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Kamala Harris’s running mate urges popular vote system but campaign says issue is not part of Democrats’ agenda
Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has called for the electoral college system of electing US presidents to be abolished and replaced with a popular vote principle, as operates in most democracies.
His comments – to an audience of party fundraisers – chime with the sentiments of a majority of American voters but risk destabilising the campaign of Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, who has not adopted a position on the matter, despite having previously voiced similar views.
“I think all of us know, the electoral college needs to go,” Walz told donors at a gathering at the home of the California governor, Gavin Newsom. “We need a national popular vote. We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nevada, and win.”
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They give you a bag of snakes and demand you reach in and pick one. Both will kill you with a single bite. It really doesn’t matter which you pick when they control your choices in the first place. I refuse to vote, it will make no difference if Harris wins or Trump, the loosing party will do everything in their power to defeat everything the winner tries to do for good, unless they can profit from it. It will just be more of the internal civil war over money. Our leaders will get richer, corporations will get tax cuts and the people will PAY!
It’s really like their own little game. We are just the peices. Neither party is working for us. They just work for themselves. But they have split up the issues to make sure the majority of the people have something to hate. And to play their game they need to do things to keep that hate going. So which one wins determines which hate will get applied. So your vote matters on that plane.
k
Normally I would agree, but it seems riskier this time around to have that mindset. Trump and his people want to do some serious damage and I believe that they will put in all the effort they can to do it.
It’s actually scary this time round
It’s scary every time around. This attitude is what got us someone who stalled on even admitting climate change was a thing for almost a decade instead of Al Gore in 2000. Like sure not as fraught as now but imagine being a decade ahead on implementing green policies even if those policies were watered down.
It’s always been that way, and you never cared. That has been happening for what, 50 years now?
Keep bowing down to your overlords and doing their bidding, that will SURELY create change. Surely.
Didn’t say it was the right thing to do. Ever since Carter’s loss which cause Democrats to go to the right because they thought it would get them votes, it’s really gone downhill.
Picking a turd taco or shit sandwich really doesn’t taste good.
This time it feels like a shotgun to the face or a shit sandwich.
I don’t think it’s fair to say both snakes in that bag are equally bad. Sure they might both kill you, but one of them will give you a horrific, painful death.
Rank choice voting for all federal elections
Finally!
The electoral college is good for one thing and one thing only: boosting confidence that election fraud in one place won’t impact the result of the election.
Winner takes all was always stupid and needs to be replaced with proportional allocation, preferably with a more direct ratio to the actual population of votes. Basically, everyone doing what Nebraska and Maine do.
It’s also really good for making sure that whoever wins the most acres of land gets a huge electoral boost. Because that’s important.
what if we make a compromise on the land area, say 3/5?
It’s also really good for making sure that whoever wins the most acres of land gets a huge electoral boost. Because that’s important.
Is it? The most disproportionate representation in the EC belongs to the people of Delaware, last time I ran the numbers of EC votes per capita.
State population is all that matters. Very small populations still get an EC vote for each Senator, which is the root of the problem.
Delaware has 3 electoral votes and a population of 1.018 million.
Wyoming has 3 electoral votes and a population of 584,000.
Wyoming is almost twice as over-represented as Delaware in the electoral college.
California currently has 54 electoral votes. If CA was as represented in the electoral college as Wyoming is, it would have 200 votes.
So you could argue that both Wyoming and California can claim to be more disproportionately represented by the EC than Delaware.
Ah, Wikipedia makes it really easy to list by per capita representation.
The top 10 in “lowest population per electoral vote”:
Wyoming Vermont District of Columbia Alaska North Dakota Montana Rhode Island South Dakota Delaware Maine
Cool. Not going to happen, but…. Cool.
Yeah, it’s a hopeless quest. Truly eliminating the EC would require 3/4 of state legislatures, an almost impossible task when the majority of states would be effectively voting against their self-interest.
Effectively neutering the EC only requires that the states with 50% of the EC votes agree to follow the national popular vote. But, it would be a fragile detente, since any state legislature could back out and break it.
