The US National Popular Vote is a little bit closer

[Toni]

You live in a rural area and seem to resent the hell out of your fellow rural citizens for not thinking and behaving as you do.

You have not interpreted that correctly. I do not at all resent them for thinking and behaving differently than me. In general they do NOT think and behave differently than me. And yet, THEY RESENT ME. And that is the part I resent.

I have not painted 4x8 plywood with slurs against them and put it up by the roadside. I have not brought guns to their meetings. I have not written threatening letters and distributed them about town. I have not stuck video cameras in their faces and published it to militia members. I have not screamed at them in public meetings. I have not refused to do business with them when I find out they are Republicans, and I have not put screws in their tires.

And that is why I don’t buy for one second your tale that the humble salt of the earth rural folk never say a bad word about anybody.

Who the hell ever claimed that rural people were all perfect little angels? Not me, that’s for damn sure.

You seem to live in a particularly malignant little enclave. I’m more fortunate.

I also grew up in a rural community—-nothing like the horror show you describe, at least of you were white and it helped if you were related to half the county as it turned out I was. Trust me, one of the main reasons I wanted out was because I knew about the racism and it disgusted me, as far back as first grade, which is when I became aware of a family member’s views. And racism.

A couple of years ago, I revisited my old high school with a friend from…second grade forward, who had also left, for many of the same reasons I did. We were given a nice tour of our old high school and learned that our previously virtually all white high school—in our day, a handful of Hispanic kids attended and were tolerated because the girls were good students and more importantly, at least one of the boys was a very good athlete—was now 40 percent minority, including S. Asian, Hispanics d black students. The staff was also integrated. This was an enormous positive change for our community—which has unfortunately lost a lot of its rural character, which has largely consisted of warehouses and fulfillment centers replacing much of the farm land.

Trust me, I realized in my school days that I was treated well because of the color of my skin and because my older sibling was an excellent student —and because of my last name. Small communities can be like that—certain families are known to be very hard working and extremely honest. Heaven knows those were the only advantages my family had…

Note: I don’t bemoan the loss of farmland so much as feel disgusted by the fulfillment centers which looked like oversized calf huts that I think are inhumane for calves, much less for human beings. Cheap land and little regulation has allowed the proliferation of such centers and warehouses, the nicer of which are brutalist and windowless concrete boxes. I find this a horrific way to treat human beings.

 

[TomC]

Note: I don’t bemoan the loss of farmland so much as feel disgusted by the fulfillment centers which looked like oversized calf huts

What pray tell, is a "fulfillment center"?
Why would anyone put one in your neck of the woods?
Tom

 

[Toni]

Note: I don’t bemoan the loss of farmland so much as feel disgusted by the fulfillment centers which looked like oversized calf huts

What pray tell, is a "fulfillment center"?
Why would anyone put one in your neck of the woods?
Tom

Not in my neck of the woods but in my old stomping grounds. Try googling fulfillment centers in your county. You’ll see what I mean.

Amazon and other merchants use them all the time.

 

[bilby]

just like they were concerned that the government would turn on it's people

No, they weren't.

They were concerned that the British might come back; They were concerned that the slaves might revolt; They were concerned that the Native Americans might want some of the good bits of the country back.

But they weren't concerned that the government would turn on its people. They were the government. They wanted to stay the government, and that meant being less unpopular than the British.

 

[bilby]

I remain undecided on this popular vote business. I say, let's wait until we hit a demographic equilibrium, a 50/50 split between diverse communities and our white compatriots. Kna mean? Then we can consider the popular vote. As it stands, there's an overabundance of eccentric folks across the political spectrum. Liberals, conservatives—you name it!

Like I said earlier... I could get behind a popular vote, but ONLY under a different voting system. Not with FPTP. Not the least of which is the ability of a majority with bad ideas to ruin it for everyone.

If you only have one president at a time, then all possible fair voting systems for presidents are effectively FPTP.

 

[bilby]

ts. As exemplified by the number of different nations represented at the baseball World Series;

You need to know that in this context, “world” does not mean planet earth. It means a newspaper in NYC.

I am aware.

I'm also rather annoyed that all the Miss Universe contestants are from one Solar System.

 

[TomC]

Note: I don’t bemoan the loss of farmland so much as feel disgusted by the fulfillment centers which looked like oversized calf huts

What pray tell, is a "fulfillment center"?
Why would anyone put one in your neck of the woods?
Tom

Not in my neck of the woods but in my old stomping grounds. Try googling fulfillment centers in your county. You’ll see what I mean.

