65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.
It’d be nice to go beyond and have some sort of ranked voting while we’re at it. Essentially being forced to pick between two parties or risk having your vote being wasted sucks.
I don’t know how the american system works, but voting for small parties should not considered a wasted vote. It helps the party even if they don’t get elected
It’s worse than wasted. It’s effectively a half-vote for the major candidate you like the least.
Works in places with coalition governments.
If a party receives 5% of the popular vote, they start to receive funding from the FEC. That hasn’t happened in a while for a third party.
Well then people should organize. I don’t understand why americans only vote for two parties if they don’t like either of them
First past the post incentiveses two party systems, which is why people are desperate for ranked ballot, or something that can allow other parties to exist.
Because in first past the post voting, whomever gets the score first, wins. Combine that with mostly voting against a specific party, and you’re railroading people into a de facto two-party system when people vote for the “best bet against _____”.
45% of the country doesn’t vote at all, so.
Part of that is due to the feeling that one’s vote doesn’t matter. IMO having the president be elected by popular vote would bring a lot more people to the polls.
Yup. In states that are not swing states, why would those voters even bother?
But even if a party gets, say, 5% of the vote and gets funding, that level of vote splitting can influence who gets a seat now. That might be fine and dandy when the short term doesn’t matter too much, but right now, the stakes are very high in the US, since the right straight up wants to dismantle democracy, kill trans people, and completely ban abortions.
Those are high stakes just to likely get some more funding for a third party (much less win even a single seat).
IMO any political pressure that could go towards pushing third parties should first to towards electoral reform. Only then can third parties be voted for without putting a lot of people at risk.
Not in America. In America it’s an utter waste. The elections are too close.
Unpopular opinion: ranked choice voting will do little to solve the USA’s democracy issues.
For starters, there are plenty of countries that do use FPTP and still have plenty of third parties in their parliaments (Canada, UK, Taiwan, Australia off the top of my head). So FPTP does not inherently preclude third parties - rather, the USA simply doesn’t have any culture of multilateralism. I’d say this is mostly a byproduct of various cultural phenomena - the wealth gap, corporate media ownership, private campaign financing, win-or-lose mindset, etc.
But the greater issue is that RCV doesn’t really ensure proportionality. As long as you have a single winner from each district, there will be distortions between the proportion of parties for whom people vote and the ultimate parliamentary body. For example, even if you implemented RCV across the entire USA today, I’m pretty sure most legislative bodies would still be entirely dominated by a single party because of gerrymandering and single-member districts.
So if you want to fix the USA’s core issue, what you really need is a more proportional system - either have fewer, larger districts with multiple representatives from each one, or adopt something like MMP which is what Germany has (where you also cast a party vote to declare your preference for which party you most want represented in parliament and distribute proportionally along this tally across all voters). Not only does this make the final representation more fair, but it also does a much better job of making all votes matter, instead of only the lucky few in swing states or the rare competitive Congressional race.
But RCV on its own won’t do much. It is still a small improvement, and if you have the opportunity to adopt it, I say go for it. But at best, I think it would take decades, or maybe even generations, before it starts to improve things.
Also, while I know this doesn’t pertain quite so much to Presidential elections as the electoral college is used for, the USA is also fairly unique in that it has a directly elected head of government with much more power than other countries that also have a directly elected head of state. This is also a part of the problem - the executive branch is supposed to be the weakest of the 3 Federal branches - but it’s a discussion for another time.
Canada and UK third parties are still smaller parties, they have no possiblity of electing a head of state.
While also true in Australia, we have preferential voting as well and whilst smaller parties dont have the numbers or votes to become the ruling parties you can vote 1 for a smaller party and 2 for a major party so the smaller party gets a funding boost for future campaigns.
And also if enough people vote for a smaller party them a larger party may have to team up with a smaller party to get the majority numbers to hold government.
Then the smaller party may have a bit of clout to get some of their values and opinions into parlimertary debate or passing bills meaning we get a wider variety of input than the major party line and its members falling into line to vote with their peers blindly.Same as I wrote on the other sibling comment. I think these countries all have terrible electoral systems. But the point is, they’re still ahead of the USA in terms of the fact that they will still have an awareness and understanding of third parties, whereas >90% of Americans are just programmed to believe there are only 2 options.
As a thought experiment, ask yourself what would happen if you could wave a magic wand and make every city, state and national legislative election use RCV over FPTP. Do you really think anything would change? I’m pretty sure 95% of the results would be exactly the same. Like I said above, RCV may make things better 20+ years from now, but there’s also a very good chance that so few people actually use their second options that it nothing ends up changing at all. This is why I think multi-member districts or MMP are better solutions.
But the point is, they’re still ahead of the USA in terms of the fact that they will still have an awareness and understanding of third parties, whereas >90% of Americans are just programmed to believe there are only 2 options.
