42 ms·

What's great about the electoral college is you need to have cross-regional appeal to win. So its less about which states are going to be battleground but that

What's great about the electoral college is you need to have cross-regional appeal to win. So its less about which states are going to be battleground but that you generally can't just appeal to 1 or 2 regions and win. In a goal of preserving the union, it's better to have a system that pushes cross-regional appeal than a system based strictly on number of votes IMO.

hinkley 7y ago
My recollection from civics was that the college is to prevent populist candidates from winning. Someone very popular only in densely populated areas may have an agenda that hurts rural ones (eg, noting that federal taxes disproportionately go to rural areas for things like maintaining highways, make it “fair” and leave rural people with shit roads and diminished services).
- gmoot 7y ago
  It was indeed intended to prevent populism; the idea is that instead of voting for the president you vote for a group of people who you trust to then choose a president. But it has never in practice worked that way.
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    And in fact many states electors are not legally allowed to do that any more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector
    - justin66 7y ago
      The question of whether faithless electors are allowed to be... faithless (ahem) is currently working itself through the courts, which is remarkable: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/22/he-tried-stop-trump-electoral-college-court-says-his-faithless-ballot-was-legal/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/22/he-tried-st...
      - rtkwe 7y ago
        Interesting, though this sounds like it would really hamper the idea of the national popular vote compact which I'm personally pulling for. And really calls into question the whole electoral system if the electors cannot be constrained by their states at all. Just bribe or threaten 271 people and the whole presidency is yours really since states can't invalidate faithless votes...
        justin66 7y ago
        > though this sounds like it would really hamper the idea of the national popular vote compact which I'm personally pulling for. I'm a supporter of NPV. I don't think it's likely to be a problem, although this feels like something that will shake out a lot further in the federal courts.
- zaphirplane 7y ago
  I thought it was to help make sure presidents are elected by hmm not elected by poor bellow average educated people. Back then
- seanalltogether 7y ago
  > My recollection from civics was that the college is to prevent populist candidates from winning The college was a compromise to give a larger voting share to slave owning states that had a high overall population, despite having a relatively smaller number of possible voters.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    Pretty sure that was the 3/5ths compromise, not the electoral college.
    - bwanab 7y ago
      They worked hand in hand. In other words, given the 3/5s compromise, how to you implement it from a voting perspective? For example, if your state has a population that was 50/50 slave/non-slave, then each non-slave vote was theoretically worth 1 and 3/5s of a vote, but giving individual voters differing weights was deemed unacceptable. The solution was the electoral college in which the votes available to the state could reflect the extra voting power of the non-voting population.
      - DuskStar 7y ago
        I don't think the electoral college was intended to work the way it does today. If I'm remembering correctly, it was originally a "Frank from town is really smart and well-informed, so I'll send him to DC to choose the president" type of institution. (This is also part of why there was such a long gap between election day and inauguration - the electors still had to get together in DC) So while the electoral college might have also functioned as a way to redistribute votes within a state... I don't think that was its main purpose.
        justin66 7y ago
        If this were the case you'd expect to see a lot more faithless electors in our history than we have seen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector#List_of_faithless_electors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector#List_of_fait... As with so much in American history the explanation involves slavery but judging from the downvotes here, that wounds everyone's pride a bit.
