cool but this aint happening cause the us aint a democracy
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Thing about the electoral collage is that it doesn’t matter what the large majority wants.
The problem with a simple majority is it allows large states to completely dominate less populated states.
We are a republic, kind of like how the UK is a union of (at least) four countries each with its own government. We are 50 states each with its own government and the constitutional right to make it’s own laws about matters not specifically delegated to the federal government (see the abortion rights debate).
The founding fathers established the electoral college as a compromise between electing the president in a vote by Congress and a popular vote. I would take an amendment to the constitution to get rid of it.
The founding fathers established the electoral college as a compromise between electing the president in a vote by Congress and a popular vote. I would take an amendment to the constitution to get rid of it.
They established it as a way to launder slave votes into presidential elections, as stated explicitly by the man responsible, James madison:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065
There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.
The electoral college exists because southerners were spoiled bitches who wanted more power than they deserved, then they threw a tantrum when they lost anyway (the Civil War), now they keep threatening and whining if they can’t keep their unfair advantage while gerrymandering to hell.
I’d be fine with the EC, if we also denied the electoral votes of states that don’t follow the constitution or ratify all the amendments (Mississippi still refuses to ratify the 24th banning the poll tax).
Thank you for that
The more I learn about the concessions made to the southern slave owners I wish the founders hadn’t tried so hard to include them in the union. The north and the south were so different it seems like it would be as doomed to failure as jamming all the Balkan states into a single country.
Every time Texas threatens to secede and doesn’t I wish we had the choice to vote them out so they could see just how badly they are not the hot shit they think they are.
Same, Texas is unique, they fought 2 wars of independence because their parent country started (or could theoretically start) restricting slavery.
All this went out the window when they capped the number of representatives in congress. That took away popular vote power. Montana doesn’t need 2 senators and a rep. North Dakota doesn’t need 2 senators and a rep. California is getting massively screwed on their representative count. That state alone should swing legislation based on reps alone. It would lay bare the tyranny of the minority.
I think a bigger component in making this happen is instituting ranked choice voting. Political parties are private institutions that have amassed entirely too much power over our country. Sure, we can vote but electoral college or popular voting and we still are stuck with a candidate selected by one of two private institutions. These private entities are able to control elected officials who stray too far from the party line. As long as large political parties control the candidates our vote holds less power.
ranked choice isn’t going to fix shit, proportional or go home
Ranked choice for presidency, proportional for congress (and the senate if that’s worth having exist at all).
I think having a bicameral house is a very good thing.
And I know it gets a lot of hate in these parts, but the Senate was never meant to be proportionate. We are a federation of states, it makes sense to have one house be “the people’s house” with proportionate representation, and a second house that is divided by state. It’s kind of the entire point of having a union of states.
Bring on the hate, but I don’t think the Senate is the problem. The corruption in the Senate is a symptom of the problem, but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with it as a concept.
States are fairly arbitrary divisions of land and I don’t think they need representation separate from the representation their people have.
Everything is an arbitrary division when we get down to it. Doing away with states would require a complete rewrite of the constitution, and a fundamental shift to the country as a whole. I personally like the Republic concept and ability for states to experiment with things that might not be popular or a priority for the entire country. This will have good and bad outcomes on these experiments, but it’s how we have things like decriminalization, universal healthcare attempts, etc. Without the “all other things not innumerated belong to the states” this isn’t possible, and removing state representation removes that.
The problem is that they haven’t expanded the house since
1920(?)1929 the current house should have at least 659 representatives, and personally I think it should be double that, because at 659 each representative is still representing 500,000 people.Edit: thanks to AbidanYre
Approval voting, not ranked choice. Easier to explain, solves the same problems at least as well and most voting machines already support it.
Combine it with every state assigning their electors in the same fashion as Maine and you’re most of the way to what people want without needing to get 38 states and 2/3 of Congress to agree to an amendment. Just simple majorities in individual state legislatures that can be done piecemeal.
Can’t believe Americans have become so anti-education.
Given there are only two major institutions that are capable of winning under the current rules, one of the two institutions figured out it’s advantageous not to have highly educated constituents.
Over the period of about two generations they’ve managed to rig it so that only the upper class can manage to get a fair education. So the poor malleable people will vote for whoever they’re told to vote for, and the ultra-rich will vote for the side that is most advantageous to them.
In a time where we should be trying to get as much education into every living being that we can, degenerates are using a lack of education as a wedge to stay in power.
stupid is as stupid does.
I’m not sure why this is surprising to you.
I think this is a “college” joke, not a political statement. Enhanced by the joke itself being supported by the teller’s implied lack of understanding about what the electoral college is.
oh that might be the case, though anti education is a big part of the republican party right now, so it might be a multi layered joke lol.
