Regarding changing an entrenched system against the wishes of those comfortable with the status quo, I am reminded of the Dorr Rebellion - Wikipedia. To recap, Rhode Island had inherited a system where only “property” (land) owners could vote. This had originally been unremarkable by Seventeenth and Eighteenth century standards; if nothing else the tax rolls were a way of confirming a voter’s identity. But by the Nineteenth century more men were laborers who became increasingly unhappy with being disenfranchised.
The problem of course was that the legislature was elected under the old system and so had no institutional interest in changing the rules. Finally an unsanctioned convention met, declared itself the new government of the state and drew up a new state constitution. Technically the rebellion was a failure, but the R.I. legislature took the hint and unbent enough to at least let anyone who paid a poll tax vote.
As a footnote, a Supreme Court case was heard on the subject of which had been the legitimate state government during the rebellion and the SC declared it a political question they didn’t want to touch.
This is only post 15 in this thread and this has already been answered multiple times. Is this just a rant?
The EC and the Senate are so badly unrepresentative that they fill me with despair. And I believe that both are responsible for the low levels of voter participation in the US.
Also, gerrymandering must die.
If our democracy is indeed on the verge of failing, then the structural components are more to blame than anything else.
You obviously never got to post 78, which was my last post summarizing what I was hearing. I was challenging the common thinking about why we still had the EC, and not ranting.
While at-large election of electors is probably the biggest source of chaos in the Electoral College as it exists today, a gerrymandering-based system might be the one solution that could make things worse. In 2012, this would have thrown the election to Romney even though he lost the popular vote by nearly 4%.
In any case, actually fixing the Electoral College with state-by-state changes in how electors are chosen would be harder than a constitutional amendment, because it would require every state with more than one district to go along and not just 37 (or even fewer if the interstate compact gimmick is actually viable). If only a few more states do it, it could make things drastically worse. (Maine and Nebraska only account for nine electoral votes between them so they’re basically irrelevant no matter what, and in the current partisan alignment they nearly cancel each other out and make their weird systems even more irrelevant.)
The Senate was never intended to be proportionally representative of public opinion; it was always intended to represent the views of each sovereign state. You may not like that approach but there is a rational argument for it insofar as high population states can’t overwhelm or bully less populous ones.
As for gerrymandering, it is a complicated topic, and we will never eliminate it completely because one person’s “fair” is another person’s “biased”. The best that can be done is lay out some objective rules for what reflects an equitable distribution of competitive voting and how to draw districts that best represent public interests and shifting demographics. Listen and read FiveThirtyEight.com “The Gerrymandering Project” from a few years ago to get a more extensive and nuanced discussion:
Stranger
I don’t understand how states can “overwhelm or bully” other states. State delegations don’t vote as a block in national legislatures.
We can’t fix gerrymandering as long as we insist on retaining single member districting.
Because they didn’t want the large states to impose their will on small states. Back then states were much more like different countries, and they didn’t want to give up autonomy. Especially since they had differences of opinion on issues like slavery.
Mythology aside, they were basically elitist British aristocrats who didn’t want to pay the taxes that the king demanded to recoup his investment in defending the colonies during the French and Indian War. A popular vote would certainty not have been obvious to them, not is it the best way to accomplish the goals they had at the time.
It is a better way to accomplish the goals we have today. But that’s because most of us are not British aristocrats from the 18th century.
As of the 2020 US Census, California has a larger population than the least populous 22 states combined, Texas than the least 19, and New York than the least 16. These three states combined could dominate a purely representative legislature with their provincial interests. You say that “state delegations don’t block as a vote,” which is somewhat true today, especially with political polarization but in the original thirteen stages legislators were often selected to represent the concerted interests of the powerful members of state industries; an equal representation of senators (which were originally not selected through any kind of popular vote; each state selected their senators through their own defined process) ensured that small and less populous states had a say on negating legislation that might be imposed by more powerful states. It is fair to observe that this was done substantially (but not exclusively) to maintain the practice of human slavery in the South and prevent a minority of abolitionists, but it has broader implications particularly in a federation of sovereign states (i.e. the United States) in terms of ensuring that individual states are not marginalized.
“Single member districting” ensures that people have a specific representative that they can vote for and contact with their concerns. This assures some degree of accountability versus a pool of people who are selected by some ranked vote process which might theoretically be more representative but would also attract even more ‘dark money’ and influence. The notion that just throwing away the existing electoral system will be a simple ‘fix’ gerrymandering ignores the complexity of politics and influence, especially today where running for office virtually requires trading influence for PAC monies.
I don’t know that I’d even go that far; while Donald Trump lost the popular vote (both times despite his claims) he did get a record amount of turnout for a Republican candidate even adjusting for the population of eligible voters, only countered by the opposing candidate also getting record turnouts. The idea that the majority will make the right decision is by no means assured, nor that the Electoral College will always favor the less ‘democratic’ candidate.
There are plenty of reasons to question the utility of the Electoral College today (although it made a lot of sense in the context of the logistics and objectives of eligible voters in the 18th Century) but it isn’t as if dispensing with it will magically fix all of the multitude of problems with our campaign and electoral system, nor the broad tendency of large swaths of the American public to hew toward authoritarianism.
Stranger
I’m in favor of it, as originally envisioned.
The current version, which boosts the political might of smaller and lower population states, isn’t necessarily bad. It keeps the country together, if nothing else.
