15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete

Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by rayiner on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @07:50PM (#20763199)

Debates over the electoral college tend to conflate two different things. The original purpose of the electoral college was a compromise between those who wanted the president directly elected, and those who wanted Congress to elect the president. While very small states have a modest edge as a result of using the number of members of Congress to decide the number of electors, the real purpose of the system is to add a layer of indirection to the election of the President, where the states have a say in their capacity as states.

That layer of indirection continues to exist today. Article II provides that “each state shall appoint” electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” So Minnesota could decide to have the state legislature appoint its electors, without a popular vote. (That would raise the importance of state government elections, which might be a good thing.)

At the same time, that layer of indirection could exist even in a purely proportional system. You could assign electoral votes based on population or number of house members.

So the debate over getting rid of the electoral college actually involves two different issues. Should the number of electors be proportional? And should we reduce the independent status of the states even more by taking away their intermediary role in electing the President?

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by pknopf on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @10:40PM (#20764151)

The founding fathers did not predict that a few states would become hyper-partisan and stop giving EC votes proportionally. The few states, early on, did this because they were decidedly red/blue and wanted a bigger say in who is president. A bunch of other states wound up following suit to level the playing field.

Now, we have winner-takes-all for almost every state. Now, politicians don't spend time pandering for votes they already have locked.

It created the concept of "battle ground states".

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by webninja on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @11:10PM (#20764310)

Maybe get rid of the winner takes all feature? It locks us in a 2-party system.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by hannasanarion on Thursday August 22, 2019 @12:16AM (#20764580)

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison tried that in the 1800s. Politicians benefit from the broken system (presidential campaigns are easier and cheaper because fewer voters matter) so it is hard to build support.

The NPVIC is a modern attempt to do the same thing, coordinated by mutual agreement instead of constitutional amendment.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by alfromspace on Thursday August 22, 2019 @09:08AM (#20767582)

The founding fathers also didn't want anyone voting but white landowning men who paid property tax.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by IgorPartola on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @08:16PM (#20763374)

First, the number of House reps is no longer proportionate to the population. Second, the layer of indirection as it exists today does nothing. Electors aren’t free to choose a president. They in most cases must elect the person they pledged to elect and if they don’t they instantly get replaced by a new elector who will. What purpose does that serve? Seems to me like we should either buck up and actually allow these people to elect a president, or abolish the whole institution as it currently is a farce.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by harryh on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @08:19PM (#20763397)

First, the number of House reps is no longer proportionate to the population.

Yes they are. Each house district has about 750,000 people. You get a bit of deviation because states don't necessarily have a precise multiple of 750k people. Also we only redraw districts every 10 years, so things have drifted a bit since 2010.

But it's pretty close.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by dragonwriter on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @08:28PM (#20763455)

> Each house district has about 750,000 people.

It ranges quite a bit above and below that. (About half a million to a million is the range.)

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by harryh on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @08:33PM (#20763479)

Indeed, according to:

https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/10/26/americas-lar...

the largest is Montana's at large district with 1,050,493 and the smallest is Rhode Island 2 with 520,389. I tried to find a full list but couldn't with a few minutes of Googling. I'm a little surprised that Wikipedia doesn't have a page on this.

Perils of the fact that districts are confined to state borders so you've gotta round up or down for some states.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by coryrc on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @08:21PM (#20763412)

I think they mean number of citizens per House rep, which is many times higher now.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by harryh on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @08:24PM (#20763433)

Ah, OK. Yes, that is definitely true. Wikipedia has a nice graph on this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_ap...

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by rtkwe on Thursday August 22, 2019 @03:59PM (#20771819)

It's also just that at the extremes we have house districts representing just over one million people and just over half a million people. 750k +/- 50% isn't great.

https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/10/26/americas-lar...

