15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by danaris on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @05:14PM (#20761908)

The plurality of the geography of NY State may be agricultural land, but that is not the same thing as saying that the majority of its people are farmers. If you cut NYC off from the rest of the state, yes, you'd have a majority-rural population, and probably a red state—but not majority farmer and farm workers.

I live and work in rural NY State. For every farmer out here, there are dozens of teachers, janitors, computer programmers, hairstylists, restaurant owners & workers, and every other type of profession you have in hamlets, small towns, and non-mega-cities.

And yeah, there are a lot of people here who don't want property taxes to go up. They don't want any taxes to go up, because they're rural Republicans who have bought into the line that taxes are bad hook, line, and sinker. But as rural Republicans, they mostly don't even make much noise about wanting taxes to go down. The signs you see along the side of the road are clamoring to repeal gun control laws that prevent violent criminals and the mentally ill from purchasing guns.

Just because New York City has enough population to drown the rest of the state in doesn't mean that we should give the rest of the state disproportionate power.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by reallydude on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @05:48PM (#20762193)

"doesn't mean that we should give the rest of the state disproportionate power."

Is it in the best interests of all the people to have proportionate power? I believe so.

The EC is an abstraction, which philosophically and practically takes choice away from individuals. Population centers having more power than rural areas (even when they are the geographical majority, otherwise) is a proxy for land-owners having more power. While, ironically, land-owners (like farmers) often tend to be poorer than city-dwellers in absolute terms, I don't believe they should have some sort of relative power difference.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by danaris on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @08:54PM (#20763620)

I think it's also important to remember that (to the best of my knowledge) the majority of farmland is not individually owned: it's run by large agricultural companies.

So the "land-owners," or at least, the owners of the companies that own the land, also live in the cities, and are themselves among the vastly wealthy.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by munk-a on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @05:49PM (#20762207)

Can you clarify this? It appears you're both advocating for same and different power simultaneously.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by reallydude on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @09:01PM (#20763665)

I wasn't trying to be obtuse. I'm not sure what's confusing.

Is it in the best interests of all the people to have proportionate power? I believe so.

I don't believe they (rural vs metropolitan citizens) should have some sort of relative power difference, despite their relative wealth and land-ownership differences. That's not important to me, philosophically.

Best I can do to clarify.

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