Are you one of those who doesn’t believe in voter suppression either?
Start with intimidating questions: Where were you born? Where were your parents born? Where do your children go to school? Ask for evidence if you don’t “like” the answers. Bring an ICE van along when canvassing certain neighborhoods. And this just scratches the surface of what can be done. It will be VERY easy to ensure illegals do everything they can to avoid being “counted.”
Do you think it will be hard to implement different census policies in different states? Do you want to buy a bridge I have for sale?
I don’t think the real problem is with the institution or how it weighs smaller states more than larger ones.
To me, the issue is that it’s a winner-takes-all system. As we see in the posts above where they show the difference between the actual electoral tallies versus what we’d have if they were proportional, several states are a LOT less red than they’d lead you to believe. Texas is one- 17 for Clinton and 20 for Trump? That’s a very different story than the real 36 votes for Trump casts.
To some degree, the historical mutation of the process has caused this- the original plan was to have electors individually elected by district- i.e. when you vote for president, you’d actually be choosing a sort of representative to vote for your district (or state as a whole, I suppose). I’m reading that to mean that a proportional choice of the EC is more in line with what the original intent was - the electors were to be chosen locally, and presumably be in line with the local intent as far as Presidents are concerned. Madison and Hamilton were apparently so dismayed with the advent of the general ticket method of voting for electors that they proposed a constitutional amendment to ensure that it would remain elections by district.
I think that a proportional system (i.e. electors chosen proportionately), or even voting for a specific elector by district would be the way to go; you’d have a more representative vote, small states would still remain more relevant, and it might not require quite the level of upheaval and change that abolishing the EC would entail.
I agree with a lot of this. The problem with the EC is that there are a lot of methods found since to be way better and it seems like lots of us aren’t willing to even entertain the possibility of improving a decrepit system.
A proportional system would serve this country very well. And Congress needs to be increased in size substantially. Let’s get better.
The President is responsible for all 50 states, and yet also responsible for each individual citizen. To best represent the former, you could theoretically have a vote that just ensures support of 51% of the states, where each state is weighted equally (similar to the Senate). A straight popular vote best represents each individual citizen and is perfectly weighted for population (sorta-kinda similar to the House of Representatives). So the founders made a compromise and just added the (#of senators) + (#of Representatives), gave that number back to each the states (+3 for DC) and told the states “I don’t care how you apportion up those numbers, you figure it out, just send that number of electors back when it comes time to vote for president”. That’s the Electoral College.
Big states already have the capability to beat up on little states in the House. Little states can beat up on big states in the Senate. The President is a quasi-hybrid of the two. Since any legislation pretty much requires all three components to work together, the system theoretically ensures that everyone is represented when it comes any changes, since any component can gum up the works equally.
In 1992, Clinton would have lost if there had been a runoff, at least that is my prediction. He won because Perot split the Republican vote with Bush I. I don’t think very many would dispute that. In 2000 Gore would have won in a runoff, although that is far less certain.
Upthread, someone asked if any state has any system like the senate, say each county having the same number of state senators. I know for a fact that in NJ each county had one senator. Sometime around 1965, the SCOTUS decided that this conflicted with the the 14th amendment. I know that my home state of PA had not redistricted since about 1900, in violation of the state constitution. Earlier Supreme Courts had ruled that this was a political question, not a legal one and the burghers of Philly and Pittsburgh should vote the rascals out ignoring the obvious fact that the failure to redistrict meant that they didn’t have the political power to do that.
In my opinion, the most important change that should be made is that every citizen over 18 be given whatever is needed to allow them to vote; that early voting be automatic; that it ought to be a criminal offense for any state voting supervisor to fail to supply enough voting stations in every corner of the state, particularly where poor carless people might live.
Actually, I would like to see every states congressional delegation be determined by the number of voters in the previous congressional election plus 3/5 of all other persons. In other words, I see voter suppression a much more serious threat to democracy than the EC. Although I am not a fan of the EC either.
I can understand, though not necessarily agree with, the notion that rural voters should have a bigger electoral voice than urban voters.
