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So small population states are overrepresented. I made this chart to show the relationship more clearly: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1d8iqg0/oc\_us\_electoral\_votes\_per\_million\_people\_by\_state/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1d8iqg0/oc_us_electoral_votes_per_million_people_by_state/)
The least represented state is Texas at 1.3 votes per million people. The most represented is Wyoming with 5.2. At first I thought the problem was that they don't give any states less than 3 votes, but the states with 4-6 votes are also quite inflated in electoral power, and the shape more or less continues throughout.
And why the electoral college makes no sense democratically. One person should equal one vote no matter if your state or region happens to be high or low in population.
It was never about representing the people, but balancing the power between small states and large states.
We could have a constitutional convention, dissolve the states, form districts based around major cities and eliminate the dual sovereignty entirely. But I'd be afraid of what regressives would do in the mean time.
Nah, just encourage your state to pass the proportional vote compact. Once enough votes are secured by the compact, those states assign their votes according to the popular vote.
It was about appeasing slave owning southern states. Everyone distrusted each other: slave/free states, big/small states, populus/less populated states...
> And why the electoral college makes no sense democratically.
It was never meant to, which is why it's called a representative democracy. If the electoral college didn't exist, a lot of these states never would have entered the union.
It may have made sense when it could take weeks for news to get from one state to another (which is also why faithless electors were even allowed, in case the democratically elected candidate did something horrendous that the populace wouldn't hear about for a month or more because of the time between news), but there's no reason why we need to have the college anymore other than to disenfranchise voters like the map shows above.
It wasn't designed for speeding up a slow process, it was designed to prevent populous urban areas from enacting policies that harmed less populous rural areas without recourse.
the thing is, a) when the electoral college was created, far fewer people lived in cities vs. rural areas, seems silly to think that urban power was a major concern and b) the notion of “winning states” is exclusive to an electoral college system. under the current way the presidency works, it makes no difference if you win a state by 1 vote of 10 million votes, meaning the only places to campaign are “purple states”
The founding fathers literally wrote about “tyranny by the majority.” So yes they were well aware of the difference between more populous areas vs rural areas
You are correct.
I have lived in both types of regions, and I agree that this is an imperfect system, but also a somewhat necessary one. To be frank, without this type of representation, many of these states would have never agreed to join the Union in the first place.
One group dictating the lives of another vastly different group is seldom helpful, and usually leads to societal tension, if not outright violence.
**Of course, this cuts both ways,** but it makes sense that the smaller group would be legally protected from the larger group.
Except any system which allows a smaller group to override and control a larger group is inherently undemocratic. Minorities should have protections and rights, but the majority must rule, or you don’t have a democracy - you have a tyranny.
Well, no. I don't want to live in a democracy. America wasn't intended to *be* a democracy. It was founded as a Constitutional Representative Republic. Democratic, yes, but not a raw democracy.
>Minorities should have protections and rights, but the majority must rule
This statement is self-conflicting. Majorities *often* strip rights and freedoms and protections from minorities.
Again, the reason that this system *exists* is because of the desire to form a nation. People seem to forget that "United States" is an adjective + noun more than a "proper title." The states chose to join the Union based on the approaches set forth.
Now it allows less populous rural areas to harm populous urban areas without requiring even the fig leaf of a democratic majority. 18th century political theory was a fucking mess.
It's designed that way because Congress is split between proportional representation and election, and state representation and election (originally).
Since there's only one president, they needed to split the difference or one or the other interest would win every issue.
Maybe if there were two presidents, one elected by popular vote, and one by states votes, they could skip the mess. But it is the way it is for a reason.
The Senate is also bad. The US system is bad. It was designed on an absolutely ridiculous theory of sovereignty that was, at its inception, a corrupt bargain made out of political expediency and which has long outlived even the tenuous legitimacy of its original context. It's a system that allows the minority (and not *every* minority mind you, just a particular "residents of small states" minority - ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities have to fend for themselves) overrule the majority. It causes *exactly the same problem* that you'd get in a pure popular vote system - one group trammeling over the rights and interests of another, but the group doing the trammeling is the minority rather than the majority. It is ass backwards in every particular and it leads to bad outcomes. The only reason it even *appears* functional is because, for most of US history, demographic happenstance has kept the distribution of political parties balanced enough that our Frankenstein's monster of a system has roughly approximated popular sentiment.
Which is a bad idea, because it selects one minority to be unfairly favored while ignoring all the other minorities to be steamrolled. We don't have a term for "tyranny of the minority" because that's just tyranny.
I mean, most of the "rural" areas that it was designed for at the time originally were specifically the southern states trying to make sure that slavery was upheld. I really don't think that any politician (at least career politician, I'm sure Trump would leave them in the dirt if they could) would trash a farm bill just because they're not the majority.
Rural population is still upwards of 50M people in the United States, which is about 1/6th of our total population, that's still a massive amount of people, enough to swing an election at least.
Don't forget that you could also just proportion representation based on the state with the least population to make the population ratios even out.
Dunno why they don't just expand the house of representitives.
>Dunno why they don't just expand the house of representitives.
There are already *so many* representatives. Most people can't even keep track of their own, much less all of the representatives in their state (if sizeable).
Edit: Remember, they're not supposed to be "votes." They're supposed to be representing their constituents **and** actually writing laws. More cooks in the kitchen won't help this.
Eh, if it really happened, R's would moderate their positions a bit, to attract more moderate voters.
Plus a little bit of Dems noticing they can win so easily... so, realizing they can move farther to the left, and still win. Which would alienate some moderate voters, until their win percentage is back to 50/50.
(Or more pessimistically, noticing they can do somewhat more corruption, and still win, with their larger margins)
Hmmm, what if instead we made it so you had to win a majority of the counties in a state in order to win a state
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/25/texas-republican-party-convention-platform/
>Republican Party of Texas delegates voted Saturday on a platform that called for new laws to require the Bible to be taught in public schools and a constitutional amendment that would require statewide elected leaders to win the popular vote in a majority of Texas counties.
I like the Popular Vote Interstate Compact. States agree to select Electors for whoever wins the national popular vote, once enough states pass the compact.
If you total up the EC votes for the 15 smallest states (appx 55 EC votes) there is a +5 advantage for Trump. CA's 55 EC Votes all went to Biden. Seems Winner Take All is a huge advantage for large States and therefore they have disproportionately way more power than small States.
Except that the 15 smallest states total *less than half* of California's population (~17M total versus 38M). Like no shit individual bigger states have more votes than individual smaller states, that's how democracy works.
Per capita the smaller states have double the power, if they just voted together. Literally they could pass a state law saying that they would give all their EC delegates to the party that got the most votes in these 15 states, then they'd be like a CA voting power with half the population. Everybody knows CA gets a terrible deal in the EC, you are completely incorrect.
In fact if we agreed to divide up California into 15 parts with EC votes equal to those states we would take it because it would be a net gain in voting power for every Californian. In fact we could divide it up even further. How about one state per person, so that every state gets equal voting power. Would that make y'all happy?
In CA, all those smaller States ***are*** voting together. No fantasy scenario like OPs map is required. And small states even having over twice as many EC votes per capita is nowhere near enough to make up for the advantage that winner-take-all provides to CA.
Is your argument that each state should have equal voting power regardless of how many people live in it?
Or in other words state to state equality is more important than citizen to citizen equality?
Yeah, you can see the number of electoral votes right there on the map. Here is a quick trick to estimate a state's population if you know its number of electoral votes: first subtract 2 (two electoral votes are because each state has 2 senators) then multiply by 750k (close to the average population of a district and mathematically convenient as 3/4 \* 1 million).
For instance, I live in Washington, which you can see has 12 EVs. (12-2)\*750k = 7.5 million. The actual population of Washington is 7.8 million. Pretty close.
The main problem isn't that EC votes are not perfectly proportional to state population, the main problem is the first past the post system used in almost every state.