It’s always been this way. But now they just can talk to each other and blast their views online.
Yeah, but only (rural) land here has any say, so whether most Americans want to do away with the EC is irrelevant. Only Republicans in rural areas should get to dictate the future of this country.
Turns out even that level of rigging is not enough for the traitorous Republican scum; they might be planning on having just enough states refuse to call the election and throw it to the House so their scum there can install the insane and incompetent donnie in the White House.
This is the kind of comment that we do not need here amongst the righteous. Of course you have a say, you have a vote. It doesn’t matter which state, just fucking vote. The republicans are on their last leg, their only hope is that you give up and resign to your fate.
Don’t. Don’t give an inch. Go vote. Show them that we the people are still in power, and we will no longer stand for their corporate distopia.
I very much plan on voting (this being Colorado, I don’t have to go anywhere, thankfully - and I can sit down and thoroughly read the ballot measures and so on and read about them, etc., and fill out at my leisure, then mail in. This is as it should be in every state.), just like most here on Lemmy (minus the bots and trolls). However, since I’m from Colorado, it turns out that voting for POTUS in Colorado is more or less a foregone conclusion.
In states like mine, that are not “battleground states”, our vote counts very much less when it comes to POTUS. Same goes for things like representation in both the House and the Senate for states with larger populations. The House is EXTREMELY tilted for the reactionaries, and is way out of step with the voters, even though they did indeed vote.
So, yeah, voting is important. I plan on voting like my life depends on it, even though I’m not in a battleground state, because those other things on the ballot matter as well. You have to play to win, as the lottos are fond of saying. However, there is no good reason to pretend that the system is not seriously flawed in some very important aspects.
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sorry, I asked the parliamentarian if we could do democracy today and he told me to go fuck myself :/
Lol … when has the will of the common people ever mattered to politicians who are beholden to the ultra wealthy.
I’m in Canada and we suffer from the same problem.
Lol … when has the will of the common people ever mattered to politicians who are beholden to the ultra wealthy.
The French Revolution leaps to mind.
It will be a cold, dark day, over my dead body, when New York City has more voting power than all of Washington state. I will fight people to the death to keep the electoral college. Get you’re moronic facts straight, the Electoral keeps high population areas from forcing their ideals on the rest of the Nation, it also makes cheating harder. FIX THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE! Fine. But remove it and you give the ruling class the ability to add a billion votes nation wide and winning an election, instead of now where they cheat district to district. Just because it’s becoming obvious your drug war baron might not win because people hate that she had jailed people for simple drug possessions, and she’s as much a traitor to the Republic as Donnie T, you don’t get to change the rules. GET A BETTER CANDIDATE WORTHLESS DEMOCRATS! Weak humans blame the system for their weak candidates, when it’s them and their candidate that are to blame, not the system that rejects them.
Who are you voting for?
Does it start with a Q and wear tinfoil on it’s head?All your arguments against it are the reason I want it. Isn’t that fascinating.
You forgot the /s
Naw op definitely drank the Qoolaide
I don’t know much about the ins and outs of politics, but wouldn’t modifying the electoral college to be bound by popular vote help?
Or if it were abolished, couldn’t the popular vote be set to act as one vote per section, with separation in a way that is fair.
Just spit balling here, but it doesn’t seem like going pop vote means we would have to drown out less populated areas with densely populated areas.
Am I wrong? Am I on the right track?
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I’m conflicted on this. On one hand, there are clear problems with the electoral college situation right now, but on the other hand, getting rid of it means that the tyranny of the majority will become a bigger problem. It’s unclear to me which is worse or how we can fix the latter.
Large majority of voters want to change a system where the large majority of voters don’t have as much say as a a minority of voters.
If the Democrats actually get the house and the senate this election, they should definitely looking into changing the voting system. It would be in their best interest.
Would require a constitutional amendment to do so. 2/3rds majority of the House and Senate and then ratification by 3/4ths of all state legislatures to outright remove it.
Or the interstate voting compact which just needs a couple more states. But that’s a less direct mechanism that keeps the electoral college intact, just changes the way electoral votes are distributed.
Yes and no.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
The NPVIC may work to get around the electoral college without amending the constitution. It would still be FPTP which wouldn’t be great. But it would at a minimum be an improvement, because it would do away with swing states, red voters stuck in blue states, and blue voters stuck in red states.
because it would do away with swing states, red voters stuck in blue states, and blue voters stuck in red states.
…and replace it with the election being won based primarily on turnout in California. Like seriously, the last few times a candidate won the electoral college but lost the popular vote it was a case where their margin in California was larger than their margin nationally. As in across the other 49 states more people voted for the person who won the electoral college, and California by itself was responsible for the swing to the other direction. Because California is just so ridiculously big compared to the other states.
and replace it with the election being won based primarily on turnout in California
No, it would replace it with a majority FPTP country wide system. Californians are a minority of the country. They do not get sole control, nor would they under a popular vote system.
