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First we have to git rid of our ludicrous electoral college system. This requires a constitutional amendment, which must first be approved by 2/3 of both houses

First we have to git rid of our ludicrous electoral college system. This requires a constitutional amendment, which must first be approved by 2/3 of both houses of congress, then ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures. Since that is the only thing that has enabled Republicans to barely win presidential elections since 2000, we will not get anywhere close to passing such legislation, let alone get it approved by 3/4 of the state legislatures. As a side note, the last attempted constitutional amendment was the Equal Right Amendment, giving equal rights to women. It was proposed in 1972, and is maybe close to finally being approved. https://www.equalrightsamendment.org https://www.equalrightsamendment.org

vkou 2y ago
> This requires a constitutional amendment, which must first be approved by 2/3 of both houses of congress, then ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures. Actually all it requires is the state legislatures of enough states to hit 270 EC votes to pass the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta.... It's at 209/270 at the moment. The electoral college is an utterly idiotic system, but can be broken from within.
- kcplate 2y ago
  The NPVIC is a fucking awful solution that would backfire on the idiots supporting it eventually. Talk about vote disenfranchisement on a massive scale—it could literally invalidate entire states worth of votes just because California, Texas, Florida, and New York decided to vote the same way. Which means that candidates would ignore literally every state except the 4-5 with the largest population because they are the only ones that would matter.
  - wbl 2y ago
    California might be 60/40 but that 40 would matter a lot. Republicans would go to Bakersfield Dems to Santa Cruz. Right now you only campaign in a handful of swing states vs getting whatever you can.
  - DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
    Yes and that would be a good thing, if people stopped thinking that by-state voting for the presidential office is a good thing in the first place. The way it is now means that your vote's weight depends on your street address. You can't move to to upstate New York to improve your influence because New York City will weigh you down. But you can move to New Hampshire and then of course the weight of your vote will improve much.
    - kcplate 2y ago
      > The way it is now means that your vote's weight depends on your street address Say huh? It is literally the same thing as now but in reverse and much much worse. At least now your vote has a chance of counting for something if only influencing your elector. If you live in a state that has agreed with the compact and has a small population, your vote doesn’t mean a damn thing even if you vote for the popular vote winner. Your vote is not yours, it’s the mob’s.
      - DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
        Your whole argument rests on the historically accidental choice that and how states should be apportioned seats in the electoral college. Everything about these procedures is arbitrary, much more so than the principle of "one man, one vote". Of course others have—of late in this forum—also aksed why it shouldn't be that big landlords get several votes. That's how they did it in Prussia in the 1800s. Commenters at they time remarked it is not clear whether it's the farmer or his many pigs who are allotted first class in elections. To sum it up, I'm for the simple and clear rules. Oh and of course if you're for a small-state bonus in presidential (i.e. federal, nationwide) elections why is it that geography of all factors should be the one distinguishing point? How about skin color or profession? You as the artisanal baker that you are by vocation, don't you feel that artisanal bakers are always underrepresented in parliaments? Shouldn't your vote as an artisanal baker be given more weight, just like the way that citizens of New Hampshire get preferential treatment the Way God Intended?
        kcplate 2y ago
- kagakuninja 2y ago
  That is a work-around for the worst flaws of the EC, but keeps in place the unfair distribution of EC votes that favors small states. It also will not allow any meaningful alternative to first-past-the-post voting, which is what people here keep asking for. We can't have ranked-choice voting for president without a constitutional amendment.
- salawat 2y ago
  Surely if someone can win a popular vote, they can convince a bunch of electors to also vote for them when informed only by their conscience? That's the point of the Electoral College. It weeds out groupthink, which is the downfall of direct democracy. It's not stupid just because you refuse to use it right.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    No, the majority of electors are bound by law to vote a certain way based on their state's decision. The electors themselves are manifestly irrelevant to the whole process, and have been for maybe a hundred years. The real problem of the system is the state based system, where winning a narrow majority in a state is equivalent to winning a landslide, since you get the same amount of power. Also, the fact that different people get different leverage based on whether they live in a smaller or larger state is highly unfair. The electors themselves have not actually decided an election in a hundred years or more (as in, electors deciding against the official choice of their state). While they legally could, I would bet you however much you want that they would get literally lynched, if not arrested and replaced, if they tried to. For all practical purposes, the USA has a weighted state-based popular vote system, where the president is the one who wins a majority in states with enough weight. Edit: researching a little bit more, the electors have never changed the result of the presidential election. The closest they ever came was in 1836 when enough electors ignored their state's vote for vice-president, and still the VP who won the by-state popular vote got elected later in congress. The president was separate and won the electoral college per the popular vote as normal. So, this concept that electors serve some purpose to safeguard democracy from populism is a pure fantasy. It may be a fantasy that the founders shared, but it has never panned out in reality.

