The Electoral College was nearly abolished in 1970 (2020)
history.com
history.com
It may or may not ultimately be better, but it certainly wouldn't be a simple one variable change from the current political climate to the benefit of one party today.
I'm largely in favor of popular vote over the EC, but it would not usher in a huge change to the status quo, more likely a slightly different flavor of what we have today.
The stances of both parties has drastically changed over time under the EC model, and would continue to do so under the popular vote model
To your assumption that Alabama will always be lopsided conservative while the country will always be lopsided Republican: Why should the Democrats in Alabama never have their voice heard?
I support electoral reform for the legislature... but the EC is trash.
And we would then see the very issue the electoral college tries to fix: small states wouldn't matter. It would be a lot more efficient in terms of vote acquisition to put in place policies benefitting Los Angeles than Green Bay, WI. Los Angeles is already extremely powerful as it is; the electoral college shifts some power away from huge cities.
We also already have weird dynamics when it comes to policy. More people are likely employed by Wendy’s than all the coal workers, but something tells me that coal workers are given way more policy proposals to help them than fast food workers.
BTW saying that one party having a trifecta of governance as autocratic is fucking moronic and not accurate. Words have meaning, lets not diminish them because you're upset people don't vote how you want.
That (51% of votes translating into 100% of power) is certainly not fair either.
One thing the current system does surprising well is ensure that power remains divided over the long term.
The US has gone through dozens of major political and regional political parties over the last 200 years. Acting like this is ossified is just demonstrably false.
It sounds like you are more upset about the first-past-the-post voting system and that I agree with you.
I don't know how you twisted my words in your mind to insinuate I just want 'them' to vote for 'my' team.
Governments that are dominated by one party, whether it be north korea, russia, or California tend to ossify and are controlled by party apparatchiks instead of democratically elected politicians. When there are multiple parties in close competition all parties are forced to be more responsive to the electorate.
Is Florida an autocratic state because the GOP control all three branches of government? Is Massachusetts an autocratic state because the Democratic party control all three branches of government? What about California, add in their jungle primaries as something that makes them extremely competitive when it comes to running elections, are they too autocratic because the Democratic politicians control all three branches?
Sorry but words have meanings, just because you want to misuse them doesn't mean we have to accept it. You conflating autocracy with competitive elections is just foolish.
In a one party rule state the senatorial/gubernatorial race is not competitive and always won by the one party in power. To appear on the ballot as a representative of that party requires the party endorsement. In effect the party endorsement is the election. However the endorsement process is controlled by the party and not open to the public.
Endorsement selection is based primarily on how much money the prospective candidate can get their friends to donate. (From this money some percent is kicked back to the party and the rest is spent on services provided by party apparatchiks. It is a closed ecosystem). The other requirement is canonical adherence, though this is more required for national politics.
How the parties work behind closed doors I'm less familiar with because im not an insider, in the Chinese communist party case or the American case.
But thankfully we're in the 21st century: a candidate can mail flyers and buy youtube ads with policies tailored for those perennial "red" states. Under the current system it makes zero difference, so nobody bothers, and they stay forgotten. Under popular vote, every citizen who votes for you in Omaha, NE is as good as another citizen in Philadelphia, PA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
Article I, Section 10, Clause 3:
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
For the most part the Supreme Court has let states create agreements on smaller things that wouldn’t be Congressional issues. This is a Congressional issue because they certify the vote so a politically biased Supreme Court is nearly certain to shut it down. Right now the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact isn’t in effect, so no one has standing to bring a case. But once it is in effect, expect a case to be quickly brought because opponents have had years to plan for this.
That seems pretty straightforward. Why would any Supreme Court ignore that?
It's also easy to get around. Eventually there will be a Congress that consents.
"Haha, we have 50.5% of the vote now you have to do what we say" is workable but hardly a stronger moral position than securing 49.5% - particularly after looking at the turnout situation in the US. Philosophically if there is less than overwhelming majorities (talking 60%, 70% style figures) there is a lot of room to question whether a democratic consensus has been achieved.
The issue is that the political class (really any group of people) is inevitably stuffed with corrupt sociopaths, tends towards groupthink, is easily dissociated from reality and insists on using social proof rather than a scientific approach. The system as it stands is just a big complicated stick to wallop them with a Trump every so often if they really muck things up to the point where their incompetence triggers too many problems for enough people. The exact trigger % of people needed to engage the stick should be set sensibly but in practice the US is making do with around 20% of the population according to Wikipedia [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
The key point is we don't need to vote to determine what works well. Whether a policy gets good results is just a fact regardless of whether or not people vote for it. And there are a large number of policies that were terrible the last time people tried them and will continue to be terrible even if the voting public decides to try them again.
They vote from an approved list of candidates, but the following makes it sound as if, in principle anyway, there ought to be enough voting to keep the better apparatchiks and bounce the worse ones:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China#Direct_elec...
tl;dr: lots of voting; no ballot access
EDIT: meanwhile, over on https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/中華人民共和國選舉 we find the Party line:
> 《人民日報》称，中国大陸的基层换届选举是世界上规模最大的基层民主选举。
("The People's Daily* says the grass-roots general elections in mainland China are the largest [900 million voters] grass-roots democratic elections in the world.")
Have you checked with the Lords of Instrumentality? (Did 101 speak with the equivalent of a midwestern accent?)
I wonder if he might have killed another Lord o.I. — where is the which of the what-he-did?
(the World Controllers have an excuse not to offer proper Bildung; the Lords and Ladies of the Instrumentality have no such)
Come to think of it, Goethe (1749-1832) was about the same age as Linebarger (1913-1966) when he started on Faust (ca 1800)...
The United States of America is exactly what it says: A Union of sovereign States. It's very sad a lot of people don't understand this because they slept through civics/history class.
The 538 Electors are derived from the 435 Representatives and 100 Senators in Congress, with an additional 1 Representative and 2 Senators equivalents in Electors allocated to the District of Columbia (specifically the same count as the least populous State in the Union, currently Rhode Island with 1 Representative and 2 Senators).
That means of the 538 Electors, 436 of them are allocated according to State population counts as recorded in the United States Census taken every 10 years.
The state level of government feels more and more like a historic novelty carried over as "we always did it this way" and "it would require far too much political capital to touch"-- America's answer to the House of Lords or the Governor General.
The United States of America is a very vast country literally spanning an entire continent, State sovereignty is more important now than ever before because the needs and desires of the peoples within them can and will vary wildly from each other; they varied wildly with just 13 States across the eastern seaboard, let alone 50 States spanning a continent and islands in the Pacific.
The Federal government exists to better enable functions of government where the States have a unanimous consensus, and to that end the Federal government including the Presidency exists strictly at the pleasure of the States. For all other matters where States can and will disagree, the States reserve the power to decide by themselves for themselves.