That was the intention of the house, not the senate. But regardless, the design of congress isn’t too great either. The power of a person’s vote on the legislature should be as close to equal as is possible with everyone else’s. No vote should have more weight/power.
Can you expand on that?
I was referring to the distribution of senators because it gives small states the same number of votes as large states. That means that each individual voter in larger states has proportionately less representation.
Yeah, I think that is wrong, as it gives people an unequal voice over legislature. Ideally the entirety of congress would looks something far closer to the house of representatives, with each representative being representative of the population.
As far as amendments go, the most egregious that comes to my mind is the 13th:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Slavery is still legal within the united states, but only in the case of prisoners. Slavery should be illegal in all forms no matter what, but we’re still stuck in the 1800s. People commonly think the U.S. ended slavery after the civil war, but instead we just turned to neo-slavery, with a million Jim Crow laws on the books to put black people right back out in the fields.
Nowadays instead of Jim Crow, we have the war on drugs which largely does the same thing. The U.S. has the largest per capita prison rate out there for a reason.
The needs of people in LA or NYC are very different than the needs of people in Wyoming. No one is, or will ever, ignore the massive population centers. They will get attention, they always get attention. Eliminating the electoral college would make it very easy to completely ignore certain states, as it would make more sense to campaign in very large population centers, where you get more bang for your buck.
A lot of people only complain about the electoral college when it doesn’t work out in their favor. If Trump won the popular vote in 2016, but lost in the electoral college, the same people demonizing it today would be praising its wisdom.
I looked it up a few years ago. Trump went to several states that Clinton didn’t, and it paid off for him. The president has to be the president for all 50 states, not just the ones with the most people.
(this isn’t an endorsement of Trump, it’s just that the 2016 is what brought the electoral college thing to the forefront again)
No one is, or will ever, ignore the massive population centers. as it would make more sense to campaign in very large population centers, where you get more bang for your buck.
That is the current situation. Presidential candidates only ever visit the biggest cities in swing states.
Eliminating the electoral college would make it very easy to completely ignore certain states
They already do. No candidate visits any state other than a stronghold state for funding, or a swing state. That’s it. The rest of the states get ignored.
I live in Pennsylvannia. My state recieves the most attention, and every single election at least one of the candidates shows up at my town. Do you know where they don’t visit? They don’t visit any of the small cities in PA, let alone some place in the surrounding states. If the reason to keep the electoral college around is to prevent un-even focus from candidates, then the electoral college spectacularly fails at this goal. If instead all votes were equally regardless of location, candidates would far more often visit the cities in other states.
It’s unavoidable that they’ll stick to higher population regions, because that’s always going to be the most effective strategy no matter the system. Since that’s unavoidable, we may as well have a system that is fair.
If Trump won the popular vote in 2016, but lost in the electoral college, the same people demonizing it today would be praising its wisdom.
I don’t think so. The people who hate the electoral college are pretty consistent in my experience.
And for the record, I don’t think we should be doing a FPTP system even if we moved away from the electoral college due to the numerous problems with FPTP. Either STAR or approval voting would be far better.
Sure, most of the time was spent in battleground states, but Trump went to 8 states Hillary didn’t show up in at all. Trump didn’t show up in 10% of states, Hillary didn’t show up in nearly 30%. That’s a big difference. She instead spent her time at fund raisers, 350+ vs 50-60. Trump talked to the people, while Hillary talked to her donors.
And for the record, I don’t think we should be doing a FPTP system even if we moved away from the electoral college due to the numerous problems with FPTP. Either STAR or approval voting would be far better.
I agree. I think this would go along way to help reduce the divisiveness in politics. I had to look up STAR and Approval, I’ve mostly been looking at Ranked Choice. All of them pretty much look to accomplish the same goal and can move us away from the 2 party, winner-take-all system.
I don’t doubt any of this is true. But if anything, I think it just supports my point that under our current system, candidates do not pay attention to anything other than a select few cities. So the pro electoral college argument over candidates focusing on select few cities is a moot point.
All of them pretty much look to accomplish the same goal and can move us away from the 2 party, winner-take-all system.
They’re all better than FPTP, but ranked choice voting in a way suffers from the same sort of issues as FPTP. The spoiler effect of FPTP is still present, not nearly as bad, but still present. Because at the end of the day, ranked choice voting is basically FPTP over several rounds. If FPTP is bad, then repeating it several times isn’t good.
The other thing is that ranked choice isn’t as secure as STAR or approval, which are purely additive, whereas ranked choice is not. Pure addition makes it much easier to audit results, which is incredibly important. Additive results also allow us to see the results being collected in real time so to speak, which goes a long way towards trust in the system. Ranked choice just doesn’t have that ability.
The other problem with ranked choice is that it doesn’t really give somebody a quantitative say in how much they like/dislike candidates. I might prefer a candidate order of B, C, then E. But if I absolutely revile E, don’t care either way about C, and am in love with B, the vote won’t really show that. Approval has this problem as well, but it is a minor gripe to be honest.
Either way, all 3 of these will help deal with the 2 party situation. But if we have a choice, STAR is the best in my opinion.
Fair points. I’ve seen the most traction around ranked choice, so even if it isn’t ideal, it’s still a step in the right direction, and seemingly the one with the best chance of happening right now. I think I prefer ranked choice over Approval. I don’t want to just say, “these 3 wouldn’t be the end of the world,” I want to be able to give more weight to the candidate I actually want to win. STAR still does that.
I do see where the transparency around ranked choice could be harder to see and make voting a lot more confusing. In an era of people claim election fraud left and right, that’s not a good thing. I guess I’d go STAR > Ranked Choice > Approval > The current system.
Other than that pesky wording on the 2nd amendment, the US Constitution is pretty good.
