I don't buy it. I believe one vote should equal one vote, and the winner is the one who the most people, you know...wanted. I've heard the arguments (all they'll do is campaign in New York, California and Texas!), which I consider invalid (because all they do is campaign in Florida, Ohio and Michigan). Aside from the "faithless elector" angle, (which *might* be a thing if a candidate suddenly decided to commit a crime between November and December of their election year), I don't get why it's necessary. In fact I think it's a bad thing. Thoughts?
An observation: Get enough faithless electors, and Hillary Clinton could still pull this off. To reverse my mantra of the last two years, Donald Trump can still blow this.
If switching to the popular vote, another thing to consider would be whether the winner had to get a majority of the votes or just a plurality. The electoral college makes it really tough for third party candidates to have a remote chance of winning, but switching to the popular vote could have trouble of its own I'm really not sure where I stand on this one
The electoral college was formed to give smaller states a louder voice. If we suppress that voice, they will seek to express themselves in other ways (use your imagination). Plus, look at the electoral map - it is at least 80% red. I don't think we should change the electoral system just because we didn't like the result this time around. I think doing so would create more problems than it would solve. And remember, the problem isn't that there are too many crazies voting, it is that those who should've voted for the right candidate didn't bother to this time. You wanna fix our country? Fix that.
Keep the electoral college. It represents the nation as a whole, not just specific population centers. If you look a the voting map of the US (even better, by county), you'll see an overwhelming majority of red vs blue. As Winston Churchill quoted in the House of Commons, 11 November 1947: Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. (Though the US is a representative democratic republic.) (Eighth Dwarf apparently you're a faster on the keyboard than I am.)
The problem with "not suppressing" the voice of smaller states is that we end up suppressing the voice of the larger ones. And despite what the Sarah Palins of the world seem to believe, those of us who live in big cities are just as much "real Americans" as those who live in small towns (like a lot of my extended family - I have NOTHING against small towns, but their inhabitants are not "more American" than anyone else). The electoral college was set up for various reasons. If you want to preserve the Federalism aspect of it, I'd be okay with that, but they ought to take 2 electoral votes away from every state, and make it closer to truly representative - still not really "one person, one vote," but at least closer. So instead of 270 EV's to win, you'd need 220. The swing states would still be the swing states and get the lion's share of the attention. This system would still have elected Trump, but 2000 would have gone to Gore instead - no invasion of Iraq, no rise of ISIS, perhaps no Great Recession...
We've only ever lived in a country where Electoral votes matter, so the "closeness" of the popular vote/electoral college makes it seem like not much would change besides the outcome, but I think more would change in how candidates campaign than we can predict. Look at the map, how many counties Trump needed to win vs Clinton. That's with both candidates needing to maintain the fiction that all states matter. Take that away, blues go to major population centers on the coasts and the great lakes area, reds have to go everywhere else to energize the GOTV AND have to go to the population centers to try and limit "running up the score." That translates into the number of offices, money, travel time spent, and who knows what else. It simply is easier to defend smaller territory than it is large territory. Blues will be allowed to operate "lean and mean" and reds will always be spread too thin.
Agreed, but I don't think the voices of the larger states were suppressed this time around - they just chose not to speak up. But if you do that, you are suppressing the vote of the smaller states. For example, you would be reducing the overall electoral college by 19% but you would reduce the electoral vote of 12 states by at least 50%. So their proportion of the electoral vote would be much less. California, on the other hand, would lose 3% of their electoral votes so their overall influence would actually go up. If the smaller states don't have a meaningful voice in the legitimate process, they will seek to have one in illegitimate ways. That wouldn't be good for anybody.
I disagree. CA's overall influence would go up, because it's artificially low now. And Wyoming's is artificially high. Basing every state's EV total to its population level only (but still keeping the winner-takes-all electoral vote system) brings us closer to one-person-one-vote. It's not suppressing anything that wasn't artificially inflated in the first place. Of course the small states would kick about it (including the small Democratic-leaning states like Vermont), and I don't see any way it's happening soon. I'm just talking about what I see as a fairer system, if you're going to keep the Electoral College (the topic of discussion). And it wasn't the larger states who "chose not to speak up," it was too many Democratic voters in all states. In deep blue states it didn't matter - the votes still went to Clinton. In purple states it did matter, whether large or small.
I get your point, but it was artificially inflated by design in order to keep smaller states relevant in our politics. Otherwise, they would essentially have no voice in a presidential election, many being reduced to 1 electoral vote versus California's 53. Only the big population centers would matter, further politically isolating the people not living in big cities or states. If you think those people are angry now, wait until you reduce their ability to pick a president. And they're heavily armed! I agree. Democrat turnout was pathetic, that is why Hillary lost. Had more Democrats turned out in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida, she would've won handily (as predicted by the polls). The problem is, they didn't show up. As a result, she received fewer popular votes overall than Mitt Romney in 2012, who lost by a wide margin. Believe me, I don't like the results of the election any more than you do, but like Brexit, it's those who didn't vote who are more to blame than those who did.
