I think it possible that turnout would increase by some significant amount in the event of the dissolution of the EC (or tipping point for the NPVIC). Democrats in really red states would be more motivated to vote as would Republicans in very blue states. Despite a few somewhat appealing arguments for the opposite, I generally think greater participation is better for the country.
We don’t need to speculate about what a nationwide Florida fiasco would look like. We already saw it, in 2000. The Electoral College made the fiasco nationwide. It’s a proven mathematical fact that the EC, or a structure like it, makes such fiascos significantly more likely. In fact, that proven mathematical fact is (somehow) often cited by supporters of the EC, as an argument in its favor.
No kidding. His objections must be some attempted Karl Rove-like mind trick, where the prime inherent weakness of the electoral vote system are portrayed as the prime weakness of the system that literally is the antidote to the problem.
Like, “Do you have any idea what’s in chemotherapy medicine? That stuff will kill cells in your body, man! Just stay away from it!”
A statement like this has no place in rational debate. I know plenty of Republicans who are for democracy and fairness. I know plenty of Republican politicians who are for democracy and fairness. Their definition of exactly what that entails might not jibe with yours, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Poor choice. There are Republicans who accept that anthropogenic climate change is real, and who are offering solutions for it. They might not be the solutions that many Democrats are offering, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a one-sided issue. 
So what? Republicans have criticized the electoral college, too.
Upon what evidence to you base your belief that the Democrats have any interest in anything OTHER than their own partisan advantage? Remember: in each of the four occurrences since the Civil War of someone winning the White House with fewer votes than the loser, it was a Democrat who lost. So the NPVIC can easily be seen as nothing more than an attempt by Democrats to gain a partisan advantage.
Which, not shockingly, can be seen from the fact that each and every one of the states to have joined is a generally Democratic bastion (Colorado is as close to being a toss up as it gets). For many people, myself included, all the NPVIC is is an attempt by Democrats to gain for themselves what they cannot manage to gain via the accepted, Constitutional process. You know, partisan gain. :rolleyes:
So the fuck what?
Are you saying that there is literally no other argument for electing presidents by popular vote? You know, if I give you a list of 10 reasons why we should eat Chinese for dinner tonight, and you say that one of the reasons is self-serving, that doesn’t negate the other reasons.
ETA: let me say I agree with you that this interstate compact gimmick is NOT the right way to change the law, and I think the courts will strike it down. But this obsession you have with someone pushing policies that are good for their interests is really tiresome.
:rolleyes:
I do believe this line of conversation has quite thoroughly run its course, let’s talk about something else, preferably something that bears some resemblance to a reasonable position to hold.
Uh… What?
First of all, a swing of 20,000 votes or so in one state is a national catastrophe. In Florida we were quibbling over a few hundred votes, where there was reason to be concerned about whether the rules were being followed or not. 20,000? That’s… a lot. If a party can realistically swing 20,000 votes with, as you put it, “tomfoolery” in one state, then that’s a really fucking big problem, with or without the NPVIC.
Looking over this list, the number of modern elections with a 20,000-vote margin is zero. The number of modern elections with a 100,000-vote margin is, again, zero. The closest we get is 125k in 1960 - in the 2000 election, Bush lost the popular vote by 500,000. Again, if you can change or invalidate hundreds of thousands of votes, we have considerably larger problems.
But as Chronos points out, with the NPVIC, you’d need that kind of swing. Without it, to cause a national fiasco, you need a few hundred votes in one swing state.
Could you outline the specific hypothetical case where you think the current system makes more sense than the NPVIC, and maybe contrast it with the actual case of Florida in 2000 (or Ohio in 2004, which was won by a smaller margin than the popular vote margin in any election since the 1800s and won Bush the 2004 election, or Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in 2016, where the combined margin was, again, smaller than the popular vote margin in any election since the 1800s)? Because I’m not seeing it.
Okay, this one puzzles me.
Who are these mythical non-denialist republicans? What solutions have they suggested? Have these solutions been taken up by their party in any meaningful way? Or are we saying “republicans accept climate change” in the same way we’re saying “republicans want Trump to be impeached”; i.e. there’s one guy and his views are absolutely the opposite of where the party stands as a whole?
(This is a rhetorical question, please feel free to not bother answering. I don’t know which representative you mean and quite frankly I don’t give a shit, given that the people whose opinions actually carry weight within the party have either been silent or active denialists. Pretending that the opinions of, just to pull a name out of a hat, John Huntsman matter in the grand scheme of things is borderline insulting.)
“No u” is not a respectable answer on this board. But it does answer the question, doesn’t it?
Yes, the Democrats generally support expanding and strengthening democracy. Now, how about the facts that make you believe the Republicans do so equally?
