“Politicians”, no, it only effects Presidential (and Vice-Presidential) candidates. It has no direct effect on other politicians.
Would it make them more likely to visit densely populated areas (where you can influence more poeple per unit time)? Yeah, probably. Right now, they focus on “swing states”, but within those states, on densely populated areas, for just that reason.
But as long as there is a Senate, they'd be encouraged to visit small states (where a small number of voters determine a large share of power in the Senate, which can block both laws and Presidential appointments) for coattail effects.
And they’d still be encouraged to spend efforts on campaigning in low-cost media markets where small money reaches lots of voters (even ones that would currently be neglected because the states aren't viewed as swingable), just probably not with personal visits as much, without some kind of broader free media exposure opportunities, because the candidates themselves can't be in more than one place at once.
They're going to campaign somewhere, why should they pay more attention to Cleveland, Ohio (metro area population ~2m) than Los Angeles (city population 3m, metro population over 13m)?
The college was a compromise to give a larger voting share to slave owning states that had a high overall population, despite having a relatively smaller number of possible voters.
So while the electoral college might have also functioned as a way to redistribute votes within a state... I don't think that was its main purpose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector#List_of_fait...
As with so much in American history the explanation involves slavery but judging from the downvotes here, that wounds everyone's pride a bit.
...other than the large numbers in the late 1700s and early 1800s, you mean?
And in any case, "intent" and "actual practice" were pretty different here. But that doesn't mean that the Connecticut Compromise [0] (which split the US legislative body into the House with representation apportioned by population and the Senate with set representation per state) was solely or even primarily due to slavery. And once you had that, using the total of Senators and Representatives for your number of electors makes a good amount of sense.
The compromise reduced the control the slave states had.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/22/he-tried-st...
I'm a supporter of NPV. I don't think it's likely to be a problem, although this feels like something that will shake out a lot further in the federal courts.
Well, that didn't work.
Communication happened at the speed of a horse, so if you need a decision quickly, you can’t have electors asking for instructions from their home government. For better or worse, the founders favored a definitive result in this case over a correct one.
Why is cross regional appeal of any value, if these region don't make up even 10% of the combined US population.
If US states were divided by population it would be a different think all together. But California has 40 times as many people as Wyoming.
Cross regional appeal is quoted as an obviously good thing to have, but the core assumption of equal distribution of population has been violated.
Because those people control a large fraction of the country’s food supply and it would be a disaster if they decided to stop selling it to the rest of us.
In reality, free markets being a thing, this wouldn't happen. We can import from other countries and they need to sell their goods to live.
You’re right that it’s extremely unlikely to get so bad that they get forcibly nationalized. However, my understanding is that market conditions are pretty bad for farmers right now, and have been for years. Any change that makes things worse for them will likely drive some to other lines of work and reduce overall production, driving food prices up.
This particular effect is probably extremely small in practice, but I felt the need to remind HN that not all value is produced in cities.
I'm not so sure it's just the 24/7 life or death coverage that makes that happen though. In solidly red or blue seats the main threat to a senators seat is a challenge from the extreme of their party, left or right, which also pulls them further towards the extremes of their parties.
Population isn't everything. We have states like Alaska, Hawaii and Wyoming which are national treasures with low populations.
Why not give disproportional representation to them on the basis of their race, or religion, or sexual orientation, or on whether or not they prefer big, or little-endian notation? Surely, it would only be appropriate that politicians should have cross-demographic appeal to win?
Every argument for why we should give extra influence to voters living in particular zip codes is just as valid, as any argument for giving extra influence to voters based on some other semi-arbitrary distinction.
Rural people have special, marginalized concerns, and are outnumbered by urban voters? Great. So do LGBT people, for example.
You don't get extra consideration for your vote for being a ______. Why should you get it on the basis of geography?
You can't do that with national effect by concerted state action with less than 100% of the states (you can simulate it by casting all votes for the candidate that would win by that rule with a bare makority, but that's just a chunky version of national popular vote.)
> I've seen more news about states leaning towards the 2nd option which is actually much worse than the electoral college in its current state.
