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Slashdot Asks: Should The US Abolish The Electoral College?
Last night as votes were still being counted, statistician and editor-in-chief for FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver pointed out that while Donald Trump has been elected president of the United States, "it's possible, perhaps even likely, that [Hillary Clinton] will eventually win the popular vote as more votes come in from California." We now know that she has indeed won the popular vote by a slim margin. American journalist Carl Bialik adds via Silver's blog: Hillary Clinton could still conceivably win the election -- or she could lose the national popular vote. But since both outcomes look unlikely, we should start preparing ourselves for the possibility of the second split between the national popular vote and the electoral vote in the last five presidential elections. A coalition of 11 sates with 165 electoral votes between them has agreed to an interstate compact that, once signed by states with a combined 270 or more electoral votes, would bind their electors to vote for the winner of the national popular vote -- in effect ending the Electoral College. New York just joined this week. It wasn't enough to affect this election, but maybe today's result will spur more states to join. The results of this election echo the 2000 results, where Democrat Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote, but George W. Bush won the White House. It brings into question whether or not the Electoral College should be abolished in favor of the popular vote. As a refresher, the Electoral College is comprised of electors that cast their votes for president. Each state has a set number of electors that is based on the state's population -- the candidate who wins the state's popular vote gets those electors. Technically, on Election Day, the American people are electing the electors who elect the president. The New York Times has a lengthy article describing how the Electoral College works, which you can view here.
yes they should
The operators of /. are unhappy about the results of the election, so the system is broken.
Eliminate the electoral college, eliminate the Federal nature of our government, and we will be dominated by NYC, LA, & Chicago. Look at the Blue
areas. Big metro areas and largely black areas voted Blue. The rest of the country voted Red. The problems of the big city are not the same as
the REST of the nation.
maybe, but it won't happen (that's what they said about Trump).
Trump wins the college so obviously we must abolish it! Get a grip will you.
New York and California do not get to dictate who is president of the entire country.
We are the United States.
A republic. And as such, the votes need to be weighted to protect the rights of the states and the people in them.
Mob rule is the worst form of government.
Work Safe Porn
The Electoral College is too susceptible to gerrymandering and other such manipulations. Popular vote is simple, straightforward, and hard to misinterpret. The margins are gonna be a lot narrower, but since in the end they don't matter whatsoever, I don't see an issue with it. It'd be more representative of the true wish of the electorate (as representative as winner-takes-all can get, anyway).
Because then when the election is close, we'd have campaigns challenging results from all 50 states.
At least during Bush v. Gore in 2000, the court only had to look at one or two states.
Not just no, but HELL NO
This is now the second time in 5 cycles where this has happened. National Popular Vote will actually make the two (or more) candidates campaign for every vote instead of trying to strategize about what counties in swing states will matter.
There are several other structural changes we ought to consider but eliminating the EC is an easy one and would be broadly popular.
Why is the EC bad only when Democratic candidates fail?
Part of a representative republic is to ensure that the majority (i.e. the coastal cities) don't just bully around the minority.
We are going to have to wait until noon the next day to count up all the votes and cast the electoral votes accordingly?
It's the last check against massive voter fraud. The colluding states should be fined for every day they have those laws on the books as they're trying to get around the US Constitution instead of pushing for an amendment like they're supposed to do.
It's funny how these conversations always take place after the Democrat loses.
In 2000, the conventional wisdom was that Bush would win the popular vote and Gore would win the electoral college so there was article after article by liberals in the summer of 2000 on why the electoral college would matter. Google it.
The electoral college prevents politicians for completely ignoring 90% of the country and focusing only on the few really big cities. It also prevents voter fraud happening in one area affecting the entire election because it limits the damage done by voter fraud.
The electoral college idea was genius and there is a reason why the country is not a democracy and why we don't elect presidents via popular vote.
It's not perfect, but it does serve it's function. What isn't perfect and should be fixed is that we only have a 2 party system (despite the appearance of supporting more parties). Time I think to look at how the party systems in other countries work, where a coalition needs to be formed if a single party doesn't get enough votes.
I'm not happy with this election's results, but I respect the system...I just think it's time to rethink the system. Probably won't happen though.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
If State A has the worst voter fraud in the country, then the effects of said fraud are limited within their borders. If there is no electoral college, then the effects of fraudulent votes in State A for Candidate X is that they will now start cancelling out votes for Candidate Y in other states. LBJ would have loved nothing more than to get rid of the electoral college. Look at Virginia allowing felons to vote. Getting rid of the electoral college is a fool's errand.
The People elect their Representatives. We are a Representative Republic after all.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
If I were in charge of re-designing our electoral process, the electoral college would be close to the bottom of the list. Higher priority would be instant runoff elections - this by itself would probably rectify any disagreement between popular and electoral votes.
I'd say house elections need more focus - I like CA's top two primary and non-partisan redistricting.
The Electoral College is due to the fact we live in a republic- the number of electoral votes is equal to the sum of the house and senate.
A better approach would be to divide the Electoral College votes proportionally to the vote cast in the sate. This would then still give candidates incentive to campaign in smaller or less populated states.
If we where to go to a straight out popular vote only then people will complain that it is always the big states like California and New York that decide every election and as such Presidential candidates will likely only stop in those larger cities along the costs and be damned to fly over country as they call it.
when you look at the big picture.
Last night some 52% of us possible voters, voted. That means just under half of the people who could, didn't. By your logic, a mob decided last night.
Even more damning is that it is only a handful of states that are deciding things through the EC. If that's not mobbish, what is?
The point is that our current system isn't handling how fact and much the world is changing. It's likely to start stripping the cogs at any moment. I'd like to have an honest discussion on how we prevent that or, in the event of disaster, how we put things back together.
Let's start with asking ourselves does the EC accomplish what it was intended to. Does it give the rural areas have an equal voice to the urban and vice-versa? Does it make sure that the voice of all of America is heard by the political elite?
I don't think it does either of those things anymore. It needs reform.
The real trick is how non-majorities are handled (e.g. run-offs vs accept pluralities) as there are third party candidates.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Of course it should - essentially Trump won by an accident of geography ... largely because of a system designed for the days befopre the invention of the telegraph where throwing someone on a horse and sending him off to represent you in the final caucus to vote for the President was the most practical thing to do.
Times have changed, a national vote is completely practical, certainly less unwieldy than sending someone to vote for you.
It's also time we got rid of a system that effectively gives every voter in Wyoming 3 votes for every 1 a California voter gets
Assemble the circular firing squad! Ready, Fire, Aim!
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy
The STATES elect the president, not the populace. In the early days it was the state legislatures that elected the Electors, who went to Washington to vote for president. Along the way the state Electors were changed to being voted on by the people. The president has never been elected by popular vote. If you want to change that then you change the original intent of the Constitution. Not saying that is a bad idea, just that it all makes sense if you understand it.
This is an effective solution to end a more and more emotional election war.
Switzerland successfully use it since a long time.
that, and why stop there, abolish super delegates as well..... bull.
nuff said
The operators of /. are unhappy about the results of the election, so the system is broken.
Indeed.
The Democrats moved $60 mil from down-ballot elections to Hillary to torpedo Bernie(*), gave the media questions to grill trump, got debate questions ahead of time, got to vet media articles before they were published, hired protestors to shut down a rally and start fights, colluded with PACs, published oversampled and biased polls, tried to frame Julian Assange.
The electoral college is unfair!!
(*) Are the democrats bemoaning that R's control both houses? Now we know why!
This is the only remnant from our past, enshrined in the Constitution, which needs to be changed. Not simply because of this election but because the presidential election is the only election in the entire country, at any level, where the person with the most votes may not win.
The reasons for the electoral college were clear, back in the day, but now, with near instant communication and the hordes of political ads we are subjected to every election cycle, that reason is no longer valid.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The point of the electoral college is to preserve the power of each state within the union regardless of voter turnout. In an average election you've got less than half of the electorate exercising their right to vote. In a populace state like California, should millions of votes be under-represented because people didn't turn out? This mechanism preserves their power by representing their full population instead of their voting population. I think states should really consider the ramifications of this before abandoning the system. Political winds change quickly, and they may soon find themselves on the wrong end of the popular vote, especially when radicalized populations in smaller states turn out in great numbers.
No, it should not. The Electoral College is just fine as it is.
One Person, One Vote is fundamental to democracy. In the United States a majority of the people can vote for one person only to see another win the election, because of administrative distortion in allocating the effect of the votes of people according to their states.
Unfortunately, this all got a lot worse a few years ago when the Republicans were the first to use computer models in gerrymandering congressional districts. This gave them the "structural advantage" the news often talks about, especially when discussing seats in the House of Representatives. It substantially increased the administrative distortion that makes one person's vote not the same in its weight as another's, not only across state lines but this time across congressional district lines.
So yes, we need to have a pure popular vote without the Electoral College, and we need to move the construction of electoral districts to a carefully constituted non-partisan committee.
Bruce Perens.
California has approx 574,000 voters per electoral vote. Contrast that to Wyoming with 142,000 voters per electoral vote. (This is because each state gets a minimum number of electoral votes.)
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2012/11/presidential_election_a_map_showing_the_vote_power_of_all_50_states.html
How in the world is that fair? Are we not giving voters in some states more power to elect the President than others?
The point of the EC is to ensure broad national support for the only elected executive position in the government. Since the very first days of the Republic there were divisions between states with large population densities and states with low population densities. The bicameral Congress is another compromise to address these these concerns of both states.
Not only does the EC guarantee broad geographical support of POTUS but also ensure that any would-be POTUS has to campaign in areas out side of a few large cities. Additionally, it ensures that any POTUS will be supported by a majority of states or more specifically a majority in states' majority. It isn't about the people, it is about the States. We are a Republic of sovereign States and the only executive office up for election should reflect this fact of our government.
The point is to give low population states some equal footing in the say of the only executive position up for election. If not, POTUS would be selected by the cities because low population areas interests are overridden by the millions in one city.
We live in a republic and a republic is a guard against the flaws of democracy. Just like the bicameral congress, the electoral college is a way to ensure that rural America isn't disenfranchised and left behind by the urban city centers. Each State has different needs and their needs should be reflected in the election of the leader of those States. You cannot represent the needs of smaller States in the executive if you elect that office on popular vote.
I live in a country where the person with the most votes gets elected. That's democracy. It doesn't matter how they change district borders or whatever, the candidate with the most votes gets elected. We live in the 21st century.
no, I don't have a sig
To improve the system. How about a ranking system. Example I want an independent but I don't want a republican. Then I can vote my independent and if they lose I can have my vote default to Democrat. That way I can vote independent and still not waste my vote. Another interesting option would be a negative vote. Example I don't like anyone running but I know I don't want Hillary so I can cast a negative vote against Hillary without having to vote Trump. Just some options.
