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Had we used a popular voting system rather than electoral college system, this system would have been expanded to every state in the nation, and Obama would lik

Had we used a popular voting system rather than electoral college system, this system would have been expanded to every state in the nation, and Obama would likely have won by a far wider margin than he did. Again, this system was about identifying impressionable voters and marketing to them properly. The location of swing states is simple and public information, not proprietary.

downandout 14y ago
"Had we used a popular voting system rather than electoral college system....Obama would likely have won by a far wider margin than he did." That is quite debatable. There is no way of knowing how many people simply don't show up to the polls because they live in a state that leans heavily toward the opposition and therefore know their vote will have exactly zero effect on the election.
- caseysoftware 14y ago
  The problem with a straight popular vote is that it is much more susceptible to attack. Take a jurisdiction like Chicago which is known for voter fraud and high turnout among the dead. Under our current system, no matter how compromised that system is, its impact is limited to that state.. it can only swing some Electoral Votes (and everything state and local). With a straight popular vote, that compromised system would put the overall system at much bigger risk. The Electoral College serves as a corruption firewall between systems.. not perfect, but significantly better than the alternative.
  - bunderbunder 14y ago
    In your Chicago example, the electoral college could easily magnify it. Imagine, for a moment, that if the kind of voter fraud that Chicago earned a reputation for in the 1960s were to happen in a city like Miami nowadays. So let's say 5,000 fraudulent votes went to candidate A. In a popular vote system, that's unlikely to swing the verdict because that's such a tiny margin compared to the country's entire electorate. 5,000 is less than 0.004% of the number of people who voted in 2008. But Florida historically polls close - easily close enough for 5,000 votes to swing which way the state goes. And this winner wouldn't just pick up that tiny sliver, they would get all 29 of Florida's electoral votes. That's a much bigger chunk of the pie - 5.4%. Worse yet, in the electoral college getting the votes is a zero-sum game. (Not so in the earlier case because the votes shouldn't have existed in the first place - so picking up a fraudulent vote for candidate A doesn't mean that candidate B lost a vote.) Candidate A getting 29 votes means candidate B loses 29 votes, so the real swing is more than 10%. Meaning that in this hypothetical, the electoral college managed to magnify the influence of what was a relatively small instance of electoral fraud by a factor of more than 2,500%, into something that could easily swing an election.
    - jivatmanx 14y ago
      Electoral fraud in Illinois would swing a maximum of Illinois's 20 electoral votes, or 29 in Florida With a popular vote, it would be popular to have millions upon millions of fraudulent votes in a single place, say, Delaware, that would allow the opposing candidate to win even if there was supposed to be a landslide victory for the other candidate. I think "Firewall" is a good analogy of this.
      - bunderbunder 14y ago
        How, exactly, would one manage to organize millions upon millions of fraudulent voter registrations in a single place? It would be better if your hypothetical example were at least remotely plausible. The entire population of Delaware is less than one million. Keep in mind that my example of only 5,000 fraudulent registrations in a single place is already over an order of magnitude larger than notable examples from recent history.
        jivatmanx 14y ago
        Simply pick a state that uses electronic voting machines, and engineer Malware, or alternatively, hack the central repository. I supposed millions in Delaware is a bad example, but it's certainly possible in a place like California.
  - r00fus 14y ago
    We can have a better more granular "firewall". Instead of direct popular vote, simply quantize it into congressional districts instead of just the state level. Who wins the district wins that EV. Who wins the state wins an additional 2 EVs (ie, aligned with senate numbers). Total would equal (currently) 538 EVs. Some states already do something similar (see Nebraska, Maine). Of course, this brings up the perennial problem of gerrymandering... which could be resolved by mandating perimeter to area ratios that keep things from looking too crazy.
  - afterburner 14y ago
    "Take a jurisdiction like Chicago which is known for voter fraud and high turnout among the dead. " An unproven case of a small number (<100) of possibly fraudulent votes in an election more than 60 years ago, and still going on about it as if it happens every election, and orders of magnitude worse.
- ssharp 14y ago
  I think there are lots of factors to consider, but the electoral college limits, to a certain extent, the "ground game" advantage Obama had. This is making an assumption that Obama's ground game was scalable, because if we went on popular vote, Obama would be able to ramp up that ground game all over the country, just as he did in the swing states. What the electoral college incentivizes is isolated ad spending and campaign stumping in the battleground states. It's clear that this aspect of campaigning would change substantially if the electoral college were eliminated, so strategic advantages would be sought elsewhere and I think the ground game would become a focal point.
ihsw 14y ago
Even more important is that the system is in place -- already in production, tested, and battle-hardened -- and it is in the hands of Democrats. The smart Republicans will take this to heart and turn their attention towards the 'quants and coders,' and the smart quants and coders will be looking to be employed by them.

