Ed Electoral College

Make the HoR proportional to the population like it is supposed to be. The law that set the cap at 435 was passed in direct response to the increasing immigration and population shift to urban centers.
 
LTC8K6 said:
I'm not sure what, if anything, should be done.

It just seems odd when you could even up just a few counties and have a large popular vote advantage disappear.

There's a ~1.7 million popular vote difference in Los Angeles County alone. That could easily elect a president in a popular vote contest.

I think a popular vote election might tilt heavily towards Democrats, as they seem to dominate the big population centers, and it would be a long time before any other party won the Presidency.
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Shhh....:mad: You're giving away the plan!


On a more serious note, historically, the reason the EC was set up in this way was because the states were supposed to pick the president. Technically, there doesn't have to be a vote for president at all by the people because the president wouldn't necessarily have much to do with people. Before Wilson, and especially before FDR, unless you joined the military or had reason to travel out of the country, a persons only interaction with the Federal government would most likely be the Post Office. The states would be the ones dealing with the Federal government, which is why the State Legislatures pick the Electors.

By that standard, the EC is an outdated concept. Obviously, now that we have a centralized, command and control Federal government, things are much different. I'm just not convinced that moving to a pure popular vote is the answer. And we'll likely have this conversation every time a Republican wins the presidency going forward, at least until enough middle class people flee California. No sane Republican is going to attempt to win California, so there's always going to be millions of extra votes in the state to run up the popular total for the Democrats.
 
LTC8K6 said:
I think a popular vote election might tilt heavily towards Democrats, as they seem to dominate the big population centers, and it would be a long time before any other party won the Presidency.
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What you mean to say is there are more Democrats than Republicans. Agreed. That's why the coming US government is obscene.
 
uke2se said:
To remove the elctoral college? Hopefully that's in the cards when the Democrats retake power.
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I think that Beerina says it much more eloquently than I could.
Beerina said:
Good luck convincing all those tiny red states you have **** on verbally for a year and a half that they should reduce their own power to make the coastal concrete canyons even more powerful.
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And as for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, that will go by the way side the first time that California is forced to give all of its EC votes to a republican candidate.
 
psionl0 said:
I think that Beerina says it much more eloquently than I could.
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Do the states get a vote in a change of the constitution? Or do you mean Senators? I'm fairly sure that once a rational crop of Senators are elected, there will be no problem.

Just read up on it. It comes down to rational lawmaking. One party is power-hoarding. The other isn't necessarily doing the same, and might actually think of the good of the nation. So, it comes down to getting Democratic majorities in two-thirds of all states. Give it a few decades for the ethnic composition of the US to change sufficiently, and that won't be an impossibility.

psionl0 said:
And as for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, that will go by the way side the first time that California is forced to give all of its EC votes to a republican candidate.
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Why do you think that? Just because the GOP is all about power-hoarding doesn't mean the Democrats are.
 
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The mere fact that a candidate or group of candidates can win despite receiving less votes than their opponent(s) makes the US electoral system completely undemocratic and unrepresentative: It violates the spirit of "one person one vote" since the strength of ones vote varies significantly based on where one lives. It's no different from giving peoples votes more importance if they were wealthy or part of the nobility.

Then again it's apparently extremely important that rural areas are heavily over-represented. I mean the system works right? Someone got elected so there's no reason whatsoever to mess with it because of the terrible, horrible potential consequences that might arise. Everyone just needs to get on with their lives and realize that things could be much worse.
 
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In a popular vote system, what would prevent a Duterte or Chavez or Castro from coming to power?

There's absolutely nothing to indicate that it would have prevented Trump from winning the Presidency.

What will happen is the popular vote system will be out of favor again as soon as it starts generating unexpected results. And by then it may be too late. We may have already elected a popular dictator.
 
Arcade22 said:
The mere fact that a candidate or group of candidates can win despite receiving less votes than their opponent(s) makes the US electoral system completely undemocratic and unrepresentative: It violates the spirit of "one person one vote" since the strength of ones vote varies significantly based on where one lives. It's no different from giving peoples votes more importance if they were wealthy or part of the nobility.