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by greggeter on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @08:57PM (#20763638)

We should expand the number of reps to 1 per 100k. Would help much of the problems.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by big_chungus on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @10:34PM (#20764112)

You think adding more people to the room in an already-dissonant chamber will make thing more coherent? We moved to a modified republic precisely because a huge-scale town meeting isn't practical.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by kbaker on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @11:00PM (#20764263)

There are a bunch of good arguments here: https://www.thirty-thousand.org/

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by big_chungus on Thursday August 22, 2019 @01:45PM (#20770614)

Hmm. I'd say the biggest argument I could see is that it would result in less stupid bills, e.g. fewer "bridges to nowhere". Maybe less federal bureaucracy. You probably shouldn't really be able to pass something if you can't convince at least 15,001 Americans. On the other hand, logistics would be an insane challenge, and you'd have a huge issue with the inability to have an actual in-person debate. Also, who wants to pay 30,000 people six figures a year? We'd have to stop paying them for it to be practical.

For reference, the current wage is $174,000/yr (a stupidly-high amount). $174,000 * 30,000 = $5,220,000,000. I'm severely disinclined to pay over five billion dollars per year (plus additional logistics costs) for pencil-pushers to sit around deliberating what bureaucratic idiocy they will next hand down from on high.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by rtkwe on Thursday August 22, 2019 @04:03PM (#20771852)

As a counter argument I say the place to skimp out on payment isn't in the people making our democracy 30k is a bit OTT in my opinion but 5 billion isn't that much in the grand scheme of the US budget coming in at just .1% of our current spending.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by danieltillett on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @11:25PM (#20764361)

You are not going to be able to buy off 30,000 reps if you are a lobyist. More reps and less staff are the way to win back democracy.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by kingkawn on Thursday August 22, 2019 @03:08AM (#20765415)

It is probably cheaper to buy off a large number of low-power reps than a smaller number of high power ones

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by rocqua on Thursday August 22, 2019 @08:47AM (#20767403)

Moreover, if the reps have fewer staff, they will probably rely more on lobbyists for research.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by rtkwe on Thursday August 22, 2019 @04:06PM (#20771887)

There's loads of ways to solve it though. Let them form groups and pool money to pay for analysts and staff as blocks or beef up the OMB to provide better faster analysis of bills and let them use those. The pooling makes a lot of sense to me because with groups that large you're going to have to form shared interest groups just to have reasonable length debates.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by danieltillett on Thursday August 22, 2019 @05:14PM (#20772410)

Not if actual experts get elected. With 30,000 reps you are going to get a wide variety of people elected many of who will know something about the world outside of politics.

If you include the staff there already are 30,000 reps, just that most of them are not elected. The current system is more like having 450 mini corporations running the place.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by danieltillett on Thursday August 22, 2019 @06:04AM (#20766370)

It might be cheaper, but it is going to be hard to organise.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by uncletaco on Thursday August 22, 2019 @08:31AM (#20767281)

Set expansion rules so the number of reps is always equal to the cubed root of the population rounded down. They would provide adequate scaling rules imo.

If the UK can stomach well over 600 MPs the so can we.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by IncRnd on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @08:51PM (#20763600)

> Second, the layer of indirection as it exists today does nothing. Electors aren’t free to choose a president. They in most cases must elect the person they pledged to elect and if they don’t they instantly get replaced by a new elector who will. What purpose does that serve? Seems to me like we should either buck up and actually allow these people to elect a president, or abolish the whole institution as it currently is a farce.

That is not correct. There has just been a ruling that the states cannot impose these sorts of restrictions on the process already delineated in the US Constitution.

Please see https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/politics/federal-appea....

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by IIAOPSW on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @08:54PM (#20763613)

>Article II provides that “each state shall appoint” electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” So Minnesota could decide to have the state legislature appoint its electors, without a popular vote.

Technically correct but as per the 13th (?) amendment, when a state denies any male citizen aged 18 or over and not a felon the right to vote, said states representation in the electoral college and congress is recalculated as though they didn't have said residents. Therefore if Minnesota went through with this they would have no more than the baseline 3 electoral votes.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by rayiner on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @09:21PM (#20763762)

> Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

I’m not sure if this question has ever been addressed, but I’m not sure this requires a popular vote for electors, but rather if there is such a popular vote the suffrage has to include all adult males.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by czbond on Thursday August 22, 2019 @09:45AM (#20767975)

I had believed the original reason was that politicians could not travel to each district/county/state and that it was easier to get a small, informed, educated group together than a large, unfocused, sometimes uneducated group together.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by gthaman on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @08:28PM (#20763454)

Let the states that will never get their way in a "fixed" elector college, secede.

