I'm not in favor of the electoral college, but wouldn't its elimination merely shift this problem to politicians only visiting the most poulated states (e.g. California) anyway?
“Politicians”, no, it only effects Presidential (and Vice-Presidential) candidates. It has no direct effect on other politicians.
Would it make them more likely to visit densely populated areas (where you can influence more poeple per unit time)? Yeah, probably. Right now, they focus on “swing states”, but within those states, on densely populated areas, for just that reason.
But as long as there is a Senate, they'd be encouraged to visit small states (where a small number of voters determine a large share of power in the Senate, which can block both laws and Presidential appointments) for coattail effects.
And they’d still be encouraged to spend efforts on campaigning in low-cost media markets where small money reaches lots of voters (even ones that would currently be neglected because the states aren't viewed as swingable), just probably not with personal visits as much, without some kind of broader free media exposure opportunities, because the candidates themselves can't be in more than one place at once.
They're going to campaign somewhere, why should they pay more attention to Cleveland, Ohio (metro area population ~2m) than Los Angeles (city population 3m, metro population over 13m)?
I’m not entirely convinced presidential candidates share this belief.
I don't know why the electoral college would be better at identifying high need areas than willingness to change your vote. Shouldn't people who need help be more likely to change their vote than to live in a purple state?
If a 10m pop area has a 70-30 split, it's still better to campaign there than a 5m pop area with a 50-50 split. In absolute numbers it's still 3 million supporters versus 2.5 million supporters.
Under your model where the goal of the campaign is to visit your supporters, you'll favor smaller cities that strongly support you over larger cities that support your opponent. A place with 5 million population that's 70-30 in your favor has 3.5 million supporters.
So I guess you're totally OK with the current system where they spend all their time in Florida & other swing states because the others don't matter...
It may encourage the discrimination against minorities.
∗and he appears to refer to it as a well established idiom so I suspect it goes further back
[0] On Liberty https://www.bartleby.com/130/1.html
But I also get the arguments of people that say that without the electoral college, there is zero incentive for politicians to campaign in or pay attention to the interests of people in lightly-populated area. And I think that is a bad thing - whenever you completely disenfranchise people you get create a potential crack for revolution, secession, or other fragmentation processes to seep in. (It's also just shitty to the people involved.) I'd rather fix that by getting rid of first-past-the-post voting systems, but I also think you can't ignore that problem.
You still haven't answered why you believe there's an excluded middle. The opposite of tyranny is representation, and it's the system we have in the U.S. You can quibble about the degree of representation, but the fact that you can quibble about it means that we don't have a tyranny.
Ballotpedia's congressional approval polling average: 20% (August 21, 2019)
Cambridge Analytica has shown the method to manipulate any political system. We are in for an "interesting" future.
This is a lie probably told to you by a high school teacher who never really thought about it, and clearly you haven't either.
If the electoral college empowers lightly populated areas, how come no Presidential Candidate has ever gone stumping for those sweet sweet Wyoming voters?
Because it doesn't empower small states. It doesn't empower big states. It empowers closely contested states.
The electoral college makes no sense, it was not designed this way, the designers tried to get rid of it after they saw how it was being abused.
It's non-democratic, nonsensical, and there has been ~75% support for abolishing it for over 100 years but politicians have been holding off because it makes elections easier for them to fight because it lets them ignore most of the voters.
I love the electoral college. For those that bother to understand that America is a republic; the system was nearly perfectly designed. If we can get back to the original method of electing senators and back to the idea of “these United States” rather than “the United States,” we’d all be happier. States should have increased sovereignty. The 10th Amendment ought to matter.
If the Electoral College made every state matter equally, then candidates would be campaigning for support in every state equally. It is a fact that that's not what the Electoral College does.
Also, the Electoral College in its current form was not "designed". It was a mistake. The people who designed it, Hamilton and Madison, tried to get rid of it with constitutional amendments after they saw how it was being abused with "winner-take-all" laws.
In the EU, is Ireland less important than Germany? Why doesn’t Germany get to pick the EU president each time? Since Germany has over 80 million people, they could team up with France and simply own the EU. Ireland and Poland would be forced to go along with whatever Germany and France wanted. Or, they would leave the EU.
If California and New York picked the president every single time, why would other states bother staying in the Union? If you just have to win New York City and Los Angeles and Chicago, then every single policy proposal would simply be to benefit those voters alone. You could deny federal protections and funding to every other part of the country because you’d rather have more money to spend in New York City. It would become just like the Hunger Games where the “districts” would serve the capitol.
The current system has worked for 200+ years. Just because some people didn’t like outcome, doesn’t make the system broken.
Do you disagree?
For some reason, though, I never see supporters of the electoral college feel that it's right and proper to give equal political power to social minority groups (Only geographical minority groups. As if where you live is more important to your interests than who you are.)
As to your innovation in voting, if you accept immutable aspects of identity as the basis for voting rights you're opening the door to some terrible ideas, like ethno-states and Jim Crow laws. Again, without embarrassment at the facetiousness, I'm also not sure how actually making the Jews have more power in 1930s Germany would've solved their problems. Would've probably fuelled grievances: "Hey, Adolf, you know that Jews really do run Germany?" Eeek!