- pjc50 7y ago
  > My recollection from civics was that the college is to prevent populist candidates from winning. Well, that didn't work.
  - Fjolsvith 7y ago
    Probably something taught by a not conservative teacher/professor.
- kd5bjo 7y ago
  As I recall, the electoral college was primarily for logistical reasons— a number of people come to Washington, meet together, and the outcome of that meeting determines the next President, with no appeals because the people in the room are empowered to choose. Communication happened at the speed of a horse, so if you need a decision quickly, you can’t have electors asking for instructions from their home government. For better or worse, the founders favored a definitive result in this case over a correct one.
- bskap 7y ago
  That assumes that "only appeals to cities" is the only type of populist that we need protection from. The electoral college does nothing to protect against things like "only appeals to white people" or "only appeals to Christians" populists, which were not a big concern for America's founders or the much whiter and more Christian rural population today.
  - changchuming 7y ago
    Huh? Somehow I doubt the rural population is less white or Christian back in those days.
    - bskap 7y ago
      English and its ambiguous grammar... I mean when the founding fathers designed the electoral college, they wouldn't have been concerned about it taking power away from minority groups. In addition, the people in rural areas today who are so concerned about removing the electoral college giving more power to cities are not concerned about how the electoral college disenfranchises minorities because they are much less likely to be minorities or have many close friends who are than people in cities and suburbs so it's not something they'd normally think about.
vkou 7y ago
Why do we only give disproportionate representation to people on the basis of their zip code? Why not give disproportional representation to them on the basis of their race, or religion, or sexual orientation, or on whether or not they prefer big, or little-endian notation? Surely, it would only be appropriate that politicians should have cross-demographic appeal to win? Every argument for why we should give extra influence to voters living in particular zip codes is just as valid, as any argument for giving extra influence to voters based on some other semi-arbitrary distinction. Rural people have special, marginalized concerns, and are outnumbered by urban voters? Great. So do LGBT people, for example. You don't get extra consideration for your vote for being a ______. Why should you get it on the basis of geography?
- your-nanny 7y ago
  because the US is a union of quasi independent states. US government is built around that fact. The Senate, for example, represents each state equally Originally and by intent these were chosen by state legislatures. Similarly, originally and by intent, states governments play a large role in how Presidents get elected. Personally, I think the changes we've made have confused people about the basic theory of our constitutional system. People should be asking: why do we have states.
- crazynick4 7y ago
  Not their zip code, their state. Hence, United States.
jshowa3 7y ago
What's the point of having "cross regional appeal" if you are appealing to virtually no one? This isn't some discrimination thing. Those people can still vote. They just aren't given more representation than they deserve. That's the con of the electoral college.
- exclusiv 7y ago
  Can you elaborate? You can't win while appealing to "virtually no one". In cases where the national popular vote didn't win - we're talking about a few % points of a difference.
  - jshowa3 7y ago
    What I mean is the states that are overrepresented based on their population. In EC, every state, regardless of population gets 3 electoral votes. Meaning low population states get more say than they should because they get electoral votes for free. This has caused elections in the past to be won because of this overrepresentation when they wouldn't have if the electoral college didn't exist. A few percentage points is a big deal in an election where every vote is supposed to count. And this overrepresentation isn't a narrow margin like Brexit, we're talking about at least 5% more represented.
screye 7y ago
