What should replace the Electoral College as practiced today, where it's winner-take-all-by-state in all but two states?
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What should replace the Electoral College as practiced today, where it's winner-take-all-by-state in all but two states?
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Percentage of others that also voted for:
Thanks to (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter it's Russian Roulette anyway - with rounds in all chambers.
Re:Thanks to (Score:4, Funny)
Quite literally Russian roulette now the Russian's control our voting machines.
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In the last year, I've run across *so* many people posting on sites like Ars Technica, The-Kinja-Formerly-Known-As-Gawker and other places where every single post was either an attack on Clinton or a pro-Russian promotional. It's just mindboggling that this is happening. I always took the whole "There are paid shills all over the place." viewpoint as being rather paranoid, and in most cases I still do. But this? I swear, this has me worried about just how many Americans really have turned off their brains
Re: Thanks to (Score:3)
This makes events like this last election unlikely
You say this, but it's happened in 2 of the last 4 elections. Seems like it's becoming more likely.
Just another form of Gerrymandering (Score:3, Interesting)
The electoral college just means that your vote counts for whichever party is predominant in your state, no matter what you actually voted for. The "predominant" party in your state is pretty arbitrary, though, depending upon how successful the parties are at gerrymandering: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
The US form of representative democracy is just an illusion to make you think your vote matters. US democracy is not intended to be just or fair... its only practical purpose is a safety valve to pres
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To understand the make electoral votes automatic statement it should be understood that in each state, when voting for a presidential candidate, you are actually voting for a slate of electors (one elector for each house seat apportioned to the state and two additional for each senate seat) who are then supposed to meet and determine the states actual vote for president. It is possible for those people, despite supposedly being loyal to the party they represent, to cast their vote for anyone, not necessari
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You have to keep in mind too that the way the electoral college works today is the democrats start with 86 electoral votes for NY and CA. These are awarded the minute the polls close; no count necessary. They don't need to campaign in these states, nor is it meaningful for republicans or anyone else to do so. The actual election is for the remaining 452 electoral votes, of which the democrats need 184 and anyone else would need 270. This is a tremendous advantage - why would they want to give this up de
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May he rein a 1000 generations!
Interesting typo there.
Trump is already a uniter (Score:4, Funny)
Who'd have thought a month ago Trump would ever get the left to agree that questing close election results was a good idea? Yet here we are today contesting elections in multiple states!
Yet another Trump victory!
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Who'd have thought a month ago Trump would ever get the left to agree that questing close election results was a good idea? Yet here we are today contesting elections in multiple states!
Yet another Trump victory!
Interesting revisionist history there. I do believe the left had been pushing to ratify election results for quite a while: example: Bush vs. Gore in 2000. Yet another recent example where the popular vote was not the same as the EC.
Talk about ballsy revisionism! (Score:2)
Interesting revisionist history there. I do believe the left had been pushing to ratify election results for quite a while
Just a month ago Hillary said not accepting the election results was horrifying [dailycaller.com].
She went on to say We've had free and fair elections and we've accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them
example: Bush vs. Gore in 2000.
So basically only when they lose... but the real truth comes out when they are sure they will win. Until they lose, then back to questioning elections being jus
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And the next time there is a close election they will again. Always and forever. By either or both parties. Since is doesn't look like there will be any landslide victories in our future, better get used to it.
Re:Talk about ballsy revisionism! (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting revisionist history there. I do believe the left had been pushing to ratify election results for quite a while
Just a month ago Hillary said not accepting the election results was horrifying [dailycaller.com].
She went on to say We've had free and fair elections and we've accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them
example: Bush vs. Gore in 2000.
So basically only when they lose... but the real truth comes out when they are sure they will win. Until they lose, then back to questioning elections being just fine!
I do believe you are highly confused. Asking for a recount is different from refusing to accept the results of an election. I will give you a hint, in our system of government the results of the election are not officially determined until the EC meets. So between now and then, it is perfectly acceptable under circumstances of potential abuse or for verification that asking for a recount is appropriate. And yes, I have said that NO MATTER WHO was the president elect.
The nuance of elections often escapes true believers on the right or the left.
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No, all Hillary needs to do is exactly what she's doing right now: nothing. As long as the Greens are contesting the election, she's in a win/win position. If the recounts change the outcome, she's the one who's going to benefit and if they don't, she's not going to go down in history as a poor loser like Al Gore.
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IDs can get really fucking hard to get really fast.
If you're low income, chances are you've moved around a lot and your parents didn't keep up with your birth certificate. To get another one from your register of deeds, you need to send in the request and payment several weeks ahead of the election... and that's assuming that your register of deeds allows requests by mail (some need you to come in person or send in someone with power of attorney... and good luck assigning power of attorney when you don't ha
IDs being hard to get (Score:2)
You are both correct and incorrect.
