I don’t know much about the ins and outs of politics, but wouldn’t modifying the electoral college to be bound by popular vote help?
Or if it were abolished, couldn’t the popular vote be set to act as one vote per section, with separation in a way that is fair.
Just spit balling here, but it doesn’t seem like going pop vote means we would have to drown out less populated areas with densely populated areas.
Am I wrong? Am I on the right track?
“Drowning out” less populated areas with more populated areas is a non-issue that conservatives pretend is a bad thing because it’s in their interest to do so. The less popular ideas being drowned out by the more popular ones is fundamentally how democracy is supposed to work. What they really want is to maintain the status quo where some people’s votes are worth several times more than others just because they live in a less densely populated region. Land shouldn’t vote. Borders shouldn’t vote. Corporations shouldn’t vote. PEOPLE ARE THE VOTERS.
I’m conflicted on this. On one hand, there are clear problems with the electoral college situation right now, but on the other hand, getting rid of it means that the tyranny of the majority will become a bigger problem. It’s unclear to me which is worse or how we can fix the latter.
Thing about the electoral collage is that it doesn’t matter what the large majority wants.
The problem with a simple majority is it allows large states to completely dominate less populated states.
We are a republic, kind of like how the UK is a union of (at least) four countries each with its own government. We are 50 states each with its own government and the constitutional right to make it’s own laws about matters not specifically delegated to the federal government (see the abortion rights debate).
The founding fathers established the electoral college as a compromise between electing the president in a vote by Congress and a popular vote. I would take an amendment to the constitution to get rid of it.
All this went out the window when they capped the number of representatives in congress. That took away popular vote power. Montana doesn’t need 2 senators and a rep. North Dakota doesn’t need 2 senators and a rep. California is getting massively screwed on their representative count. That state alone should swing legislation based on reps alone. It would lay bare the tyranny of the minority.
The founding fathers established the electoral college as a compromise between electing the president in a vote by Congress and a popular vote. I would take an amendment to the constitution to get rid of it.
They established it as a way to launder slave votes into presidential elections, as stated explicitly by the man responsible, James madison:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065
There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.
The electoral college exists because southerners were spoiled bitches who wanted more power than they deserved, then they threw a tantrum when they lost anyway (the Civil War), now they keep threatening and whining if they can’t keep their unfair advantage while gerrymandering to hell.
I’d be fine with the EC, if we also denied the electoral votes of states that don’t follow the constitution or ratify all the amendments (Mississippi still refuses to ratify the 24th banning the poll tax).
Thank you for that
The more I learn about the concessions made to the southern slave owners I wish the founders hadn’t tried so hard to include them in the union. The north and the south were so different it seems like it would be as doomed to failure as jamming all the Balkan states into a single country.
Every time Texas threatens to secede and doesn’t I wish we had the choice to vote them out so they could see just how badly they are not the hot shit they think they are.
Same, Texas is unique, they fought 2 wars of independence because their parent country started (or could theoretically start) restricting slavery.
What, and end the control and power the establishment has over you? Good luck
It will be a cold, dark day, over my dead body, when New York City has more voting power than all of Washington state. I will fight people to the death to keep the electoral college. Get you’re moronic facts straight, the Electoral keeps high population areas from forcing their ideals on the rest of the Nation, it also makes cheating harder. FIX THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE! Fine. But remove it and you give the ruling class the ability to add a billion votes nation wide and winning an election, instead of now where they cheat district to district. Just because it’s becoming obvious your drug war baron might not win because people hate that she had jailed people for simple drug possessions, and she’s as much a traitor to the Republic as Donnie T, you don’t get to change the rules. GET A BETTER CANDIDATE WORTHLESS DEMOCRATS! Weak humans blame the system for their weak candidates, when it’s them and their candidate that are to blame, not the system that rejects them.
You forgot the /s
Naw op definitely drank the Qoolaide
All your arguments against it are the reason I want it. Isn’t that fascinating.