To mess with the electoral college in this point in time - when its basically 49% vs 51% - and at such a level of divide in the country is not exactly a testament to how empathetic the two sides are. It would be a disaster.

Everyone thinks Trump himself is the problem but this awful idea to change the goalposts literally to win elections would do way more damage than Trump could ever do but I guess it doesn't come in an 'easy to hate' package with agenda serving talking points, etc.

I don't know where these idiots think this whole "OK - we'll follow these laws, but not those" thing is going but it is incredibly damaging and at the moment only one side is picking and choosing which laws to obey and not obey (then writing publicly about it) but soon enough the other side will be picking and choosing which laws to ignore.

Get your helmets on once we are on _that_ slippery slope.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by pasquinelli on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @09:03PM (#20763674)

By your logic there can never be a suitable time for democratic reform. The current political situation can only get worse until the united states becomes more democratic or more authoritarian.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by rayiner on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @09:38PM (#20763846)

That doesn’t follow. Even in recent history, most Presidents command large electoral vote majorities. In my life time, 7 of 10 elections ended in a more than 60-40 margin in the electoral college, including both Obama wins.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by pasquinelli on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @11:19PM (#20764336)

What difference does that make? It's either moving the goal posts so your team can win if they're out of power or it's entrenching your team's position if they have power. Either way is an outrage to someone, and so any reform comes at the wrong time.

I really don't see the point you're making.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by rayiner on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @11:33PM (#20764402)

I took the OP’s argument to mean that, even if you can get a consensus that the electoral college should be changed, people should hesitate to do so where close races mean that the change will be outcome determinative for particular races. My point is that we still routinely have candidates winning massive electoral college majorities. If people otherwise were in agreement that a change was warranted (note that more than 50% of republicans supported abolishing the electoral college as recently as 2012), there are still opportunities to change the system where it won’t change the result of the current election.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by jessaustin on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @09:49PM (#20763894)

Is there evidence that this proposition isn't true?

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by awinder on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @08:46PM (#20763561)

This movement predates Donald Trump by decades, I don’t really think you can paint it in that light UNLESS you are putting him up as a strawman, as the legislator quoted in the article clearly was.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by big_chungus on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @10:40PM (#20764149)

> Let the states that will never get their way in a "fixed" elector college, secede.

Why has every one abandoned the idea of federalism? The whole point was that you could have your way and I could have mine; we only had to agree on the bare minimum tasks which absolutely had to be handled at the federal level.

If California wants socialized medicine and Texas does not, fine. Why can't they do it on the state level? I see no reason. This has the double benefit of allowing experimenting with different solutions before committing on a national scale.

This shouldn't be a "red state/blue state" issue. The only reason why it would be is if you are hellbent on ramming your positions down the throats of those with whom you disagree. What so many forget is that when the other side gets power, it will do the same to you. The Democrats, for instance, spent years centralizing federal authority in President Obama so he could abuse it and are now surprised when President Trump abuses it too. Maybe if we just invested less power in the executive, both sides would be happier.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by suby on Thursday August 22, 2019 @10:15AM (#20768288)

It makes sense to handle the taxes for something like healthcare on the national level because people aren't going to renounce their IS citizenship to avoid their tax obligation, but they may move to a different state.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by big_chungus on Thursday August 22, 2019 @07:27PM (#20773303)

But if I want to move states and forego both the costs and benefits of socialized medicine, why would some one care? Why make some one who does not wish to work under that system do so? Again, the only reason is because you wish to force your position down some one else's throat via the tyranny of the majority.

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Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete by justin66 on Thursday August 22, 2019 @09:38AM (#20767886)

> the real purpose of the system is to add a layer of indirection to the election of the President, where the states have a say in their capacity as states.

The real purpose of the system was to balance the interests of states who had as many slaves as free people with the interests of states who would have dominated the legislature if representation were determined only by the number of citizens within the state.

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