The best way to protect minorities is by the protected freedoms of speech and to bear arms, not by weighting votes by arbitrarily chosen characteristics.
Not only can a candidate win the electoral college while losing the popular vote, but the winner-take-all system means that only votes in closely-contested states really matter. The Electoral College allows the minority to overrule the majority.
Which means the president is and should be, elected by representatives of the states. The House of Representatives should be the only federal office directly voted on by “the people.” If that were the case, especially eliminating the direct election of senators, you’d see a much less divisive, gridlocked system where governance is more about public service and less about these election soap operas.
It's not this.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Also, no witch burning.
As to it being their constitution, we're really talking about the Bill of Rights, and that was an updated version of the 1689 British Bill of Rights.
It's sad how we no longer have it, and that people in the past had more rights than we have now. American Constitutionalists are right to dig their heels in over anything that looks like it will encroach on their rights.
or because you are LGBT,
or because you are black,
or because you have a disability.
But the small-state kind of minority seems to be the only one who deserves electoral protection from tyranny of the majority. Oh what a coincidence then, that these minorities also happen to be mostly white, christian, and straight.
Would a register for who is LGBT be a good idea? Would you support laws and voting based on ethnic background and/or skin colour?
Why do these ideas sound dangerous?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/22/he-tried-st...
I'm a supporter of NPV. I don't think it's likely to be a problem, although this feels like something that will shake out a lot further in the federal courts.
The college was a compromise to give a larger voting share to slave owning states that had a high overall population, despite having a relatively smaller number of possible voters.
So while the electoral college might have also functioned as a way to redistribute votes within a state... I don't think that was its main purpose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector#List_of_fait...
As with so much in American history the explanation involves slavery but judging from the downvotes here, that wounds everyone's pride a bit.
...other than the large numbers in the late 1700s and early 1800s, you mean?
And in any case, "intent" and "actual practice" were pretty different here. But that doesn't mean that the Connecticut Compromise [0] (which split the US legislative body into the House with representation apportioned by population and the Senate with set representation per state) was solely or even primarily due to slavery. And once you had that, using the total of Senators and Representatives for your number of electors makes a good amount of sense.
The compromise reduced the control the slave states had.
Well, that didn't work.
Communication happened at the speed of a horse, so if you need a decision quickly, you can’t have electors asking for instructions from their home government. For better or worse, the founders favored a definitive result in this case over a correct one.
Why not give disproportional representation to them on the basis of their race, or religion, or sexual orientation, or on whether or not they prefer big, or little-endian notation? Surely, it would only be appropriate that politicians should have cross-demographic appeal to win?
Every argument for why we should give extra influence to voters living in particular zip codes is just as valid, as any argument for giving extra influence to voters based on some other semi-arbitrary distinction.
Rural people have special, marginalized concerns, and are outnumbered by urban voters? Great. So do LGBT people, for example.
You don't get extra consideration for your vote for being a ______. Why should you get it on the basis of geography?
This isn't some discrimination thing. Those people can still vote. They just aren't given more representation than they deserve. That's the con of the electoral college.
A few percentage points is a big deal in an election where every vote is supposed to count. And this overrepresentation isn't a narrow margin like Brexit, we're talking about at least 5% more represented.
Why is cross regional appeal of any value, if these region don't make up even 10% of the combined US population.
If US states were divided by population it would be a different think all together. But California has 40 times as many people as Wyoming.
Cross regional appeal is quoted as an obviously good thing to have, but the core assumption of equal distribution of population has been violated.
Because those people control a large fraction of the country’s food supply and it would be a disaster if they decided to stop selling it to the rest of us.
In reality, free markets being a thing, this wouldn't happen. We can import from other countries and they need to sell their goods to live.
You’re right that it’s extremely unlikely to get so bad that they get forcibly nationalized. However, my understanding is that market conditions are pretty bad for farmers right now, and have been for years. Any change that makes things worse for them will likely drive some to other lines of work and reduce overall production, driving food prices up.
This particular effect is probably extremely small in practice, but I felt the need to remind HN that not all value is produced in cities.
I'm not so sure it's just the 24/7 life or death coverage that makes that happen though. In solidly red or blue seats the main threat to a senators seat is a challenge from the extreme of their party, left or right, which also pulls them further towards the extremes of their parties.
Population isn't everything. We have states like Alaska, Hawaii and Wyoming which are national treasures with low populations.
You can't do that with national effect by concerted state action with less than 100% of the states (you can simulate it by casting all votes for the candidate that would win by that rule with a bare makority, but that's just a chunky version of national popular vote.)
> I've seen more news about states leaning towards the 2nd option which is actually much worse than the electoral college in its current state.
It's worse if you care about the per-state vote and not the national outcome; it's better if you care about the outcome, since it produces the desired outcome of adopted by states with a majority of electoral votes (and the NPV only goes into effect in states adopting it when it has been adopted by states with a majority of electoral votes), while proportional allocation for electors needs universal adoption to implement it's effect.
