I get that the Electoral College was originally designed to give smaller states an equal say. But, when Los Angeles county has more population than like 10 states combined, things are getting ridiculous.
California has like 67 times the population of Wyoming… yet they each have two senators. And that keeps increasing.
Our government is not a good representation of the populace.
The number of people was a political compromise between individual rights and States rights, but so was a Senate and House.
The electoral college was primarily designed to enable states to vote despite a communication delay that could take months.
It did great at that, actually. How would California have up to date info on what’s going on in Washington when the fastest mode of travel was a horse? It wouldn’t.
Instead of voting based on information that’s outdated and potentially inaccurate, best to pick some people you trust to vote in your interests, and send them to Washington. Let them get caught up, and vote how they will as your representative.
Then States can sort out their own voting time and method, with no real concern for it being simultaneous or consistent because news travels so slow anyway. The important thing was authorized people would show up by the expected federal voting time, and if that happened, everyone did well enough.
Of course, now they can cast their vote without leaving the state, and coordination is possible, but here we are holding the bag on a lack of accounting for technological progress.
It was originally designed to give slave owners a greater say than people in free states, since EC representation is mainly based on the number of representatives you have in the House, and the slave state representative count was inflated by the 3/5 compromise.
Instead of having a forever constitution that was great and new 200 years ago when the internet and modern transportation and communications didn’t exist … they should regularly overhaul the entire government every hundred years to keep up with the times.
I’m in Canada and they should do the same here.
We can’t possibly think that everything we see, think and believe today will be applicable to people living 100, 200 years from now.
We look at 200 year old laws about horses and we laugh at it. 200 years from now, our descendants will laugh at what we’re debating today.
The only reason to maintain the status quo is to protect the power and privilege of a few powerful and wealthy people. It never has anything to do with the goodwill of the people.
- Every fifty years. Jefferson for all his faults thought it should be that frequent.
Gotta refresh that tree of liberty from time to time.
California has like 67 times the population of Wyoming… yet they each have two senators. And that keeps increasing.
The worst part about the legislative branch is that Congress also acted to handicap the House of Representatives. It was supposed to be the body based on population. And you may say “Well California has 52 and Wyoming only 1 so that’s proportional.” But the original intent was no more than 30,000 constituents per representative. So based on a quick look at the 2020 population figures, Wyoming should have 19 while California should have ~1,317. (That would also be equivalent to California having 69 representatives to Wyoming’s current 1.)
“…designed to give smaller states an equal say…”
Not quite…
No it was designed by slave holding states to be sure that the free states up north didn’t have the power to end slavery.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/electoral-colleges-racist-origins
California has like 67 times the population of Wyoming… yet they each have two senators.
But they have way more representatives. That was the point of separation of power, to limit federal power, while California does have a state legislature that can do most of what it wants.
The issue is that congress can regulate anything as “interstate commerce”
This is exactly where we should be focusing when this pops up. If PA decided and the pending states go through, that’s all you need. Hell, with the pending states, you only need 11 more electoral votes for it to to be enacted.
and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome
And it will never budge above that line. They should have just done it anyways. Most of the votes to decide is better than all of them.
They should do it anyway, but limit it to the winner of the popular vote within the states that are part of the pact.
Then there’d be several states that would realize they’d have more influence by contributing their popular votes to the pact than by sending their electors to the College independently (and in any case a candidate would still have to virtually sweep all the non-pact states to win the College without winning the pact).
I think enacting it early would just make it look like a Democratic party alliance. That’s roughly who the enacted states are currently and it would dissuade other states who might benefit or believe in the popular vote from joining.
Right now, it’s in the abstract interest of Texas to join the Compact, because a popular vote would increase their influence, but if the Compact involved just being forced to vote blue indefinitely without gaining any influence, then it’s a bad deal. “Doing what the majority of the people” want is a lot easier a concept to sell than “doing what the majority of blue states want”.
You could make the argument that if it was solely down to the popular vote, the last Republican president would have been George Bush in 1988.
The only Republican since then to win the popular vote was Bush II for his second term in 2004, but it’s arguable that since Gore would have been the incumbent he might not have won that one. Plus there are a lot of hypotheticals like whether 9/11 could have been prevented under Gore, or if it had happened if the response was less aggressive, or if Bush II would have even run again after losing the first time etc. So it’s impossible to say but certainly conceivable that Gore would have gone for two terms IMO.
I wonder who would have been the opponent in 2004 if Gore had won? This was back when losers didn’t try running for election again, so not Dubya. Maybe McCain since he did in 2008?
Yeah I think McCain would be a likely candidate, he was the runner-up in the primaries in 2000 against Bush II so he was definitely thinking about it back then.
Maybe Mitt Romney? He was pretty popular for a while iirc. I think if 9/11 still happened in that timeline though, it probably would be McCain due to his military proximity. Hard to say if Gore’s presidency would have caught/prevented 9/11 or not. It’s possible flying alone would have been impacted by the climate portion of his platform.
I could make an argument that the conservatives could still be competitive in this alternate timeline, and would not necessarily need to fear the popular vote pact.
