http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/9/1594792/-The-surpris...
The electoral college was envisioned the same way, the founding fathers didn't want the uneducated masses electing the president directly, so they set up this arcane system where the governor of each state gets to appoint a certain number of electoral college voters, then they vote for president. They can generally vote how they please, to the point that a few have misspelled candidates names and not been counted as having voted for any candidate.
What this system ends up creating is an area where in many states, your individual vote literally does not matter since a vote in California is worth nearly nothing compared to a vote in Florida or Michigan. Also, the US media loves to dogpile on this and erroneously call states and guess at electoral college votes months ahead of when they'll vote. Comparatively, where the United States has set up democracies we do not do this, such as Iraq.
As to change, that is not going to happen short of people going out and taking action to fight for the future. Us americans are very depoliticized and non-participatory in our political parties, both major parties essentially lay dormant till national elections come around.
We need to get out in the streets and fight for the future we want to see, Martin Luther King didn't sit back at home and wait for a better America, nor did the readers of Silent Spring. Change in America can be had, but it takes activism, which most Americans think of as a dirty, unfamiliar thing with serious risks (due to how our media portrays it). We need to mobilize & empower Americans to fight for a better future.
One thing which is usually not discussed is the advantages of some systems where the most voted candidate or party don't win the election like FPTP in the UK.
Don't get too optimistic about it going places, though. We've got three types of states these days: red states, swing states, and blue states. Let's look at incentives:
Blue states are the only ones to go for NPVIC so far, and it's easy to see the incentive: Blue states have twice in the last 20 years seen their candidate get more votes than the other and lose anyway. So far, blue states have contributed 165 electoral votes to the effort, and could maybe contribute another 17 or so (CT, OR, DE).
Swing states are not incentivized to go for NPVIC. Presidential campaigns bring lots of money to swing states. Swing states have contributed 0 EVs so far, and according to Wikipedia three such states are considering it: AZ, PA, MI. I expect each of these to fail. It would be big news if any succeeded.
Red states: They've seen their preferred candidate win while getting outvoted twice in the last 20 years. They currently see the NPVIC as Democrats asking for a rule-change to make it easier for them to win. I could see red states start to go for this if a Republican loses while getting more votes. Until that happens, the red-state contribution to the NPVIC will at or near 0 EV.
For the NPVIC not every state has to join it, it comes active when the states that joined the NPVIC have a majority of the electors. Then the electors do not vote according to who won their state, but to who won overall. So if the democratic states and enough swing states all sign the NPVIC to get to 270 electors, they changed the rules of the game.
There is an realistic chance for it to succeed. I wouldn't give it 84% ;) But it's not impossible.
If you view yourself as a citizen of your state, then you want to avoid the problem of largely-populated states overruling everyone else. The Constitution split the House and Senate to avoid New York setting law for the whole country.
There are some bigger problems: States have a winner-take-all system to magnify their impact in the election. This encourages politicians to spend all their time on a few key battleground states.
I wouldn't mind seeing a Constitutional amendment that says, "The people voting for a member of the House also vote for a member of the electoral college, who is assigned to the same district". Then you'd see a few Republicans win in California, and a few Democrats win in Texas. And it'd be easier for 3rd-party candidates to get some visibility. There would still be a statewide vote for the electoral college members tied to the Senate.
There was also an amendment proposed along with the Bill of Rights related to the number of representatives. It was never passed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Am...
Anti-Federalists, who opposed the Constitution's ratification, noted that there was nothing in the document to guarantee that the number of seats in the House would continue to represent small constituencies as the general population of the states grew. They feared that over time, if the size remained relatively small and the districts became more expansive, that only well-known individuals with reputations spanning wide geographic areas could secure election. It was also feared that those in Congress would, as a result, have an insufficient sense of sympathy with and connectedness to ordinary people in their district.
That sounds like a tragedy-of-the-commons type of situation.
Anyway, so it seems that your vote means more depending on which state you happen to live in. Suppose we wish to preserve that property, why not simply weigh all votes in each state by the number of representatives that that state would have today, add everything together, and on those numbers decide which candidate becomes president?