It's worse if you care about the per-state vote and not the national outcome; it's better if you care about the outcome, since it produces the desired outcome of adopted by states with a majority of electoral votes (and the NPV only goes into effect in states adopting it when it has been adopted by states with a majority of electoral votes), while proportional allocation for electors needs universal adoption to implement it's effect.
This isn't some discrimination thing. Those people can still vote. They just aren't given more representation than they deserve. That's the con of the electoral college.
A few percentage points is a big deal in an election where every vote is supposed to count. And this overrepresentation isn't a narrow margin like Brexit, we're talking about at least 5% more represented.
It may encourage the discrimination against minorities.
∗and he appears to refer to it as a well established idiom so I suspect it goes further back
[0] On Liberty https://www.bartleby.com/130/1.html
or because you are LGBT,
or because you are black,
or because you have a disability.
But the small-state kind of minority seems to be the only one who deserves electoral protection from tyranny of the majority. Oh what a coincidence then, that these minorities also happen to be mostly white, christian, and straight.
Would a register for who is LGBT be a good idea? Would you support laws and voting based on ethnic background and/or skin colour?
Why do these ideas sound dangerous?
As to it being their constitution, we're really talking about the Bill of Rights, and that was an updated version of the 1689 British Bill of Rights.
It's sad how we no longer have it, and that people in the past had more rights than we have now. American Constitutionalists are right to dig their heels in over anything that looks like it will encroach on their rights.
Do you disagree?
Not only can a candidate win the electoral college while losing the popular vote, but the winner-take-all system means that only votes in closely-contested states really matter. The Electoral College allows the minority to overrule the majority.
Which means the president is and should be, elected by representatives of the states. The House of Representatives should be the only federal office directly voted on by “the people.” If that were the case, especially eliminating the direct election of senators, you’d see a much less divisive, gridlocked system where governance is more about public service and less about these election soap operas.
For some reason, though, I never see supporters of the electoral college feel that it's right and proper to give equal political power to social minority groups (Only geographical minority groups. As if where you live is more important to your interests than who you are.)
As to your innovation in voting, if you accept immutable aspects of identity as the basis for voting rights you're opening the door to some terrible ideas, like ethno-states and Jim Crow laws. Again, without embarrassment at the facetiousness, I'm also not sure how actually making the Jews have more power in 1930s Germany would've solved their problems. Would've probably fuelled grievances: "Hey, Adolf, you know that Jews really do run Germany?" Eeek!
The best way to protect minorities is by the protected freedoms of speech and to bear arms, not by weighting votes by arbitrarily chosen characteristics.
It's not this.
But I also get the arguments of people that say that without the electoral college, there is zero incentive for politicians to campaign in or pay attention to the interests of people in lightly-populated area. And I think that is a bad thing - whenever you completely disenfranchise people you get create a potential crack for revolution, secession, or other fragmentation processes to seep in. (It's also just shitty to the people involved.) I'd rather fix that by getting rid of first-past-the-post voting systems, but I also think you can't ignore that problem.
You still haven't answered why you believe there's an excluded middle. The opposite of tyranny is representation, and it's the system we have in the U.S. You can quibble about the degree of representation, but the fact that you can quibble about it means that we don't have a tyranny.
Ballotpedia's congressional approval polling average: 20% (August 21, 2019)
Cambridge Analytica has shown the method to manipulate any political system. We are in for an "interesting" future.
This is a lie probably told to you by a high school teacher who never really thought about it, and clearly you haven't either.
If the electoral college empowers lightly populated areas, how come no Presidential Candidate has ever gone stumping for those sweet sweet Wyoming voters?
Because it doesn't empower small states. It doesn't empower big states. It empowers closely contested states.
The electoral college makes no sense, it was not designed this way, the designers tried to get rid of it after they saw how it was being abused.
It's non-democratic, nonsensical, and there has been ~75% support for abolishing it for over 100 years but politicians have been holding off because it makes elections easier for them to fight because it lets them ignore most of the voters.
I love the electoral college. For those that bother to understand that America is a republic; the system was nearly perfectly designed. If we can get back to the original method of electing senators and back to the idea of “these United States” rather than “the United States,” we’d all be happier. States should have increased sovereignty. The 10th Amendment ought to matter.