All they would need to do is change up their platform to capture more votes from outside their current demographic. But that might require them to stop being cartoon villains, and I’m not sure they’re capable of taking their party back from the Trump ideology.
It’s wild that if multiple things we implemented republicans would never win the presidency again.
Any anti voter suppression method, like universal mail in voting
Ranked choice voting
Removal of the electoral college
I am sure there are even more.
Remember that republicans are the minority, they just show up to vote more often (and aren’t actively suppressed)
Man what I’d give for ranked choice voting, it seems like a no-brainer
I’ve been working with local groups trying to get it passed. It may be worth investigating if there are some near you. Donate money or time or support.
That’s awesome! I’ll have to look into it
There are other options as well, approval voting has several advantages over ranked choice voting. It is simpler and it there is no spoiler effect (voting for your favorite candidate will never hurt your second choice)
Some more info: https://electionscience.org/#approval-voting-explained
Thanks this is interesting!
Gotta remember this system was setup by literal slavers.
They’d still win the Presidency occasionally. They’d just have to do it by adopting policies that more voters would support.
You know - what they’re supposed to be doing.
I think it’s important to point out that strategies would change if the system changed so we can’t predict what the results would be.
They would still win, but they would have to shift their platform to capture the true political center rather than the center right.
deleted by creator
The way elections are run Is mostly up to the states. The electoral college, though, is stipulated in the Constitution.
So is a method to change the Constitution.
That really is the only way to get rid of the electoral college.
That’s not exactly true. Each state could choose to give their votes to the candidate that wins the national vote. Then the electoral college system would still exist on paper but in reality wouldn’t be relevant to the outcome.
I think it would be better to amend the Constitution. But it’s not the only way to make popular vote reality.
The states changing their electors outside their popular vote is exactly what Trump was trying to do.
That sounds scary, but you gotta be precise. Trump was trying to do that after the fact, which would be a coup d’etat. In reality, many states have reasonably made changes over time before elections. Did you know that two states aren’t winner-take-all, and that this has changed over time? Wild!
Nice try
And they’re gearing up for version 2.0. Shit’s gonna get weird in a few months.
Are you suggesting with say…an amendment?
Or we could ratio it out of existence. If we had 10,000 representatives then the EC would match the popular vote results.
Actually, it would be better for Republicans to try to convince the population their solutions are better instead of the BS we have now. It might help the Republican Party become somewhat normal again and then get more votes. I would love it if we could have real debates on real issues, instead of the BS we have now. I might even be a tad conservative in some areas… But right now, the choice is between Dems or Crazy Town. I think a popular vote would change politics and strategy so that you couldn’t have a Trump anymore.
Unpopular Fanatics vs Apathetic Majority. Conservatives refuse to change their unpopular policies and with all the crap they pull to make elections favor them, they struggle to get 50/50. If elections were made fair and representative of the population…they would never win. The only way to win in that environment is to have the more popular policies, and that is antithetical to conservativisim.
Gerrymandering
Can we please just get ranked choice voting
Would be nice, but I can’t see either major political party actually following through with something that hurts their power.
They did it in alaska very recently and now they can undo it
Yep, as soon as it became a risk to power it got taken away. It’s a treat that will always be dangled and pulled away before it can do anything major.
I meant to write they cant* undo it. They tried already but it didnt work, although there is a repeal effort that has survived some legal challeneges so it will be on the ballot in november, although i doubt it will pass
You may know this already but, in case you don’t, you can edit comments even after submitting them.
I do but you had already replied and context is important if an outside reader came along
Let me happily inform you that several states have varying versions of RCV.
Maine and Alaska got there through a Democratic government and a voter referendum, respectively.
Highly recommend reading this Wikipedia page.
You’ll notice a trend of Democrats and voter referendums driving RCV, and on the other hand, Republicans fighting to reverse or delay RCV laws, and entire conservative states that have BANNED it.
This isn’t a “both sides” thing.
deleted by creator
I’m aware of the progress, I am stating that I believe it to be a carrot that will get pulled away before it can actually make major impact on who controls the government.
Ah, but is a significant enough amount of that majority located in the lowest population states to make it matter?
Is that a threat? Do we need to have government sponsored people movement into less populated states from left voting cities? Because I’ll fucking vote for that.
You can bus all the immigrants you want to cities in blue states, and in equal exchange, we will bus lefty to sparsely populated states to render your votes blue.
Carpetbaggers of America, do your civic duty!
Problem is that “Majority” isn’t gonna get rid of the Electoral College. Because Electoral College. Unpopulated states still have excess control.
I wonder if Work-From Home culture might someday shift demographics of some of these small states.
Pew Research Media Bias Fact Check Credibility: [High] (Click to view Full Report)
Pew Research is rated with High Creditability by Media Bias Fact Check.
Bias: Least Biased
Factual Reporting: Very High
Country: United States of America
Full Report: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/pew-research/Check the bias and credibility of this article on Ground.News
Thanks to Media Bias Fact Check for their access to the API.
Please consider supporting them by donating.Footer
Media Bias Fact Check is a fact-checking website that rates the bias and credibility of news sources. They are known for their comprehensive and detailed reports.