That will make big urban areas appealing. However, if you think there are diminishing returns, it should cause them to spread that attention more, avoiding the last month where they repeatedly visit the same state over and over again.
[0] This might or might mean visiting those states.
A NPV would go some way to spread the federal spending around a little more fairly
California
Texas
Florida
New York
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Illinois
Georgia
North Carolina
Michigan
It's also worth noting the math really doesn't work out, the electoral college makes it easier to win the whole thing while carrying less states/votes (Which really shouldn't be surprising). With both the popular vote and the electoral college, you only have to take the 10 most populous states to win the whole thing. But the difference is that, with the current electoral college you generally only need to get 51% of the vote to win the whole state, which is significantly easier and turns states like California from a 60% to a 100%. With the popular vote, to actually win in that fashion you would have to take almost every vote in those states, which is practically impossible considering the diversity.
Totally different dynamic than general elections, which happen all at once rather than different dates in different states.
The other thing I came away with from the whole process is a newfound appreciation for the “who would I like to have a beer with” factor. The issues and policy proposals you read on the Internet don’t really matter—none of that stuff will ever get through Congress. Being able to look the person in the eye, and see how they carry themselves while shleping to half a dozen events every day—that really makes an impression.
[1] In the Iowa Democratic caucuses, registered party members in a precinct get together, discuss the candidates, take a first round vote where some candidates are cut, discuss the candidates some more, and then take a final vote.
I have a different opinion. Sanders and to a lesser extent Warren have created massive volunteer networks that do have a pretty big impact, like everywhere. Obama had that too, but it was dismantled when he took office (insanity). There's a good argument to say Obama would have been far more impactful had he kept it going.
Sanders has no intention of shutting down his "revolution" (not my words) whether he does or doesn't get the nomination. There's going to be some serious pressure (like there already has) on congress in the years to come. I don't think the same ol' same ol' will continue much longer.
I don't mean to be a fan boy, but it's pretty phenomenal what he / they have done since 2016, and it resonates with a lot of people. CNN and MSNBC don't talk about it too often, but it's very real.
Don't take my word for it though. Easily researched.
They pounded it with demagoguery to get elected but they didn't have anything behind the policy and knew it. They also knew that going forward with their disasters would hurt them even more.
The US media coverage of Trump’s corporate tax cuts really misrepresented how completely mainstream it was: https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uplo.... While the US nominal rate of almost 40% total was around the OECD average in 1990, the rest of the OECD dropped to just over 20% by 2017. Meanwhile, the US nominal rate didn’t drop at all.
As of August 14, 2019, the United States Senate has confirmed 146 Article III judges nominated by President Trump, including 2 Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, 43 judges for the United States Courts of Appeals, 99 judges for the United States District Courts, and 2 judges for the United States Court of International Trade.
If you look into many of the "unprecedented events" you'll see that most of them aren't new and some of them are decades old.
Though if the events really are bad and were ignored before, it's worth asking "why?"
Maybe but aren't you in danger of missing the big changes coming precisely because you are inside the bubble?
A political equivalent to "let them eat cake".
As an outside observer to the US it does seem like the pressure has to give somewhere soon at some point (and in a few other western democracies including my own though I think the US is further down the pipe on this one).
I think you're 100% right that there's building pressure and something will give but that's precisely because things haven't changed much. If the general populace decides "no matter how I vote, things don't change" some will lose hope and give up.. while others will look to other approaches.
(And those other approaches aren't usually good.)
There are benefits and drawbacks to both systems. Right now I'm pretty happy with this aspect of the US system. (There are other parts of the US system I'm less happy with—such as the Electoral College.)
There are a huge number of Republicans in California that would have just as much of a say than Florida/Ohio/etc.
Moreover, I'd wager that the stumps that stump speeches occur on will go to more places with more concentrated populations - there are more butts within n square miles to put in seats, as well as the most-watched news media.
My opinion is that both outcomes are preferable to stumps AND media going to half a dozen battleground states.
Something needs to be done to ensure all districts are equally represented and the representatives work for their constituents, not benefactors from out of state.
Why should people living dense regions be punished for it ?
With FPTP, each side tries to have the smallest winning coalition. This results in more competitive races. So every vote would matter.
Said another way, our current unfair gerrymandering worsens partisanship.
Said yet another, when my local city council went from at-large positions to districts based, so kinda the opposite of from electoral college to presidential popular vote, candidate platforms went from "appeal city wide" mush to "better appeal to my district".
(A better moderator would be to change from FPTP to approval voting or ranked choice voting. But that's another thread.)
--
But to your point, in practical terms, with modern get out the vote (GOTV) technology and strategies, most every voter is already targeted. They're certainly accounted for.
As the de facto head of their parties, presidential candidates are expected to do well every where, to help with down ballot races.
As an extreme example, HRC 2016 was criticized for running up her margin in "safe" areas. But that's expected (demanded) of national (and statewide) candidates by the locals.