Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College
Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College
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.
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.
It'd be nice to go beyond and have some sort of ranked voting while we're at it. Essentially being forced to pick between two parties or risk having your vote being wasted sucks.
I don't know how the american system works, but voting for small parties should not considered a wasted vote. It helps the party even if they don't get elected
Not in America. In America it's an utter waste. The elections are too close.
Unpopular opinion: ranked choice voting will do little to solve the USA's democracy issues.
For starters, there are plenty of countries that do use FPTP and still have plenty of third parties in their parliaments (Canada, UK, Taiwan, Australia off the top of my head). So FPTP does not inherently preclude third parties - rather, the USA simply doesn't have any culture of multilateralism. I'd say this is mostly a byproduct of various cultural phenomena - the wealth gap, corporate media ownership, private campaign financing, win-or-lose mindset, etc.
But the greater issue is that RCV doesn't really ensure proportionality. As long as you have a single winner from each district, there will be distortions between the proportion of parties for whom people vote and the ultimate parliamentary body. For example, even if you implemented RCV across the entire USA today, I'm pretty sure most legislative bodies would still be entirely dominated by a single party because of gerrymandering and single-member districts.
So if you want to fix the USA's core issue, what you really need is a more proportional system - either have fewer, larger districts with multiple representatives from each one, or adopt something like MMP which is what Germany has (where you also cast a party vote to declare your preference for which party you most want represented in parliament and distribute proportionally along this tally across all voters). Not only does this make the final representation more fair, but it also does a much better job of making all votes matter, instead of only the lucky few in swing states or the rare competitive Congressional race.
But RCV on its own won't do much. It is still a small improvement, and if you have the opportunity to adopt it, I say go for it. But at best, I think it would take decades, or maybe even generations, before it starts to improve things.
Also, while I know this doesn't pertain quite so much to Presidential elections as the electoral college is used for, the USA is also fairly unique in that it has a directly elected head of government with much more power than other countries that also have a directly elected head of state. This is also a part of the problem - the executive branch is supposed to be the weakest of the 3 Federal branches - but it's a discussion for another time.
Look at third parties and their success in the UK and Canada.
The last general election in the UK was 2019. Conservatives got 43.6% of the vote but 56.2% of the seats. Labor got 32.1% of the votes and 31.1% of the seats.
The biggest national third party, the Liberal Democrats, got 11.6% of the vote but a mere 1.7% of the seats.
In comparison, look at regional third parties. The Scottish National Party got 3.9% of the vote and a whopping 7.4% of the seats. Irish regional parties like Sinn Feinn and the Democratic Unionist Party got a combined 2.3% of the seats with a combined 1.4% of the seats.
Previous elections have been quite similar. In 2015, the far right UKIP won only a single seat after getting a whopping 12.6% of the vote.
Canada is quite similar. The Bloc Quebecois consistently gets more votes than the national New Democratic Party, despite having gotten less than half as many votes.
I contest your usage of Canada as an example. While it's certainly not as polarized as the US, the effects of FPTP are still prominent. There's a ton of vote splitting at the federal and provincial levels. Eg, conservatives rule Ontario despite the majority of people voting for one of the two left-er leaning parties, since the two parties basically split the left vote down the middle, while conservatives only have one party.
I do completely agree that propositional voting is waaaaay better than ranked choice, though. Personally, I will take almost anything over FPTP, but some form of PR is vastly superior, as you noted.
But at least with ranked choice, people can start to vote for another party without it feeling like a penalty. As a Canadian, I basically have to vote strategic. I don't get to vote for my favourite party because of FPTP. Ranked choice would at least remove that issue.
I think the two party system of the US is basically where FPTP systems are all at risk to end up, especially since voting strategically gradually results in that. But the US GOP is so crazy that it's almost a necessity for any progressive to vote strategically, whereas at least in Canada, things aren't quite as bad, which makes it easier for people to take the risk of voting for who they really want to.
For anyone living in Utah, a bill to enable Ranked Choice voting will be in November 2023.
So anyone there please register to vote sooner rather than later.
Currently people are being told it's too confusing and too liberal, so they really could be more young people votes to help the cause.
