6 ms·

The electoral college is the sole reason 2 out of the last 3 presidents lost the popular vote while winning the general election. In no universe does the elect

The electoral college is the sole reason 2 out of the last 3 presidents lost the popular vote while winning the general election. In no universe does the electoral college mitigate corruption on the federal level. In fact, one could argue that it makes corruption worse, because a candidate only has to win a few key states to tip the election, regardless of the popular vote.

caseysoftware 7y ago
Which countries practice direct democracy for their top executives (Presidents, PMs, etc)?
reaperducer 7y ago
it makes corruption worse, because a candidate only has to win a few key states to tip the election, regardless of the popular vote. The alternative is only counting the popular vote, which only serves to disenfranchise the majority of states. Without the electoral college, a candidate would only have to campaign in and win three or four large states, and the rest of the nations and its concerns can be ignored. That concern is the whole reason we have the House/Senate system: So that large states with lots of people in the House of Representatives don't run amok. The Senate balances that out.
- creaghpatr 7y ago
  More specifically, a state that 'cheats' can only impact their share of electoral votes, rather than bleed into the popular count of all states' electoral votes.
- erichurkman 7y ago
  > The alternative is only counting the popular vote, which only serves to disenfranchise the majority of states. The majority of red states are also the majority of the population, so this doesn't check out. (Trump states ~180mm to Hillary's ~140mm.)
  - cmendel 7y ago
    This is false. https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results >Trump 46.4% votes 62,984,825 >Clinton 48.5% votes 65,853,5165
- save_ferris 7y ago
  > Without the electoral college, a candidate would only have to campaign in and win three or four large states, and the rest of the nations and its concerns can be ignored. But this system already exists via swing states. Voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida determine the election currently, just look at how much is spent on advertising in those states compared to non-swing states. Look at how often candidates visit Ohio vs Kentucky. The idea that the electoral college equally franchises all Americans is purely a myth.
- ezrast 7y ago
  A popular vote "disenfranchises" any voting bloc that stands in opposition to a majority. Do you believe this strategy of ameliorating tyranny-of-the-majority scenarios by weighting votes generalizes to demographics other than place of residence? Can we give extra votes to all disadvantaged populations, or is there something unique about small-state folks?
corporate_shi11 7y ago
A popular vote would be awful. Would incentivize just campaigning to get as many people to vote as possible in the highest density population centers, meanwhile most people don't even pay attention to politics and have no interest in it. These people really should not be voting in the first place and a system which encourages vote harvesting even more than it already is encouraged is not a step in the right direction.
- save_ferris 7y ago
  > a system which encourages vote harvesting even more than it already is is encouraged is not a step in the right direction Are you arguing that it’s bad when all Americans are encouraged to vote? That sounds like a functional democracy to me.
  - corporate_shi11 7y ago
    Yes, encouraging everyone to vote is bad. I agree with many of the Founders that the people often get in their own way, not thinking rationally and focusing only on the short term. The will and petty desire of the mob needs to be balanced against what is really good for the nation in the long run.
ars 7y ago
> The electoral college is the sole reason 2 out of the last 3 presidents lost the popular vote while winning the general election. That's not exactly true though, because of the electoral college Republicans in California don't bother to vote, since their vote doesn't count. If you didn't have an electoral college then the popular vote count would have been different. You can't change the rules of the game after the fact and say "look we would have won", without also considering that people would have played differently with different rules.
- ianai 7y ago
  That’s not the claim. The candidate who won a majority of votes lost the election through the electoral college in those cases.
  - salawat 7y ago
    You still haven't touched on what the post you're replying to is pointing out, which is that people behave differently when the rules change. A Californian Republican may as well not vote at all. If it went off national popular vote, then those Californian minority voters would still have a reason to make sure their vote was counted. Regardless, it's a moot point, because according to the Constitution as written, those electors are supposed to only be accountable to themselves. The idea being the community electing the most level-headed and educated amongst them to make the decision everyone else would be okay with. Most states don't respect that intent since the formation of the Party system, so really what we have now is little more than an abomination completely unintended by the Founders.
  - toast0 7y ago
    If there's upsetness about this, why are we not upset that the Libertarian party didn't get 3 people in the house of representatives, given that it won 0.7[1]% of the popular vote for house representatives; or that the Democrats should have 1.4 additional representatives if you ignore 3rd party candidates and look at just vote count between Democrats and Republicans. Despite what the ballot may say, voters in the various states are voting for electors, not for president, and the votes can't be added together into a meaningful number. You could certainly take the numbers, along with registered party affiliation and other demographic data, and historic data from more contested elections in the various precincts, and guess what the vote counts might be at various levels of turnout (including scenarios where more eligible but currently unregistered persons turn out to vote), and those guesses would likely make for a much more interesting discussion than just pointing out a number that seems like a statistical oddity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_House_of_Re...
toast0 7y ago
> In fact, one could argue that it makes corruption worse, because a candidate only has to win a few key states to tip the election, regardless of the popular vote. With the electoral college, we don't hold a popular vote. This provides compartmentalization of corruption --- if election officials in some state cause an extra 10,000 votes to be counted for their preferred candidate, it may affect their state's selection of electors, but can't influence the results of other states. In a close election by popular vote, 10,000 votes could be very significant. Additionally, the electoral college provides compartmentalization of natural disasters. If there's a blizzard in some state (or several), their voting turnout will likely be much lower, and there is no provision for makeup elections; however, we can assume that voters of different parties will have reasonably equal difficulty getting to the polls, so within the local area, the resulting ratios should be similar to results of a non-disrupted election. However, the disrupted states would cast many fewer votes, so other states would have more influence; if the state was highly in favor of one candidate, it could be a big swing.

