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Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out. Right now is clearly a nadir, it's looking like Trump is going to lose the

Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out. Right now is clearly a nadir, it's looking like Trump is going to lose the general electorate by 5 points but the tipping point state by only 0.6, which is just outrageous. But as recently as 2012 we had a (much smaller) skew in the opposite direction, and people tend to forget that. Or, consider a future where some combination of Texas/Georgia/Arizona do what Colorado and Virginia did over the last decade, complete their urbanization and turn hard blue. In that world, we'd be looking at a very large democratic advantage in the EC. Yeah, it's gotta be fixed. It just doesn't correspond well to the kind of population dynamics we have in the modern US. Nothing in the original constitution expected a country where both Wyoming and California could be a single "state". Call your reps and ask for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

lotsofpulp 6y ago
> Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out. The argument today says nothing about Democrats or Republicans, it just says the president should be whoever gets the most votes nationwide. So I don’t see how it “swings” both ways.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  Arguments for it are often very coincidentally made by whoever's party benefits from the current skew.
  - salawat 6y ago
    Which is a pity, because if you read the thinking behind it in the Federalist Papers, it is neither Machiavellian or sinister, but rather an attempt to try to get reasonable people to act as a safeguard over the highest office in the nation.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      Alternatively: the EC compromise reflected the personal self-interest of Hamilton/Madison/Jay, just like your citation of them reflects your personal partisan lean. As mentioned, I really doubt you'd have been making a principled argument to that effect in 2012 when the skew went the other way. It's just silly. And it can produce antidemocratic outcomes on occasion, as it did in 2016.
      - salawat 6y ago
        I was around in 2012 actually. I also did not understand fully the intricacies of the system as formulated by the Founders. Nor did I appreciate the usurpation of the executive function of an elector in measuring the character of a candidate by the various States and the two National political parties. Fortunately, I was unsatisfied with that state of affairs, and read into the history and writings of the time, so that I could have a better chance of understanding what it was the Founders saw and hoped would carry to the modern day. The understanding I got out of it, was that over the last 200 years is that we've struck a balance between opening up sufferage, but rewriting fundamental abstractions such that the pre-eminence of only two political collectives can be be ontologically considered, ensuring that yet another check the Founders were counting on, Regional Factionalism would disappear as a mitigating factor to prevent the development of a "National Political Elite", much to the dismay of Hamilton and Madison. So, yeah thanks for assuming a modern political caricature is enough to represent the full nuance of my position on a highly argued, oft misunderstood, and underappreciated topic on the mechanics, merits, and warts of the American political system. Really appreciate it.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      If you read the convention notes, those make it very clear that it really was an attempt to compromise on the issue of representation for the slave and the small states by, effectively, transparently incorporating the already-established Connecticut Compromise and 3/5 Compromise. And slave states were really the main roadblock to any scheme involving direct popular vote, because then their slave population would effectively not count for the purposes of representation in the executive. All the stuff about electors being a safeguard etc was post hoc rationalization. I'm not even saying it was in bad faith - the people arguing that EC was a safeguard were doing it sincerely. But that's not why the idea got so much support.
  - not2b 6y ago
    It's not quite that simple, because the American political parties are coalitions. For the middle of the 20th century the Democratic Party was an odd coalition that joined organized labor and northern populists with Dixiecrats (conservative southern Democrats opposed to civil rights), while the Republicans represented both northern big business (the Rockefeller faction) and more libertarian/doctrinaire conservative Westerners (the Goldwater faction). The antidemocratic people, the ones that manipulated the rules to keep a minority in power, were the Dixiecrats. They created all kinds of obstacles to prevent Black people from voting. The parties reshuffled after the Democrats adopted civil rights and the rise of Reagan shifted the balance in the Republican Party. The Dixiecrats (and non-southerners who think like them) largely became Republicans, and the Rockefeller Republicans largely became Democrats. The factions that believed in minority rule still believe it, but they are under different party flags now.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    Well, yeah, the reasons for that are obvious. But that doesn't change anything about the validity of the argument.
    - TulliusCicero 6y ago
      True, the reasoning falls apart on its own.
- newacct583 6y ago
  I meant "who makes the argument" swings both ways. I genuinely thought that was clear from context.
rsynnott 6y ago
> Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out I'm not sure "it kind of evens out in the end, viewed over decades" is a great argument for it, really.
- newacct583 6y ago
  It's not. But it is a bipartisan argument for the NPVIC. Call your state rep.

lotsofpulp 6y ago

> Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out. The argument today says nothing about Democrats or Republicans, it just says the president should be whoever gets the most votes nationwide. So I don’t see how it “swings” both ways.