RCV is a rebrand of the voting method IRV, which was used by many cities in the early 20th century. Due to inconsistent results, it was repealed. So, unfortunately, conservatives have a leg to stand on when they attack RCV.
For clarity: their specific attacks take things to the extreme and often have some racist underpinnings, but there is a kernel of truth to attacking specifically on the method itself.
That is why I support something like STAR voting, it doesn't suffer from many of RCV's issues
I wish your ballot measure luck however, because at the end of the day it still is, mildly better than FPTP
Not "while we're at it" - RCV is the real change we need.
Approval/STAR would be even better, but I'd take RCV over FPTP
RCV will do nothing to break the duopoly in America. RCV will basically allow you to vote for the Democrats or Republicans without bubbling their name on your ballot.
Contrary to what is stated, RCV falls apart as soon as more than 2 parties become viable. It suffers from the spoiler effect.
RCV, like plurality voting, only reflects your preference for one candidate at a time. In fact, it's relatively accurate to say that RCV is just plurality with (literally) extra steps (rounds).
One of the better ballot changes we can make is to move to something like STAR voting, which can capture the nuance of magnitude of preference for ALL candidates at once.
However, changing voting method alone is not enough. Proportional representation and expanding the number of elected officials are two powerful ways to introduce new ideas and break up power structures.
And, of course, campaign finance reform such as democracy vouchers
Let's just cut out the middleman and go straight to direct voting.
Vote directly on the issues that matter to you. Representative democracies only exist to protect the ruling class.
Ranked choice still doesn't solve the winner-takes-all situation that is the presidential election. Instead it should be appointed by a group of competent people, who in turn are voted in by something like ranked choice or whatever.
The original intent from the Constitution was that the winner was president and the second place was vice president. Since the vice president also is the tie breaking vote in the Senate, that doesn't sit very well with the president. So they changed it to the running mate system.
The group your talking about would essentially be the cabinet? Right? They get approved by Congress. So indirect approval by the people.
BREAKING: group of people whose only chance of getting elected is relying on the Electoral College not thrilled about the idea of abandoning the Electoral College
It's a great idea until it affects them lol
Yeah, dawg forbid they change their platform to, you know, appeal to a majority of Americans...
Ranked choice voting please.
Came here to say this.
Part of this piece has an excellent insight into the dichotomy of the Republican Party. Of those highly engaged with politics, only 27% want to ditch the electoral college! These people understand the party is unpopular and the tactics used to hold power are a necessary way to get their policies.
The rest of the group feels otherwise, probably NOT because they don’t care if their candidate gets elected, but rather that they don’t understand how crucial it is to their party (along with gerrymandering). And their first gut instinct is that popular vote is justified/rational/logical whatever.
Now for a little thought experiment: What would happen if this became an actual campaign issue? I’d put my money on those 27% being able to convince the rest of the party how important it is, flipping their view. Maybe I’m wrong, but since many R voters tent to put self interests above all else, it logically follows that they’re just not understanding how critical the electoral college is. If their talking heads went on air/TV each day and stopped talking about how immigrants are stealing jobs or poor people are taking their hard earned money, and instead focused on the importance of the electoral college, they’d flip. Not because they think it’s right or justified. Because they think it’s best for themselves and their party. And it’s the current rallying cry.
Now apply this across an entire party, with those highly engaged telling the others how to vote, what to think about policy, and what the outcomes will be. Bring together uneducated people already susceptible to misinformation, and pair them with intelligent and extremely vocal/active groups who can sell snake oil like the best of them. Take that minority vote and put some real numbers behind it… likely not enough to get a majority, but enough to win a sophisticated electoral college or gerrymandered district.
they probably wouldn’t even try and hide it: they’d literally just come out and say the electoral college helps keep the democrats out and they’d vote for it
Good point. It’ll likely take three words to get a lot of those people to flip: own the libs.
Sometimes I forget how little value some people place in consistency of beliefs. Small government! Except ____. Ad nauseam.
They already have these talking points. They used them when Hillary won the popular vote.
Tyranny of the majority, nobody would have to listen to rural Americans ever again.
It's all bullshit obviously. But it cut through to moderates last time it made the rounds. And these are swayable voters I'm talking about.