It surprises me how many people still don’t know about the NPVIC
It still sends a message. Which in and of itself is good.
but campaign says issue is not part of Democrats’ agenda
Fucking hell! Every time either of them says something truly based, some DNC lackey comes and spoils it by saying that! 🤬
For real, ENOUGH already with the milquetoast Dem leadership being so terrified of actually taking a stand about any issue.
This is just like all those times Republican candidates hedged about Roe v Wade… right up until they finally got it overturned. Sure, the majority of voters agree the EC is outdated and needs to go; but saying as much can scare moderates, and doesn’t get you any new liberal voters. Never forget, “undecided” voters in the US are just fickle assholes who don’t want to vote for someone who “feels” too conservative or liberal. Unfortunately, with FPTP voting, they carry a lot of weight.
And all interest in this statement was lost in record time. Even though it would help Democrats win every time, as swing states would stop being a thing, and the Democrat voters in Wyoming and Texas and every other sold-red state is now something to seriously count.
Not every time. Republicans have won the popular vote before. What would happen, though, is the Republican Party would have to adjust its platform to become more in line with the majority of Americans.
Are you aware of what is minimally required in order to pull off this kind of change? There is no outcome to this election that will result in the Democrats having even the faintest possibility of doing this.
Isn’t this kind of missing the point, though? The reason neither party wants to change a thing about the current system is the whole point of abolishing the electoral college is to remove the spoiler effect that eventually leads to a two party system. If the electoral college ends, there’s no such thing as swing states, gerrymandering will be moot, candidates will actually have to have policies that people want, they’ll have to actually campaign, and many corporate “Democrats” will probably get outed by more progressive candidates.
There are other benefits, but I really don’t see this getting any traction, regardless, until we can get money our of politics and a wealth tax that makes sense (like 70%+ on the ultra wealthy).
I agree with your sentiment that Democrat ideas – more likely the progressive Democrat ideas – will likely be the candidates that win the most. However, we’ll likely never find out cause both parties will fight this with all of their being and financial ghouls.
There are other benefits, but I really don’t see this getting any traction, regardless, until we can get money our of politics and a wealth tax that makes sense (like 70%+ on the ultra wealthy).
Seems like an infinite loop by design.
Okay, a couple things here are way off. The electoral college is not a cause of the two party system. FPTP is the primary driver of that.
No, both parties don’t want the electoral college. Pretty sure the Dems would love to win nearly all modern presidential races. This is a pretty lame “they’re both the same”.
Please don’t vote-splain. You’re arguing semantics. The electoral college just gives states the ability to decide to honor or ignore the will of the people. It also gives rural states more per-capita power than they’d othereise get. Until relatively recently, most states had nothing on the books to force delegates to vote the way the people wanted.
Sure, some of the younger crowd may want to abolish the electoral college, it won’t happen unless states force an amendment. The fossils in Congress, as well as the enshrined political surnames, will all use their collective power and wealth to shut that shit down for as long as they can.
In terms of they’re both the same, you are naive if you think the Democrats really care about you or power. They just don’t outrightly tell the populous to fuck off like the Republicans do. The party tolerates progressives, but does everything they can to keep them out of power. Look to Adam Schiff these last couple of years for a good example. If I recall, didn’t he politically champion and/or donate to a candidate running against a progressive Democrat in his state? When the Democrats, or even the Republicans for that matter, have all three branches, they still never seem to get anything done.
Hmm, 🤔… It’s almost like they want the current status quo to persist, even when empowered to do something without barriers.
It’s not like Walz or Harris can do anything about it anyway. Legal scholars have said that it would take a Constitutional amendment to change the electoral college system to anything else, as it is mandated by the Constitution.
Amending the Constitution requires ratification by 75% of the 50 US states after passing a 2/3 majority of Congress.
It’s best to be realistic and not get worked up about things you can’t do anything about.
We are slaves to the ruling class forever then.
We really have nothing to lose in that case, and may as well do anything and everything to end the electoral college.
I’m not a slave, I do whatever I want and life is great. Perhaps you should try just doing whatever the fuck you want to sometimes.
Did you have a comment reply to make? I’m not watching anybody’s youtube link.
