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Comment by fixxer | Hacker News Reader

Changing from electoral college to pop vote also means the nature of campaigning will change.

California, for example, has a huge population of Republicans and now their vote would matter. I don't think Trump did any non military focused rallies there.

I am in Illinois. I didn't vote in 2008 or 2012 because I knew my vote would have no impact. Give me a popular vote and you might have Romney... Be careful what you wish for.

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> California, for example, has a huge population of Republicans and now their vote would matter.

And at the same time votes from Democrats in California would also matter more. I'd assume a number of people who'd vote Democrat in CA don't vote because they know the Democrats won't lose anyway.

Maybe. My point isn't partisan, but more along the lines of "you don't know how this will play out."

I'm all for a popular vote, but I don't think you're going to see a swing to the left necessarily.

It would drastically reduce the voting power of several red states. Only recently (since 2000) has the EC being different than the popular vote been a problem. Both times it's gone in the republicans favour.

It would definitely be radical change though.

Kind of a small sample size, right? I guess I'm hesitant to change the political dynamic of a nation based on just that.

Why shouldn't everyone's vote count the same?

Look up. I'm for pop vote. I'm just saying to libs thinking the pop vote would have changed things... Maybe. Maybe Not.

There are other good reasons too.

The system isn't fair, voters in low pop states have more power than california.

The system emphasizes swing states above others, as the country is so split right now.

The system is worse for third party candidates (especially if a STV or ranked system was used. This would also please the Bernie or bust folk).

The system is outdated, it was meant to have a group of well informed electors make the decision about who is president. This doesn't makes sense anymore as the electors are pretty much bound to the will of the states popular vote, and people have access to more information. Plus the whole safeguard against someone unqualified idea has been tossed out the window now anyway.

Yup, agreed. As mentioned above, I'm for pop vote. But... Still a big change and the consequences are very complicated.

> The system emphasizes swing states above others

It's hard to imagine a democratic system where swing voters don't hold disproportionate power. Rusted-on supporters will support you whatever may come, and the opponents' rusted-on supporters will never support you, so as a candidate you spend more time, effort, and money appealing to the noncommittal folks in the middle...

Even excellent voting systems like Condorcet don't change this particular equation; a hardcore supporter of you just simply doesn't need as much of your attention in an electioneering frame of mind.

This all being said, that doesn't mean the current systems in the US aren't horribly misrepresentative. Gerrymandering is a particular problem there.

Minor point: Swing voters and swing states are two different beasts. In the later case you can concentrate effort in one area to gain a quantum all-or-nothing jump: generally, all the EC votes in the state. To target swing voters you need to address a much larger geographic area, and only get the incremental advantage of one vote per person.

It doesn't matter which way the partisan advantage would run (and it most likely wouldn't be to the permanent advantage of one side anyway), if it increased turnout then that would be an unalloyed Good Thing.

Wouldn't Romney in 2012 have been better if it avoided Trump 2016?

Lol. Bill Maher misses W.

Romney lost 51-47 in the popular vote.

That's not a useful fact, because both candidates would have campaigned differently if the president was chosen by popular vote rather than the electoral college. It's very unlikely that the popular vote would have been the same.

Of those that voted. I think fixxer is saying that there are alot of people that don't vote (about half of the voting population) because they are an X in a Y state so they don't think their vote will change that. But if the electoral college went poof, a lot more of the missing 50% would vote and that could change the expected value of a popular vote.

This isn't so much directed at you, but this seems a great place to note that there are races on the ballot other than president, usually your local elections will have a bigger impact on your day-to-day life than the national ones, and your vote carries orders of magnitude more weight. Pay attention down-ballot!

In my district, the margins on those were even larger than the presidential margins. I still voted, but the outcomes were all very predictable here.

Are you actually saying the difference - in number of votes - for President for your state was smaller than the difference - in number of votes - for every local judge, school board member, etc?

I mean, not impossible, but surprising. Where are you located?

The number of votes was only wider in one or two of them (statewide races). The local races were mostly uncontested (or lightly contested).

Gotcha.

Exactly. As long as we are in an electoral system, discussing the popular vote as anything more than a novelty is a waste of time.

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