The fact that there is a serious discussion about it should tell you that “accepted” is not quite an accurate term.
It would be more accurate to say that in all four of those cases, the loser belonged to a party named “Democratic”. Civil War-era Democrats were not the same party as modern Democrats.
Just to follow up: States of any size that are currently non-competitive and taken for granted by either party will suddenly become attractive. Alabama Republicans will come to have a real voice in choosing the President, just like California Democrats.
By now we should be so used to hearing Republicans soberly claim to be “the party of Lincoln”, or that more of them voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that it doesn’t even register anymore.
The responses to my post were confused, to put it mildly. Let’s start here:
I wrote that there is roughly a 2% chance that a close election would be 20,000 votes or less. “2%” means “happens about 1 time in fifty.” How many close elections were there? Multiply by 0.02 and what do you get? It’s quite expected the number of modern elections with that margin was zero.
Illicit swings can take various forms.
In Florida 2000 there were over 2400 late absentee ballots that were (improperly?) counted. These swung the election to Bush. But they weren’t part of the final “quibble.” The number of Democratic voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio who were effectively disenfranchised by GOP chicanery is far more than 20,000 IIRC and, in the case of Pennsylvania, far more than the margin of victory.
GOP states like Tennessee, South Carolina, etc. don’t bother to cheat — they don’t need to. When the national popular vote matters they will have an incentive.
We’ve been through this before. Let me try One.More.Time.
First, note that Florida 2000 was NOT a national disaster. A national disaster would involve recounts or litigation over the slightest controversies in ALL FIFTY STATES, as might result when ALL FIFTY STATES influence the result. A national disaster would be much bigger than a single state “disaster.”
The 1960 election was very close (~100,000 votes) but no recounts were pursued, mainly because TWO states would need to be swung to change the Electoral College. Similarly, recounts or litigations were not pursued in 2016: a single state would be insufficient.
For the Florida 2000 election crisis to occur it was NOT sufficient that Florida’s vote be close. It was also necessary the Florida’s EVs would SWING the election.
The tiny vote difference in largish Florida DID happen. Play around with your simple statistics to confirm that a small vote difference nation-wide is not out of the question. (My “2%of close elections” depends on the definition of “close election.” But again, not-close elections hardly matter.)
Popular vote has some problems I could live with. A Compact based on the popular vote might be fine ***if we were sure there would be no legal issues.
The combination is a recipe for disaster.***
Note that if I’m a partisan big-wig in a NPVIC state who wants to litigate or cheat, it is NOT necessary that the popular vote winner actually be controversial. It’s enough that I file lawsuits claiming that recounts are necessary, and that the EVs of our state should follow the state results unless/until those phony controversies ae resolved.
You’ve lost me. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that there is a close election and that some deal like this compact was in force and made legal somehow. Yeah, just bear with me.
I still don’t see how anyone could force a recount in all fifty states without respect to the tallies in each one of those states under this particular system, as the states would still have their laws intact on when a recount can be conducted.
So if Florida went to Candidate A by a margin of 50.1% to 49.9%, absolutely, there would be a recount there. But if California went to Candidate B by a margin of 65% to 35%, by what means do you think that Candidate A could force California to recount the votes under the applicable state laws?
Even though California’s individual votes would count toward the overall popular vote winner, state laws don’t provide for recounts when the outcome in that state is clear, no matter how much a candidate threatens to hold his breath.
If anything, I think there’s a plausible case that this system would reduce the number of recounts, because picking up a couple thousand votes in a close election in State #1 probably doesn’t matter a whole lot when we are talking about candidates likely needing tens to hundreds of thousands of votes nationally to close a gap.
Of course, there are surely unintended consequences of this system – after all, making recounts HARDER to impact the first count isn’t exactly a sign of a robust democracy – but I think your criticism is 180 degrees off the mark.
The results were.
You’re mistaken on that. Wiki:
Candidate A need not file suit in California. He pursues Florida, alleging that the national popular vote is incorrect and unless/until it is fixed the people of Florida are being misserved; that Florida must cast its votes according to the will of Florida since California has not delivered accurate totals. If the state government of Florida goes along with this argument, so much for the NPVIC.
Assuming Florida is 1/16 of the country, then a national recount should find, on average, 4 times as big a change as a Florida recount (4 = sqrt(16)). IF problems/recounts are uncorrelated – if correlated the ratio is more than four.
ETA: Thanks, Elvis. The whopping 70,000 vote change caused by a recount helps demonstrate my point.
If the results were reversed, would we see positions in here flip? If a Republican can win the majority of the votes nationwide, then congrats to our new President, I say.