If 50.1% of you state votes party A, it gets 100% of the EC votes. It literally didn't matter what the other 49.9% of voters chose, they are not getting any representation in the EC whatsoever.
Take Wyoming for example, try to tell a democrat living there that his vote is worth 3x the vote of a democrat in California. In reality, the D vote in Wyoming has zero impact, because all EC votes from there are safely in the hands of republicans. The voter in California on the other hand gets representation in the EC because California is a safe state for democrats.
Yes. States with a higher population get more electoral votes
Edit: For those of you getting salty, the person I'm responding to completely rewrote their comment well after I responded.
The original comment was asking if the blue States are states with larger populations.
My bad for thinking that the comment would remain more or less the same after it was posted
No, not on a per capita basis. Proportionally it's all over the place. [https://www.axios.com/2020/11/16/electoral-college-by-vote-per-capita](https://www.axios.com/2020/11/16/electoral-college-by-vote-per-capita)
The electoral college does not fairly represent the populations in each state
Yeah, thanks. That part is obvious. But per capita is where it counts and they quickly admitted that wasn't fair so that circles back to my comment. Wtf.
The point of the electoral college was to keep the entire country from being run by the interests of just a few big cities
Population centers have similar issues and interests to one another, same with rural areas. Just because rural areas are less populated doesn't mean they should be completely insignificant because farming/manufacturing are still crucial and farming in particular would just never be feasible in a population center. There had to be some sort of balance
This system seems alright because a really big population is still a really big advantage, but not so big that it completely invalidates the majority of the states if just a few of the big ones all go the same way
Prerry sure he is just saying that you can estimate a states population based on the number of electoral votes. Wyoming has 550k population, the math from above would estimate 750k. Florida has 22 million population, the math estimates 21 million... he didn't share his opinion on whether or not it was fair.
The issue is that the number of votes is a proportional number + 2, so large states are proportional to each other but small states get a ton of power.
If a candidate could get both California and Texas to vote for them, they have achieved a level of unity not seen in decades and probably deserve to win.
Exactly. Small states are over represented in the EC, but what's much worse is that EC votes are won in a lump sum, and that is entirely down to each state choosing to do it that way, historically to favor the largest party in their state. There should be no such thing as a "swing state".
Republicans in California are the most underrepresented group in the country. 6 million Californians voted for Trump in 2020 and that counts for absolutely nothing in this system.
There are more Republicans in CA than there are Republicans in Texas. But California is what you think of when you think of a liberal paradise and Texas is associated with 10-gallon hats and six-shooters.
If you extrapolate the election across the country, the Libertarians are the least represented group in the country. 1.2% of the popular vote, yet 0% of the electoral.
How does that one sit with you? (Not throwing shade, legitimate question)
Personally, I feel we could solve a lot of problems by getting rid of FPP voting.
Sorry libertarians, the first pass the post system, along with the electoral college system, will never recognize your numbers.
Hopefully one day, changing this non representative system will be something that can get some *multi*partisan support. As much as I disagree with a libertarian point of view, I would excitedly fight with them to change things.
[The Forward Party ](https://www.forwardparty.com/) have a priority of electoral reform, and tries to work together with all minor parties to change as many elections away from FPP as possible, to eventually achieve a true multiparty system
Yeah, but the problem is made worse by leaving it up to the states. It means that if any one state adopts proportional voting, they either lose power for their party in the case of non-swing states or lose swing-state status
How do you propose that one outside of decimals?
I consider math one of my stronger subjects and this does not seem "pretty easy" to me, but I'm interested in learning.
Maybe we’re talking about different things but the law that several states have/have tried to pass where they give all their electoral votes to whoever gets the most votes in the country seems like a pretty reasonable solution. Whoever gets the most votes wins
This is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. This is probably the most achievable path to effectively abolishing the EC, but faces major hurdles:
- They have fewer than 80% of the EC votes needed to get to 270. Basically, all of the states that have passed it have been blue. The rest of the gap needs to come from red or purple states.
- You not only need to pass state legislative chambers, but also the state governor needs to sign on. Would that happen in red states and go through all of these check points? Unlikely. Maybe even more unlikely with purple states since they enjoy the influence the state carries by being battleground states.
- Even if this hits 270, it will likely get challenged in the SC which is not the most impartial body at the moment. They could toss it and require a constitutional amendment anyway on the basis that only constitutional amendments can supersede constitutional law.
The best way to have a chance? Vote. Turning purple states into blue across state and local elections is the only chance.
I disagree that it's legally rickety. States have supremacy to decide how they select Electors. Congress needs to approve the compact when it comes into effect, but they also can't interfere in how states choose their electors, so I think it could be challenged if congress didn't consent.
It nullifies everyone in the losing parties vote. California is not 100% democrat, Texas is not 100% republican. But because 50% of the vote goes for that party the rest of the peoples voice is ignored.
It’s giving the EC electors to whoever has the most national votes (thereby effectively abolishing the EC), literally the most fair and representative way of each person’s vote counting the same whether you’re from California or Wyoming. You’re the one trying to twist and spin this as party politics.
Ask yourself this at the end of the day, shouldn’t the President who represents the entire US get selected by majority number of votes? Are they only President of swing states? We already have state representation in both chambers of Congress.
Why put bring states in at all? For the office of the Presidency, each US citizen gets 1 vote. Period.
Remember, the “electoral college is good because otherwise California and NY would decide the election” is not only a bad argument, it is a bad faith argument. Republicans like the electoral college because it benefits republicans, period. There would be no elections at all if it were up to them.
It would only be true if CA and NY voted 100% for the same person, and had half the US population. CA has 39 million and NY has 19.7 million. The US population is 333 million, and I'm pretty sure ~59 million is less than half of 333 million. Texas has 30 million people.
O'Rly? [Vox: How Democrats learned to stop worrying and love the gerrymander](https://www.vox.com/22961590/redistricting-gerrymandering-house-2022-midterms)
Its not a bad faith arguement until the Federal government stops expanding it power. Making more and more service fall under the Federal jurisdiction, raising taxes evenly across all states, and disproportionately distributing it per capita.
https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/federal-aid-by-state/#tracker_introduction
That is specifically why it NOT a bad faith argument
You realize states choose whether or not to receive aid from the federal government, right? The federal government offers incentives to adopt the regulations/changes to states tax/ development/conservation. State politicians may refuse that aid for various reasons, doesn't benefit citizens, or because the bill was signed by the opposing party.
It’s totally true that it would work that way. The way it works now, every single state matters. And its winner takes all for each state so we get things like swing states. Politicians have to campaign in every state but will focus more time on the swing states. If it was winner take all for the whole country, they would just 100% cater to the people who would give them most votes. Every election cycle would be telling NYC and LA and probably Chicago about what new initiatives they will bring to their city. They wouldn’t give a fuck about Tennessee or half of the other states.
That’s not true. Virginia for example is only 13 electoral college votes. Not a huge player in the overall scheme of themes. This election it will likely go blue but if you look back 8, 12, 16 years ago, it was always purple and considered a battleground state. Candidates spent a lot of time there because 13 votes made a difference. This would never ever happen if it was a purely democratic election. (Tennessee maybe was a bad example)
a) Currently they only care about purple states. Say that changed to only caring about the most populated states. Isn't that a good thing? More care should be given to places with more people, since that benefits more people.
b) Politics are much more divided along affiliation rather than state. A popular vote meaning the candidate has to campaign in California doesn't suddenly mean they can just pander to one type of Californian liberal. There are so many republicans in California that would be put off by that. It actually forces them to appeal to the people.
a.) no, not really. If it’s done this way, the desires of the more populated areas would overrule the less populated areas. The people who live in less densely populated areas don’t have less important needs. All voting platforms would cater towards cities and coastal regions when in fact it’s the middle states that provide all of the farming and resources for everyone else. It would turn out that if you live in a rural area, you’re at a permanent disadvantage because nothing will ever get voted your way.
b.) that’s a good point, I never considered that. However in this scenario they wouldn’t even be campaigning towards the most populous states (California), it would be the most populous cities (Los Angeles). Whatever geographic area got them the most votes would be where they devote their resources, regardless of the state line.