TulliusCicero 6y ago
Arguments for it are often very coincidentally made by whoever's party benefits from the current skew.
- salawat 6y ago
  Which is a pity, because if you read the thinking behind it in the Federalist Papers, it is neither Machiavellian or sinister, but rather an attempt to try to get reasonable people to act as a safeguard over the highest office in the nation.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    Alternatively: the EC compromise reflected the personal self-interest of Hamilton/Madison/Jay, just like your citation of them reflects your personal partisan lean. As mentioned, I really doubt you'd have been making a principled argument to that effect in 2012 when the skew went the other way. It's just silly. And it can produce antidemocratic outcomes on occasion, as it did in 2016.
    - salawat 6y ago
      I was around in 2012 actually. I also did not understand fully the intricacies of the system as formulated by the Founders. Nor did I appreciate the usurpation of the executive function of an elector in measuring the character of a candidate by the various States and the two National political parties. Fortunately, I was unsatisfied with that state of affairs, and read into the history and writings of the time, so that I could have a better chance of understanding what it was the Founders saw and hoped would carry to the modern day. The understanding I got out of it, was that over the last 200 years is that we've struck a balance between opening up sufferage, but rewriting fundamental abstractions such that the pre-eminence of only two political collectives can be be ontologically considered, ensuring that yet another check the Founders were counting on, Regional Factionalism would disappear as a mitigating factor to prevent the development of a "National Political Elite", much to the dismay of Hamilton and Madison. So, yeah thanks for assuming a modern political caricature is enough to represent the full nuance of my position on a highly argued, oft misunderstood, and underappreciated topic on the mechanics, merits, and warts of the American political system. Really appreciate it.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    If you read the convention notes, those make it very clear that it really was an attempt to compromise on the issue of representation for the slave and the small states by, effectively, transparently incorporating the already-established Connecticut Compromise and 3/5 Compromise. And slave states were really the main roadblock to any scheme involving direct popular vote, because then their slave population would effectively not count for the purposes of representation in the executive. All the stuff about electors being a safeguard etc was post hoc rationalization. I'm not even saying it was in bad faith - the people arguing that EC was a safeguard were doing it sincerely. But that's not why the idea got so much support.
- not2b 6y ago
  It's not quite that simple, because the American political parties are coalitions. For the middle of the 20th century the Democratic Party was an odd coalition that joined organized labor and northern populists with Dixiecrats (conservative southern Democrats opposed to civil rights), while the Republicans represented both northern big business (the Rockefeller faction) and more libertarian/doctrinaire conservative Westerners (the Goldwater faction). The antidemocratic people, the ones that manipulated the rules to keep a minority in power, were the Dixiecrats. They created all kinds of obstacles to prevent Black people from voting. The parties reshuffled after the Democrats adopted civil rights and the rise of Reagan shifted the balance in the Republican Party. The Dixiecrats (and non-southerners who think like them) largely became Republicans, and the Rockefeller Republicans largely became Democrats. The factions that believed in minority rule still believe it, but they are under different party flags now.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  Well, yeah, the reasons for that are obvious. But that doesn't change anything about the validity of the argument.
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    True, the reasoning falls apart on its own.
newacct583 6y ago
I meant "who makes the argument" swings both ways. I genuinely thought that was clear from context.

rsynnott 6y ago

> Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out I'm not sure "it kind of evens out in the end, viewed over decades" is a great argument for it, really.

newacct583 6y ago
It's not. But it is a bipartisan argument for the NPVIC. Call your state rep.