, and actually does influence the national total regardless, which would be used to decide the President. The current system does the opposite. You live in California? No real point in voting for the Republican candidate for President, leading less people to bother. And the opposite situation with states like West Virginia or Alaska. That's just ridiculous, and has fuck-all to do with democracy or representativeness, tossing people's votes in the trash just because they didn't vote for the winner in their individual state. Screw everything about that.
A strict popular vote fixes that. Your vote matters regardless of where you live, and can have influence even if you don't vote in-line with state trends. The electoral college just creates problems that have no reason to exist in the first place, and basically treats us as if we're 50 different countries instead of all Americans, regardless of where we live, and pits us against each other and encourages not just nationalism, but strong identification with state-identities, leading to doubling down on all kinds of unnecessary inter-state rivalries and grudges and stuff as a result. All avoided by just going with a strict popular vote, and giving people one vote, that's worth the same regardless of where they live, and which isn't thrown out just because they vote for the loser in their city or county or state or whatever. I see no good reason to do otherwise.
Who said the EC had anything to do with Direct democracy.
If you eliminated the electoral college, people would only campaign in high density areas. Northeast, southern California, Chicago, maybe a few scattered other cities. Campaigning there would be much more time effective. Why bother campaigning in Iowa when you can run up the vote in NYC? Turnout in every other area would be severely depressed. You may have noticed, also, that there's a huge difference in how these areas vote. So when you lower turnout in rural areas, you're making the vote less representative.
People's needs and issues often times vary by location. Your average citizen in Houston probably isn't going to care much about ethanol subsidies, and a citizen in Iowa probably isn't going to care as much about border control. The EC encourages candidates to reach out to more people and address those different issues that matter most on a more grassroots level.
Granted, with the way the EC is set up right now, a lot of people are still ignored. Illinois is practically forgotten about because Chicagoland reliably votes blue, but there's a huge chunk of state remaining that's mostly rural and doesn't have Chicagoland values.
What I would like to see is a ranked choice voting method, along with replacing gerrymandering as is with independently drawn districts. This way elections can't be gerrymandered but are still determined district by district. If you want to fix the problem of low pop states having more say then we need ranked choice voting nation wide which also gives 3rd party's a chance. The call for the end of the electoral college is a partisan strategy.
Probably because of how radical a shift that would be - it would also dilute their own power.
Also I can just see the attack ads. "Democrats think the solution is to add MORE POLITICIANS." I don't think it would hold up very well in public opinion.
I don't think you can win just by campaigning in Urban Areas. IIRC the top 100 US cities is only 20% of the US population, and the population quickly drops for cities after that.
Another thing I dislike about the electoral college that's not talked about much is it ignores everyone in the US territories. Puerto Rico has 3 million people who are US citizens and yet they have no say in who gets to be the President.
Another thing I dislike about the electoral college that's not talked about much is it ignores everyone in the US territories. Puerto Rico has 3 million people who are US citizens and yet they have no say in who gets to be the President.
Puerto Rico can't vote because it isn't a state not because of EC. The U.S. Constitution requires a voter to be resident in one of the 50 states or in the District of Columbia to vote in federal elections.
If this were true, John Kerry would've won the popular vote. The EC doesn't force candidates to win everywhere, it's a rationalization of a very horrible system.
Imagine if we elected the president by popular vote and someone proposed the Electoral College. People would (rightly) think it was the stupidest idea ever.
Catering to rural areas is how you end up with
- coal subsidies
- corn subsidies
- a gutted EPA
The electoral college is helping killing the planet. I'm not inclined to cater to rural people in any capacity.
You can't. This is a myth that gets repeated over and over because people need to rationalize why we use such a terrible system for electing the president.
That would obviously be better than our status quo in which candidates ignore California, Texas, and the entire northeast except as locations for fundraisers. Candidates should campaign where people live! A system that encourages candidates to ignore people is obviously bad!
Edit: TBF they campaign in Philly.
Last edited:
Which I think is wrong. All US citizens should be able to vote for federal elections.
Also except for the president people from DC can't vote in federal elections either. They have no Senator or Representative with voting powers. They only reason they have electoral votes is because of the 23rd amendment.