Beep boop. This action was performed automatically. If you dont like me then please block me.💔
If you have any questions or comments about me, you can make a post to LW Support lemmy community.So how do we get a constitutional amendment passed to do this?
Especially with the republicans only able to win the presidency through the electoral college. They’re gonna cling to that shit with their dying breath.
We actually don’t need a constitutional amendment to do it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
this poll may show that Americans want electoral college gone, but if you look at where they answered, you can instead count the answers given by state delegates and then it turns out Americans love the electoral college!
I get it, but then only like 4 counties in the whole country decide an election.
Oh no! The majority of the people get to decide an election in a democracy! The horror!
As opposed to now where only like 4 empty plots of dirt decide elections…?
Not only that, but if the election is close, the entire country gets re-counted.
The quickest way to fix the electoral college is not to fix it at all, but to increase the size of Congress. Congress used to increase in size every year, until the 1920s, when they couldn’t decide on how many seats to add. In 1920, there were about 250k people in an average district. Now there are over 750k, which is larger than some of the smallest states.
Congress sets its own size, and this fix can be done without any amendment.
This doesn’t really fix anything other than the small state counting bias. You still have states that are entirely ignored because they’re reliably >50% red/blue and you still have a small number of close states that are the only ones who matter. There’s still a high likelihood that you’ll have presidents elected who lost the popular vote merely because of inefficient arrangements of voters.
that doesn’t solve the issue with the senate; where every state regardless of size has two.
No, that won’t be solved without a constitutional amendment, though. Increasing the size of Congress can help mitigate the issue, and just takes an act of Congress .
That’s the entire purpose of the Senate. It is functioning as designed and that is not an issue.
Congress is supposed to be two halves, one where every State is on equal footing (Senate), and one half where a larger population gets a larger voice (House).
Just because it’s designed that way doesn’t make it a non-issue. It was designed to be shitty and I’d really like a not-shitty government, thank you.
Which 4 counties contain even close to a majority of the population between them?
Counties dont vote. Individuals vote. Even if you’re in LA youre still one person that gets one vote regardless of how those around you vote.
…if you batched the popular vote into counties and made each county winner-take-all.
Which is not what anyone is suggesting.
How we did this
In 2000 and 2016, the winners of the popular vote lost their bids for U.S. president after receiving fewer Electoral College votes than their opponents. To continue tracking how the public views the U.S. system for presidential elections, we surveyed 8,480 U.S. adults from July 10 to 16, 2023.
Everyone who took part in the current survey is a member of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.
Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.
It’s easier to remove or even modify the Reapportionment Act of 1929 to enlarge the total number of electoral votes in the college than it is to remove the Electoral College itself.
I can already hear it…
wEr,E a REpUbLiC nOt A dEMoCrOcy111
Alternatively, with a simple bill we can establish an EC so large or doesn’t effectively matter. We would just repeal the inter-war bill freezing the size of the House of Representatives and set the ratio to something that means even Montana gets 20 EC votes.
Alternatively, with a simple bill we can establish an EC so large or doesn’t effectively matter.
Well it’s still up to the states to determine how electors are determined. That’s because the president was intentionally designed to not be a prime minister (speaker of the house) because they are intentionally not elected in the same way as the house
In theory a state could decide to just have the legislature vote. But in reality most, if not all states, have constitutional rules about having to have an election.
But that’s a tangential consideration to expanding the EC. If someone needed 5,000 votes for the EC then it would be very hard for the middle states to swing that election with their land, no matter how they selected their electors. And at the end of the day, that’s the point. People should vote, not land. We already have the Senate that gives equal representation to each state and acts as a representative for land. There’s no reason to have the EC doing the same and it wasn’t the EC’s original purpose.
I admit I have a ideological bias in favor of the current system because it makes a full sweep more difficult, limiting the federal government.
But,
There’s no reason to have the EC doing the same and it wasn’t the EC’s original purpose.
Yes it partially was. The point was to have the president basically be the middle point between state representation in the Senate, and popularish representation in the House.
It was a compromise but not between the Senate and House. Otherwise they wouldn’t have involved the people and states at all. It was a compromise between the House and a popular election. Between Congress and the President being too close and a democratic mob running things. It was also part of their idea that land ownership mattered.
But nothing in the Constitution requires us to remain tied to the land and the house was supposed to keep expanding. It expanded slower and slower over time though until it straight up stopped expanding in the 1930’s. Representation in the house was supposed to be far more personal, you were supposed to be able to sit down and talk with your rep.
That’s why the EC has started diverging from the popular ballot. We’re too big for the current cap on representatives to effectively represent. With the original ratio we’d have around 10,000 members of Congress. Even a tenth of that would go a long way to restoring the electoral system and breaking the power dynamics in Congress that favor mega donors.
It was a compromise but not between the Senate and House.
I wasn’t saying it was. I was saying it was designed to be representative of the people(also represented by the house) and the states(also represented by the senate).
You’re thinking of the 3/5ths and the large state / small state compromises. At no point did the founders want the state interests to vote for president. It was either the people directly or the people indirectly.
At no point did the founders want the state interests to vote for president.
No, you’re simply wrong
