4 ms·
The unfortunate irony is that 2/3 of state legislatures will never vote to abolish the electoral college in favor of the popular vote, because a vast majority o
by rcthompson 9y ago
The unfortunate irony is that 2/3 of state legislatures will never vote to abolish the electoral college in favor of the popular vote, because a vast majority of states get relatively more voting power than they would with the popular vote, since every state gets a minimum of 3 electoral votes no matter how small their population is. This comes at the expense of the few most populous states (e.g. California), which are severely disenfranchised.
I wonder if we will ever see an effort to exploit this by having the ruling party start splitting the states friendly to them into multiple smaller states in order to get more electoral votes and more senate seats on their side. It seems that creating a new state requires a 2/3 majority in both houses and the signature of the president [1], so this seems unlikely to come into play any time soon.
[1]: https://people.howstuffworks.com/new-state-in-us.htm https://people.howstuffworks.com/new-state-in-us.htm
- munk-a 9y agoMy own state of Vermont has signed on to this [1] particular proposition, so no, not every tiny state demands that it have a voice disproportionate with its size. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
- lutorm 9y agoHawaii, too.
- Mountain_Skies 9y agoIf the electoral college did go away, I wonder if it would end up actually increasing the animosity between the coasts and 'fly over country'. Fair or not, the current system does appear to serve as a bit of a pressure relief valve. Allowing things to escalate to the level where the urban/rural divide becomes so great that one or both sides decides it's time to break the country apart is unlikely to have a better outcome than the last time we arrived at this point, even if on a different path and for different reasons.