There’s a way to circumvent the electoral college without a constitutional amendment. It’s called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It’s in progress, but not triggered yet until a few more states adopt it.
If states totaling at least 270 electoral votes sign on, then it kicks in. Every state in the compact will send the electors for the party that wins the national popular vote, regardless of how their state votes. Electoral college rendered meaningless without a constitutional amendment.
(The video is good, it’s CGP Grey’s explanation of this compact.)
Thanks
That video is worth watching just for the LOLs, but also does a great job of explaining exactly how the whole thing works.
I can understand the strategy this time
One of the big motivators for the left is that Trump has made credible threats about undermining votes and folks have signed up for it. A fear of having your voice forever silenced in the political system is a strong motivator. You can see because pundits for Trump keep trying to turn it around and say “nuh uh, the Democrats are the ones that will take away your voice”, which generally rings hollow because there’s zero history or rhetoric in the Democratic party to even suggest that.
This could be the sort of rhetoric those Republicans have been wanting. A Democrat proposing a fundamental change to the biggest election that everyone knows would usually prevent a Republican win for that office. We wouldn’t have had either Republican president in the last 30 years. This could energize scared Republicans or feed the “but both sides” distraction.
It may make tons of sense, but it’s a huge risk of scaring people to vote against Democrats that might have otherwise sat it out.
Yay anti American vice presidential candidate!
Explain.
They can’t lol they don’t know what they are talking about, they don’t know what Walz is actually talking about. It is typical low-information knee-jerk ignorance (it is how they stay maga without getting a permanent headache)
How is proposing a change to our electoral system “anti-American”?
Was it “anti-American” to want to end slavery? After all, it was a part of our country’s systemic history.
Was it “anti-American” to give women the right to vote? The constitution pretty clearly didn’t give them that right.
Tell us you don’t know what you’re talking about without actually telling us.
Yay anti American comment!
I think at this point pretty much everyone I’ve ever talked to thinks the electoral college is bullshit. Even my dad and he’s a trumper.
Well one doesn’t necessary need to get rid of electoral college, if the electors were appointed by proportional vote and representation. At that point it would be just a smudging filter. National popular vote with extra steps and some added in accuracy due to one being able to do so much proportionality given how many electors there is.
So the main problem is not electoral college, but the voting method. Just as note since also getting rid of electoral college isn’t a fix, if the direct popular election uses bad voting method. Like say nationwide plurality vote would be horrible replacement for electoral college.
Though I would assume anyone suggesting popular vote would mean nationwide majority win popular vote. Though that will demand a “fail to reach majority” resolver. Be it a two round system (second round with top two candidates, thus guaranteed majority result) or some form of instant run-off with guaranteed majority win after elimination rounds.
TLDR: main problem I winner take all plurality, first past the post more than the technicality of there existing such bureaucratic element as electors and electoral votes.
Let’s not forget the unfair ratio of citizens to electoral votes across the different states. California, for instance, is on the low end of electoral vote fraction per citizen compared to smaller states. That absolutely needs to be fixed as well.
For sure. It’s definitely a multi layer problem and our voting system is trash. We’ll always be stuck with a two party system as long as we stick with first past the post. And as long as we are stuck with two choices it will always be a shit show of “us vs them.” But at the same time the electoral college only makes things worse. I live in a very red area of the US even though I disagree with 70% of what they believe in. And even though I vote, I know for a fact that my vote literally means nothing outside of the popular vote. And it’s pretty disheartening to know that. I’m sure there are plenty of people like me that don’t even vote because they think it doesn’t matter so why even bother.
I won’t lie and say the solution or the problem are super easy. I’m just saying it’s fucked and definitely needs to change. And I’m a strong advocate for a two round system or something similar so people don’t have to just vote against the candidate they don’t want.
It makes sense to exist… In the 40’s.
But with modern day society and how small the world has become, it makes no sense to me to still exist tbh…Even in the 1940s it didn’t make sense anymore.
1840s. It existed to preserve slavery
I was taught something different growing up and had to check myself with a quick read. Holy shit. You’re right. Thanks for sharing.
Why can’t we end it then.
I think I want him to be president.
