You’re arguing that every individual should get an equal say, which makes sense if you think of the USA as a nation made up of people, but not as much if you think of it as a nation made up of states. And I don’t think either way of looking at it is inherently the right way.
It occurs to me (though I haven’t thought about it too much) that arguments for the Electoral College (as opposed to a popular vote) are similar to the arguments for proportional representation. It’s a way of making sure that groups to which fewer people belong (minority parties or less populated states) have a chance to have some influence.
Well, I’d like a cite for this. I’m curious as how how the majority of a group can be below the average to any measurable extent, unless the distribution curve of intelligence is rather significantly different than any source I have ever seen on the subject.
I know it’s the topic at hand because of what happened two days ago but if you are really worried about everyone having the opportunity to have an equal say in the future of the country you have to change the primary system before you touch the electoral college.
The now is a function of the past. We had 13 colonies. To give up some power to form a union that would be potentially more powerful in the aggregate compromises had to be made. One of these was recognizing that states were actual political entities and would remain such.
It’s no different than in a EU of the future having Belgium or Albania having their citizens wielding slightly more power, per capital, than Germany. Otherwise why would those states cede sovereignty to be ruled by the Germans?
And if you say “oh those are just meaningless words on paper” then what foundation is there for the rest of the legitimacy of law? And remember, the constitution is deliberately conservative to change in order to mitigate damage possible by inflamed passions of a narrow majority. Yet it’s amendable to a broad majority so there are peaceful mechanism and legal as well to change for the times.
That’s why it’s right. It’s right because it was deemed necessary at the time and not enough broad support exists to change it in the present. This is why judicial interpretation that is crazily applied is so dangerous. It sets very bad precedent.
They’re already blocked from voting. All of the electors in the Electoral College could completely ignore it and go with their personal choice and it would be completely acceptable by the Constitution. The “popular vote” is actually a misnomer. It’s the “popular poll”.
Because it’s important to keep the election from being about nothing but urban mob psychology. I happen to think it works pretty well, even when the results aren’t exactly what I wanted.
Besides, every person in Wyoming this election was voting on 0.0000122 of an electoral vote; in Texas it was 0.00000427 of an electoral vote. The difference is negligible. Or, as a famous trader in a future bar once said, “Twice nothing is still nothing.” :smack:
Here’s an idea that might keep the relevance of small states, while bringing the big ones back into play too:
Get rid of the actual Electors, but retain EVs as they are (Senators + Representatives, and 3 EVs for DC) as a scoring mechanism.
Allocate the EVs proportionately within each state among the candidates with at least one EV’s share of the vote.
The virtues of this arrangement:
The EV proportions would at least be pretty close to the popular vote.
CA, TX, NY, and other big states would always be in play: a change of a few percentage points of support would swing an EV.
Small states would more often be in play than now. Not all small states would be in play each year, but a lot more small states would have an EV in play a lot more often than they do now.
Take Vermont: Trump got 33% of the vote there, right around 1 EV’s worth. If he was below 33.333…%, he’d have lost the EV under my proposal, but if he was above it, he’d have gotten the EV. The campaigns fought over ME-2 this year, and that one CD in Nebraska. They’d have fought over this one, too.
Or Utah: it would have been divided 3-2-1 between Trump, Clinton, and McMullin, but it was hard to tell until the end that it would have worked out that way.
Unlike with a national popular vote, any recounts would be confined to specific states, with only a single EV at issue.
Since the small states wouldn’t lose the effect of their Senatorial EVs under this plan, they’d be more persuadable for this than for a national popular vote.
Basically, it’s a compromise between a national popular vote and what we have now, that in some ways improves on each.
I don’t like how the electoral college screws us over any more than you do, but this is NEVER going to change in our lifetimes. Get over it and accept it as a non ideal reality and work to win with the constraints we have. There are too many small sized hick states with nothing going on for them but land and a few modern hunter gatherers, those states are not going to ratify a change to the constitution to reduce their power.
Do you understand that? Then stop wasting time and mental energy on this issue. Fight the battles we CAN win, don’t tilt at windmills.
Lol, states are not sovereign nations so this analogy is useless. Lol, states already have their own governments and disproportionate influence in the Senate for the less populated.
It’s simple: the president represents all the people, and all the people should have an equal say. The Electoral College is a vile, elitist perversion of individual rights. Any system that could allow for “faithless electors” is hopelessly corrupt. The funniest thing is the movement toward proportional allotment of electors. I can think of a simpler formula.
Every state elects governors by popular vote. I can’t think of any instances of “urban mob psycology” destroying any of them. What does that even mean?
Democrats have a structural problem. Basically, the coalition they’ve chosen to appeal to is geographically condensed rather than spread out, and unmotivated to boot. There’s just no way around being competitive with white voters. And there’s a ticking bomb in the middle of demographic change: 2nd and 3rd generation Latinos aren’t nearly reliably Democratic enough to make up for white flight from the Democrats, and Asians are the fastest growing group now and although Democratic right now have historically been quite erratic in their preferences.
No, it is reasonable in the historical context octopus is talking about. Just how much power states had/would have in the 18th-19th century was a pretty contentious debate. It is not unreasonable to regard the original colonies as demi-states bargaining as such during the earliest days of the American Revolution. The original Articles of Confederation, where states among other things maintained complete individual control over both foreign and interstate trade, shows just how much of a grey area could exist.
2/3 of the Congress and 3/4 of the states. If any party had that they wouldn’t change to a popular vote. They wouldn’t need it. And why would 3/4 of the states give up ANY more power to the feds? That’s not how people work.
Read some American history and try again. The states were sovereign and do in fact retain a great deal of sovereignty. Obviously they can’t secede and the federal government does have the army but you are sorely mistaken about the history of the formation of the United States.
It’s a shared sovereignty system. The federal government actually cannot command the states at all. States must obey federal law, but they are under no obligation to help implement it in most cases. Which is why they can decriminalize marijuana or have sanctuary cities or not set up health care exchanges.
Let me add on to what RickJay said. As of 2015 estimates, Texas is second and Florida third ahead of New York. Illinois is fifth. But 6-10 are Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan, all of which went for Trump. And the South is gaining population while New York and Illinois are barely budging. It’s counterfactual that the few strongly blue states “can decide damn near every election.” Math is math.
If you want a reason why eliminating the Electoral College and switching to popular vote will keep being dismissed, imagine what would be happening now if Trump had won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College.
I can’t foresee any likely pathway to this change. But direct voting in the age of the Internet has a power I’ve never seen before in my lifetime. I wouldn’t be surprised if this discussion kept appearing, but because of younger voters not because of political preferences.
And octopus. There is nothing in law, history, or fact that supports state sovereignty. It’s merely a comfortable myth for some people. States do have great leeway in their actions. But every single thing they do is subject to the federal constitution in the end. That end ends the discussion of their sovereignty. There are some good discussions of the subject here that can be searched for. I’d suggest reading them.
All three of your examples were areas where the Feds did try to overrule states - two until the executive decided not to pursue matters further (the third until the Supreme Court stepped in).
Apologies if your post was supposed to be about how you wish things were - it read as though you were trying to describe things as they are, and I don’t think your description is accurate. The federal government can do what it can get away with, and I wouldn’t bet the farm that our institutional checks and balances will sustain hunky-dory federalism if elected and appointed officials stop believing in it.