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

[fromderinside]

My understanding is that each representative need be representative of at least 30k citizens. My understanding of statistics is that the least number of voters deviating from that minimum is the most equitable way voters can be distributed. Ergo, California having 39,000,000 citizens/30000 representatives. That would be about 33 times the number of million citizens or 1300 representatives or electoral votes. Believe me that makes up for any gains by small states such as Wyoming 500k/30000 = about 17 representatives in a hurry. Face it. 59/2 is a lot better for small states than is 1300/17.

Such changes can be legislated in congress. For background read How can we change the the size of the house of representaives https://www.fairvote.org/how_we_can_change_the_size_of_the_house_of_representatives

Given most large cities are democratic large electoral states are the result reducing the advantage of small states electorally.

Of course we'd need to put up with about 13,000 representatives overall. However such would mean that each citizen would be one of only 30000 citizens for each representative a lot better for the citizen IMHO.

Another thought. Given the huge increase in seats corporations would need much more selective how much and to whom they give support.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

That sounds awfully like something I suggested on Page 1.

 

[fromderinside]

I have a better and easier workaround which doesn't require a constitutional amendment and doesn't require unenforceable agreements.

Increase the number of representatives in the House of Representatives. Our current number is not a magic number and is not mandated by the constitution. It can be changed. The more reps, the flatter the representation, the flatter the number of people per elector.

Except the Constitution requires 30000 citizens at least per representative so it does play a part which I illustrated in repeating your remedy.

Happy now?

 

[lpetrich]

National Popular Vote -- the Nevada Assembly has now passed it again, and has sent it on to the Nevada Senate.

At the rate it is going, I doubt that the NPV will reach its threshold in time for the 2020 election, though it may do so for 2024.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I have a better and easier workaround which doesn't require a constitutional amendment and doesn't require unenforceable agreements.

Increase the number of representatives in the House of Representatives. Our current number is not a magic number and is not mandated by the constitution. It can be changed. The more reps, the flatter the representation, the flatter the number of people per elector.

Except the Constitution requires 30000 citizens at least per representative so it does play a part which I illustrated in repeating your remedy.

Happy now?

Nothing in my suggestion indicated a desire to violate the constitutional limit. My suggestion covers a range that includes adding just a few people on one end of the spectrum to hitting the constitutional limit on the other end.

 

[fromderinside]

I have a better and easier workaround which doesn't require a constitutional amendment and doesn't require unenforceable agreements.

Increase the number of representatives in the House of Representatives. Our current number is not a magic number and is not mandated by the constitution. It can be changed. The more reps, the flatter the representation, the flatter the number of people per elector.

Except the Constitution requires 30000 citizens at least per representative so it does play a part which I illustrated in repeating your remedy.

Happy now?

Nothing in my suggestion indicated a desire to violate the constitutional limit. My suggestion covers a range that includes adding just a few people on one end of the spectrum to hitting the constitutional limit on the other end.

Implicity your suggestion does suggest solutions other than accepting the constitutional limit. Besides all I asked was "Happy now?"

 

[bilby]

Nothing in my suggestion indicated a desire to violate the constitutional limit. My suggestion covers a range that includes adding just a few people on one end of the spectrum to hitting the constitutional limit on the other end.

Implicity your suggestion does suggest solutions other than accepting the constitutional limit. Besides all I asked was "Happy now?"

If you two have to agree with each other, could you at least try to do so in a civil fashion?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

A thought about the national vote idea.

Even though California is a blue state, is there any way a Republican could achieve a national majority without the 1/3 of California voters who vote Republican?
Even though Texas is a red state, is there any way a Democrat could achieve a national majority without the 1/3 of Texas voters who vote Democrat?

How long until the states figure that out and then devise ways of keeping major party candidates off the ballot?

 

[Angra Mainyu]

A thought about the national vote idea.

Even though California is a blue state, is there any way a Republican could achieve a national majority without the 1/3 of California voters who vote Republican?
Even though Texas is a red state, is there any way a Democrat could achieve a national majority without the 1/3 of Texas voters who vote Democrat?

How long until the states figure that out and then devise ways of keeping major party candidates off the ballot?

How would they do that?
If they did, sure, there is a way a Democrat could achieve a national majority (if by that you do not mean over 50% of the vote) without the 1/3 of Texas voters who vote Democrat: just take away the 1/3 of California voters who vote Republican (in the long run, just wait. Demographics seem to favor Democrats, even in Texas).

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Ballot access laws are an interesting thing, just ask anyone from a 3rd party.