That would fit the pattern (provided Harris wins) Obama/Biden -> Biden/Harris -> Harris/Walz -> Walz/??
finally some effing leadership from a dem. Now if he just gets something done on it. A good start would be to fire whoever contradicted him.
Watch Trump win the electoral college again and Democrats not use that as a rallying point to abolish it.
Don’t worry. As soon as Waltz said an overwhelmingly positive thing, Kamala distanced herself from it.
Yawn……
Probably not the popular opinion, but I think EC is important to America being what it is & as large as it is. From Wikipedia:
The electoral college is fundamental to American federalism, in that it requires candidates to appeal to voters outside large cities, and increases the political influence of more rural states. Whether by design or accident, one of its effects is to help prevent a tyranny of the majority that would ignore the less densely populated heartland and rural states in favor of the mega-cities
Imo without the EC, the Democrats would just roll the elections and the entire Republican party would have to pivot. Serving the rural / conservative view would be a losing strategy. Then resentment would grow that a big cultural force in America no longer has any say
I used to agree, and perhaps that concept made more sense in the 18th century when the urban/rural divide was not nearly as stark and separate.
The same goes with the Senate. I have no problem with it in concept, but unless we can also have a House that is actually proportionally representative, then it doesn’t really make sense.
Rural states have a large advantage in the house, huge advantage in the senate, and of course significant skew in the electoral college. And much of it comes from compromises with slave owners.
Abolishing the EC would not mean rural regions get completely ignored, not only would they have reps and senators still courting their votes (and campaign donations), civilized countries with functional democracies have multiple parties. A rural party would show up, which could court voters in all rural areas, instead of only in swing states.And to expand on what you said, they wouldn’t be spending all their time in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia. They would likely visit every state to hoover up as many votes as they could. It would also give a voice to those who live in heavy red or blue places who don’t vote because they feel their vote is meaningless (it’s not. Get out and vote anyway).
Democratic presidential candidates only ever come here to Indiana during the primaries. They know there’s no point in the general.
Bernie didn’t even announce his schedule when he was here in 2016. He did one public event and then it turned out later he did a couple of other things of note (like visit the Eugene V. Debs museum here in Terre Haute).
Did Biden/Harris even come here in 2016? I was under the impression that the Democrat presidential Candidates abandoned indiana ~10 years ago.
I don’t remember them doing so. I just remember finding out Bernie came and left town and never told anyone.
One, the Republican party needs to pivot, or die, frankly. They’ve gone so far down the fascist rabbit hole at this point that they’re a danger to the very fabric of this country. Perhaps if they couldn’t get away with chiefly appealing to a minority of this country, that would push them to do so.
Two, the idea of the current system serving the rural/urban divide is a complete lie. Do you think the people of Kern County, CA are served by the electoral college? Do you think the people of San Antonio, TX are? No, they are completely and utterly ignored because they happen to be in states that vote the other way. To say nothing of the fact that the people who generally do vote with their state are ignored almost as much, because they can be taken for granted.
If you want every American to count, then you need to count every American. And if that upsets some people who have gotten used to welding outsized power over the rest of us and now think that’s their birthright, oh fucking well.
So your plan is to hand power to the minority of people? And you think we should agree to this minoritarianism, because the rural / conservative view holders would get resentful?
Why don’t we just hand the country back to the indigenous people and let them, an even bigger minority than the rurals, run shit for a while?
Anyway "rural / conservative view"s are already represented in their communities, towns, cities, and states. By their local, city, and state governments.
And by your “logic” shouldn’t all those conservative counties that vote red be forced to give greater weight to their liberal residents, yah know so their liberal voices aren’t drowned out and they suddenly become resentful or something.
Say it ain’t so… the Republican party would need to become more attractive to moderate conservatives and be less alienating? What a travesty that would be.
Conservativism, as it exists in modern America, is simply a fringe belief that only survives because of our broken ass election system that forces us into two parties.
Don’t conservatives resent democrats either way? They have so much of an advantage through the EC that the democrats have to go liberal+progressive big tent, but still they complain/fear the amount of non-whites and atheists in big cities.
Also don’t black americans + lgbt also resent their underrepresentation? Why should rural white populations get to speak over them? Just because historically that’s been the case and we don’t want to hurt their feelings?