The EC doesn't discourage campaigning in high density areas, it discourages campaigning in areas that are solid and just pushed candidates to middle ground states and their issues. On the flip side of "why both campaigning in Iowa" is "Why the fuck should Ohio and Pennsylvania issues matter so ridiculously much more in this country than any other state?"
Electoral College encourages voter suppression and depression. It lowers turnout in urban areas and encourages bullshit like here in Wisconsin. If we moved to a popular vote system and Iowa or Wisconsin actually wanted more say in the nation's politics then they could do things to encourage people to vote more and become a larger percentage of that vote. They could make it easier. Now, when Scott Walker and republicans suppress the vote it doesn't suppress Wisconsin's say in the system, thus actively encouraging it. Voter apathy is a rampant problem in states that aren't those middle states I mentioned just before. You're lowering turnout in urban areas and making the vote less representative with the electoral college.
The system encourages candidates to reach out to more people in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and a few others but doesn't encourage them to reach out to different people. What California or New York wants apparently doesn't fucking matter.
This is what I've been saying. The EC encourages ignoring wide swaths of the nation.
I would ask you this question regarding the popular vote and direct democracy/direct law voting -
Would you be equally supportive if you lived in a state like NC or VA where "the people" voted on a referendum that outlawed gay marriage? Both of those states passed laws banning gay marriage by a significant margin ie: majority rule and direct democracy
Think about this question because if you truly believe in majority rule, then you would accept the outcome and not look to the courts to overturn a decision you don't agree with personally.
Would you be equally supportive if you lived in a state like NC or VA where "the people" voted on a referendum that outlawed gay marriage? Both of those states passed laws banning gay marriage by a significant margin ie: majority rule and direct democracy
Think about this question because if you truly believe in majority rule, then you would accept the outcome and not look to the courts to overturn a decision you don't agree with personally.
This has nothing to do with the popular vote vs. the Electoral College. Absolutely zero.
I might as well ask EC defenders if they'd be OK with replacing the presidency with a hereditary monarchy. It has just as much to do with this debate.
Electing a president by popular vote is still representative democracy, not direct democracy.
Yeah you're still delegating everything to an elected official. Like you said it's just people trying to rationalize an inherently undemocratic system.
I'd be interested I hearing how we would realistically adjust to a repeal of the 1929 Reapportionment Act. The only person I've ever seen discuss it is Larry Sabato as part of a big raft of proposals to improve our system. The idea of massively increasing the House makes sense to me, but do we do it all at once, or phase it in or what? Surely we wouldn't go from 435 to several thousand in once cycle, right? Has anyone written about how to do this feasibly or worked out ways the GOP might undermine it? Or ways a right wing court might block it? Because this otherwise seems like a fairly achievable positive major reform if all it takes is a simple Congressional majority and president.
"Because they look like Uncle Jim and Aunt Barb and Mawmaw and Pawpaw and all the people I feel guilty for leaving behind when I escaped from there."
That's only if you consider the Urban-population to be within the city limits. Metro population is what actually matters.
Let's just take Chicago for example:
City population: 2.7 million
Metro population: 9.5 million
The vast majority of Americans live in metro areas. 81% per a quick google search.
If Congress can limit the number of Representatives to a certain number, they can unlimit it too.
I don't think we should ignore the needs of rural areas, but why would that happen under a popular vote? A candidate who could effectively balance an appeal to urban and rural areas would beat a candidate who tried to just win big cities and screw over rural areas.
The electoral college doesn't even push the needs of people in "rural areas." It pushes the needs of certain states, and candidates still tend to campaign in the more dense parts of those states anyway. You might get a few pandering photo ops in the middle of nowhere but most campaign rallies and real campaigning is done in the cities and closer suburbs. Like, Trump wasn't wandering his fat ass out to where my fucking family lived in Wisconsin. He was campaigning in a rich ass suburb of Milwaukee that was still pretty damned densely populated.
Let's flip this on its head - do you think statewide races (Governor, Senator, Attorney General, etc.) should use an EC system? By your logic, why should we elect a president by EC but not statewide offices? Blue states are usually only Blue because the urban parts of the state make up so much of the population of the state. The EC system is a dumb system that is replicated nowhere else in the world and again only exists to make Slave States of the past happy.
