cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/488620
65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.
I would modify the electoral college rather than get rid of it. Make it so that states are obligated to assign their electoral votes to candidates in proportion to the number of votes received.
Why? You’re accepting the premise but then stopping short. Yes, a candidate’s final outcome in the election should be proportional to the number of votes they received. You want to make it less unfair, but we can just as easily make it completely fair by making the outcome exactly proportional to the vote.
not completely disenfranchise rural voters
According to the US Census, roughly 20% of Americans live in rural areas. Under the Electoral College, most of these people get effectively no say in who is the president. Nobody cares what rural voters in Texas or California or Wyoming or Oklahoma think because they’re not swing states. In a popular election, these 20% of Americans would get 20% of the say, and their individual vote would carry the same weight as everyone else. That’s the only fair system. Making it less rigged is still rigged.
Bro what? Am I reading this wrong? The Electoral College ensures rural votes have an outsized say compared to their population.
See almost every GOP state with maps redrawn in the last 4 years.
On the whole, yes, the Electoral College gives a larger weight to rural voters by stealing it from urban voters. I was merely highlighting that it also effectively disenfranchises a lot of rural voters by consolidating all electoral power in roughly a dozen swing states. I think the argument that we need to give special privilege to rural voters is bogus, but even accepting the premise, the EC still sucks at that. The specious arguments made in its favor don’t hold up.
I think the argument that we need to give special privilege to rural voters is bogus
Yeah, nearly everyone would agree with that because the argument isn’t about voters, it’s about the states.
65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed
Hmm this seems unfair. How about we redo the survey but this time break it down state-by-state where the majority option in each state will be considered the “winner” of the entire state (except for in Maine and Nebraska, in which the minority option is still given some points) and then these states will appoint a certain number of people (the number of people each state can appoint is equal to how many representatives they have plus two for their senators, except in DC where its capped at the state with the least amount of appointed people) where they will redo the survey again but now they have the opportunity to change the results if they feel like it (but don’t worry that basically has never happened so it’s all good) and after that each state will count the actual votes and then mail them to DC where Congress will count the votes from each state and the members of Congress get a chance to vote to ignore a state if enough of them feel like it (but again don’t worry this has never happened! It’s all good!) and after that hopefully one of the options has a majority because if not then the house gets to choose and if they can’t decide then the senate gets to pick and if nobody can make up their minds then the Speaker gets to temporarily decide until everyone figures their stuff out.
I think that’s how Americans should answer all their surveys since it’s more fair.
You don’t happen to have ADHD do you? Dont read to much into this, that wall of text tho
I copy and pasted how the electoral college works from Wikipedia and made it a run-on sentence to emphasize how nonsensical it is.
How nonsensical…what…is…?..\n
Edit: Wat
What does the Electoral College breakdown look like on that poll?
Why does that matter? The people want a better electoral system, one that treats all votes equally.
It was designed to be unequal on purpose. The electoral is what keeps us from being ruled by the masses. It should not change.
So instead we get minority rule. Soooooo much better when the small number of loonies get to derail a functional government with a temper tantrum that ‘the masses’ want.
It’s a badly designed system, and claiming it’s like this on purpose doesn’t negate how bad the system is. Also, we should not be chained to ideas that came around 250 years ago when other people have improved on the idea and made it less shitty.
Not at all. We are ruled by the states.
The system is fine. It allows all states to have some say in the process.
Who gives a fuck about the states’ vote? States are just containers for people, and an excuse that the minority loves to use to explain how they get to rule over majority.
The electoral college is an undemocratic and broken system that makes my vote in a small state worth more than your vote in a bigger state.
A vote is a vote, and only losers need to remove the vote from the masses to be able to win. It’s literally the only reason there’s been a Republican president since H.W., and it’s no surprise they’re desperate to keep around the undemocratic voting method that allows them to steal elections they didn’t win.
Wow fascist much?
States are entities under the government with their own laws.
We are not a democracy fascist. We are a constitutional republic. The founding fathers had no interest in a rule by the masses nor do i.
Maybe you should learn the history of our government and why it was designed the way it was rather than pushing weird fascist ideology that states don’t matter and only the federal government counts.
We’d break as a nation quickly under your ideology.
So you don’t want democracy?
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If two or three states end up picking the president, you’re going to have a problem where some geographical regions have disproportionate choice over who runs the country.
A lot of the systems in the USA are set up to help prevent a national divorce caused by disproportionate power accumulating in a few states. The more you eliminate those systems the faster you expedite a national divorce.
If two or three states end up picking the president, you’re going to have a problem where some geographical regions have disproportionate choice over who runs the country.
Moving away from the electoral college to something like STAR/approval voting would move us away from geographically weighted votes, which means that no such thing would happen. All voters would have equal representation.
Instead we currently have a system where a disproportionate amount of power is given to a select few states with fewer people. Tyranny of the minority is not acceptable. All votes should be equal.
