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Because of the EC I would argue that in most states, including California, your vote effectively doesn't matter at all. Unless you are in a purple state you ba
by pfisch 7y ago
Because of the EC I would argue that in most states, including California, your vote effectively doesn't matter at all.
Unless you are in a purple state you basically don't have a vote, and politicians can ignore your entire State.
So while the EC does empower some rural voters, in reality it effectively disenfranchises most of the country.
- zaroth 7y agoBut this proves the point. The issue you are having at the state level is a dominant majority makes the views of the minority irrelevant. And to be clear, the EC does not disenfranchise all the voters in states like CA, just the minority voters. This is actually precisely what the Senate and the Electoral College is designed to mitigate.
- chillwaves 7y agoit invalidates all voters. Overvotes are a thing. You can have 90% of CA vote against a candidate and it won't mean anything more than 51% voting against. So roughly half of the votes in all non competitive states do not count.
- jakelazaroff 7y agoExactly. I live in NYC. I still vote, but really it doesn't matter whom I vote for since there's an approximately 100% chance of New York's electoral votes going to the Democratic candidate. On the other hand, Kansas hasn't voted for a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson; I'm sure people there don't feel particularly enfranchised either.
- vonmoltke 7y agoThat's not an argument against the Electoral College per se, but rather an argument against letting states allocate all of their Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote. This particular problem could be solved by forcing all states to apportion their Electoral College votes based on the distribution of the popular vote.
- wyldfire 7y agoIIRC this behavior is per-state and some (Maine or NH maybe?) do just that.
- khuey 7y agoMaine and Nebraska apportion their electoral votes on a per-Congressional district basis. But because Congressional districts can be heavily gerrymandered this is not a substitute for a truly proportional allocation scheme.
- pfisch 7y ago> This particular problem could be solved by forcing all states to apportion their Electoral College votes based on the distribution of the popular vote. That is not a realistic proposal. Political gridlock will never allow a change like this. Doing it state by state is even worse because it just creates a system where dems try to do it to only red states and the GOP tries to do it to only blue states. It would just further skew the outcomes away from a democratic result.
- zhoujianfu 7y agoThis is exactly what the article is about, and 16 states with 194 votes have already done it. It will eventually pass 270 because most states (all non-swing states) have a lot to gain from it.
- pfisch 7y agoI'm pretty sure the poster I responded to was talking about doing this on a per state basis. Not the national popular vote.
- zhoujianfu 7y agoThat’s exactly what the NPVIC is trying for... they’re not abolishing the electoral college, just making an agreement that 270+ of them will vote for whomever wins the entire nation’s popular vote.