The electoral college will exist until the day Texas turns blue and suddenly the “EC stops big states from dominating small states” talking point will disappear. I’d be happy if we could at least...
The electoral college will exist until the day Texas turns blue and suddenly the “EC stops big states from dominating small states” talking point will disappear.
I’d be happy if we could at least turn the EC into a proportional allocation of votes for each state instead of winner take all. It makes improvement in any state matter. Rather than 7 winner take all swing states that should just have their votes split 50/50 to represent the actual opinion of their populations.
I wouldn't say that. Obama actually had an EC edge over Romney in 2012 - that's right, Democrats benefited from the EC, a little more than a decade ago. It's not like Republicans removed the EC...
I wouldn't say that. Obama actually had an EC edge over Romney in 2012 - that's right, Democrats benefited from the EC, a little more than a decade ago. It's not like Republicans removed the EC right there and then either.
In the end, it's hard to change things so entrenched.
Obama still won the popular vote. Edge or not. If we’re really getting into electoral reform let’s revisit the number of congressional districts per state and the distribution based on population.
Obama still won the popular vote. Edge or not.
If we’re really getting into electoral reform let’s revisit the number of congressional districts per state and the distribution based on population.
Expanding the number of seats in the House of Representatives to a number that actually makes sense for our large population is probably the easiest (aka doesn’t require a constitutional...
Expanding the number of seats in the House of Representatives to a number that actually makes sense for our large population is probably the easiest (aka doesn’t require a constitutional amendment) path to a better EC and competitive elections generally.
Since EC votes per state are determined by the number of representatives + senators, adding more representatives automatically also improves the representation of the electoral college.
We do re-allocate house representitives with every census. California and New York both lost a rep. However, its not exactly easy to get better proportions,because the last time I remember going...
We do re-allocate house representitives with every census. California and New York both lost a rep. However, its not exactly easy to get better proportions,because the last time I remember going down this rabbithole, in order to still allow Wyoming to have a representative proportionally, we'd need to expand to something like 1000 house representatives. This becomes a logistical nightmare unless we want to move the physical location of Congress.
Imagine taking this further. Why not have 10,000 representatives who vote remotely? It would not be much like the House of Representatives as it exists today. Each of those people would still...
Imagine taking this further. Why not have 10,000 representatives who vote remotely?
It would not be much like the House of Representatives as it exists today. Each of those people would still represent thirty thousand voters. They would probably still be divided up by party. But I wonder how well it would work?
Lobbying them by talking to each of them one-on-one would not work, because they'd be scattered across the country and there are too many of them. It would be more like a mini-campaign.
It won't happen, but it seems like an interesting thought experiment.
Because this would make the current committee structures nearly impossible to manage. While Congress should be expanded, imagine trying to get 3000+ people to agree on which bills to advance...
Why not have 10,000 representatives who vote remotely?
Because this would make the current committee structures nearly impossible to manage. While Congress should be expanded, imagine trying to get 3000+ people to agree on which bills to advance through committees. The actual meat and potatoes of legislating would be unmanageable with our current systems.
If you're aware of any countries with that many legislators which haven't devolved into the executive setting policy, I'd be curious to learn.
With a radical change like that, you can't change just one thing. I imagine that the committee structure would get blown up too. Whoever decides which bills to vote on has a lot of power, and it's...
With a radical change like that, you can't change just one thing. I imagine that the committee structure would get blown up too. Whoever decides which bills to vote on has a lot of power, and it's probably going to be a smaller number of people.
Maybe it could work something like getting a referendum on the ballot, where you need a certain number of signatures from other members before it gets voted on, and some kind of limits on proposals per member?
At this point we're imagining a very different form of government. Though, with enough party discipline, maybe it works out to be the same thing in the end?
I think having one person in 30,000 thinking about legislation all day is better than all of us doing it. But it would be easier to get your representative's attention.
I think having one person in 30,000 thinking about legislation all day is better than all of us doing it. But it would be easier to get your representative's attention.
Much like now, most people would probably tune out unless an issue was particularily important to them. I like the idea of a direct democracy with a transferable (and overridable) representation...
Much like now, most people would probably tune out unless an issue was particularily important to them.
I like the idea of a direct democracy with a transferable (and overridable) representation system. 'I trust John to represent my interests' means John's vote weighs double, but since that representative could be anyone, there is a lot more room for involvement. Especially if there were a way to split vote weights among different representatives.
Maybe you get paid and mandated to politic full-time ala Jury duty if your representation weighs over a certain threshold.
That paired with mandatory voting (or investment of your vote) is a system I'd be most interested in seeing play out. Another, that would probably have catastrophic growing pains, would be...