While I agree with him, it’s also a stupid thing to say out loud during the election when they’re CLEARLY trying to sway moderate and uneasy right leaning voters.
I think the electoral college has become pretty unpopular with pretty much everyone except committed republicans in recent years
Exactly, the result is decided but free starts and for example Republicans in California and New York feel their vote doesn’t matter at all.
It’s become unpopular with everyone except the people who originally demanded it so they could count their slaves as 3/5 of a vote.
I think it was progressive who demanded it to be 3/5 if then conservative had their way they would happily count slaves as two people. It’s was in their favour to do so. Slaves could vote and it inflated their population count which will grant more seat. I’m neither American nor have I been there.
Nope, but not bad. The free states wanted them to not count for representative purposes, since they couldn’t vote.
From Wikipedia:
Slave holding states wanted their entire population to be counted to determine the number of Representatives those states could elect and send to Congress. Free states wanted to exclude the counting of slave populations in slave states, since those slaves had no voting rights. A compromise was struck to resolve this impasse. The compromise counted three-fifths of each state’s slave population toward that state’s total population for the purpose of apportioning the House of Representatives, effectively giving the Southern states more power in the House relative to the Northern states.
The progressives demanded none to be counted as they wanted slavery abolished. It was the centrists that made the compromise just so the southern states to ratifiy the constitution and join the union.
Small suggestion to use “enslaved people’s” rather than “slaves”
Why though? We call baking people bakers, why shouldn’t we call enlaved people slaves?
It’s not as if their circumstances become more human that way.
I called baked people high
It’s just good to reinforce the idea that enslaved people’s were people who were enslaved. Not a profession, slave was not their job, it was their status.
Plus studies have shown that by using these people first language, especially while teaching the subject, results in higher empathy for enslaved people and reminds that their status as a slave was one forced upon them and continually so rather than the simple status they were born with.
It’s not a huge problem or anything, but it isn’t hard to toss in every now and then and only does good.
“Good” like derailing conversations that were about content and making them about semantics. “Good”.
God forbid someone on a thread based system bring up a related topic on the side. Like, is that really your complaint? Oh no guys, the humanization of enslaved people’s is derailing this 3rd person’s quip. Quick, we must stop him!
Silly billy you are.
I think there’s a difference between the two. The term “salve” says nothing about what happened. It just tells you how things are. However, the term “enslaved” clearly indicates that the person used to be free, but was later forced into slavery by someone.
Words have a definition, slave is the appropriate word to talk about enslaved people and them being enslaved is what makes them slaves therefore it’s implied that they are enslaved if they are slaves. Now stop with the PC bullshit to derail the discussion.
Derail a thread with a small side suggestion. That’s a lot of pushback to a small request. Almost like you actively wish to not have enslaved people humanized in conversation.
You can always just not say it yourself. To actively try and start fights about it implies malice.
Imo it’s more that “enslaved people” emphasizes their humanity, something that slavery itself typically removes from a person. Therefore “enslaved person” can be seen as radical phrasing that works against the goals of slavery
Thank you
It helps humanize them
Seems a lot of people here are against the humanizing of enslaved people’s. Weird.
This very succinctly summarizes what I hate about the “unhoused” brand of pedantry. Pretty sure they want shelter more than some rich college kid making sure everyone on the internet gets their fucking nouns right.
Changing the language you use about a thing changes your perception of that thing. This is data driven reality of making small changes to the way you talk actively changes the thought process on it. You can be lazy and not do it, it’s your own language. But that’s all your doing. Being lazy, or actively reactionary.
This is the term we use in my sex dungeon.
I’m pretty sure it’s still very popular for a lot of Republicans considering that conservatives have only won the popular vote once in the last 35-ish years. The only time they won was George W. Bush’s second term after the events of 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
not the undecided swing state voters.
with the amount of money being spent to woo swing state voters I feel like being an “undecided voter” is some kind of career at this point
His comments – to an audience of party fundraisers – chime with the sentiments of a majority of American voters
I guess you missed this bit
Maybe they’re finally realizing that instead of chasing right wing voters they should try to tap into the much larger pool of left-wing voters. Or at least one can hope.