Amazon and other merchants use them all the time.

You brought them up in a thread about POTUS elections.
Feel free to explain why.

Or feel free to ignore it.
That is what I'm inclined to do. Looks like a dodgy sort of almost derail because you don't want to discuss the issues at hand.
Tom

 

[Tigers!]

What EXACTLY is being preseerved?

Poor spelling?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

just like they were concerned that the government would turn on it's people

No, they weren't.

They were concerned that the British might come back; They were concerned that the slaves might revolt; They were concerned that the Native Americans might want some of the good bits of the country back.

But they weren't concerned that the government would turn on its people. They were the government. They wanted to stay the government, and that meant being less unpopular than the British.

They were afraid of too much democracy. They were literally concerned that that too much democracy could possibly cost them their privilege because the top office in the land was going to be decided by popular vote, not congress or committee. They were afraid that the rabble could not be trusted.

If FFvC had been able to pull off his swindle he would have done so exactly as the original framers had intended the system to work. It didn't work for FFvC because in the interim between the Constitution and 2020 States had passed laws on how EC delegates had to vote. That is why the EC is an outdated system legislated in a time of fear and glacial communication, and ought be abolished.

 

[thebeave]

I am no longer a proponent of the Electoral college. Ignoring the attempts of EC shenanigans of the last election, I think the Electoral College makes POTUS candidates concentrate on battle ground states - only those voters matter. Popular vote means all voters matter.

However, battleground states are more diverse (politically) than the big states.

Without the EC, the GOP is in trouble. Even with the EC, the GOP is in trouble. While Ohio and Iowa are trending red, Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia are trending purple. Without Georgia, the GOP is fucked! It is the second largest state EV wise for them, well, third now that Florida GOP has convinced Cubans, the Democrats want to reinstall Castro as the US President.

Genuine question: Why is it that so many staunch democrats are so completely convinced that the republican party is on the brink of collapse? The number of independents is growing, and democrats and republicans have roughly equal footholds in the remaining partisans. This is never going to result in one side "winning", you know that, right?

I wonder that too. You'd think after what happened in the POTUS election of 2016 that Democrats would have learned not to be so cocksure about anything. This poll from Gallup just came out and should be a little worrying for the Democrats:

Social Conservatism in U.S. Highest in About a Decade

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- More Americans this year (38%) say they are very conservative or conservative on social issues than said so in 2022 (33%) and 2021 (30%). At the same time, the percentage saying their social views are very liberal or liberal has dipped to 29% from 34% in each of the past two years, while the portion identifying as moderate (31%) remains near a third.

The last time this many Americans said they were socially conservative was 2012, during a period when consistently more U.S. adults identified as conservative rather than liberal on social issues.

The results are based on Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey, conducted May 1-24. The survey comes at a time when many states are considering policies regarding transgender matters, abortion, crime, drug use and the teaching of gender and sexuality in schools.

The increase in conservative identification on social issues over the past two years is seen among nearly all political and demographic subgroups. Republicans show one of the largest increases, from 60% in 2021 to 74% today. Independents show a modest uptick of five percentage points, from 24% to 29%, while there has been no change among Democrats (10% in both 2021 and 2023).

 

[Elixir]

I’m not too worried about Republicans winning the Whitehouse- unless J6 was a perfect example of “social conservatism”.

They look determined to nominate Agent Orange again, knowing already that he can’t win without massive cheating. Which tells me they plan massive cheating. If they get away with it, we’re fucked anyhow. But unless “conservative identification” is synonymous with “enthusiasm for fascism”, I can’t see Trump doing even as well as he did while losing in 2020.

 

[lpetrich]

Like I said earlier... I could get behind a popular vote, but ONLY under a different voting system. Not with FPTP. Not the least of which is the ability of a majority with bad ideas to ruin it for everyone.

If you only have one president at a time, then all possible fair voting systems for presidents are effectively FPTP.

Why is that? I know of numerous non-FPTP voting and vote-counting methods.

• FPTP - vote for only one candidate
• Approval - can vote for more than one candidate
• Range, rated, score - like approval, but votes can have partial strength
• Ranked - rank the candidates from most to least preferred

For FPTP, approval, and rated voting, one adds up all the votes, though for rated voting, there is an alternative called "majority judgment", which is to compare the median votes for each candidate. Cumulative voting is a variation of rated voting where each voter's total vote is at most some value.