The rest of the group feels otherwise, probably NOT because they don’t care if their candidate gets elected, but rather that they don’t understand how crucial it is to their party (along with gerrymandering). And their first gut instinct is that popular vote is justified/rational/logical whatever.
The (European) centrist part in me think the “less engaged” Republicans are those who like the central right-wing ideas (small government, less taxes etc.), but don’t like how crazy the current Republican party is, and since they have no real representative they identify themselves as “less engaged”. Those people would probably prefer for the electoral college to be abolished so that the current Republican party never gets elected again and they’re forced to shift to candidates that are actually sane in order to win back votes.
…but yeah, your analysis might be correct too, those “less engaged” people could also be MAGAs that just don’t understand how they wouldn’t win an actually democratic election.
I’m sure you’re right about some people. They’re feeling abandoned and disgusted by what’s supposed to have their support and ideologies in mind, therefore not as active. That makes sense.
I know there are a lot of good/reasonable people who just want the government to play a smaller role in society and I think that’s a necessary part of any well-functioning system. And I agree with the sentiment in specific applications. Hopefully there is a way forward for those types to force a change for the better from the current GOP. Because it’s gone off the rails.
Yes, I think the rabble would quickly fall in line against changing the electoral college. We saw them growing more accepting of LGBT people for a few years only to whiplash back to homicidal hatred once their high priesthood started ranting against the gays again. These poll results are kind of like an interesting Freudian slip though: like you said, when they're not paying attention a majority of Repubs can organically move to the reasonable opinion before the elites can apply their brainwashing again.
Republicans would never win a nationwide election again. They'd actually have to come up with policies people want. Not gonna happen anytime soon.
I've had family that votes Republican say this, they will literally defend the minority vote winning. They see democracy as "mob rule." Well, if a bunch of rich assholes getting to decide who's president, and a system where the people with the least votes win, how is that not mob rule?
We have lots of minority protections in place to avoid mob rule and the tyranny of the majority. The Electoral College is the tyranny of the minority.
The cons really showed their hand more recently when arguing over things like suppressing the vote, and mail-in voting and telling everyone that "voting is not really a right enshrined in the Constitution".
Well, tell us how you really feel.
Wait, are you implying that only crafting policy around what the elitist of the elite want and waging stupid performative culture wars for the clueless gop base is unpopular with most Americans?
Americans, lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
The better plan would be institute the Wyoming Rule or something similar to it. The HoR is simply too damned small which not only limits the number of EC votes it also has the representative to citizen ratio fucked up 90 way to Sunday.
We broke the EC in 1929 by capping the size of the HoR and it's well past time to fix it.
If the president was chosen by popular vote, I think you could make a reasonable case that the last Republican president would have been George H.W. Bush in 1988. George W. Bush did win the popular vote against John Kerry in 2004, but he lost it to Al Gore in 2000 so it's debatable whether or not he would have beaten an incumbent Gore in 2004 I think.
And now you see why the Republicans are so against it. They can’t win in a straight vote.
I could also make a reasonable case that election strategies would have changed to more populist stances to accommodate for that.
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
Napavointerco
The Wyoming Rule, or something like it, would solve a lot more problems than just the EC.
My vote would finally matter. My state already knows who it's supporting with or without me.
yeah, the 'vote!' stuff is hard to stomach living where i do, which went red on TV literally the minute polls closed
And so, neither party is going to bother trying to court your vote: one can take you for granted, and the other will write you off. So I hope you have the same concerns as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona, because that's what you're getting.
And the votes of the flyover states become an after thought.
Exactly!
Why would you want people to decide their countrys future when empty landmass could do it?
I hate this argument. There are still a lot of votes in the flyover states. The electoral college doesn't disadvantage flyover states anymore than not having an electoral college disadvantages those living outside of the major cities in a state wide election.
Republicans still win the Ohio governor's election despite 5 major metropolitan areas in the state.
Also there are Republican votes in New York and California that get discarded currently.
This isn't a game, this is just making the thing fair.
Two things I'd love to see. Eliminating the electoral college and then getting rid of superdelegates. Two fundamentally anti-democratic concepts.
Two things I’d love to see.
Don't forget "ranked-choice voting".
My goodness, yes.