Everyone saying this can’t happen and stuff but we already have started the process. There is a set of several states that signed a pact that make it vote for the majority. Can’t think of the name of it but we only need several more states (not all of them) to meet needed electoral votes to basically bypass the electrical college.
The thing is that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is nothing until it’s all the way there. Having 95% of the necessary electoral votes has the same effect as 0. So there’s no reason for opponents to even care about it until it is within striking distance of the threshold. It seems to me that if we ever reach a point where it comes down to just a state or two, that legislation will be fought tooth and nail, not just in those last states, but there will be fights and legal challenges in states that have already entered the compact to reverse it too. And even if we manage to win the fight and it gets activated, we will still have to keep fighting in perpetuity because almost any state pulling out would undo the whole thing.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t even try, maybe some good comes of it regardless. It just doesn’t seem like a solution as much as a statement.
The real solution is to allocate delegates proportionally to how citizens vote, as is done in Nebraska and a couple other states. This achieves exactly the same purpose as the NPVC but is actually politically tractable.
No state has any incentive to assign its delgates to a person the citizens of the state didn’t vote for. You can do what the NPVC does and make it contingent upon everyone playing along, but that requires everyone to play along and is incredibly tenuous. Even if it ever goes into effect, as soon as states allocate delegates to someone who wasn’t the most popular candidate in their state they’ll pull it, and the whole thing will fall apart.
Every state has incentive to allocate its delegates proportionally. That’s exactly what people want. They want that more than winner takes all. It doesn’t require a huge chuck of states to buy into it amd it isn’t tenuous. But it accomplishes the same goal; if states allocate delegates proportionally to how they vote, then the most popular candidate gets the most delegates. If you’re in one of the many states that has winner takes all, advocate to do what the few more democratic states have already adopted and are happy with.
This only solves it if you also make the number of delegates for each state be proportional to its population size. California has 68 times the population of Wyoming but only 18 times the number of electoral votes.
What you’re describing has never resulted in the popular vote winner losing the electoral college. The popular vote winner has always lost because states allocate delegates as a winner-take-all system.
I’m not sure what you mean. Of course it’s never happened because we’ve never done it that way.
If you’re saying that if you go back and calculate previous elections, then it never would have made a difference, that doesn’t mean it could not happen. Growing up I learned that there was only one time in history that the popular vote didn’t match the EC, but now it’s become a constant threat. If it becomes a viable path then eventually it is bound to be exploited.
What you are talking about simply isn’t functionally equivalent to just straight up popular vote, for the reason I described. Votes are not worth the same amount in different places.
As usual, Republican states won’t adopt this. And you can expect Republicans to appeal this all the way to the Supreme Court if it ever does get adopted, which the current conservative majority will almost certainly bend over backwards to find “unconstitutional.”
This. Thanks!
We would just need Wisconsin or Pennsylvania to adopt it if the currently “pending” states adopted it. This is actually a lot closer to being possible than I thought.
Yeah, but only (rural) land here has any say, so whether most Americans want to do away with the EC is irrelevant. Only Republicans in rural areas should get to dictate the future of this country.
Turns out even that level of rigging is not enough for the traitorous Republican scum; they might be planning on having just enough states refuse to call the election and throw it to the House so their scum there can install the insane and incompetent donnie in the White House.
This is the kind of comment that we do not need here amongst the righteous. Of course you have a say, you have a vote. It doesn’t matter which state, just fucking vote. The republicans are on their last leg, their only hope is that you give up and resign to your fate.
Don’t. Don’t give an inch. Go vote. Show them that we the people are still in power, and we will no longer stand for their corporate distopia.
I very much plan on voting (this being Colorado, I don’t have to go anywhere, thankfully - and I can sit down and thoroughly read the ballot measures and so on and read about them, etc., and fill out at my leisure, then mail in. This is as it should be in every state.), just like most here on Lemmy (minus the bots and trolls). However, since I’m from Colorado, it turns out that voting for POTUS in Colorado is more or less a foregone conclusion.
In states like mine, that are not “battleground states”, our vote counts very much less when it comes to POTUS. Same goes for things like representation in both the House and the Senate for states with larger populations. The House is EXTREMELY tilted for the reactionaries, and is way out of step with the voters, even though they did indeed vote.