If the Electoral College made every state matter equally, then candidates would be campaigning for support in every state equally. It is a fact that that's not what the Electoral College does.
Also, the Electoral College in its current form was not "designed". It was a mistake. The people who designed it, Hamilton and Madison, tried to get rid of it with constitutional amendments after they saw how it was being abused with "winner-take-all" laws.
In the EU, is Ireland less important than Germany? Why doesn’t Germany get to pick the EU president each time? Since Germany has over 80 million people, they could team up with France and simply own the EU. Ireland and Poland would be forced to go along with whatever Germany and France wanted. Or, they would leave the EU.
If California and New York picked the president every single time, why would other states bother staying in the Union? If you just have to win New York City and Los Angeles and Chicago, then every single policy proposal would simply be to benefit those voters alone. You could deny federal protections and funding to every other part of the country because you’d rather have more money to spend in New York City. It would become just like the Hunger Games where the “districts” would serve the capitol.
The current system has worked for 200+ years. Just because some people didn’t like outcome, doesn’t make the system broken.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Also, no witch burning.
I don't know why the electoral college would be better at identifying high need areas than willingness to change your vote. Shouldn't people who need help be more likely to change their vote than to live in a purple state?
If a 10m pop area has a 70-30 split, it's still better to campaign there than a 5m pop area with a 50-50 split. In absolute numbers it's still 3 million supporters versus 2.5 million supporters.
Under your model where the goal of the campaign is to visit your supporters, you'll favor smaller cities that strongly support you over larger cities that support your opponent. A place with 5 million population that's 70-30 in your favor has 3.5 million supporters.
So I guess you're totally OK with the current system where they spend all their time in Florida & other swing states because the others don't matter...
I’m not entirely convinced presidential candidates share this belief.
That will make big urban areas appealing. However, if you think there are diminishing returns, it should cause them to spread that attention more, avoiding the last month where they repeatedly visit the same state over and over again.
[0] This might or might mean visiting those states.
The other thing I came away with from the whole process is a newfound appreciation for the “who would I like to have a beer with” factor. The issues and policy proposals you read on the Internet don’t really matter—none of that stuff will ever get through Congress. Being able to look the person in the eye, and see how they carry themselves while shleping to half a dozen events every day—that really makes an impression.
[1] In the Iowa Democratic caucuses, registered party members in a precinct get together, discuss the candidates, take a first round vote where some candidates are cut, discuss the candidates some more, and then take a final vote.
I have a different opinion. Sanders and to a lesser extent Warren have created massive volunteer networks that do have a pretty big impact, like everywhere. Obama had that too, but it was dismantled when he took office (insanity). There's a good argument to say Obama would have been far more impactful had he kept it going.
Sanders has no intention of shutting down his "revolution" (not my words) whether he does or doesn't get the nomination. There's going to be some serious pressure (like there already has) on congress in the years to come. I don't think the same ol' same ol' will continue much longer.
I don't mean to be a fan boy, but it's pretty phenomenal what he / they have done since 2016, and it resonates with a lot of people. CNN and MSNBC don't talk about it too often, but it's very real.
Don't take my word for it though. Easily researched.
If you look into many of the "unprecedented events" you'll see that most of them aren't new and some of them are decades old.
Though if the events really are bad and were ignored before, it's worth asking "why?"
Maybe but aren't you in danger of missing the big changes coming precisely because you are inside the bubble?
A political equivalent to "let them eat cake".
As an outside observer to the US it does seem like the pressure has to give somewhere soon at some point (and in a few other western democracies including my own though I think the US is further down the pipe on this one).
I think you're 100% right that there's building pressure and something will give but that's precisely because things haven't changed much. If the general populace decides "no matter how I vote, things don't change" some will lose hope and give up.. while others will look to other approaches.
(And those other approaches aren't usually good.)
There are benefits and drawbacks to both systems. Right now I'm pretty happy with this aspect of the US system. (There are other parts of the US system I'm less happy with—such as the Electoral College.)
They pounded it with demagoguery to get elected but they didn't have anything behind the policy and knew it. They also knew that going forward with their disasters would hurt them even more.
