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I am not from the US, but probably not gonna happen due to state politics? As in the whole point of EC is that mostly urbanized states won't overwhelm the spars

I am not from the US, but probably not gonna happen due to state politics? As in the whole point of EC is that mostly urbanized states won't overwhelm the sparsely populated ones?

zepto 6y ago
“ As in the whole point of EC is that mostly urbanized states won't overwhelm the sparsely populated ones?” Pretty much. Also the idea that the election would have been the same only less close if the EC was abolished is a fiction. It would just change where the battleground states are, largely to the places with the biggest urban populations.
- wan23 6y ago
  People always say this, but it doesn't make sense. The reason there is such a thing as a battleground state is because some voters matter and others do not, thanks to the EC. Look at this map from the 2016 election. New York is almost all red, but Trump didn't even bother courting voters there because their votes matter not at all. If there were a national popular vote, then every vote everywhere would matter. No candidate could focus on a few places if they want to win, because the whole country would be in play.
  - simonsarris 6y ago
    Except 83% of the USA population lives in urban areas. Parent comment is suggesting that any candidate would rationally only focus on urban areas, urban issues, urban trends, etc.
    - zepto 6y ago
      Exactly - high population density areas would become the battlegrounds. Nobody outside a city would matter.
    - wan23 6y ago
      In our first past the post voting system, the parties will gravitate to positions that roughly 50% of the people have. If there were two candidates that were both ignoring rural areas and were 50/50 with urbanites, it would be only rational for one to try to capture the remaining 17% of people who live in rural areas. That would make it so that the candidate who ignores the rural population would be a sure loser. The only thing that could happen then would be that the other party also fights for the rural vote or that they try to claim a larger share of the urban vote to make up for their disadvantage in rural communities. In either case, votes from the entire country would matter.
      - zepto 6y ago
        That doesn’t add up at all. How can both be at 50% with urban voters and yet only one of them ‘ignoring the rural vote’? Of course rural votes would have some effect at the margins, but the priorities of rural voters would always be a meaningless tie breaker, and never carry significant weight. Yes, votes across the whole country would matter, but rural votes would have so little leverage that they wouldn’t impact the agenda.
alwillis 6y ago
You might want to understand how we got here. States never should’ve been allowed to count 3/5 of their slaves who couldn’t vote of course, for electoral purposes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_Compromise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_Compromise
- latortuga 6y ago
  Thank you for saying something notably absent from the rest of this thread. The EC was invented because of racism, period.
  - onecommentman 6y ago
    A more thorough, and probably more nuanced and balanced, discussion at https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-founding-fathers-constitutional-convention https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-founding-fath...
darth_avocado 6y ago
> The whole point of EC is that mostly urbanized states won't overwhelm the sparsely populated ones This should pretty much stay as is. This could easily backfire. Case in point, India, where 2 states with highest populations are also states with the most poverty, illiteracy, and crime. But unfortunately these states decide the overall politics for the country and therefore work against any and every form of progress and instead move towards more socialist and populist policy making.
- mattnewton 6y ago
  The United States still has a senate that disproportionally awards power to rural and low population states by design, and house districts that do so in practice. It doesn’t need to also affect the presidency. And I would argue that it is already not functioning properly so I’m not as worried about hypotheticals of how it could go wrong. We just had 4 years of ineffective populism thanks to the electoral college. It continues to elect presidents without popular support and a gridlocked congress with historically low approval ratings.

I am not from the US, but probably not gonna happen due to state politics? As in the whole point of EC is that mostly urbanized states won't overwhelm the sparsely populated ones?

zepto 6y ago

“ As in the whole point of EC is that mostly urbanized states won't overwhelm the sparsely populated ones?” Pretty much. Also the idea that the election would have been the same only less close if the EC was abolished is a fiction. It would just change where the battleground states are, largely to the places with the biggest urban populations.

wan23 6y ago
People always say this, but it doesn't make sense. The reason there is such a thing as a battleground state is because some voters matter and others do not, thanks to the EC. Look at this map from the 2016 election. New York is almost all red, but Trump didn't even bother courting voters there because their votes matter not at all. If there were a national popular vote, then every vote everywhere would matter. No candidate could focus on a few places if they want to win, because the whole country would be in play.
- simonsarris 6y ago
  Except 83% of the USA population lives in urban areas. Parent comment is suggesting that any candidate would rationally only focus on urban areas, urban issues, urban trends, etc.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Exactly - high population density areas would become the battlegrounds. Nobody outside a city would matter.
  - wan23 6y ago
    In our first past the post voting system, the parties will gravitate to positions that roughly 50% of the people have. If there were two candidates that were both ignoring rural areas and were 50/50 with urbanites, it would be only rational for one to try to capture the remaining 17% of people who live in rural areas. That would make it so that the candidate who ignores the rural population would be a sure loser. The only thing that could happen then would be that the other party also fights for the rural vote or that they try to claim a larger share of the urban vote to make up for their disadvantage in rural communities. In either case, votes from the entire country would matter.
    - zepto 6y ago
      That doesn’t add up at all. How can both be at 50% with urban voters and yet only one of them ‘ignoring the rural vote’? Of course rural votes would have some effect at the margins, but the priorities of rural voters would always be a meaningless tie breaker, and never carry significant weight. Yes, votes across the whole country would matter, but rural votes would have so little leverage that they wouldn’t impact the agenda.

alwillis 6y ago

You might want to understand how we got here. States never should’ve been allowed to count 3/5 of their slaves who couldn’t vote of course, for electoral purposes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_Compromise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_Compromise

latortuga 6y ago
Thank you for saying something notably absent from the rest of this thread. The EC was invented because of racism, period.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  A more thorough, and probably more nuanced and balanced, discussion at https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-founding-fathers-constitutional-convention https://www.history.com/news/electoral-college-founding-fath...

darth_avocado 6y ago

> The whole point of EC is that mostly urbanized states won't overwhelm the sparsely populated ones This should pretty much stay as is. This could easily backfire. Case in point, India, where 2 states with highest populations are also states with the most poverty, illiteracy, and crime. But unfortunately these states decide the overall politics for the country and therefore work against any and every form of progress and instead move towards more socialist and populist policy making.

mattnewton 6y ago
The United States still has a senate that disproportionally awards power to rural and low population states by design, and house districts that do so in practice. It doesn’t need to also affect the presidency. And I would argue that it is already not functioning properly so I’m not as worried about hypotheticals of how it could go wrong. We just had 4 years of ineffective populism thanks to the electoral college. It continues to elect presidents without popular support and a gridlocked congress with historically low approval ratings.