In case you guys who aren't aware of what the electorate system does weren't aware, the states which barred a lot of voters from coming out were precisely the majority conservative states.
Trump would have had a way bigger popular vote than Hillary if you voted without the electorate, while the current vote difference is one with conservative votes suppressed.
In other words, even with a system rigged against him, Trump won.
Keep shedding those tears. I'm enjoying their taste.
And as far as that stupid woman from the young turks goes. Hey, girl, you call women who voted Trump stupid because of his vocal tirades, but what then should those women call you for supporting Hillary who herself supports and gets finance from the Wahhabi and Saudi regimes who don't just have vocal tirades but also stoning, shooting, hanging and treating women as REAL garbage?
Here's a video explaining why it would be a bad idea to end the electoral college: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Serious question, but what is stopping the electoral college people from voting for Hillary despite what the people in their state voted? From what I've read, even those states that have laws that mandate how the electoral people have to vote, the punishments are so laughable for breaking that law that they might as well not exist.
Go take civics again. You obviously failed the last time.
Let us consider what it would take to change this. Step one, a constitutional amendment should be enough for the task at hand, although it should require a constitutional convention, because we are about to fundamentally alter the constitution. But let us not argue that at the moment. Because we don't want the 2nd option to ever happen. It gives full rights to whoever is in the bicameral legislature access to change ANYTHING they want and needs 2/3rds majority to authorize the federal legislature to rewrite the constitution. Yeah if that ever happens run for the border.
For the 1st option this requires a 2/3rds majority of people to approve it. Not likely to happen as only about 47% of the people are ever pissed off about the electoral college at any one time, then they get distracted by cat videos and forget about it for 20 or so years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution
The current system favors small states because it gives each voter in them more relative power. It was set up that way on purpose by the founders so populous states wouldn't "mob" small ones.
Such states are not going to give up that advantage easily.
But an alternative solution is to assign weights to each voter that correspond to what they would be under EC. A citizen in Rhode Island may get say 3.2 units of votes, while somebody in California may get say 0.6 units.
It's still lopsided, but at least it's better granularity than EC such that states' results are not all-or-nothing. It is lopsidedness done right.
Table-ized A.I.
I'd rather see a proportional split of each state's electoral votes personally. The electoral college has its place, namely as a concession to the smaller, less populated states so they don't get railroaded. Since most states benefit from this, I doubt it would ever be ratified, especially since it would also seem to hurt the ruling party in those states also since two of the last three times their guy got elected President, it was only due to the electoral college. Granting a states electoral votes proportionally to the voter's choices would give representation to voters in non-swing states. It might also allow for some third party bits if they were allowed to form coalitions for their votes in some manner. I'm sure there's a ton of things that could go wrong with that, but in a quick post, I'll throw that out there.
Crap I could read on another site
Can we stick to the tech stories now that your shitty election is done.
If you hope that this would change the outcome, you'd be disappointed. Trump would just change his campaign strategy to target different areas and tweak his message to win those areas. He did A LOT more rallies than Hillary, sometimes doing up to five _per day_, and the attendance at those was an order of magnitude higher, with some rallies running 10K people or more. He simply got more exposure to the people who voted and promised them the things they cared about.
This is a vote against the establishments. Democrats lost it in June when they screwed Sanders out of his well deserved nomination.
There was roughly 120 Million votes cast this election. Hillary only has trump beat by 207,000 votes... out of 120 million. Thats insane. 0.002% difference. The reason that is even this close are the huge cities for the Democrats on the coasts. I think the current electoral college doesnt allow for every vote to count as well the popular vote because the larger cities would basically always decide the election.
The best way for every single vote to count is to provide a way for all candidate to take partial electoral votes based on the number of votes you got in each state. So for California, 55 Electoral votes, Hillary: 61%, Trump: 33%. That would give Hillary 33.55 electoral votes and Trump 18.15 votes. I know that leaves up partial percentage points but I'm fine with it. This way every single vote matters in each state.
More than that, get rid of first past the post voting; It strangles 3rd parties. It's no mystery why the house and senate have 10% approval ratings but a 90+% re-election rate when you only have 2 choices. There should be Proportional Representation for the house, Instant run-off for the senate, presidency, and any other election where it's only practical to have single member districts.
I like how the electoral college forces that the President has to appeal to citizens from many places. Not just the most amount of citizens.
Every election, this question. And it's a moot question...why? Because the winner (who has just won via the electoral college system) isn't about to sabotage the very system that got them elected.
Next up: Trouble in the Middle East.
It's important that a candidate win as much of the country as possible, not just the populous areas. The broad but sparse rural population has different concerns than suburbanites. A voting system which disenfranchises them would be a bad thing.
If there was a 20 point spread in popular vote and the election went to the other candidate I'd change my tune. But that's not the case. The popular vote numbers are functionally a tie.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
'Nuff said. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Yes, the electoral college should be abolished, but not because of this election (get over it). It needs to go because it is stupid and really serves no purpose. But more importantly, what we need is to abolish this ridiculous system that creates just two possible candidates (especially two candidates like we just ended up with). We need instant runoff voting just as badly- if fact, even worse. Right now other parties can pretty much NEVER get elected in any important campaigns; votes for them simply split the vote of whichever major party/parties they most resemble. People are TOO AFRAID to vote for who they want, they are forced to vote against who they most fear. IRV will fix that once and for all- and for all levels of government. People would be able to RANK candidates how they like, knowing their vote is never wasted or thrown away.
It is impossible to represent what the people might want with just two views and the primaries don't fix it either because they have the exact same problem with the lack of IRV.
Nothing is as simple as "left" or "right". Many, many, many millions of voters have views that simply can't be described in two dimensions... it is like trying to describe airplane motion as "left or right" while ignoring up, down, forward, backward, speed, and roll.
No system is perfect. But just about ANY "alternative voting" system is better than what we have now.
http://fairvote.org/
To add something to the other comments about the benefits of the Electoral College...
The United States is a constitutional republic; the Framers were very clear about the dangers of majoritarian mob rule. The most important sentence in American history is from the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
I point this out because it was universally accepted by the Framers that rights precede governments -- they are not created by them. Governments exist to protect the universe of rights you possess as a human being. No majority can legitimately (or justly) take away free speech, or religious freedom.
As such, the Framers devised several mechanisms to limit mob rule and protect the states from a consolidated (and therefore tyrannical) federal government.
Senators were intended to represent state legislatures, not the people at large. This was so the federal government could not bully the states. Obamacare and other unfunded federal mandates would not exist if senators answered to state legislatures responsible for paying for such programs. The Progressives killed this with the Seventeenth Amendment, and it was not replaced with anything comparable, e.g. states representing a majority of the population can void any federal law.
Preserving the strength of the states through senators and the Electoral College is important because the Founders recognized the benefits of competitive sovereignty: if one state fell to tyranny or some other idiocy (aka went California), you could move to another state. Competitive sovereignty leads to legal innovations (Delaware corporate law as the de facto standard), tax competition, etc. The Fourteenth Amendment, properly enforced, corrects the chief problem with states' rights, namely localized majoritarian tyranny (Jim Crow) that deprives some group of its rights.
In short, the Electoral College requires broader coalitions beyond urban population centers. Consider NY and California, which by virtue of containing San Francisco and NYC, have disproportionately benefited from elitist, inflationary policies that have largely fucked over the "Brexit states." After all, the banks receiving the money conjured out of thin air by the Fed are in NYC, not Flint, and the money is used to prop up bullshit companies in SF, not Youngstown. Likewise, monetizing the federal debt via the Fed enables the bureaucrats to receive paychecks from Uncle Sam, and they're concentrated in Northern Virginia and D.C., not Michigan. If it wasn't for the bureaucrat class and its sycophants, Virginia would've gone to Trump, too.
No, don't make voting compulsory. Just said that to get your attention. There are more important things. The US needs an electoral commission, independent of Federal and State governments, that makes sure polling booths are equally available to all groups across the country. Voting systems need to be uniform. There need to be as many booths in black communities as in white, for example, and they need to be open. It needs to be easy to vote by post, in advance and from overseas. Recall Florida 2000 -- Federal votes need to be immune from state-based interests.
That is a far bigger factor than the EC. I mean, sure, reform that -- but you need to fix the bigger problems first. It needs to be easier to vote, equally easy everywhere. Once everyone gets to vote under a more uniform system, then you can get the inputs into the EC system to be more representative. At the moment the EC is gi-go, Fix the garbage going in first.
Second, once you've made it easy for everyone to vote, you would (ideally, though this will never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever happen) introduce what I call 'compulsory attendance'. Put simply, you can fail to vote for anybody if you want to, but you have to show up (or postal vote or whatever) and tick the Brewster's Millions box (draw a funny face on the ballot paper, whatever) or the Feds come after you. Failing to vote through apathy, or showing up and choosing not to vote for anybody because they all suck are two VERY different things, and send two very different messages, and what it does -- and this is VERY IMPORTANT -- is it removes the effect of voter turnout. Getting out the vote is discounted as a factor. That means there can be more focus on policy and genuine comparison of the parties. And you have to appeal to a wider range of voters, which tends to cut down on the more extreme ideas like Mexican walls. IT IS NOT ANTIDEMOCRATIC, because YOU DO NOT HAVE TO VOTE, you just have to actually choose to not vote, rather than just be lazy.
But highly unlikely they will.
Too many racists to actually do that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That is the reason for someone asking this question because the popular vote won. This topic has already been debated ad-nauseam and always comes up after this kind of election result.
Force all electoral delegates to vote with the constituents. Because it's beyond ridiculous that in most states they can vote how they want and not listen to anyone. I'd rather vote than cast a suggestion.
To answer the question the summary poses: Even when the Democrats control both houses of congress and the presidency they don't want to abolish the electoral college. So even the to-be minority party won't do this.
Building on the parent post: And as to Democrats blaming anyone but themselves for pulling defeat from the jaws of victory in a rigged system that favors the corporate duopoly, I'm sure they'd like to add another factor they dared not mention until now: competition from third parties such as the Greens & Libertarians. We're not allowed to hear from them in the "debates" because they're not deemed popular enough to be a factor in the election but when the Democrats lose suddenly they're a factor (paraphrasing Lawrence O'Donnell from "An Unreasonable Man".
Glenn Greenwald has salient factors listed and commented on in his latest on the Intercept. Democrats just don't want to acknowledge how running a corporate-driven system with endless war and no justice against the rapacious banks doesn't go over well by the US public, particularly in states where Clinton lost and among groups who are increasingly poor.