Removing it and putting in a pure, majority rules alternative is just a bright shining beacon for populist leaders to take advantage of and you’ll see our downward spiral to demagoguery speed right up. Sure, that might lead to the Left’s equivalent to Trump taking the presidency, first. But that’s still a Trump, left or right as it might be.
The goal is to have smart, caring, and reliable people serving the position of the president. You don’t get that through a popularity contest, where the average voter is more concerned about the latest fad diet and whether Mexican jackals are moving terrorists into the country. That’s why the Framers set up a system where we’d vote for people that we trusted to act as a review and hiring committee, with an obligation to make the rest of us proud.
As we dismantled that, all that we’ve gotten for it is less pride.
Going further in that direction is just going further in that direction. The original system that was envisioned was the best. It will make your life better, your country safer, and your descendents wealthier in finance, health, and community. We only left the original plan out of playing political power games, between the parties. There’s never once been a move that was for the betterment of the country. It was only for the parties and nothing good happens by continuing in the direction.
For better or worse the President of the USA now does a heck of a lot more than “preside” over the Executive branch; this was inevitable in a global power now more unified in communication, travel and, trade than Virginia was in 1787. The Presidency today holds so much political power and importance that it dwarfs into insignificance the amount of power that “King” Andrew Jackson was criticized for in the early 19th century:
which is why we have the Senate
There is no provision whatsoever for the country to hold a binding “national referrendum” on anything.
Uh oh…somebody touched on one of my “hot subjects” (I have a feeling a number of you have seen at least one of my earlier rants about how somebody can become President more than twice).
There is a fundamental flaw with the National Popular Vote Compact as it is; you cannot force the Federal government to oversee the votes in the non-member states, and I would not put it past at least one of them to respond to the compact with something along the lines of:
“Prior to January 21 following a Presidential election, the only official results that may be issued by this State are, (a) the total number of votes cast in the state, and (b) the names of the candidates for President and Vice-President that received a plurality of the votes cast in the state.”
Any response along the lines of “In that case, your state’s votes will be ignored” defeats the entire purpose of the compact.
(Speaking of response, the response to, “Why don’t they do that now?” is, they don’t think they have a need to do it now. The Compact changes that.)
Oh, we’re not gonna see eye to eye on these issues at all. Especially on accountability in gerrymandered single member House districts versus multi-member districts with proportional representation.
With barely a dozen or so competitive districts nationwide, it would be far better to have 3-7 representatives competing for my vote. Also, there is no chance of dismantling the duopoly as long as we have single member districts and first past the post voting.
It’s not often we see the combination of not trusting voters because they’re so poorly informed with the confidence in a system that has fallen into the twenties on lists evaluating democracies around the world.
It was a system ahead of its time and devised under enormous stresses; kudos to the Founders for their work. But they could not have foreseen how the inevitable need to be improved would be stymied by the very system they devised.
Well I wouldn’t necessarily say that the way the security council is set up results is the best example of fair distribution of power so that all voices are heard. But if we ignore that and concentrate on the general assembly, That works because to a fairly large extent there is a correspondence between the alignment of population interests and countries. This is not the case in the US, were the most diverse political areas are the merged together to represent a single entity, one uniform politcally aligned group (i.e. largely white rural traditionalists) are divided into more or less identical copies to expand their power.
It would be as if the UN decided to combine all of the middle east into a single region with a single vote, and a single vote to the combination of Ukraine and Russia, but give a separate representative to each of the 20 provinces of China.
I find that most of these discussions wind up (not in this case) being people with very strong opinions and very little knowledge. We know why institutions like the Senate (especially pre-17th amendment), the Electoral College, and all the compromises to get to a document that could be ratified by nine (eventually all, obviously) states. We know this because we have the records of the sessions and arguments put forth in the Federalist Papers. But online discourse is heavily present-ist and combines with other misunderstandings (for example, what the point and effect of the Three-Fifths Compromise actually was).
Frankly, the problem with the Senate isn’t that each state has equal representation, it’s that its a body that was supposed to run under comity and regular order and the rules of the body have been weaponized to stop anything from happening. The problem with the Electoral College (and to a related degree, the House) isn’t that a vote in Wyoming theoretically has greater “worth” than one in California–after all, a candidate has to win a whole lot of low population states just to offset the opponent winning California–it’s that there simply aren’t enough districts with the cap at 435 and the requirement that even the smallest state gets one Representative and two Senators. Also note that you never hear complaints that D.C. gets too much “worth” in the Electoral College than California.
Sorry if all the arguments haven’t been made yet but a House frozen in size for a hundred years is certainly a problem that many current political scholars recognize. Current districts range from under 600,000 residents to over 900,000, with the average district size nearing 800,000.
Slight nitpick The granularity imposed by of the house of Representatives being limited to 435 votes is not an significant issue. Even if you eliminated the requirement that each state get at least one representative, all of the current states would round up to a full representative, and it isn’t even a uniform advantage to be a small state. Delaware gets screwed by having only one representative for almost a million residents. The granularity means that the number of residents per representatives is a bit more variable, but not exactly unfair (the error is as most half a representative or 0.1% share of the overall house), and in order to adequately address it would require massively increasing the size of the house into the thousands.
All of the real problems with over representations of small states comes through the Senate which then trickles through to the electoral college.