… but Rhode Island has hugely fewer farmers than California. How is it sensical in the 21st century that Rhode Island’s voters should have 38 times the Senate representation of California? Is there something special about Rhode Island in the 21st century than can possibly justify this?
It’s a state and that’s the compromise that led to a nation to begin with. You think a future European federation is going to erase all current national boundaries? Or do you think they’ll give some form of disproportionate representation to the smaller nations?
You think the UK and France still deserve permanent UN Security Council power? When institutions are formed they are formed in the context of the real world and the terms aren’t typically renegotiated continuously. Push for the end of the EC and you may just have a new constitutional convention and civil war. The little states aren’t going to give up equal senators.
Proportional would be my strong preference if we have to keep this dumb thing, but while switching would just require individual state laws, it would require a lot of coordination to avoid throwing an election. Republicans would want blue states to switch first and vice-versa.
If we go down that route, why even have states to begin with? If I live 3 miles from the border of California, I commute to California for work, and I shop in California, why don’t I get to vote on California stuff too? How is it sensical in the 21st century that something like a river separating two homes can cause different congressional representation at the national level? Why do we need two Dakotas in this day and age? What sense does that make?
If a Californian really wants more per-capita Senate representation, akin to Rhode Island, well, move to Rhode Island. Nothing’s stopping them. In fact, just by moving away, the rest of California gets better per-capita Senate representation too! Win-win!
If a Californian wants to stay in California, but still have more per-capita Senate representation, first convince the rest of California to hold a referendum to break up into more than one State. This should be easy, right? If per-capita senate representation is really this critical, it should be a slam dunk. Sure, there’s still the hurdle of convincing the rest of the states to admit the newly carved-up California states to the union, but WHY ARE YOU EVEN THINKING ABOUT THAT WHEN YOU HAVEN’T CONVINCED CALIFORNIA TO DO IT YET? Baby steps. Heck, you could even propose splitting California into two states: “Central Valley” and “Coast”, that way many of those valley R’s who are currently getting 0 Senate Representation now get 2 Senators voting their way, and the rest of the liberal coast still gets a huge increase in their per-capita Senate representation! Seems much more fair than the existing setup , right?
If a Californian wants to stay in California, still have more per-capita Senate representation, but wants to preserve existing California borders simply for “historical reasons”, well, what about my historical reasons for keeping the constitutional rules for Senate assignment as-is (that every single state agreed to when admitted)?
Yoou’re too deep in the details. What needs to happen is there needs to be an independent, non-partisan agency that runs elections.
The Georgia governor’s election this year is not a legitimate election. A U.S. state is going to choose a governor in a manner that simply cannot be seriously called democratic. It doesn’t matter where you stand on the issue of provisional votes or voter roll purging; the fact that one of the two candidates is running the election makes the election a sad joke. If Kemp wins, which is extremely likely, he cannot seriously be said by a reasonable person to have been legitimately elected.
An independent elections commission might do some of this and some of that, but one can quibble over the details all day. What matters is the independence. I use Georgia as my example, but it matters in a presidential election more than the EC does. The EC is dumb, but if it was independently run, at least it’s a fair fight.
Okay, let me take something back. If you really are concerned with your vote not counting, don’t move (which is what I would, and could do). Push your state to switch to a Congressional District Method for the electoral college, like Maine. Write letters. Make phone calls. Hell, run for office.
It probably won’t work, but it is far more realistic than a constitutional amendment with a 38 state ratification, which you will never live to see.
It’s one of the fundamental compromises on which our country is founded, and it’s intended for that exact reason you mention- so that say… Rhode Island* as a state* doesn’t get entirely overwhelmed by larger states in terms of legislative power.
Everything from those days is predicated on the notion of the union between what were effectively sovereign states, and the wording of the Constitution reflects that. It’s written as a document where the States delegated power TO the Federal government, and not the other way around.
So it’s entirely natural that the states themselves would want to ensure that they didn’t become inconsequential parts of the larger whole, and the Connecticut compromise ensures that smaller states don’t get overwhelmed, but larger states’ populations still get proportional representation.