The US media coverage of Trump’s corporate tax cuts really misrepresented how completely mainstream it was: https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uplo.... While the US nominal rate of almost 40% total was around the OECD average in 1990, the rest of the OECD dropped to just over 20% by 2017. Meanwhile, the US nominal rate didn’t drop at all.
As of August 14, 2019, the United States Senate has confirmed 146 Article III judges nominated by President Trump, including 2 Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, 43 judges for the United States Courts of Appeals, 99 judges for the United States District Courts, and 2 judges for the United States Court of International Trade.
A NPV would go some way to spread the federal spending around a little more fairly
California
Texas
Florida
New York
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Illinois
Georgia
North Carolina
Michigan
It's also worth noting the math really doesn't work out, the electoral college makes it easier to win the whole thing while carrying less states/votes (Which really shouldn't be surprising). With both the popular vote and the electoral college, you only have to take the 10 most populous states to win the whole thing. But the difference is that, with the current electoral college you generally only need to get 51% of the vote to win the whole state, which is significantly easier and turns states like California from a 60% to a 100%. With the popular vote, to actually win in that fashion you would have to take almost every vote in those states, which is practically impossible considering the diversity.
Totally different dynamic than general elections, which happen all at once rather than different dates in different states.
There are a huge number of Republicans in California that would have just as much of a say than Florida/Ohio/etc.
Moreover, I'd wager that the stumps that stump speeches occur on will go to more places with more concentrated populations - there are more butts within n square miles to put in seats, as well as the most-watched news media.
My opinion is that both outcomes are preferable to stumps AND media going to half a dozen battleground states.
Something needs to be done to ensure all districts are equally represented and the representatives work for their constituents, not benefactors from out of state.
Why should people living dense regions be punished for it ?
With FPTP, each side tries to have the smallest winning coalition. This results in more competitive races. So every vote would matter.
Said another way, our current unfair gerrymandering worsens partisanship.
Said yet another, when my local city council went from at-large positions to districts based, so kinda the opposite of from electoral college to presidential popular vote, candidate platforms went from "appeal city wide" mush to "better appeal to my district".
(A better moderator would be to change from FPTP to approval voting or ranked choice voting. But that's another thread.)
--
But to your point, in practical terms, with modern get out the vote (GOTV) technology and strategies, most every voter is already targeted. They're certainly accounted for.
As the de facto head of their parties, presidential candidates are expected to do well every where, to help with down ballot races.
As an extreme example, HRC 2016 was criticized for running up her margin in "safe" areas. But that's expected (demanded) of national (and statewide) candidates by the locals.
Thus, the question is: Do you want the majority of the USA geography being controlled by the will of people least knowledgeable about it?
If you eliminate the electoral college you give political control of resources to those who have absolutely NO physical control of those resources and yet still suffer the impact of their environmental influence.
What I mean is, people in California, Texas, and New York would push all the bad things to the rural states and take all the good parts, leaving those who live in the rural areas to feel the full brunt of those decisions. Take Louisiana as an example. It's been decimated by everyone who doesn't live there.
The U.S. constitution counted slaves at 60% of a person. Some of the arguments for the three fifths compromise were that slaveholders didn't want people who weren't "knowledgable" about slaveholding to be meddling in slaveholder's business. This is essentially one of the causes that sparked the Civil War.
I don't understand why Americans are so against becoming a full democracy. It's not like the current system benefits anyone. Congress, presidents and our courts are dysfunctional. The government is becoming the laughingstock of the world. At least in a democracy there's more chances of unified rule instead of 6 years of gridlock followed by 2-years of whiplash changes.
This is really a red state vs blue state debate, but even on a county by county level, the majority of the counties of California, Oregon and Washington state are red. Those states' votes are determined by a handful of counties around a few urban centers. The rest of the counties' interests are more closely aligned with the red states.
And thus, the electoral college gives those red counties a voice that's ignored in their own states.
And in many cases gives them more of a voice.
There's an irony that the EC more accurately represents votes per acre/square mile than per constituent, and (one of) the reasons for the move to the US was to get away from tyrannical land/owners.
To claim it reduced their power is false. It was less than they preferred, and more than the free states preferred
The argument for any consideration of slaves in apportionment included the arguments GP puts forward.