Why is geography a factor in a democracy. Why is cross regional appeal of any value, if these region don't make up even 10% of the combined US population. If US states were divided by population it would be a different think all together. But California has 40 times as many people as Wyoming. Cross regional appeal is quoted as an obviously good thing to have, but the core assumption of equal distribution of population has been violated.
- kd5bjo 7y ago
  > Why is cross regional appeal of any value, if these region don't make up even 10% of the combined US population. Because those people control a large fraction of the country’s food supply and it would be a disaster if they decided to stop selling it to the rest of us.
  - greenpizza13 7y ago
    You're probably being facetious, but I have heard some version of this argument before. It's akin to saying "give us what we want or we'll hold the country hostage." In reality, free markets being a thing, this wouldn't happen. We can import from other countries and they need to sell their goods to live.
    - kd5bjo 7y ago
      More hyperbolic than facetious. It can’t be a good thing to disenfranchise the holders of your strategic resources en masse, and farmland was the easiest to point at. You’re right that it’s extremely unlikely to get so bad that they get forcibly nationalized. However, my understanding is that market conditions are pretty bad for farmers right now, and have been for years. Any change that makes things worse for them will likely drive some to other lines of work and reduce overall production, driving food prices up. This particular effect is probably extremely small in practice, but I felt the need to remind HN that not all value is produced in cities.
    - squish78 7y ago
      Do you want to eat unregulated Chinese mystery meat? Not that I agree with the sentiment of 'holding the urban areas hostage' but the US and the world need the agricultural production of the central US
smaryjerry 7y ago
There is two methods that can be done by removing the electoral college that have vastly different results. First, without "removing" the electoral college, just deem that all electoral votes from a state are proportionate to that state's popular vote. So if a state is split 50-50 then electoral votes are split 50-50. The 2nd method is awarding all the state's electoral votes based on who wins the popular vote. This gives a vastly different outcome if only a few states implement this. It means even if you win even 80 percent of the votes of that state but lose the national popular vote then you still lose that state. I've seen more news about states leaning towards the 2nd option which is actually much worse than the electoral college in its current state.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > There is two methods that can be done by removing the electoral college that have vastly different results. First, without "removing" the electoral college, just deem that all electoral votes from a state are proportionate to that state's popular vote. You can't do that with national effect by concerted state action with less than 100% of the states (you can simulate it by casting all votes for the candidate that would win by that rule with a bare makority, but that's just a chunky version of national popular vote.) > I've seen more news about states leaning towards the 2nd option which is actually much worse than the electoral college in its current state. It's worse if you care about the per-state vote and not the national outcome; it's better if you care about the outcome, since it produces the desired outcome of adopted by states with a majority of electoral votes (and the NPV only goes into effect in states adopting it when it has been adopted by states with a majority of electoral votes), while proportional allocation for electors needs universal adoption to implement it's effect.
gizmo385 7y ago
Define region and how the electoral college requires cross-regional appeal to win. You could technically win the electoral college with the 13 biggest states in the country, so I'm not seeing how the electoral college forces any kind of broad-based appeal.
- SmartJerry 7y ago
  Not the OP, but you could technically win the popular vote with those same 13 state's voters. When there is overwhelming support for one candidate the electoral college and popular vote would always be exactly the same. It actually only matters on a closely contest election and in that case the edge goes to the person with more broad support.
notSupplied 7y ago
It has not produced that result. Instead it shifts the power from "most populated" (which at lease resembles SOME democratic values) to "most swing", which is totally arbitrary.