That paired with mandatory voting (or investment of your vote) is a system I'd be most interested in seeing play out.
Another, that would probably have catastrophic growing pains, would be something like how my brother described WoW DKP points. Politicians are given some sort of voting currency which they spend (possibly blind/anonymously) over the course of the term to determine whether actions pass or not.
Some legal mechanism for enforcing campaign promises would also be interesting, including things like "I will vote in alignment with the majority of participating constituents on bills related to issue Y".
TBH the Senate is exponentially worse of a problem, and why it makes a lot of sense to merge pretty much any state with less than 3 house reps into their nearest neighbors. Merge Wyoming, Montana,...
TBH the Senate is exponentially worse of a problem, and why it makes a lot of sense to merge pretty much any state with less than 3 house reps into their nearest neighbors.
Merge Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Delaware into Maryland. Merge Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Conneticut. West Virginia into Virginia. Merge Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico (giving them proper citizenship) into the 'Remote States'.
By lopping off that bottom tier of population, you've improved representation in both the house and senate for everyone (except for those people that had far excessive representation).
If Wyoming deserves 2 Senators, Philadelphia alone deserves 6.
So I was curious about this, and looked at some numbers. According to the Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans living in urban areas was 80% in 2020. With a total 2020 Census population of...
So I was curious about this, and looked at some numbers.
If you look at the (as best as I can tell) swing states for the 2024 US presidential election, they and their populations are:
State
Population
Arizona
7,151,502
Georgia
10,711,908
Michigan
10,077,331
Nevada
3,104,614
North Carolina
10,439,388
Pennsylvania
13,002,700
Wisconsin
5,893,718
Total
60,381,161
I think it's funny that the rural population (20% of total population) and the swing state population (18.22%) are so close.
Now, obviously a normal electoral-college-election will necessitate different priorities for candidates than a pure popular-vote-election would. So the swing state population coincidentally being so close to the rural population doesn't mean anything (probably).
However, 20% of the population is a lot. I don't think rural voters would be totally ignored by candidates. (This is pretty much the end of my response to your comment. You can stop reading here if you aren't interested in my ramblings)
I also wondered, how many people lived in the ten most-populous cities in the United States according to the 2020 Census:
City
Population
State
New York
8,772,978
New York
Los Angeles
3,889,834
California
Chicago
2,741,730
Illinois
Houston
2,300,027
Texas
Phoenix
1,611,345
Arizona
Philadelphia
1,601,005
Pennsylvania
San Antonio
1,438,227
Texas
San Diego
1,385,394
California
Dallas
1,303,234
Texas
San Jose
1,010,908
California
Total
26,054,682
So that's six different states, with two states, California and Texas, represented three times, with a total population of 26 million people, or 7.86% of the total population of the United States.
How many cities, in how many different states, would it take to reach the same population count as rural America (about 66-ish million people)?
I stopped counting after 100 cities:
City
Population
State
New York
8,772,978
New York
Los Angeles
3,889,834
California
Chicago
2,741,730
Illinois
Houston
2,300,027
Texas
Phoenix
1,611,345
Arizona
Philadelphia
1,601,005
Pennsylvania
San Antonio
1,438,227
Texas
San Diego
1,385,394
California
Dallas
1,303,234
Texas
San Jose
1,010,908
California
Austin
963,121
Texas
Jacksonville
950,463
Florida
Fort Worth
922,592
Texas
Columbus
905,860
Ohio
Indianapolis
887,382
Indiana
Charlotte
876,747
North Carolina
San Francisco
870,014
California
Seattle
738,172
Washington
Denver
717,630
Colorado
Washington
690,093
District of Columbia
Nashville
689,248
Tennessee
Oklahoma City
682,760
Oklahoma
El Paso
678,598
Texas
Boston
674,272
Massachusetts
Portland
652,388
Oregon
Las Vegas
643,292
Nevada
Detroit
638,176
Michigan
Louisville
632,037
Kentucky
Memphis
631,326
Tennessee
Baltimore
583,132
Maryland
Milwaukee
576,301
Wisconsin
Albuquerque
564,648
New Mexico
Fresno
542,159
California
Tucson
541,859
Arizona
Sacramento
523,416
California
Kansas City
507,932
Missouri
Mesa
505,860
Arizona
Atlanta
499,586
Georgia
Omaha
491,168
Nebraska
Colorado Springs
480,213
Colorado
Raleigh
467,425
North Carolina