Digital Citizen
This is the United STATES of America, not the United PEOPLE of America. It's not all about you. I know that's hard to take because you think you're so important, but that's the way it is. Lots of people are under the mistaken impression that the Electoral College was put in place to "protect slavery." That's not true at all. It was the exact opposite. When the original 13 colonies decided to band together the southern slave-holding states dominated the landscape both in terms of land area and population. Virginia was HUGE and, in fact, for the first 50 years most every President came from Virginia.
But it was the NORTHERN states that were small with small populations: Delaware, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, New Jersey, Massachusetts. Compared to southern states they are all TINY, so they are the ones who lobbied for a Senate where every state was equally represented, and in matters of voting, was the same size. The House was left to be "The People's House" based solely on population.
In real-life terms what this means is that the presidential campaign must take into consideration ALL states because any one of them could turn out to be a decisive one in terms of the Electoral College vote. If this were NOT The case the candidates could concentrate on both coasts and ignore most of the country. But as it stands the Electoral College gives a very slight advantage to the less populous and smaller states. Look at the Electoral College Map for this election. It's available nearly everywhere. What you see is a mass of red states all across the country with a smattering of blue on the West Coast plus Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico, and the northeast plus Virginia, Minnesota, and Illinois. That's all. 20 states are blue; 30 states are red. And most of the really tiny sates that the Electoral College was designed to help? They're all blue.
The United States was set up as a Republic ("What have you given us?" "A Republic, madam, if you can keep it."--Benjamin Franklin), not a "Democracy," where you suffer under the illusion that all voters are equal, when half of them are stupid and easily led, as every election shows. "Democracy" is Mob Rule, two wolves and a sheep voting for what is for dinner. God save us from that. The Electoral College was set up to provide for a majority of people AND STATES to elect the President with as broad a mandate as possible from the entire United States--not just the population of a minority of states on both coasts. Trump won the state vote 30 to 20, even though those small states had the advantage of their senatorial electoral college votes.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Well the EC still gives us hope. The Electors could revolt and vote Bernie in instead of Trump or Clinton. After all no President was elected yesterday only Presidential Electors. If between today and the actual Presidential Election Trump and Clinton can be jailed for molestation and corruption respectively than the electors are free to elect soemone else
**Life is too short to be serious**
How about if a candidate wins the electoral college but loses the popular vote, we have new vote held 7 days later? And repeat the process until someone wins both? It happens rare enough, historically anyway that it would be something we have to deal with very often, but it would remove all doubt as to who has the public's mandate.
If they abolish the electoral college, then...then...I'm emigrating to Canada!!!!
if we had the popular vote. To cut to the chase electoral college vs popular vote is how you keep "Score" in the "Game" of "US Presidential Elections". You "play" the "Game" and "Score" via campaigning. If you change the rules of the game you change how the game is played. This pretty much means they'd campaign differently, mostly to avoid being blown out in the north east and California. I mean unless you think something crazy like campaigning doesn't work or something.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Make it proportional voting like in Maine and Nebraska. You win individual districts, and the two statewide ECs go to the overall popular vote for the State. And while we're at it - let's eliminate the 17th Amendment. Originally the People voted for their own Representatives (the House was the people). The States elected their own Senators (the Senate represented the States). The Electors elected the President (with the advice and consent of the people AND the States). It's busted, now - the States lost a LOT of power, and now the "abolish the EC" group want to finish eliminating the power of all but 4 States (CA, NY, FL, and TX).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Is it gonna happen any time soon? Not if small states have anything to say about it (ironically, they won't in the proposal listed in the summary, but that will fail for different reasons).
So, if we are stuck with it, we should:
* Eliminate the "electoral voter" i.e. the person from the equation so "faithless electors" are impossible. The "electoral vote" will become a bookkeeping entry.
* Eliminate "winner take all," at least in states with more than 3 electoral votes. Either apportion the electoral votes fractionally (fairer), or split them by Congressional District with 2 votes going to the statewide winner like Maine and Nebraska do (probably more politically feasible).
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
They need to keep the electoral college in place until voter ID is required to prevent high populations of illegals from skewing the system and making it look like the "popular" candidate is a result of genuine citizens.
The current system of the House choosing the President with each state delegation getting 1 vote and the Senate choosing the Vice President is antiquated.
If we are going let Congress decide the winner if the electoral college can't, then give all 535 Senators and Representatives 1 vote each and have them vote on a single ticket.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
... have been sold to the highest bidder. Much harder to do that with 300M people, methinks.
If we do a flat popular vote, then the will of the voters will be distorted to urban areas with greater concentrations of individuals who are easier to appeal to in large masses. If we maintain the status quo, we distort the will of the voters to swing states with statistically divided political opinions (most which are located in the Eastern US), and, to a lesser extent, rural areas. Since our government is a democratic republic, and our federal government was crafted to be the government of -these- united states, an election by the states seems a more fitting choice.
In addition, concentrating voting power within districts offers a mathematical advantage to the power of a single vote over a flat voting method. (Good examples: Florida with the 2000 election, or Wisconsin and Pennsylvania with this 2016 election.)
Now, I'd love to see an amendment that changes every state's electoral vote tally to Maine and Nebraska's method of 2 electors for the state winner, plus 1 elector per winner of each congressional district. It would need to be accompanied with subdivisions that 1) prevent gerrymandering, and 2) removal the actual electoral college, changing to a basic point system, to eliminate faithless electors.
Oh noooeess over sampling!!! It's Fraud! No, idiots, it's math.
I'm fuzzy on the whole math/oversampling thing.
It might help if you could walk me through an example.
The ABC poll showing Clinton ahead by 12 points when every other poll had her at about +3 points would be a good example. That poll sampled Dems+9 to come up with Clinton+12, and it was highly cited by MSM for about a week. Recently, too.
I don't understand how sampling D+9 makes for a better poll, but I am a math major.
If you take the time to explain it, I'm sure I would understand.
Yes it's a weird system, but it does give the states meaning. I could live with the vote from the state being directly translated to the federal level so its as though there is an electoral college but give up this whole weird elector system, where they can act faithlessly.
The electoral college should remain in place because it preserves the FEDERAL nature of the United STATES of America. In a true federation, all states, big and small, should have some kind of a voice and a fair representation in the electoral system and the rest of politics. The electoral college was created to entice smaller states join the union on a voluntary basis, which they did. Without the electoral college, the country will be subjected to a mob rule of just a few big coastal urban centers that think they know better what's best for the rest of America.
"The New York Times has a lengthy article describing how the Electoral College works..."
It was actually quite brief. You must be small.
Maybe we should change the football rules too.....winner is the team which accumulates the most yards rushing.
Or passing.
When you change the rules, the way the game is played is changed. Dramatically. And not always for better.
I'm not necessary against the electoral college but they should be forced to vote according to how their state's population votes. The people, ultimately, should be determining who is president and not some intermediary.
The whole first-past-the-post bullshit is way worse.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Republicans would be screaming the same thing if Clinton won the election but lost the popular vote.
In the imaginary universe where that happened.
You're missing one point and that is federal taxation hits us all equally. I live in California and my EC vote is 1/3 of that of someone in N. Dakota... How is that fair? I would argue that unequal taxation representation is a flaw that a simple vote remedies. Unless of course if the feds are going to give a 2/3 tax rate reduction to compensate me for only having a 1/3 vote... I'd go for that...
It's easy to do, here, let me fix that:
/. are unhappy about the results of the page views report, so the system is broken. Posting more election threads will fix the system.
The operators of
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
With the butthurt.
This country and republics in general are designed to protect minority populations. (The US founding in particular focused on protecting religious minorities.) As such the Electoral College protects those of us in minority governments from larger foreign governments. We're guaranteed a certain amount of power in electing a president. If you remove this power then you will likely have secession movements over time as larger more leftist states dictate to the other 38 other states.
The only reason we're one country rather than many like Europe is purely because of the Electoral College guarantees cultural, social, and state minorities some power.
A popular vote is democracy. And democracy always boils down to mob rule. 49 out of 50 want your stuff. So they take all your stuff.
Now, the better question is, should the general public directly elect the president? I personally believe the general public should nominate and congress should vote on the president. The vast majority of the general public is too stupid and uniformed to vote. And there will always being a growing number of folks voting to rob wealth from others for their own gain.
Do you want states to elect presidents, or do you want people to do it? Does the president represent the people, or the states?
Since you're a person, I can guess your answer to that! But I'm asking anyway, because I'm going to what-if the "you're a person" part.
Suppose you were a state. Step into those meta-shoes. Might your opinion be different? You might say, "Here I am, n million people. I should have n million votes, exactly twice as many votes as that guy over there who has n/2 people." Ok, that makes sense too, right?
But now look at it from the PoV of the guy who is the n/2-people state. He has half as many people, but nearly the same amount of overhead forced upon him due to being a state, amortized over fewer people. He has to have his own legislature, governor, etc. He's going want more than half as much representation (power) as you, just to cover his additional costs. And his case is pretty good, isn't it?
The only way to remove the discrepancy is to get rid of states. And since every conceivable economic activity that you can possible imagine is Interstate Commerce, you might be right that there isn't a single power that anyone can think of, which actually does belong to the states. Ever since the 1790s when the constitution was written, states were a totally obsolete idea and it's just that nobody figured it out until WW2. Yet we still have states. Why?
Solve the riddle of the state's purpose and I think you'll solve the riddle of the electoral college's purpose.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Trump and Bush didn't waste time and money campaigning in California or New York after the primaries so of course Clinton and Gore ran up big margins there; but those margins (and the total popular vote) don't mean anything. The small margin in popular votes Hillary and Gore had is an indication that they misjudged where to campaign, not that the electoral college is broken.
Would it be more or less insulting if I said basic arithmetic instead of civics? A tiny state like New Hampshire cannot "dictate the president of the entire country." If it could, nobody in any other state would bother voting. Those small states are "swing states" because they can "swing" a close election one way or the other -- which is tie breaking, not "dictating." A logic course wouldn't hurt the civics and mathematics courses. If you strengthen your powers of deductive reasoning, you won't need such simple concepts spelled out for you step by step so often.
Hillary got a lot of popular vote through voter fraud. Over 2 million dead people were registered to vote Democrat this election. If voter verification were enforced, and a knowledge test about the candidates were required, then popular vote might be alright. At least voters would be forced to educate themselves about a candidates positions and vote based on how views align instead of the stupid liberal media tearing into a candidate for the way that person eats their chicken.
If federal taxation is your issue than you should talk to your congresscritters not the POTUS. How is it fair to only have a few cities decide the leader of all of the States in the only national election? You are a citizen of the State first and then a citizen of these United States second. The leader of the United States should be elected by the majority of States.
If you want your electoral vote to mean more use the vote of your feet and move to a low population state.
The founders' developed this system and we should keep it as it is because I believe it is there for a reason.
