4 ms·

"We've solved democracy! ... by disenfranchising a whole new set of voters."

jedberg 2y ago
I think the point is that the EC already disenfranchises a whole bunch of voters, and maybe if this passes and the red states get totally cut out, they might come around to passing an actual popular vote ammendment.
- anonymousiam 2y ago
  Most people should already know this, but I'll say it anyway. The EC exists to provide some balance between the most populous states and the least. Switching to a pure popular vote destroys that balance and brings us closer to a "tyranny of the majority." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
  - btreecat 2y ago
    Instead we have an inability to act due to minority propaganda. I'm not sure enabling the minority to completely lock up the machinery of governance is a preferable alternative.
    - nostromo 2y ago
      The US constitution is all about protecting small groups from big groups. It’s a feature not a bug. If you want to comfortably win elections you just have to win by more than a percent or two.
      - btreecat 2y ago
        The constitution is not a suicide pact
  - jedberg 2y ago
    The EC was created to protect slave states, not small states. It just so happened that those states had smaller populations because they only counted slaves as 3/5 of a person. And furthermore, because the House is capped at 435, it throws everything off. If we kept following the original algorithm outlined in the constitution, which was very similar to the square root rule, the house would have 1600 members and the EC would still match the popular vote every time. This is all broken because of the artificial cap on the house that makes each member represent far too many people.
    - sickofparadox 2y ago
      "Slave states" and "Free states" did not exist at the time of the constitution's ratification - slavery was legal and practiced in all 13 of them. And while south Carolina and Georgia were amongst the bottom half of the stack population wise, they weren't significantly smaller than the other small states. The EC was Explicitly laid out in the federalist papers (68 to be specific) to exist for the purpose of protecting the smaller states from those like Massachusetts and Virginia.
  - thephyber 2y ago
    The EC doesn’t provide balance. It provides a layer of indirection which can be used to game elections. And all of the EC delegates are political hacks, not honest brokers with the country’s best interests at the center of their duties. The “tyranny of the majority” talk about elections is just FUD — direct elections of representatives make the government more responsive to the desires of voters. The EC is a fossil from a time when representatives didn’t trust the average person to vote, but they sure as hell wanted the benefit of the average person in their state counting towards their census tally. Your view, while an accurate representation of the original result of the negotiations of the Founding Fathers, disenfranchises more Republicans in California than there are Republicans in any other state. State lines were mostly arbitrarily chosen and should not matter when choosing the leader who represents all of the states. For the same reason we use the popular vote of the entire jurisdiction to choose the elected officials for Senate and House, the NPVIC is a good compromise to improve the responsiveness of the government to the voters.
renewiltord 2y ago
The US is a federation of states, ultimately. They have a right to form treaties among themselves. The same conceptual backing that gives all states representation via US Senators gives them the backing to do this. I'm all for more federalism, and I'm fine with the Senator system and the Electoral College.

I think the point is that the EC already disenfranchises a whole bunch of voters, and maybe if this passes and the red states get totally cut out, they might come around to passing an actual popular vote ammendment.

anonymousiam 2y ago
Most people should already know this, but I'll say it anyway. The EC exists to provide some balance between the most populous states and the least. Switching to a pure popular vote destroys that balance and brings us closer to a "tyranny of the majority." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
- btreecat 2y ago
  Instead we have an inability to act due to minority propaganda. I'm not sure enabling the minority to completely lock up the machinery of governance is a preferable alternative.
  - nostromo 2y ago
    The US constitution is all about protecting small groups from big groups. It’s a feature not a bug. If you want to comfortably win elections you just have to win by more than a percent or two.
    - btreecat 2y ago
      The constitution is not a suicide pact
- jedberg 2y ago
  The EC was created to protect slave states, not small states. It just so happened that those states had smaller populations because they only counted slaves as 3/5 of a person. And furthermore, because the House is capped at 435, it throws everything off. If we kept following the original algorithm outlined in the constitution, which was very similar to the square root rule, the house would have 1600 members and the EC would still match the popular vote every time. This is all broken because of the artificial cap on the house that makes each member represent far too many people.
  - sickofparadox 2y ago
    "Slave states" and "Free states" did not exist at the time of the constitution's ratification - slavery was legal and practiced in all 13 of them. And while south Carolina and Georgia were amongst the bottom half of the stack population wise, they weren't significantly smaller than the other small states. The EC was Explicitly laid out in the federalist papers (68 to be specific) to exist for the purpose of protecting the smaller states from those like Massachusetts and Virginia.
- thephyber 2y ago
  The EC doesn’t provide balance. It provides a layer of indirection which can be used to game elections. And all of the EC delegates are political hacks, not honest brokers with the country’s best interests at the center of their duties. The “tyranny of the majority” talk about elections is just FUD — direct elections of representatives make the government more responsive to the desires of voters. The EC is a fossil from a time when representatives didn’t trust the average person to vote, but they sure as hell wanted the benefit of the average person in their state counting towards their census tally. Your view, while an accurate representation of the original result of the negotiations of the Founding Fathers, disenfranchises more Republicans in California than there are Republicans in any other state. State lines were mostly arbitrarily chosen and should not matter when choosing the leader who represents all of the states. For the same reason we use the popular vote of the entire jurisdiction to choose the elected officials for Senate and House, the NPVIC is a good compromise to improve the responsiveness of the government to the voters.

renewiltord 2y ago

The US is a federation of states, ultimately. They have a right to form treaties among themselves. The same conceptual backing that gives all states representation via US Senators gives them the backing to do this. I'm all for more federalism, and I'm fine with the Senator system and the Electoral College.