Are you forgetting Ross Perot almost won? There is constant talk of Trump starting a third party, libertarian and green parties get a fair amount of attention, and not to mention the fact that the two major parties actually consist of many smaller factions in a coalition. There’s a reason primaries happen, and often congressmen vote against the majority of their party and votes are split on other lines than party lines. Most people are smarter than is popular to say on the internet, they just understand voting the lesser of two evil is their best option right now from a certain perspective. I prefer to vote third party to increase the viability of third parties in later elections.
Look at third parties and their success in the UK and Canada.
The last general election in the UK was 2019. Conservatives got 43.6% of the vote but 56.2% of the seats. Labor got 32.1% of the votes and 31.1% of the seats.
The biggest national third party, the Liberal Democrats, got 11.6% of the vote but a mere 1.7% of the seats.
In comparison, look at regional third parties. The Scottish National Party got 3.9% of the vote and a whopping 7.4% of the seats. Irish regional parties like Sinn Feinn and the Democratic Unionist Party got a combined 2.3% of the seats with a combined 1.4% of the seats.
Previous elections have been quite similar. In 2015, the far right UKIP won only a single seat after getting a whopping 12.6% of the vote.
Canada is quite similar. The Bloc Quebecois consistently gets more votes than the national New Democratic Party, despite having gotten less than half as many votes.
Understood, all of these countries have terrible electoral systems, that was not my point. My point is that Americans only have a culture of voting for one of two parties, so switching to ranked choice voting will likely change nothing at all, because Americans already practically never even consider alternate options. Hell, I doubt even 10% of them could even name a third party, so why would they consider voting for them all of a sudden just because of the switch to RCV? They’re constantly blasted with the same message that you have one of two options, so chances are that they’ll just pick one and ignore the rest, just like they do now.
It might give independents more of a voice.
Parties work a bit differently in the US vs e.g. Israel.
In Israel, party insiders choose their politicians. If you want different candidates than an existing party is offering, you have to make your own new party with your own new list.
By contrast, in the US, parties run primary elections where voters pick the candidates. The specifics depend on the state, but in most states the election is held for registered members of that party.
Americans aren’t idiots. Most know third party candidates don’t do well in plurality elections. So smart progressives, alt-right etc. politicians don’t run as a third party candidate against mainstream Democrats and Republicans. Instead, they primary an incumbent Democrat or Republican, like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, or join the primary when the incumbent retired like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Somewhere like Israel, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Joe Manchin would be in two very different parties. In the US, they’re in the same party.
In places where RCV is passed, you absolutely see more candidates running and getting decent percentages of the vote. Because that isn’t a terrible strategy any more. Someone like AOC might have run as a Progressive or something rather than primarying the Democrat.
I contest your usage of Canada as an example. While it’s certainly not as polarized as the US, the effects of FPTP are still prominent. There’s a ton of vote splitting at the federal and provincial levels. Eg, conservatives rule Ontario despite the majority of people voting for one of the two left-er leaning parties, since the two parties basically split the left vote down the middle, while conservatives only have one party.
I do completely agree that propositional voting is waaaaay better than ranked choice, though. Personally, I will take almost anything over FPTP, but some form of PR is vastly superior, as you noted.
But at least with ranked choice, people can start to vote for another party without it feeling like a penalty. As a Canadian, I basically have to vote strategic. I don’t get to vote for my favourite party because of FPTP. Ranked choice would at least remove that issue.
I think the two party system of the US is basically where FPTP systems are all at risk to end up, especially since voting strategically gradually results in that. But the US GOP is so crazy that it’s almost a necessity for any progressive to vote strategically, whereas at least in Canada, things aren’t quite as bad, which makes it easier for people to take the risk of voting for who they really want to.
For anyone living in Utah, a bill to enable Ranked Choice voting will be in November 2023.
So anyone there please register to vote sooner rather than later.
Currently people are being told it’s too confusing and too liberal, so they really could be more young people votes to help the cause.
RCV is a rebrand of the voting method IRV, which was used by many cities in the early 20th century. Due to inconsistent results, it was repealed. So, unfortunately, conservatives have a leg to stand on when they attack RCV.
For clarity: their specific attacks take things to the extreme and often have some racist underpinnings, but there is a kernel of truth to attacking specifically on the method itself.
That is why I support something like STAR voting, it doesn’t suffer from many of RCV’s issues
I wish your ballot measure luck however, because at the end of the day it still is, mildly better than FPTP
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I wish for something like STAR as well, but much like voting now it’s all about the lesser of two evils between current voting and anything besides the current voting method haha
Well the thing about that is, RCV has been repealed in 6 states and counting for producing poor results. And it’s also given right wing groups like the heritage foundation a foothold to attack it. I’m actually seeing negative RCV sentiment on the ground when I talk to people about STAR so their message is spreading. When I explain STAR and how it fixes several of RCVs issues they come around to it, so it may in fact be better to push that instead of tag along with RCV if it’s going to end up being a waste of political capital
Neat! I am all for that? What are the left or rights views on STAR currently?
I don’t see it being on the radar of the major parties at the moment. RCV is in the spotlight so far. But that can change very soon because in Eugene, Oregon this week they are finishing up getting STAR on the ballot for their elections, then they’re also pushing for it to appear on the state ballot in May. The effort is led by non-partisan groups like the equal vote coalition.