What about my reduced ability to pick a president? Why is that not important? Why should my vote count less?
Look, arguing whether small state voters would be angered is really academic, because there's no way the Electoral college is being reformed any time soon. But if it were reformed in the way I outlined, small state voters would be exactly as relevant to the overall outcome as they ought to be, i.e. no more than anyone else.
I have railed against the electoral college since I found out that a candidate could get the least votes and still win. I think I was 8. I asked my parents about it (when Kennedy almost lost) and they gave me the song and dance about small states. I asked teachers who gave vague answers and I was still told we lived in a democracy. I went back to college in my 40's and needed American History. That is when I studied the misogynistic slave owners (er uh founding fathers) actual words. Then 2000 happened and I studied it more. In fact, if it worked the way they planned the faithless should vote for Hillary. Anyway, it is archaic and should be disposed of (which would take a constitutional amendment so it ain't happening' any time soon.) At the very least; it should be changed to make all votes equal.
I think it's a question of magnitude. Yes, the weight of your vote is slightly reduced (depending on where you live, of course). But, if it is reduced, it's because you live in a state that already has an increased influence due to its size. If you think about it, why should your vote count more just because you live in a big state? In California, where I live, the weight of my vote (and the 55 electoral votes that go along with my vote) might be slightly less because of the +2 electoral votes every state gets to account for Senate seats, but it is worth disproportionately more just because lots of people live within the borders of the state I live in. I mean, my vote still is attached to the state's 55 electoral votes versus the Wyoming resident's vote attached to his state's 3, even within this "unfair" system. My vote is worth nearly 20 times what that person's is. The electoral college system is like a progressive tax system: those with the most have to give up more than their fair share in order to help those with the least. We can scrap this system of course, which might be good for you and me (the haves in this case), but isn't that something progressives normally fight against?
Sorry, but that analysis is flawed. A Californian's vote is worth proportionately less then a Wyoming resident's, not more. If it makes it easier, consider a country in which there were only 20 states. California, and 19 states the size of Wyoming. Just to keep the numbers even let say that California has about 36 million people, and these 19 states average just over 600,000, for a total of 12 million. California has 55 electoral votes, and the 19 states have three each for a total of 57. California vote for candidate A and the 19 others vote for a candidate B. Candidate B wins despite getting only a third the number of votes as candidate A. In reality, it's not as extreme as that, obviously. We have large, small, and midsize states. But the basic math remains. Californians and those and other large states are not the Haves in the system we currently have. They are the (relative) have-nots.
What about a Republican's vote in Massachusetts? Or a Democrat's vote in Alabama? Their votes count for nothing in this system.
Because we do not democratically elect the POTUS. We never have. The Founding Fathers didn't want us to. If you want more say in picking the President, MOVE. If you're a resident of California or New York, you already have an outsized say in just about everything else. BINGO. This is where the problem is. The EC is a good thing when it works the way it was intended. Try and ponder this for a moment. A functioning country is more important than an abstract like "democracy". Believing in democracy is like believing in the tooth fairy, or American exceptionalism. Democracy also gave us Nixon. And Sarah Palin. And David Duke. Just like Christianity gave us the Crusades, the KKK, and, uh, Sarah Palin and David Duke. I do not accept "Yes, but Democracy" as a rational or valid argument. Nor should you. You aren't in 4th grade civics class anymore. This reminds me of the Eurovision Song Contest in a weird way. Every year there are demands to change the rules, coming from the fans of the song that came in 2nd. If it won the call-in vote but lost the contest, then everybody screams for the call-in vote to be worth more. If it won the jury vote but lost the contest, then everybody screams for the call-in to be worth less. If things were reversed, everyone here would be singing the praises of the electoral college. HILLARY. BLEW. THIS. ELECTION. The electoral college didn't lose it for her. It wouldn't have been an impediment if she hadn't sucked so much. Don't toss out a system that has been successful for 220 years because the Dems couldn't field a candidate capable of beating Donald. Friggin'. Trump.
Hard to say, since in recent memory it only swings one way. The Trump supporters are certainly singing the praises, but just a few short weeks ago they were threatening to rise up against the "unfairness" so who can say what they'd be saying if the situation were reversed. All I can say about it is I've been against it for a very long time, and frankly this Trump victory hits me far *less* hard on the "fairness meter" (harder by far on the nausea meter though), since he did trounce her pretty good and not in just one place. All these calls for electors to go faithless are ludicrous if you ask me, as are the protests "after the fact" (let's poll those folks and see how many of them actually VOTED, shall we?). The Gore v. Bush thing though, where it ALL came down to just a handful of voters (and eventually the courts had to step in), when it was *clear* who the nation actually wanted? That was something I found difficult to stomach, and I've been against it ever since (even before that, but not as passionately). Heck, I think if the system had been different Trump *still* would've won. It's *hard* for the party in power to keep the white house more than a term or two.