So, yeah, voting is important. I plan on voting like my life depends on it, even though I’m not in a battleground state, because those other things on the ballot matter as well. You have to play to win, as the lottos are fond of saying. However, there is no good reason to pretend that the system is not seriously flawed in some very important aspects.
cool but this aint happening cause the us aint a democracy
63% != Large Majority. If it did what would more be 70 = Really large majority 75 = Really really large majority 80 = Fricking huge majority 85 = Ludicrous majority 90 = BFM 9000 95 = Who said no 100 = Rigged
I mean, with the political environment these days, I actually agree with all of those joke titles.
Well yeah… The electoral college consistently lets a minority opinion override the majority, so of course a majority want it done.
Problem is that minority that gets their way today aren’t going to yield if they can help it.
The one time we all could’ve used conservatives’ hatred of minorities and they just let us down.
because in this case they’re the minority
It’s rule by the majority with respect for the minority not rule by the minority in the majority just take it.
Edit: at least it’s supposed to be
What they tell you that it is -vs- what it actually is.
The political and economic system hides everything from us so that all we see is the individual and all these fragmented pieces – and our education only reaffirms this viewpoint. It isn’t until you educate yourself as a worker and understand the system from a class perspective (Marx) that you can begin see it in its totality for what it really is.
Yes, please. This shit is so 1787.
They get all the votes. We get all the fucking ads! WTF!
Add Ranked choice voting along with getting rid of this.
STAR or approval is better.
Is ranked choice voting the new shibboleth to determine the in -group?
Go to bed, Jordan Peterson
Some Democrats oppose ranked-choice voting (RCV) because they fear it could threaten their incumbency and power. For instance, the District of Columbia Democratic Party has opposed a ballot initiative for RCV, with Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser calling it “a bad idea.” source
“some” == 5 children on a college campus
I remember being in 3rd grade and learning about the electoral college and thinking, “that’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard of”. Still true to this day.
Learning that it was so rich white people in the south could substitute the votes of newly freed black slaves with theirs is what got me.
All this shit is because they were too fucking nice to the slavers.
Okay guys stop up voting this! Simply let me assure you that I will upvote for you!
If you upvote this comment to 100, I will upvote the way you want me to upvote.
Actually I’ll do you better! Look. I know these guys who can upvote. If you upvote my comment past 100, I’ll have them vote for you just the way you telepathically have told me to upvote by up voting for me…what? Why would you even need to know me or my friend who hasn’t even talked to you directly? That’s crazy talk! I’m an upvoter, I upvote. They. My friends who can upvote are true upvoters too. Soon you won’t even need to upvote at all! You can just go read all the shit we Upvoted for you! Yey! We call our selves the “Upvotlectoral” college. We learn algebra in this college too, but we never graduate…at least you don’t know if we have graduated or not.
Sounds like this clown lives in that one blip in Nebraska or whatever that can impact shit, you know what to do bois. Electoral vote this mofo out the comments section! /s (chill)
I’ve had the same reaction learning about religion 😂
SAMESIES ❤️
Then how do you stop urban concerns from completely trouncing rural concerns? Voters from rural areas have valid concerns which are largely opposite of urban voters. If you get rid of electoral college, candidates will campaign in major cities and that’s it. Nobody else will matter.
There are simple and solid answers to this. First of all, dozens of other countries make it work. So there’s nothing magical that needs to be done. Second, the Bill of Rights is there to protect the minority from the majority. It’s also there to protect the people from the government, which is partly synonymous. Third, right now everyone in the minority in a winner-take-all state is being disenfranchised. My vote never mattered, not once in my entire life. I think that’s far more important than rural voters having cool voting power. At least they would still have some voting power, whereas I have none.
The cities is where all the people are. What are these “concerns” that rural areas have that should override most of the concerns of the majority of people?
Cities matter more. Sorry, but that’s the reality.
Cities are where people live. People matter.