Under the 2018 rules, in the Democratic National Convention superdelegates can't participate in the first vote and can participate only in a contested convention. Seems reasonable to me.
Wikipedia also reminded me about this little bit of Bernie hypocrisy that I'd forgotten about: "Sanders initially said that the candidate with the majority of pledged delegates should be the nominee; in May 2016, after falling behind in the elected delegate count, he shifted, pushed for a contested convention and arguing that, 'The responsibility that superdelegates have is to decide what is best for this country and what is best for the Democratic Party.'" Talk about unprincipled political opportunist.
I can disagree with something Bernie said, but still be a huge supporter of his for his many other things I fully agree with. I maintain that superdelegates being in place to deal with a contested convention is still a bad thing and undemocratic. The real unhelpful part was when the DNC chair stated that it can also quell unintended grassroots efforts. I thought grassroots efforts were an example of a good thing about democracy, not a bad one.
They will never allow that because it'll kill the entire republican party lol
Won't be good for Democrats either. System is rigged for two parties and two parties only.
The difference is in what the voters want.
Both parties wouldn't be for it, but liberal voters would be for it. Conservative voters would be against it.
The electoral college was created at a time when faster-than-horse communication didn't exist. It made sense then, but has not grown with the times.
I fail to see how it ever made sense.
The year is 1780. The printing press is the pinnacle of technology, there's no such thing as an adding machine. Most correspondence is done on parchment with a quill pen. The majority of Americans cannot read or write. Information cannot travel beyond earshot faster than a galloping horse. Elect a president by popular vote. You have four months.
That's not even it. At the time the Constitution was adopted, there were states like Virginia that had a lot of people, but rather few voters. They were afraid that they wouldn't have a real say in who the president was. The Electoral College was a way to inflate slave states' power, and entice them to join the Union.
The whole thing is absurd and overly represents rural areas and Republicans. We already have a huge problem with the "2 senators per state" thing and the House representing Republicans far too much in relation to their numbers.
I'm 100% okay with the 2 senators per state thing. That's a feature, not a bug. Even though cities are on the right side of history right now, I don't want to completely silence the rural vote forever.
However, arbitrarily limiting the number of House reps is absolutely absurd and counter to the purpose of the House. That is a bug.
Well, then, maybe we should start considering splitting up some states and joining others together then. A place like California is more future-minded and it's where a great deal of the people are, as well as much of our economy. Also, it's where a lot of our food is grown. And it gets 2 Senators.
The 2 Dakotas have more than that, and what do they really represent for the future of America and the world? More fracking?
Maybe states with really large masses and hardly anyone in them are combined. Idaho, Montana and Wyoming - one state. North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, another.
The Republicans are the main reason we still have it .. they know they'd never win if they had to play fair.
But but but why should cities get to determine everything? Don't you know that not only does land vote, everyone in a patch of land votes the same? So, why bother giving everyone in a city a vote, you know?
Also, be sure to let the vice president cancel the whole thing if they don't like the results.
(Please tell me my sarcasm is obvious.)
We should just abolish the Senate. With the current formulation of the US government there's no reason why a State should have extra power like that. Let the people make the rules. Expand the House, abolish the Senate, and remove the electoral college. And since we're wishing for things that will never happen anyway, go ahead and use some kind of proportional vote (ranked choice, star, whatever, just literally anything but FPTP).
Instead of tilting at the windmill that is removing the EC how about we do something much easier and simpler and simply expand the House of Representatives? Not only would this add votes to the EC and make the Presidential Elections more representative it would also, you know, make the HoR more Representative! For extra fun it would also diminish the returns of gerrymandering since there would be so many more districts.
All we need is a change to the Re-Apportionment Act of 1929. There is no good reason that the size of the HoR is fixed at 435. None.
For extra fun it would also diminish the returns of gerrymandering since there would be so many more districts.
you should lead with this
In 1929, each representative represented about 283k Americans. Now each representative represent about 762k Americans. That's almost a 300% increase. This means each American's voice is only about 1/3rd as powerful as it was in 1929. To have as much political power as they did in 1929, we'd need about 1200 Representatives.
To have as much political power as they did in 1929, we’d need about 1200 Representatives.