hinkley 7y ago

My recollection from civics was that the college is to prevent populist candidates from winning. Someone very popular only in densely populated areas may have an agenda that hurts rural ones (eg, noting that federal taxes disproportionately go to rural areas for things like maintaining highways, make it “fair” and leave rural people with shit roads and diminished services).

gmoot 7y ago
It was indeed intended to prevent populism; the idea is that instead of voting for the president you vote for a group of people who you trust to then choose a president. But it has never in practice worked that way.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  And in fact many states electors are not legally allowed to do that any more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector
  - justin66 7y ago
    The question of whether faithless electors are allowed to be... faithless (ahem) is currently working itself through the courts, which is remarkable: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/22/he-tried-stop-trump-electoral-college-court-says-his-faithless-ballot-was-legal/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/22/he-tried-st...
    - rtkwe 7y ago
      Interesting, though this sounds like it would really hamper the idea of the national popular vote compact which I'm personally pulling for. And really calls into question the whole electoral system if the electors cannot be constrained by their states at all. Just bribe or threaten 271 people and the whole presidency is yours really since states can't invalidate faithless votes...
      - justin66 7y ago
        > though this sounds like it would really hamper the idea of the national popular vote compact which I'm personally pulling for. I'm a supporter of NPV. I don't think it's likely to be a problem, although this feels like something that will shake out a lot further in the federal courts.
zaphirplane 7y ago
I thought it was to help make sure presidents are elected by hmm not elected by poor bellow average educated people. Back then
seanalltogether 7y ago
> My recollection from civics was that the college is to prevent populist candidates from winning The college was a compromise to give a larger voting share to slave owning states that had a high overall population, despite having a relatively smaller number of possible voters.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  Pretty sure that was the 3/5ths compromise, not the electoral college.
  - bwanab 7y ago
    They worked hand in hand. In other words, given the 3/5s compromise, how to you implement it from a voting perspective? For example, if your state has a population that was 50/50 slave/non-slave, then each non-slave vote was theoretically worth 1 and 3/5s of a vote, but giving individual voters differing weights was deemed unacceptable. The solution was the electoral college in which the votes available to the state could reflect the extra voting power of the non-voting population.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      I don't think the electoral college was intended to work the way it does today. If I'm remembering correctly, it was originally a "Frank from town is really smart and well-informed, so I'll send him to DC to choose the president" type of institution. (This is also part of why there was such a long gap between election day and inauguration - the electors still had to get together in DC) So while the electoral college might have also functioned as a way to redistribute votes within a state... I don't think that was its main purpose.
      - justin66 7y ago
        If this were the case you'd expect to see a lot more faithless electors in our history than we have seen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector#List_of_faithless_electors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector#List_of_fait... As with so much in American history the explanation involves slavery but judging from the downvotes here, that wounds everyone's pride a bit.
pjc50 7y ago
> My recollection from civics was that the college is to prevent populist candidates from winning. Well, that didn't work.
- Fjolsvith 7y ago
  Probably something taught by a not conservative teacher/professor.
kd5bjo 7y ago
As I recall, the electoral college was primarily for logistical reasons— a number of people come to Washington, meet together, and the outcome of that meeting determines the next President, with no appeals because the people in the room are empowered to choose. Communication happened at the speed of a horse, so if you need a decision quickly, you can’t have electors asking for instructions from their home government. For better or worse, the founders favored a definitive result in this case over a correct one.
bskap 7y ago
That assumes that "only appeals to cities" is the only type of populist that we need protection from. The electoral college does nothing to protect against things like "only appeals to white people" or "only appeals to Christians" populists, which were not a big concern for America's founders or the much whiter and more Christian rural population today.
- changchuming 7y ago
  Huh? Somehow I doubt the rural population is less white or Christian back in those days.
  - bskap 7y ago
    English and its ambiguous grammar... I mean when the founding fathers designed the electoral college, they wouldn't have been concerned about it taking power away from minority groups. In addition, the people in rural areas today who are so concerned about removing the electoral college giving more power to cities are not concerned about how the electoral college disenfranchises minorities because they are much less likely to be minorities or have many close friends who are than people in cities and suburbs so it's not something they'd normally think about.

vkou 7y ago

Why do we only give disproportionate representation to people on the basis of their zip code? Why not give disproportional representation to them on the basis of their race, or religion, or sexual orientation, or on whether or not they prefer big, or little-endian notation? Surely, it would only be appropriate that politicians should have cross-demographic appeal to win? Every argument for why we should give extra influence to voters living in particular zip codes is just as valid, as any argument for giving extra influence to voters based on some other semi-arbitrary distinction. Rural people have special, marginalized concerns, and are outnumbered by urban voters? Great. So do LGBT people, for example. You don't get extra consideration for your vote for being a ______. Why should you get it on the basis of geography?

your-nanny 7y ago
because the US is a union of quasi independent states. US government is built around that fact. The Senate, for example, represents each state equally Originally and by intent these were chosen by state legislatures. Similarly, originally and by intent, states governments play a large role in how Presidents get elected. Personally, I think the changes we've made have confused people about the basic theory of our constitutional system. People should be asking: why do we have states.
crazynick4 7y ago
Not their zip code, their state. Hence, United States.

jshowa3 7y ago

What's the point of having "cross regional appeal" if you are appealing to virtually no one? This isn't some discrimination thing. Those people can still vote. They just aren't given more representation than they deserve. That's the con of the electoral college.

