The issue is not with the Electoral College, but with the artificial limit on the House of Representatives. The limit of 435 Reps skews the numbers.
House of Representatives is suppose to be 1 Rep per a fixed number of people. But Congress put a hard limit of 435, that means Small States have more people per Rep than Large States.
For example, Wyoming has 1 Rep for 480900 people.
California has 1 rep per 736000 people. To be fair and agree with the original intent of the US Constitution, California should have about 82 Reps instead of 53.
Texas for that matter should really have 52 Reps instead of 36 has it as now. The way it is now it has one rep per 700279 people.
As long as we're sticking with a representative system, I'd rather be more federated than less, but president is the least important federal position and it probably wouldn't change much if it became a popular vote. There's so many more important and actually impactful areas to reform though - the fixation on the presidential election feels like a distraction from the horrible mess of a fixed-size House that causes so many problems.
Fixed sized house is super silly, but the 2 senators per state is far worse. DC not having proper representation is also appalling when that’s a founding principle.
The founding fathers didn’t want the masses to be given proper voting. There were 2 million land owners. 7-9 million non land owners. So founding fathers like John Adams did not want a real democracy. They wanted their power. Their 2 senator decision was done without info about the future and well, they aren’t amazing people anyway.
> president is the least important federal position
The president has an outsized impact on general discourse and party direction, not to mention international crises like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I wish the Popular Vote Interstate Compact didn't lose steam. It's currently at 195EV worth of states, 72% of the 270 needed to go into effect. If a few more states signed it into law it would trigger and all of those states would pledge all of their EVs to the winner of the popular vote
Essentially using the Constitution's (anti-democratic) clauses that allow state officials to pledge their votes however they want regardless of vote outcomes in order to assert a more democratic and representative popular vote system
Again another unverifiable and non audit-able "most Americans". I have heard so many "most American" votes/polls in my 50+ adult years life. You will be surprise how some of this poll conducted....there was once I recalled a polled "done" by a staffer in toilet cubicle several years back. It is like Bitcoin is actually worth 250K usd now. Just dont trust the current selling price and buy it now at cheap!
I think it’s very worthwhile to want to find a methodology behind this, but I think it’s naive to believe most Americans wouldn’t support this.
The popular vote is 7-1 in the previous 8 elections for one party, although the electoral college went 5-3 during that time.
Your statement implies this popular majority favors their side losing? They walk away from those 2 elections feeling this is how things should work? That’s a little silly of a belief.
Seriously, just randomly select people willing to do the job, maybe 10 or 15 people and then vote for one amongst that group. If this sounds radical, then consider this is already how primary votes work today except the “group” is only well connected folks approved by the donor and political class.
An obvious problem is how do you stop these randomly chosen people from being influenced from the same sort of well-connected folks? An obvious strategy for these folks would be to present themselves as "advisors" to the randomly chosen people and just be rulers in proxy.
The polls were very clear that 2016 could go either way. Clinton was favored but it was close. This is equivalent to saying "You're gonna roll the same die that just rolled a six?"
So you're telling me most people prefer the system which gives them some control over their government rather than the system which enshrines a minority party due to archaic and outdated laws. The majority of the population have had their will overridden in every single Republican presidential win since Reagan if we acknowledge the incumbent advantage especially after 9/11 for Bush Jr.
The senate is also deeply flawed. Republican senators represent 41 million fewer voters than Democratic senators, yet they control half of the chamber and get to stymie everything done outside of budget reconciliation. The House is supposed to represent the people, but has the same bias (to a lessor degree) thanks to the frozen size of the House and rampant gerrymandering. For example, in Wisconsin Democrats won roughly half of the popular vote for house seats in 2020, but only gained 1/3rd of the representatives. Half the population votes Democrat, half votes Republican and Republicans get strong majorities in representation. If California house members had the same proportional representation as Wyoming house, we'd need an additional California house members so even our alleged "proportional representation" system is fundamentally broken.
The majority are getting tired of the minority dictating how politics work in our country.
we often talk about 'going back to first principles' but we're afraid to do it when it comes to politics. Lets have a try here - should we even choose leaders based on voting for them at all? Seems to me that popularity has zero correlation with competence
See, that is why I don't like first principle. It is just arrogant and ignores complete fields of study. In your example, hundreds of years of political studies and actual experience. Democracy is the owrst political system, except for all the others. It is also the only system that has the slightest chance of protecting civil rights, human rights and to considering a tad more than just the interesst of a powerful majority.
