We're stuck with the electoral college. But there is a workaround

[Toni]

My guy lost a couple of times to the electoral college. But I'm in favor of keeping it. It gives some balance to the natural and obvious tensions between heavily populated, more urban states VS the less populated, more rural states. I see that balance as fundamental to the balance between states rights and responsibilities and national rights and responsibilities.

Otherwise, low population states such as...well, flyover country, would have very little to no say in policies that have dramatic effects on their state and their population.

Yes, I live in a low population state. I'm fine with not being the center of the universe but I'm not fine with a bunch of people who have zero idea what my state and my region is about, what our wishes, hopes, dreams and goals, what our needs and wants are and how they differ--in some ways, quite dramatically, from the needs/wants/wishes/hopes, dreams/goals of more populous states. I don't want my state or other rural states to be treated as colonies or third world countries and exploited for whatever the more populous areas want and ignored otherwise.

 

[Trausti]

My guy lost a couple of times to the electoral college. But I'm in favor of keeping it. It gives some balance to the natural and obvious tensions between heavily populated, more urban states VS the less populated, more rural states. I see that balance as fundamental to the balance between states rights and responsibilities and national rights and responsibilities.

Otherwise, low population states such as...well, flyover country, would have very little to no say in policies that have dramatic effects on their state and their population.

Yes, I live in a low population state. I'm fine with not being the center of the universe but I'm not fine with a bunch of people who have zero idea what my state and my region is about, what our wishes, hopes, dreams and goals, what our needs and wants are and how they differ--in some ways, quite dramatically, from the needs/wants/wishes/hopes, dreams/goals of more populous states. I don't want my state or other rural states to be treated as colonies or third world countries and exploited for whatever the more populous areas want and ignored otherwise.

It's almost like it's the United States.

 

[lpetrich]

Seems rather Panglossian. Why not be honest about it and give everybody's vote a density weighting? Thus, people in low-density areas would have higher vote weights than those in high-density areas.

 

[Opoponax]

This strikes me as wanting to change the rules of the game because "my guy" didn't win (i.e. Al Gore in 2000, Hillary in 2016). Would Democrats still be wanting to eliminate the electoral college, if things were reversed and their candidates won the electoral college vote, but lost the popular vote in 2000 and 2016? My spidey sense says no. We'd be hearing about how great and necessary the electoral college is.

I think the consequences of an unpopularly elected POTUS speak for themselves.

9/11, Iraq, Great Recession, and all the numerous scandals that occurred under Bush/Cheney.
Scandal is the norm under Trump, and half the nation hates the other half.

But don't be bothered with factual things. You seem quite comfortable inventing a reality-free fantasy where everyone acts like you'd like them to.

In 2004, there was a recount in Ohio - which Bush carried. Had the recount gone to Kerry, he would have won the electoral college but lost the national popular vote. Oddly, no one seemed concerned about that possible outcome at the time.

What is this thing with you guys going on about things that didn't happen?

 

[Opoponax]

My guy lost a couple of times to the electoral college. But I'm in favor of keeping it. It gives some balance to the natural and obvious tensions between heavily populated, more urban states VS the less populated, more rural states. I see that balance as fundamental to the balance between states rights and responsibilities and national rights and responsibilities.

Otherwise, low population states such as...well, flyover country, would have very little to no say in policies that have dramatic effects on their state and their population.

Yes, I live in a low population state. I'm fine with not being the center of the universe but I'm not fine with a bunch of people who have zero idea what my state and my region is about, what our wishes, hopes, dreams and goals, what our needs and wants are and how they differ--in some ways, quite dramatically, from the needs/wants/wishes/hopes, dreams/goals of more populous states. I don't want my state or other rural states to be treated as colonies or third world countries and exploited for whatever the more populous areas want and ignored otherwise.

A vote in Wyoming carries three times the weight my vote in California does. In California we have nearly 40,000,000 people and two senators. Wyoming has 580,000 people and two senators. Throw in North Dakota and South Dakota and you get 6 senators for a little over two million people. That gives those people 3 times the power in the Senate as 40,000,000 others.

Next, the argument that we have many more people in the House means that it all balances out is bullshit. Our voting power and representation is greatly diminished 2/3 of the time.

The electoral college is a farce that allowed Bush/Cheney to get into office and now Trump. A majority of Americans are progressive minded (look at the overall vote tallies), yet we're hampered and dragged down by these fucking MAGA retards and disproportionately powerful religious halfwits. Meanwhile, states like California and New York are forced to give an excess of their tax dollars to the fed in order to prop up these broken red states.