I don't see a problem with that.
That's a long way around to get to fair representation. It amounts to a distraction from the real issue.
We can achieve that now through fairness in redistricting.
There are only so many ways to divide 435 seats while still guaranteeing at least 1 seat per state.
We can achieve that now through fairness in redistricting.
No you can't.
Your way doesn't return the ratio of EC votes between the HoR and the Senate to what it should be. It keeps it stuck in 1929 and every year that goes by makes it worse.
Your way doesn't scale the number of total EC votes as our population grows.
Your way ALSO doesn't return the ratio of Citizens to Representatives to anything resembling sanity. Ratios of nearly 800,000 to 1, and growing, are irrational and break Democracy.
You could redistrict the ever loving hell out of the other 49 States but Wyoming would keep it's 3 EC votes and its outsized vote for President. It would keep it's outsized influence in the HoR and it would keep it's ranking as #1 in the Citizen to Representative Ratio.
So much of what everyone hates about our Federal Government today is DIRECTLY tied to a vastly undersized HoR. The body is simply too small to adequately represent a population of over 300,000,000 people.
I propose the National Popular Vote Interstate compact. Cgp grey has an amazing video on it. It's a "petition" of sorts that basically says that states that sign it will have its elective representatives vote with the majority vote of their said state.
Here's the video if anyone wants to watch it: https://youtu.be/tUX-frlNBJY
The "founding fathers" would be against the electoral college today too. The electoral college was an idea to try to get the people to directly vote for the president.
The electoral college was necessary because it would have been logistically impossible for people living in 18th and 19th century America to be able to participate in a single-day one person one vote election, given their level of technology at the time.
We live in the 21st century. We have instantaneous means of communication via the internet making designating an elector to travel to Washington unnecessary, a greatly expanded infrastructure via roads and mass transit for people to travel to polling places in a reasonable amount of time in a day, computers that can tally the ballots many hundreds of times faster than a human being can, and vastly expanded capacity for handling the logistics of running a nationwide election including a complex bureaucracy dedicated to oversight and enforcement of voting laws and regulations.
The electoral college is an archaic system whose only purpose has been completely supplanted by modern technology. Any notion of rogue electors defending the republic from authoritarians and populists is not only historically false, but given the fact that they failed to prevent exactly that situation from happening once already, laughably ineffective.
The electoral college was necessary because it would have been logistically impossible for people living in 18th and 19th century America to be able to participate in a single-day one person one vote election, given their level of technology at the time.
That had nothing to do with it. It would have been extremely easy for people in each state to count the votes for that state, then bring those vote totals to the capital where those state-totals are added together to get the final country-wide count. The problem is that that kind of simple, one-person one-vote system means that each vote would be weighted equally, and in some states there was a large portion of the population that couldn't vote but the state's decision-makers still wanted that portion to affect how much say that state had in choosing the President.
So basically, the Electoral College is there because of slavery.
Also, there have been times where electors got the names wrong lol. Imagine losing because somebody put your name wrong. I mean I guess there's precedent for the supreme Court picking a winner already. God I hate this country.
I don't think this is true. The commonly cited reference is James Madison's Federalist Paper No. 10, I'll provide the relevant excerpt and a Wikipedia link, though I'll urge caution as they aren't authoritative sources by any means. Bolding is mine.
Preamble
Federalist No. 10 continues a theme begun in Federalist No. 9 and is titled "The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection". The whole series is cited by scholars and jurists as an authoritative interpretation and explication of the meaning of the Constitution. Historians such as Charles A. Beard argue that No. 10 shows an explicit rejection by the Founding Fathers of the principles of direct democracy and factionalism, and argue that Madison suggests that a representative republic is more effective against partisanship and factionalism.
Cherry-picked quote cited by Garry Wills
Garry Wills is a noted critic of Madison's argument in Federalist No. 10. In his book Explaining America, he adopts the position of Robert Dahl in arguing that Madison's framework does not necessarily enhance the protections of minorities or ensure the common good. Instead, Wills claims: "Minorities can make use of dispersed and staggered governmental machinery to clog, delay, slow down, hamper, and obstruct the majority. But these weapons for delay are given to the minority irrespective of its factious or nonfactious character; and they can be used against the majority irrespective of its factious or nonfactious character. What Madison prevents is not faction, but action. What he protects is not the common good but delay as such".