It includes the electoral college though, which treat’s peoples votes differently based on where they live, which is undemocratic.
The Senate itself was specifically designed to degrade the democratic power of more populous states.
That was the intention of the house, not the senate. But regardless, the design of congress isn’t too great either. The power of a person’s vote on the legislature should be as close to equal as is possible with everyone else’s. No vote should have more weight/power.
Can you expand on that? I was referring to the distribution of senators because it gives small states the same number of votes as large states. That means that each individual voter in larger states has proportionately less representation.
Yeah, I think that is wrong, as it gives people an unequal voice over legislature. Ideally the entirety of congress would looks something far closer to the house of representatives, with each representative being representative of the population.
Okay fair enough. Disproportionate representation is stupid. Any other egregious amendments? I’m not American and I welcome the education.
As far as amendments go, the most egregious that comes to my mind is the 13th:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Slavery is still legal within the united states, but only in the case of prisoners. Slavery should be illegal in all forms no matter what, but we’re still stuck in the 1800s. People commonly think the U.S. ended slavery after the civil war, but instead we just turned to neo-slavery, with a million Jim Crow laws on the books to put black people right back out in the fields.
Nowadays instead of Jim Crow, we have the war on drugs which largely does the same thing. The U.S. has the largest per capita prison rate out there for a reason.
The needs of people in LA or NYC are very different than the needs of people in Wyoming. No one is, or will ever, ignore the massive population centers. They will get attention, they always get attention. Eliminating the electoral college would make it very easy to completely ignore certain states, as it would make more sense to campaign in very large population centers, where you get more bang for your buck.
A lot of people only complain about the electoral college when it doesn’t work out in their favor. If Trump won the popular vote in 2016, but lost in the electoral college, the same people demonizing it today would be praising its wisdom.
I looked it up a few years ago. Trump went to several states that Clinton didn’t, and it paid off for him. The president has to be the president for all 50 states, not just the ones with the most people.
(this isn’t an endorsement of Trump, it’s just that the 2016 is what brought the electoral college thing to the forefront again)
That is the current situation. Presidential candidates only ever visit the biggest cities in swing states.
They already do. No candidate visits any state other than a stronghold state for funding, or a swing state. That’s it. The rest of the states get ignored.
https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/map-general-election-campaign-events-and-tv-ad-spending-2020-presidential-candidates
I live in Pennsylvannia. My state recieves the most attention, and every single election at least one of the candidates shows up at my town. Do you know where they don’t visit? They don’t visit any of the small cities in PA, let alone some place in the surrounding states. If the reason to keep the electoral college around is to prevent un-even focus from candidates, then the electoral college spectacularly fails at this goal. If instead all votes were equally regardless of location, candidates would far more often visit the cities in other states.
It’s unavoidable that they’ll stick to higher population regions, because that’s always going to be the most effective strategy no matter the system. Since that’s unavoidable, we may as well have a system that is fair.
I don’t think so. The people who hate the electoral college are pretty consistent in my experience.
And for the record, I don’t think we should be doing a FPTP system even if we moved away from the electoral college due to the numerous problems with FPTP. Either STAR or approval voting would be far better.
This outlines what I’m talking about pretty well…
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trumps-campaigns-numbers/story?id=43356783
Sure, most of the time was spent in battleground states, but Trump went to 8 states Hillary didn’t show up in at all. Trump didn’t show up in 10% of states, Hillary didn’t show up in nearly 30%. That’s a big difference. She instead spent her time at fund raisers, 350+ vs 50-60. Trump talked to the people, while Hillary talked to her donors.
I agree. I think this would go along way to help reduce the divisiveness in politics. I had to look up STAR and Approval, I’ve mostly been looking at Ranked Choice. All of them pretty much look to accomplish the same goal and can move us away from the 2 party, winner-take-all system.
I don’t doubt any of this is true. But if anything, I think it just supports my point that under our current system, candidates do not pay attention to anything other than a select few cities. So the pro electoral college argument over candidates focusing on select few cities is a moot point.
They’re all better than FPTP, but ranked choice voting in a way suffers from the same sort of issues as FPTP. The spoiler effect of FPTP is still present, not nearly as bad, but still present. Because at the end of the day, ranked choice voting is basically FPTP over several rounds. If FPTP is bad, then repeating it several times isn’t good.
The other thing is that ranked choice isn’t as secure as STAR or approval, which are purely additive, whereas ranked choice is not. Pure addition makes it much easier to audit results, which is incredibly important. Additive results also allow us to see the results being collected in real time so to speak, which goes a long way towards trust in the system. Ranked choice just doesn’t have that ability.
The other problem with ranked choice is that it doesn’t really give somebody a quantitative say in how much they like/dislike candidates. I might prefer a candidate order of B, C, then E. But if I absolutely revile E, don’t care either way about C, and am in love with B, the vote won’t really show that. Approval has this problem as well, but it is a minor gripe to be honest.
Either way, all 3 of these will help deal with the 2 party situation. But if we have a choice, STAR is the best in my opinion.
Fair points. I’ve seen the most traction around ranked choice, so even if it isn’t ideal, it’s still a step in the right direction, and seemingly the one with the best chance of happening right now. I think I prefer ranked choice over Approval. I don’t want to just say, “these 3 wouldn’t be the end of the world,” I want to be able to give more weight to the candidate I actually want to win. STAR still does that.
I do see where the transparency around ranked choice could be harder to see and make voting a lot more confusing. In an era of people claim election fraud left and right, that’s not a good thing. I guess I’d go STAR > Ranked Choice > Approval > The current system.
Not far from where I’m at. The auditing of approval being easier means that I think it should be at #2, but that’s a minor gripe.
We can agree that the current system is the worst option, which is enough for me.