We have inverted (and I believe perverted) the founder's view of a group of STATES in control of a central Federal government. It was not intended to be this way, where the Federal government controls everything and cedes it's power to the states when and where it wants. We started down this path when we started electing Senators instead of letting the states appoint them and it has to stop. The Federal government is SUPPOSED to be limited and as small as possible, with the power left to the STATES and the people. Making the election of a president just a counting of all the nation's votes takes away power from the states, much like the election of Senators did.
Now if your state wants to proportion your Electors, so be it. How ever you decide this in your state is up to the voters there. So go lobby your state to get the rules changed if you want. Personally, I'm for leaving it alone.
Besides, the number of elections which this system produces which are contrary to the popular vote are pretty limited anyway... Yes, they seem to be too frequent these days, but only because we are nearly evenly split between two parties and a lot of folks choose not to participate. I dare say I don't believe that this situation is going to be maintained forever, in fact I see it shifting in some ways already. Nothing stays this close for very long in politics.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
This sounds familiar...
Last year feminists asked "should we stop splitting everything 50/50 in divorce proceedings" after they discovered that a lot of men married to successful women were getting a big payout. Can't have something if it might actually benefit the other side now can we, hmm?
Speaking as someone who's neither a citizen or resident of the US, but would no doubt will still be affected to some extent by the results of your elections.
Whether the electoral college system has more or less merit than a simple popular majority seems to be the least of your problems.
The founding fathers came up with a pretty good system, no doubt, but it seems to me to have a fundamental flaw in that it reaches an equilibrium with only two viable parties.
Does it seem reasonable that the opinions of 325 million people are divided into two nearly equal halves (to within less than a percentage point), votes for the smaller parties are functionally equivalent to liking someone's post on Facebook, and the party in power just flips over to the other one once people get bored with the one that's in the spotlight, or because the other party managed to spend a few more million on advertising and managed to get marginally better brand recognition?
Does it seem reasonable to sum up all your values and make a binary choice based on which side of the threshold you land on?
Well, the answer to those questions doesn't really matter, because you're fucked regardless, your political system has a fundamental flaw, and through the processes that turn a novel upstart concept into a baroque series of rituals observed out of habit, anyone who has any hypothetical power to change it is formed by it and reliant on it to keep their place and win their little victories within its framework.
Indeed, people who argue that the current electoral system is unfair because Hillary would have certainly won by a popular vote don't seem to get that the popular vote is truly irrelevant to the presidential candidates' campaign. Their campaigns are designed to maximize the electoral vote count. If the election was by popular vote, then the electoral campaign would have been entirely different, and the battleground areas would have been entirely different, and the final popular vote count completely unpredictable.
if two people get a large number of votes, having a few more or less doesn't change how qualified they are to be president. But if those votes came from more regions of the country, specifically from more states, then the one winning a large fraction of the popular vote and the larger fraction of states is the best choice.
If you disagree with that then you would be better served abolishing the senate than worrying about the electoral college as the Senate is all about regional voting not population representation.
Until the senate is gone, the president has to work with both the house and the senate so we need a president with a mandate in both houses for his/her agendas. The electoral colleges strikes that compromise.
Another rational for it, is that it renornalizes the weight of the state away from turn-out to the actual population. If there's a hurricane or a snowfall in some state then the turn out is depressed. But the actual vote is still a representative sample of that state. Thus renormalizing the weight of that vote to the population of the state not the turn out makes sense. Ergo the Electoral college makes sense.
One could tweak it. I dont' like the winner take all method of most state. I'd prefer a proportionality of delegates by the states vote plus a modest bonus for the overall winner in the state.
We don't need actual living breathing delegates I believe. The states can just submit their results. In the event of a tie we could send state reps on short notice.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The short answer is yes, if you're interest is genuinely representing the will of the people. A straight count of how the votes flowed would have given Hillary the presidency, and indeed a Democratic presidency every election since 1988 bar one. However, there are a lot of other things wrong with the US electoral system. Including: heavy gerrymandering in many states in favour of the Republicans, a different method of voting in every county, an active campaign to prevent people from voting through draconian voter registration processes etc., non-compulsory voting, and partisan officials in charge of the election process and vote counting. All of these things distort the result. Also, there's something very weird for outside observers like myself about the whole candidate selection process. That the campaign seems to start at least two years out from the election is very odd. And the primaries are also an odd odd way to select a candidate. The next four years are going to be horrible...
They should eradicate the electoral college, but there is another fix I'd sooner see.
Plurality voting (whichever candidate gets the most votes wins) gives a very strong push towards two party elections. In any contest, if your favourite candidate is not one of the top two, you're better off voting for whichever of the top two is best (or least evil), because a vote for your favourite will be wasted. Even if a candidate is the favourite of 60% of the electorate, if they are perceived by the electorate as not being one of the top two, they'll receive few votes.
With preferential voting, you rank the candidates. You can rank your favourite first, and if it still comes down to the two major party candidates, your ranking between those two will carry just as much weight as party faithful who put one of the major candidates at #1.
This allows compromise/centrist candidates to win, and allows for new coalitions of interests. For example, in the USA currently the evangelical Christians and those favouring small government have found a home in the Republican party, but these two interests have no essential alignment. (That many believe both or oppose both is partly an artefact of the current two party system - if you turn up to Republican rallies because you're evangelical, you'll get bombarded with small government arguments, and you'll want to feel part of the group.) Currently an evangelical who wants to increase social services spending has no chance of election (neither major party will take them as a candidate), but with preferential voting they do.
The partisan divide in the USA has become toxic. Preferential voting can erode that divide.
For electing a single candidate, I suggest using a Condorcet method. For multi member constituencies, the single transferable vote works well. In either case, it may be useful to have a prior round of primary voting to keep the number of candidates in the preferential voting round manageable.
Major parties could chose to put up multiple candidates. Imagine a Trump/Cruz/Rubio/Clinton/Sanders election. I believe such an election would have had a different outcome, and that the electorate would be happier with the outcome.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
No way the electoral college will be abolished. It is too entrenched and almost all the states will not agree to such a Constitutional change. Big states that are fixed to either D or R want to retain their huge winner-take-all delegates. Smaller states want to retain the electoral college otherwise they will drop into insignificance during campaign season. I can see the reasoning behind it, perhaps the focus should be candidates that have leadership qualities and able to balance various factions. Right now we need to have unity but unfortunately the president elect thinks, "oh I agree as long as I'm the unity!"
mfwright@batnet.com
The electoral college prevents major population centers and large states from dominating the election process. The US system of governing is brilliant when it isn't compromised by corrupt and crooked politicians such a the Clinton Crime Family and Chicago crime based politicians such as BHO.
No. Revamp the primaries so that states like Iowa and New Hampshire aren't disproportionately represented. One "super Tuesday" for everybody. None of this business where states that hold late primaries are irrelevant. Also, we need to do something to make 3rd parties more viable. That's a little more murky. There may be no systemic reason why our 3rd parties are so weak. It may just be that America doesn't have much room for more than two; but perhaps if we lowered the debate threshold to 1% for at least *one* of the major debates, it might be interesting.
Anyway, the primary process screws us long before the EC comes into play.
Also, candidates know the EC is there so they build their strategy around it. If it were a direct popular vote, they'd change their strategy and we might actually get the same results.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If one party believes that the electoral college works in their favour, it will be much harder to abolish it.
Of the two recent elections where the electoral college and the popular vote did not agree, a Democrat won the popular vote and lost the college. However, if I toss a coin twice and both times it comes up heads, this isn't strong evidence that my coin is biased.
Is the electoral college system biased? If it is, is it a bias that is likely to persist in the long term?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
You couldn't be much further off base if you tried. a) Why do you think the electoral college only comes up after Democrats lose? Gee, do you think it could be because it artificially favors votes in small, low-population states which tend to go for Republicans, rather than large, high-population states that tend to go for Democrats? b) The electoral college basically guarantees that since votes in areas of large population are worth proportionally far less, politicians will spend most of their time campaigning in a handful of tiny states. In other words, they'll still ignore 90% of the country, but they'll ignore the 90% where most of the population lives. The result is a far less representative government.
For fuck sakes, Slashdot is lock step in line with Huffington Posts front page articles http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.... BeauHD is liberal hack that cannot get over the butt hurt.
His twitter feed, "Trump is a saggy sack of shit. If any one of you is even remotely considering voting for him this November, please unfollow me. "
"That sack of shit next to Hillary is attracting flies! #debate"
"Clinton wiped the floor with Trump tonight. Say hello to your next president, America!"
" It's only a story because it has the 'Trump' buzzword. Stupid media is stupid."
"I bet Trump hired the climber for publicity."
NO
When I saw the subject line of this discussion I feared for the worst. I am glad to see that a great many Slashdot readers are well educated in the relatively simple concept of national voting. When a potential 230 million voters need to have their opinion heard, it could be a very dangerous to rely on a simple majority.
I understand that Hilary (& Gore) got more votes in the existing contest. But that was in a contest where it was decided in advance that there was a different method of deciding the winner, which in turn informed the campaigns' strategies. In the counterfactual case that it was known well in advance that the contest was going to be decided by popular vote, the campaigns would have adopted different strategies and the outcome of the PV might well have been different. Would Hilary have won that one too? Maybe! Could Trump have won? Maybe!
You can speculate about those maybes and even make an attempt to quantify them. Fundamentally though, it's fundamentally a wrong to state that because Hilary won the PV in an EC race that she would have won the PV in a PV race.
This would make it impossible for a democrat to be elected President as at the Congressional District level the Republicans have more Gerrymandered districts. Obama would never have been elected under this formula as many of California and New York's votes would go to Republicans. Big states will not favor such a solution though it may lead to candidates spending more time in big states but a big state which splits 50-50 is pretty useless. Florida will lose all its importance.
Swing districts would be the new swing states where politicians would spend their time.
**Life is too short to be serious**
When the founding fathers created the Electoral College as part of the Constitution, they were trying to stop /this/ from happening. The fact is, people like Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton did not trust the people enough to single–handedly choose the most important person in the world. Likewise, Winston Churchill admitted that "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
It is now the Electoral College's job to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president. The popular vote is clearly in favor of Secretary Clinton, and Drumpf is an enormous danger to America. If he wins the presidency it will be the Electoral College's fault. It will be their faults for not doing their jobs, and depending on that they may or may not deserve to be abolished.
No, the point was to get some way to utilize the large slave populations in some states, without letting them vote.
No, they get only a tiny amount more say. Since you only need a simple majority of electoral votes, and it makes no difference if they are from large or small states, you can still easily skip the small ones.
Where were the candidates spending all their time? Florida, Pennsylvania, North Caroline, etc. Hardly tiny states... deciding the election.
That's still 100% true, candidates don't go campaign in rural areas, at best they're directed to cities in swing states.
