# defend one man, one vote? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 6, 2013, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defend-one-man-one-vote/652185 "2013-03-06T13:16:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defend-one-man-one-vote/652185/121 "2013-03-08T19:46:59Z")
> [@yorick73](#): > > There is simply no escape from the federal system in place. That creates a powerful incentive to ensure it works. The “local laboratory” system creates a powerful initiative to leave a shitty place for those who can afford it, leaving those who can’t afford to do so behind. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defend-one-man-one-vote/652185/122 "2013-03-08T20:04:02Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > It couldn’t possibly be, because the candidates would be targeting swing voters as individuals, which, when you eliminate the gerrymandering created by state-by-state voting, is much more scattered across the country. Every state that has a generous population of swing voters would get attention. And that would be more states than end up as swing states in any one election now. Of course, there will be some places like Wyoming or Alaska that still won’t get much attention, but they don’t get much attention now, so there’s no loss. But “swing” states only exist under the electoral system. There’s no benefit to winning more than 50.00001% of California’s votes. Either you win all the electoral votes, or none of them. Under a direct popular vote, however, those excess votes matter tremendously. A 10% margin of victory in California is worth more than my whole state. As **Kepler1571** noted, winning becomes more about inflaming the base to ensure a high turnout than having broad appeal. Even if California as a state isn’t electing the President, Californians have interests in common, and a wise politician would appeal to them as much as (legally) possible. > [@Acsenray](#): > > And that’s still assuming that “attention” during a presidential on a state or regional basis actually has any value, whether tangible or symbolic. I don’t believe it does. And whatever value it theoretically might have is vastly disproportional to the fact that the system makes individual voters unequal. The value would get a lot more tangible once California, Texas, and New York are the key to every Presidential election, every four years, for the forseeable future. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defend-one-man-one-vote/652185/123 "2013-03-08T20:26:05Z")
One of the problems with the First Past The Post system is that it’s the least-disliked candidate that gets elected. PR systems tend to political hacks getting elected and remove the direct connection between the elected and the electors. I suggest moving to Approval Voting so that the most-liked candidate is the one elected. It scales to multiple-member constituencies too. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defend-one-man-one-vote/652185/124 "2013-03-08T20:29:43Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > One of the problems with the First Past The Post system is that it’s the least-disliked candidate that gets elected. PR systems tend to political hacks getting elected and remove the direct connection between the elected and the electors. I suggest moving to Approval Voting so that the most-liked candidate is the one elected. It scales to multiple-member constituencies too. Interesting, I’ll have to read up on those. I’d like to keep the electoral college, just with a proportional rather than winner-take-all method for allocating electors, and automatic rather than human electors. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defend-one-man-one-vote/652185/125 "2013-03-08T21:07:15Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > A 10% margin of victory in California is worth more than my whole state. … > > The value would get a lot more tangible once California, Texas, and New York are the key to every Presidential election, every four years, for the forseeable future. That’s only if you consider “California,” etc., the political unit. I consider the human being the political unit. It doesn’t really bother me if 53 million people routinely outvote 500,000 people. > [@](#): > > As **Kepler1571** noted, winning becomes more about inflaming the base to ensure a high turnout than having broad appeal. This assertion doesn’t make sense logically. What a direct popular vote ensures is that anyone’s vote anywhere has equal weight, so it’s of value for a candidate to seek support wherever it can be found, and right now if a candidate knows that he can’t get 50 percent of the California vote, then California is useless to him. However, under a popular vote system, every vote in California counts, even if those votes constitute a minority within the borders of California. And it’s patently false to assert that all California voters have some “Californianess” in common that makes their interest as a group antithetical to non-Californians. There are tens of millions of Republican voters in California who routinely fall into a minority in presidential elections, but its not some hopelessly small minority. It’s a lot of people. It’s far more of a tragedy that those Republican voters in California as individuals get essentially zero say in presidential elections than it is that Wyoming voters as a group have fewer votes than California voters as a group. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2013, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defend-one-man-one-vote/652185/126 "2013-03-08T22:15:53Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > I respectfully disagree, at bottom, our system is built to prevent federal tyranny, and sovereign states are a key part of that. It’s built to prevent federal tyranny (“tyranny” like telling Massachusetts to disestablish the Congregationalist Church or banning states from importing slaves before 1808) while turning a blind eye to the problem of _state_ tyranny, which arguably ended up being a much bigger problem. Perhaps that couldn’t have been known in the 18th century, but I think the issue was just that the people who founded the country had a pretty terrible definition of tyranny. ---