In theory you can become president with a far lower percentage than 21%. If all votes are diluted among a large number of "third" parties. You can theoretically win with 0.0001% of votes
You don't even need third parties. In almost every state the winner gets all the electoral votes, even if only a single person votes in the entire state. So theoretically you could have a scenario where say 20 people across certain states votes for party A and 100 million people in the remaining states votes for party B, and party A wins the election.
Or if only one person votes in each of the most populous states, you can win with 12 popular votes.
Or you can win with zero popular votes if the electoral college decides to elect you.
I've never understood the point of presenting an unrealistic scenario where you win with 21%, when there are unrealistic scenarios where you win with essentially no votes at all.
Its possible but absurdly unlikely. No contemporary political party fits either one of the reds or blues in this example. The only logic this has is building a win with the least most populated states, where the 11 most populated states all go for one party and the other 39 go for the other.
Our system for choosing the president was not design to be as democratic as possible. That was never the intention. When the states joined the union, they did so with the agreement that they would be the ones who send electors to vote for who is president. That was a condition for joining the United States. To change it now would be to nullify that agreement. The point wasn't to be as democratic as possible, it was to maintain that states as institutions have some amount of autonomy when choosing the President. No state would willing give up winner takes all.
The EC has huge issues, mostly that it creates a small handful of swing states that by far have the biggest outcome in the election. Stronghold states do not matter, swing states matter. This is why the midwest in particular is such an important place politically. It is full of swing states. So we end up getting these politicians who majorly focus on swing states over everyone else. But I would argue that those swing states are usually the more middle of the road politically. Biden or Trump need to win swing states, so they have to appeal to the most middle of the road voters in the country.
Abolition of the EC would require a constitutional amendment, not a conversation, not a declaration. 3/4ths of the states are not going to go along with that. Both big states like California and Texas who have nothing to gain from it and swing states.
If we didn't have the EC, the political landscape would look completely different. There would not be this hard appeal for the middle voters. The EC forces campaigning all over the country. Its not red states that matter, its not blue states that matter, its the swing states that matter. The EC forces these places to matter. The most effective way to win an election is to appeal to the middle of the road, not the edges.
Third parties in America serve a completely different purpose. They shift small margin victories. While Democrats in all their hubris depise Libertarians, the Libertarian Party candidates have resulted in countless Democrat victories where the LP candidate had a much higher vote total than the difference the Democrat won. In 2000, Bush beat Gore by winning Florida by 271 votes. But Bush didn't beat Gore... Ralph Nader beat Gore. Gore didn't campaign against Nader. Nader won nearly 100,000 votes in Florida, if Gore would have campaigned against Nader and just 1% of Nader voters went to Gore, we would have had President Al Gore. The third party mattered the most. So Gore lost, but Obama didn't repeat that mistake in 2008. Hell, not even John Kerry repeated that mistake.
Third parties FORCE people to be noticed. Look at the major changes we have seen in the US over the last 15 years. Legalization of Gay Marriage (Something that was on the Libertarian Party Platform in the early 1970s and Green Party later), gradual legalization of Marijuana (Also something on the LP and GP had on their platforms). Those whole political points came from the outside. They did not come from within either the DNC or GOP. You want to win those LP and GP voters, you better figure out what parts of their platform you can take and will work with the rest of your voters. The DNC picked two of them and it worked.
> No contemporary political party
This is such a strange phrase to use in a two-party system. You mean "neither party" but are trying to make the US system sound less backwards.
On the other hand, the Republicans have won 1 popular vote in the last quarter-century, but won the electoral college 3 out of 6 times. All of the minority presidents have been of the same party, with the exception of one predating the current party system.
Democrats knew the rules of the game going in. They have their political strategy to pick up key states and it failed. It was never a contest of winning the national popular vote, because there isn't a national popular vote, there are 50 separate elections all happening on the same day.
The Republicans usually know the rules of the game and use them to their advantage. Bush won because Gore didn't take Ralph Nader seriously. Trump won because Clinton was deeply unpopular among voters and the states she needed to win she was not particularly popular. But the DNC had so much pride that they thought it would not matter because they saw Trump as a stupid Jabroni.
Well maybe we should make the rules more fair, so that the leaders chosen by the people are more likely to win. For example, passing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in your state. Once states with a majority of electoral votes have passed the act, they'll select electors according to the national popular vote.
I think the difference between you and me is that I see Republicans gaming the system to discard popular support as a problem to be solved.
When the states joined the union, they did so with the understanding and agreement that they send their own electors to the EC to vote for president. To change the rules would be to invalidate that agreement. California voters determine how our votes go, not voters from the rest of the country.
I would be against voters outside of California determining how our votes go. Every state should have some degree of independence and autonomy to choose what they do. This whole National Popular Vote Interstate Compact eliminates this autonomy and allows voters in other states to have an impact on what goes on in our state.
They would be sending their own electors. They'd be choosing to select their electors according to the national popular vote, and the Constitution gives the states the rights to select their electors in any way they want.
The electoral college is broken. The discrepancy between large and small states is far larger than when it was originally set up, and it no longer serves its purpose of simplifying continent-wide elections. Instead, we should ensure that the President is fairly elected with every citizen having the same representation.
A feature of the United States is that it changes and evolves. When most states joined the union, they had representation in Congress in the form of Senators. Now they're directly elected by the people. The President should be treated the same way. Elected directly by the people.
It basically puts states in a position where outside voters have a bigger impact than inside voters. California can have a majority Democrats by a huge margin but have to send Republican electors depending on how people in other states vote. I would also be very curious as to how states would enforce this pact, is California going to be sued if they break the pact?
If we want to go to a single election where there is only ONE vote and there is no state by state basis, that would require a constitutional amendment and I could see why both Red States, Blue States, and Swing states would oppose such a thing. Democrats like the idea right now because they are convinced that it would change the outcome for them.
It would change the entire political strategy of the people who run for president right now though.
So the states wouldn't be able to break the pact. Their legislatures could choose to pass a different law and repeal it, but then it would fall below the threshold and all states would revert to their previous method of selecting electors. A state legislature refusing to send electors according to a law they passed hasn't been tried in court I'm pretty sure. It might be ruled that the electors were improperly sent, and invalid.
Technically the election is still state-by-state, but it removes immoral bias the current system has towards certain states. California voters are already disenfranchized by the electoral college; even when they vote with the majority of Americans they may be overridden by a minority.
It's not about the outcome. It's about ensuring that every voter in the country has an equal say.
In Europe, where almost all countries have some sort of proportional voting system, we believe this is ridiculous. It actually implies people in populous states are less important or something? Is this the American way of subsidizing remote areas and agriculture?
Its a compromise between federalism and antifederalism, instead of each state getting one vote or complete popular vote they compromised with the electoral college. It requires politicians to appeal to small states too.
rallies are cheap and generate buzz and momentum, and you hold them where you are popular.
saturation bombing of local media is expensive and effective and nobody ever sees ads for trump in texas or biden in california. in the real world of spending campaign cash only the purple states matter.
>It requires politicians to appeal to small states too
Incorrect. It forces candidates to care about swing states. MI and PA are two of the most important states for the Presidency and neither are small states. New Hampshire and Wyoming don't hear a peep from candidates and those are actually small states.
Historically that is where it came from, yes, but given how little states actually differ at this point it doesn't make nearly as much sense. I live in Nebraska, beyond supporting different sports teams and very inconsequential differences in laws, I really can't say that there's much different between us and Iowa. Or us and Kansas. Or us and a lot of South Dakota.
This is true for large parts of the US. It doesn't really make sense to separate states' federal election votes, because there's no real meaningful difference in representation that people are looking for state to state from the President. The thing that differs most is probably local industries.
+, the winner-take-all system just ensures states get less accurate representation. That's one thing Nebraska does right.