The programs that Walz champions speak for themselves.
I very much doubt that. Their metric is fundraising, and the money/rich people is/are on the right.
Lol
The real money is from corporations. And they don’t give a fuck about social issues. So long as they get their free pass to fleece the masses.
And they’ve been loosing the left this whole time.
But if we take the high road once more, surely the voters will see the light!
Just vote blue no matter who.
It’s that simple, do that and you’ll uh somehow magically become a lefter country?
We are all slaves to the ruling class until this is done.
You think the midwest will have any say in what happens in the USA without it?
All the campaigns will spend time in NY, California, Texas, and nearby states. Campaign money goes where the votes go. Then government spending goes where the votes are.
Coroprations will own the midwest while farms exist, and care not about voting because their lobbying is paying the ad spend on the coasts.
This is a deep issue. The founders may have been white (mostly, remember hamilton isnt an opera) and flawed but they werent stupid.
All the campaigns will spend time in NY, California, Texas, and nearby states.
As opposed to spending all their time in cities in swing states like they currently do? The EC is an abysmal failure at preventing candidates from ignoring huge swaths of the country. Fuck the EC. What is even dumber about the EC, is that basically every other office in the US counts all votes equally, and yet this isn’t a problem at the state/local level.
One person, one vote. We are all born equal, all votes should be equal. Nobody is more deserving of a voice than any other.
Coroprations will own the midwest while farms exist, and care not about voting because their lobbying is paying the ad spend on the coasts.
That’s already the case.
I want my devalued vote back. Any other rationalization is an assault on “one person one vote”.
so what? We’re talking about a national vote for president. Your specific voice gets heard through local elections, not the president. Every person should have an equal vote. Period.
Campaign money goes where the votes go. Then government spending goes where the votes are.
You mean to say, power will be more evenly distributed per person instead of per acre?
I’m ok with this.
The flip side is that people who live in states with a big land area but relatively small population have a way oversized vote compared to people who live in high population states. Why should a small number of people in the Midwest be able to outvote the majority?
And so we’ll remain until we can also get rid of the two party system. This would be a good start, but we also need to change our voting system to anything but this awful first-past-the-post system.
Which was the point of the EC in the first place:
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.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0065
and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes
Could you explain this sentence please? English isn’t my first language and I can’t make sense of it.
White slave owners in the south didn’t want abolitionists to vote away their supremacy over blacks, and thought the EC would be a good way to make sure the abolitionist voting bloc would be kept in check.
History is riddled with the results of people on the right side giving so much to the losers that the losers win in the long run.
They were monsters that treated humans like property… fuuuuuuuuck them so hard.
And here we are, back again cuz someone didn’t smack them hard enough
Now we’re all still property, but must find a way to feed, clothe, home ourselves and get to our mostly underpaid jobs. It’s fine if it’s extralegal, until we’re caught or turned in.
Southern states owned a lot of slaves, and thought the slave owners should get to have the slave’s votes in addition to their own. They thought that if they couldn’t do that, the South couldn’t have a loud enough voice in the election.
It’s kind of related to the 3/5th compromise.
Thanks !
Madison was saying that blacks in the south were enslaved and couldn’t vote. They made up a significant portion of the southern states population which put them at a disadvantage giving them poor representation.
Removing the electoral college does nothing to change our two party system so I don’t understand why you think it solves billionaire class rule.
It absolutely does. Without Republicans gerrymandering everything to stay in the fold, they’re completely done. They’ll get bodied every election. The last time the Republicans won the popular vote was 20 years ago, and the party has radically changed since then.
Hopefully undoing the electoral college is the first step to dismantling the two party system.
So thats on me, I said “does nothing to change our two party system” when I should have said “does nothing to remove our two party system”. All this does is concentrate power into the democrats which if they had no worry of winning elections would very quickly openly turn into the Billionaire Boot Licking Society overnight. We need more political parties.
All this being said I’m not arguing against removing the electoral college, it needs to die. But Americas problems run so much deeper than the GOP
I mean I agree, I don’t think it would solve all of our problems instantly.