You are correct in that for some people, IDs are hard to get.
You are incorrect in making this seem like a huge problem:
In most places outside of those with good mass transit, almost everyone (way more than 95% of eligible voters) under 60 already has a driver's license or state-issued photo ID card out of necessity.
So, except for maybe a handful of states, you are talking about a very small percentage of eligible voters.
Finally, you are correct in that if it's a problem fo
Re:Trump is already a uniter (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, do you know anything about getting a state issued ID or are you just repeating a Democrat talking point? I have lived in 5 states so far and in each of them it was a simple matter... online. Done in minutes. ID in the mail and in my hand either the same day (or when I needed a new birth cert. which I did) that was a couple of days for the mail to get it to me. the new birth cert? That application was all done online. approved in minutes by an automated system.
I just checked about 10 states and while most provide an online form that can be filled out and printed (editable pdf) ALL required you to present in person. I am not going to go through every state, but yeah I call for you to provide links to the state govt pages where you are allowed to fill out and submit online.
Re:Trump is already a uniter (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't need face value. People who share your 'common sense' have gone out of their way to find proof - and constantly come up empty handed. The problem really does not exist.
And if you think just a little bit further you'll realize it makes MORE sense for it NOT to exist. People don't just commit any crime they think off - they tend to do a risk/reward analysis. The rewards for voter fraud is miniscule to non-existent (since a single vote matters so little) - and it goes to somebody else ! While the risk is being caught committing a serious federal offense. The people you are most concerned about doing so, furthermore, has the highest risks - since they face deportation if they get caught.
It's just not a sum that makes sense. So the ONLY people who would do it are the ones who so damn stupid that they can't do that simple calculation - and they are, mostly, too stupid to actually pull it off anyway.
See you need to realize something. Common sense is the greatest enemy of science. Absolutely nothing in the world EVER looks, behaves or works the way common sense says it will. The real world is never that simple. Only EVER trust empirical proof - no matter HOW little sense it makes. Never trust common sense without data - it's the easiest way to be deceived.
We've repurposed our brains for tasks they were never designed for. They aren't good at the things we do with them. Good enough to get us here - but not good enough to understand the world they built. They are designed to spot a lion in the grass - now you are repurposing that pattern-matching to things like numbers - and 99% of all the patterns you see is just random noise. That's the trap of numerology and astrology -things which only exist because human brains are easily fooled by the appearance of patterns and always believe patterns to be significant.
Our evolution taught us how to identify threats by visual cues. This worked great on the savannah because a lion reliably looks like a lion. It works TERRIBLY today in our world - because threats do NOT look different from us. The people who look different are the LEAST likely to harm us. The greatest threats look exactly like us.
But we are still born with a fight-or-flight response to people who look different - and it takes a conscious, lifelong effort to overcome that.
Trust empirical proof - because, just like everybody else, your brain is terrible at figuring out the real world. You can't trust common sense.
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Well I have to wonder what else you said, and what the context was, but I don't think that's particularly racist. It's clearly not NEEDED, so the worst complaint I would have is that it's a waste of resources - but I don't see how it could be either racist or bigoted.
That said, I also know better than to think that, as a white person - I can reliably identify racism. I don't experience it on a daily basis - nuances that people of colour see because it's their life are lost on me. I acknowledge that so, whil
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Really ?
Nobody has ever assumed I speak for my entire race - and that if I am okay with something it means all white people have to be.
No employer has ever skipped over my resume simply because the name at the top sounded white.
Nobody ever wondered if my successes were due to affirmative action (though any white person who claims his race did NOT help him succeed is lying- probably to himself as well)
I was never the only person in a job who looked like me.
I have never failed to be helped in my native tongu
I wonder who would have won under each scenario? (Score:2)
It would be interesting to know who would have won under each of the scenarios above. I wouldn't change my poll choice above even if it showed that the candidate I liked least would be favored by that method.
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I apologize for replying to myself, but I forgot to add:
I know Trump wins scenario 1, Clinton wins scenario 2, Trump wins scenario 3. It is the other scenarios that I don't know.
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Scenario 4 is as I see it better since then you make it possible for outsiders to get into the pool. But alternative 2 is also good from that perspective.
Just find a way to get rid of the primaries, they are just wearing out people.
Re:I wonder who would have won under each scenario (Score:5, Interesting)
Just find a way to get rid of the primaries, they are just wearing out people.
Amen to that. If we could flat outlaw the use of public funds or buildings for primaries, that would go a hell of a long way towards breaking the duopoly. The problem is, of course, getting the politicians to actually vote on this. It's not impossible--there are plenty of politicians on both sides of the aisle who would love to run for a (or start their own) third party, but actually building a majority without the party establishments catching wind of it and nixing the whole thing seems seems far-fetched.
antifraud (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:antifraud (Score:5, Insightful)
No voter fraud is not a bigger problem. In fact it's not a problem at exists. And this has been looked into multiple times under several different administrations. There have been isolated cases of local fraud, but nothing that has ever changed the outcome in any race.