EDIT: Here's where I first heard of the argument that the US is not a democracy (in the sense it's thought of by everyday use, as opposed to the Greek which involves the concept of demos. He's a Marxist, thought it might be relevant and wouldn't want to waste your time only to figure it out later.
EDIT EDIT: I didn't even make my point, whoops. I think the founding fathers were not unaware of the current state of affairs of the electoral college being probsble, rather it was included by design.
I feel like while the electoral college is an issue, it's the gerrymandering that is ultimately the biggest issue.
And in fact probably also contributes to the electoral college issue.
The senate is pretty bad too.
In theory we could expand the number of house seats so that more populous states get more reps and everyone has a more equal number of voters per congressperson. I think that would not only help make the house more fair but would also make the electoral college more fair (since the # of electors increases with the number of house members). Not as good as the popular vote, but it’s an improvement that doesn’t require a conditional amendment.
Although it’s somewhat inconceivable to some people that the US can have more than 50 states (and that DC isn’t what it once was), don’t forget about representation for DC and Puerto Rico.
Both which operate very much like state entities now, making a pretty good argument for true federal representation with proper voting power.
What you're talking about is the Wyoming Rule or something similar to it. We fucked up our Government and we really really need to get rid of the Re-Apportionment Act of 1929.
Gerrymandering only directly impacts the House, while the EC biases the presidential vote, and state sizes bias the senate. All three elected branches are badly selected and all three are biased towards the Republicans. Hard to say the House is more important than the presidency though.
Some more fuckery with the house: Each state is supposed to get at least one representative, plus another representative per every so many people, right? And historically the house has expanded to fit the growing population, right?
That's not how it works anymore. They stopped expanding it when it was obvious the Republicans would never have a majority in the house ever again. Go look at the algorithm they use to determine how many representatives each state gets.
I don't really understand how we fix gerrymandering. Districts can sue the state for making their elections more competitive, less competitive, or a perceived slight. Every time maps are drawn, 99.9% of districts become less competitive, offering a safer win for both of the two major parties where they expect to win. Strategically voting for third parties that can put Ranked Choice in place is... Possible, but incremental.
So yeah it seems like ending the electoral college is less complicated. It seems very popular with most people and half the politicians.
First we need a federal initiative/ referendum system. Because the existing politicians will never vote to limit their own power.
After we have this, we can start with initiatives that set maximum ages, fix the voting systems. Fix Roe. Dismantle the terrible stranglehold the two party system has on getting anything done.
Do all the things that are popular but politicians will never do.
Direct democracy has shown to be a pretty bad idea. It's useful here and there for certain things like referenda, but to use it for everything? Fuck that, no way. People are fucking dumb and are already constantly voting against their interests.
I mean just look at Brexit. And that would be just the tip of the iceberg if we ran our entire country that way.
We could start by reconsidering the Reapportionment Act of 1929...
This would help so much. Not only would greatly increasing the number of representatives lead to fairer representation - it would decrease lobbyist power in the House (harder to buy a critical number of members when there are so many representatives).
there is absolutely no valid argument to do anything that isn't simply tallying all the votes. because of course that's how it should work
It makes sense from the perspective of early America, which initially wanted a confederate system.
It doesn't make sense now that most people consider themselves American first and their state is just the place they currently live.
Apparently you are unaware of ranked choice voting systems, because there are certainly reasons that electing by popular vote is a bad system.
Not a fan of the EC, but this is a bad take imo.
Many democracies don't have the people directly vote on their leader. Parliamentary systems typically have the people voting for a representative who will then vote for the Prime Minister on their behalf.
Representative Democracy exists for a reason.
Something something, “Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.”
Direct voting should be the end-goal of a democracy.
You mean referendums?
Not sure what the guy you replied to meant, but I don't think we should have referendums about every little thing. I know some of the stuff that pops up in my friend's state's referendums they say they don't feel qualified at all to vote on. But I agree that major stuff, like who gets to be President, probably should be direct voting.
Why?
What differentiates it from mob rule?