When we vote for a President, it makes that person the President of all Americans. Thus, the one person, one vote standard should apply.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

In 2004, there was a recount in Ohio - which Bush carried. Had the recount gone to Kerry, he would have won the electoral college but lost the national popular vote. Oddly, no one seemed concerned about that possible outcome at the time.

What is this thing with you guys going on about things that didn't happen?

Also the recount in Ohio wasn't really a recount.

 

[Toni]

My guy lost a couple of times to the electoral college. But I'm in favor of keeping it. It gives some balance to the natural and obvious tensions between heavily populated, more urban states VS the less populated, more rural states. I see that balance as fundamental to the balance between states rights and responsibilities and national rights and responsibilities.

Otherwise, low population states such as...well, flyover country, would have very little to no say in policies that have dramatic effects on their state and their population.

Yes, I live in a low population state. I'm fine with not being the center of the universe but I'm not fine with a bunch of people who have zero idea what my state and my region is about, what our wishes, hopes, dreams and goals, what our needs and wants are and how they differ--in some ways, quite dramatically, from the needs/wants/wishes/hopes, dreams/goals of more populous states. I don't want my state or other rural states to be treated as colonies or third world countries and exploited for whatever the more populous areas want and ignored otherwise.

A vote in Wyoming carries three times the weight my vote in California does. In California we have nearly 40,000,000 people and two senators. Wyoming has 580,000 people and two senators. Throw in North Dakota and South Dakota and you get 6 senators for a little over two million people. That gives those people 3 times the power in the Senate as 40,000,000 others.

Next, the argument that we have many more people in the House means that it all balances out is bullshit. Our voting power and representation is greatly diminished 2/3 of the time.

The electoral college is a farce that allowed Bush/Cheney to get into office and now Trump. A majority of Americans are progressive minded (look at the overall vote tallies), yet we're hampered and dragged down by these fucking MAGA retards and disproportionately powerful religious halfwits. Meanwhile, states like California and New York are forced to give an excess of their tax dollars to the fed in order to prop up these broken red states.

When we vote for a President, it makes that person the President of all Americans. Thus, the one person, one vote standard should apply.

In a presidential election, California has 55 electoral votes; Wyoming has 3. California has more than 18 times the influence on the presidential elections that Wyoming does. More, actually. How much campaigning does anyone ever do in Wyoming? Isn’t 18 times the influence enough? Why does California merit 70 times the influence? More given the attention that Californis gets in ....everything.

 

[laughing dog]

My guy lost a couple of times to the electoral college. But I'm in favor of keeping it. It gives some balance to the natural and obvious tensions between heavily populated, more urban states VS the less populated, more rural states. I see that balance as fundamental to the balance between states rights and responsibilities and national rights and responsibilities.

Otherwise, low population states such as...well, flyover country, would have very little to no say in policies that have dramatic effects on their state and their population.

Yes, I live in a low population state. I'm fine with not being the center of the universe but I'm not fine with a bunch of people who have zero idea what my state and my region is about, what our wishes, hopes, dreams and goals, what our needs and wants are and how they differ--in some ways, quite dramatically, from the needs/wants/wishes/hopes, dreams/goals of more populous states. I don't want my state or other rural states to be treated as colonies or third world countries and exploited for whatever the more populous areas want and ignored otherwise.

A vote in Wyoming carries three times the weight my vote in California does. In California we have nearly 40,000,000 people and two senators. Wyoming has 580,000 people and two senators. Throw in North Dakota and South Dakota and you get 6 senators for a little over two million people. That gives those people 3 times the power in the Senate as 40,000,000 others.

Which was the point of the Senate.

Next, the argument that we have many more people in the House means that it all balances out is bullshit. Our voting power and representation is greatly diminished 2/3 of the time.

That is untrue. Since your state has the same number of electors as it does representatives in Congress, your voting power is diminished 1/3 of the time but it is magnified 2/3 of the time.

 

[lpetrich]

[
In a presidential election, California has 55 electoral votes; Wyoming has 3. California has more than 18 times the influence on the presidential elections that Wyoming does. More, actually. How much campaigning does anyone ever do in Wyoming? Isn’t 18 times the influence enough? Why does California merit 70 times the influence? More given the attention that Californis gets in ....everything.

I have lived in California, and it isn't some sort of "Borg" state.

I calculated the effect of the disproportion, and it means that one can get over 50% of the electoral vote with only 46% of the population, the population of DC and the 40 lowest-population states. I will concede that this is not as bad as the Senate, where the 25 lowest-population states have only 16% of the population.