For ranked voting, the most common procedure is instant runoff -- the winner is whichever candidate has a majority of top preferences, and if no candidate does so, then drop the candidate with the fewest top preferences and redo the count with that candidate ignored. Repeat until some candidate gets a majority.

An alternative is the Borda count, translating rankings into ratings with first preference = (number of candidates), second preference = (number of candidates) - 1, etc. and counting as for a rated vote.

Another is Condorcet methods. These turn the election into a virtual round robin, finding the number of times the voters rank each candidate above each other candidate, the "Condorcet matrix". One then tries to find the Cordorcet winner, the one who beats all the others in one-on-one contests. With circular preferences, there won't be a Condorcet winner, and there are various algorithms for finding a winner in such a case, some of them rather complicated.

 

[lpetrich]

Math Alive -- Problem Set. Voting and Social Choice, Part 1
with
Math Alive -- Voting & Social Choice — Lab 1

Let's say that some people give different preferences to different brands of beer. Here is how many with each preference order:

Beer	18	12	10	9	4	2
Killians	5	1	2	4	2	4
Molson	1	5	5	5	5	5
Samuel Adams	2	3	4	1	3	3
Guinness	4	4	1	2	4	2
Meister Brau	3	2	3	3	1	1

or in preference order,

Order	18	12	10	9	4	2
1	Mol	Kil	Gui	Sam	Mei	Mei
2	Sam	Mei	Kil	Gui	Kil	Gui
3	Mei	Sam	Mei	Mei	Sam	Sam
4	Gui	Gui	Sam	Kil	Gui	Kil
5	Kil	Mol	Mol	Mol	Mol	Mol

 

[Bomb#20]

Lol, they're equally represented in the Senate - every state has the exact same number of senators. The senators represent the state as an entity within the Union.

No
No
No

The people are NOT “equally represented in the Senate.”

The States are.
States are not people. Land is not people. Fields are not Americans.

This idea that States have an “identity” that must be “protected” to the detriment of American citizens has not ever been justified beyond needing to maintain slavery.

Sure it has.

So tell me again. What is so Delaware-ey about Delaware that needs to be preserved by the Senate?
WELL NOT “AGAIN,” SINCE NO ONE HAS EVER ANSWERED THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE.
(oops unintentional caps lock. But… it’s kind of a key unanswered question, so I’m leaving it.)

Different Americans have different levels of power in the Senate, and the EC.
What justifies that?

Lack of imagination. If you are looking to fix this by abolishing the Senate and the EC then you've already given up. Equalizing the number of voters per representative does jack squat toward equalizing different Americans' different levels of power in the HoR. A voter in a congressional district that splits 51-49 has immeasurably more voting power than a voter in a district that splits 55-45, let alone one that splits 60-40. That power difference outweighs the whole "700K district vs 900K district is unfair" issue pretty much the way an elephant outweighs a mosquito.

What property, EXACTLY, does a New Hampshirite have that needs to be preserved MORFE than the voting rights of Pennsylvanian?

What EXACTLY is being preseerved?

The same thing, whether we equalize voters per representative or not: what is being preserved is the power of the so-called "representatives" to choose their voters instead of the other way around. If you want everyone's voting rights equalized then you have to abolish geographical districts altogether and go to some sort of proxy-voting system.

 

[lpetrich]

Let's now try various methods on the beers.

• FPTP: Mol 18, Kil 12, Gui 10, Sam 9, Mei 6 -- Mol
• Top-two runoff: the first results, then Kil 12, Gui 10 -- Kil
• Sequential runoff (IRV): the first results, then Mei drops out, then Mol 18, Kil 16, Gui 12, Sam 9, then Sam drops out, then Gui 21, Mol 18, Kil 16, then Kil drops out, then Gui 37, Mol 18, then Mol drops out, then Gui 55 -- Gui
• Borda count: Sam 191, Mei 189, Gui 162, Wil 156, Mol 127 -- Sam
• Condorcet sequence: it exists, and it is Mei 4, Sam 2, Gui 0, Kil -2, Mol -4 -- Mei

It's a rather contrived example, but it shows how different methods can give different results.