The non-swing states, which reliably vote one party or the other, are 100% left-out today, whether they are large or SMALL, precisely BECAUSE of the electoral college. If it was purely a popular vote, the candidates would care about those few thousand undecided voters out in the middle of nowhere, just as much as the voters in the cities.
The swing-state issue is a ridiculous and unnecessary distraction, which ensures the few states with evenly divided party voters, have a blank check to make demands of presidential candidates, no matter how much those policies might be detrimental to the other states.
And by the way, we're already two-thirds of the way there... Just a few more states need to sign-on, to make it reality in the next presidential election.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Getting rid of the Electoral College would be a nice start, but what's really needed is a complete overhaul of the electoral system.
Pure democracies destroy themselves in short order because people are, for the most part, foolish. The USA walks a perilous path as it is, one it will probably not ultimately survive, but switching to a pure democracy will only hasten our downfall. The federal government is an attempt to find a balanced middle ground between tyranny and democracy, neither of which is desirable. Anyone who does not understand this (1) needs an education, and (2) is exhibit #1 for why democracy is a really bad idea.
The federal government is first and foremost a government of states, not people.
It has been quite a while since we added proportional representation. Based on Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution: ...The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand...
We are no where close to that number. The election outcomes that are occurring are a symptom of disproportional representation. The Electoral College and the House of Representatives depict this country about as accurately as a 24x24 pixel icon (576 pixels total).
The problem is that less representation favors one party, and promotes gerrymandering. Too many people make it difficult for an oligarchy to function. So it is in the interest of the House of Representatives to leave the status quo.
The argument for elimination of the electoral college is an argument for old-school tyranny.
We are purposefully not a democracy. The electoral college exists to protect from the kind of upheaval that ended the Roman Republic. Our founders were obsessed with this, and it's still worth learning about today.
The EC prevents one population from having complete control. It requires people in the economic centers of the country to pay extra (even unfair) attention to the people on the margins. The purpose is to keep the country together.
As long as you are only eligible to vote if you have not received or plan to receive any government payments, subsidize or benefits within a 1 year period.
If you are receiving government benefits from social programs, you will vote for more social program candidates even if we cannot afford them.
If you are receiving government bailouts (solar, banking, automotive industries), you will vote for candidates that will support you even if we cannot afford them.
If you are a part of the military industrial complex, you will vote for candidates that will support the purchase of your products, even if we cannot afford them.
Just a thought.
Why is USA a country? A person is born in the USA that was not of their choice, that person can have/develop views on freedom, on collectivism, on government that are totally unaligned with the majority that surrounds them. Today USA is at least 2 different countries politically speaking, I would say it is closer to 3 countries than 2 even.
There are collectivists (Statists) who are subdivided into Christians and others. You have your non-collectivists (anti-Statists) who are also subdivided, but their absolute numbers are too low to worry about finer division.
These are not the people who should be forced by the circumstance of their birth to live under the system that they were born into. Of-course the very concept of States and of the Federal government allows for this type of division but it basically is a failed experiment at this point, it no longer delegates *some* power to the federal government, in general the federal government is omnipotent now, the States are irrelevant.
This is a failure of the system that can be fixed by splitting the country into 3 political systems, the USA needs to be split across some lines (easier said than done of-course) that would wall off (funny, isn't it) the populations that don't really belong with each other from each other.
You can't handle the truth.
See subject - you hit it right on the head wellwhatever...
* Have the DIGNITY to lose gracefully @ least losers!
APK
P.S.=> It's disgusting & their favorite color MUST be 'transparent' as I see right thru it as you do also... apk
No, you lost, get the fuck over it.
Stop trying to change the rules every time you lose.
As Mr Obama famously replied in 2009? 2010 when confronted by a GOP senator during a budget summit, that his proposals weren't much of a compromise: "I won" (get over it)
-Styopa
Focusing on the electoral college is a waste of political will. If the people want to enhance our democracy then demand Preferential Voting in all federal elections. Range Vote is best imo but Ranked Choice is quite popular. A better voting system doesn't just affect the Presidential election and has numerous positive effects: from forcing the candidates to run more positive campaigns, to more nuanced policy coverage in the media, no spoiler effect, and a guarantee of majority support to the winner, The EC...even if we had legitimate justification for abolishing it would have much less impact than putting your political will behind something more impactful. All future reforms become easier in a Preferential System. Some issue isn't getting the attention from the two major parties that you think it deserves - start a party, get on the ballot and maybe you won't win, but at least you'll shift the center of politics. Think about the 5M+ voters whose ballots weren't able to express a preference between Clinton vs Trump because neither was their first choice of candidate. If you believe in democracy ensure everyone feels heard at the ballot box.
Pure Democracy is rule by mob. The Republic was established with the Electoral College to exactly prevent mob rules. The founders knew damn well what Democracy was and saw how it failed in other countries who attempted to implement a pure democracy. They also knew what dictatorships, monarchies, oligarchies, timocracies, theocracies, matriarchies, patriarchies, and believe it or not.. they saw other failures at implementing republican forms of Government. Geesh, did you know that France had several very bloody revolutions before ours and tried several times to implement a "republic" of all things? Ben Franklin made quite a study of the failures in France. Try, just try to crack a history book now and then.
If popular vote was all that was needed, what candidate would ever visit Iowa, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Maine, Arizona, or the MAJORITY OF STATES! That's right, 9 states is all you need to "win" under those circumstances. Hawaii can F*&k right off because your candidate lost right?
As GP stated, it would be beneficial for more states to split their electoral votes. CA for example called all 55 for Clinton before a single vote was counted, yet Trump won just shy of a third of the votes. How fair is it that those people are not heard? That is the fault of the electoral college too, and I really don't hear you complaining about that.
Educate yourself, it's actually beneficial. Stop for a moment and consider that you may not be nearly as intelligent, which means you lack considerable wisdom as well.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I am sorry, but those reasons are completely and totally wrong. Just do a Google search and click any article on the topic.
Here y'a go, first hit on Google: History.com
The reasons you listed come from someone reasoning "Well, back then they rode on horseback, and it was hard to get around and count all those votes, etc." But it is not supported by history. They were perfectly capable of counting the popular vote and rolling that up. They didn't pick the electoral college as a way to get around technological limitations. Think about it: They had to count the popular votes in the state anyway before they could send the electors.
There are 2 much simpler reasons:
1. They believed states should get one vote for each senator and each delegate, not a simple number based on popular vote. This goes back to the "great compromise" that resulted in the bicameral legislature.
2. It abstracts the state's election system from the federal election system.
Let me expand a little bit:
If a state was to get 4 electoral votes, then they wanted each state to choose how those votes are apportioned. That means if one stated wanted the state legislature to choose, they could do that. If another state wanted the governor to decide, they could do that. If yet another state wanted it to be decided by a boxing match, they could do that.
That principle still exists today, which is why some states give all the electoral votes to one candidate, and other states split the votes.
California gave all 55 votes to Clinton while 31% of the population voted for Trump. I'd say the large states have far more effect on elections than say New Hampshire with 4 whole votes. CA also called it for Clinton before a single vote was counted. Does the EC only prove to be a problem when it's not to your advantage?
And while we are at it, there is a massive voter depression in CA because people see their votes do no good. If it was popular vote, CA could have added a few million more to Trump as easily as not.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
gerrymandering. Politicians have figured out how to solve voter distribution problems long ago.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The big problem with the electoral college is not that it gives power to small states. The big problem is that if there's no outright winner it gives all the power to the House of Representatives. This forces us to stay with a two-party system.
Instant runoff voting, with our without the EC, would allow people to list all the candidates they could stand, and none they couldn't. It also means a third party vote isn't wasted, as you can list a major candidate second. The big problem with instant runoff is that unlike bypassing the EC, instant runoff violates "one person one vote", so we'd need a constitutional amendment to get it.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
I'm cool with going the popular vote if CA, TX, and FL secede.
You raise valid points, but I don't think this was like brexit or a one off. This push to globalism by the elite and leaving everyone behind has caused a massive divide between them and the average person. Additionally, you have the propaganda outlets spreading hatred and lies. University Safe spaces and promotion of "everyone hate on the white people" has furthered the divide. Is it a one off? Depends on what the Trump administration can get done in 4 years.
Watching the media today and seeing all of the alleged protesters I wonder if the media realizes they could make most people happy by simply admitting they lied to everyone about most of the election process and candidates. The media has helped to create a great monster, but at this point I don't think the globalists and oligarchs care. It will have to harm them financially, and they have pretty deep pockets.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The Electoral College exists to prevent the dense population of a few big cities from overwhelming the votes of the countryfolk and farmers.
Actually GW Bush lost the election and was appointed by judges on the Supreme Court who were appointed by his father.
The "Fraud" and "Rigged" system mentioned is many things, not just poll sampling.
1. Media turned Propaganda to benefit a single candidate. Spread false information and flat out lies to support the same.
2. Media reporting false poll data to suppress voters from going out.
3. Flat out voter fraud exposed by Wikileaks and Project Veritas.
4. Refusal of the DOJ to clean up voter roles over the last 8 years. This increases opportunity with 3.
5. Use of Celebrities to promote a single candidate just like the media did.
6. Poll sampling and reporting used to portray the results as "white" vote ignoring others. In reality, massive amounts of all minorities (very heavy Asian) including men and women voted for the President Elect.
The poll sampling you are mentioning is a factor, but not the only factor in the "fraud" and "rigged" system that Trump was discussing. Obviously the full answer does not fit into a tweet so the average American would not bother to read or understand the issues. ABC and CNN said "nuh uh", and that was enough to make someone a liar. "Liar" is now latched onto as fact, and the media won't come clean because it does not serve their interests.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Wyoming citizens get 1 senator per 280,000 citizens.
California citizens get 1 senator per 19,000,000 citizens.
California should really split into 76 states, each with the population of Wyoming.
And by doing so, it would also get 228 electoral votes.
That's how grossly over represented the citizens of Wyoming are compared to the citizens of California.
The best bet under our current system would be to ship a half million liberal voters from california to wyoming to settle down (perhaps as remote workers)..
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Well democracy is a guard against despotism and as we can see without it a despot is bound to come to power. I just hope our country can survive him as he consolidates his secret service and the fbi into his personal stazi. Pussy grabber in chief indeed.
A couple problems with 'abolishing the electoral college' for Dems.
First, you'd need to amend the Constitution and that's not going happen in such an evenly divided political environment.
Secondly, it may not change the presidential election the way you think it would. Right now the presidential campaigns only focus on a few swing States, however if it became a national campaign then that would dramatically and the campaigns would target all 50 states, which in turn would change the turnout.