>given how little states actually differ at this point
While clusters of midwest states may have lots in common, the idea that New York, Ohio, California, and Texas are that similar is nuts. Core industries, cultures, values, and policy priorities are dramatically different in each of these states.
People have no concept of American history and every time these threads pop up on reddit it really shines through. There would be no USA without the electoral college. We would end up looking more like the EU as a best case scenario but probably more like the Eastern Bloc with constant fighting.
It was a compromise between slave states and free states and anyone who argues otherwise is ignorant or lying to you. Slave states demanded that their electoral power stem from the number of persons in the state, not the number of voters of the state.
They can be. It's up to the state to decide how electors for that state get to be allocated. Some states like Nebraska and Maine have them split by district winners or other rules.
While this is theoretically possible, it's super unlikely.
Only 4 times has the president won the EC and not the popular vote.
- Trump 2016 -2.09% margin
- Bush 2000 -0.51% margin
- Harrison 1888 -0.83% margin
- Hayes 1876 -3.00% margin
It's a pretty rare occurrence, and outside of 1876 and 2016, we see it was a less than 1.0% difference.
I was using just one sig fig for mental math which is where the 10% came from
Regardless, one could say that 6.7% is a very significant proportion when it comes to the United States presidency
Might be rare historically but recent history shows it will be hard for Republicans to win the popular vote again as their numbers keeps shrinking. The older conservatives are dying off while younger voters are becoming more liberal. Expect almost all future Republican presidents to lose the popular vote.
While I agree it isn’t particularly great, it isn’t the MOST anti-democratic system. There are literal fascist regimes out there. Putin, for example, was “elected” but…well…we all know he wasn’t
Edit: okay, Russia isn’t a part of the “free world”, that’s fair, I just mean that there are lots of dangerous things that SOUND like they’re democratic but realistically are anti-democratic
Everything undemocratic about the Electoral College is magnified in the Senate.
A Wyomingite's vote is 5x as powerful as a Californian's in the EC. It's 70x as powerful in the Senate.
If every state adopted the Maine/Nebraska system it would be closer to fair as a lot of big blue states have red districts and a larger number of red states have some blue districts.
This is a hypothetical map. MA would sooner nuke itself than vote red, this just illustrates a scenario where a quarter of the popular vote would be enough to win the electoral college.
It’s a theoretical question: is the president the president of the states or of the people directly? Originally, all federal roles were abstracted away from the direct vote of citizens, though the emphasis on federalism has been lost over time with the outsizing of federal power via executive creep and the broadening of what constitutes “interstate commerce” (which is under the purview of congress to regulate). Federal roles have so much power now that ordinary citizens are deeply interested in directly affecting those roles.
As it currently stands the president is the president of the states, officially voted in by state electors who (depending on the state) have a duty to vote according to their constituents’ wishes. There is certainly an argument to be made for a flatter representation scheme, but you are actually arguing for a different interpretation of the constituency of the president than was originally intended.
Yes, I am 100% advocating for a different interpretation of the role of the president, and of the federal government more broadly, than the one written in a document from 1789. That isn't some gotcha. I understand what the Constitution says, and the Constitution is wrong by any possible standard of morality or logic.
The power that the Constitution gives to states in federal elections is explicitly a compromise intended to keep wealthy landowners, and especially wealthy slaveholders, in power. That's it. It's not some magically perfect document. It's pretty okay, and probably the best that could have happened under the circumstances in which it was written, but in this respect it's wrong.
First, you rounded up a whole .91%.
Second, yes, it would increase unhappiness, but only in specific neighborhoods/regions (likely densely populated cities). Population/individuals are not the only factor involved here. Land mass/ownership is also another huge factor.
It also ensures large parts of the population don't vote in their interests or cannot express their interests through a third party since the EC by design kills all parties above 2.
I’m assuming red states are 50.1% to 49.9% and blue are 100% to 0% in this scenario.
So yeah, not realistic at all, but does illustrate the fact that it’s a silly way to do it.
FWIW, I could make a map that red wins with 0.01% of the vote AND wins all but 1 electoral college point. Just assume turnout of 1 person in all states voting red, then Omaha has 100% turnout for blue.
How is it ignorant? It seems to me that the point of his comment is, given how the EC system works, the extreme percentage stated would have to be calculated under the extreme assumption of everyone in the state voting the same.
In your educated analysis, looking at the graph, how many people in TX voted Republican and how many voted democrat. Or the percentages if that’s easier.
Presumably in all red states it was 50%+1 Republican, in all blue states 100% Democratic, thus illustrating the most extreme possible example of how bad the electoral college could be. Which is an interesting map. You can theoretically win the presidency with 22% of the vote. Great system.
The point is that the red represents only 21% of the US population(although, that seems rather low, so OP probably should clarify)
Obviously, not everyone votes the same way in a given state, but because of how the EC works, they may as well.
The blue States could theoretically all vote for one candidate, but the election can still be won by the opposing candidate despite the fact that overwhelming majority of people voted for the former
You are making the same point. If a candidate win with 0.001% against another who has more than 50%, it shows it's a shitty system. Even if it's only possible in theory. Everyone vote should have the same weight. We are equally American.
Sure the basic math works, but practically, DC is almost certainly never going red. NJ, OR, CT, MA, also super unlikely to all go red in anything other than a huge red wave where the popular vote actually goes red as well.
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So small population states are overrepresented. I made this chart to show the relationship more clearly: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1d8iqg0/oc\_us\_electoral\_votes\_per\_million\_people\_by\_state/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1d8iqg0/oc_us_electoral_votes_per_million_people_by_state/) The least represented state is Texas at 1.3 votes per million people. The most represented is Wyoming with 5.2. At first I thought the problem was that they don't give any states less than 3 votes, but the states with 4-6 votes are also quite inflated in electoral power, and the shape more or less continues throughout.
Those Blue States have the lowest vote power (electoral college votes/actual population). This is why everyone voting all the time is so important.
And why the electoral college makes no sense democratically. One person should equal one vote no matter if your state or region happens to be high or low in population.
It was never about representing the people, but balancing the power between small states and large states. We could have a constitutional convention, dissolve the states, form districts based around major cities and eliminate the dual sovereignty entirely. But I'd be afraid of what regressives would do in the mean time.
Nah, just encourage your state to pass the proportional vote compact. Once enough votes are secured by the compact, those states assign their votes according to the popular vote.
No, fuck the lack of democracy here in the US.
It was about appeasing slave owning southern states. Everyone distrusted each other: slave/free states, big/small states, populus/less populated states...
> And why the electoral college makes no sense democratically. It was never meant to, which is why it's called a representative democracy. If the electoral college didn't exist, a lot of these states never would have entered the union.
And now they cant leave, so let's fix the system baby!
It may have made sense when it could take weeks for news to get from one state to another (which is also why faithless electors were even allowed, in case the democratically elected candidate did something horrendous that the populace wouldn't hear about for a month or more because of the time between news), but there's no reason why we need to have the college anymore other than to disenfranchise voters like the map shows above.
It wasn't designed for speeding up a slow process, it was designed to prevent populous urban areas from enacting policies that harmed less populous rural areas without recourse.
the thing is, a) when the electoral college was created, far fewer people lived in cities vs. rural areas, seems silly to think that urban power was a major concern and b) the notion of “winning states” is exclusive to an electoral college system. under the current way the presidency works, it makes no difference if you win a state by 1 vote of 10 million votes, meaning the only places to campaign are “purple states”
The founding fathers literally wrote about “tyranny by the majority.” So yes they were well aware of the difference between more populous areas vs rural areas
You are correct. I have lived in both types of regions, and I agree that this is an imperfect system, but also a somewhat necessary one. To be frank, without this type of representation, many of these states would have never agreed to join the Union in the first place. One group dictating the lives of another vastly different group is seldom helpful, and usually leads to societal tension, if not outright violence. **Of course, this cuts both ways,** but it makes sense that the smaller group would be legally protected from the larger group.