California was larger than their margin nationally.
But not all of that margin comes from California, and not all of Californians vote blue.
Where you live should have no effect on how much of a voice you have in the federal government. Everybody’s vote should be counted, and counted equally, because we’re all made equally. The current system completely fails at that.
No, it would replace it with a majority FPTP country wide system. Californians are a minority of the country. They do not get sole control, nor would they under a popular vote system.
Unless this also dramatically changes voting patterns nationwaide it’s essentially the same thing. Every time in recent history the electoral college and popular vote have yielded different results, the difference was smaller than the margin in California.
the difference was smaller than the margin in California
That’s arbitrary. The same is probably true of Florida/Texas combined.
The whole point is that the power of a vote is independent of location.
Or the interstate voting compact which just needs a couple more states.
Of course, it’s already got every state that benefits from it being passed, and a few more that signed on but only benefit so long as their preferences are always in line with California. Which collectively isn’t enough for it to go active.
Now you’ve got to convince states that will both lose power and routinely get results out of line with their preferences to sign onto the thing that will do that.
…and once it goes active it will go to the courts where the argument will be whether as an interstate compact it has to be federally approved or if the state’s right to assign their electors as they please trumps that.
While dramatic things like making the senate votes proportional or abolishing the electoral college might require a constitutional amendment, the text is silent on plurality vs RCW or what have you.
Congress could mandate a switch with a simple law, and point to their power to ensure democracy, same as the post bush v gore laws that mandated electronic voting machines.
There are still some other things that can be done federally to help. If they change the size of the house (determined by legislation not constitution), it also changes electoral votes for states. Electoral votes are based on house + senate seats per state
On its own that makes the electoral college much closer to representing the population of each state
I would also presume it likely would also make the popular vote compact way closer or cross the needed majority of electoral votes. Though I haven’t done or seen any analysis on that directly so not 100% sure because the ways seats are appropriated can be funky and non-linear
I feel like it would be more realistic to repeal the Apportionment Act of 1911. At the very least, it would correct the massive inequality in congressional apportionment. It would also increase the number of electors in the largest states, which would mostly benefit democrats.
Don’t the states choose the voting system for their particular state? If so, it will never happen.
As if Dems would do anything that could compromise their own power.
Democrats generally favor ending the electoral college, if nothing else because it would tend to make them win elections more due to the packing effect of NY and California and the tendency of rural states to get more votes per capita. In fact several states, pretty much all the solid blue states in the last couple of elections, have passed a compact to give all electoral votes to the popular vote winner.
Dems face an electoral cliff if they do nothing. In a few more cycles, it may be impossible to win the senate or the presidency, even with a majority vote behind them, due to too much power in small states.
The only reason they want a popular vote system is because it would have worked in their favor in 2000 and 2016.
The minute it goes against “their” candidate they’ll scream to go back to the electoral college.
See the multi-state pact here:
https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation
Currently passed in 17 states for 209 electoral college votes, it doesn’t take effect until there are 270 accounted for.
But do you really think the residents of a state like Oregon, or Washington, or California will just be OK with their electoral college votes being passed to a popular vote winner who is a Republican?
Especially if that person failed to win their state?
It would be nice to implement stuff like one of the voting systems under the broader ranked choice voting umbrella first before getting rid of the electoral college.
But do you really think the residents of a state like Oregon, or Washington, or California will just be OK with their electoral college votes being passed to a popular vote winner who is a Republican?
Yes, because they won. People who favor democracy understand they won’t always be in the majority, and that’s OK bedause they aren’t shitbags. People who only want the system to work in their favor are called Conservatives.
This runs counter to the Lemmy narrative which says we need like 40 years of Democratic rule to unfuck the country.
To unfuck the Supreme Court. That’s still an issue regardless of how the voting is done. And it’s usually referenced to discredit people just saying “let the system work it out” and in favor of quicker solutions like packing the Court.
You have more faith than I do. If Oregonians thought their vote was overturned because of a national popular vote winner, there would be riots.
Their vote wasn’t “overturned” their vote counted just as much as anyone else’s they just lost.
Under the multi-state pact, if Oregon voted overwhelmingly for Harris, but Trump won the national popular vote, and our electoral college votes were delivered to Trump because of the popular vote, yeah, that would be overturning the will of Oregon voters and there would be riots.
Overturning what exactly? To record their votes in the EC for the losing candidate in a symbolic gesture? No one gives a shit about that, they’re still losing. You’ll have the state tallies, which actually count people, if you really want to say “most Oregonians disliked Trump”.
The way the multi-state pact works is that member states agree to give all their electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote, regardless of who the state actually voted for.