And let's be clear, other more important (to local democracy) races like governorship are chosen on a strictly popular basis. And there is no, I repeat no, evidence of widespread voter fraud that would or has swung such races. There don't seem to be problems there and a governorship would be far easier for someone with ill intentions to arrive at than the presidency of the United States.
The biggest problem with American democracy is gerrymandering, purposely done by politicians, but also by people moving themselves in a tribal fashion. The majority of congressional seats are considered safe. People may claim to have a beef with a dysfunctional congress, but apparently they don't really.
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"As far as we know, we've never had an undetected error".
I'd like to see citations — the cases, where the winning officials sincerely and wholeheartedly investigate the fraud, that helped them win...
It is not at all as clear cut as you claim it to be. For example, whether JFK's win in 1960 was thanks to a massive fraud in Chicago is still being debated by historians [usatoday.com].
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Now you're wanting proof of a negative, but that's not possible. So I guess in your mind it's a foregone conclusion. So debate is pretty useless at this point.
Anyway you are jumping to conclusions that aren't justified by what I wrote. Nowhere did I advocate electing the president by popular vote. Instead I was merely saying that concerns over widespread election fraud as an argument against a popular vote is weak, since there's no evidence of such widespread fraud.
Just tonight I read that President-El
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What I'm "wanting" from you are citations of those "different administrations" looking into election fraud "multiple times". You mentioned it casually, but would not substantiate... It is a positive, can you prove it?
I find it rather dubious, that winners would make a sincere effort to investigate any fraud, that helped them win... And losers, of course, aren't in a position to do much investigating. Catch-22... But you made the claim of there
Re:antifraud (Score:4, Insightful)
What I'm "wanting" from you are citations of those "different administrations" looking into election fraud "multiple times". You mentioned it casually, but would not substantiate... It is a positive, can you prove it?
I find it rather dubious, that winners would make a sincere effort to investigate any fraud, that helped them win... And losers, of course, aren't in a position to do much investigating. Catch-22... But you made the claim of there having been multiple such investigations. So, citation needed...
Actually, the word was under, not by. So I don't know what Caseih means. But start here. [nytimes.com]. Follow up with this [amazon.com].
But, of course, some times there is no need for massive fraud. Al Franken "won" his Senate seat with mere 312 votes [usnews.com]... And at least 393 felons were allowed to vote [wsj.com] — illegally — in the State that year. That alone was fraud. Small-scale, considering the State's population, but still greater, than the winner's final margin. Officially, we do not know, how these fraudsters voted. Unofficially, we kinda suspect...
That's what we call a tell mi, you're letting us know something that causes us to discredit you.
Because an honest man, would realize that such suspicions are not proof, and some of those allegations of being felons may have been false, as they only checked names, not details [minnpost.com], and Voter ID [alternet.org] wouldn't help, as there is no evidence that they didn't have ID, or lied about who they were.
And other states [wikipedia.org] have had documented problems [salon.com],so what makes you so sure that Minnesota Majority didn't?
Given her side's established propensity [realclearpolitics.com] towards winning at any cost, I consider his claim believable. It would not stand up in court, where proof beyond reasonable doubt is required, but it is certainly believable enough to shrug Hillary's camp's demands of "recounts" as simply more dishonest politics and attempts to de-legitimize Trump.
Given Trump's propensity to lie [motherjones.com], I suggest you be more credulous of the Great Orange one. Or you know, you realize that you're the one who is more dishonest and attempting to de-legitimatize Clinton. I suggest another tactic, go whole hog on the recounts. Demand investigations. After all, if you honestly won, what do you have to lose?
Intransigence now will not help you. Follow Jack Ryan's advice.
The Bomb's gone off. Trump set it off himself.
Don't deny the friendship, embrace it. Give them nowhere to go.
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Free stuff and genocidal threats have appeal in some quarters of the illegals - we see it in South Texas videos, California, even northern cities.
This isn't the 1980s (Score:2)
Back when all you needed to register to vote under multiple names was a fake name, a real residential address (you didn't have to actually live there, but someone did), a place to receive mail that isn't tied to your real identity (such as a friend's PO box) and a willingness to commit perjury and voter fraud, it was easy to vote multiple times without election officials noticing. Not that it was common (one extra vote rarely swings an election, and prior to multi-party poll-watching, it was a lot easier a
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States that push Voter ID laws typically make it quite difficult to get a state-issued ID. This specifically disenfranchises low-income groups; college kids, senior citizens, and people who don't have permanent residences, among others.