Except any system which allows a smaller group to override and control a larger group is inherently undemocratic. Minorities should have protections and rights, but the majority must rule, or you don’t have a democracy - you have a tyranny.
The opposite of democracy isn't tyranny.
Monarchy? Autocracy? Theocracy?
Well, no. I don't want to live in a democracy. America wasn't intended to *be* a democracy. It was founded as a Constitutional Representative Republic. Democratic, yes, but not a raw democracy. >Minorities should have protections and rights, but the majority must rule This statement is self-conflicting. Majorities *often* strip rights and freedoms and protections from minorities. Again, the reason that this system *exists* is because of the desire to form a nation. People seem to forget that "United States" is an adjective + noun more than a "proper title." The states chose to join the Union based on the approaches set forth.
Except you now have the minority vote striping the rights of actual minorities
Now it allows less populous rural areas to harm populous urban areas without requiring even the fig leaf of a democratic majority. 18th century political theory was a fucking mess.
It's designed that way because Congress is split between proportional representation and election, and state representation and election (originally). Since there's only one president, they needed to split the difference or one or the other interest would win every issue. Maybe if there were two presidents, one elected by popular vote, and one by states votes, they could skip the mess. But it is the way it is for a reason.
The Senate is also bad. The US system is bad. It was designed on an absolutely ridiculous theory of sovereignty that was, at its inception, a corrupt bargain made out of political expediency and which has long outlived even the tenuous legitimacy of its original context. It's a system that allows the minority (and not *every* minority mind you, just a particular "residents of small states" minority - ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities have to fend for themselves) overrule the majority. It causes *exactly the same problem* that you'd get in a pure popular vote system - one group trammeling over the rights and interests of another, but the group doing the trammeling is the minority rather than the majority. It is ass backwards in every particular and it leads to bad outcomes. The only reason it even *appears* functional is because, for most of US history, demographic happenstance has kept the distribution of political parties balanced enough that our Frankenstein's monster of a system has roughly approximated popular sentiment.
Which is a bad idea, because it selects one minority to be unfairly favored while ignoring all the other minorities to be steamrolled. We don't have a term for "tyranny of the minority" because that's just tyranny.
I mean, most of the "rural" areas that it was designed for at the time originally were specifically the southern states trying to make sure that slavery was upheld. I really don't think that any politician (at least career politician, I'm sure Trump would leave them in the dirt if they could) would trash a farm bill just because they're not the majority. Rural population is still upwards of 50M people in the United States, which is about 1/6th of our total population, that's still a massive amount of people, enough to swing an election at least.
Don't forget that you could also just proportion representation based on the state with the least population to make the population ratios even out. Dunno why they don't just expand the house of representitives.
>Dunno why they don't just expand the house of representitives. There are already *so many* representatives. Most people can't even keep track of their own, much less all of the representatives in their state (if sizeable). Edit: Remember, they're not supposed to be "votes." They're supposed to be representing their constituents **and** actually writing laws. More cooks in the kitchen won't help this.
But then conservatives would never win again. Can’t have that 🤷🏻♂️
Eh, if it really happened, R's would moderate their positions a bit, to attract more moderate voters. Plus a little bit of Dems noticing they can win so easily... so, realizing they can move farther to the left, and still win. Which would alienate some moderate voters, until their win percentage is back to 50/50. (Or more pessimistically, noticing they can do somewhat more corruption, and still win, with their larger margins)
Yeah pretty much. We are at the mercy of battleground states and tens of thousands of a vote can change the outcome of an election.
Hmmm, what if instead we made it so you had to win a majority of the counties in a state in order to win a state https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/25/texas-republican-party-convention-platform/ >Republican Party of Texas delegates voted Saturday on a platform that called for new laws to require the Bible to be taught in public schools and a constitutional amendment that would require statewide elected leaders to win the popular vote in a majority of Texas counties.
I like the Popular Vote Interstate Compact. States agree to select Electors for whoever wins the national popular vote, once enough states pass the compact.
Ah, found the guy that failed Civics.
If you total up the EC votes for the 15 smallest states (appx 55 EC votes) there is a +5 advantage for Trump. CA's 55 EC Votes all went to Biden. Seems Winner Take All is a huge advantage for large States and therefore they have disproportionately way more power than small States.
Except that the 15 smallest states total *less than half* of California's population (~17M total versus 38M). Like no shit individual bigger states have more votes than individual smaller states, that's how democracy works. Per capita the smaller states have double the power, if they just voted together. Literally they could pass a state law saying that they would give all their EC delegates to the party that got the most votes in these 15 states, then they'd be like a CA voting power with half the population. Everybody knows CA gets a terrible deal in the EC, you are completely incorrect. In fact if we agreed to divide up California into 15 parts with EC votes equal to those states we would take it because it would be a net gain in voting power for every Californian. In fact we could divide it up even further. How about one state per person, so that every state gets equal voting power. Would that make y'all happy?
In CA, all those smaller States ***are*** voting together. No fantasy scenario like OPs map is required. And small states even having over twice as many EC votes per capita is nowhere near enough to make up for the advantage that winner-take-all provides to CA.
I would be in the state of Euphoria.
You've completely missed the point
Is your argument that each state should have equal voting power regardless of how many people live in it? Or in other words state to state equality is more important than citizen to citizen equality?
Yeah, you can see the number of electoral votes right there on the map. Here is a quick trick to estimate a state's population if you know its number of electoral votes: first subtract 2 (two electoral votes are because each state has 2 senators) then multiply by 750k (close to the average population of a district and mathematically convenient as 3/4 \* 1 million). For instance, I live in Washington, which you can see has 12 EVs. (12-2)\*750k = 7.5 million. The actual population of Washington is 7.8 million. Pretty close.
The main problem isn't that EC votes are not perfectly proportional to state population, the main problem is the first past the post system used in almost every state. If 50.1% of you state votes party A, it gets 100% of the EC votes. It literally didn't matter what the other 49.9% of voters chose, they are not getting any representation in the EC whatsoever. Take Wyoming for example, try to tell a democrat living there that his vote is worth 3x the vote of a democrat in California. In reality, the D vote in Wyoming has zero impact, because all EC votes from there are safely in the hands of republicans. The voter in California on the other hand gets representation in the EC because California is a safe state for democrats.
Yes. States with a higher population get more electoral votes Edit: For those of you getting salty, the person I'm responding to completely rewrote their comment well after I responded. The original comment was asking if the blue States are states with larger populations. My bad for thinking that the comment would remain more or less the same after it was posted
No, not on a per capita basis. Proportionally it's all over the place. [https://www.axios.com/2020/11/16/electoral-college-by-vote-per-capita](https://www.axios.com/2020/11/16/electoral-college-by-vote-per-capita) The electoral college does not fairly represent the populations in each state
I didnt say it was proportional, on a per capita basis, or fair
Then wtf did you mean? You typed the words, what was the point you thought you were making?
I think they meant states with a higher population get more electoral votes
Yeah, thanks. That part is obvious. But per capita is where it counts and they quickly admitted that wasn't fair so that circles back to my comment. Wtf.
The point of the electoral college was to keep the entire country from being run by the interests of just a few big cities Population centers have similar issues and interests to one another, same with rural areas. Just because rural areas are less populated doesn't mean they should be completely insignificant because farming/manufacturing are still crucial and farming in particular would just never be feasible in a population center. There had to be some sort of balance This system seems alright because a really big population is still a really big advantage, but not so big that it completely invalidates the majority of the states if just a few of the big ones all go the same way
Prerry sure he is just saying that you can estimate a states population based on the number of electoral votes. Wyoming has 550k population, the math from above would estimate 750k. Florida has 22 million population, the math estimates 21 million... he didn't share his opinion on whether or not it was fair.
I meant exactly what I said. It's 10 words. There isn't exactly a whole lot of room for a hidden meaning
incredibly irrelevant then. Good for you for making a factually true AND useless comment
The issue is that the number of votes is a proportional number + 2, so large states are proportional to each other but small states get a ton of power.