So far my conversations with both sides of the aisle have been fruitful, and I hope that is how it continues
Not “while we’re at it” - RCV is the real change we need.
Approval/STAR would be even better, but I’d take RCV over FPTP
RCV will do nothing to break the duopoly in America. RCV will basically allow you to vote for the Democrats or Republicans without bubbling their name on your ballot.
Contrary to what is stated, RCV falls apart as soon as more than 2 parties become viable. It suffers from the spoiler effect.
RCV, like plurality voting, only reflects your preference for one candidate at a time. In fact, it’s relatively accurate to say that RCV is just plurality with (literally) extra steps (rounds).
One of the better ballot changes we can make is to move to something like STAR voting, which can capture the nuance of magnitude of preference for ALL candidates at once.
However, changing voting method alone is not enough. Proportional representation and expanding the number of elected officials are two powerful ways to introduce new ideas and break up power structures.
And, of course, campaign finance reform such as democracy vouchers
I don’t think I get it.
As I imagine it it would be: Republicans HATE Democrats. Democrats HATE Republicans. If all Democrats rank the R candidate dead last and Republicans do the same for the D one, their votes pretty much nullify each other, and whatever third party that got less First-choice votes but also way less Last-choice votes has a better chance at winning. Isn’t that how it should work?
Mostly. Yes, RCV tends to elect compromise candidates, ones who may not be anyone’s first choice, but that most people can live with. I think Joe Biden is a good example of this. Everyone was rah-rah for some else during the primaries: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee… but Joe Biden has broad tepid appeal.
I prefer score ballots over ranked ballots, expressing magnitude of preference is important!
Ranked choice specifically is one of the worst ranked ballot options out there and I hope we can push for something else
Isnt that what ranked choice is? Expressing magnitude by ranking your choices?
No, it’s not.
Given ballot options of Socialists, Democrats, and Republicans, I’d rank them 1, 2, and 3, respectively. However, when expressing my feelings about the election: I love the Socialists, dislike the Republicans, and prefer the Democrats slightly over the Republicans.
This nuanced opinion isn’t captured on a ranked ballot.
With a score ballot, like STAR voting, I’d give the Socialists 5 stars, the Democrats 1 star, and the Republicans 0 stars. This method not only captures my preferences but also the depth of my feelings for each party. This is then reflected in both the final score and the automatic runoff step of tabulation.
Ah. Gotcha. That makes sense, thanks for explaining!
Reminds me of the Blackadder episode where Baldrick won by 16,000 votes, even though there was only one voter:
H: One voter, 16,472 votes — a slight anomaly…?
E: Not really, Mr. Hanna. You see, Baldrick may look like a monkey who’s been put in a suit and then strategically shaved, but he is a brillant politician. The number of votes I cast is simply a reflection of how firmly I believe in his policies.
Let’s just cut out the middleman and go straight to direct voting.
Vote directly on the issues that matter to you. Representative democracies only exist to protect the ruling class.
Ranked choice still doesn’t solve the winner-takes-all situation that is the presidential election. Instead it should be appointed by a group of competent people, who in turn are voted in by something like ranked choice or whatever.
The original intent from the Constitution was that the winner was president and the second place was vice president. Since the vice president also is the tie breaking vote in the Senate, that doesn’t sit very well with the president. So they changed it to the running mate system.
The group your talking about would essentially be the cabinet? Right? They get approved by Congress. So indirect approval by the people.
The cabinet doesn’t appoint the president, so no. More like Congress members members get voted in by ranked choice, and they vote on someone to represent the country in international affairs.
BREAKING: group of people whose only chance of getting elected is relying on the Electoral College not thrilled about the idea of abandoning the Electoral College
It’s a great idea until it affects them lol
Yeah, dawg forbid they change their platform to, you know, appeal to a majority of Americans…
Ranked choice voting please.
My state Congress is getting ready to vote to outlaw Ranked Choice…
Probably because they know if it gets implemented they will get tossed out. What a shame.
What the point of that? Since you’d need the votes to make it a thing anyway you’d have the votes to change the law too, right?
Came here to say this.
Obligatory: “Ranked Choice” is a specific use of ranked ballots, and it kinda sucks. It beats what we’re doing now… but anything would.
Ranked Choice Voting ignores the ballot except for the top name and eliminates candidates in rounds until someone gets 50%. So if some guy is literally everybody’s second choice, that guy is eliminated in the first round. If this sounds ridiculous it’s because RCV is a misuse of a multi-winner system, Single Transferable Voting. It picks the first winner… not the best winner.
Condorcet methods like Ranked Pairs choose the candidate who’d win every 1v1 runoff. There is no “it shoulda been” factor. It works the way people automatically assume ranked ballots work.
Or we could do Approval, where you just check all the names you like, and it somehow matches Condorcet results. There is no good reason we’re not already doing this everywhere.
Part of this piece has an excellent insight into the dichotomy of the Republican Party. Of those highly engaged with politics, only 27% want to ditch the electoral college! These people understand the party is unpopular and the tactics used to hold power are a necessary way to get their policies.