Cities are where culture happens. Culture matters. You’re not going to have a big art/music/anything scene in bumbleweed, NE because there aren’t enough people there to constitute a scene.
Cities are where economy happens. Money moving around matters. There are more transactions per day in the corner shop by me than a whole week in some country town with 700 residents.
Rural people still have the Senate and local government. Their rep in the house (which should be expanded) also should speak up for their region.
Everyone deserves some minimum respect, but the idea that nowhere-utah is just as important as Queens is insane. A minority holding the majority garbage is not good. Especially when that minority seems fixated on terrible ideas like climate change denial and xenophobia.
With respect sir (or madam), you are personifying the ‘ivory tower elite’ attitude that so many conservatives make fun of. 'I matter, others don’t.
You think there’s no culture in rural areas? That you need a giant festival to have culture?
That corner shop that has 100 transactions an hour… where do you think the bread they sell comes from? The flour? The avocadoes on the avocado toast? (sorry, I had to :P ) Sure as fuck doesn’t come from the city. You can write the rest of the nation off as unimportant and then see how unimportant they are when your fridge is empty. They matter.the idea that nowhere-utah is just as important as Queens is insane.
And the idea that Queens should be able to dictate policy that applies nationally including Nowhere, UT is just as insane.
Especially when that minority seems fixated on terrible ideas like climate change denial and xenophobia.
I’ll give you that- most of the conservative platform these days is a bit on the batshit side.
But there’s other parts that make sense. Take guns for example. A liberal in NYC has the 11th largest army in the world 3 digits away. Police response time is seconds or minutes. So ‘nobody needs a gun’ is a common urban liberal position.
Go out in rural areas, there might be two deputies for an entire county with police response time in the range of 30-120 minutes if at all. And that county may have 4-legged predators like bears, wolves, etc that can threaten humans. So that guy wants a GOOD gun to defend himself and his family, because if there is a problem nobody else is gonna arrive until it’s too late.
The urban liberal doesn’t consider the rural conservative POV, and they want to apply their position nationally. Should the rural conservative have no useful defense against that?Guns are just an example, but that overall is why I think the electoral college has a place. House is based on population, Senate based on statehood, Presidency is in the middle with influences both from statehood and population. That’s a good way to go.
And FWIW, I also support INCREASING the population representative in the House. The current cap of 437 has not served us well with the expanding US population, and there’s now over 700k citizens per representative. That’s far too many to get voices heard, and one rep covers far too many disparate people. And it also in the House increases influence of smaller states (to a minimum of 1/437th).
I believe the cap should be raised to a very large number, perhaps several thousand. It may no longer be possible to have the entire House convene in one building, but technology has solved that problem. If you have one representative for every say 10,000-25,000 citizens, it becomes much easier for a representative to truly represent their citizens in detail and gives a citizen much greater access to his or her representatives.You think there’s no culture in rural areas?
There is less cultural output because there are fewer people. There’s probably a thousand new bands that started in Brooklyn this month. You just can’t have those numbers out in the sticks because you don’t have the people. There literally aren’t enough singers.
Culture matters. People interacting and inspiring each other matters. It’s not that there’s nothing happening out in Wisconsin or wherever, but there’s less. There are fewer people to be doing stuff!
I almost wrote a preemptive response about “where does your food come from”. I don’t think most of the people living outside of cities are farmers.
A quick search says
The Midwest rounds out the top five states with the most farmers: Missouri (162,345, or 5% of the labor force) Iowa (145,432 or 9% of the labor force) Ohio (130,439 or 2% of the labor force) Oklahoma (130,434 or 7% of the labor force)I don’t know if https://usafacts.org/articles/farmer-demographics/ is a real site but it would be awkward for someone to make up these numbers.
That’s a lot of people in the sense of like “I couldn’t have that many people at my birthday party” but not a lot of people compared to like, who lives in major cities. Bushwick, Brooklyn is one neighborhood and has like 130k people.