downandout 14y ago

"Had we used a popular voting system rather than electoral college system....Obama would likely have won by a far wider margin than he did." That is quite debatable. There is no way of knowing how many people simply don't show up to the polls because they live in a state that leans heavily toward the opposition and therefore know their vote will have exactly zero effect on the election.

caseysoftware 14y ago
The problem with a straight popular vote is that it is much more susceptible to attack. Take a jurisdiction like Chicago which is known for voter fraud and high turnout among the dead. Under our current system, no matter how compromised that system is, its impact is limited to that state.. it can only swing some Electoral Votes (and everything state and local). With a straight popular vote, that compromised system would put the overall system at much bigger risk. The Electoral College serves as a corruption firewall between systems.. not perfect, but significantly better than the alternative.
- bunderbunder 14y ago
  In your Chicago example, the electoral college could easily magnify it. Imagine, for a moment, that if the kind of voter fraud that Chicago earned a reputation for in the 1960s were to happen in a city like Miami nowadays. So let's say 5,000 fraudulent votes went to candidate A. In a popular vote system, that's unlikely to swing the verdict because that's such a tiny margin compared to the country's entire electorate. 5,000 is less than 0.004% of the number of people who voted in 2008. But Florida historically polls close - easily close enough for 5,000 votes to swing which way the state goes. And this winner wouldn't just pick up that tiny sliver, they would get all 29 of Florida's electoral votes. That's a much bigger chunk of the pie - 5.4%. Worse yet, in the electoral college getting the votes is a zero-sum game. (Not so in the earlier case because the votes shouldn't have existed in the first place - so picking up a fraudulent vote for candidate A doesn't mean that candidate B lost a vote.) Candidate A getting 29 votes means candidate B loses 29 votes, so the real swing is more than 10%. Meaning that in this hypothetical, the electoral college managed to magnify the influence of what was a relatively small instance of electoral fraud by a factor of more than 2,500%, into something that could easily swing an election.
  - jivatmanx 14y ago
    Electoral fraud in Illinois would swing a maximum of Illinois's 20 electoral votes, or 29 in Florida With a popular vote, it would be popular to have millions upon millions of fraudulent votes in a single place, say, Delaware, that would allow the opposing candidate to win even if there was supposed to be a landslide victory for the other candidate. I think "Firewall" is a good analogy of this.
    - bunderbunder 14y ago
      How, exactly, would one manage to organize millions upon millions of fraudulent voter registrations in a single place? It would be better if your hypothetical example were at least remotely plausible. The entire population of Delaware is less than one million. Keep in mind that my example of only 5,000 fraudulent registrations in a single place is already over an order of magnitude larger than notable examples from recent history.
      - jivatmanx 14y ago
        Simply pick a state that uses electronic voting machines, and engineer Malware, or alternatively, hack the central repository. I supposed millions in Delaware is a bad example, but it's certainly possible in a place like California.
- r00fus 14y ago
  We can have a better more granular "firewall". Instead of direct popular vote, simply quantize it into congressional districts instead of just the state level. Who wins the district wins that EV. Who wins the state wins an additional 2 EVs (ie, aligned with senate numbers). Total would equal (currently) 538 EVs. Some states already do something similar (see Nebraska, Maine). Of course, this brings up the perennial problem of gerrymandering... which could be resolved by mandating perimeter to area ratios that keep things from looking too crazy.
- afterburner 14y ago
  "Take a jurisdiction like Chicago which is known for voter fraud and high turnout among the dead. " An unproven case of a small number (<100) of possibly fraudulent votes in an election more than 60 years ago, and still going on about it as if it happens every election, and orders of magnitude worse.
ssharp 14y ago
I think there are lots of factors to consider, but the electoral college limits, to a certain extent, the "ground game" advantage Obama had. This is making an assumption that Obama's ground game was scalable, because if we went on popular vote, Obama would be able to ramp up that ground game all over the country, just as he did in the swing states. What the electoral college incentivizes is isolated ad spending and campaign stumping in the battleground states. It's clear that this aspect of campaigning would change substantially if the electoral college were eliminated, so strategic advantages would be sought elsewhere and I think the ground game would become a focal point.

ihsw 14y ago

Even more important is that the system is in place -- already in production, tested, and battle-hardened -- and it is in the hands of Democrats. The smart Republicans will take this to heart and turn their attention towards the 'quants and coders,' and the smart quants and coders will be looking to be employed by them.