It doesn’t actually get rid of the Electoral College, that would take a constitutional amendment, it just re-apportions the Electoral College votes based on the outcome of the popular vote.
So in 2000 and 2016, the Democratic candidate won Oregon, and won the popular vote, they would get all the electoral college votes, not a problem, even though they lost the election overall.
Where it WILL be a problem is if the Democratic candidate wins the state, but the Republican candidate wins the national popular vote.
State voters will be told “Yeah, we don’t care who you actually voted for, the Republican gets the votes from your state.” OMG there will be riots.
Think of it like this… Your vote in your state gets inverted because of voters in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, etc. etc.
Your state EC vote for a losing candidate is a purely symbolic exercise with zero effect whatsoever on the result. And once the NPVC is in effect even the symbolism will be effectively nil as people no longer care or count electoral votes.
If the Republicans win the popular vote, they’ve also won the electoral college, but even if they didn’t, that’s democracy. Trying to overturn the will of the people by reverting to an archaic and undemocratic system is anti-democracy. You have to actually believe the EC has some value to try go to the streets to try to restore it, but it’s a bad system that invalidates people’s votes, whether or not Democrats are winning.
So when one town votes for trump and Harris wins the state the votes of that town are “overturned” by the state then?
Pretty much, and they’re so pissed off about that they want to split the state and join Idaho.
Really? I grew up in a red town in Massachusetts and I’ve literally never heard a single person talk about their vote like that ever, let alone suggest that the town should join another state.
You mean if they lost? How many riots have there been in Oregon when the candidate Oregon shows didn’t win the electoral college? Trump lost the popular vote in 2016, but we didn’t see riots in Oregon.
That’s not your best argument against a national popular vote agreement. The best argument is that no national campaigns would give a shit about Oregon if the goal was winning the national popular vote. Oregon is a progressive coastal state, but it’s still a flyover state.
In fact, states wouldn’t matter at all. State borders are just imaginary lines drawn around population centers. Campaigns would focus exclusively on demographics and high density population zones. Oregonians as a demographic would be considered “safe” for progressives and “lost” for conservatives, so neither side would give them much effort. California Republicans and Texas Democrats would be the big winners. States like New York and Florida would become the new battlegrounds, as candidates spoke to the concerns of the most people.
And in a way, that would be much better. It would encourage more voters to actually show up, and local races would become more important. But with first past the post, winner take all national elections, you’ll still have two parties demonizing the other.
Found the person not from Oregon:
Lol, I’m from Philly, that’s not a riot.
Oregonians as a demographic would be considered “safe” for progressives and “lost” for conservatives, so neither side would give them much effort.
That’s now. You’re describing the electoral college.
True.
Is the suggestion here that the only people who support the electoral college are those who don’t want the president to represent the majority of the voting population?
I think the argument boils down to the same one that created both a Senate and House of Representatives, which is does the US have allegiance to it’s citizens or it’s States.
Representation by population vs representation by area. The same kind of arguments made in favour of switching the U.S. to a fully proportional system (getting rid of all forms of representation by area) could equally be made in favour of having one world government with proportional representation.
When we think about it that way (world elections would be dominated by Asia), it’s easy to see why we might not want such a system. Then, returning to the U.S. system alone it’s easier to see why many people want representation by area preserved. Although the cultural differences between states are much smaller than the differences between continents, they’re still very much present and the issues often dominate American politics.
No, the suggestion here is that the people supporting the popular vote are doing it because they got burned in 2000 and 2016.
Had it gone the other way, they wouldn’t be agitating for it.
If Trump somehow wins the popular vote, but loses the electoral college, WA, OR and CA will be THRILLED.
Your suggestion is wrong. Eliminating the Electoral College is advocated for by everyone who supports Democracy. It is also not a coincidence that the Electoral College disproportionately benefits one party over the other. And to cement that advantage they employ anti-Democratic measures in an attempt at voter suppression.
Everyone who supports Democracy… right up until it goes against their interests.
Thankfully, there are many people who don’t think like this.
I think you’re giving average people too much credit.
“Consider how dumb the average person is and then remember 1/2 of them are dumber than that!” - Carlin
So you don’t think it’s ok to do the right thing, because people want it for the wrong reasons?
I think people want it now because they feel burned by the 2000 and 2016 elections, but the first time it goes the other way they will be like “Wait, not like THAT!”
I look at the 2000 election like this:
Gore won. If we had completed counting the ballots in Florida, however they were counted, Gore won.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/29/uselections2000.usa
(Published 8 days after the Bush inauguration)
The problem there wasn’t popular vs. electoral college. The problem was Democrats are spineless and refuse to fight. “When they go low, we go high” and all that.
In the end though, if Gore had also bothered to win his own home state of Tennessee, Florida would not have mattered.