Long Beach
464,759
California
Virginia Beach
459,373
Virginia
Miami
441,889
Florida
Oakland
439,341
California
Minneapolis
429,014
Minnesota
Tulsa
412,629
Oklahoma
Bakersfield
403,401
California
Wichita
397,117
Kansas
Arlington
393,985
Texas
Aurora
386,580
Colorado
Tampa
383,980
Florida
New Orleans
383,282
Louisiana
Cleveland
372,032
Ohio
Honolulu
349,800
Hawaii
Anaheim
347,089
California
Lexington
322,403
Kentucky
Stockton
320,745
California
Henderson
319,055
Nevada
Corpus Christi
317,852
Texas
Riverside
314,655
California
St. Paul
310,942
Minnesota
Newark
310,350
New Jersey
Cincinnati
310,113
Ohio
Santa Ana
309,888
California
Orlando
307,603
Florida
Irvine
306,389
California
Pittsburgh
302,777
Pennsylvania
St. Louis
300,528
Missouri
Greensboro
297,808
North Carolina
Jersey City
291,927
New Jersey
Lincoln
291,383
Nebraska
Anchorage
290,637
Alaska
Plano
286,668
Texas
Durham
284,400
North Carolina
Buffalo
277,908
New York
Chandler
277,556
Arizona
Chula Vista
276,466
California
Toledo
270,041
Ohio
Gilbert
269,206
Arizona
Madison
268,846
Wisconsin
North Las Vegas
264,216
Nevada
Fort Wayne
264,169
Indiana
Reno
264,116
Nevada
St. Petersburg
258,658
Florida
Lubbock
257,882
Texas
Irving
256,873
Texas
Laredo
255,336
Texas
Chesapeake
249,679
Virginia
Winston-Salem
249,349
North Carolina
Glendale
248,797
Arizona
Garland
245,478
Texas
Scottsdale
241,933
Arizona
Norfolk
237,591
Virginia
Boise City
235,829
Idaho
Fremont
231,673
California
Spokane
228,850
Washington
Santa Clarita
228,487
California
Richmond
226,670
Virginia
Baton Rouge
224,480
Louisiana
Total
64,953,035
So we're still short about 1.3 million people, but I think it's good enough.
This is the spread of states represented in that list:
Count
State
Place
17
California
1
13
Texas
2
7
Arizona
3
5
North Carolina
4
5
Florida
5
4
Virginia
6
4
Ohio
7
4
Nevada
8
3
Colorado
9
2
Wisconsin
10
2
Washington
11
2
Tennessee
12
2
Pennsylvania
13
2
Oklahoma
14
2
New York
15
2
New Jersey
16
2
Nebraska
17
2
Missouri
18
2
Minnesota
19
2
Louisiana
20
2
Kentucky
21
2
Indiana
22
1
Oregon
23
1
New Mexico
24
1
Michigan
25
1
Massachusetts
26
1
Maryland
27
1
Kansas
28
1
Illinois
29
1
Idaho
30
1
Hawaii
31
1
Georgia
32
1
District of Columbia
33
1
Alaska
34
So that's 34 total "states" represented in the list, counting Washington D.C.
I don't think this data proves that presidential candidates would have to campaign in more states, and more diverse settings, to be elected in a popular-vote-election. However, I certainly don't think this data helps the opposite argument either (that campaign priorities would somehow stay the same, or even be less diverse).
I think to make a strong case either way, you would need to tie this data in with recent political party election trends.
For example, New York is the most populous city in the country, but if (for example) it leans super heavily towards Democrats, then maybe their presidential candidate wouldn't need to bother campaigning there much, if at all. Is that a correct assumption to make? I don't know.
I do think, in a popular-vote-election, the political leaning of any given location matters less, since every single vote has the same 1:1 "power" as every other, anywhere else (versus the electoral college system).
This is where I approach the limits of my "election knowledge" though, so I'll let someone else ride off this comment to provide their own insight if they wish.
Tagging @Eji1700, because I originally started putting this comment together a few days ago as a response to your comment on another topic. Specifically, this part:
I don't see how it's going to be any better when they only focus their time on a couple of cities.
You mean like Pennsylvania? Highly divergent interests are nothing new...basically every single city in a red state. At the end of the day, you just have a phase-in plan where initially all the...
You mean like Pennsylvania?
Highly divergent interests are nothing new...basically every single city in a red state.
At the end of the day, you just have a phase-in plan where initially all the state laws become county laws, give a bit of grandfathering in, form a new state constitution, and let all the overlap between state laws 'bubble up' to the new state. Once you unify the tax code it'll become pretty manageable.
It's not like there isn't any process to create a new state....just one we haven't used in several decades. Our traditional method is to throw away the old laws of the people who lived there, but since we have a more robust federal government, there's no reason that merging states would need to be an impossible task....they would just fallback to a default 'federal-only' jurisdiction ala Washington DC until they sort out the details.