The standard would have been that the slaves would have counted for representation purposes, which would have given the slave states the power to ensure slavery continued. The compromise reduced their power drastically and paved the way for slavery to eventually end.
No, there is no basis for even asserting that there was a standard, much less that the standard was that property, whether slaves, cattle, or horseshoes, would count for representation purposes.
My statements stand.
No, they don't, because they assume the slave state argument wasn't just their argument but a privileged default position, such that giving them something that was a compromise between what they wanted and what the free states wanted was a harm to them from the privileged default and not an inducement to keep them in.
a) read more widely, there's a lot of governments out there that are more worthy of the moniker (and even more that are horrifying)
b) read more widely, the newspapers you're reading aren't being honest (otherwise you'd know about (a))
Also I’m not sure what you mean by them pushing all the bad stuff to Louisiana and what that has to do with presidential elections (aside from that the president sets EPA policy, but again, Louisiana voted for trump so I don’t get it)
I would also add that the resources of the country belong to all of us, not just those who live in close proximity (aka the same state).
Land doesn't vote.
Your question presumes quite a lot. I'll start with "what makes you think people who don't live in Wyoming are incapable of understanding Wyoming?"
1. I’m gonna take a hard line that people deserve a vote, dirt doesn’t.
2. Louisiana is the 25th most populous state and I think 25th densest. So, I’m not sure the electoral college is protecting those less dense states’ environments. As the sibling points out, sometimes coastal liberals want environmental protection, while natives want to exploit the environment for profit.
Meanwhile, our state government seems more concerned with gutting education wherever possible and doing everything it can to destroy New Orleans' economy.
To put this in blunt terms: there are a ton of impoverished African Americans in these states that receive a large chunk of that federal aid. The segments of Louisiana that don't receive that aid are tax-productive and will not vote against a Brexit-like decision, even if it means that federal aid stops flowing
This is 5%, not 0.5%. On top of that, your numbers aren't correct: they receive around $20bn net, and their GDP is around $250bn, which means that which means that direct net federal spending is about 8% of their GDP (and gross federal spending is a whopping 20%). These are pretty huge numbers, and they affect the entire state economy, directly affecting the profits of the business owners that you claim wouldn't care.
Louisiana can certainly give all that because they cannot force TX, NY, CA, etc to bow to their whim. But that would be sort of dumb.
Well, if you want to propose a system where Alaska (area 570,640.95 sq mi) gets the same representation as Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Maryland, West Virginia, South Carolina, Maine, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama combined (area ~525,000 sq mi),
...then I'm all ears...
* Please don't tell me "But Alaska has so few people!"
So you prefer that the majority of the USA population is being controlled by the will of people least knowledgeable about the issues faced by the most populous and developed regions of the USA?
That's a 3.6x difference -- I would hardly call that a "small" edge.
Here's my claim: if you drew a curve of electoral votes per person by percentile, there would be a very small area that was significantly elevated, and the remaining portion would be moderately flat.
Because Wyoming's population is so small, the absolute impact isn't that big. Go up just a few spots to Hawaii and it's more like a 2:1 ratio. Yet still, substantially less than 10% of the population lives in such small states. So there's a very small minority of people who have a proportionally larger impact (but still a small impact in absolute terms).
To be clear, I think that's a bad result. So far as the democratic process can allow it, our votes should have equal weight. But it's somewhat exaggerated how systematic of an effect it has. In the same vein, I've argued that the best defense of the electoral college is that it only errs by giving the wrong result in elections that were already very close. In contrast, the Senate is thoroughly anti-democratic, unsalvagably so.
(Btw: I can't replicate your math. New York had 19,378,102 people in 2010, and 29 votes = 1.49 votes / million. Wyoming had 563,626 and 3 votes = 5.32 votes / million).
The house is elected by population, the senate by state. The electoral college is designed to be a blend of the house and senate systems.
> As Alexander Hamilton writes in “The Federalist Papers,” the Constitution is designed to ensure “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” The point of the Electoral College is to preserve “the sense of the people,” while at the same time ensuring that a president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.” [0]
Firstly, that has nothing to do with a "blend", and secondly that purpose was far from served. I rest my case.