The rest of the group feels otherwise, probably NOT because they don’t care if their candidate gets elected, but rather that they don’t understand how crucial it is to their party (along with gerrymandering). And their first gut instinct is that popular vote is justified/rational/logical whatever.
Now for a little thought experiment: What would happen if this became an actual campaign issue? I’d put my money on those 27% being able to convince the rest of the party how important it is, flipping their view. Maybe I’m wrong, but since many R voters tent to put self interests above all else, it logically follows that they’re just not understanding how critical the electoral college is. If their talking heads went on air/TV each day and stopped talking about how immigrants are stealing jobs or poor people are taking their hard earned money, and instead focused on the importance of the electoral college, they’d flip. Not because they think it’s right or justified. Because they think it’s best for themselves and their party. And it’s the current rallying cry.
Now apply this across an entire party, with those highly engaged telling the others how to vote, what to think about policy, and what the outcomes will be. Bring together uneducated people already susceptible to misinformation, and pair them with intelligent and extremely vocal/active groups who can sell snake oil like the best of them. Take that minority vote and put some real numbers behind it… likely not enough to get a majority, but enough to win a sophisticated electoral college or gerrymandered district.
they probably wouldn’t even try and hide it: they’d literally just come out and say the electoral college helps keep the democrats out and they’d vote for it
Good point. It’ll likely take three words to get a lot of those people to flip: own the libs.
Sometimes I forget how little value some people place in consistency of beliefs. Small government! Except ____. Ad nauseam.
They already have these talking points. They used them when Hillary won the popular vote.
Tyranny of the majority, nobody would have to listen to rural Americans ever again.
It’s all bullshit obviously. But it cut through to moderates last time it made the rounds. And these are swayable voters I’m talking about.
The rest of the group feels otherwise, probably NOT because they don’t care if their candidate gets elected, but rather that they don’t understand how crucial it is to their party (along with gerrymandering). And their first gut instinct is that popular vote is justified/rational/logical whatever.
The (European) centrist part in me think the “less engaged” Republicans are those who like the central right-wing ideas (small government, less taxes etc.), but don’t like how crazy the current Republican party is, and since they have no real representative they identify themselves as “less engaged”. Those people would probably prefer for the electoral college to be abolished so that the current Republican party never gets elected again and they’re forced to shift to candidates that are actually sane in order to win back votes.
…but yeah, your analysis might be correct too, those “less engaged” people could also be MAGAs that just don’t understand how they wouldn’t win an actually democratic election.
I’m sure you’re right about some people. They’re feeling abandoned and disgusted by what’s supposed to have their support and ideologies in mind, therefore not as active. That makes sense.
I know there are a lot of good/reasonable people who just want the government to play a smaller role in society and I think that’s a necessary part of any well-functioning system. And I agree with the sentiment in specific applications. Hopefully there is a way forward for those types to force a change for the better from the current GOP. Because it’s gone off the rails.
Yes, I think the rabble would quickly fall in line against changing the electoral college. We saw them growing more accepting of LGBT people for a few years only to whiplash back to homicidal hatred once their high priesthood started ranting against the gays again. These poll results are kind of like an interesting Freudian slip though: like you said, when they’re not paying attention a majority of Repubs can organically move to the reasonable opinion before the elites can apply their brainwashing again.
Americans, lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
The better plan would be institute the Wyoming Rule or something similar to it. The HoR is simply too damned small which not only limits the number of EC votes it also has the representative to citizen ratio fucked up 90 way to Sunday.
We broke the EC in 1929 by capping the size of the HoR and it’s well past time to fix it.
Republicans would never win a nationwide election again. They’d actually have to come up with policies people want. Not gonna happen anytime soon.
I’ve had family that votes Republican say this, they will literally defend the minority vote winning. They see democracy as “mob rule.” Well, if a bunch of rich assholes getting to decide who’s president, and a system where the people with the least votes win, how is that not mob rule?
We have lots of minority protections in place to avoid mob rule and the tyranny of the majority. The Electoral College is the tyranny of the minority.
And yet, none of them will support using an Electoral College to elect the governor of their state. I guess mob rule is fine when it comes to governors, senators, mayors, and sheriffs, but not presidents.
“As long as the party I identify with is in charge then it’s fine.”
It’s really not surprising when they support going full dictator.
The cons really showed their hand more recently when arguing over things like suppressing the vote, and mail-in voting and telling everyone that “voting is not really a right enshrined in the Constitution”.
Well, tell us how you really feel.
Wait, are you implying that only crafting policy around what the elitist of the elite want and waging stupid performative culture wars for the clueless gop base is unpopular with most Americans?
If the president was chosen by popular vote, I think you could make a reasonable case that the last Republican president would have been George H.W. Bush in 1988. George W. Bush did win the popular vote against John Kerry in 2004, but he lost it to Al Gore in 2000 so it’s debatable whether or not he would have beaten an incumbent Gore in 2004 I think.
And now you see why the Republicans are so against it. They can’t win in a straight vote.