In 2016, again, less of a problem with popular vs. electoral and more that Clinton utterly failed to campaign in key states like MI and WI, taking them for granted and assuming they were a lock. Surprise! Not a lock.
Had she done her job correctly, she wouldn’t have lost the EC.
Gore won. If we had completed counting the ballots in Florida, however they were counted, Gore won.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/29/uselections2000.usa
(Published 8 days after the Bush inauguration)
The problem there wasn’t popular vs. electoral college. The problem was Democrats are spineless and refuse to fight. “When they go low, we go high” and all that.
There were recounts beforehand. Didn’t change the result. The last recount, the one that got interrupted by the injunction and killed by SCOTUS was of a handful of specific counties and counted under a different standard for over- and under-votes than the rest of the state.
If it had been completed, Bush would still have won. According to some media outlets doing research on the topic, had the entire state been recounted under the standard Gore wanted to use for that handful of places, Gore might have won. Some surveys done after the fact also suggested Gore could have won but surveys aren’t votes, it’s why we don’t just let news media do a poll and decide the president that way.
The SCOTUS decision leaned on two things: Election deadlines are enforceable and using different rules to count votes depending on which district you are in violates Equal Protection. They killed the last recount because it violated equal protection and a version of it that wouldn’t could not possibly have been completed before the deadline (about 2 hours after they released the opinion).
The logic behind Bush v Gore is why Trump switched from launching lawsuit after lawsuit in 2020 to bloviating and whining and hoping for a coup starting at about mid December. He’ll do the same this year if he loses - he’ll launch any lawsuit he thinks might have a ghost of a chance until we reach election deadlines then incessantly bloviate in a vain attempt to foment rebellion.
I remember being in 3rd grade and learning about the electoral college and thinking, “that’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard of”. Still true to this day.
Then how do you stop urban concerns from completely trouncing rural concerns? Voters from rural areas have valid concerns which are largely opposite of urban voters. If you get rid of electoral college, candidates will campaign in major cities and that’s it. Nobody else will matter.
For anyone downvoting me- you should know I’m a liberal-libertarian registered Democrat from Connecticut, who’s very much against Trump and most of the BS today’s GOP is peddling. I just don’t think disenfranchising anyone who doesn’t live in a city is the answer.
and what has that gotten us? rural communities are subsidized out the wazoo as the urban centers across America are strangled and starved. as the more powerful minority of people is catered too
It’s almost like many people are getting taxed w/o proper representation…
Even if the 10 largest cities all voted Democrat that would only account for 8% of the vote. And not everyone votes the same way in a city either. There are plenty of republicans voting in major cities but their vote doesn’t matter because of the college. Long Island went to Trump. NYC still got 400,000 votes for Trump. All this means is more people get a voice.
That’s what the Senate is for. Two senators per state regardless of population. Wyoming has as much of a say as California does.
And what of the House? It’s largely based on population. If the White House and the House of Representatives are both population heavy then the Senate is entirely outnumbered.
The point is supposed to be that the House is population based, the Senate is state based, and the Presidency is somewhere in the middle.
In all honesty, that should change as well. I don’t think that’s doing any good, either. It gives people with completely backward and insane ideas the impression that their positions should be on equal footing with normal people’s ideas.
I am not trying to invalidate anyone’s ideas.
But rural voters and urban voters have different needs. Neither is ‘wrong’.
For example- the urban voter might have a lot of gangland gun violence, so they push for strong gun control.
The rural voter OTOH has a police response time of 20+ minutes or more, and real threats to life and property from four-legged predators so they want real useful guns to defend themselves.Neither is wrong for pushing their particular needs. They just don’t acknowledge the other exists.
Quite frankly if you’re going to say urban people are ‘normal people’ and rural people are ‘backward and insane’, then I’m quite in favor of reducing your own influence (and I say that as a liberal voter and registered Democrat). Good government recognizes that one size doesn’t fit all.
I don’t know of anyone considering getting rid of guns that would be used for pest control in a rural area. Beyond slogans and bumper stickers, is anyone seriously proposing that?
I think that the people in the places where nearly all the people live (urban centers and their suburban surroundings) surely can arrive at sane guns laws, taking into account the (valid) concerns of the few remote rural people.
So that covers gun laws. Is there anything that the majority of voters cannot grasp about how to govern rural areas?
Actually I’m not sure we agree on that.
What sort of guns do you feel would be appropriate for pest control in rural areas?
How do you stop a majority of the electoral college from completely trouncing the concerns of the other states?
You should read what the electoral college does, because that’s not what it does.
Not the previous commenter, but I’m pretty certain that the, apparently fictional book, that Leave Burton showed on either The Daily Show, or Last Week Tonight, entitled It’s all Because of Racism, would cover what the EC’s actual purpose is. Though in this particular case it may be fairer to say classism.