Further, there's a dynamic in deeply blue States that discourages Republican turn out -- my vote for president in California basically doesn't count under the electoral college and as a result a lot of GOP supporters don't vote in deep blue States like California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, etc. However, if their votes counted the same as anyone in the nation, they'd likely go out to vote. Also, abolishing the EC would affect local ballot propositions because many of those are placed on the ballot with the express purpose of driving turnout to get an electoral college win. In short, just because Hilary won a plurality of votes nationwide doesn't mean she would win a majority or plurality if the electoral college were abolished. We don't know what that result would be because the campaigns didn't run a nationwide campaign -- they ran a bunch of local state campaigns because of the EC. Hell, Hilary didn't even step foot in Wisconsin since April.
Some so-called "faithless electors" can put humanity and the our republic heading of a pledge to go off the cliff. Do let the Donald Turd reach 270! And the House of Representive who chose from Pence or Kaine. I don't like Pence but he is not BATSHIT FUCKING INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Certainly it serves a purpose. The purpose is to interfere with the political will of the active voters of the United States of America. And that's exactly what it does. Congratulations.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Electoral College used to be a mechanism to undo a popular vote (like this one) based on ignorance. Members of thne Electoral college in the past were not appointed by political parties. They were supposed to be the most intelligent and educated people around that could overturn errors in the popular vote from time to time.
So the Electoral College should be repaired to go back to its original purpose, but abolishing it is kind of silly cause its a very good idea to have a check in place in case people decide to elect a KGB supporter, rapist, and financial criminal with a VP and advisors who do not believe in the laws of physics or human decency.
Because the answer is No. It would require a Constitutional amendment, which requires 2/3rds of the States. The small States will not agree to be written off in every future election. Without the Electoral College, candidates would completely ignore every State outside California and the Northeast Corridor, and Middle America would be left out in the cold.
Here's an idea; drop the Statewide electors to 2, based on statewide returns. Allocate all other electors by returns in the congressional district. Thus, the electors vote by the will of their local people, and don't get overwhelmed by large cities. . .
Gerrymandering or 'redistricting' draws arbitrary lines on a map, by persons with a vested interest in the outcome. THIS is anti-democracy, and hobbles the nation. It is utterly UNSURPRISING that TRUMP won given that Republicans have controlled the congress so long, not coincidentally during the 'redistricting'. READ AND UNDERSTAND GERRYMANDERING because it rules YOUR world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
especially this section:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'm in Montana. Here's what the electoral college did WRT Montana and California this election:
California has 55 electors. Montana has 3. That's an 18.3:1 weight.
If the majority in a state votes for X, but a person votes for Y, that vote does not count - at all. That person becomes a member of a completely disenfranchised minority.
Montana went 273,696 for Trump, while Clinton got 174,249.
California went 5,488,261 for Clinton, while Trump got 2,969,532
Majority voters in California actually outvoted majority voters in Montana by 20:1 in favor of Clinton.
But because of the 18.3:1 weighting of the EC, the majority voters of California had about 9% of their vote weight taken from them. While the minority voters in both states were not counted at all.
That is what the electoral college did in this election. It's a nightmare of massive unfairness, and that's the nicest thing I can say about it.
In a national election, every voter should have equal weight as to who should represent everyone. No one should be disenfranchised; no one should be able to outvote anyone else.
Inside a state, on state matters, when you vote for X, your vote counts just as much if you're a farmer or a city dweller. There's no weighting of farmers over city dwellers; there's no disenfranchisement. You should all be asking yourselves, why is there such a difference here, and what possible purpose could it serve that justifies either my vote outweighing your vote / vice versa, or my vote / your vote not counting at all?
Our political system is a sewer. Representation is only fair if you have input on it. I voted, but my input was completely discarded. Same for a lot of other people. While my majority-voting neighbor exercised more influence than majority California voters were able to. That's complete and utter bullshit.
Politicians and their sycophants have completely pulled the wool over the eyes of the voters. The EC is disgusting. Apologists for the EC are disgusting.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This is NOT the 1600's. News does not spread only as fast as a horse runs. News in a staggering array of forms reaches EVERY American home, be it in the city or in the country. THUS the EC is totally un-necessary as a measure to 'even out the population disparity of states' if ever it was _needed_ at all. If EVERY vote counted as a vote, every voice would be heard and the winner would be undisputed.
There are good arguments for and against keeping the electoral college and for and against using the popular vote instead. The best argument I know for keeping the electoral college is this - In a disputed election, it narrows the area of the dispute substantially instead of making the entire country do a recount. In the 2000 election only what happened in Florida was in dispute and that's because of the electoral college. In 2000 Gore won New Mexico by less than 400 votes. Yes, you read that correctly - less than 400 votes. That's four hundred not four thousand. Because New Mexico only had 5 electoral votes it didn't matter whether the vote totals were completely accurate or not. The dispute over Florida became the critical issue because both Gore and Bush needed it to win and New Mexico didn't have enough votes to put either guy over the top. The US is too polarized and it's only getting worse. Every presidential election from now on is going to have the supporters of the losing party acting like the election was stolen from them and they were cheated. We don't need to add to the existing chaos and switch to a popular vote where the loser and their supporters are going to demand national recounts every time.
Introducing preferential voting would help more than tweaking the electoral college. Ignore the title of this link, but consider the basic idea. If you could vote for Stein or Johnson or whomever, and then have your vote flow on to another larger party if they were eliminated, it solves your duopoly problem; the smaller parties aren't wasted votes, and the larger parties have to make deals with them based on their levels of support. Start a Flyover Party for the flyover states if they feel unrepresented. Why not, once the duopoly is broken? Start whatever parties the people actually want.
http://qz.com/729090/if-america-used-australias-voting-system-theres-no-way-trump-would-win/
At least, that looks to be your main problem from my other-side-of-the-world perspective. Fixing the state-based gerrymandering of either side would help also. The parties use that to tilt the electoral college balance.
Adam Ruins Everything - Why the Electoral College Ruins Democracy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
so, let's be clear, when those 11 states have a candidate they do not favor, but wins the popular vote, and loses the electoral college to the candidate the states do favor (example, in 1968 Nixon lost Massachusetts... but what if he had won by popular vote and lost by electoral college vote, would MA want him for president?)
I mean, the 11 state traditionally vote democrat, so if their popular vote elected a republican, would they still want this strategy?
I doubt it. To me this all smells like sour grapes and gaming strategy. Otherwise known as Bullshit tactics to screw with the other side and still win no matter what.
"The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy." - Donald J. Trump
https://twitter.com/realDonald...
How is this possible?
1) illegals register to vote at the dmv like everyone else when they get their driver's license
2) during election they can:
A) vote at a polling place
B) vote by mail in
What's so hard about it or in any way at all preventing illegal aliens from voting in California?
And yes I have lived here for a very long time... This is how it works.
Why do you think we need voter ID and citizenship checks on voting? Hint: it is not to suppress the black vote. They are citizens and have the right to vote like all other citizens. Voter ID laws are to prevent illegal aliens from voting.
And if you think it doesn't matter... You're,wrong. It is philosophically wrong and does make a difference in tight elections as well.
Go look up "B1 Bob" losing his seat in Orange County due to the illegal alien vote.
In short, those of you who support the EC largely are mistaken in your understanding of how it works, or why it exists, and the net effect on it...
Many of you say "but then they'll just campaign in the big cities", but that is false and a knowledge of the facts would inform you on that.
Anyone who wants to discuss this subject needs to watch CGP Grey's video on the subject:
The Trouble with the Electoral College
https://youtu.be/7wC42HgLA4k
Short version - Using the EC, you can become President with less than 22% of the popular vote.
This is not democracy, this is indefensible.
Our founding fathers were brilliant...perhaps supernaturally so. Aside from the argument over the political system we have (republic vs democracy), the electoral college is the ultimate form of checks and balances. It negates the need for good weather or having other candidates/issues on a ballot to drive up voter turn-out. It guards against widespread voter fraud, including buying votes. It gives rural America (the breadbasket of the world) almost the same participation in politics as urban citizens. It drives down the length and cost of the election cycle. If there were no electoral college, the States of New York, California (who gave Hillary the edge on the popular vote), Texas, and Florida would gain an even a more unfair advantage in dictating who is president. Candidates would have to visit most of the 50 states, driving up the election cycle and the already-obscene cost of running for POTUS. Finally, it is the first test of a potential candidate's ability to deal with complex and complicated problems. How did Trump outwit a 30-year career politician, who took the liberal popular vote for granted? By studying various paths to electoral victory, coming up with a game plan, and flawlessly executing it. This is a better demonstration of the candidate's ability to deal with real-world strategic issues than whether they can win a popularity contest.
Yay I got a choice of two candidates from the same party for the same office this year.
Hmm... Should I vote for the socialist woman or the socialist woman for Senator?
By your own description, these criminals are quite documented. They can "legally" get a driver's license and apparently have paying jobs and I'm told by people like you they pay taxes.
They are documented.
They are also illegal aliens and criminals, by definition.
Don't play word games.
it's two days after the election, and there remain some 1,500 precincts that haven't reported in YET (per Fox 25 Election tracker). How long do you want to wait?
A Republican President must have been elected.
It's funny how state agreements outside the Constitution are OK when they're left-wing states. They could form a Constitutional Convention, and abolish the electoral college that way, but no-- that would give weight to the smaller states, and they would need 75% of the states to ratify. Let's just have populous states like California and NY make all of our decisions for us, instead.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
So?
Why?
So what if they are? Everyone is making unwarranted assumptions about the way things should be and proposing band-aid solutions to phantom problems.
Pundits say that Gore conceded too early as a recount in Ohio might have given him the win. The electoral college should be abolished as it has been reduced to favoritism for only a few states. To eke out more votes maybe we should come up with a system of using the Internet. A major disadvantage to Internet voting used to be disenfranchisement but at least in NY all of those who live in the projects have both a state supplied smart phone and a computer.
I don't talk about how great the country is, I short-circuit well, move arguments with how the universe is a lousy place.
There are two relatively easy potential things that could be done to 'fix' the electoral college disconnect.
One - Require that the electors follow the popular vote in their state. So if a state goes with Candidate A then all the votes go to Candidate A. That cuts out any form of lobbying and puts them in line with the popular vote.
Two - Apportion electoral votes according to the percentages of the popular vote. Candidate A gets X% of the popular vote and therefore X% of the electors.
Regardless the electoral college needs to be brought into line with the popular vote somehow. Being able to ignore the state's voting result is a throwback to the founding fathers' distrust of the people in general and their idea that they need some kind of way to control the outcome of elections.
IMHO, the biggest problem is the fact that in the current system you are forced to vote for lesser of two evils, even if you don't really want them.
A ranking system, where everyone orders their candidates by preference would solve that problem. If no one gets 50%, eliminate the bottom candidate, redistribute votes and repeat. The downsides are increased complexity, no question. But it would allow you to vote for independent/3rd party (if that's what you want) first, while still having a "backup" candidate.