I could also make a reasonable case that election strategies would have changed to more populist stances to accommodate for that.
Bush did say if the popular vote mattered he’d have campaigned in Texas. Changes the entire landscape.
And Gore in California, New York, hell the whole east and west coast (aka where voters live)
That’s the whole point of this discussion
Pro-citizen means democracy
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
Introduced in 2006, as of August 2023 it has been adopted by sixteen states and the District of Columbia. These jurisdictions have 205 electoral votes, which is 38% of the Electoral College and 76% of the 270 votes needed to give the compact legal force.
The Wyoming Rule, or something like it, would solve a lot more problems than just the EC.
Napavointerco
My vote would finally matter. My state already knows who it’s supporting with or without me.
yeah, the ‘vote!’ stuff is hard to stomach living where i do, which went red on TV literally the minute polls closed
And so, neither party is going to bother trying to court your vote: one can take you for granted, and the other will write you off. So I hope you have the same concerns as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona, because that’s what you’re getting.
And the votes of the flyover states become an after thought.
Tue votes of the flyover states would matter exactly as much as the votes of any other arbitrary subsection of the country with the same number of people. That’s the point.
Exactly. Now any Democrats in flyover states actually have their vote matter.
Fun bit of trivia: which state had the most Republican voters in the 2020 election? Answer: California had more R votes than Texas or Florida or any deep-red state. But neither party gave a shit what California Republicans wanted: Democrats knew that the Electoral votes would go for Biden no matter what, so they didn’t need to campaign there or court anyone’s vote. And Republicans knew that there was no way to get even one of those Electoral votes, so their time and money was best spent campaigning elsewhere.
Y-you’re telling me that gasp LAND DOESNT VOTE?!?!
You are so obtuse i would be amazed if you can find a chair that fits.
Exactly!
Why would you want people to decide their countrys future when empty landmass could do it?
I hate this argument. There are still a lot of votes in the flyover states. The electoral college doesn’t disadvantage flyover states anymore than not having an electoral college disadvantages those living outside of the major cities in a state wide election.
Republicans still win the Ohio governor’s election despite 5 major metropolitan areas in the state.
Also there are Republican votes in New York and California that get discarded currently.
This isn’t a game, this is just making the thing fair.
The electoral college doesn’t disadvantage flyover states anymore than not having an electoral college disadvantages those living outside of the major cities in a state wide election.
When you’ve become accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression.
The “fix” for the problem of equality isn’t removing voter power from the flyovers it’s ADDING voter power to the large coastal states like California and doing it is so damned simple. Uncap the size of the House of Representatives by changing the Re-Aportionment Act of 1929.
The Wyoming Rule doesn’t go far enough in my mind but it’s a good starting point.
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Maybe, maybe not. It would depend on the districting process in each state. We’d certainly see new Republican’s in Congress from California but we’d also see new Democrats in Congress from Texas.
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I think what they’re speaking to is how such a change may alter the course of a presidential campaign. As it stands, there’s this notion that a candidate has to try and have broad appeal; they need to spread their campaign out a bit in order to “capture” the electoral votes of a state.
Sans the electoral college, I see presidential campaigns becoming even more polarized and exclusionary. The Democrat campaign will become the “big city loop.” Continually visit Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, and Miami. Maybe they slide in a few secondary metros if it’s convenient. The candidate won’t have to worry about any non-urban messaging, and if they’re particularly incendiary could even preach “dumping those hicks in the sticks.”
Conversely, the Republican campaign (not even considering the existing insanity) becomes “everywhere else.” They can push the message of “big city Democrats want to destroy you” even more convincingly.
Such an outcome strengthens the “not my president” sentiment (on either side), and just further aggravates partisanship. I’m not saying eliminating the electoral college is a change that could never be made, but I definitely think this is a bad time. It will feel like exclusion and alienation and in politics perception is reality.
For the obvious follow-on question “when is a good time,” I don’t have a pat answer and I can’t even speculate if that will be in 4, or 12, or even 20 years. But it needs to be a time when there’s far less immediate friction between the two leading parties, or it’s just going to be another wedge opening the divide.
The problem with your whole argument is that ultimately it comes down to the fact that the literal minority might be unhappy that they didn’t get pick the winner over the will of the majority, and that might make them feel that it’s exclusionary to them.
Such an outcome strengthens the “not my president” sentiment (on either side),
By definition, the majority will actually get their chosen candidate as president. Do you know what strengthens “not my president” sentiment? Having a privileged, autocratic minority choose the president, overriding the will of the voters.
Well, our campaigns are ridiculously antiquated with the campaign season being kicked off in…Iowa? And silly photo-ops of them eating county fair food and so on, as if that is somehow representative of America in the past several decades.
Sorry, most people are not farmers, and it’s absurd to pretend as if that is “middle America”.
It would make far more sense to kick things off on the coasts. Where all the people are.
As it stands, there’s this notion that a candidate has to try and have broad appeal; they need to spread their campaign out a bit in order to “capture” the electoral votes of a state.