caseysoftware 7y ago

Which countries practice direct democracy for their top executives (Presidents, PMs, etc)?

reaperducer 7y ago

it makes corruption worse, because a candidate only has to win a few key states to tip the election, regardless of the popular vote. The alternative is only counting the popular vote, which only serves to disenfranchise the majority of states. Without the electoral college, a candidate would only have to campaign in and win three or four large states, and the rest of the nations and its concerns can be ignored. That concern is the whole reason we have the House/Senate system: So that large states with lots of people in the House of Representatives don't run amok. The Senate balances that out.

creaghpatr 7y ago
More specifically, a state that 'cheats' can only impact their share of electoral votes, rather than bleed into the popular count of all states' electoral votes.
erichurkman 7y ago
> The alternative is only counting the popular vote, which only serves to disenfranchise the majority of states. The majority of red states are also the majority of the population, so this doesn't check out. (Trump states ~180mm to Hillary's ~140mm.)
- cmendel 7y ago
  This is false. https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results >Trump 46.4% votes 62,984,825 >Clinton 48.5% votes 65,853,5165
save_ferris 7y ago
> Without the electoral college, a candidate would only have to campaign in and win three or four large states, and the rest of the nations and its concerns can be ignored. But this system already exists via swing states. Voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida determine the election currently, just look at how much is spent on advertising in those states compared to non-swing states. Look at how often candidates visit Ohio vs Kentucky. The idea that the electoral college equally franchises all Americans is purely a myth.
ezrast 7y ago
A popular vote "disenfranchises" any voting bloc that stands in opposition to a majority. Do you believe this strategy of ameliorating tyranny-of-the-majority scenarios by weighting votes generalizes to demographics other than place of residence? Can we give extra votes to all disadvantaged populations, or is there something unique about small-state folks?

corporate_shi11 7y ago

A popular vote would be awful. Would incentivize just campaigning to get as many people to vote as possible in the highest density population centers, meanwhile most people don't even pay attention to politics and have no interest in it. These people really should not be voting in the first place and a system which encourages vote harvesting even more than it already is encouraged is not a step in the right direction.

save_ferris 7y ago
> a system which encourages vote harvesting even more than it already is is encouraged is not a step in the right direction Are you arguing that it’s bad when all Americans are encouraged to vote? That sounds like a functional democracy to me.
- corporate_shi11 7y ago
  Yes, encouraging everyone to vote is bad. I agree with many of the Founders that the people often get in their own way, not thinking rationally and focusing only on the short term. The will and petty desire of the mob needs to be balanced against what is really good for the nation in the long run.

ars 7y ago

> The electoral college is the sole reason 2 out of the last 3 presidents lost the popular vote while winning the general election. That's not exactly true though, because of the electoral college Republicans in California don't bother to vote, since their vote doesn't count. If you didn't have an electoral college then the popular vote count would have been different. You can't change the rules of the game after the fact and say "look we would have won", without also considering that people would have played differently with different rules.

ianai 7y ago
That’s not the claim. The candidate who won a majority of votes lost the election through the electoral college in those cases.
- salawat 7y ago
  You still haven't touched on what the post you're replying to is pointing out, which is that people behave differently when the rules change. A Californian Republican may as well not vote at all. If it went off national popular vote, then those Californian minority voters would still have a reason to make sure their vote was counted. Regardless, it's a moot point, because according to the Constitution as written, those electors are supposed to only be accountable to themselves. The idea being the community electing the most level-headed and educated amongst them to make the decision everyone else would be okay with. Most states don't respect that intent since the formation of the Party system, so really what we have now is little more than an abomination completely unintended by the Founders.
- toast0 7y ago
  If there's upsetness about this, why are we not upset that the Libertarian party didn't get 3 people in the house of representatives, given that it won 0.7[1]% of the popular vote for house representatives; or that the Democrats should have 1.4 additional representatives if you ignore 3rd party candidates and look at just vote count between Democrats and Republicans. Despite what the ballot may say, voters in the various states are voting for electors, not for president, and the votes can't be added together into a meaningful number. You could certainly take the numbers, along with registered party affiliation and other demographic data, and historic data from more contested elections in the various precincts, and guess what the vote counts might be at various levels of turnout (including scenarios where more eligible but currently unregistered persons turn out to vote), and those guesses would likely make for a much more interesting discussion than just pointing out a number that seems like a statistical oddity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_House_of_Re...

toast0 7y ago

> In fact, one could argue that it makes corruption worse, because a candidate only has to win a few key states to tip the election, regardless of the popular vote. With the electoral college, we don't hold a popular vote. This provides compartmentalization of corruption --- if election officials in some state cause an extra 10,000 votes to be counted for their preferred candidate, it may affect their state's selection of electors, but can't influence the results of other states. In a close election by popular vote, 10,000 votes could be very significant. Additionally, the electoral college provides compartmentalization of natural disasters. If there's a blizzard in some state (or several), their voting turnout will likely be much lower, and there is no provision for makeup elections; however, we can assume that voters of different parties will have reasonably equal difficulty getting to the polls, so within the local area, the resulting ratios should be similar to results of a non-disrupted election. However, the disrupted states would cast many fewer votes, so other states would have more influence; if the state was highly in favor of one candidate, it could be a big swing.