Holy shit the Deep State is engaged in a covert civil war to control the Whitehouse!
Dumb, dumb, dumb. If I received something like that and was unsure as to its authenticity, I would change my email password, but not by using the link given. I would manually go to the proper Google domain, which is what their help desk suggested (but did not suggest strongly enough).
I don’t need to, but I will, remind you that rural American was 90% of the population when the Constitution was devised, coming in now at around 10%. What you have, though, are small cities in every state who are sure that the big city they like to visit for the museums, sports and shopping is draining all their tax dollars away to support those minorities bunched up in their ghettos. They forget, always, that most of the folks on ‘welfare’ are not minorities and they don’t live in the city.
All that aside, the EC is an anachronism. The principle of one man - one vote is firmly established by law now, and should be applied to the national election for president. Just because I live in Los Angeles doesn’t mean my vote is only worth 30% of the guy living in Casper, Wyoming, or Fargo, ND, etc. I want my vote to be equally as effective as those folks, especially as regards the choice of our national leader.
“should be applied to the national election for president” is not how we do things around here. If you want it to change, get to work amending the Constitution, or alternatively, convince some additional states to pass the NPVIC, although that’s probably been made a good bit more challenging by all the liberals running around this year insisting that electors can do whatever they want.
Part of that (just a small part, perhaps) is trying to convince others, like having discussions about it on the internet. It seems a reasonable argument, to me, at least, that every American voter should have the exact same voting power in presidential elections – and that is quite obviously not the case right now.
As did Republicans before me with respect to Obama, if necessary I’ll hold out for a botched inaugural oath that I can nurse into a full-fledged conspiracy theory to deny him legitimacy for his entire tenure.
Why should that be true? You are discounting the state part of United States. Would you think in a real European Federation that Greece would agree to join if a a Greek citizen’s vote was exactly equivalent to one German’s?
You are discounting the people part of the united states.
The Constitution did not say that smaller states would get more per voter voting power for the president. Can you show me where it states that? They get disproportionate representation in the senate, that was the compromise that was made. There is nothing in the constitution that also means that the house of reps and the president should also be disproportionately beholden to the smaller states.
Not sure what you mean by the last part. Are you saying that the Greeks would only join the federation if their vote counted for less than a German’s? Do you think that Germany would let Greece join if a Greek’s vote counted for more than a German’s?
Yes it does. Article 1 Section 3 & Article 2 Section 1.
Because I value individual rights far more than states’ rights. I understand that mine is not the only position, but I think it’s a reasonable one. Why do you disagree?
Strange. I did not see where in the text it says that smaller state voters get more voting power than larger state voters for president. I even read it twice.
You point to the senate, which is the great compromise that I talked about in the post you replied to, so I assume you are trying to make a point that I already didn’t make. I am not sure what that would be.
Did you check out Article I Section 2? It implies that the house of representatives should be based on the population of the state, and that the population should be proportionally represented. As a voter in Wyoming has over 3 times the HOR voting power of a person from California, can you show me where that is stated in the Constitution? It calls for one rep for every 30,000 population. Because we have decided to limit the reps to 435, in spite of the outline given in the constitution, this allows small states to have disproportionate power in the branches of govt that they were never supposed to have disproportionate amounts of power.
It’s right here:
That’s it. Those two lines right there are why we care more about who people from Wyoming think should be President than people from California.
The good news is that Californians can change this though. They just have to move to Wyoming. I hope you own a coat.
So, you didn’t check out the article that sets up the HOR then?
If we followed the founder’s original template for it, California would have around 1293 representatives, and Wyoming would have 19.
In terms of electors, California would then have 1295, and Wyoming would have 21. So California would have 60 times more electors than Wyoming (California’s population is 65 times that of Wyoming.), rather than the current 18 times. This would be in keeping with the proportional representation that was originally written into the constitution.
Wyoming would get a slight advantage from the senate count, but its advantage is greatly magnified currently with how we allocate representatives.
Then there’s the fact that the way it all works out is that my vote is actually more important than either of theirs. I live in a swing state, so national politicians actually care about what I have to say. They don’t so much care or cater to those in the “safe” states.
I’m really too lazy to research this though, but it seems to me that the founders never would have thought that the union would end up with states with the degree of population disparity that we have today as represented by the extremes of CA and WY. California really ought to be two or three states and why do we even need two Dakotas?
Amazingly, the founders were not gifted with perpetual righteousness and their every utterance is not the way things should be until the end of days.
In the 1790 census the smallest state, Delaware, had about 59,000 people. The largest was Virginia (including what is now WV) with about 748,000 people. Thus the largest state had a little less than 13 times the population of the largest. In the 2010 census, Wyoming has about 564,000 residents to California’s 37,254,000. The largest state is not over 65 times that of the smallest. The size ratio from biggest to smallest went up fivefold, making the electoral college much more skewed toward the small states than originally designed. Results such as this year’s where the “winner” had over 2 million less people supporting him than the “loser” make for an illegitimate presidency, particularly when the KGB and FBI were teammates in taking down one of the candidates.
I agree. The voters that really get to decide the President live in swing states. If it were really important to me that my vote for President “counted”, I’d move to somewhere like NH or NV.
If maximizing their vote-per-electoral-college-vote ratio were really important, people would move to Wyoming, but nobody really cares about that. It’s a complete non-issue in the minds of most voters. And if it were actually important for some of them, they have an easy solution: move to Wyoming.
Since Greece gets 1 vote in EU, and Germany gets 1 vote in EU, yes, a Greek’s vote is counted for more than a German’s.
The Founders were remarkable in many different ways but also flawed–as I’ve noted. However, do not blame them for the current imbalance in Representation–and the Electoral College.
The Apportionment Act of 1911 set the maximum number of Representatives at 435. In previous posts, others have shown how representation truly based on population would be more equable. Yes, we’d need a bigger chamber for meetings. But the 435 member limit was not written into the Constitution, nor was it an Amendment. It’s just a law. (And, yes–rural interests favored it because they think their people are worth more than them city folk.)
That’s incorrect.
The biggest congressional district by population is in Montana: 994K. The smallest is in Rhode Island: 526K.
Wyoming’s congressional district is 563K people. California has on the average about 700K people per congressional district. So a voter in Wyoming has about 24% more “HOR voting power of a person from California”. Not 3 times.
We all know that one vote doesn’t do anything. If I went up there and voted my little heart out, it wouldn’t make a difference. It takes a large group of people to make those sorts of impacts, so just one or a few people making that sort of sacrifice wouldn’t actually accomplish anything. There’s also the fact that many D voters like to live in democratically leaning states, as the right leaning states do not typically have the social progress that they enjoy having around.
I’ve always kind of liked the idea of building a city at the tri-state intersection of ND, SD, and MT. Move a few million people up there, and suddenly, you’ve flipped 5 or 6 senators, up to 6 or more representatives, and pulled a dozen or so electoral votes for president. If the metro area ends up extending south 50 miles, it can start taking over Wyoming as well.