exclusiv 7y ago
Can you elaborate? You can't win while appealing to "virtually no one". In cases where the national popular vote didn't win - we're talking about a few % points of a difference.
- jshowa3 7y ago
  What I mean is the states that are overrepresented based on their population. In EC, every state, regardless of population gets 3 electoral votes. Meaning low population states get more say than they should because they get electoral votes for free. This has caused elections in the past to be won because of this overrepresentation when they wouldn't have if the electoral college didn't exist. A few percentage points is a big deal in an election where every vote is supposed to count. And this overrepresentation isn't a narrow margin like Brexit, we're talking about at least 5% more represented.

screye 7y ago

Why is geography a factor in a democracy. Why is cross regional appeal of any value, if these region don't make up even 10% of the combined US population. If US states were divided by population it would be a different think all together. But California has 40 times as many people as Wyoming. Cross regional appeal is quoted as an obviously good thing to have, but the core assumption of equal distribution of population has been violated.

kd5bjo 7y ago
> Why is cross regional appeal of any value, if these region don't make up even 10% of the combined US population. Because those people control a large fraction of the country’s food supply and it would be a disaster if they decided to stop selling it to the rest of us.
- greenpizza13 7y ago
  You're probably being facetious, but I have heard some version of this argument before. It's akin to saying "give us what we want or we'll hold the country hostage." In reality, free markets being a thing, this wouldn't happen. We can import from other countries and they need to sell their goods to live.
  - kd5bjo 7y ago
    More hyperbolic than facetious. It can’t be a good thing to disenfranchise the holders of your strategic resources en masse, and farmland was the easiest to point at. You’re right that it’s extremely unlikely to get so bad that they get forcibly nationalized. However, my understanding is that market conditions are pretty bad for farmers right now, and have been for years. Any change that makes things worse for them will likely drive some to other lines of work and reduce overall production, driving food prices up. This particular effect is probably extremely small in practice, but I felt the need to remind HN that not all value is produced in cities.
  - squish78 7y ago
    Do you want to eat unregulated Chinese mystery meat? Not that I agree with the sentiment of 'holding the urban areas hostage' but the US and the world need the agricultural production of the central US

smaryjerry 7y ago

There is two methods that can be done by removing the electoral college that have vastly different results. First, without "removing" the electoral college, just deem that all electoral votes from a state are proportionate to that state's popular vote. So if a state is split 50-50 then electoral votes are split 50-50. The 2nd method is awarding all the state's electoral votes based on who wins the popular vote. This gives a vastly different outcome if only a few states implement this. It means even if you win even 80 percent of the votes of that state but lose the national popular vote then you still lose that state. I've seen more news about states leaning towards the 2nd option which is actually much worse than the electoral college in its current state.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> There is two methods that can be done by removing the electoral college that have vastly different results. First, without "removing" the electoral college, just deem that all electoral votes from a state are proportionate to that state's popular vote. You can't do that with national effect by concerted state action with less than 100% of the states (you can simulate it by casting all votes for the candidate that would win by that rule with a bare makority, but that's just a chunky version of national popular vote.) > I've seen more news about states leaning towards the 2nd option which is actually much worse than the electoral college in its current state. It's worse if you care about the per-state vote and not the national outcome; it's better if you care about the outcome, since it produces the desired outcome of adopted by states with a majority of electoral votes (and the NPV only goes into effect in states adopting it when it has been adopted by states with a majority of electoral votes), while proportional allocation for electors needs universal adoption to implement it's effect.

gizmo385 7y ago

Define region and how the electoral college requires cross-regional appeal to win. You could technically win the electoral college with the 13 biggest states in the country, so I'm not seeing how the electoral college forces any kind of broad-based appeal.

SmartJerry 7y ago
Not the OP, but you could technically win the popular vote with those same 13 state's voters. When there is overwhelming support for one candidate the electoral college and popular vote would always be exactly the same. It actually only matters on a closely contest election and in that case the edge goes to the person with more broad support.

notSupplied 7y ago

It has not produced that result. Instead it shifts the power from "most populated" (which at lease resembles SOME democratic values) to "most swing", which is totally arbitrary.