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I view the electoral college system as the canary in the coal mine for voting changes in America. No honest person who is informed about how the electoral colle

• RhysU 4y ago
  I think there are positives over a direct vote. I like that presidential candidates have to consider the desires of smaller states instead of simply playing to large cities. I think that it produces better outcomes for the country than a direct alternative.
  • oneoff786 4y ago
    I’m not a fan of my vote not mattering at all because my state is solidly one color or another. Meanwhile rando’s in Pennsylvania matter immensely, and it’s largely just a race to see which side can rally enough people from either the city or the surrounding areas to go to the polls.
    • ajmurmann 4y ago
      That's also why complaining about voter turnout in the US is at best annoying and worst dishonest. In most states, including some of the larger ones, it wouldn't change the outcome at all if 100% voted. It's actually surprising that turnout is as high as it is.
    • RhysU 4y ago
      I am from Pennsylvania but I have lived many places. I assure you that the randos are everywhere.
      • kristiandupont 4y ago
        Doesn't "rando" just mean "random person"?
        • RhysU 4y ago
          It is pejorative.
          • oneoff786 4y ago
            Against whom? A person who could be randomly selected?
          • RhysU 4y ago
            To elaborate: Suppose I said, "Your [loved one] is a rando." That clearly is a negative statement implying that their behavior is irrational (i.e. random). Urban Dictionary has an entry starting "an unpredictable, awkward and often creepy individual..."
            • oneoff786 4y ago
              Urban dictionary is not an authoritative source but even that one doesn’t agree with you. Number one definition is “a random person or thing”. The one You referenced is almost net negative votes. Your example sentence is just not a semantically correct way to use the word. All of which is pretty pointless because you’re arguing an alternate semantic interpretation vs me, the person who used the word and is stating that’s not what was intended.
      • oneoff786 4y ago
        The presence of rando’s is not my problem with the situation… obviously?
  • LeifCarrotson 4y ago
    That's just another way of saying that an individual in a smaller state is more important than an individual in a large city. The Senate and the electoral college are the modern 3/5ths compromise. Every human in the country ought to have the same ability to influence the outcome of elections, regardless of how much land they own.
    • RhysU 4y ago
      Yes. And any city dweller can move to the county or vice versa. The rules of the game are well-known, hence fair.
      • LordKeren 4y ago
        This is fundamentally wrong because states don’t break votes into urban, suburban, and country voters. It’s winner takes all for the state. There are a huge amount of people who’s vote for president does not matter at all due to the voting trends of their state. These people’s only option is to move to a swing state. This is a nonsense solution to an obviously flawed system of voting that can be fixed incredibly easily
        • RhysU 4y ago
          Sorry, I flipped 'country' and 'smaller state' in my response. Voting is statistical mechanics not a guarantee that you individually matter.
          • bombcar 4y ago
            Statistically your vote never matters. It's like the odds of winning the lottery.
    • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > another way of saying that an individual in a smaller state is more important than an individual in a large city An individual in the country is more able to rebel than an individual in the country. Territorial integrity was the original motivation for the system. It still has arguments for it, though the massive shift in relative economic productivity makes the college, in my opinion, obsolete.
  • jibalt 4y ago
    • RhysU 4y ago
      • jibalt 4y ago
        • RhysU 4y ago
          Seriously, if the problem with the electoral college is disparate per capita representation and you're saying that needs to be fixed then it follows that the Senate is also a problem and we shouldn't have an upper and a lower legislative chamber at the federal or any level. Yet these systems have worked for centuries.
    • oceanplexian 4y ago
      The US exists because a far-away British majority oppressively over-taxed and over-regulated a minority group of colonies, leading to the Revolutionary War. US states may not be countries, but there was a time in history where they had a choice to form the fledging United States. There were a number of compromises that everyone agreed to. One of the most important compromises was that the States had assurances that high population states would not be able to step all over the smaller colonies, and that the Federal government would not simply become another tyrannical monarchy.
      • jibalt 4y ago
        • RhysU 4y ago
          > They are on the verge of confirming the 5th circuit declaration of the federal regulatory system to be unconstitutional; that will tear the country apart. How will preventing two layers of unelected officials from dictating the law tear the country apart?