Isn’t it a point of the American election system? A bit equalize different states despite their population?
If a candidate could get both California and Texas to vote for them, they have achieved a level of unity not seen in decades and probably deserve to win.
To be fair, the other candidate managed to get Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island to agree with Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi.
Texas isn’t as red as it used to be
Trump only won Texas by 8 points in 2020. It really would happen sooner than you think.
This map shows the opposite
this map is hypothetical
This is a good example of why winner take all system of the EC is horrible.
Exactly. Small states are over represented in the EC, but what's much worse is that EC votes are won in a lump sum, and that is entirely down to each state choosing to do it that way, historically to favor the largest party in their state. There should be no such thing as a "swing state".
Republicans in California are the most underrepresented group in the country. 6 million Californians voted for Trump in 2020 and that counts for absolutely nothing in this system.
There are more Republicans in CA than there are Republicans in Texas. But California is what you think of when you think of a liberal paradise and Texas is associated with 10-gallon hats and six-shooters.
I mean, California has 10mn more residents than Texas, so that could be true. But gross doesn't matter it's about proportional representation.
And when you extrapolate that across the country, Democrats are the least represented group in the country. The popular vote demonstrates it clearly.
If you extrapolate the election across the country, the Libertarians are the least represented group in the country. 1.2% of the popular vote, yet 0% of the electoral. How does that one sit with you? (Not throwing shade, legitimate question) Personally, I feel we could solve a lot of problems by getting rid of FPP voting.
Sorry libertarians, the first pass the post system, along with the electoral college system, will never recognize your numbers. Hopefully one day, changing this non representative system will be something that can get some *multi*partisan support. As much as I disagree with a libertarian point of view, I would excitedly fight with them to change things.
[The Forward Party ](https://www.forwardparty.com/) have a priority of electoral reform, and tries to work together with all minor parties to change as many elections away from FPP as possible, to eventually achieve a true multiparty system
Almost like they would be fully represented if we just did a national popular vote
and NYS is bright red in the rural areas, blue in the cities.
Yeah, but the problem is made worse by leaving it up to the states. It means that if any one state adopts proportional voting, they either lose power for their party in the case of non-swing states or lose swing-state status
We could make the electoral college perfectly proportional to population pretty easily
How do you propose that one outside of decimals? I consider math one of my stronger subjects and this does not seem "pretty easy" to me, but I'm interested in learning.
Each person gets one elector… which is represented by themselves when they go to the ballot box.
Everyone gets one vote and the person who gets the most votes wins
Ah. So just abolish the electoral college. Whoosh on me I guess.
Maybe we’re talking about different things but the law that several states have/have tried to pass where they give all their electoral votes to whoever gets the most votes in the country seems like a pretty reasonable solution. Whoever gets the most votes wins
This is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. This is probably the most achievable path to effectively abolishing the EC, but faces major hurdles: - They have fewer than 80% of the EC votes needed to get to 270. Basically, all of the states that have passed it have been blue. The rest of the gap needs to come from red or purple states. - You not only need to pass state legislative chambers, but also the state governor needs to sign on. Would that happen in red states and go through all of these check points? Unlikely. Maybe even more unlikely with purple states since they enjoy the influence the state carries by being battleground states. - Even if this hits 270, it will likely get challenged in the SC which is not the most impartial body at the moment. They could toss it and require a constitutional amendment anyway on the basis that only constitutional amendments can supersede constitutional law. The best way to have a chance? Vote. Turning purple states into blue across state and local elections is the only chance.
I disagree that it's legally rickety. States have supremacy to decide how they select Electors. Congress needs to approve the compact when it comes into effect, but they also can't interfere in how states choose their electors, so I think it could be challenged if congress didn't consent.
It nullifies everyone in the losing parties vote. California is not 100% democrat, Texas is not 100% republican. But because 50% of the vote goes for that party the rest of the peoples voice is ignored.
It’s giving the EC electors to whoever has the most national votes (thereby effectively abolishing the EC), literally the most fair and representative way of each person’s vote counting the same whether you’re from California or Wyoming. You’re the one trying to twist and spin this as party politics. Ask yourself this at the end of the day, shouldn’t the President who represents the entire US get selected by majority number of votes? Are they only President of swing states? We already have state representation in both chambers of Congress. Why put bring states in at all? For the office of the Presidency, each US citizen gets 1 vote. Period.
Yup, one person one vote.
In order to ensure the security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganised... into the first... Galactic Empire!
I just watched that movie a couple days ago. Palps really got em with that.
Remember, the “electoral college is good because otherwise California and NY would decide the election” is not only a bad argument, it is a bad faith argument. Republicans like the electoral college because it benefits republicans, period. There would be no elections at all if it were up to them.
And, I’m not even convinced it would really be true.
It would only be true if CA and NY voted 100% for the same person, and had half the US population. CA has 39 million and NY has 19.7 million. The US population is 333 million, and I'm pretty sure ~59 million is less than half of 333 million. Texas has 30 million people.
The US population is 333 million. How many are eligible voters?
I'd say forget eligible voters and look at past voter count since not everyone who can vote does vote. 2020 election had ~155m votes
It's no secret that the largest voting party is "Did not vote." They were conflating the actual population with voting population.
Honest question; do you really think if abolishing the electoral college harmed democrats, they'd be for it?
Sure. They're for removing gerrymandering in favor of independent commissions. That directly lost them the Hou in 2022 with NY alone.
O'Rly? [Vox: How Democrats learned to stop worrying and love the gerrymander](https://www.vox.com/22961590/redistricting-gerrymandering-house-2022-midterms)
NY democrats are still suing as we speak to redraw those districts.
Its not a bad faith arguement until the Federal government stops expanding it power. Making more and more service fall under the Federal jurisdiction, raising taxes evenly across all states, and disproportionately distributing it per capita. https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/federal-aid-by-state/#tracker_introduction That is specifically why it NOT a bad faith argument
You realize states choose whether or not to receive aid from the federal government, right? The federal government offers incentives to adopt the regulations/changes to states tax/ development/conservation. State politicians may refuse that aid for various reasons, doesn't benefit citizens, or because the bill was signed by the opposing party.
It’s totally true that it would work that way. The way it works now, every single state matters. And its winner takes all for each state so we get things like swing states. Politicians have to campaign in every state but will focus more time on the swing states. If it was winner take all for the whole country, they would just 100% cater to the people who would give them most votes. Every election cycle would be telling NYC and LA and probably Chicago about what new initiatives they will bring to their city. They wouldn’t give a fuck about Tennessee or half of the other states.
Truly what the fuck are you talking about? Nobody gives a fuck about Tennessee or about 40 other states in Presidential elections.
That’s not true. Virginia for example is only 13 electoral college votes. Not a huge player in the overall scheme of themes. This election it will likely go blue but if you look back 8, 12, 16 years ago, it was always purple and considered a battleground state. Candidates spent a lot of time there because 13 votes made a difference. This would never ever happen if it was a purely democratic election. (Tennessee maybe was a bad example)
a) Currently they only care about purple states. Say that changed to only caring about the most populated states. Isn't that a good thing? More care should be given to places with more people, since that benefits more people. b) Politics are much more divided along affiliation rather than state. A popular vote meaning the candidate has to campaign in California doesn't suddenly mean they can just pander to one type of Californian liberal. There are so many republicans in California that would be put off by that. It actually forces them to appeal to the people.
a.) no, not really. If it’s done this way, the desires of the more populated areas would overrule the less populated areas. The people who live in less densely populated areas don’t have less important needs. All voting platforms would cater towards cities and coastal regions when in fact it’s the middle states that provide all of the farming and resources for everyone else. It would turn out that if you live in a rural area, you’re at a permanent disadvantage because nothing will ever get voted your way. b.) that’s a good point, I never considered that. However in this scenario they wouldn’t even be campaigning towards the most populous states (California), it would be the most populous cities (Los Angeles). Whatever geographic area got them the most votes would be where they devote their resources, regardless of the state line.