**Author:** ![yorick73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/b5a626/32.png) [@yorick73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yorick73)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2013, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defend-one-man-one-vote/652185/127 "2013-03-09T17:36:28Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > That creates a powerful incentive to ensure it works. The “local laboratory” system creates a powerful initiative to leave a shitty place for those who can afford it, leaving those who can’t afford to do so behind. Works for whom? A one-size-fits-all approach to government can only make slightly over half of the people happy…especially since this government we have sticks its nose into literally every aspect of our lives. There can really be no way to “ensure” it works..we have nothing to compare it to. All we are left with are a bunch of fucking idiots on both sides of the political spectrum telling us how bad it would be if the other guy got his way. Some will suffer, as you said, in the “local laboratory” system. That’s life. In the one-size-fits-all system there is the potential that the number of suffering could increase by orders of magnitude. And, as I said, there is no escape for anybody (short of leaving the country). Also, let’s not pretend that the poor cannot move. There are plenty of examples of poor families uprooting their entire lives and moving cross-country for a chance at a better life. It is less common now probably because government assistance is no further than a mailbox away. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2013, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defend-one-man-one-vote/652185/128 "2013-03-11T12:04:00Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > This assertion doesn’t make sense logically. What a direct popular vote ensures is that anyone’s vote anywhere has equal weight, so it’s of value for a candidate to seek support wherever it can be found, and right now if a candidate knows that he can’t get 50 percent of the California vote, then California is useless to him. However, under a popular vote system, every vote in California counts, even if those votes constitute a minority within the borders of California. See below. > [@Acsenray](#): > > And it’s patently false to assert that all California voters have some “Californianess” in common that makes their interest as a group antithetical to non-Californians. There are tens of millions of Republican voters in California who routinely fall into a minority in presidential elections, but its not some hopelessly small minority. It’s a lot of people. It’s far more of a tragedy that those Republican voters in California as individuals get essentially zero say in presidential elections than it is that Wyoming voters as a group have fewer votes than California voters as a group. Come now, I didn’t speak of “Californianess”, but rather of common interests within a state. No, not everyone shares such an interest, but in boad strokes, for example, Iowans have a disproportionate interest in agriculture, and Kentuckians have such an interest in coal. Further, since states are political units whether or not they vote as such for presidential electons, they have interests on that level as well. For instance, a president that supported federal grants to balance state budgets would appeal to states that have budget deficits. > [@Lord Feldon](#): > > It’s built to prevent federal tyranny (“tyranny” like telling Massachusetts to disestablish the Congregationalist Church or banning states from importing slaves before 1808) while turning a blind eye to the problem of _state_ tyranny, which arguably ended up being a much bigger problem. Perhaps that couldn’t have been known in the 18th century, but I think the issue was just that the people who founded the country had a pretty terrible definition of tyranny. It ended up being a bigger problem only because the checks on federal tyranny worked very, very well. Frankly, the system worked exactly as it was designed to, the states that ratified the Constitution were much more interested in restraining federal power than their own. ---
**Author:** ![Kepler1571](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/db5fbb/32.png) [@Kepler1571](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kepler1571)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defend-one-man-one-vote/652185/129 "2013-03-13T15:06:13Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > I’m hoping that strategy is a temporary one while the GOP gets its shit together, we need a strong, viable opposition party. And I thought I was the biggest optimist here. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Kepler1571](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/db5fbb/32.png) [@Kepler1571](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kepler1571)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2013, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defend-one-man-one-vote/652185/130 "2013-03-13T15:15:42Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Come now, I didn’t speak of “Californianess”, but rather of common interests within a state. No, not everyone shares such an interest, but in boad strokes, for example, Iowans have a disproportionate interest in agriculture, and Kentuckians have such an interest in coal. Further, since states are political units whether or not they vote as such for presidential electons, they have interests on that level as well. For instance, a president that supported federal grants to balance state budgets would appeal to states that have budget deficits. Correct. Also, California is a significant outlier in being both a hulking giant \*and \*extremely heterogeneous. Any program for national electoral reform should include splitting CA into at least two states. TX is getting there, too (though if we’re trying to improve the country I suggest TX independence). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defend-one-man-one-vote/652185.md?page=6)