I don't know anyone who supports the Electoral College, but I find the racism angle a little suspect. Not that there's definitely no one for whom racism is a motivator, but that there's another...
I don't know anyone who supports the Electoral College, but I find the racism angle a little suspect. Not that there's definitely no one for whom racism is a motivator, but that there's another explanation: cognitive dissonance. The Electoral College (currently) benefits Republicans, so, in order to avoid cognitive dissonance, Republican voters are motivated to believe that it is a good thing. So they start with that position and then find reasons to believe it.
It's more of a historic thing: EC votes are assigned based on population, not vote counts. Since enslaved people were counted in population ("the three-fifths compromise") but were unable to vote,...
but I find the racism angle a little suspect
It's more of a historic thing: EC votes are assigned based on population, not vote counts. Since enslaved people were counted in population ("the three-fifths compromise") but were unable to vote, slave states had an advantage in elections.
I understand that historical racism is part of why the Electoral College exists in the first place, and I agree that its continued existence is a form of systemic racism, but the piece...
I understand that historical racism is part of why the Electoral College exists in the first place, and I agree that its continued existence is a form of systemic racism, but the piece specifically says that personal racial animus is the reason why people still support it today.
I do believe that much of the "the cities aren't real America" and the way that "urban" is basically a synonym for "black" are built from that same racial animus. Chicago is talked about as a...
I do believe that much of the "the cities aren't real America" and the way that "urban" is basically a synonym for "black" are built from that same racial animus. Chicago is talked about as a hellscape of violence and during a recent incident in my general area, it was absolutely a case of locals saying "they" needed to stay in "the city" (and many other comments were explicitly racist rather than just implicitly).
There is deep racism embedded in these former sundown towns.
I also get the sense that some number of invididuals living in rural, semi-rural, and suburban parts of the country, even parts that have traditionally been less racist, consider citydwellers to...
I also get the sense that some number of invididuals living in rural, semi-rural, and suburban parts of the country, even parts that have traditionally been less racist, consider citydwellers to be incomprehisible and borderline an entirely different species. It might sound ridiculous but I've seen it myself, having grown up and/or lived in those areas.
I've spent most of my life in the small city/ suburban Midwest, hours from any major city, lots of corn. Believe me I've heard it all. But I've learned over time how often "go back to Chicago" is...
I've spent most of my life in the small city/ suburban Midwest, hours from any major city, lots of corn. Believe me I've heard it all.
But I've learned over time how often "go back to Chicago" is said alongside references to the jungle, animals, savages, and all but the N word. (Usually.) The city of STL is much the same, vs the county. Not sure about Indy or the cities that get smaller from there, but mostly because Chicago takes up so much of the local attention.
It really is crazy in Illinois how many rural people don't seem to (consciously) understand how (proportionally) insignificant they are. I'm sure part of the problem is that they do get it, but...
It really is crazy in Illinois how many rural people don't seem to (consciously) understand how (proportionally) insignificant they are. I'm sure part of the problem is that they do get it, but refuse to consciously wrap their minds around it because when you read comments on news articles or Facebook posts, the hot takes are absurd.
They act like it's unfair how much focus Chicago gets and how those city folk are a bunch of idiots who [insert complete nonsense]. But Illinois is one of the most urbanized states and Chicagoland alone makes up, I believe, over ⅔ of the state population and something like 80% of the state's wages.
Now, I won't say the rest of the state isn't ignored and that certain areas, especially in the south and west of the state aren't even deprived, but man, they act like they make up a majority of the state just because there's a lot of empty land. It's really baffling if you're from the city.
But realizing that a lot of people in the state really have no context to wrap their head around how huge the population of Chicagoland is starts to explain it. It can be hard to admit how insignificant you are, but it's a lot easier when you know you live around 9 million other people than when you know all 400 people in your town and constantly hear about how those city folk are doing things you've been raised your whole life to know are wrong because the Bible says so (even though it doesn't).
Well and I'm talking cities of 50-150k, not even tiny towns though I live in a village technically now I think (idk there's townships and villages and it's weird). Even there there's an...
Well and I'm talking cities of 50-150k, not even tiny towns though I live in a village technically now I think (idk there's townships and villages and it's weird).
Even there there's an anti-Chicago angle that's at least 50 percent racism and at least 50 percent because they're Dem leaning and maybe 10 percent about corruption. Even in Springfield. (These cities themselves tend to turn their county's blue in elections but there's still a large amount of this and the racism is not limited to one side.)