I think it was less overt racism, but still pretty racist.
But mostly because Classism and Racism were pretty intertwined back in the day, what with non-white people essentially being entirely disallowed from actually being a higher class.
In other words, racism was so overt that you don’t even need to mention it.
It’s a package deal, really.
As opposed to now where like 10 states are tossups and the rest are locked in?
Which would be replaced with “Can the Democrat win California by a large enough margin?”
Which was literally the case when people complain about Clinton winning the popular vote in 2016 - across the 49 states that aren’t California more people voted for Trump, but she won California by such a large margin that she won the popular vote because of California alone. Same thing in 2000, where Gore’s popular vote lead was smaller than his margin in CA.
FYI Hillary did not win the popular vote just because of California
Also you shouldn’t reward bad actors providing a shit place to live by making their vote count significantly more.
One citizen one vote!
FYI Hillary did not win the popular vote just because of California
Yes, she did. That there are other combinations of states that she won that combine to have a similar total margin doesn’t change that her national margin was smaller than her margin in California. And that’s the crux of the argument Snopes makes - she won the national popular vote by 2,833,220 and sure she won California by 4,269,978 votes but there are other states she won that if added together had a combined margin in her favor of more than 2,833,220 votes and also just her California votes alone wouldn’t be enough to exceed Trump’s vote count nationwide so it doesn’t count.
Which is…kinda ridiculous? It’s a big stretch for a frankly kinda dumb claim.
Also, what is wrong with only winning California, anyway? California represents the broad spectrum of a modern America and it has its rural areas as well. It is easy to argue that it is our most important state, too.
What people in California want should matter even if it overrides smaller red states - since they will likely only hold us back anyway.
It’s like you refuse to understand logic, lol
Okay, that’s just fine with me. California is arguably our most important state and has a huge population. So of course winning there should matter. This is not hard.
Which would be replaced with “Can the Democrat win California by a large enough margin?”
If it’s going to be fucked either way I’d rather at least have it be fucked in a way where every vote counts the same rather then a Wyoming vote being worth like 4 times a California vote owing to the house of representatives population being limited which means Californians aren’t being properly represented in the house.
Oh jeeeeez, maybe republicans would have to have real policies that appeal to a majority of Americans, instead of dipshit authoritarian policies that only enrich the already rich and take rights away while mainly pandering to racists in the population at large.
The electoral college is the major reason why the republicans have gone absolutely bugfuck, because they can win with a minority of votes, allowing them to be as undemocratic as they want to be, knowing they have a barely large enough base to squeak through in all the right spots.
And considering the results of the bush and trump presidencies, you’re making the argument against the electoral college, because their two picks objectively made the country worse.
So the people in cities should just be worth less when they vote? It’s a federal vote for a federal office, everyone in the country should count the same.
The individual states already have their own powers which make sure the federal government doesn’t make decisions that are bad for those states. And each county and town have their own governments that pass local laws.
I’ve also heard this argument so many times but I haven’t heard any actual examples.
Pretty sure the rural concerns trumped the urban ones in the last elections in the Netherlands.
Almost like they could be represented in the house or the Senate, right
The cities is where all the people are. What are these “concerns” that rural areas have that should override most of the concerns of the majority of people?
Sure, then we can have another republican get elected against the will of the people. Clearly rural concerns are more important than preventing authoritarian idiots like trump from being able to undemocratically take power.
And just what are these “rural concerns”, anyway?
Usually bs like “good Christian values”, which are ultimately so anti-christian that it’s almost humorous.
I spent my formative years in a very rural area, and that tracks with my experience.
Cities matter more. Sorry, but that’s the reality.
Cities are where people live. People matter.
Cities are where culture happens. Culture matters. You’re not going to have a big art/music/anything scene in bumbleweed, NE because there aren’t enough people there to constitute a scene.
Cities are where economy happens. Money moving around matters. There are more transactions per day in the corner shop by me than a whole week in some country town with 700 residents.
Rural people still have the Senate and local government. Their rep in the house (which should be expanded) also should speak up for their region.
Everyone deserves some minimum respect, but the idea that nowhere-utah is just as important as Queens is insane. A minority holding the majority garbage is not good. Especially when that minority seems fixated on terrible ideas like climate change denial and xenophobia.
With respect sir (or madam), you are personifying the ‘ivory tower elite’ attitude that so many conservatives make fun of. 'I matter, others don’t.
You think there’s no culture in rural areas? That you need a giant festival to have culture?
That corner shop that has 100 transactions an hour… where do you think the bread they sell comes from? The flour? The avocadoes on the avocado toast? (sorry, I had to :P ) Sure as fuck doesn’t come from the city. You can write the rest of the nation off as unimportant and then see how unimportant they are when your fridge is empty. They matter.the idea that nowhere-utah is just as important as Queens is insane.