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. For example, Maryland might go 60% blue and 40% red, so they would give 6 of their 10 votes to blue and 4 to red.
This would de-emphasize the importance of swing states, not completely disenfranchise rural voters, and would return a result that more closely mirrored the popular vote. It might also pave the way for a 3rd party to be relevant if the stars aligned elsewhere.
Might work for MD size states, but most smaller even EV states would split their EVs evenly, even if the state voted 60/40 one way or the other -- while odd EV states would always cast a net vote for the winner.
For example, using the 2020 election numbers Trump would win if the election included only the following states:
- AK (R+10) Trump 2-1 Biden
- GA (D+0) Trump 8-8 Biden
- WI (D+1) Trump 5-5 Biden
- PA (D+1) Trump 10-10 Biden
- NV (D+2) Trump 3-3 Biden
- NH (D+7) Trump 2-2 Biden
- ME (D+9) Trump 2-2 Biden
- RI (D+20) Trump 2-2 Biden
I don't know that it's any nobler to for electoral influence to discriminate on the basis of even states and odd states than swing states vs safe states. Unless you're also one of the group wanting to expand the legislature until there are no 4 and 6 EV states ...
By "the electoral college" most people seem to mean that each state has influence disproportionate to its population, because every state gets two electors regardless of size. Ignoring that that is independent of the electoral college, disproportionate power isn't where most of the problem arises. The problem is that most states do not allocate their electors proportionally to how their citizens voted. Almost all states give all electors to the majority winner in the state. It's not required to do it that way, and Maine and Nebraska allocate at least some of their electors based on the proportion of the vote.
If states allocated their electors solely based on the proportion of votes in the state, that would achieve what a national popular vote would achieve and more. For example, Trump won despite losing the poplar vote, but if states had instead allocated their electors proportionally to voters within the state, Trump would have lost.
Why do this instead of a national popular vote? First-past-the-post voting systems result in two party systems with a lot of conflict. Ranked choice systems elect representatives that are more agreeable to everyone. A national popular vote entrenches a bad system, making it harder to ever get a rank choice system.
More importantly from a pragmatic standpoint, it's much harder to get a national popular vote implemented. To work, almost all of the states would need to get on board, but there's no individual-level incentive for citizens of a state to agree to it. Why would the majority of citizens of Montana agree to send their electors to the national popular vote winner when it's likely not the person they voted for? How are you going to convince them to join? The majority of people there won't want that, so they won't pass the law.
If states allocate based on proportion, individuals won't be concerned that their votes will ever support a candidate they don't like. It also doesn't matter whether other states hop on board. Maine and Nebraska are proof of this. They changed their allocation schemes without regard for any other state. At the individual level, the choice is easy; no one wants their vote to go toward a candidate they don't like, and the current system AND the national popular vote system both do that. If you think about your own views, are you in a state that the majority of the time the majority of people vote for a candidate you don't like? Wouldn't you rather have your state allocate proportionally? Are you in a place where the majority of the time your state goes the way you do? Are you happy that your neighbors' opinions are suppressed? It's pretty easy to get on board at an individual level, so that makes it easy to pass within a state.
People should give up on national popular vote and focus on getting their state to switch to proportional allocation. If you really want progress, target some key states: Florida, Ohio, Texas, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois.
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a viable path to getting a national popular vote. Essentially if enough states agree to send all of their electoral votes to the popular candidate then the popular vote winning candidate will win the election. The compact will only go into effect once enough states agree that would make a majority. Right now there are states with 206 electoral votes that have agreed and only 65 more electoral votes would be needed.
I do feel like your proposition is harder to convince people to enact. Right now my state has finally changed to be for a party I support I don't want to support legislation that will mean some of those electoral college votes will go to the other party, it would be more fair on the state level but not nationally. Sure I'd be okay with it if other states that vote for the other party did the same thing. It becomes this standoff where people want the other side to move first. That's my favorite part about NPVIC is that it does away with the messy middle ground.
They told me in high school that the electoral college was still necessary because counting the popular vote was too hard...
Did your teachers perhaps get their college diplomas in the 1870s? Because that predates the first tabulating machines being invented. Add that invention to the telegraph machine (ca 1837), and you've got a stew going.