  • LordKeren 4y ago
    It doesn’t really do that though. All the electoral college does is make presidential campaigns hyper focus on swing states. You don’t see many presidential candidates stopping over in Vermont.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • Miner49er 4y ago
    Yeah, I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. Some of the founding fathers that it was fair to give people in smaller states equal representation in the Senate and part of the electoral college, because they didn't want them to be effectively ruled by the people in cities. I can understand why many people think its unfair, but there's at least an argument to be made that it should exist. OP was saying he has only met people who think it is unfair, but you are pointing out that it exists for a reason. I do think there is some concern with having people in cities effectively rule over those outside of cities. I could see it resulting in poor economic outcomes for those outside of cities, since rural areas and cities tend to have very different economies. This could lead to some poor outcomes. Like rural areas becoming even less populated, even more political unrest and division, etc. I also think that the effect of the electoral college giving some individuals more of a vote doesn't come close to the effect wealth gives. Wealth will always generate way more of a "vote" then living somewhere like Wyoming.
• jibalt 4y ago
  It massively benefits the GOP, which is why it will never change.
  • rob74 4y ago
    Ok, by this logic Ranked Choice Voting has about the same chances as the proverbial snowball in hell, because if it gets adopted, it would be bad for both currently dominant parties... To sum it up, in a two-party system there are three kinds of issues: - issues which both parties can agree upon (getting fewer and fewer in the US currently). - issues which benefit one party more than the other, which get polarized, no matter how obvious they seem at first. - issues which could potentially be bad for both parties, which are not even seriously discussed.
    • egberts1 4y ago
      Mmmm, see Australia for their implementation of rank voting and two major political parties.
  • gunfighthacksaw 4y ago
    From what I understand, the EC benefits ‘the States’ as landmasses, and since most of those lands are rural, and rural areas tend to vote GOP, the GOP ultimately benefit. Obviously it wasn’t set up to be like this: the GOP just evolved to fill the niche of rural politics to get the power. If anything, maybe there was a bias towards physiocrats vs urban liberals in the founders’ day that now manifests as Red v Blue. I’m not sure if I can see many first principles justifications for giving rural areas such a mechanism of power, but I also don’t see the entire US being dominated by LA and NYC as a good thing either.
    • jibalt 4y ago
      "the entire US being dominated by LA and NYC as a good thing either" This is a ridiculous strawman. One person one vote is a good thing, and LA and NYC do not nearly have a majority of the population ... but if they did, then political outcomes should indeed by dominated by the majority vote.
• scythe 4y ago
  The first problem with the EC as a target for voting reform is that voting reform, since it goes against the personal interest of elected officials, needs very broad popular support to succeed. (This tends to be true of changing any political system.) But the EC means that some regions will likely oppose voting reform quite vigorously. The second problem is that the EC basically only affects the Presidential election (unless you restructure the Senate, but just look at the filibuster debate to see how that goes), but most candidates get to there downstream of other elections. And in the other elections, some depressingly large proportion of legislative districts and even some entire states are lock-ins for one party. All of that is most feasibly addressed by state-level reforms that won't be part of an EC change. So it's very hard, and it's not enough. That's not great.
• dec0dedab0de 4y ago
  I think the system would be incredibly unfair without something to balance the votes among states. The real problem is that the president/federal government has too much power, things shouldn't change drastically from one president to the next. Imagine if every time you had a block party everyone voted on the type of food, but there was one huge family that shared a dietary preference that most of the other families disliked. You would have to go with what they said every time, just because they aren't keeping their household population under control. Some might say it would be more fair to give every family a vote, but If someone lives alone their vote would count way more than someone living with 20 others. The next step would be something like the electoral college. That said, they should definitely get rid winner-takes-all per state, and increase the amount of votes for every state. I think it would be nice if every state had 100 electoral votes that mapped to the percentage points of who their population voted for.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• phpisthebest 4y ago
  >>No honest person who is informed about how the electoral college works thinks it’s fair. I do, because I support the concept of Federalism and I do not believe in a Centralized "America" I believe in 50 independent States, a Republic I also think popular vote for senate was a mistake. The States need to have power over the federal government not just the people. The US Constitution reserves powers and rights to both the people AND the States for a reason, that reason is the fact that our system of government is a Federalist Republic, not a strait representative democracy. Nor would I support a transition to a strait representative democracy as I believe the federal government is far far far too powerful today I would support changes to the Electoral College, like the Wyoming Rule, or requiring all states to delegate their votes Proportionally by congressional district instead of Winner take all, etc but calls for elimination of the Electoral College are short sighted and ill advised
  • Akronymus 4y ago
    Yeah, the independant states is a feature, not a bug. And afaik, each state can choose how to implement voting for itself. So, they could move to a proportional system for EC votes. (Altough, I personally think that making it based on US wide popular/proportional vote, rather than state wide would be a mistake)
    • phpisthebest 4y ago
      My top 5 reforms would be 1. Wyoming Rule, expanding the size of the house 2. Electoral College 1 vote goes to who ever wins each Congressional district in the state, with the 2 state wide Votes going to who wins the entire state 3. Instant Run off or Ranked Choice Voting for all federal positions 4. Removal of party affiliation from ballot, vote for people not parties 5. Congressional districts should be set by non-political entity, like the Postal Service, or some other entity not state legislatures. This one I am less clear on, but gerrymandering would cause huge problems for #2.