That’s currently not the case: in most states, the vote isn’t close, so we know before the campaign even begins how most states will vote. There’s no reason for Republicans to appeal to Kansans, because Kansas will vote R no matter what. Likewise, there’s no point for Democrats to appeal to Kansans because it won’t do them any good.
Sans the electoral college, I see presidential campaigns becoming even more polarized and exclusionary. The Democrat campaign will become the “big city loop.” Continually visit Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, and Miami.
There’s a word in politics for a candidate who wins in big cities, and nowhere else: “loser”.
Check the demographics. Get a list of the 20 biggest cities in the US and add them up. You’ll see that’s only about 30% of the vote. So even if you somehow managed to get everyone in the big cities to vote for you, including children under 18, felons, and people on student visas, that still wouldn’t be enough to determine the election.
Maybe they slide in a few secondary metros if it’s convenient. The candidate won’t have to worry about any non-urban messaging, and if they’re particularly incendiary could even preach “dumping those hicks in the sticks.”
Just in passing, there are more Republicans in the California sticks than the total population of several other states. If the president were elected by popular vote, candidates could no more ignore those voters than California gubernatorial candidates can, today.
I think it’s a farfetched concern.
If you’re still voting based on whether or not someone visited you or not I’m also giving you exactly 0 sympathy. It doesn’t matter, that’s just a show. Jason Aldean can visit all the county fairs he wants, that doesn’t make him a real country boy or mean he’s “with you.” The same is true of a politician. What you should care about is how their policies affect you and the rest of the country.
Not to mention areas already have disproportionate representation via the Senate. If you can’t get your case across to the majority of the county or by senate representation… maybe you don’t have a very good case.
We should be trying to convince a majority of people about something, not forcing some arbitrary “win” that allows a minority to have disproportionate power over the majority in multiple areas of the country. We’re closer than ever to having “taxation without representation” as is, and it’s getting worse (Gore only had ~500,000 more votes, Clinton had ~3,000,000).
That’s 3,000,000 people that didn’t get their voices heard at all, and that Trump promptly told to go pound sand (even in the face of a natural disaster https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/10/16/trump-administration-refuses-to-give-california-federal-aid-for-wildfires/?sh=304cb4cb3416).
Except they can say whatever politics they feel like that day, and the average American is neither smart nor informed enough to predict how policies will affect them.
The only solution is to go back to supporting ethical politicians instead of the ones who are best at saying what you want to hear. And that will only happen if we start actually educating citizens instead of just teaching them to check educational boxes.
Well on that I can agree
They are already advantaged in both the house and the senate. Why do they need advantages in literally all elections to feel they are treated fairly?
How?
Everyone gets 2 senators, and then 1 house rep for every so many people.
Not quite, the number of house reps is not strictly proportional to the population of each state. California has 704,566 people per house seat, while e.g. Wyoming has 568,300 per house seat. This means a Californian house vote is worth roughly 80% of a Wyoming house vote.
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That’s a great joke.
Right, because Kansas’s vote should hold the same weight as New York or California even though there’s less people that live in Kansas?
No, but a Kansan’s vote should have the same weight as a New Yorker’s or Californian’s, or even a Pennsylvanian or Michigander. Not all Kansans vote the same way, and it would be nice to have a system that recognizes this.
And that’s okay.
So its bad if peoples votes in densly populated places don’t matter, but it doesn’t matter if people voting in sparely populated areas don’t matter?
But those people’s votes each matter the same without the electoral college?
The money and politicians will focus on the large urban areas, because that will maximize time and money invested.
People in rural areas will not have the capacity to affect things at all.
They get to vote, don’t they? They just don’t get to have their vote given extra privileges just because they live in a sparsely populated area, that’s all.
What extra privlages?
Everyone gets 1 vote as it is now.
Two things I’d love to see. Eliminating the electoral college and then getting rid of superdelegates. Two fundamentally anti-democratic concepts.
Well superdelegates aren’t exactly something the government can legislate away because they’re just an internal thing of the DNC.
Abolish parties.
How do you do that without violating the First Amendment right to freedom of association?
How?
Abolish parties.
Ranked-choice voting.
Two things I’d love to see.
Don’t forget “ranked-choice voting”.
My goodness, yes.
Under the 2018 rules, in the Democratic National Convention superdelegates can’t participate in the first vote and can participate only in a contested convention. Seems reasonable to me.
Wikipedia also reminded me about this little bit of Bernie hypocrisy that I’d forgotten about: “Sanders initially said that the candidate with the majority of pledged delegates should be the nominee; in May 2016, after falling behind in the elected delegate count, he shifted, pushed for a contested convention and arguing that, ‘The responsibility that superdelegates have is to decide what is best for this country and what is best for the Democratic Party.’” Talk about unprincipled political opportunist.
Yes Bernie is an unprincipled political opportunist.
Who’s this dude like casually smoking a cigarette in what appears to be some kind of war zone.