Meanwhile I have a couple of siblings in Chicago now, and their neighborhoods are safe, I use city rules for parking (no valuables visible in the car) and never feel unsafe. But my hometown has a "omg you'll get shot there" reputation too and I've lived in a bigger city for college so I just don't feel so phased or intimidated by the propaganda.
This urban/rural divide is the easiest example of what I had in mind when I made my earlier reply saying that “just combine small states” won’t work. It’s how you get local elections where all...
This urban/rural divide is the easiest example of what I had in mind when I made my earlier reply saying that “just combine small states” won’t work. It’s how you get local elections where all viable candidates promise “we will not enforce the new law here”—because said law was passed by the urban majority to address city problems.
I keep toying with the idea that the strip along Lake Michigan between Gary and Milwaukee ought to be sectioned off from Wisconsin & Illinois and become an independent federal district (if not outright new state).
No thank you, please do not remove the financial backbone of my state and leave me alone with reps like Mary Miller. This has been proposed by a bunch of conservative assholes around here, once...
No thank you, please do not remove the financial backbone of my state and leave me alone with reps like Mary Miller.
This has been proposed by a bunch of conservative assholes around here, once again due to racism and the like, and No Thanks.
I tried taking this at a line by line serious breakdown of the discussion and then just realized I was wasting my time. There's so much that's wrong with this but quite frankly i'm tired of it....
I tried taking this at a line by line serious breakdown of the discussion and then just realized I was wasting my time.
There's so much that's wrong with this but quite frankly i'm tired of it. The Electoral college is not a great system. It's not even a good system. Pure popular vote for the president likely will be just as bad if not worse in 4-10 years after passing, and yes it is never going to happen anyways for both good and bad reasons.
There are LOTS of sane ways we could do elections, but pure popular vote isn't one of them, and "well i refuted a bunch of MAGA voters points" doesn't really make the argument.
I've still found very few people who would advocate for the removal of the electoral college with popular vote if it didn't benefit their side/candidates, and if you're coming at it from that perspective, you're already looking at it wrong. I'm just so tired of people assuming that because you dare to defend what idiots are in favor of that you must also be a racist maga voting shithead, so what's the point of even discussing it.
What would you rather have than a popular vote for president? I'm struggling to think of issues with the president being a popular vote. Rurals already get outsized representation in the Senate....
What would you rather have than a popular vote for president? I'm struggling to think of issues with the president being a popular vote. Rurals already get outsized representation in the Senate.
I'm in favour of democracy, and I view the electoral college as antidemocratic, simple as.
I guess I'm one of the few people online who would still advocate for the electoral college. Most of the problems people associate with the electoral college today have to do with winner take all...
I guess I'm one of the few people online who would still advocate for the electoral college. Most of the problems people associate with the electoral college today have to do with winner take all systems, plural intentional. The constitution dictates that states will send electors proportional to their congressional representation but that is all, the rest is left up to the states themselves as far as how the run elections, count votes, and allocate electors. In fact, two states still currently divide their electors by the proportion of votes the candidates receive. The solution doesn't need to be to abolish the electoral college but rather to reinstate proportional elector allocation, abolish winner-takes-all systems.
I look back on the intentions set forth by the creation of the electoral college and largely agree with them:
Forming a deliberative body of experts to elect the best candidate in line with the will of the general populace
Slower and less reactive systems are generally a good balance for governments and while not optimal are arguable better than more reactive systems. A properly administered electoral college could add deliberateness and contemplativeness to elections
Giving smaller states a larger voice in the governing of the country as a whole (often derided but I find this is often a misunderstanding of what a federal system is and why it's a good thing)
I wish that we could walk back the party ticket system, there is rational as to why the runner up to the election should be the presiding officer of the senate and have the tie-breaking vote
The electoral college has been confirmed to have overrode the popular vote only four times in the existence of the US and all of them are attributable to the winner-takes-all systems in place, again the problem does not lie directly with the electoral college
Decisive political environments are exactly the times when direct elections are more dangerous and not as desirable
In short, no electoral system is or will be perfect but the long stability of the US does lend credence to the arguments that government systems which are slower acting, more balanced with power sharing, and with circuit breakers in place (separation of powers) to calm the populace and stop any one faction from usurping power are better for the country in the long-term. Of course there are disadvantages to the electoral college but I would argue they are outweighed by the advantages, if the system were correctly administrated and later reforms were reconsidered and repealed
The electoral college will exist until the day Texas turns blue and suddenly the “EC stops big states from dominating small states” talking point will disappear.
I’d be happy if we could at least turn the EC into a proportional allocation of votes for each state instead of winner take all. It makes improvement in any state matter. Rather than 7 winner take all swing states that should just have their votes split 50/50 to represent the actual opinion of their populations.
