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> I can't imagine any system where there aren't "safe" areas that politicians essentially ignore. Of course, when you're campaigning for the support of million

> I can't imagine any system where there aren't "safe" areas that politicians essentially ignore. Of course, when you're campaigning for the support of millions of people in a large country, some areas will be prioritized over others. The problem that swing states create, which we've seen play out on multiple occasions in the US, is that a candidate can win the popular vote by a margin of millions and still ultimately lose the election. It doesn't seem logical that a democratic system exists where the majority winner can still lose the race because of how particular states are weighed in terms of electoral power. With gerrymandering factored in, the system is further skewed to require an even lower vote threshold for a particular party to retain a majority in congress versus another. Compounded, these modifications begin to fundamentally undermine the democratic system, which further discourages voter turnout and participation in the system entirely.

nl 6y ago
I hadn't anticipated this somewhat odd conflation of the issue of swing states with the electoral college. That seems to be primarily a criticism from people who haven't been through many elections - California was a reliable Republican state until 1992, Texas has been reliably Republican for decades but now is a swing state etc. Most political criticism of the electoral college comes from the idea it is non-representation: A vote in Wyoming is worth between 2.9 and 3.6 times a vote in California[1] depending on if you measure turnout of population. A non-electoral college system will change that, but instead of it being Republican votes in Democratic strongholds that don't count (and vice-versa) it will be all the votes outside of CA, NY, IL, TX and FL. Parties will create policies that favor large, dense populate centers, and the rest of the country will be ignored. [1] https://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-the-electoral-college-74280 https://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-t...

nl 6y ago

I hadn't anticipated this somewhat odd conflation of the issue of swing states with the electoral college. That seems to be primarily a criticism from people who haven't been through many elections - California was a reliable Republican state until 1992, Texas has been reliably Republican for decades but now is a swing state etc. Most political criticism of the electoral college comes from the idea it is non-representation: A vote in Wyoming is worth between 2.9 and 3.6 times a vote in California[1] depending on if you measure turnout of population. A non-electoral college system will change that, but instead of it being Republican votes in Democratic strongholds that don't count (and vice-versa) it will be all the votes outside of CA, NY, IL, TX and FL. Parties will create policies that favor large, dense populate centers, and the rest of the country will be ignored. [1] https://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-the-electoral-college-74280 https://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-t...