And the idea that Queens should be able to dictate policy that applies nationally including Nowhere, UT is just as insane.
Especially when that minority seems fixated on terrible ideas like climate change denial and xenophobia.
I’ll give you that- most of the conservative platform these days is a bit on the batshit side.
But there’s other parts that make sense. Take guns for example. A liberal in NYC has the 11th largest army in the world 3 digits away. Police response time is seconds or minutes. So ‘nobody needs a gun’ is a common urban liberal position.
Go out in rural areas, there might be two deputies for an entire county with police response time in the range of 30-120 minutes if at all. And that county may have 4-legged predators like bears, wolves, etc that can threaten humans. So that guy wants a GOOD gun to defend himself and his family, because if there is a problem nobody else is gonna arrive until it’s too late.
The urban liberal doesn’t consider the rural conservative POV, and they want to apply their position nationally. Should the rural conservative have no useful defense against that?Guns are just an example, but that overall is why I think the electoral college has a place. House is based on population, Senate based on statehood, Presidency is in the middle with influences both from statehood and population. That’s a good way to go.
And FWIW, I also support INCREASING the population representative in the House. The current cap of 437 has not served us well with the expanding US population, and there’s now over 700k citizens per representative. That’s far too many to get voices heard, and one rep covers far too many disparate people. And it also in the House increases influence of smaller states (to a minimum of 1/437th).
I believe the cap should be raised to a very large number, perhaps several thousand. It may no longer be possible to have the entire House convene in one building, but technology has solved that problem. If you have one representative for every say 10,000-25,000 citizens, it becomes much easier for a representative to truly represent their citizens in detail and gives a citizen much greater access to his or her representatives.You think there’s no culture in rural areas?
There is less cultural output because there are fewer people. There’s probably a thousand new bands that started in Brooklyn this month. You just can’t have those numbers out in the sticks because you don’t have the people. There literally aren’t enough singers.
Culture matters. People interacting and inspiring each other matters. It’s not that there’s nothing happening out in Wisconsin or wherever, but there’s less. There are fewer people to be doing stuff!
I almost wrote a preemptive response about “where does your food come from”. I don’t think most of the people living outside of cities are farmers.
A quick search says
The Midwest rounds out the top five states with the most farmers: Missouri (162,345, or 5% of the labor force) Iowa (145,432 or 9% of the labor force) Ohio (130,439 or 2% of the labor force) Oklahoma (130,434 or 7% of the labor force)I don’t know if https://usafacts.org/articles/farmer-demographics/ is a real site but it would be awkward for someone to make up these numbers.
That’s a lot of people in the sense of like “I couldn’t have that many people at my birthday party” but not a lot of people compared to like, who lives in major cities. Bushwick, Brooklyn is one neighborhood and has like 130k people.
Food is important but probably not a justification for holding everyone else hostage. Especially when most people living in those areas aren’t even growing food. (Some are second order involved, like the guy who works the Laundromat helps the farmer or whatever). Also especially when the efforts being stymied would help people, like student loan forgiveness or federally funded school meals.
The urban liberal doesn’t consider the rural conservative POV, and they want to apply their position nationally. Should the rural conservative have no useful defense against that?
The rural conservative POV is utterly poisoned by decades of racial violence and regressive policies. There’s like a mass shooting every day. Climate change is going to fuck us. Conservatism is not an okay world view.
That said, the answer is probably local government for things that are actually local. Environmental issues cannot be local. You can’t have this town dumping mercury into the water and pretending that’s just fine. But for something like “we want a bike lane here” or “we want a library that’s open weekends” that’s doesn’t need to be federal. But if “local” means “no queers allowed to get married here” then the locals can fuck themselves.
Guns are a whole separate wedge issue. I think they should at least be treated the same as cars- license, registration, insurance, mechanisms to remove the license like DUI. I don’t know how close to reality that is.
I wrote this on my phone so it’s not my best work.
For guns, I’ve recently run into a point of view that I think is valid: the above structure (insurance/license) disproportionately favors the wealthy. Ultimately it just adds a barrier for the poor.
I fully understand that the stats show that gun control laws DO indeed decrease GUN violence. However violent crime in general doesn’t really change. The ONLY statistically effective way that guarantees a reduction of violence on the whole is lifting people out of poverty. The less poor we have, the less violent crime. Social programs can lift us out of so many issues.
This is true. The same problem applies to transportation, health care, food security, etc. Poverty is terrible. Unfortunately, the right wing also seems to hate any effective programs to deal with it. No school lunches, no basic income, no nationalized insurance, etc etc.
Right, it’s especially rich because that the demographic that’s overwhelmingly “Christian” despite consistently voting against policies that align with “Christ’s” teachings.