Food is important but probably not a justification for holding everyone else hostage. Especially when most people living in those areas aren’t even growing food. (Some are second order involved, like the guy who works the Laundromat helps the farmer or whatever). Also especially when the efforts being stymied would help people, like student loan forgiveness or federally funded school meals.
The urban liberal doesn’t consider the rural conservative POV, and they want to apply their position nationally. Should the rural conservative have no useful defense against that?
The rural conservative POV is utterly poisoned by decades of racial violence and regressive policies. There’s like a mass shooting every day. Climate change is going to fuck us. Conservatism is not an okay world view.
That said, the answer is probably local government for things that are actually local. Environmental issues cannot be local. You can’t have this town dumping mercury into the water and pretending that’s just fine. But for something like “we want a bike lane here” or “we want a library that’s open weekends” that’s doesn’t need to be federal. But if “local” means “no queers allowed to get married here” then the locals can fuck themselves.
Guns are a whole separate wedge issue. I think they should at least be treated the same as cars- license, registration, insurance, mechanisms to remove the license like DUI. I don’t know how close to reality that is.
I wrote this on my phone so it’s not my best work.
For guns, I’ve recently run into a point of view that I think is valid: the above structure (insurance/license) disproportionately favors the wealthy. Ultimately it just adds a barrier for the poor.
I fully understand that the stats show that gun control laws DO indeed decrease GUN violence. However violent crime in general doesn’t really change. The ONLY statistically effective way that guarantees a reduction of violence on the whole is lifting people out of poverty. The less poor we have, the less violent crime. Social programs can lift us out of so many issues.
This is true. The same problem applies to transportation, health care, food security, etc. Poverty is terrible. Unfortunately, the right wing also seems to hate any effective programs to deal with it. No school lunches, no basic income, no nationalized insurance, etc etc.
I say it all the time - places like California and New York are strategically more important, too. Most of the game development, the movie/tv industry, software, even a lot of our food, happens in CA. And then a great deal of finance happens in NYC. Lots of defense industry stuff is clustered around DC as well.
It’s called “flyover country” for a reason. If you want to partake in what is happening, then move to those locations. Unfortunately, our backwards slave-era system gives wayyyy too much power to regions that just don’t matter as much.
Ever consider where your food comes from?
Yeah, a lot of it comes from California. And Mexico. Why do you ask?
The Central Valley and Hi-desert, we dont really impirt too much food in my region of California.
Almost like they could be represented in the house or the Senate, right
Even if the 10 largest cities all voted Democrat that would only account for 8% of the vote. And not everyone votes the same way in a city either. There are plenty of republicans voting in major cities but their vote doesn’t matter because of the college. Long Island went to Trump. NYC still got 400,000 votes for Trump. All this means is more people get a voice.
That’s what the Senate is for. Two senators per state regardless of population. Wyoming has as much of a say as California does.
In all honesty, that should change as well. I don’t think that’s doing any good, either. It gives people with completely backward and insane ideas the impression that their positions should be on equal footing with normal people’s ideas.
I am not trying to invalidate anyone’s ideas.
But rural voters and urban voters have different needs. Neither is ‘wrong’.
For example- the urban voter might have a lot of gangland gun violence, so they push for strong gun control.
The rural voter OTOH has a police response time of 20+ minutes or more, and real threats to life and property from four-legged predators so they want real useful guns to defend themselves.Neither is wrong for pushing their particular needs. They just don’t acknowledge the other exists.
Quite frankly if you’re going to say urban people are ‘normal people’ and rural people are ‘backward and insane’, then I’m quite in favor of reducing your own influence (and I say that as a liberal voter and registered Democrat). Good government recognizes that one size doesn’t fit all.
So the people in cities should just be worth less when they vote? It’s a federal vote for a federal office, everyone in the country should count the same.
The individual states already have their own powers which make sure the federal government doesn’t make decisions that are bad for those states. And each county and town have their own governments that pass local laws.
I’ve also heard this argument so many times but I haven’t heard any actual examples.
Sure, then we can have another republican get elected against the will of the people. Clearly rural concerns are more important than preventing authoritarian idiots like trump from being able to undemocratically take power.