Then again it's apparently extremely important that rural areas are heavily over-represented. I mean the system works right? Someone got elected so there's no reason whatsoever to mess with it because of the terrible, horrible potential consequences that might arise. Everyone just needs to get on with their lives and realize that things could be much worse.
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You just can't predict how a popular vote election between Hillary and Donald would have ended.

What would you be saying today if Donald Trump had won a popular vote election? He didn't need to turn over that many counties in the US to get that done.
 
LTC8K6 said:
In a popular vote system, what would prevent a Duterte or Chavez or Castro from coming to power?

There's absolutely nothing to indicate that it would have prevented Trump from winning the Presidency.

What will happen is the popular vote system will be out of favor again as soon as it starts generating unexpected results. And by then it may be too late. We may have already elected a popular dictator.
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The electoral college couldn't prevent Trump from winning the Presidency, so I don't think this is a good argument against doing away with it.
 
LTC8K6 said:
You just can't predict how a popular vote election between Hillary and Donald would have ended.

What would you be saying today if Donald Trump had won a popular vote election? He didn't need to turn over that many counties in the US to get that done.
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Counties wouldn't have a vote in a popular election. Only individuals count. As it is, about 3 million more individuals voted Clinton. Sure, we can't exactly know how it would have been if the election had been about the popular vote, but there are clear indications that it would have been a Clinton victory.
 
uke2se said:
Counties wouldn't have a vote in a popular election. Only individuals count. As it is, about 3 million more individuals voted Clinton. Sure, we can't exactly know how it would have been if the election had been about the popular vote, but there are clear indications that it would have been a Clinton victory.
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But 9 million or so voters didn't vote for either Clinton or Trump.

Trump could certainly have swung that difference if he were running a popular vote campaign.

I think Trump and his team were the better campaigners.

A ~3m popular vote deficit only requires a ~1.5m vote swing to flip the result.

That's about 1% of the vote total for 2016, I think?

EC votes are obviously quite valuable, as one candidate got zero popular votes and one electoral vote, and another got 25 popular votes and 3 electoral votes. Those are quite the ratios.
 
LTC8K6 said:
But 9 million or so voters didn't vote for either Clinton or Trump.

Trump could certainly have swung that difference if he were running a popular vote campaign.

I think Trump and his team were the better campaigners.

A ~3m popular vote deficit only requires a ~1.5m vote swing to flip the result.

That's about 1% of the vote total for 2016, I think?
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Sure, that could happen. The point is, the electoral college could not stop Trump. Thus, stopping unwanted Presidents isn't a good reason to keep it.

LTC8K6 said:
EC votes are obviously quite valuable, as one candidate got zero popular votes and one electoral vote, and another got 25 popular votes and 3 electoral votes. Those are quite the ratios.
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But those EC votes are worthless. Winner takes all.
 
LTC8K6 said:
It wasn't meant to prevent Trump (or Clinton) from winning the Presidency, though.
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I know. But you held it up as a system that could prevent dictatorial Presidents, like Duerte, Chavez or Castro. It didn't stop the dictatorial President Donald Trump, so there's no reason to believe it would stop any of the other mentioned ones.
 
uke2se said:
I know. But you held it up as a system that could prevent dictatorial Presidents, like Duerte, Chavez or Castro. It didn't stop the dictatorial President Donald Trump, so there's no reason to believe it would stop any of the other mentioned ones.
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If there were enough evidence that Trump was unfit for office, this evidence could have been presented to enough electors to prevent Trump from being elected.

Merely believing something, or dreading something, or hating someone, is not evidence that they are unfit for office. If it were, then Obama would have been in jeopardy of faithless electors.

So, the EC certainly could have prevented Trump from winning.
 
Arcade22 said:
The mere fact that a candidate or group of candidates can win despite receiving less votes than their opponent(s) makes the US electoral system completely undemocratic and unrepresentative: It violates the spirit of "one person one vote" since the strength of ones vote varies significantly based on where one lives. It's no different from giving peoples votes more importance if they were wealthy or part of the nobility.
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The problem here is what you wrote isn't an argument. It is more like a report. You never establish why being undemocratic is a bad thing.

The pro EC side wants that debate. I'm so sick of seeing lists against the EC that never actually establish why their position is beneficial.
 
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