I can disagree with something Bernie said, but still be a huge supporter of his for his many other things I fully agree with. I maintain that superdelegates being in place to deal with a contested convention is still a bad thing and undemocratic. The real unhelpful part was when the DNC chair stated that it can also quell unintended grassroots efforts. I thought grassroots efforts were an example of a good thing about democracy, not a bad one.
Bernie Sanders is emphatically not a Democrat and doesn’t want to do any of the work of building or supporting the party, but when he decides to run for president, he suddenly wants the party’s money and infrastructure, only to abandon the party ASAP after the election. He may be fine as a senator, but as a presidential candidate, he’s just so utterly loathsome. He’s got major entitled old white man syndrome and it makes me lose absolutely all respect for him.
If you’re on to a contested convention, you can’t directly reflect the will of the primary voters in the first place (because they didn’t pick a winner) so I can’t really find any reason to object to superdelegates, most of whom are elected Democrats and already literally representing their constituents in Congress, etc.
They will never allow that because it’ll kill the entire republican party lol
Won’t be good for Democrats either. System is rigged for two parties and two parties only.
This would not really change the two party system. All it would mean is that you genuinely need a majority of votes and not the majority of a weird convoluted combo of states.
It would destroy the party system. Suddenly there’s a progressive democrat party and the freedumb caucus becomes it’s own thing.
I’m game for that.
First-past-the-post voting systems result in two conflicting parties. This would entrench the two party system. The current system is not good, but popular vote is only slightly better.
The difference is in what the voters want.
Both parties wouldn’t be for it, but liberal voters would be for it. Conservative voters would be against it.
You’ll have to pry it from their cold, dead hands.
You mean their hands the way they are now? Glitch McConnell had a death grip on that podium…
Right. Their cold dead hands.
You can’t convince me Joe Biden is actually alive. You can’t. He died on the campaign trail, and he’s being Weekend at Bernie’s-ed by his staff.
There’s not a substantive difference in his policies if he’s alive or dead…his whole platform is not Trump.
The electoral college was created at a time when faster-than-horse communication didn’t exist. It made sense then, but has not grown with the times.
I fail to see how it ever made sense.
The year is 1780. The printing press is the pinnacle of technology, there’s no such thing as an adding machine. Most correspondence is done on parchment with a quill pen. The majority of Americans cannot read or write. Information cannot travel beyond earshot faster than a galloping horse. Elect a president by popular vote. You have four months.
That’s not even it. At the time the Constitution was adopted, there were states like Virginia that had a lot of people, but rather few voters. They were afraid that they wouldn’t have a real say in who the president was. The Electoral College was a way to inflate slave states’ power, and entice them to join the Union.
The whole thing is absurd and overly represents rural areas and Republicans. We already have a huge problem with the “2 senators per state” thing and the House representing Republicans far too much in relation to their numbers.
I’m 100% okay with the 2 senators per state thing. That’s a feature, not a bug. Even though cities are on the right side of history right now, I don’t want to completely silence the rural vote forever.
However, arbitrarily limiting the number of House reps is absolutely absurd and counter to the purpose of the House. That is a bug.
Well, then, maybe we should start considering splitting up some states and joining others together then. A place like California is more future-minded and it’s where a great deal of the people are, as well as much of our economy. Also, it’s where a lot of our food is grown. And it gets 2 Senators.
The 2 Dakotas have more than that, and what do they really represent for the future of America and the world? More fracking?
Maybe states with really large masses and hardly anyone in them are combined. Idaho, Montana and Wyoming - one state. North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, another.
Again, you’re intentionally defeating the purpose of the Senate. The entire point is to give rural, less populous areas more of a voice.
Seems like giving one group more power than another group would be bad for equality.
That’s why we are supposed to have House members representative of pure population, and not land. Senate gives more power to rural areas, House gives more power to urban areas. It’s supposed to even out. Checks and balances.
It’s crazy how many people in this thread don’t seem to know the absolute basics of how their own government is structured and why.
The only reason the Senate is such a problem right now, is because the House of Representatives needs to be properly reapportioned so it’s actually representative.
On this, we definitely agree. The House is being held down to an arbitrary number and it is patently absurd.
It feels like a compromise from a period of time that is no longer relevant to these times when we are trying to push this country into the future. I don’t want rural regions to have more of a voice, FFS. Look at what it is doing to this country. Having fewer people have an equal say with the majority of the people is also not great, the majority should win out. Why the fuck should tracts of land be voting?
We should never completely silence the voice of a group of people for all time, even if right now they’re pushing some heinous shit.
Part of the reason for the phenomenon of Trump was the failure of politicians to care about the legitimate problems that rural voters have.
In any case, if the House and Electoral College functioned like they should, the majority would win a lot more often. Don’t focus on the Senate, focus on the two institutions that weren’t designed to give rural people an outsized choice but have been manipulated to do so.
completely silence the voice of a group of people for all time
I don’t think anything proposed here by anyone would do that? What is being proposed is to stop prioritizing the votes of people occupying vast tracts of land over the majority. To have a vote cast by someone in the hinterlands equal someone’s vote in more populous parts of the country is putting them on par with everyone else. I’m not so sure what is so magical about someone living in a remote area that their interests should not align with everyone else’s.