In other words, the Senate represents the States, and the House represents the people, or at least in theory that’s the idea.
One thing that might help? ***Bring back literacy tests! ***Even some Dopers have great difficulty reading for comprehension.
I’ve stressed that the small-sate EVs are not the important problem. Still I took the liberty of addressing some of the confusion on that topic.
The Yamato quote I respond to very clearly presents the present-day division into little and big states as part of our great system of checks and balances. I challenge that.
Oh, I can understand Alaska getting a special voice despite its tiny population, but “do we really need two Dakotas”? Utah has a unique culture … which it shares with parts of Idaho and northern Arizona. Does Rhode Island really have a unique culture that should give it special “small state rights”? If so, what about Santa Cruz, California? — Should it be a state?; its culture is very different from San Jose’s.
I’ve asserted many times that no controversial Constitutional Amendment is possible in this partisan clime and am happy to defend the EC with “It won’t be changed anyway.” But Yamato presented Rhode Island’s special power as a good thing — that’s what I was refuting.
The EC was developed for practical reasons in the 18th century but in my reply I wrote “in the 21st century” TWICE. I even used italics for emphasis.
My error, I guess. I needed bold and large-font as well. “in the 21st century”
Did you notice I wrote “in the 21st century” ?
“Down that route”? We were leaving Rhode Island with its Governor, its two Senators, and just trying to make the EC more democratic. Why did you stop your slippery slope where you did? You didn’t even accuse me of being an anarchist.
(BTW, the 2nd quoted paragraph is reminiscent of octopus’ recent counselling a black American to move to another country.)
Ummmm, I’m afraid you’ll have to check your analytic skills there, Ashtura. The big complaint among rational D voters is that Hillary’s victory over Trump by a margin of almost 4.3 million votes gave her 55 electoral votes. In Florida Trump won by less than 113,000 votes and got 29 electoral votes. This means those marginal R voters in Florida each had 20 times as much weight as the marginal California voters.
Breaking up California into small states would exacerbate, not fix, that problem.
Well, for one, it’s the time we’re in right now. The laws we have today should reflect the situation today, just as the laws of yesteryear should reflect the situation of yesteryear.
So, maybe I’m the last living American who was required to take Civics in HS. As explained to me then, the purpose of the EC was to balance small states interests against large states, especially as it applied to the distribution of the resources collected centrally by the federal government(and before the federal income tax, that really wasn’t all that much, but still a bone of contention). If you flat out use majority vote, the large states will vote for whatever group is going to actively redistribute income most aggressively, because, due to their larger population base, they gain a larger share of the bounty of those funds. Federal programs are proportional to people served, after all. The EC attempts to balance this effect by giving the smaller states disproportionate stature, in order to ensure a more equitable share of the spoils of federal largeness across ALL states. The EC is about states, not people, not voters. Given the left is more given to income redistribution than the right, the (slight) imbalance in popular vote/winner over the large 10 election cycles or so might suggest the EC is actually fulfilling its intended purpose. (the other issue may be the loss of more centrist positions and a move to the extremes in both parties). The biggest by far part of my personal tax burden is federal; (let’s not gt into SS). I’d rather see that distributed as evenly as possible across the entire country then to those few large states with the biggest mouths, voter-wise. That’s a personal opinion; one can argue the larger population needs more help; the counter argument is the larger state has a larger economy and the greater ability to help itself than, say, Vermont. It keeps the biggest states from uniting in a certain political stance and bullying the other states for their lunch money, so to speak. I guess it depends on how you want to define egalitarian; the need of the many poor in big states, or the need of the poor everywhere in the country. I prefer the later alternative, as poor is poor. I can’t claim to agree with some of the outcomes due to the EC, but the long-term function of the EC has to date keep state tax return benefits roughy in balance. The occasional electoral burp seems like a small price to pay for that economic equality of federal funding to states large and small.
Are you one of those who doesn’t believe in voter suppression either?