So would you abolish the senate as well, with its 2 seats per state to ensure that each state is represented equally?
If you’re going to have a few regions basically having total dominion over who controls the country, why would the other state want to remain in such a union? The reason for the way things are set up is that different regions in the US had to be convinced to join the union in the first place. The farmers were concerned that the cities would have all the power. Start stripping away stuff intended to prevent a couple geographical areas from totally dominating the discussion and you will end up getting a couple geographical areas from totally dominating the discussion. That might work for a bit, but you could very well see it eventually causes a revolt and the end of the union since there’s no point being involved with a thing like that.
The President is not the representative of the 10 largest cities in America, they’re a representative of all of America. With the current system, a presidential candidate needs to convince people from all around the country that they’re the person to be president. With a pure equal voting system, presidential candidates would never spend any time at all in most states, and wouldn’t have anything in their campaign to help most states.
So would you abolish the senate as well, with its 2 seats per state to ensure that each state is represented equally?
I wouldn’t abolish it, I think the number of senators per state should reflect the population of a given state.
If you’re going to have a few regions basically having total dominion over who controls the country, why would the other state want to remain in such a union?
Why would big states want to remain in a union in which smaller states hold more power than they otherwise would in a system that holds all votes equal?
The system we have already incentivizes the dissolution of the union.
And the big states would not have total domination, because states don’t (or at least shouldn’t) vote, people do. You do realize that a significant number of people in these big states vote red, right? So there would be no domination.
That might work for a bit, but you could very well see it eventually causes a revolt and the end of the union since there’s no point being involved with a thing like that.
Our current system has historically been terrible for avoiding revolt.
The President is not the representative of the 10 largest cities in America,
And the president still wouldn’t be under a system that holds all votes equal. Because cities are not the only thing that exist.
Your whole argument is basically “We can’t have tyranny of the majority, we must maintain our current system of tyranny of the minority!” all while ignoring that all votes being equal is in fact not a form of tyranny by the majority.
With the current system, a presidential candidate needs to convince people from all around the country that they’re the person to be president
No they don’t. They just need to convince the swing states. And that’s all they do, spend time in swing states campaigning. They might go to stronghold states on occasion for funding, but other than that 90% of the time they’re in swing states.
presidential candidates would never spend any time at all in most states, and wouldn’t have anything in their campaign to help most states.
I live in a swing state. EVERY election, both candidates visit my city. Do you know what they don’t do? They don’t ever visit the surrounding states. They don’t ever stop by the smaller towns in my state. It’s only ever my city and 1-2 others for the entire state, then they skip off on a jet to the next swing state, flying over other states in the process.
The current system has all of the problems you are concerned about an equal vote system having.
There’s multiple systems. The house of representatives is basically your democratic vote is a vote part of the government. The senate is the every state is an equal partner thing, and the executive is something where there’s some weighting by population but also some counterweighting for balance, and that’s in between.
Breaking up larger countries into different regional nations makes sense to me, btw. Then the blue states won’t need to worry about subsidizing the red states, they’ll all have to figure their thing out for themselves.
There’s multiple systems
I am aware. The mechanics of these systems doesn’t change the fact that they are inherently bad design. No voter should have more of a voice than another.
Breaking up larger countries into different regional nations makes sense to me, btw.
Oddly, that exact move has been a disaster for Britain. We should not follow suit.
Britain has been a disaster for Britain. Their leadership is terrible. It would be weak as part of the EU as well. At least this way the bad decisions are their own, and they can pay the consequences for them, and perhaps change them at sometime in the future.
Contrast with Greece, which isn’t in good shape, but is stuck doing what other people from competing regions tell them to do.
Their leadership is terrible
Absolutely. Tbeir leadership is a joke. However the actual effect of them leaving the EU was what I was referring to. They have to pay way more for import/export, they no longer have the same freedom to travel, it’s fucked their economy, there is less competition for products so the items available to them are worse.
It’s not just the leadership, it’s the effects of leaving itself that are a huge part of the issue.
Contrast with Greece, which isn’t in good shape, but is stuck doing what other people from competing regions tell them to do.
I’m not super familiar with Greece’s particular situation, but I think what we’ve seen from Brexit would make it pretty clear that it would be a disaster for Greece to leave as well. The economic hardships caused by increasing the barrier to entry for trade is disastrous. It would also make it significantly harder for them to compete, because anything to do with Greece would become more expensive.
And this is all ignoring one of the biggest reasons for the EU, which is to avoid war. The amount of bloodshed Europe had to go through to get to the current level of cooperation and stability was also disastrous. Taking a step towards that happening again is a terrible idea, and that applies here in the U.S. as well.
If each state was it’s own independent country, the incentive for war suddenly increases.
30 percent of voters are idiots and blue how they are told. Leaving it to a party vote is also not a great idea.