Right now it costs absolutely nothing to keep "the other party" on the ballot, it won't sway the outcome. It benefits in that it upholds the two party system. In 2008, both major parties forgot to file on time in Texas. In the only thing he ever did that I approve of, Barr filed to keep them both off the Texas ballot. The Secretary of State of Texas "found" the filings (with the ink still wet) and made sure they were on the ballot. In 2004, to score image points, the Republicans put their convention as close to 9/11 as possible, and as such eventually missed the filing deadlines in some states that Bush carried. Had the law been followed, Kerry would have carried those states and won the 2004 election. Can you imagine such leeway being given to a 3rd party? I can't.

So all you need is to come up with some technical reason they didn't qualify and *poof* they are off the ballot. Whichever one moves first wins that round. Will it be California or Texas?

And quit believing your own hype about demographic shift. Save it for the rubes.

 

[lpetrich]

Republicans Planned to Reject Election Results in 2000 Too datelined October 21 2016.

Donald Trump is being pilloried for refusing to say that he will accept the results of the election on November 8.

However, this is not new behavior for the GOP. While it’s almost forgotten now, the George W. Bush campaign was planning to challenge the results of the 2000 vote if he lost the electoral vote, but won the popular vote. His campaign hoped to spark a national movement to pressure members of the Electoral College in states where the popular vote went for Al Gore to ignore that and instead vote in line with the national popular vote — thus making Bush president.

In the end, the reverse happened. Bush won the Electoral College vote while losing the popular vote.

That is how close the 2000 Presidential election was.

Gore was even preemptively criticized for winning under these circumstances. It “would be an outrage” said Rep. Ray LaHood, R.-Ill. NBC’s Chris Matthews said that “knowing him as we do, [Gore] may have no problem taking the presidential oath after losing the popular vote to George W. Bush.” (Matthews lost interest in this issue when the opposite occurred. He later said that he himself had voted for Bush in 2000.)

BUSH SET TO FIGHT AN ELECTORAL COLLEGE LOSS - New York Daily News

"The one thing we don't do is roll over," says a Bush aide. "We fight."

How? The core of the emerging Bush strategy assumes a popular uprising, stoked by the Bushies themselves, of course. In league with the campaign - which is preparing talking points about the Electoral College's essential unfairness - a massive talk-radio operation would be encouraged. "We'd have ads, too," says a Bush aide, "and I think you can count on the media to fuel the thing big-time. Even papers that supported Gore might turn against him because the will of the people will have been thwarted."

Local business leaders will be urged to lobby their customers, the clergy will be asked to speak up for the popular will and Team Bush will enlist as many Democrats as possible to scream as loud as they can. "You think 'Democrats for Democracy' would be a catchy term for them?" asks a Bush adviser.

But when Bush II won the electoral vote, Gore conceded: “Despite the fact that Joe Lieberman and I won the popular vote, under our Constitution it is the winner of the Electoral College who will be the next president. Our Constitution is the whole foundation of our freedom and it must be followed faithfully.”

In a book published in 2001, CNN commentator Jeff Greenfield described something quite similar to the original Daily News report. “At least two conservative commentators,” wrote Greenfield, “were specifically briefed by the Bush campaign shortly before taking to the airwaves about the line of attack to be taken in the event that Bush wound up losing the electoral count despite a popular vote lead.”

Greenfield also quoted Kenneth Duberstein, one-time chief of staff for Ronald Reagan, as saying that the illegitimacy of a Gore presidency based only on an Electoral College victory “was part of the talking points” for GOP surrogates.

For what it’s worth, Karl Rove later denied that the Bush campaign had done anything like this.

 

[lpetrich]

On the electoral college, Trump dramatically changes direction | MSNBC

Around the time of Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012, which the incumbent president won with relative ease, one of his high-profile hecklers denounced the system that helped keep the Democrat in office. “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy,” Donald Trump declared on Nov. 6, 2012.

At the time, Trump thought that Obama had won a second term based on electoral votes, but would end up losing the popular vote. (Obama actually topped 51% of the popular vote, though that wasn’t clear in the immediate aftermath of the election.) It was against this backdrop that Trump published a series of tweets about the need for a “revolution” to prevent the “disgusting injustice” of having an American president who only won thanks to the electoral college.

Trump added at the time that the electoral college is “phoney.” (I assume he meant “phony,” and was not trying to describing something related to phones.)

Donald J. Trump on Twitter: "....just the large States - the Cities would end up running the Country. Smaller States & the entire Midwest would end up losing all power - & we can’t let that happen. I used to like the idea of the Popular Vote, but now realize the Electoral College is far better for the U.S.A."
Helen Kennedy on Twitter: "Remember these tweets from 2012 when you mistakenly believed Obama had lost the popular vote? You deleted them after you lost the popular vote, but screenshots are forever.… https://t.co/j3ZE4DltEL"

More votes equals a loss...revolution!

Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us.

We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!

The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one!

He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!

Donald Trump backs the Electoral College. He once opposed it.
Recently,
Sen. Elizabeth Warren says to 'get rid' of Electoral College
Then,
Donald J. Trump on Twitter: "The Democrats are getting very “strange.” They now want to change the voting age to 16, abolish the Electoral College, and Increase significantly the number of Supreme Court Justices. Actually, you’ve got to win it at the Ballot Box!"