vkou 2y ago

> This requires a constitutional amendment, which must first be approved by 2/3 of both houses of congress, then ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures. Actually all it requires is the state legislatures of enough states to hit 270 EC votes to pass the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta.... It's at 209/270 at the moment. The electoral college is an utterly idiotic system, but can be broken from within.

kcplate 2y ago
The NPVIC is a fucking awful solution that would backfire on the idiots supporting it eventually. Talk about vote disenfranchisement on a massive scale—it could literally invalidate entire states worth of votes just because California, Texas, Florida, and New York decided to vote the same way. Which means that candidates would ignore literally every state except the 4-5 with the largest population because they are the only ones that would matter.
- wbl 2y ago
  California might be 60/40 but that 40 would matter a lot. Republicans would go to Bakersfield Dems to Santa Cruz. Right now you only campaign in a handful of swing states vs getting whatever you can.
- DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
  Yes and that would be a good thing, if people stopped thinking that by-state voting for the presidential office is a good thing in the first place. The way it is now means that your vote's weight depends on your street address. You can't move to to upstate New York to improve your influence because New York City will weigh you down. But you can move to New Hampshire and then of course the weight of your vote will improve much.
  - kcplate 2y ago
    > The way it is now means that your vote's weight depends on your street address Say huh? It is literally the same thing as now but in reverse and much much worse. At least now your vote has a chance of counting for something if only influencing your elector. If you live in a state that has agreed with the compact and has a small population, your vote doesn’t mean a damn thing even if you vote for the popular vote winner. Your vote is not yours, it’s the mob’s.
    - DemocracyFTW2 2y ago
      Your whole argument rests on the historically accidental choice that and how states should be apportioned seats in the electoral college. Everything about these procedures is arbitrary, much more so than the principle of "one man, one vote". Of course others have—of late in this forum—also aksed why it shouldn't be that big landlords get several votes. That's how they did it in Prussia in the 1800s. Commenters at they time remarked it is not clear whether it's the farmer or his many pigs who are allotted first class in elections. To sum it up, I'm for the simple and clear rules. Oh and of course if you're for a small-state bonus in presidential (i.e. federal, nationwide) elections why is it that geography of all factors should be the one distinguishing point? How about skin color or profession? You as the artisanal baker that you are by vocation, don't you feel that artisanal bakers are always underrepresented in parliaments? Shouldn't your vote as an artisanal baker be given more weight, just like the way that citizens of New Hampshire get preferential treatment the Way God Intended?
      - kcplate 2y ago
kagakuninja 2y ago
That is a work-around for the worst flaws of the EC, but keeps in place the unfair distribution of EC votes that favors small states. It also will not allow any meaningful alternative to first-past-the-post voting, which is what people here keep asking for. We can't have ranked-choice voting for president without a constitutional amendment.
salawat 2y ago
Surely if someone can win a popular vote, they can convince a bunch of electors to also vote for them when informed only by their conscience? That's the point of the Electoral College. It weeds out groupthink, which is the downfall of direct democracy. It's not stupid just because you refuse to use it right.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  No, the majority of electors are bound by law to vote a certain way based on their state's decision. The electors themselves are manifestly irrelevant to the whole process, and have been for maybe a hundred years. The real problem of the system is the state based system, where winning a narrow majority in a state is equivalent to winning a landslide, since you get the same amount of power. Also, the fact that different people get different leverage based on whether they live in a smaller or larger state is highly unfair. The electors themselves have not actually decided an election in a hundred years or more (as in, electors deciding against the official choice of their state). While they legally could, I would bet you however much you want that they would get literally lynched, if not arrested and replaced, if they tried to. For all practical purposes, the USA has a weighted state-based popular vote system, where the president is the one who wins a majority in states with enough weight. Edit: researching a little bit more, the electors have never changed the result of the presidential election. The closest they ever came was in 1836 when enough electors ignored their state's vote for vice-president, and still the VP who won the by-state popular vote got elected later in congress. The president was separate and won the electoral college per the popular vote as normal. So, this concept that electors serve some purpose to safeguard democracy from populism is a pure fantasy. It may be a fantasy that the founders shared, but it has never panned out in reality.