I wouldn't say that. Obama actually had an EC edge over Romney in 2012 - that's right, Democrats benefited from the EC, a little more than a decade ago. It's not like Republicans removed the EC right there and then either.
In the end, it's hard to change things so entrenched.
Obama still won the popular vote. Edge or not.
If we’re really getting into electoral reform let’s revisit the number of congressional districts per state and the distribution based on population.
Expanding the number of seats in the House of Representatives to a number that actually makes sense for our large population is probably the easiest (aka doesn’t require a constitutional amendment) path to a better EC and competitive elections generally.
Since EC votes per state are determined by the number of representatives + senators, adding more representatives automatically also improves the representation of the electoral college.
We do re-allocate house representitives with every census. California and New York both lost a rep. However, its not exactly easy to get better proportions,because the last time I remember going down this rabbithole, in order to still allow Wyoming to have a representative proportionally, we'd need to expand to something like 1000 house representatives. This becomes a logistical nightmare unless we want to move the physical location of Congress.
Imagine taking this further. Why not have 10,000 representatives who vote remotely?
It would not be much like the House of Representatives as it exists today. Each of those people would still represent thirty thousand voters. They would probably still be divided up by party. But I wonder how well it would work?
Lobbying them by talking to each of them one-on-one would not work, because they'd be scattered across the country and there are too many of them. It would be more like a mini-campaign.
It won't happen, but it seems like an interesting thought experiment.
Because this would make the current committee structures nearly impossible to manage. While Congress should be expanded, imagine trying to get 3000+ people to agree on which bills to advance through committees. The actual meat and potatoes of legislating would be unmanageable with our current systems.
If you're aware of any countries with that many legislators which haven't devolved into the executive setting policy, I'd be curious to learn.
With a radical change like that, you can't change just one thing. I imagine that the committee structure would get blown up too. Whoever decides which bills to vote on has a lot of power, and it's probably going to be a smaller number of people.
Maybe it could work something like getting a referendum on the ballot, where you need a certain number of signatures from other members before it gets voted on, and some kind of limits on proposals per member?
At this point we're imagining a very different form of government. Though, with enough party discipline, maybe it works out to be the same thing in the end?
At that point you might as well go to direct democracy, with all the advantages and pitfalls that entails.
I think having one person in 30,000 thinking about legislation all day is better than all of us doing it. But it would be easier to get your representative's attention.
Much like now, most people would probably tune out unless an issue was particularily important to them.
I like the idea of a direct democracy with a transferable (and overridable) representation system. 'I trust John to represent my interests' means John's vote weighs double, but since that representative could be anyone, there is a lot more room for involvement. Especially if there were a way to split vote weights among different representatives.
Maybe you get paid and mandated to politic full-time ala Jury duty if your representation weighs over a certain threshold.
That paired with mandatory voting (or investment of your vote) is a system I'd be most interested in seeing play out.
Another, that would probably have catastrophic growing pains, would be something like how my brother described WoW DKP points. Politicians are given some sort of voting currency which they spend (possibly blind/anonymously) over the course of the term to determine whether actions pass or not.
Some legal mechanism for enforcing campaign promises would also be interesting, including things like "I will vote in alignment with the majority of participating constituents on bills related to issue Y".
I'm all for it! Love me a good DKP system.
OK, so keep the number of Representatives as it is, but allocate Electors without the artificial cap.
TBH the Senate is exponentially worse of a problem, and why it makes a lot of sense to merge pretty much any state with less than 3 house reps into their nearest neighbors.
Merge Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Delaware into Maryland. Merge Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Conneticut. West Virginia into Virginia. Merge Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico (giving them proper citizenship) into the 'Remote States'.
By lopping off that bottom tier of population, you've improved representation in both the house and senate for everyone (except for those people that had far excessive representation).
If Wyoming deserves 2 Senators, Philadelphia alone deserves 6.
The EC benefits the political parties. It means they only need to worry about the purple states.
With out it they’d only need to worry about populous areas.
Compared to now where they only care about populous areas in swing states
So I was curious about this, and looked at some numbers.
According to the Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans living in urban areas was 80% in 2020. With a total 2020 Census population of 331,449,281 that means rural Americans numbered approximately 66,289,856.
If you look at the (as best as I can tell) swing states for the 2024 US presidential election, they and their populations are:
I think it's funny that the rural population (20% of total population) and the swing state population (18.22%) are so close.
Now, obviously a normal electoral-college-election will necessitate different priorities for candidates than a pure popular-vote-election would. So the swing state population coincidentally being so close to the rural population doesn't mean anything (probably).