  • LordKeren 4y ago
    You should also be opposed to the electoral college then. The electoral college vote count is still based on population counts. The electoral college accomplishes none of the goals of republic style voting you’d like, nor the direct popular vote that others want
• indymike 4y ago
  > No honest person who is informed about how the electoral college works thinks it’s fair. Correct. The EC is unfair by design. It was was never about fair for voters, it was about growing and keeping the nation together. The EC and Senate both are to ensure that citizens of less populous states are heard, and without both, the nation would devolve (if you are not from one of the five most populous states) to whatever the five most populous states wanted, every time.
  • humanrebar 4y ago
    This. We'd talk about Chicago voters instead of Nebraska voters. There are pros and cons either way, but we won't have consensus to change (a supermajority is required) any time soon. Note that more polarization is possible if the purpose and power of the states lessens. Even deep blue and deep red states have regions with different perspectives.
    • LordKeren 4y ago
      … you don’t talk about Nebraska voters. Nebraska is not a swing state— there was an almost 20 point difference in 2020. All that the electoral college does is make it so the only states that matter are swing states. We talk about Pennsylvania, not Illinois, even though they have the same electoral votes count
      • indymike 4y ago
        Swing states change over time, slowly, but they change. You can't view the EC and Senate through partisan analysis - their purpose is much deeper than that. It's more about why Nebraska is willing to give up quite a bit of sovereign power to be part of the US, and not about who wins the next election.
        • LordKeren 4y ago
          It’s not partisan analysis to take issue with the statement “The person who wins the presidential election is not the person that most people voted for” I can objectively say that I have an issue with that statement regardless of the party that wins
• BurningFrog 4y ago
  We already have ranked choice voting in SF/Oakland, and I think it's slowly expanding in the region. Works pretty well, but I can't say I've noticed any increased sanity in local politics :) The electoral college is among the hardest things to change, since it's on the federal level and in the constitution.
• triceratops 4y ago
  If they removed the 435-member limit on the House and instead had the originally-recommended proportion of voters to reps we'd end up with 5k reps or something like that. A state's electoral college votes is the sum of its house representation + 2 (senators). So this would also make the electoral college somewhat more representative, as larger population states gain more EC votes.
  • LordKeren 4y ago
    Yes, this is the most fair solution if you’re looking to have a presidential election outcome more likely to represent how people actually voted. But 5000 is arbitrary— and the more you add, the closer the number is to how people actually voted So just set the number equal to the amount of votes cast by individual citizens then rebrand it to something like “the popular vote”
    • triceratops 4y ago
      That would require a constitutional amendment, which is basically impossible for this change (no small state would ever agree). Increasing the size of the House of Representatives would not.
  • phpisthebest 4y ago
    The best reform would be the Wyoming Rule, that says that the standard representative-to-population ratio would be that of the smallest state, under such a model the House would be 573 Members instead of 435
• refurb 4y ago
  What you should say is "the electoral college system doesn't give me the outcomes I want so we should change it". The electoral college system was designed with intent. It's like when people complain Congress is deadlocked. Yeah, that's the point, if enough members of Congress can't agree, the it should be deadlocked. That's a feature, not a bug.
  • the_only_law 4y ago
    > That's a feature, not a bug. In the same way fever dreams are a feature, maybe…
  • LordKeren 4y ago
    I can objectively say that I take issue with the statement “The winner of the presidential election is not the person who received the most votes from citizens” Regardless of the party of the winner. > It's like when people complain Congress is deadlocked. Yeah, that's the point, if enough members of Congress can't agree, the it should be deadlocked. This is a meaningless statement when you consider there is only one president. The person cannot disagree with themself. The executive branch does not have to debate and compromise with itself.
    • refurb 4y ago
      I mean, the Prime Minister of Canada is not the person who receives the most votes. They are the leader of the party who gets the most seats (not the most votes as the last election shows). If the Prime Minister loses in their riding (constituency), they'll actually run them again in another one that guarantees they'll win. So in Canada (and Parliamentary system in general), the voters have even less say in who their executive leader is. The is nothing inherently anti-democratic about not electing via popular vote. The Founding Fathers deliberately designed a system different from "the most votes wins the Presidency". They were trying to avoid the exact scenario that would happen today with popular voting - 3 or 4 states would decide the Presidency alone. Not much point in having United States of America if most of the states had no say in their leadership.
  • mrguyorama 4y ago