I say it all the time - places like California and New York are strategically more important, too. Most of the game development, the movie/tv industry, software, even a lot of our food, happens in CA. And then a great deal of finance happens in NYC. Lots of defense industry stuff is clustered around DC as well.
It’s called “flyover country” for a reason. If you want to partake in what is happening, then move to those locations. Unfortunately, our backwards slave-era system gives wayyyy too much power to regions that just don’t matter as much.
Ever consider where your food comes from?
Yeah, a lot of it comes from California. And Mexico. Why do you ask?
The Central Valley and Hi-desert, we dont really impirt too much food in my region of California.
There are simple and solid answers to this. First of all, dozens of other countries make it work. So there’s nothing magical that needs to be done. Second, the Bill of Rights is there to protect the minority from the majority. It’s also there to protect the people from the government, which is partly synonymous. Third, right now everyone in the minority in a winner-take-all state is being disenfranchised. My vote never mattered, not once in my entire life. I think that’s far more important than rural voters having cool voting power. At least they would still have some voting power, whereas I have none.
Okay guys stop up voting this! Simply let me assure you that I will upvote for you!
If you upvote this comment to 100, I will upvote the way you want me to upvote.
Actually I’ll do you better! Look. I know these guys who can upvote. If you upvote my comment past 100, I’ll have them vote for you just the way you telepathically have told me to upvote by up voting for me…what? Why would you even need to know me or my friend who hasn’t even talked to you directly? That’s crazy talk! I’m an upvoter, I upvote. They. My friends who can upvote are true upvoters too. Soon you won’t even need to upvote at all! You can just go read all the shit we Upvoted for you! Yey! We call our selves the “Upvotlectoral” college. We learn algebra in this college too, but we never graduate…at least you don’t know if we have graduated or not.
Sounds like this clown lives in that one blip in Nebraska or whatever that can impact shit, you know what to do bois. Electoral vote this mofo out the comments section! /s (chill)
I’ve Upvoted you! See? Pretty simple right? Oh. Ah, you can’t drive your car anymore. You’re driving a Japanese car and they are destroying our jobs. Please see a ford dealership. And you’ll need farmer’s or the gecko. Anyway, details! Thanks for voting up!
Learning that it was so rich white people in the south could substitute the votes of newly freed black slaves with theirs is what got me.
All this shit is because they were too fucking nice to the slavers.
Should have solved that problem back then.
Note how racist and evil the south still is, and compare it to Germany, and they had 1/3 the time to get better.
Sherman and Brown did nothing wrong and should have had opportunity to finish their job.
I’ve had the same reaction learning about religion 😂
SAMESIES ❤️
Can’t beat it with people majority, need to have the land majority.
Where a county of 1000 dipshit rednecks have as much voting power as metropolitan sector of 100,000
Ending the electoral college and changing to popular vote for the presidency is a very important goal and young people should commit to make it your life’s work, because that’s how long it will take to get a constitutional amendment done, and only if a sustained effort is made.
In the meantime we can also work toward other goals than can help:
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Expand the size of the House of Representatives. The population is now way too big for the number of representatives we have, each representing 1/2 to 3/4 of a million people or more, when the founders envisioned a ratio of 1 per 30,000. Obviously we can’t achieve that ratio, but there are several good proposals out there to make it more fair.
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Statehood for Washington, DC and Puerto Rico (they deserve representation! and it would add 4 more senate seats).
Then there’s our representation in the Senate. Our population is distributed very unevenly among the states which get two senators each. Each Wyoming senator represents less than 300 thousand people; Each California senator represents about 20 Million people (2017 figures). By 2040, 2/3 of Americans will be represented by 30 percent of the Senate, and only 9 states will be home to half the country’s population [1]
What can be done about this? What about splitting the most densely populated states into 2 or 3 states? Highly unlikely to ever happen, but it’s an idea. Then there’s the idea of population redistribution. This is happening all the time anyway, but people could consciously choose to move into lower population states where their vote would count more (and cost of living is lower). With remote work much more acceptable these days, it should be easier for people with certain kinds of jobs to do, but it would also need investors choosing to start businesses in those states instead of always flocking to the high density states. There is a little bit of that happening but not much. Otherwise I don’t know how this problem can be solved.
Ending the electoral college and changing to popular vote for the presidency is a very important goal and young people should commit to make it your life’s work, because that’s how long it will take to get a constitutional amendment done, and only if a sustained effort is made.
for now, if you want to do something and don’t want to think about the electorates, you can campaign for local voting reform in your state (which will have an effect on the electorates as well) plus then your state has better representation now.
While we are at it, we should add 1 more state. That would give us 53, which is a prime number.
We would truly be one nation, indivisible…
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