Yeah I don't think where candidates campaigned would change in terms of rural versus urban so much as which states they'd visit. A Democrat would actually feel compelled to go to Texas and Georgia. A Republican might want to make a trip out to New York or California. But let's not pretend like candidates make regular visits out to towns of 500 people or whatever. Maybe if a new factory opens up or something, but that would absolutely still happen.
I think it's interesting people are so hung up on the rural areas being ignored, as if cities have it so great under the current system. They're woefully underfunded and filled with poverty and crime and we have an entire party dedicated to doing absolutely nothing about it. In fact all they do is make boogeymen out of them. See: Chicago.
I think it's interesting people are so hung up on the rural areas being ignored, as if cities have it so great under the current system. They're woefully underfunded and filled with poverty and crime and we have an entire party dedicated to doing absolutely nothing about it. In fact all they do is make boogeymen out of them. See: Chicago.
The ec is working as designed. The founders never intended for the President to be decided by a popular vote. Given how little most voters know about how the government is meant to function and current events, I doubt the founders would change their minds. Straight up democracy only works with an informed electorate and and an unbiased media. Neither of which we have. Ranked choice voting is one of the few reforms we need among others. I like the Electoral College. I do not like how states choose electors. That's what's gumming up the system the Founders created and confusing people to think popular vote is better.
Rural areas aren't faring so great under the current system either.
Yes it's working as designed, but that's the problem. It was designed to give power to states with citizens suppressed from voting. It was created to allow slave states power while still making sure their slaves couldn't vote and now it encourages suppression of still largely black voters while keeping the power.
it's a shit system. it was created for a shit reason. It was designed for shit reasons. It's still shit.
A) Voters in Wisconsin and Ohio aren't smarter than voters in New York, California, Wyoming, Idaho, etc. All the EC is make the votes of some states matter than other.
B) If the idea is that the EC would be a check against the idiocy of the masses, what purpose does it serve if it would let someone as unfit as Trump become president?
C) You still haven't addressed why not an EC system on a state basis or that the EC is a function of concessions to Slave States......
Then why did Barack Obama win the 2008 Democratic Primary without California or New York?
We can run a well liked candidate with very little/no baggage like Kamala and still have similar problems that Hillary faced. The right will do everything in their power to make sure that candidate becomes Hillary 2.0. Just look at the Fox News and Alabama voter response to Roy Moore. This is the level of partisan politics we will be dealing with.
It's also not going to be just an election against Donald Trump this time, but given the lack of action from his administration, a election with Russia on his side once again.
It'd be very difficult for Dems to find a candidate so over-exposed.
I feel like that's the main issue with Clinton more than anything, the GOP just had enough time to make her name mud with enough people, and it still took 25 years of attacks to get there. There's few others who have been that visible for that long, if anyone. Pelosi, maybe.
Kamala or whoever else isn't going to have 30 years of baggage though. Clinton was extremely easy to demonize because voters had been conditioned for so long to not like her, and she'd been in the public arena for so long they saw her as a part of the problem.
Look at Obama - yes, there was plenty of demonization of him too, but he had a relatively clean record and it was very hard to make attacks stick with swing voters. He came in with 70% approval. Thinking the Clinton playbook is going to work against every single Democrat from now on is needlessly pessimistic, although I agree the rise of fake news and foreign involvement will complicate things.
I find it difficult to believe the Democrats could find a more easily demonized figure than Clinton for 2020. The right-wing media machine has been attacking her for going on 30 years. Pretty much any candidate other than Clinton will pose more of a challenge for Republicans to get their base riled up. Hating Clinton became an institution on the right; for comparison's sake, how many people on the right have even heard of Kamala Harris?
I think it's necessary pessimism. So much of the "baggage" that influenced voters into falling for the Clinton hate machine were factually incorrect (fake news) stories. Even her real scandals like Emailz involved tons of false information that was spread and from what we now know email editing on behalf of Wikileaks. If we assume someone who is fresh and new will slide in like Obama we haven't learned from the past election.
Pessimism and realism are not synonymous.
They don't even need to be squeaky clean, just charismatic enough to weather the storm. I don't think Hillary was guilty but the way she and her team responded to things was generally not good or convincing. Meanwhile in 92 there were plenty of rumors about Bill but he dealt with them by charming the pants off of everyone (unfortunately sometimes literally).
This is why Biden is looking at 2020 also if he chose Gilibrand or Harris as a running mate I think that tandem wins by a landslide....
- Status