The EC's disproportion would not be a big problem if every state awarded its electors proportionally. But they don't, and that makes the EC much worse. All but two states do winner-take-all, and the remaining two, Maine and Nebraska, do two winner-take-all electors and one elector for the winner of each Congressional district.

Winner-take-all means that Republicans in California and Democrats in Texas both get disregarded. It also makes Presidential campaigns concentrate on "swing states", states that are about half-half each party, disregarding states that are reliably one party or the other.

The Maine-Nebraska solution does move toward proportionality, but it has problems of its own, like vulnerability to Congressional-district gerrymandering. I recall someone calculating that if every state had used that system back in 2012, then Mitt Romney would have won instead of Barack Obama.

 

[Opoponax]

My guy lost a couple of times to the electoral college. But I'm in favor of keeping it. It gives some balance to the natural and obvious tensions between heavily populated, more urban states VS the less populated, more rural states. I see that balance as fundamental to the balance between states rights and responsibilities and national rights and responsibilities.

Otherwise, low population states such as...well, flyover country, would have very little to no say in policies that have dramatic effects on their state and their population.

Yes, I live in a low population state. I'm fine with not being the center of the universe but I'm not fine with a bunch of people who have zero idea what my state and my region is about, what our wishes, hopes, dreams and goals, what our needs and wants are and how they differ--in some ways, quite dramatically, from the needs/wants/wishes/hopes, dreams/goals of more populous states. I don't want my state or other rural states to be treated as colonies or third world countries and exploited for whatever the more populous areas want and ignored otherwise.

A vote in Wyoming carries three times the weight my vote in California does. In California we have nearly 40,000,000 people and two senators. Wyoming has 580,000 people and two senators. Throw in North Dakota and South Dakota and you get 6 senators for a little over two million people. That gives those people 3 times the power in the Senate as 40,000,000 others.

Next, the argument that we have many more people in the House means that it all balances out is bullshit. Our voting power and representation is greatly diminished 2/3 of the time.

The electoral college is a farce that allowed Bush/Cheney to get into office and now Trump. A majority of Americans are progressive minded (look at the overall vote tallies), yet we're hampered and dragged down by these fucking MAGA retards and disproportionately powerful religious halfwits. Meanwhile, states like California and New York are forced to give an excess of their tax dollars to the fed in order to prop up these broken red states.

When we vote for a President, it makes that person the President of all Americans. Thus, the one person, one vote standard should apply.

In a presidential election, California has 55 electoral votes; Wyoming has 3. California has more than 18 times the influence on the presidential elections that Wyoming does. More, actually. How much campaigning does anyone ever do in Wyoming? Isn’t 18 times the influence enough? Why does California merit 70 times the influence? More given the attention that Californis gets in ....everything.

Maybe because California is the biggest state economy? It is the 5th largest economy in the world by itself. The fact is that Californians are Americans too. Our votes should count the same as everyone else's, yet we're marginalized and penalized in order to provide some slave state era notion of fairness to small states. If California's votes counted the same as Wyomings, we'd get 165 electoral votes. But what would be easier is if Wyoming got just 1. Even easier is a simple popular vote in POTUS elections.

"But then Democrats would always win elections!" My answer to that is tough shit. Between gerrymandering and the electoral college, as well as the GOP having its own TV news outlet, what Americans want is being skewed hard to the right, and one need look no farther than the Bush/Cheney administration and now Trump to see the damage that's been done.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

It’s more than time for it to go. There is no such thing as a “Californian” or a “Texan” or any of that made up horseshit, at least not in regard to a nataional (federal) election. There are only Americans at that level and that’s what should determine the Presidency.

That my vote should count for 20,000 of your votes, just because I live five feet away from you is insane.

We all know the real reason for the EC (slavery), which is no longer applicable. The secondary reason (to prevent exactly what we currently have in the WH) has been effectively castrated by the States in an arguably non-constitutional (or, perhaps, extra-constitutional) manner, which, ironically, ALSO affirms the notion that the popular vote should determine the outcome (the only difference being the artificial and illogical limitation of state borders).

It is literally a vestigial arm that should be removed. It won’t because it benefits Republicans. It is effectively gerrymandering, just on a national scale.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I don't know the real reason was slavery. Many people who have studied the matter in great depth don't know that.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I don't know the real reason was slavery.

It was.

Many people who have studied the matter in great depth don't know that.

They’re wrong.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I don't know the real reason was slavery.

It was.