He sounds like he was sodomized with a red-hot poker.

 

[lpetrich]

Now pending in ME, MN, NV, and OR -- 4 + 10 + 6 + 7 = 27 EV's -- if it passes in all of them, that means 51 EV's to go.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

You still need a few red states to join if you're ever going to reach the goal.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

You still need a few red states to join if you're ever going to reach the goal.

That's not likely to happen. Given sufficient time, though, they might turn purple, or even blue, due to demographic changes.

 

[lpetrich]

The Electoral College - Origin and History has ha excerpt from this document: Kimberling, William C. (1992). Essays in Elections The Electoral College. Washington: National Clearinghouse on Election Administration, Federal Election Commission.

In order to appreciate the reasons for the Electoral College, it is essential to understand its historical context and the problem that the Founding Fathers were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of how to elect a president in a nation that:

• was composed of thirteen large and small States jealous of their own rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government
• contained only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a thousand miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication (so that national campaigns were impractical even if they had been thought desirable)
• believed, under the influence of such British political thinkers as Henry St. John Bolingbroke, that political parties were mischievous if not downright evil, and
• felt that gentlemen should not campaign for public office (The saying was "The office should seek the man, the man should not seek the office.").

How, then, to choose a president without political parties, without national campaigns, and without upsetting the carefully designed balance between the presidency and the Congress on one hand and between the States and the federal government on the other?

Origins of the Electoral College

The Constitutional Convention considered several possible methods of selecting a president.

One idea was to have the Congress choose the president. This idea was rejected, however, because some felt that making such a choice would be too divisive an issue and leave too many hard feelings in the Congress. Others felt that such a procedure would invite unseemly political bargaining, corruption, and perhaps even interference from foreign powers. Still others felt that such an arrangement would upset the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

A second idea was to have the State legislatures select the president. This idea, too, was rejected out of fears that a president so beholden to the State legislatures might permit them to erode federal authority and thus undermine the whole idea of a federation.

A third idea was to have the president elected by a direct popular vote. Direct election was rejected not because the Framers of the Constitution doubted public intelligence but rather because they feared that without sufficient information about candidates from outside their State, people would naturally vote for a "favorite son" from their own State or region. At worst, no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to govern the whole country. At best, the choice of president would always be decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the smaller ones.

Finally, a so-called "Committee of Eleven" in the Constitutional Convention proposed an indirect election of the president through a College of Electors.

The function of the College of Electors in choosing the president can be likened to that in the Roman Catholic Church of the College of Cardinals selecting the Pope. The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each State to select the president based solely on merit and without regard to State of origin or political party.

Then the details of the EC.

 

[lpetrich]

The Movement To Skip The Electoral College Is Picking Up Steam | FiveThirtyEight - nice article on its prospects.

It's passed one house in ME, MN, and OR, and both houses in NV. So is NV next?

 

[ZiprHead]

‘We Can Never Win Another Election’

Charlie Kirk: ‘If Democrats and the Left’ Kill Electoral College, ‘We Can Never Win Another Election’

The National Popular Vote is a campaign to evade the electoral college via an interstate compact wherein partner states — via their own statewide legislation — agree to cast their electoral votes based on the national popular vote, regardless of how their own state’s citizens voted.

“Few people actually realize that Democrats and the left have done this in 15 states, already,” began Kirk. “This is called the National Popular Vote Compact — an interstate compact — where essentially states have agreed to send their electoral votes to the winner of the popular.”

“It’s kind of a way to constitutionally reverse-engineer the brilliance of the electoral college,” added Kirk, elaborating on his Breitbart News column entitled, “The Electoral College Stands Between the Constitution and the Mob.”

Kirk warned, “If Democrats and the left pull this off, forget about it. We’ll have a less than five percent chance of ever winning another election again. This is exactly what the Founding Fathers tried to prevent, which is the tyranny of the mob of the inner cities.”

Boo hoo...

The gnashing and wailing and claims of unconstitutionality in the comments is amusing.

 

[lpetrich]

The Republican position seems to be "If we get a majority of votes, then it's a mandate. If they get a majority of votes, then it's mob rule."

 

[lpetrich]

Nevada Democratic governor vetoes national popular vote bill | TheHill

"After thoughtful deliberation, I have decided to veto Assembly Bill 186," Sisolak said in a statement.

“Once effective, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact could diminish the role of smaller states like Nevada in national electoral contests and force Nevada’s electors to side with whoever wins the nationwide popular vote, rather than the candidate Nevadans choose.”
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“I recognize that many of my fellow Nevadans may disagree on this point and I appreciate the legislature’s thoughtful consideration of this important issue," he added