It’s nothing magical. They will inherently have different priorities, and they deserve a voice in the political process.
How is it no longer relevant? Do you know where your food comes from?
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the legislative branch of the US government is structured, and why.
Your concerns are valid, but you’re not aiming them at the correct House.
I’m not understanding the food part here.
I understand the history of compromising with states that had less (free) people because of slave states; I’m saying it’s no longer relevant in modern society. It turns out rural areas are usually better represented by Democratic policies in any case. Ironically.
That’d be an easier sell if the rural areas less consistently used their voice to shit up the world.
True, but it’s not always guaranteed to be that way. We should never give one group absolute power.
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The Republicans are the main reason we still have it … they know they’d never win if they had to play fair.
But but but why should cities get to determine everything? Don’t you know that not only does land vote, everyone in a patch of land votes the same? So, why bother giving everyone in a city a vote, you know?
Also, be sure to let the vice president cancel the whole thing if they don’t like the results.
(Please tell me my sarcasm is obvious.)
We should just abolish the Senate. With the current formulation of the US government there’s no reason why a State should have extra power like that. Let the people make the rules. Expand the House, abolish the Senate, and remove the electoral college. And since we’re wishing for things that will never happen anyway, go ahead and use some kind of proportional vote (ranked choice, star, whatever, just literally anything but FPTP).
Instead of tilting at the windmill that is removing the EC how about we do something much easier and simpler and simply expand the House of Representatives? Not only would this add votes to the EC and make the Presidential Elections more representative it would also, you know, make the HoR more Representative! For extra fun it would also diminish the returns of gerrymandering since there would be so many more districts.
All we need is a change to the Re-Apportionment Act of 1929. There is no good reason that the size of the HoR is fixed at 435. None.
For extra fun it would also diminish the returns of gerrymandering since there would be so many more districts.
you should lead with this
In 1929, each representative represented about 283k Americans. Now each representative represent about 762k Americans. That’s almost a 300% increase. This means each American’s voice is only about 1/3rd as powerful as it was in 1929. To have as much political power as they did in 1929, we’d need about 1200 Representatives.
And yet, having more representatives fundamentally reduces the power of each as well. Your vote is fundamentally worth less as the population increases. Something you’re just gonna have to come to terms with.
I’m ok with my vote meaning more or less as long as it’s the same vote everyone else gets…that’s not the case with the current system.
To have as much political power as they did in 1929, we’d need about 1200 Representatives.
I don’t see a problem with that.
Would there be any way to have everyone keep the same voting power while the population tripled?
Sure, you just define the problem differently. Instead of saying that there are X representatives in total, you just say there should be 1 representative for every 283K citizens. In this way the number of representatives naturally scales with the population.
This is basically what the Wyoming Rule does. It sets the ratio in the lowest population State, currently Wyoming, as the ratio for everywhere. Wyoming currently has 500,000 people and 1 Representative. That means the HoR would expand to something like 580 Seats.
We could change the math, and the name, to the “1929 Rule” and set the ratio 280,000 to 1. I’m actually fine with an HoR that has 1,200 people in it but either way the Re-Apportionment Act of 1929 needs changed and the HoR needs expanded.
Good point - it’s not about power because everyone else also gets that extra power up. It’s about equity.
And we can achieve now that through fairness in redistricting.
That’s a long way around to get to fair representation. It amounts to a distraction from the real issue.
We can achieve that now through fairness in redistricting.
We can achieve that now through fairness in redistricting.
No you can’t.
Your way doesn’t return the ratio of EC votes between the HoR and the Senate to what it should be. It keeps it stuck in 1929 and every year that goes by makes it worse.
Your way doesn’t scale the number of total EC votes as our population grows.
Your way ALSO doesn’t return the ratio of Citizens to Representatives to anything resembling sanity. Ratios of nearly 800,000 to 1, and growing, are irrational and break Democracy.
You could redistrict the ever loving hell out of the other 49 States but Wyoming would keep it’s 3 EC votes and its outsized vote for President. It would keep it’s outsized influence in the HoR and it would keep it’s ranking as #1 in the Citizen to Representative Ratio.
So much of what everyone hates about our Federal Government today is DIRECTLY tied to a vastly undersized HoR. The body is simply too small to adequately represent a population of over 300,000,000 people.
There are only so many ways to divide 435 seats while still guaranteeing at least 1 seat per state.
Unfortunately the elected representatives don’t care what the majority of citizens want.
Hell, a good chunk of the citizens vote for people that don’t support their lives or values. It’s fucked top to bottom.
That good chunk would be democrats and republicans
I don’t disagree. The only real power us peons have is voting, and we are really, really shitty at voting.
We are not shitty at voting, we are shitty to keep supporting the right wing duopoly. Not voting is a choice, and voting 3rd party is a choice. If the 76% of democrats that do not want Biden to run voted 3rd party they would win. People choosing to vote their fears instead of their conscience is whats holding us back
People choosing to vote their fears instead of their conscience is whats holding us back
Otherwise described as: being shitty at voting.
