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It's worth noting that 3 million more people voted for Hillary. I wouldn't chalk this one up to a design issue, rather implementation (in this case, weighting
by RKoutnik 10y ago
It's worth noting that 3 million more people voted for Hillary. I wouldn't chalk this one up to a design issue, rather implementation (in this case, weighting votes by geographic region).
We've submitted a patch and are waiting for enough reviewers to approve: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
- daenz 10y agoIt's also worth noting that 90 million people who are eligible to vote didn't vote at all.
- Joakal 10y agoIt's also worth noting the first past the post system encourages duopolistic government (Almost China and NK's monopolistic government ;) ) People vote against their sincere choice by voting for one of the two most popular candidates instead. Some other systems: http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_Vote/Voting_HOR.htm http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_Vote/Voting_HOR.htm http://www.elections.org.nz/voting-system/mmp-voting-system http://www.elections.org.nz/voting-system/mmp-voting-system
- simonh 10y ago> Almost China and NK's monopolistic government That's one of the most perniciously false equivalence I've seen in a while, and that's saying something. The US has elected congressmen, elected senators, elected governors and an elected president. Even the top two presidential candidates are chosen from a wide field in primary elections. Portraying that as a stark choice between only two options and saying it's practically the same as China and North Korea, which provide no choice whatsoever, is really pretty disgusting.
- Joakal 10y agoYou do realise that in USA, people mostly vote for republicans or democrats despite some hating them? Rest of world have multi-party governments. Many more choices. So much for an example that puts people on defensive instead of raising awareness of how distorted the electoral system in USA is.
- comex 10y agoAnd the US has primaries. Last year there were 17 Republicans all trying to win their party's nomination in a series of open votes; out of those, the eventual winner, Donald Trump, was perhaps the candidate least liked by the party establishment. If anything, the problem was too many candidates, combined with a first-past-the-post system. The majority of primary voters disliked Trump, but were split between several preferred candidates (who I group because they were far more similar to each other than to Trump). Trump got a certain segment of the vote all to himself.
- will_pseudonym 10y agoJoke or not, the comparison to China or North Korea is awful, and not at all close to accurate. For example, when the BBC went to report on an independent candidate in China, plainclothes policemen blocked them from entering the building[0]. North Korea is at least an order of magnitude worse off. [0] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38005603 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38005603
- Joakal 10y agoI was pointing out that China and North Korea are monopolistic. Of course they don't allow more than one party with the system they set up. Look at USA, it's duopolistic due to the system set up. There's only republicans and democrats. What's funny is that China (Don't know about NK) brags that anyone can run for government but people only vote for one party. Just like USA brags that anyone can run for government but it ends up becoming republican/democrat. Do you see the monopolistic/duopolistic point I was making?
- specialist 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law I can't comment on China, NK.
- overcast 10y agoCampaign trails are also designed with the electoral vote in mind. Saying Hillary would have won if the election was based on popular vote, is not necessarily true.
- Mikeb85 10y agoThis. Trump optimized to win the election, and Hillary ignored a bunch of states she thought she'd easily win (some of which she didn't).
- enraged_camel 10y agoI'm not sure Trump optimized for anything. Rumors from his inner circle suggest he didn't expect to win, and was surprised when he did.
- cmdrfred 10y agoDoesn't that make Hillary's loss all the more embarssing then?
- nerfhammer 10y agoSort of hard for either of them when the polls turned out to be completely wrong
- Mikeb85 10y agoPolls aren't meant to be predictive. They're meant to be influential.
- AaronFriel 10y agoThe final national polls turned out to be quite accurate.
- kup0 10y agoThis is a good point. If it was known to be a popular vote from the beginning, the strategy of the campaigns would have been different, so it's difficult to tell what would have happened. It seems common sense, but thanks for this input because it pulled my brain out of a bubble for a moment.
- blazespin 10y agoThe electoral college is not the problem. If we remove that, than states that lose representation they were promised when they joined should have the right to secede.
- genericpseudo 10y agoThis is a bad thing how? Serious question. The US would be a much happier and healthier place if it were more like the EU.
- nostromo 10y agoThe US is quite a bit like the EU. The average German has less say in EU politics than the average Luxembourger. Similarly, the average Californian has less say in US politics than the average Wyomingite.
- gozur88 10y agoWhere states are leaving or threatening to leave, and where the bureaucracies seem completely unconnected with the voters? I think not.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jotux 10y agoThe electoral college no longer provides the intended benefit to those states anyways -- it just makes swing states more important.
- serge2k 10y agoWhy? They would get the chance to participate in any amendment to abolish the electoral college.