[0] https://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-reason-for-the-elector...
PS: I like how you said "men and women" there. If we go by the founders, women wouldn't be part of the electoral college.
You said "It's an election of a minority leader.", but that isn't the case by any measure that actually matters, however upsetting it may be for you.
Whatever case you are resting has nothing to do with how many total electors there are, and neither does Hamilton's opinion.
The reason we're not talking about electoral votes is because the discussion revolves around how things would change if we went with the popular vote.
Yes, he got more electoral votes. Many would argue this is a broken system which has fucked our country for the second time in 3 presidents.
But on the other hand:
a) All recent presidential elections have been close in popular vote. And as the article points out, two of the last three presidents have won the electoral college while losing the popular vote.
b) Everyone would be appalled by any other large systematic difference in voting power, even if the overall impact was limited. Can you imagine if instead of going by state, we decided to go by income and the top 0.2% of people were given 3.6 votes each? People would lose their minds.
As for the math, I was using electoral votes divided by the voting-age population of each state in the 2010 Census. So, Wyoming is 3 EV / 0.428M = 7.0 EV/M and New York is 29 EV / 15.053M = 1.9 EV/M. If you use total population instead, you get the basically the same ratio (3.55x vs 3.64x).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_2010_Census_State_Popu...
Why is that bad? The Senate represents the states, the other sovereign entities in our federal republic.
I think that a) we should amend the Constitution to eliminate the direct election of Senators and mandating that they be appointed by the state legislatures; b) amend the Constitution to apportion 1 representative per 40,000–60,000 people (yes, this would mean over 6,000 representatives); c) amend the Constitution to mandate a similar structure for the states, with each state legislature required to be bicameral, with senators appointed by the counties and independent cities and representatives elected by the people.
Note that greatly increasing the number of representatives would make the Electoral College much more democratic. I'm not terribly fond of that, but it's a price I'm willing to pay for an overall healthier republic.
The ratio of votes per capita is relatively consistent - assuming a baseline level of votes so individual states aren't totally excluded - and is more a sign of a potential problem with the distribution not the system itself. But there's plenty of arguments which favour both ways.
Much like gerrymandering, which both sides have a long legal record of accusing the other of taking advantage of as the last two Supreme Court cases on the matter clearly demonstrates - each by the other, this seems to be a who's on the "winning" side motivation which misses the bigger picture.
In this case it's the smaller states who have been basically given a guaranteed entrance ticket to play the game, which is different than simply giving the state extra votes relative to their size. It functions almost as a social safety net which gives you a shot, not a good shot at that, but only if you'd otherwise have no other shot. If it was only per capita (even with balancing for size) the numbers would look a lot different.
California had 32 electoral votes in the 1950s. You may have meant the 1850s, when California did have only 4 electoral votes. That's because California was tiny back then, with a population of under 100,000 in 1850.
The electoral votes per capita has always been heavily skewed in favor small states. While it's true that some formerly small states have grown into large states, I don't see how that's relevant.
The other stuff about battleground states would have only a small connection to the electoral college, as even the small states would (still) only have a small amounts of votes, and have more to do with regional political trends.
Of course there will be push back from who ever most benefits currently. But I'm sure the political machines will learn to adapt and adjust for their new markets. There will always be enough moderates to swing both ways. Each only has to focus on the important ones, so changing who is important shouldn't hurt the parties unless they don't like having power.
Re 1850, thanks I updated my comment, I should note that doesn't change the fact they're not static.
States are entities of political significance, regardless of how many people happen to live in them. This is a union of states, and states get a say. If you don't believe that consider advocating for the replacement of states with population based administrative districts.
This is such an overwhelmingly stupid statement. It's effectively "if you don't like it, then leave."
Wyoming is not as desirable as California in many ways. People don't want to go there. Just because it's not as desirable doesn't mean it should get arbitrary favoritism when it comes to elections.
Second its only your perception that it receives favoritism, because of your mistaken interpretive frame that sees electoral college electors as being about individual citizens instead of as a compromise between two sets of stakeholders: states and the citizens living in them. Until you recognize that states themselves have an interest in Federal elections, you will continue to misunderstand the role the EC plays.