And just what are these “rural concerns”, anyway?
Usually bs like “good Christian values”, which are ultimately so anti-christian that it’s almost humorous.
Pretty sure the rural concerns trumped the urban ones in the last elections in the Netherlands.
How do you stop a majority of the electoral college from completely trouncing the concerns of the other states?
As opposed to now where like 10 states are tossups and the rest are locked in?
Which would be replaced with “Can the Democrat win California by a large enough margin?”
Which was literally the case when people complain about Clinton winning the popular vote in 2016 - across the 49 states that aren’t California more people voted for Trump, but she won California by such a large margin that she won the popular vote because of California alone. Same thing in 2000, where Gore’s popular vote lead was smaller than his margin in CA.
Okay, that’s just fine with me. California is arguably our most important state and has a huge population. So of course winning there should matter. This is not hard.
Which would be replaced with “Can the Democrat win California by a large enough margin?”
If it’s going to be fucked either way I’d rather at least have it be fucked in a way where every vote counts the same rather then a Wyoming vote being worth like 4 times a California vote owing to the house of representatives population being limited which means Californians aren’t being properly represented in the house.
FYI Hillary did not win the popular vote just because of California
Also you shouldn’t reward bad actors providing a shit place to live by making their vote count significantly more.
One citizen one vote!
FYI Hillary did not win the popular vote just because of California
Yes, she did. That there are other combinations of states that she won that combine to have a similar total margin doesn’t change that her national margin was smaller than her margin in California. And that’s the crux of the argument Snopes makes - she won the national popular vote by 2,833,220 and sure she won California by 4,269,978 votes but there are other states she won that if added together had a combined margin in her favor of more than 2,833,220 votes and also just her California votes alone wouldn’t be enough to exceed Trump’s vote count nationwide so it doesn’t count.
Which is…kinda ridiculous? It’s a big stretch for a frankly kinda dumb claim.
Also, what is wrong with only winning California, anyway? California represents the broad spectrum of a modern America and it has its rural areas as well. It is easy to argue that it is our most important state, too.
What people in California want should matter even if it overrides smaller red states - since they will likely only hold us back anyway.
It’s like you refuse to understand logic, lol
Oh jeeeeez, maybe republicans would have to have real policies that appeal to a majority of Americans, instead of dipshit authoritarian policies that only enrich the already rich and take rights away while mainly pandering to racists in the population at large.
The electoral college is the major reason why the republicans have gone absolutely bugfuck, because they can win with a minority of votes, allowing them to be as undemocratic as they want to be, knowing they have a barely large enough base to squeak through in all the right spots.
And considering the results of the bush and trump presidencies, you’re making the argument against the electoral college, because their two picks objectively made the country worse.
and what has that gotten us? rural communities are subsidized out the wazoo as the urban centers across America are strangled and starved. as the more powerful minority of people is catered too
It’s almost like many people are getting taxed w/o proper representation…
You should read what the electoral college does, because that’s not what it does.
Not the previous commenter, but I’m pretty certain that the, apparently fictional book, that Leave Burton showed on either The Daily Show, or Last Week Tonight, entitled It’s all Because of Racism, would cover what the EC’s actual purpose is. Though in this particular case it may be fairer to say classism.
I think it was less overt racism, but still pretty racist.
But mostly because Classism and Racism were pretty intertwined back in the day, what with non-white people essentially being entirely disallowed from actually being a higher class.
In other words, racism was so overt that you don’t even need to mention it.
I dunno. I kinda think it’s cool that a state twenty times smaller than my own (Alaska, California) gets an equal share of say to my own. /s
California electoral votes: 55
Alaska electoral votes: 3
I’m talking about the senate. Each state gets two reps.
California - population 39 million 0.000000128205128 votes per capita
Alaska - population 734 thousand - 0.00000408719 votes per capita
Your math for California is off by a factor of ten. California’s per-capita electoral votes would be 0.00000141025
There’s a minimum representation of votes (3) for statehood. In Alaska’s case there are a large number of natives who are directly affected by policy at the federal level. The state is also very important strategically for defense and energy production.
