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California has already passed the National Popular Vote bill. https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/writte

by cpurdy 4y ago

California has already passed the National Popular Vote bill. https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation Republican controlled states don't want people's votes to count, so none of them have passed the bill.

starkd 4y ago
Not the point of this thread. Popular vote has nothing to do with how responsive or attentive a government is to voter's interests. You vote for a candidate as a whole, but there are likely still issues you disagree with. Voters' interests are largely unaddressed or ignored altogether.
- lazyasciiart 4y ago
  It is completely the point of 'voters in specific states are largely disenfranchised during presidential elections'.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Not the point of this thread. Popular vote has nothing to do with how responsive or attentive a government is to voter's interests Actually, it does: more specifically, degree of proportionality does, and antimajoritarianism (systems in which an absolute majority-preferred option can lose to a minority option) are an extreme case of nonproportionality. Having a powerful central executive elected by nonmajoritarian election itself weights the government to nonresponsiveness (though the US has many other factors reinforcing that.)
yellowapple 4y ago
In other words: California has promised to disenfranchise its own voters even more than is already the case. I can already see this backfiring spectacularly with a solidly-blue state like California being on the hook to put its electors toward a Republican popular vote winner.
- cpurdy 4y ago
  That's a weird way to look at it. The many states that have agreed to this (have passed the bill) have simply accepted that the votes of the people is worth more than the feelings of the billionaires who have sponsored the Republican gerrymandering movement. Right now, effectively, the land votes, and the people's vote is often ignored. Wisconsin is a good example, where the Republicans keep losing the vote, but yet with less than 50% of the vote, they somehow have a super-majority in the legislature.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > The many states that have agreed to this (have passed the bill) have simply accepted that the votes of the people is worth more than the feelings of the billionaires who have sponsored the Republican gerrymandering movement. More like that the votes of people outside their state matter more than the votes of their own people. Nothing weird about that being recognized as the disenfranchisement that it is. > Wisconsin is a good example, where the Republicans keep losing the vote, but yet with less than 50% of the vote, they somehow have a super-majority in the legislature. The Electoral College - and this compact of states pertaining to it - has precisely zero impact on any legislative branch, federal or state. It solely pertains to presidential elections (and in turn the rest of the Executive Branch). The solution to the problem you describe would be to address gerrymandering and other instances of geographic electoral manipulation.
  - brewdad 4y ago
    It's not weird when it reflects the reality of the situation. It's the same reason we say voting third party is throwing your vote away. It's important to have more voices heard but in our first past the post system, voting for a candidate who can't get anywhere close to a third of the votes simply doesn't matter. I haven't read the bill but if certain states are committing themselves to popular distribution of their electoral votes while the red states stick to all or nothing, the reality is that 40% of CA's electoral votes go red and blue candidates don't have a chance at winning.
    - thalassophobia 4y ago

by cpurdy 4y ago

starkd 4y ago

Not the point of this thread. Popular vote has nothing to do with how responsive or attentive a government is to voter's interests. You vote for a candidate as a whole, but there are likely still issues you disagree with. Voters' interests are largely unaddressed or ignored altogether.

lazyasciiart 4y ago
It is completely the point of 'voters in specific states are largely disenfranchised during presidential elections'.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Not the point of this thread. Popular vote has nothing to do with how responsive or attentive a government is to voter's interests Actually, it does: more specifically, degree of proportionality does, and antimajoritarianism (systems in which an absolute majority-preferred option can lose to a minority option) are an extreme case of nonproportionality. Having a powerful central executive elected by nonmajoritarian election itself weights the government to nonresponsiveness (though the US has many other factors reinforcing that.)

yellowapple 4y ago

In other words: California has promised to disenfranchise its own voters even more than is already the case. I can already see this backfiring spectacularly with a solidly-blue state like California being on the hook to put its electors toward a Republican popular vote winner.

cpurdy 4y ago
That's a weird way to look at it. The many states that have agreed to this (have passed the bill) have simply accepted that the votes of the people is worth more than the feelings of the billionaires who have sponsored the Republican gerrymandering movement. Right now, effectively, the land votes, and the people's vote is often ignored. Wisconsin is a good example, where the Republicans keep losing the vote, but yet with less than 50% of the vote, they somehow have a super-majority in the legislature.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > The many states that have agreed to this (have passed the bill) have simply accepted that the votes of the people is worth more than the feelings of the billionaires who have sponsored the Republican gerrymandering movement. More like that the votes of people outside their state matter more than the votes of their own people. Nothing weird about that being recognized as the disenfranchisement that it is. > Wisconsin is a good example, where the Republicans keep losing the vote, but yet with less than 50% of the vote, they somehow have a super-majority in the legislature. The Electoral College - and this compact of states pertaining to it - has precisely zero impact on any legislative branch, federal or state. It solely pertains to presidential elections (and in turn the rest of the Executive Branch). The solution to the problem you describe would be to address gerrymandering and other instances of geographic electoral manipulation.
- brewdad 4y ago
  It's not weird when it reflects the reality of the situation. It's the same reason we say voting third party is throwing your vote away. It's important to have more voices heard but in our first past the post system, voting for a candidate who can't get anywhere close to a third of the votes simply doesn't matter. I haven't read the bill but if certain states are committing themselves to popular distribution of their electoral votes while the red states stick to all or nothing, the reality is that 40% of CA's electoral votes go red and blue candidates don't have a chance at winning.
  - thalassophobia 4y ago