Zero correlation is a strong claim. Would you actually predict that a randomly chosen American (whose opinion you distrust) would be all-around more competent than half our actual presidents? Not just the current or last one depending on your affiliation.
General elections are largely a mechanism for resolving conflicts and not for finding competent leaders.
Historically, people have fought to select leaders. Such a system puts the strongest and most brutal in power.
Now we let people talk and then vote. It's a mechanism for resolving conflicts that has been extremely successful at its job.
This is, btw, why freedom of speech is so important and why it's exactly whose we least want to hear, who must to be able to speak. We resolve conflicts with people we have conflicts with, not people we agree with. Talk about it or fight about it. Talking has led to, probably, the most peaceful period of human history.
Go one further, why do we need to have leaders at all? Assigning specific jobs to make decisions for specific domains makes sense, but trying to have one person be in charge of everything seems like it's been proven too big a task. Politicians are terrible because anyone with that much centralized power is going to be bad at any individual task.
I think its the leader part that is the problem, not the democratic vote.
Why do we have one absolute ruler? You could make up reasons about deciding votes and stuff, but clearly it's a throwback to the good old days when one person killed anough people to become King.
The majority of Americans are morons who would vote for anything they want without regard for cost. Look at California's ballot initiatives.
Fact of the matter is that the president and senate should not be elected by the masses. The masses need to vote for local control up through their state legislature. After that, the States should vote for their representatives: the senate and the president.
At the same time some small group of self-starters should act as citizen journalists to actually keep these people accountable. For too long the powers that be have the media running cover for them. New organizations and individuals on YouTube and other media sites are showing how corrupt the government is. We need to take them seriously, still confirming their validity.
Finally, reform the US House so that it has the appropriate size for equal population representation. California needs more seats in the House. So do other States.
I agree except for the journalism part. The last decade has shown that even when faced with proof of corruption, a large percentage of people will happily rationalize away bad things to maintain support of their favored party/representative. I think a better alternative would be publicly funded campaigns + term limits.
As a Republican i support this. I think that being required to broadly appeal to voters in a all states instead of focusing on winning tons of low population, overrepresented rural states would bring a bit of sanity.
Question: which non-US democracy has the best system? Bicameral vs unicameral, presidential vs prime-ministerial, etc -- what has gotten the best results?
That's a tricky question... like, if you think Germany (for example) is a really well-run country, is it because of their parliamentary system? Or is it because of German culture, and they would do equally well under a presidential system?
I do think it's revealing that when the US helps a country set up a new government (for example, in Iraq), they set them up with a parliamentary system, and not an American-style presidential one. I once asked a politically-minded friend why that was, and he said it was because parliamentary systems are friendlier to small factions in countries with lots of different ethnic groups.
If you’re running for president and you have a limited money, it’s best to focus on the major population centers in your bases. Forget the rest of the country. If all you’re going for is raw numbers then it becomes a system that can be manipulated, which will leave half the country completely ignored.
My concern is that if I don't trust the vote counting mechanisms in <pick a state that isn't mine>, I can at least take comfort that the worst-case outcome is that the citizens of that state do not get their votes accurately counted, but that the damage is limited to those (fixed amount of) votes being cast not in accordance with those citizens.
If we define the amount of election discrepancy as being the difference between the election totals and the count of actual ballots properly cast by legally eligible voters, an electoral college system confines discrepancies to within the given state. Illinois voters might have their votes improperly represented, but that's of much less concern to Arizona voters than if any election discrepancy not only misrepresented voters' wishes in Illinois but could manufacture additional voting power to that discrepancy.
Many in this thread are saying things like “if LA county has more population than 40 states why should we listen to those states?”
At the surface level this makes sense. But dig deeper. It’s reciprocal- if you take that approach why should those states listen to you? If you throw out their interests wholesale, then you have no right to govern them and they should secede and make their own laws.
This is how we got the senate and electoral college. Why should someone in Florida have a say over the people of Kenya, New Zealand or Idaho? In a sense people should self govern unless they come together in some kind of mutual pact where both sides get a benefit. Otherwise you are speaking of literal tyranny.
> Many in this thread are saying things like “if LA county has more population than 40 states why should we listen to those states?”
I think this is a highly uncharitable rephrasing of what's being said. This sort of hyper-partisan lens I think can ruin one's ability to reason through what's actually being said. It's strawman-ing, in other words.
What's _actually_ being said is "LA county's population should be listened to as much as Michigan state" (for example). No one is saying don't listen to 40 states. They're saying each person should have an equal say in how our nation is governed.