In Alaska’s case there are a large number of natives who are directly affected by policy at the federal level. The state is also very important strategically for defense and energy production.
Can anyone explain how this would be relevant?
Well you’re replying to me, so I’ll take a crack at it. The whole purpose of the federal government is to represent the states, and the intention of the electoral colleges is to balance their interests. If the national popular vote was the only thing that mattered, there would be almost no reason for candidates to care about policy issues that uniquely affect states with smaller populations like Alaska.
This is because California just blows the curve. If California either didn’t exist or was chopped into a few pieces the numbers would look dramatically better. Likewise for merging the Dakotas or Montana and Wyoming on the other end.
The method used to apportion the House is designed to minimize the average difference in Representatives/capita between states.
But yeah, any system in which California exists and states like Alaska or Wyoming have any meaningful power at all is going to result in California being under represented per capita.
This is functionally the same as someone in the EU complaining that Germany doesn’t have remotely enough power and Luxembourg and Malta have far too much, except that the EU parliament doesn’t have as broad power as Congress and you can leave the EU.
The method used to apportion the House is designed to minimize the average difference in Representatives/capita between states.
That broke in 1929 when they capped the house.
So Alaskans count ~3x as much as Californians.
If the numbers are correct, it would mean about 30 times more influence, not 3
Good thing the number for California is not correct…
That’s great but do an electoral college majority want to end the electoral college?
Doesn’t matter. Ending the electoral college would require an amendment, and amendments require 3/4 of states to approve them. Abolishing the electoral college benefits California and the smallest states that expect to always side with California no matter what, which doesn’t get you to the 38 states required.
Wha?.. Math hard you go ungabunga? California population has 38 million. That’s only 8 million more than Texas.
Also, voting wouldn’t be by state anyway, so it wouldn’t matter? Not all 38 million Californians will vote the exact same way.
It would not. There is already a pact with a bunch of states that say once they have enough support they will put their electoral votes towards the popular vote of the country not the popular vote of their state. If enough states get on board the EC becomes powerless. Because the states determine how they vote.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
They are getting close. A couple more states needed for activation.
Doesn’t end it, merely does an end run around it. Also unlikely to ever take effect, because to get to 270 electoral votes worth of states supporting it you’re going to need to get states on board with it who will directly lose influence and/or who generally don’t vote in line with California and moving to the winner being decided by national popular vote (whether directly or by using it to pledge electors) essentially makes the result largely determined by turnout in California (both times in recent history the popular vote and electoral vote were not in alignment, the margin for the national popular vote was smaller than the margin in California).
It’s a lower bar to reach than actually ending the electoral college, but it’s unlikely to succeed for essentially the same reason - you have to get multiple states that will essentially lose any influence over the executive branch if they approve it to approve it.
And if and when it gets passed, the conservative scotus, which has constantly ruled in favor of states rights being nearly unlimited and that precedent or other writings about the cotus don’t count, will buck both these trends and vote that this violates the cotus based on some obscure writing by some founding father.
Republicans: “States rights!” States: Decriminalize cannabis, affirm women’s rights, sign on with the NPVIC, etc… Republicans: “No, not like THAT!”
This SCOTUS would uphold Dred Scott v. Sanford.
Probably that interstate compacts have to be approved by Congress. It would be the most obvious angle of attack.
Yea you’re right. I just thought it was funny that a majority of Americans disprove of something that prevents a majority of Americans from being able to choose something
Fair enough. There’s an interstate compact that’s been joined by several states that does an end run around the electoral college (all member states agree to give their electors to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of their state’s votes once 270 electoral votes worth of states join). That’s a lower bar than the 3/4 of states needed for an amendment, but will also inevitably face a legal challenge regarding needing federal approval as an interstate compact.
It’s still…several states away from going into effect for basically the same reason an amendment on this won’t pass - it benefits California and the smallest states that expect to always side with California, which isn’t enough to get to 270 electoral votes.
Yeah this headline is like “animals disapprove of farm”