Fairness isn't a simple concept. There can be many mutually incommensurable notions of fairness. Unfortunately, partisans pick and choose those that suit their interests best.
Just as an example from domestic life. Consider a family of 4 individuals with different caloric requirements. One notion of fairness would split a pizza pie into four equal portions, but another would split it in proportion to their caloric needs. Getting everyone to agree on the notion that should be operant is hard because each choice implies winners and losers.
If you don't think states interest in Federal elections shouldn't count for anything, say so, and then give some thought about whether you think states should just be replaced with population based administrative districts that change with the census.
Some states haven’t been swing states for a long time, too.
I don't see this as a "states not counting" problem as much as the issues that come up in national elections affect different populations in different ways.
If there was a national popular vote, there would still be people who feel disenfranchised because the candidates don't see their chosen issues as vital to their coalition.
That was a short-term artifact of political realignments starting in the 1930s (New Deal Coalition) and—before that one had fully stabilized—1960s (Civil Rights).
Those overlapping realignments settled down into s new relatively stable alignment by the late 1980s; before the realignments most states were much stronger one-party states than the solid-red or solid-blue states today, and sometimes the second state party, if it existed at all, wasn't even the other major national party (Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is a remnant of that: prior to the New Deal coalition, which it became part of and eventually joined the Democratic Party, the party competing with the dominant Republican Party in Minnesota was the Farmer-Labor Party, which was not associated with the Democrats.)
To be fair, there were only four elections in the previous 70 years that resulted in a Democrat winning. I think that avoiding something that like in the future is probably worthwhile, which is a minor argument against the electoral college based on past results.
Suddenly swung in 1992, and has been seen as solid blue since—not really an example of swing states switching as a state rapidly moving from Republican lock to Democratic lock.
Don't see why it would be. Obviously a flip will flip all of a states electors if it did all or nothing assignment, as most do, but sudden flip from consistent red to consistent blue in Presidential elections isn't a product of that. Might be a product of winner take all elections at other levels (e.g., state house, with the majority flipping reshaping donor alignments in the state and leading major voices to switch sides) but that's not what happened in CA either; the legislature didn't flip from solid Red to solid Blue at a time that would be consistent with it being a driving factor for the Presidential shift.
Source: "The great Hack" - Netflix doc.
"Those apps include sophisticated analytics programs like Dreamcatcher, a tool developed to "microtarget" voters based on sentiments within text."
"All of the data collected through various volunteer interactions and other outreach found its way into Narwhal's data store, where it could be mined for other purposes. Much of the data was streamed into Dreamcatcher and into a Vertica columnar database cluster used by the analytics team for deep dives into the data."
[1] from Ars Technica: Built to win: Deep inside Obama’s campaign tech https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/built...
You’re right, it was also used to get Obama elected. It’s still wrong.
I found the title to be self-fulfilling. That documentary was awful! It's just a tag along the journey of a smart narcissist to cover her ass.
Right now, if an election system is "compromised" (electronically, corrupt officials, etc), it will affect that precinct, the local elections, possibly the state-wide races, and rarely the Presidential.
With a simple majority vote, a compromise anywhere in the system - adding or removing votes - impacts the system as a whole.
In those cases, you don't directly elect a Prime Minister either. You elect an MP in little winner-take-all elections and then the party (or coalition) gets together and elect the PM from their own ranks.
It's not quite 1:1 with an Electoral College but it's not direct democracy either.
Which countries are direct democracies?
Edit:math
Complaining that "it's always been that way" is like saying, "We've been pwned that way for a decade. Why should we fix that security hole?"
I find it incredible that people don't look at elections with the same critical eye that they do software security systems. The other cool thing is that all of your candidates for president are chosen by proxy vote! So as long as you can subvert the people who have all the proxy votes, you can choose who can even enter the election! Heck, you can stuff up both sides just for giggles. How much is the POTUS worth? Surely billions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_electors_in_the_2016...
That's why I've always found "the Russians stole the election with $100k of Facebook ads!" comical.
Both Facebook and Putin wish they could get that kind of ROI.