If this collection of voters had a tendency to vote Republican, there's no doubt in my mind that the voting rules would be much looser in those affected states. But they don't, so the only tactic that Republicans have left to cheat the voters is to allow laws(that have been s
Long lines are all but inexcusable (Score:2)
Put in a two hour waiting line and the number of votes will drop by half.
Long lines at polls except at opening and closing time is unconcionable except in an extraordinary circumstances.
Voting officials know about how many voters to expect and should plan accordingly. They also know if an election is likely to be a "hot" one and should be able to scramble extra resources up to a week or two before the election.
Yes, this will cost money, but state lawmakers have a moral obligation to make it as easy as practical for eligible voters to vote.
I live in a decent-sized state with lot
You can't use current votes to judge other systems (Score:5, Informative)
It would be interesting to know who would have won under each of the scenarios above.
You can't use the number and placement of votes cast in this election to determine that, because the candidates all ran campaigns trying to win under the current system.
Trump has already said that if the election were changed to be won by the popular vote alone, he would simply concentrate heavily in a few key states (basically California and Texas) and ignore all the others as irrelevant. The results would have been quite different.
Trump worked with the system as it existed, so he basically ignored California because he knew it would not matter much under the current system, and was not possible to win the electoral votes there.. but it's easy to see where Trump could have picked up a few million votes had he focused on campaigning in California and hit Hillary as hard there as he did elsewhere. When you are just working with the total number of votes you don't have to win a majority in any one state, just get close in states like California...
There are a lot of disaffected voters outside of the tech hubs that would have swung (even more) heavily for Trump than they did.
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The question was more about who would have won with the given vote for each situation with the current votes, not who would have won if each system were in place. I know strategy would have been different in each scenario. I just wonder who would win in each choice based on the already cast ballots.
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That's akin to saying I wonder who would win a football game if we awarded points for things like field goals and touchdowns differently--without realizing that by altering the point system, you alter the behavior of the players on the field.
There are plenty of places in California--a solidly Democratic state which is highly unlikely to vote for a Republican candidate anytime soon--where a popular vote scheme would yield plenty of votes for a Republican candidate, such as through the San Joaquin Valley.
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Trump has already said that if the election were changed to be won by the popular vote alone, he would simply concentrate heavily in a few key states (basically California and Texas) and ignore all the others as irrelevant.
That doesn't make any sense. In a popular vote scenario you wouldn't concentrate on states at all, states wouldn't matter. You might put some attention into citites, since you can reach a lot of people easily that way, but you couldn't focus on cities alone since urban and rural voters represent different demographics.
Trump was probably just blowing smoke with that claim.
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It will be interesting to know who would have won under each of the scenarios above.
The whole point of the electoral college is that we don't know the results of the real election yet. The only election we have results for is the one where the little people get to vote.
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Given different routes to the White House, you would see very different campaigns. For example, if electors were selected by Congressional District, and the two Statewide electors were selected by Statewide popular vote, it would be a VERY different picture. . .
Parliament? (Score:2)
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Why not elect a parliament style body, with proportional representation by party?
I can buy the argument for Congress, or at least for the House delegations in larger states, to have some kind of "porportional by party" setup, the Presidential election should be independent of the Congressional election.
Why? Because we have - and need - an independent executive branch of government. In a true parlimentary system, the Parliament picks the Prime Minister, and you lose that independence.
Also, American generally works better when the House, Senate, and White House are not controlled by the
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That would be true if the PM was the equivalent of the president. Not so. In Britain the equivalent of the president is that German woman with the gold hat. France has both a president and a PM & I think Italy is the same. And Russia too, remember when Putin hit the term limits so switched jobs and installed a puppet?
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It seems to work in other countries to have the parliament select the head of state, other countries have a head of state that has inherited the position for life. It varies a lot also how much power the head of state has.
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The electoral college is not needed (Score:2, Insightful)
In today's world of good communications it is easy to add up the votes across the whole of the USA and determine the winner. This was not the case in the 18th century, it took days to get across the country; so some kind of message bearer was needed: the members of the Electoral College. These members 'physically carried' the state's vote to Washington and which is why they meet 5 weeks after the vote. This could now be done faster and more accurately reflect popular feeling.
democracy and suicide are not needed (Score:2)
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We said fuck off to the British more than 200 years ago, it is still fuck off.
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Why do so many naïve people think the electoral college has anything to do with speed? The amount of time between the election and the swearing in is the part that's about speed. The states could just as easily have added up the popular vote and sent that to Washington back in the day, because they kind of had to have that done before the electors would cast their votes. The data storage and bandwidth of a piece of paper carried by a messenger on a horse is more than sufficient for that amount of da
Re:The electoral college is not needed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The electoral college is not needed (Score:5, Insightful)
You're looking at the wrong scales. The federal government is a government between states, not between individual citizens. Thus the electoral college is designed to proportion states, not people.
