2 ms·

That’s not the claim. The candidate who won a majority of votes lost the election through the electoral college in those cases.

by ianai 7y ago

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...

That’s not the claim. The candidate who won a majority of votes lost the election through the electoral college in those cases.

by 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...