For now. But if Wyoming doesn't like what happens with Republican party, it can change. There's a huge inertia in large parties, so probably won't happen overnight, but it's not a law of nature. From what I've heard, one of the reasons 2016 election went the way it did because Democrats considered certain states (not Wyoming) "secure" and didn't campaign there, while Republicans did, and turned out they've been not as secure as it seemed. The margins of victory in many states are not that wide, and the margins of uncertainty in any polls are wide, so it's never certain forever.
If you look at 538 (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/), they were pretty accurate predicted which states were most and least likely to vote Trump or Clinton.
It's just that in several states where they thought Clinton had a small lead, she lost. Meanwhile, there were no states they thought Trump had a small lead but he lost.
The comparative judgments (Wisconsin is easier for Clinton to win than North Carolina, which is easier than Alabama) were right. The absolute judgments (Clinton will win Wisconsin) were wrong.
If you had gone back in time and told Clinton's team "all the polls are too positive for you, you don't have a safety margin" they'd have known that Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were at risk.
In an act of self sabotaging 12-d chess they decided not to campaign there to give the impression they were safe.
As a gambler betting on the election this cost me a lot of money.
Fascinating. Would you happen to have a link or more details on the rationale?
On my memory, this is not the first time polls tilt left. Politicians should have already learned that this is possible, especially with such an unorthodox candidate as Trump.
My point also was that not many states are really "safe", yet less - forever. Relatively yes, some are further from the middle than others, but it's not a static picture and it's not a product of some permanent law but only current configuration which should never be taken for granted.
It’s not a matter of whether battleground states deserve special protection, it’s a matter of whether or not the battleground states in any given election serve as a good representation of the nation as a whole? Are they a better representation than a popular vote which would consistently favor coastal urban centers?
A person's political views is not just shaped by where they live, but their race, gender, sexual orientation, education etc etc. If "location" is just another column in the table properties that describe a person, what if we had a "college" or "senate" based on some other property of an individual?
How about we give all citizens who identify as straight 2 seats and all those who identify as gay 2 seats in this imaginary senate?
Or a college roughly based on race, but for some reason the smaller races are grossly over represented?
How about by religion? As an atheist myself, I'd love to get in on some of that sweet over-representation-of-minorities mojo that Ohioans get.
My point is, cut this along any other descriptive property of an individual other than what state they live in and you get all sorts of colorful results that I'm sure would appall all the conservative proponents of the Electoral college or the Senate.
Is state or location really the most important a property when it comes to deciding whether or not you are a "minority?" When it comes to national issues, do you think a gay black man in Nebraska has more in common with a striaght white man in Nebraska? Or another gay black man in New York? Why does the one in Nebraska get to be an overrepresented minority, yet the one in New York get to be an underrepresented majority?
a popular vote presidency would be a disaster for the US, the illusion that votes matter would be completely destroyed at that level. it is like the difference of comparing a state only lottery to the multi state lottery
This is completely false. Having a popular vote would at least adequately represent, mathematically, the demographics of the US citizenry and what they want in a candidate. Now, FPTP is not the greatest voting scheme, I would prefer some sort of rank choice voting, but at least you would get a statistical representation of the populace with FPTP.
The electoral college is such an antiquated, outdated system that only favors fringe views.
The problem with this, and with the pledge, is that it requires the states that benefit from the current system to voluntarily decrease their own influence. Which won't happen.
As for the charge of hypocrisy, were Republicans passionately praising the wisdom of the electoral college in the 1990s? It cuts both ways.
In other words: if a candidate really wants to spend their whole campaign in Ohio, I could give a shit. Go for it.
Abolish the electoral college. Now.
However, there's a more important issue: that's not really what the electoral college does. It gives a small edge to small states[0]. The much bigger effect is that in every given election, it favors a handful of battleground states over all the rest.
If you live in Wyoming, the electoral college does not help you, because your vote is secure. Ditto for Vermont. But if you live in Ohio or Florida, presidential candidates will spend all their time in your state, trying to get your vote.
While you can concoct a semi-coherent case for rural voters needing special protection, no one can explain why Ohio is more or less important than North Carolina, or Florida than Texas.
[0] Which, if you're paying attention, is at least correlated with being rural, but only partially--another lazy generalization that surrounds this subject.