The people in the large cities have decided to live in an area where they are less represented. That is a choice they made. Why should people who choose to live in more represented areas suffer because the others are now regretting their choices? No one forced you to live in a city so crying unfair now is simply whiny bullshit. Some of us chose to live in other areas like NH to have a larger impact on how our government effects our lives at the expensive of other things. There are pros and cons to being in a city. Having less say in your local government is one of those (pro or con depending on your viewpoints).
The USA government is not designed around equal representation because such a thing is unfair. Here's a map of 50% of the USA population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_USA_fifty_percent_population_by_counties.png Do you really believe it's fair for the people in those areas to completely dominate everyone else?
The Electoral College hasn't voted Trump in yet. You seem to be easily influenced by bullshit. I suggest you spend some time educating yourself as your high school has failed you.
Please keep in mind the majority of the population did not vote for Hillary (nor did they vote for Trump). Hillary is also extremely dangerous. Do you really want a war with Russia? Do you really want the government to get more corrupt? Trump is self-contradictory, yet Hillary simply lies. One policy for the general public and then another real policy for the rich and when she takes office. I'd rather have someone whose lies are completely obvious to everyone than someone who stabs people in the back. Trump has a massive ego, he'll want to be remembered as a good President and thus will adjust his goals based on that. He's already started doing it. Hillary is only after personal power. If she can screw over the country for personal gain she'll do it, whether legal or not, and we've already seen evidence of that too. Trump may be corrupt towards money, but money isn't power. He's not a politician and likely won't stay in politics after office, so his corruption won't reach as far as Hillary's nor be as insidious.
Really, Trump only won because of Hillary. He would have lost against anyone else. You should be mad at the Democratic party for choosing her instead of being mad at Trump 'supporters' for not voting for Hillary. I would have voted for Sanders. He would have won with a landslide. Non-corrupt politicians are very rare.
In terms of ethics. Don't forget they both have sexual assault issues. In terms of pledges, pledges aren't laws. Electorates can break their pledges.
Re:The electoral college is not needed (Score:5, Insightful)
"The people in the large cities have decided to live in an area where they are less represented. That is a choice they made."
If you have to move to a different city, a different part of the country or a different state to have your vote matter, then your system is simply fucked.
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Why should people who choose to live in more represented areas suffer because the others are now regretting their choices?
Congratulations. This is the dumbest thing I've read today.
No one forced you to live in a city
Unless, you know, you want a job that doesn't involve cows.
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1. What you think is "equitable" in fact is not: the Electoral College as it currently exists places disproportionate weight on voters from states with small populations. Why should their votes have more influence on the outcome than someone who lives in a large city? Each person's vote should count for an equal share in the determination of any voting outcome. That is by definition equal representation and this is not how the Electoral College works.
I agree with you - it isn't equitable on a per person b
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Let's see. Without the electoral college, the candidates would only need to campaign in the most populous states...and would only need to appease the wants of the people in those states.
Not necessarily, it depends on how you add up the votes: state by state with entire states going one way; or every individual's vote added up together (ignoring which state the voter lives in) so that every vote counts. It was the second method that I had in mind.
National instant-runoff (single transferable vote) (Score:5, Insightful)
The electoral college is obsolete. The transportation/communications difficulties it originally solved are long gone, and the laws forcing electors to vote a certain way have rendered moot the additional check on demagoguery it was intended to be. Now, it's just a way for a minority of obsolete voters to get an outsized say in national politics. Eliminating the electoral college should go without saying. But why assume that we must use a simple plurality of the popular vote?
I propose replacing presidential voting with instant-runoff voting (equivalent to single transferable vote in elections with only one winner, which this is). It's a proven system that's been used in many other countries, quite successfully.
The system is simple. It's easily explainable - everyone ranks their choices, from best to worst, and then if any candidate wins more than half of people's top vote, they win. If not, the candidate who performed the worst is crossed off, and we check to see if anyone has a majority, repeating the process until we have a winner. It's simple enough to be easily usable with paper ballots and manual counting, and requires only a single round of votes to be cast. But it has all the advantages of the more complicated voting systems.
IRV/STV eliminates many of the problems we've seen in American politics:
1) Third parties can be more competitive, because without the spoiler effect, they don't have to convince voters en masse to defect to them, just that they would be better.
2) It separates agreement with the person and agreement with their politics. Clinton and Trump were both widely disliked as people, but they captured huge swaths of the vote simply because people agreed with the vaguest outline of their politics, as denoted by their party affiliation, and had the belief that the only practical way to support those politics was to vote for that candidate despite their personal problems. Had Democrats had a chance to vote for Sanders or Warren, with Clinton as a backup, they would have done substantially better - and perhaps Republicans would have performed better if Kasich or McMullin had been able to be people's primary pick, with Trump as a backup.