BTW, Condorcet methods can be used with approval and rated voting, by making a Condorcet matrix from those votes. For FPTP, the Condorcet matrix has a simple form, with the Condorcet winner being the FPTP winner.

 

[TomC]

If you are looking to fix this by abolishing the Senate and the EC then you've already given up.

Neither Rhea nor I are looking for that.
We aren't talking about the Senate in this thread, except as an occasional derail. And we're not talking about abolishing the EC.
What we're talking about, specifically, is making the POTUS an elected position. One that represents the American people better than the best liars and cheats.
Which is the current reality.
Tom

 

[lpetrich]

Different Americans have different levels of power in the Senate, and the EC.
What justifies that?

Lack of imagination. If you are looking to fix this by abolishing the Senate and the EC then you've already given up.

Lack of imagination? How is that supposed to be a justification?

Also, how is wanting to abolish the Senate and the EC supposed to be "giving up"?

Equalizing the number of voters per representative does jack squat toward equalizing different Americans' different levels of power in the HoR. A voter in a congressional district that splits 51-49 has immeasurably more voting power than a voter in a district that splits 55-45, let alone one that splits 60-40. That power difference outweighs the whole "700K district vs 900K district is unfair" issue pretty much the way an elephant outweighs a mosquito.

Bad argument. Very bad argument. This is about who gets represented, not about who determines close elections.

I think that the US House should be elected with proportional representation, rather than with the one-size-fits-all representation of single-member districts.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

We aren't talking about the Senate in this thread, except as an occasional derail. And we're not talking about abolishing the EC.
What we're talking about, specifically, is making the POTUS an elected position. One that represents the American people better than the best liars and cheats.

If we retain the EC the hope is to make it a representative body of delegates based 100% on the popular vote. If that happens no candidate can ever win the presidency again unless he gets the majority of votes in the country.

Technically speaking that is not abolishing the EC but it does abolish the EC as it was originally intended to operate, and as it presently operates, namely, as a safeguard against the popular vote being unpopular with the political elite.

So yes, lets make the EC representative of the popular choice of the American people just as we do for senators, governors, representatives, etc.

 

[TomC]

So yes, lets make the EC representative of the popular choice of the American people just as we do for senators, governors, representatives, etc.

But none of those positions are representative of the American people. Nor is anyone suggesting that they should be.

We are talking about the POTUS, not state governors.

Frankly, there's a ton of things I'd like to see different about our political system. What we're talking about here is, specifically, making the POTUS an elected position.
Tom

 

[Bomb#20]

Different Americans have different levels of power in the Senate, and the EC.
What justifies that?

Lack of imagination. If you are looking to fix this by abolishing the Senate and the EC then you've already given up.

Lack of imagination? How is that supposed to be a justification?

Sorry, did I need a "[/sarcasm]" disclaimer on that? I was pointing out that people who argue for a system much like our current one only with equal numbers of citizens per representative are in fact arguing in favor of a system of different Americans having different levels of power, same as defenders of the status quo are. They are merely tinkering around with the details instead of getting to the root of the problem. And they are doing that because of lack of imagination.

Also, how is wanting to abolish the Senate and the EC supposed to be "giving up"?

You already read the answer and quoted it back to me...

Equalizing the number of voters per representative does jack squat toward equalizing different Americans' different levels of power in the HoR. A voter in a congressional district that splits 51-49 has immeasurably more voting power than a voter in a district that splits 55-45, let alone one that splits 60-40. That power difference outweighs the whole "700K district vs 900K district is unfair" issue pretty much the way an elephant outweighs a mosquito.

Bad argument. Very bad argument.

Bad dog! Very bad dog!

This is about who gets represented, not about who determines close elections.

This is not about who gets represented. Everybody gets "represented", in all the proposed systems, if you can call being assigned to a particular legislator who disagrees with you about everything and always votes against your interests, merely because your neighbors like her, being "represented". This is about what Rhea said it was about: "different levels of power". The number of people in your district is not a substantive measure of the level of power you have. The substantive measure is the entropy -- the information content -- that your vote communicates to the halls of power. That's the negative log of the probability that your vote will change the outcome.

I think that the US House should be elected with proportional representation, rather than with the one-size-fits-all representation of single-member districts.

Then we are fundamentally in agreement. Proportional representation is just a clumsy, low-tech, unnecessarily coarse-grained approximation of a proxy-voting system.