Without that hyper-partisan lens, your argument sorta just looks silly and falls apart, doesn't it? I mean, "it's reciprocal" we value your state's population equally to our own. Those states should listen to us because we listen to them. No one is throwing out anyone's interests wholesale, so we do have a right to govern together and no one should secede?
Being clear here, no one is talking about disenfranchising people of their representation. They're talking about equalizing representation. When your interests are overrepresented this might _feel_ like an attack on you, but it's the same way some subset of men felt women earning the right to vote lessened theirs or some subset of white people felt black people achieving the right to vote lessened their control. It's true in a way, but only in the sense that some portion of the population unjustly and unfairly held more power than they were entitled to. You don't want to look at your voting power that way, do you?
It’s funny to me that proponents of this idea are generally Left leaning, because they believe in some kind of “demographic inevitability” of their success, while never once considering that the Right could adapt its messaging towards the center and win popular elections. Biden’s margin of victory over Trump was basically the same as Obama’s margin of victory over Romney adjusted for population growth.
And do to the abysmal winner takes all used in most states, the might be change in voting habits brining either side to actually vote as their votes wouldn't be stolen by other side.
So what's this poll look like, in terms of majorities, if you adjust it for electoral college representation? Because if you don't do that, then what is meant to be implied by stating this stat, is assuming the conclusion.
There's already a multi-state compact that will switch to this method if enough states endorse it. So you don't actually need a party with this as a policy, to be elected via the old system.
Still somewhat similar issues to getting enough states on board, but not quite the same.
[+] [-] jmclnx|3 years ago|reply
House of Representatives is suppose to be 1 Rep per a fixed number of people. But Congress put a hard limit of 435, that means Small States have more people per Rep than Large States.
For example, Wyoming has 1 Rep for 480900 people.
California has 1 rep per 736000 people. To be fair and agree with the original intent of the US Constitution, California should have about 82 Reps instead of 53.
Texas for that matter should really have 52 Reps instead of 36 has it as now. The way it is now it has one rep per 700279 people.
Fixing that limit should solve a lot of problems
[+] [-] t-3|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skinnymuch|3 years ago|reply
The founding fathers didn’t want the masses to be given proper voting. There were 2 million land owners. 7-9 million non land owners. So founding fathers like John Adams did not want a real democracy. They wanted their power. Their 2 senator decision was done without info about the future and well, they aren’t amazing people anyway.
[+] [-] macintux|3 years ago|reply
The president has an outsized impact on general discourse and party direction, not to mention international crises like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
[+] [-] culi|3 years ago|reply
Essentially using the Constitution's (anti-democratic) clauses that allow state officials to pledge their votes however they want regardless of vote outcomes in order to assert a more democratic and representative popular vote system
[+] [-] homeland221|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] divided|3 years ago|reply
The popular vote is 7-1 in the previous 8 elections for one party, although the electoral college went 5-3 during that time.
Your statement implies this popular majority favors their side losing? They walk away from those 2 elections feeling this is how things should work? That’s a little silly of a belief.
[+] [-] stuckinhell|3 years ago|reply
Yea the polling crisis shows polls are fake.
[+] [-] hgs3|3 years ago|reply
Seriously, just randomly select people willing to do the job, maybe 10 or 15 people and then vote for one amongst that group. If this sounds radical, then consider this is already how primary votes work today except the “group” is only well connected folks approved by the donor and political class.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
[+] [-] jhbadger|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] norwalkbear|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spywaregorilla|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] listless|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drewcoo|3 years ago|reply
They just showed Clinton was the more likely winner. Polling in the US tends to underrepresent actual Republican votes by a few percent.
[+] [-] orzig|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tstrimple|3 years ago|reply
...
> popular vote
So you're telling me most people prefer the system which gives them some control over their government rather than the system which enshrines a minority party due to archaic and outdated laws. The majority of the population have had their will overridden in every single Republican presidential win since Reagan if we acknowledge the incumbent advantage especially after 9/11 for Bush Jr.
The senate is also deeply flawed. Republican senators represent 41 million fewer voters than Democratic senators, yet they control half of the chamber and get to stymie everything done outside of budget reconciliation. The House is supposed to represent the people, but has the same bias (to a lessor degree) thanks to the frozen size of the House and rampant gerrymandering. For example, in Wisconsin Democrats won roughly half of the popular vote for house seats in 2020, but only gained 1/3rd of the representatives. Half the population votes Democrat, half votes Republican and Republicans get strong majorities in representation. If California house members had the same proportional representation as Wyoming house, we'd need an additional California house members so even our alleged "proportional representation" system is fundamentally broken.