3) It encourages moderatism and discourages extremism. Because votes transfer from the weakest candidates to the strongest, and the weakest candidates are usually those at some extreme, it generally transfers votes from candidates at the far left or far right, towards the center. This is a weakness of the system in that it makes the system slow to drastic change, but it is still better than our current system which is nearly as slow to drastic change, and is worse at handling minor changes as it usually overshoots.
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The question is this (Score:5, Insightful)
Clinton won New York and California. Trump won Texas. And Florida. And North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and even one electoral vote in Maine. He won the Electoral College by assembling a more politically and geographically diverse group of states than Clinton did. In our system, winning the Electoral College confers legitimacy because such a victory exemplifies the reality the Electoral College was created to ground in our political order: that the United States is a federal union of semi-sovereign states.
Re:The question is this (Score:5, Interesting)
The US system was always about allowing each state to have some say.
Other nations like different or direct systems or the use of complex math.
If the electoral system was changed the first party to pack areas with new citizens beholden to that party could sway a vote for generations and then set policy.
A lot of states and vast areas of the USA would then be locked out of politics.
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I have a few issues with this argument:
- The current states with their boundaries are artificial man-made creations. California could've entered the union as 2 states or the Dakotas as one. Given the political compromises made for many states to enter the union, I'd say allocating votes by state is allocating votes according to 19th century political compromises made with slave states.
- While the electoral college is said to give smaller states a voice, presidential candidates completely ignored smaller sta
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Wyoming isn't ignored because it only has 3 electoral votes. It is ignored because it is reliably Republican. It voted (sadly) for Trump by the highest margin of any state. If I remember Time's graph, it's about on par with how heavily Democratic the District of Columbia is. Republican candidates don't need to come here because it is already wrapped up. Democrat candidates don't need to come here because it is hopeless. Advertisements aren't going to change any minds. In many locations in the state, there i
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...by assembling a more politically and geographically diverse group of states...
Um, geography is not a good indicator of diversity. A single large city will generally be far more diverse than any random 500 miles^2 of rural country. I can tell you from firsthand experience that small town life is n
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Speaking of absurd...you do realize that ethnic diversity and geographic diversity are not the same?
Yes, different cultural groups have different needs and desires, but different ways of life also exist between rural and urban groups.
So um, yes, geography can be a good indicator of diversity.
What manner of bizarre sophistry is this? Geographic diversity is distinct from "cultural groups" or "ethnic diversity"? Uh, sure... if you're talking about diversity among rocks or something.
The "ways of life" bit seems to be yet another bizarre anachronistic reference to an agrarian divide that died out generations ago. People in the Bible Belt are not engaged in subsistence farming / hunting. The remaining differences in "ways of life" are dictated by income levels, demographics, population densit
USA needs arms-length elections agency (Score:2)
instead of leaving it up to the state legislature after each census.
That's essentially a license to gerrymander, regardless of which party's drawing the maps.
Still not gerrymandering (Score:2)
"1. manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favor one party or class.
2. achieve (a result) by manipulating the boundaries of an electoral constituency."
Given current EC rules, the winner-take-all rules in effect for each state (*) is immune to how state districts may be drawn by state legislatures. And state borders have not been modified since...1959 when Alaska and Hawaii were added?
(*) As I understand Nebraska does a proportional allocation rather than winner-take-all, however i
Coalition government's better than winner-take-all (Score:2)
The fabulous founders were sharp, but the presidential election process was not their best work. They understood the problem quite well. They hated parties because they could put their partisan politics above the nation's best interests. (I'm sure you've noticed.) However, they also wanted a leader with a clear mandate to lead strongly in case of emergency like the one they'd all lived through. (I'm sure you remember the Revolutionary War.) Their Electoral College was supposed to prevent partisan politics,
Not all of America is represented here. (Score:2)
Fortunately this tally is only indicative of the Internet-savvy demographic. Not everyone believes everything they read on the Internet is true.
The real world systems like the Electoral college keep one demographic from declaring what the laws will be for everybody.
The States elect the President of the States. (Score:2)
The fairest would be that each State get an equal say as to whom it shall be that leads the States.. New York gets 1 vote, Wyoming gets 1 vote, and everything would be fair. Only if we become a "People's Republic" should the people have a say in who becomes President of the States.
National ranked preference voting (Score:2)
If we wanted to eliminate the Electoral College entirely and go with direct popular vote (assume we can amend the Constitution), I'd go with something like ranked preference voting with instant runoff. Skip the primaries entirely and vote nationally in one fell swoop.
Why go for a simple majority? (Score:2)
Most countries with a president use a 2 stage system where the top 2 candidates are put into a run off vote. Ireland uses IRV, where candidates are ranked and the loser eliminated each round. Both of these are better than plurality voting.