However, 20% of the population is a lot. I don't think rural voters would be totally ignored by candidates. (This is pretty much the end of my response to your comment. You can stop reading here if you aren't interested in my ramblings)
I also wondered, how many people lived in the ten most-populous cities in the United States according to the 2020 Census:
So that's six different states, with two states, California and Texas, represented three times, with a total population of 26 million people, or 7.86% of the total population of the United States.
How many cities, in how many different states, would it take to reach the same population count as rural America (about 66-ish million people)?
I stopped counting after 100 cities:
So we're still short about 1.3 million people, but I think it's good enough.
This is the spread of states represented in that list:
So that's 34 total "states" represented in the list, counting Washington D.C.
I don't think this data proves that presidential candidates would have to campaign in more states, and more diverse settings, to be elected in a popular-vote-election. However, I certainly don't think this data helps the opposite argument either (that campaign priorities would somehow stay the same, or even be less diverse).
I think to make a strong case either way, you would need to tie this data in with recent political party election trends.
For example, New York is the most populous city in the country, but if (for example) it leans super heavily towards Democrats, then maybe their presidential candidate wouldn't need to bother campaigning there much, if at all. Is that a correct assumption to make? I don't know.
I do think, in a popular-vote-election, the political leaning of any given location matters less, since every single vote has the same 1:1 "power" as every other, anywhere else (versus the electoral college system).
This is where I approach the limits of my "election knowledge" though, so I'll let someone else ride off this comment to provide their own insight if they wish.
Tagging @Eji1700, because I originally started putting this comment together a few days ago as a response to your comment on another topic. Specifically, this part:
Thats why we should just merge all the tiny states until they have enough population to equal a medium-sized state.
The problem there is it may create incoherent states with internal partisan conflict because the components are too different to be stable.
You mean like Pennsylvania?
Highly divergent interests are nothing new...basically every single city in a red state.
At the end of the day, you just have a phase-in plan where initially all the state laws become county laws, give a bit of grandfathering in, form a new state constitution, and let all the overlap between state laws 'bubble up' to the new state. Once you unify the tax code it'll become pretty manageable.
It's not like there isn't any process to create a new state....just one we haven't used in several decades. Our traditional method is to throw away the old laws of the people who lived there, but since we have a more robust federal government, there's no reason that merging states would need to be an impossible task....they would just fallback to a default 'federal-only' jurisdiction ala Washington DC until they sort out the details.
I don't know anyone who supports the Electoral College, but I find the racism angle a little suspect. Not that there's definitely no one for whom racism is a motivator, but that there's another explanation: cognitive dissonance. The Electoral College (currently) benefits Republicans, so, in order to avoid cognitive dissonance, Republican voters are motivated to believe that it is a good thing. So they start with that position and then find reasons to believe it.
It's more of a historic thing: EC votes are assigned based on population, not vote counts. Since enslaved people were counted in population ("the three-fifths compromise") but were unable to vote, slave states had an advantage in elections.
I understand that historical racism is part of why the Electoral College exists in the first place, and I agree that its continued existence is a form of systemic racism, but the piece specifically says that personal racial animus is the reason why people still support it today.
I do believe that much of the "the cities aren't real America" and the way that "urban" is basically a synonym for "black" are built from that same racial animus. Chicago is talked about as a hellscape of violence and during a recent incident in my general area, it was absolutely a case of locals saying "they" needed to stay in "the city" (and many other comments were explicitly racist rather than just implicitly).
There is deep racism embedded in these former sundown towns.
I also get the sense that some number of invididuals living in rural, semi-rural, and suburban parts of the country, even parts that have traditionally been less racist, consider citydwellers to be incomprehisible and borderline an entirely different species. It might sound ridiculous but I've seen it myself, having grown up and/or lived in those areas.
I've spent most of my life in the small city/ suburban Midwest, hours from any major city, lots of corn. Believe me I've heard it all.
But I've learned over time how often "go back to Chicago" is said alongside references to the jungle, animals, savages, and all but the N word. (Usually.) The city of STL is much the same, vs the county. Not sure about Indy or the cities that get smaller from there, but mostly because Chicago takes up so much of the local attention.
It really is crazy in Illinois how many rural people don't seem to (consciously) understand how (proportionally) insignificant they are. I'm sure part of the problem is that they do get it, but refuse to consciously wrap their minds around it because when you read comments on news articles or Facebook posts, the hot takes are absurd.
They act like it's unfair how much focus Chicago gets and how those city folk are a bunch of idiots who [insert complete nonsense]. But Illinois is one of the most urbanized states and Chicagoland alone makes up, I believe, over ⅔ of the state population and something like 80% of the state's wages.