The majority are getting tired of the minority dictating how politics work in our country.
[+] [-] sokoloff|3 years ago|reply
Both major parties are minority parties.
[+] [-] hunglee2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hef19898|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orzig|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdf234f234fd|3 years ago|reply
Historically, people have fought to select leaders. Such a system puts the strongest and most brutal in power.
Now we let people talk and then vote. It's a mechanism for resolving conflicts that has been extremely successful at its job.
This is, btw, why freedom of speech is so important and why it's exactly whose we least want to hear, who must to be able to speak. We resolve conflicts with people we have conflicts with, not people we agree with. Talk about it or fight about it. Talking has led to, probably, the most peaceful period of human history.
[+] [-] shlurpy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|3 years ago|reply
Why do we have one absolute ruler? You could make up reasons about deciding votes and stuff, but clearly it's a throwback to the good old days when one person killed anough people to become King.
[+] [-] AbrahamParangi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gadflyinyoureye|3 years ago|reply
Fact of the matter is that the president and senate should not be elected by the masses. The masses need to vote for local control up through their state legislature. After that, the States should vote for their representatives: the senate and the president.
At the same time some small group of self-starters should act as citizen journalists to actually keep these people accountable. For too long the powers that be have the media running cover for them. New organizations and individuals on YouTube and other media sites are showing how corrupt the government is. We need to take them seriously, still confirming their validity.
Finally, reform the US House so that it has the appropriate size for equal population representation. California needs more seats in the House. So do other States.
[+] [-] mdorazio|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwayyy479087|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idontknowifican|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ProjectArcturis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Taikonerd|3 years ago|reply
I do think it's revealing that when the US helps a country set up a new government (for example, in Iraq), they set them up with a parliamentary system, and not an American-style presidential one. I once asked a politically-minded friend why that was, and he said it was because parliamentary systems are friendlier to small factions in countries with lots of different ethnic groups.
[+] [-] throw0101a|3 years ago|reply
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
(2020/1 seem to have been a bad batch of years, as a lot of scores seems to have dropped)
See also:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Dem_Institute
[+] [-] Overtonwindow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sokoloff|3 years ago|reply
If we define the amount of election discrepancy as being the difference between the election totals and the count of actual ballots properly cast by legally eligible voters, an electoral college system confines discrepancies to within the given state. Illinois voters might have their votes improperly represented, but that's of much less concern to Arizona voters than if any election discrepancy not only misrepresented voters' wishes in Illinois but could manufacture additional voting power to that discrepancy.
[+] [-] frosted-flakes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benf76|3 years ago|reply
At the surface level this makes sense. But dig deeper. It’s reciprocal- if you take that approach why should those states listen to you? If you throw out their interests wholesale, then you have no right to govern them and they should secede and make their own laws.
This is how we got the senate and electoral college. Why should someone in Florida have a say over the people of Kenya, New Zealand or Idaho? In a sense people should self govern unless they come together in some kind of mutual pact where both sides get a benefit. Otherwise you are speaking of literal tyranny.
[+] [-] divided|3 years ago|reply
I think this is a highly uncharitable rephrasing of what's being said. This sort of hyper-partisan lens I think can ruin one's ability to reason through what's actually being said. It's strawman-ing, in other words.
What's _actually_ being said is "LA county's population should be listened to as much as Michigan state" (for example). No one is saying don't listen to 40 states. They're saying each person should have an equal say in how our nation is governed.
Without that hyper-partisan lens, your argument sorta just looks silly and falls apart, doesn't it? I mean, "it's reciprocal" we value your state's population equally to our own. Those states should listen to us because we listen to them. No one is throwing out anyone's interests wholesale, so we do have a right to govern together and no one should secede?
Being clear here, no one is talking about disenfranchising people of their representation. They're talking about equalizing representation. When your interests are overrepresented this might _feel_ like an attack on you, but it's the same way some subset of men felt women earning the right to vote lessened theirs or some subset of white people felt black people achieving the right to vote lessened their control. It's true in a way, but only in the sense that some portion of the population unjustly and unfairly held more power than they were entitled to. You don't want to look at your voting power that way, do you?
[+] [-] emptyparadise|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoblePublius|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ekaros|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myapp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yieldcrv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhkiehna|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pie_flavor|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|3 years ago|reply
Still somewhat similar issues to getting enough states on board, but not quite the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...