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And that absolutely should happen. But the electoral college is also a huge problem, and it needs to go. It gives far too much power to states with small populations.
Re:Why go for a simple majority? (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that a simple popular vote would give way too much power to states like California who are a large radically liberal stronghold compared to the rest of the country.
Re:Why go for a simple majority? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that a simple popular vote would give way too much power to states like California who are a large radically liberal stronghold compared to the rest of the country.
"The problem is that rural conservative voters are so outnumbered that we need to ensure that one vote in the Bible Belt counts for much more than one vote in a blue state." --FTFY
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Kind of. If we got a simple majority system, the election will be solely decided by how CA votes every time. California is very populous but also very different to the rest of the US, such that many Californian concerns really don't accurately reflect US-wide issues or the average "anywhere but CA" lifestyle.
Re:Why go for a simple majority? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is blatantly arguing that Bible Belt values (not a way of life, but values) deserve to keep their anti-democratic advantage because otherwise, they would be outvoted. I don't agree with everything the Democrats do, far from it, but this is a loathsome stance to take. I happen to think Republicans will evolve to stay competitive just fine (remember they had a Republican governor in CA for a long time?), but this first requires that they actually lose fairly, instead of leveraging this anachronistic shit that was adopted in part to pacify agrarian slave states 240 years ago.
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I get your point but still remain split on it. I still maintain that CA is sufficiently different to the rest of the US to be considered its own country. I mean just one example: look at its economy, average income, cost of living and housing costs compared to the rest of the USA. ...But given that it is still a part of the US, I do agree that Californians deserve an equal voice per capita.
Ask the EU why MEPs are allocated the way they are (Score:3)
There are 28 member nations in the EU, from Malta to Germany. They didn't just choose to have one popular election for MEPs or EU President. They provide each member nation a minimum number of MEPs (6) and a cap for the total (750). Germany tops the list with 96 MEPs, based on their large population. But even so, while Germany obviously has a large say in the EU via its large number of MEP (and thus in the election of the EU President) it cannot override collective decisions supported by sufficient numbers
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>> With one difference: those MEPs are allocated by proportion of the popular vote in their country, spread over about 10 parties.
No they're really not. The only rules are that the method must be a form of proportional representation, under either the party list or Single Transferable Vote system Which leaves the door wide open to interpretation.
There aren't elections for individual MEPs, its just done by party. Who actually fills the position gets decided internally by each party. Also most European
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Welcome to reality.
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Well the problem is that California is in many ways effectively its own country, so really not representative of the entire rest of the US.
I've seen it referred to as "so 18th century" (Score:5, Informative)
Coming from the left, it seems odd that they are decrying a mechanism for electing the US President that is almost identical to the mechanism used to elect the European President (President of the European Union). I say odd, because the left constantly holds the EU and their democratic socialist governments up as the shining examples the US should strive for (as in "in civilized countries like...").
The United States is a collection of more-or-less sovereign states, joined in a common federal government. Somewhat like the EU. The member countries of the EU have distinct national interests but also share common interests with other EU members.
In the federalist government we have in the USA, each State in the Union gets a say in the election of the President. Each State has its own distinct interests but also share common interests with other States. The total number of members of Congress each state has is the basis for the total number of votes for President each state has in the Electoral College. Since each State has two Senators and at least one Representative, each state receives a minimum of three votes, with California--the most populous State receiving the maximum of 55 votes. The number of Representatives is currently capped at 435 (the apportionment of Representatives to States is adjusted every 10 years, based on the census), and the number of Senators is currently 100 (as we have 50 States), and the District of Columbia is also given 3 votes for a total 538 which implies that 270 votes are needed to win the EC.
Under the Constitution, each state is free to determine how they appoint their Electoral College voters and how they are supposed to vote. Currently, every State uses a popular election to select EC voters (and all but two use a winner-take-all method), but there's nothing preventing a State from passing a law allowing the Governor to simply appoint whomever he chooses (i.e., no popular election) or from using a proportional assignment based on election results.
The electors meet and cast their respective votes for President, and assuming there is a majority winner the process is just about complete. Let's ignore the fall-back rules if no majority is obtained as it is outside this discussion.
Virtually the same mechanism as the US Electoral College is used to elect the EU President, except it is the Parliament that elects the EU President and not a separate body specifically for the purpose. But the mechanism is very similar.
In the EU, each member nation in the Union gets a say in the election of the President. Each member nation has its own distinct interests but also share common interests with other member nations. The total number of members of the European Parliament each member nation has is the basis for the total number of votes for President each member nation has. Each of the 28 member nations has at least 6 MEPs, with Germany--the most populous member nation--receiving the maximum of 96 votes. The number of MEPs is currently capped at 750 by treaty. Occasionally, the binding treaties are modified to reapportion the MEPs, this requires unanimous consent and generally reflects changes in membership and population shifts. The EU President is elected by the European Parliament by a majority of its component members (which corresponds to at least 376 out of 750 votes).