Edit: For example, we have states A and B. State A has 3 representatives and 100 inhabitants, and state B has 2 representatives and 50 inhabitants. We have candidates X and Y. In state A, X receives 60 votes, and Y receives 40 votes. In state B, X receives 20 votes, and Y receives 30 votes. Now we calculate the winner:
X receives (3 * 60) + (2 * 20) = 220 "votes"
Y receives (3 * 40) + (2 * 30) = 200 "votes"
X wins.
As an example, Maine just passed Ranked Voting, as did Benton County, Oregon. That kind of incremental change would be impossible if you moved it up to the federal level.
http://www.fairvote.org/maine_voters_adopt_ranked_choice_vot...
As it stands right now, it is impossible for one person to reasonably represent the views of 1M people.
Edit: also Eectoral votes are tied to the number of representatives + senators + DC, so there could be an effect there too.
Instead of removing it, are there ways we can improve it?
The election would reduce to 8-10 urban areas, which also makes cheating a lot easier.
While we're at it, why don't we remove the other part of the great compromise that gave each state 2 Senators (#electors = #of House of Representative Members + 2)
And that's one reason it'll never happen, you won't get enough state legislatures to vote their states out of relevance.
The US has a total of 3,143 counties or equivalents per Wikipedia, obviously divided between 50 states and D.C., each a separate political domain, both counties and states. Corrupting enough of those under the Electoral College's constraints is a lot harder.
In Kansas, we have a system to prevent ballot stuffing. You must show state or federal issued ID. Your name must be in the pollbook for the location and pre-registered before election day.
They have two areas: The first, you show your ID and they check your entry in the location's pollbook. The fact that you showed up to vote along with the ID you presented is recorded electronically statewide and is public information instantly.
They then print an anonymous "voting ticket" and you're taking to a separate area or room. A smart card is exchanged for your voting ticket is put into an air-gapped system and you cast your ballot. Your smart card is removed and tallied on a third air-gapped system. When the poll closes, the tally machine is handed over to the county.
This system makes it nearly impossible to stuff the box, because the number of votes cast at a location cannot exceed the number of IDs presented at the checkin location. It doesn't protect from changing votes, which would require a much more sophisticated attack on the machines themselves.
It's not perfect, but it is fairly good at stopping unsophisticated opportunistic attackers. I would feel much better if all of the USA adopted such a protocol if we go to a popular vote, but that's unlikely to happen, so I can't say I'm comfortable moving away from the electoral college either.
I'm a lot happier with paper ballots + electronic tabulation than I am with electronic ballots, what do you think those parts of the process you describe are adding?
However, state and Federal issued IDs have a subsidiary feature, perhaps even more important that on the spot election verification now that I think about it, in that they expire, and I'm sure some of them also have revocation measures after the ID holder dies. This is much more true for people moving.
Agreed on the paper ballot + electronic counting, and very glad my county in neighboring Missouri uses that system, I never trusted the totally electronic or electromechanical systems I used in Arlington, VA or Brookline, MA
The same action will move popular vote by only 0.06%, which means there's a much smaller chance of it changing the outcome of the election. As a result it would also discourage state/local governments from trying something funny (not enough incentives).
Really??? That's not handled at the county level? It sure is in Missouri (http://www.moga.mo.gov/mostatutes/chaptersIndex/ChaptIndex11...), and I've never heard of it being done at the state level before---that would seem to be prima facie evidence of a discriminatory voting system---but maybe my education in this is lacking.
Hmmm, seems to be the same for Florida: http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Displ...
And anyway, speaking as someone who lives in a true 100% Red State part of Missouri (Jasper County in the extreme SW), that just changes which election matters, the primaries are were the action is. E.g. this year every county position I could vote for, plus my state house rep, was unopposed a couple of days ago. But that was most certainly not true in our August state primary!
Replacing one arbitrary non-representative sample with an arbitrary more-representative sample is not necessarily bad.
Which brings me back to my original point: How can we improve it?
Hopefully more states will come on board after this election.
I like to add there is still 4 million votes that are being counted. Projection even from CNN is that Trump wins the popular vote.
[0] https://mishgea.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/geographic-lands.... [1] http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-10/trumps-geographic-l....
One sq mile, one vote!
It's getting closer.
The election was won according to the previously set rules. That's why no one paid any attention to California. If the rule was to win the popular vote, you would see a lot different campaign with both the candidates paying much more attention to states like California.
Unfair = !Fair