Many people who have studied the matter in great depth don't know that.

They’re wrong.

IIRC, the electoral college was put in place as a check against the masses in general. The only way slaves factored into it was the 2/3rds of a person thing for the sake of allocating numbers.

The point of it was that if the ignorant masses went ahead and did something stupid, like electing a Trump-like individual as President, the elites would be able to step in and say "No ... you're not doing that ... that would be too idiotic to allow".

Then the one fucking time that happened, they went and failed to do their job. Basically, the electoral college is like an expensive fire suppression system which you realize doesn't actually work after the building catches fire.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

From Time:

Enter the 12th Amendment, which allowed each party to designate one candidate for president and a separate candidate for vice president. The amendment’s modifications of the electoral process transformed the Framers’ framework, enabling future presidential elections to be openly populist and partisan affairs featuring two competing tickets. It is the 12th Amendment’s Electoral College system, not the Philadelphia Framers’, that remains in place today. If the general citizenry’s lack of knowledge had been the real reason for the Electoral College, this problem was largely solved by 1800. So why wasn’t the entire Electoral College contraption scrapped at that point?

Standard civics-class accounts of the Electoral College rarely mention the real demon dooming direct national election in 1787 and 1803: slavery.

At the Philadelphia convention, the visionary Pennsylvanian James Wilson proposed direct national election of the president. But the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a system would prove unacceptable to the South: “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.” In other words, in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.

Virginia emerged as the big winner—the California of the Founding era—with 12 out of a total of 91 electoral votes allocated by the Philadelphia Constitution, more than a quarter of the 46 needed to win an election in the first round. After the 1800 census, Wilson’s free state of Pennsylvania had 10% more free persons than Virginia, but got 20% fewer electoral votes. Perversely, the more slaves Virginia (or any other slave state) bought or bred, the more electoral votes it would receive. Were a slave state to free any blacks who then moved North, the state could actually lose electoral votes.

If the system’s pro-slavery tilt was not overwhelmingly obvious when the Constitution was ratified, it quickly became so. For 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency.

Southerner Thomas Jefferson, for example, won the election of 1800-01 against Northerner John Adams in a race where the slavery-skew of the electoral college was the decisive margin of victory: without the extra electoral college votes generated by slavery, the mostly southern states that supported Jefferson would not have sufficed to give him a majority. As pointed observers remarked at the time, Thomas Jefferson metaphorically rode into the executive mansion on the backs of slaves.

The 1796 contest between Adams and Jefferson had featured an even sharper division between northern states and southern states. Thus, at the time the Twelfth Amendment tinkered with the Electoral College system rather than tossing it, the system’s pro-slavery bias was hardly a secret. Indeed, in the floor debate over the amendment in late 1803, Massachusetts Congressman Samuel Thatcher complained that “The representation of slaves adds thirteen members to this House in the present Congress, and eighteen Electors of President and Vice President at the next election.” But Thatcher’s complaint went unredressed. Once again, the North caved to the South by refusing to insist on direct national election.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

From Time:

Enter the 12th Amendment, which allowed each party to designate one candidate for president and a separate candidate for vice president. The amendment’s modifications of the electoral process transformed the Framers’ framework, enabling future presidential elections to be openly populist and partisan affairs featuring two competing tickets. It is the 12th Amendment’s Electoral College system, not the Philadelphia Framers’, that remains in place today. If the general citizenry’s lack of knowledge had been the real reason for the Electoral College, this problem was largely solved by 1800. So why wasn’t the entire Electoral College contraption scrapped at that point?

Standard civics-class accounts of the Electoral College rarely mention the real demon dooming direct national election in 1787 and 1803: slavery.

At the Philadelphia convention, the visionary Pennsylvanian James Wilson proposed direct national election of the president. But the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a system would prove unacceptable to the South: “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.” In other words, in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.

Virginia emerged as the big winner—the California of the Founding era—with 12 out of a total of 91 electoral votes allocated by the Philadelphia Constitution, more than a quarter of the 46 needed to win an election in the first round. After the 1800 census, Wilson’s free state of Pennsylvania had 10% more free persons than Virginia, but got 20% fewer electoral votes. Perversely, the more slaves Virginia (or any other slave state) bought or bred, the more electoral votes it would receive. Were a slave state to free any blacks who then moved North, the state could actually lose electoral votes.

If the system’s pro-slavery tilt was not overwhelmingly obvious when the Constitution was ratified, it quickly became so. For 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency.

Right, that's what I said. The slaves factored into it in terms of allocating numbers. Then I was talking about the role of the electors themselves.