Our constitution was created as a series of compromises without which there would never have been a United States. Chief among these was the Connecticut Compromise – one that blended the Virginia Plan (a legislature determined by population) with a Senate where representation would be equal for each state (2 senators per state). The smaller states – Connecticut and Rhode Island – would not have joined the United States without it, because they felt that the Virginia Plan would mean that the larger states (New York and Virginia) would have all the control. This principle is also embodied in the Electoral College – a popular vote for President and Vice President was proposed and discussed, but the Electoral College was adopted to remove a difficulty with the South (that of slavery) and a difficulty of the smaller states (the fear that the larger states would effectively always elect the President). In James Madison’s Federalist Papers (No 39) he explained that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of State-based and population-based government. Yes, the U.S. system is unique, but so was the problem of States rights – without a solution to that problem there would never have been a United States in the first place. So the question is, should the Presidential election always be decided by small pockets of highly populated places (i.e. the cities), and thus ignore the sentiment of the rural areas of the country? Or does the electoral college create that balance that our founding fathers actually intended it to have, created a situation where there is greater chance for everyone’s voice to be heard? It’s always easy to say it’s wrong when it’s your desire that is ignored, but it’s only happened 5 times out of 56 so what do we really gain by removing this aspect of the original compromise?
Abolishing the electoral college makes sense if you had 100% voter participation. Otherwise, the electoral college system is a better approximation. The Republicans in the last three presidential primaries tried to quell dissatisfaction with the party leadership's candidate choices (John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush) by changing primary rules in violation of their own rules and policies. They did this in order to achieve a false sense of party solidarity around their candidate choice. This in the end turned out to be meaningless since they all lost. This dissatisfaction with party leadership is what allowed Donald Trump to win the Republican primary. The Democratic party did the same thing in the 2016 primary. The primary race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton was very close right up until the end although it was not portrayed that way in the media. Hillary Clinton had the same kind of superdelegate advantage over Barack Obama in 2008 but most of the superdelegates moved over the Barack Obama once he edged ahead in delegates. For the 2016 primary, the Democratic party leadership decided that Hillary Clinton was their candidate choice regardless of what the voters wanted and did everything they could to help her beat Bernie Sanders. Hillary had to spend a good deal of money from her campaign war chest just to beat Sanders. I tend to believe that their is a lot of truth to the Wikileaks revelations since so many heads have rolled shortly after the releases. Heads don't rule if it is all made up. Clinton was given primary debate questions ahead of time, had favorable media coverage over Sanders her whole primary campaign, and had inside help from several members of the party. Bernie Sanders had the whole party and media against him and still nearly won. I believe that the Democratic party leadership has made the same mistake in this primary that the Republican leadership has in the last three primaries and that Hillary Clinton is their John McCain/Mitt Romney/Jeb Bush candidate. I also believe that this is why Clinton was so soundly defeated by Trump. I believe that it would have been a whole different race if Bernie Sanders had won the Democratic Party Nomination. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are both evidence of a dissatisfaction by the voter base with party leadership. I think that discussing changing the rules to get the result "we" want is just a continuation of the thinking that has led to failures in both parties. If you want to replace the electoral college with a 100% voter participation system, then we might have a discussion. Otherwise, the electoral college is their for a reason and we should leave it as is and work on the real problem, the disconnect between party leadership and voters. The other thing I like about the electoral college is that it is a reminder that we are a republic and not a democracy. Just my opinion. :)
Abolishing the Electoral College would be a good start, but for the country that regularly beats its chest as a bastion of democracy, there is so much more they could do to improve on their flawed system.
Reshaping of districts needs to be removed from the political process. Decades of gerrymandering make a mockery of the so-called democracy. It wouldn't be particularly difficult to establish an autonomous Department of Elections, even at the state level, and re-craft districts based on the last census data to design more representational districts. This likely results in wholesale redrawing of districts, meaning politicians actually have to compete for the votes of the people, as opposed to the politicians recrafting the boundaries to suit their own gain.
Perhaps i'm missing something - what's wrong with just adding up all the votes from every citizen that has voted? It's the simplest way. Why complicate it? I can understand that in the past if was necessary because ... well because. But you can do it now and not require people to cross 500 miles of desert or whatever.
My country is Moldova, we are a replublic - and that's how we elect our President.
which is tie breaking, not "dictating."
This is a distinction without a difference. If all the other states vote and the last one decides the election either way, they are in effect dictating the result of the election.
I could see the argument that since all the states vote (more or less) simultaneously, not in a serial manner, there isn't one Decider, but not the argument you're making.
If it could, nobody in any other state would bother voting.
A fair point, for the majority of the country that lives in "safe states." With the popular vote there would be no such thing as safe states.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
No. In fact, Hell, no. If you don't understand the electoral college and it's benefits, you don't understand America.
The electoral college is serving the exact purpose it was intended to serve. Without the Electoral College, those who live in cities slowly drive the rural areas toward poverty and slavery and resource deprivation.
See, there are two district groups of people. Those in a big city and those out of a big city. It is very difficult for either to understand the other. The Big City people already have the advantage on numbers. But they have no clue about life outside the big city. Our rural areas, especially our farmers, are critical to big city life in ways those who live in the big city don't understand. The rural people have an insight that most people who live in the city never can understand.
Even with the Electoral College, the large metropolitan cities in California and New York and other states have massive power, perhaps more than they should.
Before we remove the electoral college, we should stop having 100% of the state's electoral college go one candidate. Each Electoral college vote should represent an area. In California, there are areas that are 90% republican, but their voice gets stomped on by the rest of California. California has 55 electoral college votes.
The grouping of electoral college votes has helped further the terrible two party system. Without grouping the electoral college, it would be more likely that another party or an independent could win some electoral college votes, which would encourage more diversity in thinking.
Take a look at the county-by-county map, and then contemplate the vast change technology has made in our lives in a short period. Some people have indeed been left behind. It is not fair of the new urban majority to disenfranchise people who live rural just because they're bigoted against living rural.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
"they should have influence exactly in proportion to their populations"
California gets 55 electoral college votes, with 53 of those based on its population. Alaska gets 3, with 1 based on population. There is proportional representation.
Constitutionally, there is no requirement that the people even get a vote for President: "Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress..." A state may decide to let the Governor appoint all the electors directly, or let the statehouse vote. Nothing says the people shall vote for their electors.
The President is not the representative of the people. He (or she) is the CEO charged with executing the laws created by Congress, which itself is supposed to be representative of the people and the States as reflected by the House and Senate (or the Senate before the 17th Amendment). The President also represents the US interests in making treaties, as commander-in-chief (going to war), and making appointments for courts etc. See Article 2 for the enumeration of Presidential powers.
The President is not the leader of a mob bound to do what majority of the mob says. The office of President is the leader of the United States, not the leader of the people of the United States.
I suppose you'd be pleased if San Francisco, LA, NYC, Philly, and Boston could elect the president by themselves and ignore the rest of the country. But have a look at a county-by-county map and realize that almost exactly half of the voters are spread out over the entire country--commonly derided as "flyover country", while the other half are squashed into a small number of dense urban centers.
", then you immediately minamalize the say of the minority." "Good!"
You know, back during the '60s when Civil Rights Act was being passed, or the EPA was enacted, or any of a myriad of Federal takeovers overrode the majority.
Indeed, the majority were against Obamacare when it was foisted on the populace.
When Bill Clinton never got the popular vote, and when the electoral college gave Obama a firewall, that was good.
But when the firewall crashes on Hillaries head, that is NOT OK!
There's no rule that states must have winner-take-all appointment of electors.
This does not need a Amendment or federal action. Just lobby to get your state to proportionately appoint its electors.
Then Hillary would have gotten 38 of California's electors and Trump would have gotten 17. It would take some analysis to see how the outcome would be affected if this were the norm in all 50 states.
As soon as we switch to popular vote, the west coast would be hit hard by massive earthquakes devastating the population, and the east coast drowned in high sea levels from global warming. Guess that would leave middle America to decide the presidency.
I have a better idea. Whether or not we have an electoral college, you will always have the "haves" and "have-nots". The real solution is to give the majority and minority party a voice. We need to change up the rules for running for president. I propose the highest vote getter becomes president and the second highest vote getter becomes vice president. That way, the minority party is still represented in a powerful office in government.
The Democrats knew the rules of the electoral college quite well before the election started. They could have done the work to counter Trump in states that he took. Instead, they just chose to bank NY (29) and Cali (55) and the rest of the west coast and small north-eastern states as sure things--providing a baseline of 180 votes or so, ignored a large swath of the country, and focused on a few swing states.
In those swing states, Clinton outspent Trump by about 3-1, but by all accounts Trump worked his ass off in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida talking to people, holding rallies, etc. He flipped what? 5 states that Obama carried, and at least Michigan was more-or-less taken for granted by Clinton.
Face it, she was beaten at the political game by a charismatic hack with no real experience--twice.
The appropriate answer to any headline that asks a question. Including this one.
3rd parties cannot make a dent in the current system.
A system in which a person could have voted for a primary and secondary candidate, e.g. Johnson and Trump, or Stein and Clinton, or Johnson and Clinton (I will ignore to potential for Stein and Trump as technically possible, but...), would allow a conscience vote without throwing such a vote away. That is, after their primary selection is eliminated, their secondary vote would come into play.
To wit, if we assume for the sake of argument that a decent majority, let's say 70:30, of Johnson voters would ultimately have preferred Trump over Clinton, once those 4 million Johnson votes were replaced with secondary choices for Trump and Clinton at that 70:30 split, Trump's popular vote would climb from 59.704M to 62.544M; Clinton's would go from 59.938M to 61.159M.
On a state-by-state basis, this could also have had an effect. A close state like Michigan had 173k votes for Johnson, 50k for Stein, and close to 17k for Darrel Castle (Constitution Party). Trump's margin is about 32k votes. So clearly those 3rd party votes had a bearing on the outcome.
The borders of the states are well fixed.
Each state gets two electors, corresponding to the number of Senators each has.
Each state gets one additional elector per Representative.
The number of representatives is apportioned based on the state population's share of the overall population, scaled by the 435 seats the House is currently fixed at. Every ten years, a state with more population (inflow) may gain a seat while states with smaller populations (outflow) may lose a seat. The seats move with the population.
Where's gerrymandering in all this?
Even though they are not allowed to vote, there is strong evidence that at least some do. Getting a few thousand illegal immigrants to vote for you could flip a state too.
It's always losers who want the rules changed.
The rules of the EC were known to both candidates. They have not been altered. The fact is that Trump flipped 5 states by convincing more voters in those states to vote for him than for Hillary. Hillary knew that states were in play--they're called swing states for a reason. What was "unfair" is simply that the rules both parties knew about going into the game ultimately cost Hillary the election. She had ample time and money to bolster her position or tear down his in those swing states. She outspent him 3:1 but still lost those states!