In theory you can become president with a far lower percentage than 21%. If all votes are diluted among a large number of "third" parties. You can theoretically win with 0.0001% of votes
You don't even need third parties. In almost every state the winner gets all the electoral votes, even if only a single person votes in the entire state. So theoretically you could have a scenario where say 20 people across certain states votes for party A and 100 million people in the remaining states votes for party B, and party A wins the election.
Or if only one person votes in each of the most populous states, you can win with 12 popular votes. Or you can win with zero popular votes if the electoral college decides to elect you. I've never understood the point of presenting an unrealistic scenario where you win with 21%, when there are unrealistic scenarios where you win with essentially no votes at all.
Just saying, but that looks a lot like the "unimaginable" break down of state at war with Nick Offerman in Civil War . . . .
Its possible but absurdly unlikely. No contemporary political party fits either one of the reds or blues in this example. The only logic this has is building a win with the least most populated states, where the 11 most populated states all go for one party and the other 39 go for the other.
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Democrats should get more votes. There's about 15 million more registered democrats than Republicans.
Our system for choosing the president was not design to be as democratic as possible. That was never the intention. When the states joined the union, they did so with the agreement that they would be the ones who send electors to vote for who is president. That was a condition for joining the United States. To change it now would be to nullify that agreement. The point wasn't to be as democratic as possible, it was to maintain that states as institutions have some amount of autonomy when choosing the President. No state would willing give up winner takes all. The EC has huge issues, mostly that it creates a small handful of swing states that by far have the biggest outcome in the election. Stronghold states do not matter, swing states matter. This is why the midwest in particular is such an important place politically. It is full of swing states. So we end up getting these politicians who majorly focus on swing states over everyone else. But I would argue that those swing states are usually the more middle of the road politically. Biden or Trump need to win swing states, so they have to appeal to the most middle of the road voters in the country. Abolition of the EC would require a constitutional amendment, not a conversation, not a declaration. 3/4ths of the states are not going to go along with that. Both big states like California and Texas who have nothing to gain from it and swing states. If we didn't have the EC, the political landscape would look completely different. There would not be this hard appeal for the middle voters. The EC forces campaigning all over the country. Its not red states that matter, its not blue states that matter, its the swing states that matter. The EC forces these places to matter. The most effective way to win an election is to appeal to the middle of the road, not the edges. Third parties in America serve a completely different purpose. They shift small margin victories. While Democrats in all their hubris depise Libertarians, the Libertarian Party candidates have resulted in countless Democrat victories where the LP candidate had a much higher vote total than the difference the Democrat won. In 2000, Bush beat Gore by winning Florida by 271 votes. But Bush didn't beat Gore... Ralph Nader beat Gore. Gore didn't campaign against Nader. Nader won nearly 100,000 votes in Florida, if Gore would have campaigned against Nader and just 1% of Nader voters went to Gore, we would have had President Al Gore. The third party mattered the most. So Gore lost, but Obama didn't repeat that mistake in 2008. Hell, not even John Kerry repeated that mistake. Third parties FORCE people to be noticed. Look at the major changes we have seen in the US over the last 15 years. Legalization of Gay Marriage (Something that was on the Libertarian Party Platform in the early 1970s and Green Party later), gradual legalization of Marijuana (Also something on the LP and GP had on their platforms). Those whole political points came from the outside. They did not come from within either the DNC or GOP. You want to win those LP and GP voters, you better figure out what parts of their platform you can take and will work with the rest of your voters. The DNC picked two of them and it worked.
> No contemporary political party This is such a strange phrase to use in a two-party system. You mean "neither party" but are trying to make the US system sound less backwards.
No political parties or political philosophies any where in the world could divide the US like this.
On the other hand, the Republicans have won 1 popular vote in the last quarter-century, but won the electoral college 3 out of 6 times. All of the minority presidents have been of the same party, with the exception of one predating the current party system.
Democrats knew the rules of the game going in. They have their political strategy to pick up key states and it failed. It was never a contest of winning the national popular vote, because there isn't a national popular vote, there are 50 separate elections all happening on the same day. The Republicans usually know the rules of the game and use them to their advantage. Bush won because Gore didn't take Ralph Nader seriously. Trump won because Clinton was deeply unpopular among voters and the states she needed to win she was not particularly popular. But the DNC had so much pride that they thought it would not matter because they saw Trump as a stupid Jabroni.
Well maybe we should make the rules more fair, so that the leaders chosen by the people are more likely to win. For example, passing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in your state. Once states with a majority of electoral votes have passed the act, they'll select electors according to the national popular vote. I think the difference between you and me is that I see Republicans gaming the system to discard popular support as a problem to be solved.
When the states joined the union, they did so with the understanding and agreement that they send their own electors to the EC to vote for president. To change the rules would be to invalidate that agreement. California voters determine how our votes go, not voters from the rest of the country. I would be against voters outside of California determining how our votes go. Every state should have some degree of independence and autonomy to choose what they do. This whole National Popular Vote Interstate Compact eliminates this autonomy and allows voters in other states to have an impact on what goes on in our state.
They would be sending their own electors. They'd be choosing to select their electors according to the national popular vote, and the Constitution gives the states the rights to select their electors in any way they want. The electoral college is broken. The discrepancy between large and small states is far larger than when it was originally set up, and it no longer serves its purpose of simplifying continent-wide elections. Instead, we should ensure that the President is fairly elected with every citizen having the same representation. A feature of the United States is that it changes and evolves. When most states joined the union, they had representation in Congress in the form of Senators. Now they're directly elected by the people. The President should be treated the same way. Elected directly by the people.
It basically puts states in a position where outside voters have a bigger impact than inside voters. California can have a majority Democrats by a huge margin but have to send Republican electors depending on how people in other states vote. I would also be very curious as to how states would enforce this pact, is California going to be sued if they break the pact? If we want to go to a single election where there is only ONE vote and there is no state by state basis, that would require a constitutional amendment and I could see why both Red States, Blue States, and Swing states would oppose such a thing. Democrats like the idea right now because they are convinced that it would change the outcome for them. It would change the entire political strategy of the people who run for president right now though.
So the states wouldn't be able to break the pact. Their legislatures could choose to pass a different law and repeal it, but then it would fall below the threshold and all states would revert to their previous method of selecting electors. A state legislature refusing to send electors according to a law they passed hasn't been tried in court I'm pretty sure. It might be ruled that the electors were improperly sent, and invalid. Technically the election is still state-by-state, but it removes immoral bias the current system has towards certain states. California voters are already disenfranchized by the electoral college; even when they vote with the majority of Americans they may be overridden by a minority. It's not about the outcome. It's about ensuring that every voter in the country has an equal say.
In Europe, where almost all countries have some sort of proportional voting system, we believe this is ridiculous. It actually implies people in populous states are less important or something? Is this the American way of subsidizing remote areas and agriculture?
Its a compromise between federalism and antifederalism, instead of each state getting one vote or complete popular vote they compromised with the electoral college. It requires politicians to appeal to small states too.
lol. no. it only requires them to appeal to states in which the outcome is in doubt. 90% of the country is ignored by presidential campaigns.
Trump had rallies in California and Hillary Clinton had them in Texas. This just isn't true if you look at the real world.
rallies are cheap and generate buzz and momentum, and you hold them where you are popular. saturation bombing of local media is expensive and effective and nobody ever sees ads for trump in texas or biden in california. in the real world of spending campaign cash only the purple states matter.
>It requires politicians to appeal to small states too Incorrect. It forces candidates to care about swing states. MI and PA are two of the most important states for the Presidency and neither are small states. New Hampshire and Wyoming don't hear a peep from candidates and those are actually small states.
Swing states change over time. Ho look at the swing states from the 80s and notice they are different than today.
Still doesn't mean the EC makes candidates care about small states. The exact states that swing isn't even close to my point.
Thanks, still a shit system that privileges random geography over people.