MEPs are elected by popular elections in the respective member nations. At the appointed time, MEPs then vote for President, according to their respective party affiliation and national instructions.
How odd that the modern EU, most members of which are democratic socialist states, chose to use this 18th century structure that is so very similar to our own EC mechanisms.
Proper (instead of broken) 2-stage needed (Score:3)
In Finland we have a true multi-party system, not a broken 2-party system. Currently we have 8 different parties in our congress, and 3 parties in our goverment.
One important thing that makes our electoral system work is 2-stage presidential elections - and the american pre-elections are not proper first stage.
How our presidential election system works:
1) Each party selects it's own candidates (could still use similar system than your pre-elections, but it's outside the system)
2) People Vote for first round.
2a) If someone gets >50% of the votes, he/she gets elected immediately.
2b) If nobody gets >50% of the votes, the 2 candidates who got most votes go to second round, people vote for the second round. The one who get more votes wins.
This eliminates the "I most vote for someone because he is the only one who can beat this on I really don't want to be the president" thing on first round, everyone can vote for their true candidate on th first round.
better yet ... (Score:3)
we should eliminate the popular vote for president. The president should be elected by the congress from it's seating members. That way the goverment gets things done and the elections people focus on are the local ones they have more influence over.
Simpler is better. Must be self-evidently fair. (Score:3)
Simpler is better => Everybody who wants to understand it, does understand it. Electoral college may have been the simplest viable system in its day, but modern rapid communication enables much simpler alternatives.
Self-evidently-fair => This is hard, because "fair" is subjective -- and there will be factions who claim _any_ system is rigged or biased. Despite the subjectivity, some systems are obviously fairer than others -- extreme example: simple majority voting is fairer than throwing the votes away and appointing a hereditary king. We can certainly come a lot closer to "objectively fair" than the current US presidential system, though. Electoral College system is self-evidently unfair despite its historical honorable intent. If you live in a rural-dominated state your vote counts more than if you live in an urban state. For that matter, if you live in a small (swing) state, your vote counts more than if you live in a large state. And, if you live in a non-swing state, your vote doesn't count at all!
Based on these criteria, my top two choices (in no particular order) would be:
- Popular vote, winner takes white house. (The clear winner of the "simpler is better" criterion).
- Popular vote with instant runoff system. (Still fairly simple. I won't bother describing it, it's pretty clear on Wikipedia).
Instant runoff handles "spoiler" candidates better IMO. (I say IMO, since "better" is of course subjective).
Instant runoff may even help discourage the de-facto two-party monopoly that exists fort the US presidency.
For these reasons I have a slight bias towards instant runoff, but still think either of the above variants of popular vote would be vastly better than what we have now.
BTW, does anybody reading this know where I can find the Douglas Hofstadter essay on voting systems? I read it years ago. He demonstrated the pros and cons of many different voting systems, and clearly showed by example that no voting system is perfect. As I recall, for each system he described a scenario that produced outcomes that satisfied none of the voters.
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A Condorcet paradox is not guaranteed to exist in any given set of candidates and voters. In many cases, there can be a candidate who would win a 1-on-1 simple-majority election against all other candidates, and is thus clearly preferable - and there are voting systems that are guaranteed to elect that candidate *if* they exist. Simple plurality (aka first-past-the-post) is NOT one of the voting systems that can find such a candidate, and in fact is probably one of the worst systems possible for finding the
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People would be more interested if the final election held more candidates.
Primary is for the Parties, and not required (Score:3)
There's no rule that requires Parties to have primary elections. Indeed, there's no rule that we have Parties at all.
Also, there's no rule that requires states to have winner-take-all elections for EC slots. Indeed, there's no rule that requires states to have elections for EC voters at all.
Article Two: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Cong
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" why 400 Congressional districts, and 50 Senate Seats"
Well, for one thing there's 435 Congressional Districts and 100 Senate seats.
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And using just population math would not have all the SJW requirements met. Like majority-minority districts.
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Is it some sort of secret political front? It is registered in Canada- perhaps some sort of socialist group?
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There are 3,141 counties in the United States.
Trump won 3,084 of them.
Clinton won 57.
There are 62 counties in New York State.
Trump won 46 of them.
Clinton won 16.
Clinton won the popular vote by approx. 1.5 million votes.
In the 5 counties that encompass NYC, (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Richmond & Queens) Clinton received well over 2 million more votes than Trump. (Clinton only won 4 of these counties; Trump won Richmond)
Therefore these 5 counties alone, more than accounted for Clinton winning the popular
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Personally I think the people would be a lot better off without any government, and the world would be A LOT better off without a any people.
Sounds like you are teetering between anarchy and nihilism. You may need a puppy.