 

[dismal]

In a presidential election, California has 55 electoral votes; Wyoming has 3. California has more than 18 times the influence on the presidential elections that Wyoming does. More, actually. How much campaigning does anyone ever do in Wyoming? Isn’t 18 times the influence enough? Why does California merit 70 times the influence? More given the attention that Californis gets in ....everything.

Maybe because California is the biggest state economy? It is the 5th largest economy in the world by itself. The fact is that Californians are Americans too. Our votes should count the same as everyone else's, yet we're marginalized and penalized in order to provide some slave state era notion of fairness to small states. If California's votes counted the same as Wyomings, we'd get 165 electoral votes. But what would be easier is if Wyoming got just 1. Even easier is a simple popular vote in POTUS elections.

"But then Democrats would always win elections!" My answer to that is tough shit. Between gerrymandering and the electoral college, as well as the GOP having its own TV news outlet, what Americans want is being skewed hard to the right, and one need look no farther than the Bush/Cheney administration and now Trump to see the damage that's been done.

Wow, sounds like the people of California should stop trying to cram things down everyone in the country's throat and just solve their own problems.

 

[lpetrich]

We all know the real reason for the EC (slavery), which is no longer applicable.

Please explain.

Let us consider four possible electorates for the President:

1. Ordinary people (the popular vote)
2. An electoral college
3. Congress
4. State governors

Of these four possibilities, (2), (3), and (4) would give plenty of representation to slave states, and only (1) would cause them trouble, because of much of those states' populations being slaves. For representing small states, (2) and (3) are roughly equivalent, and (4) would be very good for them, much like the Senate is.

So we have to go back to the reasons that Alexander Hamilton advocated the EC in Federalist Paper #68: The Avalon Project : Federalist No 68

• The electors can be people with broad experience and expertise, people who would have a good idea of who would be a good President
• The electors would be less vulnerable to demagoguery
• The electors would be less vulnerable to foreign meddling

The emergence of political parties made the EC fail (1), and with the election of Donald Trump, it has arguably failed (2) and (3).

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

We all know the real reason for the EC (slavery), which is no longer applicable.

Please explain.

See my previous post.

 

[lpetrich]

After Stinging Presidential Loss, Popular Vote Movement Gains Momentum In States : NPR

Colorado appears poised to join as the 12th state. The state legislature passed the bill Thursday, and Gov. Jared Polis is expected to sign it. In New Mexico, the legislation is awaiting consideration in the state Senate after the House approved it earlier this month.

If the bills pass, it would show the plan has momentum outside of the Coastal U.S., especially in places where Democrats have full control of state government.

But they have done so with no support from Republican politicians. One of them in Colorado called the bill the "We Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Hate Donald Trump Act of 2019." Another one complained that it would make rural areas irrelevant.

That partisan divide isn't limited to Colorado. Across the country, pollsters have seen a steep drop in Republican support for a popular vote for president since 2016. National Popular Vote's Koza said it has been much harder to get Republicans to support his plan in recent years.

While those opinions could change over time, it signals the compact is unlikely to succeed in the short-term. Only Democratic-leaning states have joined so far. Swing states, like Ohio and Florida, have the least reason to sign on, which means it likely needs support from deep red states.

Currently, (CA, CT, DC, HI, IL, MA, MD, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA have signed on, with 172 electoral votes out of the necessary 270, leaving 98 EV's to go. CO would add 9 and NM 5, giving 14, reducing the gap to 84 EV's.

I will estimate how many more with the help of 38 States Voted for Same Party in Last Five Presidential Elections | National Popular Vote:

• D=5 R=0: St=16 EV=196: CA CT DE DC HI IL MA ME MD MN NJ NY OR RI VT WA
• D=4 R=1: St=5 EV=55: MI NH NM PA WI
• D=3 R=2: St=4 EV=34: VA CO NV IA
• D=2 R=3: St=2 EV=47: FL OH
• D=1 R=4: St=2 EV=26: IN NC
• D=0 R=5: St=22 EV=180: AL AK AR AZ GA ID KS KY LA MO MS MT NE ND OK SC SD TN TX UT WY WV

The remaining all-Dem states are DE ME MN OR, and they have 24 EV's, reducing the gap further to 60 EV's.

The three usually Dem states that voted for Trump are MI PA WI, and they have 46 EV's, reducing the gap to 14 EV's.

Getting the remaining Democratic-leaning states, VA and NV, gives 19 EV's, ratifying the NPV with 5 extra EV's.