I wish I was kidding! My school district wasn't too bright.
You're either in your 90's or 100's, or that was a complete lie.
Oh I know it was a lie. My school district sucked.
No. It's because states that have huge populations would choose the president with basically zero say from most others. Technically a non representative government.
Except using the popular vote means that States wouldn't decide who was president like they do now, the people would.
Under the current system if I vote Red in Chicago I just completely wasted my time. Cook County is so blue that I don't have a voice. Get rid of the Electoral College, however, and now my vote worth just as much as everyone elses.
People seem to think that if we moved away from the College that the population of a blue state will 100% vote blue or a red state will only have red votes. It's just not true. The northern half of California or the southern half Illinois votes way different than their counterparts.
The Electoral College is an outdated system designed for a time when the US had relatively low Literacy and the public couldn't be reliably counted on to be informed. There is no excuse for it nowadays.
So instead, states with populations smaller than some cities get to completely override the will of the majority of the country.
Whatever else, I'm sure we can all agree that the current performative, pro-forma electoral college meetings are not what was intended by the framers.
I fucking hate how Americans divide politics between liberals and conservatives. The pollster could have at least given a third 'neither' option.
This could be either a fake or a real ad by those people. It is amazing how hard it is to distinguish parody and real news theses days.
UPDATE: For some unknown reasons, this comment appeared under the wrong article. I've seen the "Electoral College" article, but didn't even open it, so this is not even a case of "postet in the wrong window" or so.
This was more of a valid argument when Republicans were winning elections. I think we should keep the electoral college as long as there's a republican candidate that wants to overturn our democracy.
I don’t think it should be eliminated completely. I think each state should award their points proportionately. That way no one is disenfranchised.
Noone is disenfranchised. By choosing to elect an executive nationally it only makes sense to popularise the vote. Why should Wyoming citizens have more sway than California (per capita)
Pure popular vote = only large population centers matter because most of the people live there, meaning politicians can safely ignore rural areas that provide all of the food to the cities because they don't matter votes-wise. Terrible idea for a large country that doesn't (net) import its food. This also ignores the fact that stupid, easily manipulated people are also allowed to vote.
Electoral college = rural areas have a disproportionately large voice as they should, but large cities are now neglected. Rural votes are also easily influenced by bad actors, like how China is trying to buy African votes to have a bigger say in the UN.
Except nowhere is homogeneous. There are red voters that live in cities and there are blue voters that live in small farming towns. Right now they don't have a voice because they are separated into districts that are overwhelmingly red or blue
but get rid if the College and now suddenly your vote is worth just as much as your neighbors, regardless of where you live.politicians can safely ignore rural areas that provide all of the food to the cities because they don’t matter votes-wise
They already do. Politicians only focus on swing states, and the cities within those swing states.
They may on occasion visit rural areas, but 9 times out of 10 they are in a city when they are campaigning.
All votes should count equally. Anything less is bullshit.
rural areas that provide all of the food to the cities
I don't understand this common argument and the framing that comes with it - as if they are doing it for free or for altruistic reasons.
Oh for fucks sakes, it isn't going away, so you can stop fantasizing about something that won't happen.
Learn to win by the rules of the game.
In basketball you don't win a game by scoring the most 3-throws. The game is won by scoring the most points. Period. Stop acting like we don't have a way to win. If one side is gaming the system, then find a way to work around it. Clearly they were smart enough to game the system, so find a way to game it back. Goddamn it these polls are incredibly annoying. Americans will find any excuse not to vote.
Oh for fucks sakes, it isn’t going away, so you can stop fantasizing about something that won’t happen.
Every day we get closer to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact getting triggered, effectively killing the electoral college. Doomerism isn't going to get us anywhere.
If one side is gaming the system, then find a way to work around it.
If the system is gamed then it needs fixed. Which it is and does. Our elections should not be gamed.
Americans will find any excuse not to vote.
That's not really what's happening here. Americans are frustrated that their votes are essentially meaningless if they are not in a swing state, and that the value of your vote is dependent on where you live.
All votes should be equal.
The electoral college is good because it stops mob rule from taking over America and doing tyrannies against the minority of wealthy entrepreneurs.