Now, I won't say the rest of the state isn't ignored and that certain areas, especially in the south and west of the state aren't even deprived, but man, they act like they make up a majority of the state just because there's a lot of empty land. It's really baffling if you're from the city.
But realizing that a lot of people in the state really have no context to wrap their head around how huge the population of Chicagoland is starts to explain it. It can be hard to admit how insignificant you are, but it's a lot easier when you know you live around 9 million other people than when you know all 400 people in your town and constantly hear about how those city folk are doing things you've been raised your whole life to know are wrong because the Bible says so (even though it doesn't).
Well and I'm talking cities of 50-150k, not even tiny towns though I live in a village technically now I think (idk there's townships and villages and it's weird).
Even there there's an anti-Chicago angle that's at least 50 percent racism and at least 50 percent because they're Dem leaning and maybe 10 percent about corruption. Even in Springfield. (These cities themselves tend to turn their county's blue in elections but there's still a large amount of this and the racism is not limited to one side.)
Meanwhile I have a couple of siblings in Chicago now, and their neighborhoods are safe, I use city rules for parking (no valuables visible in the car) and never feel unsafe. But my hometown has a "omg you'll get shot there" reputation too and I've lived in a bigger city for college so I just don't feel so phased or intimidated by the propaganda.
This urban/rural divide is the easiest example of what I had in mind when I made my earlier reply saying that “just combine small states” won’t work. It’s how you get local elections where all viable candidates promise “we will not enforce the new law here”—because said law was passed by the urban majority to address city problems.
I keep toying with the idea that the strip along Lake Michigan between Gary and Milwaukee ought to be sectioned off from Wisconsin & Illinois and become an independent federal district (if not outright new state).
No thank you, please do not remove the financial backbone of my state and leave me alone with reps like Mary Miller.
This has been proposed by a bunch of conservative assholes around here, once again due to racism and the like, and No Thanks.
I tried taking this at a line by line serious breakdown of the discussion and then just realized I was wasting my time.
There's so much that's wrong with this but quite frankly i'm tired of it. The Electoral college is not a great system. It's not even a good system. Pure popular vote for the president likely will be just as bad if not worse in 4-10 years after passing, and yes it is never going to happen anyways for both good and bad reasons.
There are LOTS of sane ways we could do elections, but pure popular vote isn't one of them, and "well i refuted a bunch of MAGA voters points" doesn't really make the argument.
I've still found very few people who would advocate for the removal of the electoral college with popular vote if it didn't benefit their side/candidates, and if you're coming at it from that perspective, you're already looking at it wrong. I'm just so tired of people assuming that because you dare to defend what idiots are in favor of that you must also be a racist maga voting shithead, so what's the point of even discussing it.
Wait what? Why?
What would you rather have than a popular vote for president? I'm struggling to think of issues with the president being a popular vote. Rurals already get outsized representation in the Senate.
I'm in favour of democracy, and I view the electoral college as antidemocratic, simple as.
I guess I'm one of the few people online who would still advocate for the electoral college. Most of the problems people associate with the electoral college today have to do with winner take all systems, plural intentional. The constitution dictates that states will send electors proportional to their congressional representation but that is all, the rest is left up to the states themselves as far as how the run elections, count votes, and allocate electors. In fact, two states still currently divide their electors by the proportion of votes the candidates receive. The solution doesn't need to be to abolish the electoral college but rather to reinstate proportional elector allocation, abolish winner-takes-all systems.
I look back on the intentions set forth by the creation of the electoral college and largely agree with them:
Forming a deliberative body of experts to elect the best candidate in line with the will of the general populace
Slower and less reactive systems are generally a good balance for governments and while not optimal are arguable better than more reactive systems. A properly administered electoral college could add deliberateness and contemplativeness to elections
Giving smaller states a larger voice in the governing of the country as a whole (often derided but I find this is often a misunderstanding of what a federal system is and why it's a good thing)
I wish that we could walk back the party ticket system, there is rational as to why the runner up to the election should be the presiding officer of the senate and have the tie-breaking vote
The electoral college has been confirmed to have overrode the popular vote only four times in the existence of the US and all of them are attributable to the winner-takes-all systems in place, again the problem does not lie directly with the electoral college
Decisive political environments are exactly the times when direct elections are more dangerous and not as desirable
In short, no electoral system is or will be perfect but the long stability of the US does lend credence to the arguments that government systems which are slower acting, more balanced with power sharing, and with circuit breakers in place (separation of powers) to calm the populace and stop any one faction from usurping power are better for the country in the long-term. Of course there are disadvantages to the electoral college but I would argue they are outweighed by the advantages, if the system were correctly administrated and later reforms were reconsidered and repealed
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