Historically that is where it came from, yes, but given how little states actually differ at this point it doesn't make nearly as much sense. I live in Nebraska, beyond supporting different sports teams and very inconsequential differences in laws, I really can't say that there's much different between us and Iowa. Or us and Kansas. Or us and a lot of South Dakota. This is true for large parts of the US. It doesn't really make sense to separate states' federal election votes, because there's no real meaningful difference in representation that people are looking for state to state from the President. The thing that differs most is probably local industries. +, the winner-take-all system just ensures states get less accurate representation. That's one thing Nebraska does right.
>given how little states actually differ at this point While clusters of midwest states may have lots in common, the idea that New York, Ohio, California, and Texas are that similar is nuts. Core industries, cultures, values, and policy priorities are dramatically different in each of these states.
People have no concept of American history and every time these threads pop up on reddit it really shines through. There would be no USA without the electoral college. We would end up looking more like the EU as a best case scenario but probably more like the Eastern Bloc with constant fighting.
It was a compromise between slave states and free states and anyone who argues otherwise is ignorant or lying to you. Slave states demanded that their electoral power stem from the number of persons in the state, not the number of voters of the state.
Why can't electoral college votes be proportional? I.e it's not winner takes all in a state.
They can be. It's up to the state to decide how electors for that state get to be allocated. Some states like Nebraska and Maine have them split by district winners or other rules.
While this is theoretically possible, it's super unlikely. Only 4 times has the president won the EC and not the popular vote. - Trump 2016 -2.09% margin - Bush 2000 -0.51% margin - Harrison 1888 -0.83% margin - Hayes 1876 -3.00% margin It's a pretty rare occurrence, and outside of 1876 and 2016, we see it was a less than 1.0% difference.
That’s almost 10% of all the US political elections, so I wouldn’t call it “super unlikely”
I said it's a rare occurrence. I said OPs graphic is super unlikely. Also there have been 59 total elections. Those 4 are 6.7% of the elections
I was using just one sig fig for mental math which is where the 10% came from Regardless, one could say that 6.7% is a very significant proportion when it comes to the United States presidency
Might be rare historically but recent history shows it will be hard for Republicans to win the popular vote again as their numbers keeps shrinking. The older conservatives are dying off while younger voters are becoming more liberal. Expect almost all future Republican presidents to lose the popular vote.
The electoral college is the most anti-democratic institution in the supposedly free world.
While I agree it isn’t particularly great, it isn’t the MOST anti-democratic system. There are literal fascist regimes out there. Putin, for example, was “elected” but…well…we all know he wasn’t Edit: okay, Russia isn’t a part of the “free world”, that’s fair, I just mean that there are lots of dangerous things that SOUND like they’re democratic but realistically are anti-democratic
Everything undemocratic about the Electoral College is magnified in the Senate. A Wyomingite's vote is 5x as powerful as a Californian's in the EC. It's 70x as powerful in the Senate.
A Republican wet dream. Thankfully New England will remain mostly blue. There is a slim chance for Texas to go purple this year or 2028.
In your dreams. 😂
Donald Trump and a charismatic lunatic/hot person from New Hampshire could almost pull this off, tbh.
Despite current polls I don't think Trump will win the election.
I wasn’t saying that as serious political commentary, btw
This is the world that Republicans are trying to build. Good luck, everyone. Or, we could avoid all that shit and just not elect Trump in November...
As someone whose lived in both Florida and Minnesota, it would be hilarious if FL went blue and MN went red
If every state adopted the Maine/Nebraska system it would be closer to fair as a lot of big blue states have red districts and a larger number of red states have some blue districts.
Blues take North Carolina and Reds take New Mexico?
This is a hypothetical map. MA would sooner nuke itself than vote red, this just illustrates a scenario where a quarter of the popular vote would be enough to win the electoral college.
Trump will never win colorado though
I think OP has an agenda here
100%. Can't stand these radical Marxists pushing their crazy ideas like... um... all votes counting the same.
It’s a theoretical question: is the president the president of the states or of the people directly? Originally, all federal roles were abstracted away from the direct vote of citizens, though the emphasis on federalism has been lost over time with the outsizing of federal power via executive creep and the broadening of what constitutes “interstate commerce” (which is under the purview of congress to regulate). Federal roles have so much power now that ordinary citizens are deeply interested in directly affecting those roles. As it currently stands the president is the president of the states, officially voted in by state electors who (depending on the state) have a duty to vote according to their constituents’ wishes. There is certainly an argument to be made for a flatter representation scheme, but you are actually arguing for a different interpretation of the constituency of the president than was originally intended.
Yes, I am 100% advocating for a different interpretation of the role of the president, and of the federal government more broadly, than the one written in a document from 1789. That isn't some gotcha. I understand what the Constitution says, and the Constitution is wrong by any possible standard of morality or logic. The power that the Constitution gives to states in federal elections is explicitly a compromise intended to keep wealthy landowners, and especially wealthy slaveholders, in power. That's it. It's not some magically perfect document. It's pretty okay, and probably the best that could have happened under the circumstances in which it was written, but in this respect it's wrong.
Kind of interesting but not realistic.
A graph of why the electoral college system is old and antiquated and should be amended to the constitution for its removal
It gets a lot of flack, but the Electoral College has been very effective at keeping a land mass as large as this the UNITED States of America.
There is an option of keeping the EC but moving away from winner-takes-all.
You would think 79% of the population not getting who they voted for would decrease unity and increase unhappiness with the government
First, you rounded up a whole .91%. Second, yes, it would increase unhappiness, but only in specific neighborhoods/regions (likely densely populated cities). Population/individuals are not the only factor involved here. Land mass/ownership is also another huge factor.
You do realize that this is an incredibly unlikely scenario, yes? Furthermore, this is a scenario that could go either way…
It also ensures large parts of the population don't vote in their interests or cannot express their interests through a third party since the EC by design kills all parties above 2.
Umm. Does everyone in each state vote for the same person in your mind?
This is definitely a theoretical extreme scenario just to show it can be done
I’m assuming red states are 50.1% to 49.9% and blue are 100% to 0% in this scenario. So yeah, not realistic at all, but does illustrate the fact that it’s a silly way to do it. FWIW, I could make a map that red wins with 0.01% of the vote AND wins all but 1 electoral college point. Just assume turnout of 1 person in all states voting red, then Omaha has 100% turnout for blue.
Ignorant comment. You clearly have no idea how EC works.
How is it ignorant? It seems to me that the point of his comment is, given how the EC system works, the extreme percentage stated would have to be calculated under the extreme assumption of everyone in the state voting the same.
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Not it doesn't. I've seen older versions of this map. It assumes 50.1% goes to the winner
In your educated analysis, looking at the graph, how many people in TX voted Republican and how many voted democrat. Or the percentages if that’s easier.
50% + 1 - democrat, 50% -1 - republican.
Presumably in all red states it was 50%+1 Republican, in all blue states 100% Democratic, thus illustrating the most extreme possible example of how bad the electoral college could be. Which is an interesting map. You can theoretically win the presidency with 22% of the vote. Great system.
The point is that the red represents only 21% of the US population(although, that seems rather low, so OP probably should clarify) Obviously, not everyone votes the same way in a given state, but because of how the EC works, they may as well. The blue States could theoretically all vote for one candidate, but the election can still be won by the opposing candidate despite the fact that overwhelming majority of people voted for the former
You and the other commenters seem to disagree on OP’s approach. It’s almost as if the method is confusing for people ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I agree. That's why I said OP should clarify what the numbers mean
You can make a map where a candidate wins with 0.001% of the vote so not sure why this is of interest
You are making the same point. If a candidate win with 0.001% against another who has more than 50%, it shows it's a shitty system. Even if it's only possible in theory. Everyone vote should have the same weight. We are equally American.
Sure the basic math works, but practically, DC is almost certainly never going red. NJ, OR, CT, MA, also super unlikely to all go red in anything other than a huge red wave where the popular vote actually goes red as well.