- jonathankoren 10y agoThe electoral college is antiquated and premised on an idea that didn't pan out. Specifically that people would have a primary allegiance to their state and not the federation. This was true since World War I at the latest, and Reconstruction at the earliest. Quite frankly it's asinine that my town has more population and less representation than 6 states.
- notpc 10y agoThis is a silly argument. Trump and Clinton competed for the electoral college, not the popular vote. Which means that Trump spent a lot of time campaigning for one electoral vote in Maine and almost none in courting millions of people in California and New York. It's impossible to say what the outcome would have been if the popular vote would have mattered, because both campaigns would be run totally differently.
- cmdrfred 10y agoThe parties may of run entirely different candidates if it was a popular vote as well. They would likely hold entirely different policy positions as a party.
- bb88 10y agoActually, no it's not. The electoral college was setup in 1787. What it has to do with politics two centuries later in the age of the internet seems out of date. Yet it's the rules we live by, not the rules we like. Since 2000, it's clear that voter majorities have been underrepresented in presidential elections. And as we claim to be the world's largest democracy, we have been, in fact, the world's largest republic.
- copperred 10y agoIt claims to be both a democracy and a republic and is generally accepted as both.
- notpc 10y agoI'm highly amused that you start with "actually, no it's not", implying that you are going to disagree with my comment, because you don't actually address anything I said. Did you even read what I said?
- wyager 10y ago> It's worth noting that 3 million more people voted for Hillary. She has, in many respects, just as many problems as Trump. If the US used the popular vote, we would just be screwed in a different manner. This is not a "patchable" problem with some implementation detail. It's a fundamental problem with trying to force hundreds of millions of people with dozens of vastly different cultures to live under the same overburdened legal and regulatory system.
- Swizec 10y agoI was 4 when such a system collapsed around me in the Balkans. It was interesting, I don't remember much, but 25 years later a lot of the politics still revolve around it. Arguably the US 2 party system is still better than the Yugoslav 1. And while the multiparty system common in much of EU is crazy inefficient, it sure makes This Current Problem high unlikely.
- wyager 10y agoThe situation in the EU is a lot better in many ways because the EU has much less purview than the US federal government. When you do less stuff, you're less likely to piss off people with irreconcilable cultural differences.
- CamperBob2 10y agoBut how is it any more fair to let three large metro areas override the preferences of most of the rest of the country?
- vkou 10y agoRight now, the electoral college lets large metro areas override the preferences of rural voters in their state. The rural voter in Michigan gets outsized representation, the urban voter in California gets downsized representation, and the rural voter in California gets no representation at all.
- baddox 10y agoThat isn't the alternative. The alternative is to let the sum of each equal individual vote determine the outcome. Metro areas don't vote. Neither do farms. People vote. Just like most of us presumably agree that gender, ethnicity, etc. shouldn't affect the impact your vote has, I don't think that the amount of land you own or the population density of the area you live in should affect the impact of your vote.
- panzagl 10y agoThis is how you get the Roman/Parisian mobs that were the downfall of the Roman and French Republics. All you have to do is promise the mob everything and they'll give you the support to suppress the provinces. The Founders had the Roman example to draw on, as well as Venice's devolution into an urban oligarchy.
- toor2 10y agoWith the electoral college al you have to do is appeal to the mob in the swing states. Then you give that select group of voting Americans the ability to suppress the rest of the population. How is that any better?
- baddox 10y agoYes, you can just appeal to a smaller mob which has the same political influence as larger mobs.
- pizza 10y agoWhat do you think of range voting? http://rangevoting.org http://rangevoting.org
- sytelus 10y agoMore likely it might make it worse. In US political scene, people are divided strongly and therefore moderates gets to chose in the end. This is better and keeps extremist grabbing the power (well, most of the time). With range voting, power of moderates would diminish and it would be matter of which side has slightly higher number of extremists. I think what would improve US elections is rather this: Publish results in real time. Most people don't seem to realize consequence of not voting . If results comes in real time then people who are lazy might get extra prode. If 95% of the population votes, there is less likelyhood of nasty surprises as opposed to say only 60%.
- jmcdiesel 10y agoA true popular vote would be just as horrible... minority interest gets buried... But honestly, its the size of the nation thats the problem. People in the northeast have fundamentally different beliefs than those in, say, Alabama and california... and trying to rule over all of them as a single government is only going to cause pain...
- gozur88 10y agoThat has nothing to do with size. When the system worked the federal government was really only concerned with national level things - war and trade, mostly. Over the years more and more power got transferred to the national level, and now we're at the point that states are pretty much satrapies of the federal government. Now the system doesn't work, because the Alabama voters have a big impact on California and vice versa.