And I assure you that there are enough patriots who, despite having voted for him, that if he should do something like attempting to dissolve Congress (except by seeking a Constitutional Amendment) that the uprising would be swift and 2nd Amendment-based.
There was a time in college football where the clock started when the ball was kicked during a kickoff. The clock ran until the play was blown dead, and certain live-ball penalties were assessed after the ball was dead. These were the rules. One smart coach at the end of a game, nursing a slight lead after scoring a go-ahead TD, told his team to intentionally be offsides on the ensuing kick-off. The clock started with the kick, the ball is in the air for about 5 seconds--they just had to prevent a big return (by kicking through the endzone). The offsides penalty calls for 5 yards and a re-kick. Two or three time ran out the clock. (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2006-11-06-clock-loophole_x.htm)
"Coaches are innovative," he said. "They find ways to be within the rules but take advantage of situations."
"Whenever you put a rule in," Maguire said, "they ought to find the smartest guy in college football and have him look at every single scenario there could be."
Clinton--as the most qualified person ever to run for the office--should have been smart enough to know how the rules worked.
The system hearkens back to a time when a vote of the populous would take years, if it could ever be done at all. Getting everyone to vote, counting those votes, and communicating the results was not possible 200 years ago. Additionally most of the population wasn't literate. Each state appointing electors was the only workable solution. (and even that had it's problems -- the union is vast when hoof and foot are the only means of transportation.)
What many (most?) people fail to realize is the electors can vote for whomever they damn well please. There may be consequences when they return to their home state, but they are violating no federal laws and their vote(s) stand. (I don't recall it ever being a problem, because electors are chosen carefully.)
The Electoral College is there for the stated reason that, it makes less likely that the large cities will always control the elections.
There is also a second reason, proved mathematically about a decade ago, that individual voters have more power in elections that have intermediate groups, such as states or counties. In a full popular election individual voters have much less chance of being able to swing an election one way or the other. Look it up...
Also, a full pure democracy is not the best thing, see the thing called "The Tyranny of the Majority".
(If you really want to know how to fix things, see "Approval Voting" ! )
I don't care who wins/won, yes, we should get rid of it. (i.e I thought this long before the recent election.)
We already have 2 Senators for each state, regardless of size, to deal with the "big states would rule everything" issue.
And still lost the popular vote. You're telling us that Trump did appeal to the popular vote, lost it, but would have won it if.....
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I demand you change how the votes are counted so they did win!
Of all the things that are wrong with the national government of the US, the Electoral College is not in the top 5. Or 10. Or 20. Assuming it's even an actual problem.
Except for the Third Amendment, every amendment in the Bill of Rights is frequently violated, some routinely.
The Federal Register is incompatible with Article I, Section 1.
We have presidents who take the nation to war without a declaration of war from the Congress, and the Big Issue is that the process for selecting that president is suboptimal/obsolete/inelegant?
Priorities, folks.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
The system is broken yes, but not for the reason(s) you think. In fact the system is broken in many countries across the world. The problem is it puts us into an "us vs them", "left vs right", "conservative vs progressive". In other words it divides us. The system only works for one half of the population even though it governs over the entire population. Despite whichever party is in power we all have the same basic needs: education, security, employment, health, etc. A re-think of democratic government is what's really called for. I don't know what the answer is, I just know that what we've currently got isn't it.
The Electoral College was one of the finest tweaks the Founders made to our Republic.
The only real problem with it nowadays is that it's now limited to 538 Electors. It was originally supposed to field one Elector per Senator and Representative from each state, but Congress capped the number of reps at 438 several decades back. That means that over time we should have more Reps and more Electors to better represent the people.
I'd restore the original intent though it would take a Constitutional amendment to do so.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Hey moderators and meta-moderators: both the parent and grandparent are factually wrong. Multiple people posted rplies explaining why, with citations, and there was no rebuttal. But they did so after these others were modded-up. Stop with the "me too" moderating, where something gets to 3 then it skyrockets. Read the replies before moderating. And stop giving points to "me too" replies.
Here's what people are missing:
1. Each state gets two Senators; the state's population is completely irrelevant.
2. When it comes to how many reps a state gets in the House of Representatives, the number is directly proportional to population; population is the ONLY thing that's relevant.
3. The Electoral College was designed to be a compromise between the two above extremes.
If you want all voters to have equal political power, you should first try to change the way Senators are elected, because that is where the greatest deviation from your ideal exists.
Personally, I like the way the Electoral College distributes power, because voters in say, South Dakota, seem to exhibit a lot more common sense than voters in San Francisco.
They should remove the Electoral College. It would make it much easier as you would only need to campaign in New York, California, and Florida. These are the only states that matter anyway.
NORC counted the "illegal" votes in Florida 2000
For TRUTH'S SAKE quit repeating "Bush won"
HE LOST
by any standard, universally applied, to all votes LEGAL under Fla. 2000 Title IX, S 101, GORE WON
This isn't even counting the illegal "Overseas" absentee ballots in Republican leaning Counties ONLY, which put more than 690 extra, unsigned, unpostmarked, unwitnessed, unaddressed, undated "Votes" into the Bush column.
We have to quit repeating "If only we had gotten more votes". WE DID.
But 5 corrupt Republican Judges said "no fair counting, it might upset the people who voted for Bush"
I currently live in NE, one of the two states that allocates EC votes proportionally. I completely agree with you. Regardless of your political stripe, this is the right way to go, if you want election results to reflect the will of the voters. However, in the last legislative term, there was a bill to switch to winner-take-all. The only reason to do this is to benefit the dominant political party. Unfortunately, the pols that introduce these things fail to realize that going this road may be a good idea for them today, but a bad idea for them if the political winds change tomorrow. Better to stick to the principle of reflecting the will of the electorate.
It is interesting to me that when the disenfranchised groups in CA have called for secession (e.g. Cascadia) in the previous 10-20 years, the liberal majority responded with disparaging comments like, "What is this, the 1860s?" Now, when faced with results they don't like, they call for their own secession movement. I wonder if anyone has ever realized that splitting CA into several smaller states would actually improve things for all concerned? Each new smaller state would have more local control, disenfranchised groups would be less frustrated, and as a whole the people of what is currently CA would have more voice in the Senate and EC. Of course, the liberal majority of current-CA would not be in control of all that new influence, but as far as benefiting the people it would be a win. And that's who our state policy-makers are supposed to be helping, right?
Direct democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. That's why we have an EC. It's a system to protect our collective selves from ourselves. The US of A are a federal system. The design of Congress is a compromise - brush up on the VA/NJ plans. The design of the EC is the same compromise directed toward a singular office rather than a body. The implementation is very well thought out - brush up on the Federalist Papers. Sometimes I think we should actually vote for the Electors rather than for president, and have their meeting in December actually be a meaningful debate and vote. This would make the EC what it was intended to be: a specially-convened single-purpose one-time convention.
What else might we change to fix our system meaningfully? Glad you asked. Specially note #4, which is most relevant to this story.
1) Condorcet voting. Duverger's Law is the suck. 2) Lower the thresholds to get on the ballot. The major parties don't like competition. High filing fees and petitioning requirements only benefit the entrenched establishment. They may say it's to keep "joke" candidates off the ballot, but...just take a look at the presidential race. Both the Ds and Rs are jokes, so obviously that doesn't work. 3) Proportional representation in the lower chamber of your state legislature. Bicameralism is great, if the two houses serve to balance differing points of view. Having both chambers allocated by district is pointless. There are Libertarians/Greens/Constitutionalists who are perpetually disenfranchised. They should have a voice somewhere commensurate to their size. 4) Increase the size of the (federal) House to 1000 (without increasing the total size of support staff). This solves two problems. First, small districts makes reps more responsive to citizenry. Second, it makes the EC distribution more equitable, so that calls to remove it (which would be disastrous) hopefully subside. 5) Repeal the 17th Amendment. Making senators into super-representatives through popular election makes them unaccountable to their states, and thus more beholden to special interests. Senate elections are insanely expensive because of this. If your motto is "get money out of politics" this should be a no-brainer.
Constitutionally Correct
Agreed. The Cascadia movement (secession from CA) is not new. Funny how liberals in CA scoffed at secession...until now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_and_secession_in_California
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:California_4way_secession_proposal.svg
Constitutionally Correct
Less freedom is not the way to fix the problem.
If elections aren't throwing the bums out, then fix the way we do elections so that they work right. The mathematics of the system ensure that we self-limit our own freedom by looking at only two candidates as real possibilities. Isn't that foolish?
How to fix? Condorcet voting, for one. Proportional representation in one chamber of state legislatures, for another.
Constitutionally Correct
The candidates don't visit the vast majority of the states
Good. Do you really want that circus coming to your state? New flash: there exist modes of communication called television, and the internet, through which you can learn about a candidate's platform without them having to actually visit your state.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
If there is no electoral college, the largest cities in the US will effectively control the election. Or the three or five largest States. The rest of us would not count.
With Presidential campaigns running at about $1 billion, and roughly 1% of the population controlling 99% of our wealth, who actually makes it to the November election is also a problem for most of us.
Bernie Sanders and our President-elect seem to have bucked this last problem. The Fourth Estate helped both of them, I suppose, although with vastly different tactics being employed by the each. Both used social media very effectively. showing that the Fourth Estate has changed!
Another point is that all those polls never got it right, did they? So maybe we poor, supposedly disenfranchised voters do get a say after all. Or maybe hackers got away with it . I know I got it wrong. I thought Hillary would win 35 states. Most elections have been a choice between the lesser of two evils, but personally, this time there sure was not much of that "lesser" part.
I think the Electoral College should remain. We are a Republic, not a democracy. States Rights and all that! Oh, and no, California cannot secede. Remember, our new President-elect is from New York! But as I live in a town of under 5000 souls located in The Natural State, I can always hope that CA, NY, & TX go away. Go CANYTXit!
M. Reed Brooks * mailto:mreedb@hotmail.com * mailto:mreedb@gmail.com * mailto:mreedb@undernet.org
Should a mechanism originally part of the 3/5ths compromise, from an era before electricity or public schools, that failed in its most basic aim be eliminated?
Fuck yes.
We have a republic, but we also have a strong democratic tradition. Even the most ill informed is remarkably well educated compared to the ones the founding fathers were so afraid of in the 1700s.
As for the failure in basic aim? Preventing a charismatic tyrant from taking office. We're now less than 60 days from that.
Thanks Electoral College, thanks. (Because of course they're just going to rubber stamp this shit, because these people weren't ever serious about serving the real intent of the electoral college... or their country, just their party.)