Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
Ranked choice.
Fix gerrymandering.
Popular vote.
If you don't want this, you're simply a sore loser. You dont want democracy, you want a boys club.
want a boys club.
*white, straight, christian, republican, cis, landowning boys club
How do you achieve this, when by and large neither party seems to want to move in this direction?
I get that the Electoral College was originally designed to give smaller states an equal say. But, when Los Angeles county has more population than like 10 states combined, things are getting ridiculous.
California has like 67 times the population of Wyoming... yet they each have two senators. And that keeps increasing.
Our government is not a good representation of the populace.
The number of people was a political compromise between individual rights and States rights, but so was a Senate and House.
The electoral college was primarily designed to enable states to vote despite a communication delay that could take months.
It did great at that, actually. How would California have up to date info on what's going on in Washington when the fastest mode of travel was a horse? It wouldn't.
Instead of voting based on information that's outdated and potentially inaccurate, best to pick some people you trust to vote in your interests, and send them to Washington. Let them get caught up, and vote how they will as your representative.
Then States can sort out their own voting time and method, with no real concern for it being simultaneous or consistent because news travels so slow anyway. The important thing was authorized people would show up by the expected federal voting time, and if that happened, everyone did well enough.
Of course, now they can cast their vote without leaving the state, and coordination is possible, but here we are holding the bag on a lack of accounting for technological progress.
I agree with your ultimate premise, that technological advances have all but eliminated the need for the Ec. But, my man, the telegraph predates CA as a state.
The EC was also for many reasons, but pertaining to the point were talking about, it was because they were afraid people would just campaign in cities because that would be the most efficient. The EC forces a wider appeal.
But with the ability to reach everyone, everywhere, instantly, this fear that they only campaign in cities is gone.
Also, the electoral college only shifts the focus from cities to major swing states (and even then, cities within those states).
But more importantly, why the fuck should potential campaign strategies affect the strength of my vote?
It was originally designed to give slave owners a greater say than people in free states, since EC representation is mainly based on the number of representatives you have in the House, and the slave state representative count was inflated by the 3/5 compromise.
Instead of having a forever constitution that was great and new 200 years ago when the internet and modern transportation and communications didn't exist .... they should regularly overhaul the entire government every hundred years to keep up with the times.
I'm in Canada and they should do the same here.
We can't possibly think that everything we see, think and believe today will be applicable to people living 100, 200 years from now.
We look at 200 year old laws about horses and we laugh at it. 200 years from now, our descendants will laugh at what we're debating today.
The only reason to maintain the status quo is to protect the power and privilege of a few powerful and wealthy people. It never has anything to do with the goodwill of the people.
California has like 67 times the population of Wyoming... yet they each have two senators. And that keeps increasing.
The worst part about the legislative branch is that Congress also acted to handicap the House of Representatives. It was supposed to be the body based on population. And you may say "Well California has 52 and Wyoming only 1 so that's proportional." But the original intent was no more than 30,000 constituents per representative. So based on a quick look at the 2020 population figures, Wyoming should have 19 while California should have ~1,317. (That would also be equivalent to California having 69 representatives to Wyoming's current 1.)
"...designed to give smaller states an equal say..."
Not quite...
This is exactly where we should be focusing when this pops up. If PA decided and the pending states go through, that's all you need. Hell, with the pending states, you only need 11 more electoral votes for it to to be enacted.
and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome
And it will never budge above that line. They should have just done it anyways. Most of the votes to decide is better than all of them.
They should do it anyway, but limit it to the winner of the popular vote within the states that are part of the pact.
Then there’d be several states that would realize they’d have more influence by contributing their popular votes to the pact than by sending their electors to the College independently (and in any case a candidate would still have to virtually sweep all the non-pact states to win the College without winning the pact).
I think enacting it early would just make it look like a Democratic party alliance. That's roughly who the enacted states are currently and it would dissuade other states who might benefit or believe in the popular vote from joining.
Right now, it's in the abstract interest of Texas to join the Compact, because a popular vote would increase their influence, but if the Compact involved just being forced to vote blue indefinitely without gaining any influence, then it's a bad deal. "Doing what the majority of the people" want is a lot easier a concept to sell than "doing what the majority of blue states want".
You could make the argument that if it was solely down to the popular vote, the last Republican president would have been George Bush in 1988.
The only Republican since then to win the popular vote was Bush II for his second term in 2004, but it's arguable that since Gore would have been the incumbent he might not have won that one. Plus there are a lot of hypotheticals like whether 9/11 could have been prevented under Gore, or if it had happened if the response was less aggressive, or if Bush II would have even run again after losing the first time etc. So it's impossible to say but certainly conceivable that Gore would have gone for two terms IMO.
Gore won twice in the good timeline. Sucks we have to live in this one.
I wonder who would have been the opponent in 2004 if Gore had won? This was back when losers didn't try running for election again, so not Dubya. Maybe McCain since he did in 2008?
Yeah I think McCain would be a likely candidate, he was the runner-up in the primaries in 2000 against Bush II so he was definitely thinking about it back then.
It's wild that if multiple things we implemented republicans would never win the presidency again.
Any anti voter suppression method, like universal mail in voting
Ranked choice voting
Removal of the electoral college
I am sure there are even more.
Remember that republicans are the minority, they just show up to vote more often (and aren't actively suppressed)
Man what I'd give for ranked choice voting, it seems like a no-brainer
I've been working with local groups trying to get it passed. It may be worth investigating if there are some near you. Donate money or time or support.
They'd still win the Presidency occasionally. They'd just have to do it by adopting policies that more voters would support.
You know - what they're supposed to be doing.
I think it's important to point out that strategies would change if the system changed so we can't predict what the results would be.
They would still win, but they would have to shift their platform to capture the true political center rather than the center right.
Can we please just get ranked choice voting
Would be nice, but I can't see either major political party actually following through with something that hurts their power.
Let me happily inform you that several states have varying versions of RCV.
Maine and Alaska got there through a Democratic government and a voter referendum, respectively.
Highly recommend reading this Wikipedia page.
You'll notice a trend of Democrats and voter referendums driving RCV, and on the other hand, Republicans fighting to reverse or delay RCV laws, and entire conservative states that have BANNED it.
This isn't a "both sides" thing.
Ah, but is a significant enough amount of that majority located in the lowest population states to make it matter?
Is that a threat? Do we need to have government sponsored people movement into less populated states from left voting cities? Because I'll fucking vote for that.
You can bus all the immigrants you want to cities in blue states, and in equal exchange, we will bus lefty to sparsely populated states to render your votes blue.
Problem is that "Majority" isn't gonna get rid of the Electoral College. Because Electoral College. Unpopulated states still have excess control.
So how do we get a constitutional amendment passed to do this?
Especially with the republicans only able to win the presidency through the electoral college. They’re gonna cling to that shit with their dying breath.
We actually don’t need a constitutional amendment to do it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
this poll may show that Americans want electoral college gone, but if you look at where they answered, you can instead count the answers given by state delegates and then it turns out Americans love the electoral college!